That was the longest speech Breckinridge had ever heard Fulbright make. Morgan said, “I’m afraid Amos is right, Breck. We couldn’t afford to let any of them get away.”
Breckinridge wiped the blood from his knife and stood up. Since he had killed more of the Indians than any of the others, he supposed he didn’t have any right to complain. And looking at it from a practical standpoint, the others were indeed right.
“So what should we do with them?” he asked.
“There’s a ravine up in the hills about half a mile from here,” Akins suggested. “We could dump ’em in it and maybe throw some rocks down on top of ’em. Nobody’d be likely to find the bodies that way.”
Morgan nodded solemnly and said, “That sounds like a good idea.”
It sounded like a bloody, unpleasant job to Breckinridge, but he didn’t have anything better to offer. He said, “We’d better get at it, I reckon, if we want to finish before dark.”
Chapter Five
The grisly task took most of the rest of the day, as Breckinridge had predicted. He did the lion’s share of the work, using his great strength to haul two of the corpses at once on the long walk to the ravine.
It took him, Akins, and Fulbright to shove enough rocks over the bodies to protect them from scavengers and, more importantly, keep them from being discovered. Morgan, who was more slightly built and not as strong, kept watch while the larger men labored.
When it was done, the four men returned to their camp and made sure there were no more signs of violence there. The Blackfeet had pawed through the trappers’ belongings but didn’t appear to have stolen or destroyed anything.
“If we hadn’t come along when we did,” Fulbright said, “chances are they would’ve gone off and hidden somewhere close by, then snuck back to ambush us later.”
“Why do you think we haven’t seen any of them until now?” Morgan asked.
Breckinridge said, “From what I’ve heard, Injuns tend to move around a lot. Could be they’re just startin’ to drift back into this area. They might’ve spent the winter somewhere else, then started this way after the spring thaw.”
That explanation made sense. Akins, who had the most experience out here on the frontier, agreed that it was likely.
They put all their supplies and equipment back where it was supposed to go, then built a small fire inside the stone cooking pit they had erected when they made camp here. That kept the flames from being visible, which was even more important now that they knew there were hostiles in the area.
As they ate supper, which was coffee and salted meat from an elk they had killed a few days earlier, Morgan said, “We’d better not go out alone anymore. Might be a good idea to stay together instead of splitting up.”
“That’ll slow us down and means we’ll be out here even longer before we get a big enough load of pelts to take to one of the tradin’ posts,” Fulbright argued. “Doesn’t that just increase our odds of runnin’ into more trouble?”
“Maybe we ought to split the difference,” Breckinridge suggested. “We can run the traplines in pairs. That way one man can be keepin’ an eye out for trouble while the other checks the traps. And if we do run into any more Blackfeet, two men’ll stand a better chance against ’em than one.”
Fulbright shrugged his beefy shoulders and said, “I reckon I can go along with that. Although two men won’t have much of a chance against a Blackfoot war party, either. I got to tell you boys, we were mighty lucky to come through that fight like we did today. By all rights, those redskins should’ve killed at least one of us.”
“Luck’s got nothin’ to do with it,” Akins insisted. “We just outfought ’em, is all.”
Morgan sipped his coffee and said, “What I want to know is . . . how did you wind up getting treed by a bear, Breckinridge?”
That made the other men chuckle and put a grin on Breckinridge’s face.
“It’s my own damn fool fault,” he said. “I got carried away by how cute a little bear cub was and went to pet it.”
“Good Lord,” Akins said. “You are lucky to be alive.”
“I know that,” Breckinridge said. “Luck has always sort of followed me around.”
What he didn’t mention was that most of the time, it was bad luck . . .
* * *
The dark-haired young man who stood at the sideboard in the luxuriously furnished room, pouring brandy from a cut-glass decanter into a crystal snifter, was handsome, expensively dressed, and appeared to have everything in the world a man might want.
But there were three things he didn’t have, and their lack gnawed intolerably at him.
One was a wife who loved him. He was married, but she despised him.
Two was the child they should have had by now.
And three was revenge on the man he blamed for those other two things.
He tossed back the drink, and then as he thought about the man he hated, his fingers tightened on the snifter. He had to force himself to set it back on the sideboard carefully, or else the delicate crystal might have shattered under his grip and sliced his hand open.
A soft step on the stairs made him turn his head in that direction. His wife paused about three-fourths of the way down the staircase and asked, “Richard, are you coming up to bed?”
Most men would have answered quickly in the affirmative. Maureen was petite, slender, and very beautiful and alluring in a blue nightdress that set off her fair coloring and dark hair.
Richard Aylesworth just shook his head and said curtly, “I’ll be up later. I still have some business to attend to.”
Maureen just nodded and said, “All right.” Dull acceptance was in her voice. She didn’t even pretend to be disappointed any longer. The fire that had once been between them was gone, snuffed out by tragedy.
Of course, most people wouldn’t blame her for feeling that way. After all, he had shot her and caused her to lose their child. He could have just as easily killed her, too.
