Trail to Devil's Canyon

by Cole Matthews

  ‘Let’s just say your bride is here in one piece, Judd,’ Anton said. ‘Now it is your turn to look after her, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Don’t you worry none about that, Old Moscow,’ Judd said, his eyes riveted on the woman.

  ‘You will need to keep a sharp lookout on the trail to Fort Bighorn,’ Anton advised. ‘We saw more Indians on the way. The country we rode through was lousy with Paiute Indian sign.’

  ‘We rode northwest chasing those yellow-bellied deserters, and we never saw a trace of Injuns,’ Judd said disparagingly.

  ‘Didn’t even smell an Injun,’ Trooper Yacey yawned.

  ‘All the same, be careful,’ Anton again advised. ‘You will have a woman with you.’

  ‘Forget that, Old Moscow!’ Judd snapped. ‘You are finished with being concerned about my bride!’

  Lucy served the venison steaks. The soldiers ate the meal, lounging around the table. Anton sat apart from the others. He drank a second cup of coffee as the troopers yarned, and Judd watched his bride like a hawk. Yellow-haired Copeland smelled of whiskey, and his breath was foul. Yacey was still slurping coffee. He thrust a cigar between his lips, just as he had done at Old Bootleg Canyon. Gravens looked half asleep. Loomis seemed different from the rest. Not only was he younger, but he seemed ill at ease.

  ‘You men can go outside and get the horses ready for the trail,’ Judd directed.

  The troopers tramped outside, leaving the Lieutenant and the mountain man with Lucy.

  Judd stubbed the ash of his cigar. ‘Anton, we need to borrow your other room.’

  Anton looked at the officer with confusion. ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘It is time for me and my lovely bride to get better acquainted,’ Judd winked. ‘Just ten minutes will be fine – for now.’

  Lucy stepped back a few paces.

  ‘Please, Judd, let’s not rush things,’ she said. ‘I would rather ride to the fort, and—’

  ‘Woman, I make the decisions!’ Judd said flatly.

  ‘No, Judd; in this house, I make them,’ Anton declared.

  ‘Dammit, Anton—’

  ‘Lieutenant! Lieutenant Reed!’ Hal Yacey’s urgent summons bellowed from the doorstep of the cabin.

  ‘What in the living hell is up?’ Judd Reed demanded irritably.

  The trooper was excited. ‘Smoke!’

  Anton was outside first with the lieutenant bustling through the doorway moments later. The four cavalry troopers, bunched near their horses, were staring at the smoke signal rising from the northern slopes of the valley. The signal fire had probably been lit on the ridge where Anton had caught the old Paiute Indian, Looks at the Bear, stealing from his traps.

  ‘What does it say, Old . . . Anton?’ Judd asked.

  ‘It is war smoke.’

  ‘Then we had best get into the saddle and ride,’ Judd decided swiftly. ‘We will need to inform Major Peabody.’

  ‘You could ride through the valley,’ Anton suggested to his soldier visitors as he watched the dark, ominous puffs. ‘If there is a raid, the settlers could use five extra guns.’

  ‘Judd, Anton’s right,’ Lucy pleaded with her future husband. ‘The settlers will need help. . . .’

  ‘I will thank you to keep your opinions to yourself!’ Judd Reed said tersely. ‘This is army business, woman.’

  ‘Hell!’ Trooper Alan Loomis exclaimed, pointing to the western rim of Devil’s Canyon. ‘Two more smoke signals!’

  Anton stepped into the yard. Two thin columns of white smoke were drifting in the sunlight. Suddenly the columns broke into separate puffs. He glanced south to the end of the canyon, beyond the old stockade. Three more signals were rising into the morning sky. He saw the wide eyes of young Trooper Loomis looking in the same direction. That was the way to Fort Bighorn. A lone signal puffed into the air from the sheer walls of Minaret’s Pass.

  ‘You won’t be ridin’ back to Fort Bighorn in a hurry,’ Anton Kozlov informed them soberly. ‘We are ringed in from the looks of the signals.’

  ‘Bastards!’ Yacey whispered hoarsely.

  ‘They must have followed you here,’ Judd muttered. ‘You killed some braves, so the tribe wants blood. Dammit, you should have covered your tracks better, you old fool.’

  Anton ran his eyes around the valley rims.

  ‘They are not here on my account,’ he announced.

  ‘Then – why?’ Trooper Loomis stammered.

