Colter's Winter Read online

  ~~~

  “There!”

  Colter spun around and looked up at the sky, toward where Forest was pointing.

  “God…what is it?” Forest said.

  Colter stared, wide-eyed at a ball of light, a star…something. It was there, and then it was shooting across the sky, far north, faster than anything he’d ever seen.

  “My God, what was that?” Forest said behind him.

  Colter spun around, his eyes nearly rimming with tears from the fright he felt. Then his eyes went wide again.

  “Forest, down!” he shouted, and lunged forward, his arms outstretched to push the trapper down. For there in the tree line not more than twenty feet away, was an Indian, bow raised and arrow nocked.

  Swish!

  Colter swore he felt the arrow brush past his hair as he fell to the ground with Forest in his arms.

  “My gun!” he shouted.

  “Here!” Forest called back, and threw the Kentucky Rifle Colter’s way. The mountain man caught it midair, checked the pan, cocked it, and took aim. The young Indian brave saw him and bolted back toward the tree line, where another was standing and pointing at the sky.

  Colter lowered the gun and looked at Forest.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “Which way?” Forest asked, his eyes batting from left to right.

  “Across the field,” Colter said without hesitation, “away from those Indians.”

  ~~~

  “C’mon, we can reach them!” Lapu yelled.

  Anoki shook his head, his eyes still wide, tears streaming down his face. He shook his head again and again, even as Lapu came up and began tugging on his robes.

  “They’re right there!” the brave shouted at the medicine man, pointing behind him across the vast plain. The two whites were rushing across it.

  “No…we cannot!” Anoki said, his eyes wide. “That…light.”

  “A falling star!” Lapu shouted at him. “Let’s go, Shappa would want us to hunt them down!”

  “We cannot….we cannot….we cannot…” the medicine man said over and over, and finally Lapu turned about in frustration. He watched as the whites – he was sure they were white – rushed across the plain. They would eventually reach the opposite tree line far in the distance, he now saw, the same the light had darted over. Lapu knew he could run and reach them, but he would not. When Shappa asked him later why that was, he would blame Anoki and the medicine man’s hesitation. Never would he say his true reason, fear.

  31 – Distracted Thinking

  “What was that back there?”

  “Brave.”

  “No,” Forest said as they walked across the long, empty field, snow crunching under their boots, the open night sky above looking down on them oppressively. Both men glanced up at it concernedly. It was more than ten minutes since they’d spotted the two Arikara, but the Indians were gone now, back into the trees from which they’d come.

  “I don’t know what it was, a shooting star maybe,” Colter said, his irritation up. He didn’t want to talk about lights in the sky.

  “That wasn’t no shooting star I ever saw.”

  Colter spun around on him. “What do you want me to say?”

  “I want you to say everything’s gonna be alright, and that we’re gonna get out of here,” Forest said, close to tears.

  Colter stared at him, then slowly let out a sigh, his shoulders slumping.

  “We’re gonna be alright,” he said at last, and clapped Forest on the shoulder before turning around to press on.

  Forest swallowed the knot in his throat and fell in behind the mountain man. He didn’t like what he’d seen one bit, not one bit at all. It wasn’t a shooting star, that was for sure, so it could only be one thing – the Indians and their damn medicine man playing tricks on them. What else could it be?

  Forest tried to let the thoughts stray from his mind, and as the crunching of the snow under their boots continued, they did just that. After a time it was just them and the vast whiteness covering the land, a stark contrast to the sea of blackness above, tiny pinpricks of light their constant companions.

  “Captain Clark used to always tell us that it took the light from one of those stars years to reach us,” Colter said suddenly, throwing Forest from his thoughts. “He said there was a good chance a few of those stars we’re seeing actually burned out years ago, perhaps even before we were born. But their light hasn’t stopped moving from the millions and millions of miles that separates us, and might not until after we’re gone.” Colter stopped and turned around to face Forest. “Could be that what we saw was the last dying light of some distant star.”

