The Lost Wagon Part 63

"They might try something, but I doubt it. There's some heathenish nonsense about their having to die in the daylight so they can see their way to the spirit land. But--and I'll bet on it--we haven't seen the last of them. Think one of us should try slipping out to Camp Axton tonight?"

"It's a pretty long chance, what with so many of them being out there.

We can hang on for one more day. The day after tomorrow's the fifteenth, and the chaplain and some soldiers are coming from Axton anyway. No sense in being foolish if we don't have to."

"That makes sense," Winterson conceded. "Well, I'll go rest my eyes on some of your scenery again. Might get a shot."

All through the long afternoon nothing appeared, and the women prepared and served dinner in the last lingering hour of twilight. They ate, while the embers of the dying fire cast a ghostly glow into the room.

Again Joe wondered if this were actually real. None of it fitted his preconceived notions of an Indian fight, with bullets flying thick and fast and deeds of derring-do. So far not a dozen shots had been fired.

Then he glanced soberly at Ellis's bandaged head. It was real enough.

They took the mattresses from the beds and laid them on the floor.

Sleepy, and somewhat bored, the children curled up where bullets could not reach them. Joe walked back to his post at the window, and he saw a thin sickle of a moon hanging as though from invisible wires in the sky.

It shed a faint light, and Joe stiffened when he saw an Indian crawling up to the cabin. But closer scrutiny proved that it was only a shadow.

"Haven't seen a thing!" Tad wailed. "Do you suppose they'll come tonight, Pa?"

"I don't know. Hadn't you better knock off for a while and get some sleep?"

Winterson called softly, "Joe."

Joe went to the front of the house, and down at the stable he saw a flickering, tiny light. It grew, and within seconds it was a leaping fire. Joe felt his body grow taut, and fury mounted to new heights. But he could do nothing except stand helplessly by and watch.

"The stock won't be there," Winterson a.s.sured him. "The devils'll run that off with them."

"I--" Joe gritted.

"I know what you're thinking. You don't have to say it."

They watched the fire grow and heard its crackling, and the entire s.p.a.ce between the house and stable was lighted by it. Sparks floated skyward and winked out. Fire broke through the shake roof, and transformed it into seething, liquid flame. Then the roof fell in and there was a vast shower of sparks.

"They're real playful," Winterson commented. "Real nice people."

"Where's the wagon?" Joe asked.

"What did you say?"

"They've taken the wagon!"

Winterson grunted, "They'll take anything they can lay their hands on."

Joe walked back to the rear window and stared into the darkness. He had not slept but he was not sleepy. Flaring rage still consumed him, and he peered intently at every shadow.

The slow hours of the night dragged endlessly. Dawn came softly and Tad called,

"Pa."

"Yes?"

"There's the wagon."

Joe peered past his son's shoulder. Far up the valley, hopelessly out of rifle shot, the wagon's canvas top was sharply white in the lightening morning. Mounted Indians were pulling it with ropes, and Joe felt sick to his stomach. This was the wagon that had brought them all the way from Missouri, over prairie, hills, rivers and mountains. This was the wagon that had been their home. Now it was stuffed full of hay from the haystack, and the raiders must have worked all night to get where it was. Now all they had to do was drag it up the slope, find a position directly behind the house, set the hay on fire and send the wagon rolling down. Without exposing a man they could burn the house, and its defenders would be at their mercy.

Winterson and Ellis came to stand beside Joe, and they looked at this thing that could not be but was. The wagon turned and stalled sidewise and Joe's heart gave a great leap. But the Indians righted it again, kicking savage heels into their mounts' ribs as they forced them to pull. Slowly the wagon moved up the hill. Joe swallowed a hard lump in his throat. He looked at Emma and the children, and at Martha Winterson, and strode grimly to the rear of the house.

The wagon did not appear, and for a moment he cherished the wild hope that it had broken a wheel or become snagged in the trees, and that the Indians would be unable to move it. The sun rose, warming the meadow, and still Joe stared up the hill. After an eternity he saw what he had prayed he would not see. The upper third of the wagon's canvas top was silhouetted against the trees, and smoke was pouring from it. Joe turned to find Winterson and Ellis at his elbow.

He said vaguely, "It might miss the house."

But he knew that it would not. The besiegers had their one great opportunity and they would not waste it.

Joe's hand tightened around the breech of his rifle, and for a second he thought he must have shot. But the shot came from the top of the hill, near the wagon, and it was followed by a volley that was in turn followed by the barking of revolvers.

They waited, wondering, and after fifteen minutes, while the burning wagon continued to smoke, they saw the hors.e.m.e.n come down the hill. They were nine men, riding at a walk, and they herded Joe's mules and Ellis's and Winterson's horses ahead of them.

Joe breathed, "G.o.d Almighty!"

It was a prayer, not a curse, and he flung the door open to go out and meet these hors.e.m.e.n who had appeared so providentially.

"Told you I'd come!" Sergeant Dunbar called. "Told you I'd come as soon as my hitch was up! I brought a wagon train through with me and they told us at Camp Axton that you were here. We smelled smoke and figured the rest."

His arm around Martha, Henry Winterson stood just behind Joe and both their faces wreathed in smiles. Emma came, and the younger children ran with open arms toward this man who had been their playmate at Fort Laramie. Joe looked through the cabin's door to see Barbara and Ellis in a lovers' embrace. He grinned; they thought they could not be seen.

"Get down!" Joe sang out. "Get down and come on in! Where are your wagons?"

"Left 'em back along the Trail when the Sarge here smelled Indians," a lanky Kentuckian on a brown horse said. "Say, this looks like good land.

Is it all taken?"

"Not near. There's room for all of you if you want to come and we have everything here. Everything but our wagon. That's lost, but we'll get another." He glanced again through the open door and shouted joyously,

"All of you just better stay right here, at least through tomorrow.

There's going to be a wedding!"

About the Author

Born in New York City, Jim Kjelgaard spent most of his boyhood in the Pennsylvania mountains where his father, a doctor, had a back-country practice. For a time after he finished his schooling, young Jim clung to vigorous open-air pursuits, becoming by turns a trapper, a teamster, a surveyor, a guide. In his late twenties, however, he set out to make writing his career. Since then hundreds of his short stories and articles have appeared in national magazines, and he has written a number of books for young people as well.

With his wife and teen-age daughter, Mr. Kjelgaard makes his home in Phoenix, Arizona. But in his quest for stories he has travelled widely and often throughout North America. The vivid reality of _The Lost Wagon_, his first adult novel, grows out of his intimate, first-hand knowledge of the American West.

Books by Jim Kjelgaard