Wagons to Nowhere

by Orrin Russell

  A crowd was gathering around Nelson’s wagon. He stood on the driving bench where he towered above them. The Farro brothers leaned on the wagon. Major Shroud stood by, his posture a hangover from his military background.

  Balum and Joe moved in close. They wanted to hear exactly what it was the man planned to say.

  Frederick Nelson stood upright with his chest out. He was dressed neatly, his hat still crisp and unsoiled. He made a fine picture. Confidence poured out of the man. He motioned with his hand for the people to gather close.

  ‘If you can’t hear me just move up closer,’ his voice boomed. ‘There’s been a lot of talk about Indians in the vicinity. It’s true; Major Shroud found tracks this morning. I want you to all understand something. I don’t aim to lose a single man, woman or child to any savage. That’s why I’ve hired these good men here. They’ve been through a battle or two, believe me. And they know how to deal with an Indian.

  ‘I want the wagons bunched tight today. We’ll travel slow, and while we do the boys here will ride out and take care of the problem. That’s why you’ve hired me. That’s why I’m the wagon master. I’m the man who keeps you safe.’

  A murmur ran through the crowd, and the tone was a general approval of Nelson’s message. Balum looked at Joe. The time to speak was now, before the crowd dissipated. He let his voice ring loud over the heads of the party.

  ‘Frederick Nelson,’ he said, loud enough to quiet the crowd. ‘What do you mean when you say your men will take care of the problem?’

  ‘That means they’re going to put a bullet into every one of those animals following us.’

  ‘They will not. I’m going to say this loud and clear so everyone understands. I’m the one who first came across those tracks, and now everyone has gotten worked up. That’s no war party. It’s a small, ragged group of starving people, and they present no danger. They’ve been following us, gleaning for scraps we leave behind. Killing them is nothing more than the murder of innocents. Flat out.’

  Nelson’s eyes flared. He was not a man accustomed to disagreement. When he spoke, men obeyed. His anger interfered with his silver tongue, and he responded with raw emotion.

  ‘You shut your mouth you son of a bitch,’ he said, his lips curled back.

  ‘I’ll speak my mind,’ responded Balum. ‘These folks might not know the difference between friendly natives and a raiding party, but you and I do. Any of your men harm them and I’ll give them back whatever they’ve dealt out.’

  ‘You won’t do a goddamn thing. And certainly not to the Farro boys. You’ve already gotten a taste of their knuckles. You want another?’

  ‘Any man who wants to go out hunting the innocent will have to go through me. If you want to start now, so be it.’

  ‘Gus!’ fumed Nelson. He pointed down at Balum. ‘Shut that man’s mouth!’

  26

  Gus Farro stood six feet four inches in socks. With his boot heels on, he towered above most men. From the back he resembled the oxen hitched to the wagons; shoulders wide and rippling with muscle. He was thick in every way, with logs for thighs and a strapping chest that rarely found a shirt large enough to encase it.

  He pushed himself off the wagon and walked into the crowd. They parted, scrambling over each other to give the man a wide berth.

  Balum stood firmly in place while the crowd around him retreated to a circle. He had been beaten once by this man already. Badly. But he had never had a chance. He felt fresh now. And he had a cause.

  Gus came in with a smirk on his face. There was no fear in him. He planned on crushing the man before him, perhaps with a single blow. Most men ran from him. In truth, he had fought very little, and the fights had ended quickly, as the men were generally mentally beaten before any fist was swung. He figured Balum to be no different.

  As he closed the distance he swung a right fist around in a wide-arching hay-maker. It was meant to take Balum’s head off.

  It never touched him.

  Instead, Balum ducked under the man’s arm and stepped in, landing an uppercut to the giant’s belly. It rocked Gus hard, bending him forward with the contents of his stomach shooting back up his esophagus.

  Balum spun on his bootheel and cupped the back of Gus’s head. He swung a knee up, slamming it into the man’s face. The crunch was loud enough for the crowd to hear. His nose burst open, blood spilling over his mouth and down his chin as his body was thrown backward onto the ground.

