Brionne (1968) Read online

  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 camp fire.

  "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 Grranville. 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 be 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.

  They turned away from the camp, rode out on a rocky ledge, and switched around and rode right back along the ledge and into the water. Riding upstream for half a mile, they came out on another such ledge and rode through a thick stand of trees, where the floor of the forest was covered with leaves and where even at midday it was shadowed, as if it were twilight.

  All day they switched back and forth. Once they stopped for a few minutes to let the horses catch their wind after a steep slope, and Brionne broke out some pemmican and gave a good-sized chunk to Mat to chew on as he rode. Not until late afternoon did be pause to let the horses graze.

  There was no chance of watching the back trail now. Most of the travel was in forest, and even the character of the trees was changing. Now, as they climbed higher, the trees were mostly evergreen. Here, too, they ate pemmican. They drank cold water, then mounted up and rode on again.

  Although their change of direction was often due to the character of the ground, they continued to ride uphill. It was long after dark before they made a cold camp behind a clump of aspen. Mat was very tired, and he was almost falling off his horse when Brionne reached for him.

  Brionne prepared Mat's bed, pulled off his boots and pants, and tucked him in. During all this time his eyes rarely left the horses, but they grazed contentedly, seemingly glad to stop. Not once did they look up or prick their ears.

  Brionne always enjoyed a problem, and he had one now. Ed Shaw had been prowling around the back country for a good many years, and he had spent some time tr
ying to interpret the picture writing, or whatever it was, in Nine Mile Canyon. Suppose there had been a map to the silver mine that had been used by the Indians?

  Maps are of many kinds, and few primitive maps looked like those to which Europeans or Americans were accustomed. In the South Pacific they were sticks with shells tied on them to represent islands, the sticks indicating prevailing winds or ocean currents; but many ancient maps were done in pictures. There was a symbol for running water, there were symbols for peaks ... suppose there was a symbol for silver?

  The old man had known this country, and he might have found something. Somebody had been supplying him with cash, and that somebody had apparently been Rody Brennan. Therefore Brennan need not have gone into the mountains at all. Ed Shaw would have worked on Brennan's grubstake; and he must have brought out some silver that he turned into cash. With Shaw dead, Rody Brennan became the legitimate owner of the mine--if there was one.

  Little by little, James Brionne isolated the few facts he had obtained from the various conversations he had heard. Out of them had come Shaw's apparent angle of approach to the mountains, and some hint of the time he had taken. Vague as these things were, it was interesting to speculate on the direction he might have followed, and the possible location of the mine.

  After adding a little fuel to the fire, concealed in a small hollow and shielded by the aspen, Brionne took up his rifle and went to a rock that jutted from the side of the mountain. Earlier he had noticed that it would be simple enough to climb up there, and once there, he sat down to survey the country around.

  Looking down, he could see the campfire and the small figure of his son. Looking outward, he could see only endless blackness of forest, the blue-black of the star-studded sky, and the great bulk of the mountain, rising behind him and on his left

  For a long time he studied the night--not the stars, but the forest blackness. When he caught the gleam, it was out of the corner of his right eye, miles away and much lower down.

  Watching, he saw it again ... and again. A campfire. His point of vantage could scarcely have been better. The air was clear, and he was high up. The fire might be ten miles away, but it was probably less.

  Brionne considered the country between, trying to recall how much of a trail he had left behind. He was rising to leave the rock when he glimpsed another light, not quite so far off, and a little higher up the mountain.

  He studied that light through his glasses, but they helped him not at all. The distance was too great, and they merely showed a somewhat larger light, unidentifiable even as a fire. Now who could that be?

  Returning to camp, he arranged his blankets and lay down, clasping his hands behind his head. For a long time he considered his next move, then at last he fell asleep, remembering Anne, as he had seen her last ... too long ago.

  The second light Brionne had seen was the campfire of Dutton Mowry and Miranda Loften. Knowing the way to go, they had moved faster than Brionne. They were not following anyone, and were not expecting anyone to be following them. Mowry was a good man on a trail, and he had chosen good stock for them. They were higher up the mountain than the Allards, and about three miles ahead of them.

  The trail they had followed was an old game trail, used occasionally by Indians. Two days ago, their trail had been the same as that of the Allards, and Mowry had noticed the fresh sign, and had taken time to learn the track of each horse. Within a few minutes after coming upon the trail he knew one of the men was Cotton Allard.

  Then the trail, as designated by Miranda, took them farther up the slope. He turned to her now and indicated the rifle she carried.

  "Can you use that?" he asked,

  "Yes."

  "Don't ever go anywhere without it. Not in this country. And if I say jump, you jump--don't ask why. If you take time to ask, it may be too late."

  "All right."

  "How much farther is this mine of yours?"

  "It's up on top ... among the lakes. Another three days, I think, if nothing stops us."

  He considered putting the fire out, but instead he banked it; then he left it and went to his blankets. "Get some sleep," he said to Miranda. "We've got a rough day ahead. We're going to try to cut three days to two, if we can."

