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.’Dear God—January remembered the smack of the man’s fist on his jaw, the animal glint of those brown eyes and the trained, clean, careful way Wildman had moved.Remembered how the big man had pulled that Omaha girl from the men who’d held her, not knowing then that he wouldn’t have to fight January for her immediately thereafter and maybe others as well, but half-throwing her to her own people, with a let the girl go.A second scout came into the moonlight below, much too near the rocks.Frye and January drew further upslope.The firelight leaped up among the tipis; Wildman’s screams passed beyond human, beyond animal even.The moon’s angle changed above the draw.January saw the pale pattern of elk teeth on smoky buckskin, moving on this side of the creek now.When Frye touched January’s arm again to signal a further retreat, January could feel the young man’s hand shaking, as were his own.Hating himself, he followed, keeping to the border zone of darkness among the trees, as high up the side of the little canyon as they could until they were well clear of the vicinity of the Blackfoot camp.Only then did the mountaineer whisper, ‘I’m sorry, hoss.We couldn’t—’‘It’s all right.’But it wasn’t.They hid among the boulders Frye had told him about, far up the draw.Shared pemmican, which January was almost too sick with shock to want until he’d tasted some and realized he was famished and his head was pounding.When the wind backed a little they could still hear the screaming.It didn’t stop until past moonset.Not long after first light January heard the harsh scuffle of movement in the trees below them.He put his head over the rocks and saw the Blackfeet moving out.Warriors rode ahead, long dark hair hanging down their backs; women walked with bundles among the horses that drew the lodgepole travois.Dogs and children, silent alike, ghosts between the trees.Medicine bundles – feathers and bones twirling – on the end of travois poles and spears.Rifles held upright and ready.When the last of the village was well out of sight, January and his companion slipped from cover, almost ran downstream——and swung around, rifles at ready, at movement in the green dawn shadows on the other side of the creek.‘You tolerable, Maestro?’January let out his breath in a sigh.‘Just.’Shaw came to the creek’s edge as Frye and January waded across.‘Glad to see that warn’t you they was settin’ fire to.’ Together the three climbed the few yards up to where Goshen ‘Beauty’ Clarke waited with his horse and his laden mules, nearly hidden among the trees.‘An’ twice as glad to see you had the good sense not to try an’ put that poor bastard out’n his pain.’ Clarke had on his wolfskin hood, beneath which his long golden braids flowed down almost to his waist.On his feet he wore a pair of well-cut, and much-scuffed, black boots.‘You were bug-struck loco to even think about tryin’, Shaw,’ snapped the Beauty.‘Waugh! You near as dammit got us killed.’‘But I didn’t,’ pointed out Shaw mildly.‘I told you it couldn’t have been Clem or any of the boys,’ Clarke added grouchily.‘They’s all camped in the next draw over.You didn’t see them riskin’ their tripes checkin’ to see if that was me.’‘Well, don’t mean they didn’t,’ replied Shaw.‘I ’spects they’ll meet us at the campsite, if’fn the Dutchman wants to see if they left your new boots behind.’‘Naw.’ The Beauty shrugged.‘They didn’t fit him.The coat doesn’t fit him, neither, but he wanted somethin’ out of it, an’ he wouldn’t listen to reason.’‘You tell my partner how you come by those boots, Clarke,’ said Shaw.‘I found it right interestin’.’As did January, when the trapper related in an undervoice – because Shaw and Frye were still listening for the slightest signs of trouble back down the trail that the Blackfeet had taken – the events of three nights ago.‘We thought at first that little speck of a fire mighta been somebody who’d been hurt,’ explained Clarke.‘Or somebody who’d camped up, not realizin’ how close he was to the rendezvous, like Robbie Prideaux, that time he made his confession to one of his camp-setters an’ they both laid down in a blizzard, thinkin’ they was dyin’ fifteen feet from the gate of Fort Laramie one night.But there’s this old man, layin’ in a shelter under a deadfall, with his hands folded on his breast an’ his throat cut from ear to ear.Stabbed in the back, too, though that didn’t keep Clem from takin’ his coat.We figured he was that Indian agent Titus was workin’ himself up to a stroke over – no lookout of ours even if we hadn’t been tryin’ to ease on out of the camp, quiet like.There’s one thing I got no patience with, it’s Indian agents, pokin’ around causin’ trouble [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]