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    Bendigo Shafter (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures): A Novel
    Bendigo Shafter (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures): A Novel
    Bendigo Shafter (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures): A Novel
    Ebook487 pages7 hours

    Bendigo Shafter (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures): A Novel

    By Louis L'Amour

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    At what point does a group of strangers become a community?

    When young Bendigo Shafter and a ragtag bunch of travelers settle in the rugged Wyoming mountains, they quickly come to depend on a toughness and wisdom many of them never knew they possessed. Led by the beautiful and resourceful widow Ruth Macken, the settlers battle harsh winters, renegade opportunists, and the destructive lure of gold. Through these brutally demanding experiences, young Bendigo is forged into a man. But when he travels to New York to reclaim the love of Ninon, his childhood sweetheart, Bendigo is faced with new challenges. Will hard-edged instincts, honed from years in the mountains, serve him in the big city? Does Ninon’s heart belong to the lights and glamour of the theater? And if his destiny deems it so, will he be willing to leave the community he toiled so long and hard to build?

    Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures is a project created to release some of the author’s more unconventional manuscripts from the family archives.

    In Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volumes 1 and 2, Beau L’Amour takes the reader on a guided tour through many of the finished and unfinished short stories, novels, and treatments that his father was never able to publish during his lifetime. L’Amour’s never-before-seen first novel, No Traveller Returns, faithfully completed for this program, is a voyage into danger and violence on the high seas.

    Additionally, many beloved classics are being rereleased with an exclusive Lost Treasures postscript featuring previously unpublished material, including outlines, plot notes, and alternate drafts. These postscripts tell the story behind the stories that millions of readers have come to know and cherish.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateAug 29, 2017
    ISBN9780425286128

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    Reviews for Bendigo Shafter (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures)

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    • 5/5
      I forgot how much I like LL's stories of the old west.
    • 3/5
      Nice long western. A fun read.
    • 4/5
      Travelers headed west with a wagon train stop and form a tiny settlement on the plains. A teenager, but a man grown, Bendigo Shafter recounts his experience in helping create a town with a solid foundation. From its roots to the end of the trail, weak and strong stand together against through blizzards, outlaw raids and invasions of hell-fire and brimstone spouting preachers.

      One of my favorite L'Amour books, I always find something new to take away.
    • 4/5
      Not your typical good guy vs bad buy shoot 'em up western from L'Amour. This is a little more thoughtful & told in the first person, from our hero's POV. Bendigo journey's west with his older brother & his family. They set up a new town in the wilderness. L'Amour hits some of the high points of what that entails & makes you think a bit about how hard it was for them.Bendigo is a little to good to be true (typical hero) but it's a fun read. There's plenty of action, but not a lot of slap-leather, get-out-of-town-by-noon stuff. Hunting for lost people in the snow, hunting for food, keeping out some riff-raff & even a glimpse of NYC during that time.The only downside to the book is the philosophizing that Bendigo constantly shares with us. It actually wasn't bad reading as a teenager since it is idealistic & appealed to me at the time. Now, it's a little too trite & too much. Still, a very good book.
    • 5/5
      One of the best of his works, Bendigo Shafter not only has a great storyline (that of a boy growing to manhood, shouldering responsibility, and becoming a well-respected member of his community), but also is extremely informative. This novel contains enough information to teach any reasonably intelligent individual to survive in the wild with little more than a knife and ax. Even includes techniques for cold-weather survival, house building, and tree harvesting.
    • 5/5
      One of L'Amour's more sprawling epics. The founding of a town, the development of a man, the fruition of dreams (or the dieing thereof), the growing of "men to match my mountains." Larger cast of characters than usual, well developed.

    Book preview

    Bendigo Shafter (Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures) - Louis L'Amour

    PART 1

    CHAPTER 1

    WHERE THE WAGONS stopped we built our homes, making the cabins tight against the winter’s coming. Here in this place we would build our town, here we would create something new.

    We would space our buildings, lay out our streets and dig wells to provide water for our people. The idea of it filled me with a heartwarming excitement such as I had not known before.

