good thing, too. It makes up for all the times men go around with blinders on.”
“For a man, you sure don’t think highly of your gender.”
“Quite the contrary. I’m quite happy being male. The notion of being female scares me to death.”
“Why?”
“I’d have to put up with men.”
Lou laughed gaily. She headed for the cabin and gazed at the timbered slope beyond just as a jay took wing, squawking loudly. She idly wondered if something had spooked it, then put it from her mind. She had more important things to think about.
Up on the slope, the jay continued to squawk.
Chapter Two
The Outcast sat patiently on the pinto until the jay lost interest and flew away. Of all the birds, he liked jays least. Their shrill cries alerted everything within hearing. They were the bane of every hunter and warrior.
His brother used to argue that vultures were the worst birds because they ate rotting flesh and stank of death and were so ugly, but at least vultures were quiet.
The Outcast stared down the mountain. He could not tell much from that distance, but the white-haired man was plainly old and the sandy-haired woman, plainly young. He saw them talk and laugh and go into a wooden lodge.
A light jab of his heels sent the pinto down the slope. With a caution borne of experience, he rode slowly and hugged the shadows.
The Outcast was surprised to find whites so deep in the mountains, at least ten sleeps from the prairie, if not more. To his knowledge, no whites had ever penetrated this far.
He regarded white men much as he did jays. They were nuisances the world was better off without.
His first encounter with whites came when he was nineteen and went on a raid led by his uncle. Thirty warriors took part. They’d traveled south into the land of their longtime enemies the Nez Perce. But they were not fated to find a Nez Perce village. Instead they came upon a large party of bearded, hulking, coarse men with many horses and many beaver hides and many guns. The horses and the hides were incentive for his uncle to suggest they attack and kill the whites and take all they had, but the taking proved to be harder than any of them expected. They’d downed several of the whites with arrows and rushed in to slay the rest at close quarters. Only the whites drove them off, felling half a dozen warriors with their guns.
The Outcast had dragged his wounded uncle into the woods. There was a hole in his uncle’s chest and a bigger hole in his back, and so much blood, it soaked the Outcast’s leggings. His uncle had frothed at the mouth and was a while dying. The last words his uncle uttered was a plea to have his family looked after.
By then the whites had retreated to a cluster of boulders. The warriors tried to get at them, but the guns of the whites drove them back. Finally it was decided that too many had died, and they broke off the fight.
The Outcast learned important lessons that day. He learned that whites were not always easy to kill, and he learned to respect their guns.
Since then, the Outcast had fought whites on two other occasions. In one fight, the two sides had swapped arrows and lead, but nothing more came of it. In the other, the Outcast and six fellow warriors surprised four whites who were dipping pans in a stream and swirling the water around. It was most strange. But the whites had good horses and a lot of packs, and the Outcast had counted coup that day.
He never thought of whites as anything but enemies. They were like the Nez Perce, to be killed wherever he found them.
Now he came to a small clearing ringed by pines. Dismounting, he slid his bow and quiver from the sheath and glided lower. He must learn more about these whites. It wasn’t wise to attack an enemy until you knew the enemy’s strength. He wouldn’t risk being seen until he was ready to be seen. He flattened himself on the ground about an arrow’s flight from the wooden lodge.
The lodge, from what little the Outcast knew of the dwellings, was sturdily built. To one side was a pen for the horses. To the other were several small structures. In front of one of those were plump birds that clucked and pecked the ground. His mouth watered and his stomach growled as he imagined roasting the plumpest over a crackling fire.
Laughter came from within the lodge. The young woman must be goodnatured, he reasoned, to laugh so much. Everyone always told him whites were grim, but she wasn’t.
From where he lay, the Outcast could see other dwellings across the lake. Smoke rose from only one. The wooden lodge at the west end and the long, low lodge to the east showed no signs of life. He wondered if they were empty, and if so, where the people who lived in them had gone.
Presently a rectangle of wood opened and out came the old man and the young woman. The woman was smiling and happy. The old man placed a hand on her shoulder and said something in the white tongue that caused her to touch her belly and to shake her head. Then the old man kissed her on the forehead and went off around the lake. When he looked back, the woman waved, and he waved back.
The Outcast speculated that maybe the old man was her father.
Still holding her belly, the young woman walked to the water’s edge and stood, staring across the lake. The wind fanned her hair, and she idly brushed at stray wisps.
She interested the Outcast, this woman. She was small and dainty, as the woman he never thought about had been, and she had a grace about her that he found appealing. The thought jarred him. He must remember who he was and what she was and not let her stir his feelings. He had given up the right to feel long ago.
Just then, to the west, someone yelled. The woman turned and smiled and ran to meet a young man who carried a dead grouse over his shoulder. They embraced with much passion, and the woman kissed him on the mouth. Together they moved toward the wooden lodge.
The Outcast dug his fingers dug into the earth until his knuckles were pale. Here was another reminder of the life he once had lived. He’d had a wife and a lodge, and been full of joy.
His eyes narrowed. There was something unusual about the young man. He’d taken him for a red man, but now that he was closer, the Outcast saw that her husband was a half-breed. Yet another surprise. He’d been told that whites didn’t like breeds.
Not that it mattered.
Right then and there the Outcast made up his mind.
He was going to kill them.
Zach King couldn’t believe the fuss his wife was making over supper. She insisted he wash up after he plucked and butchered the grouse, and made him don his best buckskins. She put a vase of those yellow flowers she liked on the table. She brought out her precious china and her fancy silverware. She even put a candle in the center of the table and lit it.
“Are we having company?” It was the only explanation Zach could think of. She never went to this much bother any other time. “Did you invite Shakespeare and Blue Water Woman?”
Louisa was spooning potato soup into a bowl. She had changed into her one and only dress, which she had sent for out of a catalog and picked up at Bent’s Fort the last time they were there. “No. But he did stop by today and asked if you wanted to go hunting with him tomorrow.”
“What is he going after? Did he say?”
Lou shook her head. “Why don’t you have a seat, kind sir, and I’ll bring the food over.”
“I can help,” Zach offered, although he really didn’t want to. He considered cooking and the like woman’s work. He offered only because if he didn’t now and then, she carped that he never helped around the cabin.
“Not tonight. Tonight I’ll wait on my lord and master.” Lou wanted him in fine spirits when she broke the news.
