Authors: David Thompson
In the gray light of predawn, the valley was serene and still save for writhing tendrils of mist.
Two Knives had slung his bow over his shoulder and was holding the lance as he edged around the lodge. Elk Running was behind him. Two Knives was careful to keep his back to the lodge and whispered to his son to do the same.
Two Knives stopped and probed the murky depths of the greenery for their adversary.
“Where is it?” Elk Running whispered.
Two Knives would like to think it was gone for good. But if the Devil Cat was like its tawny cousins, it had a territory it roamed. Which meant it would be back.
“Do you see it anywhere?”
“Not yet.”
“I want to kill it for what it did to Fox Tail. I want to skin it and hang the hide on our wall.”
To the east a golden glow was spreading across the sky. The stars were blinking out and being replaced by light blue.
Elk Running fidgeted. “How long will we stand here?”
“No longer,” Two Knives said. He believed the Devil Cat was gone, if only for a while. Hurrying inside, he imparted the news to his wife and daughter, ending with “We should go while we can.”
“Go where?” Dove Sings asked.
“We must leave the valley.”
All three of them stared at him as if they must have misheard.
“We have lived here since before Fox Tail was born,” Dove Sings said. “It is our home.”
“We must go far enough that the Devil Cat will not find us,” Two Knives said. “We can pack and be gone before the morning is done.” They did not have a lot of possessions.
“We are running away?” Elk Running said.
“We are.”
“It is wrong to run. This is our home, Father. And what of my brother? Did he die for nothing?”
“He died as a warning to us,” Two Knives said. “The Devil Cat is too smart and too strong for us to kill. Our only hope to live is to let it have the valley.”
“I do not like running.”
“You are young yet. When you have grown more you will see that running to live another day is better than dying.”
Dove Sings surprised him by saying, “I do not like running, either, husband. We should fight.”
“For this?” Two Knives said, and stepping to the wall of limbs and brush, he smacked it. “We can build another lodge.”
“I have many happy memories of our valley. We have been in peace here and our life has been good.”
“Until now.”
“I like it here, too,” Bright Rainbow said.
Two Knives was irritated with them. He was the father and husband and they should accede to his wisdom. “The valley is not worth our lives.”
“I think it is,” Elk Running said.
“You have not seen the Devil Cat as I have,” Two Knives told him. “You do now know what we face.”
“It is an animal, and animals can be killed.”
“So can we,” Two Knives argued, but it was apparent he was speaking for nothing. The three were determined to stay. “My heart is sad that you oppose me.”
“We do no such thing,” Dove Sings said. “We only want to fight where you want to run.”
“You think me a coward.”
Dove Sings came over and clasped his hand. “You always put us above all else. I love that about you. But you must not let it make you weak when you must be strong.”
Two Knives was stunned. She had never talked to him like this. “We fight and we might die.”
“I have lived long with you. I would die happy with you at my side.”
His head in a whirl, Two Knives sat by the fire. He needed to think. Every instinct he had warned against this folly. “Killing the Devil Cat will not be easy.”
“We could set a snare,” Elk Running said.
“We would need rope as thick as my arm.”
“A pit, then?” Dove Sings suggested.
“It would take us half a moon to dig one big enough and deep enough,” Two Knives noted.
Dove Sings hunkered beside him. “Here is an idea. We could go to the Shoshones and ask for help. Their leader, Touch the Clouds, has brought us deer meat.”
“Once,” Two Knives said. She made perfect sense, but a part of him balked at going to outsiders.
“What about Wolverine? He was nice. He would help.”
“I would not know where to find him.”
“How about that other white man? The one everyone says is a friend to all Indians. The one who took a Shoshone woman for his wife?”
“They call him Grizzly Killer,” Two Knives said. “We have never met him. What reason would he have to help us?”
“Then it is us alone.”
Elk Running said, “Three against one cat.”
“Four,” Bright Rainbow amended.
That made them smile. Dove Sings held her arms open and Bright Rainbow stepped into them and Dove Sings hugged her.
Elk Running patted his sister on the shoulder and said, “We would not forget you.”
Two Knives racked his mind for a means of slaying a creature nearly impossible to slay. Poison would work if he could get the cat to eat tainted meat. A shallow pit lined with sharp stakes wouldn’t kill it but might severely wound it and make it easy to track and finish off. So there were possibilities. The trick was to choose the best.
