Damnation Valley

by William W. Johnstone

  That thought barely had time to form before Carnahan pulled the trigger.

  * * *

  Ophelia screamed as she heard the muffled boom and saw her father’s head come apart from the close-range shot. Before Garwood’s bloody corpse even hit the ground, Carnahan swiftly stepped back and to the side. Rifles blasted from the trees, but only a couple of balls whistled through the opening before the men pushed the doors closed again. The other shots thudded harmlessly against the thick barrier of logs.

  Carnahan jerked a thumb toward the trading post and told the man holding Ophelia, “Get her inside.” She didn’t put up a fight this time as he hustled her toward the building. She was too stunned by witnessing her father’s death.

  The men at the loopholes returned the fire. It was unlikely that any of the shots would find their targets, but the volleys continued on both sides for several minutes.

  Carnahan followed Ophelia and her captor inside, then told the man, “Put her with her sister.”

  Eugenia was still huddled against the wall behind the bar. The man gave Ophelia a hard shove in that direction, causing her to stumble. She fell to her knees beside her sister. Eugenia clutched desperately at her.

  “Ophelia!” the younger girl cried. “Are you all right?”

  Ophelia didn’t answer. Her face was drained of color, and her blue eyes were wide with shock and horror.

  “Ophelia!” Eugenia said again. “Where’s Papa?”

  “He’s dead, girl,” Carnahan answered instead of the stunned Ophelia. “I had to make those fools see that I mean what I say.”

  Eugenia stared up at him in a mixture of grief and horror. “You . . . you killed him?” she managed to say.

  That was enough to make racking sobs come from Ophelia again. She sagged against Eugenia, who instinctively put her arms around her older sister.

  Tears came to Eugenia’s eyes, too, but she held tight to Ophelia and cast a glance up at Carnahan, who stood at the end of the bar with a cruel, self-satisfied smirk on his bearded face. Eugenia had never hated anyone as much in her life as she hated Jud Carnahan at that moment.

  He was going to be sorry he had killed her father, she vowed. She had no idea how or when she would make good on that vow, but she swore to herself that sooner or later she would. She held Ophelia, patted her on the back, and attempted to comfort her by crooning soft words to her.

  And all the while, she was trying to come up with a plan.

  Chapter 12

  From his position in the rocks behind the compound, Breckinridge heard the shouting and recognized the voices of Morgan and Carnahan, although he couldn’t make out all the words. He understood enough to know that Carnahan was demanding he and Morgan surrender, as well as promising that he would let everyone else go free.

  Breckinridge didn’t believe that for a second. He knew Morgan didn’t, either, and if they had any sense, neither would anybody else.

  Think of the lowest, most treacherous thing a person could ever do—and that was what you could expect from Jud Carnahan. Or worse.

  Even though Breckinridge knew that, he was still a little shocked to hear a sudden, single shot at the front of the compound, followed immediately by a volley of gunfire from the river. Carnahan had done something to set that off, and it had to be something bad.

  From the clump of brush where he had hunkered down out of sight, Donnelly said, “Damn it, Wallace, don’t we need to go see about that?”

  “How are we gonna do that?” Breckinridge asked. “Climb over the fence back here? Carnahan’s bound to have men watchin’ all around the place, and we’d be easy targets tryin’ to clamber over. I don’t like it any more than you do, George, but for right now we got to sit tight and see what happens next.”

  Donnelly did some grumbling about that, but he didn’t say much, and nothing directly to Breckinridge.

  No matter how much the inaction ate away at Donnelly, though, it was worse for Breckinridge. Sitting and doing nothing while an evil man like Jud Carnahan threatened innocent folks scraped painfully against the grain for Breck. A glimmering of an idea began to form in his brain.

  The shooting died away. Breckinridge and Donnelly continued to watch the compound. The morning dragged by and got warmer as the sun climbed higher in the sky. Beads of sweat began to pop out on Breck’s forehead.

  He heard a noise behind him and swung around quickly with his rifle ready, even though he didn’t see how any of Carnahan’s men could have gotten out and snuck up on them.

