Under the Sweetwater Rim (1971)

by L'amour, Louis

  "Those men . . . they wouldn't attack the army?"

  "They might. But only if they felt they had something to gain." He glanced at Belle. "Did the Captain give you a gun?"

  "Yes."

  "Keep it handy-you may need it. And neither of you must leave camp without telling Schwartz or West, and when you go, go together."

  They sat in silence for a while, staring at the coals. "Ten, what are we going to do?" Mary asked presently.

  "We'll stay right here for two or three days-it's an unlikely place to look. They won't look for us very long, I'm thinking, and after that we'll pull out for the west, keeping to high ground in the mountains" The air was still, the sky was cloudless.

  Brian glanced at the knoll. There were no trees at the top, only a little brush and some dwarf cedar that grew from an outcropping of rock.

  There was a small hollow up there, just large enough for three or four men. From the concealment it offered, anyone would have a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of fire, with no cover nearer than a hundred yards. However, at a point nearly that far away there rose another hill, slightly higher than their own, and a good marksman on top of that hill could make this position untenable. This was the only drawback in their position here except for its lack of water. Two barrels on the sides of the ambulance, but rarely carried on such a vehicle, took care of that problem when the ambulance was near.

  Ever since leaving the wagon train, Brian had taken precautions to erase as much of their trail as possible, but he knew that a skillful tracker could find them.

  At noon he climbed the knoll and relieved Dorsey. "Get some sleep," he said. "You'll need it."

  He settled down to studying the terrain. This would be a moonlight night, but rocks and trees have a way of looking different by night, and unless every one of them was memorized, a man might believe he was seeing things that he was not.

  There was no use, he reflected, in telling them that the man at the head of the renegades was Reuben Kelsey. They had worries enough. Kelsey had never won the reputation of some of the other border riders, like Quantrill or Bloody Bill Anderson, but he had been wise enough to shift his base of operations to the Emigrant Trail. The loot was better, there were Indians to take the blame, and there were no settlers to report their activities. Above all, Kelsey knew the country as few other men did. Everybody knew about Reuben Kelsey, but the fact that he was operating this far west was not known. It had been reported that he had been seen in Kentucky, and even that he had been killed during a fight in Missouri. As for Ten Brian, he had made no secret of the fact that he had once known Kelsey, or that they had been friendly after a fashion.

  Choctaw Benson had been the source of the information as to Kelsey's presence in Wyoming. Ten Brian as a boy had known Benson and liked the old mountain man, and he had come upon him again in a frontier saloon, after his own return to the frontier. He had bought him a drink, then staked him.

  A few days later, as Brian was preparing for his trip to St. Louis, word had reached him that Benson wanted to see him. Brian hesitated because of his own plans, but Choctaw Benson had never made an urgent request before, so Brian had gone to Julesburg.

  "Heard you was sweet on the Major's gal,"

  Choctaw said, squinting his wise old eyes at him. "Well, you was always a good boy, so take care. Kelsey's seen her, and he's crazy after women. The way he uses them up they don't last long. There's a streak o' pizen in him. I seen a squaw he worked on one time, when he wanted to get shet o' her . . . well, I never seen an Apache who could have done it worse.

  "Don't you take risk of him. He's handy with any kind o' weapon, an' he's more treacherous than a rattler. They give a body warnin', at least." Kelsey's activities with women had been known along Suds Row, for gossip had a way of getting around. From Suds Row it had been repeated in the officers' quarters, and even Mary had probably heard the stories. Yet Kelsey could be ingratiating. Even as a boy he had w'tag qualities, as Brian remembered.

  As Brian sat there on the knoll, someone came up the cut toward him. It was Mary.

  She sat down beside him and looked through a space between the rocks at the wide plain. "Will they come that way?" she asked. He shrugged, and indicated several other spaces that allowed a view over the surrounding area.

  She locked her arms around her knees, and turning her head, regarded him calmly. "You knew of this place, Ten."

  "Yes"

  "I think you told me about it once. You hid here from the Indians . . . three days, wasn't it?"

  "And over there somewhere"-she gestured toward the south-"your parents were killed."

