Beyond Fort North

by Peter Dawson

  That last wagon, when he came even with it, held Gentry’s attention the longest. There had been something impersonal about the others, particularly the first with its spilled merchandise. But this last one was different. He could see an oak bureau lying on its side, a cherry-wood desk of unusually fine lines standing upright, and, beyond it, two white-painted iron bedsteads and a brassbound chest with its burst-open lid all but hidden by the edge of the canvas. Harry Tipton had evidently planned to make Elk Bend his home.

  Gentry wouldn’t have lingered if he hadn’t noticed a big metal canteen wrapped in gunny sacking that hung from the sky-tilted side of that last Conestoga. Here was something he could use. And he reined the mare over there with the thought that the canteen could save him many detours for water over the next few days in crossing the dry country beyond the hills.

  As he was swinging lazily aground, the Grulla all at once shied violently. Gentry was nearly thrown and did his best to steady her, drawling: “Easy, girl! Whoa!” But the animal, so utterly placid until this moment, only tossed her head and tried to pull away. Gentry shortened his hold on the reins and laid a hand on her shoulder, hoping to quiet her. But she reared and struck out at him with her hoofs.

  In the end he led the mare across the wheel ruts and tied her to a pine sapling. As he sauntered back over to the wagon to get the canteen, he was more than ever curious over what had frightened the animal. He decided finally that it must have been sunlight reflected from the broken pieces of a mirror lying near the chest. And, eyeing the glass, he stepped closer, trying to place himself where the mare had been.

  It was in this moment that he caught a whisper of sound rising over the creek’s steady murmur. It lacked all definition. He stood very still, breathing shallowly, listening. Suddenly it came again from a point close ahead of him. It was a faint, smothered outcry.

  He stepped quickly into the litter and reached out to take a hold on the edge of the canvas and throw it back. He looked down at the chest’s inner edge, at its spilled top tray. What he saw froze his big frame in a paralysis of amazement.

  At first it appeared to be nothing but a rumpled length of yard goods, of red and blue printed calico showing from beneath the trunk. But then he saw the wavy mass of tawny golden hair beyond the trunk’s back edge.

  He moved fast now, lifting the trunk by its handles, and heaving it aside. He went to his knees, staring down in bewilderment at a huddled form.

  What held his glance longest was a streak of bright crimson snaking down from that mass of golden hair across a girl’s face that was serene and beautiful.

  Chapter Four

  It was when Dan Gentry lifted her and carried her into the shade at the head of the wagon that Faith Tipton’s awareness surged from out of the drowned depths of unconsciousness and almost reached the surface of understanding. From some remote recess of her mind cried a voice of fear and pain she knew she should be listening to, and, dully over a space of indeterminate time, she tried to heed it.

  But all through her was a languor she couldn’t rouse from. It numbed her will and wouldn’t let her respond at those infrequent times when she heard a voice, a strange one, a man’s, speaking to her. Not only did it seem unimportant to know who he might be, but she wasn’t even interested in knowing what he was saying. She did somehow grasp the fact that his voice sounded friendly. That in itself seemed sufficient, all she could wish for.

  The refreshing shock of her face being bathed with cold water brought her a brief and lucid moment in which she plainly caught the sound of Gentry’s breathing close above her face. But an instant later he began wiping away the blood caked on the ugly gash high along her forehead, and the pain of it made her cry out. And once more her senses were numbed, and she slipped back into unconsciousness.

  Her next full awareness came against a sickening swaying of her body, and it took a definite strength of will to push aside the heavy, cottony throbbing of her head and alert her senses. Then she could distinguish certain sounds, a horse’s slow hoof beat, the creak of saddle leather. Her body felt cramped, and she was aware of her shoulders being tightly held. When she finally understood that she was being carried on the back of a horse, that someone was holding her, outright terror made her open her eyes.

