Predators and Prey Page 25

  DeBreen whirled around, his hand swinging to hang near his pistol. A new arrival, a man he didn’t know, was coming straight at him. DeBreen heard the antagonism in the stranger’s voice, saw it in the way he walked. Who was he?

  “I’m DeBreen.”

  “You were on the upper Missouri in early March.” It was a statement, not a question.

  DeBreen shrugged his big shoulders. “Maybe I was. And then again, maybe I wasn’t. What’s it to you?”

  Sam said nothing. He stopped to stare unblinkingly at DeBreen. Several seconds passed.

  “What do you want?” DeBreen’s voice rose belligerently. “Are you deaf?”

  Sam made no response. His eyes bore into DeBreen. He was holding his anger at bay, savoring this moment of finally seeing his foe eye to eye. In a few seconds he would pull his revolver and empty every cylinder into the white skin of the murderous river pirate.

  “I think the fellow’s crazy,” DeBreen said in a mocking tone.

  Mathias knew the man was not crazy. But the light that burned in his eyes told that violence was near. Mathias spoke. “My name is Rowley. This is my camp. I don’t want the women or children hurt.”

  Sam glanced to the side and looked into Rowley’s worried face. The man’s request was a fair one. Sam could not fight DeBreen here. “I’ll not do anything to cause harm to your women and children,” Sam said. He wheeled around and started back toward his horse.

  Abruptly Sam halted. He recognized Ruth Crandall sitting by one of the fires. Her sensitive features were full of apprehension. He veered in her direction.

  Ruth remembered the frail young trapper who had come to her father’s place of business in St. Joe. He still seemed old beyond his years, but his step was firm and he seemed stronger.

  “Hello, Miss Crandall,” Sam said, removing his hat from his head.

  Ruth climbed to her feet and straightened her dress. “Hello, Mr. Wilde. I’m surprised to see you.”

  “Not as surprised as I am to find you this far from St. Joe. Where are you bound?”

  “To Salt Lake City.”

  Ruth saw Sam’s sudden understanding of what that meant. She did not like his look of disapproval.

  “You have joined up with the Mormons?”

  She nodded without speaking.

  Sam shuffled from one foot to the other. He would like to continue a conversation with Ruth, but nearly every person in camp was listening, and he did not know what to say. However, he should tell her what kind of man DeBreen was. “May we talk tomorrow?”

  “Certainly, if you want.” Ruth recalled how he had looked at her when they had last met. That same expression of awe, as if he were viewing something of great value, was in his eyes now. Most pleasing.

  “Good. Until then. I’ll look you up.”

  “I won’t be hard to find.” Ruth smiled at the serious young man.

  Sam moved to his horse and picked up the reins. He spoke to Nathan. “You are not with the Mormons or DeBreen?”

  “That’s right. I came up from Texas with some other fellows.” Nathan evaluated the man. Obviously he was a foe of DeBreen. That just might make him a friend of Nathan’s. There was going to be trouble with DeBreen; Nathan was sure of that. The Texans were outnumbered, and he did not think the Mormons could be counted on to fight. Another gun would be valuable.

  Nathan spoke. “You’re welcome to camp with us tonight. After that little meeting with DeBreen you may need somebody to watch your back.”

  “All right. I’ve got two Indian ponies out there on the prairie that I must pick up first.”

  “I’ll show you where our camp is,” Nathan said.

  The two men went into the darkness.

  Sam spoke as they walked along. “I saw only three of DeBreen’s men. Do you know where the other seven are tonight?”

  “You mean the other five?”

  “No, seven. I’ve followed them all the way from St. Joe, and from Florence, rode on their tracks. I can count. DeBreen has ten men riding with him.”

  “I’ve seen only seven. I think we’d better talk about this.”

  ***

  At the Texans’ camp Nathan kindled a small fire for light. Then Sam and he sat and talked across the flames.

  As Sam told his story the other Texans came one by one, emerging from the dark and seating themselves. They listened silently.

  “I plan to kill DeBreen,” Sam said, ending his tale.

