The Stonegate Sword

by Harry James Fox

  “I am not sure what happened,” answered Samuel, turning to Billy, who had been calmly eating pancakes and drinking coffee. “Do you know why Deborah was along?”

  “No, friend Samuel,” returned Billy gravely. “I do not know this Deborah. I was only told that she with the group, and she not hurt.”

  “Well, let me continue, then,” said Samuel, a bit hurriedly. “The sun is beginning to rise. Go ahead and start serving your plates. I will continue the story while you do so.” Stanley nodded and began serving the girls. Jane chose this time to rejoin the group, which meant that all were present.

  “Oatmeal and hot cakes,” exclaimed Jane. “Is that all we have? Don’t we have any eggs at least?”

  “Sorry, your Ladyship,” returned Stanley, with a grin. “But I do have some butter and honey to put the sparkle back in your eyes.”

  “If I could continue, Jane,” put in Samuel, firmly. “And to make a long story short, the women all insisted that they knew nothing about any strange girls who had been captives. They Raiders beat the three guards nearly senseless, then they left, riding down-river.”

  “Well, if you ask me,” declared Jane, “it sounds like a hare-brained scheme. It is a wonder that the Raiders didn’t kill them all or maybe take the women captive to replace us.”

  “I doubt that the Prophet would be interested in bar girls from Glenwood,” returned Samuel. “He is very selective. And the Raiders are interested in getting the fairest of the fair for him.”

  “I don’t like your attitude,” said Jane in a huff. She turned to face Samuel, hands on hips. “I think all you men just consider us as baggage—valuable baggage, but still baggage! Or maybe as the prizes in a game!”

  “Please, Jane,” said Abel. “I would think that it is plain to you who your friends are! Now let Samuel finish the story.” She gave a sniff and a toss of her black hair. Her bright eyes sparkled with anger.

  “Well, that is all there is,” said Samuel. “Did I leave anything out, Billy?” Billy shook his head. Samuel continued: “Jane is correct that the diversion was risky. But the Raiders have always acted with restraint in the Glenwood area. I know that is not true when they cross the mountains to the east, but it has been true here. They sometimes stop caravans and even sometimes loot them. But, as a rule, they have not killed guards when they surrender. We expected that they would do the same in this case.”

  Abel nodded, and added: “I agree. The Prophet demands that his Raiders show restraint in areas under his orbit. They mostly raid in foreign lands. We normally have more to fear from tax collectors in this valley than from Balek Brown.”

  †

  They began the process of saddling and packing the horses. All were anxious to start the final leg of their journey. Eric and Bobby had found a full sack of grain and fed the horses a quart or two each. They had watered them all before breakfast. The horses had a lean look and tried to graze as they were being led. But they seemed sound and well rested. While Stanley and Don worked with the pack horses, Eric and Bobby began to saddle the girl’s horses.

  Don was tightening the cinches on his own saddle, as Abel approached him. “Lore-man,” he said. “I would like you to come with me. The others can go on their way toward Owl Hollow without us. And there is something that I want to share with you.”

  “What is that?” asked Don. “I would like to keep an eye on Rachel.”

  “They are quite safe now, and Samuel agrees that there is something we must do. You are being greatly honored.”

  “Why is that?” blurted Don, surprised.

  “Very few have been trusted with this secret outside of the Pilgrims,” returned Abel. Don noticed that he did not directly answer the question. “Samuel knows, and Stanley has an idea of our secret, though not the details. But no questions now. I will show you everything in just a short while.”

  And so it was that Don and Abel soon parted from the others. Don gave Rachel a brief explanation and a hug, then reined away. She blew him a kiss, as he and Abel cut off the trail, heading to the northwest. She tried to smile, but her eyes again looked large and frightened.

