Although he died at a tragically young age, Les Savage, Jr. (1922–1958) was a prolific writer of Western and historical fiction, publishing twenty-four novels and well over a hundred short stories, novelettes, and novellas in his sixteen-year career. Even more remarkable than his output is the consistently high level of quality he attained, whether in the novel length or in the shorter forms. Savage’s fiction is highly atmospheric, assiduously accurate as to period, and vividly evoked, as evidenced by such novels as Treasure of the Brasada, The Hide Rustlers, and Return to Warbow. He was meticulous about plot, inventive, innovative, and loved to experiment. His painstaking research is apparent in all that he wrote, as is his intimate grasp of the terrain wherever a story would be set, his vital familiarity with the characteristics of flora in the changing seasons, and the way of horses, mules, and men.
“I’ll Wait In The Hills… .”
In the spring of 1840, Fort Union had stood at the confluence of the Yellowstone and the Missouri for eleven years. And in that same spring, Victor Garrit came down out of the mountains for the first time in three years. He came down on a Mandan pony, still shedding its winter coat, with his long Jake Hawkins rifle held across the pommel of the buffalo saddle. Those years of running the forest alone had changed his youthful handsomeness, had hollowed his face beneath its prominent cheekbones, had settled his black eyes deep in their sockets. It gave his face the sharp edge of a honed blade, and made a thin slice of his mouth which might have left him without humor but for the quirk which came and went at one tip. He stopped twenty feet out from the huge double-leaved gate in the palisaded wall, calling to the guard.
The small door in one of the leaves opened and John Farrier stepped through. Chief factor of Fort Union since 1832, his square and beefy figure in its three-point blanket coat and black boots was known from New Orleans to the Canadian Territories. He greeted Garrit with a broad grin.
“We saw you coming in, Vic.”
“Your Indian runner found me in Jackson Hole last month,” Garrit said. “He said you were in trouble, and would give me amnesty if I came.”
“You’ve got my protection, as long as you’re here,” Farrier told him. He scratched thoughtfully at his curly red beard. “You know Yellowstone Fur is in a hole, Vic. The Blackfoot trouble has kept my company trappers from working their lines for two years. If we don’t get any fur this year we go under. The free trappers have been operating over beyond the Blackfoot country. They’ll have their rendezvous in Pierre’s Hole this year. If we can get a train of trade goods through and get their furs, we’ll be in business again.”
Garrit’s eyes had never been still, roving from point to point along the palisaded wall in the suspicious restlessness of some wild thing. “And you want me to take the pack train through?”
“You’re the only man can do it, Vic. I can’t get any of these mangy lard-eaters around the post to take the chance, not even for double wages and a bonus. The trader’s here, but he had to get all of his crew from St. Looey.” The factor put a freckled hand on Garrit’s knee. “Yellowstone might forget a lot of what happened in the past, if you saved the day for them, Vic.”
Garrit’s black eyes never seemed to lose their gleam, in their shadowed sockets, and it only added to the wildness of his gaunt face. “You’d go under if the company went under, wouldn’t you, John?” he asked.
Defeat pinched at Farrier’s eyes, making him look old. “You know I plan on retiring soon. I couldn’t do it without Yellowstone’s pension.”
The quirk at the tip of Garrit’s lips became a fleeting grin. “You’ve been my only friend up here, John. I don’t think I’d be alive today without you. Where’s the trader?”
A broad smile spread Farrier’s beard, he slapped Garrit affectionately on the knee, turned to lead him back inside. There were a dozen company trappers and engagés gathered on the inside of the door, gaping at Garrit as he rode through. He followed Farrier past the great fur press in the middle of the compound to the hitch rack before the neat factor’s house. He dismounted, still carrying his Jake Hawkins, and followed Farrier through the door. Then he halted, shock filling his face with a bloodless, putty hue.
Enid Nelson sat in a chair by the crude desk, rising slowly to her feet with sight of Garrit. And beside her, John Bruce took a sharp step forward, staring at Garrit with red anger filling his heavy-jawed face.
“Damn you, Farrier,” he half-shouted. “You didn’t tell me it would be Garrit. What are you trying to do?”
Farrier dropped his hand on Garrit’s tense shoulder. “I gave him my word he’d have my protection, Bruce.”
“Protection, hell!” Bruce stormed. “As an officer of Yellowstone Fur, I order you to put this man under arrest immediately.”
“John—” Enid wheeled toward him, her voice sharp. “You can’t ask Farrier to go back on his word!”
Bruce glared at Garrit, breathing heavily, held by Enid’s angry eyes for a moment. Three years of soft living had put a little weight around his belly, but he still bore a heavy-shouldered handsomeness, in the buffalo coat and cowhide breeches of a trader. Garrit was not looking at him, however. Since he had first entered, his eyes had been on Enid. She was a tall girl, auburn-haired, with a strong beauty to her wide-set eyes, her full lips. The Palatine cloak with its pointed hood, the tight bodice holding the swell of her mature figure, the skirt of India muslin—all brought the past to Garrit with poignant impact.
Bruce finally made a disgusted sound. “I’d rather go alone than be guided by a wanted man.”
“You’d never make it ten miles alone,” Farrier said. “The trader for Hudson’s Bay tried it last year. The Blackfeet caught him. He lost his whole pack train. He was lucky to get his men back alive.”
“Those weren’t Blackfeet,” Garrit said thinly.
Bruce stared at him blankly a moment, then a derisive smile curled on his lips. “Don’t tell me you’re still harping on that Anne Corday fable.”
Garrit’s head lifted sharply. He turned to pace restlessly across the room, glancing at the walls, like some animal suspicious of a cage. “It’s no fable,” he said. His voice had lost its accustomed softness. “Anne Corday was with those Indians that got the Hudson’s Bay trade goods last year. The same woman that got my pack train down on the Platte.”
Farrier stopped John Bruce’s angry retort with an upheld hand. “There may be something to it, Bruce. The few trappers of ours that have gotten through haven’t been able to keep any pelts on their lines. Their traps have been cleaned out more systematically than any Indians would ever do it.”
