“Thank you, Lieutenant, I will see what I can do.”
The sandy-haired man got to his feet slowly. “I’d like to see what the Lieutenant can do. I’ve seen him perambulatin’ around here, shinin’ up to that gal lives by herself in that tent, and I—”
Zeb Rawlings swung down. “Gentlemen,” he said quietly, “I hope you will excuse me.”
The sandy-haired man was three inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than Zeb. He grinned a slow grin and rubbed his palms down his jeans. “Ain’t had me a chanct like this here since the war, by G—!”
He closed his fingers in a big fist and threw his punch.
There was no finesse in Zeb Rawlings. He had never had an opportunity to learn there even was such a thing. Linus, on the other hand, had been victor in many a brutal fight with keelboaters and trappers, and he had demonstrated to his sons and rehearsed them in the basic elements of fighting to win.
The big sandy-haired man swung, and Zeb Rawlings went under the swing and put everything he had into a right to the ribs. The man buckled at the knees and started to fold, and Zeb Rawlings jerked up his knee to meet the falling chin. There was an ugly clunk and the man continued to fall. Zeb Rawlings stepped back, blowing on his skinned knuckles and looking at the man on the ground.
Then he turned. “Mr. Vaucelle, I’ll appreciate what you can do. Thank you!”
Quickly, he stepped into the stirrups and turned away, and as he did so he saw Julie Stuart.
She was standing not fifty feet away, a basket in her hand, and as their eyes met, she turned sharply as if to go. He touched a spur to his horse and was beside her in a bound. “I’ve yet to offer my congratulations,” he said stiffly.
She turned her eyes on him. “Congratulations?”
“Mike King told me he had spoken to you.”
Her chin came up. “He has spoken to me many times, and what of it? I’ve no doubt he will speak to me again if he passes me on the way, and I shall answer, and what of that?”
“You’re not—you mean you’re not going to marry him?”
“Mike King? And why should a girl want to marry a railroad, I’d like to know? I’ve never given a thought to it.”
“But he told me—I thought—”
“Do you believe everything you’re told, then? Don’t you know the man hasn’t the truth in him? You had no reason to think anything of the sort, and if you’d been less of a fool you would have known it.”
Zeb glanced toward the encampment. “Julie, you’ve got to get what you need and come to where the army is. We’re expecting an attack.”
“You change the subject very fast.”
He grinned sheepishly. “It’s a poor time to talk of romance and what comes after, when I have a duty to fulfill.” He looked down into her eyes. “Julie, I’ll be leaving the Army.”
“So you told me before. If you are going to leave, you should do it soon. Wherever we settle we will want a crop in, and there’s little time.”
He was halfway back to the camp before the full weight of her words struck him. He rode into camp in a daze.
And then anger flooded through him. King had lied to him, made a fool of him, and he had let it happen. Wheeling his horse, he rode toward King’s car just as the railroad man stepped to the door and stretched.
Zeb drew up. “You’re not wearing a gun,” he said. “Get one, and get it now.”
Mike King lowered his arms with care. His pistol lay on his desk inside, and almost within reach was a fully loaded shotgun.
Zeb Rawling’s face was taut and white, and King, who was counted a courageous man, felt an odd sinking in the pit of his stomach. In that instant he knew he was closer to death than he had ever been. He had seen Zeb Rawlings shoot, and he knew just exactly what his chances were.
He started to speak, when a shout came from the army encampment. “Indians! Indians!”
A shot barked in the afternoon sun. Zeb wheeled his horse sharply around. The crest of the hill was feathered with charging Arapahoes, and even as he looked, another bunch burst from the mouth of a gully not twenty-five yards off, their horses at a dead run.
“You asked for war!” he shouted savagely at King. “Now you’ve got it!”
He turned his horse and raced the few yards to his own camp, where sporadic fire had already begun as his veterans picked their targets. Directly before him Zeb saw a man stagger, clutching at his throat, where blood welled between his fingers.
