Novel 1968 - Brionne (v5.0)

by Louis L'Amour

  “He talked the trainman into carryin’ him on past Corinne. They dropped him there, and him an’ the kid took off south.”

  “Salt Lake?”

  “I reckon not. He was packed for travel. I figure he was headed into the Uintahs.”

  “That’s our country. All right, boys, we’ve got him. We’ll light out, come daybreak.”

  They walked out of the alley into the street, and for a moment Pat saw them clearly. All three were strangers, but he had seen at least one of them before. He was a big man with a wide, deep chest and yellow-white hair. He had a flat, dangerous-looking face, and Pat Brady had seen him around several times. He was the man they called Cotton.

  At the stable all was quiet. The hostler said no newcomers had come into town, nobody had left. Dutton Mowry? He hadn’t seen him.

  Pat drifted down the street, looking into several saloons. At last, almost at the end of the street, he saw the faint glow of a cigarette, and walked toward it. His guess was right.

  Mowry was leaning against the awning post, and he spoke around his cigarette. “Howdy, Pat. Late for you, ain’t it?”

  Briefly, Pat Brady outlined Miranda Loften’s proposal. Mowry listened, offering no comment. Finally he said, “You say Rody Brennan never had any silver?”

  “Not that I know of. How could he? He was around all the time. I mean, he was a man who talked a lot, and he’d have talked about that. Anyway, he was busy every day. He never went off to do any prospecting.”

  “Drivin’ stage like that he must’ve knowed a lot of folks.”

  “I suppose he did.”

  “Nice feller, they say. I’ve heard talk about Rody Brennan. Folks said he was a free-handed man.”

  “Give you the shirt off his back,” Pat said. “Never asked nothing of nobody, but if you were in trouble, Rody was the man to go to.”

  “An’ this girl says he never lied to her?”

  “That’s what she said.…Will you help her?”

  Mowry tossed his cigarette into the dust. He stood for a moment watching the dying glow. “No,” he said finally.

  “Well,” Pat said, “I tried.” He turned to go, then paused. “Brionne, now. Was he a friend of yours?”

  “A good man.…Why?”

  Brady repeated the conversation he had heard. Mowry listened, lighting another smoke. “Called him Cotton, you say? A big feller?”

  “That’s right.”

  Mowry smoked in silence. “You don’t need to worry none. I figure that Brionne feller is a pretty handy man. I mean, if a body was figuring on picking a fight, he’d better not choose him. I think not.”

  Pat Brady turned away. “Good night, Dut. I’m off to bed.”

  “Pat?”

  Brady stopped.

  “You tell that lady I’ll go with her. You tell her that if Rody Brennan had a mine, we’ll find it.”

  Pat Brady walked away down the street, and Dutton Mowry finished his cigarette. Maybe he was being a damn fool. Maybe he was just getting himself into a lot of grief, playing shepherd to a tenderfoot girl in wild country, but he had a hunch, and he was a man who played his hunches. Besides, when you came right down to it she seemed level-headed. There was something substantial about that girl, something that made you think she was one to ride the river…and they didn’t come too often.

  “Dut,” he said to himself, “you’ve opened your big mouth and bought yourself a packet of trouble.”

  Still, he did not feel depressed. He was pleased with the decision he had made, although he was not quite sure why. He was playing a wild-haired hunch that just might pay off, and it was based on two little threads of information that had come to him in the past few days. Two threads that might not tie in at all, but if they did—and his hunch was that they would—he would be there when all Hell broke loose.

  “Dut,” he repeated, “you’ve bought trouble, but when didn’t you have trouble? And when did you fight shy of it?”

  One thing remained. Major James Brionne had better watch his back.

  Chapter 7

  THE STREAM CHUCKLED over the stones, sunlight glancing from the water. Downstream a few feet the water rippled quietly about a dead branch that hung suspended in the clear water.