  Morgan was crawling through the brush toward him. He held up a hand and motioned for Breckinridge to hold his fire. Breck lowered the rifle and waited for his friend to join him.

  As Morgan moved into the rocks beside him, Breckinridge asked in a grim voice, “What happened?”

  “Garwood is dead,” Morgan replied, his tone equally bleak. “Carnahan shot him in the head.”

  Breckinridge’s jaw clenched so hard it was painful. For a moment, he was too angry to speak. When he found his voice again, he rasped, “Why?”

  “To make us take him seriously. I guess he figured he still had the two girls to use as hostages, so he didn’t really need Garwood. He used him for . . . for an object lesson, instead.”

  “Good Lord,” Breckinridge said. “Did Desdemona see it?”

  “I’m afraid she did. Charlie had to grab her to keep her from charging the wall. It was all he could do to hang on to her.” Morgan shook his head. “You wouldn’t think somebody as small as that could put up such a fight.”

  “Badgers are small, too, but I wouldn’t want to stick my head in a hole where one of ’em was. How’s she doin’ now?”

  “She’s still upset, of course. But she’s settled down some. If she ever gets a chance to kill Carnahan, though, she may beat you to it, Breck.”

  “I don’t care anymore who kills him,” Breckinridge said. “He just needs to be dead.”

  “Nobody’s going to argue with you about that. Question is, how are we going to do it?”

  “We’re gonna take a lesson from the Blackfeet,” Breckinridge said. “They’re ornery varmints, but nobody ever claimed they don’t know how to fight. This didn’t work for them, but we’re gonna go at it a mite different. You take my place here, while I circle back around to the river.”

  “What are you going to do, Breck?”

  “Make me a bow and some arrows.” Despite the grim, desperate situation, Breckinridge smiled. “When I was a kid back home, runnin’ around the Blue Ridge Mountains, I made more’n one bow. Got so I was pretty good at it.”

  Morgan frowned. “I don’t understand. What good is a bow going to—” He stopped short. His eyebrows rose as he began to understand. “Flaming arrows!”

  “Yep. We’re a little closer than the Blackfeet were. If they’d been around on this side, we might not have been able to stop them from settin’ the wall on fire. We’re gonna give it a try. That ought to shake Carnahan up, if we can do it.”

  “He’ll still outnumber us, and they’ll be forted up inside that strong building.”

  “Then we’ll have to make ’em come out.”

  Breckinridge didn’t offer any more details. He left Morgan in the rocks and moved off through the brush, staying low so he wouldn’t be spotted by anyone inside the compound.

  Once he was out of sight, he stood up and loped around toward the river, then moved along the bank until he came to the spot opposite the trading post. The other men were crouched behind trees, aiming rifles and pistols at the wall.

  Desdemona sat just below the bank’s drop-off, on a log that had washed up there along with several others. Breckinridge angled toward her and dropped onto the log beside her.

  Her face was pale and he could see streaks on the lightly freckled cheeks where tears had dried, but she wasn’t crying now and seemed composed. Breckinridge said, “I’m mighty sorry about your pa, Desdemona.”

  “You ought to be,” she replied. “I’m not saying that it’s your fault C
arnahan killed him. But if you hadn’t been here, Carnahan wouldn’t have attacked us.”

  “You don’t know that. The fella’s like a hydrophobia skunk. He’ll lash out at anybody who gets in his way.”

  “But if he was headed on west, he would have stopped and then gone on his way. He wouldn’t have any reason to cause trouble.”

  “Maybe . . . but I’ve got a hunch that when he saw you and your sisters, he would’ve wanted to take you along with him. Your pa wouldn’t have stood for that. Things would have gone bad anyway.”

  She turned her head and gave him a cold stare. “I suppose we’ll never know which of us is right, will we? And it doesn’t matter. In the end, Carnahan is the one who pulled the trigger. He’s to blame. And he’s got to die for what he’s done.”

  “Yes’m, he sure does. I’m workin’ on it.”

