Novel 1968 - Brionne (v5.0) Page 2

  Brionne’s mouth twisted wryly. “Colonel, that is one of the very reasons I am going away. I want to be free from pity, free from questions, free from sympathy and curiosity. I want to go somewhere where nobody knows and nobody cares. I have had too much of sympathy for now. Ethel is a lovely woman, but the first thing you know she will be trying to get me married off. You know how women are. She will be saying that I need a wife and that Mat needs a mother.”

  Devine smiled ruefully. Ethel had said that very thing not two hours ago.

  They talked then of various things—of the coming presidential campaign, of conditions here in St. Louis, of the hotel where they were staying. Finally, Devine went back upstairs to Grant and the rest of the entourage.

  Alone once more with his son, Brionne talked with him a little, and then he fell into a study. Was he doing the right thing? Was change the only answer? Was it an answer at all?

  Night after night Mat had waked up screaming with fear. And he could not stand it to be left alone with only a woman to care for him, so fearful was he that the renegades might come back.

  They had searched for him that dreadful night, and Mat recalled every footstep. There were times when they had come close enough for him to hear their sullen, muttering voices. He had seen them, he knew them, and he was the son of the man they hated.

  The Southern Hotel’s spacious dining room was one of the finest in the country, and the food was good. St. Louis was busy; it was the gateway to everything that lay to the west. There were people here who knew Brionne, and everyone knew who Devine was; they knew that if Devine spoke to him he must be important, for Devine was the President’s closest friend and associate.

  “Pa? Will I have a pony?” the boy asked.

  “You will have a proper horse, Mat. A man’s horse. We will be doing a lot of riding together, and where we are going there will be no roads, nothing but Indian trails, and very few of them.”

  At first, once his son had been found safe, Brionne had been seized by a sort of madness. There had been a pursuit, of course, and he had been among the leaders. The country had been shocked by the tragedy, and every man who could bestride a horse had been out with his rifle, hunting for the Allards, as they called themselves.

  They had made a run for the mountains, but now they were without friends, even there. The hideouts they once had used were closed to them, for this crime had been something even the hardest of the former guerrillas could not stomach.

  They had fought Brionne, but they knew him for a brave man, and respected him. They knew his wife too, and they would ride with no man who attacked women. The result was the Allards disappeared from their old haunts, and the story was that they had returned to Missouri.

  Brionne refused to accept that. Harsh, relentless, bitter, he rode every trail, going alone into places where companies of cavalry had hesitated to go. Driven by the dark fury that Devine knew lay within him, he had ridden himself into exhaustion. Even his former enemies offered their help, but the Allards were gone. In the end he had realized his duty lay to his son.

  “Do you know the place where we are going, pa?” Mat asked now.

  “I’ve had a glimpse of it, son. It is a wild, strange, lonely land. Once you have put your eyes upon it, there is something in it that will never leave you. There are tremendous rocks everywhere—great, grotesque rocks…and overhead the wide sky, the widest sky you ever saw, Mat. It is unbelievable.”

  He paused, thinking back. “I went into new country at your age, Mat. I was born in Canada, you know, and spoke nothing but French as a boy. When I was seven I went to Virginia to live with an aunt, and I grew up there, with occasional visits to Canada and to France.

  “We did a lot of hunting and riding in the Blue Ridge Mountains when I was a boy, and I started school in Virginia. When I was old enough I entered the Virginia Military Institute, and later I spent a year at St. Cyr, in France.”

  It was an exciting story, and he told it the best he knew how, wanting to keep Mat’s interest aroused. James Brionne had, because of his superior training and an uncle’s influence, been commissioned a second lieutenant and sent to Indian country in the West.

  Arriving just at the right moment, he went with Captain Stuart in pursuit of a party of Cheyennes who had attacked a mail party. Recovering twenty-four stolen horses and mules, they killed ten of the Cheyennes. Later, Brionne rode with Colonel Sumner against the Cheyennes and was in the battle of Solomon’s Fork, and in the pursuit that followed.

