Absaroka valley, p.1
Absaroka Valley, page 1
ABSAROKA
VALLEY
LAURAN PAINE
Copyright © 2019 by Lauran Paine, Jr.
E-book published in 2019 by Blackstone Publishing
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-9825-9491-6
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-9825-9490-9
Fiction / Westerns
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
Chapter One
The man stood watching dawn break, like a creeping wraith, into the black whispering mass of trees where his wagon stood. There was a ground fog, watery white and clinging, to this new day; it gently ebbed and it gently flowed. The sun would come as it always did and burn this shroud from earth, but meanwhile, there it was, dirty white and diluted looking, weak and watery and yet in its own way strong enough to be choking and suffocating and evil.
He moved to poke at the little fire near his feet which outlined his lankness with its flickering light, his cracked old boots and his wasted face. Then he turned slightly to gaze upon two little lumps upon the nearby ground, curled deep in soiled quilts and old ragged blankets. These were his children, Linda Louise, eight years of age, and Billy Ray, ten.
Yonder stood the patient mules, old and scarred and wise as only aged animals can be wise. Their harness hung upon the wagon tongue, along with two dented buckets and a settler’s axe and spade.
That white mist swirled into the first fringe of red-barked pines; it came creeping through dawn’s utter stillness. The lank man pushed fisted big hands into pockets to watch its coming. But it never got to the wagon, the gaunt big man, or to the busy little fire, for that widening great stain of light over the eastern hills turned from pink to brightest gold, and the sun came, popped up from behind those hills like a seed is popped from a grape.
It was a summertime sun, all dancing gold and swollen, and its cauldron-like heat rushed down over the land in blinding waves to jump into canyons, to flash up along mountainsides, to burn with merciless intensity into that miasmic flow of dirty white. It cut in among the trees to warm the backs of those standing mules, to lay a shaded pattern across the gaunt man’s wasted face, to brighten the undersides of two pairs of closed eyelids and awaken Linda Louise and Billy Ray Patton.
Their father watched how his children simply looked up and smiled at him, ready in that single, uncomplicated instant, to arise and move and run to the creek to wash, to happily chatter, and he thought what a blessed thing youth was; how blind and trusting and utterly unquenchable it was. He smiled back at them and hunkered low by the fire to put on the pot of mush, mixed with the last of that milk they’d acquired miles back at a village. He stirred this weak porridge and indifferently considered their onward passage down the land upon the golden carpet of a fresh new day.
He heard them at the creek, squealing at the coldness of that water, and his heart was heavy for them, and it was also weary from its tired and sluggish beating, for it knew there was no hope; that he would tool his wagon endlessly onward seeking something which did not exist upon this earth—surcease, peace, safety for his children. A man in his yeasty years stepped over the tallest mountains, paced the widest plains, braved the brawlingest rivers in search of a mate.
Samuel Patton had done these things; he had found her in a Mormon settlement beyond the big Missouri. He had taken frail Kathleen Bryan to be his wife, and his heart had been full to overflowing, for Kathleen had dark and misty eyes and a dreamy way to her. She had been soft and eager for his touch. She had borne him Billy Ray with his mother’s gentleness and his father’s pale blue eyes. She had borne him Linda Louise with her mother’s liquid dark eyes and taffy hair. And Kathleen had died in the mud beside the Osage River after a six weeks’ deluge of steady drizzle, dead at twenty-one of lung fever.
Samuel had nursed her. For all his bigness in those days, his mighty strength and his power, he had been as tender with Kathleen as with a new lamb. He had never left her side. But she had died, and he buried her in the mud bottoms where fragile willows grew, and he had then hitched up and gone on.
That had been some years back. Time had, after a while, healed his hurt, but a kind of exhaustion had come to Samuel. With it had come this wasting. The year before, a doctor in a Rocky Mountain settlement had told him: “Sir, it is not the memory which makes you weary in body. Sir, you have lung fever.”
He stirred that weak porridge.
There was no cure that the doctors knew of; a man lost his strength a little at a time, his flesh wasted, he awoke in the mornings tired, and he felt within him the diminishing of his proud spirit.
But a man never drew in a vital big gust of good fresh air in his lifetime, Samuel Patton knew, without also drawing in, each day, a little of the decay of death also, for this was the sum of a man’s existence. No matter who he was, how great or small, how mighty or how weak, each morning he was one more new day closer to eternity. It was not, therefore, the gift of life Samuel was loath to put aside; it was his children which made the hopelessness in his breast so bitter. They had no other kin, and in this savage frontier land, each family had a cleaving only for its own. Life here was hard, food and safety were dearly wrung from the soil, and aimlessly wandering strangers could count on sympathy only, which was never enough, because sympathy was a variety of deceit. It was another way for people to feel secretly glad the troubles of others had happened to strangers and not themselves.
