The Ferguson Rifle (7 page)

CHAPTER 10
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S
UDDENLY, ONE OF them pushed forward and it was Walks-By-Night. “We ride to meet our friend,” he said.

“I am pleased that you have come. Had there been fighting, you could have shared the coups with me. I would be honored to fight beside the dog soldiers of the Cheyenne.”

They were pleased, although they wanted not to show it. They formed around us as a guard of honor and together we rode toward camp.

Yet a far different camp it was. My friends and their Cheyenne companions had come up with the main body of the Cheyennes for whom they had been looking. The camp was a dozen times larger than before, and there were at least fifty warriors in camp, fine-looking men, all of them.

It was immediately apparent that Walks-By-Night was a considerable personage among them, not a chief, but a warrior, hunter, and orator of prestige.

The horse herd must have numbered several hundred head, tough little mountain ponies most of them. Many were excellent stock, and I found myself appraising them thoughtfully for my own horse was feeling the effects of hard riding on no other food than grass.

Lucinda Falvey kept close beside me and I did not find it distasteful. Brave as she was, these were the first wild Indians she had seen at firsthand and she was obviously nervous.

Davy Shanagan rode out to meet us as we came in, glancing at Lucinda with startled pleasure. “Howdy, ma'am!” he said. “If I were to guess, I'd say you were from the old land itself!”

“And you would be right, sir!” she replied pertly.

We rode to where the others were camped together not far back from a small stream. Degory Kemble looked from Lucinda to me. “Do you have the story yet?” he asked me. “How did a girl like that come to the western plains?”

“And why not? Is there something to be afraid of? If there is, I'm not!” she declared. “Where can an Irish girl not go?”

Beside the fire that night, roasting a small bit of meat over the flames—and a nice flush it brought to her cheeks—she told us her story.

Her father had been a colonel in the Spanish army, a man who had fled his own country as so many had. He was among those brave Irish lads who were called the “wild geese” and who left their island where there was hope of neither land nor advancement, to join the armies of Spain, Italy, France, and Austria. A good number of them had risen to rank, as General Alexander O'Reilly, in Spain, who had been commandant in New Orleans until sent for to return to lead the Spanish armies against Napoleon. He had died on the ship returning, and that had been an end to it, but one of Napoleon's own generals, Macmahon, was another of them, and the bold lad who gave his name to the finest Cognac, Hennessy, was another.

Colonel Patrick Falvey had come to New Orleans with O'Reilly and then had been sent to Mexico.

“What happened there?” Kemble asked.

“My father did well, for he was a brave man, and a leader of men, but he was sent north to put down a fierce tribe who killed a priest and burned a mission church. He did that, too, but in doing it, he saved the life of an old Indian who was being tortured by another officer.

“From this, some difficulties developed, just why I don't know, but the officer wasn't of my father's command and he made much of the fact that my father was Irish.

“The Mexicans loved my father, and not at all this other man, but he had powerful friends. They interceded and demanded the old Indian prisoner be taken from my father and given to the torturer.

“My father had no choice but to obey.” The girl hesitated, quite evidently deciding to conceal something. “Almost immediately my father was ordered north. Several months passed, and suddenly I received a message from my father telling me to come to him, only to find when I arrived that it was not he who sent the message.

“He told me they had brought me to Santa Fe to use me against him. When I told him that could never be, he said that a man who must protect others was less strong than one alone, and they would get at him by threatening me.

“I suggested we escape, and he replied that he was considering just that. He went out that night and returned with Jorge and Lieutenant Conway. He would get horses, he said, and some maps from headquarters. When he returned, we would ride north for the Mandan villages, and then into Canada where we had friends.

“He left then, and Jorge went with him. We waited and waited, but when it was almost daylight, Jorge came running. My father had been killed and with his last words told us to flee … and we did.”

We debated the question among ourselves. Whatever the cause of the trouble, this was no place for Lucinda Falvey, and it was up to us to get her to Canada where she might find friends.

