by John Glasby
Neil lifted his head a little, saw Jackson standing a few yards away, with the Winchester cradled in his arms.
‘Drop it, Clem,’ he said sharply. ‘He means what he says.’
Slowly, reluctantly, the other let go of the rifle so that it fell clattering to the dirt at his feet. His eyes glared at the man standing behind Neil.
‘That’s being sensible.’ There was a harsh laugh from the other. ‘All right, Roberts, turn round now but very slowly and easy. I’m going to shoot you down like I swore I would, but I want you to be facing me when I pull this trigger.’
Neil ran his tongue over his dry lips as he turned very slowly to face the other. Sherman stood a few yards away in front of one of the wagons, a Colt in his left hand, the barrel trained on his heart, the other’s hand rock steady in spite of the greyness of his features and the limp right arm hanging by his side.
‘And what do you figure is going to happen to you even if you do shoot me, Sherman?’ he asked, keeping his voice steady and even. ‘You’ll be dead the next minute, I suppose you know that. Your men have left you, run out on you. By now they’ll be miles away and they won’t be coming back to help you.’
Sherman thinned his lips, drew them back over his teeth. ‘They’ve served their purpose now,’ he said harshly. He swayed a little, then snapped up the barrel of the Colt sharply as Neil made a slight movement forward. ‘I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time. I want you to crawl and cringe this time as I had to do all those years ago.’
There was no answer from Neil. He waited, turned his gaze for a moment over the faces of the men and women standing around the wagons. There were no words from any of them. Not that he had expected any. No movement. Sherman drew a rasping breath in through his nostrils and stood erect with an effort. There was a growing red stain on the front of his shirt, a tell-tale bulge where the thick bandage had been wound tightly around his shoulder in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood.
‘I’m going to kill you, Roberts.’ It was simply said, and there was the promise of death in the other’s eyes as he took a single step forward, his finger bar-straight on the trigger of the gun in his hand, knuckles growing white with the pressure he was exerting. Neil braced himself for the impact of the bullet. His eyes locked with those of the man who intended to kill him, waiting, watching, probing for the sign which would tell him that death was on its way. Silence crowded down on the wagon train.
Then there came the sharp, searing blast of a gun. Involuntarily, Neil winced, stiffened, then stared as Sherman fell forward, the gun slipped from his fingers. Slowly, as though every muscle in his body was reluctant to fight against the need to hold him upright, he crashed to the wet ground.
Neil touched his lips with a dry tongue, went forward and stared down at the body of the man who lay in front of him, stretched out at his feet. Then he lifted his head and stared at the wagon directly behind where Sherman had been standing, saw the canvas part and someone step forward with a smoking rifle in her hands.
His eyes held in bewilderment on her as she stood framed in the opening. Then he recognised her, knew why she had killed Jesse Sherman, why she had taken that rifle which had belonged to her husband and shoot him in the back.
Very slowly, like a woman in a dream, Claire Vance lowered the hand which held the rifle and stood looking about her in stunned surprise. Out of the corner of his eye Neil saw two of the women move towards her, take the gun from her and lead her gently back inside the wagon.
Jackson came forward, tall and massive, looked down at the dead man with a hard expression on his pitiless features. Then he gave a slow, ponderous nod of his head. ‘A strange kind of justice, I suppose,’ he said slowly, choosing his words with care. ‘But I for one can understand why she killed him.’
Neil gave an answering nod. ‘She saved my life,’ he said softly.
‘Somehow, I doubt if that was the reason she did it. She knew he was the man who was directly responsible for setting that herd on us when her husband was trampled to death by those stampeding steers. Perhaps she’ll find some rest now, poor soul.’
The next morning they broke camp, moved out along the trail to the west. The storm had passed and the sunrise was one in which all of the colours seemed to have been washed clean by the rain, flaming reds and oranges which lit up the whole of the eastern horizon. In front of them, almost seventy miles away, the tall peaks of the mountains lifted clear to the blue heaven, their peaks glistening in the brilliant sunlight which touched them with a touch of red, while still leaving the bases in shadow.
