Authors: David Thompson
The basket held a lot. Evelyn packed a bundle of pemmican at the bottom. She’d helped her mother make it a month ago. Sometimes they made it from buffalo meat, but this time it had been the meat of a buck her father shot. They had cut the meat into strips and dried and salted it, then pounded the strips until the meat was ground fine. Then they added fat and chokecherries. It would last years, and was as tasty as anything.
She went into the pantry and got carrots and wild onions. She cut six slices from a loaf of bread and wrapped the slices in a cloth. She put butter in the basket along with a knife to spread it. She put in a couple of corn cakes left over from a few days ago. Her pa had bought a tin of raisins at Bent’s Fort and she took that. She also packed tea. Since they might shoot game for fresh meat, she placed a small pot on top and next to it a spider, a three-legged pan made for cooking over fires.
The sun had not yet risen when Evelyn went out to the corral. She opened the gate and went in and spoke quietly to the horses. Her buttermilk was at the back. She slid on a bridle and brought Buttercup out and put on the saddle blanket. She threw her saddle up and over and cinched it. Then she brought Buttercup around to the front of the cabin and looped the reins around a peg on the wall.
Evelyn walked to the south corner and gazed to the east. There was no sign of Dega yet, but he would be there. He had said he would and he never let her down.
The wind was still, the lake as smooth as glass. In the dark it was like a great black eye staring up at the star-speckled sky. She heard a fish splash and the far-off cry of a loon.
She went inside and sat at the table. For some reason she was nervous. Maybe it was the lying, she told herself. Maybe it was the fact that she would have Dega to herself, exactly as she wanted. Maybe she was nervous because she was afraid of what they might do. She coughed and drummed her fingers and was glad her mother and father were still in bed.
Her eyelids grew heavy and her head drooped. She had hardly slept, she was so excited. She imagined how wonderful it would be, just the two of them. She imagined him kissing her, and tingled.
With a start, Evelyn jerked her head up. She had fallen asleep. A rosy tinge lit the window. She went out and around the cabin. A golden crown lit the eastern horizon. The sun was coming up. She rose onto her toes and stared hard and eagerly, but the shore was empty of life. Oh well, she thought. She had asked him to come as early as he could. Maybe he couldn’t get away yet. Maybe his folks had him doing chores. She shrugged and went to the lake and put her hands on her hips, and gave another small start. She was unarmed. She had left her pistols and her rifle inside. If her pa saw her, he would be upset. One of his cardinal rules was that she was never to step outside the cabin without a weapon. Even if it was to feed the chickens or get
firewood. She thought it a silly rule, but she didn’t care to wash the dishes for a month if she broke it.
Evelyn regretted deceiving them. They had always been honest and forthright with her. And here she was, planning to spend a night alone with a man. The clomp of hooves caused her heart to flutter. She turned, and it seemed to her that although the sun was not fully up, the rider approaching was awash in light and she could see every detail as clearly as at midday. He wore green buckskins, as always. Over his back was a quiver and a bow. He had brought a lance, too, a gift to him from Shakespeare, who had lived with various Indian tribes and could fashion a weapon as well as any of them. She went along the shore a short way and stopped to await him.
“Dega,” she said softly to herself.
Degamawaku saw Evelyn King come past the cabin and inwardly winced. He was happy that they were to spend the day together, and yet he was deeply troubled. His mother’s words were a great weight on his shoulders. He had tossed and turned all night, unable to get them out of his head. He drew rein and smiled down at the loveliest face he had ever seen. “Good morning, Evelyn.” He had practiced that “good morning” until he could say it exactly as she did.
“Good morning, handsome.”
Dega knew that word well. She called him handsome a lot. It meant he was pleasing to her eyes. “How you be?” he asked, and caught himself. “Sorry. How are you?”
“I am fine now.” Evelyn yearned to reach up and
pull him down and kiss him, but she contained herself. “I’m looking forward to this day so much.”