  Mat Brionne sat on the bank under a dappling of shadow from the leaves overhead. He was fishing, but not very seriously. He was just sitting, eyes half closed, suspended in time, and he was happy. He was deeply, richly content.

  There was the sound of the water and the sound of the wind in the trees, a far-off sound like that of a distant train rushing over the rails. Across the stream, only a few feet away, two squirrels were playing among the leaves, making soft, scurrying sounds.

  Not more than thirty yards away through the trees, Mat could hear his father as he worked around the camp. And sometimes he could hear him singing as he worked.

  It was three weeks since they had left Promontory, and they were in the foothills of the Uintahs. Brionne had planned to go further south, but had changed his mind suddenly and headed deeper into the mountains. Mat studied about that.

  His father had long wished to come back to a certain area of Utah, so why had he suddenly changed his mind? Not that Mat minded one little bit. He had never seen country more beautiful than this, and he liked loafing along day after day. But it seemed to him that his father was acting strangely.

  The way they moved, for example. Just when they had found a good camp, they would move, all of a sudden, and without warning. And each move took them deeper into the wilderness. Mat speculated about it, for usually the moves came after one of his pa’s night-wandering spells.

  James Brionne would make camp, fix supper, talk a bit, and then get Mat settled in his bed. After that he would say, “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” and he would walk off into the night.

  He was never gone long. He would suddenly reappear, look around to see that all was well—Mat usually pretended to be asleep—and then he would go off again. And each time he went armed.

  Sometimes he would go out in the first light of dawn, and at those times he would find some place with a view, and study the country around.

  It had started about a week after leaving Promontory, when they made camp one night with three prospectors. They had come drifting in out of the night, calling out to the campfire.

  “That’s the proper way,” Brionne explained to Mat. “Never approach a man’s campfire without announcing yourself. You might get shot.”

  Mat liked the three men at once. One of them was a youngish fellow with sandy hair, freckles, and a big Adam’s apple, and he was full of jokes and easy humor. The others were older, and they too were filled with stories, and they were quick to work around camp.

  Brionne listened. He had advised Mat about that. “If you listen, you learn. If you learn to really see things and to really listen, half your troubles are over.”

  These men were talking about the country. Mat, who was listening well, and trying hard to pick out the important details instead of just hearing the stories, soon discovered that his father was leading them on by his questions. Brionne was learning about the country, the people he might expect to find, the stories of other people who had wandered there, the Indians, and everything.

  The three men were Paddy O’Leary, Tom Hicks, who was the redhead, and Granville. Granville was the quietest of the three, a tall, slender man who moved easily, and relaxed whenever he sat down.

  O’Leary was the talker. “Shaw was the man,” he said; “nobody knew this country like him. Used to like to camp down in Nine Mile. Said he could read all those inscriptions and pictures on the wall.”

  “I figure he lied,” Hicks commented. “That’s just Injun writing…like a feller does with a pencil when he’s got time on his hands.”

  “Shaw wouldn’t agree with you,” O’Leary insisted. “He spent a lot of time figuring about those pictures. He said one day they’d make his fortune. He had it figured that whilst lots of them were just written for th
e gods, or for hunting charms or the like, some of them had a story to tell. He used to show us a silver armband he’d found.

  “He’d say, ‘Now where do you suppose that there silver came from?’ And he’d tell us how he’d found some small fragments of broken rock in some of the caves or Injun houses along Nine Mile. He’d say that rock didn’t belong there, and he had it figured it was rock that had come from the same ground the silver did, that the Injuns worked the silver out of it. He used to bet he’d someday find that silver mine.”

  Granville was the thoughtful man, and one evening after the subject of Shaw had come up again, he commented, “I think Ed Shaw was right. And I think he found something.”

  Brionne glanced over at him. “Really?”

  Granville smiled, his eyes glinting with a kind of amusement as he looked back at Brionne. “Really,” he repeated, and then he added, “One day he just up and took off. Shaw was a lucky one. He had somebody grubstaking him, and I think he went down to Corinne, got some more supplies, and followed his hunch.”

