The Tears of God

Chapter Eighteen

Arthur Lexington turned as Nate vaulted from the saddle with the bay still in motion. Running up, Nate seized him and shook him as a riled bear might a marmot. “What in hell is the matter with you? I told you to get your people out of here.”

Lexington indulged in his ever-ready smile. “Really, now, Brother King. Did you seriously expect me to believe your far-fetched claim? What do you take me for?”

It was the smile that did it. As eloquently as any words, it said that Nate was not only a liar but a fool and a simpleton. It nearly sent Nate berserk. He shook Lexington harder and drew back a fist to strike him, but at the last instant he shoved the man to the ground in disgust and turned to the startled and stunned Shakers. “Listen to me!” he cried, raising his arms. “You’re in great danger.” He pointed at the approaching pall of death. “That mist is poisonous. Breathe it and you die. I don’t know how or why except maybe it comes out of the ground when the ground shakes. It will kill you if you don’t flee. Get on your wagons. Get on your horses. Now.”

Not one budged. They looked at one another in amazement or doubt and looked at the mist in puzzlement and finally one woman cleared her throat and with a sheepish grin said, “Is this a joke, Brother King? We know the Lord would never let anything like that happen to us.”

“Please,” Nate pleaded. “You’re running out of time.” The mist seemed to have slowed, but it was still inexorably advancing. “Brother Calvin and those who went to bury the bodies are dead. Do you want to end up like them?”

A man gazed up the valley. “Dead? Brother Calvin?” He faced his brethren. “There’s only one way to prove if this man is trying to make a mockery of us.” He went around the building and when he reappeared he was riding bareback. “I’ll investigate,” he announced, and brought his animal to a canter.

“Don’t get too close!” Nate shouted. It was awful to stand there knowing the Shakers were squandering the precious minutes they needed to escape. He wanted to yell, to scream, to pound and prod them into fleeing.

The man on the horse wasn’t much of a rider. He flapped and he flopped, but he stayed on. Then he was at the leading edge of the mist. Nate figured he would stop and call out to Brother Calvin and the others, but to Nate’s astonishment the man did no such thing; he rode into the mist and was swallowed from view.

Nothing happened.

Nate waited for the scream sure to come, but none did. The Shakers were giving him looks that suggested they didn’t approve of his jest. Then a big man with a voice that could carry far cupped a hand to his mouth and thundered, “Brother Simon! Have you found Brother Calvin?”

There was no answer.

Uneasiness began to spread. Nate took advantage by saying, “Now will you believe me? He doesn’t answer because he can’t. I beg you. Leave before it’s too late.”

Some of them started to move, but they stopped when Arthur Lexington strode past Nate and shouted, “Brothers! Sisters! Don’t listen to this man. There is no such thing as poison mist. He wants us to leave because he thinks our coming here was a mistake.”

“But the earthquake—” a man said.

“What about it? There might never be another here.” Lexington moved among them, smiling and touching arms. “Are we to give up after so much effort? After we have come so far? After we worked for weeks to build our cabins? Are we to forsake Second Eden because of a quirk of Nature and this outsider?” He pointed at Nate. “Look at him. He’s a mountain man. He has an Indian wife. He’s lived among them for so long he’s become part Indian himself. He thinks as they do. He takes their superstitions as true, but we know better, don’t we?”

Nate barely held his simmering fury in check.

“The Indians think this is a bad place, so he thinks this is a bad place,” Lexington had gone on. “He wants us to leave. The quake only made him more determined, so he concocts a ridiculous story about mist that kills.” Lexington laughed merrily. “Have you ever heard anything so silly in your life?”

The mist had reached the green belt. Trees, grass, brush, all were being devoured.

Nate tried one last time. “I’m not the fool here. This man is. As God is my witness, I swear to you that what I’ve said is true. Please, please, if you value your lives, flee.”

Lexington laughed louder. “Brothers and Sisters, do you know what I think? I think we should show our mountain man that he can’t make fools of us. I think we should show him that our faith is the true faith.” He gripped a woman’s hand and held it high. “Do as I am doing. Link hands and form into a line. Hurry now, so we can prove him wrong and be shut of this nonsense.”

