Nate skirted it as the Pawnees had done. He went perhaps fifty yards and came on another. Soon he passed a third and then a fourth. Once a sizeable herd had called the tableland home.
Maklin had been content to stay behind Nate, but now he brought his horse alongside the bay. “How much farther before we turn back?”
“I never said we were.”
The Texan frowned. “I wish you had told me.”
“It makes a difference?”
“I didn’t count on staying out all night. Blunt is leaving tomorrow, and if I’m not there he might head out without me.”
“You can turn back if you want and no hard feelings,” Nate assured him. He didn’t add that he hadn’t wanted the help anyway.
“I don’t run out on a pard. I can always catch up to the freight wagons. Those oxen are molasses with hide on.”
A glint of light in the distance caused Nate to draw rein. He took out the spyglass. At the tableland’s western boundary rose a serrated ridge heavy with growth. Beyond, slopes rose like stepping-stones to the Divide. Fully half a dozen peaks glistened white with snow.
“Anything?” Maklin asked.
“It’s peaceful,” Nate responded.
“Too much so. I feel like a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.”
Nate shortened the telescope and put it back in his parfleche and rode on. He thought of Winona and how much he missed her. Another wallow appeared on the right, its bottom mired in shadow.
“Notice anything about the tracks?” Maklin asked, interrupting Nate’s reverie.
Nate glanced down. The prints were still in single file, their depth corresponding to the softness of the soil. “They’re not riding fast anymore.”
“Not that. They’re going from wallow to wallow as if they’re looking for something.”
The notion struck Nate as humorous. The only thing in wallows was dirt. The buffalo liked to urinate in it and then roll around to cake their hides and ward off flies and other pests.
Belatedly, the notion dawned on Nate that maybe the Pawnees weren’t looking for something in the wallows. Maybe they were looking for a wallow deep enough to hide in. Even as the thought crossed his mind, a shadow at the bottom exploded into motion and hurtled up over the edge at him.
Nate’s Hawken was pointing the other way. He had no time to turn it to shoot, but he did raise it to ward off a flash of steel. The warrior drew back the knife to stab again. There was a crack behind them and a hole appeared in the Pawnee’s temple while simultaneously the other side of his head burst in a shower of skin and bone and blood.
The warrior staggered a few steps and fell.
Nate jerked the Hawken up, but there was no one else to shoot. The man had been the only one in the wallow. The high grass was undisturbed. He glanced back at Maklin and the smoking pistol in Maklin’s hand. “Thanks.”
“I was a shade slow.”
Only after Nate was sure no others were going to attack did he climb down and roll the dead warrior over.
“Why just this one? Why not all of them at once?”
“Your guess is as good as mine would be.” So much for Nate’s idea that Kuruk would try to take him alive. He scanned the tableland ahead. “Could be they thought there would be more of us and they didn’t want to risk all of them getting killed.”
“So it’ll be one at a time from here on out? Hell.”
“We’ll just have to keep on our toes.”
“We can always turn back,” Maklin said. “Make them come for you instead of us riding into every ambush they set.”
“No.”
“You’re a stubborn cuss, Nate King.”
Nate looked at him. “I want to end it.”
“I don’t blame you. But it will eat at your nerves, something like this.” Maklin regarded the dead man, and grinned. “Look at the bright side. One more down means only six to go. The odds get better all the time.”
They pressed on. White puffs of clouds floated serenely in the blue arc of sky. A breeze rippled the grass as it might waves in the sea. A pair of finches flew overhead and a doe and her fawn stared but didn’t run off.
This was always the way with the wilderness. On the surface it could be as calm as a lake on a windless day. Under the surface, though, lurked perils galore. Beasts that delighted in feasting on human flesh. Snakes with poison in their fangs, scorpions with poison in their tails. Pitfalls of chance and deadfalls of trees and just plain falls for the unwary. So many dangers the list was too long for Nate to ponder.
The dark underbelly belied the warmth of the sun and the caress of the wind. A man must never forget the duality of the wilds or the wilds would lay that man low.
It was said that Nature was fickle. It was said that “she” was a harsh mistress. Nature had no gender, though. Nature was the order of things, and that order was a doe and her fawn on one hand and a Pawnee with a knife on the other. Life and death, light and dark, peaceful and violent.
Nate had thought about it and thought about it and concluded that if the order of things was a reflection of the Maker of that order, then the Maker must have a reason for things being as they were. But what that reason could be was as much a mystery now as it had been years ago when he first thought about it.
The best explanation he’d heard was courtesy of Shakespeare. Life was a forge, McNair once said, and just as the heat of a forge tempered metal to be hard so it wouldn’t break, so, too, did life temper men and women to make them strong and wise so they wouldn’t break under the adversities.
Nate gave a toss of his head. He was letting his mind wander again. That could prove costly should another Pawnee spring out of nowhere.
The sun was on its westward descent. Gradually the shadows lengthened. Nate began to cast about for a suitable camp and chose a stand of aspens. The trees would shelter them from the wind and hide their fire from the Pawnees. He climbed down and led the bay to a small clear space.
Maklin offered to gather firewood and walked off.
While he waited Nate gathered dry leaves and grass for kindling. He formed a pile, and when Maklin returned, took his fire steel and flint from his possibles bag. It took three strikes. Once the spark ignited, he puffed lightly on the tiny flame. As it grew he added fuel, and soon they had a crackling fire.
Maklin chewed on jerky and stared across at him.
“Something on your mind?”
“You wouldn’t listen if there is.”
“Try me.”
“This is a mistake. I keep saying it, but you won’t heed.”
“Not that again.”
Maklin bit off another piece. “You told me a while back that you had me figured out. Well, I have you figured out, too. You take the blame for Wendell and his family. You take the blame for our wrangler. You want revenge for them as much as Kuruk wants revenge for his uncle.”
“If that’s how you see it.”
“You must not care for your family as much as you claim you do.”
Nate’s head snapped up. “Be careful. They are everything to me. I won’t have anyone say otherwise.”
“Your idea of everything must be different from mine or you wouldn’t be doing this. You wouldn’t make it this easy for your enemies to make your woman a widow and your boy and girl fatherless.”
“That’s going too far.”
“I’m only saying my piece. If it hurts, then it’s true, and if it’s true you can’t hold it against me.”
Nate spent the next half hour examining his feelings. He decided the Texan was only half right, but even half was too much. He did feel bad about the Wendells and the wrangler. He did feel partly at fault. And, God help him, he did want Kuruk to be held to account. He gazed over the fire. “About what you said a while ago. I’m trying to do what’s right.”