  In the next few years he rode on two dozen scouting trips into Indian country in Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah, but he was recalled and sent to Europe, without uniform, to engage in counterespionage against Confederate agents operating there, in France, England, and Germany.

  The demand for officers brought him back to the States, where he took part in Grant’s campaigns in the West, acquiring a reputation for his skill in moving and supplying large bodies of men. He was promoted to first lieutenant, then to captain, and finally to major. He had been among the first to see the possibilities of the railroads in handling troops and supplies; but near the end of the war he was once again sent to Europe when there were indications that one or more of the European nations might intervene on the side of the Confederacy. His command of French, as well as the friendships formed during his period at St. Cyr, served him well. When the war ended, he returned to his old home near Warrenton, Virginia, dividing his time between there and Washington.

  “What will we do out west, pa?” Mat wanted to know.

  “Oh, we’ll prospect a little, catch a few wild horses, and we might even run a few cattle. We will cross that bridge when we get to it, Mat. Mostly we are going to see some new country, some wild country.”

  James Brionne pushed back his chair. “Now I must go to speak to the General, Mat.”

  “Pa, what state is St. Louis in?”

  Brionne was considering the arguments he would offer to Grant, and spoke without thinking. “In Missouri, Mat. This is St. Louis, Missouri.”

  Mat stiffened abruptly, and Brionne looked down at his wide, startled eyes with sudden realization. “It is all right, Mat. There is not one chance in a thousand we will ever see the Allards again. And if we ever do, you must not be afraid. I will be with you.”

  He was thinking now that he dared not leave the boy alone in his room, a prey to his imagination and to all the fears it could conjure up in a strange place. He would take Mat with him to see Grant. It might even help, for the General liked children.

  He had started toward the stairway when he heard somebody say, “There goes Major Brionne. He is a friend of President Grant’s.”

  A man seated in a chair near the foot of the steps looked up sharply at the words, his hard blue eyes staring right into those of Brionne.

  Instantly, the man looked away as if fearful of being recognized. Brionne paused and the man got up quickly, folded his paper as he moved, and crossed the lobby toward the street.

  Brionne hesitated. An old soldier friend? No…He looked again, and saw that the man had paused in the doorway and was looking back at him. This time when their eyes met the man paused no longer, but went out and closed the door behind him.

  Of course, people would be curious. Brionne had come to expect that, but in this man’s eyes there had been such livid hatred mingled with what seemed to be fear that he was curious. But Colonel Devine was probably right. His training and his instinct had made him suspicious of everybody.

  “Pa, come on!” Mat was saying.

  That man’s attitude disturbed Brionne, nagged at his consciousness. Yet the more he considered it, the more positive he became that he had never seen the man before.

  He went up the stairs, and down the carpeted hall to the General’s suite. Two stocky, powerful men stood guard outside. Both knew him from Washington. “Evenin’, Major,” one of them said. “The General’s waitin’ for you.”

  Grant sat behind a desk, the stub of a cigar in his teeth. Hi
s coat was unbuttoned, his tie somewhat askew.

  He nodded shortly. “How are you, Brionne?Pull up a chair.”

  Chapter 3

  *

  THE TRAIN RUMBLED into the night. Outside, on the vast and empty plains, there was no light to be seen. Beside Brionne, on the seat next to the window, Mat slept soundly.

  The car was almost empty. Two seats ahead a young man lay on the seat with his legs in the aisle; his boots were down-at-heel, his spurs carrying the big rowels used by Mexicans or the Californios.

  James Brionne had seen the man when he got on the train at some small station west of Omaha. He was a tall, loose-jointed young man with a shock of yellow-white hair and a look of dry amusement about him. He had winked at Mat, bobbed his head at Brionne, and promptly lighted a cigarette, which marked him as from the border country of Texas, where the habit had been picked up from the Mexicans.

