The tracks continued to point east.
Winona figured it was safe to cup a hand to her mouth. “Chickory? Chickory Worth? Where are you?
Other than the twittering of sparrows, there was no answer.
Winona leaned down. She had found where the boy rode fast, and soon she came on the cause. Chickory was after a buck. She knew it was a buck because she found where it had urinated. Does always squatted. This deer hadn’t.
Winona admired his gumption if not his judgment. Bucks were extremely wary. To get close enough for a shot took considerable skill, skill the boy didn’t have. Odds were the buck would tire of the cat-and-mouse game and vanish, if it hadn’t already.
A jay squawked and was mimicked by another. Winona saw them fly from tree to tree. Raiding nests to eat the hatchlings, she reckoned, as did crows and ravens, which was why the three were at the bottom of her list of favorite birds.
Winona rounded a bend—and drew rein in surprise. Directly ahead, its reins tied to a bush, was Chickory’s horse—but no Chickory. She called his name but got no reply.
Winona kneed her mare up next to the sorrel and slid down. She shouted the boy’s name again. Puzzled, she walked in a circle around the sorrel. The sorrel’s tracks went past where it was tied and then came back again. Evidently, Chickory had ridden past this point, returned, tied his horse to the bush, and gone on afoot.
Why would he do that? Winona wondered. The only answer she could think of was that he was stalking the buck.
Winona started after him. She assumed he hadn’t gone far, but she covered the distance three arrows could fly without spotting him. She stopped, debating whether to go on or wait there.
A low sound carried to her ears.
Winona couldn’t quite identify it, but it might have been the groan of an animal in pain. Leveling her Hawken, she crept toward a cluster of cottonwoods. She scoured the ground for tracks and discovered the prints of other horses, all of them shod. She was bending to examine them when the groan was repeated.
Winona looked up, and her blood changed to ice water.
His arms outspread, Chickory Worth had been tied by his wrists to two cottonwoods. Someone had beaten him; blood trickled down his brow and red drops dribbled from his chin. He was barely conscious. He groaned a third time, and his eyelids fluttered.
Winona moved to help him.
That was when the undergrowth rustled and parted, and figures closed in from all sides.
Chapter Nine
It was a gorgeous, sunny day, painting the prairie in vivid hues with added splashes of color from wild- flowers.
Nate King loved days like this—the sun warm on his face, the fragrances in the air. He breathed deep and felt some of the tension drain from him like water from a sieve.
Nate had spent the past two hours scouting the river for sign. He hadn’t found any, hostile or otherwise. Drawing rein, he swung down. “We’ll water the horses and then head back.”
“Fine by me, hoss,” Peleg Harrod said. He dismounted stiffly and put a hand to the small of his back. “These old bones of mine ain’t what they used to be. Too much saddle and I’m a bundle of aches.”
“You’re spry enough for someone your age.” Nate brought his bay to the water’s edge. “My wife will be happy to hear there aren’t any Sioux about. We’ve tangled with them a time or two.”
“Who hasn’t?” Harrod laughed. “They love to count coup on whites more than they love to count coup on just about anyone. Except maybe the Shoshones.”
Nate grunted. The long-standing animosity between his adopted people and the Sioux was well known. “It’s too bad all the tribes can’t live in peace.”
“Peace ain’t human nature. Red or white, they live to make war.” Harrod led his own horse over.
“Most folks I know favor peace over spilling blood.”
“Maybe they say they do. But name me one time in all history when there wasn’t a war somewhere. Killing is in our blood. Has been since Cain and Abel.”
“So we forget about the part where it says ‘Thou shalt not kill’?”
Harrod chortled. “This from a coon who, from what I hear, has sent a heap of souls into the hereafter. Don’t take this wrong, but you’re a fine one to talk.”
Nate squatted and dipped his hand in the river. He couldn’t deny his past. But he could, and did, defend his deeds. “I’ve only ever taken a life when I had to.”
“Is that a fact? Then that ‘Thou shalt not kill’ doesn’t count when it’s not convenient?”
“I don’t know as I like your tone.”
“Sorry. It’s just that a lot of those who say they live as God wants them to live tend to break His rules as much as the rest of us.”
Nate splashed water on his neck and felt cool drops trickle under his buckskin shirt and down his chest. “I can’t argue with that. I’m only saying most people would be glad to go through their entire lives without taking someone else’s.”
Harrod picked up a small flat stone. He threw it, skipping it across the surface as boys were wont to do. “I’d have been content to go through my life that way. But it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Life never goes as we think it should.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Harrod picked up another flat stone and skipped it—four times before it sank. Searching for more, he came around the bay. “You probably never figured on nursemaidin’ a black family, did you?”
Nate glanced up. “Why mention them?”
“No reason, except that it shows things happen to us we never plan on.” Harrod bent and picked up a stone, but it wasn’t flat enough and he dropped it. “Take me, for instance. I’ve done things I can’t believe I did. Nearly always, I did them for money.”
Nate set down his Hawken and dipped both hands in the water. “I try to get by with needing as little as I can.”
“Wish I could. But I’ve got me a few vices. I like to drink. I like whiskey an awful lot. I like cards on occasion, and now and then I pay the painted ladies a visit. All that takes money.”
“You could always give them up.”
“I wish it were that simple. My vices are as much a part of me as what ever virtues I have.” Harrod sighed. “Precious few, I’m afraid. No, I’ll do just about anything for money except hurt women. That’s the one thing I’ve never done and won’t ever do.”
Nate cupped water and pressed his hands to his face and welcomed the relief it brought from the heat. Through his fingers he said, “But you’d hurt a man for money. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Harrod selected a rock as big as his fist. “As a matter of fact, it is. I’m being paid extra in this case, seeing as how the man is more dangerous than most and the gents who hired me want him alive.”
“ ‘This case’?” Nate started to turn. He saw the frontiersman’s reflection in the water, saw Harrod’s arm sweep down, and the back of his head exploded with pain.
His last sensation was of pitching into black emptiness.
“Well, this a fine
“Want me to go look for them, Ma?” Randa volunteered.
