To the River's End Read online

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  They rolled out of their blankets the next morning before sunup and went to check their traps. When they got back to the pond, they left their horses and rifles close by, where they could get to them in a hurry, should that be necessary. Wading into the water again with no weapons other than their pistols stuck in their belts, they made their way around the pond, checking each trap, removing the catch, and resetting the trap. When they had completed the harvest, they were satisfied to have caught ten beavers in the twelve traps they had set. “Not a bad start, I’d say,” Jug commented. “I ain’t surprised, though, with all the sign we saw.” They decided to leave the traps where they were for another day and then move them to the many little streams feeding the river. They skinned the ten they had caught, removed the scent glands, and took the meat and tails of four of them back to camp for breakfast. They would come back that night to check their traps again while the rest of the day would be filled with the scraping and stretching of the beaver pelts. Ordinarily, a little time for hunting for something to eat besides beaver might be available, but they decided against that, for the same reason Luke had spared the lady elk. “I hope to hell those Blackfoot have moved on north. I’m afeared they won’t, ’cause the huntin’ is too blame good in these mountains. Mule deer, white tail, probably even elk, I expect,” Jug allowed.

  “Yeah, there’s elk,” Luke agreed but refrained from telling him why he thought so. “What makes you think those Indians are Blackfoot?”

  “’Cause that’s what they like to do best,” Jug replied. “They was just born to aggravate white men.”

  “They get along all right with white men who work for Hudson’s Bay, though,” Luke commented.

  “Well, I reckon so,” Jug replied. “That’s where they get their guns and ammunition.”

  “You know, if those Blackfoot ain’t usin’ their rifles to hunt, you know, usin’ bows and arrows, they could be closer to us than we know,” Luke suggested. He was still thinking about his earlier meeting with the elk. Jug remarked that there was no doubt about that, and it was a good reason why they had to keep alert all the time. Luke went on to tell him what was on his mind. “You ever do any shootin’ with a bow?”

  “No, I never have,” Jug answered. “Never thought I’d be much good with one.”

  “I did a little bit of shootin’ with one, year before last at Cache Valley when they didn’t have the rendezvous,” Luke started.

  “That’s when I discovered The Chinaman’s,” Jug interrupted. “Was you there, too?”

  “Yeah, but not for long,” Luke answered. “I was with American Fur, with those fellows that got killed this year. There was this Shoshone guide with us and I got kinda interested in his bow, so he took it on himself to teach me how to shoot one.” He paused to say, “There ain’t much to learn about how to shoot it. He spent most of the time trying to teach me how to make a good one. I got to where I could hit a target with his bow, but I never got around to makin’ one.” He decided then to tell Jug what started his thinking on the subject. “What I’m sayin’ is, I wish to hell I’d had one today.” He went on to tell Jug about the elk cow at the bottom of the ravine.

  Jug cocked his head to one side and pictured the cow standing still, waiting to be shot. Having hunted many an elk in his life, he found it hard to believe the cow would have stood there, if she could see him. But in the short time he had known Luke Ransom, he had formed the opinion that the young man was not prone to exaggerate. “I do declare,” he said, “a good supply of elk meat would carry us a while, wouldn’t it? And it’d be handy to have another good elk robe for this winter comin’ on. Then we could sell it at rendezvous next summer. I don’t know, I mighta just had to risk one shot, if she was standin’ as close as you say.”

  “I figured we had too much ridin’ on keepin’ our camp a secret,” Luke said. “But it was awful hard to pass her up.” He laughed then. “Maybe we’ll meet again. We were both eyeballin’ each other like there was something goin’ on between us.”

  They were still talking about it when they left after dark to check their traps. They found six more carcasses in the pond but decided to leave only four traps there and set the rest of them in the streams around the pond and between it and the river. “I’d hoped we’d do better than that in this pond,” Jug complained. Beaver usually live in family groups of six or more, and the pond was large enough to have two lodges. Judging by the size of those they had already skinned, they figured these beavers had been there a long time. “Hell,” Jug decided, “they’re just bashful. They ain’t never done no trappin’ before.”

