Tardy Benton had come up the mountain with supplies for the Allards. He might have come alone, although that seemed unlikely with conditions what they were. So the Allards might have been reinforced.
But where had they gone? They must be somewhere up on the mountain, but as yet there had been no shot from the lake camp. Had Dut Mowry been surprised and killed or captured? And what about Mat and Miranda?
Returning to the trail, Brionne started back up the mountain. The warmth of the day had vanished before the cool wind, and now it was cold. But he dared not move fast, for his enemies might be anywhere along the trail.
He was avoiding the area of the Allard camp. He had only one idea now--to get back to the lake and discover what had happened. How long had he been gone, he wondered. An hour? Two? He would have liked to look at his watch, but there was no light, and he dared not strike a match.
His moccasins made no sound on the trail. He moved swiftly and easily, with occasional stops to listen and catch his breath, for the altitude made climbing difficult.
When he came to the edge of the boulders again, and could look across the gravel and sand toward the lake, he saw no fire; there was no sound, there was no movement. The lake lay like a strip of steel in the dimness; all else was dark.
His mouth dry, his heart pounding, he lay watching the lake, but after several minutes he knew he was alone. There was nobody over there, nothing. Nearing the rock wall, he worked his way back to where the horses had been sheltered. The horses were gone; the packs were gone. There was no sign of his son, of Miranda or Dutton Mowry.
Had Mowry sold them out? Was he, after all, one of the Allard gang?
There had been no shots, of that he was sure. He had not at any time been so far away that he would have missed hearing a shot. There was no evidence here of a struggle. The sand was white, and he could see the tracks of horses and people--their own tracks.
He stood alone in the night, and despite the cold he felt the sweat break out on his brow. It must mean that they had Mat. The Allards had Mat, and they had Miranda.
He had been a fool to leave ... a fool.
Chapter 12
There was no blood anywhere on the sand. He felt sure he could have seen it on the white sand if there had been. No blood ... no shots ... so there probably had been no fight.
What did it mean? They had been surrendered to the Allards by Mowry, who had turned traitor. They had been captured somehow, without a chance to fight. Or--and this seemed the most unlikely of all--they had had some warning of the approach of the Allards, and had gotten away.
Gotten away ... how? Or if captured, where had they been taken?
Brionne had been holding himself back in the darkness all this time, thinking. There was no panic in him. His military conditioning had taken all that out of him. Now he thought clearly, trying to isolate each fact.
He could find no signs even of a scuffle. It was possible that he might not find them in the dark, but such a scuffle would have resulted in deep indentations in the sand, the marks made by struggling men.
Mowry had not been in this country before. He might have been lying, but his actions on the trail showed no indication of previous knowledge. Had Miranda remembered something? Or had she been holding back some secret information? Perhaps she had recognized something unclear to her before.
There seemed to be nothing to do but wait. Yet even as he considered it, he knew that this was perhaps the worst place to wait. The Allards, if they did not have Mat and the others, might come back here to look for them, or for him. On the white sand any movement of his could be too easily seen.
After taking a long drink at one of the springs, Brionne slipped out of the cul-de-sac at the lake, went around the rocks, and climbed toward the pass. This was a broken ridge, its sides made smooth in some places by slides, and heaped with scattered boulders or talus in others. Here the forces of erosion were always at work--wind, cold, heat, snow, ice, and rain.
Finally, near the top of the ridge, under a tilted slab of rock, he found a hiding place and shelter from the wind. He squirmed his way into the moss and broken rock, and curling up for warmth, he went to sleep.
It was dawn when he awakened.
The cold gray of morning under gray clouds found him haunted with fear for Mat and Miranda. He crouched under the slab of rock, feeling the dampness of the clouds that swirled about the higher peaks. A damp chill pervaded him, and there was something in the air that frightened him. He emerged slowly, like an animal from its den, studying all around him. Only when he was sure that nothing lay in wait for him did he begin his search for tracks.
