Long Road to Cheyenne (12 page)

No one got much sleep the rest of that night. Although caught up in the frightening chaos of the assault, Grace and Emma eventually succumbed to the urge to drift off. Mary’s nerves were still struggling to deal with the wanton slaughter, and she thought back on the days since leaving Fort Collins. She might have gained a fortune in gold, but at an extremely high price—not only the wounds Cam suffered, but also the loss of her husband and the exposure to a violence she never dreamed existed. The evil man could inflict upon his fellow man was difficult to imagine, and the small value placed upon the life of a human being in this untamed territory was enough to make a person question the sense of it all. She looked at Cam as he sat there trying to keep his eyes open with Emma snuggled close against his side. She wondered if he now regretted ever having crossed paths with her and all the trouble it had brought down upon his seemingly carefree life. She wondered if he had ever killed a man before his fateful meeting with her and how the killing he had done since was affecting his mind. Realizing she was getting too deeply engrossed in her sense of right and wrong, she reminded herself that the two men had come to kill her and her children as well.
Cam had to kill them, and I would have killed them if they had gotten by him,
she thought.
So stop fretting over things that had to be done
.

Like probing fingers of light searching the darkened gulch, the first rays of the morning sun began to search out the huddled party. In a few minutes more, it looked directly into the gulch to find all members asleep. Cam opened his eyes and glanced at Mary, sound asleep, still holding on to her rifle, although it had slid off the pack to settle in her lap. Beside them, the horses were snuffling the sparse bits of grass within their reach.
We’re still here,
he thought, and tried to rouse himself after gently moving Emma back against the riverbank. The sharp pain that resulted reminded him of his wound. He made a couple more attempts to get to his feet before he was successful. After a few uncertain steps, he held on to a small bush to steady himself until his head stopped spinning. Then when he was sure he was going to make it, he walked back toward their abandoned camp to see if anything had changed. He decided that the other outlaw had either died or run for a doctor.
Good,
he thought,
because I’m in no shape to fight anybody
.

When he came back to the girls, Mary was awake and already looking for wood to make a fire. She looked up when he approached. “I’m glad to see you on your feet. I was afraid we were going to lose you during the night. How do you feel?”

“Not worth a damn,” he said, and meant it.

“It looks like there’s no one here but us,” she said. “So we can thank God for that. And Cam Sutton,” she added. A grunt was his only response. “I’ll make some coffee and find something for us to eat. You look like you need a lot more than what we’ve got in the packs. You lost so much blood.”

“If a deer comes running right up to us, maybe I’ll shoot it,” he said drolly.

Coffee and breakfast helped to the point where he felt that he could do what was necessary to get them on the move again, although Mary was not so sure. Determined to prove her wrong, he forced his body to do his bidding, loading and saddling the horses with Mary’s help. Then, remembering the deceased outlaw lying in the gully had a horse outside the gulch somewhere, he climbed into the saddle and rode out to look for it.

Not more than fifty yards downstream from where the river exited the gulch, Cam found the horse down by the water’s edge. A sorrel, it lifted its head and looked at him curiously as he approached. He looked it over thoroughly, and after going through the saddlebags to take everything of value to him and his charges, he took another look at the saddle. It was in decent shape, and would be worth a little money if he got an opportunity to sell it. On the other hand, leading a horse with an empty saddle might attract too much speculation from anyone who happened to see them. Reluctant to simply throw a good saddle away, however, he decided to keep it.

They only traveled a distance of ten miles that day until striking the Laramie River. It was obvious that Cam needed rest, and since Mary had managed only an hour or two of sleep, she was ready to stop as well. She told him that she might have elected to stay there on the North Laramie, but she felt it better to leave the scene of such violent action. She admitted that both she and her daughters preferred to rest somewhere away from the body she had dumped in a gully.

With no reason to believe they were being followed by anyone, Cam decided it was safe to leave the girls while he rode toward the mountains in hope of finding a deer. Mary argued against the insanity of a seriously wounded man insisting on trying to ignore his condition. “You’re just trying to kill yourself,” she charged.

With a little show of impatience, he fired back, “We need meat, all of us. I need meat to build my blood up, and I’m the only one liable to get it. A man can’t build his blood up on salt pork.”