“I, too,” Dega said. He had learned to keep his responses simple. His English was nowhere as near as good as he would like it to be. The less he spoke, the less apparent it was.
“I’ll be right back.” Evelyn hurried inside. She had left her pistols and the Hawken on the table; she wedged the flintlocks under her belt and cradled the rifle in the crook of her elbow, then went to the counter for the basket. When she turned, her mother was in the doorway to the bedroom pulling her robe about her. “Ma. You’re up.”
“I am always up at dawn,” Winona said. “Your father is getting dressed.”
Evelyn hefted the basket. “Tell him I love him.” She was almost to the front door when her mother said her name. “Yes?”
“You gave your word to him.”
“About what?” Evelyn asked, knowing full well.
“That Dega and you will be home by dark. We are holding you to it. Do not disappoint us.”
Evelyn hoped she wasn’t blushing from the shame she felt. “Haven’t I always done as you’ve asked?”
“Almost always,” Winona said.
Evelyn smiled and nodded. “Don’t worry. Dega won’t let anything happen to me.”
“It is what you might do to yourself that concerns me more.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know very well.”
“See you tonight, Ma,” Evelyn said, and got out of there. She couldn’t bear to look her mother in the eye. Quickly, she tied the basket to her saddle,
mounted, and reined the buttermilk next to Dega’s sorrel. “I’ll lead the way.”
“I will follow,” Dega said. It occurred to him that when they went on rides together, she nearly always led. He had never given it much thought, but now that he did, it bothered him.
Evelyn clucked to Buttercup and poked with her heels. She passed the corral and was midway to the forest when she glanced back. Her mother and father had come out of the cabin. Her father raised his arm and waved. She returned the favor and said under her breath, “I’m sorry, Pa.”
The woods closed around them. Here and there were oaks and a few mahoganies, but the forest was principally evergreens: ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, and Douglas fir. Higher up were aspens and spruce.
The air had a pine scent that Evelyn always liked. Wildlife was everywhere. Ground squirrels scampered about. Tree squirrels leaped from limb to limb. Rabbits bounded away in fright and marmots whistled from atop their burrows. Once a porcupine waddled away, bristling with quills. Evelyn lost count of the number of deer she saw. Most were does. The older bucks were too wary to be abroad during the day; it was the younger ones, the spikes, that braved the sun.
The woods were a bird paradise. Sparrows chirped and crossbills beeped. Siskins made a peculiar buzzing sound. Jays screeched and woodpeckers
rat-a-tat-tatted
. Vultures circled lazily in search of carrion, and hawks circled in search of prey. Eagles were the masters of the sky.
Ordinarily Evelyn drank in the scenery and the
pulsing throb of life with relish, but today her enthusiasm was directed at the rider behind her. She couldn’t stop looking back at him. It got so, she willed herself to face front so he wouldn’t think she was being silly.
Dega wondered why she kept glancing back. Once or twice he could understand, but twenty or thirty times made him wonder if she was afraid he would change his mind and turn around. She needn’t have worried. He needed to have a talk with her. He needed to know if his mother was right.
Evelyn found the pass without difficulty. It was at the base of a rock cliff, a narrow gap invisible from below. Deer and elk tracks were proof it saw regular use. The far end opened onto a timbered valley. She reined to the north, toward a serrated ridge fringed by firs.
Dega was surprised. He’d thought they were coming to the valley they had visited before. “Where we go?” he called up to her.
“You’ll see,” Evelyn answered. Once the sun went down and she didn’t show up, her father would come after her. Maybe her mother, too. They might think to take the pass into the valley below, but they would never expect her to cross over into the next valley to the north. Even if they did suspect, tracking at night was hard and slow, even if they used torches. At the very least it would take them another day to find her. Which suited her just fine.
It was the middle of the afternoon when they crossed over. Evelyn drew rein on a grassy shelf and pointed. “Look there. Is that a perfect place for a picnic or what?’
