“I reckon that won't come any too easy to their hands,” said Rogers quietly.
“Look here,” said Bushrod, “what do you say to my banking up the earth under the wagons?”
“It's an excellent idea; I'd do it,” said Stephen.
“Come,” said Rogers, “lets you and me take a look around, Mr. Landray. I reckon they're in no hurry to try this hill, I wouldn't be if I was them.” They crossed the barricade, and inspected their surroundings. The top of the hill was perfectly flat, and an acre or more in extent; beyond this level space the ground fell gently away to the plain below.
“It's right smart of a place for a fight,” remarked Rogers, after a brief glance about.
Stephen nodded; he admitted to himself that with such an enemy the spot had its own peculiar advantages; he could believe that they might hold it for an almost indefinite period, even against much greater odds. His memory reverted to the glories of the freshly fought fields of Texas and Mexico: Odds? What had odds meant in the past to the men of America; and what were they still meaning on a thousand miles of lonely frontier?
To the west, near the base of the mountains, a fringe of cottonwoods and willows marked a water course; there the herbage of the plain was a richer green. Stephen almost fancied he could seen the water sparkling among the trees, then he remembered that their own supply was wholly exhausted. Rogers seemed to understand what was passing in his mind; he touched him on the arm.
“We could never have made it, Mr. Landray,” he said regretfully. “They'd have cut us off in the open.”
The horsemen who had ridden away toward the west were now nearing the cottonwoods. Rogers turned from regarding them to look at the forted wagons.
“Your brother 'll fix the camp snug enough. I reckon after he gets finished we can make it hot for the redskin who thinks his road lays across the top of this hill.”
“You have told me of these fights; what chance have we?” asked Stephen gravely.
“No twenty men that ever lived can cross them wagon poles unless we are willing they should.”
“But why should they attempt that when they can keep us here on a strain until our powder and lead is exhausted, or the need of water forces us to abandon the hill?”
“I reckon that'll be their game; but see here, by the time our guns are silent we may have them pretty considerably crippled up. I needn't tell you that twenty men in the open against six with good cover like we got, have their work ahead of them.”
“Look!” cried Stephen, pointing.
On the edge of the cottonwoods which they had just reached, the horsemen were joined by a much larger party which suddenly rode out of the timber.
“We reckoned 'em too quick and too few,” said Rogers simply. “There's forty or fifty of the varments.”
The horsemen were now galloping toward the hill. Rogers watched them in silence, then turned again to Stephen.
“Good God! Mr. Landray, don't you see no difference?” the Californian demanded almost angrily. Stephen's lack of all suspicion was too much for him.
“There is a difference in dress, if that is what you mean.”
“Yes, that; and do you note the size of their horses?”
“They are smaller certainly.”
“I wa'n'. going to let you know, but it's a heap easier to be fair with you; those down yonder's white men; this new lot's Indians—there's no mistaking that.”
“What!” cried Stephen in astonishment.
“It's Basil and Raymond and some cutthroats from the valley trigged out to look like redskins.”
“Nonsense, Rogers, that's the wildest surmise; how can you know that?”
“You don't believe me. Well, I seen him.”
“You saw whom? Basil?”
“No, Raymond.”
“The deserter—when?”
“This morning;” and Rogers told him in the fewest words of his meeting with Raymond. “I allow they're mainly after me, and I reckon you can make some sort of terms by handing me over to them. I ain't saying but what it would be right for you to do this; you got your folks back East to think about; I only got Benny; I reckon you'll look out for him. My first notion was to let matters stand until we'd put our mark on a few of them, knowing it would be too late to do anything then.”
“No,” said Stephen, “if it's so, if it's Basil, he's wanting more than revenge; he knows we have a large sum of money with us.”
“Well, I allow we've both made a few mistakes,” said Rogers.
He added, “I'm ready to do what's right. Give me your horse, and I'll make a dash for the hills. You can tell 'em you've turned me out of camp.”
But Stephen shook his head. “Why, man, we wouldn't think of that!” he said earnestly.
