The Bold Frontier (41 page)

“That was two years back,” Ironhand explained to Manitow in a weary voice. “After awhile I came to believe his crazy cant about forgiving and forgetting. I wanted to mend my life, so I didn’t take after him as I could have. I sold my plews to Astor, though they say he’s tired of falling prices too and will get out. … What a fool I was, wouldn’t you say? Trying to get on with keeping alive, forgetting Jaggers?”

The spring sun had burned off the spectral mist; the snow peaks were brilliant against hazy lavender sky. Ironhand was exhausted from speaking. Manitow chewed on a strip of
charqui
and considered what he’d heard. At last he said, “Many traps are set in this wilderness. You were caught in the cruelest of all. Trust.”

And do I dare trust you, you ring-tailed savage? Not so far’s as I could throw you. I daren’t turn my back.

Still, there were necessities.

“Will you help me up? I have to pee.”

“Clasp my arm with both hands.”

Ironhand braced his boot heels and was slowly, painfully raised to standing position. His eyes were close to Manitow’s a moment but he could read nothing there, except what he imagined was there—an intent to murder. The trap of trust, was it? Well, not a second time …

As he hobbled toward a grove of white birch trees, he bit out, “This time I won’t turn my cheek. I’m going after that pissant who does the dirty work for Jaggers.”

“I will go with you.”

Ironhand twisted around, causing a hell-hot pain in his bandaged back. “Why? So’s you can pass judgment?”

His face a smooth bronze mask, Manitow said, “It may be so.”

I won’t turn my back, you red devil …

But he hobbled on, grasping Manitow’s arm for support; for the present he was at the mercy of the unavoidable necessities.

They rode southeast, the direction of Kirk’s Fort. The fort stood sixty miles beyond the foothills of the Stony Mountains, at the confluence of two shallow muddy streams. It was the jumping-off place for St. Louis. Ironhand presumed it was also the destination of the quarry whose sign they were following. He was in constant pain, but it was bearable. Hate was a stronger painkiller than opium.

He trailed his three pack mules behind his old roan. Manitow could have sped ahead because he had a better horse, which he rode with only a scrap of blanket and his moccasined heels. The Indian’s horse was small, with spots like swollen inkblots on his white rump. The trapper enviously compared his faithful but sorry saddle animal, Brownie, with the other horse, which the Cayuse tribe had bred and sold to the Indian. Cayuse and Nez Perce horses were the best a man could find. Ironhand had evidence of it the first morning. He woke in his odorous blankets to find Manitow gone. A distant drumming stilled sudden alarm. Somewhere in the foothills Manitow was galloping his spotted horse.

Another thing bred envy, in the same dark inner place as Ironhand’s suspicion of murder being planned: Manitow’s skill with sign. The second noon, examining horse dung, Ironhand said, “He’s near a day in front of us.”

Manitow shook his head. “Less than half a day. Moving slowly. Not fearful he will be caught.”

Ironhand’s cheeks turned red above his beard that still held crumbs of ship’s biscuit from breakfast. “Why ‘n hell not? He knows he didn’t put me down for good.”

“That may be so, it may not. I will show you why he doesn’t worry.” Manitow led him to a clump of stunted shrubbery, stepped around it, pointed. Ironhand saw more droppings. “There are three now. Your assassin and two more.”

“Since when in hell—?”

“Sunset, yesterday.”

“You damn well should’ve told me.”

Manitow smiled. “It would have spoiled our supper. If I had told you then, would you have stopped this chase?”

“Not likely.”

The Indian bobbed his head, vindicated.

They talked intermittently as they tracked Little Joe Moonlight and his companions moving southeast ahead of them. Manitow expressed no surprise at the treatment the trapper had received from Four Flags. “Theft, ambush, murder—it is the way of the strong companies against the single weak rebel. It is the way of those white men who are evil.”

Which should have soothed Ironhand’s suspicion a little, since it was clear from Manitow’s voice and expression which side he favored. But Ironhand wasn’t soothed. He continued to insist that Manitow ride ahead of him; they had sorted that out before they started. Ironhand still believed Manitow would try to murder him at the first opportunity.

