Wind River Read online

  AMBUSH

  Little Wolf raised his arm and was about to signal Black Feather when, suddenly, a figure rose in front of him, directly between him and his Cheyenne friend. His whole nervous system suddenly went numb. The man had been kneeling between two small boulders no more than ten feet in front of him. Little Wolf realized that Black Feather did not see the man. He also realized that the man, an army scout by the look of his buckskin shirt and blue army-issue trousers, was not aware of Little Wolf’s presence behind him. As he watched, the scout slowly raised his carbine and drew down on the unsuspecting Cheyenne.

  There was no time for thought. Little Wolf, without consciously thinking about what he was about to do, pulled his stone club from his belt and brought it down across the back of the man’s skull. . . .

  Wind River

  CHARLES G. WEST

  SIGNET

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,

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  Penguin Books Australia Ltd,

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  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Copyright © Charles West, 1999

  ISBN: 978-1-101-66292-2

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

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  For Ronda

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  “Now what the hell’s ailing you, Sadie?” Squint Peterson dug his heels into the belly of his balky old mule.

  The mule had been cranky all morning, more so than usual. She was naturally bad-tempered anyway, so much so that Squint had named her after an ill-mannered prostitute who had accommodated him at the rendezvous in the summer of ’39. He grinned as the thought of that particular union came to mind. It was his first and last rendezvous. He wasn’t much more than a kid, fifteen years old. He had spent the winter trapping on the Yellowstone with his Uncle Bris. In fact, it was his Uncle Bris who introduced him to Sadie, giving her instructions to “Rub the peach fuzz offen him.” He laughed when he recalled his introduction to “the sins of the flesh.” She rubbed it off all right, but not without a gracious plenty moaning. The poor woman had whined and complained the whole time he was trying to satisfy his needs.

  “You’da thought she was the Queen of Sheba,” he announced aloud. When he concentrated on it, he could still see her screwed-up expression when he removed his buckskin britches, revealing long underwear that had not seen the light of day for at least two months before that night. The abrupt physical release that followed cost him two prime beaver pelts. She wanted two more, since he hadn’t washed before coming to her tent, but he lied that two were all he had left. He might have been green as a willow switch and rutty as a springtime buck, but he wasn’t about to let go of his hard-earned plews for one go-round on a puffy-faced old whore. She reluctantly admitted him to what she referred to as her paradise, the memory of which lingered with him long after he had journeyed back down the south fork of the Powder. As a matter of fact, he had not been able to rid himself of the last of those memories until that winter’s first freeze when he submerged his buckskins, with him still in them, in an icy mountain stream. He almost froze himself to death but it got rid of the stubborn body lice.

  “Matter of fact,” he told the mule, “that was about the last real rendezvous they had.” He shook his head in amazement when he thought about it. “Twenty-four . . . no, twenty-six years ago . . . Damn! Has it been that long?” It was hard to imagine he had spent that many years roaming around these mountains, still retaining his scalp. There had been a couple of times when the threat of Indian trouble had influenced him to head back to civilization for a while, but it never lasted. The longest was a period of two years when he tried his hand at being a lawman. Two years of that was enough to drive any man back to the mountains.

  He shifted in the saddle a little to ease the ache in his back. It caused him to ponder his chosen way of life and the future it offered. He liked it best in the mountains, but he wondered if he wasn’t approaching the age where his senses might start to lose their keen edge. And he knew that when you lost that edge, you usually lost your scalp along with it. The thought of his hair decorating the lance of some Sioux warrior didn’t serve to overly frighten him. He just didn’t like the idea of being bested by anyone when it came to surviving by one’s wits. There were a few gray hairs showing up in his beard already but he could still cut sign quick as most Indians and shoot better than any man he’d met so far. He had to admit, however, that it was getting easier to thread a needle if he held it at arm’s length, a fact that accounted for several briar rips in his buckskins that needed repair. Maybe he should give more thought to moving out of hostile country. Maybe it was time to move on to Oregon, a big territory. Squint needed a big country. He was a big man and he required room to stretch out. Well, he decided, I reckon I got a few years yet before I’m ready to turn toes-up.

  “Sadie, git!” he admonished and stuck his heels in her again. She seemed reluctant to step across the narrow gully that had been formed by the recent snow and runoff. Had he not been thinking of a prostitute at rendezvous, he might have been more alert to the mule’s skittishness. As it was, he was taken completely by surprise.