Above the mountain tops the sun was sinking, filling the grey plain with floods of glorious gold and violet. Rogers took off his hat and faced the west; his mouth twitched and his look of resolution softened.
“This is mighty decent in you, Mr. Landray, it is so. I ain't saying much, but Benny and me won't forget this in many a long day.” and he held out his hand. “Maybe it is the money they're after, as you say; I reckon it is, for they've undertaken right smart of a contract just to get even with me for killing that half-breed.”
The two bands had now united, and after a brief parley, charged down on the hill with loud yells. Stephen and Rogers withdrew from their exposed position and sought the shelter of the barricade.
“There's no need of throwing away ammunition,” said Rogers, surveying the little group that formed about him. “There'll be plenty of noise, but you'll get used to that. Hear the vermin yell!”
His first thought was of Benny. He hid the child away in a safe place.
“Is this an Indian fight, pop? And is them real live Indians?” the child asked eagerly, as he nestled down in the nook his father had found for him.
“I allow some of them will presently be dead Indians, son,” answered his father hopefully. “You pray that your old daddy's aim may be what it used to be, for he wants mightily to fetch you and him out of this with a whole hide apiece.” and repeating his injunction to Benny to lie very still, he rejoined his companions.
A glance sufficed, and the experienced eye of the frontiersman told him that as yet little harm had been done by his companions fire, though it had served to keep the Indians at a respectful distance.
In spite of the presence of their white associates, the tactics of these latter did not differ materially from what they must have been had they been alone. They circled about the hill evidently keenly sensible of the fact that there existed a zone of deadly peril into which it was not wise to venture; on the outer edge of this they hung with noisy zeal, and it was only when some one of their number more daring and reckless than his fellows dashed in toward the wagons, that the men on the hill levelled their rifles; but they were not long in discovering that these displays of prowess were more than likely to be attended by fatal consequences; for twice Rogers stopped them in mid career; once Bushrod was similarly successful; he killed the pony and crippled the Indian; then as he showed a disinclination to fire on a wounded man, Rogers who had withheld his hand out of consideration for what he conceived to be his friend's rights in the matter, made the shot for him.
“That's three!” he cried in high good humour. “I tell you, Lan-dray, you mustn't hang back from giving them their full dose. It's them or us, and I'm all in favour of it being them.”
“How long will this last?” asked Bushrod, crouching at his elbow. “Why don't they come in where we can get at them?”
“It's their notion of fighting; they'll draw off when night falls.”
“I suppose there is no hope of their drawing off entirely?”
“Not until they've had a fair try at us.”
While he was speaking his gun had been thrust cautiously over the top of the barricade, and fired at a savage who had ventured within easy range, but the light was now uncertain and the bullet sped wide of its mark. With a muttered oath he turned to Bushrod. But before Landray could bring his rifle to bear on the savage the latter's gun was discharged, and Dunlevy at the opposite side of the barricade rose from his knees with a startled cry, spun round once and fell back among the mules. Walsh who was nearest him, turned a white scared face on Stephen.
“Poor Dunlevy's hurt I think! Won't you help him, Mr. Landray? I can't, the sight of his blood makes me ill.”
But Rogers had already crept to the teamster's side; he reached out a hand and pushed the boy back in his place.
“Never mind him, you keep out of sight,” he said quietly.
“Do you mean he's dead!” cried Walsh.
Here Bushrod Landray's warning cry recalled the Californian to his post.
“They seem to be forming for a charge,” he said.
“And they're nearer than they need be,” rejoined Rogers, throwing his rifle to his shoulder. The group melted away at the flash, but one of the savages tumbled from his saddle and lay as he had fallen until one of his friends crept up on hands and knees and dragged the body off; at him the Californian fired again, but apparently without effect.
“The varments will fetch away their dead and wounded every time if they can!” he said.
“Dunlevy was killed outright?” asked Landray.
“Yes, he wan't much of a shot, and he would raise his head to see what was going on. I heard your brother tell him more than once to keep down,” said Rogers resentfully.