Still, as long as life lasted, men struggled. In the Bible it said man was born to strife, to suffering, to anguish. So long, then, as life lasted, Samuel Patton must continue his search. This was his private struggle. Find a place for his children somewhere in this savage land. Find love and a cherishing appreciation for these two precious gifts Kathleen had left him. Until he found these things, he must keep going, must ignore as best he could that insidiously creeping thralldom which bowed down his spirit and mightily taxed his waning strength, for no man lacks a goal, not even a wasting man burdened with lung fever who saw in the morning mist the solitude and peacefulness of death, against which he had, each new day, to summon all his remaining strength to stave off for yet a while, what was inevitable.
“Pa,” said a solemn little voice behind him. “Pa, there’s a man and a big black horse down by the creek.”
Samuel turned. Linda Louise was there, her face pink from cold water, her flawless dark eyes big and round and very solemn.
“Well,” answered Samuel, “invite him along for some porridge made from milk.”
“We can’t, Pa. Billy Ray is down there with him. We can’t get him up.”
Samuel considered his daughter. She was small for her age but sturdy. She would, one day, be a beautiful woman, as her mother had also been. Her face was alive to life, shadows of passing moods altered it constantly. She was, in Samuel’s eyes, more nearly the pure mixture of himself and his Kathleen than was their son Billy Ray, and now, studying her gravity, feeling her mild puzzlement, Samuel sensed the quiet awe which held his little girl there motionless and waiting, as though in her perplexity, she had come to the only person on earth in whom she reposed fullest trust, full confidence.
She had not a single doubt but that her father would be able to explain about the man and the big black horse down by the creek. So she stood still, waiting.
Samuel gravely arose. He took her hand and went along with her where trees thinned out, where a grassy glade spread up and down a fluting-swift run of good snow water. There, Linda Louise led him northward. There, he found his son squatting in shade, solemnly gazing upon a saddled black horse whose head hung low and whose flanks were close tucked from fatigue and foodlessness.
“There, Pa,” said Linda Louise, releasing Samuel’s hand, putting both arms behind her to stand back a ways looking down into the grass. “That’s him. Is he asleep?”
Samuel knew at once this man was not asleep. Wariness came up in him. He went forward very carefully, then stood gazing upon that sprawled, still form. There was a faint fluttering rise and fall to the stranger’s chest. He was a tall man, as tall as Samuel himself was. He was well-dressed in dark clothing and the shell belt encircling his narrow waist sagged from the weight of a large black gun.
Samuel had a feeling about this man. He turned to see the horse. A carbine butt stuck upright, ready to hand on the saddle’s right side. There was a tightly bound bedroll aft of the cantle and there were engraved silver ornaments upon the saddle, the headstall, and the bit.
From upon the ground, Samuel’s son said: “Pa, did you ever see such a fine horse? There’s no white on him anywhere.”
Samuel looked away from the animal, back down to the man. He knelt, rolled that inert form over upon its back, and saw at once where the bullet had struck low along the stranger’s right side, angling upward as though the injured man had been riding and the man who had shot him had been upon the ground.
“Linda Louise, I’ll need a pan of water, Samuel said. “Fetch one of the clean towels too, honey. They are under the chuck box in the back of the wagon.”
Linda Louise hastened away. Billy Ray left off admiring the black horse and came over to stare down past his father’s shoulder as Samuel cleanly cut away that blood-stiff shirt.
“Golly,” said Billy Ray, in awe. “He’s bad hurt, isn’t he, Pa?”
“Yes. But he’ll likely live.”
There were three broken ribs, and the stranger’s flesh was torn ragged and swollen badly. It was purple for the long length of his injury.
“Did his horse throw him, Pa? Maybe he landed on a boulder, or a snag limb, to get torn up like that, huh?
Samuel had never been a good man to compromise with truth. He said: “We’ll have to get him to the wagon, son.” He did not answer Billy Ray’s question at all. “Maybe the three of us could drag him there.”
Billy Ray said logically: “His horse could carry him, Pa.”
Samuel looked up. He smiled at his son’s good sense.
“You’re plumb right, boy. But first we’ve got to fix this hurt.”
Linda Louise returned with towels and water from the creek. She and her brother helped Samuel bandage the stranger. They also helped him boost the man to his feet, get him across the black horse’s back, and slowly lead the laden animal to their wagon. There, they made the injured stranger comfortable upon a bed of their quilts, covered him, and turned next to breaking their camp.
It was Billy Ray’s responsibility to catch and harness their mules. Linda Louise ran to the creek with the breakfast pans, scoured them with silt, and ran back to put everything into its allotted place. Samuel, deep in troubled thought, ate his porridge slowly. He was the last to be ready when the children had their chores finished. They had gulped down their breakfast in the manner of excited little animals long before, each with a special reason. Linda Louise wished to nurse the stranger. Billy Ray had in mind riding the big black horse behind the wagon when they moved out.
Samuel finally arose, went along the wagon’s side as was his custom at each camp-breaking, seeing that the axe, the shovel, the pots and pans were all put away, that the chain-tugs had been properly hooked, the chocks removed from under the wagon’s wheels, and nothing had been forgotten. Those tasks completed, he went up hand-over-hand to the high seat, peered down inside the wagon at his daughter where she solemnly sat curled by the unconscious stranger, then around where Billy Ray sat proudly upon the stranger’s black horse, and flipped the lines.
