Novel 1968 - Down The Long Hills (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  If he could set that afire…

  Gathering some bark, he rubbed it to shreds between his hands, then took a branch from the fire and went outside. He left the door open so that he could rush in if the wolves attacked. He doubted they would, for the man-smell was on him, and they had learned to fear it. But he felt sure they might soon know there was nothing to fear from him, might realize he was small and unarmed.

  On top of the splintered stump he dug out a little hollow. It was the stump of a blow-down, broken off jaggedly, ought to burn well. He tried his branch, but the fire had gone out.

  Going back to the dugout he got another one from the fire, added it to the shredded bark, and blew to tease it into a flame. It caught some bits of pitch, which blazed up brightly.

  At the base the stump was partly hollow, and he kindled another fire there, and added fuel from branches lying about. Soon the fire was blazing well, and he withdrew to the dugout.

  The stump was very pitchy, and pitch pine burns with a hot, bright flame. There was a good chance the fire would burn all night through—or through what was left of the night.

  Inside the dugout he huddled near the fire, arms squeezing his knees for warmth, and he turned a little from time to time when his back grew cold.

  Several times he peered out, but he saw no wolves. A long time later, when it was almost light, he crawled under the buffalo coat and went to sleep.

  When he woke on the morning of the third day he knew it was time to go.

  The stump was burned down to almost nothing, and the wolves might come back. They would follow him, he was sure, but from a distance. Wherever he stopped, he must be sure the place was one where there would be shelter for both them and Red, and where he could keep a fire going. Wild animals were afraid of fire, and in that lay safety perhaps.

  It was a gray morning, and under a sullen sky they started west once more. They had scarcely started when they came upon the travois trail of the Cheyennes, the same one Scott Collins, Squires, and Darrow had seen only a short time before.

  Hardy knew a travois trail when he saw one, and a travois meant Indians. At this time of year, he thought, they were probably headed for their winter camp, so their presence in this region did not alarm him. He was more worried about the wolves, but at first he saw no sign of them.

  The snow was almost eight inches deep on the level, but it was drifted in places to a depth of three or four feet. Hardy avoided the drifts, and tried to keep a straight course to the west.

  Though he was scared and tired, he was glad to be moving, and the big red stallion seemed as eager as they were to be on the way. They moved forward at a steady pace, and for the most part Hardy let the horse choose his own trail.

  For a while they found no tracks at all. The snow was unbroken, and there was almost no wind.

  Looming close above them were the Wind River Mountains. South Pass lay to the south of the range, and it was the accepted route to the west. If all he had heard talked about on the wagon train was true, they should be at South Pass soon. He had heard them say it was mostly a big, wide-open country where a body could scarcely tell when he crossed the divide. On one side the streams flowed toward the east, on the other toward the Pacific—or at any rate in that direction. Some of the water, he’d heard them say, wound up in the bottom of the Great Basin.

  The trail they were taking followed Beaver Creek more or less. Suddenly he came upon the tracks of three riders. All the horses were shod, but he could see that only in an occasional track where it had been sheltered by a tree or bush, for the rest of the tracks were almost covered by last night’s snow.

  “These look like yesterday’s tracks,” he said to Betty Sue. “It might be those men we got away from.”

  “There were only two of them,” Betty Sue said.

  “They might have picked up a friend. But no, these don’t look like the same tracks. I can’t make out enough to tell, though—it might even be Indians on stolen horses.”

  He turned Big Red away to the north, then taking a westward direction again, he followed Beaver Creek. He could not rightly see the sun, but by what he thought should be noon they had put ten or twelve miles behind them. Big Red was tireless, and they had found no place to stop.

  It was midafternoon before he saw a wolf. The animal was perhaps half a mile behind them, and when Hardy turned in the saddle he glimpsed it, loping easily along through the snow, just keeping them in sight. Fear tightened his throat. If there was one wolf, there would be others.