They exchanged stories of their trials in the wilderness. Manitow pushed up the sleeve of his hunting coat to reveal a snakelike scar on his left forearm. Ironhand, who had seen plenty of horrors in his time, was nevertheless a little sick at the sight of the healed tissue, because of what had made it. Manitow had survived the bites of a rabid wolf, in the land of the Apaches, far south. He didn’t explain why he had been in the land of the Apaches.

Ironhand told of nearly starving to death several times during his career. “I slew my mules and drank their blood once. I ate my moccasins twice. Another time, all I could find to feed on after five days were ants from an anthill.” Manitow seemed to find these exploits unremarkable; almost to be expected.

He did express admiration for Ironhand’s carbine. The trapper explained that it was a custom creation from the armory of the legendary Wyatt Henry of St. Louis. The revolving magazine, Henry’s unique design, held five rounds.

Manitow asked to handle the piece. Ironhand said no. Manitow looked at him, and seemed to sneer just before he trotted his spotted horse ahead again.

As the mountains fell behind, the twisted gullies straightened; the shale ridges sank; the spring prairie rose up to greet them. They saw a migratory herd of buffalo passing southward in a dust cloud that boiled nearly to the apex of the sky. “Thousands upon thousands of shaggy brothers,” Manitow said. Ironhand growled something under his breath; he already knew the herd was huge; they had been watching it the best part of an hour. The upstart savage was beginning to anger as well as worry him.

Or was it the sign they’d read—two unknown bravos and a third smug killer lolling their way toward Kirk’s Fort without concern? Manitow insisted the trio was only a couple of hours ahead now.

A sunlit dust seemed to float above the silent plain surrounding them. The sky was tawny, like the earth, only a few cottonwoods with twisted shapes breaking the horizon. The vista had the serene quality of a landscape painting, but the diffuse light and dust gave it a touch of the unreal, like a picture from one of those fables of old Greek gods Ironhand dimly remembered reading from a hornbook when he was a child, in a civilized place somewhere.

At sunset they stopped to camp and eat. The trapper took some kindling from a parfleche strapped to a mule. Manitow watched him build a small pyramid of sticks, then said, “If you cook they will see the smoke.”

“Hardly matters, does it? We’ll find each other one way or another. That’s the idea.”

Late next day they approached a wide turgid stream Ironhand identified as Paint River, though the only artist’s color represented in its flow was dirty brown. Natural features surrounding Kirk’s Fort had been named by the fur men passing through.

While they watered and rested their animals, Ironhand advised the Indian that one more day would bring them to the headquarters of Four Flags. “I have to speed. Leave the mules. Catch them before they’re safe inside the fort.”

“Even with three against you?”

Ironhand answered with a nod.

Manitow sighted ahead. “I will go on a little way.”

He didn’t ask permission, hitting his spotted horse with his heels and splashing on across Paint River. Ironhand hunkered down on the long narrow hump of an island in the middle of the water, where they’d pulled up. What the hell was the upstart savage about?

Manitow galloped away till he was a speck, then galloped back. He threw himself off his spotted horse, looking unhappy.

“One has gone on ahead, leaving two. Their tracks turn north. I think they saw the smoke and are circling back.”

Ironhand’s gaze crawled to stunted trees on the northern horizon. Nothing moved there, nor anyplace. Manitow said, “We should camp. I do not think you need to chase your enemy anymore. He will find you. He knows you are hurt. But he will think you are alone.”

Ironhand scowled, gripping his Henry rifle with his powerful right hand. “I am. Isn’t your fight.”

“I am here, so it will be. There is no reason not to cook again. Have you any sticks left in the saddlebag?”

Ironhand slept badly, rolling around with his carbine clutched against his middle, the way he’d slept with it nightly since he met the prowling Indian. A new moon shed pale light on the plain, which was flat for miles in every direction save north, where a pronounced tilt raised the horizon. Along that horizon the crooked trees stood out. If there were a fight on this barren hump of island, would he have to look out for Manitow and Little Joe Moonlight at the same time? A threat of death from two directions?

He wished he could sleep but it was impossible. Manitow lay to his left, hands crossed on his shirt bosom, profile sharp in the pale moonshine. The Indian breathed softly, steadily, like a small boy sleeping without care.

He must have dozed. He woke to Manitow barking his name. Ironhand floundered to his knees, saw Manitow standing beyond the mules and pointing to the stunted trees. Two riders were pounding down the inclined plain, riding with their knees and reins in their teeth. Each held a brace of revolvers. Four guns against his one.