Once they reached those mountains, Neil reflected, they would have to move up through one of the two passes open to them. He felt the tiny wave of apprehension flowing in him again. It would take them the best part of thirty-five days to cover that distance because, from his knowledge of the territory, the going became rougher the closer they got to that high range and their progress would be slowed to a crawl during the last ten days or so. By that time the winter would be on them and the first snows would be falling up there among the passes. If they were caught in one of the early winter blizzards, they might find themselves trapped, and even if they did manage to get safely over to the other side of those mountains, which formed a natural barrier along the trail, they would have the marauding border gangs to contend with, professional killers who owed allegiance to no one and preyed on any wagon trains which managed to get through as far as that.
They had only one slim chance of beating the winter snows among those high passes. He would have to drive the train hard, harder than they had been driven so far, and once again, as far as the others were concerned, the danger was one they would not readily appreciate. A man could see danger when it consisted of bullets drumming at him from the darkness around a ring of wagons, or when it lay in the swirling foam of a swollen river, built high by the heavy rains to the north. But talk of snow which might be there more than seventy miles away and it did not seem to present any real danger.
*
Fifteen days on the trail. Long days with short nights. Neil had set the hard pace, anxious to cross the plain as quickly as possible, driving man and beast to the utmost limit. They camped wherever they happened to be at midnight, woke with the first grey light of an early dawn, ate quickly, hitched up the teams and moved on again, keeping to the trail that led due west.
Seated by the blazing fire, on the night of the fifteenth day after their brush with Jesse Sherman, Clem Jackson said quietly: ‘Some of the men have been grumbling about the way you’re driving ’em, Neil. They figure that there ain’t so much hurry that we have to drive more’n fifteen hours every day. By the time we reach the mountains, none of the wagons will be in any fit condition to make it over them. We’ll have to carry out extensive repairs, and that will take time. You’ll lose more time with that than you’ll gain pushing them as you are doing at the moment.’
‘Do you think I haven’t considered that?’ Neil spoke with an unaccustomed sharpness, then forced himself to relax. ‘Sorry, but I guess I am a little jumpy.’
‘You afraid of what we might find when we hit those mountains?’ The other raised thick, bushy eyebrows, regarded Neil quizzically.
‘Guess so. I made an agreement to get you folk through to California. We lost some on the way here, mostly my own fault. I had no right letting any of my personal feuds interfere with this, specially as far as Sherman was concerned. That’s been the main cause of all our trouble so far.’
‘You ain’t got nothing to reproach yourself for on that account,’ declared the other. ‘We all realised that Sherman or Hollard would have killed us all if they had the chance. They’re as much against settlers as they were against you.’
‘If we run into bad conditions up there in the mountain passes, we may have to spend the whole of the winter this side of ’em. Reckon we don’t have enough supplies for that, so the only chance we have is to keep on going. That’s why I’m pushing everybody as hard as they can go.
I’d like you to try to make them see that. I don’t like keeping up this cruel, punishing pace any more than they do. But it won’t be long before the first winter storms start up there.’
‘Anybody tried to cross during the winter months?’ The other teased a strip of beef with the tip of his long-bladed knife, then pushed it into his mouth and chewed on it reflectively.
‘Some,’ Neil admitted. ‘They didn’t get far if we can believe the reports that came back. The blizzards struck while they were crossing, caught them unawares, blocked the pass completely. None of ’em managed to get through to the plains on the far side.’
‘And you reckon there’s a good chance of that happening to us?’
‘I reckon so. We may be lucky. The storms may be late in starting this year.’
A pause, then: ‘But you don’t think they will be? Is that it?’
‘Judgin’ from the rivers, they’re pretty full at the source up there in the mountains. That’s always a bad sign. Could mean an early winter.’
