Under the Sweetwater Rim (1971)

by L'amour, Louis

  Carried down, it still kept plunging up, and suddenly they were across and the horse was scrambling up on the finger of earth, there to stand trembling and frightened. Behind them shale rattled and fell. Far below, they could hear it hitting. Tenadore Brian mopped the sweat from his face and said, "All right, boy, let's go join the others."

  Reuben Kelsey sat hunched upon a flat rock well hidden among the stunted spruce of the high mountains. He held powerful field glasses, and he was studying the country about him with care.

  He was well pleased with himself. The hide-out on the mountainside just below him was well hidden, and well provisioned, a result of years of careful planning.

  He had begun the planning even before coming out from Missouri. The war would be over, and he was wise enough to know the Confederacy could not win. They had the best riders, the best shots, and the most willing fighting men, but they did not have the factories, the mines, or the staying power the North had.

  Reuben Kelsey had only one loyalty, and that was to himself. The soldiers, North and South, would be turned loose on the country to fend for themselves. He had no intention of being one of them. From the first, while giving the impression of a free spender, he began hoarding a little. And at first it had been very little, for the pickings in the border states were small indeed. The west-bound caravans promised better, and from the first they had done well.

  He had managed to get a little of his money into banks, but most of it he changed into gold-in short supply in the Mid-West-and when he moved west with his renegades, he carried it with him.

  Drawn to the country where he had been as a boy, he had made many scouting trips into the mountains and had finally located the half-walled cave on War Bonnet. He had spent several days there, building up the wall, and making a cabin that was wind-tight.

  Later he returned, bringing the first of the tools and supplies. He worked on the cabin, building it better, hiding it more effectively. Several times he had come, always bringing more supplies, and always approaching from a different direction so as to establish no pattern. He saw no tracks except rarely those of unshod ponies.

  Now he was here, holed up to wait until the search for him had let up, and the war parties of spring had dwindled. Then he would come down out of the hills and ride the Oregon Trail, joining some wagon train until he reached the coast. From Astoria or Portland he would take a steamboat for San Francisco.

  He had erased his tracks as effectively as possible, and subsequent showers had helped. He was hidden securely, and there was no need to shoot game.

  He was not worried about his former followers. Without his strong hand they would break up and scatter. Anyway, he had done nothing but what any one of them would have done, given the chance.

  Hardly any of his former men would be dangerous.

  Jess . . . yes, and perhaps one or two others.

  Nor was the army a source of worry. They would have to be patrolling back toward the east, and before they could divert anyone to hunt for him he would be long gone out of the country. The Indians were his chief worry. He had cultivated some friends among them, but he trusted them not at all.

  He had only to sit tight, move around as little as possible, and wait. He lit his fire only at night when the thin trail of smoke could not be seen, and it was hidden within the rock walls. He had, he decided, thought of everything. With the money he had brought along he bad something over seventy thousand dollars in gold, and half a dozen rings and watches of varying degrees of value.

  He eased back now on the fiat rock, reached in his pocket for a plug of tobacco, and bit off a chew. In the past he had chewed tobacco rarely, but now he did not want to smoke. He chewed and spat, and took up his glasses. Suddenly his breath caught.

  Indians. A war party of at least twenty of them was bunched near the river. They were three miles or more from his hide-out, only visible as a small patch of color. He watched them for several minutes, and then saw them ride away toward the south.

  Even at that distance, they worried him. What he dreaded most of all was such a party coming up the narrow valley heading for one of the passes. He slid down from the rock and made his way to the hide-out. In the black of the night, he awoke sweating. For a long time he lay still, listening. He could hear the wind coming down the pass, and once he heard a rumble far off up the mountain. Thawing had loosened a rock and the wind set it rolling.

  After a while he got out of bed and peered out of the loopholes .... Nothing....

  But what had awakened him? He wanted a light, but dared not strike one. If there was an Indian prowling about he might smell the smoke.

