Chapter
32
Conrad had the feeling he hadn’t been
unconscious too long. His mouth was filled with the taste of salt
and dirt. He lifted his head, spat out the awful gunk, and looked
around.
The overturned wagon lay several yards
away. Bodies were scattered around it. None of them were moving,
but as Conrad tried to get to his feet, several of the victims of
the wreck began to stir.
Conrad spotted Arturo. With the muck
dragging at his feet, he reached his friend’s side as fast as he
could and dropped to his knees. Arturo lay on his back, so he
wasn’t in danger of drowning in the mud. He moved around a little
and groaned. Conrad got an arm around his shoulders and lifted him
into a sitting position. “Are you all right? Anything
busted?”
“Just every bone in my body, from the
feel of it,” Arturo replied. He waved a hand. “No, no, I’m fine.
See to the others.”
Ollie pushed himself upright. “What in
the world happened?”
“The buckboard’s wheels broke through
the crust into a sink hole and it turned over,” Conrad explained.
“Let’s check on everybody.”
Within a couple minutes it was clear
no one had been badly hurt in the crash. A few bumps and bruises
were the extent of the injuries.
Conrad examined the wind wagon and saw
that it would never work again. The tongue had snapped, and the
canvas had come loose and blown away.
“We’re stuck out here,” Selena said,
panic edging into her voice.
Conrad looked at the overturned
buckboard. “We might be able to bust up some of the boards and tie
them to our feet—make salt shoes out of them instead of snow shoes.
If we spread out the weight like that, we might not break through
the crust.”
Kingman nodded slowly. “That might
work,” he admitted. “But which direction would we go? If we start
out trying to walk through this storm, we’re liable to wind up
wandering in circles.”
“We’re going to have to wait for it to
blow over,” Conrad said. “That way we can see where we
are.”
“And that gives Hissop and Leatherwood
more time to catch up to us.” Kingman sighed. “But you’re right.
Waiting is the only thing we can do. I just hope it doesn’t take
too long.”
“In the meantime,” Conrad suggested,
“let’s set the buckboard up on its side so it blocks the wind. We
might be a little more comfortable behind it.”
The men lifted and heaved and wrestled
the buckboard into position, then everyone huddled on the leeward
side of it. Night was settling down, earlier than usual due to the
dust in the air. Shadows gathered quickly, and once the last of the
feeble sunlight faded, utter darkness closed in. The dust in the
air completely blocked any light from the moon and stars. Conrad
couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.
Despite the terrible thirst and hunger
that plagued them, exhaustion was too powerful to overcome. One by
one they dozed off. Conrad felt Arturo’s head leaning against his
shoulder and heard the soft snores coming from his friend. He tried
to stay awake, thinking someone needed to remain on guard, but it
was hopeless. His eyes were too heavy, and he succumbed to
sleep.
Conrad jerked awake. For a second he
thought someone was screaming, and that sent his hand groping for
the gun on his hip. Then he realized what he heard were cries of
laughter. The sun was beating brightly against his eyelids, and he
forced his eyes open, squinting against the glare that came from
the salt flats all around them.
Kingman was the one laughing. “Look!”
he cried when he saw that Conrad was awake. He flung out a hand to
point. “Look over there!”
The edge of the salt flats to the west
wasn’t more than three hundred yards away. Where it ended, the
rocky slopes of the foothills leading up to the mountains began. In
the distance, possibly two or three miles north of where they were,
lay the pass. Conrad could see it from where he was.
“We almost made it all the way,”
Kingman babbled as the others came awake. “The wind wagon brought
us almost completely across the flats. We can walk that
far!”
Conrad pushed himself to his feet and
squinted up at the sky, which was a beautiful, crystal clear blue.
The storm had blown over completely. It had left some salt heaped
up at the edge of the flats, but otherwise there was no sign it had
ever taken place.
“Gather up the guns,” Conrad told the
others. “Hissop and Leatherwood are at least a day behind us, but
they have horses and we don’t. It’ll take us a while to walk to the
valley, and then we have to get ready to defend it.”
A bleak expression replaced the grin
on Kingman’s face. “I’m going to blow up the pass. The more I think
about it, the more I see that’s the only answer.”
“But, Dan,” Selena said, “that won’t
stop Father Agony and Leatherwood in the long run. They’ll just
find some other way to get at us.”
“Not if they’re in the pass when it
blows up,” Conrad said.
Kingman shot a sharp glance at him.
“You mean lure Hissop and all the avenging angels in there, then
drop an avalanche on top of them?”
“That’s the only way to stop them for
good. Otherwise, Selena’s right. They’ll find some other way to get
into your valley, and they’ll keep trying to kill you. Hissop can’t
back down now, not and hope to have his followers stay with
him.”
“That’s murder,” Selena
said.
“No, it’s self-defense,” Kingman
insisted. “If they’re trying to get to us to kill us, they deserve
whatever happens to them. That’s just common sense.”
Arturo said, “I believe that’s
correct. People can’t be expected to sit back and do nothing while
a bunch of fanatics who want to destroy them plot their demise.
Taking action to prevent that is the only sensible
course.”
“What’s going to happen if Hissop and
Leatherwood are gone?” Conrad asked. “Will the people who are left
behind in Juniper Canyon still try to come after you?”
Kingman shook his head. “I can’t
guarantee it, but I don’t think so. Hissop is the one who holds
everything together, forcing people to do what he wants.
Leatherwood is his enforcer. Neither of them has ever been all that
well liked. People are just afraid of them, that’s all. Afraid of
crossing a self-proclaimed prophet, sure, but even more afraid of
Leatherwood’s gun.”
“Then you’ll have at least a chance to
build lives for yourselves in the valley. Some others may even come
and join you.”
Kingman put his arm around Selena. “A
chance is all anybody ever really gets.”
Some of the guns had been fouled by
the salty mud. The weapons could be cleaned properly once the
fugitives got back to the valley. The salt crust broke through
several times while they were walking off the flats, but the
distance was short enough no real harm was done to anybody’s
feet.
Once they were off the flats, they set
a fast pace, but nobody was used to walking and soon everyone’s
feet and legs ached. They pushed on anyway, and no one complained
too much.
After all, they had come through hell
to get away from Father Agony and Juniper Canyon, and the passage
to their deliverance was in sight, the pass that waited for them up
ahead.
It was the middle of the day before
they reached it. Everyone was staggering from pain and weariness as
they stumbled through the pass and paused at the top of the trail
leading into the green oasis of the Valley of the Outcast Saints.
Paradise Valley, Kingman had talked about renaming it, and Conrad
thought the name suited it. The place looked as close to a piece of
pure paradise as any he had ever seen on earth.
He turned his head and looked over his
shoulder, knowing that somewhere out there, riders were thundering
inexorably after them, bringing death and destruction.
You couldn’t have a paradise without a
hell to counterbalance it, Conrad thought. In that remote corner of
Utah, those two things were about to come crashing together once
again.