Chapter 24

That winter, I took the habit of wearing a medley of animal skins, mostly buffalo, around me to cut the bite of the dreaded cold moving down like a silent enemy from the mountains. The females, with the exception of Kit, tended to stay inside the tents and sheltered lean-tos we had constructed to weather the storms.

A couple of my Indian scouts had made camp in the Canadian wilderness for several years and they instructed the other on making a weird looking foot device that looked almost like a giant tennis racket. I grasped the intent immediately seeing that they were makeshift snowshoes to allow the wearer to move over snow-laden terrain.

We could see the snow up on the mountain with our naked eyes.

I remembered freezing my ass off in a place just north of the 38th parallel and often landing on my back with the weight of my backpack. Trying to stand up became a losing proposition what with the snow and the ice. I suspected we were in for a taste of that right here in the good old USA.

Our unit normally would make a twenty mile trek in about four and a half hours loaded down with all our combat gear.

However, with the snow and ice in the equation, we were lucky to make two miles in the same timeframe.

What with the buffalo hides wrapped around me and the snowshoes attached to my boots, I must have looked a bit like “Frankenstein’s Monster” and the womenfolk always smiled when I passed by on my way to hunting or scouting our surroundings.

My Spencer was perfectly suited to combat situations and to most confrontations of a violent kind on the flatlands, but I knew from past experience I needed a true long gun like one of those manufactured in Pennsylvania or Kentucky. A couple of the scouts had long-barreled Sharps rifles with heavy loads, but they were wisely not inclined to trade for the lighter but less-reaching Spencer.

My tent partner Kit had the look of a fragile thing.

She proved to me her stamina and agility in a way not normally included in any training manual.

I took great pains in showing her how to dress out a deer and other animals we were fortunate to run across. A few times we sighted bears heading for lower ground to seek a sheltered den for their long sleep. All of the scouts, me included, gave them a wide berth because they were reputed to be especially agitated at this time of the year. Some of my scouts were members of the bear clan and the thought of shooting a bear was like patricide to them.

Kit had taken to wearing man’s pants and she cut her curls off so they wouldn’t get in her way.

I noticed she was quite skilled with the skinning knife and seemed to take pride in keeping it clean and sharp. My backpack contained a roll of throwing knives that I had taken off the body of a dead Confederate just because I thought they looked deadly and efficient.

Little Kit was so happy with those knives that she sometimes slept with them near to her hand to make her feel more peaceful at night. I was not a qualified instructor in their lethal use, but one of the scouts was quite skillful with either a tomahawk or a knife of any description. He gave her tutoring on a daily basis if she rewarded him with one of the blades. It seemed like a good deal to her and I had to agree because I had seen him hit a moving target at fifteen paces.

After a few short weeks, Kit had the knack of throwing the knives so that they would hit their target point first every time. I made her a belt that she could wear over one shoulder and she placed all seven remaining knives in leather sheaths to keep them clean until needed.

She begged me to take her hunting and I eventually gave in to her request. She could be quite persuasive in a nocturnal setting at a time when I only had one thing on my mind.

It was relatively easy to get up into the foothills.

I had no desire to get into any climbing situation because I knew the combination of ice and sharp rocks was both deadly and swift. We stuck to the drifts which were easier to traverse than the sparse snow spots or the ice-covered rocks near the streams. That girl had reserves of energy that most men in the midst of combat would be happy to possess. I found out later that she was one-quarter Indian due to her grandmother being raped as a captive. I made certain not to let any of the Indian scouts in on that, because most of those fellows would consider it a duty to lay siege to her favors.

It was common knowledge that she was the most appealing of the females in the camp.

Since I had already made claim, none of them was likely to make an issue of it, because Kit’s sister seemed well-suited to handling the rowdy bunch without asking for any assistance.

It was a grey sky day with the promise of snow all around us that I went out with Kit to the other side of the iced-over river to look for game and check our traps all set along those little trails the night creatures used to find water. The smaller ones were often thirsty, because of the ice, but patiently waited for some large animal to break through the ice and give them an instant watering hole.