Below lay a small valley split by a narrow stream.
The valley floor was lush with high grass, the slopes dense with trees.
“We need perfect place?” Dega asked. As near as he could remember, “perfect” meant the best that something could be.
Any
place was fine by him.
“I want it to be a day we’ll remember for as long as we live,” Evelyn told him.
“Picnic important?”
“Everything we do is important to me.”
The ride down took half an hour. Evelyn had seldom seen forest so thick. At times they had to force their way through. At length they came out of the shadows and into the high grass. Only then did it hit her how quiet it was. “Listen. You can almost hear your heartbeat.”
Dega raised his head but heard nothing. Certainly not his heart. The stillness was unusual. Only a few times in the past had he ever known it to be so quiet.
Evelyn reined toward the stream. She was tired and her throat was dry. On a low bank she drew rein. Sliding down, she arched her spine and pressed her hand to the small of her back. “All that riding about put a kink in me.”
Dega tried to decipher her comment. A kink, to the best of his recollection, was a bend or twist, like the time Nate King had a kink in a rope and had to unravel it. He did not see a kink in Evelyn. “I am glad it not put one,” he said for a loss of anything better. Alighting, he went down the bank, dropped onto a knee, set his lance on the ground, and dipped his hand in the water. It was runoff from on high, and cold. He splashed some on his neck and face, then cupped his palm and sipped.
Evelyn quenched her own thirst. She had set the
Hawken down to use both hands, and admired Dega over her fingers. When she was done she wiped her hands on her dress and said, “Well.”
Dega wondered if he was supposed to say anything to that. He tried a “Well,” of his own.
“Here we are.”
Where else would they be? Dega asked himself. All he said was “Yes.”
Evelyn stood and turned in a slow circle. “It’s pretty here, don’t you think?”
“It quiet.”
“That will change once the wind picks up and the sun starts to go down,” Evelyn predicted. By then the meat-eaters would be stirring and fill the night with their howls and roars and screams.
“We have picnic here?” Dega asked, and patted the ground.
“We could so the water is handy,” Evelyn said. But the truth was, a secluded nook was more to her fancy. She pointed at the woods to the west. “I’d like over yonder better.”
“What you wish,” Dega said. Until that moment he hadn’t realized how they nearly always did what she wanted and rarely what he wanted. The same as how she led when they went riding.
Evelyn’s saddle creaked as she swung up. “Let’s go, Buttercup,” she said, and flicked the reins.
Dega trailed after her. Conflicting tides of emotion were tearing at him. He had much he wanted to say once they made camp, but he was afraid to say it for fear he would lose her.
Evelyn hummed as she rode. She couldn’t wait to set up camp. She imagined how it would be that evening around the fire, talking, and other things,
and she grew warm in anticipation. Then Buttercup snorted and stopped, and she looked up. “Oh my.”
Dega drew rein beside her. He saw what she was looking at. “Someone live here.”
“Surely not,” Evelyn said. Yet there was the evidence, right in front of her eyes: a lodge made of limbs and brush with a hide over the entrance. By Shoshone standards it was crude. A vague memory tugged at her, and she said, “I know who made that.”
“You do?”
“Sheepeaters.”
“Sorry?” Dega had heard mention of many new tribes since his family came to the mountains but never a tribe by that name.
“The Tukaduka. My pa says they’re related to the Shoshones, but they don’t live like the Shoshones do.” Evelyn gigged her horse closer. Suddenly a foul odor assailed her, and she almost gagged.
“Look!” Dega exclaimed.
Evelyn stopped in alarm. The body of a woman lay near the hide, which she now saw was ripped and torn as if by razor-sharp knives. Jerking her Hawken up, she probed the woods beyond. “We better have a look-see.”
Dega firmed his grip on his lance. He’d never expected to find death in so remote a place, yet if there was one thing he had learned about the wilderness, it was to expect the unexpected. “This bad, yes?”