  “It didn’t get him anywhere, either,” Hicks said dryly. “He’s dead.” And then suddenly he spoke again. “Say, maybe we could trail him to where he went! He’d have a claim staked, but he’s not alive now.”

  James Brionne took a cigar from his pocket.

  “Whatever Shaw had would go to his family, if he had any, and to whoever grubstaked him.”

  “If they could find the silver,” O’Leary agreed. “An’ that ain’t likely.”

  Mat Brionne remembered that night well, because it was since then that their manner of travel had been so strange. Not only had they several times moved suddenly, often after dark, but several times they had changed direction.

  “Always watch your back trail, Mat,” Brionne told him. “Country looks a whole lot different when you are facing the other way. Landmarks that show up very well when you’re going east may not look at all the same when you’re going west.”

  Mat remembered that, but he thought that his father took a lot of time studying his trail, and it was always from some vantage point where he could see a good bit of it. Mat often looked back with him, but he could never see anything special.

  The fact was that James Brionne was quite sure that he was being followed. Mat had guessed right when he decided his father must be looking at something besides landmarks during those long periods of studying his back trail.

  His sudden changes of direction had been for two reasons. First, to see if he was followed, and then, if so, to try to throw them off the trail. By now he was sure of the first, and he felt that he had not slowed them down even by a little. So they were fair country trackers, then. That posed a different sort of problem.

  So tonight he got up before daylight and packed swiftly, and when Mat woke up everything was packed except for his bed. The coffeepot was still on the fire. Until this trip Mat had never been allowed to drink coffee, but there was no milk to be had out here. There was a piece of broiling meat on a stick over the dying coals. He ate that and drank coffee, and then his father watched him mount up.

  They turned away from the camp, rode out on a rocky ledge, and switched around and rode right back along the ledge and into the water. Riding upstream for half a mile, they came out on another such ledge and rode through a thick stand of trees, where the floor of the forest was covered with leaves and where even at midday it was shadowed, as if it were twilight.

  All day they switched back and forth. Once they stopped for a few minutes to let the horses catch their wind after a steep slope, and Brionne broke out some pemmican and gave a good-sized chunk to Mat to chew on as he rode. Not until late afternoon did he pause to let the horses graze.

  There was no chance of watching the back trail now. Most of the travel was in forest, and even the character of the trees was changing. Now, as they climbed higher, the trees were mostly evergreen. Here, too, they ate pemmican. They drank cold water, then mounted up and rode on again.

  Although their change of direction was often due to the character of the ground, they continued to ride uphill. It was long after dark before they made a cold camp behind a clump of aspen. Mat was very tired, and he was almost falling off his horse when Brionne reached for him.

  Brionne prepared Mat’s bed, pulled off his boots and pants, and tucked him in. During all this time his eyes rarely left the horses, but they grazed contentedly, seemingly glad to stop. Not once did they look up or prick their ears.

  Brionne always enjoyed a problem, and he had one now. Ed Shaw had been prowling around the back country for a good many years, and he had spent some time trying to interpret the picture writing, or whatever it was, in Nine Mile Canyon. Suppose there had been a map to the silver mine that had been used by the Indians?

  Maps are of many kinds, and few primitive maps looked like those to which Europeans or Americans were accustomed. In the South Pacific they were sticks with shells tied on them to represent islands, the sticks indicating prevailing winds or ocean currents; but many ancient maps were done in pictures. There was a symbol for running water, there were symbols for peaks…suppose there was a symbol for silver?

  The old man had known this country, and he might have found something. Somebody had been supplying him with cash, and that somebody had apparently been Rody Brennan. Therefore Brennan need not have gone into the mountains at all. Ed Shaw would have worked on Brennan’s grubstake; and he must have brought out some silver that he turned into cash. With Shaw dead, Rody Brennan became the legitimate owner of the mine—if there was one.

