“Huh?” Finnan said.
“ ‘Peas and beans are as dank here as a dog, and that is the best way to give poor Jade the bots.’ ”
“Huh?” Finnan said again.
“ ‘Zounds. I was never so bethumped with words since I first called my father’s brother dad.’ ”
“What language is that you’re speaking, old man? It sounds like English and yet it’s not.”
“ ‘You are duller than a great thaw.’ ”
“I understood that one, I think,” Finnan declared, “and if I understood it correctly, I resent it.” He glanced at Nate. “Is your friend drunk? Is that it?”
Nate was shaking with suppressed mirth. “Finnan, allow me to introduce my best friend in all creation. You are talking to none other than Shakespeare McNair.”
“The saints preserve us!” the younger man blurted, and stepped to the mare. “I’ve heard so much about you, sir. You’re as famous as Jim Bridger and Joseph Walker. It’s an honor to finally meet you.”
Shakespeare had raised a hand and was about to deliver another bombastic quote. “It is, is it?”
“Yes, indeed. They say you were the first white man to ever set foot in the Rocky Mountains.”
“Not quite, but I was a close second. Or possibly third.”
“May I shake your hand? I can’t wait to tell everyone. I can hardly believe my luck.”
“There’s hope for you, after all,” Shakespeare said, and leaning down, he offered his hand. “But take heed, boy. When you meet a person my age, the last thing you want to do is remind him of his years.”
“Oh, I understand, sir. I’m sorry I did that. It’s just that I’ve never met anyone as old as you before.”
Nate snorted.
“ ‘This is the very coinage of your brain,’ ” Shakespeare said with a sigh.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Stand aside so we can enter. I feel myself in serious need of hard liquor.” Shakespeare gigged the mare and rode through the gate, casting a dark glance at Nate. “One word of this to my wife and I’ll have your guts for garters.”
“Now, now,” Nate responded. “She is entitled to laugh the same as the rest of us.”
Raising his face to the heavens, Shakespeare declared, “ ‘There’s many a man that hath more hair than wit.’ Was that a jest on your part or do you just like hair?”
Nate went to follow him.
“Does he always talk like that?” Finnan asked.
“There are days when I think he must have talked like that in the cradle,” Nate said, and tapped his heels to the bay. Nothing much had changed since he last visited Bent’s. The post was quieter than normal, in part because no wagon trains were there.
Nate crossed the compound and drew rein next to McNair in front of the trading room just as the door opened.
“As I live and breathe, Nate and Shakespeare. I’ve missed you, my friends.” Ceran St. Vrain emerged, his aristocratic features lit by a warm smile. He was dressed in the best of fashion, his hair neatly slicked, his boots polished.
“Ceran de Hault de Lassus de St. Vrain,” Shakespeare said. “It is a joy for this old coon to set eyes on you again.”
St. Vrain chuckled. “McNair, you are the only person alive who ever uses my full name, and how in the world you remember it is beyond me.”
“His memory is formidable,” Nate praised his friend. He had long been astounded by Shakespeare’s ability to quote the Bard at will.
The three shook, and Ceran said, “How is it you’re here? You can’t be out of supplies so soon.”
Nate’s good humor evaporated like fresh rainwater under a hot sun. “I’m looking for my daughter.”
“Evelyn? Yes, she was here some weeks ago with that family of Indians from the East you let settle in your valley. I’m afraid my memory isn’t the equal of McNair’s. What are they called again?”
“Nansusequas,” Nate answered. “Wakumassee is the father. From what I gather, he took them off to hunt buffalo.” Nate wished he had been home when they decided to go, but he’d been in St. Louis having his rifle repaired by the Hawken brothers.
“I seem to remember your daughter telling me that.” Ceran stopped. “They haven’t returned?”
“No.” The simple word tore at Nate’s heartstrings like his keen-edged bowie. “They’ve been gone much too long.”
“We’ll find them, Horatio,” Shakespeare vowed. “If we have to scour the prairie from end to end, we’ll find them.”
Nate refused to delude himself. The plains were vast beyond measure, stretching countless leagues from Canada to Mexico and from the Mississippi to the Rockies. Granted, he doubted that Evelyn and Waku had gone that far, but the task was still daunting. “Have you heard anything?” he asked St. Vrain. “Has anyone seen them? Has there been any word at all?”
“Would that there had.” Ceran’s broad brow furrowed. “I’ll be more than happy to organize a dozen men to go with you. You can cover that much more ground in much less time.”
Nate was tempted. Time was crucial. The longer it took, the less the odds of finding them. “Have there been any reports of the Blackfeet down this way? Or have the Sioux been on the prowl?”
“The Sioux are always on the prowl,” Ceran said, and caught himself. “But no, nothing recent. The Sioux are staying up in their Black Hills, and the Blackfeet haven’t sent a war party this far south since last summer.”
“When you talked to her, did she happen to mention which way they were headed?” Nate asked.
“East, as I recall. I reminded her that most of the buffalo are to the south, but she was confident they…” Ceran gave a slight start and visibly blanched. “Oh, my word.”
“What?”
“I just remembered.”
“What?” In his excitement, Nate gripped St. Vrain’s arms. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”
Ceran swallowed and forced a smile. “Calm down. As you say, it’s a vast prairie. It’s unlikely they ran into them.”
“Ran into who?”
“There’s been word,” Ceran began, “of trouble to the east. The first accounts were sketchy. I thought it couldn’t be true, but then other reports reached my attention.”
Nate was practically beside himself. “Reports of
“Of a band of white scalp hunters who have been killing and scalping every Indian they come across.”
“God, no,” Nate said. It was true, then. And it meant his friends the Nansusequas—and his daughter—were in deadly danger.
A map never gave a true sense of scale. It said X was five hundred miles from Y, or that at its closest point the Mississippi was nine hundred miles from the Rockies. A person could picture it in his head, but the picture never matched the reality.
This was what went through Nate King’s mind as he hurried eastward from Bent’s Fort on the morning of the sixth day out. There was so
Nate thought of Evelyn and choked down despair. Ceran St. Vrain had told them that the scalp hunters were ranging wide over the region, killing men, women, and even children and lifting their hair. The question Ceran couldn’t answer was why they were so far north of their usual haunts. It was well known that Texas and the government down to Santa Fe both offered money for scalps. In Texas it was for Comanche hair. In New Mexico it was for Apache scalps. But Texas and Santa Fe were a thousand miles away.
