the Ferguson Rifle (1973)

by L'amour, Louis - Talon-Chantry

  He walked his horse into the light, and looked about, his eyes missing nothing. At last they fell upon Lucinda.

  "Well!" He bowed, removing his hat with a sweeping gesture, the perfect cavalier. "My niece! It has taken me a long time, my dear, but now we are together again, and thank God for that!" "I... I do not know you," she said, but her voice was halting and frightened.

  "Not know me? I am your father's brother, Colonel Rafen Falvey, at your service.

  I've come to negotiate with these... kidnappers for your release." Degory Kemble said quietly, "You're misinformed, sir. Miss Falvey is with us of her own choice. We're honored to be her escort to the Ohio towns." "Well, now, that puts a different look on the situation. I was told my niece had been kidnapped, and rushed after you to obtain her release." He dismounted, somewhat stiffly, I noticed, like a man who might have been wounded slightly.

  He walked up to the fire, and never have I seen a man so cool, so completely in command of himself.

  Obviously he had chosen to risk everything on a brazen demand for the girl, and I admired the fellow's nerve. Yet when I looked at Lucinda, I was worried.

  This man who claimed to be her uncle was no more than thirty-five, only a few years older than I, and he was handsome, debonair, and obviously educated. He carried himself with style, and he seemed in no way disturbed that he was among men with whom he had lately exchanged shots.

  "Then, of course, there's no problem," he said cheerfully, extending his open hands to the fire.

  "Lucinda, if you'll get what you wish to take with you, we can be riding back to our camp. It's not far and we have a number of men, a much safer escort than this small group, if you don't mind." For the first time, I spoke. "I'm afraid it's less simple than you seem to believe," I said quietly. "Miss Falvey is with us because she wishes to be. We feel ourselves perfectly adequate to escort her where she's going." He looked at me. Some shadow of the overhang partly concealed my face so he was forced to peer.

  Yet my comment in no way disturbed him. "It's quite simple. It's better for a young lady of Miss Falvey's years to be with her family.

  I have nothing against you gentlemen, but of course, her own flesh and blood--was "I don't know you," Lucinda said quietly.

  "I've heard my father speak of a half-brother of his who was a complete scoundrel." Talley chuckled, and Rafen Falvey's face tightened. Yet a moment later, he smiled. "He was joking, of course. My brother and I often made such jokes. He always laughingly said I was the black sheep of the family, and he was the prodigal son who would sometime return.

  "Come, Lucinda. Let's go. We've talked long enough." She hesitated, and then she said, "I--was Her reply was interrupted by Jorge Ulibarri. The boy had suddenly come into the light. Now he pointed his finger. "He murdered your father! He shot Mr. Conway!" Rafen Falvey's face stiffened with anger.

  "You, is it? Next time you'll die." Suddenly there was a pistol in his hand.

  "Lucinda, you'll come with me... now! And the first one who moves will die." He produced a second pistol. "And you, Lucinda, will be the next to die." None of us had weapons in our hands. Nor were we within reach of any. My Ferguson was under the edge of the blanket, but

  would have to take it out, reverse the muzzle, and then fire... much too late.

  Isaac Heath spoke from the hidden shelter directly behind Falvey. "At thirty feet, with a rifle, Colonel Falvey, I'll not miss. My bullet will take away the base of your spine, and rip out the front of your belly.

  I don't think you want that to happen." He was no gambler, I saw that at once.

  He was willing, even anxious to kill, but he did not want to die, nor to be left to die.

  With a rifle at his back, he had no chance and he knew it. I got to my feet and casually reached over to pick up one of my own pistols.

  "I suggest, sir, that you ride out of camp.

  I further suggest that you keep riding. The next time I shoot I'll have a better target." "It was you, then? In the woods back there?