  ‘Oh, probably just a murder raid,’ Hal Yacey said, snatching his army carbine from its saddle scabbard.

  ‘Chief Numaga signed a treaty,’ Anton said. ‘Somethin’ bad must have happened to make them break it.’

  ‘Treaty or no treaty, you can never trust those Snake Indians,’ Judd muttered beside the mountain man.

  ‘Snake? I thought they were Paiute?’ Lucy whispered.

  ‘One and the same,’ answered Anton. ‘Some people refer to them as the Snake Indians, for snakin’ along rivers, I reckon.’

  Once again, Anton looked around at the ring of slowly rising smoke. He strode to Socks and unsheathed his rifle.

  ‘We canyon folk have a way of warnin’ everyone else of danger,’ Anton declared.

  He lifted his rifle and aimed at the sky. Then he discharged his gun three times in rapid-fire succession. He waited as the echoes reverberated the whole length of the valley.

  ‘By now, every settler should be outside his cabin checkin’ what is up. I reckon everyone will see the smoke now.’

  Three shots boomed from Roberts’ place in acknowledgement of the warning. Gunfire came next from Calhoun’s spread, followed immediately by blasts from Will Alvord. The echoes began to die, but then they heard from Weathers and Bliss.

  ‘They all know to make for the stockade,’ Anton explained.

  ‘Mount up,’ Judd told his troopers. He looked at Lucy then and added, ‘You too, woman.’

  ‘Are you going to help the settlers?’ Lucy asked Judd anxiously.

  Plainly angered by her question, Judd merely pointed to her horse and then stood waiting with his hands on hips as she walked to the horse and mounted. The four troopers made ready to ride.

  ‘I told you what I intend to do,’ Judd Reed said tersely. ‘We are riding to inform Major Peabody of an Indian uprising.’

  ‘I would not advise tryin’ to get through the pass,’ Anton said, watching a second smoke signal rise just south of the pass.

  ‘I am in command, old man,’ Judd said crisply. ‘And I make the decisions.’

  ‘To ride into that pass would be bookin’ a ticket to the nearest cemetery,’ Anton Kozlov warned.

  ‘You were yellow in the army,’ Judd sneered, ‘and you are still yellow now!’

  Anton’s fist smashed into Judd’s face like a hammer. Judd staggered back with blood gushing from his broken nose. He fell hard against his horse and then pitched forward into a barrage of blows – to his jaw, to his chest and straight at his gaping mouth. Two teeth sailed across the yard, and Judd Reed fell flat. When Anton looked up, he was facing four guns.

  ‘Just say the word, Lieutenant,’ Trooper Hal Yacey grated, looking down his rifle barrel at Anton’s head.

  ‘Judd!’ Lucy screamed frantically. ‘Don’t do it! He is your friend!’

  Judd eased himself painfully into a kneeling position. Blood streamed down his face and soaked into his tunic. His chest heaved. Shaking with rage, he glared at the old mountain man. Still kneeling, he contemplated the arc of loaded guns aimed at Kozlov.

  ‘Like she said, you are my friend,’ Judd said indistinctly as he spat out another tooth. ‘More important than that, you brought my bride to me. That is the only reason I am gonna tell my men to put their guns down.’ The troopers lowered their rifles as Judd nursed his jaw. ‘But listen – don’t you ever lay a hand on me again, because next time I will have you shot down like a dog!’ Judd swung into his saddle then. Possessively, he leaned over and took hold of Lucy’s bridle. ‘So long, Old Moscow.’ Then he bellowed the order. ‘
Make for the pass!’

  ‘You could be takin’ your bride on a death ride,’ Anton warned stubbornly.

  ‘Her safety is my business and not yours, from now on.’

  Anton watched them ride out.

  Lucy stole a quick, desperate glance over her shoulder. Judd said something, and she turned obediently to face him.

  Signal smoke was still rising. Knowing that time could be running out, Anton hurried into his cabin and quickly began to stuff supplies into his saddlebag. Then he carried out an armful of pelts and roped them to the spare horse. He went back inside to replenish his ammunition and check his guns. Finally, he untied the old mongrel dog.

  Although it probably wouldn’t matter, he closed the cabin door.

  Riding his sorrel and with the spare horse and the dog behind him, he set his face for the stockade.

  Chapter 5

  Fire in the Canyon

  ‘Shut the gate!’ Anton Kozlov commanded.