He was not a man to whom anger came quickly; rather, it grew within him until suddenly he was swept by those black rages, rages of which he was aware and which he struggled to keep within bounds. Deliberately, he forced himself now to stand still, to breathe deeply, to fight down the thing that was rising within him.
He must keep his mind clear, or all was lost. It was only by thinking clearly that he could win. He told himself this again and again. The Allards must also be hunting for him. Two of their men had been killed, and by now they must know their horses and outfits were gone.
That feeling in the air that he did not like he now realized was a developing storm. Now he knew that he had two antagonists--there were the Allards, whom he had to find, and there was the storm. But it was possible that the storm might prove an ally.
Mat and Miranda ... it was what had happened to them that was important. For the moment he was not considering Dutton Mowry. They had gone somewhere, and it was up to him to find them, and quickly.
He went out on the mountain and began casting for sign. It was a slow, painstaking search. There were several areas of flat rock over which they might have been taken, and at first he found nothing.
He stood, a bleak and lonely man with the cloud-fog swirling about him, looking over the face of the slide rock, the smooth face with jagged edges like frozen gray flames. This was another world. Paris and New York, Washington and Virginia did not exist for him now. This was a primeval world, and he felt as if he had become a primeval man. His son had been taken from him, his only son; and the girl ... what was she to him? He did not face that. She had been in his care, and that was enough.
This was no land for the niceties of civilization. He was alone, and he was facing, as all primitive men had sometime faced, the horror of unreason, of men who kill without passion, or kill with hatred for those who use their mind in a better way.
Patiently, steadily, he worked back and forth across the mountain. Had they gone directly down he would have heard them. They must have gone along the side of the mountain, or up it. He found their tracks suddenly. There was no single track that he could make out--only a tight bunch of tracks, mingled with one another, and tramped over by those following.
He went on, his rifle in his hand, every sense alert, his movements shrouded by the thickening, darkening cloud. The air prickled with electricity. He felt it in his hair when he took off his hat to run his fingers through his hair, a way he had sometimes when thinking intently.
A black, shattered cliff towered on his left, the mountain fell away in a steep slide to the timberline below, and there he could see a gray wall of long dead trees, some still standing, some tumbled about, limbs spread out as if in groping, or flung up starkly to the sky, tree trunks like the mummified bodies of some ancient battlefield. A slide had killed them, or a stroke of lightning, leaping along the mountain, ricocheting from peak to peak, cliff-face to boulder to tree.
As he looked, a bullet smashed rock, stinging his cheeks with fragments, and he half-turned, crouched like an animal at bay, and fired at the flash, a flash scarcely seen. Then he ran forward three quick steps and threw the rifle to his shoulder and fired again at the running figure. The man fell, not hit, but losing his footing upon the loose rocks. He scrambled up, glancing over his shoulder in horror, as if looking for the bullet that might take him between the shoulders.
But Brionne missed again, and for a second time the frantic runner slipped among the rocks. Then, scrambling desperately, he plunged through an opening and was out of sight.
Brionne was gasping for breath in the thin air. Drifting cloud cut him off from his surroundings, and he was lost in the chill depths of the fog.
It was a danger, that. He could come upon them without even realizing it.
He had noticed a crevice in the rock face on his left before the fog closed down, and he went to it now and clambered up, as quietly as possible. Every foot brought a wrenching gasp from him. His lungs fought for air, and when only a few feet up he had to stop, cling to the rocks, and rest.
They were somewhere ahead of him. Had the man at whom he fired been a straggler? And how many of them were there?
Crawling out on the flat top of the rock, he lay still, breathing hoarsely, but trying to listen. The man at whom he had fired had been trying to get to some spot in the rocks up ahead. Were the Allards there? If so, they knew he was close by. There was no surprising them ...
Yet why not? They would not expect a lone man to attack their camp. They would expect him to lie out and try to pick them off, one by one ... or else to run for help.
