Fires of Fate/Chapter 4

UD CONLEY’S awakening was painful. His mind was hazy and his eyes seemed badly out of focus, as he stared up at the ceiling of the log cabin. He tried to moisten his lips with his tongue, but it was like leather against leather.

“Gee cripes, I must ’a’ been awful drunk,” he said aloud. “I feel like I’d been corroded.” He reflected for a moment, and then added, “Maybe it’s my iron constitution that has began to rust. Whew, what a flavor I have in my system!”

After considerable effort he managed to hitch himself over to the wall, where he braced himself and looked around. He was in a small cabin, windowless and with one door. The cabin had evidently been built for something other than a place to live.

Bud swallowed painfully and felt of his head. Then he began to remember a few things. He had ridden up to the front of Magee’s place at Kingsburg in a driving rain and had tied his horse. As he ducked under the hitchrack, he remembered seeing someone near him, and then a heavy weight had descended upon his head. From that time he had no recollection.

“WhacthaWhatcha [sic] know about that?” he grunted aloud, feeling of his aching head. “I must ’a’ been crowned queen of Kingsburg. They’ve sure handed me two wonderful receptions in that town.”

His clothes were still wet and muddy and the upper part of his body was blood stained from the cut on his head, which had stopped bleeding. His cartridge belt and gun were gone.

He managed to get to his feet and stagger over to the door. It was fastened from the outside and was as solid as the four walls.

“Well, they sure respect a Montana cowpuncher enough t’ lock me in a place where I’ll stay put,” he observed. He circled the walls carefully, but nothing less than an axe or dynamite would ever make an impression on those heavy logs.

“She’s so danged tight yuh couldn’t even pour water out of it,” he declared to himself, “so I reckon I’ll stay right in here, like a nice little boy.”

He sat down on the floor and leaned against the wall, just as the door swung open and closed quickly behind two Indians. One of them carried a blackened pot and both had rifles, with which they kept Bud covered. They were both evil faced bucks, seemingly half-drunk.

Bud started to his feet, but one of them shoved a rifle against him, grunted a warning and Bud sat down.

“How’s all yore folks?” asked Bud pleasantly.

The one with the pot motioned toward the receptacle and said thickly, “Eat.”

“I don’t have to, if I don’t want to, do I?” queried Bud.

“No kumtuks,” said the other, signifying in the Chinook jargon that he did not understand, and they backed toward the door.

Bud was unable to tell what tribe they belonged to, but felt that, from their use of the Chinook jargon, that they were renegades from tribes across the border, although the border tribes of British Columbia spoke the jargon.

“Wait a moment. Let us talk, friends,” said Bud in the same strange tongue, which he could speak.

He thought he might get them into conversation and find out why he was imprisoned, but one of them shook his head and said coldly, “No talk. Not friends.”

As they opened the door, Bud spat at them, “Mahkh mokst, hum opoots!”

One Indian started to lift his gun, but the other spoke gutturally and shoved him outside. They barred the door quickly behind them.

“Well,” observed Bud sadly, “tellin’ that pair of skunks to get out quick didn’t get me anythin’ that yuh could see with yore naked eye. As far as knowin’ anythin’, I’m right where I left off.”

He examined the kettle of stew, but his stomach rebelled. The kettle was none too clean, and its contents far from appetizing. Bud was still nauseated from the blow on his head, and he wanted a drink of water.

“Skunks they were,” he reflected, “but I should have kept the information away from them long enough to beg a drink of water. Now, why am I a prisoner?”

But there was no lead for him to work on. He had always been friendly to the Indians. Why had Monk Magee given him the doped whisky, and why did Marie Beaudet figure in his troubles, he wondered.

A search of his pockets showed that his captors had overlooked his knife and several matches. The cabin was chinked from the outside with strips of wood, but he was able to work the large blade of the knife between the strips.

It was a slow process, but after a time he was able to gouge out a place large enough to enable him to peer into the adjoining room. It was empty, as far as he could see, and was without a window. He attacked the opposite side of the room, but was unable to work his knife blade between the strips.

In a spot above the doors there appeared to be two logs which had never been chinked. The light space was fairly large and Bud considered the possibilities of getting up there for a look outside. The logs offered little surface for climbing, but after much labor and several ineffectual attempts he managed to hang up there long enough to peer out between the logs.

In front of the cabin was a fairly heavy growth of brush and trees, some of which had been cut away. The rain was beginning to fall again—another dreary drizzle—which presaged a wet night.

Bud dropped back and fell to a sitting position on the floor. He was still a little weak and very thirsty, but grinned with satisfaction, as he began slicing splinters off the exposed chinking of the cabin.

It was slow work, but Bud was not in a hurry, and by the time that the light failed he had collected a goodly supply of the pitch kindling, which he piled against the door.

He sat down and rested a while, waiting until it was very dark. The rain was coming down heavier now and the interior of the cabin was growing colder.

Then came a scraping noise in the next room. Bud managed to find the peep-hole in the wall, which he had made with his knife. There was a candle burning in the room, beside what appeared to be a hole in the floor.

A closer survey showed that the floor of that room was composed of hand-hewn timbers, known as puncheon, and that some of them had been removed, making a hole in the center of the room.