But they were the only two people who knew that, and anyway, it wasn’t his fault.
He’d been trying to shoot Breckinridge Wallace.
As Maureen turned and went back upstairs, Aylesworth looked at the brandy and considered pouring another drink. He discarded the idea. He had spent too many nights sodden with liquor, slumped in one of the overstuffed armchairs, lost in half dreams of vengeance and hate.
He wanted to be clearheaded tonight, because he was finally taking a step he should have taken long before now. He was going to do something about what had happened besides brooding about it.
He went into his study, filled his pipe, and smoked it while he waited for the visitor he expected.
After what seemed like hours—the lamp had burned low and Aylesworth felt like he was about to wear a hole in the rug with his pacing—a quiet knock sounded on the door. It opened to reveal a liveried maid standing in the hall. The slave had a worried frown on her face.
“Mist’ Aylesworth, there a man here to see you,” she said. Her disapproval of someone calling this late at night was plain to hear in her voice.
“Thank you, Ophelia,” Aylesworth said. “Show him in here.”
“In here?” she repeated, as if the visitor wasn’t fit to set foot in the room.
“That’s right,” Aylesworth snapped.
“Yes, suh. Whatever you say.”
As Ophelia disappeared, Aylesworth recalled that a third person knew the truth about what had happened that night several months earlier . . . that bloody, terrible night. Ophelia had been there and had witnessed the whole thing.
But she was no fool. When the sheriff came, she had told the same story her master did, laying the blame for the shooting at the feet of Breckinridge Wallace.
Of course, it wouldn’t have done her any good to call Aylesworth a liar. The law would have believed him without question, and he would have sold Ophelia as a troublemaker. No one would have thought twice about him doing it, either. She was smart enough to know that.
The door opened and a man followed Ophelia into the study. He was big, broad-shouldered, roughly dressed like a teamster or a tradesman. He held a battered hat in one large, knobby-knuckled hand, revealing a bald head. Bushy black eyebrows matched a thick mustache. The man’s prominent nose had been broken more than once, and there were numerous other signs that life had not treated him gently.
He jerked his head in a nod and said to Aylesworth, “Guv’nor.” His accent betrayed his English origin.
“You can go,” Aylesworth told Ophelia. “And close the door behind you.”
She went out. Aylesworth suspected that she would linger on the other side of the door, eavesdropping, but he didn’t care. She couldn’t do him any harm.
“Would you like a drink?” he went on.
“What’ve you got?” the man asked.
There was a bottle sitting on a tray on the desk, along with a pair of glasses. Aylesworth gestured toward it and said, “Port.”
The bald man grunted.
“Rather have rum or beer, but if that’s all you’ve got . . .”
He sounded a bit less English now. Aylesworth supposed he had been in the States for a while and was starting to lose his accent.
Such speculation was nothing but an attempt to distract himself, thought Aylesworth. He resolved to stick to the matter at hand, once he had poured a drink for the man.
He handed the glass to his visitor and said, “I’m afraid I don’t know your name, Mister . . . ?”
“Sykes,” the bald man said. “Harry Sykes.”
“To your health, Mr. Sykes.”
The visitor tossed back the drink, clearly not worried about savoring anything about it. He licked away a couple of drops that clung to his mustache, then said, “It ain’t my health you’re worried about, is it, Guv’nor?”
“Actually, no, it’s not,” Aylesworth admitted. “I put the word out among some of my, ah, associates that I was looking for a man who’s good at finding things. A man who’s also not too particular about the jobs he takes on.”
“You must have some associates who ain’t quite so fancy, elsewise they never would’ve known to get word to me,” Sykes commented.
That was true. Since his father’s illness, Aylesworth had taken over the running of the lucrative mercantile store, so as a successful and respected businessman, he couldn’t afford to frequent any of the seedier establishments in Knoxville.
In his younger years, though, he had gambled, drank, and wenched his way through many of them, and he still knew people in those places. He had sent notes to several of the proprietors, and one had responded that he knew just the man and would send him to Aylesworth’s home, late at night so the visit would be a discreet one, of course.
Aylesworth didn’t care for Sykes’s sneering tone, but he told himself to ignore it. Some things were more important than his pride. His need for revenge was one of them.
“I want you to find someone,” he said. “He’s not here in Knoxville. The last I heard, he was headed out west. There’s really no way of knowing where he might be by now.”
Sykes grunted and said, “You don’t ask for much, do you? ‘Out west’ takes in some mighty big ground.”
“Hire as many men as you need to help you,” Aylesworth said flatly. “Take as long as you need in order to do the job. Money is no object.”
“What is the object?” Sykes asked with a sly smile.
“I want you to find a man named Breckinridge Wallace, and when you do, I want him to die.” Aylesworth paused, then added, “As painfully as possible.”
Chapter Six
The fight with the Blackfeet had made Breckinridge and his friends wary enough that they took turns standing guard that night, even though the likelihood of any more Indians showing up so soon was small.
Indeed, the night passed quietly, and the next morning, after a quick breakfast, the four men paired off to check the traplines. Breckinridge and Morgan Baxter went one way, Akins and Fulbright the other.
