Colter's Journey Read online

  For the moment, he was outrunning the killer but he knew he couldn’t outrun a grown man, an experienced woodsman. Not for the long haul. Sooner or later, the mountain man would be on top of him, and then Tim would die. He understood something else. He had gotten out of the stream, gotten past the man with the black teeth and braids, for one simple reason. He had surprised the murdering dog.

  He needed to surprise him again.

  He slid down a little knoll of straw and rocks, and picked up a piece of old wood from a tree branch. Wielding the stick, maybe four inches in diameter and three feet long, he turned on his knees and looked up the incline.

  The man with buckskins and braids exploded from the woods and slid down the knoll, his eyes widening when he saw Tim. The surprise had worked.

  Tim swung the limb and smelled the tar of the pine. The wood splintered as he slammed it into the mountain man’s face. Blood spurted as the nose broke. The limb flew apart, but the mountain man fell, sliding past Tim.

  As Tim leaped over him, he saw the knife, and desperately wanted to pick it up. The knife would give him a chance. But again, his brain worked, telling him not to stop. Not to attempt making a play for the knife. The man with the braids was experienced. He could grab Tim’s legs, jerk him to the ground, and finish what he had started.

  Run.

  That’s what Tim’s brain told him to do.

  That’s what Tim Colter did.

  He leaped over the man still on his knees groping and spitting and cussing, and sprinted back up the trail—if you could call it a trail—hoping and praying that he wouldn’t slip and slide back down into the mountain man’s arms. At the crest of the incline, he reached up and grabbed a little sapling. It held, did not come up by its roots, and Tim pulled, lifting himself to the top.

  Something whistled over his head and smashed into a tree. The man had thrown a piece of rotting wood at him, but he had missed. Tim lunged forward, his feet digging as hard as they could as he carried himself back through the woods.

  To his left stood the clearing, the prairie, the hills and the camp. He knew better. With no place to hide, something even worse would meet him there. He would see his mother and his father—maybe even his sisters if he was mistaken in believing that they might still be alive—and that would stop him. He would freeze, and the man would be atop him, and Tim would indeed join his parents in death.

  To his right flowed the creek. The woods did not go on forever. Stones. Stones had stopped the burly man with the knife. Stones were in the creek bed. He remembered the story he had read and heard so many times during his life. David and Goliath. David has slain the giant with a slingshot. Tim had no slingshot, no weapon at all, but he could use those stones in the creek. He had already used one, and that was why he still breathed and his heart still beat.

  He turned that way, bursting from the woods, looking at the sun reflecting off the river. He didn’t see the dam the beavers had made, at least, not at first. Because he had come out well before it. He had run a lot farther through the timbers than he had believed. The dam, and something else, was down the stream. Tim saw it, blinked, and ran.

  Behind him, the big man with the knife burst out of the forest.

  No longer did Tim feel cold. His clothes remained wet—he didn’t know if he would ever feel completely dry after spending all night inside that beaver dam—but at least he was warm, even sweating as he ran. His muscles burned and his breath came harder. He knew he was slowing down and the mountain man was closing in on him.

  Tim’s side screamed in agony. He was leaning to one side as he ran. Behind him, the man felt too close to snatch a stone from the bed of the stream. Tim saw what he thought might help and lowered his arm as he ran.

  It might have been a mistake. The action slowed him, and he needed all the speed he could summon. His hand gripped the walnut stock of the pistol the man had dropped, and he brought it up as the man dived behind him, reaching out with his hand that did not grip the knife. His fingers caught just enough of Tim’s left leg to send him tumbling to the ground.

  He rolled, grunted, tumbled, and his head boomed with pain—he had hit something, but didn’t know exactly what. He came up and saw the man coming at him on his knees. His face was bloody and scratched and flushed from heat and exhaustion. Yet Tim could see murder in the man’s eyes.

  He could also see the knife in the man’s right hand.

  He waited, trying to find pride and strength within his heart. When the man, still walking on his knees, raised the knife, Tim swung.