    Was it this feeling of creating something new that held my brother Cain to his forge throughout the long hours? He knew the steel he turned in his hands, knew the weight of the hammer and where to strike, knew by the glow of the iron what its temperature would be; even the leap of the sparks had a message for his experience.

    He knew when to heat and when to strike and when to dip the iron into the water; yet when is the point at which a group of strangers becomes a community? What it is that forges the will of a people?

    This I did not know, nor had I books to advise me, nor any experience to judge a matter of this kind. We who now were alien, strangers drawn together by wagons moving westward, must learn to work together, to fuse our interests, and to become as one. This we must do if we were to survive and become a town.

    No settlement lay nearer than Fort Bridger, more than a hundred miles to the southwest…or so we had heard.

    All about us was Indian country and we were few.

    There were seven men to do the building, two boys to guard our stock, and thirteen women and children to gather wood and buffalo chips for the fires of the nights to come, and kindling against a time of snow.

    Only now did we realize that we were strangers, and each looked upon the other with distant eyes, judging and being judged, uneasy and causing uneasiness, for here we had elected to make our stand, and we knew not the temper of those with whom we stood.

    It was Ruth Macken, but lately become a widow, who led the move to stop while supplies remained to us, and we who stood beside her were those who favored her decision and joined with her in stopping.

    My father had been a Bible-reading man and named his sons from the Book. Four of our brothers had gone the way of flesh, and of the boys only we two remained. Cain, a wedded man with two children, and I, Bendigo Shafter, eighteen and a man with hands to work.

    Our sister was with us. Lorna was a pretty sixteen, named for a cousin in Wales.

    You will build for the Widow Macken, Cain said to me. Her Bud is a man for his twelve years, but young for the lifting of logs and the notching.

    So I went up the hill through the frost of the morning, pausing when I reached the bench where their cabin would stand. A fair place it was, with a cold spring spilling its water down to the meadow where our oxen and horses grazed upon the brown grass of autumn. Tall pines, sentinel straight, made a park of the bench, and upon the steep slope behind there was a good stand of timber.

    The view from the bench was a fine one, and I stood to look upon it, filling myself with the quiet morning and the beauty of the long valley below the Beaver Rim.

    You have an eye for beauty, Mr. Shafter, Ruth Macken said to me, and I kept my eyes from her, feeling the flush and the heat climbing my neck as it forever did when a pretty woman spoke to me. It is a good thing in a man.

    It works a magic, I said, to look upon distance.

    Some people can’t abide it. Bigness makes them feel small instead of offering a challenge, but I am glad my Bud will grow to manhood here. A big country can breed big men.

    Yes, ma’am. I glanced about the bench. I have come to build you a cabin, then.

    Build it so when spring comes I can add a long room on the south, for when the wagons roll again I shall open a trading post.

    She turned to Bud, who had come up the slope from the meadow. You will help Mr. Shafter and learn from him. It is not every man who can build a house.

    Ruth Macken had a way of making a man feel large in his tracks, so what could I do but better than my best?

    The morning chill spoke of winter coming, yet I notched each log with care and trimmed them with smooth, even blows.

    There is a knowledge in the muscles of a workman that goes beyond the mind, a skill that lies in the flesh and the fiber, and my hands and heart held a love for the wood, the good wood whose fresh chips fell cleanly to the left and the right.

    Yet as I worked my thoughts worried over the problem of our town. We were ill-prepared for winter, although our sudden decision to stop left us better off than had we pushed on to the westward.

    Going on would have been simple, for travel is an escape, and as long as our wagons moved our decisions could be postponed. When one moves, one is locked in the treadmill of travel, and all decisions must await a destination. By choosing to stop we had brought our refuge tumbling about us, and our problems could no longer be avoided.

    The promised land is always a distant land, aglow with golden fire. It is a land one never attains, for once attained one faces fulfillment and the knowledge that whatever a land may promise, it may also demand a payment of courage and strength.