  Forest had kept his eyes on his feet ever since Colter had spun around, but now that the mountain man had stopped talking he looked up. But he didn’t see Colter, for a slight trace of movement caught his eye, something over Colter’s left shoulder. The explorer must have seen his brows furrow, for he spun around to get a look himself.

  “Damn!” he said in a half-whisper, half-shout.

  “Arikara?” Forest asked.

  “No, Blackfeet, and a war party by the looks of it,” Colter said, “quick get down!”

  Both men fell to the snow and then immediately looked up, as if the crunching weight of their bodies had given them away. It hadn’t.

  “There,” Colter said, and pointed to a small cluster of boulders with a couple trees sprouting up beside them. “It’s the only spot we’ve got on this damn plain.”

  Forest said nothing, and in a moment both men were scurrying on their bellies over the snow and ice. It took them a few minutes, but they reached the boulders and got behind them. Only then did they get back into a crouching positions and peer ahead once again.

  There were eight of them, all on horseback, painted ponies with handprints and streaks, yellow, red and white. The braves were nestled in buffalo furs, and seemed to be making a slow pace, not rushing at all.

  “Could be they’re worried about ice,” Forest said, as if reading Colter’s mind.

  Colter shook his head. “Those men know this area like the back of their hand. This is the Blackfoot hunting ground around here, near this stretch of the Yellowstone. We’re in their area, and if they find us they’ll kill us.”

  Forest gulped, something he was getting quite good at on this particular night. He remembered well the story several of the expedition men had told him about the small party of Captain Lewis running into the young Blackfeet, and killing one before running off. No doubt the tribe was still looking for those men, though any whites would do.

  “C’mon,” Colter said once the Indians had gone several hundred yards past them, all the while giving no sign that they’d spotted the two whites, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

  “And head where?” Forest said in frustration.

  It was clear the strange light, all the walking, and now the lack of sleep were getting to him. They were getting to Colter too, he had to admit. He let out a sigh and nodded back toward the tree line, the same the Arikara had been at.

  “We’re closer to the A’anninen than the cave,” he said, looking at Forest. “With those braves out I’m worried about Joe. It’s well past time we got back to that cave, but we can’t head that way if there’s a bunch of Blackfeet blocking our path.”

  “We’ll go back to the chief, make a deal.”

  “We’ll go back to the chief,” Colter agreed, “but I’m not sure we’ll be making any deal.”

  “We can at least get a place to sleep though.”

  “Aye,” Colter said with a chuckle, then got a little more serious, “but we’ll have to be careful. If we skirt way around those trees we’ll make the village just before dawn.”

  And maybe a maiden’s warm bed, Forest thought but didn’t say. He simply nodded at the mountain man’s words, and within moments they again crawling through the snow, northward this time, and hoping the next Indian they saw was a friendly one.

  32 – Snowed In
>
  Pure blackness, that’s all Joe Dixon could see, and that’s all he’d been seeing for the past two days, ever since Colter and Forest had left.

  “Oh hell, I can’t see anything!” Joe had cried out. There had been no one to hear him, however, or his sobs.

  The snow had taken his sight, he was blind. It was snow blindness, he’d heard of it but always gave it more of a laugh than any serious thought. But now there he was, blind as a bat. It’d started with him seeing all white, after a particularly bad night that saw nothing but flakes the size of rocks. He’d cursed the white the next morning when the sun was bright and reflecting off of it. It’d done little good, and eventually that white had faded to blackness. It’d been slow and gradual, and he’d barely noticed. His eyes were shut tight or teared-up most of the time, and then one moment he opened them and couldn’t see a thing.

  He’d panicked, and fumbled all about the small camp he’d made outside the cave entrance. He thought it could be temporary, that his vision would come back in an hour, then a few hours, then a day. Now it was two days, and all he could see was blackness. Joe expected the world around him was black now as well, that it was night. All the sounds told him as such. If his eyes could shed tears of fear they would, but they were about dried up. He was going to die there outside that cave, he knew it.

