Under the Sweetwater Rim (1971) (17 page)

As he rode, he reloaded his guns.

Between South Pass and Fort Laramie half a dozen telegraph stations had been set up, each guarded, as a rule, by four soldiers. One of the missions of the troops stationed at Fort Laramie was to protect that line as well as the stages that traveled the route.

It had taken the Indians no time at all to discover the importance of the telegraph line, and they were constantly tearing it down, burning the poles, and carrying off the wire to be made into bracelets or other ornaments. Buffalo were also a threat to the line, for they found the slender poles all too convenient for scratching purposes, and frequently they pushed over the poles while scratching. Needless to say, the telegraph line was an uncertain medium of communication.

The situation had become so serious that both the telegraph line and the stage line were being shifted south, away from the mountains that sheltered the raiding Indians.

Major Devereaux had gone into camp at the edge of the small community of South Pass. It was headquarters for miners working nearby creeks, and for a few hunters, and it was a stopping place for westbound wagons. When Major Devereaux had started west one of his duties was to repair the line, and to relieve the various guards, leaving men of his own in their places.

The line was in working order when he arrived at South Pass, and he sent a report to Lt.

Col. Collins. He was instructed to purchase provisions at South Pass, if available, to continue his search for three days, and then to return to the Fort, following the line of the telegraph. He was further instructed to place Lieutenant Tenadore Brian under arrest and return him to Fort Laramie for an inquiry, perhaps for a court-martial.

There had been, he was informed, Indian raids all along the line and several hundred horses had been stolen from the stage company. An emigrant train had been wiped out.

Lieutenant Cahill returned, but he had little to report. He had located a camp where the Kelsey men had evidently stopped for several days, and had found a man bound and gagged in the brush, a man who had no very coherent story of how he had come there.

There had been a brief, indecisive engagement with a party of Kelsey men in which two of the enemy were killed and one of his own men wounded. There they had been joined by Ironhide, wounded and emaciated.

Ironhide had made an effort to recover the payroll, had tried to intercept Kelsey, who was escaping with it, but he had been ambushed, getting a bullet in his leg. Crawling into the brush, Ironhide had waited until Kelsey was gone, them improvised a crutch and started back. He had seen nothing of either Lieutenant Brian or the women. He had heard shooting on several occasions when working his way back across the mountains.

Major Devereaux was in a quandary. He had taken up a position for his command headquarters in the hotel at South Pass, a small frame building of half a dozen rooms. He used the main-floor room which did duty as a lobby and hotel office. He was puzzled as to his next move, for any move might well be a wrong one. Though it seemed that the Kelsey force was breaking up, he had little evidence except the brief skirmish Cahill had had with an apparently leaderless group of them, and reports that several others had been seen, scattered and apparently without a uniform direction. If Mary and Belle were with Brian they were in good hands . . . but were they? And where were they? Combing the mountains for them was out of the question. He must keep his command intact, both for its own safety and for any military move they might have to make.

Brian might bring the girls here, though he might try for Fort Bridger, or even try to return to Fort Laramie. But he would have no reason to feel there would be no safety in South Pass. The population of the town was small, constantly in fear of Indian attack, and unable to withstand an attack by Kelsey's band if it could still muster its former number. Undoubtedly Kelsey had spies in the town. In fact the very hotel which Major Devereaux was using as temporary headquarters was questionable. There had been rumors about it, and the Major had no liking for the woman who operated the place.

The door opened and Turpenning stepped in.

"Suh?" "What is it, Turpenning?"

"Request puhmission, sub, to go a-scoutin'.

Figure I might find the Lieutenant, suh, an' maybe Miss Mary and the Captain's wife."

"Permission refused, Turpenning, but I appreciate the offer, and the risk it would entail."

He placed his pen on the table. "We have other fish to fry, Turpenning. There is some likelihood that the Kelsey gang may have broken up or scattered, and we are going to round up as many of them as possible.

It is important their sort of action be ended, once and for all."

"Yes, suh."

"I am sending Cahill out with ten men, and Corporal Chancel with another ten. You will accompany Lieutenant Cahill." When Turpenning had left, Devereaux sat back and stared out at the bleak hills where the green was just beginning to show. Even now Mary might be fighting for her life somewhere in the mountains . . . . Within a fifty-mile radius there must be fifty or a hundred canyons, scores of remote parks, and many streams, and most of it covered with forest. Where to look among all that? A thousand men might do it, in several weeks. He dare not risk the small parties at his command in such a venture, no matter how willing they were to go.

He must trust to Lieutenant Tenadore Brian, the man he disliked. At this moment there was no one else.

He felt old and tired. He looked at the reports he had been writing, but his eyes would not focus, nor his mind. He could only think of Mary, somewhere out there.

Mary . . . he remembered her as a tiny girl, as she had been when Susan was alive. He had no right to expose Mary to this, and once she was back-if she ever came back-he must take her back east where she could have the sort of life a woman needs. The frontier was too harsh. It was no life for a young girl.

If he only had another chancel He could retire. He need not finish his years out as a soldier. There were other things he could do. Only a few years ago his brother had offered him a job . . . he needed someone to manage a construction project. He would, he must get away from this.

Beyond the bleak hills were the mountains, not far off, waiting for him. He had always loved the mountains, loved them as Susan had loved them, and as Mary, too, did love them. That was the trouble, of course, with thinking of leaving. There was always the vast distance with the grass bending in the wind, the whispering leaves of the aspens, the gold of them when autumn came.