  Jug started skinning the six carcasses they had caught while Luke finished setting the traps in the streams. He finished in time to skin the last of the six beaver. All done, they headed back to their camp, ready to crawl in their blankets for the night but knowing it best to scrape and stretch the six hides right away. The six beaver pelts were completely forgotten, however, when they rode into the blind canyon to find the remains of their camp scattered about the ground in front of the cave. Their other horses were gone, along with their supply of ammunition. Even the beaver pelts they had been drying before folding them to pack were missing. Contents of sacks holding supplies like flour and coffee, that the savages had no use for, were scattered about the ground. The bottoms of logs supporting the lintel over the doorway were scorched, evidence of an unsuccessful attempt to burn the log framework they had constructed to support the cave opening. The scene caused an explosion in Luke’s mind at once, fueled by the realization that it had to have been a result of his carelessness. Somehow, they must have tracked him while he was attempting to track them. There was no time, at that point, to dwell on it, for first, he and Jug had to make sure there was no ambush waiting for them to ride in.

  “Check that side!” Luke exclaimed as he rolled off his horse, pulling his rifle with him, and ran into the trees on one side of the canyon. Thinking the same as his partner, Jug came off his horse and ran into the trees on the other side. The sides were the only realistic places to wait in ambush, and it didn’t take long to determine there was no one there. The fact that the raiders had not waited in ambush told Luke that he was right in his estimation that the hunting party was no larger than two or three. And it was his guess that they probably had no guns—either that, or no ammunition. His reaction now was to go after them, but he knew it was too dark to track them, and he felt the total frustration of that fact.

  “Ain’t that a helluva howdy-do?” Jug commented when they came out of the trees to get their horses. “They snookered us good. I don’t know, maybe we oughta be dancin’ a jig and hollerin’ hoo-ray ’cause we weren’t settin’ in front of the fire, jawin’, when they snuck up on us.”

  “They wouldn’t have found us, if I hadn’t led them to us,” Luke said. “I was careless somewhere back there when I thought I was tracking them.”

  “Don’t go beatin’ yourself up, thinkin’ like that,” Jug responded. “These ain’t no ordinary Injuns. These boys are Blackfoot. Ain’t nobody smarter, and we’re tryin’ to make it in their territory.”

  “I’m goin’ after ’em just as soon as it gets light enough to find a track,” Luke said. “We gotta find these coyotes. They know where our camp is.”

  “That’s a fact,” Jug replied, “and the only thing they wanted but didn’t get, was our scalps. So, I expect they’ll be comin’ back for them.”

  “That’s what I think,” Luke said. “And that’s why I wanna get on their trail before they decide to pay us another visit.” He thought about it for another minute, then added another possibility. “On the other hand, they mighta just been interested in stealin’ our horses and they’re figurin’ on hightailin’ it with the horses they took. And we’ve got to have those packhorses.”

  Chapter 5

  Luke slept very little during the rest of the night, and with the first light of day, he was saddling Smoke. Jug, also awake early, was reluctant to see his partne
r ride after the raiders alone. “There’s three of ’em,” he said, after they had both scouted the ground around their camp. “I think you’d do well to have some help to even up the odds a little.”

  “Always appreciate your help,” Luke replied. “But I think it best if you keep an eye on our traps and anything else we’ve got left. I just hope to hell these three ain’t got any more of their tribe close by. There are three of ’em, but I really think they don’t have any guns.”

  “Yeah, but they stole all our extra ammunition,” Jug insisted. “Maybe they hadn’t used their guns because they was outta powder and shot.”

  “Maybe,” Luke countered, “but ammunition is the same as money to them, so they’da stole it whether they had guns or not. And if they just have bows, and I do catch up with ’em, I can cut a couple of ’em down before I get in range of their bows.” He paused to grin and remind him, “Like I did when I found you lyin’ behind a dead horse.”

