Virgin River (21 page)

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Authors: Richard S. Wheeler

BOOK: Virgin River
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W
here were they? Had they fled? Were they in trouble? Anguish gnawed at Skye.
“I'd rawther be in London,” Mickey said.
Skye held Jawbone quiet to listen closely, but he heard nothing. No voice calling, no snort of a horse. He eased Jawbone's rein. Let him point. But the horse just stood. Skye started to do what he always did when trying to read a story from what lay on the moonlit ground. He began a slow spiral that would take him farther and farther from the camp, until he knew where people went, and possibly knew why.
He turned Jawbone around a widening circle. And then the moon quit him. The only cloud he had seen all night slid overhead and blanked the moon. Suddenly it was pitch-dark. It was a large cloud too, one that would not quickly pass.
Why was nature so perverse? Why extinguish the lantern? He raged a moment. Half of his life he had spent raging at nature, which froze him or soaked him or starved him or thirsted him or clawed him or tormented him at the worst possible moments. But it was black now.
“Mickey?”
“Ya'ar,” came a voice.
“I'm talking to guide you here. Join me.”
Skye actually began humming a sea chanty, and soon enough he heard the soft rustle of the Morgan.
“What'll ye do, bloke?”
“If the cloud lets up, find the creek and head up it.”
“They're well gone.”
“I think trouble came and Victoria took them to safety.”
But he sensed the wrongness of that even as he said it.
“I got me some dandy eyes and ears, old bloke. Leave it to this East Ender for prowling the night, eh?”
“All right,” Skye said. If ever there was a nocturnal male, it would be an East London pickpocket.
“Now, follow me, matey,” Mickey said.
Skye did, and soon they heard the babble of the tributary creek. Mickey turned up the creek, and Skye followed, marveling that the man and horse could go anywhere at all.
Not that the Morgan didn't stumble now and then. It was too dark for movement, and Mickey's only compass was the purring of the brook on the left.
Skye thought of discharging his rifle, and perhaps Enoch Bright would respond with a shot from his fowling piece. But that was too dangerous. A militia could be prowling this country.
But then Mickey cursed some brush that had whipped his face, and quit.
“Now, in London, every alley, it's in me head, but this isn't in me head,” he said.
Patience. That's what Skye needed and what he didn't have. He dismounted and prowled restlessly, looking for
edges in the black cloud mass working its way across the heaven. But he saw nothing. Just blackness.
“Limey, do ye want a fire, eh?”
“It's worth the risk. Signal fire. But there's no wood.”
“Old Skye, you haven't learned about me,'ave you? In London town, I could pick a pocket in fog, in dark so thick I couldn't tell the shape of the bloke I was crocking. Mate, I could cut a purse loose on the blackest night of the year, from a man wearing a black coat and black boots and a black hat. I got me the night sense. I know what something is without seeing it, you bet I do.”
Skye felt something vague stirring, and the faintest whisper of movement.
“There, ye fool, I've got yer powder horn.”
Skye roared, “Give that back.”
But Mickey the Pick was laughing. “Now just sit tight. I got senses you never knew a man had, and they didn't call me Mick the Pick for nawthing.”
Skye felt but did not see the little pickpocket stirring about, but there was nothing he could do but sit tight on the dew-damp grass and wait.
“Hurry it up or I'll put Jawbone on you,” he grumbled.
But Mick the Pick just laughed softly.
“And now, bloke, a pinch of powder and we′ll ′ave a bonfire.”
Skye saw a shower of sparks as flint struck steel, and then a flare of light a few feet in front of him, and then some flames tentatively licking a heap of twigs and sticks and dried reeds and bark. It caught, somehow, and there was Mick, a mean little smirk across his mug. Mick handed Skye his powder horn. The leather suspension cord had been neatly sliced.
“All right, get away from that flame, get into darkness,
face the darkness, and see what's out there. I know something about fires in the night, and the danger of fires, and I didn't learn it in London,” Skye growled.
Both men crept well apart from the tentative flame and studied the silent valley.
