Colter's Journey Read online

  It was, he knew, an easy trail to follow. He might live. Maybe he could even make it to that trading post the train’s captain had mentioned. Bridger’s. Many a night some man around the campfire had told a story about Jim Bridger. Tim had been excited about the chance to meet the famous mountain man.

  That’s the way he should go. That’s the way Ma and Pa would have told me to go.

  Tim tightened the scarf over his hat and tied the knot under his chin. The morning sun felt warm, and the breeze wasn’t kicking up much dust. He stepped to the center of the trail and crossed the next rut.

  A few yards off the road, he found the tracks left by the raiders’ horses, and that’s the trail he followed.

  Ma and Pa might be frowning on my decision. I might regret it shortly. But I have to try. Nancy, Margaret, and Mrs. Scott are out there. So is Patricia.

  Tim Colter wasn’t going to leave them in the hands of those butchers. He would find them.

  Or die trying.

  CHAPTER 12

  Reining up, Jed Reno held up his right hand in a peaceful greeting and let the Indians come. Most were shirtless, and wearing only breechclouts. Some wore eagle feathers in their hair, and their braids were long and black, glistening in the sun.

  They rode good ponies, which they stopped a few yards in front of him.

  “Pave-vooná-o,” the oldest one said. “Ne-pevo-mohta-he?”

  Reno knew the first part, but the second sentence he couldn’t fathom. They were Cheyenne. That much he could tell, not just from the guttural language, but from their clothes and features and the horses they rode.

  “English?” he asked. “Speak white-man language?” He remembered one of the few words he knew in the tongue of the Cheyenne. “Vé-ho-é-nestsestotse?”

  The one who had first spoken shook his head. So did the five others. The leader moved his hands. He had much practice at communication, and, after spending more than twenty years in that country, so did Jed Reno.

  Nodding, he swung out of the saddle. After ground-reining his horse and hobbling the pack mule, he took his Hawken rifle and sat cross-legged in front of the Indians, who sat in a semicircle around him. Reno kept his rifle across his lap, but did not think he would need it. Still, to stay alive in a country as wild as that, a man wanted his long gun handy, just in case.

  The oldest Cheyenne, who probably had yet to see twenty-five winters, spoke in his native language as he talked with his hands. Reno did not understand a single word, but the hands he could read.

  Rubbing his right cheek in a counterclockwise circle with his four fingers meant red. Holding his hands together in front of him, palms up, then spreading the hands apart was prairie. The brave’s name was Red Prairie.

  Reno signed that he was glad to meet him and the others. His name, he signed, was Plenty Medicine. It was the name the Utes had given him back in ’28 on his way to the Rendezvous in Bear Lake. He had needed plenty of medicine to survive that little set-to, and when he finally reached the agreed-upon site, glad to have his hair, the supply trains had not arrived. The trappers and Indians grew annoyed, and Reno had wound up in another fight with two Frenchies who worked for Pratte, Chouteau, and Company. After that, even some of the white men took to calling him “Plenty Medicine.”

  All that, and the trains did not arrive till late fall, meaning men like Jed Reno and other trappers wouldn’t get their supplies until the next spring.

  Reno read the Cheyenne’s hands. They had been hunting.

  Probably ponies and scalps, he figured, as more Crows and Shoshones could be found in that part of the country. Red Prairie did not say, and Reno did not push. He let the Indian keep on.

  “North”—the Indian pointed, and Reno guessed he meant the South Pass or maybe the Popo Agie—“the hunting party had found bad medicine. Two wagons that lumber across the country had been attacked.”

  Reno leaned forward.

  “Just two wagons?” he signed.

  Red Prairie’s head nodded in affirmation.

  Only fools would cross this country with only two wagons.

  Likely one of the wagons had broken down, and the men in the other had stayed behind to help make repairs. That, in itself, was dangerous. The whole train should have stayed behind, but maybe the captain thought they needed to make good time. Greenhorns were scared of getting caught in the winter. Not that Reno could blame anyone for that.

