The girl hesitated before telling him: ‘Harvey Dana.’
The calm Will was shaken deeply. He felt himself go cold. Everybody in the world must have heard of Harvey Dana. And his own daughter had ... He was filled with a kind of suffocating horror. He cocked a querying eye at the girl—‘You sure of that? He wasn’t lyin’ to you?’
‘No, it was the truth.’
He wandered into the big room, gray-faced. Martha started toward him and stopped. He didn’t see her. This was a Hell of a note, he thought. Indians on the loose, Harvey Dana maybe still after his daughter. His world seemed to have fallen apart. He started to bar the door and put the shutters up on the windows. Better safe than sorry. He decided he wouldn’t say anything to Martha about Dana. There didn’t seem any point in adding to her anxiety. But he knew one thing for sure, if he ever had that bastard in his sights he’d kill him, from front or back, it didn’t matter which.
Chapter Nine
The following morning, folks started to arrive.
First, Will’s brother, Martin, came in with his wife Linda. They both rode horseback, for Linda was a famous horsewoman. With them they brought a dozen of their best horses. As Mart said, a man could bear losing a few cows, but one horse gone was enough to break his heart. With them came their two riders, Saul Hoddick and Gregorio Nunez, both tough and capable men. Gregorio had come up with Linda from her place in New Mexico when she married Mart the year before. Linda was a tall gaunt woman with large eyes which, with her mouth, were her claims to beauty. A strong-minded woman some ten years younger than her husband. The only kind of woman, as Martha said, who could ever have corralled a cimarrone like Mart. Which was probably true.
The four of them ate breakfast in the large room and Will told them some of what he knew, leaving out Kate’s implication in the affair. It didn’t concern them and it didn’t change the situation to tell them about it. There was some discussion about which tribe the Indians belonged to. Maybe Prescott Harrison would have something to say on the subject. He had lived for years with the Utes before he settled down to raise cows and kids with Manuela, his Mexican wife. Harrison was a man of strength and character. In a few years, he had turned from being a bum with the Utes and living hand to mouth to being a man of parts. He was prospering and enjoying the fact. He held a line of country to the south and was a formidable force opposed to Ed Brack’s extension in that direction, a point that did not endear him to the cattle-baron. Harrison didn’t pussyfoot around. A year back, he had told Brack straight to his face, if he so much as looked at him wrong he’d bend a gun-barrel over his thick head.
It was appropriate that when Prescott Harrison arrived, as they expected he would, he came alone, not giving a monkey’s hoot in Hell how many Indians there were around wanting to see the sight of a white man’s blood. He swaggered into the house, kissed the two daughters of it, bowed low over Martha’s hand and sent her in a twitter, ate a second breakfast that was bigger than most men’s first and demanded to know if Will was going to offer him a drink or was he one of those degenerates who believed a man shouldn’t drink liquor early in the day?
It was his opinion that the Indians were Utes. Nobody asked him for his advice, but he gave it anyway, filling the room with his character and his rich voice. If there was trouble, Prescott Harrison would settle it or the Almighty would be accountable to him for the failure. There was a kind of comfort in the man’s bragging. They knew from experience that Prescott could back his brag. He was going into the hills and look for Utes and he was going to talk to them. It didn’t matter a damn who had killed the brave. An Indian had been killed, maybe three had gone to their Maker, and a price would have to be paid. If anybody could talk to the Utes, it was he. Will said he’d go along with him, but Harrison roared ‘no’, this was something he had to do alone. Anybody else along and the Utes would be suspicious.
An hour later, Meredith Quentin rode in. He was a man of about thirty, who had come from Texas with the Storms as a drover and now had a small place of his own to the west. Just the kind of isolated shack the Indians would first attack. A couple of years before, his brother Charlie had been killed by outlaws and Meredith hadn’t been the same since. From a carefree boy he had been turned into a morose and solitary man. He now came silently among them, indicating that he would go along with anything that had to be done.
Then Jody and Riley came in, one after the other, bushed, and told that they had warned the countryside. They had ridden through the night, changing horses whenever the chance was offered to them. Both at once went to look in on Pete. He was sleeping now and Martha declared that his heart-beat was steadier.
