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  WINTER WOMAN

  by F.M. Parker

  On a tributary of the Powder river, they came together as enemies. Across a land of towering, snow-topped mountains and sprawling plains, they were bound by hate, blood—and an undying passion for revenge.

  Raised on Mississippi riverboats, Jacob Morgan came west to make his fortune as a fur trapper. But here, on the violent, blood-stained prairie, he is the survivor of a savage confrontation that will change the course of his life.

  Driven from his rightful lands by the white invaders, Wolf Voice has been forced to steal and kill in order to survive. Now, with most of his tribe brutally massacred, he will have his vengeance—or die.

  Cora DuBois is the woman who will be caught between them—driven by dreams of a new life in the gold hills of California—fated to forge her soul on the rough-and-tumble frontier.

  Against the rugged backdrop of the untamed Wyoming Territory... from the thundering terror of Indian raids through the great Mormon migration west, WINTER WOMAN is the sweeping epic tale of a magnificent land where men and women become warriors, enemies, and lovers—and where only the brave and the strong survive.

  About the Author

  F. M. PARKER has worked as a sheepherder, lumberman, sailor, geologist, and as a manager of wild horses, buffalo, and livestock grazing. For several years he was the manager of five million acres of public domain land in eastern Oregon.

  His highly acclaimed novels include Skinner, Coldiron, The Searcher, Shadow of the Wolf, The Shanghaiers, The Highbinders, The Far Battleground, The Shadow Man, and The Slavers.

  "SUPERBLY WRITTEN AND DETAILED... PARKER BRINGS THE WEST TO LIFE."

  Publishers Weekly

  "ABSORBING...SWIFTLY PACED, FILLED WITH ACTION!"

  Library Journal

  "PARKER ALWAYS PRESENTS A LIVELY, CLOSELY PLOTTED STORY."

  Bookmarks

  "REFRESHING, COMBINES A GOOD STORY WITH FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE."

  University of Arizona Library

  "RICH, REWARDING... DESERVES A WIDE GENERAL READERSHIP."

  Booklist

  Also by F.M. Parker

  Novels

  The Highwayman

  Wife Stealer

  Winter Woman

  The Assassins

  Girl in Falling Snow

  The Predators

  The Far Battleground

  Coldiron – Judge and Executioner

  Coldiron - Shadow of the Wolf

  Coldiron - The Shanghaiers

  Coldiron - To Kill an Enemy

  The Searcher

  The Seeker

  The Highbinders

  The Shadow Man

  The Slavers

  Nighthawk

  Skinner

  Soldiers of Conquest

  Screenplays

  Women for Zion

  Firefly Catcher

  LIEUTENANT STEPTOE SHOUTED, "FIRE."

  As the crash of the carbines rippled along the line of attacking riders, Jacob Morgan fired at the Sioux he had in his sights. The man recoiled at the strike of the bullet, tried to catch himself, and tumbled to the ground.

  Half a dozen other Sioux warriors were slammed from their mounts. Two Sioux horses went down in a jumble of kicking, thrashing legs.

  Answering shots blazed from the rifles of the Sioux and two bowmen let loose their arrows at the white men. All along the line of the attacking force came the stutter of rapid firing pistols, scything down the remaining Indians.

  Jacob knew the fight was almost won and looked to the side to see if his two partners were unhurt. Wolf Voice and the other two Crows scouts Steptoe had hired had fallen behind and were angling their mounts towards the three fur trappers. Jacob saw Wolf Voice's hostile eyes were fastened on him.

  Wolf Voice jerked his rifle to his shoulder and fired at Jacob.

  Prologue

  The Creation of the Land

  Only the primeval eye of the sun saw the birth of the mountains in that ancient time of orogeny on the northern continent of the Earth.

  A compressive force of unimaginable power ushered in that age of mountain building. For a time span of millions of years, the crust of the continent was squeezed from the east and west, and the thick rock layers arched upward, bending until they stood at steep angles. A giant range of mountains was formed, stretching some three thousand miles north to south and spanning the continent. The stony mountain peaks stabbed four and five miles high, wounding the sky in scores of deep thrusts.

