Ward stopped by. “You all right, son?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Boy, I’m gonna ride back a ways, see if I can see anything of the Thompsons. If they got back to the road they’ll need help.”
Tom Trevallion looked up. “And if they didn’t?”
“Their funeral. I can’t go killin’ a good horse an’ maybe myself to find ’em. They were warned, but he wouldn’t listen.”
He turned his horse, then stopped. “Tom? If I shouldn’t make it back, you take charge. You take them on to California.”
“Me?”
“You. You’re the steadiest man on the train, and folks listen to you. You just use your own good sense and take them on in.” He chuckled without humor. “But don’t count me out. I aim to come back.”
He walked his horse off into the night. Much later, a long way off, they heard him calling. They heard no answer.
It was daybreak before he returned, walking and leading his horse. “Get ’em moving, Tom,” he said, his voice husky with weariness, “get ’em moving or we’ll lose some more.”
“You didn’t find them?”
“No, only their tracks, and them almost wiped out by drifting dust.” He accepted the coffee Val handed him. “You see the mirage is always ahead of you. You never catch up. Toward the end…as far as I went, their wagon wheels were cutting deep, oxen were making hard work of it. They’ll mire down in the playa, an’—”
“Playa?”
“Dry lake. Only it ain’t really dry. The crust breaks through, and it’s muck, bad as quicksand. Once you get in there, it would take two or three fresh teams to haul a wagon out. They ain’t going to get out no way.”
“What can they do?”
“Mount their oxen an’ try to walk out. Can’t carry much water, and he didn’t have much hay. If he’s smart, he’ll start back. Trouble is, he ain’t smart, or he’d have listened and not gone off like that.”
“Maybe if we got a bunch together—”
“Nothing doing. I’ll not stand for it. He took this on hisself, and I’m not going to lose good men trying to save a damn’ fool. It’s tough on his family, but the men who’d go after him have families, too.”
Wearily, Ward got to his feet, staggering a little. “It’s up to them now. If they get back to the trail, they may catch a ride with somebody. Trouble is, Thompson had gear in that wagon he set store by. I don’t think he’ll leave it. He’ll keep fighting to get it out until there’s no more time.
“I give him two days if he tried to get out, and in two days he can make it afoot. If he stays there struggling to get that wagon out, he won’t last that long.”
Tom Trevallion walked along the line of wagons stirring people to move. With a jolt and a rumble they started again.
Wagon after wagon started, and at last Hiram Ward came up, leading his horse. The wind began to blow, irritating, fitful gusts that filled the eyes and ears with gray-white alkali dust that made the eyes smart and the lips crack. Time and again the oxen stopped; after a few minutes of rest, they started on again. Only a few wisps of hay were left, and almost no water. The slosh of it in the kegs was an agonizing sound.
Val walked, urging the oxen when he could, his throat sore from dryness and dust. His father, walking ahead of him, stumbled and fell. Slowly, heavily, he got to his feet.
The wagon ahead of them had stopped, and one of its oxen was down. With Tom Trevallion’s help the ox was unyoked and left to lie. A few minutes later they passed the lead wagon, circling around it as it stood in the trail.
“Trevallion? Can you take some of my gear? I can’t leave it here. It’s all I’ve got. It’s my clothes, my tools…I need ’em.”
“Make packs,” Ward advised, “put ’em on your oxen. Just let the wagon set. No use to overload another wagon and do him in, too.”
Beside the trail some books lay in the sand, a six-volume set of Rollin’s Ancient History. Just beyond it there was a rocking chair, an old trunk, all left behind by overloaded wagons.
All the night through they had been seeing the stark white bones of long-dead animals as well as others, not long dead, but stripped by buzzard and coyote until only bones remained.
They stopped again in the gray hours of the morning. His father dipped out enough water for coffee and took the rest to the oxen. There was less than a half-hatful for each.
“How far?”