“I will make breakfast,” Dove Sings announced, and moved to the parfleche in which she stored their dried meat and pemmican and roots.
Two Knives wasn’t hungry; he was too on edge. But it would be good for her to keep busy, so he rubbed his belly and said, “I could eat a bull elk.” He had another idea: rigging the lance to impale the cat. With the right bait and a sapling, it could be done.
“Where did the Devil Cat come from?” Elk Running wondered. “It has not bothered us before.”
“The old ones say a Devil Cat is born into the world every hundred winters,” Two Knives said. “It is as rare as a white buffalo. But where the white buffalo brings good medicine, the Devil Cat is an omen for evil.”
“Father?” Bright Rainbow said softly.
“I would like to see a white buffalo one day,” Elk Running said. “Didn’t Grandfather see one?”
“Father?” Bright Rainbow said again.
“Yes, he did,” Two Knives confirmed. “On the prairie when he was about your age.”
“Father!”
“What is it, little one?”
Bright Rainbow pointed.
Two Knives looked, and his breath caught in his throat. He had forgotten to tie the hide when he came back in and there was the Devil Cat, the hide pushed back, crouched in the opening and glaring at them with slanted eyes of blazing yellow-green fire.
“No!” Dove Sings shouted, and scooped Rainbow into her arms.
Elk Running had set down his bow, but he had a knife in a sheath on his hip. Drawing it, he leaped at the giant.
“Stop!” Two Knives shouted, too late, for the next instant the Devil Cat reared and struck Elk Running across the chest. Elk Running cried out and was flung at Two Knives. Both of them went down and the lance was knocked from Two Knives’s grasp.
Two Knives sought to rise and defend his family. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a black blur. Dove Sings screamed. He pushed from under
Elk Running, who was thrashing and spurting scarlet, and rose.
Dove Sings was down. The Devil Cat had her by the throat. She was striking its head and neck to no avail as its fangs ravaged her flesh.
Two Knives scooped up the lance. He thrust at the Devil Cat’s side, but it was too fast and dodged. He went after it and it skipped away. He had never seen anything so fast. Feinting left, he speared to the right and the tip penetrated the cat’s shoulder.
There was not a lot of room for the Devil Cat to move, but move it did, vaulting clear.
Dove Sings was struggling to rise. Her throat and the front of her dress were red. She saw Two Knives and reached for him and would have buckled had he not wrapped an arm around her waist.
“I have you.”
The Devil Cat was crouched on the far side, hissing mightily, its long tail flicking back and forth.
“We must flee,” Dove Sings gurgled.
Two Knives turned to his son. Elk Running’s eyes were wide and his face wooden. A crimson pool was spreading under the boy’s body. Whirling, Two Knives propelled his wife toward the hide. He looked for Bright Rainbow but didn’t see her. Another moment and he burst out into the harsh glare of the hot sun. He turned to the right, or tried to. The hide exploded outward and the Devil Cat was on them. It leaped full onto Dove Sings, ripping her from his grasp and smashing her belly-down on the ground. Their eyes met and she raised her fingers to Two Knives in mute appeal. He went to throw himself at the cat—and the beast bit down on the top of her head. Its fangs punctured her skull as his flint knives
would puncture melons. He saw the life fly from her, saw her eyes go empty.
In a rage, the Devil Cat shook her and clawed at her body.
Nearly numb with a hurt that surpassed any physical wound, Two Knives ran. He didn’t know where he was running. All he could think of was that his wife was gone. He had gone a dozen strides when he remembered his daughter. “Bright Rainbow!” he cried, and stopped and turned. He took a step to rush back and heard her call him.
“Father!”
Bright Rainbow stepped from behind a nearby pine. Sweeping her into his arms, Two Knives fled. He did not care if some would call him a coward. He had lost three of those he loved; he would not lose Bright Rainbow or his own life if he could help it. He realized he still had the spear and firmed his grip.
“Mother,” Bright Rainbow said, and sobbed.
“Not yet, little one,” Two Knives cautioned between puffs for breath. “We must be as quiet as we can or the Devil Cat will be after us.” He glanced back, but there was no sign of it.
“I am sorry, Father,” Bright Rainbow said, sniffling. She wiped at her face with her sleeve. “I will try.”
The woods were a green tangle. Two Knives had been through them countless times and knew them well, yet he couldn’t tell where he was or which direction he was running. A glance at the sun revealed he was headed north. He remembered a certain slope and a possible haven, and he ran faster.