Then Joe Widbee rode in on a ragged little mountain mustang. Will met him in the yard. Joe stepped from the saddle and they shook.
‘You sure come quick, Joe.’
Joe nodded and batted the mustang’s head aside as it bared its teeth at Will. Joe said: ‘Who they fellers up to Tall Rock?’
Will looked puzzled. ‘There’s nobody up that way.’ He caught sight of Riley Brack coming from the house. ‘Rile, did you see anybody up the creeks at Tall Rock when you come through there yesterday.’
‘Only the Indians through the breaks.’
‘No, I mean at Tall Rock.’
Riley Brack smiled a little and said: ‘No, all I saw up there was the gold you told me wasn’t gold.’
Joe sucked air through his teeth.
‘You say ‘gold’?’
Will said: ‘A few days back Riley come in with some fool’s gold from that location. Now he says he found gold in the sand.’
Joe turned his horse into the corral before he came back and spoke again. Will stood chewing over what he’d just heard. He didn’t like the sound of it. Could it be possible...? Riley Brack drifted off to the bunkhouse to catch up on sleep. Joe came back to Will and said: ‘Will, you sure have troubles. You got Indians in the hills and gold-hunters on the creek.’
Will said: ‘What about Serafina? You should have brought her in here.’
Joe shrugged.
‘She jest anole Indjun gal,’ he said. ‘Miz Storm don’t want no Indians around the place. No more an’ she want no-account niggers. You know that, Will.’
Will looked embarrassed. It was true that Martha did not fully approve of Joe. It was the kind of isolated wildness that the man carried around with him. An utter independence from other men. Which was a contradiction really, because Joe was tied in some way to Will and Mart. Martha also did not approve of Joe’s dislike of washing, which really put him in a pretty considerable company in the mountain country. Will and Mart protested in vain that Joe merely smelled of horses because he spent his life with the animals. Will said he and Mart must smell just about the same to a soft-livin’ city-raised girl like her. Which was a piece of Will’s irony.
As Mart came from the house, Joe said: ‘they Injuns don’t mean me an’ Serafina no harm. We make out all right with ’em. We do a piece of tradin’ ever’ so often.’
‘That means it won’t do you no good with ’em if you side us.’
Joe shrugged. As Mart came up and shook with Joe, the Negro asked him if he knew about the gold found in the creek. That fact seemed to be playing on his mind. At the sound of gold, Mart’s eyes lit up. He was a very different stamp of man from his brother. To look at them, it was difficult to realize that they were related. Whereas Will was on the small side, quiet and slightly reserved, dark-complected and slow to move, Mart was tall, fair, ebullient and quick to action and anger.
‘Gold!’ he exclaimed. ‘On Three Creeks? By God …’
Joe said: ‘How the Hell they fellers know about it? Can you tell me that?’
Will’s thinking had taken him somewhere.
He said: ‘Ed Brack was here that morning Riley come in with that fool nugget. I just wonder ...’
Mart and Joe looked at each other.
‘That hit,’ Joe said. ‘that Brack, he spread the word.’
Mart said: ‘I�
�m a-goin’ up there an’ take a look.’
‘I’ll come along,’ Joe said.
Will said: ‘I was hankerin’ for you to pick up the tracks of the feller that shot Pete, Joe.’
‘Sure, I do that. But first I have to take a look-see at Tall Rock.’
‘Riley Brack’ll go with you.’
‘I don’t need that kid. I do this on my lonesome.’
‘Like Hell you do,’ said Mart. ‘You do it with me.’
‘Jest so long as you don’t git in my road,’ Joe snarled at him. Mart laughed. Joe couldn’t rile Mart—he’d known him too long.
Will didn’t approve the way things were going at all. He looked down his nose in the way he had.
‘Hold hard just one little minute,’ he said. ‘You boys ain’t pointed in the right direction a-tall. We don’t have time to fool around with gold. We have gold-hunters on Three Creeks and you know where’s there’s two there’s likely to be two hunnerd tomorrow. We have Indians an’ we have a cow-thief loose in the hills. That’s enough to be a-goin’ on with without you two getting’ the smell of gold. You track down that man who shot Pete Hasso.’
