Trail to Devil's Canyon by Cole Matthews

Author:Cole Matthews [Matthews, Cole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

Fire in the Canyon

‘Shut the gate!’ Anton Kozlov commanded.

He stood on the platform behind the north wall. From that elevation, he could look over the wall and see the whole length of the canyon. Puffs of smoke no longer drifted into the sky, but now there was other movement. Riders in the pines on the slopes of the canyon.

‘You heard him!’ Reverend Burt Roberts bellowed. ‘Close the gates before the heathen get here!’

Dave Calhoun and Jed Bliss threw themselves against the heavy gates. As the two settlers heaved, the old gates dragged on the tufts of coarse grass which grew over the entrance. Finally, the barrier was in place. Roberts dropped the iron bar.

‘Preacher,’ Kozlov summoned him from the platform. The settlers were all inside the stockade walls.

Bliss had arrived first with his Indian squaw trailing a few steps behind. It was the first-time Anton had seen her. She was a young Crow, slim and stately. Grayson Weathers, his young wife, Clara, and Calhoun had come next.

Weathers was standing protectively beside his pregnant wife. In his free hand, he held his rifle.

Calhoun was armed to the teeth. He wore a double gun rig and carried three rifles and a double-barreled shotgun. Will Alvord and Crazy Jane stood apart from the others. The old mountain man had a massive hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.

Reverend Roberts, Henrietta and the preacher’s six children from his three marriages, had lumbered down the valley in a wagon pulled by a team of sweating horses. Anton had come in last.

‘The gate’s barred,’ Roberts said.

Built like a shaggy bull, he was no seminary-trained preacher. He held church weekly in his barn where he preached earthy sermons, baptized babies and performed marriages and funerals. He looked more at home wielding an ax or a shovel than thumping a Bible. Anton rarely attended the preacher’s services, but he liked the man.

‘What is next, Kozlov?’ the preacher was asking now.

Anton glanced back over the stockade. The army had built the outpost well. The four straight log walls made a precise square. They enclosed an old, dusty building, once used as store and barracks. In the center of the old parade ground was a stone-walled well which Will Alvord had already checked. The bucket he had lowered by rope came up full of fresh, cold, drinking water. Alongside the one-time barracks was a stable and a small guardhouse with barred windows. A two-story building, the former officers’ quarters, was set into the eastern wall. Kozlov’s eyes swept along the platform. There would be six settlers to man the four walls.

‘Stable the horses and then pool the food,’ Anton ordered the bearded preacher. ‘The women can handle that, because I want every man on this platform with his guns loaded.’

‘I will make sure it is done,’ Burt Roberts promised, leaving him to watch the canyon.

Anton had assumed command the moment he rode into the stockade, and no one argued with him. He had been a cavalry scout, former Russian soldier; he knew Indians and the way they thought.

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