“Go, then,” Mary said, still exasperated, “but, Cam, for goodness’ sake, be careful.” She could see that he was determined to go.

Emma begged to go with him, and he tried to convince her that he would feel better if she remained in camp to look after her mother. She argued that Grace was the elder and would be better at taking care of Mary. “It might take us a while to find some game,” he told her, still hoping to discourage her. “We might not find anythin’ at all.” She said nothing, but continued to gaze up at him with pleading eyes. “You can’t talk when you’re tryin’ to get close to a deer,” he said. “You’d have to be quiet.”

“Quiet as a mouse,” she promised, her steady gaze constant.

He found that he couldn’t bring himself to disappoint her. “All right,” he finally surrendered, “just this one time, but you’ve got to promise me you’ll be quiet and do like I tell you.” He was rewarded with a gracious smile that reached from ear to ear. Cam looked at Mary and commented, “She shoulda been a boy.”

“Don’t I know it?” Mary replied. She stood and watched the two of them ride away.
A child and one who thinks like a child,
she thought.
I pray God they’ll be all right
.

•   •   •

Cam grunted as he dismounted to examine some droppings that appeared to be fresh as he followed a game trail that led into the foothills. Not to be left out of anything, Emma scrambled down after him. “Is it deer doo-doo?” she asked in a whisper.

“I reckon that’s one name for it,” Cam replied quietly. “Looks like this one has been eatin’ some berries, and I’d guess he left this for us this mornin’.” He looked down the trail toward what appeared to be a small valley, or maybe only a pass, that looked as though there might be a creek or stream. “From the looks of this trail, there might be a regular waterin’ hole down at the bottom of this hill,” he told her. The possibility seemed likely because it was a frequently used game trail by all indications. “We’ll leave the horse here and walk on down the hill.”

His hunch proved to be accurate, for there was an abundance of deer sign as they made their way down the trail, with Emma trying her best to walk in his footsteps. He cursed under his breath when the wound in his shoulder began a constant throbbing, and he scolded himself once more for being careless. He had no choice, however. He had to find some game, if it was no more than a rabbit.

Just before reaching the bottom, he saw the stream winding its way out of a pass that appeared to lead between the two mountains ahead of them. “We’ll wait here a bit,” he told Emma, and guided her to a stand of short pines from which he could watch the watering hole for a while. Nothing moved in the bushes lining the stream, so it appeared that the deer that had left the droppings on the trail behind them had long since passed through here. He continued to wait and watch for a while, already aware of the fidgeting of the impatient child close beside him. Suddenly there was movement in the leaves of the high laurel bushes on the other side of the stream. He looked down at Emma and whispered, “Don’t make a sound.” She nodded vigorously and clamped both hands over her mouth as if to prevent any sound from accidentally escaping. He grimaced with the pain caused when he raised his rifle and trained the front sight on the edge of the bushes.
Don’t take too long,
he thought,
I can’t hold this rifle up much longer
. In a moment he saw the muzzle of a young buck appear, so he rested his finger gently on the trigger and waited for the deer to push out of the bushes.

As he was about to apply pressure to the trigger, he was suddenly startled by the blast of a shotgun from the other side of the stream. “What the . . .” he muttered, and dropped the barrel of his rifle while he tried to see the shooter. The buck bolted from the brush and jumped the stream, wounded, but apparently not enough to slow him down. Since it was now coming directly toward them, Cam quickly pulled his rifle up and dropped the wounded animal. Too late now to consider if it had been a wise decision to shoot, he ejected the spent cartridge, placing another in the chamber to be ready for whatever was to follow. All went silent in the pass, with no indication of another soul around. If it was an Indian hunting party, they were evidently not well armed if they were hunting deer with what sounded to be a light-gauge shotgun, and there were no arrows in the carcass that he could see from that distance. After what seemed to be a lengthy pause, he heard a voice.

“Are you gonna eat that deer?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer, since it was beginning to appear that there was going to be a question as to who had first claim on the animal. So he said nothing for a moment, holding Emma back when she tried to inch forward to see what was going on. The voice sounded like a woman’s, and in another moment, she stepped out of the pines on the other side of the stream. Astonished, Cam eased the hammer back on his rifle, hardly able to believe his eyes. A short, solidly built woman, wearing a man’s shirt and trousers and boots that almost reached her knees, walked boldly out on the trail and stood there waiting for a reply. Cam got up from his kneeling position and walked out of the clump of bushes he had hidden in, Emma close behind him.