“They are both dead, aren’t they?” Bright Rainbow asked.
“Yes.”
“What will we do without Mother?”
“Quiet.” But Two Knives wondered the same thing: what
would
he do without the woman who had been everything to him? Sorrow washed over him, but he fought it. As he had told Bright Rainbow, now was not the time. There would be ample time later on for grief—provided they lived.
Branches loomed in their path. Thickets rose in impassable barriers. Logs and boulders had to be vaulted or avoided. At one point Two Knives nearly tripped over the spear and shifted his grip so he held it higher and it wouldn’t happen again.
“Where are we going?” Bright Rainbow asked.
“I said no talking.” Two Knives was listening for pursuit. The Devil Cat was bound to come after them. It had killed everyone else. Which proved that its reputation for bloodlust was well deserved.
“Father,” Bright Rainbow said.
“Not now.” Two Knives had spied his goal.
“Father, please.”
“We are almost there.” Two Knives weaved through oaks. Above him canted a bluff. Midway up was a jumble of rocks from a bygone slide and above it their salvation.
“It is important.”
Two Knives remembered not listening to her in the lodge, and the tragic consequences. “What is it, little one?”
“The Devil Cat is after us.”
Two Knives glanced over his shoulder. “No!” he cried, and pumped his legs. He reached the slope and up they flew, small stones and dirt sliding out
from under his feet. In desperation he lunged the final distance and hurled his daughter from him. Turning, he held the lance ready to thrust.
A black streak was almost to the edge of the forest.
“What do I do?” Bright Rainbow wailed.
“There!” Two Knives yelled, and nodded at what he hoped would be their sanctuary.
“What about you?”
“Do it!”
Then there was no time for talking. There was no time for anything.
The Devil Cat was on them.
Evelyn King was in love. It had taken a while for her to admit it, but now that she had, she was giddy with glee. Which was strange, since until recently the last thing on her mind was boys. Now one in particular was all she ever thought about, or dreamed about, or imagined going on long rides with in the mountains or on long walks around the lake or simply sitting and staring into his eyes. She giggled and caught herself.
“What is happening to me?” Evelyn asked out loud, and shook her head in amusement. She was changing. Her mother had always said the day would come when she would go from being a girl to being a woman, and she’d always scoffed. Maybe it happened to other females; it wasn’t going to happen to her.
Evelyn had doubted she would ever fall in love. She had doubted she would ever marry and have a family. So what if her mother and most other women since the dawn of creation had done it? But once again her mother had been proven to be right.
Now that Evelyn thought about it, her parents had been right about a lot of things. It made her wonder what other notions she held that she was wrong about. It frazzled a person, being mistaken like that.
Life sure was strange, Evelyn reflected. There she’d been, a perfectly content sixteen-year-old girl,
happy with her life and with no hankering to change it, and life went and threw a surprise at her. Life went and kindled a flame that she couldn’t quench if she wanted to, and she didn’t want to.
Evelyn smiled at her reflection in the lake. “Who would have thought it?” she asked out loud. Certainly not her. She’d had no interest in boys. None whatsoever.
She resumed her stroll around the lake shore toward her parents’ cabin. Around her the valley was vibrant with life. King Valley, it was called, named after her father. By the calendar it was early autumn, but you wouldn’t know it from the hot weather. Indian Summer, folks back East would say. A last heat wave before the weather turned chill and the oaks and the aspens changed color.
Someone was coming toward her, a man with a mane of white hair and a warm smile. Like her father, he wore buckskins and was armed with a Hawken rifle and a brace of pistols. She returned his smile with affection.
“Forsooth, fair maiden! Don’t you look pretty in your new dress and bonnet!”
“Uncle Shakespeare,” Evelyn said. He wasn’t really her uncle, but he had been his father’s best friend since before she was born and she had known him since she could remember. “What are you up to today?”
Shakespeare McNair stopped and placed the stock of his rifle on the ground and leaned on the barrel. “I paid your father a visit to needle him.”
“What about?”
“Anything and everything. I like to bring color to his cheeks.”
“You are the biggest tease I know. Ma says if a person could make a living at teasing, you could have stayed back in the States and been rich.”