“Protect yourself,” Manitow cried, diving under the belly of a snorting, bucking mule. Seizing Ironhand, he tried to throw him to the ground. Little Joe Moonlight and his burly pardner were riding hellbent for the hump island, but Ironhand refused to cower. He shook off the Indian and took his fighting stance with his carbine at his shoulder. His blood was up; he didn’t care that he presented a perfect target.

The riders were closer. He distinctly saw Little Joe’s mean white triangular face, his long Chinese-style mustaches, his leering smirk. Still short of the river bank, Little Joe and his pardner opened up with all four barrels. Ironhand stood his ground and squeezed his trigger. Manitow tackled him. Yelling, Ironhand toppled. Only the fall prevented one of the flying bullets from finding him.

He didn’t realize this; all his anger was directed against the damned Indian. He screamed oaths, trying to get up as Little Joe Moonlight galloped into the stream, closely followed by his henchman. Manitow snatched his double-barrel rifle from its saddle loop. The blued metal flashed.

The charging horses tossed up fans of moonlit water. Little Joe passed to the left of Ironhand and the Indian, the henchman to the right. They were firing continuously. One of their bullets hit Manitow’s rifle, a lucky shot that blew apart the breech. Manitow leaped back, momentarily blinded. A bullet hit lronhand’s left thigh just as he stood up. With a cry he fell a second time. The back of his head struck the earth. Stars danced.

The mules bucked and bellowed. Two of them tore their picket pins out and ran into the stream, braying. Ironhand heard the attackers splash to the bank of Paint River behind him and there wheel for another charge. His back wound, cruelly bruised by his fall, hurt nearly as much as the thigh wound bleeding into the leg of his hide trousers. He had to get up …
had
to. Tried it and, with a howl of despair and fury, fell back again. He heard the attacking horses coming on, in the river.

Standing over the wounded trapper, Manitow said, “Give me the rifle.”

He’ll use it to kill me …

“The rifle!”

Don’t dare, I can’t trust …

“White man, if you don’t, we’ll die.”

There was a halo of hoof-driven dust around Manitow’s head. He looked like some ghost of one of his primitive ancestors. His outstretched brown hand opened, demanding. “White man—
obey me!
”

The hooves were thunderous. Risking all, the supreme act of trust, Ironhand flung the carbine upward and Manitow snatched it and put it to his shoulder. Bullets were flying again but Manitow stood firm and fired and kept firing. As the horse of Little Joe’s henchman passed within Ironhand’s field of vision, the trapper saw the nameless bravo lift in his saddle as if being jerked to heaven. The bravo’s horse ran out from under him and he crashed and rolled into the brown water, staining it with blood from his open belly.

Ironhand was shouting without realizing it. “Stop firing, there are only five—”

Too late; some part of his brain had already counted five shots. Manitow had exhausted the magazine in one volley.

And Little Joe Moonlight, his long thin mustaches whipping against his cheeks, was unhurt.

He wheeled his horse in the water, making him dance to the island, then stand still while Little Joe raised his revolver with his shooting hand, clasped it with his other hand and pointed it at Manitow’s head at close range.

It all happened quickly. Ironhand acted from instinct, coming upright, dizzy and tortured by pain but willing it not to matter. He leaped at Little Joe Moonlight and his prancing horse. Little Joe was angrily heeling the animal while trying to steady himself for the shot. Manitow crouched and pulled his knife to throw it but Little Joe would fire first. There was no cover to keep the Indian from death.

The horse sidestepped again; Little Joe screamed a filthy oath. He realized too late that his mount had sidestepped
toward
Ironhand…

Ironhand’s face contorted into a bestial parody of a grin. His filthy mitten closed on Little Joe’s right arm. Little Joe understood his peril and shrieked girlishly. Ironhand brought his huge right hand upward from his hip at great speed while pulling his enemy out of the saddle. The angle was right; the edge of the trapper’s hand struck Little Joe’s windpipe with speed and force.

Paralyzed, Little Joe dropped his revolver. Two streams of blood spurted from his nostrils. Ironhand threw Little Joe on the sere ground and knelt on his chest with one knee. He snatched his knife from the thong at his waist. Poised to cut Little Joe’s throat, Ironhand started at a touch on his shoulder.