“I was just fixin’ to squeeze the trigger when you fired that shotgun,” Cam said, and made his way down the path to the stream where she waited, shotgun propped by her side. “I reckon there’s plenty of deer in these mountains, judgin’ by the sign I’ve seen. Looks like you had first claim on this one. I just thought I’d stop him, since that shotgun wasn’t up to the job.” He could see her more closely now, a gnomelike woman, her face tanned and wrinkled by the sun, her yellowish gray hair rolled up in a bun behind her head, supporting the weathered flat-brim hat she wore. There seemed to be no malice in the face he saw, and no evidence of fear at all, only an expression of surprised curiosity to see a man obviously shot by the look of his shirt. Then, catching sight of Emma holding on to the back of Cam’s trouser leg, the face blossomed into a rosy smile.

“Well, lookee what we got here,” she exclaimed delightedly. “Hey, darlin’, you helpin’ your daddy hunt?”

Emma came out from behind Cam long enough to take a good look at the strange woman, and did not answer until she decided it was all right. “This is Cam,” she informed the woman. “He’s not my daddy. My daddy’s dead.”

“Well, bless your heart. I declare, it’s been a heap of years since I saw a little one like you. I’d ask you for a hug, but I reckon you might be too shy right off.” She turned abruptly to Cam. “My name’s Ardella Swift. I reckon I wasted a shell tryin’ to kill that deer. This shotgun is all I’ve got to hunt with, and it’s all right for birds and squirrels and rabbits. But you have to get so close to a deer to kill it that you’d do just as well beatin’ him over the head with it. But I still can’t resist takin’ a shot at one when he ends up right in my lap. Lucky you and little missy here came along when you did. I’da had to walk all over these hills to try to see if he mighta been wounded enough to die. I ain’t et deer meat in quite a spell.”

“Well, there ain’t no reason you can’t eat some now,” Cam said. “My name’s Cam Sutton, and I reckon that deer’s yours. You got the first shot in him.”

“Well, that’s mighty sportin’ of you, Cam,” Ardella said. “But it was your kill.”

“Why don’t we just split it down the middle?” Cam suggested, looking at the two-point buck. “Looks like plenty of meat for everybody.” He could tell by her expression that the suggestion pleased her. “How much family you gotta provide for?” he asked.

“Just me,” she replied. “Ain’t nobody but me.”

Surprised, Cam asked, “You’re just huntin’ for yourself? You livin’ somewhere hereabouts alone?”

His questions drew a chuckle from Ardella. “Huntin’ by myself, livin’ by myself, everythin’ by myself,” she answered. “I got a cabin ’bout two miles back up near that highest peak yonder.” Without turning around, she pointed back toward the west.

“How’d you wind up here, alone in these mountains? You musta had some family, a husband, or somebody.”

“Oh, I had a husband,” she replied with a nostalgic smile. “Long Sam Swift, he was a helluva trapper and a helluva man—had hands big enough to crush a coyote’s head.” Her smile broadened a bit. “You remind me of him.” She sighed. “Lord in heaven, I was lucky to have been married to that man.” Changing the subject abruptly, she gave Emma a smile. “What might your name be, missy?”

“Emma,” the little girl replied, still gazing wide-eyed at the strange-talking woman.

“Emma,” Ardella repeated. “Why, that’s a dandy name—suits you.”

Still finding it hard to accept the fact that this elderly woman, though obviously tough as nails, could be living alone out in the rugged mountains of Wyoming, Cam had more questions. “How long ago did your husband pass away?”

“Let’s see,” she said, thinking hard. “I make it eighteen years come spring.”

“Eighteen years?” Cam responded, amazed.

“Yep,” she confirmed with a single nod of her head. “He was kilt by a Pawnee war party on the South Platte. They jumped us on our way back from South Pass. He made me hide under the bank while he went to try to talk peace with ’em, but they jumped him. It took four of ’em to take him down, and only two of ’em got up again when it was over.” She paused to sigh again. “Damn, he was a man.”