The fight continued until the sun sank beyond the ragged lines of peaks; and its glory turned first to grey and then deepened into twilight; a twilight through which the horsemen moved vaguely like shadows; then suddenly the attack ceased; the brisk volleys dwindled to a few straggling shots, and silence usurped the place of sound, silence absolute and supreme. Bushrod turned to Rogers who rose slowly and stood erect. “I reckon it's over until daylight comes again,” he said.
They lifted Dunlevy into one of the wagons and drew his blanket over his face. Now that the excitement of the day was past, a deadly weariness had come upon them; they were oppressed and silent; they ached like men who had been bruised and beaten. Looking about them they saw things that they had not seen before; two of their mules were dead, and three others wounded, the wagon covers were in tatters. They seemed hours away from the fight in point of time, and yet their ears still roared with the sound of crashing volleys, the clatter of hoofs, a medley of yells and shrieks; yet while these sounds had been in actual continuance they had scarcely heard them.
When they had eaten a few cold mouthfuls. Rogers said:
“I'm going to take the first watch. Mr. Landray you'll relieve me; your brother can follow you; and Bingham and Walsh can finish out the night together. I reckon I needn't tell you all, that you'd best get what sleep you can.” And with this he took up his rifle, crossed the barrier, and with noiseless step made the circuit of the wagons.
The enemy had withdrawn to the cottonwoods where their blazing camp-fires were now plainly visible. At his back in the shelter of the forted wagons, his companions had huddled close together in the darkness, and were now talking in whispers; he heard nothing of what they said, and presently the murmur of their voices ceased entirely.
Until this day he had known never a doubt as to the success of their journey; the reasonable uncertainty he might have felt had long since faded from his mind; others might fail, but he never; and now their way was blocked. Twenty white men alone he would not have feared; the Indians by themselves he would have feared even less; but together, the cunning of the one supplemented by the intelligence of the other, was something he had not reckoned on. Even should they beat them off, their whole plan must be changed. He was quite sure that it would not be safe to venture into Salt Lake. He had heard too much of the justice the Mormon leaders were wont to mete out to such of the Gentiles as came under their displeasure, especially when these Gentiles had in their possession valuable property; and Basil knew, and probably by this time Raymond knew, that they had with them a large sum of money. The needy saints would never let them out of their hands while any pretext remained on which to detain them; and what better pretext could be furnished them than that some of their co-religionists had been killed by members of the party. Then his brain became busy with the problem of immediate escape. They could mount the mules and make a dash for the mountains; but his reason warned him than any such desperate measure must be attempted only when their need of water had rendered the hill absolutely untenantable; for the chances were that thy would be surrounded and butchered before they had gone a mile. No, clearly such an attempt should be made only in the last and direst extremity.
In the stillness of his own thoughts the noises of the camp in the cottonwoods came to his ears. He heard the neighing of horses, the voices of men; now it was a burst of laughter, a fragment of song, that reached him; the white men were carousing with their red allies. He stood in an attitude of listening; he seemed to find something insulting in these sounds, and scarcely knowing what he did he fell to threatening the camp; he shook his gun at it and waved his free hand menacingly, then, he fell to cursing under his breath, softly so as not to disturb the others. How long he continued thus he did not know; he was finally aroused by hearing Stephen call his name; and Stephen stepping to his side placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Why, Rogers, what's the matter?” he asked in a whisper.
“Matter, Landray? They're having water when better men are going thirsty!” he said stupidly, and his utterance was thick and difficult. “That's matter enough I reckon,” he added, with something of his usual voice and manner; he was like a man waking from a dream.
“You have seen nothing?” questioned Stephen.
“Nothing—have you slept?”
“A little; not much.”
Here a burst of sound from the camp reached them, long continued and sustained; it was strident, fierce, primitive; Stephen turned to Rogers.
“I'd almost say they were singing hymns,” and he smiled at the fancy.
“They are dancing our scalps,” said Rogers.
“That's premature,” said Stephen.