Glancing toward the settlers’ camp, he saw Vaucelle and the ex-soldiers he had mustered lined up behind the tiestacks, rifles poised to fire. Under their steadying influence the others were coolly prepared to fight.
Mixed among the muzzle-loaders and breech-loaders were a few of the new Henry rifles, and here and there a Spencer. You could always tell when the big Spencer hit, because the .56 or .54 caliber cartridges would lift an Indian right off his horse.
A statuesque blonde girl who might have modeled for Brunnhilde was running a ramrod down a rifle barrel, loading it and passing it to a man who exchanged it for the rifle he had just fired. Another woman was bending over a wounded man, bathing a wounded arm and preparing to bandage it.
Far from their homes in a savage land, these stalwart people, many of whom had never heard a shot fired in anger, were fighting to defend their right to be here. No less than the Indians, they fought for home and family, and many would die.
King’s railroaders settled down grimly. Most of them were veterans, or men who had experienced Indian battles before, and they took their positions quickly and began to fire.
The sudden fire seemed to break the onrush of Indians, for their charge suddenly split off to left and right. And then Zeb heard a sound that gripped his throat with sudden fear.
A soft, muted thunder, scarcely heard, then filling the ears with sound…a great dust cloud that suddenly exploded above the hill, and then the dust was split apart by a vast, rolling blackness from which came the thunder. A dark cloud of massive, woolly heads, glistening horns…buffalo!
On either side rode the Arapahoes, pointing the stampeding herd straight at the town of canvas, straight at the flimsy barricades of the settlers, many of whom were at the end of the tiestacks.
They simply had no chance. There was scarcely time to fire and load before the charging herd was upon them. The great woolly wall of hurtling flesh came down in a gigantic herd. Many a beast among those hundreds weighed at least a ton.
And there was no stopping their insane charge. Tents flattened; women screamed. The wounded man pushed the woman aside and tried to cover her with his body; then the black mass whirled through. One instant the settlers’ town was there, and then it was ground into the mud along with torn and bloody flesh. At a dugout near the railroad line Zeb saw a huge bull struggling, half through a roof, saw it plunging to escape the trap, then vanish.
And then the Arapahoes came.
They came close upon the heels of the buffalo, and leaping their ponies over fallen beasts, shot down by the desperate effort to stop the stampede or turn it, the Indians were behind the barricade, among the defenders.
King retreated swiftly toward his car, one of the few things left standing. Zeb saw his sergeant go down under the glancing blow of a tomahawk, and he fired, knocking the warrior from the saddle. A horse plunged at him and he fell aside, firing and missing.
A young warrior, his face painted with streaks of black, rushed at him, and Zeb lifted his pistol and fired. The bullet stopped the Indian in midstride, but then he came on and Zeb fired again. When the Indian fell three bullets were in his breast and he went down almost on top of Zeb.
Catching up a rifle, Zeb scrambled to his feet and shot at an Indian near the barricade. Then he wheeled to fire again, but the gun was empty and he charged a group of Indians, swinging the heavy Springfield like a club.
As suddenly as the attack had begun, it ended. There was only the acrid smell of gunpowder, the gasping of men exhausted by tremendous effort, and the
moans or cries of the wounded. Zeb removed the empty cylinder from his pistol and replaced it with another.
Mike King got slowly to his feet from the steps of his private car, blood running down his face from a scalp wound.
“You bought it,” Zeb told him savagely. “Now walk out there and look at the price!”
“Going to shoot me?” King even now smiled his taunting smile, but his eyes were wary. Both held drawn guns, and the range was close. King knew the difference then: he wanted desperately to live, and Zeb Rawlings did not care. Deep within him, King was filled with fear. He would stand and fight, but desperately did not want to die.
“Walk out there!” Zeb commanded. “I want you to see what you have done!”
Where the woman had knelt above the wounded man, now there were two bodies ground into one, their flesh churned by the flying hoofs. The blonde Brunnhilde lay sprawled in ugly death, only a raw skull where the blonde hair had been. Men moaned and begged for help. Slowly the survivors collected themselves and began to move among the wounded.