  “Yeah, well, you just be damn careful you don’t ride into an ambush,” Jug warned. “They drive an arrow through your meat sack, it’ll hurt just as much as a bullet.”

  “I will,” Luke assured him. “You keep a sharp eye as well, in case they double back on me. They fooled me once, they might do it again, tryin’ to steal our traps.” He gave him another grin and said, “I don’t wanna come back here and find you pinned down behind that big jug of yours and it with a hole in it.”

  He led his horse to the mouth of the canyon to see if he could pick up a trail. With no one at the camp to shoot at them, it was the logical way out. Any other way would require a steep climb. Their trail was easy to find, as they had galloped out of the canyon and followed the valley to the north. He climbed up into the saddle and followed the tracks to the end of the valley, where he stopped to make sure which way the tracks led then. It was the dark of the night when they had ridden this way, and lucky for him, they were not thinking so much about the tracks they were leaving. They were so obvious that he had to caution himself that he might be riding into an ambush. Their first attempt to disguise their trail came when he came to a wide stream making its way down the steep slope of the mountain he was circling. The trail he had been following failed to appear on the other bank of the stream, so he turned Smoke around and went back into the water. He reined the gelding to a stop and waited for him to drink, while he looked up the stream to try to see where it might lead. About one hundred and fifty feet up the slope, he saw what appeared to be a level ledge and he thought at once that it was where their trail led.

  He gave Smoke a touch of his heels, and the bay gelding started immediately up the busy stream. While the horse climbed, Luke imagined what the three Indians were thinking during their ascent of the stream in the pitch-black darkness under the branches of the big fir trees. In spite of his first thought when he came to the stream, he now believed they had no thoughts at that point toward hiding their trail, no more so than when they were galloping away from his camp. When he reached the ledge, he felt doubly sure he was right, for he found that the ledge held a game trail leading toward the adjoining mountain. He paused to look in the opposite direction and saw that it continued along the slope of the smaller mountain. There was no question which way the Indians had taken on the trail, however, for there were plenty of tracks to show that they came out of the water and headed still in a northerly direction toward the larger mountain.

  It was time to become a little more cautious, he told himself, as he held Smoke to a fast walk, slowing almost to a halt whenever he approached a sharp turn in the trail. I don’t want to make a sudden appearance at their camp when I come around one of these curves, he thought. This, even though he felt pretty confident the three raiders he was chasing would not likely be encamped on a game trail part way up a mountain. Halfway around the mountain, the ledge came to an end, but the game trail continued on, descending sharply toward the base of the mountain. At this point, the trail took a little more concentration on his part, for it led out on a grassy valley split by a creek. Still, he found it not too difficult to follow the tracks of the three Indians on horseback, apparently leading his and Jug’s packhorses behind them.

  Feeling vulnerable to a rifle shot as he rode across the wide valley, he hoped he was right in thinking the three he followed had no rifles. The trail they left angled toward the creek as if they intended to follow the creek up a narrow gorge. He continued on, following the creek past the point where it came out of a thick growth of cottonwood trees at the foot of another mountain. His concentration on the three Blackfoot warriors was so intense that he didn’t realize the trees were cottonwoods and excellent horse feed. Otherwise, he might have been surprised to find them amid the fir and lodgepole pines. He was further distracted when he heard a noise ahead, but immediately recognized it as the sound of a waterfall. It caused him to suspect he must be approaching their camp. He was further convinced when he noticed Smoke’s ears perk up as if sensing other horses nearby. He reached for his rifle, pulling it out of the saddle sling as he dismounted. The smallest fraction of a second after he dropped to the ground, he felt the arrow pass over his head and heard the dull thunk as it struck the tree behind him. It was followed by the startling cry of alarm released by the Blackfoot warrior charging toward him with his tomahawk raised to strike. Luke pulled the pistol from his belt, it being the quicker choice, cocked it, and put a bullet in Hears the Wind’s forehead.

