Mountain Man (Book 5): Final Stand [Last Ditch]

by Jones, Nathan

  “Many go to their graves wondering what impact they had on the world,” she began quietly. “For Gray Tucker, he can look into the faces of the hundreds, the thousands, of people whose lives he saved, and countless more whose lives were bettered by his selfless service.” She hesitated. “I've heard, and seen with my own eyes, that very few who die a violent death look peaceful at the end. But I've been told that Gray died with a smile on his lips, saving lives to the last.”

  She looked at the small pile of Gray's possessions that had been retrieved to serve as a focal point for the memorial. His body had been left behind with everyone else who'd died in the battle on that meadow, buried with respect but haste by people who needed to escape a perilous situation.

  It was a meager pile; the man hadn't been able to bring much with him on the brutal journey from Grand Junction to Camptown, and she'd been given to understand that even in his service to his city over the years he'd never showed much interest in acquiring material possessions.

  “Thank you, Sheriff,” she said quietly. She stepped quickly over to rejoin her friends, as Brandon stepped forward to take her place.

  He was the first of many, and the service went on hours into the night.

  * * * * *

  Brandon wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or relieved when his fitful sleep, full of nightmares of the horrific past and of a dozen even worse futures, was interrupted by a pounding at his cabin's flimsy door, early enough that not even a hint of light filtered through the small gaps in the walls and roof.

  Fiona tore free from his embrace to sit bolt upright with a terrified gasp, and across the room baby Thomas let out a plaintive wail at being rudely awakened. Brandon bit back a curse as he sat up and wrapped his arms around his wife, murmuring soothing words as she panted in the beginnings of panic.

  Okay, definitely annoyed.

  “Gerry!” Jonas's voice shouted through the thin barrier. “Get up, Gerry!”

  “It's fine,” Brandon whispered to Fiona, rubbing her back. “Everything's fine.” He raised his voice. “I get it, man, you said be there at the crack of dawn!”

  “Screw the crack of dawn!” the militia lieutenant shouted. “Get your keister out here, we're in serious trouble!”

  “Honey?” Fiona hissed worriedly.

  Brandon was already out of bed, fumbling in the dark to pull on his clothes. “Pack up what we need and wake up Mother Kristy and the others,” he said firmly as he reached for his boots. “I'm sure everything's fine, but better safe than sorry.”

  He heard the rustle of his wife also dressing. “We've been prepared for weeks now,” she said gently. “Whatever's happening, we're ready to go.”

  Leaving his bootlaces untied, he hastily kissed her and made for the door, where Jonas was still pounding and shouting for him through it. Brandon yanked it open so abruptly that the militia lieutenant, nothing more than a dark shape in the starlit predawn, overbalanced and nearly fell against him.

  “What?” he snapped.

  Jonas grabbed his shoulder and yanked him outside, rushing him towards Camptown. “We've overheard disturbing stuff from the bloodies on the radio.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “The kind that tells me we're all screwed,” the lieutenant growled, quickening his step.

  He refused to say any more, other than urging Brandon to go faster. They stumbled through the darkness towards the nearest street leading into Camptown, which was partially lit by lanterns or electric lights captured from Emery. Before long they reached the command building, where dozens of fighters were already milling, along with twice that number of concerned townspeople.

  Jonas pushed through the crowd without a word, and possibly more force than necessary, dragging Brandon behind him. They were pelted with questions with every step, all of which the lieutenant ignored and Brandon couldn't answer. Then they were in the command building, which was crowded with leaders from the various squads as well as Mitchells, Brady, and some of the Grand Junction civilian leaders.

  “There you are!” Mitchells snapped, pushing through the press to join them at the door. He waved impatiently at Jonas. “You told him what's going on?”

  “He didn't tell me jack,” Brandon said.

  “I figured I'd see if you guys would figure out what the blazes is going on by the time we got back,” the militia leader replied curtly.

