men? Do you know who they are?' 'Oui. Ver' bad! Polon is their name.
Pete and Jock Polon. If the Hudson's Bay Company was here, they would not come back! They are thieves! They killed trappers! They killed some Cree! And in the woods they are superb! Have a care, mon ami! Have a care!' We drove on another seven miles before we camped after watching the m`etis ride away.
Orrin looked across the campfire at me that night. 'Tell, we aren't going to make it. We can't make it before snow flies.' 'What d'you think, Cap?' 'Orrin's right. We've got to push them, Orrin, even if we run beef off them. After all, it's cattle we are supposed to deliver.
Nobody said nothing about fat cattle!' That night, two men, headed east, rode into our camp. 'You're takin' cattle out there?' They stared at me. 'You must be crazy!' 'You mean there's no market?' 'Market? Of course, there's a market!
It's gettin' 'em there. There's no decent trails; there's rivers to cross, grizzlies a-plenty, and wolves--you ain't seen any wolves yet!' One of them, a tall man named Pearson, indicated the carts. 'You won't be able to use those much longer. The trails are too narrow. Put your stuff on pack horses.' 'My old horse will carry a pack,' Brandy suggested. 'He's done it before.' We sat long with the two travelers, getting as much advice as we could. They drew the trail in the dirt for us, indicating the passes.
'How are things up there?' I asked.
'Peaceful?' 'Generally speaking. Some of the boys get a mite noisy now and again. There's brawls and such and once in a great while a shooting. Mostly, they're just noisy.' 'The best claims are all taken,' the other one said. 'If you're figuring on staking claims, forget it.' 'We'll just sell our beef and get out,' Orrin commented. Then, tentatively, he added, 'We promised delivery to a man named Sackett, Logan Sackett.' They stared at him. 'Too bad about him, and I'm afraid you're too late. He's dead.' 'What?' 'I'll say this for him. He was a man. Party got trapped in the passes last year, and he went up and brought 'em out. Saved seven men and a woman. He brought 'em through snow like you never saw. Avalanche country.' 'You say he's dead?' I asked.
'He went north. There were rumors of a strike up in the Dease River country. Story was that he was killed in a gun battle up there with some outlander.' 'Big man?' 'Your height,' Pearson said to Orrin, 'but heavier by twenty pounds. Come to think of it, he favored you somewhat.' 'Who killed him?' 'That was a bad outfit. They'd been in some trouble in Barkerville. Don't recall what.
Five or six of them, and smart, tough men. The one who seemed to be the leader was named Gavin.' 'Gavin?' I glanced over at Nettie, who was listening.
'Kyle Gavin?' 'No, this one's called Shanty. Shanty Gavin, and he's as mean and tough as he is smart.' Pearson looked over at me. 'It was Shanty Gavin who killed Logan Sackett.
Shot him dead.'
Chapter XXII
Logan Sackett dead? I didn't believe it. He was too durned ornery to die.
Besides, I'd seen him come through cuttings and shootings and clubbings like he was born to them.
Shanty Gavin? Any relation to Kyle Gavin?
Who was Shanty, and what did he want? For that matter, who was Kyle Gavin?
Pearson and his partner headed on east, back to the fleshpots and away from the gold fields.
Fraser River gold was too fine, and the Cariboo was played out, or so they said, but we'd learned long ago to discount anything anybody said who was either going to or coming from a gold field.
'Any way you look at it,' Cap said, 'we're drivin' these cows right into trouble.' 'I never seen any trouble a cow couldn't handle,' Haney said wryly. 'What I'm wonderin' about is us. What are we gettin' into?' 'Move 'em along,' I said. 'The time's gettin' short, and if we don't hurry, there'll be frost on the punkin before we get where we're going.' 'I want to get there,' Shorty said, 'so's we can get out before the snow settles down. I'm a warm-weather man myself, born for the sunny side of the hill.' That was the night we left our carts behind. We divided what they contained into packs for four horses.