Enid turned to Bruce, catching his arm. “John, if Garrit’s the only one who can get you through, let him do it.”
“And let him take another five thousand dollars’ worth of trade goods whenever he feels like it?” Bruce said. “I’m not that foolish, Enid. And you have no right to give him amnesty, Farrier. When the company hears about this, there’s liable to be a new factor at Fort Union.”
He turned and stamped out the other door, leaving an empty silence in the room. But Farrier winked at Garrit.
“They sent Bruce up here to learn the ropes so he could take over when I retire. But he can hardly be factor if there ain’t any Yellowstone Fur, can he? And there won’t be any Yellowstone Fur if he don’t get through to the rendezvous. And he won’t get through unless you take him. When he cools off, he’ll see how simple it is.”
With a sly grin he followed Bruce out. Slowly, reluctantly, Garrit looked back at Enid. His weather-darkened face appeared even more gaunt. When he finally spoke, his voice had lowered to a husky murmur.
“It’s funny. I’ve dreamed of seeing you again, for three years. And when it comes—I don’t know what to say.”
A smile came hesitantly to her soft lips. She moved toward him, reached out a hand shyly, impulsively, to touch his mouth.
“That quirk’s still there, isn’t it?”
The touch of her hand was like satin, bringing the past back so painfully that it made him pull away, turn from her, start to pace again.
“It’s the only thing that hasn’t changed, in you,” she said. “I don’t think I’d have recognized you, at a distance. You must have lost twenty pounds. You’re dark as an Indian. And so restless, Vic. Like some animal.”
“The woods do that to a man, I guess,” he said. “You got to be half animal to stay alive in the Blackfoot country.” His deepset eyes filled with that restive gleam as he glanced around the walls. “I never saw such a small room.”
She shook her head from side to side, staring at him with hurt, troubled eyes. “Was it worth it?”
He turned sharply to her. “Would you spend five years in jail for something you didn’t do?”
“Don’t you want to come back, Vic?”
“Come back.” He looked at her an instant, the pain naked in his eyes. Then he turned away stiffly, voice low and tight. “More than anything else in the world, Enid. It’s the only thing that keeps me going.”
“Things have changed, Vic.”
The gaunt hollows beneath his prominent cheekbones deepened, as he realized what she meant. “You … and Bruce?”
“I tried to wait, Vic.” She turned her face away, as if unable to meet his eyes. “You have no idea how hard it was.” Then she wheeled back, catching at his arm, the words tumbling out. “You’ve got to understand. I did wait, you’ve got to believe me, but it was so long, not hearing from you, then someone brought word you were dead—”
“It’s all right, Enid. I understand. I had no right to ask that you wait.” He paused, then brought the rest out with great effort. “I suppose you and John plan to be married after he makes good on this trip?”
“Oh, Vic—” It was torn from her, and she wheeled around, face in her hands, shoulders shaking with sobs. He stared at her, helplessly. He wanted to go to her, to take her in his arms, more than anything else he’d wanted in these three years. He started to, then his hands dropped, and he stopped again, as he realized he had no right. She was tortured enough, in her dilemma. Even though she knew he was alive now, it did not change things. He had no more to offer her than he’d had three years ago, when he fled.
Finally, in a barely audible voice, he said, “For your sake, and for Farrier’s, I hope Bruce decides to let me take him through. Tell them I’ll wait in the hills to the west. These walls are getting too tight.”
Hell-Cat’s Brew
John Bruce’s pack train left Fort Union on the twelfth of April, following the Yellowstone River south. There were ten men and thirty mules, loaded with the tobacco, Du Pont powder, Missouri lead, knives, traps, flints, vermilion, bridles, spurs, needles and thread for which the free trappers and Indians at Pierre’s Hole would trade their furs.
The cavalcade toiled through the rolling grasslands south of the Missouri, forded countless creeks swollen and chocolate with spring. They passed the mouth of the Powder River where the sand lay black and fine as Du Pont on the sloping banks, and fighting their way through clay flats turned viscid as glue by the rains, finally gained the mountains.
There had not been too much talk between John Bruce and Garrit during the days in the lowlands. But now, as they pulled to the first ridge ahead of the toiling mules, and halted their horses among the pines, Bruce let out a relieved sigh.
“Thank the Lord we’re though that clay. I thought I’d go crazy. I never saw such country.”
Garrit sat staring off westward at the undulant sea of hoary ridges and valleys, rolling away as far as he could see. “It’s a good country. You’ve just got to get used to it,” he said. His broad chest swelled as he drew a deep breath of air, syrupy with the perfumes of pine and wild roses. “Take a whiff of that. Like wine.”
Bruce frowned closely at him. “Don’t tell me you actually like it—running like an animal all these years in this wilderness.”
Garrit tilted his narrow, dark head to one side. “It’s funny,” he said. “A man doesn’t think about liking it, or not liking it. He just lives it. Maybe he should stop to appreciate it more often.”
“I used to see those mountain men come into St. Looey,” Bruce said. “I never could understand what made them come back here, year after year, till some blizzard got them, or some Indian.”
Garrit glanced at him, the humor leaving his face. “No,” he said. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Surprise widened Bruce’s sullen eyes. Then his lips clamped shut, and the antipathy dropped between them again. “You want to be careful, Garrit,” he said. “I still think I should turn you in.”
A sardonic light gleamed in Garrit’s eyes. “But not till I’ve brought you through safe with the furs that’ll make you chief factor of Fort Union.”
Bruce’s face grew ruddy, and he started to jerk his reins up and pull his horse over against the mountain man’s. But a rider came laboring up the slope behind them, stopping Bruce’s movement. It was Frenchie, a burly man in a cinnamon bear coat and elk hide leggings, a red scarf tied about his shaggy black hair, immense brass earrings dangling against his cheeks. He drew to a halt beside them, blowing like a horse.
“Now for the climbing, hein?” he grinned. “Looks like we go through that pass ahead.”
“Not by a long shot,” Garrit said. “How long you been in this country?”