  “Fair enough,” Brady said as he dodged through the crowd to join them. “First things first, our people listening on the radios intercepted this a half hour or so ago.” He handed Brandon a sheet of wrinkled, faded paper with fresh writing on it.

  Brandon looked it over, feeling his gut sink with every sentence. It appeared to be a dialogue between Sangue command and one of the squads in the nearby mountains, scrawled in hasty lines of Spanish and then translated into neater lines of English:

  Command: Forget Lobo Solitario! You've chased him for days, and there's every sign you'll chase him for days more, if he doesn't get away entirely.

  Squad Leader: He's about to run right into Silva's squad. After all the trouble he's caused us, do you really want to let him slip away?

  Command: We've found the camp of the Estadounidenses! You're meeting up with Silva in the first place to rendezvous with others in the area and move on it. One buzzing hornet won't matter once the nest has been exterminated.

  Squad Leader: If we're to meet up with Silva anyway, we're already going in that direction. I want this man dead, sir. For Grego and Paolo.

  Command: . . . Very well. You have until you meet up with Silva. Six hours, no more.

  Squad Leader: I'll bring you the wolf's head to mount on your wall, sir.

  Brandon looked up, trying not to panic. Worried as he might've been for Skyler, or Trapper, whichever it was, they took second consideration to the talk about the camp of the Estadounidenses; somehow he doubted this time the bloodies were talking about the group they'd been fighting in the north.

  He started to speak, swallowed around a dry throat, then tried again. “Are we sure they've found us?”

  Mitchells shrugged, expression grim. “They sure seem to think they have. From intercepted radio transmissions we know they've been diverting every single soldier south of Highway 29 in this direction, as well as calling in more. And from what I've been able to decipher of the directions they've been giving for their rendezvouses, they're converging basically smack dab on top of us.”

  Brandon swore, sick dread threatening to make him heave up last night's dinner. If the bloodies really had found them, the only other question was how? The obvious answer filled him with horror. “Did we lead them here?”

  Jonas spat on the floor at their feet to avoid hitting anyone. “If you had, I wouldn't have been pounding down your door, I would've smashed right through it and beat the tar out of you in front of your adorable little family.”

  He flushed with anger in spite of the situation. “You're the one who picked our route-”

  “I said it wasn't us!” the militia lieutenant snapped.

  One of Jonas's men, Brandon thought his name was Diaz, a radio operator, cleared his throat. “I might have the answer to that. Over the last few day's we've been picking up a lot of local chatter about some prisoner named Ricardo, and Sangue joking about the fun they're having with him.”

  Brandon grimaced. He really didn't need to hear about that sort of thing. “What's that got to do with us?”

  Diaz shrugged grimly. “Everything. The bloodies were so excited about this Ricardo because they captured him south of Highway 29, farther west closer to Ephraim. The fun they were having was torturing him and a few men they captured with him for information, trying to get them to give up the location of a community of refugees they were all part of.”

  Brandon didn't speak much Spanish, but even he knew enough to put the pieces together with a cold spike of horror: Ricardo, or in other words Richard. “Bradshaw,” he growled.

  That miserable SOB. It wasn't enough to pu
sh around the people of Emery for as long as Brandon had lived there, or go after little Bryant Hendrickson or beat up Skyler for trying to protect him. Even after being kicked out of the community, the man was still finding ways to cause problems for them.

  “Bradshaw?” Mitchells repeated, scowling as realization dawned. “Son of a . . . he gave us up!”

  An alarmed murmur spread through the room. This was worse than a problem, worse than pretty much anything else Diaz could've told them. If Bradshaw had told Sangue where to find Camptown, that was it. Their only hope in this fight had been keeping the location of their loved ones, their main base of operations, a secret. With everything they'd done up until now, that had been their first and foremost priority.

  Because you couldn't fight a guerrilla war when you were rooted to one spot, especially with several times the number of helpless townspeople as you had fighters to worry about.

