River of Blood

by William W. Johnstone

  Instead he pushed past the tent’s entrance flap and stepped back out into the morning sunshine, unsure of what to do next.

  That question was answered for him in the person of Harry Sykes, who came up to him and said, “There you are, Wallace.”

  “Mornin’, Harry,” Breckinridge said. “You’re up and about early. Not really surprised, though. I didn’t see you at the big bonfire last night.”

  “I didn’t come out here to get drunk and dance with whores,” Sykes said. “I take what I do seriously, and I came to be a fur trapper.”

  Breckinridge slapped the Englishman on the shoulder and said, “That’s the best way to look at it, I reckon. Since neither of us is sleepin’ it off today, why don’t we go on over to where my partners and me got our canoes? I’ll introduce you to ’em.”

  “I was hopin’ you could show me how to set a beaver trap.”

  “Sure! In fact, we could paddle upstream a ways and I’ll let you watch while I check one of our traplines. We left ’em baited and ready so that if any beaver come along while we’re here at the rendezvous, they’ll find themselves caught.”

  “That’s why they make traps, ain’t it? To catch unwary creatures?”

  “That’s the way of it, all right,” Breckinridge agreed.

  He led Sykes over to the creek where Akins and Fulbright were still sitting and recuperating from the previous night. They shook hands with Sykes, but they were too hungover to be very friendly.

  “I thought I’d show Harry one of our traplines,” Breckinridge said. “You fellas want to come along?”

  Fulbright shuddered and said, “Good Lord, no. The thought of bein’ out on the creek today, ’specially in some of the rougher stretches, that don’t sit well with me at all.”

  “Hush up,” Akins croaked. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “That’s fine,” Breckinridge said. “I’m sure that if I need a hand with anything, Harry’d be glad to pitch in.”

  “Of course,” Sykes said. “After all, you’re doin’ me a favor, takin’ me along with you like this, Wallace.”

  “Glad to do it. Come on, help me get one of these canoes in the creek.”

  A couple of minutes later the two men were paddling upstream, Breckinridge in the back of the canoe, Sykes in the front. The Englishman was a little awkward at first when it came to handling the paddle, but he soon got the hang of it.

  “Is there anybody else up there where we’re goin’?” he asked Breckinridge.

  “Shouldn’t be. Everybody else in the valley ought to be here at the rendezvous. Unless we should happen to run into some Injuns, that is. If we do, there’s a chance they might be unfriendly, so keep your rifle handy.”

  “I don’t intend to let it out of my reach,” Sykes said.

  * * *

  In the shadows under some trees about a hundred yards away, Powell watched as Wallace and Sykes climbed into one of the canoes and paddled away upstream.

  It looked like the plan he and Sykes and Otto Ducharme had hatched was working to perfection. Sykes had lured Wallace away from his friends so that Powell and his men could deal with the big bastard on his own. If the other trappers had gone along, Powell would have cut their throats and got them out of the way, but he didn’t believe in spilling blood for no good reason.

  Besides, he wasn’t getting paid for killing those other fellas, and money was the best reason of all for spilling blood.

  He didn’t wait until the canoe carrying Wallace and Sykes had gone out of sight. Instead he turned and moved deeper into the trees where Ducharme and the rest of his men waited. Powell nodded to the German and said, “Wallace took the bait, just like we hoped he would.”

  “Good,” Ducharme said. “And soon he will be gutted like a fish.”

  “I thought you were gonna blow his head off with that scattergun.”

  “And so I am,” Ducharme said. “Eventually. When he has suffered enough to pay me back for what he did to my Rory. It may require a great deal of time . . . and blood . . .”

  Chapter Forty

  It took an hour or so to reach the area where Breckinridge and his partners had placed their traps along the creek and the smaller brooks that ran into it. Finch’s Point and the rendezvous were far behind them, and as Breck and Sykes paddled along, they might as well have been the only men within five hundred miles. The majestic mountains all around them conjured up that feeling of beautiful isolation.

  “How far are we from the rendezvous?” Sykes asked.