  "You have a good memory."

  "There was another boy with you, a boy who lost his family in that attack." "He wasn't with me here.

  We met the next day, over on the Sweetwater."

  "You told me his name, too"

  "Sometimes I talk too much."

  "Ten, there's something you don't know that you should know.

  There's government money in our wagon."

  He turned his head sharply, gripped by fear.

  Reuben Kelsey was sometimes lazy, and he might give up a chase if it looked too hard, and wait for an easier prey. After all, there were other women; but for women and money both, he wouldn't give up at all.

  "Who knows this besides you?"

  "Belle . . . and Corporal West. He's not guarding us, he's guarding the money."

  "How much money?"

  "Sixty thousand dollars . . . in gold."

  Sixty thousand dollarsl Reuben Kelsey must have known, tipped off by someone. No wonder he had attacked the wagon train. It had twenty-odd men, some of them known fighters, and it would not be Kelsey's usual game; but he had attacked and he had wiped them out, men, women, and children, but he had found no gold, no army wagon or ambulance, no army personnel.

  That could mean but one thing. Rueben Kelsey would not return to his hide-out. He would know that the ambulance carrying that gold was out here somewhere, and he would not give up until he had found it . . . and Mary.

  The sun was warm, pleasantly so. Nothing moved on the wide plain. In the west, on the horizon, loomed the Wind River Mountains. "We can't outrun them," Brian was saying, "although if we left the ambulance . . ."

  There really was very little choice. The ambulance was light and moved easily. The trail they had followed was wide and had been traveled by the wagons of the Forty-Niners, as well as pioneers bound for Oregon, so that presented no problem. The trouble was that hiding an ambulance is rarely easy; hiding its tracks even harder.

  "I must find out where they are," he went on. "I know they are within a few miles."

  "My father is on patrol," Mary said, "but I don't know how far he was to come. Anyway, he could not find us, hidden like this."

  "Turpenning could." Brian paused. "I doubt if your father would come so far as this. He might, given the right conditions, but they are so short of men that Collins would not want him away from the post for too long a time. No, we must not think of what he might do. What is done we must do ourselves. We must make our plans with care, and when we move it must be with speed and discretion."

  "Shouldn't we be moving now?"

  "We'll wait. As long as we do not move, we will leave no tracks, and we'll raise no dust."

  The afternoon drifted slowly by. The soldiers, glad of the rest, slept, loafed in the shade, and watched the shadows pass. Only Corporal West seemed thoughtful and morose, glancing from time to time at the knoll where Brian was on watch.

  He had admired Ten Brian, but now he felt he was an antagonist, though with no reason he could name. Corporal West had been in command of the ambulance and that command had been usurped; with the command went the responsibility, of which West was glad to be free.

  But he was suspicious of Brian. He had ridden up suddenly from nowhere, demanding the ambulance turn off and abandon the train. At first West had believed in the fear that Brian communicated, but he no longer felt so sure. After a
ll, sixty thousand dollars was a lot of money, and it was not as if the Lieutenant was a career soldier. He had left armies before this and could again. West had known men to desert for a lot less, and said so to Dorsey.

  "Sixty thousand? Who's got that kind of money?"

  West was annoyed with himself. He had been expressly warned to say nothing about the money, yet it had come out. In any event, it was too late now.

  "What do you think we're guarding? The women?"

  Dorsey whistled softly, glancing awe-struck at the ambulance. When the Cherokee came up the cut with the last rays of the sun, Ten Brian sat beside him indicating the various approaches. Like many Cherokees, he was a man of education, reading easily not only in his own language as devised by Sequoyah, but in English.

  "Is it true, Lieutenant, that you know Reuben Kelsey?"

  "I knew him as a boy, and then a few years later, but I haven't seen him since we were sixteen."

  "You were friends?"

  "We worked together, fought side by side, escaped from the Cheyennes together, but it is not a friendship I would trust where money or women are concerned."

  "I see."

  "Will he find us?"

  "I think so. How soon, is the question. If they lose our trail down there they may go west, or turn back toward Laramie, looking for us. Then we must move."

  "You know about the money?"

  Brian, startled, glanced at him.