  “Did your party do this bad thing?” Reno asked with his hands. Using the word “bad” might have been risky, but he felt these Cheyenne warriors weren’t a bad lot. After all, they had approached him, and had ridden up to him showing the signs of peace.

  All of the braves shook their heads adamantly.

  Reno believed them, having learned a few things about Indians. Not all of them, but most of them, had a thing about telling the truth. “Who did it?” he signed.

  “Indians,” Red Prairie signed. “But not Indians.”

  Leaning back, Reno tried to comprehend exactly what the Cheyenne brave meant. He watched closely, focusing on the hands and fingers, their movements, and not the Cheyenne words Red Prairie and others spoke.

  He learned that Red Prairie and his friends rode down a hill and saw off the train two wagons the white men used to cross this country. No oxen were with the wagons anymore, but Red Prairie saw smoke in the woods. The Indians dismounted, and Red Prairie and another fine Cheyenne named Big Beaver—Big Beaver grinned and puffed out his chest—sneaked their way to the wagons.

  Big Beaver found a white man wearing his hair in braids in the fashion of the Cheyennes and other Indian tribes, and with his face painted for war. Red Prairie carefully, silently, walked around the wagons. He looked at, but did not touch, the bodies of two white men and a white woman. All had been scalped. All had been filled with many, many arrows.

  “Whose arrows?” Reno signed.

  “Arapahos,” Red Prairie signed.

  Reno frowned, then sucked in a deep breath when Red Prairie’s hands kept moving. After making the sign for Indian, he put his hand, palm down, under his chin, and then pulled it away. That was the sign for the Sioux.

  Red Prairie was not done. Again, he signed “Indian,” and then held up his right hand, the pointer and middle fingers pointing up, close to his shoulder, and lifted his hand a few inches up and forward. The sign for a wolf. Pawnee Indians.

  Still, Red Prairie’s hands moved. He made signs for the Utes, and the Crows, and the Blackfeet, and the Paiutes.

  Lastly, Red Prairie did the sign for “Indian,” the left hand flat and up, palm down, in front of his body, then using his right fingers to rub the hand from the wrist to his knuckles, up and down, but only twice. After that, he made the sign of the finger choppers.

  “Tse-tsethése-staestse,” Red Prairie said. The Cheyennes, too.

  “A confederacy of Indians,” Reno said. His stomach felt sour.

  “This bad thing,” Red Prairie said with his hands and fingers, “we did not do.”

  “I know you didn’t,” Jed Reno said, and began to make the signs that he knew Red Prairie spoke the truth.

  Malachi Murchison had said that Louis Jackatars wanted to start a war with the Indians, and he did not care which tribe. The rat had been lying. Jackatars wanted to start a war with every Indian tribe in the West, it seemed.

  “We must go,” Red Prairie signed, and he and the other braves rose.

  Reno had to use the butt of the rifle to push himself to his feet. His joints popped as he rose, holding out his right hand to shake with the Cheyenne warriors.

  “We wanted to find a white man we could trust, and one who would trust our words,” Red Prairie signed and spoke. “We are glad that we found you, Plenty Medicine. Now we must go.”

  “Tell your chief,” Reno signed. “But stay in your camp. Stay away from white men.”

  Red Prairie stiffened. “We are men,” he reminded Reno.

  Reno nodded. “I will do what I can.” He watched the Cheyennes mount thei
r ponies and gallop off toward the north. “What I can,” he whispered, “which ain’t much.”

  He flipped up the patch covering the hole where his eye should have been, and rubbed the eyebrow. After putting the patch back in its proper place, he went to work, removing the hobbles from the pack mule, sticking them in the leather sack, and gathering the hackamore to his horse. Once he had climbed into the saddle, he started to sort through his options.

  He could ride back to Bridger’s Trading Post. Ol’ Jim knew the Indians, liked them probably more than he cared for his own kind of people. He was a man Reno trusted and might need. Bridger could also help calm down those feelings for revenge that the emigrants would likely have once they found the remains of those three dead white people, and all the arrows sticking out of their bodies.