There was no more talk at the fire that night. With the long days on the trail, men snatched at sleep whenever they could. An hour lost in talk meant a tired man the next day, a man whose reflexes were just that shade slower than they ought to have been and that could spell danger.
Wrapped in his blankets, feeling the wind that blew off the mountains blowing cold against his body, Neil Roberts tried to figure out in his mind the best thing to do for the safety of the train. Had it not been for Jesse Sherman, they might have picked up more supplies back in Twin Creeks, might have enough to wait out the worst months of the winter, at least, before attempting the dangerous crossing of those tall, snow-covered peaks. As it was, they had very little left. Perhaps just sufficient to carry them through to the end of the trail, but little besides. There could be no question of waiting it out. Half of them would starve before the weather changed for the better and allowed them to go on with their journey, and he doubted if they could shoot enough to keep themselves alive.
No, they had to cross the peaks and once he had made that decision there was the question of which pass to choose. The pass which slashed through the upper reaches of the mountains directly ahead of them would be the very devil in the midst of winter, was certainly the shortest route, but the more dangerous. The other was easier to negotiate, but it meant swinging to the south, more than two extra days on the drive. He fell asleep with the thoughts still spilling through his mind.
Ten days later they left the trail, struck out across more rugged country leading to the south. Neil Roberts had made his decision. He told Jackson and Jessup of it as they moved off through the rough terrain, the wagons bouncing and jolting over the stony ground.
‘We daren’t risk taking the wagons over Snake Pass,’ he said quietly, eyeing the big man who sat the tongue of the wagon beside him, his own sorrel moving alongside. ‘A couple of thrown wheels up there and we would be bogged down for weeks before we could make repairs. At least this way we stand a better chance of getting through without mishap. The South Pass is lower, if there is snow it ought to be less severe than to the north.’
‘We’re in your hands as far as that is concerned,’ muttered the other harshly. He stared ahead, his jaw jutted forward. They had covered several hundred miles now, and somewhere on the other side of that tall range of mountains lay California, the Promised Land, the country where the climate was always mellow and sunny, where the rich red gold had been found. It was enough to fire the imagination of any man, and watching him out of the corner of his eye, Neil could almost read the other’s thoughts, knew that most of the men and women in the train were thinking along the same way now that they were approaching the end of their long journey across a continent.
In a way, he felt the empty coldness in his own mind. For him, it seemed, there would always be the wandering, the leagues of rolling grass or the white alkali of the stretching, flat deserts, a man hunted by the law, framed by a crooked sheriff, and always on the run.
‘Do you reckon that the folk here can take that journey over the mountains?’ he asked abruptly. ‘So far, the going has been easy compared with what we’ll find up there.’
‘They’ll take it,’ said the other emphatically. ‘They knew what they were letting themselves in for before they started out on this trip. You ain’t reckoning on any of ’em wanting to turn back now, are you?’
‘I was wondering about folk like Claire Vance. There wouldn’t seem to be much left for her in California.’
The big man caught Neil’s look, shrugged. ‘You may be right. Whenever you set out on something like this, there’s always somebody who has to get hurt. I suppose she was one of the unlucky ones.’
‘How is she taking it now — after what happened with Sherman, I mean?’
Jackson pursed his thick lips. ‘I got Virginia Millais taking care of her. She seems to have got over it pretty well considering the shock she must have had. You worried about her, Neil?’
‘In a way. She’s been through a lot and I feel, well, sorta responsible for her. After all, she did save my life by shooting Sherman. If she hadn’t done that he would have shot me down in cold blood.’
‘She’s back in the fourth wagon if you’d care to take a look-see for yourself. Maybe you’d be able to get her to snap out of it a little.’
He gave Neil a queer look which the other pointedly ignored. Then Neil had swung his legs over the side of the shafts and dropped lightly to the ground, waiting while the other wagons rolled past him, kicking up the grey dust as they rumbled by. He waited until the fourth wagon came alongside, then climbed up on to the tongue. Virginia Millais gave him a smile of welcome, moved along the seat. He took the reins from her, slapped the rumps of the horses absently.
