They started on, holding to what cover the trail offered. They rode with caution now, their seeking eyes uneasy upon the slope. It was one thing to be following a group they expected to ambush or capture when the time was right; quite another to have one or more of that group lying up there in the rocks watching for them with a rifle.
Hoffman’s horse was lagging. Hoffman had no stomach for this. He had never fancied himself a fighting man, although he had, like most western men, had a few brushes with Indians. There was nothing about his memory of James Brionne that gave him any feeling of security.
They were strung out single file. They could see what seemed to be a zigzag trail toward the top of the pass.
The sign bothered Cotton. Why would a man do a thing like that? Why take time to stop and write that notice? It made no kind of sense.
The thought nagged at him and worried him. He himself would never have done such a thing, and it disturbed him that Brionne had…there must be something behind it.
He glanced up at the cliffs. There were plenty of places up there where a man might hide, and a good man with a rifle would be hard to get at.
But no shot came. The trail grew steeper, and somewhat more narrow. Now they could not see what was above them, but in front of them the trail dropped steeply as they dipped into a hollow. Off to their right the slope fell away, too abruptly for a man to negotiate on a horse.
*
ONLY TWO MILES further along, Miranda Loften had pulled up short. The landmarks given her by Rody Brennan, who had them from Ed Shaw, had failed her for the first time.
Until now they had been easy to find…obvious in a country of many lakes, many peaks, many spots that could be used to indicate a route. But the canyons that cut through the plateau had restricted the possible ways they could go.
Mowry came up beside her while James Brionne turned his horse to watch down the mountain behind them. From where they sat their view covered a wide stretch of open country, but on the gray, white streaked slope below, clear to the edge of the trees, nothing moved. Of course, there were places along the trail that were hidden from view. He considered the situation, and liked none of it.
This delay would allow the Allards to gain ground, and he was not yet ready to make a stand. First, he wanted to get Miranda and Mat into a safe place where they would be out of range of any gunfire.
The mine had to be close by, if there was a mine. He was quite sure that, given time, he could find it. In the first place, Shaw’s directions had been explicit. Without them, it was unlikely the mine could be found. And it would be like Shaw to be explicit in somehow marking the mine.
Brionne suddenly thought he saw, far below on the slope, something stir, then immediately vanish.
“Major,” Mowry said just then, “Miss Loften’s run out of trail. We got to have time to look around.”
“There’s a lake just below the pass,” Miranda said, “a small lake with some rock walls on its shore line. There are springs flowing down one of those walls. The springs make quite a bit of mist, falling as they do. There’s a place in there to camp.”
They moved on, Mowry in the lead, and Miranda fell back near Mat. The girl certainly could ride, Mowry thought, and she had not complained even once at what had been a rough, grinding trip.
Brionne let them ride ahead, then noticed something on the rock wall alongside the trail that set him smiling.
A fallen log had wedged itself so that it lay crossways, held in place only by a small rock. Behind and above the log was a great pile of debris of broken rock and slabs, a pile amounting to several tons. Working with care, Brionne took a dead limb from one of the stunted trees and placed it across the trail by the log in such a way that if it was lifted the log would shift and the whole mass would come toppling down. It took only a few minutes, and then he rode on after the others.
The dip in the trail had taken them back into the timber, but now the trail began to leave the trees behind. Twice Brionne stopped to prepare possible traps.
His first one, using the rock slide, could kill a man if he tried to move the tree limb without looking the situation over. It could even kill the whole lot of them. The other “traps” were merely tricks to slow up the pursuit and make the pursuers more wary.
When they reached the lake they found that it was closed in between two rocky cliffs. The air was damp with mist from the springs, but there was a ready and easy water supply for themselves and their horses.
At a corner of the rocks Brionne found the perfect hideout, a small glade unapproachable from above and offering only one approach on the level. This space was littered with boulders, too small to afford hiding places, but too big to charge through on horseback. There was a good field of fire, and excellent cover.
Behind the glade a narrow crack in the rock wall gave access to a sand-floored shelter under the rock wall that could have stabled twenty horses. There was access, too, to the springs by a narrow footpath, and there seemed to be a vague trail up through the rocks toward the pass.
They saw the remains of old campfires, some where the charcoal was worn smooth by time; but one fire must have burned only a few weeks or at most a couple of months before.
Stripping the riding saddles and pack saddles from the horses, they turned them out on the sand-floored semicavern and let them find their way to the lake for water. Meanwhile, Brionne moved a few rocks near the opening, building the wall higher, and closing a few gaps.
He was cool and methodical now. Their trouble was upon them, and there was no avoiding it, nor did he wish to. This was the conclusion he had expected would come, and for which he had hoped.
“Mat, you stay close to Miranda,” he said to his son. He had called her by her first name without even realizing it. She looked at him quickly, but his mind was on other things. “Stay with her,” he repeated, “and both of you keep back under the overhang and out of sight.”
Miranda Loften had opened the packs and was getting out some food. Mowry had put wood together for a fire, but there was little fuel. Some of the wood he used had been carried here by earlier travelers, and some he picked up along the slope where the forest played out.
