Nate and Maklin went another mile and the Texan remarked, “Looks to me as if they’re heading for Pawnee territory.”
Nate thought so, too. Unless it was a ruse and Kuruk intended to circle back later.
“They’re moving awful fast. It could take us days to catch them, if we ever do.”
Nate came to a stop. Leaning on his saddle, he frowned.
“You’re doing the right thing,” Maklin said.
“By giving up?”
“By being smart. This smells of a trick. Could be this Kuruk aims to lure you into Pawnee territory.”
Nate felt his jaw muscles twitch.
“It’s not as if that dirt farmer and his family were kin of yours. As you reminded me last night, you only just met them.”
“For a man who doesn’t talk much, you have a leaky mouth.”
Maklin grinned. “My boss says I’m to keep you alive. We keep on going and that might prove hard. Do we use our heads or do we lose them?”
“We turn back and bury what’s left.”
It was pushing sundown when they caught up with the freight wagons. Jeremiah Blunt took the news in grim spirit. “You did what you could. Their souls are in the Lord’s hands now.”
Nate blamed himself in part for the tragedy. Maybe if he had been more insistent, Wendell and his family would still be alive. But what else could he have done short of forcing them to join the freight train at the point of a gun?
By the next morning Nate had come to terms with his guilt. Blunt and Maklin were right; he had done all he could. Wendell and Maddy had brought it on themselves by not heeding his advice. The wilderness was a harsh mistress. She was cruel and merciless. Simpletons were fodder for her claws and fangs. The timid fell to her tomahawks and knives. Some people were too naive to see the thorns. Like Wendell, they relied on the hand of Providence or on luck to keep them alive. It never occurred to them that to a hungry grizzly or a hostile out to count coup, Providence didn’t matter a lick. Luck was more fickle than the weather. To rely on chance when one’s life was at stake was to have a secret death wish.
Day followed day without further incident. Nate got to know the freighters well.
On a sunny morning they started the climb to South Pass, which wasn’t much of a climb at all. When most easterners thought of a pass, they thought of a gap high on a mountain range. South Pass was the exception. The prairie rolled upward as gently as could be to the Continental Divide and then down the other side. To the north were the jagged peaks of the Wind River Range; to the south the land peaked to form the mileshigh backbone of the Rockies.
South Pass was the one point where wagons could cross from one side of the Divide to the other with ease. Thousands of emigrants bound for Oregon and California had left the ruts of their passage. They had left other things, too. A stove, a grandfather clock, an anvil, tokens that even an easy climb had taxed teams pulling overburdened wagons.
Beyond lay a sage-sprinkled valley. The main trail bore to the southwest for a number of miles before it jagged to the northwest again and eventually brought travelers to Fort Hall.
Nate and the freighters left the trail shortly after South Pass, making for the rugged mountains to the north. From that point on, the freighters relied on Nate to guide them. Few whites had ever ventured into the geyser country. The tales of steaming springs and spouts of hot water hundreds of feet high had brought the region the label of “hell on earth.” No one ever went there, which had Nate wondering about the Shakers.
Nate had been to the area twice. Both times he had taken the same route, north up Bridger Basin and then along the Green River to where it flowed down out of the Green River Range. From there on it was solid mountain travel.
Nate chose a different route this time. He had them cross a low unnamed range and follow a long, winding valley to the banks of the Gros Ventre River. By paralleling it they didn’t want for water or graze, and while now and then the men had to wield axes to clear the way, the going was easier than on the slopes above.
The oxen were unflagging, but their progress, through no fault of theirs, was slow.
The mountains were magnificent. Peaks that towered almost three miles into the sky. Slopes forested thick with spruce and fir and stands of shimmering aspens. Meadows that ran riot with the colors of wildflowers.
Wildlife was everywhere. Black-tailed deer raised their tails in alarm and bounded off. Elk hid in the deep thickets. Bear sign told of black bears and grizzlies. Eagles ruled the air. Hawks dived for prey. Ravens squawked and flapped. Squirrels in the trees and squirrels on the ground scampered and chattered. Songbirds warbled an avian orchestra.
They were now deep in the heart of the Gros Ventre Range. To the northwest were the Tetons. Beyond, the spectacular geyser country. The Valley of Lost Skulls was at its southernmost edge.
Another ten days brought them to where Nate felt they could come on the valley at any time. As he told Jeremiah Blunt, he’d never been there, but based on what Shakespeare had told him and other accounts, the landmarks were right. It should be near.
As added proof, the country changed. The mountain slopes were not as thickly forested. Lower down, where vegetation usually thrived, the little that grew was stunted and withered, as if the plants were being poisoned by the ground. Deer became scarce. There was no bear sign. Eagles and hawks disappeared from the sky. Ravens were never seen. Nor squirrels or rabbits or any of the small game formerly so abundant. The birds fell silent. Not a single, solitary note broke the disquieting stillness.
Nate could understand why it gave people the jitters. The silence, the twisted shapes of the rocks, the absence of life, gnawed at the nerves. Bad medicine the Indians called it, and they were right.
He roved on ahead of the wagons to try and locate the valley. As usual, the Texan accompanied him. The shod hooves of their mounts sounded like hammers on the rock.
A reek filled the air, a foul stench explained when they came on a pool of bubbling water no bigger around than a washtub.
The Texan coughed and said, “So this is what hell smells like?”
They rode on. It was a maze, this country, and Nate began to think he had been overconfident and the Valley of Skulls would be a lot harder to find than he imagined when they came on ruts. Wagons, a lot of wagons, had come in from the east. It had to be the Shakers, Nate reckoned. No other wagon train that he knew of had ever penetrated this far.
“These people must be crazy,” Maklin remarked.
Nate wondered, too.
The tracks led to the northwest along a ribbon of a stream that had no name. It had another quality, which Nate discovered by accident when he dipped his hand in the water to drink. “It’s warm.”
“What?” Maklin said.
“This water. It’s warm enough to use for bathwater.”
The Texan climbed down to see for himself. “I’ll be damned. Is it safe to drink, you reckon?”
Nate dared a sip. Save for a slight metallic taste, the sip produced no ill effects.
“I wouldn’t want to drink this regular,” was Maklin’s assessment.
Neither would Nate. They climbed back on their mounts. The wagon tracks hugged the stream and they did the same until along about the middle of the afternoon when it brought them to a narrow cleft dark with shadow. There was barely enough room for a wagon to pass through.
Nate entered the cleft. He didn’t like being hemmed by rock and was glad when after only thirty feet they emerged to have a valley floor spread out before them. Not a valley of grass and flowers but a valley of rock and boulders. Grotesque stone shapes testified to a geologic upheaval in the remote past that had bent and twisted the foundations of the earth.
Both abruptly drew rein.