“Jus’ come north to work at Fort Union this spring,” the Frenchman said. “Man don’t have to know the country to see that pass is the easiest way through.”
“Exactly why we don’t take it,” Garrit said. “The Blackfeet have caught three pack trains in there the last two years. They don’t think there’s any other way through Buffalo Ridge. But I know a trail over that hogback to the south.”
“These mules are already worn down from that clay,” Bruce said angrily. “I’m not taking them ten miles out of our way to climb over a peak when there’s a perfect pass through—”
“Farrier sent me along to keep your hair on your head,” Garrit said thinly. There was no quirk left at the tip of his lips. “Any time you want to go on alone, just say so.”
Bruce grew rigid in the saddle, his eyes drew almost shut. For a moment, there was no sound but the stertorous breathing of the animals, standing in a long line behind them. Finally Bruce settled into the saddle.
“All right,” he said, sullenly. “What do we do?”
“It’s getting late. I’ll scout ahead. I want to be sure what we’re going into. If I’m not back by the time you reach that river in the valley below us, make camp there.”
Garrit heeled his horse down off the crest and into timber. As the men disappeared behind, the only sound that broke the immense stillness was the sardonic crackle of pine cones underfoot. He could not help his usual grin at the sound. There was something sly and chuckling about it, like the forest having its own private little joke on him. It always brought him close to the mountains, the solitude, and it made him realize what a contrast his present sense of freedom was to the restive confinement he had felt in the fort.
But thought of Fort Union brought the picture of Enid back to him, and his exhilaration faded. Through all these years he had carried with him constantly the painful desire to return to her, to the life they had known. Seeing her at Fort Union had been a knife twisted in the wound. He still felt a great, hollow sickness when he thought of her being promised to Bruce. Could she be mistaken in her feelings? He had seen something in her eyes, something she had been afraid to put in words. If he cleared his name, so he could go back to her, would she realize—
He shook his head, trying to blot out the thoughts. He realized he had climbed halfway up to the next ridge without looking for sign. A man was a fool to dream in this country. His head began to move from side to side in the old, wolfish way, eyes picking up every little infraction of the normal rule of things.
It was near dusk when he found the sign. He was five or six miles beyond the pack train, emerging from a fringe of quaking aspen along a stream in the bottom of a canyon, and he caught sight of the early berry bush ahead. A few of the red-black berries were scattered on the ground, and half a dozen of the limbs had been sliced cleanly near the root. As he approached, a magpie began scolding far up the slope. It was another of the forest sounds that invariably turned the quirk at the tip of his lips to a grin. There was something irrepressibly clownish about the raucous chatter.
Just keep talking, you joker, he thought. Long as you jabber I’m safe.
He got down to study the moccasin tracks about the early berry bushes. They were only a few hours old, for the grass they had pressed down had not yet risen straight again. As he stood up, the magpie’s scolding broke off abruptly. It made his narrow head snap around. The weather seams deepened around his eyes, squinting them almost shut, as he searched the shadowy timber. Then he hitched his horse and headed for the trees. An animal look was in his face now and he ran with a wolfish economy of motion. He reached a dense mat of buckbrush and dropped into it and became completely motionless. He could still see his horse. It had begun to browse peacefully. The timber was utterly still.
After a long space, he began to load his gun. He measured a double load of Du Pont into his charge cup and dumped it down the barrel of his Jake Hawkins. He slid aside the brass plate in the stock, revealing the cavity filled with bear grease. He wiped a linen patch across this, and stuck it to his half-ounce ball of Galena. He rammed the lead home, and then settled down to wait.
FOR TEN MINUTES he was utterly motionless. His eyes had grown hooded, the quirk had left his lips. The fanwise sinews of his fingers gleamed through the darker flesh of his hands, as they lay so softly, almost caressingly, against the long gun.
Then the man appeared, coming carefully down through the timber. He saw the horse and stopped. The brass pan of his Springfield glittered dully in the twilight. Garrit knew the conflict that was going on within him. But finally, as Garrit knew it would be, the temptation was too great, and the horse decoyed him out.
He approached the animal, frowning at it. At last he began to unhitch it.
“Don’t do that, Frenchie,” Garrit said.
The burly Frenchman wheeled toward the sound of his voice. Surprise dug deep lines into his greasy jowls.
“By gar,” he whispered. “You are an Indian.”
Garrit’s voice was silken with speculation. “I thought you were the Indian.”
“Ho-ho!” The man’s laugh boomed through the trees. “That is the joke. He thought I was Indian. And I find his horse and think the Indian take his scalp.”
“Shut up,” Garrit said sharply. “Don’t you know better ’n to make that much noise out here? I found sign down by the creek. Some Blackfeet had cut early berry branches for arrows.”
Frenchie sobered. “We better go then, hein? My horse she’s up on the ridge. Bruce he got worry about you and sent me to look.” Garrit unhitched his horse and began the climb beside the man. Frenchie sent him an oblique glance. “You really belong to the woods, don’t you?”
“How do you mean?”
“I was five feet from you and never see you. Like you was part tree or something.”
“A man learns that or doesn’t stay alive.”
“Is more than that. Some men belong, some don’t. Them that do will never be happy any place else.”
It touched something in Garrit that he could not define. “Maybe so,” he shrugged.
“For w’y you guide Bruce through like this? You hate him.”
“It’s for Farrier,” Garrit said. “He’s been my only friend up here. He’ll go down with the company if they don’t get any pelts this year.”
“And for Anne Corday?”
Garrit glanced at him sharply. “What do you know about her?”
Frenchie shook his head. “Nothing. Except this is the first trade goods to go through mountains this year. Is like honey to bear. Five thousand dollar worth of honey. You have been hunting three year for Anne Corday without the success. Wouldn’t it be nice if you were along when she show up to get these pack train?”
Garrit was looking straight ahead, his dark face somber and withdrawn. He would not admit it to Frenchie, but the man had struck the truth. Part of his motive in taking the train through had been his debt to Farrier. But another part was his realization of what a strong lure this train would be to the men with Anne Corday. If he could catch them in the act, with John Bruce as witness …
“It’s funny you should talk that way,” Garrit said. “Most men won’t admit Anne Corday exists.”