    To destroy is easy, to build is hard. To scoff is also easy, but to go on in the face of scoffing and to do what is right is the way of a man.

    Neely Stuart already regretted the stopping and spoke of continuing on to California in the spring, and Tom Croft, who listened to Neely, was a man who never knew whether the course he had taken was the right one. So he was always open to persuasion. Nor was his Mary of a different mind.

    Even Webb talked of going on when spring should again bring grass to the hills, yet he had been the first to break off from the wagon train and follow Ruth Macken in her decision. He was a discontented, irritable man, always impatient for change, yet he was also strong and resolute and would stand up in an emergency. He had a son, an arrogant, disagreeable boy named Foss…short for Foster.

    John Sampson, my brother Cain, and I were for staying on, which left only Ethan Sackett, a single man who had been guide for the wagon train but had chosen to leave it when we did.

    What has he to do with us? Webb demanded, when I wondered aloud if Sackett would stay on. He’s a drifter, not one of us.

    He chose to stay with us, and that makes him one of us.

    He chose to stay because of Mrs. Macken. Would he have come with us had it not been for her? I say he does not belong here.

    It was our first night around the fire, the first after leaving the wagon train, and we huddled close to the flames for there was an autumn chill in the night. The truth was we were all a little frightened at what we had done, and our nerves were on edge because of it.

    He won’t be with us long, Neely Stuart said. His kind have no stability. He is more like an Indian than a white man.

    Who among us, John Sampson asked mildly, has wintered in this country? I think before the winter is gone we shall be glad he is among us.

    We could have been miles from here, Stuart complained. We were fools to stop.

    Mrs. Macken, I told them, will open a store, come spring.

    To sell what? Stuart scoffed. And to whom?

    She will sell boots and clothing she and her husband packed against that purpose and vegetables we ourselves will raise. Whenever possible she will accept goods in payment, goods to be sold again.

    A silly woman’s dream!

    There might be good trade with the wagon trains, Webb admitted, but no matter. When it is warm again I shall move on.

    I shall stay.

    It was the calm voice of my brother, to whom all men listened. Until then he had remained silent, watching the leap of the flames and thinking his thoughts.

    Cain’s face was square, massive, and might have been hewn from oak. His body was also square, but large and powerful. He moved easily, as one who is in complete command of himself and his every muscle. He was not a man given to talking, speaking only when his mind was made up, not as many men do who shape their thoughts as they speak.

    I shall open my smithy and a shop for the mending of guns. I believe the Widow Macken knows what she is about.

    Stay on if you wish, Stuart said defensively. I shall not. Yet his tone had weakened before the weight of my brother’s decision.

    I shall leave with the first grass, Tom Croft said. The wilderness and the thought of Indians distresses my wife.

    The sickness of disappointment lay upon me, for if they left our strength would be pared to nothing, and we must also go. We were too few as it was, and if we were attacked by Indians our chances would be slight.

    This valley we had chosen lay upon a highroad for the Shoshone, but it was traveled by the Sioux as well and occasionally by the Ute or Blackfeet. Our presence invited trouble.

    On the morning I went up the slope to build for the Widow Macken. There was a fringe of ice along the stream’s edge, and the meadow was white with frost. My breath showed in a cloud, and the bodies of the cattle steamed as they worked, hauling down the logs after I felled the trees.

    The morning air sang with the hum of axes, a fresh and lovely sound on a chill morning. Looking down from the bench to where the town would lie, I could see my brother pacing off the limits of his cabin site.

    The blade of the double-bitted axe sank deep, and chips as large as a man’s palm fell into the needles under foot. From time to time I paused to listen to the squirrels, scolding from the pines nearby, yet the pauses were few for the time was short. There is a pleasure in working with the hands and muscles, a pleasure in the use of good tools, and I gloried in the grip of my hands upon the axe and the smell of honest sweat and fresh pine wood.

    When I went up the slope with Bud beside me, I chose the trees with care, choosing not only for size and straightness, but to leave the forest as it was, to give the trees room to grow taller and thicker.

