Hero's Stand

by Charles G. West

  “I can’t. I have to take care of Pa, and I don’t think he can travel. He looks pretty stove up, but he’d tell you the same thing I did. You go—as fast as you can.”

  “I reckon I’ll stay,” he stated in a tone that left no room for argument. “That bunch of trash might overrun us, but it’ll damn sure cost ’em.”

  The issue settled, they returned to the cabin to prepare for the assault they knew would come. It wasn’t likely to come before daybreak, but, unwilling to bet on it, Katie and Luke loaded their rifles and prepared to sit up all night.

  Both Katie and Luke were unwilling to chance another visit from Fry’s men that might not find them alert and ready to defend themselves. With the lamps extinguished and only the light of the fire, they each sat by a window with a rifle propped up close at hand. After several hours had passed with nothing outside but the silent snow, Katie got up and made a pot of coffee. While it was heating over the coals, she pulled the blanket that served as a partition aside and looked in on her father. Rufus was sleeping peacefully. She stood over him for a few moments, watching his steady breathing. She shook her head slowly in a brief moment of compassion as she noticed dried bloodstains on the pillow. You done good, Pa, she thought and smiled down at him before replacing the blanket and returning to her post by the window.

  The long night finally faded into shades of gray, and the dark, solemn line of trees along the river rapidly began to acquire definition. Young Luke Kendall glanced back at Katie, now sleeping peacefully at her post by the small window in the front of the cabin. Finally overcome with fatigue, she had drifted off some two hours before sunup. Reluctant to wake her, Luke had taken on the responsibility of keeping an eye out for Fry’s men. Moving almost constantly from the front window to the smaller window at the back, he had waited out the night for the attack that never came. He knew Katie would scold him for allowing her to sleep, but he felt she needed the rest.

  In a matter of mere minutes, the light crept across the yard from the edge of the corral, announcing the official end of the long night. With no sign of unwanted visitors in front or back, Luke laid his rifle aside and walked to the door. Stepping outside onto the frozen snow, he scanned the horizon from the white peaks beyond the northern end of the valley, along the low ridges to the east, and finally to the southern foothills. There was no one in sight.

  “Luke?” He turned to glance back at the cabin when he heard Katie call from inside.

  “I’m out here,” he answered. In a few moments, she appeared in the open doorway. “Looks like we sat up for nothing,” he offered in hopes of defusing the scolding he knew he was about to receive. As he had anticipated, he got it, anyway. But it was short and not too severe. When she had finished, she stepped back inside long enough to grab a coat to throw over her shoulders while she hurried along the frozen path to the outhouse behind the cabin.

  “If you’ll go ahead and build up the fire,” she called back over her shoulder, “I’ll fix us some breakfast.”

  “Yessum,” he replied and started toward the stack of firewood at the side of the cabin. From the size of the stack, it looked to be about time for him and Rufus to take the wagon over beyond the ridge to cut some more wood. The thought brought his mind to Katie’s father and the realization that the old man was sleeping later than usual. He got a pretty hard blow to the head, Luke thought. Little wonder he might be in bed for a spell.

  When Katie came tiptoeing back from her toilet, shivering with the cold as she clutched the coat around her shoulders, Luke had already thrown a couple of chunks of firewood on the glowing coals and stirred up a fresh flame. Seeing him start for the door to look after the livestock, she said, “I’ll look in on Pa. Then I’ll start breakfast.” When he nodded in response, she added, “Take your rifle with you.” He nodded again, paused to pick up the weapon, then went outside.

  Stopping behind the barn to take care of his own morning toilet, Luke thought about the events of the night just passed. It was a dead certainty that the so-called militia would pay them a visit. He and Katie had both expected it to come before daylight. The fact that it hadn’t was no guarantee that the outlaws had been fooled by Luke’s attempt to make it seem that Wiley had been attacked by Indians on his way back from the cabin last night.