“I only know the stories I hear. You were youngest man ever trusted with Yellowstone Fur’s trade goods for the rendezvous. Engaged to Enid Nelson in St. Looey. Big future ahead with the company.” He sent Garrit that oblique look. “How did it really happen? I hear different story every time.”
Garrit’s eyes lost their focus, looking back through the years. “We had brought the trade goods by boat to the mouth of the Platte. Gervais Corday was camped there. He said he’d been a free trapper till Yellowstone Fur squeezed him out. He’d fought them and some Yellowstone man had shot him. They had to take his arm off. It made him bitter as hell toward the company.”
“I would be bitter too,” Frenchie said softly.
Garrit hardly heard him. “Anne Corday was his daughter. He’d married a Blackfoot squaw and kept Anne up there with the Indians. We were the first white men to see her. I guess no white man has ever really seen her since. It was raining. The Corday’s invited us into their shelter. There was whiskey. You don’t pay attention to how much you’re drinking, with a girl like that around. She danced with me, I remember that. She got us so drunk we didn’t know what was going on. And her pa and his men got away with our goods.”
“But why were you accused of taking the furs?”
“Cheyennes caught us before we got back to St. Looey. My crew was wiped out. I was the only one left alive. I had to get back the rest of the way on foot. It took me months. Nobody would believe my story. Too many traders had worked that dodge on Yellowstone, and had taken the trade goods themselves. If there had been witnesses, or someone had known of the Cordays, or had seen them, it would have been different. But I was completely without proof.”
“And nobody has seen Anne Corday since,” Frenchie mused. “She mus’ have been very beautiful woman.”
Garrit nodded slowly. “I can still see her—”
He broke off, as he became aware of the expression on Frenchie’s face. The man tried to hide it. But Garrit had seen the sly curl of the lips. Hot anger wheeled Garrit into Frenchie, bunching his hand in the filthy pelt of the cinnamon bear coat and yanking the man off-balance.
“Damn you. You don’t believe a word I’m saying. You were just leading me on—”
For a moment they stood with their faces not an inch apart. Garrit’s lips were drawn thin, his high cheekbones gleamed against the taut flesh. Finally the Frenchman let his weight settle back against Garrit’s fist, chuckling deep in his chest.
“Do not be mad with Frenchie for making the joke, M’sieu.”
Garrit shoved him away with a disgusted sound, trying to read what lay in those sly, pouched eyes. “Don’t make another mistake like that,” he said thinly. “It’s no joke with me.”
IT WAS FULL night when they got back to camp. The mules were out in timber on the picket line, grazing on the buffalo grass and cottonwood bark, indifferently guarded by a pair of buffalo-coated men. The pack saddles were lined up on one side of a roaring fire. Garrit came in at a trot, calling to the trader.
“Bruce, don’t you know better ’n to build a fire like that in Indian country? Get those mules and saddle up. We can’t stay here now—”
He broke off as the men about the fire parted. There was a horse near the blaze, with two willow poles hooked in a V over its back. From this travois the men had just lifted the woman, putting her on a buffalo pallet by the fire. Before they closed in around her again, Garrit caught a glimpse of the Indian sitting on the ground beside the pallet, head in his arms. Bruce pushed his way free, a flat keg of Monongahela in one hand.
“We can’t move now, Garrit. The woman is sick. Our interpreter’s been talking with them. Game has been scarce this spring. She’s so weak she can hardly talk. The man had tied himself to the horse to stay on.”
“That’s an old dodge,” Garrit said. “They’ve probably got a hundred red devils waiting, now, out in the trees, to jump you.”
“Wouldn’t you have run into them on your way back?”
Garrit shook his head darkly. “You just got to learn the hard way, don’t you? If she’s hungry, that whiskey won’t help.”
“I was just giving the men a drink. I thought a shot might revive her.”
“You were what?”
“Giving the men some,” Bruce said irritably. “Now don’t tell me I can’t do that. Farrier said he gave his men a drink every other night.”
“I suppose you had some too?”
“I did. How else can a man keep his sanity out in this godforsaken country?”
Garrit shook his head disgustedly, glancing at the laughing, joking, red-faced men. “From the looks of them they’ve had more than their share. If you want to get anywhere tomorrow, cork that keg up right now.”
He turned to walk over to the group and push his way through, to stare down at the woman. She was in an elk hide dress with openwork sleeves, whitened by bleaching, a stripe of vermilion paint was in the part of her black hair, and more was blotched on her cheeks. She lay with her head thrown back, eyes closed, breathing shallowly.
He felt the blood begin to pound in his temples. He felt shock spread its thin sickness through his belly. Suddenly, he found himself on his knees beside her, his hand grasping her arm, jerking at her.
“Open your eyes; you’re no more starving than I am. Get up—”
The Indian man raised his head from his arms, calling weakly to Garrit, “Kola, kola—“
“Friend, hell,” Garrit said savagely. “Ma yan levi kuwa na—”
Bruce shoved his way through, grabbing at him. “Garrit, what are you doing?”
“I’m telling him to come over here,” Garrit said hotly. “He isn’t weak, and this isn’t any Indian. It’s Anne Corday.”
“Let her go,” Bruce said roughly. “You’re crazy. You can’t treat a sick woman that way.”
“She isn’t sick, damn you, she’s Anne Corday—”
Bruce pulled him back so hard he sat down. He jumped to his feet like a cat, whirling on Bruce, so enraged he started to hit him. Then he became aware of the men, sitting down around the campfire. Only one was still standing, and he was rubbing at his eyes, a stupid look on his face. The others were dropping their heads onto their arms, or lying back in their buffalo robes. A couple were beginning to snore stertorously. Even Bruce’s eyes had a heavy-lidded look to them.
“What’s the matter?” Garrit said.
“Nothing.” Bruce shook his head. “Just sleepy.”
“How much of that whiskey did you drink?”