Before they parted, Breckinridge told Akins and Fulbright, “If you run into trouble, fire a shot. Morgan and me will do the same. We got to look out for each other, ’cause we’re all we got.”
That was true, as far as Breckinridge knew. He wasn’t aware of any other white men for miles around. They certainly hadn’t seen any other trappers since they’d arrived in this valley.
Several weeks earlier, though, while they were still scouting around for a good place, they had run into another group that had welcomed them with a mixture of hospitality and wariness.
That reaction was understandable in these days when making any money in the fur trade was more of a challenge than it had ever been. Nobody wanted strangers bulling their way into an area where beaver might be found.
Breckinridge and his companions had made it clear that they intended to move on, though, and so for a pleasant night they had shared a campfire with the other trappers, who were six in number. They were all experienced frontiersmen, and they had brought up something that Akins had already mentioned on the way out here.
“Yeah, there’s gonna be a rendezvous ’fore too much longer,” one of the trappers had said. “Fellas’ll come from all over these here mountains to have theirselves a good ol’-fashioned hooraw for a few days. Be lots of drinkin’ and dancin’, and some of the fur company men will be there to buy pelts. Best thing about the whole season, if you ask me.”
“I’ve been to a few of those fandangos,” Akins had said. “You won’t ever see the like back East.”
That had led to snorts of agreement from the other men.
“Where will they hold this rendezvous?” Breckinridge had asked.
“Don’t rightly know just yet. But don’t worry. When the time comes, word’ll get around. Just keep an ear to the ground, boys.”
Since then, they hadn’t heard anything else about the gathering, but Breckinridge was looking forward to it and hoped he and his friends wouldn’t miss it. He loved the solitude of the wilderness and always had, ever since he was a boy, but he enjoyed being around people, too.
And the talk of whiskey had given him a thirst that night. He and his friends didn’t have even a single jug among them. That was probably a good thing—a man didn’t need to get his mind all muddled up by liquor when there were dangers all around, every hour of the day and night—but it would be nice to cut loose for a spell and lubricate his tonsils.
He wasn’t thinking about that as he and Morgan Baxter made their way along the creeks, checking their traps. They tramped several miles up and down the streams that day and found two beaver. When they came across the second, Breckinridge tied the carcass to the first one and carried both. The varmints were heavy, especially since they were wet and dead, but he was strong enough that the load didn’t bother him. He could have carried more if he needed to.
The valley had been quiet all day, with no shots from Akins and Fulbright. Breckinridge hoped that the party of Blackfoot warriors finding their camp had been just a fluke and that no more of the savages would come along.
Somewhere, though, there was a village where those men belonged, and when they never returned, the rest of their band would grow curious and start to worry. It was likely they would send out a search party.
Breckinridge hoped he and his friends would have enough pelts and be gone before that happened.
One thing he had learned was that if he hung around anywhere long enough, something bad was bound to crop up.
* * *
The wagon rolled out of the livery barn in St. Louis not long after dawn. It was a sturdy vehicle, pulled by a team of six equally sturdy mules, and the back was filled with crates and sacks of supplies that were covered with canvas tied down at the corners.
Two men sat on the driver’s seat. The one handling the reins was roughly dressed and stick-thin, with a black hat shading his gaunt face.
The man beside him was heavy enough to have made two of the driver, but he didn’t give the
impression of being fat. Instead he looked powerful, filled with the sort of driving energy that made a man rich. The well-cut suit he wore, along with the wide straw hat, added to that appearance.
Balanced across his knees was the finest shotgun money could buy, its polished wood and brass gleaming in the early morning sunlight. Fingers like sausages closed around the stock.
Under the brim of the straw hat was a wide, moon face, flushed with good living and habitual anger. Coarse, graying, rust-colored hair stuck out from under the hat. The man’s pale gray eyes were set deep in pits of gristle. They watched as more than a dozen men on horseback moved up to the wagon and reined in.
One of them, who had white hair and a rugged, deeply tanned face, said, “We’re ready to go whenever you are, Mr. Ducharme.”
Otto Ducharme nodded. He asked in a slightly guttural voice, “You are all well-armed?”
“Yes, sir. You made it pretty clear that we need to be ready for trouble. You’ve got plenty of powder and shot in the back of that wagon, I expect.”
“Of course,” Ducharme snapped. “And everything else we will need for our journey.”
“You know,” the white-haired man ventured in a cautious tone, “it’s still not too late for you to leave this to us. There’s really no need for you to go traipsin’ all the way out there to the mountains or wherever it is we wind up.”
“No need?” Ducharme repeated. His beefy face slowly turned an even deeper shade of red. “There is every need. It was my son that man murdered. My boy who lies cold and dead in the ground because of that . . . that . . .”
In his rage, his words dissolved into a sputtering series of curses in his native German.
He had come to this country to make a life for himself and his wife. His father had been a Hessian, a mercenary soldier who had fought for the British during the war in which the Americans had won their freedom.
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