Damnation Valley

by William W. Johnstone

  “Blast it, I paid him to come with us.”

  Moss took a couple of gold coins from his pocket and laid them on the table. “The stiff-necked varmint told me to give ’em back to you. He kept a little for the time he’d put in so far, but he wouldn’t take the rest of it.”

  Morgan sighed. “Maybe he’ll change his mind. He went downriver, you said?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’ll catch up to him, and if he’s gotten over being mad and wants to join us again, he’ll be welcome.” Morgan looked at Breckinridge. “We are going downstream, aren’t we, Breck? We know Carnahan isn’t west of here because we came from that direction.”

  “Unless he’s not followin’ the river and took out across country,” Breckinridge said. “More than likely, though, he held up somewhere between here and St. Louis, and you just didn’t see him when you went past him on your way up.”

  Most travelers on the frontier followed the rivers; they were the only dependable routes. But from time to time someone would strike out away from the streams. Breckinridge wouldn’t even try to predict what Jud Carnahan might do, except whatever it was, Carnahan would be ruthless about it and wouldn’t care who he hurt as long as he got what he wanted.

  Eugenia came over to the table and asked, “Are you gentlemen going to be staying for supper?”

  “We have our own supplies,” Breckinridge said. “Figured we’d build a cook fire—”

  “Nonsense,” Morgan interrupted as he smiled up at Eugenia. “We can’t turn down such a gracious invitation, Breck.”

  “It wasn’t exactly an invitation,” Eugenia said. “You’ll be paying for it.”

  “Of course.”

  “All right, then. I’ll tell Rose to make sure there’s plenty of stew.” She smiled at Morgan and turned to walk behind the counter at the back of the room. She disappeared through a door that Breckinridge assumed led into the kitchen.

  “She’s a canny one, my Eugenia,” Garwood said. “Never misses a chance to make a profit.”

  “Beauty and brains,” Morgan said. “That’s a formidable combination.”

  Breckinridge didn’t say anything, but he saw the way Morgan was looking at the door where Eugenia had gone, clearly waiting for her to appear again. Breck had promised that he wouldn’t cause any more trouble, and he meant what he said.

  He suddenly wondered, though, if Morgan could make the same claim.

  Chapter 5

  Absalom Garwood offered to let the visitors sleep in the barn—for a price, of course, as Eugenia quickly reminded them—but the weather was pleasant and the men were accustomed to spreading their bedrolls outside and sleeping under the stars.

  Breckinridge was up before dawn the next morning, stretching, yawning, and then heading down to the river to get a drink and dunk his head in the water to help him wake up. He enjoyed this time of day, when everything was quiet and the approaching sunrise was still just an arching band of pink, orange, and gold on the eastern horizon.

  He was shirtless and barefooted, wearing only his buckskin trousers and carrying his rifle. Even though the trading post and its surrounding stockade fence were close by, he wasn’t going to leave its protection without taking a weapon with him. He seldom went anywhere without a gun, knife, or tomahawk—preferably all three—close at hand.

  As he approached the river he saw movement in the dim light and tightened his grip on the rifle. When he came closer, he could that a man was kneeling at the edge of the stream, filling a bucket. Another bucket sat on the ground beside him. When he was finished with what he was doing, he stood up, grasped the bails of both buckets, lifted them, and turned toward the trading post. A little water sloshed from the top of both vessels.

  The man stopped at the sight of Breckinridge striding toward him.

  “Mornin’,” Breckinridge said with a nod. He hadn’t seen this fellow the day before around the trading post, but it was obvious he was one of the Mandan Indians Absalom Garwood had mentioned. He was middle-aged, with deep trenches beginning to form in his coppery, pockmarked face, but his hair was still black as midnight and he stood straight, with an air of vitality.

  Solemnly, the man returned Breckinridge’s nod and then started to walk past.

  “My name’s Breck. Breckinridge Wallace.”

  “Edward,” the man said.

  “Really?”