The sergeant, an ugly cut upon his scalp, came to Zeb for orders. Briefly, Rawlings told him what to do. “Get eight men on the barricades as before. Turn the rest of them to collecting rifles and ammunition, and helping the wounded. We can spare only four men for the injured.”
He turned on King. “How do you like it, King? You invited them here. You brought them too soon into the hell created by your broken promises. You brought them here, you killed them—now you can live with it.”
“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs,” King said. “And the eggs will keep coming.”
But his face was gray and sick-looking and he turned his eyes quickly away from the dead and dying. “You aren’t going to kill me?” he asked.
“You? You aren’t worth killing. You’re dead. You’ve been dead for years. You’re only a hammer in the hands of the directors of your road. There’s nothing inside you at all.”
Julie, he thought…where was Julie?
And then he saw her, bending over a wounded man, and he went to her.
“I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m riding out.”
“Now?” She was incredulous.
“It’s best. The Arapahoes will see me go, and they blame me more than anyone else. I think you can stop any attack that will come now, but if I leave they may not attack at all.”
“They will kill you.”
“Maybe. I’m no martyr—once out there, I’ll run for it. I’m taking the company race horse and leaving mine.”
She put her hand on his sleeve. “No…don’t go.”
“I have to. If I go they’ll come after me. It will be easier than attacking here again. If I make it, I’ll meet you in Salt Lake.”
There were no tears, no protests. They stood an instant looking into each other’s eyes, and then he turned quickly away.
He walked across to where the sergeant was bringing some order into the frightful mess of the encampment. “You’re in command, Sergeant. My resignation has gone in. I’m riding out. Maybe they’ll want me so bad they’ll leave you alone, but your position is good, their chance of surprise is gone, and the train from Omaha should be rolling in by tomorrow with more troops.”
“So long, Lieutenant.”
“So long, Sergeant.”
“And Lieutenant—good luck.”
He saddled the gray horse. It was a runner and a stayer, a horse he himself had bought but which they had kept for racing, winning a good bit of money from time to time. Now it was going to have to run.
He mounted up and walked the horse to the edge of the barricade. Vaucelle came over to him. “Over there,”—he nodded his head but did not point—“there don’t seem to be any of them. You might make it.”
“Thanks.”
The Indians had carried off their dead, as they always did, leaving only those who had fallen within the enclosure. There were pools of blood here and there upon the grass, indication that the Arapahoes had been hard hit, too.
He started his horse trotting down the valley, giving them a chance to see him. He was heading west. That always seemed to be the answer. When things go wrong, go west.
A shot rang out.…
He glanced back, surprised to see the distance between himself and the fort. And then he saw the Arapahoes. There was a long line of them strung out along the ridge, and they were coming after him.
He glanced off to the north, and there was another line. They were pointing themselves at some spot ahead where they expected to close in on him.
“All right, Jubal,” he said to the gray horse, “let’s see what you can do.”
The long legs stretched out, the hoofs pounded the turf, the wind whipped at his face. The gray had a smooth, wonderful stride, and dearly loved to run.
Ahead of him somewhere was tomorrow—with luck. The hoofs drummed a rhythm upon the sod. He crouched lower to lessen the resistance offered to the wind.
Chapter 18
*
GABE FRENCH PAUSED on the corner and stared along the street. The last time he had walked on Nob Hill he had come looking for a teamster who had once worked for him, and the Hill then had been a cluster of modest wooden cottages. Now they had been replaced by ornate mansions.
He squinted his eyes against the reflection of sunlight from Jim Flood’s thirty-thousand-dollar brass fence. It was all of two blocks long, and there was a man at work polishing it. Gabe had heard about that fence. In fact, come to think of it, Cleve had told him of it, and how it kept one man busy every day to keep it polished.
