Chapter 5

I selected the six horses with advice from everybody in sight, and Shirley and I received our riding lessons. It took us three days to become comfortable enough with the horses to take off on our own. Everyone of the Cayuse Indians was convinced that I truly was a wizard, so we set up a camp outside of the village to relieve some of the tension my presence caused.

On the fourth day we left, and I could swear that we were boosted on our way by a collective sigh of relief from the whole village. I had presented the mountain lion skin to the man whose horses I had “won” as a kind of thank-you gift. He was truly surprised, and we left with some residual good feeling on both sides.

The saddles were more than a little on the primitive side, so I intended to upgrade them as soon as we could. However, with enough blankets padding our seats, we could get by until then. If necessary, we could make do until we switched to boats.

We contacted a hunting party of Nez Perce four days after leaving the Cayuse village. We only stopped long enough to exchange pleasantries and to learn their language before moving on. The Indians were engaged in the serious business of feeding their families, so they did not have much time for idle chit-chat. I was happy with that because I was already concerned about getting as far as possible before we ran into winter weather. We still had a couple of months before the weather started cooling off, but I wanted to get far enough south to miss the heavy snow.

Shirley was not familiar with this country, and I sent an android out to find a way through the mass of trees and brush, crags and crevasses, and dangerous animals. Among the dangerous animals were the Flathead and Crow Indians. Neither tribe took kindly to people trespassing on their territory. Luckily, I guess, I had kept an android with us while the other one was out scouting. That way, we got some warning when a group of six Flatheads showed up and demanded to know what we were doing in their hunting grounds.

I tried to explain that we were just passing through on our way east, and we had no intention of hunting or staying around any longer than absolutely necessary. I suppose that I should have expected it, but I was not believed. I had gotten the impression that no Indian could understand why any place could be more attractive than where he lived. I had hardly finished my explanation when one of the Flatheads shouted, “YOU LIE!”

He was using a bow for hunting, and he hurriedly nocked an arrow and pointed it at me. Shirley reacted to the danger faster than I did and drew her pistol. It was set for ball ammunition and the high velocity air pressure, so, when she fired, the shock wave was so loud that I think that some of the Indians were temporarily deafened, and the man who was threatening me was killed immediately by the bullet passing through his body. The entrance hole was not very impressive, but the exit hole was large enough to accept a clinched fist to the depth of the wrist.

I woke up to the danger and said, “We are wizards who are on a quest. You have no chance against us. We can call thunder and lightning from the sky to defend ourselves, and the gods favor us with their protection. As further proof of my words, shoot an arrow at that man’s chest.” I pointed at the android. Its chest had a covering of steel plate just below its artificial skin, so I knew that it could not be injured by an arrow of the type the Indians used.

One of the other hunters took me up on my suggestion and fired an arrow at the android that I had pointed out. The arrow struck its target with a kind of clank and fell to the ground with a severely damaged point. The Indians looked at each other for a moment before they suddenly turned and ran away from us as fast as they could go. I think that, somehow, the word spread among the Indians, because we never saw another Indian until we crossed the Columbia River.

We worked our way through the worst of the mountains by moving slowly and carefully. There was just no way for us to hurry through the mountains of Eastern Washington and Idaho, even though we did cut sharply south to pick up the Oregon Trail. Frankly, I was intent on spending the winter in some place like Denver, Colorado.

At one point, we came up against a cliff that there was no way the horses could manage to descend. That was a time when the android’s strength was invaluable. We blindfolded the horses so that they would not panic, and the androids actually picked up a horse and carried it down the narrow trail along the cliff face. Shirley and I simply waited while this job was done, then the androids carried us down the trail. At least, the androids did not have to use the fireman’s carry on either one of us.

We spent a lot of time paralleling rivers, but they were all flowing to the West, and I did not want us to have to paddle or pole our way against the current. Sure, the androids could have done that, but I doubted that we could make as good a rate of progress as we could by horse.

It was already damned cold at night by the time we crossed the Rocky Mountains, but we made it to Denver before the worst of the snow. As it turned out, our biggest problem with Indians was an encounter with the Shoshoni Tribe just after we had crossed the Snake River. We were just making camp when about 20 warriors showed up on horseback. They were spotted by an android guard while we still had time to react.

The Indians charged toward our camp and brandished lances. They would have ridden us down if we had been armed with ordinary weapons of the period. Sure, the Henry Rifle was available if you could find one, but the people out here who had guns were using muskets and muzzle-loading rifles. They were good for four shots per minute if you were lucky, but a man on a horse can move a significant distance in 15 seconds.

We were outnumbered, but even the androids were armed with the air pistols, so we were way ahead in firepower. I ordered the androids to switch to the high air pressure setting and to use darts. The reason was I wanted an explosion if a dart hit a piece of metal such as what the Indians liked to wear as decoration. The Indians were still 500 yards away when the androids started shooting. Their ability to lock on a target and not waiver made their pistols more accurate than rifles used by humans. The only chance an Indian had to avoid being hit was to dodge unexpectedly. Furthermore, I told the androids to aim at the horses, rather than at the men. Even at that range, a dart could pass clear through a horse from front to back with the high pressure setting.

This was really not a battle—it was more like a slaughter! The androids cut down the charging Indians before they reached the 300 yard point. Neither Shirley nor I had to shoot because the Indians were all dead from falling from their horses before they got close enough for our shooting to have made any difference. We didn’t even have to move our camp to escape the odor of the dead horses and Indians.

When we got to Denver, I booked two rooms in a hotel. I put the androids in one room, and Shirley and I took the other room. I sold our horses, since I wanted to sail down the South Platte River when the ice broke in the spring. Nevertheless, I had the androids spend most of their time hiding in the attached stable during the day to try to keep down suspicion about their nature.

Shirley spent much of her time during the day in the Lady’s Lounge of the hotel talking to other women. I wanted her to learn as much as she could about how “civilized” women acted before we moved much farther east.

Meanwhile, I spent time in the multitude of saloons in the city learning as much as I could about the chances of hiring a boat to take us to St. Louis. River traffic on the Missouri River and its tributaries was virtually undisturbed by the threat of war in the east, so it looked like that we could even get a ride on a steamer as far as St. Louis. From there, we would have to see what developed. I hoped to take a boat to Chicago and travel east by train, but that was open to question at this point. The alternate universe that I was in had almost identical characteristics as the one I was used to, but it had not advanced as far with rail travel as mine had. Chicago was still an important rail terminal, but it was not as busy as it was in my universe.