    Trees are a crop, Bud Macken, I said, to be taken only with care and a thought for the forest.

    But there are lots of trees, he protested.

    A forest is a living thing like a human body, I told him, each part dependent on all the other parts. A forest needs its birds, its beaver…all its animals and plants. The forest gives shelter to the birds, but they repay the debt with the insects they eat, the droppings they leave, the seeds they carry off to plant elsewhere. The beaver builds dams for himself, but the dams keep water on the land, and although the beaver cut trees to use and to eat, their ponds provide water for trees during the hot, dry months.

    For a moment I held still. Listen, I whispered, and you can hear the forest breathe.

    This was a lesson my father had taught me, that we only borrowed from the land, and borrowed with discretion and a thought for the years to come.

    He taught us that to live in the wilderness one must live with it. Live from it, but allow it to live also. Such was my intention now, and so I explained to Bud Macken my reasons for choosing trees as I did.

    What I had received from my father and Cain, this I would pass on to Bud and perhaps someday to sons of my own, for a bee that gathers honey must pass the honey on to those who can best use it. Yet it was little enough that I had to teach and much I had to learn.

    When I had felled my third tree, I put Bud to trimming the limbs, watching him first to be sure he knew the use of an axe, for this was no country in which to be left without a foot. I was beginning the fourth tree when Ethan Sackett rode up the hill to draw rein beside me.

    He leaned on the pommel of his saddle and watched for a moment before he spoke. Bendigo, at this time of year there will be few Indians about, but do you take a walk up the ridge now and again to look over the country. If they are about we must know it, so keep your eyes wide for a sign.

    You believe they are holed up for the winter?

    Soon…but a body can’t be too caring. Bendigo, I count on you. I cut little ice with those men down yonder, but neither do I pay it much mind. But if there’s trouble comes I figure you’ll stand. You and that brother of yours.

    Webb will fight. I have a feeling you can count on him, too. He’s a mean, cantankerous man, but come fightin’ time, he’ll be around.

    You are right, I am thinking. You keep shy of that man, Bendigo. He’s dangerous.

    He rode away then, and as I worked I gave thought to what he had said and began to gather the sense of it. There was a temper in Webb that flared sudden and often. At first I had thought him only a sullen, disagreeable man, but as the days passed on the westward way I saw him change. He took no pushing, and when somebody moved toward him he pushed back…hard.

    The westward way had a different effect on folks, and many of them grew in size and gathered in spirit. John Sampson was such a man. Back home in the States he had been the village handyman, and nobody paid much mind to what he thought about anything. He did his work and he took his pay, and that was the sum of it. Folks turned to teachers, ministers, storekeepers, and bankers for opinions.

    But once you got out away from home on a wagon train, a minister or a banker wasn’t much help; a handyman could keep your wagon rolling. Time and again, on the trip west, Sampson helped folks out of trouble, and finally they began to ask his advice on things. When they got it, it was good advice.

    When we crossed the Mississippi and rolled out over the grasslands some folks were scared of the size of it all. Miles of grass stretched on all sides, the vast bowl of the sky was overhead, and there were a few who turned around and ran for home, their tails between their legs. There were others, like John Sampson, who began to grow and to take big steps in the land.

    Webb grew, too, but in another way. There had always been a streak of violence in him, but fear of public opinion and fear of the law had toned it down. Now a body could see the restraint falling away. Nobody had a reason to cross him, so all had gone smoothly so far, but Ethan Sackett had read him aright.

    The work was hard, but none of us had led easy lives, and we buckled down to it. John Sampson and Cain were the first to start their cabins after I began on Mrs. Macken’s place. Neely, he sat on his wagon tongue talking to Tom Croft about what fools they had been to stop. Webb sat listening for a spell, and then he went to whetting his axe.

    Come noontime he was close to catching up with Sampson.

    My eyes kept going to the hills, and my ears reached out for sound; we lived with fear.

    This was a savage land, a lonely land, yet here the foundations of our homes would be laid, and here we would sink the roots of our lives. Here, for some of us, our children would be born.

