Brand of the Hunted

by John Glasby

  Presently they came upon the relic of an ancient wagon trail, broader than that which they had followed from the plain, and they made good time with the horses pulling hard in the traces, the wagons rumbling forward, rocking gently from side to side. In places the trail wound around jagged rocks, then climbed to a long, bare ridge of stratum where they came out into the open, the trees thinning, then falling away from them on both sides so that the bright light of the glaring late-afternoon sun beat down at them with an intense fury that half-blinded them until their eyes became accustomed to it.

  Halfway along the stratum they came across the remains of an old digging. There were two log cabins built by the side of the trail in the lee of a tall stretch of rock, but the roofs had fallen in and there was the mark of a solitary grave in the hard earth in front of a small clump of trees, the rough wooden cross thrusting itself up from the dirt like a vaguely accusing finger. Neil let his gaze wander over the scene, taking in everything until he was certain that the place was deserted and there was no danger there. In one of the trees an axe had been thrust into the bark, left there by the former occupant. At some time in the past, he thought, a man had driven that axe-head deep into the wood and then simply turned on his heel and walked away, possibly the man who had buried his companion in that lonely grave near the trees.

  ‘Do you know this land, Neil?’ Jackson turned from his seat on the lead wagon, holding the reins loosely in his huge gnarled hands.

  ‘I’ve been here a couple of times before. There’s a good place to camp about three miles ahead. We won’t reach the pass for another three, four days maybe, depends on how fast we can travel.’

  ‘You been all the way over and down to the other side?’

  ‘I have, but not in the middle of winter. It may look easy right now, but when you’re up there, in the middle of a blizzard, things look very different.’

  By degrees the country roughened and, around them, the pines grew smaller, more stunted. They were climbing through the timber now, but the trail led them by many switchback courses, and Neil knew that the change would not be sudden, that only gradually would they notice the difference between the tree-covered slopes down here, where the air was still warm, particularly at high noon, and the rocky passes high up where the air was thin, and even if the sky was blue and cloudless, the air was cold and frosty; and the long nights filled with the bright and glittering stars were colder than any of these people had ever known.

  They camped on the wide bluff some five hundred feet above the plain. There were crags and deep, knife-edged ravines all about them now and the wind that came sweeping down off the sheer side of the mountains was bitterly cold and struck through their clothing into their bones. The wagons were drawn up in single file and the two fires were lit in a shallow, narrow-sided ravine where they could not be picked out from the plains down below. Although Jesse Sherman was finished, there was still the possibility that Matt Hollard might come riding out on their heels, even though they had crossed his territory now.

  They had held the wagons to the ridge during the latter part of the long afternoon, but now had dropped down into the ravines. Shortly before sunset they had crossed the narrow creek and there was plenty of fresh water for themselves and the horses. While the others ate their evening meal, cooked over the fires, Neil made his way to the edge of the bluff, checking on the ground. The land, he saw, was deceptive. They had passed out of one large canyon, up to this flat stretch of ground, and in front of them stretched another canyon, although the trail itself was still pointed at the summit of the mountains. Now they were on an island of height with a sheer precipitous drop of three hundred feet on one side of the trail directly ahead of them. He peered along it in the growing darkness, trying to make out details. It would not be easy to drive along that particular stretch of the trail, he estimated, and there was a very narrow trail running down the side of the precipice, a trail which could have been traversed only by a mule or a mountain goat. Certainly nothing else could have been sufficiently surefooted to make it and he could see that this trail had not been used for a long time. Possibly it could not have been anything more than a series of footholds cut out by goats.