  Gus didn’t stay down long. He picked himself back up and put a hand to his face. When he drew it away it was covered in blood. He lunged again at Balum. Too quickly. Balum side-stepped, letting the man’s punches whiff through the air. Gus came in again, but Balum was lighter on his feet, and he moved a fraction of a second faster than the larger man.

  Gus’s heavy blows missed only by inches, but they missed cleanly. Balum, on the other hand, countered with short jabs to the man’s already broken nose. They added up, none being a finisher, but each one taking its toll on the larger man.

  Though Balum was outmatched in size, he was no small man. He was built square, and his hands had grown large and tough through a lifetime of manual toil. When he closed them into fists they were as solid as the working end of a dried-leather mallet. For the damage they did, they might as well have been.

  Saul Farro elbowed to the front of the crowd. The fight should have been over already. He had never seen his brother bleed, much less be thrown to the ground.

  Gus’s breathing had turned heavy. He inhaled in ragged gasps, and his arms tired. They fell too low, and Balum swung a right cross to his face. It knocked Gus’s head around, and he staggered back.

  Balum came in quickly, and Gus raised his hands back up to protect his face. It left the man’s belly exposed, and Balum swung into it with forward momentum.

  Gus’s hands dropped again, and Balum began to pound the man’s face with his two fists. Gus backpedalled, and Balum stayed in front of him. The blows sent blood flying from Gus’s nose and mouth, and as the man began to drop, Balum heard a shout.

  ‘Gus!’ Saul bellowed, and ran into the circle. Balum turned from Gus’s fallen body to meet the attack.

  Saul made the same mistake as his brother. He drew his arm back preparing to decimate Balum with a single blow. But Balum was ready now. He was warmed up, his body limber. Instead of waiting for Saul’s fist, he stepped in with his own right hook. It connected fully on Saul’s chin, slamming his teeth together and rocking his head backwards.

  The man lost consciousness in mid-air. His arm dropped limply and his body turned and fell to the mud. His face landed with a splat.

  Noise had built in the crowd, as it is apt to do when men are fighting in front of a mass of onlookers. It had built to a roar so slowly it nearly went unperceived. Until the crack of a gunshot cut through it and put silence in its place.

  Frederick Nelson stood on top of the wagon bench from where he had watched the fight. He fired the gun above his head, and now leveled it at Balum.

  Major Shroud brought his rifle to his shoulder to put another gun on Balum, and Billy Gunter emerged from the crowd with his own pistol drawn.

  ‘Goddamn you!’ yelled Nelson, and cocked the hammer back. What gave him hesitation was the sight of Joe standing in the crowd of people. He held his revolver steady, the barrel pointed at Nelson’s head.

  In that moment of doubt another gun emerged from the crowd, this one belonging to Jeb Darrow. Balum had never seen the man openly carry a weapon, but he had one now, and it was pointed directly at Nelson.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ Jonathan Atkisson’s voice broke through the silence. ‘Nobody shoot. Put your weapons down. Put it down Frederick. You too Jeb.’

  ‘I’ll lower my weapon,’ said Nelson, ‘but hear me now. This man leaves today. Him and his Indian friend. And if I see either of you two again I’ll cut you down without a thought. And you’ve got no say in this anymore Jonathan. I’ve given in to your petitions long enough. They leave today.’r />
  The eyes of the crowd turned to Balum. He stood alone before a mass of men, women, and children. They did not know him, nor he them. Of all assembled, few were ready to defend him. Jeb and Suzanne. Perhaps Robert Venton. Jonathan Atkisson had drawn the line at a killing, but had gone as far as he was prepared to.

  Balum looked at the Farro brothers slowly picking themselves off the ground. He looked at Major Shroud and Frederick Nelson. The affidavit was folded and waiting in his shirt pocket. He could take it out. Read it aloud, reveal his secret.

  But what would follow after is what gave Balum pause. He had no lawful reason to arrest Nelson, nor his men. And even if he did, the members of the Oregon Expedition would not let him. He could see that. They had taken sides, and Joe and Balum stood alone.

