Only The Strong

Chapter Six

Nate King was enjoying himself. He was enjoying himself too much.

If there was one lesson Nate had learned during his years on the frontier, it was that only the alert and the quick and the strong survived. The evidence was all around him. In the natural world, the unwary fell to the meat eaters. The slow fell to the fast. The weak fell to the strong.

Predator-and-prey was the order of things. The elk past its prime was pulled down by wolves. The careless doe was pounced on by a mountain lion. The rabbit that didn’t jump at shadows was impaled by the talons of the hawk.

The same held true when predators clashed. When two bears fought, inevitably the strongest won. When bull buffalo bumped heads, invariably the strongest head beat down the weaker.

It was a lesson Nate learned the hard way. Too many times to count, he let down his guard and paid for his mistake with his blood or a narrow escape from the grave. He learned to always be alert, no matter where or when.

So it was that as his party wound along the Platte River toward the far off Rockies, Nate grew upset with himself. He liked the Worths; he liked them a lot. Samuel was a good companion. Emala made him laugh. Randa and Chickory were endless founts of curiosity. The trouble was, he liked them too much. He was paying attention to them and not to their surroundings.

On this particular day, with the blazing sun high in the afternoon sky, Nate mopped his brow with his sleeve and remarked to his sager half, “We need to be more watchful.”

Winona was admiring the antics of a goldfinch and its mate. “Have you seen sign I’ve missed?”

“No, only animal tracks. But we’re close to Sioux country.”

“Strange you should mention it, Husband.”

“Why?”

“It is probably nothing. But I have been uneasy for a while now. Nerves, I suppose.”

“You have the calmest disposition of anyone I’ve ever known,” Nate said, praising her.

“Thank you. But that is not true. Blue Water Woman never lets anything fluster her. I often wish I were more like she is.”

Nate grunted. Blue Water Woman was the Flat-head wife of his best friend, Shakespeare McNair. “Why haven’t you said something?”

Winona shrugged. “I thought I was being silly. I wake up at night thinking something is wrong, but everything is fine. I feel I am being watched, but I never am.”

“Damn.”

“I do wish you would stop saying that. You never swore when you were younger. It is a habit you can do without.”

Nate remembered the language used by his fellow trappers at the rendezvous, back in the days when beaver plews were worth good money. “You’re starting to sound like Emala,” he teased.

“She is a good woman. We will be fast friends.”

Nate raised his reins. “This unease of yours…Maybe I should take a look around.”

“Now?”

“It will be hours yet until sundown. There’s plenty of time.” Nate touched her arm, then wheeled his bay and rode back along the line, passing each of the Worths.

Randa was last, and she brightened as he approached. “What are you up to, Mr. King? If you don’t mind my askin’.”

“I keep asking you to call me by my first name.”

“Sorry. My ma raised me to always be polite.”

Nate nodded at the woodland behind them. “I’m going to check our back trail.”

“Can I come along?”

Nate knew Winona would tease him no end. But he gave a different reason. “There’s no telling what or who I’ll run into. I have to do it alone.”

“Be careful. Please.”

“Always.” Nate brought the bay to a trot until he was out of her sight, then slowed to a walk again. To his left gurgled the Platte. The river consisted mainly of long sandy channels fringed with vegetation. Here and there were deeper pools.

Presently he emerged from heavy growth into an open area with wetlands on either side. A pair of cranes took flight, their necks almost as long as their legs. A harmless ribbon snake slithered from his path. To the south a hawk soared on the air currents.

Nate breathed deep and smiled. God, how he loved the wilderness! He never tired of the splendor, never wearied of the parade of life. He shuddered to think that once he wanted to be an accountant. He would have spent his entire life in a dimly lit office, scribbling in ledgers. No sun, no wind in his hair, no dank earth under his feet. Just him and the office and his reflection in a mirror. “Thank you, Lord,” he said out loud.