Bruce yawned heavily. “Maybe a little more ’n I should. But it wouldn’t do this. Just been a long day.”
“Long day, hell.” Garrit spotted the keg of whiskey, walked savagely over to it. He picked it up, uncorked it, sniffed. “She did this,” he said, wheeling on Bruce. “That’s laudanum, she’s put laudanum in the whiskey—”
Then he stopped. Bruce had sat down against one of the saddles, arms supported on his knees, and his heavy head had fallen onto those arms. Garrit’s eyes flashed back around the men. Frenchie was not among them. He realized he had been too intent on the whiskey. It was too late. Even as he started to wheel, with the heavy grunt in his ears, the blow struck his head.
The Fight
He regained consciousness to the sense of throbbing pain at the base of his skull. Someone was shaking him gently.
More pain dug new seams about his eyes, as he opened them.
“I thought you’d never come around,” John Bruce was telling him. “It’s lucky that Frenchman didn’t split your head open.”
He helped Garrit sit up. It was dawn, with the timber drenched in a pearl-gray mist all about them. The men were gathered around him, grimacing, rubbing their eyes, staring stupidly at each other. One of them was feeding a spitting fire, another was at the edge of camp, retching.
“We came out of it a couple of hours ago,” Bruce said. “Been trying ever since to revive you.”
Garrit shook his head again, winced at the pain. “How could they have got that laudanum in the whiskey?”
“When I gave her a drink, she tried to hold the keg,” Bruce said. “She dropped it, spilled some. The Indian picked it up. There was a little confusion for a minute, there, when they could have put it in. I never would have believed laudanum would do that.”
“If you drink enough,” Garrit muttered. “Farrier used it at Fort Union once. The Indians got so drunk they were going to start a massacre. He spiked their whiskey with laudanum and it knocked them out.” He sent a dismal glance to where the pack saddles had stood, beyond the fire. “Did they get everything?”
“Even the animals,” Bruce said. “We’re stranded.”
“Did you send that Frenchman after me?”
“No. He just disappeared.”
“I guess he was trying to keep me from coming back,” Garrit mused. Then he looked up at Bruce, wide-eyed. “Now will you believe me?”
The man shook his dark head. “I’ve thought Anne Corday was a myth for so long, it’s hard to accept it, even now. I might as well join you in the mountains. This will finish me with Yellowstone Fur.”
“It will finish Yellowstone Fur, if we don’t get that pack train back.”
Bruce’s black brows rose in surprise. “What chance have we got? They have a night’s start on us, and they’re riding. We’ll be lucky to get back to Fort Union on foot, as it is.”
“A crowd like this will never make it back through that Blackfoot country on foot,” Garrit told him. “Your best bet is to hole up while I go after our horses. If you can hold these men here till I get back you still might get a chance to stay with Yellowstone Fur.”
Bruce protested, but Garrit finally convinced him it was their only chance. He drew a map in the earth. There was a creek in the next valley that ran ten miles northward into a canyon so narrow and tortuous it could not be reached by horses. Bruce was to do his hunting now, try to get enough meat to last the men several weeks, and then walk in the water of the creek to its head. This would leave ten miles of his backtrail covered, and in such an inaccessible place, he would be comparatively safe from Indians, if he did not move around.
Bruce finally agreed, and Garrit made up a pack of smoked buffalo meat and dried corn, rolled it in one three-point blanket, and took up the trail.
They had not bothered to hide their tracks. They led northwest from the Yellowstone, toward the heart of the Blackfoot country. It convinced him more than ever that he had not been mistaken. Only someone with connections in the tribe would have dared head so boldly into their land. And Anne Corday’s mother had been a Blackfoot.
He left the mountains for a while, and hit the high plains, rolling endlessly away from him, so devoid of timber in most places that he could not travel much during the day for fear of being seen. On the third day he reached the Little Belts. After the endless plains, it was like coming home. He plunged gratefully into the shadowed timber on the first of the rolling slopes.
Now it was the real running. It brought out all the animal attributes bred in him these last years. There was an intense wolfishness to his unremitting dog-trot, long body slack, head down and turning incessantly from side to side, eyes gleaming balefully in their shadowed sockets, not missing a sign. He ran on their trail till he could run no more and then crawled into a thicket and lay in stupefied sleep and then woke and ran again.
He began to see tepee rings, circles of rocks in parks or open meadows that marked the campsite of an Indian band. It made him even more watchful. On the fourth day he sighted the first Indians. He was climbing a slope, with a magpie scolding in the firs. Despite his aching weariness, he could not help his faint grin at the sound. Just keep talking, you joker.
His moccasins crushed resiliently into the mat of pine needles, and for another hundred yards he climbed steadily. Then the magpie broke off sharply. He stopped, staring up the slope, and wheeled and darted for a dense clump of chokecherry.
He was on his belly, hidden in the brush, when the Indians appeared. They passed within fifty yards of him and never knew he was there, a part of Blackfeet on the move, with their pack horses, their wives, their children. The scent of their tobacco floated to him, and it was not willow-bark kinnikinnik, but the rank plug cut the traders used. There were new axes on their saddles, and new iron bridles on their horses. They had been trading their furs with Anne Corday.
The band of spare horses made his mouth water. But he could not try for one in broad daylight, and since they were heading in the wrong direction, he did not want to lose half a day by following them south to their night camp. So he ran on.
On the fifth day he ran out of food and was afraid to shoot game for fear he would be heard. But he knew the Indian tricks. He found tinipsila roots and ate them raw and later on came across some bulrushes by a stream and ate the white part like celery. And farther up the stream were wild strawberries and a few service berries that only an Indian could swallow with a straight face. It gave him enough nourishment to keep running.
THAT NIGHT HE found three more tepee rings in a shallow valley. The grass had not begun to grow up around the circled rocks, so he knew they had been planted recently. The horse droppings leading north were fresh enough to have been left that morning. It was the way he wanted it.
He followed the trail by moonlight, his lank figure fluttering through the shadow-black timber like a lost animal. He found the new camp near dawn. Three tepees formed pale cones in the center of a clearing, with the horses grazing on picket ropes.