  As the mountains rose, streams of a thousand sizes came to life and tumbled with awesome violence from the high ramparts. The myriad currents cut and tore at the steep flanks of the mountains, grinding the rock to sand and silt and rushing away with it to the lowlands. On the lower reaches of the streams, the grade became less steep and the currents slowed and wandered in meandering courses, dropping their load of eroded mountain debris. The valleys of the streams became choked with swamps and shallow lakes as thousands of cubic miles of sediment were spread in flat, ever-thickening layers.

  Time ticked off the millennia, adding to millions of years. During the long epoch of deposition, a plain grew at the base of the mountain range and extended toward the rising sun for many hundreds of miles.

  Far away at the extreme eastern edge of the plains, the streams coalesced to form a grand river. This stupendous flow of water poured in a never-ending current to the south, finally debauching into the salty brine of one of the great oceans of the Earth.

  As time continued to whisper its passing, the climate of the Earth began to cool. Glaciers thousands of feet thick formed and marched across the northern portion of the plains, each time to retreat and die. In the harsh, frozen part of the cycles, the land was buried under an unbelievably large expanse of ice and swept by hurricane winds that never ended. Wet, warm, pluvial times, the interglacial periods, melted the ice, creating torrents that scoured the mountains and plains and sped off to add their volume to the prodigious south-flowing river.

  A dramatic change occurred in the climate cycles of the Earth. The continental glacier retreated and the deluge came, but the next phase of the cycle did not arrive. Instead the land grew drier and drier. Broad forest died and the plains became a prairie, a sea of grass.

  The great animals that had lived and thrived during the stormy glacial period, the wooly mammoth, the wide-horned bison, the saber-toothed tiger, and the vulture condor all died. However, the bison left a legacy, for in its genes there existed the potential for change. As the plains became ever more dry, each succeeding generation of the bison grew smaller and smaller, adapting to the changing climate and the decreased availability of food. It became a miniaturized replica of its ancestor, weighing a mere ton or less. This new breed of bison flourished by the millions on the grassy prairie.

  In this warmer, drier time, a brown-skinned man came onto the plains and stalked the bison herds. The man was skilled and killed the animals he needed to survive. Only the gray prairie wolf competed with the brown man as he journeyed where the buffalo journeyed and lived in harmony with the herds for twelve millennia.

  Then a new clan of man, one with white skin, came onto the broad prairie. The quiet tread of the moccasined foot and the silent bow of the Indian were joined by the hobnailed boot and thunderous rifle of the white man. The mountains were given the name Rocky Mountains and the prairie was called The Great Plains.

  The two clans of man became enemies and fought savage battles in the mountains and on the prairie. The victor slew the vanquished without mercy.

  This story takes place during that time of bitter struggle between the two clans of man.

  One

  Big Horn Mountains, Wyoming Territory—1859

  The three white trappers and the young Arapaho wom
an forced their gaunt, long-legged mounts through the deep snow choking the bottom of the narrow mountain valley. The trappers led four packhorses heavily loaded with furs. Dark, heavy clouds scudded past close overhead on the back of the stiff, cold wind. The clouds flung hard, flinty crystals of ice down on the men and the Indian woman.

  Jacob Morgan and Glen Kinshaw rode in front, each leading a packhorse. Renne Chabot came next with the two remaining packhorses. The Arapaho woman trailed in the rear. Her face was strained with worry, for she knew what the men planned to do to her.

  Each trapper held his Sharps .52-caliber carbine ready across the saddle in front of him. Their eyes moved constantly, warily scouring the pine forest on the mountainsides above them and the brush thickets bordering the frozen, silent creek. They wore long wolfskin coats, unbuttoned so they could quickly reach their Colt revolvers, and buckskin shirts and breeches. Elk-hide moccasins clad their feet. Brimmed hats crowned their heads and held their long hair out of their faces. Their beards were winter-long, and their skin was weather-burnt to a dark brown. Jacob was the youngest, lean and blond. At nineteen years, he was less than half the age of the other two men.

