The Outcast Read Free Page A

when a baby is teething. Tell it to a parent who has to change and wash diapers a thousand times. Tell it to a—”
    Lou held up a hand. “Dear Lord. You make a baby sound like an affliction.” She bent and lifted the bucket out of the water and Shakespeare immediately took it from her.
    â€œI’ll do the honors.”
    â€œOh, please. I’m not helpless.”
    â€œNever said you were, girl. But a woman with a child in her brings out all the tenderness a man has. It’s a good thing, too. It makes up for all the times men go around with blinders on.”
    â€œFor a man, you sure don’t think highly of your gender.”
    â€œQuite the contrary. I’m quite happy being male. The notion of being female scares me to death.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI’d have to put up with men.”
    Lou laughed gaily. She headed for the cabin and gazed at the timbered slope beyond just as a jay took wing, squawking loudly. She idly wondered if something had spooked it, then put it from her mind. She had more important things to think about.
    Up on the slope, the jay continued to squawk.

Chapter Two
    The Outcast sat patiently on the pinto until the jay lost interest and flew away. Of all the birds, he liked jays least. Their shrill cries alerted everything within hearing. They were the bane of every hunter and warrior.
    His brother used to argue that vultures were the worst birds because they ate rotting flesh and stank of death and were so ugly, but at least vultures were quiet.
    The Outcast stared down the mountain. He could not tell much from that distance, but the white-haired man was plainly old and the sandy-haired woman, plainly young. He saw them talk and laugh and go into a wooden lodge.
    A light jab of his heels sent the pinto down the slope. With a caution borne of experience, he rode slowly and hugged the shadows.
    The Outcast was surprised to find whites so deep in the mountains, at least ten sleeps from the prairie, if not more. To his knowledge, no whites had ever penetrated this far.
    He regarded white men much as he did jays. They were nuisances the world was better off without.
    His first encounter with whites came when he was nineteen and went on a raid led by his uncle. Thirty warriors took part. They’d traveled south into the land of their longtime enemies the Nez Perce. But they were not fated to find a Nez Perce village. Instead they came upon a large party of bearded, hulking, coarse men with many horses and many beaver hides and many guns. The horses and the hides were incentive for his uncle to suggest they attack and kill the whites and take all they had, but the taking proved to be harder than any of them expected. They’d downed several of the whites with arrows and rushed in to slay the rest at close quarters. Only the whites drove them off, felling half a dozen warriors with their guns.
    The Outcast had dragged his wounded uncle into the woods. There was a hole in his uncle’s chest and a bigger hole in his back, and so much blood, it soaked the Outcast’s leggings. His uncle had frothed at the mouth and was a while dying. The last words his uncle uttered was a plea to have his family looked after.
    By then the whites had retreated to a cluster of boulders. The warriors tried to get at them, but the guns of the whites drove them back. Finally it was decided that too many had died, and they broke off the fight.
    The Outcast learned important lessons that day. He learned that whites were not always easy to kill, and he learned to respect their guns.
    Since then, the Outcast had fought whites on two other occasions. In one fight, the two sides had swapped arrows and lead, but nothing more came of it. In the other, the Outcast and six fellow warriors surprised four whites who were dipping pans in a stream and swirling the water around. It was most strange. But the whites had good horses and a lot of packs, and the Outcast had counted coup that