  Standing inside the small open-ended structure that passed for a barn, Luke measured out a small amount of grain for each of the mules and horses. Ordinarily, he would have let them out to scratch around in the snow for grass, saving the grain for those long months when the snow would be too deep for them to graze. On this morning, he deemed it best to keep the horses close at hand. Replacing the grain bucket, he hesitated a second, thinking he had heard something from the cabin—a low cry or exclamation. Keeping very still, he listened, but there was nothing more. He figured it had just been his imagination. All his senses were acutely alert this morning, and his nerves were a little jumpy from lack of sleep.

  When he started to return to the cabin, the black-and-white paint gently pushed its muzzle against his chest to be petted, and Luke paused to give it some affection. “I’m afraid I’ve spoiled you rotten,” he said as he stroked the animal’s forelock.

  As soon as he walked in the cabin door, he knew something was wrong. Katie was standing by her father’s bedside. She turned when she heard Luke come in. “Pa’s gone,” she said softly, as if trying not to wake him. She did not cry, but her eyes were wide and moist as she looked at Luke, revealing a sorrow that ran too deep for tears.

  Rufus Colefield had passed on peacefully during the night, the blows that Wiley Johnson had administered to his skull having done fatal damage. Katie stood looking at him for a long time, thinking back to the start of their trek across the continent, which now seemed a hundred years past. The frightened little man was now at rest. Always remorseful for his failure to properly stand and fight beside his son-in-law, he had died while trying to fight in his daughter’s defense. Then the condemning reality struck her that she was responsible for his brutal murder. She had pushed him to make the trip west, convinced him that there was no future in the rocky soil of his tiny farm in southern Ohio. She was the reason he had worked long hours scratching a living out of the soil, looking all the while over his shoulder for the Indian raid he feared might come again. At once her heart was filled with sorrow, and she silently begged for his forgiveness. Turning once again to Luke, she tried to speak but found she could not.

  “It ain’t your fault.” The boy had stood silently by while she gazed down at her father. When she turned to face him again, he could read the guilt in her eyes and knew that she blamed herself. “Things happen the way they’re supposed to.”

  She managed a smile for him. “I suppose so,” she admitted quietly, knowing that he was repeating words that she had said to him when his mother and father had been killed. Calling on the strength and resolve that had carried her through so many hard times, she marshaled her will to face this new tragedy. “I don’t know how much time we’ve got before we can expect a visit from the militia, but I’d like to bury Pa before they get here.”

  “Yessum,” Luke replied softly and turned to leave.

  She stopped him before he went out the door. “Luke, I reckon there’s no longer any reason to stay here and wait to get killed. We might as well make a run for the Shoshoni camp.”

  Luke nodded, then said, “We can stay with my uncle.”

  Katie looked around her as if second-guessing her decision. This was her home, but was it worth standing to fight for? She gave a brief thought to the possibility of seeking help from one of the other families in the valley. But then the image of their faces when she had called them all to the meeting came back to her, and she remembered how blindly they believed in Simon Fry. She decided that she and Luke would be better off in the Indian village. “Then I guess we’d better bury Pa and get ready to ride.”

  Katie picked a gravesite under a towering cottonwood that stood by a narrow stream feeding into the river. I
t was a favorite spot of hers, where sagebrush buttercups signaled the first signs of spring each year. The ground was already hard from the snow and cold, but Luke attacked it with pick and shovel until he had a fair-sized grave. When it was ready, they went back to the cabin to get her father. “Help me put his coat on,” Katie said as they started to move the stiffening body. “It’s awful cold out there.”

  After they lowered Rufus Colefield’s body into his grave, Katie covered his head and shoulders with an old tablecloth. “I don’t want dirt in his face,” she explained as she took one last look at her father before covering him. Then she got to her feet and turned abruptly toward the cabin, leaving Luke to shovel the dirt over him. “I’ll get some food together. As soon as you’re finished, get the horses. I don’t know how much time we’ve got before they show up.” Unable to prevent the tears any longer, she ran for the cabin, her rifle in her hand, her teary eyes searching the horizon for the sudden appearance of Simon Fry and his men.