  The Arapaho girl was dressed in a long buckskin dress, and a wolfskin coat with a hood that was pulled up over her dark head. Her age was two years less than Jacob's. She appeared even younger, with a childlike, innocent face. Her large black eyes steadily watched Jacob's back.

  Jacob turtled his head deeper into the collar of his coat, for the wind and ice crystals had teeth. It was a mean time to travel, but without a doubt wise. He scanned the forest on the mountainsides, at least what he could see of it. The clouds, sweeping past only a couple hundred feet above his head, hid all of the towering peaks of the Bighorn Mountains, and capped the stark, snow-filled valley with dark gray.

  He caught movement in the forest ahead. Four ravens, seeking shelter in the brushy crown of a large pine, had taken alarm at the approach of the trappers. The black gang, cawing loudly to each other and with wings pumping powerfully, had launched themselves from their perch. They kited away riding the turbulence of the invisible river of air.

  Jacob saw tracks in the snow where a band of six elk had come down into the valley and crossed to climb into the timber on the opposite side. The big pad marks of a pack of wolves were on top of the tracks of the elk. The savage hunters were hungry.

  He turned to Glen. "This'd be a bad place for us if the Crows jumped us," he said.

  "They could sure bottle us up in here," Glen replied. "But I think we've left early enough that we'll catch the braves still wrapped in their blankets with their squaws and not out looking for trappers to rob."

  "They probably won't bother us up high here in the deep snow, but down below things could be different," Jacob said.

  He twisted in the saddle to check Renne's progress. The man acknowledged Jacob's look with a lift of his hand. Jacob looked at the Arapaho girl, Moon Mist. She smiled wistfully at him.

  Glen spoke again. "If it wasn't for the Crows being so damn ornery, all this country would've been trapped out by white men long before now."

  "We found virgin fur country all right," Jacob said.

  He looked ahead down the snowy valley. The creek was a tributary to the Powder River and ran east to join with it. Indians camped on the lower Powder during the cold winter months. In the early spring, the warriors became restless after being snowbound for weeks and set out looking for trouble, for white trappers to kill and rob.

  * * *

  The trappers and Moon Mist rode downward through the day with the flanks of the mountain gradually pulling back and the valley widening. The snow on the ground grew ever thinner until five thousand feet lower in elevation, it finally fell away behind the travelers. When the day grew old, the valley ended and a broad prairie stretched before them as far as the eye could see. The snow had turned to a cold rain that fell without sound on the gray, dead grass of winter.

  Glen reined his mount in and Jacob and Renne halted their horses beside him. Moon Mist stopped several yards behind, for she knew what was about to happen and was reluctant to come close.

  "The country's open from here on," Glen said. "Time we stretched these horses out and covered ground."

  All three men twisted in their saddles and looked at Moon Mist. Her eyes locked on Jacob's, holding him with a pleading expression.

  "Get on your way, girl," Glen said and pointed to the south. "Your people are in that direction about five suns riding."

  Moon Mist sat her mustang and moved not at all. She continued to stare through the rain at Jacob.

  "Did you hear me, girl?" Glen's voice had an edge on it. "Stop watching Jacob and answer me."

  "Don't be too rough on her," Jacob told Glen. He spoke to the girl. "Can you find your way home, Moon Mist?" He saw the sorrow at her leaving in her face. He felt a tinge of regret himself. But she was Glen's woman.

  Though Glen had not shared her with him, or Renne for that matter, her presence, her girl's voice, and her woman's laughter had made the long, snowy winter the most pleasant of any he had spent in the mountains.

  In the fall of the year just past, the three trappers had journeyed to the Bighorn Mountains along a route through Cheyenne country lying to the south. At a Cheyenne village on the Sweetwater River, Glen had traded a spare pistol he had for Moon Mist, a girl the Cheyenne had taken captive in a raid on the Arapaho. She had wanted to go with the trappers and escape the cruel slavery the Cheyenne had forced upon her. She had promised to do anything Glen wanted of her. In the long black nights in the cabin, and little more than an arm's length away from him, Jacob had heard her carrying out her promise to Glen.

