The Shadow Man Page 2

  Jacob knelt, hunkered low as the wind and sleet swirled around him. He waited, staring intently into the blinding whiteness.

  Jacob knew that too much time was passing. He leapt erect and lunged into the storm. Indians almost always liked to have the enemy far outnumbered. The three Arapaho were not going to continue the battle. They would be searching for the trappers’ horses.

  Jacob crossed the narrow meadow and the frozen channel of Saruche Creek at a dead run. He veered slightly left, aiming to enter the downstream edge of the aspen thicket. That was where the horses would most likely be, for they liked to feed upon the tender, sweet sprouts and limbs of the trees. When he caught the first glimpse of the grove of aspen, he slowed.

  Two horses burst from the trees. One animal carried two riders, the other the remaining Arapaho. The single Indian saw Jacob running to intercept their course. He began to shout at his companions.

  The Arapaho had found only two of the horses, but that had been accomplished more quickly than Jacob had thought possible. Already the running horses and the men clinging to their backs were disappearing into the wall of white. Jacob slid to a halt, jerked his rifle to his shoulder, and snapped off a shot at the hurtling figure of the lone rider.

  Horses and men vanished into the turmoil of the storm.

  Jacob followed cautiously along the deep tracks of the running horses. His shot had been hurried; still, he felt it had been close to its target. He badly needed the cayuse to haul out the catch of furs.

  The horse stood beside the body of a man on the ground. It looked back the way it had come and caught sight of Jacob slinking forward. It nickered as it recognized its master.

  “Well, it ‘pears you still belong to me,” Jacob said to the horse.

  The Indian stirred and groaned. He weakly struggled to a sitting position and propped himself up with his hands. His eyes were full of pain.

  The eyes hardened to black obsidian as they came to rest on Jacob, standing not three paces distant, so close that the white man could reach out with his rifle barrel and touch him.

  The Arapaho saw the pitiless anger in Jacob. The battle was over and he had lost. There would be no mercy.

  The wounded Arapaho sat more erect and placed his hands on his knees. He squared his fur-clad shoulders and raised his face up to the falling sleet. He began to chant in a clear tenor voice.

  Jacob listened to the warrior’s death song. Let him prepare himself for the journey into the world of the dead. Had Jacob been defeated, he would have appreciated that privilege from his victor.

  With hooded eyes the Indian stared upward, seeming not to feel the stinging sleet pellets striking him. His voice was strong, with a fine, almost musical timbre.

  Jacob drew his long-bladed knife and leapt forward. His hand lashed out as swiftly as the snapping end of a whip. The sharply honed steel blade sliced into the warrior’s neck, cutting deeply, grating off the bony vertebrae of the spinal column. As the Indian fell backward, Jacob plunged the knife through his rib cage and into his heart.

  If he had lost, Jacob would have wanted a quick death from the victor.

  CHAPTER 2

  “The mountains are like whores,” Daniel said, his voice frail and far away.

  Jacob did not reply. He leaned farther over his friend to protect his face from the falling sleet. Daniel was gravely wounded. Blood oozed steadily in a red stream from a gaping hole in his chest. He was dying, and there was nothing Jacob could do. His sorrow clutched at his throat until he could not speak.

  Daniel struggled for words again. “The mountains draw us to their cold beauty. Every fall we climb up into one of their hidden, secret valleys, hoping it will be virgin and has never felt the intrusion of a man before. The mountains charge a heavy price for what they give. They take their pay in the precious years of our youth. Then they kill us in one of a thousand ways.

  “Do you hear me, Jacob? The whorish mountains have killed me. Not the Indians but the mountains!” Daniel’s voice rose in a lamenting pitch. “Do you hear me, Jacob?”

  “Yes,” Jacob said, choking.

  “Get down from the high country to the low river valleys or the plains and find yourself a woman. It’s not too late for you to do that. Your beard is mostly white and there’s a touch of white in your hair, but you’re still strong and quick as any man I’ve ever seen. You’ll live long enough to raise a family. Maybe you’ll even die in bed. Take all my furs. You’ll need the money.”

