Chapter 7
Delaney thought this was the slowest, hardest riding she’d ever done.
And this was the way down! They were deep in the belly of the most rugged stretch of land where not a speck of the ground was level.
Instead, it was all peaks and gorges, among which were narrow trails—if they could be called that.
Even the streams they waded along dipped and rose with rough stones.
As they skirted mountainsides, they inched their way down into gullies that seemed to swallow them all in one gulp.
Then they rode on in the shadowy depths of the gullies, sometimes along a stream, with the water curving one way while Morgan went another.
They’d climb into the sunlight again and keep twisting along the snakelike trail.
Delaney had ridden so long and hard that she was nearly asleep on her horse.
And she needed to be in top form to survive the perils of such a rugged trail.
Thankfully, Boone was holding up all right.
He rode in front of her, so she could see if he was pale or flushed, unsteady or steady or a little of both.
But he hung on to his horse and never complained, and she did the same.
When they reached one of the stretches that was part of a stream, Delaney pulled up her horse beside Boone’s and reached her hand across to rest it on his arm.
“How are you?” she asked him. “I’m about to nod off.”
Boone turned to smile at her. He was clearly exhausted, but his eyes were brighter, clearer. “This is the wildest place we’ve ever been.”
She smiled back. “With the name Bridger, we probably shouldn’t admit that.”
He nodded but with tiny, slow movements, as if doing so made his head hurt. “The truth is, most of our hunting and tracking skills came from Ma. Pa was gone too much.”
“It was always nice when he was home,” Delaney replied. “Ma missed him something fierce. I wonder where our brother ever got to. It sounds like Bowie’s been to the highest peaks and the deepest canyons.”
“Well, he can’t’ve been to higher peaks or deeper canyons than what we’re riding through right now.”
They grinned at each other.
“He might have us beat, but not by much. I wonder if he’s still alive?” Delaney thought of their oldest brother. To her and Boone, he was more legend than family. “I wonder if we’ll ever meet him?”
“Crockett and Jedediah wandered through Texas that time, remember?”
“Yep, but we knew them a little when growing up. Bowie, he took off before we were old enough to remember.”
“Pa always said Bowie was born for wild country, and the house was getting crowded. Pa crossed paths with him a few times. And Crockett and Jedediah fought in the war. He met up with them pretty regular for a time, and they came through and visited us.”
Boone seemed to look into the past as he thought of their wandering brothers.
“Ma said they put out word that she and Pa are living in Fort Russell now. She’d heard all three of our brothers are in the northern Rockies, though maybe not together, and hopes they’ll come for a visit.
I can’t imagine having a son who left over twenty years ago and has never come back. ”
“I’m glad we decided to join our parents in Fort Russell.
” Delaney had been teaching school in Texas, and Boone had lived there with her when their folks were stationed at a nearby fort.
Then their parents had moved on, and for a time Boone and she were settled.
Done with their wandering life. He’d done some sheriffing and worked as a justice of the peace, even spending a year doing the work of a cowhand. They’d done well there.
Ma wrote that she and Pa were planning to settle down in Cheyenne and stay put until Pa was done with his working years.
Ma had invited them to come and live close to them.
So they’d decided to pull up stakes and move to Wyoming.
All of that had led them to this remote wilderness with four Marshals and three criminals tied up.
Seeing the trail was about to turn even rougher, Delaney said, “Looks like Morgan’s turning off up ahead. It’s getting real narrow now. I’d better drop back.”
Their eyes met for a moment. “I’m so glad you’re all right, Boone.” She squeezed his arm. “Seeing you lying there, bleeding from your head . . . it was a sight that scared me right to the marrow of my bones.”
“But I’m going to be fine now.” He smiled and gave his head one slow nod.
She nodded and dropped into single file again.
Delaney didn’t say so, but she felt better riding behind Boone so that she could keep an eye on him.
He was a savvy man. It was proof he was still somewhat addled or he’d’ve known why she rode behind and objected to being watched over so carefully.