  The cliff itself was rock and earth, growing a stunted kind of vegetation which clung tenaciously to it, sucking a bare existence from the dry soil with the solid rock only an inch or so beneath. The darkness fell swiftly as he stood there and the night air began to flow more swiftly off the peaks, sweeping down the narrow ravines. He shivered and made his way slowly back to the camp. Clem Jackson motioned him down beside the fire, his eyes drifting slowly around the looming rocks which lay about them at the shadows that crouched beyond the ring of red light thrown by the leaping flames. A platter of sizzling beef was placed in front of Neil, and the other waited until the platter was clean before saying quietly: ‘What do you think of it? You did go to take a look along the trail?’

  ‘We’ll have to be careful when we pull out in the morning. There’s a sheer drop of nearly three hundred feet on one side. One false move and that wagon will be finished.’ He forced a quick smile, but there was no answering smile from Clem Jackson. The big man gnawed at his dry lips.

  ‘There’s no sign of snow,’ he said finally, the words deep rumbling things that came from the depths of huis chest.

  ‘The weather can be deceptive here. It can change without warning.’

  Jackson shrugged, gulped his coffee. Jessup refilled his cup and the big man held the cup between his hands, rolling it a little, absorbing the heat, then held the coffee beneath his broad nose, sniffing the fragrance and drawing it deep into his lungs.

  ‘How soon before we hit the bad country, Neil?’

  ‘Maybe three days. The trail winds around the outcrops of rock most of the way now. We’ll have to move the wagons one at a time past the precipice. Once we’re beyond that, we ought to make better time, although it’s going to be uphill all the way now.’

  Neil filled his coffee cup from the boiler and sipped it slowly, swilling it around his mouth before swallowing it. It brought some of the warmth back into his frozen body.

  Later, getting up from the fire, he made his way back along the line of wagons. They stood in shadow now that the light had gone from the sky, but as he moved quietly past one of them there was a slight movement of the canvas and a voice came out of the darkness, a rich and husky voice that he recognised immediately.

  ‘Neil … ’ called Claire Vance. ‘Neil, do you mind if I talk to you?’

  8. The White Menace

  Bending forward a little, Neil stared up at the questioning eyes of the woman who looked down at him from the tongue of the wagon. She drew her shawl more tightly about her shoulders in the cold night air. Then her hand reached out and she placed it on his arm.

  ‘Do you mind if I talk to you, Neil?’

  ‘No.’

  He felt a curious tightness in his body as if his muscles were all drawing tight under his flesh. It was easy to forget Sherman and Hollard, to forget the life he had been forced to lead in the past, for ever running from the law, sleeping where he could, never knowing how long it would be before some gun, faster than his own, caught up with him and ended his life in a single, red-edged instant of time. He sensed her nearness and felt the strange warmth that seemed to flow from her hand into his arm, even through the thick cloth. ‘Did you think over what I told you some days back, Neil?’

  ‘About settling down in California, if we ever get there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it a little.’ He straightened up as she sank down on to the hard wood of the wagon, sat beside him, staring up at the brilliant stars that powdered the heavens over their heads, frostily clear now. Soon, thought Neil tightly, those stars would be even clearer until the time came when they were utterly blotted out by the racing snow clouds.

  ‘And you don’t like the idea. Is that it?’ Her voice was soft and low. There was no trace in her voice or face of the tr
ouble that she had experienced on the drive, the loss of her husband and the time when she had shot a man in the back.

  ‘I think it may be a good idea. But I wonder if a man like me could ever settle down and try to forget the past, or whether it wouldn’t keep on coming up, standing between me and any peace I might find.’

  ‘It wouldn’t if you were determined to forget it. If you only wanted to put it behind you and kept it there.’ She paused, then tightened her grip on his arm. ‘If you want something hard enough, nothing in this world will stop you.’

  ‘I only wish I had your kind of faith, Claire,’ he said softly. She leaned to one side. Her shoulder touched his and her weight rested on his arm. ‘Do you know that’s the first time you’ve ever spoken my name.’

  ‘I never realised.’

  ‘I hope you do decide to settle down there, and not come riding back to look for vengeance.’