But there was no help.
When his breath was back to normal, Brionne reloaded his rifle. Then, getting to his feet, he moved swiftly and silently along the top of the rock.
Somewhere ahead of him he heard a faint sound, a whisper, and then it was gone. Was there somebody ahead of him, moving along the rock? After a moment, he went on, holding his rifle ready in his hands.
The rock ledge along which he moved was damp and slippery, but the moccasins enabled Brionne to move easily on the wet surface, and with almost no sound. The heavy clouds, growing thicker by the minute, cut visibility to only a few feet; rarely could he see a few yards in any direction.
It was an eerie feeling, a feeling of being lost in some strange, misty world. At any step one might encounter a precipice or an enemy. After every few steps Brionne paused to listen ... and again he heard the whispering sound.
Something was moving along the same ledge where he himself moved.
A person? A mountain lion? A grizzly? To encounter any one of them in this place would mean a fight to the death.
However, this was above the haunts of the lions; among these lonely peaks the eagles flew, and the bighorns moved among the crags. Here, except for the occasional storms, was a place of silence, broken only by the rattle of a pebble, the slide of rock, the groaning of a glacier.
Now the day was still. The clouds covered the mountain far below the place where Brionne walked, and here there was only the penetrating dampness and chill.
Had they managed to keep their packs, he wondered. Was Mat warm enough? The boy's health was good, but this damp cold, at this altitude ...
Again he heard the faint sound, like the sliding of rough cloth on rock. He stood still for a moment, his rifle easy in his hands, ready to turn quickly in any direction.
Moving on, he found the shelf ended in a cataract of rocks that disappeared into the cloud below ... how far? He waited there, listening again. In the thickness of the mist, all sounds would be distorted, and he could not be sure of their direction.
Brionne stood on the rim like a man standing on the far black edge of the world, and he looked down. He knew that the stones would rattle if he started down the slide, and they would carry a warning to anyone below or beyond. He must find a way around.
To the right was the cliff face ... there was nothing there but a vast emptiness. He turned left and walked on cat feet, his ears pricked for the sound of movement. He was a hunter, alert for those other hunters, and something in him had changed, some ancient feeling had welled up within him. He squatted down close to the rock. It was smooth except where cut by the slow passing of a glacier that had left grooves into which he could lay a finger.
He thought he heard the whispering, rough sound again--or was it the wind? He waited, thinking of his enemies somewhere around him, and only the girl and his son who were friendly to him. He heard the sound again, and now he thought it was like something creeping toward him, and was tempted to shoot ... but only a fool shoots at what he cannot see.
A mile away, huddled near a spring, Cotton Allard looked at his empty coffee cup. He knew they were waiting for him to decide, and he did not know what to say. Never in his life had he wished so much to kill a man as he wished to kill James Brionne now.
He hated Brionne because he had hunted down his brother, and he hated him because he had possessed such a home as he had seen in Virginia, and such a woman as the one who had so calmly waited for him. She would not leave his mind, tormenting him with her calmness. It nagged at him that she had bested him. She had killed one of his men, narrowly missed another shot, and then had calmly killed herself before he could put his hands on her. He had seen the contempt in her eyes, and the memory would not leave him.
If he could kill the boy and the husband, she might be beaten then. He looked again at the empty cup, swore savagely, and filled it once more. The coffee was bitter.
Tuley spoke at last. "What are we a-goin' to do, Cotton? Just set here? That man's yonder in the mountains. So are the rest of them. As for that white-headed cow-puncher, I figure I nailed him."
"You figure!" Cotton glared at him. "That there puncher you talk about is Dut Mowry! His kind don't die easy. What I want to know is what happened to Tardy? He wasn't exactly no pilgrim. He was a fair hand with a gun."
"He's probably waiting till the fog lifts," Hoffman said hesitantly. "He couldn't find us in all this."
Cotton looked up. "Are you sure that was Brionne who shot at you? Not Mowry?"