  A hint of amusement appeared on the man’s face as he said, “No, but that is what Mr. Garwood calls me.” His English was good. “He has given white man names to all of us who work for him. My true name, in your tongue, means Blue Feather.”

  “That’s what I’ll call you, then, while we’re here. Which won’t be that long, I reckon,” Breckinridge added as his brawny shoulders rose and fell in a shrug, “because we’ll be leavin’ later this morning. Headin’ on downstream.”

  “Most white men who come to Damnation Valley are going the other way, deeper into the mountains.”

  “That’s where we came from,” Breckinridge said, then he frowned. “Wait a minute. What did you call this place? Damnation Valley?”

  He knew that most Indians had few words in their languages that could be considered curses, and although they possessed a concept of hell—wandering endlessly in the spirit world without being able to move on to the happier realms beyond—the word damnation didn’t sound at all like something an Indian would come up with.

  Blue Feather tried to move past him again. “I should not have spoken of it,” he muttered.

  “Now, hold on,” Breckinridge said. He put out a hand to stop the Indian. “I understand why the tradin’ post is called Fort Garwood. Man likes to name things after hisself, I reckon. But why Damnation Valley? Who called it that?”

  With obvious reluctance, Blue Feather answered, “The other white man who was here first. He said the valley was cursed.”

  “What other white man?”

  “An old man. Evil spirits were in him. He came here to trap beaver but fell sick. He wandered in the woods and lived like an animal. We found him soon after we arrived, but he died not long after that. My people said his body should be burned, but Mr. Garwood said he must be buried.” Blue Feather set one of the buckets down and swept that hand toward the trees. “We put him deep in the woods, in the hope that the evil spirits in him would not find their way back here.”

  Breckinridge nodded. Setting aside what Blue Feather had said about evil spirits, it was a simple enough story. Some trapper had come along here and been laid low by sickness, probably a fever of some sort, and it had deranged him. No telling how long he had wandered up and down the valley, slowly starving to death.

  “My people want nothing to do with the evil spirits that possess white men,” Blue Feather went on. “They came to us on the great boat that bellows smoke—”

  “You mean a steamboat?” Breckinridge interrupted.

  Blue Feather nodded gravely. “That is what the white men call them. It brought their evil spirits to my people and caused a great sickness among them. Many died. The ones who survived were left like this.”

  He touched one of the pockmarks on his lean cheek, and with a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, Breckinridge realized what the Mandan was talking about.

  Smallpox.

  He had heard about outbreaks of the disease that had taken great tolls among the Indians. Anybody with any sense feared the pox, but it was even worse when it struck among the natives. It was no wonder that Blue Feather had a grim cast to his features if he had fallen victim to it but survived. Doubtless many of his friends and loved ones hadn’t made it.

  “I’m sorry, Blue Feather.” Something occurred to Breckinridge. “The white man who was here when you and the others came with Garwood . . . did he have the pox?”

  The Mandan shrugged. “I do not believe so. But evil spirits are still evil, and who can tell what form they will take?”

  He was right about that, Breckinridge thought. Maybe that explained Jud Carnahan. Maybe he was
an evil spirit in human form.

  A new voice made Breckinridge and Blue Feather turn toward the trading post. “Rose sent you for water a long time ago, Edward. She’s wondering why you haven’t come back.”

  Breckinridge saw Desdemona Garwood walking toward them. She wasn’t wearing the coonskin cap this morning, and the thick red hair that had been tucked up under the cap the day before was loose this morning, falling around her shoulders. In the golden light of approaching dawn, it made for a pretty glorious display.

  Blue Feather grunted and said quickly, “I am sorry, Miss Desdemona—”

  “It’s my fault,” Breckinridge broke in. “I’m the one who kept pesterin’ him with questions.”

  “Questions about what?” Desdemona wanted to know. Her gaze lingered on Breckinridge’s broad, bare chest.

  Breckinridge hesitated. He didn’t know if Blue Feather wanted him talking about everything he had just revealed. It might be bad for Garwood’s business if the story got around about how a sick man—maybe sick with the pox—had died here, but not before declaring that the valley was cursed.

