Wilderness double editio.., p.21
Wilderness Double Edition 18, page 21
Blue Water Woman sagged, her lovely face contorted. Scooping her up, Shakespeare ran to the mare and flung his wife into the saddle. He was sorry to be so rough, sorry to cause her more discomfort, but they had no time to spare. Reaching around, he gripped the horn and vaulted up behind her so he could brace her body with his own.
Shakespeare reined to the right as the woods pealed to a ferocious roar. He glanced over a shoulder and saw the creature twenty yards away, churning through the vegetation like a hairy tornado. Facing front, he rode with all the skill at his command, one arm clamped around Blue Water Woman, his other hand holding the reins and the Hawken both.
The traitorous dun was rushing headlong for the switchback—and home.
Blue Water Woman groaned when the mare abruptly veered to avoid a tree. Placing his lips to her ear, Shakespeare coaxed, “Hold on! Once we’re safe I’ll stop. It shouldn’t be long.”
Then again, he could be wrong. Glancing back again, Shakespeare was startled to find the creature in open pursuit, flowing over the ground with unbelievable speed, as fast as the mare, or faster. The feat was all the more astounding in light of the creature’s uneven, lurching gait.
“Heeyah!” Shakespeare bawled, applying the reins. The mare was doing the best she could, but she had to bear the weight of two people over some extremely rugged terrain. He let her have her head, then twisted to see if the creature had gained any.
It had.
Thirty feet separated them. Shakespeare saw the thing clearly for the first time, and what he saw only added to the mystery.
Seven feet tall, if not more, the creature was three times as wide as an average man and possessed extraordinarily broad shoulders. At their apex was a pronounced hump, akin to the hump on a grizzly. But the creature moved on two legs, not four, legs as thick as tree trunks and as powerful as the pistons on a steam engine. Legs clad in buckskin, not hair. On its feet were huge moccasins constructed from bear paws, complete with pads and claws.
The black hair Shakespeare had found, the black hair that lent the illusion of the creature being covered with fur, came from a knee length robe it wore, a robe fashioned by stitching the hides of several black bears together. It was crowned by a loose-fitting hood that effectively hid the thing’s face. Or, rather, the person's face.
“It’s a man!” Shakespeare exclaimed. On one hand, the discovery was comforting. Human beings weren’t invincible. A man could be slain. But on the other hand, it was a man unlike any other, a man endowed with the prodigious strength of Samson and the raw ferocity of a grizzly. A man who could bend fireplace pokers and metal traps in his bare hands. A man more monster than human.
Blue Water Woman straightened and stared past him. She said something in the Flathead tongue, something he didn’t quite catch.
“What was that?”
“The hunchback of the heights.”
Shakespeare wasn’t sure he had heard correctly over the pounding of the mare’s hoofs and the hideous snarls of their pursuer. “What did you say?”
Blue Water Woman raised her voice. “The hunchback of—!” She got no further. The mare swerved to go around a boulder, and without warning a tree materialized in front of them. Shakespeare saw a bunch of low limbs directly in their path and reined to the left, but it was too little, too late.
At breakneck speed they slammed into the branches. Blue Water Woman was clipped on the head and knocked against him. Like leaves in a gale they toppled from the saddle, Shakespeare with his arm still around her. The ground rose to greet them and they tumbled wildly, Shakespeare losing his hold as they rolled to a stop. He placed his hands flat to rise, but dizziness assailed him and he collapsed, disoriented and distressingly weak.
“Husband?” Blue Water Woman said softly. She lay on her stomach a few yards off, her long hair over her face. “I hurt.”
Gritting his teeth, Shakespeare pushed up onto his hands and knees. The sky and the earth were doing a dance and he couldn’t quite make up his mind which way was up and which was down. Digging his toes into the earth, he heaved toward her. In mid-spring a steely hand clamped onto the back of his neck and viselike fingers dug into his flesh. He was jerked into the air and held there as effortlessly as he might hold a child’s rag doll.
An image assaulted his confused senses. A horrible, distorted image of a face that wasn’t a face, an image so warped and misshapen it couldn’t possibly be real, an obscene nightmare given form and substance.
