Novel 1968 - Brionne (v5.0) (7 page)

“Those with money rode the cars out, east or west, but a mighty big lot of them were caught with little or nothing, and they stayed on to rob, to kill, to get along any way they can. And those woods are full of them.”

“I am going,” Miranda said firmly.

“There’s Utes, too. Indians, they are, and pizen mean.”

“You can’t talk me out of it, Pat,” she said quietly.

“Then we’ll just have to find somebody to ride along. It’s a pity you couldn’t have gone with Major Brionne.”

“
Major
Brionne? Major James Brionne? Was that who that was?”

“You know him? I saw the name on some of his gear.”

“I know the story.” Suddenly she was thoughtful. That poor little boy! Slowly, remembering it as she had read it in the papers, she told the story of the attack on the Brionne home, the death of his wife, and of the search for the Allards. “He is a very famous man,” she said.

“Aye,” Pat said thoughtfully, “I remember it now, although it’s been few newspapers we’ve seen out here.”

No wonder that little boy had been so quiet at first! She remembered how he had snuggled against her when the flames were coming close. At that moment little Mat must have been remembering the flames when his home burned. Shuddering, she put the thought from her mind. She would not see them again…somehow the thought gave her a sense of loss, of loneliness. And that was foolish. She had spoken only a few words to James Brionne.

She took the ring from her purse, and handed it across the table to Pat. “Will you buy that? Or accept it for security?”

He shrugged. “Miss, I don’t know nothing about such things. If this here is worth what it looks like, there ain’t money enough in town to buy it; and if it ain’t—well, it just ain’t worth much of anything.”

“Will you take it for security?”

Pat looked up at her, smiling. “Miss, you been livin’ in the East too long. Out here we do business on character, not on notes or security or the like. I like you and I think you’re a solid person, so I’ll stake you to the horses an’ gear you need. You pay me when you can.”

He passed the ring back to her. “You keep that.”

She shook her head. “No, Pat. Something might happen to me. You keep it for me. I shall want to leave the day after tomorrow.”

“I got to find somebody for you,” Pat protested. “That may take time.”

“There’s a man who was on the train,” she suggested. “I have seen him around and he doesn’t seem to be doing anything. He worked with Major Brionne to put out that fire, and he seemed very competent. I wonder if—”

Pat’s face was expressionless. “I know the man you mean. I’ll talk to him.”

Outside, he paused in the darkness and lit his pipe. Odd that she should pick on Dut Mowry…of all people.

Pat Brady walked through the darkness toward the stable. He always made this late check to be sure everything was all right. His night hostler was a good man, but old, and Pat liked to keep an eye on the comings and goings in town.

He had almost reached the stable when he heard voices, and he slowed down, never liking to come up on anybody in the dark.

There were three of them, and they were speaking in low tones, but Pat could hear what they were saying.

“He talked the trainman into carryin’ him on past Corinne. They dropped him there, and him an’ the kid took off south.”

“Salt Lake?”

“I reckon not. He was packed for travel. I figure he was headed into the Uintahs.”

“That’s our country. All right, boys, we’ve got him. We’ll light out, come daybreak.”

They walked out of the alley into the street, and for a moment Pat saw them clearly. All three were strangers, but he had seen at least one of them before. He was a big man with a wide, deep chest and yellow-white hair. He had a flat, dangerous-looking face, and Pat Brady had seen him around several times. He was the man they called Cotton.

At the stable all was quiet. The hostler said no newcomers had come into town, nobody had left. Dutton Mowry? He hadn’t seen him.

Pat drifted down the street, looking into several saloons. At last, almost at the end of the street, he saw the faint glow of a cigarette, and walked toward it. His guess was right.

Mowry was leaning against the awning post, and he spoke around his cigarette. “Howdy, Pat. Late for you, ain’t it?”

Briefly, Pat Brady outlined Miranda Loften’s proposal. Mowry listened, offering no comment. Finally he said, “You say Rody Brennan never had any silver?”

“Not that I know of. How could he? He was around all the time. I mean, he was a man who talked a lot, and he’d have talked about that. Anyway, he was busy every day. He never went off to do any prospecting.”