Rogers moved off toward the wagons. A moment later he had stretched himself on the ground at Benny's side.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STEPHEN fell to pacing about the wagons as Rogers had done. He saw the fires of the Indians die down until they became mere specks of living colour that seemed to glare steadily at him out of the distance. As the fires died, so did all sound until at last a mighty silence held the plain in its spell; and with the silence came a tormenting loneliness. But for the black outline of the mountain peaks against a lighter sky he might have been looking off into infinite space. The night wind sinking to a murmur, sighed about the wagons, softly flapping their bullet-torn canvases. It seemed to hold the very soul of that lone land. He turned his face to the east; somewhere there beyond the night, in the new day that was breaking, was Benson. With a gulp of sudden emotion he saw the valley as he had seen it on a thousand summer mornings, with no special realization of its beauty; dawn, the day's beginning; here and there a lantern flashing in and out among barns and outbuildings; the darkness growing always greyer, always toward the light, until the sleek cattle could be seen in the fields, newly risen from the long wet grass and with the dew yet sparkling on flanks and sides, crossing slowly to pasture bars to be fed and tended; and then far down the valley a touch of glowing colour that crept above the low hills to become fixed in a narrow luminous rim which changed swiftly to a great flaming quadrant of light that grew into the level sun.
Regret, terrible because it was unavailing, lay hold of him. Virginia was there. Was it possible that by any gift of divination she could know of their danger? She had told him more than once that no evil would ever befall him and she be wholly unconscious of it, no matter what the distance that separated them. He hoped this was so. He prayed that if the coming day closed on a tragedy, she might learn at once of the destruction of the train; but who would there be left to tell her of the end? None of his companions would survive, he was sure of this, if Basil and Raymond were responsible for the attack; indeed, it would be the merest chance if she ever knew. He would not go back to her—that would be all; this alone she would know, that he had not returned; the rest would be conjecture.
He recalled how they had passed in indifference the graves by the trail side; they had not once been moved to curiosity, even the most idle; for what were these little tragedies in the supreme selfishness of that rush across the plains, and who would stop or turn aside to unravel the small mystery of their last stand? What man would care who they had been, or whence they came, when the certain hand of death had done its work? Their very bones might bleach there for a hundred years before another white man climbed that hill.
He told himself his fears were cowardly; he sought to reason himself out of his forebodings; a thousand things might happen when day came to make the situation seem less hopeless. It was only the night, the unspeakable loneliness and silence, or the memory of that ghastly presence in the wagon, with its white upturned face, that filled him with abject fear. He closed his eyes, but the white face was there before him—always the white face—with the small dark stain on the temple among the brown curls; the visible cause so inadequate measured by the consequences. Dunlevy might have lived for sixty years without that mark; and sixty years were countless weeks, endless days, hours and minutes innumerable; and yet all in a second the possibilities of life had been withdrawn, and there remained only the senseless clay and the uncertainty that hope and love had crystallized into its high belief of immortality.
To get away from this he tried to think only of Virginia. He saw her again on the white porch of their home; he could only remember her so; the days they had spent together seemed blotted out and to have dwindled to the agony of that last look; yet even this gave him hope and courage. He thought now of the time when the toil and effort of the trail should be ended, when he should have made or lost in this foolish enterprise, to his sobered judgment it mattered not which.
But what if this was his last night; his lips parched, and his breathing became laboured; already in anticipation he tasted death. What if it would be his lot to share poor Dunlevy's sleep! He thought with bitter regret how he had filled Virginia's heart; there were no children to take his place; all her strong maternal love had been given to him.
His mind drifted back to commonplaces. He had disposed of his business in an orderly fashion before he left home. Benson knew just how matters stood, and he believed Benson to be scrupulously honest. There would be ample left for her, if the worst came to the worst, out of the wreck he and Bushrod had made of the family fortunes; ample for the simple life she would choose to live. Then he remembered the packet of papers in his pocket; among them was the memorandum which he and his brother had drawn up at Benson's request and which included an accurate inventory of their interests. He had intended sending Virginia a copy, but had neglected to do so.
The sound of a light footfall roused him from his revery; he turned quickly. In the grey light he saw the figure of the child; his hold on his gun relaxed; the boy stole to his side.
“Why aren't you asleep, Benny?” he asked in a whisper so as not to disturb the others.
