He began to see tepee rings, circles of rocks in parks or open meadows that marked the campsite of an Indian band. It made him even more watchful. On the fourth day he sighted the first Indians. He was climbing a slope, with a magpie scolding in the firs. Despite his aching weariness, he could not help his faint grin at the sound. Just keep talking, you joker.
His moccasins crushed resiliently into the mat of pine needles, and for another hundred yards he climbed steadily. Then the magpie broke off sharply. He stopped, staring up the slope, and wheeled and darted for a dense clump of chokecherry.
He was on his belly, hidden in the brush, when the Indians appeared. They passed within fifty yards of him and never knew he was there, a part of Blackfeet on the move, with their pack horses, their wives, their children. The scent of their tobacco floated to him, and it was not willow-bark kinnikinnik, but the rank plug cut the traders used. There were new axes on their saddles, and new iron bridles on their horses. They had been trading their furs with Anne Corday.
The band of spare horses made his mouth water. But he could not try for one in broad daylight, and since they were heading in the wrong direction, he did not want to lose half a day by following them south to their night camp. So he ran on.
On the fifth day he ran out of food and was afraid to shoot game for fear he would be heard. But he knew the Indian tricks. He found tinipsila roots and ate them raw and later on came across some bulrushes by a stream and ate the white part like celery. And farther up the stream were wild strawberries and a few service berries that only an Indian could swallow with a straight face. It gave him enough nourishment to keep running.
THAT NIGHT HE found three more tepee rings in a shallow valley. The grass had not begun to grow up around the circled rocks, so he knew they had been planted recently. The horse droppings leading north were fresh enough to have been left that morning. It was the way he wanted it.
He followed the trail by moonlight, his lank figure fluttering through the shadow-black timber like a lost animal. He found the new camp near dawn. Three tepees formed pale cones in the center of a clearing, with the horses grazing on picket ropes.
Under ordinary circumstances, he would have moved more slowly, but the squaws would be rising soon, and he wanted to get away before that. So he had to approach the horses directly, not giving them time to get used to him. He picked out a pinto with lots of wind in its heavy throttle. Before he could reach it, however, one of the animals spooked and whinnied.
This brought the dogs from where they had been sleeping near the embers of last night’s fire, and their baying raised the camp. They circled him in a pack, snapping at his legs and yapping crazily. Kicking them off, he pulled the pinto’s picket pin and ran down the rope to the plunging horse. The first Indian to jump through the door flap had a clumsy London fusil.
He saw that he couldn’t get it loaded in time, and started to run for Garrit. The mountain man threw all his weight onto the picket rope, pulling the pinto down so he could throw the loose end around its fluttering snout in a war-bridle. He did not have time to unknot the other end from about its neck. He pulled his green River Knife and slashed it.
The Indian reached him then, leaping through the pack of dogs to swing viciously with his clubbed fusil. Garrit ducked and the butt of the gun thumped against the pinto’s flank. Holding the plunging horse with one hand he threw his Green River, blade first, with the other. There was but a foot between them, and he saw it sink to the hilt in the man’s shoulder.
The Indian staggered back, face contorted with pain. Garrit scooped up the rifle he had been forced to drop and threw himself aboard the horse, kicking its flanks. He raced out of camp with the dogs yapping at his heels and the other Indians stopping halfway between the tepees and the herd to load their fusils and fire after him. The short-range London guns would not reach him, however, and he plunged unhurt into timber.
He knew they would follow and ran the horse for the first creek. He went south in the water, for they knew all the tricks too. After two miles of riding the shallows he went out on shore and left sign they would be sure to follow and made them a false trail leading on south till he found a talus bench that led into another creek. The pony was unshod and would not even leave shoe scars on the rocky bench. In the water he turned north again. When he could travel north no longer in the water he left it once more. He was far enough above the Indian camp to start hunting for the Cordays’ sign now. It took him several hours to pick it up.
