The high country, p.10
The High Country, page 10
“We’ll have to see where he’s got his traps set,” Yarborough said. “We might have a few more to take care of. How many are there?”
“I counted twenty,” Luther answered, “and winter ain’t even gone good yet.”
“Well, that’s a start,” Yarborough said. “That was bad luck losin’ Seth. I reckon the rest of us can just work a little harder to trap this valley. I’m glad ol’ Jug got us a good start and left us some extra horses to carry the plews.”
“We’ll just work a little harder,” Luther said. “It’ll be a bigger payday split three ways instead of four, anyway.” He gave Yarborough a cocky smile. “And that’s the deal, ain’t it, even split?”
“That’s the deal,” Yarborough said, “even split when we sell ’em at the Rendezvous.” Of course, that depends on you making it to the Rendezvous, he thought. Ever since he had found out about this little known river, he had planned to reap the rich abundance of fur it supplied all to himself. It was getting harder and harder to keep it a secret, and now he finds a trapper camped in the valley and trapping the streams. He had decided that this year was the best time to cut his ties with Hudson’s Bay, anyway. The value of beaver fur had dropped in the last two years, and there was talk among his superiors at the company that this might be the last year for a decent price. So he had decided to part with Hudson’s Bay, but with a parting bonus of his own making. He needed men to help him with his plan, men like himself, with no conscience or honesty. That’s why he had carefully picked these three men to offer the deal. All three were without a moral compass. And of the two remaining after Seth’s death, Luther would be the more dangerous one. Moose Harris was incapable of any thoughts beyond his immediate needs and worked best with a handler to tell him when he was hungry or when to shoot a man. He would do all right to trap the beaver and do any heavy lifting that came up. When they had trapped all they could carry, they would pack the plews down to the Green River and sell them to American Fur, and to hell with Hudson’s Bay. And the thought of Hudson’s Bay losing all the money for the beaver fur in this little valley gave him great pleasure. He figured they owed him that because of the years he had worked for them and the times he had been passed up for promotion.
“Whaddaya wanna do with their bodies?” Moose asked, interrupting Yarborough’s thoughts. “We gonna bury ’em?”
“What for?” Luther asked. “I sure as hell ain’t diggin’ no grave. Drag ’em off in the woods somewhere. That’s what they made buzzards for.”
“Even Seth?” Moose asked.
“Luther’s right,” Yarborough said. “Seth don’t care now what you do with his carcass. Right now, he’s too busy tryin’ to convince the Devil that they sent him to the wrong place. Drag ’em over in the trees yonder, out of the camp, so we don’t have to look at ’em. I’m gonna see what else is in that tipi, then I’m gonna cook some more of that meat that squaw was fixin’ to cook.” He walked back toward the tipi.
“Me, too,” Luther called after him. “I’ll help you.”
“Gimme a hand movin’ their bodies first,” Moose said.
“Them bodies don’t bother me,” Luther told him. “If they bother you, you move ’em. I’m gonna keep my eye on Yarborough and make sure he don’t find anything he don’t tell us about.”
* * *
He stopped as if he had been hit by one of them when he heard the shots fired. There was no doubt in his mind where they had come from. Several rifle shots and at least one pistol shot, and they had definitely come from the other side of the mountain. Their camp was under attack—it could be nothing else! In a near panic, he hesitated only long enough to wipe his skinning knife on the hide of the elk hanging in the tree before racing to his horses. Driving the bay gelding hard back up to the pass, he crossed over to the other side of the mountain, the laboring horse’s hooves pounding the narrow game trail like the thunder of a war drum. Man and horse had worked together long enough to feel the urgency of the race, and Luke knew that Thunder would give all until there was no more to give. Sensing that they might be reaching that point, Luke eased off and began to gradually slow the bay down to a walk. Realizing the bay had given his all, he pulled him to a stop and jumped down from the saddle. And with approximately two hundred yards to go, he started running, holding his weapons in both hands and on his back. He entered the cover of the aspen forest at a trot. He fought to control the urge to scream out for Willow to know she was safe because he knew he had to calmly assess the situation. So he moved silently up through the trees closer to the camp, then stopped when he came to some horses tied in the trees. There was no one guarding them. Four of them were saddled, the rest carried packs. He decided then to circle around close to the stream and approach the camp near the back of the tipi. Once he reached a spot behind it, he paused to decide what to do.