As he peered in he saw a man come out of the hole, carrying a heavy keg, which he rolled against the wall. Then he went back and helped another man remove a keg from the same place. They talked in an undertone for several moments, and then replaced the puncheon.

Each of them took a keg and carried it beyond Bud’s line of vision. Then a door creaked open and he heard them shut it from the outside. They were talking again and their voices were plainer.

One of them said, “They can’t pack all this in tonight, unless they want to take a chance and take it in the wagon.”

The other replied in too low a tone for Bud to hear, but their voices died away in the distance.

“So this is where Monk Magee keeps his hootch cached, eh?” mused Bud. “Sort of a supply station, I reckon. Well, it’s none of my business.”

He went over to the door and touched a lighted match to the pile of splinters, which were heavily impregnated with pitch. In side of a minute the cabin was lighted with the glow, and the black smoke was seeping out through the chinking.

Somewhere a man yelled a warning, but Bud was unable to tell whether it was a white man or an Indian. The flames roared against the seasoned pine of the door, and the room was filling with smoke.

Then came an Indian’s voice, crying a warning. Bud sprang to the wall and climbed like a monkey, clinging with tooth and nail to the rough logs. Sideways he moved until he was directly over the door, where the stifling smoke boiled out of the unchinked logs.

Came the sound of running feet, a jumble of Indian gutturals and the door was flung open. The smoke swirled out of the door, and enabled Bud to see the two Indians, who had kicked the fire aside and were peering in through the smoke. As they moved further in, holding their guns ready, Bud dropped like a plummet, feet-first onto the broad back of one of them.

The Indian grunted hoarsely, dropped forward from the crushing weight and Bud pitched sideways into the other Indian, knocking him backward and out of the cabin by the sheer weight of his attack.

They went down into the mud, rolling over and over. The Indian had lost his rifle, and most of his breath had been knocked from his body, but he clawed wildly at Bud, fighting like a wild animal.

But Bud was not idle. He was schooled in the rough-and-tumble methods of battle and he mauled the Indian without mercy. The other Indian, still half-stunned, recovered his rifle and came to his companion’s assistance.

It was impossible for him to shoot at Bud, without taking a big chance of hurting his companion; so he danced around them, trying to strike Bud with the butt of his rifle. Behind them the fire blazed merrily, as the pine logs of the cabin picked up the flames, and the scene was well lighted.

Bud’s attention was centered on his immediate opponent,' who was giving him plenty of battle, but he was not losing sight of the fact that his head was in imminent danger of being crushed at any moment.

Over and over they rolled, each striving for a damaging hold, but both fighting silently. Then Bud got a grip on the Indian’s throat, and their heads were close together. A glancing blow from the gun-butt partly paralyzed Bud’s shoulder, but he clung to his choking grip on the buck’s throat. The other Indian was striking oftener now, as though taking a long chance, but Bud was watching.

The fight was slackening now. Bud’s strangle-hold had caused the Indian’s body to grow limp and his hands relaxed. Suddenly Bud threw himself away, as though trying to disentangle himself, but as the gun butt swished downward he jerked the Indian almost over him.

Came the dull thud of hardwood on yielding bone. Quick as a cat, Bud flung his opponent aside, rolled over and sprang to his feet. The other Indian yelled and sprang after him, rifle up raised, thinking that Bud was about to escape, but instead of running away, Bud dug his toes into the soft dirt and came back like a charging moose.

His shoulder crashed into the Indian’s midriff and the rifle went spinning away. The shock threw Bud sideways, and he sprawled across the body of the second Indian, where he lay for several moments, gasping from the collision. But the other Indian did not get up; he was completely knocked out.

Bud got to his feet and looked around. The wound on his head had opened again and his face was cut and bruised from the fight. His shoulder ached from the blow and he felt dizzy and weak, but lost no time in securing one of the rifles. He removed a belt of cartridges from one of the Indians and fastened it around his waist.

The cabin was blazing merrily now and nothing could save it. Suddenly there came a shout from behind the building. Beyond the light of the burning cabin every thing was a black pall, but Bud raced headlong into it, trusting to luck to strike a trail.

As he struck the brush tangle, almost beyond the light from the fire, he looked back and saw several forms running around the cabin. They halted at the Indians, talking loudly, but Bud waited no longer. Gripping his rifle tightly, he started running into the darkness of the trees.

Then he stopped suddenly. From just beyond him came the unmistakable creak and rattle of a wagon, and the sound of a man’s voice, talking excitedly.

“Whoa!” The wagon stopped.

“The whole damn thing’s on fire!”

“Well, whatcha goin’ to do—stop here?”

“Danged right. We don’t know who’s there.”

Came the sound of them getting down from the wagon.

“Goin' to tie the team?”

“Naw, they’ll stand. Come on.”

The two men passed very close to Bud and went on toward the fire. Bud chuckled to himself and felt his way over to the team. Cautiously he lit a match and looked around. It was an old lumber-wagon, with a high box, and the team was a shaggy pair of gray bronchos.

Bud noted that there was room to turn the outfit around, so he lost no time in climbing to the seat and gathering up the lines. He had no idea of where he was, and in the darkness and rain he could not even see his team, but he trusted to them to keep the road.

Cautiously he turned around, bumping over rocks, down timber and low brush, but managed to get headed the opposite direction and spoke sharply to the team. It was like heading into a black void, but the grays responded with a will.