  The young man carried a beat-up Henry rifle; but with the practiced eye of the Army veteran, Brionne noticed the rifle was clean and well cared for. The belt gun was one of the heavy Walker Colts, a kind rarely seen.

  There were half a dozen other persons in the car, including one young woman. Her clothes showed both style and quality, but they were a little worn. She was dark-eyed, and strikingly attractive in a well-poised sort of way. He wondered about her, and he tried to think of who she might be and why she might be going west.

  Grant had been right, of course. He was running away, trying to escape not only the horror of his wife’s death but everything that tied him to it. He was leaving Washington, his friends, the countryside he knew well. He was going toward…what?

  And he could not say he was doing this only for Mat. He himself wanted to escape. He was going to a country he had seen only once, years ago, but it was a country that had never left his thoughts. He could still remember the stark loneliness of those towering pinnacles of rock, the brilliance of the stars, the expanse of the sky.

  No land had ever touched him as had that wild and desolate desert, with its vastness and loneliness, the strange canyons, the stark ridges, the ruined ranges with their cascades of broken stone toppling into the valleys below. Deep within him something had always reached out with longing for that country.

  He remembered an evening when he had led a patrol, scouting for a band of Indians that had stolen some horses. They came suddenly to the crest of a small saddle offering a fine view of the country beyond. He drew rein, astonished, and his men came up slowly around him, speechless with awe.

  Before them lay a valley, a narrow corridor of green, deep in shadow now, a corridor between two rows of towering gargoyles, weird monsters shaped by wind, rain, and blown sand, carved from the native rock into these fantastic creatures of stone.

  The trail had run out in the valley, and there was no reason to ride on, yet he felt drawn, impelled to go on into that darkening corridor. His men hung back, and his sergeant suggested tentatively: “Lieutenant, you can’t tell me—no Injun would go down in there, not with night a-comin’ on.”

  The man was right, of course. Reluctantly, Brionne had turned back. But this land spoke to him, whispering a song to his ears. When it was silent, and he sat unmoving, he heard the wind speaking to him from out of the distance, softly, plaintively. He knew then what was the song Ulysses heard when bound to the mast as he sailed past the siren islands.

  *

  THE TRAIN CAME suddenly to a stop. There was a creaking of cars, a jolting, then silence, except for the distant sound of steam from the panting engine.

  The tow-headed cowboy sat up, looking about. His eyes met Brionne’s. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” He glanced down at Mat. “I’ll have a look.”

  The cowboy got up. “I’ll go along.”

  Brionne hesitated, looking down at his son. The dark-eyed girl smiled. “Go along,” she said. “I will watch over your son. If he wakes up I’ll tell him where you’ve gone.”

  Brionne walked to the end of the car and stepped out on the platform.

  Vast plains, rolling up into low hills, swept away on either hand. The single line of rails disappeared in the distance behind them. Holding to the handrail on the end of the car, he leaned out to look toward the engine. He could see the dark figures of two men who were talking, and the bobbing lantern of the conductor as he came back along the train, checking the cars.

  Brionne swung down, the cowboy beside him. “What is it?” Brionne called softly.

  “Fire,” the conductor answered. “I smell fire. I figure one of the cars must’ve developed a hotbox or something. Maybe a cinder set the roof on fire.”

  The cowboy had been standing apart. “It ain’t none of my affair, Mr. Conductor,” he said mildly, “but if I was you I’d board up an’ take this train a-sky-hootin’ yonder. That there smell is grass a-burnin’. That’s a prairie fire an’ she’s a-comin’ thisaway!”

  The conductor turned and stared at him in the darkness. “Sure enough,” he said, “that is burnin’ grass.”

  He turned and started a stumbling run back toward the engine, but even as he started the flames showed, a dull red glow against the sky.

  “We can’t make it,” Brionne said. “We’d better backfire.”

  “Not here.” The cowboy drew his gun. “There’s a slough back up the line a ways. We’ll need water.” He fired into the air, and the conductor skidded to a stop.

  “Back!” the cowboy yelled. “Back to the slough!”