He heard a noise that told him someone was inside the tipi, and he started to get up and go around to the entrance but stopped again when he saw what looked like a body on the ground near the other side of the clearing. Totally alarmed now, he again rose up from his knee, but before he took a step, just at that moment, he realized it was not one large body, as he had at first thought—it was two! For another brief moment, his brain seemed to lock down, refusing to accept what his eyes were telling him. In what seemed an eternity but was actually only seconds, he realized his eyes had not deceived him. He was looking at Jug’s body lying across Willow’s body. It was then that Moose Harris walked back into the clearing.
“I dragged ol’ Seth’s body into the woods,” Moose called out to Luther, who was still plundering the inside of the tipi after Yarborough had gone back to the cave. “His was the biggest body to move,” Moose went on. “Wouldn’t hurt you none to gimme a hand totin’ these two outta here. Ain’t neither one of ’em very big.” He giggled as he added, “I’ll flip you to see who gets to tote the—” He stopped cold then, forced to take one backward step as he stared at the shaft of the arrow protruding from his abdomen. “Luther!” he gasped, in alarm, as a second arrow drove into his ribs with a distinct thud. “Luther!” he cried out again. “Injuns!” He dropped to his knees.
Fully alert now, Luther grabbed his rifle and ran out of the tipi, only to go facedown on the ground, the result of a rifle ball in his back. In raging fury now, after realizing the bodies were those of Willow and Jug, Luke looked inside the tipi to see if there was anyone else. There was no one inside, so he figured there must be more up in the cave. He picked up the rifle Luther had dropped, checked to see if it was loaded, then used it to finish Moose off with a shot in his chest. Then he knelt on one knee and aimed his rifle at the cave, expecting the remaining two men up there to respond to the shot he just fired. But there was no response, and that worried him, because now he wasn’t sure where they were. He walked back to stand over Luther, who was still lying flat on his stomach. “I’m done for,” Luther pleaded. “I won’t cause you no more trouble.”
“Right,” Luke said, then reached down and grabbed a handful of his hair. He jerked Luther’s head back and ended his life with one quick slash of his skinning knife across his throat.
Seeing no sign of anyone else, Luke hurried to the edge of the clearing and the bodies. He pulled Jug’s bloody corpse off Willow’s slender, blood-soaked body, fighting to prevent a sob that threatened to burst forth from his throat. He recoiled then, startled by the flutter of her eyelids when she suddenly opened her eyes. “Luke?” she asked, not sure he was real.
“Yes, little one,” he answered, “it’s me.”
“Jug told me to play dead. He said you would come.” She tried to smile. “I knew you would come.”
“There were four men, right?” he asked, knowing he could not afford to be careless and thinking he had heard one calling out about moving a body. But since there was no response after he killed two, maybe there had been only three.
“There were four,” she answered. “Jug killed one of them.”
Luke quickly looked all around him. So there was one more to deal with. Luke wondered why he had not made a move. The first place he would think of was the cave, but why didn’t he take a shot at him when he came to Willow? His guess was that he wanted to keep the protection the cave gave him. For he held the advantage if Luke advanced upon the cave. He could easily shoot Luke down if he tried to come in the entrance after him. Luke was not sure if he had a choice at this point.
The loss of his friend, Jug Sartain, would strike him later, and his death would have to be avenged. But his priority at the moment was to take care of Willow, and the first thing to do was to get her out of harm’s way, then find out how serious her wounds were. The top of her deerskin shirt was covered with blood, so much so that he was not sure how many wounds she had. The most obvious one was the hole over her right breast, for there was still some blood coming out of it. “Come,” he said, and hung his rifle on his shoulder, “put your arms around by neck. I’ve got to take you away from here so I can see how bad you’re hurt.”