Ward shrugged. “Ten mile, maybe more. They’ll smell water about midmorning, and you’ll have to hold ’em, if you can. They’ll stampede for it.”
Parkins, now driving the wagon ahead of them, shook his head. “They haven’t strength enough, Hiram. If my stock tries to run, they’ll fall down.”
“When they smell water, it gives them strength. You mark my words. If they start to run, just pile in the wagon and hang on!”
Red-eyed with weariness, their faces, their hair, and their clothing gray with dust, they started on. Now each step was an ordeal, each step a victory. Twice Val fell, and each time he crawled to his feet in time to avoid being walked over by the following team.
From beside the wagon, he looked back. The once long train of wagons was pitifully short now. Where had they all gone? How many had dropped off during the night that he had not even seen?
Midmorning came and passed, and still the oxen plodded steadily, hypnotically onward, heads low, leaning dumbly into their yokes.
All about them was gray desolation littered with dead animals, parched and shriveled hides clinging to stark white bones, broken wagons, blankets, tools, odd bits of furniture, and the stuff of people’s lives now abandoned.
Suddenly there was a sharp gust of wind, a brief spatter of rain that vanished as soon as it came, and then the wind….
Val had only time to see a vast billowing cloud, black and ugly, rolling down upon them, and then it hit. Sharp particles of sand stung his face. He glimpsed his father struggling to pull his kerchief up over his mouth and nose, and he did likewise. In the midst of it, he heard a weird sound, a low moan from the nearest ox, a moan that swept through them, and all back down the line. Their pace quickened, suddenly they began to trot. He lunged for the tailgate of the wagon and pulled himself over it, and then they were running.
Rolling, rumbling, bouncing off occasional rocks. He clung to the wagon-bow and prayed the wagon would not break up. Around him other wagons were rumbling and bouncing, banging into each other. Dust filled the wagon, choking dust that had him coughing and gagging. Everything inside the wagon was thrown together. The shotgun fell into the bedding, and the stove door slammed open, and it was with difficulty he got it closed, while ashes spilled over everything. Fortunately the stove had been for days unused, so no fire remained.
From the right Val heard a splintering crash and a scream of pain, and he caught one wild, fleeting glimpse out of the back of the wagon of another, turned on its side, wheels spinning, the oxen gone.
They raced on, and he clung to the wagon in an agony of fear. Would it never stop? Would it never end? Where was pa?
Suddenly, it did stop. Val felt a delicious coolness coming into the wagon, and crawling to the back, he peered out. The oxen were knee-deep in water, their heads plunged into it. Slipping over the tailgate, he crouched down into the water himself, scooping great handfuls into his mouth, throwing it over him, dipping his head into it.
To left and right were other wagons. A few yards away Dottie Parkins stood in the water, her dress sopping, clinging to her figure in every shocking detail. Amazed, he stared at her, and seeing him, she laughed, smoothing the dress over her breasts. Val turned his head quickly away and she laughed again. Dottie Parkins was sixteen, and he was three, almost four years younger. She had always seemed serene, quiet, and very much the prim young lady.
He got up from the water, and, rescuing his ox-goad from the wag
on, he went around to the lead team to get them out of the water.
His father was nowhere around.
He heard a sharp gasp from Dottie Parkins and looked around to see a rider had pulled up on the bank of the river and was staring at her.
“Got quite a figger there, missy,” the rider said.
“It’s none of your business!” she flared.
Val reached into the back of his wagon and handed her a blanket which she hastily wrapped around herself.
The man looked from her to Val, and Val felt a queer, sharp pang of recognition.
He knew him! One of the men who attacked and killed his mother!
Turning, Val lunged at the wagon and grabbed for the shotgun. It came free of the wagon and he turned with it in his hands. Seeing it, the man touched a spur to his horse and was gone.
Dottie stared at him, her eyes wide. “Why! Why, you were going to fight for me!” she said. “Well, I never! Val Trevallion, I never thought—Why, you were wonderful! Just wonderful!”