  “Don’t know for sure. Three or four miles, I’d say.”

  “Would the sound of a shot carry that far? If we were to run into trouble and needed help, I mean.”

  “It might. Might not. And dependin’ on how hungover those fellas are, they might not hear it. But I wouldn’t worry, Harry. I don’t expect to run into anything we can’t handle. Out here a man learns how to take care of his own problems.”

  Sykes grunted and said, “That’s good to know.”

  Breckinridge lifted his paddle from the water, pointed to a smaller stream branching off to the right, and said, “We’ll head that way. Got a few traps up there.”

  Sykes nodded that he understood. Their paddles cut into the water, and the canoe angled into the tributary.

  About fifty yards farther on, they came to the first of the traps. Submerged as it was, Sykes probably would have paddled right past without ever seeing it if Breckinridge hadn’t pointed it out.

  “There’s no beaver in it, but let’s haul it out anyway,” Breckinridge suggested. “I’ll spring it and reset it so you can see how it’s done.”

  “I appreciate this, Wallace,” the Englishman said. “Not every man would take the time and trouble to teach the competition like this, you know.”

  “Oh, I don’t think of you as competition, Harry. I reckon there’s plenty of beaver out here for all of us. At least there will be for a while yet. Some of the old-timers say the end of the fur trade is comin’, but when you look around it’s sort of hard to believe.”

  “Everything comes to an end sooner or later.”

  “Well, that’s the truth,” Breckinridge agreed. “There’s no denyin’ it.”

  Breckinridge showed Sykes how to set the trap, then they moved on. As they paddled upstream, the banks rose higher on both sides of them. The trees grew thicker.

  Suddenly, Breckinridge lifted his paddle from the water and said, “Hold on a minute.” Sykes stopped paddling, too, and the canoe drifted to a halt.

  Breckinridge stared at the mouth of a ravine that cut into the left-hand bank, which was about thirty feet tall at this point. The ravine was like a gash in the earth, penetrating about a hundred yards before it tapered down to nothing.

  Sykes looked back over his shoulder and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Didn’t really realize where we were until just now, since we come at it from a different direction,” Breckinridge muttered. “And somethin’ ain’t right. I need to go take a look up yonder in that ravine, Harry.”

  Sykes shrugged and said, “All right. Whatever you need to do is fine with me.”

  “Let’s pull this canoe ashore . . .”

  Once they were out of the lightweight craft, Breckinridge picked up his rifle and frowned worriedly up at the ravine, which began only a few paces away. Although the day was bright with sunshine, gloom hung over the area at the bottom of the slash in the earth.

  “You want me to come with you?” Sykes asked.

  “No, stay here,” Breckinridge told him. “And keep an eye out.”

  “Are you expectin’ trouble?”

  “Maybe,” Breckinridge said grimly.

  With his hands clasped tightly on the long-barreled flintlock, he started up the ravine, weaving through the rocks that littered the bottom of it.

  The last time he’d been here, Morgan, Akins, and Fulbright had been with him, and they’d been toting the bodies of those Blackfoot warriors they had been forced to kill. They
had dropped the corpses from up above and then pushed rocks down to conceal them.

  The memory of that day put a bad taste in Breckinridge’s mouth. He was perfectly willing to kill to defend himself or someone he cared about, but ending another human being’s life wasn’t something he took lightly, even when it was necessary. Thinking about it made a solemn feeling come over him.

  A few minutes later he stopped short as the smell of death drifted to his nose and made his stomach twist.

  Something had been messing with those Blackfoot corpses, and he could only hope it had been scavengers.

  Breckinridge forced himself to go on. He could see the heap of rocks now that marked the resting place of those dead warriors. He wasn’t sure, but it looked like some of those rocks had been tumbled aside . . .

  Again he stopped. He saw an arm sticking out, with decay already setting in on the flesh that was visible. He knew the patches of white he saw were bone showing through rotted flesh. His stomach lurched, and the breakfast he had eaten a couple of hours earlier threatened to come up.