‘We’re heading for the South Pass,’ he said quietly, pointing towards the tall peaks which were now close on the horizon. ‘Once we cross that and move down into the plains on the other side, it ought to be plain sailing all the way into California. I’m sure you’ll all be glad once this journey is over.’
‘And the border gangs you mentioned. What about them?’
‘We may run into trouble with them.’ His eyes followed those of the woman to the tall peaks that glistened in the sunlight. ‘It’s hard to say. But we fought off Jesse Sherman and his killers. I reckon we can do the same with these men.’
There was a movement in the wagon at Neil’s back and a moment later the heavy folds of canvas were twitched aside.
Neil felt his gaze being drawn to the golden-haired woman who looked out at him, her eyes turning to Virginia Millais and then back to him.
‘They tell me that you’re feeling a little better now, Ma’am,’ said Neil quietly. ‘I’m afraid I’ve never had the chance to talk with you, and thank you for saving my life as you did.’
There was an instant of pause, then: ‘He was the man who gave the orders to stampede the cattle. He killed my husband just as surely as if he had trained a gun on him and pulled the trigger. He didn’t deserve to live.’
‘I’m real sorry about your husband.’ Neil spoke hesitantly. ‘He was a good man. It was a bad way for anyone to die.’
The woman’s face did not change. Only her eyes seemed alive. ‘He’s dead now, but life has to go on here whether we like it or not.’
‘I understand. Perhaps when we reach California, it may be different. You may be able to start a new life there, pick up the threads and begin again.’
‘Perhaps.’ Her voice was merely a faint whisper of sound. Then it grew a little stronger. ‘And you, Neil Roberts? What about you when we reach California? Do you intend to turn and ride back into this terrible country? Here, so they tell me, you’re always on the run.’
‘You seem to know a lot about me,’ he said softly.
‘Enough to know that you’re no criminal, that the charges brought against you were made by crooked people, men who hid behind a badge and brought shame to this country.’
‘I wish you could
make everyone see that.’ He spoke lightly, in a faintly bantering tone, but his words were deep and serious. His fingers had tightened a little, convulsively, on the leather reins in his hands.
‘Then why don’t you stay in California? Surely the past could never catch up with you there. It’s new country, shut off from this place by the mountains. Like me, you’re looking for some place to start a completely new life.’ Her eyes looked over him with a renewed interest, as if seeing the man for the first time.
There was silence while the wagon lurched forward over the rough trail, the creak of the wheels loud in Neil’s ears. It was a thought which had never occurred to him. Perhaps this woman was right. Perhaps in California, hundreds of miles from here, he might find the peace he had been seeking for so long and there would no longer be the need to keep on running, moving on from one place to another, with only the wide arch of the heaven for a ceiling, his saddle for a pillow.
‘You’ll consider it?’ There was a trace of insistence in the woman’s voice as she looked at him.
For an instant his gaze locked with hers, then he gave a slow, brief nod. ‘I’ll consider it,’ he said softly. ‘But first we have to reach California and that isn’t going to be easy. We’ve still a long way to go and if there is snow up there in the Pass, it’s going to be ten times worse than anything we’ve had to endure so far.’
The lie of the land was far rougher now than anything they had yet encountered. They forded a wide river, shallow, but with the current running fast. Already in flood, fed by the rains and snow up in the mountains, it boded ill for a crossing of the South Pass. Now they were moving into the foothills of the mountains. High above them, crushing down with all of their tremendous, massive weight, the mountains looked up against the bright blue of the sky, their topmost peaks almost lost to sight. Then the tall trees which covered the lower slopes crowded in on them from all sides, and although high noon blazed somewhere above the leafy arch over their heads, here it was blue-shadowed and still, with the air cool and filled with the sharply acrid scent of the pines.