Colter's Journey Read online

  “Reload them, boy,” Reno said. “They be yours now. Keep them clean. Shoot to kill.”

  CHAPTER 25

  On a few rare occasions, Tim Colter almost believed that the one-eyed mountain man might have been at least partly human. Like that morning. He reined in his horse and beckoned Tim to ride alongside him.

  Tim had to urge his mount with several kicks before it obeyed, but the teenage boy thought he was getting the hang of things. Maybe. Pulling on the reins, then letting go, he breathed a sigh of relief when his mount stopped.

  Jed Reno tilted his head and pointed the barrel of his Hawken off toward the distance. “You see them, boy?”

  Standing in his stirrups, Tim stared ahead. Yes, yes, he did see something. Moving off in the distance. First he spotted the dust, and a few moments later, his eyes focused better. It was a herd of animals.

  He lowered himself into the saddle.

  Reno’s one good eye stayed trained on the scene off to the north and west, and, if Tim’s eyes weren’t playing some kind of cruel joke, the old trapper appeared to be smiling. Shaking his head in wonderment, Reno looked at Tim. “Pretty sight, ain’t it, boy?”

  Tim’s head bobbed slightly. He swallowed. But he had to ask. “Are they elk?”

  The smile vanished. The mountain man spit, grunted, farted, and cursed. “Elk!” He shook his head and muttered a few pages of profanity. “Is you that dense, boy? Or blind? Elk? Elk! No, they sure ain’t elk. If they was elk, I’d be leaving you here with these animals, making my way downwind of them, coming in close, and real quiet-like, and then shooting one of them for supper. Elk. By Jupiter! I knowed I should have left you back down the trail when I first come across you. Elk.” He shook his head and spit. “And they ain’t antelope, deer, rabbits, coyotes. Ain’t hawks, eagles, or even sage grouse, neither. Them’s wild mustangs, kid.”

  Tim looked again.

  “Mustangs,” he whispered.

  “That’s wild horses, boy,” Reno said.

  “I know that!” Tim swallowed. He had not meant to snap at the Cyclops.

  The trapper just chuckled.

  “Well, that’s a good thing to learn about you, boy. You take a little pushing, but not too much. Good.” His head nodded again at the herd. “See a lot of them down in the Red Desert. Beautiful animals, ain’t they?”

  Tim could see better. If he counted right, there must have been at least forty, in a wild array of colors. They were too far away to see any details, but even at that distance, he had to agree that Jed Reno was absolutely right. It was a beautiful sight.

  “Got introduced by Spanish explorers, way back in the 1500s,” Reno said. “You might not believe this, but before that time, there wasn’t no horses in this country. The Cheyennes, the Shoshone, the Sioux, well, they didn’t even have horses, hadn’t even ever seen one of them. I guess a few got away from those Spanish boys. Must’ve bred like rabbits. Well, a mustang, he ain’t got no natural enemy, excepting a catamount. You know, a mountain lion. Cougar. Panther. Whatever you want to call one of them mean cat beasts. So Indians learned how to handle those Spanish ponies . . . better than most white folks. Pretty to see.”

  Again, he shook his head. “When I see something like that, boy, it makes me think that maybe the olden days ain’t a thing of the past. That maybe this land here will always be like this. That there will be a place in the country for wild mustangs and wilder men like me. Yeah, I know it’s just a dream, a silly notion, but, well, it sure makes me feel good about the way things are, the way things used to be, the way things—and this land here—should always be. Yep.”

  He kicked his horse into a trot, and Tim followed, watching the mustangs ride off, thundering away. Reno galloped with them, too, and Tim struggled to keep up, noticing how small, but tough, those mustangs were. Pintos and sorrels. Roans and bays. Browns, blacks, and duns led by a proud, spirited, high-stepping stallion the color of midnight. Running like that, those wiry little animals did look free, and Tim thought he could even hear Jed Reno laughing as he galloped with the herd.

  * * *

  That night, faces of the dead haunted him, tormented him, terrified him.

  First appeared his mother. “Run!” she shouted. “Ru—!”

  Tim stood frozen, watching, hearing the sickening sound as the tomahawk split her head open. It happened again and again. He watched the man who had killed her. A big man, almost a giant, in buckskins and a fur hat, full beard, forehead and nose painted green and gold, earrings hanging from his ears.