  The possibility of action seemed to perk up Desdemona’s interest. “What are you going to do?”

  Breckinridge stood up from the log and took the tomahawk from his belt.

  “First thing is to find me a good branch that I can make into a bow.”

  He had to look around for a while before he found a suitable branch on one of the trees. Once he had, he hewed it off the trunk, then trimmed the smaller branches and peeled the bark from it. After testing the branch for springiness and deciding it would work, he used his knife to notch both ends. Then he cut several pieces of fringe from his buckskin shirt, tied them together to make two longer pieces, and wove those pieces together so the makeshift bowstring would be stronger.

  “There are better ways to do this,” he told Desdemona, who was watching with interest, despite her grief. “Animal gut makes a stronger bowstring, and so do tendons. But that takes more time, and we ain’t got that. Carnahan’s like a wild animal—there ain’t no tellin’ what he might do, or when.”

  He strung the bow and tested it, putting enough pressure on the string to make sure it would hold. Then he began looking for smaller branches he could fashion into arrows.

  “You’re going to shoot flaming arrows at the wall the way the Blackfeet did,” Desdemona guessed.

  “Yep, but around in back, not here in front. The cover’s closer in the back.”

  “My sisters are still in there,” she said worriedly. “If you burn the whole place down, what’s going to happen to them?”

  Breckinridge shook his head. “Even if I set the wall on fire the way I’m plannin’, it shouldn’t burn down any of the buildin’s except maybe the barn. There’s a good-sized open space around the tradin’ post itself. I don’t think the flames will jump it. But then Carnahan and his bunch won’t have the wall to hide behind no more.”

  “They’ll still have the trading post,” Desdemona pointed out. “It’s very sturdy. My father built it for defense.”

  “I got an idea about that, too, but let’s see if we can get that wall down first.”

  His boyhood spent roaming the Blue Ridge Mountains near his home had proven beneficial many times since he’d traveled west to the frontier, and now it did again. He was able to trim and shape several small branches into arrows. There were no birds in the trees at the moment—the gunfire had caused them all to flee—but he found a dead one on the ground and used feathers from it for fletching. There was no time to find flint and chip it into arrowheads, so he sharpened the tips of the arrows as much as he could. They wouldn’t penetrate the logs, but Breckinridge planned to aim for the base and stick them into the ground there. He hoped that would be close enough for the flames to spread.

  When he was satisfied with the arrows, he wrapped dry moss around the shafts just behind the tip. As he was finishing up, Desdemona said, “It’s almost like you’re an Indian yourself.”

  Breckinridge grinned. “I’ll take that as a compliment. Most of ’em are fine folks, and they know better’n anybody else how to get along out here because they been doin’ it all their lives. You got some who are pure poison, like the Blackfeet, and, shoot, probably a lot of them ain’t all bad. Just the ones I’ve run into.”

  “I’m coming with you when you go back around to the other side.”

  “No, ma’am. You’ll be safer here. The cover’s better.”

  “You can’t give me orders, Mr. Wallace.” Her small chin rose defiantly. “Since my father’s gone, I’m the oldest of the three sisters, which means I’m my own boss from now on.”

  “At least until you find a fella and get hitched.”

  She said, “Hmmph,” as if getting married wouldn’t change anything when it came to making up her own mind. Somehow, Breckinridge didn’t doubt that.

  Short of tying her up, he didn’t really have any way of stopping her, so he said, “Stay low and follow my lead.”

  “Fine.”

  He wasn’t completely convinced she would do that, but he didn’t have any choice but to hope so.

  Breckinridge filled Charlie Moss in on the plan, then he and Desdemona trotted along the edge of the river, staying below the bank so they wouldn’t be seen. Breck had to bend over in order to do that, but Desdemona was short enough she was able to stay upright. When they had gone far enough, they climbed out and began the wide circle that would bring them up behind the compound.

  As they got closer, Breckinridge motioned for his companion to get down on her hands and knees.

  “I know it ain’t ladylike, but from here on, we got to crawl.”

