Damnation Valley

by William W. Johnstone

  The Indians reined in and dismounted in front of the largest lodge, which Breckinridge supposed belonged to Wolf Tooth. A handsome, middle-aged woman with gray streaks in her dark hair stepped up to the chief. She didn’t say anything, but her expression made it clear that she was waiting to hear whatever he had to say. He spoke to her quietly, in the Cheyenne tongue, and although her face didn’t change immediately, Breck saw pain flare in her eyes. He knew she had to be Wolf Tooth’s wife and the mother of the young man called Rock Against the Sky. She turned away from the chief, some of the other women clustered around her, and the wailing resumed.

  Wolf Tooth turned to Breckinridge and Moss and said, “You will be taken to a lodge and given food. You will rest there tonight and tomorrow. The bodies of our lost ones will be brought back and given to the spirits of the earth and the sky as is our custom, and then . . .” He had to stop and draw in a breath. “And then we will find the man who did this evil thing and deal with him as we would an animal that has gone mad.”

  “That’s a pretty good description of Jud Carnahan,” Breckinridge agreed.

  Chapter 22

  Charlie Moss stayed nervous as long as they remained in the Cheyenne village. The fatalistic streak that the past few years had instilled in Breckinridge took over and kept him from being too worried, at least about his own safety. He figured that whether he lived or died didn’t really matter. The only thing that was important was living long enough to kill Carnahan and get Ophelia back safely to her sisters.

  As long as Wolf Tooth was on his side, the Cheyenne were going to help him do that, so he didn’t mind being here.

  That night, the chief came to the lodge Breckinridge and Moss were sharing. They hadn’t turned in yet. Wolf Tooth sat on the buffalo robes next to the fire with them and said, “The wise old men of our people believe I should have the two of you killed.”

  “I knew it,” Moss said. “I knew we couldn’t trust—”

  Breckinridge stopped him with a lifted hand.

  “But you told them you weren’t going to do that,” he said to Wolf Tooth, “because we have the same enemy and should be friends.”

  Wolf Tooth frowned and said, “I do not think the Cheyenne will ever be friends with the white man.”

  “Even when we desire the same vengeance?”

  “We can seek that without being friends.”

  Breckinridge shrugged and said, “I reckon so. But it might be easier if we were.”

  “You will not be killed,” Wolf Tooth declared. “You are safe in our village. You will be given horses, as I said before. More than that, I cannot offer you.”

  “You said you were going to ride with us after Carnahan.”

  Slowly, and with apparent reluctance, Wolf Tooth shook his head.

  “This I cannot do. Some of our scouts saw a Pawnee war party east of here. They may be coming to raid our village and steal our horses and women. I cannot take our warriors and leave, much as I wish to avenge the death of my son and the other two young men. You have sworn to me that you will kill this man Carnahan.”

  “I have,” Breckinridge agreed. “And I never meant anything more in my whole life.”

  “It is good,” Wolf Tooth said, nodding. He reached into a pouch he wore at his waist and brought out something that Breckinridge recognized: the necklace of animal claws that the chief’s son had worn.

  Solemnly, Wolf Tooth extended the necklace to Breckinridge. Equally solemnly, Breck took it.

  “Wear that, and the spirit of my son will travel with you. He will be there when you slay the evil Carnahan. While Carnahan still lives, you will tell him that he dies to avenge the death of Rock Against the Sky, as well as for all the hurts he caused to you and those you love. Then, my son’s spirit will be free.”

  “I swear it,” Breckinridge said. “You have my word on it.”

  Wolf Tooth nodded and got ready to stand up. Instead he paused and said, “I have not had dealings with many white men, but there have been enough that I have learned already their word is not to be trusted. For some reason, I believe that you are different, Breckinridge Wallace.” The chief made a face. “Your name is long and uncomfortable on my tongue.”

  “Back where I come from, the Indians I knew sometimes called me Flamehair.”

  Wolf Tooth thought for a moment and then nodded.