  The group now numbering four had continued warily on into the land of the fierce Crow Indians, built a cabin in a hidden valley in the Bighorns, and trapped furs all winter. Tending the traplines required two men, one working up the valley removing the animals caught and rebaiting the traps, and one performing the same chore downstream. Running the traplines rotated among the men. The third man remained at the cabin With the Indian girl.

  Moon Mist kicked her mustang forward and brought it up close to Jacob. She reached out and caressed his bearded cheeks. "Take me with you, please. I will be no trouble to you. When you go into the white men's village, I will stay out on the prairie and wait. You can come back to me when you are ready. No matter how long, I will wait for you."

  "Don't listen to her," Glen said. "You don't need a permanent Indian squaw." He knew the girl had fallen in love with Jacob. However, he was certain Jacob had not touched her when they were alone in the cabin together. Youth was calling to youth, and he was a dashing young fellow.

  "That's right," Renne added. "You couldn't ever forget she slept with Glen. And we don't know how many Indian bucks she laid with back there with the Cheyenne."

  Jacob caught Moon Mist's hand and gently removed it from his face. During his few young years his experience had brought him to the conclusion that one woman was very much like any other. None had held him for long. He knew he did not want a woman tagging along after him. "Go home. We will give you a rifle with plenty of shot. That is something the people of your village can use, so they'll be glad to see you return. You are pretty and with a valuable rifle to give, you can find a husband."

  Moon Mist jerked her hand free of Jacob's grasp. Her eyes narrowed and took on a hard sheen. "Give me the rifle," she said sharply.

  "Can you find your way back?"

  "What do you care?"

  "I do care." He thought he understood her feelings. She had wanted to escape from the Cheyenne and had come with the trappers willingly, knowing full well what Glen expected of her. In fact she probably thought that all of them would make demands on her. But now, months later, Glen was sending her packing and she did not want to leave. Actually, she did not want to leave Jacob. He felt some guilt at that; maybe he shouldn't have been so kind to her. "I want you to make your way safely back to your people without the Cheyenne
catching you again."

  "Give me the rifle," Moon Mist said sharply.

  "All right." Jacob stepped down to the ground and extracted the spare Sharps from the pack on one of the packhorses. He handed the rifle to the Arapaho girl.

  The instant Moon Mist's hand closed on the rifle, she cocked the hammer and swung the barrel to point at the center of Jacob's chest. She squeezed the trigger.

  Two

  Jacob saw the rifle's hammer fall and heard the metallic snap it made striking the unprimed iron nipple. He jerked back by reflex, and knocked the barrel aside, knowing even as he did so that there was no danger in the weapon. If there had been a cap on the nipple, he would be dead now, dead by Moon Mist's hands.

  He looked up into the girl's angry eyes, and studied her for several seconds. "Travel safely," he finally told her.

  He jumped astride his gray horse, reined it to the east, and raised it to a trot. He glanced back once at Moon Mist and saw her sitting dejectedly on her mustang in the falling rain. Then the Arapaho girl shook herself, as if coming out of a trance. Her head came up, and looking straight ahead into the wetness, she rode south.

  "You did right," Glen said from where he rode his horse beside Jacob.

  "Now let's get our prime pelts to St. Joe," Renne said. "And hope to hell we can do it without having to fight our way clean across Crow country." He raised his head and shouted out full-mouthed and happily across the plain. "St. Joe, here we come."

  "Do you want Indians to hear you?" Glen asked with a grin.

  "There's no one around for miles," Renne replied and swept his arm across the empty prairie. He struck his horse with his whip and the animal broke into a ground-devouring gallop.

  Glen and Jacob raised their mounts to match that of Renne's horse.

  Jacob pushed away thoughts of the Arapaho girl and concentrated on the danger that lay ahead. He knew the horses were not strong. They had not been ridden since the first heavy snowfall of the past November, when the men had switched to snowshoes. Worse still, the deep winter snows had hidden much of the mountain grasses from the horses. Though the men had chopped down cottonwoods and willows so the horses could eat the bark and smaller limbs, the bones of the animals showed painfully through their skins. They would have little stamina in any race. Still, the willing horses ran at their masters' commands, their legs swinging, devouring the miles.