  ‘Why should you think I’m seeking vengeance now?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I know how things were between you and that man I had to shoot. There was some kind of personal feud between you that could only be settled when one of you was dead. Now he’s gone, but there are others back there who would like to see you dead, aren’t there?’

  He hesitated, knew that he could never lie to this woman, that she saw things about men more clearly than they realised. ‘Yes, there are men here who won’t rest until they’ve killed me. But Sherman was the worst. He was the last of the gang who framed me all those years ago.’

  ‘And yet you’re still running? Why?’

  ‘Because the wanted notices are still out for me. Because decent lawmen believed the lies they spread around, believed them enough to put a price on my head. What chance do you reckon I’d have if I gave myself up and tried to prove that I was innocent of everything?’

  ‘I think I understand. But California is a new country, a whole new world just over the top of those mountains. There are no crooked sheriffs there who know the name of Neil Roberts. And there aren’t likely to be any riding out there looking for you — no bounty hunters coming as far afield as that.’

  ‘I wish I could be sure of that.’

  ‘When we get there — and I’m sure we’ll get there one day, I hope you will be sure. You and I are very much alike, Neil. We both seem to be looking for the same thing, and this new country that lies ahead of us is the last and only chance we’ll ever get. We both want peace, peace to forget everything that has happened and start with a clean sheet. It isn’t going to be easy for a woman without a man out there. This is a world that men have made, and there’s no place in it for a woman like me, not unless she wants to go up into the hills and shut herself away in some small hut where nobody can ever find her, or she goes the other way, becomes a bad woman.’

  ‘You’ll never be like that,’ he said fervently.

  ‘Someday I will. But before that happens there are so many things I want.’

  Neil shivered, threw a swift glance at the clear arch of the sky about him. Already he thought he detected the touch of snow on the breath of the wind.

  *

  Carefully, one behind the other, the wagons edged forward along the trail. The men sat gingerly on the tongues of the wagons, guiding the horses slowly while the women and children walked behind along the stony trail. In places the earth had formed a fresh slide across the trail, dirt not yet packed firm. There was no point in risking the lives of everyone, and Neil noticed the eyes of the women and children flicking incessantly towards the bottom of the canyon down below them less than three feet from where they walked, but three hundred feet down. There was water at the bottom, silver and thread-like, made narrow by distance.

  One by one the wagons negotiated the precarious section of the trail. The women and the children climbed back on board, and they swung forward along the winding trail, heading up into the upper fastnesses of the mountains. The air grew thinner as they moved higher, thinner and colder. There were more narrow creeks to be crossed, high banks with loose rocks that moved whenever the wheels of the wagons crushed over them. Water foamed white over the boulders, splashed over the axles of the wagons as they crossed. Slowly the weather and the terrain was building up a picture of what lay in store for them, and Neil found the apprehension in his mind growing with every mile they travelled. Above them the towering peaks still lifted, high and seemingly inaccessible. It seemed incredible that they could ever get the wagons up there and, in places, the trail narrowed until it was all they could do to move the Conestogas through between the rough, rocky walls of the rearing canyons through which they had to pass.

  Two days, three, and then on the fourth day there was no sun at first light. The dawn was a vague greyness that spread up from below them, touched the sky with a curious eerie light. Rolling out of his blankets, feeling the cold dampness on his body, Neil glanced up at the clouds that moved in swiftly from the north-east, blowing over the ragged peaks, and knew that there was snow on the way, that the luck which had been with them for so long had given out.

  He folded his blanket, then moved over to the embers of the night’s fire, kicked them with the toe of his boot until it broke flame, and piled more dry wood on to it until the flames leapt high and the boiler of coffee was sizzling over it. The others rolled out of their blankets, shrugged, and then stood up. Jackson rubbed the sleep from his eyes, then stared about him, caught Neil’s worried look and walked over, stood with his hands outstretched towards the fire.

  ‘Think it spells trouble, Neil?’