  Chapter 15

  †

  Owl Hollow

  They are the ones who will dwell on the heights, whose refuge will be the mountain fortress. Their bread will be supplied, and water will not fail them. Isaiah 33:16 NIV

  Don followed Abel along a faint trail that climbed and switched back westerly up the hogback. They passed through some swampy areas, and skirted a couple of dwindling snowdrifts. Everything seemed dormant, waiting for the winter to come.

  As they went over the crest, they crossed an open park with gray patches of sage intermingled with boulders and bedrock. Abel seemed to be heading for a prominent knob, just ahead of them. The sun was just coming up and the sky was a deep cobalt blue. They tied their mounts to a scrubby pair of gray-barked firs. Abel took a leather box, about the size of a small loaf of bread, from one saddlebag, and they walked up on a prominent rock formation. The view was superb. They could see Storm Mountain to the west, and the hazy purple of Battlement Mesa, far off to the southwest.

  Abel sat down next to a reasonably flat rock, about three feet high, and opened the leather box. He unfolded a complicated machine, with an arm about a foot long, attached to a small platform. He took out two round mirrors, each about six inches in diameter, and attached them to the platform. Short, adjustable legs leveled the device, and he arranged it so that he was looking directly at Storm Mountain. He seemed to be aligning it so that he could reflect a beam of sunlight directly at the mountain top.

  Don watched this operation with great interest. Abel grinned at him. “You must have some questions,” he said. “This is an ancient idea, called a heliograph. It uses sunlight to send coded messages and can be seen for an amazingly long distance, sometimes as much as eighty miles. Every Pilgrim has one in his medical kit, though we do not speak of it. I am going to try to communicate with Storm Mountain, which is only a little over twenty-five miles from here. There should be a signaler there. He can relay directly to the House of Healing.”

  “Interesting! Do you use ancient code?” asked Don. “I forget the name.”

  “You probably mean Morse’s code. But, no we do not. We use a table with five rows and as many columns. We send two sets of flashes with a short rest between for each letter. One and one means ‘A’; one and two means ‘B’ and so on.” Abel pulled a small telescope out of the leather box and looked at the mountain, intently.

  Then he flipped up a small card with a slot cut in it and began adjusting the spot of light. He turned the mirrors this way and that until he was satisfied, and then pushed a small lever several times. Finally, he flipped the card down and began quickly flicking the lever. Each time the lever was pushed, the mirror tipped forward, and the spot of light dipped toward the ground. When the lever was released, the mirror snapped back to its original position. He tapped for several minutes.

  “This is just to convince them that I am really Abel, and that they can send me any message that they might have,” explained Abel. “Keep a close look at the mountain, and let me know if you see any flashes of light.”

  The return flashes did not take long in coming. They were bright and easy to see. Don called Abel’s attention to them. Clearly, the telescope would not be needed. Abel started marking in a small notebook. Don remembered his pen case, and reached for it on his belt. He pulled out a small roll of parchment and opened a small tube of ink. “I can record, if you want to read the letters off,” he offered. After a minute, Abel agreed, and began reading off letters. Don jotted them down, but they seemed to make little sense.

  “Numbers coming,” whispered Abel, half to himself. And he was correct. A long series of numbers followed. The name Adam came again. Then Abel muttered, “That will be all, I think—Yes!” He flipped up the card and readjust
ed the heliograph. Then he sent a quick message back. Four quick flashes came in response.

  “Very well, Donald,” said Abel. “I told them to wait a few minutes for our reply.”

  He took the parchment from Don and laid it on the rock next to his notebook. He went over the first part of the message carefully, down to the part where the numbers started. “The first part of the message asks if we are faring well, if we have problems. The second part is in code, which means that it must be very sensitive. We rarely bother with code. The abbreviations that we use would be difficult for an outsider to read, anyway, even if he understood our system.”

  “Couldn’t the Prophet have someone read your messages?” asked Don, doubtfully. “They could easily be seen by someone else.”