“I think your mine is somewhere close,” Brionne said to Miranda, “and I think Ed Shaw left some sort of a marker for Rody Brennan. Evidently he feared something might happen…and to a man traveling alone in this kind of country almost any accident could prove fatal. And he was all alone…miles from any help.”
“Likely he never expected any help,” Mowry said. “Like us.”
Brionne went out to the rocks and Miranda brought him his coffee there and a sandwich made of a chunk of beef and the last of their bread. She lingered beside him as he ate, watching the trail.
“What was she like?” she asked. “Your wife, I mean.”
His eyes swept the country before them, searching every nook and cranny with the practiced eye of the skilled observer. Passing quickly here, lingering there, nothing almost unconsciously every change of color and shade, every movement, every stir of dust.
“She was tall, clean-limbed—an aristocrat in the best sense of the word. She had humor and she had style. Before that night”—he paused a moment—“before the night she was killed, or killed herself, she had never faced any real emergency, but her breed always knew how to act at such a time.
“Those men were forcing their way into her home, and she had no intention of permitting it. She told her son where to hide, and then she waited for them.
“The fire destroyed the house, but the least damage was done right where she was. Obviously she had waited in a chair on the landing for them. It gave her the best view of the front hall.
“Evidently she got one of them. We found an exploded shell in the shotgun. And then as they rushed her she must have deliberately shot herself.”
“She was very brave,” Miranda said quietly.
“Yes, she was. But she would not have considered it bravery. It was simply what had to be done. O
ne did not permit strangers to come bursting into one’s home that way. One did not submit to violence to oneself or to one’s home.
“And as I said, she had style. She had wit, humor, and brains.”
“She would be hard to follow,” Miranda said.
“No one should ever ‘follow’ anyone else; no one takes the place of another, and in the best sense, no one ever does. Each one blazes his or her own trail.”
They were silent, and Brionne watched below. There were no movement, but he had not expected there would be. The Allards would be doing their own surmising, and would expect him to be somewhere up on the slope, waiting. They were cautious men, dangerous fighters, and they would use their heads now.
Oddly enough, he felt neither apprehension, nor the tense suspense of waiting. Inwardly a great stillness filled him, a quietness such as he had not known in a long time. He was empty of feeling in that moment—he was simply waiting for what he knew must come.
He had no preconceived plan, for he had no idea of how or when they might attack. His mind was open, his senses were exposed. He had no feeling—he was only seeing, hearing…he was ready.
Miranda Loften sat near him, and he was conscious that he liked her being there. She did not speak, and he was glad of her silence. She was a sensitive person, aware of feelings; her sensitiveness went outward, a subtle awareness of the feelings of others.
The cool wind from over the pass touched them, and she shivered. After a long time she said, “What is going to happen?”
“There will be fighting,” he answered, “and some men will die.”
“Doesn’t that depress you?”
“No. We are naked and alone here in the West. We have no law to protect us—only scattered and limited governments in the towns or the territories. The strong have come here because it is a place for the strong; but all of the strong are not good men, and if we are to survive, if we are to become a land of homes and people, evil men must not be allowed to persist in their evil.
“Such men as the Allards, or whatever their name is, are a blight upon the land. They are like mad dogs, or like weasels. Their instinct is to do violence, to kill. Some of the bad men will change, they will learn, they will grow up with the country. Not such men as these. These will end, snarling and biting, tearing even at each other if there is no one else.”
Dutton Mowry walked out to join them. “Mat’s with the horses,” he said. His eyes swept the mountainside. “You got any ideas, Major?”
“No. I’m just ready. The only thing I do not expect is a frontal attack. They might come tonight, but I rather think it will be tomorrow, just before daylight.”
“Is it true that the Allards rode with Bloody Bill Anderson?” Mowry inquired.
“Yes. Later they organized their own outfit. They were too bloody and undisciplined even for him.”
Brionne returned to the fire with Miranda and Mowry stayed on watch. Mat was curled up on a blanket near the fire, fast asleep. “He’s had a rough time,” Brionne said, “but he’s coming through in fine shape. You know, you are the first person he’s warmed up to since…since he lost his mother.”
“He’s a lovable boy.”
She glanced around at the lake and the cliffs. The surroundings were growing somber with the changing hours. “I wish I could be here when there was no trouble,” Miranda said. “I love it here.”
He nodded. The cliffs had changed in appearance, and rose now from the steel of the gray water in the rusted iron of their sheer rock. The evening was still, and already here the night was coming, although the sky above was still clear and blue, only traced by faint streaks of rose left from the declining sun.
“One lives with trouble,” Brionne said. “There is no need to think about a time without it, for it is always here. A man grows strong by standing against the wind, and eternal peace would bring no happiness. Man needs strife of some kind, something to struggle against. Although that struggle need not be with other men.”
But he was feeling strangely at peace in this place, talking with this girl, and it was not the right way to feel at this moment. At any other time he would have welcomed this feeling, but now he needed that sense of awareness that he had been feeling earlier. He needed it because he knew only too well the danger they faced.