Another crane took wing. The flapping drew Nate out of himself and back to the here and now. Once again he had let himself be distracted. He was falling into a number of bad habits of late. Shaking his head to clear it, he focused on his surroundings. “The last thing I need is an arrow in the back.”

Nate chuckled. Talking to himself was another habit he could do without. Patting the bay, he said, “I’m downright pitiful.”

More than a mile more of riding brought him to a bank choked by heavy thickets. Rather than inflict the briars on the bay, Nate reined to the right to go around. He gazed out over the prairie and spied several specks on the horizon. Buffalo, if he was any judge, maybe stragglers from a herd that had passed through. He was tempted to try to get closer. Buffalo meat was just about his favorite, second only to mountain lion. But without a pack horse he wouldn’t be able to bring much of the meat back, and he hated to think of nearly an entire buff going to waste.

Nate faced front and stiffened.

Up ahead was a rider, a frontiersman in greasy buckskins. The man had drawn rein and a friendly smile creased his salt-and-pepper beard. He had a rifle, but the stock was on his thigh and the muzzle pointed at the sky.

Nate scanned the vicinity but saw no one else. Leveling the Hawken, he slowly approached.

“I mean no harm, friend. Truly, I don’t,” the stranger said.

“A man can never be too careful,” Nate responded. He was trying to place the face; it was not anyone he’d ever met.

“That we can’t.” The rider’s smile widened. “I’m Peleg Harrod.”

“Peleg?”

“My ma lived and breathed her Bible. She named all ten of us by opening to a page and picking the first name she saw. I was one of the lucky ones. I’ve got a brother called Mizzah and another called Zelophehad.” Harrod laughed. “Then there are my sisters. One was named Timna, after a concubine. Another is Ahinoam.”

Nate introduced himself.

“King, you say? Why does that name strike a chord? You’re not by any chance the same King who is a good friend of Shakespeare McNair’s?”

“You know McNair?”

“I’ve heard of him,” Harrod said. “But then, who hasn’t? He’s older than Methuselah, or so they say. One of the first whites to ever set foot in the Rockies. I reckon he’s as famous as Bridger, Walker and Carson put together.”

“Don’t tell him that or his head will swell up even bigger than it already is,” Nate mentioned. Not that McNair thought too highly of himself; quite the contrary.

Harrod liked to laugh. “Well, fancy this. Meeting someone like you way out here.” He bobbed his bearded chin. “I’m heading for the mountains. Can’t wait to get there. I just spent a few weeks back east and I’m hankering to set eyes on the high country.”

“We’re bound for there too.”

“We?”

Nate mentally kicked himself. Harrod seemed friendly enough, but a person could never be too careful. “I’m with some others.”

“You don’t say? I’m by my lonesome, but I wouldn’t mind company. That is, if you don’t object.”

“I suppose not.” Nate gazed past Harrod, but there was no sign of anyone else. It was rare to come across someone alone on the prairie, but then, he’d crossed it a few times by himself.

Nate reined around and beckoned. “Ride with me and we’ll jaw.” Better that the stranger was beside him than behind him.

Harrod came up next to him. “I’m obliged.”

“You haven’t come across any sign of hostiles, have you?”

“Sure haven’t. And I don’t care to. I’m powerful fond of what hair I have left.”

“That’s good to hear. I was worried Sioux might be in the area.”

“Let’s hope not. They’re tricky devils and they don’t care a lick for whites. You’d think they were Blackfeet, they like counting coup on whites so much.”

“You know your Indians.”

“So do you, I hear. Is it true you were adopted by the Shoshones?”

Nate hadn’t realized that was common knowledge. “Some years ago, yes. My wife is Shoshone.”

“Well now. That must have been quite some honor. Me, I’ve always been too skittish about having my hair lifted to take up with redskins.” Harrod quickly added, “No offense meant.”

“None taken.”

Harrod showed more teeth. “I wouldn’t want us to get off on the wrong foot.”

