The Adventures of Silk and Shakespeare by Win Blevins Page A

least covered Hairy’s bugling.
    He awoke the next morning to find their horses gone.

CHAPTER NINE
    O most pernicious woman!
    — Hamlet , I.v
    It was a clean sweep—Hairy’s broken-down pair, Iron Kettle’s riding horse and pack horse, and Rosie.
    “Why, you…,” Hairy began. “How could you be sleeping out there and not hear anything?”
    “Big stupid,” put in Iron Kettle. “Between the bugling of the bull elk and the bugling of the bull Hairy, how could anybody hear?”
    Tal was looking around for tracks. “What kind of moccasin is this?” he said in a deliberately businesslike way, pointing.
    Hairy and Iron Kettle came and bent over it.
    “Crow,” said Hairy. “Crow?”
    “Yah,” said Iron Kettle. “Is my moccasin.” She whomped Hairy on the back, only half-playfully.
    “How we gonna catch them on foot?” muttered Hairy.
    Tal was checking out other prints in the dust where the horses had been picketed. “I think this one’s different,” he called. He spotted several more like it, small fragments and large, twisting in all directions.
    Iron Kettle stooped. Then she gave a little wobbling, dying cry, a cry that sounded like fear itself. “Blackfoot. So far into our country.” Iron Kettle was looking at Hairy. “Black-foot raiders. And me with a big stupid and a boy.”
    Hairy was strapping on his belt, with knife and tomahawk. “Let’s go, lad, time’s a-wasting.”
    “No!” cried Iron Kettle. “They are Blackfoot! They’ll kill us!” She clung to Hairy. Hairy gave a Tal a hard look, and Tal got his gun and his spyglass.
    “If they were going to kill us, woman, they’d have done it last night.” He shook Iron Kettle off. “Probably just boys.”
    “Is only one sleep to Stinking Water,” wailed Iron Kettle. “We walk there, my people help us.”
    Hairy looked at her indulgently. “We ain’t going in empty-handed, lass.” He turned to Tal. “Let’s move.”
    It was an obvious trail of a dozen horses, down the Grey-bull toward the Big Horn. Tal wondered if they were being begged to follow it. No, Hairy said, the boys just didn’t care because they thought they couldn’t be caught. Hairy meant to surprise them.
    Tal thought he might do it. Hairy moved at a surprisingly fast lope for a big man, a lope that would overtake a horse that wasn’t being pushed. After two hours without a let-up, Tal was struggling to keep up, and didn’t think any critters on earth could stay ahead.
    At noon the trail turned sort of back on itself, up a little creek that came out of the mountains. They drank quickly and moved on. Hairy was pushing now, grimly, and Tal was dragging.
    By late afternoon they knew where they were headed. The trail went up the creek and took a turn back toward camp, straight over a divide. Hairy led them higher, so they could look into camp without being seen on the back trail. Maybe they slowed down because of the steepness, or because they were afraid of what they’d find at camp.
    From their perch they could glass the entire valley of the Greybull, including the lean-to by the mouth of the creek. Still breathing hard, Tal recognized Rosie and the others staked beyond camp. He couldn’t see any people.
    Hairy motioned down with his head and started contouring agilely around the side of the hill. Evidently he meant to stay high, where they could see.
    But there was nothing to see. Now the lean-to was just a hundred yards away. No one was visible. The swoosh of the creek and the river kept them from hearing much. Suddenly a woman’s cry carried to them. Hairy sat and pondered. The cry came two or three times more.
    “We gotta get her,” he said. “I think there’s only four or five of them, probably boys. Must be using her hard. Raping bastards. Good thing they’re so careless.”
    He threw back his chestnut curls suddenly and rose to a squat. “Still, may be a guard. Best be cautious.”
    He pulled at his nose, watching the lean-to. It was on the sand in a big