Under ordinary circumstances, he would have moved more slowly, but the squaws would be rising soon, and he wanted to get away before that. So he had to approach the horses directly, not giving them time to get used to him. He picked out a pinto with lots of wind in its heavy throttle. Before he could reach it, however, one of the animals spooked and whinnied.
This brought the dogs from where they had been sleeping near the embers of last night’s fire, and their baying raised the camp. They circled him in a pack, snapping at his legs and yapping crazily. Kicking them off, he pulled the pinto’s picket pin and ran down the rope to the plunging horse. The first Indian to jump through the door flap had a clumsy London fusil.
He saw that he couldn’t get it loaded in time, and started to run for Garrit. The mountain man threw all his weight onto the picket rope, pulling the pinto down so he could throw the loose end around its fluttering snout in a war-bridle. He did not have time to unknot the other end from about its neck. He pulled his green River Knife and slashed it.
The Indian reached him then, leaping through the pack of dogs to swing viciously with his clubbed fusil. Garrit ducked and the butt of the gun thumped against the pinto’s flank. Holding the plunging horse with one hand he threw his Green River, blade first, with the other. There was but a foot between them, and he saw it sink to the hilt in the man’s shoulder.
The Indian staggered back, face contorted with pain. Garrit scooped up the rifle he had been forced to drop and threw himself aboard the horse, kicking its flanks. He raced out of camp with the dogs yapping at his heels and the other Indians stopping halfway between the tepees and the herd to load their fusils and fire after him. The short-range London guns would not reach him, however, and he plunged unhurt into timber.
He knew they would follow and ran the horse for the first creek. He went south in the water, for they knew all the tricks too. After two miles of riding the shallows he went out on shore and left sign they would be sure to follow and made them a false trail leading on south till he found a talus bench that led into another creek. The pony was unshod and would not even leave shoe scars on the rocky bench. In the water he turned north again. When he could travel north no longer in the water he left it once more. He was far enough above the Indian camp to start hunting for the Cordays’ sign now. It took him several hours to pick it up.
They were pushing twenty-five horses, and he could travel at three times their speed if he drove hard. And he drove hard. All day, with only time out to water the horse and shoot a buck whose haunch he roasted over a fire and ate as he rode. He gave the horse an hour’s rest at sundown and then went on.
By dawn the horse was beaten down but Garrit knew he was near his quarry for all the signs were not many hours old. His belly sucked at him with its hunger and his face, covered with a week’s growth of scraggly beard, had the haggard, driven look of some animal. It took all his grim purpose and the bitterness of three years’ exile to push him those last miles. Then, in the late afternoon, he topped a ridge and saw the line of pack horses standing in the park below him.
He left the horse and dropped down through the trees on foot. Closing in on the camp, he became a shadow, flitting from tree to tree. Finally he bellied down and crawled like a snake through buckwheat and chokecherry bushes till he could see the whole camp.
They had evidently just finished trading with more Indians, for there was a pile of unbaled pelts heaped to one side of a campfire, and a pack saddle next to them, with some trade goods still lying on the ground. The Blackfoot who had come to Bruce’s camp with the woman was busily loading another pack saddle onto one of the horses lined up near the trees. The other three were at the fire. Frenchie was on his hunkers, still wearing his immense cinnamon bear coat, sorting out the pelts they had just gotten. Gervais Corday stood above him, tall, bitter-eyed, one-armed. And Anne Corday was feeding new wood to the fire.
The weather seams deepened about Garrit’s eyes, as he stared at her, giving his face an expression close to pain. This was the woman he had hunted for three years. Hers was the face he had seen in a thousand dreams. And now it was before him. Her blue-black hair no longer had the vermilion in its part. It was blown wild by the wind, and made a tousled frame for the piquant oval of her face, with its black eyes, its ripe lips. She had discarded the Indian dress for a shirt made from a red Hudson’s Bay blanket, and a skirt of white doeskin with fringes that softly caressed her coppery calves. Even in his bitter triumph, he could not deny her striking, young beauty.
“Ho-ho,” Frenchie chortled. “There are over twenty prime beaver here. Another year or so like this and we’ll be rich.”
Gervais frowned down at him. “You said this would finish Yellowstone Fur.”
“Is true.” The Frenchman grinned. “They don’t turn this pack train into furs, they go under. But why stop? There is still American Fur, Rocky Mountain Fur. Even Hudson’s Bay.”
“Did they take my arm?” Gervais’s voice was acid. He began to pace back and forth, slapping at his elk hide leggins with his good hand. “Did they ruin me? What do I care about Rocky Mountain or Hudson’s Bay? They didn’t smash my life. It is Yellowstone Fur who will pay.” His voice began to shake. “They can’t take a man’s life and toss it away like a puff of smoke. Ruin everything he worked for so long. Cast him and his daughter upon the wilderness—”
The girl caught his arm, her voice low and placating. “Father please, don’t get excited again—”
“Excited!” He turned on her with blazing eyes. “How can you talk that way? You were ruined too. All my plans for you. Instead of a great lady you’re nothing but a wild animal running the forest with me.”
“One fur company is just as bad as the next,” Frenchie said. “You saw how American Fur pushed Lestrade off his rightful lines. If you’d fought them, I’m sure they’d have taken your arm just as quickly.”
“Frenchie,” the girl said sharply. “Don’t start him off again. You’re just twisting things around. Maybe he had reason to fight Yellowstone, but—”
“I don’t know—” Gervais pulled away from his daughter, pacing again. “Perhaps Frenchie is right.”
“Of course I’m right,” the big Frenchman said. “What good would it do to stop now? If you take what we’ve made and try to start again, some other big fur company will only pinch you off again. We’ve got to ruin them all, Gervais. Only then will it be safe for honest men out here again. They take your arm this time; they’re liable to kill you next time—”
“They won’t get the chance, Frenchie,” Garrit said, rising from the chokecherry bushes.