  He waited for several minutes, and then returned to the warmth of his bed. For some time he lay awake, but finally, he slept. When he awakened it was morning.

  There was a thread of light around one of the covers for the loopholes.

  He dressed, and then opened one of the loopholes and looked out. The sun was shining, and nothing was in sight. He took down the bar from the door and opened it . . . nothing. The west wall of his shelter was of rock. The north side was within the cave itself, and a door there opened to allow access to the cave-not a big cave, but good for storage. And it was a stable for his horses, which could be brought in through a narrow passage alongside the east wall, where there was also a door.

  The south wall faced outward, and blocked most of the cave entrance, but the roof of the cabin did not quite reach to the roof of the cave. There was a space of two or three feet, and he could climb out through a trap door to the roof. This gave access to a cleft in the rock that allowed an escape among stunted spruce on the mountainside out of sight of anyone near the cabin, or in front of it.

  But though the place was secure, there was an enemy within that he had not made allowances for-his own imagination. One does not need enemies as long as the imagination can provide them.

  Reuben Kelsey was not a man accustomed to being alone. It had been his way to surround himself with people who would cater to his whims or his vices, or those who were present merely to listen and admire. These people had been a cushion against the silence of solitude, which now he really knew for the first time.

  He had taken the precaution of grazing his horses well before moving on to the hide-out, and later he had found a small glade hidden among the rocks with a thick carpet of grass. It was a natural corral where his horses could graze in the daylight hours.

  On that first night, silence had come to him. Of course, it had been there through the long day, waiting in the wings. He had been conscious of it as he was conscious of the far-off sound of the wind among the pines, a distant sound that only intensified the stillness.

  On this second day, after he had moved his horses to the natural corral, he returned to the cabin and the silence closed in about him.

  Never given to reading, he had brought nothing along for that purpose. He cleaned his guns, checked his bridle and saddle, whittled, and felt the hours go by slowly. Finally he decided it must be getting on toward evening and stepped outside.

  The sun was high in the sky ... it was scarcely noon. He went back inside and tried to sleep, but could not. Again he took the field glasses and climbed by the hidden trail to his vantage point.

  There was no sound, no movement. The wind was chill off the mountains, but the sun was warm. He stayed there, high on the mountain, watching. Gradually, an eerie feeling came over him, for as he watched, he felt that eyes were watching him.

  He slid down the mountain and returned to the hide-out. Back there, he suddenly thought of Ten Brian, and again he wished his old companion had come with him. He had never thought much of any man or woman. He had found them, used them, tossed them aside, but his offer to Ten to join him had been sincere. Well . . . up to a point.

  In all his life Ten Brian had been the one person to whom his thoughts always returned. He had not stopped to ask himself why, but deep within him he began to realize for the first time that he had needed a friend. And he wished tha
t friend had been Brian.

  Even as a boy there had been something about Brian that rankled. Possibly it was the feeling that Brian could have bested him if he had tried . . . no, it could not be that. Nobody had ever bested him in anything, and nobody would. But even as Brian irritated him, he had found he was the one person to whom he could talk .... Why the hell hadn't he come along? What could he make out of the army business, after all? There was no future in that. Then for a while he forgot Brian and thought of what he would do with all that money when he got to "Frisco. Invest some of it, of course. An investment would provide a certain standing, and he'd be spoken to with respect by men of affairs. But he would keep a good bit for wine and for women.

  Women...

  Waiting wouldn't be so bad if he had a woman.

  Now that Major's daughter . . . No wonder Ten was sweet on her. In his mind he pictured her walking across the parade ground as he had seen her once at the Fort. She was somewhere in these hills right now. She might be only a few miles away.

  He paced the floor, looked outside. Then he climbed back to his lookout again, scanned the rocks all around to see from what places he might be observed. He thought there were only two, and those difficult to attain; he felt better.

  The hills were green with young grass, the forest fresh-looking and cool. Nothing moved ....