  The iron barrel of the fouled horse pistol smashed into the man’s jaw, splitting his lip and knocking out a few teeth. Again, the man dropped like a felled tree and the momentum carried Tim to the ground.

  He wanted to lie there to catch his breath, to rest until he could move again. But to do so meant death, and Tim was not going to die. He rolled just in time. The blade came down with a whump, and the mountain man cursed and screamed. The blade was buried to the hilt in the damp earth. Tim came to his knees, his lungs heaving, working and trying to grasp what little oxygen the air held. He fell backwards onto his buttocks and saw the man, his face bloodier than before, jerk the knife free from the dirt.

  The man was exhausted. He had to be. The knife left his grip and flew a few yards away. That was enough time—or all the time Tim had—to make himself stand, turn, and run.

  Three times he had surprised the mountain man. The killer would be even more wary and would have enough hatred to not make any more mistakes.

  Tim forgot about the stones and ran back toward he woods. The man swore, said something that Tim could not understand, and went after him.

  Luck. That’s what Tim needed. Luck or someone to come to his rescue. Maybe his father was still alive. Maybe Mr. Scott had loaded his Pennsylvania rifle and was waiting for the man with the buckskins and braids to show himself. Tim ran, but his brain had stopped working. He ran into the woods and made a straight path along the animal trail into the clearing. He ran to the campsite where his mother had yelled as the Indians—no, not Indians. Is the man with the knife a renegade white man, running with the red savages? He tried not to think.

  He saw the two wagons, the one belonging to his family and the one that the Scotts had purchased. He saw his mother’s dress. Again, he tried not to think. He tried not to run toward the camp, the last camp his family had ever made. Yet he could not help himself.

  His mother was lying there and she might need him. She might still be alive. He ran toward her, and saw her eyes staring at him. He saw the blood that had poured out of her mouth. He saw the blood on her chest, and the arrows pinning her into the earth. She looked like a pincushion. Her head had been split open, too, and her scalp had been removed.

  She was dead.

  Dead.

  He knew that. He did not stop, but leaped over her body. His feet and legs gave out, and he dropped, rolling, spinning, heading toward the left rear wheel of the big Conestoga. He saw his father when he stopped rolling.

  They had slit his throat. They had taken his scalp.

  Tim had never seen anyone so butchered. Oh, he remembered the stories. Western Pennsylvania had not always been so civilized. White settlers had tangled with Iroquois and other Indians over the years. Even some men in Danville had fought them in past years. He had heard and read about scalpings. About death.

  These were the first scalped bodies he had ever seen, though, and to see his own parents so small, so tiny, so dead.

  He was played out. He pulled himself up by gripping the spokes of the wheel, and leaned against the big wheel. Grinning, the man with the buckskins and braids was coming at him, his face still red with hatred. The big man leaped over the dead body of Matilda Colter, and it seemed as if even in death, Tim’s mother had tripped the man with her outstretched hand.

  It didn’t happen that way, of course. His mother did not move. She could not move. She was dead. But the man had tripped over her hand, and down he went, scream
ing and cursing and landing on his stomach.

  Tim felt his heart banging against his ribs. He was still breathing, but he could not move.

  He watched the man with the black teeth and black braids push himself up with his right hand. He came to his knees. His left hand held the bone-handled grip of the knife and pulled, but the sweaty hand could not pull the knife out of the man’s own chest.

  Tim blinked. He felt confused.

  The man with the black hair and buckskins looked just as confused, and his face no longer burned red, but was pale as the ash from a fire that had burned all night.

  The man looked at the knife sticking out of his chest. He stared back at Tim.

  Blood stained the man’s buckskin shirt and dribbled from a corner of his mouth into his beard.

  “Ye . . .” The man coughed. “A kid . . . Ye . . . It can’t . . . It . . .”

  He fell to his side. His eyes never closed. And his heart never beat again.