“Drivin’ stage like that he must’ve knowed a lot of folks.”

“I suppose he did.”

“Nice feller, they say. I’ve heard talk about Rody Brennan. Folks said he was a free-handed man.”

“Give you the shirt off his back,” Pat said. “Never asked nothing of nobody, but if you were in trouble, Rody was the man to go to.”

“An’ this girl says he never lied to her?”

“That’s what she said.…Will you help her?”

Mowry tossed his cigarette into the dust. He stood for a moment watching the dying glow. “No,” he said finally.

“Well,” Pat said, “I tried.” He turned to go, then paused. “Brionne, now. Was he a friend of yours?”

“A good man.…Why?”

Brady repeated the conversation he had heard. Mowry listened, lighting another smoke. “Called him Cotton, you say? A big feller?”

“That’s right.”

Mowry smoked in silence. “You don’t need to worry none. I figure that Brionne feller is a pretty handy man. I mean, if a body was figuring on picking a fight, he’d better not choose him. I think not.”

Pat Brady turned away. “Good night, Dut. I’m off to bed.”

“Pat?”

Brady stopped.

“You tell that lady I’ll go with her. You tell her that if Rody Brennan had a mine, we’ll find it.”

Pat Brady walked away down the street, and Dutton Mowry finished his cigarette. Maybe he was being a damn fool. Maybe he was just getting himself into a lot of grief, playing shepherd to a tenderfoot girl in wild country, but he had a hunch, and he was a man who played his hunches. Besides, when you came right down to it she seemed level-headed. There was something substantial about that girl, something that made you think she was one to ride the river…and they didn’t come too often.

“Dut,” he said to himself, “you’ve opened your big mouth and bought yourself a packet of trouble.”

Still, he did not feel depressed. He was pleased with the decision he had made, although he was not quite sure why. He was playing a wild-haired hunch that just might pay off, and it was based on two little threads of information that had come to him in the past few days. Two threads that might not tie in at all, but if they did—and his hunch was that they would—he would be there when all Hell broke loose.

“Dut,” he repeated, “you’ve bought trouble, but when didn’t you have trouble? And when did you fight shy of it?”

One thing remained. Major James Brionne had better watch his back.

Chapter 7

T
HE STREAM CHUCKLED over the stones, sunlight glancing from the water. Downstream a few feet the water rippled quietly about a dead branch that hung suspended in the clear water.

Mat Brionne sat on the bank under a dappling of shadow from the leaves overhead. He was fishing, but not very seriously. He was just sitting, eyes half closed, suspended in time, and he was happy. He was deeply, richly content.

There was the sound of the water and the sound of the wind in the trees, a far-off sound like that of a distant train rushing over the rails. Across the stream, only a few feet away, two squirrels were playing among the leaves, making soft, scurrying sounds.

Not more than thirty yards away through the trees, Mat could hear his father as he worked around the camp. And sometimes he could hear him singing as he worked.

It was three weeks since they had left Promontory, and they were in the foothills of the Uintahs. Brionne had planned to go further south, but had changed his mind suddenly and headed deeper into the mountains. Mat studied about that.

His father had long wished to come back to a certain area of Utah, so why had he suddenly changed his mind? Not that Mat minded one little bit. He had never seen country more beautiful than this, and he liked loafing along day after day. But it seemed to him that his father was acting strangely.

The way they moved, for example. Just when they had found a good camp, they would move, all of a sudden, and without warning. And each move took them deeper into the wilderness. Mat speculated about it, for usually the moves came after one of his pa’s night-wandering spells.

James Brionne would make camp, fix supper, talk a bit, and then get Mat settled in his bed. After that he would say, “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” and he would walk off into the night.

He was never gone long. He would suddenly reappear, look around to see that all was well—Mat usually pretended to be asleep—and then he would go off again. And each time he went armed.

Sometimes he would go out in the first light of dawn, and at those times he would find some place with a view, and study the country around.