  Joe suddenly stopped feeling sorry for himself. The hackles on the back of his neck rose, and he knew something wasn’t right. Something was there, not there in the camp near the cave or even around the forest. But something was there alright, he didn’t need his eyes to know that. He didn’t need them when something told him to turn around, look up. It wasn’t a voice, more a feeling, and it came from inside. Joe wasn’t thinking any of those things at that time, however, for he was struck by the feeling, and the need to turn around. Eyes wide as they had been for days, he looked up toward where he expected the sky to be, and then saw it. His eyes were already wide so couldn’t get much wider, but they would if they could. It was a light, bright as the sun, and moving…fast.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” he said, and immediately crossed himself. Right as he finished the light shot off, northward and over the snowy mountains. Joe stood stock still, amazed at what he’d seen. Then it dawned on him.

  “I can see!” he said loudly, then shouted, “I can see!”

  His hands went up to his face and then his eyes, as if he should rub them away, like seeing was bad.

  “It’s a miracle,” he said suddenly, stopping his pawing of the face, the realization of what had happened dawning on him. “It’s a miracle, thank God, it’s a miracle.”

  And then the next realization dawned on him, the realization of what he had to do. That was leave, leave the mountains, head downriver, get out of the wilderness…and fast. He didn’t waste time, and started packing his things right then and there. Before fifteen minutes had passed he was in the canoe and heading down the Yellowstone, his only thought being how long it’d take to get to St. Louis this time of year.

  33 – Back to Work

  “Hee-hee.”

  “Oh!”

  “Yes!”

  “Hey!”

  Forest tore off the large buffalo pelt and looked up in anger. His visage softened a bit when he was it was Colter staring down at him, but just barely.

  “What’s the matter!” he said, his voice full of anger. Beside him the dark hair of an Indian maiden appeared, and then two eyes. When they locked onto the mountain man the head quickly disappeared back below the pelt, followed by a “hee-hee” laugh.

  “The matter’s that we’ve got to get going,” Colter said, “we’ve got to get back to Joe.”

  “Joe’s fine,” Forest said, and started to duck back under the buffalo pelt.

  “I’m not sure he is,” Colter said, kicking the pelt so that Forest was visible once again.

  The trapper stared up at him with an anger in his eyes. “We just got here and–”

  “We’ve been here four days!” Colter nearly shouted, throwing his arms up. “Four days!”

  “Because of the snow,” Forest said matter-of-factly. “You said yourself that we shouldn’t move overland in all that snow, in those conditions, and with Blackfeet out there.”

  Colter frowned. He did say those things, and it’d been a helluva lot easier to say them after they’d struck a deal with the A’anninen chief. The fact that they’d been forced to strike it after dragging themselves into the village at dawn, bleary-eyed and not thinking straight didn’t seem to factor into it. They’d been given two Indian maidens, their own tepee, and two packs that weighed 30 pounds less in furs…with the additional promise that another 30 pounds was to be delivered shortly. On top of it they’d traded on of their Northwest Trade Guns. That made it 30 pounds and not 70 it seemed, and also because the chief was in such a good mood knowing that he’d had a good night’s sleep while the whites hadn’t. They’d sure slept good after being escorted to the tent by the maidens, however, two that Colter later learned were named Malia and Maralah – ‘Sea of Bitterness’ and ‘Born During an Earthquake.’ The mountain man had learned mighty quick how the two had come about their names, and his life had been a living hell ever since. Forest, however, was in heaven and in no rush to leave.

  “I’ve talked to the chief,” Colter said to the trapper, before the man had had a chance to dive under the buffalo robe once again, “and he says he’ll loan us a dugout canoe to get back to camp…the better to get him his furs.”

