thrust out his hand.
“No! Think! You know what is out there. You know what they will do to us.”
As if to prove him right, from the other side of the door came a low growl, followed by more, and harder, scratching.
“Let me past,” Philberta insisted, and shoved him out of her way. “Rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub. And who do you think they be?” She placed her hand on the latch.
Sully shoved her and she stumbled back. “I will not warn you again! Heed me, woman!”
“Heed a fool? What would that make me? Twice the idiot?” Philberta shook her head. “You have come to the wrong place if it is heeding you are after.”
The scratching became a frenzy of clawing and growls and snarls. The door shook to fierce blows, the leather hinges creaking.
“Do you hear them?” Philberta asked. “Aren’t they grand?”
Sully faced the door and raised his knife. “I am ready for them! If they get in, there will be the devil to pay”
Philberta stepped to the counter and gripped a cast iron pan. “Dickery, dickery dare, the pig flew up in the air.” She walked up behind Sully and brought the pan crashing down on the top of his head. The
“Serves him right,” Philberta said. Fluffing her hair, she called out, “Can you hear me, my sweets?”
Something outside the door howled.
“Birds of a feather flock together,” Philberta said, and opened it.
Godsend
Few natural wonders stirred Nate King like the Rocky Mountains. He still remembered the first time he set eyes on them: the emerald foothills, the green of the thick timber that covered the higher slopes, the brown of the rocky heights crowned by white caps of snow. Peaks that reared miles into the sky. Compared to the splendor of the Rockies, the mountains of his native New York were so many pitiful bumps.
On this particular morning Nate was many miles from the remote valley his family called home. He was astride his favorite bay, on his way to the village of his wife’s cousin, Touch The Clouds. The Shoshones were contemplating a raid on their enemies the Blackfeet, and Touch The Clouds wanted Nate to sit in on the council. It showed the high regard in which the Sho-shones held him. That, and Nate suspected the Shoshones hoped he would help them get their hands on a few more rifles.
The last thing Nate expected to come across so deep in the mountains were other whites. But from high atop a ridge Nate spied eight riders, the last leading a couple of pack horses, winding west in his direction. They had no inkling he was there.
Nate was heading north. He raised his reins to ride on, but curiosity got the better of him. Reaching back, he opened a beaded parfleche his wife had made and brought out a collapsible metal tube. Extending it, he pressed the scalloped eyepiece to his eye.
Nate was a big man, broad of shoulder and narrow of waist. He was dressed in buckskins. A beaver hat crowned his black thatch of hair. An ammo pouch, powder horn and possibles bag crisscrossed his broad chest. Wedged under his wide leather belt were a pair of flintlocks, while jutting from a beaded saddle sheath was the stock of a Hawken rifle. On his right hip hung a bowie, on his left a tomahawk. He was, in short, a walking arsenal. He needed to be.
As Nate studied the eight riders through his spy-glass, his mouth curled in a frown. “I’ll be switched,” he said to his bay. Four of the eight in particular were responsible for his frown. “Some folks have no more sense than a tree stump.”
Angry, Nate snapped the telescope in upon itself, and shoved it into his parfleche. “They are none of my business,” he declared, and again went to ride on to the north and the Shoshone village.
Nate hesitated. His conscience pricked him, as it often did in situations like this. For long minutes he debated whether to go on or go down and talk to the party below. Exasperated with himself, he reined sharply down the slope.
The lead rider spotted him and pointed. As well the man should, since he, like Nate, was a frontiersman.
Nate threaded through a belt of lodgepole pines and came out on a flat bench. Rather than go lower,he drew rein and dismounted to await the eight. It was a quarter of an hour before they reached him, and in that time Nate gathered dead limbs, used his fire steel and flint, and tinder from his tinderbox, to kindle a fire, and put coffee on to brew.
When the other frontiersman came over the crest, Nate was seated on a log he had dragged close to the fire, his Hawken across his legs. He didn’t smile or lift a hand in greeting. Instead, he leveled the Hawken and said bluntly, “I should kill you here and now.”
The man made no attempt to raise his own rifle. Lean and bony, he had a high forehead, stringy brown hair that hung limp under a floppy brown hat, and a jagged scar where his left ear should be. “I thought it might be you. Not many are your size.”
“My son tells me you were there when he was whipped.” Nate was referring to an incident not long ago in which his oldest, Zach, had tangled with an English lord.
“Did he also tell you I had no hand in the whipping? And that I did what I could to help him escape?”
Nate slowly lowered the Hawken. The mere thought of harm coming to either of his children was enough to fill him with fury. He loved Zach and Evelyn dearly and devotedly, and anyone who hurt them must answer to him. “He told me, Ryker. Which is why I’m not going to blow out your wick.”
Edwin Ryker let out a long breath. “You had me worried there. I don’t want you for an enemy.”
“We have never been bosom friends.”
The other riders were filing onto the bench. A white-haired bantam of a woman in a floral dress and yellow bonnet jabbed a bony finger at Nate and demanded, “Why were you pointing your rifle at our guide just now? If you are a brigand, all you will get from us is an early grave.”
“Aunt Aggie, please,” said a man of fifty or so. His clothes were store bought. He had a thin mustache and thin sideburns and no chin to speak off. “Hush, and let us men handle this.”
The woman who had threatened Nate was not the least bit intimidated. “Pshaw, Peter. Men are good for two things in this world. As beasts of burden and to help breed. Beyond that, we women would be better off without you.”
Nate laughed.
Aunt Aggie’s back became ramrod straight. “Find me humorous, do you, you great lump of muscle?”
“I find you marvelous. My wife would agree with your opinion of my gender. She has tongue-lashed my ears many a time.”
“I dare say you deserved it,” Aunt Aggie said, but she was smiling. “Although I must admire her taste. For a lump of muscle you are uncommonly handsome.”
A woman about the same age as Peter let out with a loud sigh. “Enough, Aggie. Must you always embarrass us?”
“I speak my mind, Erleen. You would do well to do the same. Timidity never got anyone anywhere.”
“We don’t know this man from Adam, yet you carry on with him like some tavern tart. I wish just once you would remember you are supposed to act like a lady. And if you can’t do that, at least act your age.”
“Did you hear her?” Aunt Aggie said to Nate. “She was born with a sour disposition, and life has not improved it much.”
“Agatha!” Erleen declared. “I will thank you to shush until we find out who this man is and whether he is trustworthy.”
“I can answer both questions,” Edwin Ryker said. “This here is Nate King. He got his start as a free trapper years ago, and now he lives somewhere in these mountains with his family and a few close friends. As for trusting him, he is as trustworthy as a man can be this side of walking on water.”
