Erleen bristled. “Mr. Ryker! I will ask you for the final time to curb that cursing of yours. Must I constantly remind you there are children present?”
Ryker gestured at the spectacular sweep of majesty and mystery below the divide. “Lady, do you see that down there? Do you have any idea what we are in for? Because I promise you that before this is done, my cussing will be the least of your worries.”
Nate didn’t say anything. Ryker was right. It could be none of them would get out of there alive.
Horror
One lock was not enough.
Black Elk thought it would be. But after he held the wonderful yellow curls in his hand and felt how soft the hair was and marveled at how the sunlight turned the yellow to gold, he wasn’t content. He wanted more than one lock. He wanted the whole head, and the girl that went with the head.
The others listened to his appeal, but Black Elk could tell Mad Wolf was the only other one as eager to continue tracking the girl. Mad Wolf was always eager to kill whites. Mad Wolf was always eager to kill anything.
“I say we let them go,” Small Otter declared. “They gave you the hair you asked for. To kill them now would be bad medicine.”
“You see bad medicine in everything,” Black Elk said. “If a cloud passes in front of the sun, to you that is bad medicine.”
Mad Wolf and Double Walker smiled.
“And we will not make war on the women,” Black Elk went on. “We will not kill Golden Hair or the old one or the other two. Only the men, so we can take their guns and horses.”
Double Walker said, “And so you can take Golden Hair, as you call her, back to our village. What will Sparrowhawk and your other wives say? You have not asked them if they want to raise this white girl as their own.”
Black Elk grunted. He had four wives. Among the Blackfeet only a poor man had one wife. Warriors rich in horses and possessions had as many wives as they could support. The leader of their band had five. “They are my women. They will do as I say.”
Mad Wolf grinned and said to Double Walker, “He does not want Golden Hair for a daughter. He wants her for a fifth wife.”
“She looks young,” Double Walker said.
“I can wait a few winters.” Black Elk could wait for as long as need be to make her his wife. No one in his band, no one in the entire tribe, had a wife like her. Several warriors had white women in their lodges but none with hair so yellow. Hers was like the sun. She must be a favorite of the sun god, he thought. She would bring good medicine to his lodge and his people. And at night, under the blankets, he could run his fingers through her hair and—he grew warm at the imagining.
Small Otter was speaking. “There is another matter. This Grizzly Killer. His is a name we all have heard. He is white but he is Shoshone. It is said he has killed more of the silver tip bears than any man, white or red. It is said he has counted many coup.”
“Are you afraid?” Mad Wolf sneered.
For a moment Small Otter appeared ready to strike him. Instead he said, “If you truly think I am, we will set all our weapons aside except our knives and you can test my courage.”
It was Black Elk’s turn to grin. With a bow and arrow they were all about equal in skill. Mad Wolf was best with a lance. Double Walker, so big and so strong, was formidable with a war club. But with a knife Small Otter had no peer.
“Do not take me so seriously,” Mad Wolf said. “As for Grizzly Killer, yes, he has counted many coup. They say he has killed Sioux. He has killed our brothers, the Bloods and the Piegans. He has killed Black-feet. He is a great warrior.” His face lit with the passion that inspired him more than any other. “Think of our fame if we kill him.”
“Think of
“I make no secret of that. We are warriors. Warriors kill. The more we kill, the greater we are. I will be the greatest one day. Our children and our grand-children and our grandchildren’s children will sing songs about me.”
“Here he goes again,” Small Otter said.
Black Elk held up a hand. “Enough. If Mad Wolf wants to kill Grizzly Killer, I wish him success. My interest is the girl, Golden Hair. But Mad Wolf and I cannot kill the white Shoshone or steal the white girl alone. Are you with us? Are we together in this?”
Double Walker shook his war club. “I am with you.”
“Good.”
Small Otter scowled. “We have been friends since we were little. We have grown together. We have hunted and played and gone on the war path together. So yes, I am with you. But I want it known I do not think we are doing right. I have a bad feeling.”
“You always have bad feelings,” Mad Wolf said.
Black Elk slung his bow across his back. “Then we are agreed. We must hurry. The whites are making for a pass high up that will take them to the other side of the mountains. But I know another way. A faster way. We can get to the other side ahead of them and catch them unprepared.”
Hurriedly they mounted. With Black Elk in the lead, they rode south along the edge of the forest until they came to a game trail pockmarked by elk and deer tracks. It led up a long slope to a wall of rock well below the summit. The wall had a break in it, a break barely wide enough for a horse, but it brought them to the other side of the mountain well before the whites could hope to make it through the high pass.
Drawing rein, the four Blackfeet surveyed the maze of peaks and shadowed valleys. All was deathly still, even the wind. Not so much as the chirp of a bird reached their ears.
“I do not like this country,” Small Otter said.
“There must be much game,” Double Walker remarked.
“And plenty of ghosts.”
Mad Wolf rolled his eyes. “Not that again.”
“Only a fool is not afraid of ghosts. You know as well as I do that they like forest and rivers. Look below us. What do you see? Forests, and in the distance a river.”
“I see smoke,” Double Walker said, and pointed.
Rising out of a shadowed valley below were gray tendrils that writhed and coiled like snakes. The valley was thick with timber and dark with gloom thanks to sheer red cliffs that hemmed it on three sides. One of the cliffs had been split long ago by a mighty cataclysm.
“A village?” Small Otter wondered.
“Not enough smoke,” was Black Elk’s opinion. “It is a campfire.”
“We should go see,” Mad Wolf proposed.
The game trail wound down into the dark valley. They were just entering the dense forest when Double Walker thrust out a muscular arm. “Look there!”
A dead cow elk lay on her back, her legs wide, her belly ripped open. Ropy loops of intestine and other organs had spilled out, along with a flood of blood, now dry.
“Dead five or six sleeps, at least,” Small Otter guessed.
Black Elk leaned down as low as he could to examine the cow elk. “I have never seen a kill like this. See these bite marks? Where something has chewed meat off the rib bone? What animal bites like that?”
None of them could say. They rode on, their bows strung and shafts notched. The stillness of the forest was unnatural, the quiet absolute. The dense ranks of trees could hide a multitude of enemies.
“There are ghosts here, I tell you,” Small Otter whispered.
A stream gurgled to their right, but they couldn’t see it. Once Black Elk thought he glimpsed a flicker of movement. He didn’t like this place, but he didn’t tell the others. Mad Wolf and Double Walker would tease him as