  There! He moved the glasses, and after a moment found what he was looking at . . . deer. Three of them, placidly feeding. He scanned the hills. A lone eagle held still against the sky. A rock rolled behind him and he jumped, turning swiftly, gun in hand. Irritated with himself, he went back to, the cabin and made coffee. He was breaking his rule against coffee in the daytime, but there was nobody anywhere around, and besides, he needed it.

  He got a bottle of whiskey from his pack and a deck of cards. He started to play solitaire, then gave up in disgust. He leaned against the doorjamb and looked out, but he saw nothing. He was alone.

  Alone.

  His original plan had been to remain here for three weeks. Most of the war parties would have passed southward by that time, the army would be gone, his own men scattered.

  Three weeks ... and on the second day he was irritable, uneasy, almost jumpyl Reuben Kelsey was not really a drinker. He liked a drink and sometimes he took one, sometimes five or six, but sometimes he went weeks without touching the stuff and, generally speaking, he didn't care whether he did or not. Now, with nothing to do, he killed the bottle.

  Somewhere along there he went to sleep, and awoke with sunlight showing through a crack at a loophole and a realization that time had passed. He started to sit up and his head swam. At last he got his feet on the floor and sat for some time with his head in his hands, his shock of hair falling forward.

  After a long time he got up. The horses would need water. He had left them all night in their glade among the rocks.

  Hitching up his pants, he tugged on his boots, with no recollection of taking them off the night before.

  He put on his gunbelt and took up his rifle, but his bead was throbbing. He swore as he stepped to the door and opened it.

  Instantly, he stopped. In the sand, not two feet from him, was a moccasin track.

  He drew back, looking quickly around, but he saw nothing. He wet his lips. They had found him, then. Had it been accident, or the coffee he made at the wrong time?

  A beetle had crossed the track, so it had not been made within the past few minutes.

  Studying it, he decided it had been left sometime during the previous evening. He closed the door and went to the trap door and crawled out on the roof. With his glasses he studied the terrain before him, scanning the steep slope across the narrow valley, and looking down the valley at the wide sweep of country that opened below.

  The sun was already high . . . his horsesl Had the Indian found them? Hastily he slid from the roof, and keeping under cover and wary of a trap, he scrambled over the rocks, and reached the glade where he had left the horses. Gone!

  For an instant he felt a wave of panic, then fury followed. Hastily he scrambled down to look at the tracks.

  The story was plain enough. The Indian had followed the horse tracks to this place, had caught up the horses, and had led them out and down the trail.

  There he had tied them while he scouted around, probably going to the cabin then. Unable to get in, he had simply mounted up and ridden away, leading the stolen horses.

  Reuben Kelsey knew that without a horse he was a dead man. Without the horses there was no possible escape, and no way he could pack out his gold. He had to get away from here before that Indian came back with others, and somehow he had to find a horse.

  His best bet was to go south toward South Pass and the settlement there, to keep under cover and steal a couple from the army if they were still there, or from some of his former men or whoever.

  He went back into the cabin, closed the trap . door carefully, and hid his gold in a hollow made under the corner of the wall. Then, taking food for several days, ammunition, and his rifle, he left the hide-out, crawled away through the rocks, in case the Indian was hidden somewhere watching, and started down the North Fork of the Popo Agie.

  His head still throbbed, but his senses were keen and he knew well enough the danger he was in. Every step was a matter of life and death now. Instinctively and from long practice he made his trail difficult if not impossible to follow. By nightfall he had covered what he guessed would be twelve miles.

  He stopped then, ate some jerky and drank water, and rested a little. On the Middle Fork, with just enough light to see, he found no fresh tracks leading toward Sweetwater Gap. After another short rest he was up and moving.

  Shortly after midnight, with no Indians to worry him at night time, he was on the Blue Ridge overlooking the silver gleam of Fiddler's Lake. Kelsey slept the night there, burrowed into the needles and wrapped in his one blanket.