  Packing all the essential items they could on the horses, Katie and Luke rushed to get ready to run. There was no time to fret over the many things that would be left behind. They had to travel fast, and they couldn’t be slowed down by a wagon. Consequently, Katie had to leave treasured family keepsakes and personal items that she had accumulated over the years. Luke dropped the bars in the feed room so the cow could help herself to the hay that was balled there. On Katie’s suggestion, he left the barn door open. She figured the cow might wander down in the willow thickets by the river when she needed water. It saddened Katie to leave her, but they couldn’t afford to be hampered by a cow if Simon Fry was on their trail.

  A light snow began to fall as they climbed into the saddle and, each leading a couple of pack horses, rode out back of the barn and down by the river. Crossing over, they nudged the horses into an easy canter until they had left the cabin a couple of miles behind them. Reining their mounts back to a fast walk, they skirted Monk Grissom’s cabin and crossed over the low ridge that ran the width of Horace Spratte’s place. Katie was concerned that Horace might see them. They would just have to trust to luck that he was sitting by the fire on this cold winter morning. Once past Spratte’s place, they hightailed it for the pass at the northern end of the valley. Katie did not voice it, but she made a solemn vow to herself that she would be back. Simon Fry might have the advantage now, but she had no intention of being chased out of her home for good.

  * * *

  Simon Fry was furious. “That rutty son of a bitch,” he fumed. “I knew he was going to keep sniffing around some female until he fouled up my plans.” He felt no remorse at Wiley’s demise. Fry was angry because their number had been reduced by one. Now he had lost three men since his small gang had descended upon this valley and its settlement of peaceful farmers who should have offered no threat to his band of outlaws. To further irritate him, he had to send Caldwell out to find Clell, who, he suspected, was asleep somewhere instead of watching the trails out of the valley like he had been told.

  Trask had returned the night before and told Fry what Wiley was up to. At the time, Fry was mad enough to go after Wiley, but Pitt had talked him out of it. “Let him have at that woman and get it outta his system,” Pitt had advised. “He ain’t gonna be worth a damn until he does.”

  “And then what?” Fry had wanted to know. “Explain to the rest of these folks why one of my men raped that Mashburn bitch? Then they’ll probably expect me to discipline him some way.”

  Pitt had remained unperturbed. “If I know that crazy son of a bitch, I reckon Wiley won’t leave nobody alive to complain.”

  “He better have killed the lot of them, the old man and that damn half-breed kid, too,” Fry had stated. “We’d better ride over there first thing in the morning and see what kind of mess he left. We can burn the place and tell the rest of them that it was another Injun raid.”

  The light of day had revealed a worrisome twist to the situation, however: one that further fired Fry’s anger. For Pitt spotted Wiley’s horse leisurely making its way back to the cabin with Wiley’s stiff and frozen corpse draped across the saddle. Trask had grabbed the horse’s bridle when it came up to the cabin while Pitt walked around to its side. Taking hold of Wiley’s boots and heaving up on them, he dumped the body unceremoniously onto the hard-packed snow.

  They now stood staring at their former partner, his frozen body still half-bent from the saddle. “Injuns,” Trask surmised, looking at the arrow protruding from Wiley’s neck and the black blood-crusted dome where his scalp had been.

  Pitt was not so eager to jump to that conclusion. “Injuns, my ass. You ever see an Injun kill a man and leave his horse—and his rifle in the saddle sling?” He glanced at Fry for his answer. “Well, I ain’t,” he concluded.

  “That damn half-breed kid,” Fry said, his mind in the same groove as Pitt’s. “He’s pretty handy with that damn bow of his.”

  “That arrow’s just for show,” Pitt concluded. “He’s shot plumb full of holes. I reckon they wanted to make damn sure he was dead.”

  “You dumb whore-hound,” Fry fumed now, directing his anger at the corpse. He drew his foot back and kicked the body hard, planting the toe of his boot in the dead man’s ribs. It made a dull thud, as if he had kicked a rotten log.

  Pitt grunted, amused by Fry’s reaction. It always amused him to see Fry lose his temper. It sometimes made him wonder how he lasted as long as he did in that St. Louis bank before he had busted that senior vice president over the head. The upright and proper Mr. Finch, he thought.

