Now it was Logan who scowled. “You’re not being fair. You get to drink blood all you want, but you won’t let me do what I like?”
“What you like is to tie women down and do things that would get you hung in the States. What you like is to see them suffer. What you like is for them to beg and cry.” Venom shook his head in disgust. “What you like is sick.”
“Don’t give me that. You’ve tortured. I’ve seen you.”
“Now and then, sure. If someone makes me mad. Or if I need information. But I don’t get the pleasure out of it that you do.”
“It’s not fair, I tell you.”
Venom resented his tone. “I’ll make it plain. You’re not to touch Maria. Buck me on this and you will by-God regret it.”
Logan was holding his rifle across his saddle. He started to raise it, but then lowered it again. “I don’t like being threatened.”
“I don’t give a good damn what you do or don’t like. You’ll do as I damn well tell you.”
“This is how you treat me when I’ve ridden with you longer than practically anyone?”
“This is how I treat you. Let me hear your word on Maria.”
Logan swore and then growled, “I give you my word I won’t touch the cow when we get to Santa Fe. Happy now?”
“If you need a female so much, we’re bound to come across plenty of squaws. Do them.”
“They’re not as much fun. Most don’t beg or cry.” Logan went to rein around to fall back in line, and stiffened. “Look! Injuns!”
Venom whipped around in the saddle. To the northeast, so far away they were little more than vague shapes in the heat haze, were a lot of riders. Even at that distance it was obvious they weren’t white.
Venom turned and pumped his right arm three times. It was a signal he had worked out. To a man his company promptly dismounted. Each gripped the bridle of his mount. Tugging and pulling, they coaxed their animals to the ground. Then they crouched with their rifles at the ready, their mounts now barriers against enemy lances and arrows.
Venom had a lot of tricks like this. Tricks that kept him and his men alive.
“Use your spyglass,” Logan urged.
Venom disliked being told what to do, but he was about to take a look through the spyglass anyway. He opened his saddlebag, slid out the metal tube, and telescoped it as far it would go. Raising it to his eye, he studied the warriors. Lakotas, unless he missed his guess, or Sioux, as they were more commonly called.
“Well?” Potter nervously called out. “Can you tell who they are?”
Venom told him. “I count at least thirty. I think they’re wearing war paint.”
“You think?” Logan said.
“Have they spotted us?” Potter asked. “Folks say the Sioux are as fierce as Apaches. I sure don’t want to tangle with any.”
“You’re a damn coward,” Venom told him. A loyal coward who would do anything Venom wanted, no questions asked. “You can breathe easy. It appears they have no idea we’re here.”
“That’s a lot of scalps,” Tibbet remarked.
“Go ahead and try if you’re that stupid.” Venom learned early on that in the scalping trade a man must know when to cut and when to fight shy and keep his own scalp.
“By my lonesome? No thank you. I like breathing as much as the next gent.”
Venom kept watching through the spyglass. He didn’t know what to make of it when the entire war party stopped. Then he saw one of the warriors point in his direction, and all the Sioux turned. “Damn!” He jerked the telescope down behind his horse.
“What’s the matter?” Logan asked.
“I think one of them saw the sun reflect off the metal.” Venom should have been more careful. He should have held his hat over the spyglass. It was the little mistakes that did a man in.
“Look again,” Potter urged. “Maybe they’re coming.”
“Idiot.” Venom could still see them, off in the haze. They hadn’t moved. He glanced down the line to make sure none of his men was holding his rifle where the sun would gleam off the barrel as it had off the spyglass.
“They’re movin’ on!” one of the Kyler twins hollered.
That they were, continuing to the north, raising dust in their wake.
Venom stayed put until the war party was well gone. Then, rising, he gave the signal to stand.
“That was a close one,” Potter said.
When they moved on, they did so warily. Venom sent the Kyler twins on ahead to ride point and sent Tibbet and Potter out to each side to cover their flanks. He deemed it unlikely the Lakotas would return, but it was better to be safe than dead.
In the excitement, Venom had forgotten to look for Rubicon’s marks. When half an hour went by and none appeared he began to worry they had lost the trail. He was so preoccupied with finding it that when a rider reined in next to him, he glanced up in annoyance.
“What the hell do you want now?”
Logan answered, “It’s not our day.”
“Care to explain, or am I supposed to figure it out for myself?”
Extending an arm to the southwest, Logan said, “I haven’t seen one of those critters this far out in a coon’s age.”
Venom sensed what he would see before he turned. A quarter of a mile off, lumbering on all fours, was a creature as massive as a buffalo but ten times as dangerous, and as difficult to kill as anything. “Hell.”
A huge grizzly was bound who-knew-where. The hump, the tree-trunk legs, the huge head with jaws that could crush bone at a bite—the last thing Venom wanted was to have it attack.
“It hasn’t seen us yet.”
“It’s the nose we have to worry about.” Venom licked the tip of his finger and raised it over his head. The breeze was blowing from west to east—from the bear to them. They were safe so long as the wind didn’t shift. One whiff of their scent and the grizzly might decide to fill its belly.
“That hide would fetch a good price at Bent’s Fort.”
“Scalps fetch more.” Plus, Venom didn’t intend to stop at Bent’s. The last time they had, on their way to St. Louis, Ceran St. Vrain, who ran the place along with the Bent brothers, treated them as if they had the plague. St. Vrain had a low opinion of scalp men, as he’d made clear when he cornered Venom in the stable.