  Travel from here on would be increasingly dangerous, for here the war parties would go east or west, filtering down to the plains, and here there might be search parties of soldiers . . . with their horses. At daybreak he was up, tired, but eager to be going. He worked his way down the slope, dogtrotted across a meadow and into the trees. Catching his breath there, he watched his back trail and saw nothing to worry him. He cut across country toward the Little Popo Agie and found his first horse tracks just beyond it. They were a day old, but one of the horses was Ten Brian's big gray.

  He found dry wood, and made coffee, ate jerky, and then killed his small fire, scattered the ashes, and sifted earth and leaves over the spot.

  If an Indian actually looked for it he would find it, but without a careful search he would see nothing amiss. Reuben Kelsey knew that, given time, a man could walk down a horse, and he knew that with the women to protect, Ten Brian would not be taking risks.

  At a dogtrot he covered a couple of miles, then alternately walked and ran.

  By nightfall he was sure he had gained ground. The tracks looked fresh, and he had seen no Indians.

  He slept the night through, but at the first hint of grayness in the sky he was up, chewing jerky and cutting for sign. He found it, and was off. Running and walking, he kept to the trail of the horses.

  Shortly before noon, coming down a slope through a clump of aspen to save time and cut off a wide bend in the trail, he saw them: horses feeding on the grass, saddles still in place, the big gray among them. They were close by, then. Ten Brian, somebody else, and the two women.

  Reuben Kelsey eased himself down on his haunches and studied what lay before him. There was a fringe of trees along a trickle of water . . . no sign of a fire.

  They were down there, and he could wait.

  The trickle of water Kelsey had seen came from a spring in a cluster of rocks. There were pines and aspens around the rocks, and a clump of low brush.

  The place offered excellent cover for a small party. Jason and Brian took turns watching the horses grazing in the meadow. The horses as well as themselv
es needed the rest. Mary and Belle were asleep, worn out by the days of riding and hiding.

  Brian knew that in their state of exhaustion, he could no longer consider the ride to Fort Laramie.

  Regardless of the chances they might take, they must ride for South Pass. The nooning, planned to last no more than an hour, stretched on as the women slept. Jason was in bad shape from his wounded arm, and Brian was fighting sleep, but soon he must awaken Jason to take over the watch. The camp was a good one. There was even a place among the trees where the horses could be hidden after they had fed. Why not stay the night through and leave at daybreak?

  South Pass could be no more than ten miles away, in a straight line, but by the trails they must follow it would be at least another five miles-- too far for the women to ride in their present state, too far even for Jason. To rest through the day and night might be the wisest plan and start fresh in the morning and go right on through without a stop.

  He felt his eyes closing, and forced them open, then got to his feet, shaking his head to try to clear it. He moved around, keeping low and under cover of the trees.

  Suddenly he noticed one of the horses-the one closest to the woods across the meadow. Its head was up, ears pricked.

  Tenadore Brian took up his rifle and waited ... something or somebody was out there.

  He let his eyes scan the edge of the trees opposite, then looked away, letting the peripheral vision pick up any movement, for sometimes a slight movement is seen better from the corners of the eyes .... There was no movement.

  Yet what was that shine from among the leaves? He studied the area, looked all around, but saw nothing out of the usual. Yet he was sure there was something there.

  He eased down to his haunches, peering past the trunk of a pine, then he lowered one knee to the earth for a better shooting position.

  Only the one horse had seemed nervous, but now Brian looked toward his gray. It was at the end of the picket rope but turned to face the trees, eating quietly but with the ears pricked. He knew from the past that the gray was alert and watching, even as it cropped grass. Whoever waited out there had only to stay until they came for their horses, and he would be sure to get at least one of them. But would they wait? Turning his head, Brian looked behind him at the place where the women and Jason lay asleep. None of them moved; all was still. He looked again to the spot where he had seen that different shine, and as he looked a small rock or clump of dirt rolled from under the brush. Something back there had moved. He was tempted to shoot, but he had never shot at any target he could not see or did not know was there. He had no desire to shoot an innocent person, or even an animal, so he held his fire.