The Huron looked at her thoughtfully. “Hyle would kill him. He would kill your husband. Then he would take you.”
“And you would let him?”
“Why not? What are you to me?”
“I am a woman. You are a gentleman.”
For the first time there was a shadow of a smile on his face. “You are clever, to put that burden upon me, but ask anyone and they will tell you the Huron is a savage. Ask your friend.”
“Mr. Vallian?” She indicated his face. “Did he do that?”
“It was our second meeting. I thought I had killed him the first time. I look forward to the third.”
“He is a good man, Huron.”
“I think so. But I will kill him. Nobody escapes the Huron twice.”
Suddenly, he was gone.
She stood staring, then turned swiftly. Con Vallian was walking into camp. He paused, looking beyond her. “I thought I heard someone talking.”
“It was the Huron.”
“Here?” Vallian stared at her. “You were talking with him?”
“He speaks very well… excellent English. I thought there was a shadow of French, but I cannot be sure.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.”
“You had better eat, Mr. Vallian.”
He glanced at McKaskel. “How is he?”
“In some pain, I think, but he is sleeping. I fed him some broth.”
So the Huron had been here and knew their location. Would he bring the others? It was likely, but then one never could outguess the Huron.
“What are you thinking of?”
“That Injun… next time we meet one of us will get killed. He moves like a ghost. Makes a man right uneasy, with him around. The first time he almost killed me.”
He ate the food she gave him, yet there was a restlessness about him, an unease. Twice the Huron had come upon him unheard, something he believed no man could do. He got up suddenly. “We’re going back.”
“Back?”
“To your cabin. You had decided to stay there, and it is a good place. They may come back looking for you, and they may not, but there is a time to stop running, and the time is now, the place is there.”
With help they got McKaskel into the saddle. Con Vallian led the way, not along the dim trail by which they had come, but up through the aspens, on a winding route among the trees. Suddenly they emerged on the slope of the mountain. Below them, bathed in moonlight now, lay a wide flat, a high, grassy plateau.
They crossed it at a gallop, then entered the trees once more, weaving among them through the filtered moonlight. The rain had softened the leaves under foot and their horses made little sound. When they came at last to the cabins it was upstream, from below. They were under the cottonwoods.
Near the house they saw their wagon, and Con stopped them. “I’ll go up there,” he said.
There was no way to approach the house under cover, so he walked his horse across the meadow to the cabin, watching the house and prepared for anything. Nothing happened.
The door swung on hinges, and nothing seemed disturbed. “Better get some sleep.”
“We left the other mules in a corral.” Tom pointed. “It’s back there.”
“You get some sleep. I’ll have a look at them.”
Susanna turned at the door. “You will stay? You will be here in the morning?”
“I’ll stay.”
He walked away, pausing only when he was in the blackness under the trees. He turned to glance around. It was a good place they had chosen.
He found the corral and it was what he had supposed. The original owner of the cabin had simply pulled deadfalls into place among the close-growing aspens to form a crude fence. Probably the little he had done had been done from horseback, simply swinging logs into a better position. Yet it permitted a nice bit of grass and grazing for the mules.
He had no idea how the showdown would come. Now that they knew he was here it might be approached more carefully, for they would know about Con Vallian.
But seven of them? Duncan McKaskel would be a help, and so would the others, but they’d be better off holed up in the cabin. For himself, he preferred to be outside. He had always believed in a war of movement, and was not given to occupying static positions.
Standing in the shadows near the cabin, he studied the layout. The approach from the creek could be covered by fire from the house, and so could the trail down from the bench. Except for the windows, nobody was going to get a bullet into that house… well, the door was a risk, but a lesser one.
The dangerous area was near the bench where land broke off sharply and dropped away to the area of the beaver-dams. A rifleman, or several of them, could get close to the house from there and there would be no way to smoke them out.
Con Vallian looked from the bank across the beaver ponds and the naked tree trunks lying on the green and marshy ground. Beyond were the still pools where the beaver had gathered water.
It was a good place the McKaskels had chosen, rich with the quiet of trees and still water. Over there, just down the way a bit was the river, running pleasantly over the stones.
Once a man had been here, perhaps with a family. He had seen and loved this place and had built this cabin, and then somehow he had gone away. Had he tired of it? Had he fallen and died? Been killed by Indians or renegades? Did he lie buried in some mine tunnel only he himself knew? Or had he simply gone off to Cherry Creek, which people were beginning to call Denver, and never come back?
Susanna came out from the house. “Are you listening? Should I be quiet?”
He shrugged. “I was thinking that this is the best life, always the best I was thinking that cities are no place for men.”
“You may be right, Mr. Vallian, but cities have much to offer. They have better educational advantages, and culture.”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t be knowin’ about such things.”
“Do you think they’ll come tonight?”
“Doubt it. But I’ll never try to outguess that Huron. He’s a canny one, and the next time they come, ma’am, it’ll be root hog or die, no two ways about it.”
VaUian pushed his hat back. “You’re fresh out of the eastern lands, so get it straight in your minds. When they come back they’ll be killin’. No matter if they say, ‘you do this an’ you’ll get off scot-free’, or ‘do that an’ we’ll not harm your boy,’ Ma’am, don’t you believe them.
“When a man starts out to do violence there’s only one way. You got to defend yourselves.
“Now these men. Purdy’s a bad one, but he might give you a break. His brother Ike wouldn’t even give Purdy a break, and neither would Red Hyle. Doc Shabbitt is mean, dirty, and a coward, but he’ll kill you just as quick, an’ the others gather someplace between.”
“I… I wanted a home out here, Mr. Vallian. I did not think I’d have to fight for it.”
“No, ma’am, but you have to fight for most of the things worth havin’… or somebody does.”
CHAPTER XVI
For a time Con Vallian walked about, gathering sticks, hauling deadfalls closer to the house, building up a pile of wood for the fire. He had always enjoyed working with his hands. Moreover, he thought better while working.
There were seven tough men in Shabbitt’s lot, as opposed to McKaskel and himself. Susanna and Tom would fire some, would load for them, and could be helpful, yet he had to find some way of shortening the odds.
He was not a man who wanted to kill, yet the men he had to face had no such compunctions. He doubted whether any of them actually liked to kill, unless it was Ike Mantle but the others did it just the same.
Aside from Hyle or Purdy Mantle, Con doubted whether any of them would stand up to a man in a fair fight. The trouble was, they could choose their time and their direction.
Con Vallian did not like the idea of fighting from a position, such as the cabin. He preferred to be outside, under the trees. He paused, straightening up and leaning on the thick branch he held in his hand. Slowly he surveyed the area.
They might be already out there, watching. But suppose they were not? Suppose instead of waiting inside the cabin for an attack, they waited outside?
The attackers could come across the stream, down from the bench, or they could come downstream. The only other route was across the beaver ponds. Possible, but difficult owing to the great number of fallen trees and the marshy ground.