  “Flamehair,” he said. “Yes. It suits you. Flamehair now carries the spirit of Rock Against the Sky with him, and together they will have vengeance on the evil one called Carnahan.”

  “You can count on it,” Breckinridge said.

  * * *

  To tell the truth, he wasn’t disappointed that Wolf Tooth and some of the Cheyenne warriors weren’t going with them, Breckinridge reflected the next morning as he and Charlie Moss got ready to ride. Wolf Tooth was a chief, and as such, he would expect to be in charge. Breckinridge had never cared much for anybody giving him orders.

  There was another thing to consider. He and Moss still got plenty of unfriendly looks from the inhabitants of this village. He didn’t think the Cheyenne believed the two white men were responsible for the deaths of the three young hunters. It was more like they just didn’t like Breckinridge and Moss on general principles. If Wolf Tooth and the other warriors had gone along, and something had happened to the chief, Breck had a hunch that the rest of them would decide it was better to kill him and Moss. Their bodies would feed the buzzards and the coyotes, and their bones would bleach in the sun.

  One of those none-too-friendly fellas had come and gotten them this morning, after a couple of women brought food for breakfast. He motioned curtly for Breckinridge and Moss to follow him. When they stepped outside, he pointed to two ponies standing there with their reins dangling and said, “Horses.”

  “Yep, they are,” Breckinridge said.

  The Indian motioned again, first at the two white men, then at the ponies. The word horses might be all the English he spoke, Breckinridge realized. Breck nodded, tapped his chest, gestured toward Moss and then toward the horses to show that he understood. The Cheyenne grunted and stalked off.

  “We are mighty lucky to be gettin’ outta here with our hair still on our heads,” Moss said.

  “You ain’t far wrong. Let’s gather our gear.”

  “We’re gonna have to go back to where we veered off Carnahan’s trail to pick it up again, ain’t we?”

  Before Breckinridge could answer that question, Wolf Tooth walked up. He had a stick in his hand.

  “I will show you where to ride,” he said.

  He hunkered down and began drawing in the dirt. Breckinridge and Moss knelt, too, and studied what Wolf Tooth was doing.

  The chief spent several minutes sketching in landmarks, including the creek where the killings had taken place and the location of the Cheyenne village.

  “This is the way the tracks left by Carnahan and the woman were going,” he said as he drew that trail. “There are mountains here, in their way. But there is a pass here”—he touched the stick to the drawing—“where they can ride through. If they do not take that pass, they must travel many days to the east to go around the mountains.”

  “So you’re sayin’ we should head for that pass, too,” Breckinridge said.

  Wolf Tooth shook his head and moved the stick’s tip.

  “There is another pass—smaller, higher, harder to reach—here to the west. But it is closer to this village. If you take it, you will save a day’s travel, perhaps more. And if you follow this route”—he traced an angled line in the dirt—“you will come to the trail left by Carnahan. No matter which way he goes, you will cross his trail sooner or later.”

  Breckinridge nodded. “Then that’s what we’ll do. We’re sure obliged to you, Chief, for the horses, your hospitality, and this advice, too.”

  “You will owe me no debt,” Wolf Tooth said, “as soon as the man Carnahan is dead and my son’s spirit is free.”

  “That can’t be too soon to suit me.”


  * * *

  The Indian ponies were a little skittish, and Charlie Moss didn’t have any experience riding with just a blanket instead of a saddle. He fell off a few times before he got used to it, and in spite of the grim nature of the quest they were on, Breckinridge had to work to keep from laughing. He had ridden bareback or with a blanket many times, so he didn’t have any trouble.

  Once Moss got the hang of it, they made better time as they rode toward the high pass Wolf Tooth had told them about. Breckinridge could see it in the distance, a small notch in the mountains that ran east and west. Those mountains were not tremendously tall, but they were rugged enough that it would be difficult to cross them without making use of a pass.

  Once they entered the foothills around midday, the terrain got rougher and rockier, the vegetation more sparse. The ponies were big for Indian mounts. Breckinridge knew Wolf Tooth had picked them out because the white men were larger and heavier than the Cheyenne. Even so, the horses struggled at times on the slopes, and Breck and Moss had to dismount and lead them.

