Wind Walker Page 5

  Sweete cleared his throat, that scratchy bullfrog of a voice dramatically softened now. “Sure would like to see ol’ Gabe my own self.”

  “Why, child—you askin’ yourself along?”

  Shad’s face brightened. “Figgered I’d have to work harder’n that to get you to come to the bait, pilgrim!”

  “Who you callin’ pilgrim, you lop-eared greenhorn?”

  “Damn, if it wouldn’t shine for our families to ride north together!” Shad gushed with enthusiasm. “So, how long afore you was planning on leaving, Scratch?”

  He dug at an itch under his chin, then said, “When I first rode in here, I fixed my sights on laying over at the fort two nights at the most—so I was gonna pull out come morning.”

  It was like the air suddenly went out of Shad. With a grump of resignation he said, “Morning don’t give Shell Woman much time.”

  “Hell, Shadrach—ain’t a Injun woman what can’t take down a lodge and pack it up in the time it takes you an’ me to eat our lunch and have us a pipeful of that tobaccy o’ your’n.”

  Wagging his head, Shadrach explained, “It ain’t getting ever’thing tore down and packed up I was meanin’. It’s just … Shell Woman’s got family—folks, sisters, and a brother, ever’one she growed up with in this camp. I allays figgered I’d give her all the time she needed to say her goodbyes afore I ever yanked her off with me—”

  “Ask her if’n you give her a day, she’d be ready to go mornin’ after next.”

  He watched the two of them talk back and forth, listening to the strange word-sounds in the Cheyenne tongue. But mostly he trained his attention on Shell Woman’s face—watching how her eyes darted to the newcomer and his Crow wife. Finally Shell Woman rocked onto her knees and turned aside to lay her infant daughter on the robes, her back to the men as she went about putting her small children to bed. For those breathless moments, Bass had worked his expectations and hope into a lather.

  Finally Sweete explained in a whisper, “She says no matter how long I’d give her, it’d never be long enough to say good-bye to her folks, her blood kin.”

  Disappointment flooded through Titus. “I’m real sad to hear that—”

  “But Shell Woman said a day would be awright … long as I promised to get her back to her people one of these days soon.”

  His heart leaped again. “Sh-she says … you’re all gonna go?”

  Shad’s head bobbed up and down eagerly. “Damn if we ain’t!”

  To Scratch’s left, both Magpie and Flea were abruptly awakening to the noisy voices, blinking their eyes and squinting at the exuberant men who had bounded to their feet to begin pounding one another on the back and shoulders. Across the lodge little Bull Hump woke up, propping himself up on an elbow to watch the same strange scene as the two men jigged beside the low fire.

  Finally turning back to Magpie and Flea, Scratch held down both hands. His children put their hands in his as he pulled them up and helped them into their heavy blanket coats, winter moccasins, hoods, and mittens, preparing to make that snowy tromp back to Fort William. At the doorway, he stopped Waits-by-the-Water and put his arm around her shoulder as she clutched the sleeping Jackrabbit against her shoulder.

  “This gonna be good for us, Shad,” he said, his heart filled with an exquisite happiness. “Not just you an’ me. Good for all of us.”

  “Shell Woman—she and the young’uns—none of ’em ever knowed anything but this prerra country down here. They ain’t stomped all around the mountains like your family, Scratch. Gonna be good for ’em to lay eyes on some new sights.”

  “You need help tomorry?”

  Sweete shook his head. “The two of us get it done.”

  With a huge smile, Titus asked, “Be set mornin’ after next, Shad? You’ll have it all packed for Green River country?”

  Bull Hump sleepily rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. The tall man knelt beside his weary son and tousled the boy’s hair. “Damn if we won’t be ready to prance north, Titus Bass. Back to beaver country come first light!”

  Wind like this could make a horse downright fractious. The way it blew the old snow along the ground in gusts that swirled almost as high as a horse’s nose—it frightened the poor, thick-headed animals.

  “We best tie ’em off and leave ’em here,” Scratch finally suggested after the horses had been fighting their riders. “Never get up close enough on them cows to get a shot, these dumb brutes making all this noise with the wind.”

