As battered and exhausted as he was, Brady Kenton felt almost none of it as he observed, from a participant’s perspective, the evacuation of Confederate Ridge.
It was a remarkable and moving sight. Despite their emotion, despite knowing that the odds of every single one of them coming together again as before were slim; the people moved with a fluid efficiency to gather what they needed and to abandon the rest. They saddled horses and pack mules, cried and hugged and cried some more, then within an hour of having made the decision, abandoned the Confederate Ridge enclave.
Kenton stayed close to Jones, as did Milo—still Jones’s right hand after all these years, Kenton observed. Jones was generous, giving Kenton a horse, an old but efficient saddle, and even a good Colt pistol and ammunition. He tried to persuade him to take a rifle as well, but Kenton would not do so.
As the group moved through the dark mountains without the benefit even of torchlight, two things were evident: They knew every mountain trail intimately, and they were no strangers to fast group flight. Kenton marveled at their efficiency, their trail skills, their determination. He’d never be able to endure their familial, cloistered way of life, nor share their isolationist philosophy, but he found he could understand them nonetheless, and even admire them.
Jones in particular he thought admirable. The man might view himself as just one more resident of the Confederate Ridge community, but Kenton saw that he was far more. Jones had the qualities of natural leadership. It was no wonder he had been so effective as a guerilla warrior during the great civil conflict, and so feared by the Yankee squads he stung like a hornet time and again in the wilderness regions of Virginia and Tennessee.
When the great moving pillar of people began to disperse at key points along the way, Kenton realized that this flight was in no way random. They’ve planned this all…long in advance! he thought. This was made evident by the natural and orderly way the group broke apart, different individuals and families taking different mountain trails. He wondered how it must have been to live in a society that was so insecure, so subject to interference, that it had been necessary to develop an advance pattern for its self-destruction.
The group went on, growing smaller all the while. Jones spoke little, withdrawn inside himself, yet also wary and attentive, keeping watch for pursuers. Kenton himself worried about this, especially at the beginning, but less as time passed and it became clear that no one was on their trail. Kenton realized that the out-of-control forest fires that were spreading from Gomorrah Mountain were actually working to the advantage of the Confederate Ridge refugees, diverting the attention and manpower of the soldiers, giving more time for flight.
Kenton found much satisfaction in knowing that Colonel Ottinger had made a fundamental miscalculation. He had assumed that Jones and the people of Confederate Ridge would remain where they were. He had assumed he had all the time he needed to deal with them.
He’d find himself overrunning an empty stockade. The mental image made Kenton smile.
By the time dawn came, Kenton, Milo, and Jones were alone. The populace of Confederate Ridge had entirely broken up, like smoke dissolving to nothing.
As Kenton lay down at last to sleep, hidden away with his two companions in a mountain hollow, only then did he realize that he had not the slightest idea where they were going, or even if Jones and Milo wanted him along.
At this point, he was far too tired to care.
About the time Kenton was falling asleep, a band of exhausted, ash-covered soldiers stood in the midst of the Confederate Ridge compound and watched Colonel J.B. Ottinger seem to fade away before them.
He stood alone, unsmiling, unspeaking, the morning sun bright on his disfigured face but murky in his dead eye. He looked very old.
His troops hated him by now. They’d begun to hate him slowly, by stages, almost as soon as he’d arrived to take command at Fort Benton. The soldiers had known of Confederate Ridge a long time, just as they knew of the personal history between Ottinger and Jones. If any had doubted that Ottinger’s coming to Montana had nothing to do with his hatred for Jones, they’d lost that doubt now. The entire Gomorrah incident made it undeniable.
The nearby ridges flamed now, burning over many miles, hopelessly out of control. For a time the soldiers had tried to contain the blaze once it spread beyond the planned reburn area, but the wind and the dry mountains, which had seen no rain for a month other than that one storm that had put out the original Gomorrah fire, combined to make it impossible. Stopping the fire the soldiers had started was now in the hands of God and nature alone.
As exhausted as they were after all their slavish labor, though, Ottinger had ordered them to ready their arms and march to Confederate Ridge, there to demand the surrender of the enclave and to take into military custody its leader, Jones.
But Jones was gone. The stockade was empty. And after a feeble effort at tracking and pursuit, even Ottinger had to realize that it was hopeless. His men were far too weary, and Jones and his people had too great a start.
So Ottinger stood there near the Confederate Ridge stockade well, alone, old, his spirit seeming to die while his men silently watched.
An under officer approached him. “Do you have orders for us, sir?”
Ottinger said wearily, “Set the stockade ablaze.”
“Ablaze, sir? Begging your pardon, sir, but we’ve already lost control of the earlier fires, sir. It could happen on this ridge as well.”
“I’ve given my order. Carry it out.”
They did set the log fort ablaze, and all the buildings inside it, and for an hour watched it all burn. Then, at Ottinger’s orders, they returned to Gomorrah, there to rest for a few hours and break their camp before beginning the march back to Fort Brandon, a place they normally deplored, but which by comparison to what they’d endured at Gomorrah, now seemed a welcome refuge and familiar home.
When they’d rested for a time, Kenton, Jones, and Milo Buckner made a fire, cooked food and coffee, and talked about the immediate future.