    We accepted the danger but took no unnecessary risk. It is a fool who invites trouble, a child who is reckless, for life holds risks enough without reaching out for more.

    There would be cold, there would be hunger, there would be snow, and no doubt before spring brought life to the plains again we would suffer hardship. We had not enough food to last a long winter, and when our cabins were built the hunting and the cutting of wood must begin.

    A day passed and then another. Three or four times each day I went up the slope, then scaled the sheer white cliff above it, finding several ways a man could climb easily and swiftly, almost as though steps were built for him. Each time I scanned the country for Indians, and also to know the country. In my mind I measured the steps to the next creek, to the tall, lightning-scarred pine, to the swell of ground.

    In a blinding snowstorm or the dark of night such knowledge might mean the difference between life and death, and later when I could walk the ground I would know it better.

    John Sampson and Cain were placing their cabins so the ends could be joined by a palisade. Stuart and Croft were building opposite them and Webb a bit further along, yet all could be joined by a wall or the wagons to make a fortress of sorts.

    Stuart came up the hill to watch me work. She’s crazy, he said, to build so far from us.

    There was something in what he said, for her house would be all of a hundred yards from the others, and such isolation could be dangerous. Yet I knew she built for tomorrow, and she accepted the risks. But I, who must do the building, planned the house strong and true.

    The logs I chose were thick and heavy, and I fitted them snugly together. There would be no chinking in this cabin, for I worked each log smooth with a broadaxe and adze, and laid them face to face. Eighteen inches thick at bottom was each wall, tapering to twelve under the eaves, and the fireplace was built of stones artfully chosen.

    On the fourth day Ethan Sackett came down from the hill and took up an axe and worked beside me. He was a strong, lithe man, easy with his strength, and he handled an axe well. He worked with me an hour or more, then went down the hill and worked with John Sampson, who was the oldest among us.

    Twice during the week he brought in game. The first time it was two antelopes. Not the best of eating, he said, but it is fresh meat.

    The second time it was a deer that dressed out at nearly two hundred pounds. He cut it well and passed it around, leaving some meat at each fire.

    Tom Croft, who was a good worker when he put his back into it, stayed on the job better than Neely Stuart, who was forever finding something else that needed doing to keep him from work. He’d be going to the bucket for a drink, or talking to his wife.

    And then it began to snow.

    CHAPTER 2

    WHEN THE FIRST flakes fell I was up on the ridge cutting poles for the roof, which was half-finished. I’d paused a moment to catch my wind, and when the first flake touched my cheek I felt a chill of fear.

    By now the passes to the west were closed, and the way to the east was long. We were trapped in this lonely place, building our town. The winter would be cold, hard, and long, and we were ill-prepared to face it.

    Flakes sifted down by twos and threes, then faster and still faster. Bunching my poles I threw a half-hitch on one end and a timber hitch on the other and started the team back along the slope.

    From the ridge where I’d been cutting I could see the shape of our town. Cain and John Sampson had left off working each on his own and were roofing Cain’s house, with Ethan passing poles up to Sampson. Mrs. Sampson was hustling bedding from her wagon into the cabin.

    Ruth Macken’s cabin was a worrisome distance from the others but had the finest site.

    Smoke was lifting from Cain’s house, the first inside fire in town. I could see the women-folks and youngsters coming in from gathering sticks. Sampson was only a shadow through the snow, still working on the roof.

    When I got the poles to the cabin I climbed up on the roof, and Bud handed the poles up to me. One by one I laid the poles in place, forming the temporary roof that would keep the Mackens warm until spring came when we could add a solid plank roof. When the last pole was in place I came down, and we started pitching dirt on the roof to seal it tight.

    Ruth Macken went inside and started a fire, and when she returned to the door Ethan was there to help her move her bedding inside. She had brought her husband’s favorite chair, knocked down and packed flat, and a chest of drawers she said came from the old country.

    When I saw the books she carried I looked at them wishfully. I had never owned a book, nor had the chance to read but four or five, although I’d read those carefully and often.