There was nothing to be seen. They had, apparently, moved a quarter of a mile or so up the creek from where the camp had been.
Skye gathered the horses and drew them into darkness. “All right, we'll see what the fire does, but we're staying well away from it,” he muttered.
The Pick added a few more pieces of tinder he had collected, just how Skye would never fathom, and then retreated from the flame. Skye tied the sliced cord together and hung his powder horn from his neck once again, and then the pair of them sat out the minutes and hours until a slow, glum dawn finally broke in the east. As the light thickened, and Skye could see farther and farther up and down the valley, and onto the eastern slopes of hills, he saw not a soul.
Where were the invalids? Bright? His family?
They sat quietly until dawn, when he could read the story of the meadow. He caught Jawbone and rode quietly back to the campground. There was a moil of disturbed grass, iron tire tracks, and it seemed to Skye that a lot of people had been at this place. Mickey, on the Morgan, studied the campsite too.
“They got took,” he said.
Skye was coming to the same conclusion. But he hadn't yet ascertained whether the visitors were Indians or white men. The meadow yielded no secrets. He spiraled Jawbone out farther and farther until it became clear that nearly all the traffic had come from the Virgin River, had turned up this side valley with the creek, and had come to his company's
camp. And there was now absolutely nothing left in camp.
But there was more. Clear travois furrows plowed up the creek toward the mesa country. And here, where there were fewer marks of passage, he thought he discerned the prints of his ponies, but he couldn't be sure.
“These are travois marks, and these tracks look like my family,” Skye said.
They followed the creek toward the canyon and mesa country above, where the travois trail took them. Soon they were in cedar thickets, and climbing steadily. Then Skye halted. Ahead was an arrow protruding from a thick, twisted juniper tree. He knew in a glance whose arrow that was. It had been driven there by Victoria's bow. The arrow had Crow fletching and dyes. And it meant big trouble, watch out, be ready, and come slowly ahead.
He had double feelings, relief that his family, as far as he could tell, was safe, and worry about the rest, and what sort of mysterious trouble might lie ahead. But he unsheathed his Sharps, checked the load, and found the rifle was ready.
“I'd still rawther be in London, mate,” Mickey said quietly.
“There's trouble. Study the ridges and let me know if there's anything unusual. We may be observed,” Skye said.
He worked the arrow loose and dropped it into his rifle sheath. Victoria's arrows were well wrought and valuable.
He thanked her silently for the warning.
They continued up the creek, plunging into a red rock canyon, and then Victoria stood there in the trail, bow nocked with an arrow.
Skye dropped from Jawbone, raced to her, and hugged her fiercely, so glad was he to see her.
“Come,” she said, and led them across naked rock and finally into a pocket hollow in a red cliff, where red walls
vaulted upward, leaving only a patch of blue high above. There was Mary, and there was the boy, and there were the ponies, and lying on the clay were the lodge, lodgepoles, and his family possessions.
This hidden place held all his treasure. He gave Mary a hug, studied his boy, who stared up at him from bare ground, and then the women pressed Skye to sit. There would be much telling, and Skye dreaded what he was about to hear.
“The men came, many, many, hundred maybe, riding horses, carrying rifles and revolvers. Men with beards. They don't ride so good, but they come. It was late in the afternoon, and they come up to the camp, and then they spread out, rifles ready, and the man we know, square-bearded man, he's the boss, and he walks up when he sees no one's gonna fight.
“He's damn cheerful, they all are laughing, pleased with themselves. Bright, he feels their good cheer, introduces himself, and I don't like this so I nod to Mary, and we slowly pack up, but nobody notices some old squaws. Except the square-beard, he looks around for you, and asks, and I say you're gone somewhere.
“So the men, they say, they're taking the invalids away for protection, lots of Paiute Indians making trouble for travelers, and these men, they come to protect white people and get us to safety. So Enoch Bright, he's smiling. The sick ones are happy, they pack up, and the square-beard, he's the boss, he says the women and sick go in one wagon, the men walk. Off they go, and that square-beard, he tips his hat, winks at me, and says nothing.”