'We can burn them,' Fleming said. 'They'll make a hot fire for cooking.' 'We'll leave them,' I said. 'Somebody may come who needs a cart. We'll push them back under the trees and leave them for whoever comes.
Good hands made them, and I'll not destroy honest work.' Again we moved out, pointing our way into the darker hills. The forest was changing now, and ahead of us we saw peaks that were bare of growth, and some were covered by snow. Grass was scarce, and we watched for meadows where the cattle could stop and feed. Our travel was arranged to make the most of grass when we found it. There were firs among the poplars now and sometimes groves of stunted pine.
We skirted a forest blown down by winds where the dead trees lay in rows like mowed grain.
Orrin was riding point when we met the grizzly. We'd been coming along a forest trail, the cattle strung out for a couple of miles or more and Orrin riding quiet, making no sound. Suddenly, the grizzly arose from the brush and stood tall in the trail. Startled, Orrin's horse reared, and Orrin kept his seat, drawing his pistol as he did so.
The first we knew of trouble was the sharp bark of his pistol, then three times more, rapid fire.
Tyrel, Haney, Cap, an' me, we lit out for the front of the column.
Ever try to get through a trail jammed with cattle? It took time, too much time.
Cattle began bucking and plunging, trying to get into the woods and brush on either side of the trail, and we could hear the roaring and snarling of what was obviously a mighty big bear. We fought our way through, but getting there was tough.
We heard two more shots, and we broke through to find a big grizzly lying in the trail, crippled but still full of fight.
Orrin was just getting up off the ground. His hat was gone, and his buckskin jacket was ripped, and there was blood on his shoulder. He made it to his feet, staggered, and commenced jamming loads into his pistol. Me, I took my rifle from the scabbard and killed that grizzly with two good shots.
He would have died from Orrin's shots, we later saw. Two of them had hit him in the neck, and after going down, Orrin got two more shots into his spine, fired as the bear was turning. They had crippled him in the hindquarters, which kept him from getting at Orrin. He'd hit him one glancing swipe, knocking him tail over teakettle into the brush.
It taken us the rest of the evening to skin out that grizzly and get the best cuts of meat; then we had to get the cattle around the blood in the trail. The carcass we hauled off with that old plow horse of Brandy's.
Scouting ahead, Shorty found a long meadow along a winding stream, and we turned the cattle in there for a good bit of grass and water. We rounded up some of the cattle that got away into the trees, but there was a few of them we never did find and didn't take the time to hunt. One old steer came up the trail after us when we started the next morning.
All the following day we struggled through bogs, the cattle floundering and plunging, our horses doing no better, and the trail when it could be found at all was wide enough for one animal only.
During the whole day, we made scarcely four miles, yet the next morning we climbed a low hill and then another and emerged in a forest of huge old poplars, scattered but with no undergrowth. Here and there, the cattle found a bite of something, usually a clump of wildflowers. We made good time and by nightfall had twelve miles of easy travel behind us.
We broke out into a plain at sundown, and the cattle scattered on the good grass there, and we found a camp up against some willows and near a small stream.
We were dead beat, and me an' Shorty were taking the first guard. I slapped a saddle on a dusty red roan and cinched up. I was putting my rifle in the scabbard when suddenly there was a thunder of hoofs, wild shrill whoops, and we saw a party of Indians swooping down upon us.
I grabbed my rifle back out of the scabbard, saw Tyrel hit the dirt behind a log, and heard Haney's pistol barking, and then they were gone and with them about fifty head of our cattle.
Well, I done some cussing, then apologized to Nettie, who came up from the campfire to see what had happened.
'Blackfeet,' Cap said. 'Count yourself lucky they wasn't war minded.' 'Let's go get 'em!' Shorty suggested.
Cap just glanced at him, but that glance said more than a passel of words. 'Blackfeet, I said. You don't chase Blackfeet, Shorty.
