The scent of so much fresh blood caused the bay to shy and snort. Nate had to calm it to get it to go all the way to the bottom. The gore, the viscera, the abominable things that had been done, churned his stomach. He came close to being violently sick.
“This wasn’t no ordinary butchery,” the Texan remarked.
Nate nodded, his mouth too dry to speak. The family had been tortured, tortured horribly, and then hacked and cut and chopped, even the little girl and boy.
Maklin asked the pertinent question. “Was it the Pawnees or someone else?”
Nate slid down. He tried to avoid stepping in the blood, but there was so much it was impossible. The killers had stepped in the blood, too, leaving footprints. He examined them.
No two tribes made their footwear the same way. A person would think that feet were feet, but each tribe had a distinct shape and stitch. Cheyenne moccasins were wider across the ball of the foot and tapered at the toes and the heel. Crow moccasins were a crescent. On Sioux moccasins the toes all curved inward. Pawnee moccasins were usually shorter than most others and narrowed from about the middle of the foot to the heel.
The footprints in the blood were short and narrowed from about the middle of the foot to the heel.
“Now we know,” Maklin said.
Nate bowed his head. This was Kuruk’s doing. He was as sure of it as he was of anything.
“He’s rubbing your nose in his hate. Letting you know what he has in store for you.”
Choked with emotion, Nate vowed, “Not if I kill him first.”
The Texan nudged a severed finger with his toes. “This reminds me of what the Comanches did to Na-lin.” He swore under his breath. “What kind of world is it that things like this can happen?”
Nate didn’t have an answer. He had long since stopped trying to figure it out. The best he could do, the best any man could do, was protect his loved ones as best he could from the cruelties life threw at him.
“Are you fixing to go after them?”
Nate considered. The freighters were on open prairie and had days of easy travel before they would reach South Pass. They didn’t need him right now. “Your boss won’t mind you tagging along?”
“He was the one who told me to stick to you like prickly pear.” Maklin confirmed Nate’s earlier hunch. “He doesn’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I told him I don’t need a nursemaid.”
“All I’m to do is watch your back.”
“It might take a lot of watching.”
Maklin motioned at the slaughter. “Do you want to bury them or leave them for the scavengers?”
“We’ll do it on the way back.” To Nate the important thing was to catch the culprits.
Their trail was plain enough. Eleven horses left a lot of tracks. They led to the north for over a mile and then off to the northeast.
Nate and Maklin went another mile and the Texan remarked, “Looks to me as if they’re heading for Pawnee territory.”
Nate thought so, too. Unless it was a ruse and Kuruk intended to circle back later.
“They’re moving awful fast. It could take us days to catch them, if we ever do.”
Nate came to a stop. Leaning on his saddle, he frowned.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Maklin said.
“By giving up?”
“By being smart. This smells of a trick. Could be this Kuruk aims to lure you into Pawnee territory.”
Nate felt his jaw muscles twitch.
“It’s not as if that dirt farmer and his family were kin of yours. As you reminded me last night, you only just met them.”
“For a man who doesn’t talk much, you have a leaky mouth.”
Maklin grinned. “My boss says I’m to keep you alive. We keep on going and that might prove hard. Do we use our heads or do we lose them?”
“We turn back and bury what’s left.”
It was pushing sundown when they caught up with the freight wagons. Jeremiah Blunt took the news in grim spirit. “You did what you could. Their souls are in the Lord’s hands now.”
Nate blamed himself in part for the tragedy. Maybe if he had been more insistent, Wendell and his family would still be alive. But what else could he have done short of forcing them to join the freight train at the point of a gun?
By the next morning Nate had come to terms with his guilt. Blunt and Maklin were right; he
Day followed day without further incident. Nate got to know the freighters well.
On a sunny morning they started the climb to South Pass, which wasn’t much of a climb at all. When most easterners thought of a pass, they thought of a gap high on a mountain range. South Pass was the exception. The prairie rolled upward as gently as could be to the Continental Divide and then down the other side. To the north were the jagged peaks of the Wind River Range; to the south the land peaked to form the mileshigh backbone of the Rockies.
South Pass was the one point where wagons could cross from one side of the Divide to the other with ease. Thousands of emigrants bound for Oregon and California had left the ruts of their passage. They had left other things, too. A stove, a grandfather clock, an anvil, tokens that even an easy climb had taxed teams pulling overburdened wagons.
Beyond lay a sage-sprinkled valley. The main trail bore to the southwest for a number of miles before it jagged to the northwest again and eventually brought travelers to Fort Hall.
Nate and the freighters left the trail shortly after South Pass, making for the rugged mountains to the north. From that point on, the freighters relied on Nate to guide them. Few whites had ever ventured into the geyser country. The tales of steaming springs and spouts of hot water hundreds of feet high had brought the region the label of “hell on earth.” No one ever went there, which had Nate wondering about the Shakers.
Nate had been to the area twice. Both times he had taken the same route, north up Bridger Basin and then along the Green River to where it flowed down out of the Green River Range. From there on it was solid mountain travel.
Nate chose a different route this time. He had them cross a low unnamed range and follow a long, winding valley to the banks of the Gros Ventre River. By paralleling it they didn’t want for water or graze, and while now and then the men had to wield axes to clear the way, the going was easier than on the slopes above.
The oxen were unflagging, but their progress, through no fault of theirs, was slow.
The mountains were magnificent. Peaks that towered almost three miles into the sky. Slopes forested thick with spruce and fir and stands of shimmering aspens. Meadows that ran riot with the colors of wildflowers.
Wildlife was everywhere. Black-tailed deer raised their tails in alarm and bounded off. Elk hid in the deep thickets. Bear sign told of black bears and grizzlies. Eagles ruled the air. Hawks dived for prey. Ravens squawked and flapped. Squirrels in the trees and squirrels on the ground scampered and chattered. Songbirds warbled an avian orchestra.
They were now deep in the heart of the Gros Ventre Range. To the northwest were the Tetons. Beyond, the spectacular geyser country. The Valley of Lost Skulls was at its southernmost edge.
Another ten days brought them to where Nate felt they could come on the valley at any time. As he told Jeremiah Blunt, he’d never been there, but based on what Shakespeare had told him and other accounts, the landmarks were right. It should be near.
As added proof, the country changed. The mountain slopes were not as thickly forested. Lower down, where vegetation usually thrived, the little that grew was stunted and withered, as if the plants were being poisoned by the ground. Deer became scarce. There was no bear sign. Eagles and hawks disappeared from the sky. Ravens were never seen. Nor squirrels or rabbits or any of the small game formerly so abundant. The birds fell silent. Not a
