to not take life unless we must.”
“We have to now, or we’re goners.”
Waku sighed. There were times when it seemed that the white solution to every conflict was to kill. His people had been wiped out by whites who craved their land, and the only way those whites could think of to get it was to kill every last Nansusequa. That the Nansusequa wouldn’t have given the land up under any circumstance was beside the point.
Waku had noticed the same trait in his new white friends, to a greater or lesser degree. Zach King, Evelyn’s brother, was a notorious manslayer. Shakespeare McNair, mentor to her father, had no qualms about slaying an enemy. As for Nate King, he had done his share, but always reluctantly, always when there was no other recourse.
Of all the whites Waku ever met, he respected Nate King the most. Nate’s outlook was a lot like his own. It was to be regretted that more people, red and white, didn’t share their view. Many fewer lives would be lost.
“Tell me, then,” Evelyn prompted. “What do
Waku had to think to remember the right word. “Flee.”
“You want to run?”
“If run is the same as flee, yes.”
Now it was Evelyn who sighed. “Do you realize how far we are from the foothills? What chance do you think we have of reaching them alive with the scalp men after us every foot of the way?”
“We must try.”
To Evelyn it was lunacy. The scalp hunters were bound to overtake them. “When they catch us, as they surely will, what will you and your family do then? Turn and fight?”
“If they catch us, yes.”
Evelyn had been raised to respect her elders. Her inclination was to bow to his wishes. Giving in, though, could cost them to pay too high a price for his ideal.
“My family will run,” Waku declared. “We will not fight if we can help it.”
Evelyn’s exasperation knew no bounds. Tihi, Teni and even Dega would do as Waku told them. To try to talk them into bucking him would be a waste of her breath. The only one Evelyn could count on to side with her was Plenty Elk, and the two of them alone stood no chance at all against nine hardened cutthroats. “You’re making a mistake.”
“It will not be my first.”
Disappointed, Evelyn went off by herself a dozen yards, tucked her legs under her, and gloomily munched on a piece of pemmican. When a shadow fell across her she sensed who it was before he spoke.
“You look much sad.”
“Your pa won’t listen to reason.”
Dega sat across from her. “I see you talk to him. I see your face. I come make you smile.”
“Tucking our tails between our legs isn’t how we should deal with this. When your back is to the wall you bite and scratch.”
“Tuck tails?”
“It means to run. That’s what your pa wants to do. Run until they’re on top of us. But unless we whittle down the odds first, I’m afraid we’ll all be bald before the week is out.” Evelyn smiled thinly at her poor joke.
Dega repeated her statements in his head. He understood the running part and the bald part but the whittling part was a puzzle. To whittle had to do with carving wood with a knife. Shakespeare McNair liked to whittle. How that had anything to do with the scalp hunters was beyond him. He fished for more information by saying, “You think whittle good idea?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it, to get in the first licks? Catch them with their guard down. Maybe make half of them goners before they know what hit them.”
Once again Dega wrestled with her meaning. Licking was what a person did with their tongue, but she certainly couldn’t be suggesting they lick the scalp hunters. As for goners, that sounded a lot like gone, and gone was when someone went away. So she must be saying that she would like half the scalp hunters to go away. But where? And what was to stop them from coming back? He began to despair of ever learning the white tongue.
“I wish my pa was here. Or Zach. They’re better at this sort of thing than I am.”
“You girl.”
“Thank goodness. To tell you the truth, I never could stand the bloodshed. Ever since I was old enough to remember, our family has had to fight for survival. Fight against hostile Indians, against white scoundrels, against wild beasts, against nature.” Evelyn paused. “When I was small, I’d get down on my knees next to my bed at night and pray that God would let us get through the next day without something or someone trying to kill us. Silly, huh?”
“Smart.”
“It’s not like this back East. You can go your whole life long and no one ever lifts a finger against you. There isn’t a bear over every mountain or a war party over every hill. A body can go about their business in perfect peace.” Evelyn bit off more pemmican. “That’s partly why I wanted to move back there for so long. I was sick and tired of always having to look over my shoulder. It grates on the nerves.”
Dega had noticed that while the mountains were wonderlands of beauty, perils lurked in the shadows. He couldn’t go anywhere, even in King Valley, unless he was armed.
“Here I wanted this trip to be fun,” Evelyn said quietly. “We’d shoot a buff and peel the hide and take enough meat back to last your family a couple of months or more. I never counted on anything like this.”
Another shadow fell across her. This time it was Plenty Elk. He pointed to the east.
Evelyn looked and didn’t see anything. Only the grass and the sky and the summer haze. Then her eyes narrowed. A speck had appeared, a speck in motion, miles away yet but there was no mistaking the fact it was smack on their back trail. “Their tracker,” she guessed.
“The black man, you think?” Dega asked.
Evelyn nodded and stood. “The others can’t be far behind. We’ll have to ride like the wind to stay ahead of them.”
“I tell my family,” Dega said.
Plenty Elk signed, ‘Question. You want do with black man?’
There was no sign for “what.” Evelyn had to fill it in mentally. She responded with, ‘Question. You want do?’
Plenty Elk mimicked drawing his bowstring and releasing an arrow.
‘You me think same,’ Evelyn signed, and grinned.
Chapter Eleven
Rubicon liked being a scalper. He got to track, and tracking was something he was good at. He also got to kill Indians, of whom he was not all that fond.
Rubicon had been born and raised in Rhode Island. Most people assumed he was a former slave or the son of a slave, but he was neither.
His father was a minister. Reverend Rubicon made the circuit of the state’s Freewill Baptist churches. Some of Rubicon’s earliest memories were of sitting in hardwood pews and fidgeting and squirming, wishing his father would get done with the sermon so they could leave. His father was also prominent in the American Anti-Slavery Society and high in the ranks of the Temperance Society. It kept him so busy that Rubicon rarely got to see him. Which was fine by Rubicon.
They had lived in a small frame house on the outskirts of Coopersville, with miles and miles of woodland out their back door. As a boy Rubicon spent every spare moment he could in those woods. He learned the ways of the animals. He learned to hunt and fish. His father didn’t approve, but the good reverend prided himself on being fair- minded and on letting the young grow as they saw fit, with the result that shortly after he turned sixteen Rubicon