  He found himself in midair before he had time to realize what had happened. At first he thought he had been attacked by a mountain lion or a bear. He landed on his back, his assailant on top of him. The force of his contact with the hard ground knocked the wind out of him. By then he realized his attacker was a man and, in spite of the pain in his lungs, he struggled to defend himself from the thrust of the knife as it sought to evade his arms and find a vulnerable spot. There was no time for conscious thought. He fought totally by reflex, sparring with the arm that held the knife while pushing against the man’s neck with his other hand. He could hear the man grunt as he strained to gain advantage. Finally his assailant tore himself from Squint’s grasp and raised his knife hand for one desper
ate thrust. Squint managed to catch his wrist in his hand and block the assault. There was one final attempt to free himself and then the strength seemed to suddenly drain from the man’s arm like water from a busted water bag and Squint realized that he was in complete control. His assailant had given up the fight.

  Squint quickly rolled over on top of the man, pinning him to the ground while he fought to regain his breath. His initial thought, as soon as he could breathe again, was to dispatch the red-skinned son of a bitch, for he could now identify him as an Indian, straight to hell. As furious as he was at having been attacked, he was almost equally angry for letting himself be taken like that, like a damned green tenderfoot.

  There seemed to be little resistance from his adversary as he shook the knife loose from the Indian’s hand. When he stuck the point against his throat, the man made no effort to defend himself. This lack of resistance caused Squint to hesitate and, since the man no longer seemed an immediate threat, he paused to consider what manner of being he was about to send to the great beyond.

  “Why, hell, you ain’t no more than a boy.” He sat back on his heels, still astraddle the Indian. “And a pretty damn scrawny one at that.”

  There was no response from the boy. His eyes, dull and lifeless, appeared to focus on some faraway object. It was obvious to Squint that he was prepared to die. In fact, he looked like he was two-thirds gone already. It was evident that he had mustered all his strength for that one desperate attack and, when it failed, it had drained him. Moments before, when they had struggled for possession of the knife, Squint could have killed him without thinking twice about it. Now, as the boy lay helpless beneath him, he was reluctant to dispatch him.

  “What the hell did you jump me for?” Squint demanded, not expecting an answer for he spoke in English, even though he could converse a little in several Indian dialects. It was a little late for caution, but he stood up and looked around to make sure the boy had acted alone. At the same time he kept an eye on his assailant, still lying there. Satisfied that he was in no danger of attack from another quarter, he turned his full attention to his captive. It occurred to him that the boy wasn’t dressed too well for the chilly weather that had descended upon the valley for the past few weeks, wearing only a buckskin shirt and leggings. It was then that he noticed the dark crusted spot in the shoulder of the shirt.

  “Damn, boy, looks like you been shot or something.” This might explain the boy’s apparent weakness. “Better let me take a look at that.”

  When he started to open the shirt over the wound, the boy recoiled in pain and made one feeble effort to resist.

  “If I was gonna hurt you, I’da done kilt you,” Squint grunted as he brushed the boy’s hand aside.

  The wound was bad. From the looks of it, Squint guessed it was caused by a bullet, and from the way it was all inflamed and swollen, the slug was probably still in it.

  “I tell you what,” Squint decided, “that thing looks like it’s festering and I’m gonna have to dig it out of there.”

  If he had any objection, the boy didn’t register it. He didn’t have any fight left in him and offered no resistance when Squint took his arms and pulled him up so he could heft him up on his shoulder.

  “Boy, you ain’t got no weight to you a’tall.” He marveled that the lad had been able to summon enough force to knock him off his mule. When he realized how light he was, Squint couldn’t help but feel a little sheepish that he had allowed himself to be taken so easily.

  “Whoa, Sadie. Hold still.” He spoke softly in an effort to calm the mule. Sadie still seemed a mite skittish, what with the smell of Indian still in her nostrils. Rolling back her eye in an effort to keep the man and his burden in view, she attempted to sidestep her hindquarters away from him. He began to wish he had ridden one of his horses and left the mule back in his tiny corral. “Hold still!” Impatience crept into his tone as he grew tired of following the retreating beast around in a circle, the wounded Indian boy on his shoulder and the mule’s reins in his free hand. Finally he gave the reins a hard jerk to show the reluctant mule who was boss and she kicked her hind legs once in response. But, after registering that one complaint, she settled down and accepted the load Squint slid off his shoulder onto the saddle. She grunted once more in protest when Squint stepped up behind the boy. He gave her a couple of hard kicks with his heels and she broke into a trot for a few yards, then settled down to a slow walk. Squint knew he could kick her until her slats caved in and she would still give him no more than a few yards at a trot before falling back into a walk. She would run, but only when she was with his horses when they ran. So he resigned himself to a leisurely ride back to his camp. “I hope you don’t bleed to death before we git back.” The boy was drooped over Squint’s arm, unconscious or dead, Squint wasn’t sure.