  27

  There was little in the way of goodbyes. Jeb and Robert each shook Balum’s hand and Joe’s as well. Suzanne gave Balum a hug and told him how much he would be missed.

  Leigha sat on the driving bench of her buckboard, conflicted. She was angry with him beyond words. Not speaking to him had been the first small step at revenge, and she had taken satisfaction on sending him away the other day without a chance to speak. But the realization that she may never talk to him again was overwhelming. It sent a tightness throughout her chest and throat.

  The draft teams dug in and the caravan came alive. Wheels turned on their creaky axles and moved as one body towards the looming mountains ahead. They moved around Joe and Balum’s wagon, which sat stationary like a stone in a stream of water.

  She thought of jumping from her wagon. She could run to him, hug him, tell him goodbye. Never again would she see the man. But her rancor was too great. She looked back one more time, and caught his eye. He waved to her, and she only turned her back.

  They stood by their wagon and watched the Oregon Expedition shrink into the distance. When they had gone Balum shoved a plug of tobacco into his cheek and offered the same to Joe. They stood in absolute silence. In the absence of the wagons the world appeared larger. The sky was larger, the fields of grass and woods more grandiose.

  They spat into the mud.

  ‘Didn’t plan on the cards coming up this way,’ said Joe.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘That was a hell of a whupping you gave those boys.’

  Balum couldn’t help but grin.

  ‘What do you want to do now?’ asked Joe.

  Balum spat again and stared at the mud.

  ‘This won’t work for me,’ said Joe. ‘My deal was to get those folks to Oregon.’

  ‘Are you ever going to tell me what that deal was?’

  ‘San Carlos. Redrawing the boundary lines.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Captain Davis appoints the reservation commissioner, who drafts and signs the land agreement. He’s appointing Pete Cafferty.’

  ‘I’ll be damned. How much bigger is he going to make it for you?’

  ‘Three times the size.’

  ‘A prison three times as big.’

  ‘The battle is over, Balum. The whites won’t stop coming. The Apache thinks he can fight them from the back of a horse. But that fight is lost. The fight now is a legal one. And that’s where I can help my people. With that much land we can live the way we desire. It’s not what we would have chosen, but the world has changed.’

  ‘Well,’ Balum spat tobacco. ‘I’ll tell you what I think. I think he’s going to kill every last one of them. I don’t know how he aims to do it, but those folks are going to meet the same death as the last group he took out.’

  ‘It’s why he’s taking them into the mountains,’ said Joe. ‘Somewhere where they won’t be found.’

  ‘We do this, and it’s five of them against the two of us.’

  ‘It’s for my people, Balum.’

  ‘And for me?’

  ‘What was it...restlessness?’ Joe laughed.

  Balum didn’t so much as smile.

  ‘That and a pretty blond that won’t talk to you,’ Joe said, laughing harder.

  ‘I liked you better when you were mute.’

  They left the wagon where it sat and let the oxen free. They chose carefully what they needed, loading their saddlebags and tying on what they could to their bedrolls. Much of what they chose was ammunition. They took blankets, a hatchet, flint, pemmican prepared by Joe, a pot and and a bag of coffee.

  They cut eastward, two men dressed for the cold, weapons at the ready. Into what future they rode they could not say. The only certainty was violence. Violence to them and from them, of which only one outcome would result.

  Unencumbered by the wagon, they set their own pace. The caravan could average fifteen miles a day. On horseback they could do thirty.

  There was no losing track of the progress of the wagons. The party was too large and their pace too slow to disappear from their pursuers. They had climbed in elevation, trading the free range of the plains for a trail of connected valleys lying between tree-covered slopes. The valleys were rich in grass and free from trees due to the days when buffalo would roam by the thousands, feasting on grass and churning the ground with their massive hooves.

  It was along the mountain slopes that Joe and Balum rode. They kept to the pines. Their path wove through spruces and hemlocks, always remaining deep enough into the tree line to keep from sight.