Hoffman looked worried. He wanted to give the right answer, and was afraid he might give the wrong one. "I thought it was Brionne. I didn't get a good look at him."
Cotton Allard threw the coffee into the fire and got up. "So we don't know. Maybe he's alive, maybe he's dead."
"If we get the woman," Peabody said suddenly, "the woman an' the kid, then he's got to come to us. Besides, it'd be mighty comfortin' to have a woman around."
Cotton did not reply. He was cold. He had been cold and wet ever since he came up on the mountain, it seemed, but this was a deeper cold ... was it fear? The question angered him. He would have struck anyone who asked such a question ... had anyone dared.
No, it was not fear. It was just this damned country, the whole situation ... and it was the memory of that woman. There was no way to get at her. She was dead, gone. Only she was not gone, for she lived in his mind and he could still see her sitting there, looking at him so calmly, looking at those intruders into her quiet, well-kept home.
At no time had she raised her voice, at no time had she recognized them as anything but a disagreeable intrusion ... or so it had seemed to him.
"Look at it this way," Cotton said, and there was a roughness in his voice, a forced assertiveness not usually present. "They've split up. Maybe both of 'em are shot up some, maybe just one.
"We got their horses an' they ain't goin' nowheres without them. We just wait until this fog hits, then we go get 'em."
"Cotton," Hoffman suggested tentatively, "this isn't just fog. We're away up in the mountains and these are clouds. I think they're storm clouds."
"So?" Peabody asked.
"Have you ever been this high up in a bad thunderstorm? Or suppose it snows? My advice would be--"
"Nobody asked your advice." Cotton spoke in a mean tone.
Peabody glanced at his brother, and walking over to his blankets, he lay down with his face to the rock wall. Cotton was in a mood, and Peabody knew from of old how treacherous he could become ... And it was worse now. Ever since they burned that house. A body would think killing a woman was something new for him.
Tuley fed fuel into the fire and walked over to the edge of the hollow to listen. He did not like these mountains. He would have preferred to be down among the trees, which in
some places were only a few hundred feet below them. And he had a sneaking feeling Hoffman was right about the clouds.
Tuley was no more than sixty feet from the fire, standing alone, looking down the mountain when James Brionne appeared.
He did not come walking up, making sounds as he came; it just seemed that some of the fog or cloud drifted away and there he stood, like a ghost, with a rifle in his hands.
"Where is she? Where's the boy?"
His voice was low, and unconsciously Tuley Allard replied in the same tone. "I don't know. We got their outfit, but they got away from us."
"Were you there when my wife was killed?"
"Yeah, I was there. Only she killed herself. Had herself a derringer we never seen. She killed one of us with the shotgun, then missed with the derringer, and before we could lay hold of her she shot herself."
The rifle muzzle was down. Tuley smiled, showing his broken teeth. "Cotton is goin' to be fit to be tied when he finds I've killed you."
"Tuley?" It was Cotton's voice. "Who you talkin' to?"
"Brionne," Tuley said, "an' I'm goin' to kill him."
Tuley was a fast hand with a gun. Not so fast as Cotton, but he was an excellent shot along with his speed. He was very confident now. No ghosts disturbed his stolid, somewhat stupid temperament. His hand moved down and back. It was an easy draw. Tuley was smiling when his palm slapped the gun butt, and when the gun started to lift. He was still smiling when the rifle bullet struck his belt buckle's corner, mushroomed, and tore into his stomach.
And he still smiled as his gun was coming up, only he was on his knees and a queer numbness gripped him. His fingers no longer felt the gun's weight. The bullet had ripped a wide gash in the wall of his stomach, glanced off a rib, and struck his spinal cord, coming to rest there.
At the first bellow of the shot, Cotton Allard hit the ground rolling and came up, gun in hand. Only there was no target. And the fire, a moment before the center of the small group, was suddenly deserted.
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