  You're more of a woodsman than you look." He was staring at me, a strange light in his eyes. "Ah? You very much resemble Ronan Chantry," he said. "In fact," he peered into my face, "you are Ronan Chantry." "You have the advantage of me, sir." "You fought a duel with a friend of mine. I was to have been his second but I was delayed and arrived too late." "A friend of yours was he? You should choose your friends with more care." He smiled at me pleasantly enough. "I only regret his marksmanship. Had I been in his place, I would not have missed." His arrogance angered me. "You had your chance this night, and you did no better." If I have ever seen death in a man's glance, it was in his then. "On another occasion I'll do better. I'll kill you, my friend, and I'll enjoy it." He turned his attention abruptly from me to Lucinda. "You'd do better to come with me," he said. "I at least might leave you enough for some gowns. That's more than you'll have from this rabble." "They're gentlemen, sir. Can you say as much?" He shrugged. "I care nothing for gentlemen or otherwise. I'll have you in a day or two, and whatever goes with you. When I'm through with you, the Indians can have what's left." He turned sharply, looking from one to the other of us. "As for you, all that live will be staked to anthills, depend upon it." Abruptly he mounted his horse, tucking one pistol behind his belt to do so, and without a backward glance, he rode off down the trail.

  No one of us moved or spoke for several minutes, and then it was Solomon Talley.

  "We'd best not low rate the man. He's a scoundrel, no doubt of it, but he's also a damned brave man. It took nerve to ride in here and speak as he did." I looked over at Lucinda.

  "He's your father's brother?" "Half-brother, but an enemy to my father from childhood. I remember some word of him now, but I wasn't often with my father so I knew little of this man." The rain had stopped and suddenly we had had our fill of the place. With only a few words to be assured that all agreed, we saddled up and started off down the trail, camped in an isolated clump of trees at nearly daybreak, slept three hours, and took to the road once more.

  We had deliberately mentioned Ohio, hopeful that our pursuers would try a wrong direction, yet not very hopeful, at that. The Mandan villages were our destination, and it was a long ride and a hard one. First we must find the treasure, if treasure there was, and for that moment Rafen Falvey would be waiting.

  Obviously he knew something, but not enough. He needed us to locate it for him, and we had no choice but to find it, and then take our chances on getting away.

  I was worried, as I believe we all were.

  Rafen Falvey was no mean antagonist.

  To take him lightly would invite disaster.

  Solomon Talley and I led off. "We must know more about him. How many men he has, how they're mounted and armed." "That there's sensible. Trouble is we ain't got the time. Seems to me we got to keep movin', and when we get that gold we got to really light out." The man to whom we had talked was not only intelligent, but shrewd, a knowing, conniving man and one filled with hatred. We must be on guard every second.

  Talley and I discussed the question, and all the while, our eyes and ears were alert for trouble. We believed we had a good lead on them, but to take such a thing for granted was to borrow trouble.

  Twice we changed direction. Several times we descended into stream beds and backtrailed, emerging where a rock surface left little in the way of tracks, and then plunged into the deep woods. Deliberately we swung fallen trees across our path, chose unlikely ways, and all the while, we knew we might not be fooling them at all.

  Bob Sandy rode right along. That his wound bothered him we knew, but he let us see none of it. "Only one thing to do," he said.

  "We got to lay in wait. We need to pick a good place an' cut them down as they come into range." The thought had occurred to me, and I had no qualms about ambush. When facing superior numbers, any tactic is useful, and we knew they outnumbered us, and we also knew their leadership was uncommonly shrewd. However, if we waited in ambush, we would lose whatever distance we had gaine
d, and might ourselves be surrounded and wiped out.

  We decided to move on.

  Twice during the day I got out the map I had found in Conway's pocket, but could find nothing in the terrain that corresponded with what the map indicated. Unfortunately, we were moving fast, and I feared the map required a better overall view of the country. I began to get the impression it had been drawn from some vantage point higher than we now were.

  There was, of course, the possibility we would find nothing. Two hundred years is a long time, and the Indian or those who told him might have told others. Treasure is ever elusive, a will-o'-the-wisp that has a way of not being where it is supposed to be.

  Deliberately I chose a way that took us higher and higher upon the mountain, and when we camped that night, it was in a thick cluster of spruce trees with branches to the ground. To our right and rear there were aspens, a thick stand virtually impossible to penetrate without sound. Before us and beyond the stand of spruce, there was the mountainside falling steeply away and a green and lovely swell of meadow with occasional outcroppings.