  The man left his mother dead and walked toward Tim while other attackers killed Mr. Scott, the old dog, and Tim’s father. He saw his sisters running, pursued by the Indians and renegade white men.

  He saw the big man well.

  The hat—which looked like a coyote—came off the man’s head as he walked toward Tim, hatchet in his right hand, dripping with his mother’s blood, her brains, and bits of her hair.

  His hair was long, frizzy, black, with small braids hanging in front, buzzard feathers attached to the braids with rawhide. The only gray appeared in small streaks on the beard that fell to his heart. The forehead seemed crevassed with ditches and scars—wrinkles deep and dirty—and the nose appeared crooked and bent, and, likewise, heavily wrinkled.

  Never had Tim seen a man so ugly.

  The clothes, however, were beautifully stitched and beaded, the leather lighter than the buckskins worn by the other raiders, and sporting little fringe. The cream-colored shirt was untucked, falling over the rust-colored britches that became plaid wool just past the knees. Moccasins came up to the man’s calf, and these were not beaded, just plain, dirty, and serviceable.

  Tim could make out a bear-claw necklace behind the full beard.

  As the man walked toward the paralyzed Tim, a name came to him. It wasn’t spoken, unless by God. Dog . . . Ear . . . The rest of the name, he could not understand. Rose. Something foreign. French.

  Tim’s mouth fell open. He tried to scream, but no words, no sounds, could come out. He watched the man named Dog Ear Something-or-other raise the tomahawk, but before the hatchet split Tim’s head, the man changed.

  Tim saw him staring at the raider by the creek . . . the man who had basically died by an accident, falling on his knife and killing himself. Tim saw him clearly. Suddenly, the man’s features changed. His face melted. Blood ran in rivulets until there was nothing left but a skeleton, then dust.

  Tim awoke screaming, scared out of his senses.

  He sat straight up, then felt a crushing hand knock him to the ground.

  “Hush up, boy!” Jed Reno yelled.

  Tim screamed again.

  The blow came harder, and Tim groaned.

  “Quiet. Quiet, I say.”

  Tim sniffed. He realized he had been having a nightmare. Suddenly, he started sobbing.

  “By Jupiter, boy, don’t you start bawling on me. Quiet. Buck up.”

  He saw the one-eyed trapper’s features more than anything else, because clouds enveloped most of the stars.

  Reno knelt and his big hand grabbed Tim’s shoulders. “You all right now, boy?”

  Tim sniffed, but he did manage to nod.

  “Some h’aint come after you in your sleep?”

  “Huh?”

  “Nightmare.”

  Again, Tim’s head nodded.

  “Well, next time you have a scare like that in your sleep, don’t wake up crying out like some banshee, boy. Let every dad-blasted injun in the Rockies know where we are. Or Louis Jackatars himself. You understand?”

  “Yes . . . sir.”

  “Get back to sleep.”

  When Reno turned, Tim called out, not loud, though. He knew better than to shout in the dead of the night. “I saw my mother.” His head still hurt where the one-eyed monster of a mountain man had knocked him practically senseless . . . twice.

  Reno grunted, but stopped, turned, and looked at the boy.

  “Saw the man who killed her.”

 
The mountain man’s knees popped as he knelt, but Tim could tell that Reno would rather be sleeping.

  “Just a dream, boy. Get back to sleep. We got lots of riding to do.”

  “His name was Dog Ear.”

  “Dog Ear?” Suddenly, Jed Reno sounded interested.

  “Well, in my bad dream. I don’t know . . . I don’t know his name. It’s—”

  “Dog Ear Rounsavall,” Jed Reno said.

  Tim blinked. He tested the name, but butchered it.

  “Dog Ear Rounsavall,” Reno said again.

  “Yeah, Rounsavall. That’s it. In the nightmare, anyway.” Tim tilted his head, thinking. “But how could you know?”

  “Dog Ear Rounsavall is a French cur. Big man. Part griz, part painther, not a drop of human blood runs through his veins. He’s an animal. A butcher. And he rides with Louis Jackatars. He killed your ma?”

  Tim nodded. “I guess. I mean . . . it was . . . just a . . . dream.” Somehow, he had managed to finish that sentence without crying. “A bad dream.”