Mart said: ‘You’re my brother, Will, not my boss.’
Will looked to Joe for support. The Negro stared him down. Will waved a despairing hand—‘Aw, to Hell with the pair of you.’
Joe said, poker-faced: ‘You too mad at us’ns to let us have fresh horses?’
‘He don’t have to give us horses. I brought a string with me. Try that sorrel with the blaze over yonder, Joe.’ They turned away together.
‘God damn,’ Will said softly and tramped into the house.
Chapter Ten
They heard the gold-seekers even before they saw them—the clink of pick on stone, the rattle of a pan. The first man they came on was standing with the water coming almost up to the tops of his high-boots, one gallus supporting his pants and a slouch hat whose brim drooped around his bearded face. Their approach was watched by a man similarly dressed standing on the far bank. Both men had large revolvers strapped to their hips. They showed claim-jumpers what kind of a welcome to expect. Cowmen and goldmen viewed each other.
‘Howdy, boys,’ Mart said amiably. ‘Any luck?’
The man in the water replied: ‘That ain’t nobody’s business but ourn.’
‘True,’ said Mart. He and Joe rode on. Around the bend in the creek they came in sight of a dozen or more men scattered along the twin water-courses. Heads turned to stare at them. Mart and Joe sat their horses watching them. They stayed long enough to see that the men were panning gold or as Joe put it: ‘Fellers don’t look at plain crick sand thataway. No, sir, Mart, there’s gold here.’
‘You know what this means,’ Mart said.
‘Jest like the strike at Sutter’s mill. This here could sure finish Will,’ Joe said.
At that moment, there came a wild yell and a man appeared from what appeared to be an ordinary break to the west. He waved something in his hand high above his head and shouted: ‘Gold! Gold! I struck it rich, boys.’ Men ran toward him, clustering around him like flies around a honey-pot.
Mart said: ‘You know any way out of a situation like this, Joe?’
The Negro shook his head—‘We’re up the crick without a claim.’
Mart said: ‘We lief as well get on an’ find this trigger-happy bastard in the hills.’
They lifted their lines and rode their horses through the shallows.
Joe took them unerringly to the spot where Riley Brack had fought the Indians and taken Pete Hasso to safety. He found where the man who had shot him had hidden his Indian pony.
He spent a long time sniffing around and Mart settled down for a smoke in the shade of the trees. Joe didn’t hurry himself. He wanted a complete picture before he started on the long track. He didn’t find out all he wanted, but when he came back to Mart nearly a couple of hours later, he dismounted, loosened cinches and squatted to chew.
There was a whole mess of sign, he said. It looked like the Indians had collected their dead or wounded and lit out. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be back. They’d suffered enough damage to make the mildest band of Indians want to pay off the score. Somebody, he said, ought to warn those fool miners. They talked about that and decided that could keep until they were on their way home. They both knew they were going to follow the trail until they came up with their man.
They ate from their wallets, sipped water from their canteens and tightened cinches. They headed into the west, not hurrying. They didn’t want horses without any run left in them when a spurt was needed.
‘Jest like old times, eh, boy?’ Joe said with the faintest of smiles.
‘That Pete Hasso’s a nice kid,’ Mart said.
‘No kin to pay his owin’s,’ Joe added.
‘That’s a fact,’ Mart agreed.
They covered five miles, breasted a rise and paused to allow the horses to blow. It was very hot. Men and horses were sweating. The hides of the animals were black in places.
‘Maybe this feller we’re followin’,’ Joe said, ‘has comp’ny.’
‘I had the same thought,’ Mart said.
They rode on.
Two more miles and Joe halted. They were in difficult country, thick with scattered boulders and brush. At times visibility was no more than a few yards.
‘We ain’t the on’y ones a-followin’ this man,’ he said.
He pointed. At first Mart could see nothing. He concentrated and saw the faint sign that cut across ahead of theirs from the north.
‘How do you know they’re following?’ Mart asked. ‘Looks to me like they cut across his sign and went on south.’
Joe shook his head—‘They followin’ sure ’nough. You keep your eyes and your ears open or they ain’t a-goin’ to be no use to you no more. They Indians.’