  “We can slide off over there,” Shad Sweete suggested, pointing his longrifle at a faint line of green that hinted at a brush-choked coulee.

  As they came out of the saddle minutes later, Titus assured, “Shell Woman an’ your pups, they’re gonna be fine, outta the wind where we left ’em with my family. Them dogs of mine, they’ll scare off most critters what try an’ sneak close.”

  Sweete glanced up at the lowering sky. “We best make meat soon, afore this storm slams us but good.”

  “Gonna take us time to ride back to that notch in the ridge,” he said as he poked his trigger finger out of the slot in his blanket mitten. Bass turned and looked over his shoulder, unable to see any of the distant landmarks for the roll and heave of the earth, not to mention the way the wind had kicked up, tormenting the old snow into what might soon become a ground blizzard.

  Shad sighed, “Leastways, we got us a good chance to get back afore dark sets in.”

  They started down the barren, twisting bottom of the coulee, headed for the flat where they could hear the lowing of the shaggy beasts. Titus shouldered into the gale and whispered, “Pray our medicine’s strong and the wind don’t shift on us.”

  He swore he could smell those buff well before the two of them eased up to the end of the coulee and the first of the hump-shouldered creatures emerged out of the swirling snow. Strong, heady, an honest-to-goshen smell of the earth—a fragrance perhaps made all the stronger what with the sharp, metallic tang to the wind quickly quartering around to the north. It still made his senses tingle—after all these seasons, after all those years of waiting and wanting that had gone before he came west out of St. Louis … the nearness of these mystical beasts still made his blood run hot and throb in his temples like an Apsaluuke drum.

  “You smell that?” Sweete asked, almost breathless.

  “Buff.”

  “No—ain’t buff what I smell.”

  Scratch closed his eyes and held his breath, drawing the freezing air into his nose. Finally he opened them and said, “How long it been since you hunted buffalo?”

  “It ain’t been that long,” Shad growled defensively. “An’ it ain’t buffalo I’m smelling! Something else—”

  “There!” Titus whispered sharply, the breathsmoke ripped from his lips as he spoke.

  At least two dozen of them slowly inched out of the layers of gauzy ground snow swirled into tiny cyclones by the fickle wind. The dark animals were there, then they were gone. There again, and gone. Slowly plodding past the edge of the hill, their hooves kicking up tiny cascades of white, their long beards dragging over the top of the icy crust, frost steaming from their black, glistening nostrils like smoke belching from the double-barreled stacks of a Mississippi paddle wheeler. That hot breath encapsulated the huge, shaggy heads in wreaths of fog, tiny molecules of moisture quickly freezing into masks of matted ice.

  The huge beasts snorted and blew, trumpeting their cold discomfort or their fright at the wind to those around them, some of the buffalo tossing their horns menacingly at those who crowded too close as they plodded past the unseen hunters.

  “See what I told you, Shad?” he whispered. “That’s buff you’re smelling.”

  “Maybeso it was,” Sweete answered in an unsure way. “I’ll take a shot from here.”

  “Wait’ll you see a cow.”

  “Bull’s gonna be tough and rangy now,” Shad agreed. “I can almost taste the boss right now.”

  “You miss, we’re gonna have to chase this bunch
, or find us some more—”

  “You hear that?”

  “Yeah,” Titus responded as the bellowing grew louder.

  “Bulls can’t be fighting for the rut,” Sweete said guardedly.

  “Something’s got ’em worked up.”

  “You figger I should shoot?”

  “Way they’re all on the move—you better shoot now or we ain’t gonna have us ’nother chance.”

  Sweete immediately took three steps forward and went to one knee. After flipping back the frizzen to check the priming powder in the pan, he drew the hammer back to half cock, brought the butt plate against his shoulder, then dragged the hammer back to full cock before slipping his bare index finger inside the trigger guard.

  She was no more than forty yards away when the gun roared. Staggering to the side, all but disappearing in the swirl of snow, the cow tumbled to the side, where she kicked her legs twice and lay still.

  “You dropped ’er!” Bass roared, his words muffled by the bellows from the nearby beasts.