  “We’ve got to find a place to stop,” he said. “You keep looking, Betty Sue. You might see something that I don’t.”

  “Are there going to be wolves, Hardy?”

  “Maybe. In this kind of country there generally are wolves. Nothing to worry about though,” he added. “We’ll have a place with a fire.”

  “What if the wolves come before we get the fire lit?”

  “They won’t come much before night,” Hardy said hopefully. “We’re going to make camp pretty quick.”

  He knew it would be no use to shoot at them. Pa had done that once, but it only scared them for a little while, and then they had come back.

  Big Red continued along Beaver Creek, and Hardy studied every nook and cranny for a place to camp. They would need something at their backs, and they would need fuel—lots of it. They also needed a place that was big enough to get the horse in with them. Twice Hardy saw a place he thought might do for camp, but each time he had to decide against it.

  He kept thinking back to the tracks of those three riders. Would it have been better to have followed them? But he had no idea who they might be, or where they were going. He kept seeing tracks of animals too, for they were out and moving now, but most of the tracks were wolf tracks.

  The afternoon wore on, and it grew colder. When he looked back again he saw there were two wolves now…and yes, another one, still farther back.

  It would soon be dark. Red had slowed his pace, and Hardy knew the big horse was hungry and must be allowed to scratch away the snow to get at the grass before they tied him up. Hardy was not only frightened, but he was close to tears. There was no place to stop…no place. Behind him a wolf howled, answered by another. Suddenly he saw a wolf ahead of them, waiting in the trail.

  Red saw it, too, but he did not turn and run…instead started for the animal, teeth bared.

  The wolf leaped aside, in no way frightened. He was not a lone hunter, and the rest were coming. Wolves had pulled down horses before this.

  Their way went down into a grove of trees, where it was dark. The stallion ran through the trees swiftly, and suddenly, in the gathering dusk, Hardy saw what he had been looking for.

  Across the creek and under the shoulder of the hill was a cave. It did not look like a deep cave, just an overhang, but there was some scattered wood there, left by high water of the past.

  “Over there, Red,” Hardy urged, “across the creek!”

  The big horse splashed through the knee-high water and up the rocky bank on the far side. The bluff rose high above them. The interior of the cave under the overhang was black and forbidding, but close to the entrance there was a small parapet of stones made for a breastwork, or for a reflector.

  Hardy slid down, gathered dry sticks under the overhang, and heaped them together. From the last camp he had brought some shavings and a handful of shredded bark, and he put these on the ground under the dried sticks and started a fire. It blazed up, died down, then caught again.

  Picketing Big Red on a level spot nearby, he scraped off some of the snow to get at the grass underneath, but Red needed no showing. He knew where the grass was, and went after it.

  Then Hardy set to work to gather more sticks. Betty Sue came with him, walking close to him. First of all he searched for a short, strong stick for a club, and then he gathered as much wood as he could find and piled it in the hollow under the bluff. He built his fire brighter.

  It would soon be night. The wolves were out there.
He could already see them coming closer and slinking around. Kicking a couple of rocks loose that were partly frozen to the earth, he hurled them at the wolves—and he had a strong throwing arm. The wolves ran off a few feet, then stopped. And that was when he thought of the slingshot.

  He had no rubber or anything to use for rubber, but he could make a sling. His pa had made the first one for him when he was four, after telling him the story of David and Goliath, and he had practiced with it off and on for a year. Then he discarded it until he was six, when one day he tried it again and barked a squirrel with it. After that, he had practiced a good deal. He still couldn’t be sure of hitting his mark, although he did every once in a while.

  With his knife he cut a strip from the worn bottom of the old buffalo coat, and made his sling. Then he hunted in the creek bottom for stones of the right size. The water was so cold that he nearly froze his hands hunting for them, but he had soon gathered fifteen or twenty.

  He stood shivering over the fire, stretching his wet hands out toward the flames.…There was so much to do, and he was so tired. He had never been so tired in his whole life. And he was scared—scared of the wolves, of the Indians, of the cold, and of the distance to Fort Bridger.