  There was an answering yell from the engineer, and the conductor leaped aboard the nearest car. Brionne swung up, catching the cowboy’s hand as he jumped for the platform.

  The engine wheels spun as they ground into reverse, and the train began to move. Already the horizon was dancing with a leaping line of flame. How far away was it? A mile—half a mile? In the darkness it was impossible to judge.

  Grinding and roaring, the train backed up the line. Brionne went inside the swaying car. Mat was sitting up, his eyes wide and frightened. The girl was beside him.

  “It’s a grass fire, Mat,” his father said. “You take care of this lady. She doesn’t know about such things and she may be frightened. But stay inside the car.”

  He glanced around. “We’ll need any help we can get.” One of the passengers, a soldier in uniform, sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Brionne spoke to him. “Private, go forward along the cars and roust out all the men. Get buckets, anything that will hold water. These cars are made out of dried lumber and varnish. Soak them down!”

  He threw off his coat and ran to the back of the car and jumped off as the train slowed. The slough was on the wrong side of the car to stop the fire, but there was a good water supply, and if need be it offered a shelter from the flames.

  Brionne began running on the other side of the train, toward the fire. “Start one close in to the track,” he said to the cowboy; “one that will get the nearest grass and that we can put out. I’ll go farther out.”

  He could see the fire clearly now, great towering flames roaring over the prairie. When scarcely fifty yards out he stopped, knelt in the grass and tugged up a double handful. Lighting it, he waited until it was ablaze, then touched it to the grass. A flame leaped up, and he ran on, touching the grass until he could no longer hold his torch, then taking a second handful of grass. When he had a fire started the length of the train, he turned and started back, setting new fires inside the outer ones. The idea was to keep any fire from getting too large, but burning the grass toward the train to stop the big one that was coming.

  Others were helping. A score of dark figures were alongside the track, throwing water over the cars. Others were burning grass, and putting out some when the flames got too high or too close.

  It was desperate work. There is no work that will demand more of a man than fighting fire, for there is a desperation in it that is born of man’s ancient fear and his present realization of the danger. Brionne had no sooner set the backfire than he was fighting to kee
p it under control.

  The cowboy, who knew what to do and worked swiftly, had set a fire only six feet from the tracks, burning off a border that was easily controlled and soon burned out except for that edge that ate slowly back against the wind to meet the area burned off by Brionne’s large fire.

  But the great wall of flame came on; it was now only a few hundred yards off. The train stood between the burned-off portion and the slough. With the outer edge of the backfire burning slowly to meet the wall of flame, and with a margin of burned-off ground to protect them, all hands turned to drenching the wooden cars with water.

  Several men got on top of the cars, and others passed buckets up to them. Still others were throwing water on the varnished walls of the cars. All were coughing from the smoke; leaves and grass blew over them, and blazing tumbleweed rolled close to them. The heat was intense.

  Now the flames rolled up to the backfire and blazed furiously there, but they could go no farther. Around the ends of the backfire some flames tried to make their way around the island of slough and burned-off grass that surrounded the train, but these they could take care of more easily.

  Within a few minutes it was obvious that the train was safe. Silently, the small group of tired men stood there for a moment.

  Brionne found himself beside the cowboy. “Quite a fire,” he commented dryly.

  “Yeah. I’ve seen a few. This was a bad one.”

  The conductor came up to them. “I want to thank you men,” he said. “Without you we’d have lost the train.”

  The cowboy chuckled. “I’ve come too far to lose my hair in a prairie fire,” he said. “Pa allus said I was born to be hung.”

  He grinned at Brionne. “You move fast,” he said. “My name’s Mowry. Dutton Mowry.”

  Brionne shook his hand. “James Brionne,” he said. “My son and I are heading west. Utah,” he added, “or maybe over the line into Nevada.”

  “Headed that way m’self,” Mowry said. “Where you leavin’ the train?”

  “Promontory,” Brionne said. “We plan to locate somewhere south of there for a while and scout the country.”