  As Sweete quickly reloaded, Titus watched several of the other buffalo pause momentarily near the cow, stopping to sniff at her body, snort at the blood on the snow—suddenly they all bolted as if they were one.

  “Can’t stand the smell of blood.”

  Shad gazed over at Titus while he got to his feet. “Ain’t blood what scared ’em off.” Sweete sniffed the air again, nose held high.

  “What you smelling now?”

  “Same as it was before,” the big man answered as the bellows grew louder.

  They were both drawn to turn by the unmistakable, snarling growls.

  “See what you gone and done?” Bass grumbled.

  “Me?” Shad replied. “What’d I do?”

  “You gone and give them damn wolves some fresh blood on the wind.”

  As he and Titus started away from the mouth of the coulee, Sweete asked, “You think them critters comin’ for our cow?”

  “Only a matter of time afore they do.”

  “Let’s butcher off what we can do real quick, then ride on back to the women,” Sweete suggested.

  “You start on the boss and some fleece,” Scratch said as they inched toward the dark carcass sprawled upon the icy snow. “I’ll get the tongue first off.”

  After propping their rifles against the ice-crusted flank of the cow, both men went to work as the wind picked up and the snow billowed around them all the more.

  “Can’t hardly see what I’m doing,” Sweete grumbled from between the cow’s legs.

  “Just don’t cut your goddamned fingers off, Shadrach.”

  By the time Titus had the savory tongue freed from the mouth, Sweete had carved off a yard square of the cow’s hide and had it laid on the blood-streaked snow at his feet. Now they both put their knives to work with a growing urgency—listening to the snorts and bellows of the buffalo all around them in the blinding storm, hearing the growling, snarling, snapping wolves work their way closer and closer through the nervous herd.

  “That be about all we’ll need for now,” Scratch said as he plopped some of the bloody, greasy strips of fat on that piece of hide stretched across the snowy ground.

  What the mountain men called “fleece,” this thin layer of fat lying just beneath the animal’s skin could satisfy any man who had just about had his fill of the extra-lean meat trimmed from a buffalo.

  “That packhorse can carry more.” Shad raised his voice as the wind came up.

  “Like you said, we ain’t got the time,” Bass argued. “Let’s get while we can still find our way back to that notch.”

  The moment the last word was out of his mouth on a stream of breathsmoke, Scratch saw the first of them slip out of the dancing snow. Gray-black, their muzzles coated with hoarfrost. Their heads slung down and forward, brought this close to man by the luring fragrance of fresh blood.

  “Scratch?”

  “I see ’em, goddammit.”

  “Them bastards is what I was smelling,” Sweete admitted with a loud snort as he dropped his skinning knife into its scabbard at the back of his belt.

  “You got your pistol in reach?”

  Shad nodded slowly. “Hooked on my belt.”

  Mentally measuring the distance from where he stood in the fold of the cow’s neck to the rear flank, Titus shuddered when another five, no—six more wolves slinked up through the fog. “You get to the guns?”

  “Think I can.”

  “Easy, coon. Easy at it.”

  Damn ’em, he thought as Sweete began inching sideways toward the two rifles.

  Two of the biggest ones were slipping round to get behind Shad—just the way those creatures worked over any poor dumb brute that happened to land in their path. While most of the hunting pack held the victim’s attention, one or more played the sly and got up behind their prey, where they could make a blinding dash, slashing at rear tendons, hamstringing the victim while others leaped up to sink their fangs in the back of the neck.

  Shad was slowly reaching out for his rifle when Titus announced, “Watch them two—”

  “Where—”

  The first one streaked in low, its belly almost dragging the ground, jaws opened as it lunged for Shadrach’s ankle. As Sweete attempted to spin away, the wolf instantly locking down on his foot, the second predator had already sprung high—its powerful momentum carrying it right on over the man and the cow’s carcass too, landing in the bloodied, trampled snow. In a high-pitched, feral yelp of pain, Shad hammered away at the wolf clamped onto his leg. When that did not break its hold, Sweete seized the ruff at the back of the wolf’s neck with his left hand while his right scrambled to lock around the butt of his belt pistol.