“This is very bad,” Evelyn King said.
The dark one stirred in his lair and sat up. He was uneasy and his shoulder was bothering him. Rising, he padded onto the ledge and gazed over his domain. He listened and sniffed the air. Birds warbled in the trees. Other than that, the valley he had claimed was quiet and peaceful.
He paced back and forth. It was early, and he didn’t yet feel the pangs of hunger that nightly impelled him to prowl in search of prey. A pair of ravens flapped overhead and he watched them fly off.
The dark one went into the niche in the rock cliff and lay on his belly with his chin on his forepaws. He closed his eyes and dozed. Images filled his head, and his legs twitched. He was running after a doe. He could see the white of her tail and her pumping legs, and he leaped and landed on her back. He bit her neck and slashed with his claws and she crashed down, thrashing and pumping her rich wet blood over him and the grass. He growled and lapped it, and then he was awake again and raised his head.
His uneasiness persisted. He went back out to the ledge. The sun was warm on his body. Lethargy crept over him, and he dozed again. When next he woke, the gray shadows of twilight were spreading and the hunger was on him.
Descending, the dark one tested the wind. Elk had passed by recently. Usually they were higher up, but they had come to graze on the succulent grass. His nose to the ground, he set out on their trail. There were two, a cow and her calf. He walked faster. Calf meat was juicy and sweet.
Their scent hung heavy around a thicket. They were still in there. His keen ears detected the rustling of their bodies. They had lain up in its depths for the day and would soon emerge to feed. They didn’t know he was there; he never let his presence be known.
Circling, the dark one came to a small pine and sank flat under it. The low branches hid him. With the eternal patience of his kind, he waited for his quarry to show.
The sun had been swallowed by the western peaks when the thicket crackled. The mother came out first, raised her head to sniff, and pricked her ears. She was cautious, as all good mothers were, but the dark one wasn’t upwind and she didn’t smell him. She snorted, the signal for her calf to emerge. A male born that spring, it wasn’t half her size.
The dark one focused on the calf. The mother would be harder to kill and he always went for the easiest. There was less chance of being hurt and he could not afford another injury. His limp was a constant reminder of how costly a mistake could be.
The pair started down, the mother in the lead. She was wary and stopped every few steps to look about. She sensed something was amiss, but she didn’t know what.
The dark one tensed his muscles. The calf was
looking at her, cuing his action on hers. That was usually the way with the young. It made them vulnerable. It made them slow to react. He bared his fangs but made no sound. Not yet. Not until the kill.
The mother twisted her neck to look behind them. She stared right at the small pine and then looked away. She hadn’t seen him. His dark coat and the dark shadows were one.
The calf stamped as if impatient.
The dark one was ready. When the mother turned, he exploded from under the pine. Two bounds and he was on them. He leaped high and landed on the calf’s back, his weight almost smashing it to the ground. It bleated and tried to run, but its legs were wobbly. The dark one sank his teeth deep into its throat even as his claws churned and sliced. The mother bleated, too, and tried to butt him. He wrenched with his fangs, and a red geyser sprayed his face. The calf took several staggering steps and collapsed. The dark one clung on, tearing and raking. A pain in his side caused him to yowl in fury. The mother had butted him. She drew back and lowered her head to charge again. A black blur, he whirled to confront her. He snarled and spat, his tail lashing. She hesitated. She bleated again, and sniffed, and drew back. Her calf had stopped moving. Whirling, she plowed off into the gathering night.
The dark one let her go. He had what he wanted. He sank onto the calf, lapped at its ravaged throat, and purred. Here was life’s most delicious treat. He loved to lap blood. Meat was good but blood was best. When there was no more blood to be had, he tore off a great chunk of raw flesh and chewed. Around him the world darkened. Stars glimmered. In the woods
an owl hooted. Far off a coyote wailed. Farther away, a wolf howled. The other meat-eaters were abroad.
