“There may be ten men down there, and there may be fifty. They’ve already showed us they are ready to fight, and to kill. According to what we heard, they’ve got the Stampers down there and those Polon brothers.”
“Go into camp,” I said, “right back at the edge of the trees, and let’s get set for a fight.”
We moved the cattle into a kind of a cul de sac at the’ edge of the forest. Dragging a log into place here and there and propping them against trees, we made a crude sort of a fence. It wouldn’t stop a determined steer but might stop a casual wanderer.
We found a place at the edge of the trees where a fire might safely be built without being seen from too great a distance. “Fix us a good meal, Lin,” I suggested. “We may need it tomorrow.”
“What’s on your mind, Tell?”
“I’m going down there tonight. I’m going to see what’s going on.”
“They will expect somebody.”
“Maybe.”
“If Logan didn’t leave that marker himself,” I said, “somebody did it for him, somebody who could get out and come back in.”
“I didn’t see any tracks.”
“You didn’t look close enough. There were tracks, most of them wiped out and with leaves scattered over. Back in the brush a few steps I found some — woman’s tracks.”
“That sounds like Logan. He never got himself in trouble yet there wasn’t some woman tryin’ to get him out of it.”
There was grass enough to keep the cattle happy, and we settled down to study what lay ahead of us. During the night, there could well be an attack. We had been warned in about the worst way, and we knew they would not hesitate to kill. The worst of it was that we did not know what was at stake except that Logan Sackett was somehow involved.
My night horse was fresh, and I shifted the saddle. Right now I wasn’t sure whether I’d ride or walk, and I was thinking the last way might be best. Usually, I carried some moccasins in my outfit, and they were handy today.
Tyrel and Orrin stood with me at the last. “We’ll handle things here. If there’s shootin’, don’t worry yourself. We’ll hold the fort.”
Baptiste came to me. “A long time back there is a path down the mountain.” He drew it in the dust. “The old fort is gone — only some stones here. This is grass. There is the river. I do not know what is here.”
“The smokes — is ver’ much smoke. Two, three fires, maybe.” He hesitated. “A man who was at the fort, he tell me they find gold. Maybe — ”
That could be the answer. But why threaten Logan with hanging? Why did he need cattle? Who was trying to prevent our arrival?
When darkness came, there were stars over the Cassiar Mountains, and I found Baptiste’s trail and went down quietly to the water and crossed to the point where the old fort had stood. Some of the snow had melted, but there were patches which I avoided, not wanting to outline myself against the white or to leave tracks that could be found.
A straight dark line against the sky told me a building was there.
Where would Logan be? If I could find Logan, he could explain it all. Slowly, taking infinite care, I circled the area at the edge of the woods. I found a sluice, heard a rustle of running water in it. Somebody had been placering for gold.
A tent, and another tent. A canvas-walled house, a shedlike place, a log cabin with light shining from some cracks. A dug-out door with a bar across the outside — the outside?
For a moment, I held still in the shadows. Now why a bar across a door from the outside? Obviously not to keep anybody from getting in, so it must be to keep somebody from getting out.
Logan?
Maybe. There was a larger log cabin close by and light from a window made of old bottles, a window I could not see in, and nobody inside could see out. Beyond it, there was a corral. Easing along in the shadows, I counted at least twelve horses, and there were probably more.
There was a building with a porch in front of it, steps leading up to the door, and no light at all. It could be a store. In all, there were not more than five or six structures and a scattering of tents and lean-tos.
Nobody was moving around, and there seemed to be no dogs, or my presence would have been discovered. A door of a cabin opened, and a woman stood revealed in the door, a light behind her. She stood there for several minutes, and the night wind stirred her skirt. She brushed back a wisp of hair and went back inside, leaving the door open.
There was a fireplace in view, a homemade chair, a table, and some firewood piled by the fireplace. Suddenly, she came to the door again singing softly, “Bold, brave and undaunted…”
“Rode young Brennan on the moor!” I finished the line for her.
She ceased singing, swept off the door step, and then she spoke softly. “I shall lower the light and leave the door ajar.”
She took a few more brushes with the broom, then stepped back inside and partly closed the door; then she lowered the light
I hesitated. It might be a trap, but “Brennan on the Moor,” about an Irish highwayman, was a favorite song of Logan’s, and mine, for that matter.
I crossed the open space swiftly, flattened against the wall of the cabin to look and listen; then, silent as a ghost, I slipped inside.
She was waiting for me, her back to the table, her eyes wide. A surprisingly pretty girl with a firm chin and a straight, honest look to her.
“You will be William Tell,” she said.
“I am.”
“He described you to me, and Tyrel and Orrin as well. Even Lando, for we did not know who would come. He promised me that somebody would. I could not believe it.”
“Three of us came, with some friends.”
“I heard.” There was something ironic in her voice. “I heard that you did not come alone.”
“There’s a girl with us who is looking for her brother, Douglas Molrone.”
“He is here.”
“Here?”
“Of course.”
“And Logan?”
“He’s here. He’s getting over a broken leg. It should be almost healed by now, but I think he’s prolonging it.”
“If you are his nurse, I can understand why.”
“He has no nurse. They permit no one near him.”
“Who,” I asked, “are ‘they’?”
“There’s gold here. Quite a lot of it, we believe. Some of us began finding it, first just a little, then more. We built a cabin or two and settled down to work.
“Then those others came. They saw what we were doing, and then they began to go to the store for supplies. At first, they bought a little as we did, then they returned for more. Nobody thought anything of it until my father went in to the store and found they had sold out. Everything was gone.”
“John Fentrel, the storekeeper, sent a man out for supplies. He did not return.”
“Then Logan Sackett came along. He came down the river in a canoe and tried to buy supplies at the store. Then he tried to buy from us, but we were down to almost nothing.”
“He found out what had happened, and he offered to drive in a herd of beef cattle for us. He collected money from us, all we had. We managed to kill a little game, and we waited.”
“Apparently, he had known of a small herd that had been driven part way here. Actually, I think the drover was headed for Barkerville and got hung up somewhere inland.”
“Logan said he bought the herd from him and started back here. His men deserted him, but he kept on; then his cattle were stampeded, and his leg was broken.”
“We got word somebody wanted to hang him.”
“Some of us did. We thought he had taken our money and tried to get away with it. Some of us did not believe there had ever been any herd. Some of us thought he had lied. He promised us that if he could get a message out, he’d get cattle here before snow fell. There wasn’t much else we could do, so we sent his message, and we’ve waited,”
“Did you believe him?”
“Sort of. We sent a man out for supplies, and he got back, traveling at night with a canoe. He was going again, but his canoe was stolen.”
“All the time those other men just loafed around, eating very well and just waiting. They mined very little and cut just enough wood for themselves and waited for us to starve.”