Mountain majesty 7, p.14
Mountain Majesty 7, page 14
Looks for Home’s happiness diminished. “They all fell trying to defend the village.” He paused, his lower lip trembling. “It was terrible. The white men gave us no warning. The men did not have a chance.”
Long Forelock clasped his son’s arm. “You saw these whites with your own eyes”
“Some of them, Father. And one there was who seemed to be their chief, but he was not white. His skin, his hair, were different.”
“How different?” Kicking Bear asked.
“Darker. I saw him shoot Rattle Tail. He laughed when he did it, like he was having great fun. Then he stuck her in the eyes with his knife and laughed some more.”
Singing Wolf had one more important question to pose. “Twisted Leg, my daughter-in-law. I did not see her body anywhere. Is she at the gully?”
There was no need for the boy to respond. His expression was adequate.
Singing Wolf shook himself and turned. “We have lost many loved ones, many friends. I know that all our hearts are heavy, but we must be strong now for the sake of those who depend on us.” He paused and glanced up at the dozens of circling buzzards that had flapped into the sky earlier at the band’s approach. “We will honor the memory of the dead later. Now it is important that we see the survivors to safety. We have enough meat to last for many sleeps, so we can travel to the northwest without delay.”
“What of the whites who butchered our families?” Kicking Bear interrupted. “Do we let them go unpunished?”
“My blood cries for vengeance, just like yours,” Singing Wolf admitted. “If we only had ourselves to think of, I would not rest until the butchers were destroyed. But we must put the welfare of the women and children who lived through this nightmare before revenge. The living are more important than the dead.”
No one argued with his wisdom.
“We will head into the hills and set up a new camp,” Singing Wolf went on. “Buffalo are plentiful there at this time of the year. We will collect many hides, build new lodges. In a moon or two, the village will be as it was. In time, the Burning Hearts will thrive as before.” He swept them with a sharp gaze. “But our lives will never be the same again. Things have changed forever.”
“Because of the whites,” Hairy Hand said bitterly. Lame Deer cleared his throat. “What of Second Son and Yellow Hair? How will they find us if we go so far from our usual haunts?”
The reminder seared through Singing Wolf like a burning brand. He spun toward Looks for Home. “Their son, Wolf Sings on the Mountain! Is he with you?”
“No,” the boy said. “My mother saw him ride off early the morning of the raid. He went to the west, the same direction the whites came from. And he never came back. We think the whites must have killed him.” Looks for Home nodded to the south. “We have been taking turns at watching the village, and we have seen no one else.”
Singing Wolf recalled how sad he had been the day his father, Buffalo Horn, died. It had been the single worst day of his life, until now. His wife was gone. The son he cherished and the daughter-in-law he adored were gone. His beloved nephew was gone. His sister and her husband were probably dead also, or they would have returned long ago. All his family was gone. He was alone in the world.
Then Singing Wolf saw the hopeful eyes fixed on him, and he knew his thoughts had led him astray. He wasn’t alone and would never be alone as long as there were Burning Hearts who needed his counsel, who relied on his judgment. They were more than just his people. They were his family now, and he must devote himself to them more deeply than ever before.
“Come,” Singing Wolf stated. “The women and children wait. We must give them cause to be happy, to see that life will go on.”
Hairy Hand grunted in disgust. “I know you are right, but I would still like to track down the white dogs who did this.”
“They are long gone,” Long Forelock said. “They must be many days’ travel from here by this time.”
The warrior was wrong. Camped among the low hills to the east were the objects of their wrath. On the crown of one hill overlooking the incinerated prairie and the site where the village had stood, two men were flat on their stomachs with spyglasses pressed to their right eyes.
“Do we attack them, boss?” Rafe Hancock asked out of dread that they would. Going up against old men, women, and kids was one thing, tangling with seasoned warriors quite another. Besides, the odds were about even and he liked to have them stacked in his favor.