Beyond their camp, beyond the final last fringe of forest, lay a long valley. Distantly, there were bony mountain flanks squatting low, pinching that long valley down to a narrow, funnel-like yonder outlet. Samuel imagined how the road would be through that pass—rocky and bumpy but passable. He had passed through a hundred passes just like that. And somewhere on ahead would be a town or a village, or perhaps only a hamlet.
Sunlight burned its steady scald over the land, but the real heat would not come for another two hours—it was still early in this day. For a time they would all feel good. Their bellies were full, their attentions were occupied, and around them was the swollen richness of nature’s greenery, her trees and grasses and upland flowers.
Samuel twisted now and then for a rearward look. Billy Ray sat the black horse, now with a smile, now with a scowl; he alternated between the sweet delight of youth and the splendid imaginings of himself as a great scout, or mighty general, or of a knight in finely etched armor.
Under the wagon bows, in shade made of the canvas top, Linda Louise sat on with her patient, from time to time putting cool rags soaked in the water barrel across his sweating forehead. The stranger himself bumped limply along. His face steadily reddening from fever, his lips hot and cracking. He opened his eyes occasionally, Samuel noticed, but there was no focus, no rationalization at all, to this misty staring.
Where the valley drew out thin, where the mountains began to tilt inward and downward, Samuel found the old argonaut trail exactly as he had known he would. It showed clearly that little traffic had passed over it in years, but his old mules were wise; they knew how to step around boulders, to sidle clear of stones large enough to hang the wagon upon high-centering obstacles. They made the transition from valley to mountain pass without difficulty, and where this downward trail fell away abruptly, they knew how to ride back on their breechings so that the wagon did not creep up and nudge them.
This old road hugged granite cliffs in a long-spending curve leading steadily downward to an immense plain. From his place upon the high seat, Samuel looked far out and down.
This land they were approaching was cattle country. One did not have to see the actual cattle to know. One had only to have been a husbandman once himself to know.
A summertime haze hung above that immense prairie. Lower, where this smokiness writhed under the steady buildup of relentless heat, there was a long winding creek bed willow-shaded and passing on out of sight southward.
Still farther out, dimly unreal appearing, stood a giant sawtoothed mountain range, and even from this distance, Samuel could plainly see where sunlight flashed pale pink upon the snow fields, high up there.
It took two hours to make that cautious and perilous ascent, but once the prairie floor was reached, Samuel paused to rest his mules. Here, close to the base of the foothill, there remained a lingering night-like coolness. Here too, coming straight out of solid granite, was the pouring freshet which fed that southward creek bed lined with willows.
Samuel thought of finishing the day here. There was rich good grass, shade, and solitude. But he did not. He pushed onward again, out across the prairie, and kept traveling all that afternoon until red sunlight warned him of day’s end. Then, seven miles clear of those rearward mountains, he halted in a greenery thicket, drove the wagon out of sight here, and made his camp. Afterward, with the children going happily about their chores, Samuel walked back a ways to stand in the dying light, watching their back trail. There was nothing to see. The land lay still and quiet and entirely empty.
He went back to the little stone ring Billy Ray had built, knelt there in silence, and began coaxing a cooking fire to life. Linda Louise made a little squeal from the creek, and immediately afterward Billy Ray’s laughter came kiting over the splash of water.
Samuel set up his pot tripod and put the remainder of their breakfast mush to heating. He also set a pan of water to boil, and afterward, he looked out where the stranger’s black horse was contentedly browsing with the mules, then closer, where Billy Ray had dumped the stranger’s expensive saddle and bridle. He considered that saddle for a long time, seeing its saddlebags, its canteen, and bedroll. He rose up, passed over to these things, bent low to flip back the saddlebag straps, and reach inside.
He stiffened his full length, staring down at what he’d partially revealed in one withdrawn hand—a crushed packet of crisp green money!
Chapter Two
They trailed downland the next day, starting early, as Samuel said, to avoid some of the day’s heat, and they nooned in more willows then kept to their southward way.
In a wagon one could only make good traveling time by steadily moving onward. They could not speed along as mounted people might. Samuel kept moving. He did not know exactly why he was doing this. He did know that somewhere far back, men were rummaging the land with guns for his weak and wounded passenger. He wished for the stranger not to be caught. But why he wished this, he could not have precisely explained.
Samuel Patton had always been an honest man. He had come upon outlaws at other times, and he had been stoutly opposed to all they stood for. He was perplexed in his spirit now, thinking over his actions. It was a solid conviction in his mind that the feverishly moaning man in his wagon was an outlaw. He rode too fine a horse for an ordinary man. He wore a gun as only a man wears weapons who lives by them. And of course that saddlebag full of paper money was in its own mute way a testimony of evil.
Still, the stranger was a man, and because of this he deserved at least an even chance. In his present semiconscious condition, he would stand no chance at all if overtaken by pursuers whose anger and vengeance found him hurt and helpless.