  He forced himself to control that and turned his attention to the ground at his feet. He knelt and brushed away leaves and pine needles. The light wasn’t good here at the bottom of the ravine, but his eyes were keen. He spotted the tracks left by previous visitors, but they weren’t animal prints as he had hoped.

  They were human.

  Moccasin tracks.

  Could have been left by other trappers, he supposed, since some of the white men in these mountains preferred Indian footgear.

  But they could have just as easily been left by Indians, and if they were then the question became, were they friendly, like the Shoshone, or . . .

  Or had another Blackfoot war party discovered what had happened to their lost brothers?

  Strain carved bleak trenches into Breckinridge’s cheeks as he rose to his feet. He had no way of knowing for sure who had found the bodies, but as long as there was a chance it was the Blackfeet, he needed to get back to the rendezvous and warn folks. It seemed unlikely that Indians would attack such a large gathering of seasoned, well-armed frontiersmen, but since there were women there, Breck couldn’t afford to take the chance.

  Since Dulcy was there . . .

  He swung around to start back along the ravine toward the stream, and once again surprise stopped him in his tracks. He had told Harry Sykes to stay with the canoe, but he saw now that Sykes had followed him into the ravine. Breckinridge had been so engrossed by what he’d found that he hadn’t heard the Englishman’s approach.

  Sykes wasn’t alone, either. A frown of confusion creased Breckinridge’s forehead as he recognized the white-haired gent named Powell, who stood beside Sykes. Close behind them were half a dozen other men, all bristling with rifles and pistols.

  “What the hell?” Breckinridge exclaimed.

  “Don’t get jumpy, Wallace,” Powell said. His voice was cold with menace, not friendly like before. “You’re outnumbered and outgunned.”

  “What is this?” Breckinridge demanded. “If you’re plannin’ to rob me, you’re gonna be disappointed. I don’t have a damned thing anybody would want.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” Powell said. “You’ve got your life.”

  Breckinridge didn’t know what the man meant by that, but clearly it couldn’t be anything good. And yet there was more going on here than any of the others knew about.

  “Listen to me,” he said, and he tried to make his voice as urgent as he could. “We’ve got to get back to the rendezvous right away. We have to warn the folks there—”

  “You’re not going back to the rendezvous,” Powell interrupted. “And neither are we. We’ve got what we came to the mountains for. Now, drop that rifle and come with us.”

  “Damn it, you don’t understand!” Breckinridge burst out. “There’s liable to be trouble!”

  Sykes chuckled and said, “There’s gonna be for you, no doubt about that.”

  Breckinridge saw that he had misjudged the Englishman. Sykes wasn’t a friend, and he probably had no interest in becoming a trapper. From the looks of it, Sykes and Powell were working together, and they didn’t have his best interests at heart. Breck suddenly wondered if they might have been responsible for the earlier attacks on him and his partners . . .

  That didn’t really make sense, since Powell had helped them during one of those fights, but Powell sure wasn’t on his side now. In fact, the white-haired man raised the cocked pistol he held and pointed it at Breckinridge, saying, “Drop the rifle, Wallace. I won’t tell you again. I’m not supposed to kill you, but I can make you wish you were dead.”

  Maybe it would be best to play along with them for the moment, Breckinridge thought. That would give him a chance to tell them about the possible threat from the Blackfeet. No matter what the men were after, the chance of a war party in the vicinity could mean danger for them, too. If Breck could convince them of that, he might get them to postpone whatever it was they had in mind for him.

  “All right,” he said. “Sykes, here’s my rifle.”

  He tossed the weapon to the Englishman, and for a second he considered lunging after it and tackling Sykes.

  He didn’t want a bunch of shooting, though. If there really were Blackfoot warriors around, that could draw them back to the ravine. The most important thing was to get out of here and warn the folks at the rendezvous.

  Sykes caught the rifle. Powell motioned with his pistol for Breckinridge to walk out of the ravine. As he did so, his captors parted and then formed a ring around him, making sure he couldn’t run.