“Are you insane?” Julio Morales responded. “I want the Bennetts, and I don’t see them with this bunch.” He watched through the telescope as the warriors galloped to the south. “I wish we knew where that boy came from, eh? There must be others who got away. Too bad we couldn’t find them before the warriors came back.”
Rafe lowered his spyglass. “How much longer do you aim to hang around here? Some of the boys are getting a mite restless.”
“Some?” Morales said sarcastically. He had listened to their grumbling for days and knew he had better commit himself to a plan of action soon.
“All right. All of us are damned tired of twiddling our thumbs,” Rafe confessed. “And can you blame us? Every day we waste here is a day we could be plundering pilgrims bound for the Oregon country. We didn’t throw in with you to stay poor the rest of our lives.”
Morales shifted onto his side. “Bastardos. This is the thanks I get for all I have done?” He spat in the grass. “Until I came along, these renegades barely stole enough to keep their powder horns filled. Under my leadership they have done better than ever before, yet still they doubt me.”
“I didn’t say—” Rafe began, but stopped when the other held up a hand.
“Silencio. I am not done.” Morales folded his telescope and sat up. “You would all do well to trust me more and your fears less. You are like pampered niños who are so used to getting what they want that they throw fits when events do not move rapidly enough for them.”
Rafe held his tongue. Riling the Mexican was a surefire means of slashing one’s life expectancy dramatically, and he aimed to live to a ripe old age.
“Sometimes you whiners disgust me,” Morales said, and was disappointed when Hancock refused to take up the gauntlet. He liked a good quarrel. They served to remind the others of who was in charge. “I am always thinking of new and better ways to line our pockets, but does anyone appreciate my effort? No.”
“We’re not exactly a Christian outfit,” Rafe mentioned offhandedly.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Morales demanded. “El diablo claimed us the day we were born, amigo. None of us are religious and it is too late for us to change our stripes.” He stood and brushed dirt from his leggings. “Enough of this foolish talk. Let’s go back. I have an announcement to make.”
The cutthroats were taking their ease, hungry faces focused on an antelope haunch slowly roasting on a makeshift spit. Red was doing the honors.
“Another few minutes and we can make dog of this meat,” he declared for all to hear. Poking it with a finger to test how well it was done, he then licked his finger and smacked his lips. “Hell. Painter can’t shine with this.”
“I never heard a body brag so on his own cookin’,” Webber said. “And all you did was light a damned fire.”
Red glowered. “I’d like to see you do any better. Every time you cook, we end up with meat so raw a wolf would spit it out.”
A dispute was imminent, but Morales nipped it in the bud by striding to the center of the ring. “Quit your squabbling, children,” he said with just the right touch of malice. “I have something important to say.” That shut them up. Morales put his hands on his hips and stated, “Either the band we attacked were not the Burning Hearts, or Cleve Bennett and his red bitch have gone elsewhere to live. Whichever, I think it is time we went on about our own business. Tomorrow at first light we head for South Pass.” General cheers greeted the news.
“C’est incroyable! At last!” Landis cried. “I was beginning to think I would spend the rest of my days watching grass grow.”
Red wagged his butcher knife. “I just hope all the yams we’ve heard about these here pilgrims were told with a straight tongue. It would upset me something awful to get to the Green River country and not find a single greenhorn.”
“Some will show, sooner or later,” Morales insisted. He winked and grinned. “If they do not, so what? There will be another rendezvous in a few months. Trappers will come from all over, and some will have more plews than they need.”
Rafe chuckled. “I’m sure we can persuade them to share with us if we ask real politelike.”
The discussion turned to how much money they hoped to make, and how best to attack a single wagon as opposed to attacking several wagons at once. In all cases trickery was called for. The renegades were masters of the art, none more so than Julio Morales. He laid out exactly how they would proceed, everyone marveling at his craftiness.