Shakespeare stiffened in mock indignation and quoted the Bard he was named after. “ ‘O serpent heart, hid with a flowery face. Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?’ ”
“Now, now,” Evelyn chided. “She was only saying.”
“That’s the trouble with females,” Shakespeare grumped. “They are forever using their tongues as rapiers and piercing us poor men to the quick.”
“You men deserve it.”
“Since when? What do we do that you women delight in pricking us so?”
“It’s how you are.”
Shakespeare sniffed and quoted, “ ‘You do unbend your noble strength, to think so brainsickly of things.’ ”
Evelyn laughed. “Is that even a word? Brainsickly? Sometimes I think that William S., as you like to call him, just made up words to suit him.”
Shakespeare’s indignation became genuine. “Why, you upstart. I’ll have you know he was the greatest word-weaver who ever drew breath. He made poetry of the plain and showed the real and the true of all that is.”
“Oh, really?” Evelyn said. “What about that silly play of his with the fairies and Cupid?”
Shakespeare made a sound remarkably similar to a goose being throttled. “Did my ears deceive me, child? Did you just call the Bard
silly
?” He quoted again. “ ‘Is there no military policy how virgins might blow up men?’ ”
Evelyn gave a mild start. “What did you just say?”
“That you have besmirched the greatest writer of all time.”
“No. That other thing.”
“Oh. You mean about virgins?” A sly smile curled McNair’s seamed features. “That reminds me. How is the handsome Romeo these days? Rumor has it that the two of you are glued at the elbow.” He chortled merrily and said, “Glued at the elbow! I do make myself laugh, if I say so myself.”
“That will be enough of that.”
“Oh ho?” Shakespeare returned. “The young maiden can dish it out, but she can’t take it?”
“You shouldn’t poke fun at something like that.”
“Like what? Love?”
Evelyn was growing annoyed. She cared for Shakespeare dearly, but he had a knack for getting a rise out of people. “I never said I was in love.”
“You never said you weren’t. Not that anyone would believe you if you did. The proof of the pudding is in the tasting, young one.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning if it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it won’t do any good to call it a moose.”
Evelyn put her hands on her hips. “I’ve heard that people your age tend to babble a lot and I reckon it must be true.”
“Here, now,” Shakespeare said. “Pick on anything you want but my years. I have earned these wrinkles honorably.” He glanced behind him and then gazed past her and came closer and lowered his voice. “How are the two of you doing, by the way? Has Horatio said anything about Dega and you?”
“Horatio,” as Evelyn well knew, was Shakespeare’s
nickname for her father. “What would Pa have to say about what I do? It’s between Dega and me.”
“Does your father mind the two of you being together? Sometimes parents take exception.”
“I don’t see how he could,” Evelyn said. “So what if I’m white and Dega is an Indian? Pa married a Shoshone, after all.”
“That wasn’t what I was talking about,” Shakespeare clarified. “Land sakes, girl, I married a sassy red wench myself.”
“Oh, Uncle Shakespeare.”
“Don’t ‘Uncle Shakespeare’ me. I will call my wife that to her face and she will be flattered.”
“So Blue Water Woman is a wench, is she?”
“All women are. Some hide it better than others, but deep down all women want the same thing.”
“And what would that be?”
Shakespeare started to say something and caught himself. Instead he smiled and said, “They want a heart to entwine with their own.”
Evelyn thought of Dega and her chest grew warm. “Even if that’s true, I’m still not admitting I’m in love.”
“A woman’s prerogative. And for your sake I will graciously drop the subject.”
“Thank you,” Evelyn said. “I’ll have to tell your wife that she’s wrong about you.”
“What did the wretch say?”
Evelyn snorted. “How did she go from being a wench to a wretch?”
“She’s female. Your kind does it with every other breath.”
“Oh, Uncle Shakespeare.”
“Don’t start with that again. What did my darling wife claim this time?”
“Only that your tongue is so tart, you must have been born with a sour disposition. But she was smiling when she said it.”
“That was the word she used? Tart?”
Evelyn nodded. “She was quite proud of it. She said it was a word worthy of your precious William S.”
“The nerve,” Shakespeare said, and paraphrased, “All that is within her does condemn itself for being there.” Lifting his rifle, he marched on by. “If you’ll excuse me, there’s a certain upstart who needs a tongue-lashing.”