  As he settled his body into the rhythm of the mule’s walk, he wondered what manner of creature he was bringing home with him. He wasn’t accustomed to running into anyone this far up in the hills and he didn’t particularly care to have anyone know he was even there, let alone take them to his camp. This was not the first time he had decided to winter in the mountains, instead of going down to one of the settlements until spring. He knew it wasn’t a real good idea to winter in the same camp two years in a row. Somebody might discover it and lie in ambush for you the next year. But this one was so well hidden he figured the odds were good that he was still the only man who had set foot in the small ravine he had stumbled on while tracking a wounded deer, two years ago this spring.

  His mind returned briefly to that chilly spring morning. He had jumped the deer accidentally while making his way down through a stand of lodgepole pine, on his way to the river to water his horses. When the buck suddenly sprang from a thicket, it took Squint completely by surprise. He reacted quickly enough to grab his rifle and get off a shot, even though the animal was running directly away from him and didn’t offer much of a target. Squint only had time for one shot. He hit him but he didn’t kill him. The shot caught him in the shoulder. The impact was enough to knock the deer down and roll him over but he was back on his feet immediately and off again. Squint hated it when he didn’t get a clean kill shot at an animal. That meant tracking him until he bled himself out and died.

  He must have followed that deer for a mile or more before he lost the trail just on the other side of an outcropping of rock overlooking a stream, swollen with winter’s runoff. There was no sign of the wounded animal anywhere. Beyond the stream, a clearing stretched for a quarter of a mile. If the deer had crossed the stream, Squint would have been able to see him long before he reached the other side of the clearing. He was sure he had not lost the trail up until he reached the rock outcropping. There was no other place for the buck to go, unless he went straight up the side of a cliff. If it had been a bighorn, that would have been a possibility, but a deer? Squint didn’t think so. Still, there was no deer in sight.

  Feeling as though he had been totally bamboozled by a dumb animal, Squint dismounted, for his horse was having difficulty maintaining sure footing on the rock. As he led him back the way they had come, he stumbled and would have fallen had he not caught himself with one hand. As he was about to straighten up, he glanced to his side at what he had thought was a little stand of pines in front of a solid rock wall. From his position close to the ground, he was surprised to find that he could see daylight between the tree trunks. Instead of standing in front of a solid rock wall, the trees were in fact standing in an opening into the wall. The fact that there was a solid bridge of rock spanning the opening made it appear there was a solid wall behind them. Leading his horse through the trees, Squint found an opening through the rocks big enough for two horses to pass though side by side. Once through the opening, he had found himself in a clearing, maybe half of an acre in size. It was walled in by the mountain on three sides with a small stream trickling through the northernmost point. The floor was carpeted with grass and there, under a clump of low-growing laurel, th
e deer lay dying.

  * * *

  A sudden groan from the Indian boy, as Sadie almost stumbled, brought Squint’s mind back to the business at hand. Now, two years later, he was bringing a human being into his secret camp, although the wounded boy might be closer kin to the wounded deer he had originally followed here. He had to admit that he had some doubts about giving away the location of this place. If there ever was a perfect camp, this place had to be it. What with the trouble that was brewing all over between the army and the Indians, a man needed a good secure camp to hole up in.

  To say he was overly worried about Indian trouble would not be accurate. He wasn’t as unconcerned as he used to be, however. It used to be that, if a man wanted to trap some beaver, take some meat when he needed it . . . even buffalo . . . as long as he stayed to himself . . . why, hell, the Indians wouldn’t bother him. As a matter of fact, he had quite a few friends among the Shoshone. Wounded Elk’s winter camp on the Wind River had been one of his favorite visits the year before. It was different now. This year, he wasn’t sure if he would be welcome or not. All the tribes seemed to be in a state of agitation. There had been some reports that the Cheyenne were getting stirred up south of here. The Blackfeet were getting set to start some real trouble up north. They never got along with many of the other tribes as it was and they sure didn’t have any love for the white man. Squint could readily see for himself that the Sioux were getting ready to give somebody some grief. For some time now, he occasionally observed Sioux, Lakota as they called themselves, in war parties coming through the passes that led down to the basin country. He only saw them from a distance but they were close enough to tell that they were not hunting or horse-raiding parties. They were wearing paint and feathers. The fact that his policy was to keep them at a distance, where he could see them but not vice versa, was the key to his survival in this hostile country.

  A man with half a gourd full of seeds would probably pack up what skins he had and get the hell out of here before the real trouble starts, he thought. But what the hell would I do to make a living? The last job he had held down in civilization was sheriff of a two-horse town on the Missouri. “And I’m damned if I’m going back to that,” he muttered.