  “Then why did you face him there at the Mormon camp?” Nathan said. “He will soon figure out you survived the river ambush and be warned.”

  “I had planned to shoot him on the spot. But that Mormon fellow asked me not to start a fight. So I had to back off.”

  “I think DeBreen will be coming after you.”

  A twisted, contorted smile came to Sam’s face, his hate making him an ugly young man. “That’s all right too,” he said.

  “I’ve learned something else,” Ash said. “Sophia told me three Mormon men have vanished since DeBreen came. Two were on guard duty and could not be found when the reliefs came. Their rifles were gone too. Now the Mormons have just one rifle and one pistol. The third man went off to fetch wood and never came back. DeBreen tells Rowley the Indians must have taken the men.”

  “Sam says DeBreen has two other men around someplace,” Nathan said. “They could be responsible for the disappearance of the Mormons and not the Indians. I have a feeling that DeBreen plans to destroy all the Mormons.”

  “I agree,” Nathan replied. “And that explains why he tried to run us off. But why does he want the Mormons dead?” Nathan tossed some wood on the fire and thoughtfully watched the shower of sparks rise straight up in the still air.

  “Maybe he just hates Mormons,” Sam said into the silence.

  “We can’t let anything happen to the women,” Jake said. “We may have to take on DeBreen and his men.”

  “We now know there would be eleven men against us in a fight,” Nathan said. “Even with Sam to help us, we’d be outnumbered nearly two to one.”

  “From the looks of them I’d judge they would be tough fighters too,” Les said. “Especially DeBreen. But even so, we can’t let them kill the Mormons.

  “The answer is simple,” Sam said. He extended his empty hand, as if it held a pistol. He slowly pulled the trigger on the imaginary weapon. “We’ll catch them apart from each other. I’ll kill DeBreen, and then, when they no longer have a leader, we can kill two or three at a time without too much danger to us.”

  “Start our own war?” Nathan asked.

  “Exactly,” Sam replied.

  “I don’t know about that,” Nathan said. “Let’s sleep on it.”

  ***

  Nathan awoke as the half-moon slid below the horizon. He heard Sam arise and move off in the darkness. He thought he knew where the man was going.

  Nathan lay and mulled over what Sam had said about starting a war to whittle away at DeBreen’s larger force. There was logic to that proposal.

  An hour later Sam returned, coming through the darkness as silently as a shadow.

  “Are DeBreen and his men still in their camp?” Nathan asked.

  “So you’re awake and thinking the same thing as me?” Sam said. “Yeah, they’re still there. There’ll be no trouble from them tonight.”

  ***

  The morning was bright with light when Nathan awoke. This was the latest he had slept in days. He looked toward the Mormon camp, located some two hundred yards away. On this Sunday the people were late in rising.

  He buckled on his pistol and ambled toward the creek, lined with big sycamore, oak, and walnut trees. In the sky a hunting hawk came gliding down from the north, its head angled down and its keen eyes scouring the grass-covered ground for prey. Just as the hawk reached the creek it banked steeply away, and its wings pumped hard for a few swift strokes. Something in the trees had frightened the bird.

  Nathan stole upstream, then into the woods. The band of trees was not more t
han fifty yards wide, growing only on the narrow floodplain, where the creek water supplied moisture to their roots.

  He moved stealthily from one silent morning shadow to the next. The sound of splashing water and a woman’s voice humming a song came to him.

  30

  Caroline gathered a clean change of clothing, left the camp, and aimed her steps toward the creek. A cool bath in the morning and a day of reprieve from the cruel harness and handle of the handcart was an event she would thoroughly enjoy.

  She bent and picked up a stalk of the new buffalo grass and chewed on it as she walked along. All around her the prairie was becoming gilded in bright sun colors. Hidden in the grass, a meadowlark trilled its short series of notes. A bumblebee droned over the ground, checking the emerging flower heads for nectar.

  She entered the woods as the top limbs of the trees began to tremble to the first faint puffs of the morning wind. The creek came into view, flowing among the gray boles of the trees.