“When they got to the Virgin River, which way did they go?” Skye asked.
“They all go down the river,” she said.
To safety.
M
aybe it was true, Skye thought. Maybe the Paiutes were raiding travelers. Attacks on travelers were common enough on every trail heading across the continent. But it didn't make sense. Why were the Paiutes stirred up, and why were the Saints suddenly protecting travelers?
“I don't trust the sonsofbitches,” Victoria said.
She was usually right.
Maybe the Mormon militia was simply rounding up the invalids to expel them from Utah, send them west once again. That did make sense. Bright's company would be told to head west and keep on going. Surely that's what all this was about. But that didn't feel right, either.
Skye ached for some sort of clue, if only to figure out what to do. But he didn't know what had happened or what to do. It was all guesswork.
“We'll look for them and come back here when we can,” Skye said. “This is a good place to cache our stuff.”
Victoria glared at him, her way of saying she was seeing things that he didn't grasp.
It was a perfect place to hide things, a tiny walled alcove in the red cliff. Victoria and Mary had already drawn the lodge cover and lodgepoles into the alcove, so there was little to do but pull everything under an overhang.
He realized suddenly that Mickey the Pick hadn't been informed. “We're going after our people before we lose them,” he said. “That means speed. We'll try to catch up with that militia and find out where they're going. We won't be dragging the lodge. We'll take all the ponies; might have to put Peter Sturgeon on one when we catch up. If that militia's big and if it knows what it's doing, this won't be easy. The first step is to find them. Then we'll know what is happening.”
Mickey beamed. “I can cut a purse from a bloke at midnight in fog; just let me cut a few invalids from the bunch.”
“Mickey the Pick, you are going to be an asset,” Skye said.
“They called me Lord Cutpurse, they did, long ago.”
“From now on, you're Lord Cutpurse,” Skye said. “Ladies, meet Lord Cutpurse.”
But the name meant nothing to them. They stared.
Swiftly, Skye collected and saddled his wives' ponies. Mary slipped North Star into the cradleboard. The child had almost outgrown the board, and would soon be riding in a shawl wrapped around Mary's shoulder and back.
They left in a hurry. Skye knew that food was going to be a problem. All those pine nuts so painfully harvested had gone with the wagon. But what was more important, at that moment, was catching up. The Saint militia had almost a day's head start.
They made good time, and would have done even better if Lord Cutpurse had known more about riding a horse. The
militia was not visible, but the wheel tracks were plain, and Skye knew that it would not take more than a day or so to catch up with slow-moving Mormons. Just what he would do when he spotted the armed force ahead he wasn't sure; whatever he did, it would require the cloak of night.
He let Jawbone set the pace, and the ugly brute chose a bone-jarring trot out of sheer perversity. Trotting never wearied a nag, even if the trot pounded the tailbone of any rider. Victoria's eyes became slits, but she didn't complain. Only Lord Cutpurse complained. He howled and growled, and cursed Skye and his whole tribe.
They met no one. Perhaps because the militia was roaming, no travelers were out this day. They followed the Virgin River as it flowed toward the mighty Colorado. The road was well worn and smooth, and had swiftly dried after the rain. There wasn't much to say so they rode silently, locked in their own thoughts. The long, wearisome ride took them clear to a little settlement calling itself St. George at dusk, and there the wheel tracks melded with dozens of others, and the hoof-prints in the dust became indistinguishable from all the rest. The militia and its prisoners had vanished behind the closed doors of humble houses in the dusty hamlet. Skye thought to look for the mules and burros, but they, too, were hidden.
There were few people visible, and these seemed to be hurrying. An odd tension caught the settlement. Skye could hear nothing; no coughing, no talk, no barking of a dog, no whistle, no singing. He had the sense that eyes were peering at him from dark windows. He saw only one lamp, in a tiny store that had stayed open.
“Matey, it's dangerous for you here. Now this is a job for Lord Cutpurse. Let it get a little blacker and I'll have me a good look.”
Skye agreed. In fact, he was worried that an armed band of men would loom out of the twilight and capture them all, his son, wives, horses, and the East Ender.