  Jacob had long reflected on having a wife and children, and that at his death perhaps a grave would enclose him. But he had always thought it more likely that when he died, his body would rot and waste away in some wild and lonely place.

  “I hear you, Daniel,” Jacob said.

  Daniel’s voice came as a gasping whisper. “Bury me deep, Jacob.”

  * * *

  Jacob buried his comrade in the unfrozen ground of the floor of the cabin. He finished and stood staring down at the grave.

  He recalled Daniel’s last words and recognized the truth in them. The solitary life in the mountains was missing something very valuable.

  With a surging sense of urgency driving him, he hurriedly packed all the furs in bales. The fresh skins he bundled by themselves. They would still need to be fleshed and dried. The horses were brought up to the cabin door. Two packhorses were loaded with furs and one with camp gear, and his riding mount was saddled.

  Jacob carried arm load after arm load of firewood into the cabin, all the fuel that had been cut for the winter, and piled it over the grave. Kindling, rich with pitch, was placed in the center of the mound. Taking a fiery brand from the fireplace, he ignited the wood. When the fire was burning strongly, he went outside.

  The roaring fire touched the rafters. Red flames broke through the clapboard roof and dense smoke soared up to meet the falling sleet.

  Jacob climbed astride his cayuse. He rode a few yards then halted, sitting his saddle and staring back at the burning cabin. He felt the hollow ache of his sadness. Life was without tang and very bitter.

  Jacob reined his pony away into the lonely gloom of the storm.

  * * *

  At some unknowable hour of the gray day the rattle of the sleet pellets on the skeletal branches of pine died away. Fine, flinty snow began to fall, and the air became smoky, filled with the wind-swirled flakes.

  Jacob turtled his head down more deeply between his shoulders and strained to peer through the icy mist. The string of packhorses, tied nose to tail with short lengths of rawhide, trailed behind, crunching a path through the deep snow crusted with two inches of brittle sleet.

  On a large, twisting bend of Saruche Creek, he crossed the tracks of the stolen horses. The imprints were getting old, partially filled with new snow. Yet Jacob could tell that one Indian rode and one ran behind the cayuse. He would make no effort to overtake the Arapaho. However, if he should come upon them, they would die, for Jacob’s anger at Daniel’s death still seethed within him.

  The cavalcade of horses was forced to cross the frozen creek at a place where the slick ice was exposed. The horses’ hooves slipped and skittered. One animal fell, nearly pulling its adjoining mates down with it. The upright beasts patiently waited as the fallen horse carefully gathered its legs beneath itself and heaved erect.

  The valley gradually widened, the flanks of the mountain drawing back a hundred yards or better. Long, narrow meadows began to appear, separated by stretches of fir and pine.

  The evening dusk came swiftly. Jacob veered aside, leading his animals up a tightly curving tributary of Saruche Creek. When he had passed around two bends that would hide his fire from the main valley, he halted.

  The horses gathered close about him, as if wanting to be near. Jacob became wreathed in swirls of steam from his own breath and that of the ponies. He brushed at the formless vapor to no avail. He gently slapped the horses away and stepped out to where he could observe his surroundings.

  Jacob saw nothing except the ste
ep sides of the mountain and the dense woods. Nearby up the creek lay a large, wind-fallen pine. He led his animals there and tied them to separate trees.

  With his small single-bit ax he cut aspen branches and piled a quantity of the sweet fodder before each horse. Soon the sound of contented munching was joined with the noise of the storm.

  Jacob dug the fire-starting materials, flint and steel and a pouch of dry grass and pieces of punk, from his pack. At the edge of the windfall he collected small pieces of wood. He screwed a piece of the punk into a nest of the grass and struck the flint and steel over it. Sparks sprang from his blows. A hot, twinkling fragment of steel fell upon the punk.

  Jacob cupped the grass and punk in his hand and blew lightly and carefully on it. A tiny coal came to red life. A curl of smoke arose. He coaxed the incipient fire to bright, glowing life and fed it shavings of dry wood. Then larger and larger pieces of fuel were added.

