The Outcast

Chapter Eight

Zach King tried to tell himself he had no reason to worry. There had been only the one shot. If Lou and Blue Water Woman were beset by hostiles, surely there would have been more. They were tough, strong women; they wouldn’t go down without a fight.

Then Zach remembered that his wife was forever traipsing outside without her weapons and leaving the front door open. He glanced at McNair, riding hard beside him, and said loud enough to be heard over the pounding of hooves, “What do you think?”

Shakespeare thought they were making a mountain out of a prairie dog mound. There could be a perfectly ordinary explanation for the shot. Either woman might have shot a deer or some other animal for the cook pot. Or maybe a fox had got in with the chickens. Or a rattlesnake decided to sun itself close to one of their cabins. He seemed to recollect that Louisa, in particular, was skittish about snakes.

Since Zach was looking at him and waiting for a reply, Shakespeare shrugged and said, “I bet they’re fine, but it doesn’t hurt to check.” He said that last for Zach’s benefit. The boy—Shakespeare mentally caught himself—the young man had a tendency to overreact. When there really was danger, well, heaven help anyone or anything that threatened Zach King or those he cared for.

The south shore came into sight. There stood McNair’s cabin, awash in sunlight, as picturesque as a painting.

Shakespeare counted the horses in his corral. “My wife went somewhere on her dun.” That the packhorses were still there told him that no one had stolen it. No self-respecting horse thief would steal just one animal.

Zach rose in the stirrups to try and see the north shore. He spied his chimney. It was too far to be certain, but he thought wisps of smoke curled to the sky. That was a good sign. Lou was supposed to be doing some baking. “Do we stop at your place or go on to mine?”

“On to yours.”

When they reached the west end of the lake, Zach slowed to a walk to spare their sweaty mounts. “If they ask why we came back, I’ll tell them I forgot my whetstone.”

“ ‘You do advance your cunning more and more,’ ” Shakespeare quoted.

“I just don’t want Lou to think that I think she can’t take care of herself. She’d never let me hear the end of it.”

Shakespeare chuckled. “ ‘Oh, what men dare do. What men may do. What men daily do, not knowing what they do.’ ”

“Can you say that in English or Shoshone so I can understand it?”

“Lout,” Shakespeare said. “It’s not my fault you’re so light of brain.” He quoted again. “ ‘A lip of much contempt speeds from me.’ ”

Zach laughed, but his heart wasn’t in their banter. He’d noticed that the front door to their cabin was wide open. “Why don’t women ever listen?”

“That was a rhetorical question, I trust.”

“A what?”

“Women are the queens of curds and creams, and queens need not stoop to listening to their subjects.”

“I ask a serious question and that’s the answer I get?”

“Haven’t you learned by now that women have minds of their own? They listen when it suits them and don’t when it doesn’t. But to be fair, men don’t listen at all.”

“What are you talking about? I listen to Lou all the time.”

“You only pretend you do. When she talks about cooking and sewing and all the things she does, you think about hunting and fishing and the black powder you need to buy the next time you’re at Bent’s Fort. When she goes on about how you need to repair the roof, you think about going for a ride up in the mountains.” Shakespeare chuckled. “We nod our heads and say ‘Yes, dear,’ and they let us cuddle with them at night. Not a bad trade, if I say so myself.”

“I don’t do any of that.”

“You don’t? Then someone else is the father of Lou’s child? My word. Who can it be?”

A retort leaped to the tip of Zach’s tongue, but then he noticed something else. “I don’t see your dun anywhere.”

“You don’t?” Shakespeare had assumed his wife was paying Lou a visit. “We’ll ask Lou if she’s seen her.”

The quiet, the smoke rising from the chimney, had eased much of Zach’s concern. He was annoyed more than anything, rankled that Lou had left the front door open yet again. Fifty yards out, he suddenly drew rein. “I’m going to teach my wife a lesson. Stay with the horses.”

“Are you sure that’s wise? Why stir the hornets when they’re being peaceable?”

“There’s only one hornet, and its high time she learned that leaving that door open could get her in trouble someday.” Zach handed the reins over and turned to jog to the cabin.

“Be gentle, son,” Shakespeare cautioned.

Making no more sound than the wind, Zach gave the chicken coop a wide berth so he wouldn’t set the hens to clucking. He came to the front wall and crouched. Grinning, he cat-stepped to the open door. It would serve Lou right, his scaring her silly. Taking a deep breath, he bounded inside while simultaneously giving voice to a roar worthy of a grizzly.

No one was there.

Scratching his head, Zach backed out. He beckoned to McNair, then scoured the shore and the forest.

Shakespeare didn’t need to ask what had happened. He was off the mare before it came to a stop. “Maybe we should fire a few shots in the air. It’ll bring them on the run.”

“Good idea.” Zach went to raise his rifle, then froze. “God in heaven,” he breathed.

Shakespeare turned, and thought his heart would burst in his chest.

From out of the woods, her face smeared with blood, staggered Blue Water Woman.

Louisa King had felt overwhelming fear before. There was the time Zach was nearly killed by a grizzly; the time the army took him into custody and he was put on trial for murder; the time a wolverine tried to kill them. Other instances came to mind. She should have been used to it, but she wasn’t. The fear that gripped her as she was being carried off by the warrior who had invaded their valley chilled her to the marrow.

Lou knew that Zach and Shakespeare would be gone for most of the day. She couldn’t count on rescue from them. She had seen Blue Water Woman brutally struck with a rock, had seen her friend collapse and blood stream over her brow and face, and felt certain she was dead. With Nate and Winona gone, and the Nansusequa off after buffalo, there was no one to come to her rescue.