    Of a sudden there was a pounding of hoofs, and Ethan turned sharply around, his gun half-drawn under his buckskin shirt.

    It was Neely Stuart. He leaned from his horse, trying to peer into the door. Is Mae here? She went out with the little Shafter girl and Lenny Sampson.

    They were over in the creek bottom when I was cuttin’ poles atop the ridge. They should be back by now.

    A gust whipped snow into our faces and there was a moan in the wind. For a moment the wind caught our breath and we could not speak.

    Come on! Neely said. We’ll roust out ever’body and hunt for them.

    You go out there with a lot of tenderfeet, Ethan said, and you’ll lose some of them.

    Who asked you? Neely shouted. That’s my sister out there!

    Ethan was in no way put out by Neely’s anger. How much experience have you had in blizzards, Stuart? A man can lose himself in fifty yards, and judging by the sound of the wind, this one will be pretty bad.

    Ethan’s right, I admitted. You can’t even see the other houses now.

    You coming or not?

    We’re coming, Ethan said. He turned to Ruth Macken. You’ll be all right, ma’am?

    Bud’s here, and we’ve some unpacking to do and a meal to get. When you come back, come to supper. I’ll have some hot soup waiting.

    We rode down to town, unable to talk for the wind blowing our words down our throats, yet we thought of what was to come; not one of us was fixed for winter.

    It was amazing the way the snow piled up. In the few minutes it had been falling there were two to three inches on the level, and it was starting to drift against the north side of the cabins.

    Neely had reached Cain’s house ahead of us, and when we came through the door accompanied by a gust of blown snow he was talking. …if that Sackett opens his mouth in here, I’ll…!

    Whatever it is you’ll do, Ethan said mildly, you’d better save it until later. We’ve got to find those youngsters before they freeze to death.

    You stay out of this! Stuart shouted. He turned on the others. Scatter out and hunt for them!

    Ethan squatted on his heels against the wall. You’d be wanderin’ blind in the snow. You start seven men out in a storm like this and some of them aren’t comin’ back. You’ve got women-folks will need you before spring comes.

    Neely started to shout, but Cain stopped him with a gesture. What did you have in mind?

    Bendigo here, he saw those young uns down along the creek, and if they were doin’ what I figure, they never saw that storm comin’.

    He turned his eyes to Cain Shafter. I should do the hunting because I know this country better than anybody here, and there ain’t anybody going to mind if I don’t come back. I’d like Bendigo, if he’d care to come along.

    What about me? Webb demanded. I grew up in snow country. I seen a sight of it.

    You’re welcome. I spoke of Bendigo because he’s single and he’s steady. Doesn’t fly off the handle. A blizzard in this country is nothing to play around with.

    While you sit here talking those youngsters are freezing! Neely’s voice shook with anger. Don’t you try to tell me what to do! I’m going out!

    All right. Where do you figure to look?

    Out there! Neely flung a wide arm.

    Big country. Ethan got to his feet. Better take it slow. You get warmed up and you start to sweat. The first time you slow down or stop to rest the sweat will freeze, and you’ll be wearing a thin coat of ice next to your skin.

    You think they stayed with the creek? Cain asked.

    Sure. There’s hawthorn along the creek, and my guess is they found some late berries hanging. Sometimes they stay on until January, and the first day here I rode down there and saw the bushes heavy with them. Those young uns are hungry for sweet, and it’s there, so they probably just went on from bush to bush. When they realized it was snowing heavy they probably stayed right there, knowing we’d come for them.

    Ordinarily that would be good thinking, but knowing how flighty Mae Stuart was, I couldn’t see her using that much judgment. Mae was sixteen and pretty, but mighty notional. She’d put up her hair about a year back, and she was flouncy, feeling her oats, like. She’d been making eyes at men-folks since she was shy of thirteen and was getting to where she wanted to do something about it.

    Ann Shafter, Cain’s oldest, was only ten. Lenny Sampson, although a bright youngster, was six.