To Nate’s dismay, they did.

Arthur Lexington beamed and nodded and said words of encouragement, and when the line was formed, they stood facing the approaching mist, all with the same beatific smiles.

By then the mist was only a few hundred feet away. A mule that had strayed from the broken corral was nipping at grass and was covered in a matter of moments.

“See?” Lexington crowed. “Did that animal act panicked? It did not. Do we hear its death cries? We do not.”

Nate ran to the bay and swung up.

“Raise our voices in song, brethren!” Arthur Lexington urged, and launched into “Rock of Ages.”

Nate brought the bay to a gallop and didn’t look back until he was past the cabins and the parked Conestogas.

The Shakers were still singing. Above them loomed the creeping shroud. They sang, and the mist flowed over them. For a few seconds the singing went on and then it abruptly stopped. From out of the mist came cries and yells and then the screaming began.

“The horror,” Nate said. He stopped looking. The screams and shrieks went on and on. He would never forget them, not for as long as he lived.

The freight wagons had stopped outside the valley. Jeremiah Blunt and Maklin and Haskell were waiting. Blunt stared at Nate, the question in his eyes, and Nate shook his head.

“Damn.”

“I tried my best. They wouldn’t come.”

“Don’t blame yourself. Some folks just can’t be reasoned with. Especially when they think they are right and the rest of the world is wrong.” Blunt gave a toss of his head. “Well, then. Are you coming with us or going your own way?”

“My own,” Nate said. He had his reason.

Each of them offered his hand in parting and when it was Maklin’s turn, Nate glanced at his palm and said, “For me?”

“I have an extra and you might need it.” Maklin smiled. “If you ever get to Texas look me up. My folks live in San Antonio.”

“I just realized. You’ve never told me your first name.”

“Marion.”

“Marion Maklin?” Nate grinned.

“It’s worse than that. Marion Maurice Maklin.” The Texan sighed. “My pa was half drunk when he named me.” He touched his black hat. “Take care, mountain man.”

The freighters and their wagons melted into the night.

Nate watched until they were out of sight. He was suddenly lonely. Reining into the forest, he rode until he came to a clearing. He climbed down, stripped the bay, and spread out his blankets. He lay on his back with a pistol in each hand and tried to sleep, but he kept hearing the screams and shrieks. An hour or so before sunrise he finally dozed off.

The chirping of finches woke him. Nate’s stomach growled, but he ignored it and saddled the bay. He headed south, knowing it could happen at any time, the Hawken always in his hands. Noon came and went. By the middle of the afternoon he was having doubts until sparrows took noisy flight behind him.

Nate rode on. He was deep in the mountains he loved, the mountains he knew as well as he did the back of his own hand. The mountains were part of him and he a part of them. He was as much at home here as a city dweller on a city street. Here, he had the edge over the warriors out to count coup on him.

A ground squirrel scampered from his path, its bushy tail erect. A horned lark and its mate stared at him from a branch, the yellow of the male’s throat as bright as a sunflower. A little farther on a hare went jumping in flight. In the winter it would be white, but now it was brown and blended into the brush.

Nate climbed until he was among white-bark pines. The nuts were a favorite with bears, both grizzlies and blacks. Squirrels cached them in cold weather. The trees grew to a height of sixty feet and were spaced well apart, exactly as Nate wanted. He ascended until he came to a boulder that jutted out of the earth like the jagged prow of a sunken ship. Reining behind it, he climbed down and let the reins dangle. He moved to a tree that afforded a view of the slope below, and hunkered.

Nate figured it wouldn’t be long. His enemies were far from their own land and would want to end it sooner rather than later. The prairie was their home, not the mountains.

Two riders appeared, smack on his trail.

Nate had expected three. He watched behind them and scoured the woods to each side, but there were just the two unless one of them had circled ahead like the last time. That bothered him. He didn’t want to have to watch his back.