  Ironhide smiled. "Oh, yes! We know about it, Lieutenant. Or at least I did. I helped load it."

  Brian was displeased. Did everybody know about that damned gold? Ironhide he could trust.

  Actually, he was the only soldier of the lot whom he knew. The others he had seen about the post, but Ironhide had actually served with him on a scout down toward Big Timbers.

  Schwartz seemed a good solid man. Dorsey?

  There was a question in his mind about Dorsey. He would not want his honesty to be stretched too far, but Dorsey was a good soldier, and a good rifleman.

  At daybreak, after Dorsey had relieved Ironhide, the Cherokee and Ten Brian took the horses to water. There was plenty of water in the barrels but the animals required a good deal and he did not want to deplete his supply too much. There were nine horsesthe four hitched to the ambulance, and the mounts for each of them except Schwartz and Belle.

  "There's grass enough for another day," West said.

  "What are we to do?" Tenadore Brian stared into the coals of the fire. Belle was trying to heat the coffee with as little fire as possible. He waited just a moment, searching his mind for any ideas that might offer alternatives. Then he said, "We're leaving the ambulance. We'll mount up and take back trails west to the Wind Rivers."

  West stared down at the ground for a moment. "Does the Lieutenant know that country? I mean ... well, I don't. And I don't think the others do." "I know it."

  Even as he said it, Brian knew he was telling less than the truth. He had been told of a trail across the end of the Wind River Mountains, but that was years ago. How much did he remember?

  Off the point of the mountain there was a settlement, but they dared not go there. It was a small settlement, a few people only. It would mean disaster for them if he tried to take refuge there, for even less than the wagon train could they defend themselves against what Kelsey would bring upon them. West was not satisfied. "Lieutenant, it is a big risk .

  . . with all that money."

  "You have a solution to suggest, Corporal?"

  West looked angry. "It isn't my place to tell you what to do, sir. You're in command. That's what you told us when you took us away from the wagon train, and I ain't sure that was such a good idea."

  "What has been done was done by me and is my responsibility, Corporal. Now if you have an alternative to suggest I shall be only too happy to hear it. Otherwise, enough has been said. Do you have such a plan?" "No, but--2'

  Ironhide appeared suddenly in the cut.

  "Riders, sir. "I'd guess about thirty of them"

  Scrambling up the cut after Ironhide, rocks rolling under his feet, Ten Brian knew the trouble he had feared was here. Deep down, he had never really believed they could escape Kelsey-not without a fight. West had followed them up, and now he crouched beside Brian, watching the riders coming.

  They rode in a column of two's, led by a big man on a blood bay. Ironhide pointed, and for the first time Brian saw two other men, scouting well ahead of the column, cutting back and forth, looking for signs.

  Most of the men wore buckskins. Through his glasses, which he kept down behind a masking bush to prevent any reflection from them, Brian saw that the one thing all had in common was excellence of horseflesh and horsemanship. "Are those the men?"

  West's tone was reluctant. "Yes-and take a good look. I know Kelsey, and you can be sure there isn't a man in that outfit who hasn't been carefully chosen-for fighting ability, at least."

  "And you think they wiped out the wagon train?"

  "Yes, I do. My information was that they had been destroying wagon trains for over a year. Their secret of success has been that they have allowed no one to escape."

  "Except us and our ambulance."

  "And therefore they must find it, and us. You may be sure of this: that Reuben Kelsey will stop at nothing to destroy us all. As long as nothing is known of him he can operate in perfect freedom, choosing what targets he will, and when he will, without fear of pursuit or risk of getting involved."

  The column rode past. They had come no nearer than about three hundred yards, and fortunately, nowhere near the trail by which Brian's men had ap- proached their hide-out, but Brian was worried.

  Did Kelsey realize he was with the command. How much had he told Kelsey about his hiding place at that meeting long ago on the Sweetwater-how he had waited here while the Indians searched all around but had not found him?

  Leaving Ironhide on lookout, he went down the cut. "All right," he said to the men, "saddle the horses, strip the ambulance. We're moving out."