  She walked slowly up the stream until she found a pool of water some forty feet long and three feet deep. She stripped, tossed her soiled clothing into the water to soak, and waded in. She began to hum and leisurely bathe herself.

  A blue jay came flapping in, the white sections of its wings like little semaphores signaling its arrival. The bird landed on the high branch of a sycamore and chattered away as it cocked its head from side to side and watched her with first one black eye and then the other.

  ***

  Nathan’s eyes probed out ahead as he crept through the grove of walnut trees. The sound of the woman humming came from directly ahead. He left the walnuts and entered a stand of sycamores. A blue jay darted away with a call of alarm.

  Nathan stopped instantly, listening intently. The humming continued, the woman taking no warning from the bird’s cry. And she was close, only a few feet in front of him.

  Nathan peered past the trunk of a big sycamore. His breath caught in his throat. A nude woman stood knee-deep in a pool of water in the creek. She was bathing, scooping up the water in her double hands and splashing her body, then rubbing. It was the green-eyed woman. She was humming to herself, altogether a most pleasant voice.

  He pressed against the tree, staring at the ivory-white body of the woman, at the swell of her hips, the bounce of her bosom as she moved. The beauty of her mesmerized him. Was she real or something dreamed?

  Nathan had made love to pretty girls twice before as he had roamed the frontier. But never had he encountered one he craved as much as he craved the green-eyed girl. He felt his mood brighten to a glorious exhilaration as he watched her.

  The girl knelt in the water and started to wash her hair. Her humming ceased as she worked on her long, tawny mane.

  Nathan knew she would hate him if she knew he’d spied upon her. Yet he’d spied, and he felt no more guilt than if he were looking at a beautiful flower. But what flower could attract a man the way a beautiful young woman could?

  Caroline finished her bathing. She scrubbed her clothes. The wet garments were wrung out and hung on a branch extending out over the creek. She waded to the shallow end of the pool and began to peer down into the water.

  Her two hands were inserted into the water, then quickly brought together. She lifted a crayfish some five inches long into the air. Its strong pincers snapped at her, trying to catch her fingers. But she held it safely by the back. With a happy laugh Caroline tossed the crayfish into the grass on the creek bank.

  Nathan saw the grass jerk and tremble as the crayfish tried to fight its way back to the water. The stiff stems held it imprisoned. Caroline bent again to peer into the water.

  Her wet tangle of hair fell around her face. She straightened, twisted her hair into a thick braid, and tied it in one loose loop at the rear of her head. She went back to catching crayfish, tossing them one after another on the bank.

  Nathan could not get enough of watching the nude huntress. Believing herself all alone, her every action, every movement, was beautifully uninhibited, pure animal, young and graceful. He knew he was viewing a jewel, a jewel of incalculable value to a man in this lonely land. With such a woman a man would be complete. Never again to feel wanting wherever he journeyed in the universe.

  It was a grand day to find a woman he wanted as a wife. However, it might be very difficult to get her to agree to that.

  The girl froze in mid-motion, bent at the waist. Her head rose, questioning. Nathan could see her testing the air for sound. Then her eyes swung to the far side of the pool.

  She seemed to shrink into herself. She cowered down in the water, sinking as deeply as the shallow water would allow but still only barely to her waist.

  Nathan crept forward a foot so that he could see around the trunk of the tree and determine what scared her. Two men in buckskins and flat-crowned trapper hats stood on the creek bank and stared at the girl. Each man wore a pistol and a knife on his belt. They were men Nathan had never seen before.

  “Come out of the water, pretty girl, and give us a little lovin’,” one of the men said.

  “Go away,” Caroline replied sternly. “Leave me alone.”

  “We can’t do that,” said the men. “We haven’t had a girl for a spell. We’re not going to pass up this chance at a pretty one.”

  The second man nodded his head in agreement. He licked his coarse lips in anticipation.

  “If you don’t go away at once, I’ll scream.”

  “Well, if you do, it’ll only be a short one,” said the first man. “For I’ll jump out there and bash you in the mouth.”