  He stood on the platform behind the north wall. From that elevation, he could look over the wall and see the whole length of the canyon. Puffs of smoke no longer drifted into the sky, but now there was other movement. Riders in the pines on the slopes of the canyon.

  ‘You heard him!’ Reverend Burt Roberts bellowed. ‘Close the gates before the heathen get here!’

  Dave Calhoun and Jed Bliss threw themselves against the heavy gates. As the two settlers heaved, the old gates dragged on the tufts of coarse grass which grew over the entrance. Finally, the barrier was in place. Roberts dropped the iron bar.

  ‘Preacher,’ Kozlov summoned him from the platform. The settlers were all inside the stockade walls.

  Bliss had arrived first with his Indian squaw trailing a few steps behind. It was the first-time Anton had seen her. She was a young Crow, slim and stately. Grayson Weathers, his young wife, Clara, and Calhoun had come next.

  Weathers was standing protectively beside his pregnant wife. In his free hand, he held his rifle.

  Calhoun was armed to the teeth. He wore a double gun rig and carried three rifles and a double-barreled shotgun. Will Alvord and Crazy Jane stood apart from the others. The old mountain man had a massive hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.

  Reverend Roberts, Henrietta and the preacher’s six children from his three marriages, had lumbered down the valley in a wagon pulled by a team of sweating horses. Anton had come in last.

  ‘The gate’s barred,’ Roberts said.

  Built like a shaggy bull, he was no seminary-trained preacher. He held church weekly in his barn where he preached earthy sermons, baptized babies and performed marriages and funerals. He looked more at home wielding an ax or a shovel than thumping a Bible. Anton rarely attended the preacher’s services, but he liked the man.

  ‘What is next, Kozlov?’ the preacher was asking now.

  Anton glanced back over the stockade. The army had built the outpost well. The four straight log walls made a precise square. They enclosed an old, dusty building, once used as store and barracks. In the center of the old parade ground was a stone-walled well which Will Alvord had already checked. The bucket he had lowered by rope came up full of fresh, cold, drinking water. Alongside the one-time barracks was a stable and a small guardhouse with barred windows. A two-story building, the former officers’ quarters, was set into the eastern wall. Kozlov’s eyes swept along the platform. There would be six settlers to man the four walls.

  ‘Stable the horses and then pool the food,’ Anton ordered the bearded preacher. ‘The women can handle that, because I want every man on this platform with his guns loaded.’

  ‘I will make sure it is done,’ Burt Roberts promised, leaving him to watch the canyon.

  Anton had assumed command the moment he rode into the stockade, and no one argued with him. He had been a cavalry scout, former Russian soldier; he knew Indians and the way they thought. Besides, he had won the respect of the Devil’s Canyon folks a year before, when the Tully gang came to plunder. Single-handedly, he had put paid to Steven Tully and his two sidekicks. That was enough to send the rest of the outfit fleeing for their lives.

  The timbered slopes were alive with riders now, descending into the canyon. This was no small raiding party. The Paiute Indians were swarming like bees. Even as he watched, settlers took up positions on the platform. Will Alvord and Jed Bliss were manning the western wall, Dave Calhoun and Grayson Weathers climbed the ladder on the south side.

  The preacher rejoined him and asked, ‘Are the red varmints still coming for us?’

  Anton nodded. ‘They are headed this way, for sure.’

  ‘Smoke!’ Roberts pointed out.

  ‘It is not a signal, preacher,’ Anton told him with his eyes on the black, swirling cloud. ‘They have torched a cabin. I would say Will Alvord and Crazy Jane will be rebuildin’.’

  ‘If they . . . I mean . . . we survive the attack,’ the preacher added.

  ‘Yes, exactly.’

  ‘Heathen vandals!’ Reverend Roberts cried passionately, keeping an anxious eye on the distant slope where his own cabin stood.

  ‘There has to be a reason for this,’ Anton murmured.

  ‘They are all children of the devil,’ Roberts pronounced. He glanced down at the weed-strewn parade ground and jerked his chin in the direction of Bliss’ young squaw. ‘And we have let one of them inside with us! I don’t like it, Kozlov! If we are still here after dark, she could knife any of us in the back.’

  ‘So could you . . . or I . . or anyone one of us for that matter,’ Anton replied. ‘She belongs to a white man. That means she is tainted and a candidate for scalpin’, same as us. No cause to worry about her.’