  “Our signals chief thinks so, also,” answered Abel. “He constantly harps on the need for more security. Maybe he is right. Someone could position himself east of the river and see the messages from Storm Mountain, easily enough. Anyway, we need to decode this.” He reached into his pack and pulled out a small book. Then he began marking down a series of words.

  After a short time, he looked at Don. “Well, it is decision time. The message says: ‘PROPHET DEMANDS RETURN OF WOMEN PD SAYS THEY WERE KIDNAPED PD ANY OBJECTIONS IF WE TELL HIM THAT THEY HAVE DEPARTED QQ.’”

  “What does that mean?” asked Don. He realized that the “qq” must mean a question mark. “What would be the problem with telling the truth to the Prophet?”

  “Probably they want to know if we think we are safely away,” returned Abel. “As soon as they admit that the sparrows have flown, the Prophet is going to start looking on every road and behind every bush. He has eyes and ears in many places, and they will drop everything else!”

  “The whole point of taking the girls away was to take the pressure off the healers,” mused Don. “Isn’t that true?” He felt uncertain as to the best move. Should they delay as long as possible? He wished Samuel were with them. But would another day’s delay help very much?

  “That is my understanding.”

  “I see no point of stalling, then. Perhaps the Chief Surgeon could openly admit that they are not in the hospital. He then could offer to make a careful search of the entire area within the walls. That would probably delay the Prophet’s messenger for a few hours. He would not want to take a reply back until he was sure.”

  “Let me think, Lore-man,” came Abel’s response. “You probably guess right that a messenger or emissary is meeting with the Chief Surgeon. Perhaps they have already met. It would be better to tell our enemy nothing—but that would defeat the purpose of removing the girls. This is a bit of a dilemma. I am afraid that the decision must be yours.”

  Don mentally ran over the options. “I think the Surgeon should admit that they are not in the Hospital. He could offer to search for the kidnapped girls through all the buildings inside the walls. That would take all day, probably. It would likely keep the Prophet’s men uncertain for a little while. But a thought just occurred to me.”

  “What?”

  “Won’t our signals be a dead give-away to anyone watching? Won’t they be able to tell that we are up here? I hope these signals are not a sign-post pointing the Prophet’s men directly to us. I don’t see any Diné up here hiding our tracks!”

  “The Diné are as much of a mystery to me as they seem to be to you. But you need not worry too much. There are signals being flashed to Storm Mountain from every direction, every day. It is the main relay station, since peaks from every direction can see it. So the Prophet’s men would have no idea which signal may be from us. My check-in, though not in code, would tell him nothing.”

  “Let me draft a message,” muttered Abel. He scribbled for a moment. “How does this sound? ‘WE ARE ALL WELL PD SAY THAT GIRLS NOT IN HOSPITAL PD OFFER TO SEARCH EVERYWHERE WITHIN YOUR WALLS PD SEARCH MAY OFFER SOME DELAY.’”

  Don agreed, and Abel repeated the process of sending the message. He first converted it to code, and then adjusted the heliograph. He established that the signalman was watching, by exchanging flashes, then commenced. The signal, itself, only took a few minutes.

  Four flashes came again. “They received the message,” announced Abel. “Now we wait. Unfortunately, one of us must keep the mountain in view. We don’t want to miss any response.”

  It was a long half-hour when they noticed the familiar pattern of flashes again. As before, Abel read off the letters and numbers. And, again, it did not take long. Able took the message that Don had written down, and he laboriously decoded it. The decoding took much longer than it took to receive it in the first place.

  “They send an acknowledgment,” said Abel, finally. “It is an abbreviation that means the message was received and understood. Then there is a message in code. It seems to be—it is a bit strange.”

  “What does it say?”

  “It says: ‘WILL DELAY AS LONG AS POSSIBLE PD URGENT NEED TO MOVE DEBORAH AT HER REQUEST PD IT WOULD BE BEST IF SHE COULD JOIN YOU PD PLEASE ADVISE.’”

