Charles West - Day of the Wolf

Wolf was gone for over an hour. When he returned, he had nothing to show for his hunt but about a good handful of serviceberries in his hat. He offered them to the women, but only Billie Jean sampled them. “You didn’t have much of a huntin’ trip, did you, stud?” Lorena remarked, unable to resist teasing him. “I thought all you wild mountain men always came back with some kinda game.”

“Can’t kill anythin’ where there ain’t nothin’,” Wolf said, drew his knife, and speared a thick piece of the salty meat left in the frying pan. He accepted the cup of coffee she offered.

“There’s beans in that pot,” Billie Jean said. “They’re probably still warm. At least, they were hot about an hour ago.”

“Much obliged,” he said, and helped himself. He saw no need to tell them the real reason he was late for supper. Around the bend of the creek, he had discovered tracks where a dozen or more horses had crossed over, heading north. They were unshod horses, Indian ponies, and they had crossed only several hours before, by his estimation. Whether they were friends or hostile, there was no way to tell, but they were traveling in the same direction he planned to take. So he followed them across and up through a rocky draw that emerged to a ridge top. At the top of the ridge, he looked back to see if the wagon and camp were visible from that vantage point. Relieved to find they were not, he continued down the ridge for a mile or so with still no sight of the Indians. They were most likely Crow, he told himself, but there was no way to tell for sure. Since it appeared that the Indians were not aware of their presence, he thought it best not to mention them to the women. He wondered, however, if it might be best to swing over a couple of miles to the west in the morning, just to put a little more distance between their trail and that of the Indians. When they set out in the morning, it would only take them a few hours to clear this stretch of rough ridges. There was nothing but wide, flat prairie after that, country where a wagon could be seen for quite some distance. It was not the country he wanted to be caught in if the tracks he found were made by a Sioux war party, especially one of that size.

His supper finished, he walked over to the wagon where Billie Jean was taking a close inspection of the suspect wagon wheel. “Well, it doesn’t look any worse than it did this morning,” she told him. “I think it’s shrunk back a little, but Lorena’s sure gonna have to have it fixed when we get to Fort Laramie.” His only response was a slight nod, but he was thankful that it seemed to be holding up. He turned then and walked up a slight rise where his horse was pulling up what little grass it could find. Using his saddle for a pillow, he wrapped his blanket around him and turned in for the night.

“He’d rather sleep with his horse than one of us,” Rose commented to Lorena. “There’s something wrong with a man who won’t take a free tussle when it’s offered to him.”

“That might be so,” Lorena said. “There might be somethin’ wrong about him, but I believe there’s a lot of things right about him.” She had given much thought to their partnership with the strange young man, and she had come to the conclusion that she was wrongly suspicious of his intentions. For one thing, it didn’t figure that, if he had something evil in mind, he would have bothered to lead them this far to make his move. She expressed as much to her two friends. “You know,” she said, “I think he’s just shy as hell when it comes to women. I don’t think he knows anythin’ about dealin’ with anybody but Injuns.”

“You may be right,” Rose allowed. “He acts like he’s been living in a cave for most of his life, I swear, but he wouldn’t look so wild if he wasn’t wearing clothes made outta animal skins.” She laughed at her own remark. Finding humor in all but the most dire situations, she reminded them, “Course Lorena’s already tried to get him outta those buckskin britches, and she couldn’t do it.”

“Huh,” Billie Jean chuckled, “it’d be like skinning a wildcat.”

“You do carry on, Rose,” Lorena declared. “We’d best forget about skinnin’ Mister…” She paused then. “Damn, I don’t even know his name. Did he say?” Billie Jean and Rose both shook their heads. Lorena shrugged. “Well, anyway, we’d best get to bed. It might be a long day tomorrow.”

Up on the rise above the creek bank, the subject of the women’s conversation slept, much the way a deer slept, with his ears attuned to the sounds of the creek around him, and alert to any sound that did not belong. The tracks he had seen earlier in the evening had told him that the party of Indians were on their way somewhere to the north, and should be far ahead of them, leaving them no cause for concern. Still, he would remain alert. Indians, like everybody else, could, and often did, change their minds.

Up before first light, Wolf freshened the fire, knowing that the women would most likely want to make some coffee before starting out. He would suggest that they drink it fast and get under way, stopping for breakfast when it was time to rest the horses. “I figured I’d wait till you got up before I started coffee,” he told Lorena when she climbed out of the wagon, wearing nothing but a suit of long johns for protection from the chilly morning air. “I ain’t got the coffee beans, anyway.”

“Uh,” she grunted, trying to blink away the sleep from her eyes. “If you’ll go fill the coffeepot, I’ll grind some beans, after I go behind the wagon to pee.”

“All right,” he replied. “You’d best get them other two outta their beds. We need to put some country behind us before we stop to rest the horses and eat breakfast.”

“What’s the big hurry?” Lorena asked, thinking that she was hungry now.

“It’s better for the horses,” he told her. “We can give ’em a longer rest. Easier on ’em in the mornin’ when it’s still cooler, too.” His real concern was for the Indian pony tracks he had seen and the fact that they were too close to the prior line of travel he had at first planned. “They can travel longer in a day that way,” he added.

“Hell, I don’t wanna travel longer days,” Lorena retorted. “My behind is already gettin’ blisters from settin’ on that wagon seat so long.”

Wolf ignored her complaining. “Best we get started right away,” he stated stoically, and left to fill the coffeepot with water.

She started to protest, but decided to let him have his way. He was probably just eager to get the trip over with, so he could go back to living with the Indians and the animals, or whatever it was he wanted to do. After all, he wasn’t charging her anything for the job, so she had no reason to complain. “Rose! You and Billie Jean crawl outta there! We’re fixin’ to get started pretty soon, and if you want a cup of coffee before we go, you best shake a leg.” She waited a moment to hear their groans of protest, then unbuttoned the flap on her long johns and proceeded to squat right where she stood. “Hell,” she groused, “he can’t see me from down by the creek.” She paused a moment, then said, “I don’t care if he can.”

As Lorena expected, there were complaints from Rose and Billie Jean when she informed them that breakfast was going to have to wait until midmorning. “And we probably wouldn’t stop then if it wasn’t for the horses,” she remarked.

“Don’t we have any say in it?” Billie Jean questioned. Her protest was interrupted then when she had to grab a rag and pull the coffeepot off the hot coals when it started to boil over. “We aren’t on any kind of schedule. Why don’t you tell him we’ll go when we’re ready? We wanna eat breakfast first.”