  ‘They didn’t worry about Judas either,’ Roberts reminded him as he stared at her with obvious distaste. ‘How could any Christian white man cohabit with an Indian squaw?’

  ‘Preacher,’ Anton said softly, ‘I reckon they are at your place.’

  Reverend Burt Roberts whipped his gaze from Bliss’ squaw and looked north. His eyes were dark and wide and terrible as they fastened on the black pall belching into the sky. He clenched his huge fists and shook them at the smoke that rose.

  ‘They will burn in hell for this!’ Roberts promised, as fiery sparks mingled with the black smoke.

  Two minutes later, a new plume of smoke began to rise, and Anton swore under his breath. Now it was his cabin. Anger and frustration swept over him as he watched the smoke thicken. The raiders were systematically burning every cabin in Devil’s Canyon, as they moved towards the stockade.

  From his elevated position, Anton Kozlov spotted a large bunch fording the river. He glanced anxiously up at the pass and hoped that Lucy was safe.

  Maybe Judd had already led his bride and the troopers through the pass, and they were on their way to Fort Bighorn. For all his faults, Judd was a good cavalryman.

  Anton turned his eyes down canyon again. A second bunch of warriors was fording the river, and smoke was rising from Dave Calhoun’s new cabin.

  ‘Keep watch,’ Anton told the preacher. ‘I will check right along the walls.’

  Walking along the platform, he headed towards Calhoun. The loner stood staring over the eastern wall. He held the double-barreled shotgun in his arms, and his rifles rested beside him. Anton halted a few paces away, but Calhoun did not acknowledge his presence.

  ‘We expect them within the hour,’ Anton said gloomily.

  Calhoun nodded. ‘I will be ready.’

  ‘Watch those rocks,’ Anton warned. ‘If there is an attack, they will want that spot, so they can keep blastin’ this wall.’

  Calhoun fixed his cold eyes on the jumbled rocks.

  ‘No need to give me advice, Kozlov. When it comes to swappin’ lead, I know what to do.’ He spat over the wall. ‘I reckon you would have heard about that.’

  It was Anton’s turn to nod. ‘I have heard some talk.’

  ‘I could use some tobacco,’ Calhoun declared.

  Kozlov handed his pouch to the tall, lea
n settler. Putting down his shotgun, Calhoun built himself a cigarette.

  ‘I reckon they got your cabin,’ Anton said as Calhoun lit his cigarette.

  ‘I can build another,’ Calhoun simply replied.

  Anton left him and walked along the south platform. This wall overlooked a lightly-timbered downslope. Seeing Kozlov approaching, Grayson Weathers lowered his rifle.

  ‘You OK here, Grayson?’ Anton asked.

  ‘I’m OK,’ Weathers said. ‘I am just worried about Clara. She is due pretty shortly.’

  Anton looked concerned. ‘How soon, Grayson?’

  The man shrugged. ‘I dunno . . . a couple of days maybe.’

  ‘The other women will look after her,’ Anton said to reassure him.

  ‘Kozlov,’ Weathers said slowly, ‘if those red devils get in and kill all the men, what will happen to the women folk?’

  ‘Never you mind that,’ Anton replied softly, ‘just keep your eyes on that slope, you hear?’

  The man nodded. ‘I am keeping my last bullet for Clara.’

  ‘You do what you have to do,’ Anton told him gently.

  He left Weathers swigging water from his canteen. From the western wall, he saw more smoke. Just about every cabin in Devil’s Canyon was blazing. He glanced down at the parade ground. The horses were all stabled. By now, most of the women were inside the two-story building, although he could see Bliss’ young squaw seated cross-legged in the dust.

  ‘Any bright ideas?’ Will Alvord asked.

  ‘All I know is we are not goin’ to lay down and die,’ Anton told him. ‘We have food, water in the well, and ammunition.’

  ‘Listen, Kozlov, you damn well know we don’t have enough guns or ammunition to hold off that many Indians,’ Bliss said wryly.

  With a slight nod of his head and looking down then up again, Anton said, ‘We are goin’ to try.’

  A sudden burst of gunfire made Bliss and Alvord grab their rifles. It was distant gunfire coming from the direction of the pass, and the echoes rolled and merged like faraway thunder. The echoes died, and then there was more gunfire. A lone smoke signal puffed above the pass. It was a signal summoning more warriors in for the kill.