The dark one gorged. When his belly was full, he rose and turned his back to the calf and scratched grass and dirt onto it. He would come back to eat several times.
Cool night air washed over his sinewy form as he loped up the mountain. He caught the scent of a black bear. He had come across it twice already, a big male in its prime. Were it a male of his own kind, he would challenge it for the valley. But bears were not competitors for the same meat; they seldom went after deer or elk. So long as this bear left him alone, he would leave it alone.
He was almost to the ledge when the wind shifted. A new scent caused him to stop in his tracks. He raised his head to pinpoint where the scent was coming from, but the wind shifted. A growl escaped him. It was the scent he hated. The scent he was reminded of every time he put weight on what was left of his forepaw.
Irritated, the dark one climbed to his lair. He stretched out on the ledge and closed his eyes, but sleep eluded him. He was strangely restless. He rose to go into the niche, and froze.
Down on the valley floor a light glimmered. He has seen lights like it before. He had seen the flames that made it and those who made the flames, the two-legged creatures he hated, the creatures responsible for crippling him.
The creatures he would slay.
Evelyn King breathed shallow as she stepped to the body. The stink was atrocious. Using the stock of her
Hawken, she rolled the body over. A beetle scuttled from an eye socket, and she recoiled.
“Poor woman,” Dega said. Whites said that a lot when bad things happened to others. Which perplexed him. He understood the whites’ ideas of “poor” and “rich” but not how having a bad thing happen made someone “poor.”
Although she didn’t want to, Evelyn bent down. The body had been there awhile. Scavengers had been at it. Most of the flesh was gone. Only a few shreds of skin remained. Punctures high on the brow gave a clue to the manner of death. “An animal did this.”
Dega gazed about them. The grass had been trampled and worn, and in a patch of dirt was a large print. He squatted and pointed. “Cat,” he said. “Much big cat.” Catching himself, he amended, “Sorry. Very big cat.”
Evelyn came over. “A mountain lion.” It was rare for painters to attack people. Her father, in all his years in the Rockies, had only ever been attacked by mountain lions twice, so far as she knew. Bears, on the other hand, he’d clashed with often.
“How long you think she be dead?” Dega asked.
Evelyn shrugged. “I’m no judge. Pa and my brother would likely know just by looking at her. If I had to guess, I’d say a week, two at the most.” She turned to the lodge. “Anyone in there?” she called out. When there was no answer she switched to Shoshone.
“Ne hainji.”
No one replied. She pushed on the hide, and her stomach churned. The stench was worse. Ducking, she warily entered. “Oh my.”
Another body was inside. The scavengers had not been at it, but it had rotted and the maggots had
done their grisly work. Evelyn gave it a quick scrutiny. “This one was a boy,” she reckoned. Not much younger than Dega, she reckoned.
“Cat again?”
“Yes,” Evelyn said. Slash marks on the dead boy’s buckskins confirmed it. “Let’s get out of here.” She pushed on the hide and took Buttercup’s reins and walked toward the stream. The stink faded and she could breathe again. She sucked air into her lungs and declared, “Thank God.”
Dega shared her revulsion. He never liked being around dead things. The Nansusequa always buried their dead within a day of death, usually with a feast and singing to celebrate passing to the other side. They didn’t weep and cut themselves as some tribes did. To them, death was a cause for happiness, not sorrow. “Those mother and son, you think?”
“Maybe,” Evelyn said. It begged the question of what had happened to the father. Could be the painter had gotten him, too.
“We bury them?”
Evelyn debated. That was the proper thing, she supposed. But there wasn’t much left of either the woman or the boy. And it wasn’t as if they were kin or even Shoshones. They were strangers. She felt no obligation. Besides, it would take time she would rather spend more pleasantly. “I think we should leave them where they are for their own people to find.”
“If you say,” Dega said. Though in his opinion a person should show respect for the dead as well as the living.