  CHAPTER 8

  West of the Continental Divide, the Big Sandy flowed south and southwest—when it had water. So late in the year, it was a mere trickle. Although the land was gently rolling and the white-capped mountains of the Wind Range to the north and Essex Mountain to the east could be seen, mostly all a body ever saw were antelope, Indians, and sagebrush—which is why Louis Jackatars had set up camp there. Nobody could sneak up on him. He could see forever.

  It was a land of contrasts. Nearby Boar Tusk served as a landmark for travelers across the Red Desert; the rugged high country to the north and the verdant valleys of the Green River, which the Big Sandy fed into; the wondrous Flaming Gorge carved by the Green River to the south; Sinks Canyon in the Popo Agie at the southeastern edge of the Winds; the valleys that surprised a person traveling across what seemed like a vast, flat wasteland—Alkali Wash, South Packsaddle Canyon, Blind Canyon, Split Rock Canyon, and Box Canyon. The sand dunes, the creeks, and the springs—Indian Spring, Ox Yoke Springs, Deer Springs, Hillside Springs, and Rock Springs down to the south—where a man could find water when the creeks ran dry.

  Louis Jackatars had always loved that country, especially the Red Desert. The high-elevation badlands were spectacular with sandstone buttes, deep canyons—even the sand dunes that rain (but mostly wind) kept shifting.

  It was where the Continental Divide split, then rejoined. You could see a herd of desert elk, not the mountain variety, but a herd that lived and survived in the windswept, harsh country.

  He loved the sage grouse. They weren’t too plentiful around that time of year, but come fall, a person could hunt them forever amid the open plains, grass pastures, and all the sage that grew.

  Antelope and deer—both white-tailed and mu-leys—called that area home. Great eating. Great country. Too bad people had to ruin it.

  All of the country in the unorganized territory could be spectacular. The towering Rocky Mountains, the Tetons, and the Absaroka Range off to the northwest and those hot springs and geysers. That magnificent gorge cut by the Green River down south. The Big Horn mountains off to the northeast, and the wild Yellowstone River.

  Jackatars had seen most of it. Indeed, he had seen places no eyes had beheld before his. He remembered seeing the Owl Creek Mountains for the first time, and how intimidating the canyon cut by the Shoshone River had made him feel. How the country changed far off to the east where the hills still rolled and the wind always blew. He remembered the grass that fed the buffalo and those Black Hills to the northeast.

  Yes, it was a country of contrasts . . . and a place that Louis Jackatars, mad as he knew he was, wanted all for himself. If he could not have it, then no one else could.

  He considered the contrasts in the men who lived there, too. There were plenty of good men. And there was Louis Jackatars. And the vermin who rode with him.

  Jackatars said that he came from a long line of coureurs des bois, those fabled “runners of the woods” who left the civilization of Montreal to explore the land to the west and south, to trade with the Indians, and learn the ways of the natives. They were voyageurs who traveled by canoe who didn’t believe in acquiring a trading license from the government but, when it came to Indian maidens, did believe in marriage à la façon du pays.

  In reality, Louis Jackatars knew nothing about his heritage beyond the fact that his mother was a Red River Métis Indian from Canada and his father was a fur-trading vagabond who had been killed by Blackfeet when Jackatars was ten years old. He did not remember much about his father, who was around only every two or three winters, but he had followed in his father’s footsteps.

  He lived among Indians and white men. He trapped, traded, robbed, raped, and killed.

  Standing in the wet sand along the creek bed, he watched the dust rising from the south. One horse, still coming at a hard trot. He figured it to be Malachi Murchison, and the dumb sot had better be bringing good news, along with the head of Jed Reno. Turning, he looked off toward South Pass, but saw nothing.

  That troubled him. Baillarger should be back by now, bringing good news, and the scalp of that boy who had escaped their well-planned massacre. Jackatars could send another man to see what was keeping Baillarger, but that could prove risky. Another train of emigrants could already have discovered the two Conestogas and the remains of the butchered travelers. That much Jackatars knew would happen, and wanted to happen, but he didn’t want one of his men to be found, alive or dead, near the site.

  Again, he looked back at the dust. Footsteps sounded behind him, but the half-breed Métis did not turn around.

