“Oh, I understand, sir. I’m sorry I did that. It’s just that I’ve never met anyone as old as you before.”
Nate snorted.
“ ‘This is the very coinage of your brain,’ ” Shakespeare said with a sigh.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Stand aside so we can enter. I feel myself in serious need of hard liquor.” Shakespeare gigged the mare and rode through the gate, casting a dark glance at Nate. “One word of this to my wife and I’ll have your guts for garters.”
“Now, now,” Nate responded. “She is entitled to laugh the same as the rest of us.”
Raising his face to the heavens, Shakespeare declared, “ ‘There’s many a man that hath more hair than wit.’ Was that a jest on your part or do you just like hair?”
Nate went to follow him.
“Does he always talk like that?” Finnan asked.
“There are days when I think he must have talked like that in the cradle,” Nate said, and tapped his heels to the bay. Nothing much had changed since he last visited Bent’s. The post was quieter than normal, in part because no wagon trains were there.
Nate crossed the compound and drew rein next to McNair in front of the trading room just as the door opened.
“As I live and breathe, Nate and Shakespeare. I’ve missed you, my friends.” Ceran St. Vrain emerged, his aristocratic features lit by a warm smile. He was dressed in the best of fashion, his hair neatly slicked, his boots polished.
“Ceran de Hault de Lassus de St. Vrain,” Shakespeare said. “It is a joy for this old coon to set eyes on you again.”
St. Vrain chuckled. “McNair, you are the only person alive who ever uses my full name, and how in the world you remember it is beyond me.”
“His memory is formidable,” Nate praised his friend. He had long been astounded by Shakespeare’s ability to quote the Bard at will.
The three shook, and Ceran said, “How is it you’re here? You can’t be out of supplies so soon.”
Nate’s good humor evaporated like fresh rainwater under a hot sun. “I’m looking for my daughter.”
“Evelyn? Yes, she was here some weeks ago with that family of Indians from the East you let settle in your valley. I’m afraid my memory isn’t the equal of McNair’s. What are they called again?”
“Nansusequas,” Nate answered. “Wakumassee is the father. From what I gather, he took them off to hunt buffalo.” Nate wished he had been home when they decided to go, but he’d been in St. Louis having his rifle repaired by the Hawken brothers.
“I seem to remember your daughter telling me that.” Ceran stopped. “They haven’t returned?”
“No.” The simple word tore at Nate’s heartstrings like his keen-edged bowie. “They’ve been gone much too long.”
“We’ll find them, Horatio,” Shakespeare vowed. “If we have to scour the prairie from end to end, we’ll find them.”
Nate refused to delude himself. The plains were vast beyond measure, stretching countless leagues from Canada to Mexico and from the Mississippi to the Rockies. Granted, he doubted that Evelyn and Waku had gone that far, but the task was still daunting. “Have you heard anything?” he asked St. Vrain. “Has anyone seen them? Has there been any word at all?”
“Would that there had.” Ceran’s broad brow furrowed. “I’ll be more than happy to organize a dozen men to go with you. You can cover that much more ground in much less time.”
Nate was tempted. Time was crucial. The longer it took, the less the odds of finding them. “Have there been any reports of the Blackfeet down this way? Or have the Sioux been on the prowl?”
“The Sioux are always on the prowl,” Ceran said, and caught himself. “But no, nothing recent. The Sioux are staying up in their Black Hills, and the Blackfeet haven’t sent a war party this far south since last summer.”
“When you talked to her, did she happen to mention which way they were headed?” Nate asked.
“East, as I recall. I reminded her that most of the buffalo are to the south, but she was confident they…” Ceran gave a slight start and visibly blanched. “Oh, my word.”
“What?”
“I just remembered.”
“What?” In his excitement, Nate gripped St. Vrain’s arms. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”
Ceran swallowed and forced a smile. “Calm down. As you say, it’s a vast prairie. It’s unlikely they ran into them.”
“Ran into who?”
“There’s been word,” Ceran began, “of trouble to the east. The first accounts were sketchy. I thought it couldn’t be true, but then other reports reached my attention.”
Nate was practically beside himself. “Reports of what?”
“Of a band of white scalp hunters who have been killing and scalping every Indian they come across.”
“God, no,” Nate said. It was true, then. And it meant his friends the Nansusequas—and his daughter—were in deadly danger.
Chapter Three
A map never gave a true sense of scale. It said X was five hundred miles from Y, or that at its closest point the Mississippi was nine hundred miles from the Rockies. A person could picture it in his head, but the picture never matched the reality.
This was what went through Nate King’s mind as he hurried eastward from Bent’s Fort on the morning of the sixth day out. There was so much prairie; a sea of it, flowing on, mile after mile after mile. Finding someone in that immense ocean of grass was akin to looking for a tiny bit of driftwood in the middle of the Atlantic or the Pacific.
Nate thought of Evelyn and choked down despair. Ceran St. Vrain had told them that the scalp hunters were ranging wide over the region, killing men, women, and even children and lifting their hair. The question Ceran couldn’t answer was why they were so far north of their usual haunts. It was well known that Texas and the government down to Santa Fe both offered money for scalps. In Texas it was for Comanche hair. In New Mexico it was for Apache scalps. But Texas and Santa Fe were a thousand miles away.
Rumor had it that some scalp hunters weren’t particular about whose hair they lifted. Some would scalp whites and Mexicans, too, so long as the hair could pass for Comanche or Apache. Nate suspected that the band doing the marauding had come north because it would be easy to fill their hair sacks to bulging and then take them to Texas or Sante Fe and claim thousands of dollars in bounty.
Nate couldn’t see them lifting Evelyn’s hair. Hers would never pass for an Indian’s. But the Nansusequas with her had the kind of hair a scalp hunter would love. And if they killed Waku and his family, what might they do to Evelyn? They might not want a witness.
Again despair nipped at Nate and he pushed it back down. Suddenly he realized Shakespeare was calling his name and drew rein. “What is it?” he asked, turning in the saddle.
Shakespeare brought the mare to a stop and pointed. “You need to come out of yourself.”
A mile to the northeast smoke curled to the sky, rising in gray coils like a thick snake climbing into the clouds.
“White men made that fire,” Nate remarked. Indians invariably made their fires small so as not to give them away.
Shakespeare grunted in agreement. “Whoever they are, maybe they’ve seen Evelyn and Waku. We should pay them a visit.”
It took all Nate’s self-control not to push at a gallop. He had already been riding too hard for too long and his bay showed signs of flagging. He held to a quick walk, his insides churning.
“How are you holding up?” Shakespeare asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re a terrible liar, Horatio.”
Nate rubbed his jaw and scowled. “I can’t help it. I love that girl so much. It’s hard being a parent, the hardest thing there is.”