“We’ll go up the valley a ways and make camp,” Evelyn proposed. She mounted and clucked to
Buttercup. She tried to shut the bodies from her mind and think only of Dega. “Are you hungry?”
“Not after them.”
Neither was Evelyn. The grisly find had spoiled her mood and her appetite. She refused to be discouraged, though. She had gone to all this trouble to be alone with him, and by God, she wasn’t going to let anything spoil it. Forcing a smile, she said, “We can’t let all the food I brought go to waste.”
Dega was shocked. That she could think of eating amazed him. “We eat later if that all right.”
For over a quarter of a mile Evelyn stuck to the tree line. She came on a spot where a crescent of grass indented the forest, and said merrily, “Look what we have here. This will do just fine.”
“What about cat?” Dega asked.
“It’s long gone by now,” Evelyn assured him. “My pa says they roam a large area. Fifty to a hundred miles or better.” She was more worried about a grizzly happening by. “We’re safe enough.”
“I hope,” Dega said.
Evelyn untied the picnic basket. From her parfleche she took a short stake, and using a rock, pounded the stake into the ground. She tied one end of a length of rope to the stake and looped the other end over Buttercup’s neck. “So she won’t stray,” she said when she noticed Dega looking at her.
“What I do with my horse?”
“I have more rope. We’ll tie off yours, too.”
Next Evelyn stripped off her saddle and saddle blanket. She was lowering the saddle when she realized Dega was still standing there. “Something the matter?”
“No.” Dega had been on the verge of bringing up
the issue his mother had raised, but he couldn’t muster the courage.
“Make yourself useful. Fetch some firewood.”
“I be right back.” Dega went into the woods. The shadows were lengthening and it was uncommonly still. He marveled at the absence of life. In King Valley there were animals everywhere, but here all he saw were a few birds. His search for fallen limbs took him an arrow’s flight from the clearing. He was bending to pick up a short branch when an impression in the bare earth caught his attention: another cat print, only this one was smaller. To him it appeared as if part of the paw was missing.
Dega straightened. He hoped Evelyn was right about the mountain lion being gone. They were fierce fighters, those big cats. Troubled by his find, he started back. Without warning, the undergrowth to his left rustled. He turned and spied a vague shape low to the ground. Dropping the firewood, he raised his lance. He glimpsed what he took for a tawny hide and tensed, but whatever it was, it ran. He took several steps to try to get a better look, but the thing was gone. He waited to be sure it didn’t circle around. When he was convinced it was safe, he picked up the firewood and struck off for the clearing, more troubled than ever.
Evelyn was waiting for him. She had spread a blanket and set the food out. “There you are. I was beginning to think you got lost.”
Dega was insulted. His people prided themselves on their woodcraft. He could tell direction by the sun and the stars and had never been lost in his entire life. But he didn’t mention that. Instead he said, “I see something.”
“What?”
“I not know.”
“Was it the mountain lion?”
“I think too small,” Dega said.
“Good. That’s the last thing we need.” Evelyn patted the ground. “Why don’t you set that wood down and we’ll get the fire going?” She opened her parfleche and took out a fire steel and flint and her small box of tinder. Her father had taught her how to light a fire when she was little and she was so adept at it that in no time she had puffed a tiny flame to life and their fire was crackling and growing. She put the steel and flint and box in her parfleche and turned to Dega, who had sat across from her. “You can sit closer if you want. That way I don’t have to reach across to hand you food.”
Dega had never really noticed how she was always telling him what to do. He slid around the fire and she handed him a piece of pemmican.
“Help yourself to whatever else you want.” Evelyn was tickled. Here they were, at long last. She gazed on his handsome features and felt a stirring deep inside.
Normally Dega would be famished, but he was nervous, which wasn’t normal for him at all. “We need talk.”
“Yes,” Evelyn agreed. “We do.”
Just then a twig snapped and they both glanced at the ring of woods.
Something was staring back at them.