  Don hardly knew what to say. Having Deborah in the same cabin with Rachel and the others could cause problems. On the other hand, she might be helpful. She seemed to have an aptitude for nursing. If she remained in the House of Healing there would be some chance that one of the Prophet’s spies would recognize her. She could be in some danger if she stayed, but attempting to leave would also be risky. He finally decided that it would probably best to remove her, if possible.

  “I think we should remove her,” said Don, finally. “But maybe we should talk to Samuel first. What do you think?”

  “I quite agree. I will say that we give an answer about Deborah in two day’s time. We have to come back here to retrieve the tent and supplies anyway. But we have to be sure that we do not lead the Prophet’s searchers back with her!”

  Don nodded. He could see the danger, and it was a real one. He gazed absently across the valley to the snow-capped peaks far away as Abel sent the last message.

  †

  Abel retrieved his equipment and returned it to the saddlebags. They were soon riding a trail that led them off the ridge to the northeast. They were not retracing their tracks, and Abel said little, so Don simply followed along, keeping alert—particularly to the rear. They came to a stream and watered their mounts. Abel got off his mule and untied a small pouch from his saddle.

  “Well, Donald,” he said in a low voice. “Time to do something different. These House of Healing shoes are just a bit too distinctive.”

  “Really? Maybe we should have had the horses shod somewhere else.”

  “Not a bad idea. It is a bit late for that; but all is not lost. We have something here that will make us look a bit different. I doubt that we will fool a good tracker, but it should complicate matters.”

  “What do you plan?” Don stepped off to look at some leather objects that Abel was taking from the sack.

  “These are some boots that we can buckle over our mounts’ shoes. It won’t hide their tracks, but they will leave hoof prints that look unshod. This mule leaves tracks that are unusual, but his boots make tracks that appear to be a horse. We will strap them on, ride down the stream for a few hundred yards, and then go on our way. The tracks leaving the stream will look like someone else, at least to an average tracker.”

  They both knelt and strapped on the boots, fastening the last buckles while their mounts stood on a gravel bar. Then they smoothed out their tracks, mounted and rode downstream, just as Abel had said. They came out of the stream bed in a patch of willows perhaps a quarter of a mile below the trail and then rode due east through a grove of lodge-pole pine. They continued in a northeasterly direction, gradually gaining altitude as they went.

  After about two hours, they came to another well-used trail, which had hoof prints from a number of shod horses. Abel reined up and looked over his shoulde
r. “We may as well take the boots off. This is the trail of our friends. One or two more sets of shod hoof prints will make no difference, now.”

  They dismounted and removed the boots. Abel insisted that Don keep the four that he had used on Snap. “They will come in handy, and I had an extra set for just this reason,” he insisted. “Besides, you will need them again in a little while. Now we need to make up some time.”

  Abel led them at a ground-eating jog for the next several miles, then reined the horses back to a walk so their mounts could catch their breath. Snap was not as trail-hardened as he was a month before, but he kept up with the mule well enough. The trails were too narrow to ride abreast, so conversation was minimal. Several times they came out on open ridges that offered a view to their rear, and they saw a wide vista back to the snowy peaks on the other side of Glenwood. The day was cool and crisp, but not cold. Shady areas on north-facing slopes still had drifts, but the trail was easy going for the most part. A few climbs up steeper parts of the trail were slippery and treacherous.

  They caught the main party at noon. The others had stopped in the shade of a stand of spruce and fir on a small knoll that gave a good view in all directions. Samuel had chosen well. The main party was not easy to see and would have been easy to miss. It was not until the two rode within thirty yards of them that they could make them out clearly. They exchanged waves, but made no loud greetings.

  “Hello,” said Samuel, standing up and stepping toward them as they dismounted. “What news, friend Abel?”

  “Hello, yourself,” Abel returned. Don echoed the greeting.

  “A message said that the guards from the other party are healing,” continued Abel. “The Prophet is demanding our guests. His men said someone had kidnapped them away from his protection. Is that coffee?”