  The caravan did not stop for lunch, and neither did Balum and Joe. They washed down pemmican with water as they rode, and stared at the mass of wagons, their minds struggling to decipher Nelson’s plan.

  He was not wandering aimlessly. The wagons were caught between two impassable slopes, but the valley stretched out straight before them, clearly connecting with another further along the mountain chain.

  Major Shroud did some scouting. He would ride out several miles in front, survey the land, and ride back to the wagons. Balum watched the Major do this twice. Something didn’t figure right. He held a hand up for Joe to stop.

  ‘They know where they’re going,’ he said. ‘The Major isn’t scouting a way through the mountains. He already knows the way. He’s just making sure it’s clear.’

  Joe nodded. ‘You’re right. Either that or there’s no use scouting. There’s only one way ahead at this point, and it’s down this chain of valleys.’

  ‘It can’t go far. No one’s ever found a route through this far north.’

  ‘Maybe Nelson has.’

  ‘You believe that?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘I’m tired of following along. All we’re doing is reacting to Nelson’s moves. You want to take a ride? Let’s get ahead of him for once. See where we’re going.’

  The creak of leather saddles echoed off the trunks of tall and resolute pines. Vapor rose from the horse's’ nostrils, and their hooves fell in near silence on the bed of needles over which they rode.

  No wind blew. The air was still and crisp and cold. It smelled of evergreens, and carried on it the premonition of winter.

  They rode far, by the end of the day easily putting ten miles of distance between themselves and the wagons. It was enough to safely start a fire, and they did so, warming their hands over the flames and cooking the bacon and beans they had brought with them. They slept close to it and turned their bodies toward it in their sleep to warm themselves.

  In the morning they coaxed the coals back to life. They sat on the ground and sipped coffee, feeling no need for words.

  Again in the saddles they rode. There was no way but forward, deeper into the chain of valleys. It was ghostlike; the silence. The open spaces lying low between the steep mountain walls grew narrower. They continued to connect, one to another, snaking through the mountain range. The sense of claustrophobia grew with each narrowing of the valley floor.

  They made camp at the edge of the pines and slept once again alongside the fire, swaddled tightly in their blankets. The morning broke as did the morning before. The motions of their routines went unchanged.

  The scenery fr
om their saddles changed little. They plodded on through narrow grassy valleys bordered by pine-covered mountainsides. It seemed the chain of valleys might continue forever, until it did not, and the two pulled up in surprise and stared in disbelief at the sight before them.

  The mountainsides holding the valleys had turned steeper. They rose up from each side of the floor as massive cliffs, impassable and untraversable. For miles they had run parallel to each other, allowing the flat valley to stretch onwards. It came to an end in a half bowl of sheer rock cliff. There was no way up and no way out; only the way by which they had entered.

  Where it ended, bunched along the rock face of the cliffs, were the broken and rotting remains of nearly twenty wagons.

  Balum and Joe rode with their guns drawn. There was no need, for they were alone. Nevertheless, the sight of what they rode up on and the gradual realization of what had happened put a fear into them that the feel of a gun butt did something to assuage.

  What remained had rusted if made of metal and rotted if made of wood. Still, there was enough to tell the story. Bullet holes riddled the sideboards of the wagons. The bones of humans and animals lay scattered in great number. Their cream-like color stood out in stark contrast to the colors around them.

  They rode through the ruins, looking down on broken scraps of hopes come to the end of a road. A few passes back and forth were enough. They turned back the way they had come.

  ‘Is that enough to arrest him?’ said Joe.

  ‘Doesn’t matter if it is or isn’t. I’m taking him back to Denver either hog-tied or filled with lead.’

  28

  Major Shroud sat on horseback under the concealing boughs of a ponderosa. He had followed the two mens’ tracks long enough. He knew they would come upon the massacre site. What they might do afterward was unclear. There was only one way back though, and that was through the chain of valleys.

  From where he sat the line of fire was clear and open. He could rest his rifle in the crook of a tree, and given the distance and lack of obstruction, he would not miss.