These men who were their enemies were degenerate, evil. He had known, long before it became his job to hunt down and capture the man who called himself Dave Allard, the kind of men these were. Outlaws and thieves before the war, they had taken advantage of the protective coloration it provided to release all their lust for rapine, killing, and destruction.
There was something twisted and malformed about them—perhaps nothing that was outwardly visible, but something that lurked in their minds. Yet they were woodsmen—they were men at home in the wilderness, men who knew its ways and how to use those ways. They were wily and cunning, and they were not cowards in the physical sense.
Of Cotton Allard he had heard much. The man’s physical reactions were amazing, as was his muscular strength. Tuley was slower to act, but he was physically strong, and as easy on his feet as a big cat. All this Brionne had read in the record or had been told by those who knew them. During the search for Dave, and later the quest for the ones who had burned his home, he had made many inquiries, piecing the story together, bit by bit.
Now, from this moment on, it would be a fight for survival, a bitter, desperate fight in which the only way to live was to kill.
“Why did you come here?” Miranda asked suddenly.
“The boy and I were headed south, actually. We wanted a wild place where we had to keep busy every moment to live. I wanted that for both of us. We needed it to recover mentally from what had happened, and then we needed the sky, the high mountains, the good air.
“But then I thought about you. It is not easy to be alone, and to be a woman with no home, no money. I know something of the mountains and I thought I might help, so we came over here into the Uintahs.”
Mowry came down from the rocks. “Brionne? You’d better come up here. I think we’re in trouble.”
Brionne looked at Miranda. “Have you got a pistol?”
“Yes.”
“Keep it with you…and remember, these men are not to be trusted, not for a moment, no matter what they say, or how they act.”
She watched him walk away, a tall, straight, easy-moving man, the rifle in his hand almost an extension of himself.
Then she sat down close to Mat, and waited.
Chapter 11
*
DUTTON MOWRY WAS crouched among the scattered boulders. Only the sky above held some light; below all was darkness, and for the moment, silence.
“There ain’t no way to keep watch,” Mowry whispered, “and we daren’t move about much up here or we’ll sky-line ourselves. They’ll be comin’ at us out of the dark.”
It was true, of course, Brionne reflected, but they dared not pull back, for that would leave their enemies in possession of the boulders. From the shelter of the rocks they could fire upon anyone near the lake shore.
“Go get some sleep,” he suggested. “You’ll be needing it.”
When Mowry had moved back, Brionne deliberately turned his back on the valley, trusting to his ears. He studied the lay of the lake, and the pass, which was undoubtedly guarded by now, as was any route they might take that would enable them to get away.
The lake had received the melting snows, and its entire basin was filled. Swimming in its water was out of the question, for it was icy cold.
The more he considered the situation the more he resented it. He had come to this region to live quietly with his son. Mowry had come here to help Miranda discover her mine. They had been followed to this place by the Allard outfit, who had every intention of wiping them out.
James Brionne had never been much inclined to run. His theory of fighting had always been to attack. If you had twenty men, ten men, one man…attack. There was always a way.
And the time was now…or very soon.
He wanted the Allards, so why wait for them to come to him? Why not carry the fight to them instead? The attacker has one advantage—he can choose the time for the fight.
No sound came from below. The Allards, secure in the knowledge that Brionne and his party were trapped, were undoubtedly sleeping.
“All right,” Brionne told himself, “let them sleep for now.”
When an hour had gone by, he went down to the camp and woke Mowry. Briefly, he explained what he intended to do.
Dutton Mowry stared at him, and spat. “Brionne, you’re a damn fool. You’ll get killed sure as shootin’.”
“I don’t think so. Anyway, I have never liked to let the other man move first.”
“It’s your skin.”
“I’ll see you later.”
Brionne did not walk toward the rocks, but toward the cliff itself; then in the deeper shadows he went quickly along until he reached the end of the cliff. The mountain fell away before him, and somewhere down there were the Allards.
He was wearing his moccasins, and he moved like a ghost, careful to put each foot down with care, trying to avoid loose rocks, easing every movement. He knew well how sound can carry on such a night, in such clear air.
He knew, too, the chance he was taking, but he believed that the very unexpectedness of it might make it work. If they waited for Cotton Allard to make the first move, they would almost certainly be caught.
When he had gone fifty yards down the slope, he squatted among the rocks and listened.
He heard nothing…simply nothing at all.
After a few minutes he worked his way down through the rocks. Now he could smell the smoke of a fire; but creeping and crawling as he must do, he took at least fifteen or twenty minutes to get to it.
It was in a small hollow among the rocks, right at the edge of the trees. It was a dying fire, gray ashes with a few smoldering coals and partly burned sticks.
The Allards were gone!
Crouching, rifle in hand, he lowered one knee to the ground and considered. They had moved out, and by this time they were in a position to attack the camp and seize whoever was there. To go charging up there would only be to get himself killed, and as he had heard no shooting, it was likely they had not yet begun an attack.
Novel 1968 - Brionne (v5.0) Page 9