  At her questioning glance he added, "We ain't the only ones up here. Brionne is up ahead of us."

  Startled, she stared at him. "Looking for silver? He can't be!"

  Mowry shrugged. He looked at her, his eyes amused. "Why not?"

  "I--I just don't believe it."

  He chuckled. "I was only funnin'. That is, if he is huntin' the silver, you must've told him more than you thought."

  She racked her brain. "No ... no, I told him nothing. Nothing at all."

  "He ain't the only one." Mowry settled into his blankets. "The Allards that are huntin' him, they're out here, too."

  She sat up. "Are you sure?"

  "Uh-huh ... and so's he. If the Allards are smart as they're supposed to be they won't foller him any further. They might catch up with him."

  Chapter 8

  With the first gray light of morning, Brionne squatted beside the small fire, drinking coffee and studying the steepening slope before them.

  There was no trail up it. Here and there were rocky outcroppings; there were clumps of brush, a maze of fallen logs, slides of broken rock and scattered aspen. It all ended at a wall of rock thirty feet high or more. An old fault line, it extended along the face of the mountain for at least half a mile.

  He planned his route carefully, aiming for what seemed to be a fracture in the face of the rock, a possible way to the top without going far around the end. The crack, if that was what it was, could not be seen clearly from here; but once in the saddle he led off, weaving a precarious way through the obstacles on the mountainside.

  Twice he paused, letting Mat and the pack horses go ahead, remaining behind just long enough to tumble rocks over their path that would bar any horse from following. Brionne knew that anyone tracking them would have to waste time finding his trail again, and every minute thus wasted would be an advantage to him. Somewhere ahead they were going to stop, and they would need time to find the kind of position he wanted.

  Suddenly, the crack was before them. It was scarcely wide enough for a horse, and it meant a difficult scramble to the top. Brionne dismounted and led his horse, grunting and scrambling, up the steep way. He tied the horse, pausing only long enough to catch his breath, then he descended and brought Mat to the top. After that he brought up the pack horses.

  Looking around, he found the fallen trunk of a long-dead pine. Getting behind it, and using a broken limb for a lever, he worked the heavy log over until he could topple it into the crack, closing it off.

  They were now on a rugged plateau, which formed the top of the Uintah Range. It was a wide, uneven plateau, broken by canyons and ridges, and dotted with many lakes. There were forested slopes and open, grassy meadows. Within the space of a few minutes he saw tracks of the bighorn sheep, the mule deer, and wild horses.

  The blue spruce and aspen thinned out up here, and on the ridges ahead he could see alpine fir and another type of spruce that grew in this high altitude. Everywhere there were marks of glacial action. He pointed them out to Mat, keeping up a running commentary on the country, the trees, and the tracks. All around them were snow-covered peaks.

  "How high are we?" Mat asked.

  "I'd guess about eight, nine thousand feet--maybe closer to nine."

  He stopped to let the horses take a breather. He had gained a little time, and the ridge ahead should offer a camp with some security.

  He had no idea who his enemies might be, if those who followed him were, indeed, enemies. Out here he was relatively unknown. It was unlikely that anyone else remembered, as the Ute warrior had, the young cavalry officer of a time before the War Between the States. But somehow, in some way, he must have impressed someone as being a danger, or perhaps possessing some coveted knowledge.

  Did they
connect him with Miranda Loften? After all, they had ridden the same train west, and they had had some small association on that train. Could they guess that he had not known her until he left his son in her care when he went to fight the fire?

  His choice then had been simple. He had, on entering the car, mentally catalogued the occupants. Miranda Loften had impressed him at once with her quiet dignity, her air of gentility, and her natural sympathy. He had sensed that she liked children and would be warm and responsive to Mat. It had been as simple as that ... but would everyone see it so?

  Yet he had interfered in her affairs. He had, without asking permission, or even mentioning the fact, deliberately begun to try to solve the problem of the silver mine.

  Why?

  James Brionne was a reasoning man, and he asked himself this question seriously for the first time. Why, indeed? Was it simply because he needed some direction to follow? Was it because all his life he had moved from one goal to another? Always with some destination in view, always with some purpose? Or was it because of her aloneness, and the fact that he was a Virginia gentleman?

  Or--and he hesitated even to frame the question--was it because she was so attractive? Because she was, in fact, a very lovely girl?

  "You've read too much of Sir Walter Scott," he said aloud.

  "What was that, pa?"

  He looked over his shoulder. "Nothing, son. I was just talking to myself. You'll find it is a habit men acquire when they're riding in the wilderness."

  "Was this where Fremont was, pa?" There had been much talk of Fremont around their home, and Mat knew the stories of Fremont's explorations in the West, and of Kit Carson.

  "Not far from here. Father Escalante traveled some of the trails we traveled a few days back. He came through here with a very small party in 1776. But I doubt if he was ever up this far into the mountains. If he was, there's nothing in his journals about it."

  Suddenly he drew rein. Not thirty feet from the way they were following was a small stump showing the marks of an axe. Leaving Mat with the pack animals, Brionne walked his horse over to the stump. Then he called, "Mat ... come here."