  He could forget about the Cheyennes and the emigrants. Just keep right on after Malachi Murchison and Louis Jackatars. What Jackatars was doing, trying to start up a war—it would be one unholy war—was one thing, and not really any of Reno’s business. But Murchison had tried to kill him, and Jackatars had sent him to do it.

  Or he could read what would be happening to this land if Jackatars got that war going. Whites against Indians . . . in the country Reno had called home since 1822. The whites would win. The Indians would be wiped out. That country could be ruined.

  He looked south.

  Old Bill Williams had raved high and low about the country down that way, south and west of Taos, in that Spanish country of giant gorges and mountains and desert landscapes that were something to behold. It would be new. It would be different. That appealed to him, especially since the beaver were pretty much played out and that country was filling up with people, although, granted, most of them were just passing through.

  Unless a war started. Then the Army would come with cannon and Dragoons. And the British up north would get scared. And before long, the United States would not be at war with just every Indian tribe out here. They would be fighting the British and the Canadians, too.

  “C’mon.” Jed Reno kicked his horse into a walk and tugged on the lead rope that pulled the mule behind him. Find Jackatars. Kill him.

  That would satisfy his revenge and stop the war the half-breed Métis was bound and determined to start.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Reno?” Malachi Murchison leaned back his head and laughed as hard as he could. When that was done, he shook his head and looked at Louis Jackatars. “His guts was hangin’ out of his belly when I was finished with him.” He drew his knife and showed off the blade to Jackatars and the other men gathering around him.

  Then he saw the women—three children and one grown woman, it appeared—all of them something to look at.

  “Aha! I see you were successful. You sell them to the Blackfeet, no?”

  Jackatars frowned. “Do you want to see the graves of the two fools who wanted the women for themselves?”

  The smile vanished from Murchison’s face. He sheathed the knife.

  “I asked for you to bring me the head of Jed Reno.”

  “That I could not do, Louis,” the leathery man said. “Jim Bridger is an old man, but he remains quick. I did not have time to even lift Jed Reno’s scalp.”

  Murchison was lying. Jackatars knew that. Not about Bridger—even Jackatars would not care for a tangle with that old mountain lion—but about Jed Reno.

  “Your face betrays your words,” the part-Métis said.

  The scarred hands of Malachi Murchison reached up, and he flinched when he touched the bruises and cuts. “What?” he said, forcing himself to sound jovial. “These.” He stepped forward, laughing, but even that seemed to pain the man. He realized it and turned. “I promise you, Louis. I cut Jed Reno across his side. He fell, bleedin’ like a pig before slaughter. If not dead when I rode out of Bridger’s Trading Post, he was dyin’. This I swear on the grave of my sainted mother.”

  “You don’t even know who your mother was.” Jackatars turned.

  Malachi Murchison called out his name, but Jackatars waved a hand and moved toward his prisoners. “There is nothing to fear today, you lying dog. I have killed two men this day, and I should not kill any more. To start my plan, to get my war bloody and furious, I need every man I have. Even a scoundrel such as yourself.”

  Suddenly, he stopped and turned back. He raised his arm and pointed a long finger at Murchison. “But come near these women, touch one of them, and this to you I swear. Your guts will be spilling out of your belly when I leave you for the wolves and the ants.”

  He went to the women and motioned away the two Spaniards who had been guarding them.

  The woman the two fools had attacked was sitting up. She had pulled another shirt over her torn undergarments and brought two of the girls under her arms. The girls she protected did not look anything like her. It was the other girl, the one standing, who resembled her.

  “What do you want?”

  The mother did not speak. Her daughter did. She stood off to the side, holding a wet cloth that she had used to wash the scratches on her mother’s face and arms left by the dogs who had tried to rape her.

  “What is your name?” Jackatars asked.

  The girl flattened her lips.

  Spirit. A lot of spirit. She was strong. She would be the one to watch, not the mother or the two frightened girls of the woman they had been forced to kill back near the South Pass.

  Jackatars smiled. “Obey me. Answer me. Three women are all I need to give to the Blackfeet. You, I can leave behind. Or let my men have you.”