They were pushing twenty-five horses, and he could travel at three times their speed if he drove hard. And he drove hard. All day, with only time out to water the horse and shoot a buck whose haunch he roasted over a fire and ate as he rode. He gave the horse an hour’s rest at sundown and then went on.
By dawn the horse was beaten down but Garrit knew he was near his quarry for all the signs were not many hours old. His belly sucked at him with its hunger and his face, covered with a week’s growth of scraggly beard, had the haggard, driven look of some animal. It took all his grim purpose and the bitterness of three years’ exile to push him those last miles. Then, in the late afternoon, he topped a ridge and saw the line of pack horses standing in the park below him.
He left the horse and dropped down through the trees on foot. Closing in on the camp, he became a shadow, flitting from tree to tree. Finally he bellied down and crawled like a snake through buckwheat and chokecherry bushes till he could see the whole camp.
They had evidently just finished trading with more Indians, for there was a pile of unbaled pelts heaped to one side of a campfire, and a pack saddle next to them, with some trade goods still lying on the ground. The Blackfoot who had come to Bruce’s camp with the woman was busily loading another pack saddle onto one of the horses lined up near the trees. The other three were at the fire. Frenchie was on his hunkers, still wearing his immense cinnamon bear coat, sorting out the pelts they had just gotten. Gervais Corday stood above him, tall, bitter-eyed, one-armed. And Anne Corday was feeding new wood to the fire.
The weather seams deepened about Garrit’s eyes, as he stared at her, giving his face an expression close to pain. This was the woman he had hunted for three years. Hers was the face he had seen in a thousand dreams. And now it was before him. Her blue-black hair no longer had the vermilion in its part. It was blown wild by the wind, and made a tousled frame for the piquant oval of her face, with its black eyes, its ripe lips. She had discarded the Indian dress for a shirt made from a red Hudson’s Bay blanket, and a skirt of white doeskin with fringes that softly caressed her coppery calves. Even in his bitter triumph, he could not deny her striking, young beauty.
“Ho-ho,” Frenchie chortled. “There are over twenty prime beaver here. Another year or so like this and we’ll be rich.”
Gervais frowned down at him. “You said this would finish Yellowstone Fur.”
“Is true.” The Frenchman grinned. “They don’t turn this pack train into furs, they go under. But why stop? There is still American Fur, Rocky Mountain Fur. Even Hudson’s Bay.”
“Did they take my arm?” Gervais’s voice was acid. He began to pace back and forth, slapping at his elk hide leggins with his good hand. “Did they ruin me? What do I care about Rocky Mountain or Hudson’s Bay? They didn’t smash my life. It is Yellowstone Fur who will pay.” His voice began to shake. “They can’t take a man’s life and toss it away like a puff of smoke. Ruin everything he worked for so long. Cast him and his daughter upon the wilderness—”
The girl caught his arm, her voice low and placating. “Father please, don’t get excited again—”
“Excited!” He turned on her with blazing eyes. “How can you talk that way? You were ruined too. All my plans for you. Instead of a great lady you’re nothing but a wild animal running the forest with me.”
“One fur company is just as bad as the next,” Frenchie said. “You saw how American Fur pushed Lestrade off his rightful lines. If you’d fought them, I’m sure they’d have take
n your arm just as quickly.”
“Frenchie,” the girl said sharply. “Don’t start him off again. You’re just twisting things around. Maybe he had reason to fight Yellowstone, but—”
“I don’t know—” Gervais pulled away from his daughter, pacing again. “Perhaps Frenchie is right.”
“Of course I’m right,” the big Frenchman said. “What good would it do to stop now? If you take what we’ve made and try to start again, some other big fur company will only pinch you off again. We’ve got to ruin them all, Gervais. Only then will it be safe for honest men out here again. They take your arm this time; they’re liable to kill you next time—”
“They won’t get the chance, Frenchie,” Garrit said, rising from the chokecherry bushes.
The three in the clearing and the Indian by the horses all turned in surprise. Garrit walked toward them, his Jake Hawkins held across one hip. Gervais finally let out a pent breath, speaking in a voice thin with shock.
“I thought you said you took all the horses.”