Her only hope was that Zach could track her captor down. But if Zach and Shakespeare didn’t get back until dark, they’d have to wait until morning to come after her, unless they used torches. By then she would be miles away.

Presently the warrior came to a stream fed by a glacier.

Lou held her breath. Would he cross it or use it to hide his tracks?

The Outcast drew rein in the middle of the stream and shifted to look behind him. He grunted in satisfaction. There was no sign of pursuit yet. He rode up the stream toward the mountains, counting on the swift-flowing water to wash away most of the pinto’s prints. Most, but not all.

Lou’s heart sank. This was exactly what she dreaded. Now Zach and Shakespeare would have a harder time finding her. She closed her eyes and smothered a slight tremble. Ordinarily she was as brave as the next woman, but she was in dire straits. She figured the warrior was taking her to his village, where she would spend the rest of her days as his blanket warmer.

Like hell. Lou would slit her wrists before letting another man touch her. But then she thought of the new life taking shape within her, and her eyes moistened as she realized that she didn’t have it in her to do away with herself if it meant doing away with the baby, too.

The Outcast studied his captive. He was impressed by how quiet she was. Most woman would scream or be hysterical. This little one, he mused, had exceptional courage. It reminded him of her. Again pain filled him. Not physical pain, but the deep searing pain of raw emotion. It occurred to him that he had thought of her more since he came across this young white woman than he had in many moons.

The Outcast told himself his feelings were to be expected. Such a loss, the loss of someone who meant everything, someone loved and adored and cherished beyond all others, could never be forgotten. The best he could do, the best any person could do, was to hold the hurt at bay by piling rocks of denial around his heart so that the hurt could not touch it. The problem, of course, was that piles of rocks always had gaps in them, thin gaps, yes, but gaps where a stray feeling or an unguarded thought could slip through.

A tiny voice in the Outcast’s mind told him to spare himself the misery. All he had to do was draw his knife and slit the white woman’s throat. One slash and her life was over. One slash and his hurt was banished. He placed his hand on the hilt.

Lou opened her eyes and looked at her captor. She wished she spoke his tongue or he spoke hers. She would beg him to set her free so she could go back to her home and to those she loved most in the world. She saw him give a slight start, and wondered why.

The Outcast was about to draw his knife when his captive fixed her eyes on him. Such remarkable eyes, as blue as the lake. Mute appeal was mirrored in their depths. An appeal so potent, it caught him about his heart with a pelt of the softest fur. His head swirled, and he hissed in annoyance. “Stop looking at me,” he said, but she didn’t understand him and kept on doing it. He raised his hand to smack her.

Lou turned away. She wondered why he was so mad. It didn’t bode well. Men prone to get angry were also often violent. He might beat her if she wasn’t careful. In despair she sagged across the pinto, her cheek against its side. Her belly was starting to hurt, and that worried her. It couldn’t be good for her to be over the horse this way.

She gazed off through the trees, longing for a glimpse of her cabin, but they had come too far to the west. Soon, they would start to climb into the high country. It puzzled her. The only way out of the valley, as far as she knew, was to the east. Why was her captor heading west?

The Outcast scanned the valley rim. To the northwest was the glacier. To the south were peaks so high, they brushed the clouds. Ahead, to the west, were forested slopes that rose in tiers to rocky ramparts. He would set his traps there.

Inwardly, the Outcast smiled. Killing the breed and the old white man would take his mind off her. He had a lot to do and he might as well start now. Reining out of the stream and up the bank, he came to a stop at a stand of saplings and slid down. The saplings were ideal for what he had in mind.

Lou raised her head. Hope flared anew. She’d figured he would stay in the stream for miles. That was the smart thing to do if he wanted to shake off pursuit. She saw him take the rope and cut a couple of short lengths. Then he moved off into the undergrowth.

He had left her alone.

Instantly, Lou shifted to try to slide off the pinto. But her legs were partly numb and she couldn’t quite manage it. Suddenly her captor was back. He had a downed tree limb, which he broke into pieces. Each piece was no thicker than his middle finger. One was about a foot long, the other six inches, the third even shorter. As she watched, he sat and drew his knife and started cutting on first one and then the other.

Lou would have to wait for another chance to try to escape. Curious what he was up to, she watched him intently.

The Outcast sharpened the sticks. At the opposite ends of the long one and the short one he cut notches. A rock served to pound the long stick into the ground. Stepping to a thin sapling he had chosen, the Outcast reached overhead and climbed. He used only his arms. Under his weight the tree began to bend. As it bent, his feet sank lower and lower until they were on the ground again. The sapling was now curved like a bow.

The Outcast tied one end of the rope to the sapling, about a third of the way from the top. Holding the rope securely so the tree couldn’t snap back up, he tied the other end of the rope to the short stick, then knelt beside the stake.

Horror gripped Lou. She had divined what he was up to. Zach and Nate used the same trick to kill rabbits and the like. “God, no!” she exclaimed through her gag.

The Outcast glanced at her.

“Why are you doing this?” Lou struggled against her bonds.

The Outcast patted the sapling. He didn’t understand a word the woman was saying, but he understood the worry on her face. “I do what I must. You and your man and your friends are my enemies.”

The Outcast aligned the notch in the short stick with the notch in the stake, setting them so the short stick would release if it was bumped. Rising, he took the third sharpened stick and carefully tied it to the bent sapling at the height of a mounted man. He cast about until he found pine limbs that suited his purpose and set them so they hid the rope and the stake. Now all that was needed was for one of his pursuers to ride by and jar the limb that hid the short stick. The sapling would whip up and impale the rider.

Lou’s mouth went dry. She had realized the awful truth. He wasn’t taking her to his village. He had no interest in her other than as bait. He was using her to lure Zach and Shakespeare to their deaths.