  Having wrenched his own pistol off his wide leather belt, Titus dragged back the flintlock’s hammer and quartered to confront the snarling wolf starting its lunge for him. The .54-caliber ball slammed into its furry chest just below the neck, the impact’s force twirling the wolf’s body in midair. As he attempted to twist out of the way, the furry body hammered against Bass’s hip. Two more of them crouched menacingly less than ten feet away now, snarling yet wary of the man who instantly dropped the empty pistol and dragged out both of the butcher knives he carried in rawhide scabbards at his back. Clutching both of those long, much-used weapons in his bare, bloody hands, Scratch began to snarl at the wolves, feinting with this knife, then with that. Each time one of the wolves appeared ready to leap, he swung a knife in a wide arc. Inch by inch the lanky-legged predators steadily worked toward the two trappers, at the same time Titus inched his way backward in the direction of their rifles.

  “Scratch!”

  Just as he was twisting about to look for Shadrach, Titus watched the wolf free its hold on Sweete’s ankle—and immediately whirl about to seize hold of the big man’s forearm. Shad shrieked anew as he shook the arm violently, attempting to dislodge the predator’s teeth from his flesh.

  “Use your goddamned pistol!” Bass ordered over his shoulder.

  Shadrach grumbled, “Shit—I’m trying to get to it!”

  Finally freeing his pistol, Sweete hauled back on the hammer of the big weapon, jammed its muzzle under the beast’s jaw, and blew a lead ball right on out of the top of the wolf’s head. As the animal collapsed, its jaws still locked on the man’s arm, it toppled Shadrach over with its weight.

  A swirl of ground snow blinded Titus for a moment as the closest wolf growled, leaping for Sweete as the man hit the ground. Landing on the trapper’s back, it sank its teeth in Shad’s shoulder as Titus dove for his rifle. Wheeling it in an arc, Bass brought the hammer back from half cock and didn’t wait to set the front trigger. Instead he pulled the back trigger with a powerful surge of adrenaline while bringing the muzzle down on the wolf snarling atop Sweete’s back.

  The bright muzzle flash flared against the murky snow scene as Shadrach sank to the ground beneath the dead animal’s weight.

  “Load me!” Scratch bellowed, dropping the rifle over the cow’s c
arcass so that it landed right beside Sweete.

  “Don’t think I can move my arm,” he groaned. “The shoulder, can’t move it—”

  “Your pistol?”

  “Only one is empty,” Shadrach admitted.

  “Try your best to hold the rifle up ’cross’t your arm, Shad,” he begged. “The rest of this pack don’t know your gun’s gone empty.”

  “H-how many more?”

  “I see’d four more of ’em out there in the snow,” he replied, watching the dark shadows lope back and forth, no more than fuzzy blurs in the dancing snow.

  “I—I’m bleeding bad, Scratch.”

  “Where?” he asked, not taking his eyes off those ghostly attackers.

  “First’un got my leg,” he answered weakly. “Likely I can wrap it tight. The last’un got my shoulder … it didn’t have time to rip out a hunk of meat. But—when that first’un got his teeth in my arm … hell, I can’t feel a thing from my shoulder on down.”

  “That’s good, you don’t feel the pain so bad,” he soothed, worry already worming in his belly. “Wrap your other hand around your arm, Shadrach. Clamp down tight—see if that holds off the bleeding.”

  As Sweete did what Bass suggested, Titus went about quickly reloading. But after pouring in a measured antler tip of powder, he decided not to waste any more time fishing out a patch lubricated with bear grease from the pouch that hung at his right hip. Instead, he started the ball into the muzzle with his thumb, then rammed it home with the straight-grained hickory wiping stick.

  “What’s your caliber, Shad?”

  “Six … sixty-two.”

  “Shit,” he grumbled as he clambered over the cow’s partially bared carcass. “Gonna have to dig a ball out for your gun. Pistol too?”

  “It’s the same. Sixty-two.”

  “Good man,” he whispered as he knelt beside Sweete, quickly peering down at the arm his friend had clenched between the fingers of his big right hand. “Allays good to have the same caliber for rifle and belt gun too. H-how’s that bleeding?”