The gray towers of the Hopkins castle with its terraced gardens was diagonally across the street. He walked on by, ignoring the Colton, Stanford, and Crocker houses. He had never visited Cleve’s home during his lifetime, and it seemed odd that he should come here now, when Cleve was dead. Yet they had been friends in the old days, and never less than friends in all the years that followed.
“One man I envied,” Gabe said aloud, as he hesitated on the corner. “He had something about him…sort of a flair, I’d guess you’d call it.”
“What was that?”
Gabe turned at the query, embarrassed to be caught talking to himself. “Asked if you knew where the Van Valen mansion is,” he grumbled.
The man pointed. “Right over there. Although you can hardly call it his now. And by all accounts it won’t be his widow’s after today. They’re selling him out, lock, stock, and barrel.”
He was a prim little man with small eyes and a sour expression, and the satisfaction in his tone was obvious.
It irritated Gabe French, and he said, “They’d not do it if he was alive. Cleve Van Valen could raise millions when nobody else could lay hands on a copper penny…just on his name.”
“I’ve heard that,” the man said skeptically. “But I don’t believe it.”
Gabe felt his anger mounting. Age had brought a quick impatience to Gabe French. Heretofore he had been tolerant of fools; he was so no longer.
“A man must pay his debts,” the man continued stiffly. “Van Valen always lived beyond his income.”
“There was more’n a few years,” Gabe replied testily, “when nobody could have lived beyond his income. Time was when one mine paid him upwards of eighty thousand a month. Eighty thousand. Never made that kind of money myself.”
“I don’t imagine you did.” The stranger glanced contemptuously at Gabe’s shabby clothing.
Gabe French tried to stifle his irritation and failed. A man had few pleasures when he grew old, and Gabe allowed himself his irritation at petty things. He had never been known to fret at disaster, but in these later years he found pleasure in grumbling.
He looked at the man coldly. “Not to say,” he said deliberately, “that I couldn’t buy and sell many a man who owns a mansion on this hill. As for Cleve Van Valen, there was never a better friend than him, or a more loyal one. Came a time—that was years back—glanders got into my horses and I had two freight contracts goi
ng, and all my stock dead or dying almost overnight.
“Somebody told Cleve, and he came over Donner Pass driving a hundred head of horses for me—and that in the late fall with snow falling. He made it through with the pass closing up behind him. Saved my bacon.
“There was another time when the two of us got ambushed by Modocs up near Klamath Lake. Our horses were killed and I had a bullet in me; and Cleve, he stood them off throughout the day, and in the night got away, carrying me on his back.”
The man looked startled. “Then you—Why, you must be Gabe French!”
“That’s right,” Gabe said quietly, and glancing up the street, then down, he stepped off the curb and walked across.
Cleve was dead, but Lilith was alive, and by the Lord Harry, if she needed money he knew where she could get it. The trouble was that Lilith was a mighty proud woman, mighty proud.
Half a dozen rigs were standing in the street and in the short driveway leading up to the house. Gabe walked past them and went inside, pushing through a small knot of men talking by the door.
A crowd was gathered in the hall, and on the stairway stood the auctioneer.
“Two thousand dollars? Is that the last bid? Ladies and gentlemen, this trophy is solid gold and fully inscribed.” He indicated letters on the side of the gold figure. “ ‘Mr. Cleve Van Valen. President of the San Francisco-Kansas City Railroad.’ It is a treasure he held dear to his heart.”
Gabe glanced around, his eyes searching for Lilith. When he saw her he was startled and momentarily dismayed. Somehow, he had never thought of Lilith as being old, yet come to think of it, she must be all of sixty now.
She sat in a chair overlooking the hall, clad in a lovely silk gown, her hair faultlessly done. Next to her was a man Gabe recognized as her attorney.
“Do I hear three thousand for this priceless possession?”
She was just near enough for him to hear her say, “Priceless, my foot! We used it as a doorstop.”
The auctioneer spoke again. “Why, the gold here alone is worth three thousand—”
Novel 1963 - How The West Was Won (v5.0) Page 20