The two below came closer. Kuruk was in front, his gaze glued to the bay’s tracks.

Nate judged the time to be right. Cocking the Hawken, he stepped from under the pine. The pair whipped around but turned to stone when they saw his leveled rifle.

“So,” Kuruk said.

“So,” Nate replied.

“You are hard to kill, white-eye.”

“I wanted to be left in peace,” Nate said. “The blood that has been spilled is on your hands.”

“My uncle’s blood is on yours.” Then Kuruk did a strange thing; he sat back and lowered his bow. Before we do what we must, I would ask a question of you.”

“What?” Nate said suspiciously.

“The white cloud that kills. What is it? We were on the mountain to the south. We saw it cover Swift Owl and the whites and when it passed they were dead.”

“I don’t know what it was. It came from under the ground. To breathe it was to die.”

“When I tell my people they will be much amazed. But they know I always speak with a straight tongue.”

“You take a lot for granted.”

Kuruk smiled. “You would not say that if you knew me better. I plan all that I do.”

Nate wagged the Hawken. “Did you plan on this?”

“Yes, white-eye, I did.”

Nate knew then. He had been right about the third warrior circling around. Shifting, he glanced out of the corners of his eyes but didn’t see him.

Kuruk’s smile widened. “I climbed a tree. I saw you ride around the big rock. When your horse did not come out the other side I sent Wolf’s Claw on ahead.” He switched to Pawnee and called out and from the woods behind Nate came a reply.

Nate was upset with himself. He had been so sure he could outfox them, and they had outfoxed him.

“Wolf’s Claw has an arrow on you. If you try to shoot us he will put the arrow in your back.”

“You want me alive,” Nate said.

“I have always wanted you alive. The others who did not care as much, they only wanted you dead.”

The warrior with Kuruk said something and Kuruk replied in anger and gestured sharply. “Did you hear him? Even now Bull Charging wants Wolf’s Claw to kill you and have it done.” His face hardened and he raised his bow, but he didn’t draw back the string. “You will drop your rifle. You will hold your arms over your head while we take your pistols and your knife and tomahawk. You will do all this or you will die.”

“You aim to kill me anyway,” Nate said, and exploded into motion. He threw himself to the left and fired as he dived. An arrow flashed past, missing his shoulder by the width of a whang. He hit and saw Kuruk falling. Instantly, he grabbed for his pistols.

Bull Charging reined toward him and raised his lance. He hurled it just as Nate fired. The ball took the Pawnee high in the forehead and snapped his head back even as the lance thudded into the earth half an inch from Nate’s chest.

Moccasins padded behind him.

Nate rolled and extended his other flintlock, but Wolf’s Claw was already on him. A foot slammed his chin and a knee rammed his chest. Cold steel streaked in the sun. Nate jerked his neck aside and the blade sank into the dirt instead of his jugular. Thrusting the pistol against the warrior’s ribs, he stroked the trigger. At the blast Wolf’s Claw arched his back, clutched at the wound, and pitched over.

His jaw racked by pain, Nate rose to his knees. Both pistols and his rifle were spent. He reached for his powder horn and sensed rather than heard someone come up beside him. He tried to turn, but a blow to the temple felled him. Both flintlocks slipped from his grasp.

Kuruk reared over him. Kuruk’s shirt was marked with red. There was red on Kuruk’s tomahawk, too.

“I have you now, white-eye.”

Nate’s hand slipped under his buckskin shirt. He found his voice and said, “Your uncle.”

It gave Kuruk pause. “What?” His tomahawk was poised for a final slash. “What about him?”

“He didn’t leave me any choice, either.” Nate pointed the pocket pistol Maklin had given him. It barely filled his hand but it was .70 caliber. The ball blew out Kuruk’s right eye and much of the rear of his skull and Kuruk fell with a thump.

Nate slowly sat up. He touched the gash on his head. It wasn’t deep and it wasn’t bleeding much. He had been lucky. He would hurt for a while, but he would heal. Rising, he went about gathering their horses and then climbed on the bay.

He couldn’t wait to get home