The three in the clearing and the Indian by the horses all turned in surprise. Garrit walked toward them, his Jake Hawkins held across one hip. Gervais finally let out a pent breath, speaking in a voice thin with shock.
“I thought you said you took all the horses.”
“I did,” Frenchie said. “The man’s inhuman.” Then he let out his bellowing laugh. “Sucre bleu, I should have kill you. The only man in the world who could have catch us on foot, and I let him live.”
At that moment a quick movement from the Indian spun Garrit toward him. The man had tried to jump behind one of the horses and scoop up a loaded rifle and fire, all at the same time. His gun boomed simultaneously with Garrit’s but he had tried to do too much at once. His bullet dug into the ground a foot from Garrit, while Garrit’s bullet struck him in the chest, knocking him backward like a heavy blow.
But it gave Frenchie his chance. He reached Garrit before the mountain man could wheel back, with Gervais Corday rushing right in behind. Garrit was off-balance when the Frenchman grabbed his rifle. It was his first true sense of the man’s bearlike strength. He felt as though his hands had been torn off with the rifle when Frenchie wrenched it free.
The big Frenchman swung it wide, clubbed, and brought it back in a vicious circle. It would have broken Garrit’s head open. All he could do was drop to his knees. The heavy gun whistled over his head and smashed Gervais right in the face as he came rushing in on Frenchie’s flank.
The one-armed man made a choked sound and dropped like a poled ox. Garrit came up off his knees into Frenchie, locking the rifle between them. It knocked the Frenchman back off his feet and he rolled to the ground with Garrit on top, fighting like a cat.
The quarters were too close for the rifle and the Frenchman let it go to pull his knife. Garrit tried to grasp the wrist but the Frenchman spraddled out for leverage and rolled atop Garrit.
The mountain man saw the flash of a blade and jerked his whole body aside. The knife drove into the ground. Frenchie yanked it out, but Garrit got hold of the knife-wrist with both hands and twisted it inward as he lunged upward with his whole body.
It drove the knife hilt-deep into the Frenchman. He let out a great shout of pain and flopped off Garrit. As the mountain man rolled over and came to his feet he saw Anne Corday on her knees beside her father, fumbling the pistol from his belt. Garrit ran at her, reaching her just as she raised the weapon. He kicked it out of her hand.
She threw herself up at him, clawing like an enraged cat. He caught both hands, spun aside, used her own momentum to throw her. She hit on her back so hard it stunned her, and she made no attempt to roll over or rise.
Garrit wheeled back in time to see Frenchie staggering into the trees, one hand gripped over his bloody side. Garrit got the loaded pistol and ran after the man. But by the time he reached timber, Frenchie was out of sight. Garrit heard Anne Corday groan and roll over. He didn’t know how much time it would take him to find Frenchie. He couldn’t risk it, he couldn’t take that chance of losing the pack train again, with the girl and her father still in the clearing.
Reluctantly, he turned back to Anne Corday. The anger was gone from her face. Grief and shock rendered it blank. She was staring at her father, as if just realizing how crazily his head was twisted. Garrit knew, then, what she must have known. The blow of the rifle butt had broken Gervais Corday’s neck.
“She’ll Always Be Calling… .”
It was two days before the girl would talk to Garrit. He buried her father and the Indian up there in the Little Belts and took the pack train and started back to Bruce.
The second night he made camp on the white beach of a creek in a narrow gorge that rose a hundred feet above them and would hide the light of their fire. The girl sat on a heap of buffalo robes, watching him draw a spark with his flint and steel. When he had the blaze started, her voice came softly out of the night.
“You love this country, don’t you?”
He was silent awhile, staring into the flames. “I guess you’re right. The country gets into a man without him even knowing it.” He paused, then slowly turned to look at her. “You don’t hate me?”
“I’ve been mixed up these last two days.” She spoke in a low, strained voice. “For a while I thought you were to blame for my father’s death. But the Frenchman killed my father.” She shook her head slowly. “Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. Father was changing so. I thought he was bitter enough, at first. But he was getting worse. He was becoming a fanatic. Actually, you have as much reason to hate me. We ruined you, didn’t we?”
He turned and walked to where she sat, towering above her, his face narrow and dark with thought as he gazed down at her. “I should hate you. I’ve tried to. But what I saw in that clearing changed a lot of things. Don’t you realize how Frenchie was using your father?”
She stared at the sand, her lips still pinched and white with grief. “I realize now. The Frenchman didn’t show his true colors till that afternoon. We thought he was a friend, another man who had been ruined by Yellowstone Fur. But he was nothing more than a thief, using my father’s bitterness against Yellowstone to further his own ends.”
“And your bitterness?”
Her face turned up to him defiantly. “Were we wrong? Wouldn’t you despise the people who ruined your father?”
He dropped beside her, caught her hands. “It wasn’t Yellowstone Fur itself, Anne. Has your father so filled you with his bitterness that you can’t see that? There are decent men in Yellowstone. There’s a man named Farrier down at Fort Union who could have turned me in, but he gave me a break.”
“They sent a man out to kill my father—”
“Did your father really convince you of that? I saw a copy of the Yellowstone man’s orders. He was sent to try and negotiate a new deal with your father for his territory. It was your father who started the fight. The Yellowstone man was only defending himself.”
She jumped to her feet, eyes flashing. “Now you’re trying to twist it up. I forgave you my father’s death. Isn’t that enough?” She wheeled away from him, walking to the end of the sandspit. She locked her hands, staring out into the night for a long time. Finally she said, thinly, “You think you’ll take me in. You think you’ll show me to all those men who don’t believe Anne Corday exists, and it will clear your name.”
“It’s what I’ve been working toward for three years,” he said, in a low voice.
“You’ll never even get me back to Bruce,” she said.
“Where would you go, if you escaped?” he said, gently.
“My mother is still with the tribe, up near Flathead Lake,” Anne said. “I would be safe with any band of Blackfeet I met. But I don’t need that. Don’t you know who is following us?”
He felt his head lift in surprise, as he realized what she meant. “How could he, with a wound like that?”
