Page 28 of Sure as Shooting

Chapter Twelve

Huntley appeared extremely furious to have two weapons leveled upon him.

“Land’s sake!” he shouted. “What’re you trying to do, take my topknot?”

Whit immediately holstered his revolver. “Huntley! My apologies, partner. Belle here just heard footsteps in that patch of snow.”

Huntley looked at Belle suspiciously. “Heard footsteps? From under the roar of that waterfall?”

She shrugged. “I’m a scout, right?”

“Yes, and what a splendid scout you are! You couldn’t even manage to follow me to the top of that narrow ridge without getting lost in a cave.”

“Ah.” Whit smiled in a conciliatory manner. “We weren’t exactly ‘lost’ in the cave, Huntley.”

Pride swelled in Belle when Huntley’s expression changed to one of jealousy. He actually looked quite handsome with his nostrils flaring like that. He appeared to want to vent his rage on Belle, but turned instead to Whit. “Screwing while you’re supposed to be hunting down Indians? Listen, I’ll have more to say on that subject later, but right now, I’m about to order the boys into a skirmish line. You can come or not as you wish, but I’d suggest you hang back.” He frowned his most ferocious frown at Whit. “Seeing your penchant for pulling weapons on individuals who are not the enemy.”

Without anymore ado, Huntley leaped over a granite ledge and was skittering down the cliff face, back to where he’d left his men. Belle followed soundlessly in her moccasins, but when they had nearly regained the battalion, she stopped Whit.

“He does seem very angry that we were…intimate in the cave.”

Whit appeared unconcerned. “We both enjoy a challenge, the challenge of competition. And it seems I’m winning this hand, since he’s barely said a civil word to you.”

This did not sit well with Belle. “So is that it? I’m only a prize? Two competitive men who can’t bear to lose? And you’ll dump me the second you feel you’ve won?” She was extremely fond of Whit and trusted him immensely, but she was not prepared to be “won” as of yet. Why, she’d just been rescued from an Indian encampment where she’d spoken nothing but a strange language for an entire year! And she had no wish to become knocked up again, so what use could she be to a potential husband?

Whit took her hands between his gloves. “Miss Belle. You are far more than a prize, to either one of us. You are the first woman I’ve been on such a friendly and devoted basis with. Ever. You may not have noticed, but most of my truck has solely been with men. You’ve opened up entirely new vistas I never dreamed possible. Not least among them that women can be the most witty, intelligent, and companionable partners on God’s green earth.”

Belle pouted. “And Huntley? How am I more than a prize to him? Because he wishes to keep a decent maid?”

Whit laughed that dazzling, white-toothed smile. “Why do you belittle yourself, Belle? Did it occur to you Huntley could be smitten with you because you’re beautiful, smart, and fresh? He hasn’t been smitten since he lost his wife five years ago. This is all something new to him, and he doesn’t remember how to act. How to court. Me? I never knew how. So you are fresh from the mountains living with Indians. All three of us will just have to make up the rules as we go along.”

Major Ashbury bellowed the order to “form into line!” The pair scrambled to join the ranks of the rear guard and “forward marched” without any effort at concealment.

Bud was beside her, and his smile betrayed the glee he felt at once again engaging in combat. “We’re going to make mincemeat of those red devils!”

“I have somewhat of a conflict,” Belle admitted. “I have no love for Chief Tenaya, but my tribe only showed me kindness while I lived with them.”

Bud’s glee turned swiftly to rage. “After they murdered your entire family! How could you forget, Bellissima?”

“I’ve not forgotten. I just wish they weren’t all doomed to be herded like cattle onto a small reservation where whites will continue to encroach.”

“Have you forgotten?” Bud gnashed his teeth. “You are white, Bellissima! Would you rather it be you who was herded?”

Not waiting for a response, Bud stomped angrily forward to join his compadres. Belle marched silently along, recalling the many Cherokee—Dr. Whitney’s tribe—who had passed through Missouri during the winter of 1838. Bedraggled, starving, given only blankets infected with the pox, they were supposed to walk very far around her town to avoid making any whites ill. Forced out of their ancestral lands in the States, they were being removed to Indian Territory, a place considered the bush where no one yet cared about using the land. She knew Whit had been born in New York City in 1817. But that could have easily been Whit, dragging his carcass past her house with eyeballs like death, meager flesh frozen to the bone.

They discovered the Indian encampment where Belle and Major Ashbury had predicted it would be. Oddly, the village surrendered without a shot being fired. They all threw up their hands in submission, crying in Spanish, “¡Paz! ¡Paz!” Peace, peace! The chief recognized the major and they confabbed. Belle learned not by speaking to a Yankee but an Indian that Ashbury and the chief had agreed to send out runners into the Deep Grassy Valley to find Chief Tenaya and his band of Grizzlies. While Indians removed their belongings from their bark ochum huts, Belle learned from a few of “His Satanic Majesty’s” subjectsthat Tenaya was so far into the Deep Grassy Valley, if the snow continued the tribe could not leave, that it would be a long time for them to climb out of it.

“Well,” Belle told Whit, who was dispensing aguardiente brandy to the exhausted troops. “You might just get your wish. We may have to enter the Deep Grassy Valley after all.”

The Indians told her that to show their obeisance and willingness to go onto the reservation, they would apply torches to their own ochums.

But it was Bud who lit the first torch and jubilantly held the flame to the first bark hut. He claimed he had found some rope reatas and a bridle in an ochum,which had been stolen from him in Agua Fria while everyone was awaiting action from the commissioners.

* * * *

After the surrender of some seventy-two Indians, Huntley left guards in charge and went to confront Whit.

Huntley was in a sweat about having discovered Whit and his maid screwing, or whatever they were doing in that cave, when he’d imagined that at least Belle, his ostensible scout, would follow him up the cliff face. His plan was to become on friendlier terms with her, to make some headway. Where Whit, that sensual surgeon, had already frigged her cunt most intimately, Huntley had only held extremely remote and civil conversations with her. But not only did they not follow him up the mountain, they retreated into a romantic cave under a sparkling cataract. Belle had emerged rearranging her animal skins about her body, looking as flushed as a well-fucked woman, and Whit had a superior smirk on his face.