Mart looked around. Suddenly, the idea of paying Pete’s debt for him in proxy for his kin didn’t seem such a good idea.
They pushed on.
They covered maybe another mile and the country was getting more difficult to move through by the yard. Joe rolled his eyes a little, which was a sign that he was concerned and said: ‘Reckon hit time we climbed some, boy.’
Mart didn’t think that a bad idea either. Down here in this tangle they could be jumped any minute without warning. Joe led the way to the right and they started a hard and difficult climb, leading their horses and keeping their eyes and ears open. They went on up, straining and sweating, stumbling frequently and failing, to their alarm, to be as quiet as they wanted. Finally, they were in deep timber and working their way almost silently westward, treading on a thick carpet of pine needles. Mart didn’t fail to recognize the fact that, if they could move silently, so could their quarry if he was up here.
They went on for another thirty minutes or so, however, without incident and they came out on a spur of the hills overlooking a fair valley with a shallow and spreading creek far below them.
Joe said: ‘that a right nice place to be.’ Without a word, he took Mart’s line from him and led the two horses back into the cover of the trees. When he had tied them, he returned and squatted, surveying the fine sight beneath them. Mart joined him. He gave Joe a hard close look, but he could learn nothing from the Negro’s immobile features.
‘You ole goat,’ he said softly, ‘you didn’t stop for nothin’. What did you see?’
‘Ain’t seen nothin’. I smelled. Man, don’t you have no nose?’
‘Sure I have a nose. Biggest goddam nose in the country—so my wife tells me.’
‘Then you did ought to smell fire. Ain’t I learned you nothin’? Not any thin’ a-tall? They’s men down there. Not jest the feller we been a-followin’. Two-three men. Maybe more.’
‘They with this fellow?’
‘How in Hell should I know that? I can’t see around corners an’ I ain’t able to see through trees. They have a fire down there without too much smoke an’, boy, they’s a-cookin’ deer-meat on
it. Sure smells good. My belly feel like my throat been cut.’
‘We don’t have all the time in the world, Joe,’ Mart opined.
‘We should go down there an’ finish this.’
‘That’s what I purely admire about you-all. You don’t change none. A man knows what to expect from you. Since you was knee-high to a prairie-dog you went off half-cock. Man, you rest your soft white self up here with that HI ole rifle of yourn and you see them nasty men don’t jump me.’
‘I can’t cover you. I can’t see a damn thing.’
‘I aim to Injun up on ’em from the south. You hear shootin’ you jest fire like you meant it at them trees yonder. Theys in there.’
He stood up, reached his rifle from his horse and walked away into the trees. Mart fetched his rifle and found himself some good cover. For the next hour and a half, he didn’t hear a sound, except for the distant whicker of a horse. Then Joe appeared out of the trees and gave him the fright of his life. One moment he wasn’t there and the next he was. Mart swore.
‘That’s real smart, comin’ up on a man thataway. Hell, you might of gotten your fool self shot.’
Joe ignored the remark, squatted and said: ‘I ain’t ezackly brought you glad tidin’s. They’s five men down there an’ this Harvey Dana’s with ’em. Boy, we sure have our work cut out.’
‘See any sign of the Indians?’
‘Nothin’.’
They stayed still, staring at the valley and thinking. At last, Mart said: ‘Only one way to play it. Jump ’em at first light.’
‘Jest the way I see it,’ Joe agreed. ‘We watch till dark so’s they don’t slip out on us, then we go back a ways and find grass for the horses.’
‘You watch here,’ Mart said. ‘I’ll locate a camp now.’
‘Keno.’
They slept cold that night under their single blankets and they did so for no more than a few hours. While the stars were still out, Mart found himself shaken awake by his companion and told to stir himself. They had tied their horses on long ropes, so there was no problem of catching them. Within a few minutes, they were saddled and making their way through the trees toward the south. As the false light of the herald of the true dawn came up, they tied their horses down in the valley in good cover and made their way forward on foot. They walked for some ten minutes with their rifles in their hands before Joe halted. The real dawn was almost on them now. Mart had never known a man with a better sense of timing than the Negro.
Battle Fury Page 7
