Chapter 25

The episode with the king of the forest was a trigger that changed my attitude about my adventures in the past. I was keenly aware of the possibility that if I were to expire in the past there would be no return to my proper place in time. Suddenly, I was stupidly stricken with an overwhelming sense of caution in almost every movement I made. If I even saw a naked blade near me, I would be on my guard in case of some unexpected accident. I think the men suspected my new-found lack of initiative to take a risk for any reason and they resented my authority.

I remembered that life in the chaos of combat was entirely different when I was free as a bird and not concerned about the effect my demise would have on my wife and family at home. It was only after I married that I became more stable in my actions and my reputation as a risk-taker of notorious proportion was ruined forever. I could see now that it probably saved my life in the long run and I regretted losing my wife and son to the advances of a rich oil-man from the Houston area when I was gone for an extended mission to some third-world country. It was entirely my fault and I bore no rancor to either of them for the betrayal. That was a subject I rarely cared to talk about and I will let it remain in memory gathering dust along with many other facets of my past that I manage to store in locked vaults under lock and key.

It was only after a heavy night of drinking with the Indian scouts and a strenuous nocturnal exercise session with Kit that I was able to throw off the sense of caution caused by the bear and fell back into my normal state of thinking about life and matters of the present.

When the streams started to unfreeze and the white-capped mountains started to show signs of awakening from the long winter’s clutches, we began to break camp with no need for instructions from me to the experienced trail-hands using their initiative to make all the right moves.

I decided to split our forces in two with the full knowledge it was not a preferred military tactic. It had perplexed me that the previous two late trains over the summit ahead had apparently not made it to the other side. I suspected that it was a matter of terrain and not some attack by hostiles or thieves determined to make an evil profit. The reports of cannibalism were rampant much to the amusement of my men. They bedeviled our tent-mate females with tales of how the women made tasty dishes when the need of survival was upon them. I was determined that the dirty practice would never be a tool used for survival whilst I remained in charge and that was the end of that as far as I was concerned.

I took Kit and most of the women with me. We also had about a half dozen of my most trusted Indian scouts and a couple of black troopers that had stuck with me through thick and thin. I put a grizzled old sergeant in charge of the other group and told him to scout out the lower passage to see if the trail was still sound enough to support our transit. If they were unsuccessful, they were to rejoin us on the plateau shelf still buried in deep snow drifts and we would all attempt the final climb to pass this mountain chain of danger. I know our chances of survival were increased drastically if we were joined together for the final assault.

The following day, I spotted an area that seemed unnatural in the light of the early spring sun. The broken tree branches and melting snow revealed a scene of utter disaster as the rotting hulks of settlers and horses were partially visible in the shrinking drifts still frozen in their last position of death. It was easy to see that it was not due to natural causes but the result of an attack that robbed all of them of their valuables and their hair. I knew the suspicion would immediately fall on the Indian tribes, but I was certain it was a pack of thieving wolves that preyed on the late leaving trains for the womenfolk’s pleasures and the cash they carried. The taking of their hair was more of a cover for their activities than a ceremonial act of disrespect for their corporal bodies. Besides, a lot of local governmental units were still paying coin for the supposed Indian scalps as a way to keep the hostile population down and less of a threat to the new settlers.

We hastily left the distressing scene to put some distance between us and the ghosts of the mountain pass travelers destined to remain forever as forlorn apparitions guarding the entrance to the Pacific coastline. It was late afternoon when we discovered another scene similar to the first except that in this jumble of destruction, there were several survivors of the female sort that seemed jubilant at our approach as if we were their rescuers sent by a vigilant government quick to intercede on their behalf with the lawless elements. There were four of them. Two were mature older women with a lifetime of close scrapes under their belts and the other two were fresh-faced youngsters with lots of common sense learning needed to bring them up to an acceptable level of self-defense in a necessary hurry.

The older women were called Natasha and Teresa. They were not beautiful but I wouldn’t throw either of them out of bed if I actually ever found a real one before we arrived back at the new headquarters of our upland forces. The two younger ones were not in the least bit interested in helping any of us and I can’t say I blame them for their lack of cooperation. After all, who couldn’t blame their natural instincts in the deep forest and their obvious delight in pretending to be normal yet once more like some obscene.

The worried younger duo was heading back east to upgrade their communication center to be more receptive of social contacts of the type used exclusively by all with the money furnished by others to make their gig on the survival experiment a little more palatable to their liking. Vicky was the pretty one and the sharp-faced Violet was already regretting her decision to practice her knife tossing skills. Poor Vicky was forced to give up her fetish for store-bought vittles once they crossed the Mississippi and she was immersed in the making of soups ever since. I figured it was only Christian to take them along with us even if it was beginning to get on Kit’s nerves to have so many females tagging along with us. I sensed these four survivors were probably a lot move capable than they appeared on the surface because the ability to survive was a signal of stamina reserves untapped and ready to be exploited.