“I did,” Frenchie said. “The man’s inhuman.” Then he let out his bellowing laugh. “Sucre bleu, I should have kill you. The only man in the world who could have catch us on foot, and I let him live.”
At that moment a quick movement from the Indian spun Garrit toward him. The man had tried to jump behind one of the horses and scoop up a loaded rifle and fire, all at the same time. His gun boomed simultaneously with Garrit’s but he had tried to do too much at once. His bullet dug into the ground a foot from Garrit, while Garrit’s bullet struck him in the chest, knocking him backward like a heavy blow.
But it gave Frenchie his chance. He reached Garrit before the mountain man could wheel back, with Gervais Corday rushing right in behind. Garrit was off-balance when the Frenchman grabbed his rifle. It was his first true sense of the man’s bearlike strength. He felt as though his hands had been torn off with the rifle when Frenchie wrenched it free.
The big Frenchman swung it wide, clubbed, and brought it back in a vicious circle. It would have broken Garrit’s head open. All he could do was drop to his knees. The heavy gun whistled over his head and smashed Gervais right in the face as he came rushing in on Frenchie’s flank.
The one-armed man made a choked sound and dropped like a poled ox. Garrit came up off his knees into Frenchie, locking the rifle between them. It knocked the Frenchman back off his feet and he rolled to the ground with Garrit on top, fighting like a cat.
The quarters were too close for the rifle and the Frenchman let it go to pull his knife. Garrit tried to grasp the wrist but the Frenchman spraddled out for leverage and rolled atop Garrit.
The mountain man saw the flash of a blade and jerked his whole body aside. The knife drove into the ground. Frenchie yanked it out, but Garrit got hold of the knife-wrist with both hands and twisted it inward as he lunged upward with his whole body.
It drove the knife hilt-deep into the Frenchman. He let out a great shout of pain and flopped off Garrit. As the mountain man rolled over and came to his feet he saw Anne Corday on her knees beside her father, fumbling the pistol from his belt. Garrit ran at her, reaching her just as she raised the weapon. He kicked it out of her hand.
She threw herself up at him, clawing like an enraged cat. He caught both hands, spun aside, used her own momentum to throw her. She hit on her back so hard it stunned her, and she made no attempt to roll over or rise.
Garrit wheeled back in time to see Frenchie staggering into the trees, one hand gripped over his bloody side. Garrit got the loaded pistol and ran after the man. But by the time he reached timber, Frenchie was out of sight. Garrit heard Anne Corday groan and roll over. He didn’t know how much time it would take him to find Frenchie. He couldn’t risk it, he couldn’t take that chance of losing the pack train again, with the girl and her father still in the clearing.
Reluctantly, he turned back to Anne Corday. The anger was gone from her face. Grief and shock rendered it blank. She was staring at her father, as if just realizing how crazily his head was twisted. Garrit knew, then, what she must have known. The blow of the rifle butt had broken Gervais Corday’s neck.
“She’ll Always Be Calling… .”
It was two days before the girl would talk to Garrit. He buried her father and the Indian up there in the Little Belts and took the pack train and started back to Bruce.
The second night he made camp on the white beach of a creek in a narrow gorge that rose a hundred feet above them and would hide the light of their fire. The girl sat on a heap of buffalo robes, watching him draw a spark with his flint and steel. When he had the blaze started, her voice came softly out of the night.
“You love this country, don’t you?”
He was silent awhile, staring into the flames. “I guess you’re right. The country gets into a man without him even knowing it.” He paused, then slowly turned to look at her. “You don’t hate me?”
“I’ve been mixed up these last two days.” She spoke in a low, strained voice. “For a while I thought you were to blame for my father’s death. But the Frenchman killed my father.” She shook her head slowly. “Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. Father was changing so. I thought he was bitter enough, at first. But he was getting worse. He was becoming a fanatic. Actually, you have as much reason to hate me. We ruined you, didn’t we?”