A watch was posted, and shortly before midnight the last of the killers turned in. Morales slept nearest the fire, as befitted his position as leader, a pistol clasped firmly in his right hand as was his custom.
Breakfast consisted of leftover antelope, gulped cold with cups of coffee to wash it down. Morales ate a light meal. He wasn’t fond of riding long distances on a full stomach.
The prairie was swept with spyglasses before the gang moved out into the open. Morales was wary of clashing with the warriors he had seen since they were bound to be out for blood.
From the hills, the renegades rode to the river, then bore westward at a brisk pace, Morales and Rafe Hancock in the lead. Morales gave the village a last, lingering look and sneered at the black circles that marked where the lodges had stood. Wiping the Cheyennes out had been a lot easier than he had anticipated. It was food for thought. What he did once, he could do again. Only next time he would pick a village rich in prime animal hides.
Buzzards covered the bodies even at that early hour. Others waited for their turns to feast. Morales saw one bird rip off a sizable chunk of putrid flesh with its big beak, then, with a deft flip of its ugly head, slide the morsel down its gullet.
The men were in fine spirits at the prospect of killing and robbing again. They talked quietly among themselves and Morales didn’t object. He was in rare good humor, too. Despite not having slain the Bennetts, he had added to his formidable reputation by doing what no other man had ever done. When word got out, he would have more men riding with him than he knew what to do with.
They were abreast of a gravel bar when Morales spotted recently made horse tracks. Holding up a hand, he stopped and slid off his sorrel. Judging by the prints, a pair of horses had watered at that spot many times over a number of days. He guessed that the last time had been less than a week ago.
“Hey, lookee there!” Webber called out, pointing at a dark hole in the bank. “What do you make of that?”
At a gesture from Morales, several of the cutthroats climbed down and converged with their rifles leveled. A man named Cain crawled inside, was gone all of five seconds, then poked his head out to say, “Someone hid out here for a spell, but they’re not here now.”
Morales investigated for himself. Embers of a small fire in a corner of the cavity testified to repeated nights spent huddled in the sanctuary. A depression against the back wall showed where a man had lain for many days. Most intriguing of all were the footprints.
“A kid made most of these,” Red remarked.
“Yes,” Morales said, poking at a discarded pile of bloodstained bandages. “A man was hurt and the kid tended him.” It sparked an idea. Could it be, he asked himself, that the wounded man was Cleve Bennett and the kid was Bennett’s breed brat, Billy-Wolf? It would explain their absence, if not that of the squaw. “Find which way they went,” he commanded.
The men fanned out along the bank. The horses had been sheltered among cottonwoods close by. Tracks were found leading to the spot, but none turned out to lead away, except to the gravel bar.
“There has to be some sign,” Morales said. “Keep looking until I say to stop.”
Grumbling, the killers complied. Landis, one of the better trackers, walked a score of yards upriver and halted beside a strip of mud. His ear-piercing whistle brought everyone on the double. “See these, mon ami,” he said. “They are the freshest of the lot, I think.”
Morales knelt to study them. He wasn’t as good at rating the age of tracks, but he would take Landis’s word for it. The former voyageur was rarely wrong. In this case it appeared the two horses had entered the river single file at an angle that revealed they were heading westward.
“They’re making for the mountains,” Red said.
“The same as we are,” Morales said, and grinned. Fate had looked favorably on him again. If he pushed the men, they would overtake the pair in four or five days. At long last they would have his revenge on Cleve Bennett. “Mount up. Let’s ride.”
Morales was a good hater and knew it. He’d learned at an early age. When only six, he had grown to hate his mother for her antics when his father was away. She had invited strange men to their house and always locked him in his room so he would not bother them. Later, his father had learned of her affairs and killed her.
Morales had thought that would be the end of it, but his father had to flee and Morales was given into the care of an uncle who drank himself into a stupor every night. The man had worked Morales from dawn to dusk and cuffed him brutally if he objected. Morales had hated anew.