Or maybe he wasn’t addled at all. Maybe he knew he should be watched.
Morgan started up another mountain. She knew better than to ever believe there wasn’t a higher one somewhere, but honestly she’d thought they had to be near the top of the world.
She wondered how long this could go on. The question almost escaped her lips, but she clenched her jaw and kept quiet.
Once they’d reached the top, the group wound around a pile of boulders that looked to be clinging to the mountainside more out of pure habit than by anything holding them there. And then the trail opened up to paradise.
Delaney gasped. She heard Owen coming from behind her, leading Clive and Sly.
Tex was now bringing up the rear with Stella and the saddle string.
Sly had regained consciousness somewhere in the middle of the long day and was given water and a stick of jerked meat.
He was allowed to straddle his horse now.
The man only grunted, and he had a look in his eyes so calculating that Delaney didn’t like him riding behind her, not even bound tight to his saddle.
She drew her horse to a stop alongside Boone and wanted to study him but couldn’t take her eyes off what lay before her. Owen pulled up on her left and stopped.
Tex let out a whistle at the sight before them, while Clive seemed unable to find the words to describe it.
Sly spoke for him. “Who’d’a thunk there was a place like this on top of the world.”
They continued on. There was a short descent into a bowl-like meadow that went on for hundreds of acres until it ended with a stand of oak and maple trees.
The meadow was surrounded by canyon walls.
A stream cut an arc at the far west edge of the meadow.
Near the center of the meadow, a herd of longhorns grazed, along with a dozen or so horses, including four foals.
Amidst it all was a tidy-looking log cabin.
Smoke drifted up from its stone chimney.
A woman stepped out of the cabin, her rifle drawn. “You polecats ride on. This here’s private—” Her words cut off, and then she said, “Morgan? Morgan Sawyer as I live and breathe. I never thought to see you again.”
A young boy stepped out of the cabin behind her. His eyes were wide as he watched them ride up, awestruck. They were both white-blond and willow-thin. Both blue-eyed and seemingly dazed at the sight of company, especially company the woman clearly knew.
Morgan swung off his horse, spoke a few quiet words to Owen, then turned to stride toward her. “It is me for a fact, Roz.”
She laid the rifle on the ground, spoke to the boy, then came a-runnin’, throwing herself into Morgan’s arms. He lifted her clean off her feet and spun her around, both of them laughing.
That’s when a movement drew Delaney’s eyes to the boy, who’d picked up the rifle and looked more than capable of using it, even though he was only nine or ten years old. He looked for all the world like a youngster who didn’t like seeing a man put his hands on his ma.
Owen swung down, then dragged Clive off his horse. Tex took charge of Sly, got Stella off her horse, and sat her on the ground nearby but out of reach of her brother and pa. No sense making it easy for them to untie each other.
While Tex watched over them, Owen released the extra horses, all bareback and wearing no bridles—only the halters they’d been wearing when they were staked out for the night by the Duncans.
They walked, then trotted toward the lowland before them, wading into belly-deep grass. They went right to grazing.
Delaney shook her head. Probably stealing horses was one thing, but taking time to saddle them was something else.
Of course, you couldn’t steal horses that were already stolen, not if you were an officer of the law.
Instead, they’d taken possession of stolen goods and would soon see them returned to their rightful owners. If they were in fact stolen.
She realized she was trying to work excuses around in her head for horse thieving and decided to stop. She decided she didn’t care if they’d stolen horses from the varmints who’d shot Boone.
“When’s the last time Morg was home?” Owen asked Tex.
Both men studied the woman, the child, the hug that’d gone on far too long.
“Longer than that kid is old, I’d say. Didn’t Morgan fight in the war?”
The Civil War had ended in April of 1865, seven years ago. Morgan himself wasn’t all that old either.
“He told me he and his brother fought on opposite sides,” Delaney said, keeping her eye on the angry-looking lad.