“God help us!” Shakespeare blurted.
“Husband?” Blue Water Woman repeated.
The hand holding him let go and Shakespeare fell with a jolt. He had to reach his wife, had to protect her, but as he rose a blow to the temple felled him like a poled ox. His vision swam, his gut did flip-flops. “I’m here,” he croaked, struggling to stand. Inside him an inky chasm yawned and his consciousness began to fade.
“No!” Shakespeare railed, his voice reaching him as if from a great distance. Dimly, he saw a gigantic black mass tower over his wife, saw the creature bend and drape Blue Water Woman over a broad shoulder.
“Carcajou?”
Shakespeare clawed at the dank earth, desperately seeking the will, the energy, to save her. The chasm inside him widened, engulfing him in emptiness. Fleeting despair brought a whine to his lips. Then he passed out.
Five
Shakespeare McNair heard someone groan. He was adrift in inky vastness, an ethereal sea where the only sensation was a cool wind. He tried to concentrate, to think, but couldn’t. His mind refused to cooperate. His thoughts were sluggish, disjointed, a mishmash of unconnected images and sounds. He was sure he was having one of those dreams where a person knew they were dreaming but were powerless to stop or wake up.
Again the groan sounded, louder this time. Shakespeare wished he could tell whoever was doing it to stop. It distracted him, breaking his concentration, and he needed to focus to make sense of things.
Then a jaw squawked shrilly, and it was as if a finger had been pulled from a dike enclosing his consciousness. A small blue hole appeared in the ether and through it rushed a riot of colors, blues and whites and greens and browns. The earth and sky reformed before him. He was shocked to discover he was lying on his side in high grass. For the life of him, he couldn’t recollect how he got there.
Yet another groan brought the realization that he was the one doing all the groaning. Simultaneously, Shakespeare was flooded with vivid memories of the chase, of the hunchback of the heights, of colliding with the low limbs and of being struck on the head. He remembered seeing the creature take Blue Water Woman, remembered vainly trying to reach her. “No!” he cried, and sat bolt upright.
Shakespeare regretted being so impetuous. Pounding waves of pain splashed inside his skull. Dizzy, nauseous, he squinted against the harsh glare of the late afternoon sun, dismayed that he had been unconscious for hours.
“Blue Water Woman?” Shakespeare croaked, turning his neck. His head protested in the strongest possible terms, and for a moment he thought he would black out again. But the sickening vertigo faded and he slowly rose up onto his knees to take stock of himself and his situation.
Shakespeare wriggled his fingers and toes and moved his arms, and they were fine. No bones were broken, at least. He had a nasty welt on his temple where the creature had hit him, along with a layer of dried blood from a break in the skin. Licking dry lips to moisten them, he swiveled at the hips.
Other things were missing besides his wife. Shakespeare didn’t see his Hawken anywhere. Nor hers, come to think of it. He reached for his pistols, but they were gone as well. The only weapon he had left was his Green River knife, which was hardly sufficient to hold off a prowling grizzly or a hungry mountain lion.
Shakespeare inched to his feet and stood swaying like an infant taking its first steps. Guns or no, he would push on after the creature. He couldn’t bear to think of Blue Water Woman in the clutches of that hellish thing, couldn’t bear to imagine what it might do to her, or had already done. “God, please, no,” he prayed.
The tracks were plain enough; the creature had gone off to the northwest. Shakespeare willed his legs to move and shuffled after it, gaining strength with every stride. Fear lent him extra energy, fear for the one he loved.
A constriction formed in Shakespeare’s throat and his emotions seethed like boiling stew. The thought of losing Blue Water Woman brought tears to his eyes. She was his life’s blood, his anchor, his happiness given form and substance. He needed her as much as he needed lungs to breathe. Without her he would wither and die, his advanced years at last taking their toll.
“Damn you!” Shakespeare raged, clenching his fists at what the creature had done. The thing had deprived him of the one person who mattered most, and if it was the last thing he did he would make the fiend suffer, make it howl in agony and die an agonizing death.
