“Nothin’ to say?” Emala goaded. “You’re the one wanted this. You’re the one had his heart set on livin’ free.”
“Don’t start,” Samuel warned. A big man, he wore a homespun shirt she had made and pants bought with money given him by his new friend Nate King. Samuel shifted in his saddle and said to his benefactor, “So you say this valley is named after you?”
“King Valley,” Nate confirmed. He was as big as Samuel but broader at the shoulders. His attire consisted of buckskins and moccasins and an eagle feather tied in his hair. A powder horn, ammo pouch and possibles bag crisscrossed his chest. In the crook of his elbow rested a Hawken rifle and around his waist was a virtual armory: two flintlock pistols, a Bowie knife and a tomahawk. “Shakespeare, here, started calling it that, and the handle stuck.”
The man Nate referred to was a fellow mountain man, Nate’s mentor and best friend in all creation, Shakespeare McNair. McNair was similarly attired and armed but had white hair to Nate’s black. “That I did, hoss. I could just as well have called it Nate’s Slice of Heaven.” He chuckled and quoted his namesake. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
“I can’t get over how funny you talk,” Emala said. “Half the time I can’t understand you.”
Nate laughed. “Don’t feel bad. No one else can understand him either.”
Shakespeare harrumphed and resorted to the Bard again. “Scoff on, vile fiend and shameless courtesan.”
“Now see,” Emala said. “Who talks like that?”
“You have to forgive him,” Nate said. “He’s getting on in years and sometimes the aged become touched in the head.”
Samuel had noticed brown structures along the lakeshore. “Which cabins do you all live in?”
Nate answered him. “I live on the west side of the lake, my son and his wife on the north shore. The cabin to the south is Shakespeare’s. Waku and his family live to the east.”
Samuel glanced behind him at the family in question, five Nansusequa Indians who had fled across the Mississippi River when the rest of their tribe was wiped out and their village destroyed by whites who wanted their land. They had been living in King Valley for some time now.
Chickory Worth, Samuel’s son, kneed his mount forward. “Where will we have our cabin, Mr. King?”
Nate studied the boy. Chickory had recently come down sick with a high fever and the chills. For ten days the fourteen-year-old hovered near death at Bent’s Fort. Nate had been returning alone from a trip to the geyser country and been surprised to find McNair and his daughter and the Worths and the Nansuseqas all there, waiting for Chickory to recover. Like the rest, he had been stumped by the boy’s illness. No one could say what brought it on. “Wherever your ma and pa would like,” he said. “How are you feeling, by the way?”
“Fine as can be,” Chickory said.
Two other members of their party—Nate’s daughter, Evelyn, and Chickory’s older sister, Randa—brought their horses up next to Nate’s.
“Why have we stopped, Pa?” Evelyn asked. “I can’t wait to get home. After what we’ve been through, I don’t know as how I’ll ever leave here again.”
Nate smothered a grin. This was the same girl who once wanted to forsake the mountains and live in a city. “Lead the way,” he said. He couldn’t wait to get home either. He dearly missed his wife.
The trail wound through ranks of tall fir and shadowed spruce and pine. Squirrels scampered in the high branches. Jays squawked raucously. Finches warbled and sparrows chirped. Twice startled deer bounded away with their tails up and once a cow elk and her well-grown calf went crashing off through the brush.
Nate breathed deep of the clear mountain air. This was his home, his haven, as near to paradise on earth as he’d ever found. He loved it here and intended to stay the rest of his days.
In half an hour they emerged from the forest near the Nansusequa lodge.
Nate bid his friends good-bye and continued along the south shore to Shakespeare’s cabin. McNair invited the Worths in, and they agreed. As Emala put it, “I can dearly use some rest from all this ridin’. My backside wasn’t made for sittin’ a horse.”
That left Nate and Evelyn free to make the short ride to their own cabin, where he wearily drew rein.
Inside, Winona King was baking when she heard them ride up. She took off the apron her husband had bought her in St. Louis and hurried out.
Nate swung down and turned just as the cabin door opened. Warmth flooded his chest, as if his heart were on fire. He drank in the sight of her shimmering ink-black hair and the beaded buckskin dress that accented the beauty of the body it clothed, a body he knew as well as he knew his own. “Winona,” he said softly, and spread his big arms.
Winona melted into them and hugged him close. “Husband,” she said simply.
Nate sniffed her hair, savoring the scent. He felt whole again.
“I have missed you,” Winona said.
“And I you.”
“Was there any trouble?”
“No more than usual,” Nate hedged. Later he would tell her about the scalp hunters who nearly slew their daughter and the hostiles who had tried to take his own life.
Evelyn climbed down and let her reins dangle. “You two can stand there forever, but I want a bath and a hot meal and good night’s sleep.” She started toward the door.
“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?” Winona asked.
“You know the rules,” Nate said. “Your animal comes first. Strip your saddle and put him in the corral and then we’ll fill the basin.”
“Aw, Pa.” Evelyn had hankered for a bath for days now.
“You heard your father,” Winona said.
Evelyn snatched the reins and led her horse around to the corral. She was mildly annoyed. Here she was, sixteen years old, and her parents treated her as if she were ten. She thought about her recent trip to the prairie with the Nansusequas, and felt herself blush. Thank goodness her folks didn’t know about Dega and her. She imagined they would be upset, her kissing a boy.
Evelyn closed her eyes, remembering. Oh, those kisses. She never experienced anything like them. They had left her breathless, they were so potent. She couldn’t get enough.
Evelyn opened her eyes and giggled. She was in love, in honest-to-God love. She’d never expected anything like this to happen to her. Oh, sure, women fell in love all the time. But somehow she’d always thought she would be different. Grinning at the memory of those wonderful kisses, she leaned her rifle against a post, opened the gate, and ushered her horse into the corral. She undid the cinch and took off the saddle and threw it over the top rail. She did the same with the saddle blanket, then removed the bridle. She patted the horse and went out and closed the gate. She turned to reclaim her rifle, and froze.
A rattlesnake was almost at her feet.
“Younguns,” Nate said as his daughter led her horse around the corner. “You would think she’d know better by now.”
“Blue Flower is not a child anymore, husband,” Winona said in her impeccable English, using their daughter’s Shoshone name. “She is almost a woman.”
“The ‘almost’ is the important part,” Nate said. “I’d as soon she stayed as she is for five or six years yet.”
“We have both seen how she looks at Dega. It would not surprise me if she agrees to be his wife.”
Nate was genuinely shocked. “She’s not old enough for that. Not by a long shot.”
“Girls in some tribes marry even younger,” Winona reminded him. “So do many whites.”
“I don’t much care what everyone else does,” Nate grumbled. He never had patterned his behavior by how others acted.
Winona put her hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes. “I understand this upsets you. It would upset me, too, were it not, as you whites would say, the natural order of things.”
