Chapter 8: Fire and Family

There was a whistle out of the fading light.

Dante recognized it and sent a responding whistle back into the twilight. A figure appeared out of the shadows following the exchange. A figure that resolved itself into a familiar face.

"Huck, good to see you!" Dante said with relief. "I assume you've all made it then?"

"Yup," Huck agreed. The rest of his group began to appear behind him.

"Your dad will be coming later, and Dwight should be with him," Sam said as he rode up. "Who else is here so far?"

"Cooper and I got here two days ago. Wick Peterson and Two-foot Jackson rode in this afternoon."

"I've got Huck, John Cantor, Birdie Gilead, my son Pip and grandson Taegan, and granddaughter Lily, along with Sam and Jenna Porter and Matt and Mor Steiner. We picked up Tiger Isturis and Reggie Empereza on the ride in."

Cooper Wilson was excited to see his cousin Lily, and pleased to see her sitting with Sam Porter. It was interesting to see Taegan and Jenna behaving like a couple, but the news of Conway made it hard to enjoy the observations.

"We always knew we had a leak somewhere inside the family," Dante said when the news was revealed. "Still, I wouldn't have suspected Conway, and it must be torture for you Taegan."

Taegan could only nod his head and look down. The comforting he got from Jenna and the echoes of sympathy from everyone else were quick and sincere. He looked up finally, and looked Dante in the eye.

"You know I've always been interested in the Cayuse, and you've managed to let me nose around a little and keep me interested. I'd like to make it official and ask for a place."

"We've always had a spot reserved for you Taegan," Dante told him. "It was always a matter of your asking. Consider it done."

"No!" Sam Kendall said.

"What?" half the group seemed to say at once in reaction.

"No. I have other plans for Taegan, and for everyone here who's not already Cayuse. For the Cayuse too, but you can't undo being Cayuse."

"What plans?"

"Now's not the time to say," Sam admitted. "We need to reach the end of this journey and see what is revealed there before we can talk of those things. There are more who will join us before we get there. Just a few more."

"Mrs. Kendall, I'm sorry, but we just can't give you what you're asking for, and even if we could, I just don't see what purpose it would serve to grant your request."

"You misunderstand the situation Guildmaster Curtis. I am not requesting the use of eight passenger cars."

"You're not?" the confused transportation guild yardmaster asked, glancing down at the papers in front of him.

"No sir, if you will read those papers a little more closely, you will see that I am requiring the guild to turn over the eight cars that my husband and his father loaned to the guild more than thirty years ago. Along with that, I am exercising the clause in the original contract that calls for the loan of a railroad engine. Perhaps you should avail yourself of a copy of that contract, sir. It makes for interesting reading."

Of course both of them already knew what the contract stated. Perhaps the guildsman even knew it word for word as Greta did. The terms were plain, and the conditions not couched in complex language.

"I shall have to study it," he suggested. "Perhaps if you come back in a week?"

""Come now, Paul. This is not the old United States. We don't bury our dealings in complex and confusing language that only lawyers can understand. A single reading of this document, one that a man in your position should already have made, tells you that I have the right to ask what I am asking, and you are required, by conditions the guild agreed to when it took on the contract, to honor my demands. I am not Sam Kendall, it is true. I am Mrs. Sam Kendall, and what I ask for is exactly what I am allowed to ask for. Nothing less and nothing more."

The guild master stared back for a long moment without comment, but finally let out a sigh and shrugged his shoulders. "What you say is true, and my wishing it were otherwise does not make it so. It will take two days for me to get eight cars ready."

"You have a dozen empty cars in the yard behind us that have been cleaned and are ready to go. All that needs to be done is to remove the Guild markings on eight of them. I could do that with a paintbrush myself in two hours. Twenty minutes with a little help."

"The paperwork will take several days."

"This contract is the only paperwork I need. You do not need possession of the cars in order to complete your paperwork. I'll come for them tomorrow."

"Fine, but we aren't likely to have an engine available until the middle of the week."

"Ah! finally something we agree on. You are right, you would normally not have an engine available," Greta said with some glee while pulling another document from the folder she carried. "However this document from the Portland Military Reserve releases their reserve engine to our care and allows you four days to replace it."

The guild master sputtered and fumed and made a few phone calls, but Greta and her Cayuse bodyguard walked out with the proper forms signed.

"That seemed to be a whole lot of sound and fury signifying nothing," Ray Jackson muttered. "Why did he even bother?"

"When you've inherited a promise you never thought you'd have to deliver on, it can be kind of hard to let go of your attitude, I guess. Besides, he didn't know about our deal with the general for the engine. That blind-sided him pretty good, don't you think?"

"That it did," Ray answered. "I don't suppose you can tell me what we're going to do with them now that we have them?"

"Not yet. But soon."

The scout's failure to report in had worried Elder Hobson. He'd assumed the worst and sent another man to scout Moro.

This man failed to return as well, and by first light the Elder decided he was done wasting time. "Mount up," he told the brethren. "Kendall, you ride at my side and nowhere else, understand?"

"Yes," Conway said sullenly.

The two dozen men came riding into Moro at full gallop and with guns drawn. All they found was a fire pit and the bodies of their two scouts. The Elder sent teams of two men through the town looking for signs of the Kendall group, but he knew they'd find little, if anything.

"There must be wild pigs of some kind in the area," Brother Pendergrast said after examining the fire pit. "They appeared to have supped on roast pork last night, and Karl and Sid look to have been left out for the swine to find."

"We didn't hear any gunfire last night, so how did our brothers die?"

"I'd say they were hit with arrows. Steel-tipped heads, designed for maximum damage. Both shots were straight to the heart."

"Cayuse," Elder Hobson spat. "Find their trail Wyatt, we ride as soon as we know where they've gone.

Ten minutes later, he had the report. Their were lots of tracks heading south towards highway 97, but they died out after a quarter mile. There were some small sign of tracks on the Lone Rock service road.

"Where does it go?"

"It meanders a bit more, but taking that road would still put them in Grass Valley or Kent further south," someone crouched over their maps answered.

"Wyatt, take four men and follow this road, just in case they're thinking they can wait a while down this road and then double back. We'll head south on highway 97."

The five Denied riders cursed the dust and the road and, as always, Sam Kendall as they rode down Lone Rock road. They had old man Murphy scouting up front of them a good half mile. Once they were out of the small canyon the road dipped into as soon as it left Moro, they stopped worrying too much about their side trail. There wasn't enough cover to hide a group. Riding out of their camp at first light had left most of the men's stomachs grumbling, so they gnawed on jerky or ate whatever they had handy in their saddle bags.