“His brother for the South, him for the North. He said his brother died in the fighting, but Morgan didn’t know that until he came home and found a letter from his pa waiting for him in Elk Point, telling him to move on and that his brother was dead.
Whether Morgan wasn’t welcome because he was on any side other than his brother’s or whether his pa had supported the South, Morgan didn’t say.
I assume that meant he left thinking he’d never go back. ”
“The war ended in sixty-five, but Morgan had been fighting a year or two. He’s not that child’s father,” Owen said. “And he hadn’t oughta be hugging that woman like that, seeing as how she’s probably got a husband around here somewhere.”
“Maybe,” Delaney said doubtfully, “they’re just old friends.”
Morgan set the woman back down on her feet. She swiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her brown broadcloth shirt.
Delaney noticed she was wearing trousers and boots that looked about five sizes too big for her. Was this woman dressed in her husband’s clothes?
Morgan turned and called, “Owen! Come here and meet my old friend.”
Delaney had some old friends herself. They didn’t greet each other that way.
Tex said, “Go ahead. I’ll hold a gun on our prisoners while Morg has his reunion and does introductions with his . . . old friend.”
Owen and Tex gave each other a look that said they agreed with Delaney. Neither of them greeted old friends that way either.
“They’re late, Hester.” Grizzly Bridger tossed his napkin on the table. “I’m going after our young’uns.”
Four days late, Hester Bridger thought while shaking her head. What should have been a two- or three-days’ ride from Elk Point, where they’d sent the last telegram to Boone and Delaney, had stretched to nearly a week.
Hester shoved her chair back. “We’re leaving this to you, Kimmy. The colonel and I are riding out.”
Kimmy, the wife of one of the fort officers who’d hired on as housekeeper to the fort commander, nodded. “Ride careful, sir, ma’am.”
They took five minutes to fetch a bedroll, to gather a few days’ worth of beef jerky and hardtack, and to fill canteens, then headed out the door.
Hester already had on a riding skirt and a sturdy shirtwaist, so there was no need to change clothes. She grabbed her holster and black, flat-topped Stetson as she walked out ahead of her husband of forty years.
She glanced back to see Grizzly snag his Winchester off the rack over the back door and sling it over his shoulder, followed by his holster and Stetson. He never broke stride.
They’d been itching to go from the minute their children were an hour late. But several things could delay a trip, such as bad weather or a horse pulling up lame. Innocent things that made it foolish to go chasing out to save the day. Even so, it’d been too long.
“I’m irritated with myself, Hester. We should’ve told the young’uns to wait until the train started running again or ridden down to fetch them.”
“No sense in it, Grizz. They should’ve been fine with five Marshals.”
“Where you reckon they will’ve gotten to by now?”
“Don’t matter where they’ve gotten to, Pa. Wherever they are, we’ll find ’em.”
Hester was proud of her son, Boone. Well, all of her sons.
She and Grizz had three older boys. Then, after a span of years, while Grizz was posted out west and Hester couldn’t follow, he came home, and they had their second family.
Boone and the light of her life, a longed-for daughter, Delaney, who was their youngest. Hester had finally realized her dream of having a girl. After that, there were no more babies.
Grizzly barked out a few orders to his second-in-command as they rode out of Fort D. A. Russell.
“The last wire she sent was straight south, only two days’ ride. That was a week ago. She’d been in Elk Point, the first town south of Fort Collins. I reckon we’ll be riding south until we cut their trail, then pick up what became of them from there.”
A simple plan, but Hester knew it was anything but simple.
Something had stopped them or turned them aside.
And it’d been too long for it to be something simple.
Hester thought of the prisoner they’d been transporting, a man who’d already broken jail once.
She had to fear he was the cause of the delay.
“Mighty rough country if they got driven into the mountains,” Grizzly said. “I’ve been up in that wilderness, and some fearsome varmints roam those hills.”
“More fearsome than our youngsters?”
Even in his concern, Hester saw a small smile bend his lips. Grizzly was thinking the same thing she was thinking. No one was more fearsome than their youngsters.