  “Nothing important—” Breckinridge began.

  A whisper of sound, followed instantly by a thud and a gasp, interrupted him. He heard the other water bucket hit the ground. He looked around and saw Blue Feather staggering. The Mandan tried to reach behind him and grasp the shaft of the arrow protruding from his back between the shoulder blades, but he couldn’t manage it.

  Not that it would have mattered if he did. He pitched forward onto his face.

  Breckinridge was moving before Blue Feather hit the ground. He leaped forward, grabbed Desdemona’s arm, and half shoved, half threw her toward the open gates in the stockade fence.

  “Run!” he told her.

  He didn’t know where the arrow had come from that had killed Blue Feather, but he had seen the markings well enough to recognize them as Blackfoot. Those warriors he and Morgan had killed the day before had had friends, all right, and now they had followed the white men downstream to the trading post and were out for revenge.

  Desdemona raced toward the gates. Breckinridge turned, caught a glimpse of movement in the trees along the riverbank, and whipped the rifle to his shoulder. Another arrow cut through the early-morning air and whistled past his ear. He saw where it came from, drew a quick bead on the spot, and pressed the trigger. The rifle boomed and kicked against his shoulder.

  He heard a shrill cry of pain and figured that was the only sign he would get that his shot had found its target. With no time to reload because arrows were still flying around him, he turned and sprinted after Desdemona. His long legs enabled him to close the gap between them in a hurry.

  As he was coming up behind her, he saw three warriors running to cut them off from the gates. The Blackfeet had a good angle to do just that, and Breckinridge knew he would have to fight them to clear a path for him and Desdemona.

  She was far from helpless, though. She yanked a pistol from behind her belt, cocked it, and fired on the run as one of the warriors screamed a battle cry and launched himself at her. The heavy lead ball slammed into his chest and stopped him like he had run into a wall. He twisted, stumbled, and crashed to the ground.

  Breckinridge leaped to meet the second man’s charge. The Blackfoot swung a tomahawk in a vicious arc aimed at Breck’s head. Breck blocked it with the flintlock’s barrel, then rammed the rifle’s brass butt plate into the man’s throat. The warrior began gagging and gasping as he tried and failed to drag air through his crushed windpipe.

  The Blackfoot was mortally injured, but he wasn’t dead yet. He slashed a backhanded blow with the tomahawk. The head raked across Breckinridge’s chest, leaving a shallow cut. Breck hit him again with the rifle butt, this time in the face. The upward angle of the stroke crushed the Indian’s nose and sent splinters of bone into his brain, killing him almost instantly. He wouldn’t choke to death from the blow to his throat after all.

  There was still a third Blackfoot warrior to deal with, but as Breckinridge swung toward him, another shot rang out and the warrior’s head jerked as a rifle ball blew away a fist-sized chunk of his skull. Breck glanced toward the trading post and saw Morgan standing at the gates with a smoking flintlock in his hands.

  He would thank his old friend later for shooting that third warrior, he thought. Right now, another arrow flashing past his head reminded him that he needed to get inside the stockade as quickly as possible. Desdemona was already at the gates, having pulled ahead of him again because he had stopped to fight the second Blackfoot.

  A moment later, Breckinridge raced through the gates. Men were already in position to close them as soon as he was inside. They pushed the gates up, and Charlie Moss was there to drop the bar across it. Rifles began to roar as men took up spots along the wall and fired through loopholes cut for that purpose. Lead raked the trees along the river where the Blackfoot attackers were concealed.

  Breckinridge’s chest heaved as he caught his breath following the hard run and the brief hand-to-hand battle. Morgan came over to him and asked, “Are you all right, Breck? You’re bleeding in a few places.”

  Breckinridge looked down at himself and saw that in addition to the cut across his chest from the tomahawk, his arms and shoulders had little trickles of crimson here and there on them as well.