They rode in silence for a while, until Nate shifted in the saddle to glance behind them.

“So, tell me, are you returning from a visit back east, too?” asked Harrod.

“I had to have my Hawken repaired.”

“Ah. You took it to the Hawken brothers? Smart thinking. Other gunsmiths do fine work, but no one can match Jacob and Samuel.”

Nate felt the same. They were the best. He would no more take his rifle to someone else for repair than he would wear buckskins made by someone other than Winona.

“And to think we owe it all to two people dying,” Harrod went on in his friendly fashion.

“How’s that?”

“Didn’t you know? Jacob and Samuel didn’t start out as partners. Jacob was working with a gent named Lakenan. Samuel had his own shop. Then Samuel’s wife died and he moved to St. Louis, some say to get away from the sad memories. Shortly after, that Lakenan fellow died and Jacob went to St. Louis to be with Samuel.”

“You know more about them than I do.”

Harrod chuckled. “When you’ve lived as long as I have, you pick up kernels here and there. For instance, I’ve heard that your friend Shakespeare Mc-Nair has a Flathead wife. And I’ve heard it said that your son is a regular hellion and best fought shy of.”

“You sure hear a lot. My son’s been in a few scrapes, yes.”

“Say no more. I was young once. Had me a temper you wouldn’t believe. And not much common sense, either. Or I likely wouldn’t have struck off for the mountains to trap beaver for a living. Not when I didn’t know a thing about the mountains and even less about beaver.”

Nate found himself warming to the older man. Harrod was a talker, that was for sure. It reminded him of his mentor, McNair. “I was the same way.”

“Do tell. I reckon a lot of us didn’t have the brains of tree stumps. How else to explain why we put our lives at risk for the privilege of setting traps in ice-cold streams and risk having hostiles hang our hair on their coup sticks.” Harrod chuckled. “I thought I knew it all.”

“The young never learn how fragile they are.”

Harrod glanced sharply at him. “Why, that’s almost poetical, that is. No one ever told me you have such a way with words.”

Nate shrugged. “I read a lot.”

“Is that a fact? I never got beyond the second grade. My ma wanted me to stick it out to the sixth, but I was always acting up and the teacher didn’t take kindly to my antics. He didn’t take kindly to them at all. Must have rapped my knuckles ten times a day with that ruler of his.”

“My father wouldn’t have let me quit school even if I’d wanted to.”

“One of those, was he? My pa lit out on us when I was four. Never did learn why. Ma said he took up with another woman but a friend of his told me he couldn’t take ma’s nagging anymore. Seems to me, though, that if a man says ‘I do,’ he shouldn’t abandon a gal just because she’s fond of flapping her gums.”

Now it was Nate who grinned. “You have a way with words yourself. Well put. Of all the virtues, I value loyalty pretty near the most.”

“Virtues, huh?” Harrod snickered. “I won’t lie to you and claim more than my share. I have my weaknesses, I am afraid. Money is one of them.”

“Oh?”

“Money is what brought me to the mountains to trap. Remember all the talk back then? About how a coon could make a small fortune for a few measly months of work?”

“It wasn’t entirely a lie,” Nate said. The best trappers earned upward of two thousand dollars at the rendezvous, at a time when most men back east were lucky to make three hundred dollars a year.

“Maybe so. But if I told you some of the other things I’ve done for money, you’d laugh. I’d laugh too except that some of my harebrained notions have cost me in scars and skin.”

“You’re not the only one.”

Harrod didn’t seem to hear him. “I’m just letting you know I’m no angel, so you don’t hold it against me later if I prove to be less than perfect.”

“Don’t worry,” Nate said. “I won’t hold you to a higher standard than I’d hold anyone else. So long as you show some common courtesy, you’re welcome to ride with us for as long as you like.”

Peleg Harrod beamed. “You don’t know how happy I am to hear you say that.”