  “Well that’s a sight better than traipsing across that damn plain again!”

  “Aye,” Colter said, “now let’s get our things packed and get out of here.”

  Forest frowned, but nodded. “Alright…but give me five minutes first.”

  Colter frowned to that, but headed toward the tent flap, the ‘hee-hee’s’ getting louder behind him.

  34 – Overturned

  Colter and Forest were making good time moving up the Yellowstone. The waters were a lot less than they had been just a few weeks before, and that made for easier going. Colter knew his shoulder sure appreciated it – he didn’t want to admit it, but if they hadn’t stopped for winter camp when they did, he wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to keep paddling against those currents each day. But now here it was, the middle of winter by the look of it, though Colter knew the worst of it was still several months off. Thankfully they had the warmth of the cave to see them through the hard times. It’d been nearly a week since they’d left Joe there, and if they managed to keep up their speed they’d be back to him by that evening.

  “What’dya think of her?” Forest asked from the head of the canoe. He slapped the side of the boat, emphasizing what he was talking about.

  Colter nodded, though Forest wasn’t looking back at him. “Aye,” he called up, “she’s fast.”

  “She’s a lot easier to push through this shallower river, too,” the trapper said back to him, “lot easier than the boat we came up on.”

  Colter nodded again. Getting the canoe from the A’anninen chief had been good fortune, even if it had cost them a few furs in the end, as Colter fully expected it would. But then they had so many furs now…Colter dreaded the thought of getting them out. He knew they’d have to dig out at least two trees to make the dugouts necessary to get their take down to St. Louis, maybe three. And dugout canoes weren’t the easiest thing to make, either, though the mountain man supposed the time involved was what made the task so unappealing. A quick scan of the scenery told him that winter was there, however, and when winter was there in this part of the world, there wasn’t much you could do but kill time. Couldn’t much trap beaver – the thicker winter coats were too oily for the refined tastes in Grand Paris. Digging out some canoes would be a good way to kill time, therefore, especially if he could get Forest to do some work. Joe wouldn’t be a problem, so long as he didn’t stay too mad too long. Leaving him alone in the cave as long as they had wasn’t the best idea, but there was nothing to do f
or it now but say they were sorry and wait on Joe hand and foot for a few days until he cooled off. Forest, however, well…that was a different story.

  Colter made to clear his throat to start up that conversation when a trace of movement on the far bank caught his eye. Was that…yes!

  “Forest!” Colter shouted, but it was too late. The Indian he’d seen on the bank got his shot off. Before the word was even out of the mountain man’s mouth, an arrow was sticking from Forest’s chest. Colter could see clearly the stone arrowhead sticking from his companion’s back. The trapper’s head lolled down to look at it, and then he started to turn his head back to look at Colter.

  “John…Injuns,” he managed, then another arrow slammed into his chest, cutting off whatever words he still had. A mouthful of blood shot forth all over the dugout’s bow.

  A split second later another arrow slammed home, but this time into the canoe and just inches from Colter’s legs. The mountain man didn’t hesitate – dropping his paddle and grabbing both sides of the canoe, he quickly threw all of his weight to one side. At the last second he reached down for his Kentucky Rifle and then the boat was overturning on top of him.

  SPLASH!

  Part IV – Hunting

  35 – The Cold

  Ice shot through Colter’s arms and legs and into his brain. The temptation to throw his mouth open and scream against the biting cold was overwhelming, but he kept it firmly closed. He was fully submerged now, in water that was 40 degrees at least. Throwing his eyes open, they were filled with water and then white as he spotted the submerged ice that dotted the Yellowstone’s banks. The water was pushing him fast and one hand was still on the canoe’s side; the other was firmly gripping his rifle. The gun was under the water and the powder was likely ruined, but with it he stood a chance in the wild. Without it his chances were nothing. Colter moved one of his hands forward and grabbed hold of the canoe’s inside bottom. There was air, and he threw his head up into it.