  Being slowed down like that chafed at Breck, but there was nothing he could do about it. They had to keep their mounts in good shape. Being set afoot out here might not be fatal, but it would ruin any chance they had of catching up to Carnahan.

  It was late in the day by the time they reached the pass. Down on flatter ground, the sun had been warm, the breezes pleasant. Up here, the wind that blew was a chilly one.

  “We’ll push on,” Breckinridge said. “We can get part of the way down from here before it’s late enough that we’ll have to make camp.”

  “I sure hope that Injun was right about this savin’ us some time,” Moss said.

  Breckinridge reached up and touched the claw necklace he had placed around his neck after Wolf Tooth gave it to him. The claws had been restrung carefully on a new strip of rawhide that replaced the broken one. Breck figured the boy’s mother had done that.

  Maybe someday he would come back to these parts, he thought, and find that band of Cheyenne again. It would be fitting to return the necklace to Wolf Tooth and his wife and let them know that their son had been avenged.

  “He told us right,” Breckinridge said. “He’s got as much at stake in this as we do.”

  They were about halfway down the southern slope below the pass when they found a somewhat level spot that would serve as a good campsite. Breckinridge called a halt. Moss arranged a circle of rocks, stacking them high enough that he could build a small fire inside to cook their supper without the flames being seen from far away. Breck picketed the ponies where there were a few clumps of hardy grass growing from the rocky landscape.

  With those chores done, they sat and ate and watched the last of the pink and orange glow from the sunset die in the western sky. To the east, darkness flowed steadily toward them, with the heavens shading from purple to blue to black. A few streaks of cloud showed up dramatically pink in the gathering dusk. The world was quiet.

  To the south were more rolling hills and flatlands. As Breckinridge sat there, his keen eyes swept over the far distances, searching for any faint glow that might mark the location of a campfire.

  If Carnahan was out there, though, he had made a cold camp. Breckinridge didn’t see a thing.

  His frustration over that futility grew during the next day, as he and Moss descended the rest of the way from the pass and followed a generally southeastward course, detouring only when they had to in order to avoid one of the deep, rocky ravines that cut across this part of the country. Breckinridge wasn’t sure how long it ought to take them to cut Carnahan’s trail, but it didn’t happen that day.

  A similar lack of success the next day grated at him until he was snapping at Moss every time the other man said anything. Finally, Moss responded, “Blast it, I don’t know where they went! I thought we’d find their tracks before now, too.”

  “Either Carnahan’s coverin’ ’em up really good, or else they didn’t come this way after all,” Breckinridge said with a frown. They had stopped the horses and were sitting and peering at the ground. No matter how hard Breck stared, it didn’t make tracks appear.

  “Where else could he have gone?”

  Wearily, Breckinridge scrubbed a big hand over his face.

  “I don’t know. If they didn’t come through the mountains, they had to go either east or west. West would’ve put them deeper in Cheyenne country, but I don’t know if Carnahan knew that or not. East would take ’em . . . shoot, all the way back to St. Louis, if they went far enough.”

  “You think Carnahan would do that?” Moss asked with a frown. “He’s got a kidnapped gal with him. All she’d have to do once they got back to civilization is yell her fool head off about what Carnahan did, and the law would be after him. Seems like he wouldn’t want to risk that.”

  Deep in thought, Breckinridge scraped his right thumbnail along the line of his jaw, then tugged at that ear.

  “He’s got to head for a settlement somewhere. He can’t just wander around out in the middle of the wilderness, alone with Ophelia, from now on. He could go back to St. Louis, but more folks know him there. Maybe he’s figurin’ on driftin’ on down to New Orleans. And there are Spanish settlements a long ways south of here, down in Nuevo Mexico. Santa Fe, one of’em is called, I think. Nobody would know him there.”

  “They still got to have law,” Moss said. “The girl could still try to get help from them.”