  They worked swiftly. Blankets, slickers, food, medical supplies, ammunition, and the sixty thousand dollars in gold-all were taken care of. Aside from what they could carry in their saddlebags and behind the cantles, two pack horses would be used. Within an hour they were moving out. Ten Brian took the lead, pointing his horse north into the wilderness, and the others followed, reluctantly. Turning in his saddle, he glanced back once. He kept them to low ground in single file, and twice he led the way across great slabs of rust-red rock.

  Then he went back and, after smudging out the marks made by the horseshoes, he took up dust in his fingers and let it sift over the rock where they had passed. Ironhide brought up the rear. He trusted the Cherokee to watch the back trail.

  They were taking a chance in going north, for there would be no likelihood of help there, but it was the last direction their pursuers would expect. Also, it would be easier to cover their trail, and there was a route over the mountains and down the western slope.

  If worse came to worst, he would turn back, find Kelsey, and kill him. With Kelsey dead, the others might scatter, for none of them had his will, his drive.

  Turpenning rode back to the column, and Major Devereaux halted the troops and dismounted them for a few minutes rest before going on. "Suh"-7urpenning squatted on the ground so that he could draw in the dirt-"I picked up their sign. The Lieutenant, suh, he's a foxy one. He figures he's followed, suh, an' he's doin' his level best to leave no trail. With an ambulance that's hard . . . almighty hard. "Them renygades, they're a-huntin' him-men scattered out to all sides, cuttin' for sign."

  Turpenning chuckled. "A couple of times they cut right acrost his trail without findin' hide nor hair."

  "How far behind them are the renegades?"

  "An hour . . . mebbe two. The Lieutenant, suh, he's uncommon shrewd.

  They'll have themselves a time comin' up to him."

  Turpenning paused, chewing on a blade of grass.

  "Major, suh, a body a-readin'
sign sometimes figures things beyond a few scratches in the sand. A body surmises, suh." "And what do you surmise?"

  "The Lieutenant, suh, he's scared."

  "Frightened? Lieutenant BtianThat"

  "No, suh. Not scared thataway, but scared wary, suh, if you get what I mean.

  Lieutenant Brian, suh, is worried about who's on his trail. He ain't just tryin' to leave no sign; he's doin' partic'lar things.

  He's actin' like he knows somebody's on his trail who ain't about to give up. "Suh, if you-all don't mind, I figure to be an uncommon good tracker. I growed up with Injuns, an' you let me follow a man's trail long enough an'

  I'll read you his life story, like. There's nothin' like a trail to show character in a body. Well, suh, Lieutenant Brian rve tracked before this-was "For what reason?"

  Turpenning shrugged. "Nature, I s'pect.

  You all give a beaver some sticks an" water an' he'll build hisself a dam. You give me a trail, an' I'll follow it. Also?-he spat "if'n I'm to trust my life to a man, I'm wishful to know what manner of man he is.

  "Well, suh, Lieutenant Brian, suh, just naturally he gives you nothin' to take hold of.

  Even with troops, suh. He don't just ride off acrost the country, suh, he knows the lay of land like he'd shaped it with his own hands . . . no Injun is ever goin' to ambush him. And they know it, suh." He paused, spat again. "Ive heerd "em talkie, suh. He's a most admired man, a big warrior. You ever want anybody to make palaver with Injuns, you send him. They know him an" they respect him."

  "Let's get back to the trail," Devereaux said. He had known that Brian was a good soldier, but that the Indians knew him so well and respected him so much he had not suspected.

  "Ain't much more I can tell, except what I figure. Brian's headed for Bridger, sure as shootin', an' he knows somebody's on his trail that wants him almighty bad, somebody he knows or knows about."

  Devereaux studied the marks in the sand, considered the country before him and the time he had left, mea suring hours of travel against rations, and he was dismayed. There was so little time. He discounted Tur penning's ideas about Brian fearing a known enemy, but he knew too much about scouting to discount much else Turpenning said. "What do you think he will do?" he asked Turpenning. "Ain't no doubt, knowin' the Lieutenant. He's goin' to leave that ambulance, mount "em all a-horseback, an" head for wild country." "You think he won't run for it?"