Wilderness Double Edition 33 by David Robbins

Author:David Robbins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: trappers, american frontier, mountain men, piccadilly publishing, david l robbins, best western ebook, western 1800s, historical fiction ebook, terry c johnstone
Publisher: Piccadilly

Two

KING VALLEY LIVED up to its name. Sculpted as if by an artist, it had everything a frontiersman could ask for. A lake and the mountain streams that fed it provided plenty of water.

Grass for grazing covered much of the valley floor. A variety of thick timber grew on the facing slopes. Game was abundant—so much so, it was rare for any of the valley’s inhabitants to spend more than a few hours hunting. Fish and water fowl thrived.

Shakespeare McNair had never beheld a valley so grand, and he was the oldest living white man in the Rocky Mountains. He had come West before the fur trappers, drawn by an indefinable urge to explore the vast unknown. Now, decades later, he had seen most everything the mountains had to offer, and he was as versed in the ways of the wilderness as any man alive.

On this particular sunny morning, Shakespeare was strolling along the lake with his Hawken in the crook of his elbow. As ever, he was clad in buckskins, with an ammo pouch, a powder horn, and his possibles bag crisscrossing his chest. A pair of pistols was tucked under his leather belt, a Green River knife sheathed at his waist.

Every now and again Shakespeare felt a twinge of pain in his left hip, but he ignored it and concentrated on the beauty of the day. He breathed deep of the breeze that stirred his long beard. Both the beard and his hair were as white as the snow that capped several of the mile-high peaks.

A fish leaped and splashed down. Ducks quacked and a goose honked. To the south a bald eagle soared, to the north a pair of ravens. A doe and her young ones grazed at the edge of the woodland and higher up an elk bugled.

“The wonder of it all,” Shakespeare said to the world at large. He touched a hand to his hip. Then he noticed someone ahead and his mouth quirked in a grin.

Nate King wore the same style of buckskins and was similarly armed, but his hair and beard were a deep black. At the moment he was pacing back and forth and muttering and angrily gesturing.

“This is too rich for words,” Shakespeare said. Raising his voice, he called, “How now, Horatio? What bodes this unseemly behavior?”

Nate paused in his pacing and glared and said, “Go away.”

Placing a hand to his chest as if stricken, Shakespeare teased, “Is that any way to greet your best friend and the man who taught you everything you know? Crows and daws, sir. Crows and daws.”

“You won’t believe it,” Nate said. “You just won’t believe it.” He resumed his pacing and muttering.

Shakespeare regarded the King cabin, situated west of his along the lake. “Methinks I detect the whiff of female.”

“You think you know someone and then they go and do something like this.”

“Care to share, Horatio, or should I guess from now until Armageddon?”

Nate stopped. “How many times have I told you to stop calling me that?”

“At least a million.

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