Evelyn grinned and continued on her way. She thought of his remark about the military and virgins and felt herself blush. That was another thing she’d never given any attention until recently. Why should she, when she was never going to marry? Sighing, she stopped and gazed toward the east end of the lake. The Nansusequa lodge was a dark block in the shadows of the tall trees. Dega was there somewhere, going about his daily chores. It had been a few days since she saw him and she dearly yearned to.
That got her thinking. Usually when they were together, others were around. His family or her family or Shakespeare and his wife. It was rare for them to be alone. The last time had been when they went on a long ride up into the mountains. She decided to go on another. Only she couldn’t just tell her mother and father and say she wanted to go off with Dega to be alone with him. She needed an excuse.
Over by the cabin the chickens were pecking and taking dirt baths. The rooster flapped his wings at her as she went by. She opened the door and went in
and stood a moment so her eyes could adjust. Her mother, Winona, was at the counter chopping a rabbit into bits for a stew.
“Where’s Pa?” Evelyn asked.
“He went to visit your brother and see how Louisa is coming along,” Winona said in her impeccable English.
Evelyn pulled out a chair and sat at the table. Her sister-in-law was in the family way and everyone was doting over her. She wondered if they would do the same when she was in the family way, and blushed again.
“How was your walk?”
“It’s a beautiful day,” Evelyn said.
Winona turned. She had a bloody knife in one hand, and the fingers of her other hand dripped red drops. “Too beautiful to clean your room as you promised you would?”
“I said I would get it done by suppertime.”
“And you will stall until it is nearly time to eat and then do it,” Winona predicted.
Evelyn wanted to stay on her mother’s good side, so she said, “I’ll clean it in a few minutes. First I wanted to ask you something.”
Winona turned back to the counter and began putting the pieces and bits into a pot. “I am listening.”
“Pretty soon the weather will change,” Evelyn began by a devious route. “Winter will be here and we’ll have snow up to our necks.”
“Sometimes the snow is deep, yes. Do you want your father to repair that sled he made you?”
“What? No. I haven’t used that in years.” Evelyn traced the shape of a heart on the tabletop.
“Then what was your point?”
“Only that once the snow hits, we don’t get to go anywhere. We can be socked in for days or even weeks.”
“Winter is as it is.”
“I know that. I’m not griping about the snow. I’m saying that I’d like to get away for a day. Maybe ride up into the high country.”
Winona shifted toward her. “Oh?”
“Yes.” Evelyn saw the hint of a grin at the corners of her mother’s mouth. Or maybe it was her imagination.
“Would you go alone?”
“No. Pa and you wouldn’t like that. So I was thinking of asking Dega to go along. I was thinking we could pack food and make a picnic of it. The last outing of the summer, so to speak.”
“So to speak,” Winona repeated, and stabbed a juicy chunk. “It is fine by me if it is fine by your father.”
Inwardly, Evelyn smiled. Her father nearly always let her do things if she got her mother’s approval first. “I’ll ask him when he gets back.”
“Have you asked Dega yet?”
“No. If Pa says yes, I’ll ride over to the Nansusequa lodge later. We could go tomorrow morning and be back by nightfall.”
“All day? That is a long picnic.” Winona looked at her. “What will you do with yourselves?”
“Mostly we’ll ride and eat and admire the scenery and the animals,” Evelyn said, her cheeks warm yet again.
“You will go armed. Take your rifle and your pistols. And you will tell Dega to be on his guard at all times.”
“We’re not kids,” Evelyn said.
“You’re not adults, either.” Winona put down the butcher knife. She poured water from a pitcher into the pot and carried the pot and a large wooden spoon to the stove. “After all the things that have happened to you, you shouldn’t take the wilderness lightly.”
“That’s one thing I’ll never do,” Evelyn vowed. Over the years she had encountered bears and wolves and hostiles and more, and nearly lost her life on several occasions.
“I hope Dega’s parents will let him.”
“Why wouldn’t they?” Evelyn asked. “They’ve always been as nice as can be to me.”
“I am sure they will,” Winona said. “They are dear people and have become good friends. We are lucky to have them as neighbors.”
“Yes,” Evelyn agreed. “We are.”
“You will be back by nightfall without fail?”
“I give you my word, Ma,” Evelyn said, averting her gaze. She couldn’t look her mother in the eye after telling such a bold-faced lie. She had no intention of making it back by dark. In fact, she planned on the opposite; she was going to stay all night alone with Dega in the wilderness.
She couldn’t wait.