For six years Morales had tolerated the abuse, then, one stormy night, he had slit his uncle’s throat. Drifting steadily northward, he had met other men he hated, but none as much as he hated Cleve Bennett and Second Son. Thinking of them always gave him a warm feeling inside, such as he had that time he twisted a kitten’s neck to silence its mewing.
How Morales would love to do the same to the Bennett clan! Over the next several days he followed the river to the northwest and twice came on camps made by the boy and the man. Soon, Morales told himself while rubbing his palms in bloodthirsty anticipation. Soon his enemies would learn what it meant to earn the hatred of Julio Cardenas Morales!
Chapter Thirteen
IT HAD BEEN four days. Second Son was very worried. She squatted between the small fire and her unconscious mate, folded her arms across her knees, and studied his rugged face. How much longer before he came around? she reflected.
Maybe he never would. Second Son remembered an incident from her childhood, when a noted warrior by the name of Leaps Fast did not quite leap fast enough one day when charged by a bull buffalo. Leaps Fast had been bowled over, then stomped repeatedly. One of the blows had struck his skull. Although the Burning Hearts did everything in their power, and their best healer, Little Otter, had exhausted herself trying to save him, Leaps Fast never recovered. He lay as one dead, day after day after day. His body wasted away to the point where it could no longer support life, and Leaps Fast’s spirit soared to the Great Beyond.
Would the same thing happen to her Cleve? Second Son placed her palm on his forehead to see if his fever had returned. His temperature was as it should be.
A faint rustle told the warrior that her shadow was back. She glanced around to find the giant Modoc standing there with a dead doe over his wide shoulder. He grinned, touched the deer, and addressed her at length.
“What am I going to do with you?” Second Son responded in her own language. Since neither spoke the other’s tongue, and since the Modoc had no knowledge of sign, communicating was hard. She had to resort to exaggerated movements to get her ideas across.
Second Son was still not comfortable having the outcast around. She bore him no malice for his treatment of her, but she did not know how far she could trust him, if at all. He had made no attempt to harm her. Rather, he lived to make her happy. The Modoc was the one who did the hunting, who gathered wood, who was ready to do her bidding at any time of the day. It was like having her own personal slave.
But this was different. Second Son could not decide whether the Modoc entertained a romantic interest in her, or whether he had adopted her as a sister. There was a third possibility, but she thought it ridiculous that a man so huge and capable, even if dull-witted, should feel the need for a pretend mother.
“Thank you,” Second Son said, smiling and pointing at the doe.
The giant puffed out his chest in pride and set the dead animal down. Placing a callused foot on the body, he gripped a rear leg with both hands, then wrenched. So great was his strength that he tore the leg clean off. Beaming like a five-year-old, he proceeded to skewer the haunch with a sharpened stick so he could roast it.
Second Son had to admit that the Modoc was of great help. In addition to everything else he did, he had taken it on himself to protect her from her enemies. When she had nothing else for him to do, he would go off into the lodgepole pines and keep watch for Broken Paw.
The Nez Percé had not given up. Of that Second Son was sure. She had nearly been caught unawares once, during the thunderstorm, but she would not make the same mistake again.
Second Son looked at Cleve, wishing he would groan or whine or twitch a finger, to show some sign that he would soon rejoin the world of the living. She picked up the cup of broth she had made the evening before and let some trickle into his mouth. His throat automatically bobbed, but that was the only reaction.
Depressed, Second Son put the cup down and rested her brow on her arms. They couldn’t stay there forever. Eventually the Nez Percé would find them. She had to get her man out of there even though moving him might worsen his state.
For one of the few times during their danger-filled marriage, Second Son pondered how her life would be without Yellow Hair. She could not abide the thought. Until he came along, she had believed herself to be complete unto herself. She had needed no one, and secretly regarded her married sisters with amusement. She had never understood why so many women took men into their lives when doing so sometimes brought endless disputes and aggravation.