Embarrassed, he put the shotgun back into the wagon, unwilling to spoil her appreciation by telling her who the man was and why he acted as he had.
Parkins came splashing around his wagon and looked at them. Dottie splashed over to him and began telling what had happened.
Val’s father suddenly loomed on the riverbank. “I’ll be damned!” Parkins shouted. “You’ve got a spunky lad there, Tom! A spunky lad! He’d have fought for my daughter.”
Later when they were alone, Val said, “Pa, she took it wrong. I went for the shotgun because that man was one of those who killed mother.”
“What? What kind of horse was he riding? What did he look like?”
“A medium-tall man, dark, thin, straggly beard. He was riding a chestnut with three white stockings and a blaze face.”
They got the wagon out of the water and turned the cattle loose on a meadow near the stream. Other cattle and some horses were there.
“Son, you keep an eye on the wagon and the stock. There’s a trading post over there. I shall ride over.”
“Pa? Don’t tell her about him, that man, I mean. Don’t tell Parkins or Dottie. She thinks I done…did it for her.”
His father nodded, then walked his horse away.
Hours later he returned, undressed, and went to bathe in the river. When he came back Val asked, “Did you find him?”
“No. He rode out before I got there, but they know him. His name is Skinner. The man at the trading post says he is a hard character.”
Tom Trevallion went about fixing a meal, and Hiram Ward joined them, bringing a chunk of fresh meat. “Mind company?”
“No.”
After a bit Ward asked, “That feller you run off? Did you know him?”
“I know his face. I remembered him. He was one of those who killed my mother.”
Ward looked across the fire at Tom. “They told me over at Spafford’s that you were askin’ after him. You be careful, Tom, that’s a mighty mean man and he runs with a bad outfit. If he gets an idea you’re hunting him, he’ll kill you.”
“He will have to shoot first, then.”
“Tom, you don’t understand. Skinner will guess it was the boy who told you, so he’ll kill the boy, too. And I believe he knows who you are. He was down at the post asking folks from the train who you were, if you were married. Somebody told him your wife had been murdered back in Missouri.”
“So he knows, then?”
“He knows.”
CHAPTER 4
Tom Trevallion moved his wagon higher up the river and away from Spafford’s. Hiram Ward came to him on the last day. “You stayin’, Tom?”
“I am.”
“You’re wiser than them, but I’m the guide, and I have to take them through, somehow.” He paused, lighting his pipe. “Keep an eye out, you and the boy. That’s a bad outfit.”
“All right.”
“Ever kill a man, Tom?”
“No.”
“With their kind, you kill. Don’t talk, don’t tell them what you think of them, just kill. They understand nothing else. They’re worse than wolves, Tom. You can bet time is holding a rope noosed just for them. Don’t go hunting them, Tom.”
They watched the wagons go. Val felt a pang as of something lost. He knew few of them well, but for months now they had been together. The wagons slowly rumbled past, and only a few waved. Their eyes were on the trail, their hearts and heads were in the magic land across the mountains.
“It will be cold this winter,” his father said, “and we must gather wood. There’s a deserted cabin here where we can stay the winter through, and when the snows melt, we will cross over.”
They cleaned out the old cabin, and his father repaired the roof. Val gathered wood along the slope; there were many fallen trees and branches, great slabs of bark, enough wood for many winters, just lying about. He stacked it against the house to help keep out the cold and where it would be close to hand when needed.
“No need to worry about snakes,” Ward had told him. “Not in this cold weather. First sign of frost they hole up for the winter in caves and the like. But there’s bears…keep an eye out.”
He saw no bears, but he did see tracks. His father killed a deer the second day they were there, an easy shot, not thirty yards away.
Val was up on the slope when the men came. His father was near the wagon and heard them coming and he reached in the back for the shotgun.
The mountain air was clear and Val could hear it all.
“Is that the wagon?”
