Wilderness Double Edition 30 by David Robbins

Author:David Robbins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mountain men, louis lamour, the rockies, piccadilly publishing, david l robbins, nate king, wild west 1800s, william m johnstone, best wilderness men stories, early us frontier
Publisher: Piccadilly

One

IF ZACHARY KING lived to be a hundred years old, he would never understand women. No, he reflected. Make that a thousand. Their minds worked in strange ways. Female logic was no logic at all.

Take this latest instance. There was enough venison and elk meat in their larder to last weeks, but Louisa insisted he go and kill a grouse for supper. A grouse! When she knew he didn’t like to pluck all those feathers. Lou loved grouse meat, though, and she was making a special meal, so she insisted he bring home a grouse and nothing else.

Women!

Zach stood on a slope a quarter of a mile above the lake at the center of King Valley and stared at his cabin on the north shore. Smoke curled from the chimney. Lou was baking a blackberry pie, one of his favorites. It mollified him, somewhat, for having to kill the grouse.

On the west shore stood his father’s cabin, empty at the moment. His pa and his ma had gone off to St. Louis to have his pa’s Hawken repaired.

On the south shore was the cabin of Shakespeare McNair and his Flathead wife, Blue Water Woman. Smoke rose from their chimney, too.

On the far east side of the lake stood the lodge of the Nansusequa, a friendly family of Indians from the East. They had gone off to the prairie to hunt buffalo. To Zach’s considerable surprise, his sister, Evelyn, had gone with them. She hated to hunt. She hated to kill things. Yet off she went. She told Zach she was bored and needed something to do, which amused him considerably. The real reason she went was a young Nansusequa by the name of Degamawaku.

With everyone gone except Zach and Lou and Shakespeare and Blue Water Woman, the valley was quiet and peaceful. It was the middle of the summer and there wasn’t much that needed doing. Zach could relax and take it easy for a change … if it weren’t for his silly wife and her craving for a stupid grouse.

Women!

Zach sighed and resumed climbing. At that time of year and that time of day the grouse were in heavy woods where few meat eaters could get at them. He moved slowly, his thumb on the hammer of his Hawken. Around his waist were a brace of pistols, a Green River knife, and a tomahawk. Louisa liked to tease that he was a walking armory, to which he always retorted that he was still alive.

Zach wore buckskins and moccasins. With his long dark hair and the fact that his mother was a Shoshone, he knew that from a distance he appeared to be an Indian. His green eyes gave away his white inheritance.

Zach stalked as silently as a wolf toward a shelf where the grouse liked to roost. He spied circles in the dust, which told him he was close; grouse liked to give themselves what his pa called “dust baths” This made no sense to Zach. How could it be a bath if it got them all dirty?

At a cluster of pines, Zach crouched.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.