  He cooked elk meat and ate, washing the strength-giving flesh down with a quart of hot tea.

  As the night deepened, the snow stopped and the clouds thinned. From time to time he saw the stars, glittering like ice shards flung across the ebony sky.

  He sat gazing at the leaping flames of the fire, watching the sparks chasing smoke into the sky. As the last yellow blaze began to flicker and weaken, Jacob cut fir boughs and laid them thick and overlapping on the snow. His tanned buffalo-hide sleeping robe was placed upon the soft mattress.

  The horses began to stir and stomp. One snorted, frightened, and jerked at its tether.

  Jacob turned. Three pairs of eyes glowed red just beyond the horses at the far edge of the circle of firelight. Wolves had crept in close to investigate the intruder in their domain.

  Jacob grabbed a flaming brand and flung it in a looping, fiery arc at the beasts. The eyes vanished. There was a swift scratching of clawed feet on the snow crust, and then the wolves were gone. There was plenty of food for the predators this winter. They would not be back to bother the horses.

  The fire dwindled down to a small bed of living red embers. The darkness pushed in from all sides. Jacob got up and walked past the horses to stand in the gray, snowy night.

  Through holes in the clouds he caught sight of the moon, round and frozen and wintry wan. Its light glowed gray-blue on the long snowdrifts. He heard the fast wind high on the mountainside whistling to the North Star. In the trees, all around, the night lay cold as iron.

  He reflected upon where he was in life. He had spent most of it in the mountains. At first they had been a joyful new world to play in. Now the mountains contained only emptiness, an aloneness all around him. And in the future? He could not see, so it, too, was empty. But then, maybe not completely empty. He would go and see.

  Jacob returned to his bed. He wrapped himself and his rifle in the thick fur of the buffalo robe. It encased his body snugly, soft as heavy velvet. He covered his head and lay on his back, thinking about the violence of the day and the terrible loss of his partner.

  He shoved away his sorrow and for a long time pondered what the next few days would bring. Then he pushed even those thoughts aside. He listened to the arctic wind moaning an endless dirge as it wandered the dark world. Felt its cold fingers clawing at his protective covering, searching for an opening so it could come inside with him.

  Jacob pulled the robe in closer around his shoulders. He went to sleep in the black, arctic night.

  * * *

  In the uncertain light of early dawn Jacob threw aside his frost-cloaked robe, pulled on his moccasins, and stood up. The air had a static crackle of cold. The clouds were heavy and hung close to the earth. They had spilled snow again during the night, and all around lay huge white drifts, carved and hardened by the wind of the blizzard.

  Without making a fire, Jacob loaded his mustangs, mounted, and left the camp. The clouds threatened more snow. He had to reach lower country quickly, or he might be trapped in the mountains for many days by impassable snowdrifts.

  The horses labored mightily, lunging through the high snow ridges blocking the route. Large plumes of mist exploded from their nostrils. Sweat began to dampen and darken the long winter coats of the brutes.

  At noon Jacob came out of dense timber and struck the main stream of the Purgatorie River near its headwaters. He had dropped two thousand feet in elevation. The snow that had been crotch-deep along Saruche Creek, now reached only to his knees.

  Jacob turned to make his way with the watercourse, buried under snow and ice and winding down a valley studded with giant pines. He pushed hard, often jumping down from the saddle to help the tiring animals break trail.

  Half a score of miles later, Purgatorie River swerved directly east. Jacob had traveled that path, a rapid descent through a narrow, rock-walled gorge down to the great plains lying five thousand feet below. He turned aside and continued due north, passing over a low saddle and finding North Fork of the Purgatorie River. By dusk he had climbed up and over a second rock-choked divide and found the tiny creek that was the beginning of the Cucharas River.

  A silent camp was made in the edge of the night. It began to snow.

  * * *

  When the cold morning arrived, three inches of new snow lay on the ground, and icy mist filled the valley of the Cucharas River. Vision was shortened to a range no greater than a long rifle shot. Yet Jacob knew when he passed beneath Spanish Peak, towering fourteen thousand feet unseen on his right hand.