She did as he instructed, and he picked her up and immediately stepped into the trees at the edge of the clearing in case the other raider decided to risk a shot at them. He took one look back at Jug’s body lying in the clearing. The little man looked even smaller in death. Good-bye, my friend, he thought. I will be back to give you a proper grave, and I will kill the last one remaining to avenge your death. He hurried through the trees then, carrying Willow back to his horses by the stream.
He was not sure what the man in the cave would do. Would he try to finish what the four of them had started to do and come after him and Willow, or would he run? And what men were these, who would attack a trapper’s camp? His first guess would be Hudson’s Bay trappers. These were some of the thoughts running through his mind as he laid his wife on his coat beside the stream. He looked in his saddlebags and found some cloth he carried for the purpose and cleaned the fresh blood away from the wound below her shoulder. Better at treating wounds than he, she told him how to clean it. Between the two of them, they managed to stop the bleeding, however, she had already lost a great deal of blood and was very weak. Luke knew he really needed to get her back to the tipi where he could put her to bed by a warm fire and cook her something to eat. But he couldn’t do that knowing one of the raiders was in the cave above the tipi. He was also haunted by the thought of Jug’s body lying unprotected at the edge of the clearing, and he was determined to beat the scavengers to the little man’s remains.
When he had done all he could to comfort Willow, he asked, “Did Jug have any idea who these men were?”
“He knew they were Hudson’s Bay men,” Willow answered weakly. She rested a moment, then said, “The man in the cave knew Jug and called him by name.”
That lit a spark in Luke’s brain. “Did Jug call his name?” He waited but she couldn’t seem to recall. Luke remembered Jug talking about the Hudson’s Bay trader who told him about the valley. “Did Jug call him Yarborough?”
“Yarborough,” Willow repeated. “Yes, that’s what he called him.”
So, he thought, Jug’s suspicions about the man, Yarborough, were correct. He had reserved the potential harvest of the bountiful beaver fur in this unknown little valley all for his own personal gain. Yarborough had evidently kept the existence of the valley a secret from his superiors at Hudson’s Bay as well as the trappers he was responsible for. Yarborough, a man Jug had worked for when he trapped for Hudson’s Bay, had ordered the little man’s death. And he was right there, holed up in the cave, waiting for Luke to flush him out.
When Luke did not speak for several moments after she answered his question, Willow opened her eyes to look at him. His expression was so intense that she had to ask, “What are you thinking?”
“What?” he replied, distracted from his thoughts of revenging Jug’s death. “Oh, I’m thinkin’ how best to take care of you. But first, I have Yarborough to deal with. We can’t do anything until he is taken care of.”
“You can’t go into that cave, Luke,” she insisted. “He will shoot you down.”
“We can’t stay here waitin’ for him to start takin’ shots at the tipi. Jug and I weren’t too bright when we decided to build the tipi where we did. We didn’t think about a situation like this. We were just thinkin’ about a place to keep the horses from freezin’ to death. Now I’ve got to figure a way to get him outta there.” He thought about throwing some random shots into the mouth of the cave, but it would be one helluva coincidence if one happened to hit Yarborough. More likely he would kill some of the horses. It would also serve to use up a lot of ammunition.
He was about ready to give up on the idea when Yarborough solved the problem for him. Luke heard a pistol shot from inside the cave and ran up toward the clearing to see what it was about. All of a sudden all their horses came galloping out of the cave, and in the middle of the pack, Luke got a glimpse of Reese Yarborough hanging on the side of one of them, yelling like an Indian to urge them on. When they charged over the lip of the mouth of the cave, the horses didn’t scatter but continued to run as a pack. Luke realized then that Yarborough had some of the horses on lead ropes and the other horses were just following. They charged straight through the clearing into the aspen forest, not veering to go back to Yarborough’s own horses, left tied in the aspens. Yarborough was running scared, his one thought to save his own life. He didn’t know how many were in the party they had attacked, and he simply felt trapped inside that cave. So he ran, Luke thought, still finding it hard to believe. Where would he run to? Back to the Hudson’s Bay store Jug told him about on the Big Hole River? It won’t do you any good, Luke thought. You will have to pay the price for killing Jug Sartain.