  “We’re going to make it, Betty Sue,” he said confidently. “I just know we are. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Her voice was small, and she looked up at him, sensing something of what he felt.

  “You roll up in that buffalo coat,” Hardy told her. “I’ll be fixing around for a while.”

  He took up the stick and the sling and went out to the horse. One of the wolves, a big, heavy-chested brute, was not more than fifty feet away, just sitting there. Big Red had pulled back to the end of his tether and Hardy had to go past him, toward the wolf, to pull up the picket-pin. He was afraid Red might pull away from him.

  He took a step over to the horse and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right, Red. Don’t you fuss none.”

  He slipped a stone into the sling and, carrying the stick in his left hand, walked toward the picket-pin. The wolf got up on all four feet and seemed to snarl, deep in his throat. Suddenly, almost of its own volition, Hardy’s arm whipped over with the sling. The distance was short, and Hardy was lucky. He heard the thump as the stone struck the wolf, and the animal jumped straight up, yelping in surprise and pain, and then it scrambled off into the darkness.

  Almost crying with fear, Hardy tugged and pulled at the picket-pin, but it held, half frozen in the hard ground. He worked at it, and finally it came loose and he pulled it up. Then catching up the stick and the sling again, he went back toward the overhang.

  He led the horse deep inside, back of the fire. There were only two pieces of the pilot bread left, but he fed Red one piece, and patted him for a time. After that he went back to the fire and heaped wood upon it.

  He dragged some sticks close up to the buffalo coat, where he could just reach out from under it and put them on the fire. It was very cold. He hung up their blanket-capes so that they would not get damp, and crawled under the coat, lying on part of it, with the other part wrapped over them. He felt of the back of Betty Sue’s neck. It was warm, and she was sleeping soundly.

  He cuddled up, trying to stop shivering, knowing he would soon be warm. He looked out at the fire; and beyond it, in the darkness, something stirred. He reached out and put two big sticks on the fire, then pulled his hand back.

  He was beginning to get warm. He knew he should put another stick on the fire, but he hated to reach out and let the cold air in. He wanted to stay just as he was, but finally he did put out his hand and add more fuel.

  Then he snuggled a little deeper under the buffalo coat, warm at last. And then, not knowing just when it happened, he fell asleep.

  Nearby the stallion moved restlessly, ears pricked. Slowly the wood burned down. Only ashes glowed. Beyond the fire the wolves had moved closer, just a little way out there. The big horse stamped and blew, but the boy did not stir.

  A stick, propped against a stone, slid down and fell into the coals. A flame sprang up, burned brightly, then died away, and there was darkness. Only the coals glowed, and the eyes of the wolves.

  Chapter 13

  WE SHOULD’VE KILLED that kid,” Cal muttered.

  Jud hunched his shoulders against the wind. The night was bitterly cold, and in the snowfall they had lost the trail. “You forgettin’ that’s Scott Collins’ boy?”

  “To hell with him!” Cal said.

  They had been riding since before daybreak, and now it was long past midnight. Their horses were dead-beat and so were they. Cal, who rode bareback, had been cursing at the loss of his saddle, and neither man had seen anything remotely like the shelter they needed.

  The two men had ridden out of Hangtown just ahead of a general clean-up, which had been engineered in part by Scott Collins, and in which he had taken the major role. They were just two of many who had scattered to avoid hanging, and they had ridden east with some vague idea of robbing wagon trains bound for California or Oregon.

  When news of the gold strike reached the East—and it had just done so—travelers by the thousands would be coming over this road, and an organized gang could get rich quick and live off the fat of the land while doing so.

  They had at first considered staying around Salt Lake, but the stories they heard of Porter Rockwell, Bill Hickman, and others of the Danites, had given them the impression it might become extremely unhealthy in that region. So their idea had been to hole up somewhere along the trail, and steal enough supplies to wait for the rush in the spring of ’49.