  She was staring up into a man’s lean face. It was tanned but not dark enough to belong to an Apache. He wasn’t looking at her. And gradually her fright drained away as she studied his clean-lined features and the friendliness of his eyes, a deep brown. Over the next several seconds as her thoughts hung suspended, there was little emotion in her beyond a thankfulness at being able to see objects and relate herself to them so as to quiet the queasiness of her stomach.

  Then suddenly it all came back to her, and across her mind’s eye there flashed a host of frightening images. She saw again the fleeting shadows materializing out of the dawn-lighted timber beside the road, she heard the abrupt thunder of the guns, the high-pitched cries of the Apaches. Worst of all was the vision of her father suddenly lurching erect from the seat ahead of where she lay, clawing at his chest, and afterward falling brokenly down between the lunging wheel horses. Then the wagon was tilting crazily over onto its side, and she was crying out in panic and horror.

  Gentry’s face tilted quickly down. “You’re all right,” he said gently, tightening rein on the Grulla. And as the motion of the horse stopped, he smiled down at her. “This is better. You had me worried.”

  There was in Faith Tipton a reserve of quiet strength, and she drew upon it now, getting herself in hand. For some obscure reason she decided it was important not to show any hysteria or feminine weakness to this man. She would have liked to sit straighter and ease the cramp in her back. But it also seemed important not to move and lose the reassuring strength of his arm about her shoulders.

  She kept her voice firm and even as she asked: “Where are you taking me?”

  “To a doctor, an Army sawbones. Just a couple more miles and we’ll be there...if this mare holds out.”

  She remembered now and asked: “Fort North?”

  He nodded.

  She was remembering other things, yet dreading his answers if she should mention them. He interrupted her thoughts then by asking: “D’you want anything? A drink, maybe?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is your head all that hurts?”

  She wasn’t listening. There was something she had to know, and she was trying to summon the courage to ask him about it. And in another moment she had found the courage and looked up at him to breathe haltingly: “Mother and...and Dad. And the others. Where are they?”

  His glance lifted quickly away. “Let’s wait to talk about that, miss. Right now the best thing’s to....”

  She had read enough into his look to understand completely. Her choked, forlorn cry was barely audible. And as he told her — “We’ll go along now. Just don’t move or you’ll slide off.” — she was trembling as though gripped by a sudden chill.

  It was a long time before the tears came, long after the steady swaying motion of the Grulla had resumed. She turned her head then and put her face against the rough material of Gentry’s coat, crying silently, spending her strength in fighting against making any sound. And presently the shock and the rigid way she was holding herself exhausted her so completely that she mercifully dropped off into a half sleep that dulled her terror.

  Only once before Gentry lifted her down from the mare’s back at dusk before Doc Spires’s quarters on the post was she really aware of anything. And that awareness was of Gentry’s voice as he argued with the sentry at the gate.

  “You damned well will let me in! Stand back, Corporal! This woman’s badly hurt.”

  Directly afterward she felt the animal go on at its plodding walk.

  * * * * *

  There had been no more pressing reason for Caleb Ash accompanying Peebles’s detail down the cañon to the
scene of the massacre than for Mike Clears to go. His hardware goods were safe enough, since it was obvious no one would be traveling the road. Nor did the sight of bodies with or without scalps attract him; he had seen many dead, and the wanton killing by the Apaches always roused him to a rage. He would gladly have forgone the experience.

  But one detail of Shotwell’s story alarmed and sickened the big man. In addition to that, he was utterly confused and he had decided quite suddenly it was all important that he be one of the first to look over the wagons. So, to strengthen his reason for going, he told Peebles that someone who knew how to read sign should look around down there.

  Ash had never been quite so physically sick as when he first glimpsed the bodies of the women. His face blanched to a pasty yellow tinge as he walked hurriedly away and in behind a tangle of alders. Afterward, he kept strictly away from the troopers loading the wagon Peebles had brought along. He took his time about circling the scene, ostensibly looking for sign. There was plenty of it, horse and moccasin tracks, but he paid it slight attention. He scarcely even noticed that the first two wagons were loaded with his hardware.