  He spoke as if he were teaching a toddler how to behave in public. Slowly. Pleasantly. But with a voice to let the kid know how serious things would be.

  The girl understood.

  “Patricia. My name is Patricia Scott.”

  She was tall, slim, with blond hair that would have been quite beautiful if she had had a chance to wash it. Her eyes shone as blue as the cloudless sky, and as big and bright as this wild country. Her face and arms had been burned by the sun, her neck even more so. The underclothes she wore had been dirtied by the rough camps and rougher long rides across the country. Yet she remained pretty.

  Since attacking the camp and killing the fools, Jackatars had not spoken to the captives. They had simply made hard rides for days, covering the country they needed, before stopping at the Big Sandy.

  “You are her daughter?” He pointed a knife’s sharp point at the woman.

  “Yes.”

  He thought of something else. “Do you speak French?”

  “No.”

  “A pity. It is a much more pleasant sounding language.”

  “Spoken by the likes of you, it would still sound ugly—even if I understood it.”

  When Jackatars stopped laughing, he showed the blade of his knife to Patricia Scott, and narrowed his eyes.

  “Careful, little lady. It is a long way to the land of the Blackfeet. And I might tire of your sass.”

  The girl sat down, crossing her legs like an Indian squaw.

  Maybe, Jackatars thought, this one I can keep. Too young, yes. Too skinny. But what a beauty with some practice and seasoning.

  “Your mother’s name? Doris is it not?” He remembered the wench’s husband calling out that name before he had killed the fool.

  “Yes.”

  He turned toward the woman. “Doris. You are the woman. These others are children. I hold you responsible. You are a mother, so you know children. You know how to discipline them. If one of them runs away, if they do not obey what I tell them to do, or what my men tell them to do, there must be punishment. It is how boys learn to be men and girls learn to be women. Is that not so?”

  “They will not run away,” Doris Scott said flatly.

  “That is good. That is the way it should be. If one of them disobeys me or my men, or if one of them runs away, it is you, Doris Scott, who will be punished. You got a taste of that earlier, but I do not think you enjoyed it. Am I right?”

  He w
as testing her, but Mrs. Scott had a brain in that head of hers. She knew to answer. “I did not enjoy it.”

  “Did you hear what I said would happen to that piece of filth who just joined our group of merry men?”

  “I heard.”

  “What did I tell him?”

  “You said”—she swallowed—“that his guts would be pouring out of his stomach when you left him alive for the wolves and ants.”

  Jackatars enjoyed watching the two other girls grow suddenly pale.

  “You listen well, Doris. Remember to do so.”

  His eyes found the youngest girl, for his words, though directed at Mrs. Scott, had been meant for the children. Children were the ones apt to run away. Children would cry. Children would scream.

  “What is your name?”

  The girl’s face, filled with fright, looked at Mrs. Scott, and Jackatars considered letting her know then that when he asked a question she must not look at Doris Scott but must face him. But he merely tossed the knife from one hand to the other. In time, he told himself. Girls must learn the ways, but they are slow. It will take a few days before they know what is really expected of them.

  “Tell him,” Doris Scott whispered.

  “Mar”—the girl swallowed—“Mar-ga-ret.”

  “And your age?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “Thirteen.” Jackatars stopped playing with his knife. “Girl, when I was twelve, I had killed five men. Would you like to see the scalps?” He grinned evilly and waited for Mrs. Scott to tell the child to answer.

  “Answer him, Margaret.”

  Margaret was a cute kid, even with freckles. The sun might burn off those freckles before long. She wasn’t very old or tough, and the long ride ahead might be hard on a kid like that. She would be the one likely to die, long before they reached the Blackfeet country.

  Then, Louis Jackatars thought, she would be the lucky one.

  The girl had to wet her lips. “No.” Tears fell down her cheeks, and Doris Scott pulled her closer.

  “Some other time, then.” Jackatars turned to the older sister, a pretty girl, and said carefully so that everyone would hear, “And let us hope that your scalp is not one I am forced to add to my coup stick. Or even worse, that I give you to Dog Ear Rounsavall and you feel the blade of his knife. Or hatchet.”