It had started about a week after leaving Promontory, when they made camp one night with three prospectors. They had come drifting in out of the night, calling out to the campfire.

“That’s the proper way,” Brionne explained to Mat. “Never approach a man’s campfire without announcing yourself. You might get shot.”

Mat liked the three men at once. One of them was a youngish fellow with sandy hair, freckles, and a big Adam’s apple, and he was full of jokes and easy humor. The others were older, and they too were filled with stories, and they were quick to work around camp.

Brionne listened. He had advised Mat about that. “If you listen, you learn. If you learn to really see things and to really listen, half your troubles are over.”

These men were talking about the country. Mat, who was listening well, and trying hard to pick out the important details instead of just hearing the stories, soon discovered that his father was leading them on by his questions. Brionne was learning about the country, the people he might expect to find, the stories of other people who had wandered there, the Indians, and everything.

The three men were Paddy O’Leary, Tom Hicks, who was the redhead, and Granville. Granville was the quietest of the three, a tall, slender man who moved easily, and relaxed whenever he sat down.

O’Leary was the talker. “Shaw was the man,” he said; “nobody knew this country like him. Used to like to camp down in Nine Mile. Said he could read all those inscriptions and pictures on the wall.”

“I figure he lied,” Hicks commented. “That’s just Injun writing…like a feller does with a pencil when he’s got time on his hands.”

“Shaw wouldn’t agree with you,” O’Leary insisted. “He spent a lot of time figuring about those pictures. He said one day they’d make his fortune. He had it figured that whilst lots of them were just written for the gods, or for hunting charms or the like, some of them had a story to tell. He used to show us a silver armband he’d found.

“He’d say, ‘Now where do you suppose that there silver came from?’ And he’d tell us how he’d found some small fragments of broken rock in some of the caves or Injun houses along Nine Mile. He’d say that rock didn’t belong there, and he had it figured it was rock that had come from the same ground the silver did, that the Injuns worked the silver out of it. He used to bet he’d someday find that silver mine.”

Granville was the thoughtful man, and one evening after the subject of Shaw had come up again, he commented, “I think Ed Shaw was right. And I think he found something.”

Brionne glanced over at him. “Really?”

Granville smiled, his eyes glinting with a kind of amusement as he looked back at Brionne. “Really,” he repeated, and then he added, “One day he just up and took off. Shaw was a lucky one. He had somebody grub-staking him, and I think he went down to Corinne, got some more supplies, and followed his hunch.”

“It didn’t get him anywhere, either,” Hicks said dryly. “He’s dead.” And then suddenly he spoke again. “Say, maybe we could trail him to where he went! He’d have a claim staked, but he’s not alive now.”

James Brionne took a cigar from his pocket.

“Whatever Shaw had would go to his family, if he had any, and to whoever grubstaked him.”

“If they could find the silver,” O’Leary agreed. “An’ that ain’t likely.”

Mat Brionne remembered that night well, because it was since then that their manner of travel had been so strange. Not only had they several times moved suddenly, often after dark, but several times they had changed direction.

“Always watch your back trail, Mat,” Brionne told him. “Country looks a whole lot different when you are facing the other way. Landmarks that show up very well when you’re going east may not look at all the same when you’re going west.”

Mat remembered that, but he thought that his father took a lot of time studying his trail, and it was always from some vantage point where he could see a good bit of it. Mat often looked back with him, but he could never see anything special.

The fact was that James Brionne was quite sure that he was being followed. Mat had guessed right when he decided his father must be looking at something besides landmarks during those long periods of studying his back trail.

His sudden changes of direction had been for two reasons. First, to see if he was followed, and then, if so, to try to throw them off the trail. By now he was sure of the first, and he felt that he had not slowed them down even by a little. So they were fair country trackers, then. That posed a different sort of problem.

So tonight he got up before daylight and packed swiftly, and when Mat woke up everything was packed except for his bed. The coffeepot was still on the fire. Until this trip Mat had never been allowed to drink coffee, but there was no milk to be had out here. There was a piece of broiling meat on a stick over the dying coals. He ate that and drank coffee, and then his father watched him mount up.