  “More than a dream, boy. Sounds that way to me. Big cuss. Black beard. Some braids. Ugliest fiend you’ll ever see.”

  Tim swallowed. “In the dream, he became someone else.”

  “Devil most likely.”

  “No.” Tim shuddered. “He became the man I killed . . . well, I didn’t kill him. I mean, he fell . . . he killed—”

  “You killed him, boy. Don’t you ever forget that.”

  “He turned into a skeleton. Into dust. His face just—”

  “Boy, you regret killing that man?”

  “I didn’t kill—”

  “Yes, you did. Listen to me, boy. You killed a man. A man that was responsible for the deaths of your ma and pa. You remember this, too. That man—if you could call him a man—would have killed you. Wouldn’t have thought more of it than had he swatted a horsefly. You killed him. That was your first killing. That’s why you’re having those nightmares and such, but you stop having those bad dreams. Right now. You stop feeling sorry for putting under some scum. Trust me, boy, that might be the first man you killed, but it surely won’t be the last.”

  “I don’t want to kill anyone ever again,” Tim said.

  “You damn well better, boy. This is wild country. Out here, you kill to survive, be it for meat to live on or to plant some scalawag who wants you for your horse, your possibles, your scalp, or the gold fillings in your teeth. If you don’t kill someone trying to put you under, it’ll be you who gets butchered. And if Dog Ear Rounsavall comes after you, don’t give him no chance. No chance at all.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Louis Jackatars did not like it at all. First Baillarger. Then the Basque. Both missing. And Red Coat, that wild Blackfeet Indian, had sent three braves to meet him. At least Red Coat had not come himself. On top of all that, it was snowing.

  Rare for that time of year, but certainly not unheard of, not up in the Rocky Mountains. He and the braves had reached the high country and were climbing. He smelled pine and the aroma of the bighorn sheep a Frenchman had killed and quartered the day before. Jackatars wanted coffee and sheep meat, but first he had to figure out a way to get rid of the Indians. He had never cared for those red-skinned devils, not even his own mother’s people. Then again, he had never cared much for anybody, except himself.

  The Indians gathered around him. They were the Southern Piegans, brothers to the Siksika, Kainai, and Northern Piegans who lived in Canada, but all claimed membership in the Blackfoot Confederacy of “original people.”

  They did not speak English, nor Métis, so Jackatars used sign language to talk to them. The leader called himself Pinto Killer, which Jackatars understood did not mean he went about killing the pinto horses favored by many tribes. He killed Cheyenne Indians, enemies of the Blackfeet, and known to them as kiihtsipimiitapi, or “Pinto People.”

  He was a brave warrior, for his tanned deerskin shirt was decorated with porcupine quills, scalp-hair fringes, and beaded symbols of the sun, weasel, and bear. His long leggings were also heavily beaded and adorned with scalps. A Blackfoot, Jackatars knew, would not wear that outfit into battle. He probably had his war clothes on his horse. Pinto Killer wore that outfit to let Jackatars and the white men know he was a man of power.

  All three braves wore their hair in the traditional fashion of Blackfeet men—three braids with high pompadours, two of which were decorated with a lone eagle feather.

  The oldest brave, bundled in a heavy robe, had a face ravaged by smallpox, a blind right eye, and was missing the pinky and ring finger of his left hand. He carried only a hatchet, and from the look on his hard face, Jackatars figured that was the only weapon he needed. Pinto Killer had an old Lancaster rifle, a knife, and a lance. The youngest of the three carried only knife, bow, and arrow.

  The one-eyed Blackfoot called himself Ugly Face, and he certainly was that. The younger one was called Stupid Boy, but Jackatars figured it was the kid’s first venture out of his village on a hunting or war party. The Blackfeet would give those first-timers an insulting name. If he performed bravely, counted coup or showed courage, he would earn a better name.

  Jackatars signed, “Why did Red Coat send you?”

  Pinto Killer answered, “To guide you to the place where we are to meet.”

  “I know this place already,” Jackatars signed.

  Pinto Killer grinned. “Red Coat knows that, too.”

  “You do not trust me?” Jackatars signed.

  Pinto Killer shrugged. “I do not know you,” his hands signed. “Red Coat does.”