He turned and walked to where she sat, towering above her, his face narrow and dark with thought as he gazed down at her. “I should hate you. I’ve tried to. But what I saw in that clearing changed a lot of things. Don’t you realize how Frenchie was using your father?”
She stared at the sand, her lips still pinched and white with grief. “I realize now. The Frenchman didn’t show his true colors till that afternoon. We thought he was a friend, another man who had been ruined by Yellowstone Fur. But he was nothing more than a thief, using my father’s bitterness against Yellowstone to further his own ends.”
“And your bitterness?”
Her face turned up to him defiantly. “Were we wrong? Wouldn’t you despise the people who ruined your father?”
He dropped beside her, caught her hands. “It wasn’t Yellowstone Fur itself, Anne. Has your father so filled you with his bitterness that you can’t see that? There are decent men in Yellowstone. There’s a man named Farrier down at Fort Union who could have turned me in, but he gave me a break.”
“They sent a man out to kill my father—”
“Did your father really convince you of that? I saw a copy of the Yellowstone man’s orders. He was sent to try and negotiate a new deal with your father for his territory. It was your father who started the fight. The Yellowstone man was only defending himself.”
She jumped to her feet, eyes flashing. “Now you’re trying to twist it up. I forgave you my father’s death. Isn’t that enough?” She wheeled away from him, walking to the end of the sandspit. She locked her hands, staring out into the night for a long time. Finally she said, thinly, “You think you’ll take me in. You think you’ll show me to all those men who don’t believe Anne Corday exists, and it will clear your name.”
“It’s what I’ve been working toward for three years,” he said, in a low voice.
“You’ll never even get me back to Bruce,” she said.
“Where would you go, if you escaped?” he said, gently.
“My mother is still with the tribe, up near Flathead Lake,” Anne said. “I would be safe with any band of Blackfeet I met. But I don’t need that. Don’t you know who is following us?”
He felt his head lift in surprise, as he realized what she meant. “How could he, with a wound like that?”
“I know him,” she said. “When he sets out to do something, nothing can stop him. You could stab him a dozen times and he could still walk a hundred miles. Frenchie is following us, Garrit, and he will catch us. You will never take me in.”
GARRIT DID NOT sleep much that night. He tied Anne Corday’s hands and spent most of the time scouting th
e gorge. It rained the next day, a spring thunderstorm that made the creeks overflow their banks and wiped out the trail of the pack train. Garrit pushed hard, knowing there was little chance of meeting Indians in the storm. But thought of the Frenchman hung more heavily upon him than any danger of Indians. If Anne Corday was right, the man would be a constant threat, hanging over them till they reached Bruce. It made Garrit jumpy, imbuing him with more than his normal restlessness.
They made a miserable camp in a cave, both of them soaking wet, and he hung a three-point for Anne to undress behind and then she wrapped the blanket around her and huddled over the fire.
“Do you remember how it was raining the first night we met, down on the Platte?” she said.
“And you took us into your shelters and let us dry our clothes and drink your whiskey and we got drunk as Indians on ration day.
“I had been drunk before. It was more than that. It’s bothered me ever since.”
“It has bothered me, too,” she said, softly.
He stared down at her, trying to fathom the strange look in her eyes, to untangle the mixed emotions in himself. Her lips, so red, so ripe, seemed to rise toward him, until they were touching his, with her body in his arms.
After a long while, he backed away, staring down at her. There was a twisted look to her face, a shining confusion in her eyes. Then, for an instant, the expression in her face changed. Her eyes seemed to focus on something behind him. When they swung back to his face, she reached up to pull his lips down to hers once more.
Only senses developed through three years of living like an animal would have detected it. Some sound, unidentifiable in that instant, reached him. He tried to tear himself loose and twist around. He shifted far enough aside to that the knife went into his arm instead of his back.
The girl scrambled away from him, lunging for the rifle he had kept loaded at all times, these last days. Sick with pain, he tried to wheel on around and rise. He had a dim view of the Frenchman above him, the pelt of his coat matted with dried blood, a murderous light in his eyes.
A Century of Great Western Stories Page 59
