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A man wearing a leather patch over his left eye leered at him, exposing rotting black teeth. He held a pistol in each hand, and slowly stepped into the cabin.
“Sabin,” Laurent said quietly. He was alive! The name sent a jolt of dread through him. He knew he couldn’t reach his weapon without getting shot. He took a slow step in front of his wife, his foot stepping on his belt that held his knife.
“We meet again, Laurent,” Oliver Sabin sneered. “I have waited a long time to repay you for what you’ve done to me.”
“I thought you were dead,” Laurent said. He eyed the man’s pistols warily.
Oliver Sabin laughed. “I’m not dead, but you will be, along with your squaw. I also heard you had an offspring. I aim to wipe you and your family off the face of this earth, Laurent.”
Without warning, Sabin fired his pistol. Whispering Waters screamed behind him, and hot pain shot through Laurent’s insides. His hand clutched his stomach, feeling warm liquid oozing into his hand. Before he could reach for his knife, dizziness washed over him, and he sank to the ground. All noise around him sounded far away. Another shot echoed in his head, accompanied by an evil laugh. His wife’s screams died in the background.
Laurent gasped for air, and he tried to get to his feet. A heavy weight shoved him onto his back. Blinking to clear his blurring vision, Laurent stared up into the gleaming eye of his killer.
“Now where is that precious half-breed baby of yours?”
Laurent gritted his teeth. “You will never find her,” he gasped between labored breaths.
Sabin laughed, and straightened. “Oh, I’ll find her, you can rest in peace with that, after you die a slow and agonizing death.” Laughing coldly, the man disappeared from view, and an eerie stillness swept through him.
Laurent squeezed his eyes shut, hoping to hear Whispering Water’s soft voice, knowing that he wouldn’t. His wife was dead, and he would join her very soon. The bullet in his stomach would slowly kill him. He didn’t have the strength to move, to be at his wife’s side, so he lay there, waiting for death to come. His eyes closed, and he prayed for Sophia. His beautiful, raven-haired little girl. He had no doubt that Sabin would carry out his promise and kill her, too.
All sense of time passing left him. Laurent didn’t know how long he lay on the hard ground, gasping for each breath as the blood drained from his body.
“Laurent? Oh my dear Lord!” The faraway voice echoed in his mind. He tried to open his eyes. At the sound of a baby’s cries, he turned his head. A blurry figure bent over him.
“Laurent?”
He recognized Yancey’s voice. The greenhorn grabbed for his hand. It felt so warm, while his was as cold as death itself.
“Take . . . take Sophia and run,” he rasped.
“What?” Yancey leaned close to his face. “Laurent, who did this?”
“Sabin . . . he will kill her, too.”
A sudden urgency raced through him, the last of his strength gone. With one final effort, he grabbed Yancey’s hand, and stared him in the eyes. “Take my daughter. Protect her. He will kill her, too . . . swear that you will protect her.”
Yancey stared blankly for a moment, then nodded.
Laurent relaxed. “He must never find her,” he gasped, then he loosened his grip. His hand fell to the ground, and suddenly there was no more pain, only peace and happiness. A beautiful raven haired young woman smiled down at him, and he closed his eyes, letting the darkness carry him away.
Dear Reader
Teton Sunrise is set in the 1820’s, the decade when the fur trapper and mountain man era west of the Mississippi was at its peak. By the 1840’s, the beaver was nearly trapped to extinction, and silk replaced beaver fur for hats. In 1822, William Henry Ashley advertised in the Missouri Gazette for “enterprising young men to ascend the river Missouri” to trap for beaver. The group of men who joined the expedition became known as Ashley’s Hundred, and included Jim Bridger, Jedediah Smith, Hugh Glass, and Thomas Fitzpatrick, among others who would become famous mountain men later on. This was the beginning of the fur companies who employed men to venture into the Rocky Mountains and bring back beaver pelts that were in high demand in the east and overseas. A “company man” was no more than a day laborer, outfitted by the company he worked for, and paid roughly $200 per year for his hard and dangerous work. Everything these trappers caught belonged to the company. A “free trapper” was exactly that. He answered to no one, and made his own decisions. He might join up with a group of other trappers for safety, but he traveled and trapped where he chose, and sold his furs, or plews, to whomever he wanted.