  Ugly Face grunted. He pointed over the fire and spoke in the Piegan tongue.

  Pinto Killer signed for his companion. “Ugly Face asks if those are the women.”

  Without looking away from the three guests, Jackatars merely nodded.

  Ugly Face spoke again.

  Pinto Killer grinned. “He would like one.”

  “When I have the gold,” Jackatars signed. And added, “From Red Coat.”

  Pinto Killer told Ugly Face what Jackatars had said.

  Ugly Face’s expression told Jackatars that the Blackfoot did not care for that answer, but Jackatars did not care what a Piegan thought.

  They had never been especially friendly to whites, and perhaps Red Coat tolerated Jackatars only because of his Métis blood. Or more likely, because Jackatars wasn’t well-liked by the whites, either.

  Things had been testy ever since.

  The Hudson’s Bay Company eased some Blackfeet hostility, mostly up in Canada, by trading for beaver skins, pemmican, and buffalo robes for goods—beads and blankets, coffee and sugar, and later muskets and powder and shot.

  When Ashley’s One Hundred came into the Upper Missouri and started trapping—without permission from the Blackfeet—war started again. Peace had come around 1830, and afterwards, the Indians let the trappers set up trading posts at Fort Piegan and Fort MacKenzie. The white men also gave the Blackfeet other gifts, ones the Indians did not want or appreciate—notably smallpox and cholera. Less than ten years ago, the Blackfeet had lost an estimated six thousand when a steamboat bound for Fort Union brought in smallpox and practically wiped out the Blackfeet. Once they had been a force to be reckoned with in this country. Now it was the Sioux and Cheyenne who ruled.

  Red Coat, however, had been one Blackfoot Indian who’d refused to cotton to the whites. He hated all whites for what they did to his people, so he had agreed with Jackatars.

  “If you want to hurt the white men and destroy them,” Jackatars had told him, “take their women.”

  Red Coat had frowned. “I share my robes with only Blackfeet women.”

  “You do not have to like them,” Jackatars had said. “I bring them. You give me gold. You do with them what you want.”

  Reluctantly, the old warrior, who still donned the faded red coat from an English captain that his father had killed, had agreed.

  Of course, four women proved far less than what Jackatars had planned. He
had hoped to capture at least a dozen, which he could divide up, so to speak. It had always been his idea to deliver at least four to Red Coat, and let the Blackfeet do as Red Coat wanted with them. Probably hand them to his young bucks, and when they were through, kill them.

  The other tribes might not be so cooperative, so Jackatars had planned on pumping a few of the women full of Cheyenne arrows—after his men had had their fun. Two more would receive similar treatment, but with Sioux arrows. Others with arrows of Utes, Paiutes, and Arapaho. That should do the job, start the war.

  It hadn’t worked out that way, but Jackatars figured he had some extra time. Red Coat was first. He would be easily provoked to start a war. Maybe it would be enough. Maybe once the ragtag element of Blackfeet went to fight, other tribes would join in, and the country would become a bloodbath.

  Yet Jackatars figured he needed at least two Indian tribes in it to turn the entire region into a battlefield, so he had also made a deal with a Sioux brave named Medicine Owl.

  The Sioux had been friendly with the whites, so far, but that could easily change. He was to meet Medicine Owl along the Yellowstone after his dealings with the Blackfeet. He would give Medicine Owl one girl and a few clothes he kept well-wrapped in a buffalo robe on a pack mule. The clothes were infected with smallpox and cholera, which he figured would make the Indians blame the girl. They would kill her long before she could tell who had actually kidnapped her, and if any of the Sioux remained alive, they would be ready to fight all whites.

  By then, Jackatars would be bound for Mexico, safe from the carnage.

  What would he have gained from starting a war that would be long, furious, and bloody? No riches, for certain, just a little gold . . . maybe.

  But he would have satisfaction. He could play God. And maybe wipe out those races he most despised. Indians. And whites. If he had his way, he would wipe out everyone on the face of the earth, leaving him alone with deer and buffalo.

  The three Blackfeet Indians, however, might spoil his plan. Red Coat would want all the women, and if Medicine Owl did not get his, the Sioux would be after the scalp of Louis Jackatars. He had to get rid of these.