How could a man who had known such vast distance confine himself to a desk? To the crowded streets of an eastern town? He remembered the first time he had seen the Plains. For days they rode westward, day after day the open land, always stretching before them. They had called it the Great American Desert, but it was no desert . . . there was grass everywhere. And the buffalo . . . thousands of wild horses running free . . . antelope. And along the rivers the giant cottonwoods. He got up, feeling strangely alone, and walked outside. The air was cool and fresh off the mountains, with a smell of pines. Across the dusty street a horse stamped and flagged his tail against the fees. A man in miner's boots came out of the store and stood on the steps, and two men in uniform rode in from camp.

It was his life, and he would not want to leave it.

He stood for a moment, fumbling with a cigar. Finally he lighted it and then went back inside and seated himself at the, desk again. He thought of Kelsey . .

. Reuben Kelsey. The man must be found, for such a man was too dangerous to be allowed to run free.

Before the day was over one of his patrols returned with two prisoners, and a report of a fight where two men had been killed. The prisoners could tell him nothing . . . or they would not. But after questioning he was doubtful that they had anything to tell. They said they had been scouting, trying to locate Lieutenant Brian and the payroll. Then word came to them that the payroll had been taken and they started for the rendezvous near the Little Sweetwater, only to find it abandoned.

Of one thing he was now sure. The Kelsey gang, for whatever reason, had come apart at the seams. The men were scattering, trying to lose themselves.

Or perhaps they were scouting for Kelsey himself.

"Sir," Cahill suggested, "I think Kelsey took the money and left-on his own."

"I am inclined to agree." Devereaux's brow furrowed, and Cahill, who loved him like a father, winced at the older man's face. It had thinned down and he looked years older. "When the other patrol comes in, have Corporal Chancel report to me."

A trapper, who had worked the northern stretches of the Wind River range came in to South Pass City. Anybody who went north was a fool, he said. The Sioux and the Blackfeet were ranging all that country, and coming south he had only barely avoided more than one war party. "I ain't a-goin' to trap no more," he told Cahill over a buffalo meat stew in the restaurant. "Beaver's trapped down to where they got barely enough left to reproduce theirselves."

He chewed thoughtfully. "I seen nobody up yonder but Injuns, but anybody who is in that country better get out, an' fast. I never seen so many redskins in all my born days."

He paused and looked up. "Come to think of it, I did see somethin' almighty curious up there.

A few years back I found a cave up there and somebody had done a sight of work around, walling it up. He had him a cache in there, too-ammunition, tools, and grub . . . tinned goods, and such.

Looked like somebody aimed to hole up there.

"Well, a-comin' down across that country due east of the Lizard Head, I come on some tracks.

Two, three hosses . . . only one of them shod. Those were fresh tracks I seen."

"Some other trapper, perhaps?"

"Ain't nobody trappin' that country no more.

Nobody "cept me, and that there's high, lonesome country. No reason for anybody goin" in there, even." "Is there a trail across the divide?"

"Sure is. I favor the Big Sandy Trail . . . some trapper called it Jackass Trail because anybody but a jackass would be a fool to try it. It ain't that bad-a man afoot or on a good mountain hoss ain't liable to have trouble."

Cahill reported to Major Devereaux.

"Sir, it may be just a hunch, but who would be likely to be up that way but Kelsey? He seems to have dropped from sight, and my guess is that he has the payroll, has abandoned his men, and has headed north. He may try to hide out up there until the search for him is over, and until his men have scattered and the Indians have gone away." It made sense.

Devereaux hesitated to risk the men required, with the country about to be overrun by hostiles, but he might recover the payroll, and one more foray into the mountains might locate Mary. He held back.

. . . Was he trying to find reason to send them out simply because he wanted an excuse for another hunt for her?

Major Devereaux studied the map, and sent for the trapper. A lean, raw-boned man in fringed buckskins. A man with a hard jaw and narrow eyes, uneasy inside a room, at home only in the wilderness. "That Jackass Trail now . . . can you tell us how to locate it from the west?"

"Ain't no trouble. It's rough . . . you better take some horses you can trust on a mean trail.

One place you better look at. Might want to camp there yourself, but if this gent should take a notion to leave, he might just hide out there a spell."

He put the stub of a finger on the map-the end of the finger lost by knife or trap. "After the trail crosses this here creek-North Creek, we call it-about a hundred an' fifty feet up the creek, an' west you'll find you as neat a hide-out as a man could wish. Granite all around . . . you could camp fifty men in there, if need be, an' nobody the wiser. "But you better watch for Injuns. They scout around up there, for on a clear day a body can see wagons on the Oregon Trail from up above there, on the peaks."

Major Devereaux pushed back his chair and spoke to Cahill. "Is there any word from Corporal Chancel?"

"Not yet, sir."

"Very well. Lieutenant, I shall want twenty menwho are in good shape, twenty picked horses, and I shall want pack horses to carry a hundred rounds per man and rations for five days."

"You, sir?"

"Yes, Lieutenant Cahill. I shall take the patrol myself. You will remain in command here. Keep a close lookout. No man is to go more than half a mile from the town, and only upon your orders."

"But, sir, I would-was "Lieutenant Cahill, you have your orders. That will be all."

He turned to the trapper. "How would you like to guide us? Scout's pay and a bonus?"

The mountain man shook his head. "No, suhl I come out of that country with my hair. I don't figure to risk it against what I seen up thataway. No, suh. Not for no money."

Major Devereaux shuffled his papers together, looking once more at the map. They would camp the first night out at Blucher Creek; the second in that granite basin or the vicinity. The third day they would be at the cave the trapper had mentioned, and two days back . . . if all went well.

From a clump of pines on the slope of the mountain, Tenadore Brian squatted on his heels and studied the terrain below with his glasses. There had been some good rains, and the grass was green. The young bucks would soon be riding south for the taking of scalps.