  When the Cucharas River veered to the northeast, Jacob angled away from it and went northwest. He began to climb the steep, heavily wooded slope. By noon he had reached Veta Pass, crossed over, and was tramping south beside Sangre de Cristo Creek. He did not stop to rest at all.

  Jacob hurried down from the mountains with snow frozen to his back and the wind clouting him. He made camp on the south end of a low range of frozen hills fifteen miles east of the deep lava gorge of the Rio Grande.

  * * *

  All day Jacob held course toward Santa Fe, traveling south between the canyon of the Rio Grande and Taos Mountain. Clouds hid all of Taos Mountain above a couple of hundred feet. Snowflakes, large and soggy, sifted down through the pinon pines to pile upon the packs and the backs of the ponies.

  He crossed the Rio Pueblo de Taos on thick ice and halted his string of horses at the edge of the ancient Indian settlement of Taos. The weary ponies hunched their backs, let their heads droop dejectedly, and stood stock-still in the wind and snow.

  Jacob surveyed the adobe homes of the Pueblo. The buildings rose one, two, and in a few sections three stories high around a large, open plaza. Pole ladders led up from one level to the next. Gray wood smoke climbed from chimneys, vanishing almost immediately in the hanging overcast.

  An old Indian woman with a blanket wrapped around her and a fold of it thrown hood-like up over her head came out of one of the dwellings. She shuffled across the snow in an aged, stiff-legged waddle and drew near half a score of dome-shaped ovens. She stopped at the one round structure that had its snow cover melted away.

  Jacob stepped down from his mustang and walked quietly toward the woman. Intent on her task, the woman didn’t see or hear his approach. She lifted aside a thin slab of rock to open the door of the oven. Then, with a slat of wood, she reached into the hot interior and brought out a big loaf of brown corn bread. It immediately began to send short streams of steam into the cold air.

  Jacob caught the aroma of the fresh bread wafting toward him on the wind. He breathed it in slowly, savoring the tantalizing odor. He had not tasted bread for months, and his craving turned his mouth moist.

  “Mother, I will give you a Mexican peso for half of that loaf,” Jacob called.

  The woman flinched back at the sound of his voice. She whirled to face him.

  Her old eyes ran over the white man, searching quickly for any danger that might lurk in him. He calmly gazed back, seeming not to notice the long-barreled rifle that hung in the crook of his arm. His light-colored eyes were frank and open, and a ple
asant half-smile of anticipation lay on his lips. One of his hands went into a small pouch fastened over his shoulder. He brought out a silver coin.

  The old woman bobbed her head at the white man who spoke her language so well. With a peso she could buy enough cornmeal or flour in Santa Fe to cook several loaves of bread. “That is a fair price,” she said.

  She held out the loaf of bread on the wooden paddle. “Do you have a knife to cut it with?”

  “Certainly, Mother.” Jacob slid his long skinning knife from its scabbard.

  Steadying the end of the wood slat with his hand, he divided the loaf with one sweep of his sharp blade. He returned the knife to its scabbard, then reached and took one of the pieces of bread.

  The old woman noticed that the division had been quite even, and that the white man had chosen the section that may have been slightly smaller.

  “You are an honest man,” she said.

  Jacob grinned at her and took a large bite of the warm bread. The crust broke between his teeth, and the soft bread within lay deliciously on his tongue. His grin broadened. He shut his eyes and started to chew, very slowly, leisurely. This was no time to hurry.

  The old Indian woman remained, peering through the falling snow and watching the satisfied expression on the man’s face as he devoured the half loaf. He finished and looked directly at her.

  “Mother, that was most enjoyable. The men in your family must be well fed. They could grow fat just on your bread.”

  “They do not complain,” she replied. A pleased smile creased her wrinkled features.

  “That I believe,” said Jacob. “I must be going. Goodbye, Mother.”

  He climbed astride his pony, guiding his animals into the snow and south toward Santa Fe.

  CHAPTER 3

  The day turned to dusk. On the gray snowscape, objects were blurred and distances distorted. The nipping wind had sharp teeth, and Jacob cinched his coat in more tightly.