  "I'd no business getting you into th," I told them over the fire. "You'd have been trapping beaver by now had I not joined you." "And I," Lucinda said.

  "It's nothing." Degory Kemble waved a hand, dismissing our comments. "We're learning more of the country, and when we do begin trapping, we'll be the better for it." Later, after the sun had gone down and when the land was light, I moved to the edge of the spruce and studied the country and the map.

  No man can know a country seen only in daylight. The morning and evening hours are best, for then the shadows have gathered in the depressions, the hollows, and canyons, and the terrain is revealed in a completely different manner. Nor is the light at dawn the same as at sunset, although there are similarities.

  Lucinda came out beside me, and we sat there, screened and shadowed by spruce, studying the terrain before us. After a moment, she indicated a shoulder of rock some ten miles off across country to the east and south. "That's a place I was to look for.

  We're very close." "What is it we're to look for? How will we know?" She waited several minutes to reply, and I could understand. Without doubt, it had been drilled into her to tell no one. That she had been told at all was simply the only kind of insurance her father could offer... in the event something happened to him, and to Conway.

  Solomon Talley had come up beside her, but she hesitated no longer. "There's a great slope burned bare above a blue black cliff about twenty feet high. Above the burned area there's a slope of reddish yellow broken rock." "Is that all?" I stared at her. I simply could not believe it, nor could Solomon. "Was there nothing more?" "Across the creek bed there was a rocky face with a jagged white streak... like lightning... upon the face of the rock." Neither of us said a thing. We just stared off across the darkening hills, not knowing whether to laugh or simply throw up our hands. They were just such landmarks as a tenderfoot might choose... and utterly useless.

  She looked from Solomon to me. "What's wrong?" He poked at the ground with a stick, and I said, "Lucinda, in these mountains, and in any lot of mountains, you'll find a thousand such places. And as for that bare slope... there's hardly a chance that it's still bare." "You mean... you mean it isn't any good?

  We can't find it?" "I didn't say that. We do know it's near here. But you see, that Spanish officer expected to return. He knew the place. The landmarks he chose were no doubt taken quickly, with little time.

  He noticed the most obvious things.

  "Such slopes are quite common high in the mountains, and as for the white streak, it was undoubtedly quartz and that's a familiar sight, too. It's evident this description originated from the Spanish officer. Any Indian with him would have observed differently." She looked like she had been struck. Her face was pale. "Then we can't find it?" "One chance in a thousand," Talley said, "but there must have been something else? Some other thing? A hint of some kind?" "No." We walked back to the fire and sat down.

  Talley explained briefly. We all felt sorry, not for ourselves, because we had lost nothing, but for her, who had lost everything.

  We had come west after fur, at least most of us had. Why I had come I did not yet know.

  To run away from something? From everything? To change myself? Or to return to a lost boyhood?

  "The joke's on him," Shanagan said, "that white-faced spalpeen from Mexico. After all, we did come after fur, and we can still get fur.

  He's got nothin' facin' him but a long ride back." "But he doesn't know that," Ebitt replied gently. "He doesn't know, and he'd never believe it. He'd think we were lying. And you remember what he said... he'd kill us all ... trying to make us tell what we don't know." We looked at each other across the fire. The hope of treasure was gone; the long march to the Mandan villages remained. Nothing was solved.

  And somewhere on our back trail, Rafen Falvey was riding.

  CHAPTER 14

  We sat about our fire feeling very glum indeed, not for ourselves, for we had little to lose, but for Lucinda, for whom we'd all come to feel a great affection.

  In a difficult and desperate situation, she had not complained. She had ridden with the best of us, she had calmly made do with what was available, she had said nothing about the food, nor had she asked any special privileges.

  Suddenly angry, I looked over at Degory Kemble. "Damn it, Deg, we've got to do something! The stuff was hidden, and with information as poor as that, I doubt if anything has been found." "How far from that promontory back there?" Talley asked.

  "A day's ride," she said.