“I have been sleeping,” the boy answered, “but I waked up and got lonely, and I couldn't wake my pop.”
“Couldn't wake your father? That's odd; he usually rouses at the slightest sound.”
“I know; but he didn't to-night, and I got scared.”
A horrible doubt flashed through Stephen's mind. “Here,” he said, “you hold my gun, and I'll go and see if he's all right.” And he made his way to the Californian's side, but the latter's regular breathing instantly dispelled his fears. He returned to Benny. “What did you do; did you call him?” he asked.
“Yes, and I put my hand on his face as I always do when I want him to wake up.”
“Oh, well, he's very tired, that's all.”
“Have they gone away, Mr. Landray?” the boy asked.
“Are you afraid, Benny?”
“No”—slowly and uncertainly—“at least I reckon not so very afraid. Are they still there?”
“I expect they are.”
The child was silent. Stephen stood leaning on his rifle looking down at him with a wistful pity in his eyes. He had scarcely noticed him before, he was so silent, so little in the way; and now for the first time he was seeing how small and weak he was. Why had Rogers brought him with them; why had he not left him behind with some woman who would have cared for him? His sudden sense of pity made him bitterly resentful of what he considered the man's ignorant unimaginative devotion, for of course he knew that the boy was all in all to the Californian; but why since he loved him had he brought him out into the wilderness to face hardship and possible death? It was bad enough for men, but this child—he sickened at the thought.
Then he recalled with no little satisfaction that even Basil had shown more than a passing interest in the boy; brutal and hard as he was with every living thing, the child had yet found a way into his surly, grudging regard, and this in spite of the open breach that from the first had existed between Rogers and himself. Remembering this, he could not believe that the fur trader would allow any harm that it was in his power to avert, to come to him. Then he thought again of the packet of papers in his pocket; why not give them to Benny to keep?
“See here, Benny, do you think you could take care of some papers for me to-morrow?”
The child nodded interestedly. “What are they?” he asked.
Stephen took the packet from the pocket of his flannel hunting shirt. “I am going to give you these papers to take care of for me, Benny,” he said. “Now you are to remember, if anything should happen to me they are to go back to Benson.” He paused hopelessly; could the child understand?
“Yes, sir, they are to go back to Benson.”
“Now think, Benny, how would you send them there?”
“I'd give them to Mr. Bushrod, or to my pop, or Mr. Walsh.”
“Good, so you would, Benny; they would know perfectly what to do; but if anything should happen to them, you are to keep in mind just two things, the name of Benson, and the name of Landray. Do you think you can remember?”
The child laughed softly. “Why, of course I can, Mr. Landray. I can remember you; and Benson's the name of the place where my pop was a little boy.”
“Yes, but do you know where Benson is?”
The child's face fell for an instant, then it lighted up with sudden intelligence, he turned quickly and pointed to the East. “It's there. That's Benson,” he said.
“It's there true enough, but it's a long way off, a very long way. Benny, Benson's in the State of Ohio; do you think you can remember that?”
“Benson's in the State of Ohio,” said Benny dutifully.
“That's right, Benson's in the State of Ohio,” Stephen slowly repeated after him. He smiled almost pityingly, his hope hung by such a slender thread; a child's drifting memory.
“Yes, sir,” said the boy, “Benson's in the State of Ohio.”
“And you are never to part with these papers unless it is to give them to some white man who will send them to the person whose name is written in the packet; and should you ever meet Basil Lan-dray again, you are not to let him know that you have the papers.”
Benny looked at him shrewdly. “He won't come around, Mr. Landray. My pop 'lows he'll fix him if he ever shows his head in this camp.”
The papers were in a buckskin bag that closed with a stout drawstring. “You can wear it around your neck, Benny—so,” said Stephen. “Keep it under your blouse, like this—it will be safe there. It's a very important matter, Benny, and you are such a little fellow for so big a trust.”
Here he was interrupted by the discharge of a gun, and within the barricade Rogers sprang to his feet. Almost simultaneously with his warning cry, the dark slopes of the hill were lighted up with spurts of flame from the belching muzzles of fifty rifles.