  “Did the guys on the radio pick up anything about when Sangue intends to hit us?” Brandon asked quietly.

  “As soon as they can,” Brady said, expression grim. “From at least three directions we know about, and at least a thousand soldiers. They're already gearing up for it.”

  Mitchells sighed, sagging back against the map table. “Gray's loss is even more disastrous now. It couldn't have come at a worse time, just when we need him most.”

  Jonas gave him a look of pure contempt. “Your grief warms my heart, old man.”

  The former sheriff bristled, and Brandon cut in sharply before they could get distracted with squabbling. “Even if he was still with us, we couldn't fight our way out of this one.” Everyone turned to him, and he paused a beat for emphasis. “We need to evacuate.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Evacuation

  “Our first step should be to put everyone to work helping out,” Brandon said, following at Mitchells's heels as the man rushed outside, with a dozen other people clustered close behind. “We need to grab everything essential that we can carry while still moving quickly.”

  Camptown's leader nodded grimly. “Brady, can you get going on that? With the bloodies coming for us from all sides we need to be gone yesterday, even if we have to leave a lot of stuff behind that might've been useful.”

  Jonas abruptly raised his voice to the small crowd waiting anxiously outside. “Everyone, we've received advance warning of a threat and have decided to evacuate this valley!” A shocked outcry rose from the assembled people, and the militia lieutenant scowled and raised his voice above it. “We're doing this with all haste, so here's the situation! Go home and pack up only what you need, and if you have families get them ready to go as well! Once you've handled your own affairs, come back prepared to pitch in with whatever else needs to be done.”

  “What about all the work we've done here?” a woman called, sounding on the verge of tears. “Everything we've accomplished?”

  Mitchells fielded the question, raising his voice to be heard. “We'll have to leave most of it behind, I'm afraid. Everything but ourselves and the barest necessities . . . at the end of the day, our lives are the most important thing.”

  “We'll be singing a different tune in a few months, once the cold starts setting in,” a man called. To Brandon it sounded like Ted Colson, an acquaintance of the Knudsen family.

  “Let's worry about the next few days!” Jonas snapped. “You all know the enemy we face. They're converging on this valley with over a thousand soldiers. Let's focus on making sure we're gone before they arrive.”

  “When will that be?” Ted demanded.

  An uncomfortable silence settled as Mitchells and Jonas both hesitated. Brandon clapped his hands sharply. “Sooner than any of us would like, so let's get moving, people!”

  People rushed into motion, from what Brandon could see not all of it particularly productive. He started to pull Mitchells, Brady, and Jonas aside to get back to organizing the chaos, but the former sheriff was slow to follow him, expression blank as he watched the people around them hurrying to and fro.

  “Speaking of leaving all this work behind,” the older man said in a low, heavy voice, “near the beginning of Camptown, a lot of folks came to me complaining about all the training you and the volunteers were doing under Trapper. Said you were wasting time that could be put to more important tasks to help us survive living in this place.” He shook his head, expression bitter. “Well, it looks as if that training is pretty much the only thing we can actually take with us, so who's laughing now?”

  Brandon didn't feel much in the mood for laughter at the moment. “Since no amount of training's going to help against what's coming, I'd say none of us are.”

  Mitchells cursed and wearily straightened his shoulders. “Well, the bloodies are coming from the north, east, and south. The only way we can run is west-southwest, and eventually we'll reach the end of the mountains where they can get at us with their vehicles.” He grabbed his hat, crumpling it in his fist. “I'm getting the fear this might turn into a death march like what our Grand Junction friends endured.”

  It had better not. “We'll move quicker than they expect, loop around the guys coming from the south and stick to the western edge of the mountains.”

  Camptown's leader just grunted in response; they both knew the mountains would eventually run out no matter which way they went, and if Sangue was dogged in their pursuit a bunch of refugees with elderly, children, and the sick and injured wouldn't be able to stay ahead of them forever.