Though these men were quite different from him, and during the war had been his enemies, Kenton was naturally drawn to them. They were tragic figures, in their way, attempting to live an independent, autonomous life that could never fully succeed, yet this was part of what was intriguing about them.
“You said you’d write about us, Kenton, and tell the true story. Did you mean it?” Jones asked.
“I did. I only regret I saw so little of your way of life…I saw only the end of it all.”
“It’s not the end yet,” Jones said. “We’ll find our way together again, most of us, anyway. And someday find a place far enough away that we can live and truly be left alone.”
“Pernell, you have to face the facts: That would be easier said than done,” Milo Buckner said. “It would be hard indeed to survive if we were too far cut off from your brother.”
Jones watched the steam rise from his coffee, and nodded. “Yes. I know.”
“I never knew you had a brother,” Kenton said. He’d known a fair amount about Pernell Jones back in the war days, but had never heard of a brother until Jones had mentioned one during his final talk to the people in the Confederate Ridge compound.
“I do,” Jones said. “A fine brother…and Milo’s right. Without ready access to him, I don’t know if we could have survived here like we did.” He stood, swore softly, and began pacing about. “I don’t like to say it, don’t even like to admit it to myself, but I suppose we haven’t been as self-sufficient at Confederate Ridge as it might appear. Without my brother’s support, we would have been a very impoverished people at times.”
Kenton paid close attention. He’d wondered almost as soon as he’d seen the cloistered community of Confederate Ridge how such a group could have survived so well without outside commerce or subsidy. Evidently they hadn’t.
“So your brother has helped you?”
“Yes. Yes, many times. He has always believed in us, understood us, and helped us…all without really being part of us. He’s deeply involved in the commerce of the Foreign Nation. Quite wealthy, he is. His generosity has, from time to time, been what allowed us to go on.”
Kenton felt mildly disappointed. The idea of a self-sufficient, self-sustaining community of stubborn isolationists appealed to his romantic side more so than that of a group that required occasional injections of support from the outside in order to survive. Rather than being independent from the commerce of the “Foreign Nation” of the United States, Jones and his people had actually been indirectly dependent on it.
“Where does your brother’s wealth come from?” Kenton asked.
Jones said, “Tell you what—why don’t you come see for yourself?”
Milo Buckner grinned. “I was hoping that’s where we were going, Pernell!”
“So you don’t care if I travel with you a while longer?” Kenton asked.
“I was counting on you doing so.”
“So was I,” Kenton replied. “There’s still much I need to learn about you and your people if I’m to write about it as I should.”
“Then meet my brother you shall.” Jones went back to the battered coffee pot, which Milo had brought out of Confederate Ridge slung by a string to the horn of his horse’s saddle, and poured a fresh cupful for himself. “Tell me something, Mr. Kenton: What brought you to these parts in the first place? The fire at Gomorrah?”
“Oh, no. I came earlier than that. I was to meet a man in Gomorrah. He’d contacted me, telling me he had information that would be important to me. I was about halfway up Gomorrah Mountain when I was attacked by a highwayman and robbed. The sorry thief left me unconscious in the forest, took my possessions, even my original coat and pistol, everything, and apparently headed on up toward Gomorrah. Actually, I suppose the poor devil saved my life. He was apparently just outside town when the fire came down. Burned him to a cinder. I was farther down the mountain, unconscious on the ground, so I survived with nothing more than a fairly mild scorching.”
“Speaking of that fire…what do you think it was?” Milo asked.
“I couldn’t say,” Kenton replied. “It certainly wasn’t man-caused, and was nothing volcanic, or lightning-related. I can only surmise that something fell from the sky and exploded just above the town.”
“A meteor,” Jones said. “That’s been my suspicion from the outset. One bursting through the atmosphere so fast it generates intense heat and disintegrates with an explosive force.”
“A meteor…like a falling star?” Milo said.
“That’s right.”
“Mercy!”
“It’s an amazing thing to consider,” Kenton said. “It’s a telling thing about Ottinger, too, that the man could find nothing in such a fascinating event except a handy pretext for trying to settle a personal score.”
Jones stared across the mountains. “I hate him. I thought about slipping away, heading back, and finding him. If he wants to kill me, let him see if he’s man enough to do it face-to-face.”
“I’m glad you didn’t do that, Pernell,” Milo said.
Kenton shifted the conversation back onto its original course. “Where does your brother live, Pernell?”
“A couple of days’ ride from here. You may be surprised to meet him. But what about this man you were to meet in Gomorrah? You never met him, I’m sure.”
“No, I didn’t,” Kenton said. “Now I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. If alive, he’s at Fort Brandon, a place I certainly can’t safely go.”
“So what will you do?”
“Hope he’s alive, and that he contacts me again through the offices of the Illustrated American. It’s all I can do at the moment.”
“Tell you what. Let’s take a look at Fort Brandon first, from a distance, anyway. Maybe we’ll spot him.
“It’s a good idea. Can you spare the time?”
“Fort Brandon’s not far out of our way.”
“I do appreciate it.”
“Glad to have you with us, Kenton. Glad to have you writing about us, and about Ottinger.”
“I intend to bring him down completely this time.”
“He had his men shooting at you, Kenton. He wants you dead. He’ll try to get you again, as he’s tried with me many times.”
“Let him try,” Kenton replied. “Let him try.”