  Finally he came across to stand with Peebles alongside the last Conestoga, the overturned one. Neither man had a thing to say as four troopers passed carrying a blanket-wrapped shape to the spring wagon. Peebles’s expression was stern, his face almost as pale as Ash’s.

  A moment later Tim McCune came in with four others carrying the last body. Approaching Peebles, he glanced briefly at Ash with loathing and a wicked, obvious anger. Then, saluting smartly, he told Peebles: “We make the count only eleven, sir. Didn’t Shotwell say there were twelve?”

  Peebles frowned worriedly a moment. Then: “He was probably counting himself, Sergeant. Tell the men to take a five-minute break before we start back.”

  McCune saluted again, and, as he turned and walked on down to join his men grouped by the horses near a clump of pines thirty yards below, Peebles was eyeing Ash with a faint smile. “Why’s he got the chip on his shoulder?”

  Ash’s look was utterly grave as he answered: “Couple days ago I told him they should’ve hung Dan Gentry.” Then, seeming to dismiss the matter as a trivial one hardly worth noticing, he glanced on up the road toward the other wagons, drawling: “It’s a lucky thing for me those butchers were only after scalps and horses.”

  “Why, Caleb?”

  “Usually they fire the wagons. If they’d done that, I’d be out somewhere close to eighteen hundred dollars.”

  “Your hardware?”

  The scout nodded soberly. “After this I lay out my cash only when goods are delivered. It ought to be a freighter’s risk to haul through this country.”

  “Then you are a lucky man,” Peebles said. “You’re sure about tomorrow morning being soon enough to make the haul into town?”

  Ash nodded. “Them red devils won’t be back.”

  Peebles looked off toward the creek. “Think I’ll get a drink,” he said, and started across toward the alders.

  Ash was over the worst of his qualms and, satisfied at having carried a certain point nicely with Peebles, he stood now idly surveying the wreck of the wagon. It wasn’t a pretty sight, yet it roused in the scout a stubborn rebellion that finally made him tell himself: He’d probably have gone to freighting, set himself up in business against me. And then he began wondering if he could salvage any of Tipton’s belongings. He had his eye on the iron bedsteads particularly. And he liked the looks of a big open-lidded, brass-bound chest half covered by the wagon’s crumpled canvas.

  He was noticing how the chest lay, half on its side, its lid hanging open and the top tray spilled out. Several dresses and embroidered petticoats hung over the tray’s edge, and sight of these gave the scout an uneasy feeling, one of embarrassment that he should be prying. But just then his sharp eye picked out a neat row of letters and a small gold-filigree box packed tightly between some articles of clothing at the bottom of the chest, and his unsettling qualms died before a fresher curiosity.

  There lay in this big man’s nature an innate furtiveness rarely noticeable in the face of his blunt and hearty surface mannerisms. Now that quirk had its way with him as he glanced casually across at the others — first at the troopers gathered near the horses below, then at Peebles standing by the creek, looking toward the far rim.

  Having made sure that no one was watching him, Ash stepped over and with the toe of a moccasin pushed the shards of a broken mirror from their frame. He looked exactly as he intended he should, to be casually surveying the litter lying about him. But from where he now stood he could look directly down into the trunk.

  He noted that the bundle of letters had been disturbed and that several lay loose on top of the others. One he could see plainly enough to read had Mrs. Harry Tipton, Acequia Madre, Santa Fe, Territory of New Mexico, scrawled across its face. Ash recognized it as Harry Tipton’s handwriting.

  He took another short step that put him closer to the chest and he could see several other articles in the near corner. He gave a slight start at sight of one, a thinly bound book with Ledger printed across its face. Directly on top of it lay another book, this one scarcely larger than his hand. Across its black cover, in gold gilt, ran the legend Thoughts From Day To Day.