  "And that might be anything from twelve to thirty miles, depending on their horses, their anxiety, and what they figured to do." "It would be nearer the lesser figure," Cusbe Ebitt replied. "Think now... they had the treasure with them. Indians were already with them or closing in. We cannot be sure of just what the situation was after so long a time, yet they must have been pushed to let go of the treasure at all.

  "Think of it now. They wanted to get away to the French colonies where they could return to Europe and live in style in Paris or London or Rome. They didn't want to bury that treasure.

  "So they would have moved slowly, I think. They would have been looking for a place, something that offered a camp... a good reason for stopping... and something that offered some kind of a marker. Something more than we've been told." "But I've told you all I know!" Lucinda protested.

  Solomon Talley nodded his head. "I think you have. That doesn't mean there was nothing more. It's likely there was something they reserved for themselves, some knowledge they held back." "My guess is that we're within five miles of it right now," Isaac said.

  Firelight flickered against the dark spruces and the white trunks of the aspen. They were some of the largest aspen I had seen, for the aspen grows in thick stands, grows tall and straight. It is a tree that likes the sun, needs the sun, and it is one of the first to gro

  across burns where fire has swept. It grows up, grows tall, and then under its cover the spruce begins to grow, sheltered and protected by the aspen. Yet as the spruce grow taller, the aspen tend to die out, until after many years the aspen are gone and a thick stand of spruce remains.

  One of the most beautiful trees anywhere, it is not a good timber tree, for it rots from the heart out. Now with winter coming on, the aspen had already turned to gold. The earth where we were to sleep was inches deep with the golden leaves... treasure enough for me.

  Rising from the fire, I gathered leaves and heaped them into a place for Lucinda to lie, then bunched leaves for myself. I was restless and wakeful. Deliberately we had allowed our fire to burn down to coals. We fed it some knots and chunks lying about, but such as would smoulder and burn but would make no bright flame.

  Bob Sandy's leg was bothering him. We had treated it as best we could, and though it was but a flesh wound, it was painful and his leg was stiff.

  He was first to sleep, then Ebitt.

  Heath was standing the fi
rst watch, and was already on the slope below us. Kemble and Talley both turned in, and then Jorge Ulibarri, after finding there was nothing he could do for Lucinda, went to sleep well back in the stand of aspen. Davy Shanagan lay under a spruce, out of sight from but within sight of the fire.

  "Why do they call you Scholar?" she asked suddenly.

  I shrugged. "It began as a joke, but I was a teacher briefly. A restless one, I'll admit. Research I liked, teaching I liked also, but I've done a bit of writing, and studied law somewhat. To be frank, I've not fallen into a settled pattern. You see, as a boy I lived much in the woods. The wilderness left its mark on me, and I would find myself longing for the dark paths among the trees again." "And now what?" she asked.

  "Who knows? I doubt if I'll ever go back to what I was. Of course, there's much to be learned. I'm tempted to travel, to explore more of the ancient civilizations in Asia. Or here, for that matter. Too little is known about what happened here before the white man came." "You're not married?" "My wife is dead. It was then I cast off my ties to all I'd been." I got up.

  "You'd better rest. Tomorrow won't be easy." She went to her bed, but I did not go to mine.

  There was no sleep in me, and I knew not why.

  Something was disturbing me, and in my restlessness I went to where Heath stood guard.

  "You, is it? There's nothing... yet. But I don't like the feel of the night." "Nor I." Our backs were to the stand of aspen. The leaves whispered gently around us. The moon was rising, throwing all about into stark relief. The white trunks of the trees were like Grecian pillars.

  I put my hand on one.

  "They're self-pruning," I said. "Their early branches fall away when they grow tall." "These are thick," Heath said. "Most aspen are more slender." "These are a hundred years old or older," I said, "and they rarely grow to two hundred.

  very rarely." He turned his face toward me. "Chantry, I was thinking of what you said earlier, that the aspen grows over old burns. And it was a burn she spoke of. Do you suppose it could be covered by aspen?" "I'll be damned. Heath, you're probably right. By now that slope would be covered by spruce, with few aspen left, if any.