The woods weren’t as quiet as they had been. A robin was singing to the north. To the south, ravens cawed. A chipmunk he passed scolded him for daring to intrude on its diminutive domain. Proof the creature was long gone.
Shakespeare placed a hand on the hilt of his knife and kept it there. He never knew when a bear or some other predator might rise up out of ambush, but he wouldn’t let that deter him. He would push on for however long it took.
At their cabin Shakespeare had his spare rifle and pistols, but on foot it would take days to get there. Days he could ill afford to lose.
The minutes dragged, becoming an hour, then two. Shakespeare regretted letting his wife talk him into tracking the creature down, regretted not going to Nate King’s instead. With Nate’s help he could have brought the thing to bay and left her with Winona, where she’d be safe.
Lengthening shadows hurried Shakespeare along. The sun was dipping toward the high peaks. Before long night would descend and he would be forced to stop. He couldn’t track in the dark. And it wasn’t wise to be abroad armed with just a knife when every meat-eater in the mountains was looking to fill its belly. By rights he should find a safe spot to hole up, but he stubbornly plodded on in the belief every step brought him that much closer to his wife.
Soon brilliant multicolored bands painted the horizon, spectacular hues of red, orange and yellow. They faded into twilight, and Shakespeare moved through darkening gloom, scarcely able to see more than twenty yards in front of him. Then fifteen yards. Then ten. By then a myriad of stars sparkled overheard above.
The yip of a coyote stressed the fact that Shakespeare should find shelter until morning. But where? Shakespeare was halfway across the tableland, amid dense forest. The handiest havens were the nearest trees. He debated whether to climb one and spend the night perched in a high fork, and decided against it. Trees were too damned uncomfortable; catching any sleep would be nigh on impossible. He chose to gather a large pile of downed limbs and stacked them next to the trunk of a fir, then sat with his back to the bole. Scooping out a depression with his fingers, he broke the limbs into small sections and arranged them in a small mound. Around the base he sprinkled kindling.
From his possibles bag Shakespeare took his fire steel and flint. On the third strike a tiny spark caught. Bending, he lightly puffed until the spark became a flame. The limbs ignited, and from then on all he had to do was occasionally add more wood.
Shakespeare deliberately kept the fire small so it was less likely to be spotted from a distance. Hostiles might also be abroad. The flames were high enough, though, to keep most animals at bay. Most, but not all. A good-sized silvertip, if it was hungry enough, wouldn’t let a few puny flames stop it.
Sagging against the bole, Shakespeare reviewed the day’s events and felt his eyes moisten again. He’d always counted on having a few good years left with Blue Water Woman, not on having her snatched out from under his nose by a hideous creature spawned in a madman’s nightmare. He wondered what she had meant about the “hunchback of the heights.” He thought he knew every Flathead legend there was, but no one had ever mentioned a hunchback before.
Maybe it was something new, Shakespeare mused. Blue Water Woman hadn’t made as many visits to her people in recent years. She said it saddened her to go. Most of her childhood friends had long since passed on, and of her immediate family only an uncle and a couple of cousins were still alive. Her mother, her father, her brother, her sisters were all gone. So her visits had become less and less frequent, and the last time she went, she took Winona King, not him. At his request. He’d wanted to go off fishing with Nate.
Shakespeare stiffened at a grunt off in the trees, his hand on the Green River knife. A bear was out there somewhere close, but whether it was a black bear or a griz he couldn’t say. If the latter, it would make its presence known soon enough.
Shakespeare wasn’t unduly worried. Most predators naturally were shy of humans. Even grizzlies, nine times out of ten, turned tail and shuffled off. That tenth time, though, invariably ended badly for the person the griz was after.
Another grunt sounded, nearer now. Shakespeare drew his knife and added a few more pieces of wood to the fire. The circle of light expanded. And there, at the limit of its glow, blazed a large pair of slanted eyes.
The eyes of a grizzly.