“We'll be on the river, above town,” he said.
Mickey grinned.
Skye turned Jawbone, and his family softly retreated from the desert town but not before a barking dog investigated them. Nothing came of it, and Skye steered off the road and found the river purling slowly. Night settled. Skye dismounted, let Jawbone lap up water. Mary slipped off her pony and began nursing the boy. Victoria grumbled through the chores, but in time the ponies were all cared for and there was nothing to do but wait for a gifted pickpocket to slip into their camp, with news—or no news.
Skye thought of Enoch Bright, trapped somewhere in that dusty hamlet, fuming at his captors. He tried to imagine what the mechanic would do or say to Saints who wanted to purge their Zion of unbelievers. Bright would probably light a pipe and tell them their cogwheels were missing teeth. He thought of Anna Bennett, proud and aloof. Of the Bridge sisters, bravely coming west to be healed. He thought of the Jones brothers, both of them the walking sick. He thought of Sterling Peacock, probably lying somewhere, and angry at these people he had made his own. And Peter Sturgeon, sick, twelve, and bewildered.
The stars emerged, bright pricks in a clear sky, and soon it was as black a night as Skye had known. He slipped close to Victoria, who sat stolidly on the ground. Without speaking, she welcomed him, a single touch of her brown hand enough to convey her thoughts. The Dipper rotated through the night, and still they sat, awaiting word from the king of pickpockets.
Mary materialized and sat beside them, and she handed
the boy, North Star, to Skye, who hefted the chunky child and was gladdened. This little bundle of life was all he would leave behind him. For now, the boy was well. But he would have a hard life. Skye did not live in safe cities where there would be food and warmth and medicine and help. He lifted the boy to his lap.
“Ah, Dirk, it is a quiet night here. When you're older you'll know that men's beliefs get in the way of good sense,” he said. “May you be wiser and stronger than your old father.”
The child's smooth flesh seemed silky to the touch, not a wrinkle in this one. Dirk clamped his little hand around Skye's fat thumb and hung on, and Skye was content.
It was a slow night but not an uncomfortable one.
“Ye blawdy Londoner, where be ye?” Mickey's voice carried softly from perhaps fifty yards.
“Here, mate.”
In a moment, a wraith of a man slipped into the resting place and dropped to his knees.
“There's not a one of'em in there. They gave us the slip.”
“How do you know?”
“I got eyes, they got windows and shutters.”
“Are you sure?”
“It's not a big burg, mate. There's not six'ouses.”
“What do you think?”
“I don't think. They're not ′ere. Not a woman, not a man. There's not a consumptive ′ere. Not Bright, either.”
“How do you know?”
“I can damned well see a ring on a pinky finger at ten paces when the fog's thick as soup.”
“But these are homes.”
“I can see anything anywhere.”
“Closed shutters?”
“I got me a pair of ears good as my eyes. I tell you, there's no bunch of consumptives, neither are they spread out in a few houses, and there's not a shed or a loft where they might be guarded. And I'iked along the river, below town, looking for a camp too.”
“Any chance you're wrong?”
“Why do they call me Lord Cutpurse, may I ask?”
“Did we miss something on the trail?”
“That's for you, mate. Me, I'm a pickpocket. The night's my game.”
“They are dead,” said Victoria.
“Naw!”
She shrugged. “It is a big land.”
“But why?” Mickey asked.
“Goddamn white men, why should I know?”
Skye had that bad feeling again, a sense that Victoria had discerned truth without quite knowing how or why. It was her medicine. Sometimes she saw things that turned out to be true. Still, he rebelled.
“They wouldn't,” he said.
Victoria refused to answer him, always a danger sign. She saw what she saw.
“I get itchy here. We must go.”
“Now?”
“Yes! Now!” she cried.
He helped her up. With nothing but starlight to help them, they collected their ponies, and Mickey the Pick found the Morgan, and they rode softly along the Virgin, not knowing where they would go or stop. Skye didn't even know whether he was employed, or whether his task was done. He had brought them to the place where they intended to heal themselves. What next?

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