    "Bendigo, Webb, an’ me will go over to where the brush thins out and work north from there.

    Neely, if you’re bound and determined to go, you and Cain can cross to the upper creek and work back. We’d best search every clump of brush. They’ll not hear yelling in this wind.

    He looked around. The rest of you stay put, and don’t leave the house for any reason at all. He was listening to the wind. In this weather a man shouldn’t get fifty feet from shelter.

    Ethan had shortened his distance from fifty yards to fifty feet, and when we stepped outside I could understand why. At the door he paused to say one more thing.

    "If we don’t find those youngsters by the time we meet up, then we’d best all come in. Then Bendigo and me will go out again.

    It’s a long time until spring, and if anybody can be spared it’s us. There’s more to be considered than those youngsters out there.

    We went afoot and it was cold. No use for horses in that kind of weather, not where we had to look, down in the brush where it was a tangle of deadfalls.

    A time or two I’d seen blizzards, but nothing like this. The wind came down off the mountain like there was nothing between us and the North Pole. The snow no longer fell in flakes but in frozen particles that stung the skin like blown needles.

    Even walking across the wind it was hard to catch a breath, but we tucked our chins behind our collars and breathed through the merest slit of a mouth.

    When we reached the stream at the foot of the cliff it was a relief. The trees were mountain alder, clumps of quaking aspen, willow, hawthorn, and an occasional spruce.

    Everything was buried deep in drifted snow, the smaller bushes looking like snow-covered hummocks of earth or rock. If we found those youngsters it would be a miracle.

    The cold was intense. Here or there the snow had heaped itself over a fallen tree or some rocks to form a hollow where an animal or child might have curled up, so we dared pass none of them. Once, slipping on an icy log hidden beneath the snow, I had a bad fall.

    When I got up I saw Ethan squatted on his heels, studying something.

    It was a rabbit snare, rigged at the opening of a run. The snow around the snare was disturbed and there were flecks of blood, most of them partly covered by snow. Ethan put a finger on the thickest spot of blood, and it smeared slightly under pressure. Almost frozen, but not quite.

    Indians, he said.

    We felt a chill beyond that of the cold. Within the hour, no doubt much less than that, an Indian had taken a rabbit from that snare and killed it. He must have been inspecting his snares at the same time that the children were along the creek.

    Webb was a hard man, but he had a child of his own, and he knew these children. Injuns! he said. Injuns got them.

    The tracks that might have told us more lay under the new fallen snow, and the storm was growing worse. It was only by chance that we had found the snare, for in a few minutes it would have been covered.

    We had thought to find the children before they could freeze, perhaps huddled somewhere out of the wind waiting for us.

    We were armed with pistols, but, wary of freezing our hands, had carried no rifles.

    Yet we could not abandon the search. The Indians might not have known they were there, and hearing the Indians, the children might have hidden themselves well. So we continued to search every clump of bushes, around the roots of blow-downs, under the hanging, snow-laden branches of the spruce, but we no longer expected to find them.

    By the time the others came floundering toward us we had given up hope. Bunched together in the partial shelter of thick trees, stamping our feet and beating our hands against the cold, we listened to them, who had had no more luck than we.

    Neely Stuart complained, putting the blame on Ethan, but the scout ignored him. From the look on his face I knew he was considering the Indians. Given knowledge of the country and the ways of redskins, a man might guess how far they had gone and where they might be camped.

    Bad off as those youngsters might be, I almost wished my sister Lorna was with them instead of Mae. Lorna was pretty, too, prettier than Mae, but Lorna was like Cain in some ways, a cool-thinking girl. If anybody could have found a way out, Lorna could.

    There was nothing to do but go back home. There was a chance they had found their way back, but nobody would have bet on it.

    Ethan fell in beside me as we started back. He had faced directly away from that clump of trees, taken the wind at a certain angle on his face, and led off. It was the only guide in a storm like that, and although the wind might shift it wasn’t likely to shift that much at this stage of the storm.