Shakespeare felt himself tensing up and willed himself to relax. Animals sensed fear, smelled fear, and if the griz sensed his it would be on him in a heartbeat, ripping and rending. He met its unblinking stare with one of his, matching it tit for tat, as it were, and as he sat there waiting for the grizzly to make up its mind whether it was going to devour him, he recalled an incident from long ago, from the days when trappers roamed the Rockies by the hundreds and the annual rendezvous was the social event of the year.
A prominent man in the trapping trade and co-organizer of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, Thomas Fitzpatrick, had failed to show up for the I832 rendezvous as expected, and search parties had been sent out. Alarm mounted when, from a high bluff, one of the search parties spied a Blackfoot encampment. Training their telescope on it, they were appalled to see a Blackfoot warrior astride Fitzpatrick’s well-known horse.
Some of the trappers advocated punishing the Blackfeet, Shakespeare foremost among them. The Blackfeet had killed his first wife, Rainbow Woman, and were responsible for the deaths of more trappers than all the other tribes combined. As plans were being finalized for a night raid, word was received that Fitzpatrick had been found alive but on the verge of collapse, wandering afoot along the bank of the Pierres River.
Shakespeare had been one of the first to greet Fitzpatrick on his arrival and had been stunned at how weak and emaciated his friend had become. A walking skeleton, Fitzpatrick could barely speak. He was placed in a tent under warm blankets and given ample nourishment. Within a week he had recovered enough to sit outside the tent and relate his experiences.
It so happened that Fitzpatrick had become separated from his fur company and ended up in a part of the country he didn’t know. Blackfoot country, as it turned out, and as he learned to his utter horror when he blundered onto a village and they spotted him before he could conceal himself. He’d fled, pushing his excellent mount to its limits, but in the end his ignorance of the terrain did him in and he had to abandon his faithful but exhausted horse midway up a steep and treacherous slope. He hid in a cramped hole among some rocks and pulled sticks and leaves in on top of him.
For the rest of that day and most of the next the Blackfeet scoured the mountain for him, frequently passing within yards of his hiding place. Fitzpatrick rightfully feared for his life should they find it, and he stayed in the uncomfortable hole the whole time. Not until the third day, when his thirst became unbearable, did he slip out late at night and sneak down to a stream to slake his need.
Confident he could find his way back, Fitzpatrick struck off across country and came to a river. He tried to cross on a small raft he built of old logs, only to nearly lose his life when the raft was dashed to splinters in rapids. In an act of monumental carelessness he had laid his rifle, ammo pouch, and possibles bag on the raft, and they went to the bottom when it broke apart.
For days Fitzpatrick wandered, subsisting on berries, buds, even weeds. He weakened fast, though, and was about stove in when he stumbled on a cow buffalo recently slain by wolves. Tearing what flesh remained from the glistening bones, he made a fire by rubbing two sticks together and ate until he was fit to burst.
Thereafter, Fitzpatrick’s luck failed him. Berries and buds became harder to find. He tried to bean birds and small game with rocks but always missed. His hunger mounted even as his body wasted away. Had his deliverers not found him, it was certain he would have perished in the next day or two.
What interested Shakespeare most about the tale, though, was Fitzpatrick’s account of his run-ins with wild beasts and how Fitzpatrick comported himself. Time and again the hapless mountain man encountered grizzlies and wolves. Time and again he stood up to them and stared them down.
In one memorable instance, Fitzpatrick had been seated on a rock and a huge silvertip snuck up within six feet of him. At the last moment he sensed it was there and jumped up. The bear stared awhile, then backed off. Fitzpatrick tried to leave, but the grizzly rushed up behind him, so again Fitzpatrick turned and glared at it. Once more the lord of the mountains backed off. Over and over the macabre theater was repeated, until ultimately the grizzly lost interest and wandered off.
On hearing of the close call, Shakespeare commented to the effect that his friend had been extremely lucky.
“Nonsense,” Fitzpatrick responded in his typically know-it-all manner. “Luck had nothing to do with it. The Lord was my salvation.”
“How do you figure?” Shakespeare had asked.
“Haven’t you read your Bible?” Fitzpatrick said accusingly. “The Lord has given man dominion over the beasts of the land and the birds of the air. They are ours to command, to do with as we see fit.”