  There was no good reason why Ash shouldn’t have reached down, picked up both the books and the gold box, and looked at them. Still, he went at it a different way, one that was typical. He squatted on his heels and began sorting through a scattering of pots and pans lying nearby, all the while edging closer to the chest. A seemingly incurious glance toward the men below showed him that no one was looking this way. So, deliberately and in the same way he would have reached into a stream to catch a sleeping trout, he dipped his hand into the chest.

  The motion of his hand once it was out of sight became swift, sure. First of all he opened the box to discover that it contained some fine turquoise-set Navajo bracelets and necklaces made of silver. Next his fingers darted to the ledger, opening it. The pages he glimpsed were filled with figures and entries written in Harry Tipton’s uncertain scrawl. Last of all he thumbed open the smaller black book. It was penned in a finer hand than Harry Tipton’s. He read three lines only: no attachments here that would prevent our doing as my husband proposes. Yet I have reluctance to....

  He straightened now, a furtive glance toward the others showing him Peebles idling away from the streambank in this direction. The sober set of Ash’s broad face didn’t betray any emotion whatsoever, though he sensed that the lieutenant’s eye was on him. He stepped on around the chest now and squatted on his heels, knowing that the canvas hid all but his head and shoulders from Peebles’s sight. Then his hand snaked quickly back into the chest again and he snatched the book and the ledger.

  Had Caleb Ash glanced down at this moment he would have seen Faith Tipton’s dress and the mass of the girl’s golden hair fanned out beyond the chest’s corner. Less than ten minutes ago Tim McCune, coming across here to lift the canvas and peer under it, had missed seeing Faith by an even narrower margin. He had, in fact, idly noticed a rumpled edge of her skirt and assumed that it was just another of the several dresses spilled from the trunk.

  But Ash didn’t look down now, didn’t have to. He was idly watching Peebles approaching the wagon. And in another moment the lieutenant was asking from the far side: “Finding anything interesting, Caleb?”

  “Just Tipton’s possibles,” Ash said innocently. He lazily came erect then, right hand to hip holding tight the folded ledger and book he had a moment ago thrust down inside his belt.

  He stood with that side away from Peebles as he eyed the wagon’s spilled goods and soberly shook his head. “For a fact, this is a damned shame. Everything Harry Tipton collected over a lifetime shot to hell...wife, daughter, everything. All there’ll be to show for it is some fresh graves and a pile of junk not worth fifty dollars at the outside. Makes you
think, eh?”

  Peebles was young and impressionable, and his face took on a bleak look. “If Fitzhugh will only let me be in on the kill,” he breathed softly yet savagely. He stood a moment longer, staring in an outraged way at the capsized wagon. Then he turned abruptly to call: “Sergeant, let’s move!”

  Ash was transferring the ledger and book to a hip pocket as Tim McCune’s salty voice rang out over the breadth of the cañon, calling in his men who had strayed off toward the creek. “All right, you poor, tired soldiers! Stir your bones!”

  Chapter Five

  This had been a long, trying day for Major Robert Fitzhugh, and he had kept to his bed much later than was his habit in taking an afternoon nap. Shortly after 4:00 he had been wakened by the return of Peebles’s detachment and had thought about getting up. But then he’d fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep. Now wakening to see the oncoming night deepening the grayish light at his window, he lay quietly, his breathing purposely even and shallow so as not to bring on a fit of coughing.

  From time to time he could hear Mary’s light step passing between the kitchen and main room of the cabin, and for some minutes his thoughts were wholly upon her in a reflective way that was tender and deeply satisfying. Mary had strangely become the core of almost everything he found pleasant in life lately. Weeks ago he had been both surprised and pleased at finding that Phil had chosen such a charming woman. Her arrival had quieted some rather vague misgivings in him, and he had concluded that it was an error in judgment to have remembered Phil as an unpredictable youth who was something of a weakling. Their six-year separation had quite evidently worked its change, had turned his son into a man he found himself extremely proud of. Mary, plus the circumstances surrounding Phil’s death, were good evidence that he had a right to be proud of him.