“I know him,” she said. “When he sets out to do something, nothing can stop him. You could stab him a dozen times and he could still walk a hundred miles. Frenchie is following us, Garrit, and he will catch us. You will never take me in.”
GARRIT DID NOT sleep much that night. He tied Anne Corday’s hands and spent most of the time scouting the gorge. It rained the next day, a spring thunderstorm that made the creeks overflow their banks and wiped out the trail of the pack train. Garrit pushed hard, knowing there was little chance of meeting Indians in the storm. But thought of the Frenchman hung more heavily upon him than any danger of Indians. If Anne Corday was right, the man would be a constant threat, hanging over them till they reached Bruce. It made Garrit jumpy, imbuing him with more than his normal restlessness.
They made a miserable camp in a cave, both of them soaking wet, and he hung a three-point for Anne to undress behind and then she wrapped the blanket around her and huddled over the fire.
“Do you remember how it was raining the first night we met, down on the Platte?” she said.
“And you took us into your shelters and let us dry our clothes and drink your whiskey and we got drunk as Indians on ration day.
“I had been drunk before. It was more than that. It’s bothered me ever since.”
“It has bothered me, too,” she said, softly.
He stared down at her, trying to fathom the strange look in her eyes, to untangle the mixed emotions in himself. Her lips, so red, so ripe, seemed to rise toward him, until they were touching his, with her body in his arms.
After a long while, he backed away, staring down at her. There was a twisted look to her face, a shining confusion in her eyes. Then, for an instant, the expression in her face changed. Her eyes seemed to focus on something behind him. When they swung back to his face, she reached up to pull his lips down to hers once more.
Only senses developed through three years of living like an animal would have detected it. Some sound, unidentifiable in that instant, reached him. He tried to tear himself loose and twist around. He shifted far enough aside to that the knife went into his arm instead of his back.
The girl scrambled away from him, lunging for the rifle he had kept loaded at all times, these last days. Sick with pain, he tried to wheel on around and rise. He had a dim view of the Frenchman above him, the pelt of his coat matted with dried blood, a murderous light in his eyes.
Then his fist smashed Garrit across the face, knocking him back against the wall of the cave, and his other hand pulled the knife free of Garrit’s upper arm. Garrit rolled over, dazed by the blow. His eyes were open, but he could barely see the Frenchman, lunging up above him, raising the knife for the kill. He tried to rise, but his stunned nerves would not answer his will. Anne Corday stood on the other side of the cave, the loaded Jake Hawkins in her hands. There was a wide-eyed vindication on her face.
The Frenchman straddled Garrit with a triumphant bellow, and the uplifted knife flashed in the firelight as it started to come down.
Then the shot boomed out, rocking the cave with its thunder. As if from a heavy blow, the Frenchman was slammed off Garrit and carried clear up against the wall of the cave. He hung there a moment, and then toppled back, to sprawl limply on the ground. Garrit shared blankly at him, until he finally realized what had happened. A Jake Hawkins packed that much punch, close up.
Slowly he turned his head, to see the girl, still holding the gun, smoke curling from its muzzle. Her face was blank, as if she was surprised what she had done. Then that same confusion widened her eyes. With a small cry, she dropped the rifle, wheeled, and ran out of the cave. He got to his feet and tried to follow, but almost fell again at the mouth and had to stop there. He heard a whinny, then the drumming of hooves. He stared out into the dripping timber, knowing he was too weak to follow her. The knowledge turned his face bleak and empty.
JOHN BRUCE’S PACK train returned to Fort Union on the first day of September. The trade goods were gone from the packs, now. They were bulging with dark brown beaver pelts and buffalo robes. The saddle-galled horses filed soddenly in through the great double-leaved gates, met by cheers and greetings of the engagés and hunters and trappers of the post.
Farrier took Bruce and Garrit to his office. Enid was there, in a wine dress, a pale expectancy in her face. Bruce grasped her arms, a boyish eagerness lighting his heavy features momentarily. Garrit thought the presence of himself and Farrier must have restrained them from an expression of their true feelings, for after looking into her eyes a long moment, Bruce turned to Farrier, telling him of Anne Corday. When he was finished, Farrier turned in amazement to Garrit.
“And what happened to the girl?”
Garrit stared around at the walls, feeling that constriction again. He rubbed at his arm, still sore from the knife wound Frenchie had given him. “She got away,” he said, curtly. “I couldn’t help it.”
“Your name will be cleared anyway,” Farrier said. “Bruce’s whole crew is witness to what happened. You’ve saved Yellowstone Fur, Garrit, and they’ll certainly reinstate you with honors.” He scratched his beard, studying Bruce and Enid with a knowing grin. “Maybe we better go out and talk it over, while these two reunite.”
Bruce had been watching Enid, whose eyes had never left Garrit. “Perhaps it is I who had better go out with you, Farrier,” he said.
Enid turned sharply to him. “Bruce, I—”
“Never mind, Enid.” His voice had a dead sound. “I guess I should have known how you felt, ever since you saw Garrit here last April.”
He turned, shoulders dragging, and went out with a perplexed Farrier. Garrit felt sorry for the man. He knew he should have felt elation for himself, however, as he turned back to Enid, but it did not come.
“I have always wondered, Vic, why you let her make such a fool of you, that first time, on the Platte,” Enid said.
He stopped, frowning deeply. “I’ve wondered that myself.”
“Perhaps, Vic, it was because she is really the woman, and I never was,” she said.
He turned to her, tried to say something. She shook her head.
“You’ll never be happy with the old life. I can see that now. If you want to go to her, Vic, you’re free.”
He stared at her a long time, realizing she had touched the truth. And he knew now why Anne Corday’s face had been with him in so many dreams. It hadn’t been there as a symbol of his revenge, or vindication.
“Thank you, Enid,” he said, softly.
He left the fort with but one packhorse and enough supplies to take him as far as Flathead Lake. He rode across the flats and into the timber where a magpie’s scolding drew a fleeting grin to his lips. He stopped, to take one look backward, and then he turned his face toward the mountains, and rode.