  As they came back out into the open, Breckinridge saw the short, thick figure of the Colonel standing there with a double-barreled shotgun in his hands. Maybe he could talk some sense into him, Breck thought. He said, “Colonel, you need to tell your men—”

  “I am not a colonel,” the man interrupted in his guttural voice. “I am a grieving father. My name is Otto Ducharme.”

  As soon as he heard that, Breckinridge knew there was no chance of persuading him to go back and warn the others. If Ducharme would come all this way, go to all this trouble, then there was no room in his brain for anything except hate.

  Which meant Breckinridge had to find some other way to escape—

  Before that thought was even fully formed, what felt like a mountain crashed down on the back of his head and buried him under a ton of darkness.

  Chapter Forty-one

  When Breckinridge came around, he had no idea how long he’d been out cold. Pain throbbed unmercifully inside his skull, and as he forced his eyes open, the world blurred and shifted around like it would have if he’d been underwater.

  He groaned, then realized he probably shouldn’t have. That would just let his captors know that he was awake again.

  Someone stepped in front of him as his vision began to clear. After a few seconds he recognized the squat figure of Otto Ducharme.

  “So, you are awake, Herr Wallace,” said the man Breckinridge had first known as the Colonel.

  The German’s right hand, with fingers as fat as sausages, came up and cracked across Breckinridge’s face. The impact jerked Breck’s head to the side and made his eyes go blurry again for a second.

  “You know me,” Ducharme said. “You know the great crime you committed against my family.”

  Instinct tried to send Breck surging forward in retaliation for the craven blow, but he couldn’t budge. He felt the rough bark of a tree trunk against his back and looked down to see ropes wound around his torso and arms, binding him to the tree. He was as helpless as he’d ever been.

  But he wasn’t gagged, and his mouth still worked just fine.

  “I know your son did his dead-level best to kill me, Mr. Ducharme,” he said. “That’s the only reason I shot Rory. I took no pleasure or pride in what happened.”

  “But my son is still rotting in the ground, regardless.”

  “Yes, sir, I reckon that’s true. But it was his own doin’.
”

  Breckinridge looked past Ducharme at the other men. There were at least a dozen of them, counting Powell and Sykes. The sight of those two was especially galling to Breck, since he had considered them friends.

  Obviously, what he’d told Dulcy about being a pretty good judge of character wasn’t anywhere near right.

  “So you two have been workin’ for Ducharme all along,” he said as he glared at them.

  Sykes was leaning against a tree stump. He straightened from the casual pose and said, “I’m workin’ with the fella now, but not for him.” He looked at Ducharme. “You mind if I talk to Wallace for a minute before you go to work on him?”

  Go to work on him. That sounded pretty ominous, thought Breckinridge. He expected nothing less from Otto Ducharme, though.

  The German nodded curtly and told Sykes, “Go ahead and speak with him. We have plenty of time.”

  Maybe less time than they thought, Breckinridge reminded himself, since it was still possible there were hostile Blackfeet skulking around here.

  As Ducharme withdrew slightly, Sykes sauntered over and planted himself in front of Breckinridge. The Englishman sneered and said, “You don’t have the slightest idea why I want to see you dead, do you, Wallace?”

  “Best I recall I never laid eyes on you until a couple of days ago,” Breckinridge said.

  “And you’re right about that. This is strictly a business deal for me. I was paid to kill you.” Sykes shrugged. “Somebody else may do the actual deed, but I helped, and to my way of thinkin’ that entitles me to collect the rest of my fee.”

  Breckinridge was about to ask who could hate him enough to pay someone to kill him, but before the words were out of his mouth, the obvious answer came to him.

  “Aylesworth,” he said. “That no-good son of a bitch, Richard Aylesworth.”

  Sykes laughed.

  “You’re smarter than you look. Not by much, maybe, but a little. Why wouldn’t Aylesworth want you dead? You killed his child and almost killed his wife.”

  Breckinridge seized on one thing Sykes said.

  “Almost,” he repeated. “Maureen didn’t die?”