  Little by little, James Brionne isolated the few facts he had obtained from the various conversations he had heard. Out of them had come Shaw’s apparent angle of approach to the mountains, and some hint of the time he had taken. Vague as these things were, it was interesting to speculate on the direction he might have followed, and the possible location of the mine.

  After adding a little fuel to the fire, concealed in a small hollow and shielded by the aspen, Brionne took up his rifle and went to a rock that jutted from the side of the mountain. Earlier he had noticed that it would be simple enough to climb up there, and once there, he sat down to survey the country around.

  Looking down, he could see the campfire and the small figure of his son. Looking outward, he could see only endless blackness of forest, the blue-black of the star-studded sky, and the great bulk of the mountain, rising behind him and on his left.

  For a long time he studied the night—not the stars, but the forest blackness. When he caught the gleam, it was out of the corner of his right eye, miles away and much lower down.

  Watching, he saw it again…and again. A campfire. His point of vantage could scarcely have been better. The air was clear, and he was high up. The fire might be ten miles away, but it was probably less.

  Brionne considered the country between, trying to recall how much of a trail he had left behind. He was rising to leave the rock when he glimpsed another light, not quite so far off, and a little higher up the mountain.

  He studied that light through his glasses, but they helped him not at all. The distance was too great, and they merely showed a somewhat larger light, unidentifiable even as a fire. Now who could that be?

  Returning to camp, he arranged his blankets and lay down, clasping his hands behind his head. For a long time he considered his next move, then at last he fell asleep, remembering Anne, as he had seen her last…too long ago.

  *

  THE SECOND LIGHT Brionne had seen was the campfire of Dutton Mowry and Miranda Loften.

  Knowing the way to go, they had moved faster than Brionne. They were not following anyone, and were not expecting anyone to be following them. Mowry was a good man on a trail, and he had chosen good stock for them. They were higher up the mountain than the Allards, and about three miles ahead of them.

  The trail they had followed was an old game trail, used occasionally by Indians. Two days ago, their trail had been the same as that of the Allards, and Mowry had notic
ed the fresh sign, and had taken time to learn the track of each horse. Within a few minutes after coming upon the trail he knew one of the men was Cotton Allard.

  Then the trail, as designated by Miranda, took them farther up the slope. He turned to her now and indicated the rifle she carried.

  “Can you use that?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t ever go anywhere without it. Not in this country. And if I say jump, you jump—don’t ask why. If you take time to ask, it may be too late.”

  “All right.”

  “How much farther is this mine of yours?”

  “It’s up on top…among the lakes. Another three days, I think, if nothing stops us.”

  He considered putting the fire out, but instead he banked it; then he left it and went to his blankets. “Get some sleep,” he said to Miranda. “We’ve got a rough day ahead. We’re going to try to cut three days to two, if we can.”

  At her questioning glance he added, “We ain’t the only ones up here. Brionne is up ahead of us.”

  Startled, she stared at him. “Looking for silver? He can’t be!”

  Mowry shrugged. He looked at her, his eyes amused. “Why not?”

  “I—I just don’t believe it.”

  He chuckled. “I was only funnin’. That is, if he is huntin’ the silver, you must’ve told him more than you thought.”

  She racked her brain. “No…no, I told him nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “He ain’t the on’y one.” Mowry settled into his blankets. “The Allards that are huntin’ him, they’re out here, too.”

  She sat up. “Are you sure?”

  “Uh-huh…and so’s he. If the Allards are smart as they’re supposed to be they won’t foller him any further. They might catch up with him.”

  Chapter 8

  WITH THE FIRST gray light of morning, Brionne squatted beside the small fire, drinking coffee and studying the steepening slope before them.

  There was no trail up it. Here and there were rocky outcroppings; there were clumps of brush, a maze of fallen logs, slides of broken rock and scattered aspen. It all ended at a wall of rock thirty feet high or more. An old fault line, it extended along the face of the mountain for at least half a mile.