“Same one, painted just that shade of blue. It’s them, all right.”
“But how could he know? He wasn’t there!”
“He knows; it was that kid told him. We didn’t see the kid, but he must have been there.”
They rounded the rocks and trees within sight of his father.
One of them was carrying a rifle, another had drawn a six-shooter, and Tom Trevallion lifted his shotgun and blew a man out of the saddle. His second shot killed the man with the pistol, and he dropped the shotgun and reached for the six-shooter, and Val saw his father’s body jerk with the impact of the bullets. He went to his knees, got the pistol out and fired again and again, some of the shots going wild as he was himself hit.
As suddenly as the shooting began it was over, and in the silence they heard the rattle of approaching hoofs. Somebody swore, and another said, “Let’s get out of here!”
They wheeled their horses, and Val got up from where he had been hiding. Rushing down he grabbed up his father’s pistol and fired just as they vanished into the brush.
From the direction of the Carson, a party of horsemen came rushing up. A lean, bearded man swung his horse around and looked at Val, then at his father.
“Who did it, boy?”
Val told them, then ran to his father. Dropping to his knees beside him, he stared down, shocked and sick. His father’s skull and shirt were bloody. “Val…Val, I…” Then, more softly, he whispered, “Be a good boy, your mother—” His voice trailed away, and he was gone.
The bearded man put a hand on his shoulder. “Your pa was a good man, son. He died game.”
They buried his father there, on a low knoll under the trees, and Val carved the marker himself, a slab of sandstone on which he laboriously chipped out the words with a hammer and chisel.
He lived on in the cabin all that winter. Spafford let him clean up around the store for twenty-five cents a week. With only one mouth to feed, there was enough food to last, and they had already cut most of the wood needed. He had warm blankets, a rifle, a shotgun, and a pistol. Later, walking up the trail the murderers had taken when they fled, he found a second pistol. The name A.X. Elder was carved on the butt; evidently the pistol had been dropped in flight, perhaps by a wounded man.
During the winter he went through what his parents had left, their clothing, their small chest of keepsakes, some old letters. Among his mother’s things he found five gold coins, hidden away against some emergency. He hid them again, and when spring came, he yoked up the oxen and took the wagon over the mountains to California with the first wagon train that went through. He was thirteen then, already man-grown and strong for his years.
In Sacramento he sold the oxen and the wagon but kept the mare, and the firearms. The pistol with the name on the butt he packed away. He now knew two names, Skinner and A.X. Elder.
That summer he tended cattle, helped dig an irrigation ditch, and built a flume. In the fall he helped construct a log barn and cut and squared timber for a cabin.
A stoop-shouldered, lantern-jawed man from Missouri squared timbers with a broadax right beside him. He was a talker, a loose-tongued man who talked sunup to last light, with many a frontier story of hunting, fighting, rafting on the rivers.
Toward sundown one day he said, “Pirates! Boy, they was on the river them days! Steal the hat off your head! Mostly they laid in wait for rafters or boaters, come aboard in the night, murder folks and steal what all they had!
“My ma, she was a God-fearing woman. Raised us right. She was a Methodist. Swore by that there John Wesley, and never a Sunday but we’d go to the preaching. I never paid much mind, but it was a time to see the gals whose folks brought them to the preaching. We’d make eyes at one another, and one time I got to hold hands with that Sawyer girl, right in church, too!
“Had me a fight over her, knuckle-an’-skull with another boy, but then Obie come along, an’—”
“Who?”
“Obie, Obie Skinner. Him who lived over nigh Bald Knob. He—”
“Tell me about him.”
“Obie? He was no-account. Year or two younger than me, but mean as all get-out right then. I mean he was a knowed boy, stealin’ an’ all that. I was winnin’ that fight, but Obie he come along and hit that other boy with a club. It wa’n’t fair. I’d of whupped him anyway, but Obie he come from my fork of the crick, and he just fetched that boy a clout.
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