    Bendigo, are you game to take a chance? I’ve a notion where those Indians might be.

    Just the two of us?

    We’d not make it out and back tonight. Are you with me?

    To my dying day I shall remember that blizzard. Ethan moved up to Cain, who had taken over breaking trail. Hold across the wind, he advised. Let it take you on the left eye and nose, like. You’ll reach sight of the valley in a few minutes. Once over that low ridge, hold along the edge of the trees above Mrs. Macken’s and you’ll make it.

    Cain stopped. He turned his broad back square to the wind and looked at Ethan. What about you?

    Bendigo an’ me, we’ve an idea. If worse comes to worst we’ll just dig a hole in the snow and sit it out. A man can wait out a storm if he doesn’t exhaust himself first.

    We faced into the storm and plodded away, leaning against the wind. Darkness had come upon us, and the wind blew a full gale, cutting at our exposed brows like knives. It seemed an age before we climbed a knoll and stumbled into a thick stand of aspen where we stopped to catch our breath.

    The day we fetched up to this place, Ethan explained, I spotted the sign of eight to ten Indians with their travois, lodges, and goods. Not wanting to frighten the women-folks I said nothing. Maybe they were passing through, but that snare was reset, so I figure they’re close by.

    It was almost still inside the aspen grove. The slim trunks stood so close they formed a barrier against the wind.

    The best place for those Indians to wait out a storm is in the hollow right below this hill, so we’re a-goin’ down there.

    Cold or not, I loosened the buttons on my coat and laid a hand to that old pistol of mine. Never in my born days had I drawn against any man, and I had no mind to unless the need was great.

    You keep that handy. An Indian respects strength but mighty little else.

    We went down the hill through the deepening snow, smelling smoke on the wind, and sure enough, the lodges were there, three of them, covered with snow except around the smoke hole at the top where the warmth had melted the snow away.

    We listened outside each lodge until we heard Mae speak and some arguing among the Indians. Ethan lifted the flap and went in, with me right behind him.

    A small fire burned in the center of the tent, and the air was stifling hot and smoky after the cold outside. Right off I spotted Mae and the youngsters beside her. They seemed unhurt, only scared.

    There were five buck Indians in there. One young brave was on his feet arguing, and he was mad as all get-out.

    The others were older, and the one at whom the buck seemed to be pointing his words was oldest of all. Now that one might be old, but his eyes were clear, and it seemed to me I saw a gleam of malice in those eyes, like maybe he didn’t like that young buck too much.

    Talk broke off when we came in, and the young brave put a hand to his tomahawk. The next thing I knew he was looking into the business end of my six-shooter.

    Now he was no more surprised than I, for I’d no thought of drawing that gun. It just fetched out when the need came, and young as that warrior was, he knew what that gun meant, and he let go of his tomahawk like it was red hot.

    Ethan Sackett, he started talking to that old Indian in Shoshone.

    After a minute he stopped talking, and the old man spoke. Ethan interpreted for me out of the side of his mouth. "The young buck wants to keep Mae and kill the young uns, but the old man doesn’t like it. He says the Shoshone are friends to the white man.

    He’s right about that, but there’s more to this argument than a body can see at first glimpse. I think the old man wants to take that young buck down a peg. Gettin’ too big for his britches.

    My eyes had never left that young warrior. He was mad as a trapped catamount and ready to pitch in and go to fighting.

    Tell them we are friends, Ethan, and tell them to come when the snow leaves and trade with us. Tell them to bring their furs, hides, or whatever. And thank them for saving the young ones from the snow. Tell them when they come in the spring we will have presents for them.

    Sackett, he talked for a while, but before the old man could reply that young buck busted in with a furious harangue, gesturing now and again toward the other lodges, like he was about to go for help.

    We’d best take the youngsters and light out, I suggested. This shapes up to trouble.

    Ethan never turned his head. Mae, get up and come over here and bring the young uns with you.

    When that young buck saw what was happening he started to yell, and I belted him in the stomach with my fist. When he doubled over I sledged him across the skull with my gun barrel.

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