With his rifle in hand, Luke ran down the trail that led to the river, trying to keep the fleeing man in sight. He got glimpses of the galloping horses through random clearings in the aspens all the way to the river trail, and he could see that the captive horses veered north, toward the Big Hole River. Amazed by the man’s cowardice, it occurred to Luke that Yarborough must have seen the killing of the man he shot with arrows and heard him cry out, “Indians!” Thinking they were under Indian attack, and with no idea how many, he must have thought his only option was to escape. You can run, Luke thought, but I will find you, no matter how long it takes.
Right now, however, Willow was more important. At least he could take her to the tipi and make her more comfortable. So he picked her up again and carried her there. Once he had her situated a little better beside a warm fire inside the tipi, he went back into the trees to retrieve the horses left by the Hudson’s Bay men. In addition to the four saddled horses, there were four packhorses, three of them were loaded heavily with traps and supplies. So it was obvious to Luke that Yarborough had decided it was time to reap the harvest he had been guarding for so long. But since there were no traps on one of the packhorses, he figured Yarborough had not planned to do the trapping himself. The question now was what would Yarborough do in response to what happened here? He was running for his life at the moment, but would he return with a gang of Hudson’s Bay men to get rid of the free trapper who was trapping HBC territory? If he did that, he would give up his plan to harvest all the valley’s beavers for himself. He might also have to explain why he took three trappers to the valley. Luke decided Yarborough was more likely not to disclose what happened in the forbidden valley to his superiors and planned to recruit another party of men to return. With that in mind, he should go after Yarborough before he had time to form another gang. But that might not be possible, because he could not leave Willow while she recovered from her wound and before he could find a way to keep her safe.
Chapter 9
After bringing the horses up from the aspens, he searched the packs, hoping to find some coffee, since his own supply was all but exhausted. His search was rewarded with the discovery of two ten-pound sacks of it, ground and roasted no doubt at the HBC store on the Big Hole River. He made a pot, and Willow tried to drink a cup of it, but she could not eat anything, wanting only to lie there by the fire. Satisfied that she would be all right for a little while, he left her to rest while he went to take care of Jug.
The little man’s body had laid there on the ground long enough to just begin to stiffen up as the blood drained back into his larger veins. Luke picked him up and laid him across his shoulder. With one hand steadying the load and a shovel in the other, he walked up the slope past the mouth of the cave in search of a peaceful place for his partner’s final rest. When he came to a spot with a clear view of the river far below, he decided Jug would most likely have picked that for himself. So he dropped the shovel and lowered Jug gently to the ground, then he looked around for a patch of dirt that didn’t have so many rocks. When he found one, he set to work with his shovel, and while he labored, he thought about his relatively short acquaintance with the feisty little trapper. He wondered if Jug would still be alive if he hadn’t decided to leave the camp to hunt elk, and he thought he should apologize. “I’m sorry I was way over on the other side of the mountain when you needed me, partner. Willow said you dropped over on top of her to keep her from gettin’ shot again. I wanna thank you for that. It don’t surprise me a-tall.” He paused to pick up a big rock he had managed to unearth and lift it out of the grave. “I’ll use that for your headstone,” he said, continuing his conversation. “You know, partner, I’ve been thinkin’. I don’t believe I ever had a close friend before you and I partnered up. I wanna thank you for bein’ the best of both, partner and friend. And it don’t matter how long it takes, Jug. I’m gonna settle the score with Mr. Yarborough. I owe you that.”
When the grave was as deep as he wanted, he climbed out and dragged Jug’s feet over the foot of it, stood his already stiffening body up, so the feet dropped down inside. Then, as gently as he could, he lowered Jug’s head and shoulders down into the grave. He stood there for a few minutes, trying to think if there was anything else he should do. It occurred to him then to untie the woolen scarf from Jug’s neck and spread it over his face to keep the dirt out of his eyes and mouth. He picked up the shovel and started to fill the grave in but stopped when he remembered. “Damn, I almost forgot. I’ll be right back.”