  The second man spoke. “You don’t want my friend to get his moccasins wet, now do you? Come on out of the water. Here on the bank the grass is nice and soft for you to lay on.”

  Nathan felt sorrow at the frightened expression on the ashen face of the girl. His anger flared bright and cold.

  “Never!” cried Caroline.

  “Then I guess I’ll just have to carry you out,” said the first man. “If I have to do that, then I’m not going to be as gentle as I would be if you would love us willingly.”

  Caroline’s hands frantically searched the bottom of the creek for a weapon. They closed upon two fist-sized stones. She gripped one in each hand and stood up, the water dripping from her body.

  “Damnation, ain’t that something,” said the second man, his eyes devouring the girl.

  “I’ll brain the first man who gets near me,” Caroline threatened, cocking her right arm.

  God! Nathan liked her spirit. He pulled his revolver and cocked it under his cupped hand to deaden the sound. He stepped from behind the tree and stood in the open.

  Intent on the girl, the trappers did not see Nathan appear. They laughed derisively at Caroline and her rocks. “Here I come,” said the first man.

  “If you do, you’re a dead man,” Nathan said.

  The two trappers jerked at the unexpected challenge. They spun a quarter turn to face Nathan.

  Caroline twisted to look in the direction of the voice. The Texan called Nathan stood in the shadows at the edge of the woods. He was so still, he seemed cast of stone. He leaned slightly forward, a half-raised pistol in his hand.

  How long had he been there watching her bathe? She did not care. An overwhelming relief flooded her being. Then a sickening thought came to her. There were two trappers against him.

  Nathan took three slow paces off at an angle to get the girl more out of the line of fire. These men would fight.

  “I want you two to get out of here and let the girl alone.” Nathan’s voice was hard.

  “What you want doesn’t mean spit in the wind,” the first man growled.

  “Make them go,” Caroline cried to Nathan. She shivered at the thought of the two trappers alone with her in the woods. How brave was the Texan? Was he like Mathias, afraid to fight and kill? Her eyes scoured Nathan’s face. The rims of his nostrils were ice-white and his eyes burned with a controlled fury. She sensed no fear in him. The sun sent a ruddy glint f
rom the iron of his pistol as he shifted it ever so slightly. She could not imagine a man more ready to fight.

  “We’re not leavin’, he is,” said the first man.

  “You’re wrong,” Nathan said. “I’m staying.” His words were flat and ugly.

  “Do you plan to fight both of us and die for a woman?”

  “I’m not going to be the one who dies. However, if it should by some miracle be me, then that’s all right too.”

  The trappers looked at Nathan’s pistol, pointing at the ground just in front of them. Only a slight lift, a tiny fraction of a second, would be needed to bring the weapon to bear on them. Their weapons were still holstered.

  “Let’s go, Phillips,” Ross said. “She’s not worth gettin’ killed for.”

  “We can take him,” Phillips said.

  “I don’t think so. He’s too ready. I’m leavin’.”

  Phillips studied Nathan a moment longer. “All right,” he told Ross.

  The trappers wheeled around and walked from the creek and into the woods.

  Nathan waited for the count of five, then he dashed across the creek and entered the woods upstream from the men. He had seen the implacable malevolence in the men’s faces. They must be the last two of DeBreen’s band. That meant they could not leave him or the girl alive to tell of their presence.

  Caroline was greatly surprised at the Texan’s sudden disappearance. He had driven the trappers off. Why hadn’t he waited for her to thank him? She hastened from the water and began to dress hurriedly in her fresh clothing.

  As she buttoned the shirt over her breast she caught movement in the woods. The trappers were returning, slinking warily forward at the border of the trees. Their pistols were gripped in their hands. Their hard eyes scuttled about in all directions.

  ***

  Nathan moved quietly into the woods a score of paces, then turned left and slipped onward. The course of the trappers should lie just ahead.

  He heard whispered voices and slowed. The men came into his view. They nodded in agreement to some plan and pulled their revolvers. They crept back in the direction of the creek. Nathan trailed behind.