  Brandon cursed as well and continued on to where Jonas and Brady were waiting, outpacing the other man. However grim their future might be, the faster they got out of there the better their chances.

  “I'll organize the fighters,” Jonas was saying to the trader. “You handle sorting out what we can afford to take with us, what we absolutely need that won't slow us down too much.”

  Brady nodded grimly. “I've been preparing for this moment as best I could, although a lot of what we can take will have to be determined by what the townspeople are taking of their own possessions, and are willing to carry.”

  “I'll coordinate with them,” Mitchells cut in as he arrived. “You pack up what we need, I'll make sure you have backs to carry it all.”

  The trader nodded and turned to Brandon. “You think the cattle Trapper's got left would endure having a saddle slung across their backs?”

  Wasn't that a question. “Only a few of the older ones have been trained for it, but it's worth a shot,” he replied. “You'll have to send someone around to ask Mother Kristy, though . . . I figured I'd get the freed slaves organized and pitching in.”

  “Don't take too long,” Jonas said. “Our radio operators can warn us about what's coming, but I'd like you to organize the scouts and send them out along the route we plan to take, and also check in with the sentries around Camptown. Make sure there aren't any Sangue squads that are more on the ball than their friends and decided to come straight in instead of rendezvousing.”

  “Fair enough,” Brandon replied. “Someone's going to need to stay behind until the last minute, to bring in the scouts, defenders, and far patrols and make sure they get out in time.”

  “Thanks for volunteering,” the militia leader said with a dour smile.

  Brandon scowled, about to flat out refuse a task that would keep him from leading his family out of danger. Then he thought twice about it; those people were his responsibility, and it wasn't fair to fob such a potentially risky job off on someone else.

  Besides, Trapper and Skyler were still out there, and they might have no idea what was going on. Staying here in case they came in would give Kristy some much-needed peace of mind.

  “Fine,” he snapped, turning away. “Make sure you've got work for my people by the time I've got them rounded up.”

  Brady snorted. “No shortage of work. We could be scrambling around making preparations to leave until the bloodies come swooping in if we're not properly organized.”

  “Then make sure we are.” He quickened
his step.

  Halfway to Grand Junction's new town where the freed slaves were waiting, Logan intercepted him. His brother-in-law came trotting up from behind to fall into step beside him, the predawn glow revealing a fearful expression. “Is it true?” he whispered. “Did they find us?”

  Brandon nodded grimly. “We've got to get out of here.”

  The teenager cursed. “I need to find my squad,” he said, starting to turn away.

  He caught Logan's arm and stopped him short, returning his questioning look with a firm gaze. “As of this moment, you're retiring from the fighters.”

  His brother-in-law gave him a look of mingled outrage and defiance. “Wha-”

  Brandon shook him gently to shut him up. “Camptown's leaning on me to organize this chaos, Logan, which means the summer retreat group has exactly one man available to help them right now. You. You need to make sure your sister, Mother Kristy, and all the other women pack up everything they need and leave as soon as possible. Fi should already have them started on it.”

  Logan's face had paled, but he squared his shoulders and nodded determinedly. “I'll take care of it.”

  “Good.” He released the young man's arm. “Once you're ready, join up with the Knudsen clan and travel with them if they're also ready. If not, you go immediately, even if it means going with just our people.”

  He gestured in the opposite direction of the rising sun as he continued. “We're evacuating midway between west and southwest, to avoid bloodies coming in from the south and northwest. If I haven't had time yet to send out a screen of scouts, you'll have to keep an eye out as you help everyone keep mov-”

  “Brandon,” his brother-in-law said quietly, meeting his eyes with quiet determination. “I've got this.”

  That certainty filled Brandon with a surprising amount of relief, and he impulsively pulled the teenager into a crushing hug. “Keep our family safe, little brother,” he said quietly.