“There's no use you leaving what you planned,” I said. “I'll take her through to the Mandan villages at least, and farther if need be.”

Ulibarri squatted near us. “It's a long way, and there are many Indians,” he said, “but I promised the colonel that I would go, and I will.” He looked around at me. “I was raised by Indians.”

“Hopis?”

“Apaches,” he said, “but I speak much Indio … many tongues. I know the Sioux and the Pawnee and Shoshoni. I am young, but I have traveled.”

“I will ride with you,” Davy said suddenly. “She's an Irish lady, and far from home, and I'm an Irishman.”

“I'm not Irish,” Kemble said, “but I'll ride along.”

“There are furs in the north,” Solomon Talley said, “as well as here. We can trap as we go. The Hudson Bay Company will buy our furs.”

There was no dissenting voice among them, and so the decision was made. Yet that night as I lay staring up at the stars, I considered the question. Obviously it was not the girl alone they sought, but what she knew, or what they believed she knew.

What secret had they attempted to torture from the old Indian? A secret he had told Falvey? Had that secret been passed on to Lucinda? Or to Conway or Ulibarri?

I remembered the few odds and ends from Conway's pockets. Was there a clue among them? I decided I'd have another look at that map.

And when morning came, I thought, I'll have a long talk with Lucinda Falvey.

For her to escape was of course essential, but to be penniless upon the world would not be pleasant for a young and lovely girl. Yes, yes of course she was lovely. That her father was one of the wild geese was obvious, that he might have a family to whom she could return was possible, but not too many of the Irish estates were paying well these days. A bit of smuggling on the side always helped, of course. My own family had tried it, too. There were still some of my blood remaining in Ireland, although only on my mother's side. How well off they were, I did not know.

I could think of nothing that would so arouse feelings as gold, and no doubt somewhere in this affair there was treasure involved. Of course, there was no shortage of treasure tales, and according to marketplace gossip, dozens of mule trains had gone north out of Mexico with treasure belonging to the Aztecs. Some of this was reported to have been hidden in western America, although why anyone should go so far to hide it, I could not guess, for the mountains of Mexico were filled with good hiding places.

There was no need to go more than a day's march from the valley of Mexico to find a thousand places where treasure could be hidden, so why anyone would travel hundreds of miles, risking discovery all the way, was beyond me.

The Aztecs were reported to have come from somewhere in the north, and many were the stories of just where that had been, but they were not a rich people when they began their long trek to the south, nor for a long time after their arrival in the valley of Mexico. It was unlikely that coming into possession of great treasure they would send it all those many miles back to a land they had themselves abandoned. Yet this was a land where gold had been found, and who could guess what might not have been found … and hidden?

So if there was a treasure, and if we could find it now, there might be enough to give Lucinda Falvey the advantages such a girl should have.

The night wind stirred the leaves, down in the Indian encampment quiet had come at last, and my eyes closed. A few spattering drops of rain fell, and half-consciously I felt them, then turned in my sleep and awakened.

The camp was still. Nothing seemed to move. The coals were red, with no tendril of flame remaining. I was awake, and wide awake, listening to I knew not what.

Tonight we had posted no guard, trusting to our Indian friends and their dogs. Lucinda Falvey slept near me, and beyond her, the boy, Jorge Ulibarri. Davy Shanagan lay just beyond the boy, and Degory Kemble on the other side of me.

My hand closed on a pistol butt, and I waited. What had awakened me? Suddenly, I knew. For as if a ghost, I glimpsed the faint outline of a man standing on the very edge of our camp, just beyond Davy Shanagan, and he was looking at Lucinda.

He was a tall man, and I could see his face, which was extraordinarily pale, like the face of a dead man, yet his eyes were black, and he wore a black hat, the brim turned up leaving his features clear and sharp against the night.