  “You reckon after travelin’ with Carnahan for weeks or maybe even months, Ophelia’s gonna be brave enough to try to get the law on him? By then he’ll have her so beat down she probably won’t dare to try anything like that.” Breckinridge sighed. “That is, if he don’t just get tired of her and kill her somewhere along the way.”

  A grim silence hung between the two men for a few moments. Then Moss said, “So what are we gonna do? Give up?”

  “Not hardly,” Breckinridge said without hesitation. His eyes narrowed as he stared into the distance. “I’ll never quit lookin’ for Jud Carnahan until all the skin wears off my soul.”

  Chapter 23

  Two months later

  Spring had turned to summer. Heat lay hard on the land. At least, down on the flats it did. Up here in the mountains, the nights were still cool, anyway.

  But Breckinridge and Charlie Moss were at the very edge of the mountains, so that when they looked eastward from the ledge on which they stood, they could see forever across the plains in that direction.

  “You reckon they’re out there somewhere?” Moss asked as he stood with the butt of his flintlock rifle on the ground, leaning tiredly on the weapon.

  The past two months had caused a deep weariness to set in for both men. They sported long beards, and their faces were gaunt. They had long since run out of the supplies they’d taken with them from the Cheyenne village and had been living on wild game and whatever edible plants they could scrounge for quite some time.

  More than just the physical, their appearance and attitude mirrored the frustration they felt. Breckinridge knew that given half a chance, Moss would give up on the chase.

  Not Breckinridge, though. He was still as determined as ever to find Jud Carnahan and settle with him. He was just . . . tired, that’s all.

  Unable to find any trail left by Carnahan and Ophelia Garwood south of the mountains they had crossed after taking their leave of the Cheyenne, Breckinridge and Moss had had no choice but to double back and cross the mountains to the north, using the pass they had believed their quarry would take.

  A day of casting back and forth had finally turned up the tracks of three unshod ponies, one of them carrying a lighter load than the other two. Carnahan and Ophelia had taken all three horses from the young Cheyenne braves Carnahan had killed. They were using one as a spare, Breckinridge figured. That would allow them to keep up a somewhat faster pace, although not as fast as if they’d had two extra horses so both riders could switch back and forth.

  The tracks led east. Carnahan had
decided to go around the mountains after all, instead of cutting through them by way of the pass. Eventually, they left the mountains behind but continued straight as an arrow across what some people were starting to call the Great American Desert.

  It wasn’t actually a desert, of course. In fact, there were plenty of stretches where grass grew. Thick, hardy stuff that came up to their horses’ hocks. But trees were mighty few and far between, and when Breckinridge and Moss came across one, it was usually a stunted, gnarled thing. The few exceptions were cottonwoods that grew along the banks of the small creeks they came to.

  No matter how hard they tried, the two men couldn’t seem to gain any ground on Carnahan and Ophelia. Whenever it looked like they might, bad luck always intervened. Sometimes they lost the trail and had to search for half a day or more before finding it again. Twice they had to hunker down and wait out massive thunderstorms with lightning flashing all around. Out here on the flats, it was too dangerous to ride horseback while that was going on. They would be the tallest objects around and might attract those deadly bolts if they continued to ride. They even had to get the horses to lie down flat, where it was safer.

  During one of those storms, Breckinridge had heard a sudden roaring sound unlike anything he had ever heard before. He lifted his head enough to look and saw a huge column of what appeared to be black, spinning air reaching down from the clouds to the ground. It was a cyclone, he realized. He had heard of them but never seen one with his own eyes. The thing was dark because of all the dirt and debris it had sucked up from the ground. Looking at it, Breck felt an instinctive fear. He would match his strength and fighting ability against almost anything, but he knew that against a storm like that, he would be utterly powerless.

  The cyclone danced across the prairie about half a mile away and gradually went out of sight. Breckinridge and Moss stayed right where they were, though, because of the lightning and the possibility that another of those madly whirling monsters might come along. They didn’t move along until the storm was miles to the south.