  “Dust,” said Dog Ear Rounsavall. The Frenchman spit. “Murchison.”

  Jackatars nodded.

  “What if it is Reno?” Rounsavall asked.

  That caused Jackatars to laugh. “Jed Reno would not make so much dust. He is no fool.”

  Jackatars was a slim, lithe man. Folks said that the buckskins he wore, heavily beaded blue, red, and white, weighed more than he did, especially when soaking wet after fording a river. Fringe hung in foot-long strips around his shoulders, sleeves, and the sides of his mitasses, as his people called the leather leggings. His moccasins were well worn and on their third set of soles. The bright red sash, sporting the pattern known as a ceinture fléchée, carried a small bone-handled weapon more dagger than knife, a large-caliber horse pistol, and a longer, curved knife. A wide-brimmed, low-crowned tan hat with three eagle feathers sticking out from the left side, topped his head. Jackatars’s black hair, always cut evenly, hung to just above his shoulders, unlike most fur trappers of the region. Likewise, instead of sporting a full beard, he kept his dark face clean-shaven except for the small, thin mustache.

  In his buckskins and fur hat, Dog Ear Rounsavall towered over Louis Jackatars, but no one in the camp would have bet against the half-breed Métis in a fight.

  A woman screamed from the center of the camp, and, with a vile curse in the Métis language, Jackatars moved away from the Big Sandy.

  He saw the circle of men—if even a rogue like Louis Jackatars would call these animals men—and drew the little dagger from its sheath in his left hand and the flintlock pistol in his right. He knew what the men were up to, and blood rushed to his face. “Imbeciles!” he yelled.

  Two rough-looking white men turned and quickly parted, allowing Jackatars to move into the circle.

  Three girls still in their teens cowered on a saddle. Their hair resembled the nests of rats, and their pale faces and arms had been burned by the sun after a hard day and night of traveling. They wore only chemises for tops, and their skirts had been ripped between their legs so they could ride. Their feet were covered with stockings, but Jackatars had pulled off their shoes and pitched them miles back.

  If they tried to escape, they would not get far without shoes, and not without hats or bonnets to protect them from the sun. The oldest girl, the one called Patricia, had an arm around the other girls, two sisters. All three were quite pretty for white girls, despite the dirt and grime and blood that covered the
ir bodies. Jackatars had told them that they could bathe in the Big Sandy. It had been a pretty good joke, he had thought, knowing that the creek would not have enough water to wash one’s hands in so late in the summer. The snowmelt from the mountains was practically in the Pacific Ocean.

  The petrified girls were looking at the two men whose backs were all that Louis Jackatars saw. Beneath one of the men’s legs, a slender, bare leg dug ditches in the sand. The men laughed.

  Jackatars strode toward them, furious. “Smith!” he called out, his voice savage.

  The big red-bearded man with the pockmarked face—the one hovering over the woman’s leg—turned his face, his grin fading. He started to stand, but Jackatars never gave him the chance. The pistol boomed in the half-breed’s hand, and the man’s beard erupted in a blaze that quickly died. Smith also died quickly.

  The shot replaced the mountain man’s nose with a bloody hole, and Jackatars had fired the pistol at such close range, powder blackened what was left of the dead man’s face. His body flew backwards and landed on the woman.

  The other idiot, a renegade Crow with only one ear, came up quickly, clawing for his big stag-horn knife, but Jackatars moved in quickly. He punched the man with the dagger just above his navel, and the Crow Indian’s knife slipped from his grip, landing in the sagebrush.

  “I told you,” Jackatars said with a whisper, “that we keep our hands off the ladies.”

  He never told anyone anything twice. He brought the blade up to the rib cage, and then used the smoking pistol still in his right hand to push the Crow away. The Indian fell to his knees, trying to hold his belly together while attempting to sing his death song. The words were choked with the blood pouring from his mouth, and he fell to the ground, pushed himself up once, only to collapse in the sage, staining the green shrubs and brown sand with his blood.