  “I told him he oughtn’t to hang around that place,” Trask reminded them. “But he wouldn’t pay me no mind.”

  Ignoring Trask’s remarks, Fry and Pitt were already looking ahead to the possible effect this latest incident might have on the rest of the people in the valley. “We’ve got no choice on one thing,” Fry said. “We’ve got to get over to the Colefield place and silence the three of them. If they think they can get away with something like this, they might get the rest of these damn sheep thinking they can buck us, too. Let’s get saddled up.”

  “You wanna wait for Clell and Caldwell to get back?” Pitt asked.

  Fry hesitated for a second. “No,” he decided. “No tellin’ how long it’ll take Caldwell to find that lazy bastard.”

  “What about Wiley?” Trask interjected.

  Fry glanced down at the late Wiley Johnson as if annoyed to be reminded of him. “Drag him off in the woods yonder,” he said, gesturing toward the river. “I don’t wanna have to step over him every time I walk in the door.”

  Chapter 9

  Lettie Henderson had made a big mistake. She knew it, and she was willing to admit it to herself. Things had not turned out as she had planned since leaving St. Louis to search for her father’s murderer, Steadman Finch. But how could she have known that Harvey would contract cholera? He had been frail and sickly since he was a baby, and most of her friends in St. Louis had tried to convince her that her older brother could not stand up to the rugged land beyond the Missouri. It turned out they were right. Harvey had only made it about twenty miles past Fort Kearny before coming down with the debilitating sickness so many feared. That didn’t mean she had been wrong to start out on the journey—just unlucky. They had actually been doing just fine. The weather had been good, and they had made good time ever since leaving Westport Landing.

  She had done the best she could for Harvey when he became ill, but she was forced to watch helplessly as he retched his fragile life away until there was nothing left of him but a sheet of thin skin stretched over some bones.

  Poor, sweet Harvey. He had been as zealous as she to pack up and head out across the country in search of the man who had murdered their father. The mistake she had made, and now feared she was in danger of paying for, was in the hiring of Henry Bingham to guide them. Unwilling to spend the time to check Mr. Bingham’s references because of the approaching winter, they had hired him wholly upon his word. Bingham had run off
as soon as it was suspected that Harvey’s sudden illness was cholera. He had heard the many tales of cholera epidemics and was not willing to expose himself to the possibility of catching it. Lettie suspected he had not run very far and had been keeping his eye on them from a distance, for as soon as poor Harvey was safely in the ground, Bingham had come slinking back, claiming his conscience wouldn’t permit him to leave her all alone after contracting to take her to find Steadman Finch. He had showed up a little before dark, as contrite as could be, talking about how much he had worried about her.

  There was little doubt in Lettie’s mind that Bingham had returned solely because of the money he suspected was hidden in the wagon. What Bingham didn’t know was that the money was not in any of the bags or satchels packed in the wagon. It was sewn inside her flannel drawers, and she vowed that if he or any other man found it, it would be on her cold, dead body. Wearing Harvey’s revolver on her slender hip, she made it obvious to Bingham that she was not to be considered easy pickings.

  The decision to terminate his contract had been made the instant he set foot back in camp. She hadn’t told him of it yet, but she was of the opinion that she would not be safe alone in his company. Since Fort Kearny was only one day’s ride back east, she felt now was the time to notify him of the change in plans.

  After waiting for him to place new limbs on the fire and settle himself, she said, “I won’t be needing your services any longer, Mr. Bingham. Since my brother is dead, I think I’ll turn back to Fort Kearny.” Her statement caused him to jerk his head up quickly, but, before he could respond, she went on. “Of course, I’ll pay you for taking me this far.”

  His eyes dull as slate, he stared at her for a few moments before speaking. “Well, now, that sure is a right sad piece of news at this late date. I had to make a lot of changes in my plans to guide you out to Montana. Your sudden decision to turn back is gonna cause me some hardship. It’s a long way back to St. Louis. Yes, ma’am, no doubt about that. But I reckon it’ll be all right if you just pay me the whole fee we agreed on.”