  He wasted no time then, for the alarm had been sounded, and reached back to his saddle to get his other rifle. They were both primed and ready, but he only cocked one of them as he ran toward the smoke of a campfire. Due to the bushes between him and the camp, he couldn’t see the fire, or the two warriors sleeping beside it until they jumped up at the sound of alarm. He laid his spare rifle on the ground and took dead aim at the biggest target. He squeezed the trigger and Iron Pony stood straight up when the rifle ball struck his chest. Seeing what had happened to him, Two Bears dropped to the ground again and rolled away from the fire before scrambling to his feet, his bow and arrow quiver in his hands.

  Not sure where Two Bears had fled to, Luke watched the bushes between him and the fire while he hurried to reload his rifle. Then with both rifles loaded again, he hurried through the trees to find a better location. When he reached a position where he could see into the camp, he knelt beside a tree and scanned the small clearing, looking for his target. With no sign of Two Bears, he made his way deeper into the trees and stopped when he saw the waterfall and the pond it had formed. Beside the pond, he saw the packhorses and the Indian ponies grazing on the grassy bank. Still there was no sign of Two Bears, so he started to move again when another arrow thudded into the tree beside his head. He realized then that the Indian was circling around in the opposite direction, trying to get a shot at him. Without thinking, Luke naturally looked in the direction the arrow had come from in time to see the bushes moving after Two Bears had shot his arrow. He cocked both rifles. Laying one beside him, he quickly fired at the bushes he had seen move. Then, gambling that the Indian would continue to move in the same direction he had been circling in, he picked up his other rifle and aimed it to the right of the bush he had just shot at. His bet paid off because he caught sight of a patch of buckskin moving behind the screen of bushes. He pulled the trigger and heard a cry of pain. Wasting no more time, he immediately reloaded his rifles in case his shot had not been a lethal one. Then he pulled his pistol out of his belt again and reloaded it. He had to check on all three to make sure they were dead. And even though he assumed there were only three Indians, he could have been wrong. So he had to be sure there was no one else to be accounted for.

  His first concern was the last one he had shot, for he really couldn’t tell if he had guessed right when he fired. He had heard a cry of pain, but that could have been fake, and he might be waiting for him to come to him, with arrow notched and bowstring fully drawn. So, as a precaution, Luke circled around to come up to him from behind. He found Two Bears slu
mped on the ground, his back against a tree, his war axe in his hand. He was obviously in great pain. He had been gut shot and was bleeding profusely. When he heard Luke behind him, he turned and gazed at him forlornly. Luke paused to look at him, realizing at once the man was going to die. He walked past him, and when he was behind him, he turned back and shot him in the head, thinking he should end the poor devil’s suffering. With that done, he then went to the campfire to make sure of the one he shot there. There was no question. As he looked down at the dead Indian, he thought, Jug was right, they’re Blackfoot, all right. Then he straightened up and looked around him. “And they’ve got a better spot for a winter camp than we have.” He walked over to the edge of the pond and took a long look at the waterfall he guessed to be a hundred feet high. Good water, good grass, good wood, and protection from the wind, he thought, and decided to bring Jug there to see if he thought it worthwhile to move their camp here.

  After he had put out their campfire and gotten all the horses ready to be led back to his camp, he walked back to Two Bears’ corpse and took the bow from his hands. He drew it full to test the strength of it. Not bad, he thought. He pulled his quiver of arrows off him and went to compare that bow with the other two. He selected the best two, with the thought that Jug might want to try one, and took all the arrows. Before he left, he pulled the three bodies out of the clearing and dumped them on the ground while he decided what best to do with them. His first impulse was to drag them back beyond the place where the stream came out of the hill, and find a gully or a crevice to dump them in. But he gave it a little more thought and decided it might be worth his effort to carry the bodies farther away from this spot, in case he talked Jug into moving their camp here. The more he looked around him, the better the place looked in comparison to the cave he and Jug had already finished. And if the spot struck Jug the same, and they moved their possibles there, maybe it would be best not to have the three bodies anywhere nearby. If some of their friends stumbled on them, it might not be good to have them so close to the camp.