  “Hold up, Cal!” Jud pulled in his horse and sat bolt upright in the saddle. “I smell smoke.”

  They tested the wind, waited, and then Jud said, “Must’ve been mistook, but I’d have sworn—”

  “I think you did,” Cal interrupted. “I caught a whiff of something.”

  The night was still; a low wind moaned among the trees and stirred loose snow. They waited, listening, trying the wind. They smelled nothing more, and were about to go on when they heard a wolf howl.

  “Ever get a close look at one of them brutes, Jud?” Cal stared off into the night. “I seen one must’ve weighed two hundred, if a pound. Rancher killed him over on the Green. You never seen such teeth.”

  Cal started on, then held up at Jud’s motion “Hold on a minute,” he said. “I think that wolf’s found something. He don’t sound like he’s huntin’.”

  “Aw, come on! Its cold and I want to…”

  They both caught it then, the definite smell of woodsmoke. It came from the south, and the two renegades swung their horses and walked them slowly in that direction. From time to time they continued to catch the smell of smoke.

  “Somebody’s got ’em a far,” Jud said. “Now, Cal, don’t you start nothin’ with these folks. Maybe we can get a night’s good sleep.”

  The smell of smoke was elusive—now faint, now stronger, then dissipated by the slight wind until there was no smell of it at all. For almost an hour, never more than a few hundred yards from the source, they moved up and back, working about among the trees, and finally emerging on the top of the bluff.

  There the scent was strong, for they were now directly above the overhang where Hardy and Betty Sue had taken shelter.

  “Look!” Jud pointed. “There’s your wolves!”

  At least five wolves were within sight, their dark bodies showing up clearly against the white snow. One or two moved restlessly, others just sat there, but one seemed to be creeping toward a spot right below them.

  “They’ve spotted something down below,” Jud said. “I’ll lay you eight to five it’s them young uns.”

  Skirting the cliff’s edge, they found a slide that would take them to the bottom. The bluff was no more than sixty feet high, but it was sheer along most of its length, and the slide itself was steep. The horses hesitated, but urged on by their riders, they slid down in a cascade of snow a
nd gravel.

  The riders had come up with the wind in their faces, unseen and undetected by the wolves, but the nearest wolf, creeping over the snow on his belly, was close enough to rush.

  The horse was trapped against the rock wall. The wolf crept a little closer, and Big Red, eyes rolling, pulled back hard on the worn picket-rope. It snapped, the wolf charged, and Hardy awoke, all in one instant.

  Hardy’s eyes flared opened to see the belly of the horse above him, the stallion rearing high, forefeet churning. Before his eyes the wolf suddenly charged and the horse struck hard, his hoofs missing the agile wolf by a hair as it sprang aside, but the horse was suddenly in the open, and the other wolves were charging in.

  The nearest one leaped, and the stallion caught it in its powerful jaws. Red hurled the wolf to the snow, then the big horse spun, kicking and charging as the other wolves charged.

  By now Hardy was up, his derringer in his hand, watching for the chance for a shot.

  Then from out of the darkness came the riders. They charged in swiftly, and one of them chopped down with his six-gun. It spat fire and a wolf dropped, kicking in the bloody snow. The rider fired again, but at a fleeing target, for as suddenly as they had come, the wolves were gone.

  Hardy knew the horses. Wheeling, he caught Betty Sue by the hand and darted into the darkest corner of the overhang. Running blindly, he brushed by the blanket-capes and had the presence of mind to grab them from the rock where they hung.

  He had not yet explored the back of the overhang, and now he ran into a pile of stones, and scrambled over them, barking his shins and tearing his hands. Somehow he got Betty Sue over into the dark recess behind the stones, and there they crouched, shivering and terrified.

  “Get a rope on that horse!” they heard Cal shout. “I can’t rope barebacked!”

  “You see them young uns?”

  “Damn ’em! Git that horse!”