  “Have I ever done anything that makes you think I’d worry about being ladylike, Wallace?”

  Breckinridge knew this wasn’t the right time for it, but he had to laugh at that question.

  “No, I reckon not,” he said. “But I learned a long time ago how changeable gals can be.”

  She just glared at him for a moment in response to that. But she got down on hands and knees and crawled through the brush behind him.

  A few minutes later they came up to the rocks where Morgan was posted. He glanced over his shoulder when he heard them coming and looked surprised to see Desdemona with Breckinridge.

  “Are we going to attack from this side if you can set the wall on fire?” he asked.

  “No, they’ll still have us outnumbered too much for that,” Breckinridge said. “But if any of ’em come out to fight the fire, we’ll do our best to pick ’em off.”

  He gathered up dry twigs and leaves and mounded them behind one of the rocks. Then, taking out flint and steel, he began striking sparks. He had plenty of experience at starting fires, so it took only a few moments before small flames were flickering up.

  Morgan was sprawled on his belly behind a rock. Desdemona had worked her way into a similar position a few yards away. Breckinridge looked at them and said, “You two ready?”

  “Go ahead,” Desdemona told him. “Rain down the fires of hell on them, Wallace.”

  “Might not be quite that much brimstone,” Breckinridge said as he nocked the first arrow and held it in the flames to set the moss afire. Then he stood up, drew back the bow, and let fly.

  Chapter 13

  The arrow arched through the air. Breckinridge heard a man shout inside the compound and knew somebody had spotted the flaming missile, probably through one of the loopholes in the stockade wall. He had a pretty good idea what would happen next, so he ducked back down behind the rock.

  As he did so, a rifle blasted. Breckinridge heard the ball hum past, well over his head.

  “Breck, it fell just short!” Morgan called.

  Breckinridge bit back a curse. It wasn’t surprising that his first attempt was a little off—it usually took a couple of tries to get the range, after all—but a fella could hope, couldn’t he?

  He nocked another arrow and set it alight. Instead of firing immediately, he squirmed along the ground for several yards, so when he reared up he wasn’t in exactly the same place as he’d been before. By now, more of Carnahan’s men probably had hurried to the rear of the compound and would be watching through the loopholes, eager to get a shot at him.

&
nbsp; More shots rang out. Rifle balls whined off the rocks.

  “Stay down!” Breckinridge told Morgan and Desdemona. When the shots stopped for a moment, he came up on one knee, bent back a little so he could draw the bow, and loosed a second burning shaft toward the compound.

  Once again he had to dive to the ground as shots whistled around him. While he was lying there on his belly, Morgan whooped and said, “This one landed perfectly! It dug into the ground right at the base of the wall and it’s still burning good. Looks like it’s going to catch—Hell! ”

  “Morgan, are you all right?” Breckinridge asked anxiously.

  The answer came back right away, thankfully.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Just had a rifle ball skip along the ground a few inches in front of my nose. I’m back behind this rock now. Nothing to worry about.”

  “I can see the wall from where I am,” Desdemona said. “It looks like the log next to where the arrow landed is starting to smolder. I wish I had a spyglass so I could see better . . . Yes! It’s caught on fire now!”

  Breckinridge crawled back to the fire. He had left the other arrow there, and in a matter of seconds he had it lit and was ready to send it speeding toward the compound. He heard quite a bit of shouting on the other side of that wall now. He thought Carnahan’s men might try to throw some water over the top of the wall or even through it, hoping to get enough moisture through the tiny gaps in the wall to extinguish the flames. So far they didn’t seem to be doing that, however, and the fire was getting bigger.

  He reared up again, aimed at a different angle, and sent the third and final arrow toward a different section of the wall. This time the shots that came in response were even closer to him. He felt one of the balls flick the fringe on his left sleeve. He hit the dirt and listened to the shots whickering through the nearby brush.

  Morgan laughed. “It’s like you stirred up a nest of hornets and got them mad at you!”

  “Yeah, them lead stingers can be pretty painful!” Breckinridge called back.