He did not see me, for where I lay there was shadow, and if he saw anything of me at all, it was merely a form half outlined in the darkness. He was looking at Lucinda, and he held a knife in his hand. He started to move, then hesitated. He must step past Shanagan as well as the boy, and he did not like it. The slightest wrong move or sound and those around her would awaken, and he would be caught.

He did not like the odds. I could see the hesitation, the debate in his mind. One of them and he might have chanced it, but two he dared not chance, and with both Kemble and myself close by as well.

The dogs had quieted. There was no sound but that brief spatter of rain. For a moment I was tempted to shoot, yet I did not know the stranger, and he might well be a friend, although not for a moment did I believe that.

Who
was he?

He was no man I had ever seen before. Certainly he was not Fernandez or any of his men. He was a stranger, but that he was a man of evil I had no doubt. Nor had I any doubt that he wished to either kill or capture Lucinda.

Gently I eased back the edge of my buffalo robe and thrust out the muzzle of my pistol. Yet even as I did so the tall man turned slightly and I saw his other hand held a pistol. He lifted it and aimed it not at me, but at Lucinda. His eyes were boring into the darkness as if he could actually see me.

“You might kill me”—he spoke very softly—“but I would certainly kill her.”

My pistol still covering him, I stood suddenly to my feet.

But he was gone….

Swiftly I stepped over the others to the edge of the woods, and there was no one there, nor was there any sound. At that moment the rain began to fall harder and I stepped into the woods. There was no one there.

Davy Shanagan was sitting up. “What is it?”

“There was someone here,” I said. “Keep an eye out.”

A swift search of the small patch of woods brought me nothing. Wherever he had gone, he had done so swiftly and with no nonsense about it. Beyond the patch of woods, there was open prairie and there seemed no place where a man could hide.

Skirting the woods, I returned.

“Sure you weren't dreamin' then?” Davy asked.

“He was a tall man, very pale … with black eyes.”

“Maybe it was a ghost you saw,” Davy said. “What man could come to this camp without arousing the dogs? And never a yelp from them, not a yelp. Not from the horses, either.”

Had I been dreaming?

“It was no ghost,” I declared, “and he spoke to me.”

“I heard nothing,” Davy said, “and I'm sure I would have.”

Both of us lay down again, but I slept fitfully from then on, disturbed that any man could approach our camp so easily. When morning came, I scouted around but found no tracks, nor did Davy. I began to doubt my own senses, and when I opened the subject at breakfast with Lucinda, she shook her head.

Yet when I described the man, she turned very pale. “Why! Why, that's what my father looked like!”

“But your father's dead?”

“Of course, he is! At least I was told so, and I believe it. But if it were my father, he would have come into camp. He would have spoken to me.”

“A ghost,” Davy insisted, “you've seen a ghost, man.”

“Bah!” Bob Sandy said roughly. “There's no such thing as ghosts. He had a dream … or a nightmare, if you like. I've had them myself, and often enough. But mine were mostly with Indians in them, and I had a many in the years after my family were killed by those screamin', howlin' redskins.”

“After this,” Talley said, “we'll post a guard, tired though we may be. I want no man, nor ghost either, for that matter, coming into our camp unknown to us.”

Our plans had been made, and now we went among the Cheyennes to trade for extra dried meat, and to make our preparations for the north. We would ride north, skirting the eastern face of the mountains, and once past them we would turn east of the mountains toward the villages.

“We will be coming out on the open plains in the winter,” Kemble said. “It's asking for trouble unless we've more luck than we deserve.”

“I can take them alone,” I said.

Isaac Heath turned on me. “Are you more gallant than we are? I think not, Scholar. We will go with you, for alone you would never make it through. No offense intended.”

“I take none. I know it would be difficult.”

“We'll trap on the way,” Ebitt said. “We must have something for supplies for another season.”

My eyes went from one to the other, knowing what this meant to the lot of them. This was their life. To me it might be my life, but also might be only an interlude. I was not dependent upon furs as they were. A little money remained in an eastern bank, and a profession whenever I wished to return … if I ever did.