  “Reckon I got a few scratches from all them arrows flyin’ around me,” he said. “None of ’em hit me hard enough to stay in, though. I was a mite busy at the time and never noticed these little nicks.” He paused. “I’m obliged to you for that shot, Morgan. I might’ve been able to handle that last varmint, but it would’ve slowed me down even more.”

  “I was already up and about, and when I heard a shot, I figured you had to be involved somehow.”

  “Wasn’t me who fired that pistol. That was Miss Desdemona,” Breckinridge said, nodding toward the young woman as she came toward them.

  “You’re hurt, Mr. Wallace,” she said.

  “Nothin’ to worry about,” he assured her.

  “Come on inside, anyway. Those cuts need to be cleaned up. Eugenia’s a fair to middling doctor when she needs to be.”

  “I thought maybe you’d tend to ’em,” Breckinridge said.

  Desdemona snorted and said, “I’m going to fetch my rifle and see if I can help the men drive off those Indians.” Her fierce expression softened slightly. “I wish they hadn’t killed Edward.”

  “So do I,” Breckinridge said. “I didn’t know him except for a few minutes, but he seemed like a good fella.”

  “He was. And he’ll be avenged.”

  She turned and hurried toward the building to get the rifle she had mentioned. Morgan watched her go with open admiration on his face.

  “That’s an unusual young woman,” he said, “but a very impressive one.”

  Breckinridge couldn’t argue with that.

  Chapter 6

  The firing was still going on along the walls when Breckinridge came out of the trading post a short time later. Eugenia had cleaned all the cuts and scratches on his torso and arms, then rubbed a salve on them she said would keep the wounds from festering. Breck felt a little awkward while she was doing that. She was so petite that beside his massive frame, she seemed like a little girl.

  He returned to the spot where he had slept, pulled on his shirt and boots, and slung his shot pouch and powder horn over his shoulder. Then he hurried to the wall and found a spot where he could thrust the flintlock’s barrel through a loophole and search for a target once he had loaded the rifle.

  If there was a battle going on anywhere in the vicinity, Breckinridge Wallace was bound and determined to take part in it.

  Charlie Moss called over to him, “You reckon these savages are friends of that bunch we tangled with yesterday?”

  “You could bet a hat on it,” Breckinridge said as he squinted over the rifle’s sights. The sun still wasn’t up yet, but it was getting pretty close. The light was certainly better. Breck s
potted a flicker of movement in the trees. A single feather showed. Breck had the rifle cocked and ready, so all he had to do was shift his aim slightly and squeeze the trigger. The flintlock roared and spouted smoke and fire.

  A second later, the limp body of a Blackfoot raider rolled out of the brush and sprawled with outflung arms. Breckinridge could see the blood leaking from the hole in the man’s head.

  The Blackfeet had a problem. The trees where they had taken cover were within rifle range of the stockade wall around the trading post. Their arrows, however, consistently fell a little short of the log wall. There were at least a couple of rifles among the attackers, no doubt stolen from white trappers the Blackfeet had killed, but they were notoriously bad shots. If any of their shots actually hit one of the loopholes in the wall, it would be by blind luck.

  After reloading, Breckinridge caught a glimpse of another Blackfoot moving around in the trees and fired again. This time he couldn’t tell if his shot scored. He got the rifle ready again and settled down to wait for another chance.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw someone step up beside him. Desdemona stood there, holding her long-barreled rifle. She had a powder smudge on her freckled cheek.

  “I realized I didn’t say thank you,” she said.

  “You don’t owe me any thanks,” Breckinridge told her.

  “I believe I do. You’re the one who gave me a push toward the fort and told me to run after Edward was shot. I was so shocked I might have stood there staring at him until one of those Indians put an arrow in me.”

  “Have you ever been in a fight like this before?” Breckinridge asked her.

  She shook her head. “No, the Indians have left us alone since we got here, and we haven’t had any real trouble from the trappers passing through. I . . . I never killed anyone before.”

  “The way you shot that fella down while you were on the run, you’d never know he was your first.” That sounded awkward to Breckinridge as soon as he said it, so he hurried, “I mean, the first fella you . . . well, shot, I reckon.”