  ‘Afraid so. Those clouds mean snow. We ought to reach this end of the pass by noon. Could be that we can be well into it before the snow comes. But there’ll be a blizzard before night.’

  ‘I figure you’re right. What do you say to that, Jessup?’

  The other nodded, pursed his lips tightly. ‘This is country I don’t know, Jackson. But I’ll take your word for it. Want me to get the train moving as soon as possible?’

  Jackson nodded. Soon there was the smell of sizzling beef and bacon, with beans scooped on to the platters. Breakfast was a hurried meal of silences, soon over. Then the train pulled out once more, moving through a country of almost unsurpassed grandeur; a beautiful terrain, a magnificent vista which seemed to defy the imagination. But in spite of its beauty, it could be capricious and deadly.

  The people in the wagons stared about them with open eyes. This was something none of them had ever seen before, something new and strange. By noon, with the clouds still lowering over the crests of the mountains, they had reached the eastern end of the South Pass. In front of them the ground stretched for mile upon mile, almost level with the tall, towering rocks lifting sheer on either side of them, a vast natural cutting that stretched clear over the mountain chain. Soon there was no talk in the wagons. The first few white flakes drifted down in the wind.

  Twenty minutes later the blizzard struck, a million white flakes that swirled about the wagons, obliterating the rocky walls on either side. Men rode with their heads down, shivering in their thick clothing. The snow worked its way down their necks in spite of the high collars and wide-brimmed hats, into their boots. The blast of the wind, seeping along the pass, threatened to hurl them back into the rocks, and the animals made little headway against it.

  This was worse than Neil had expected. He had hoped that they would have made it halfway along the Pass before the blizzard struck. Another blast of chill air lashed at them, this time off the walls of the pass, hit so hard that the horses were forced to stop in their tracks and brace themselves against it, unable to move. Neil cursed harshly under his breath, lifted his head a little and tried to peer into the heart of the snowstorm. Already it was beginning to settle around them, forming a white layer on the uneven ground, even beginning to stick to the rocky walls of the canyon.

  It made an even greater danger now, obliterating the rocks and boulders in the middle of the trail so that they could not pick them out in time, before the wheels ran over them, sending the
wagons lurching and swaying from side to side. There was one thing, he thought quickly, if there was anyone following them it would blot out their trail completely.

  ‘Do you think we can keep going in this?’ shouted Jackson at the top of his voice. He bent from the wagon as Neil rode alongside. His body was almost covered in snow, his face covered by the hood which he had pulled down over his eyes so that only the shaggy beard showed, thrust forward aggressively.

  ‘We’ve got to. It won’t let up for days, possibly weeks. I know these blizzards. Once they begin, they just keep on going.’

  Heads down, they pushed ahead into the storm.

  Everything was a solid wall of white and it was impossible to see more than three feet in any direction. Overhead, the sky was a deep and ominous grey, with no let-up in the icy wind. Minutes stretched themselves into hours as the numbing cold bit deep into their bodies. Even inside the wagons there was no escape from the driving snow. It worked its way through the folds of the canvas, formed a deep layer on the tops of the wagons, threatened to tear the canvas. The horses trudged forward, heads down, moving by some strange instinct.

  How they managed to survive the biting fingers of the wind, the driving snow which was piling high on all sides, it was impossible to tell. When night came it did not bring an end to their misery. Rather it was just beginning.

  Jessup tried to build a fire in the lee of the rock, with the snow shrieking past, but it was virtually impossible. They huddled close to the flames and tried to get some warmth into their frozen bodies. Savagely the wind howled around them, threatening to tear the heavy canvas from the wagons, exposing their interiors.

  ‘If we ever get through this, meeting up with those border gangs is going to be child’s play,’ growled Jessup tightly. He rubbed the snow from his face and eyes, shook his head numbly. ‘I don’t mind facing up to something I can see and fight, but how in God’s name can you fight this?’