Under the Sweetwater Rim (1971) Read Online Free Page B

back."
    "Do they know about us?"
    Brian shrugged. "If they do, they will come after us.
    They daren't let anybody escape. Also, they'll be wanting women."
    Belle Renick interrupted. "The coffee is ready, and rve broiled some steaks."
    After Dorsey had returned to the lookout on the knoll, Brian turned again to West.
    "Corporal, I want you and Schwartz with the wagon and the women at all times. One of you must be awake always. "Dorsey, Ironhide, and I will take turn about watching from the knoll." When the others had moved off he sat again by the dying fire and filled his cup from the blackened pot.
    "I am not sure I like this, Ten," Mary said.
    "You are not alone-I like nothing about it"
    "If we are off the trail like this, how will father ever find us?" "He may be in so much trouble he won't have time to look. If you recall, your father has only a few veterans in that group. Most of the men have never heard a gun fired, as far as we know."
    "Those men . . . they wouldn't attack the army?"
    "They might. But only if they felt they had something to gain." He glanced at Belle. "Did the Captain give you a gun?"
    "Yes."
    "Keep it handy-you may need it. And neither of you must leave camp without telling Schwartz or West, and when you go, go together."
    They sat in silence for a while, staring at the coals. "Ten, what are we going to do?" Mary asked presently.
    "We'll stay right here for two or three days-it's an unlikely place to look. They won't look for us very long, I'm thinking, and after that we'll pull out for the west, keeping to high ground in the mountains" The air was still, the sky was cloudless.
    Brian glanced at the knoll. There were no trees at the top, only a little brush and some dwarf cedar that grew from an outcropping of rock.
    There was a small hollow up there, just large enough for three or four men. From the concealment it offered, anyone would have a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree field of fire, with no cover nearer than a hundred yards. However, at a point nearly that far away there rose another hill, slightly higher than their own, and a good marksman on top of that hill could make this position untenable. This was the only drawback in their position here except for its lack of water. Two barrels on the sides of the ambulance, but rarely carried on such a vehicle, took care of that problem when the ambulance was near.
    Ever since leaving the wagon train, Brian had taken precautions to erase as much of their trail as possible, but he knew that a skillful tracker could find them.
    At noon he climbed the knoll and relieved Dorsey. "Get some sleep," he said. "You'll need it."
    He settled down to studying the terrain. This would be a moonlight night, but rocks and trees have a way of looking different by night, and unless every one of them was memorized, a man might believe he was seeing things that he was not.
    There was no use, he reflected, in telling them that the man at the head of the renegades was Reuben Kelsey. They had worries enough. Kelsey had never won the reputation of some of the other border riders, like Quantrill or Bloody Bill Anderson, but he had been wise enough to shift his base of operations to the Emigrant Trail. The loot was better, there were Indians to take the blame, and there were no settlers to report their activities. Above all, Kelsey knew the country as few other men did. Everybody knew about Reuben Kelsey, but the fact that he was operating this far west was not known. It had been reported that he had been seen in Kentucky, and even that he had been killed during a fight in Missouri. As for Ten Brian, he had made no secret of the fact that he had once known Kelsey, or that they had been friendly after a fashion.
    Choctaw Benson had been the source of the information as to Kelsey's presence in Wyoming. Ten Brian as a boy had known Benson and liked the old mountain man, and he had come upon him again in a frontier saloon, after his own return to the frontier. He had bought him a