They came by river and by wagon train, braving the endless
來源：香港大書城megBookStore,http://www.megbook.com.hk distances of the Great Plains and the icy passes of the Sierra
Nevada. They were men like Linus Rawlings, a restless survivor of
Indian country who''d headed east to see the ocean but left his
heart--and his home--in the West. They were women like Lilith
Prescott, a smart, spirited beauty who fled her family and fell for
a gambling man in the midst of a frontier gold boom. These
pioneering men and women sowed the seeds of a nation with their
courage--and with their blood. Here is the story of how their paths
would meet amid the epic struggle against fierce enemies and
nature''s cruelty, to win for all time the rich and untamed
West.
內容試閱：
Chapter One
The sun was not an hour high when Linus Rawlings came
upon the trail of the Ute war party. The high walls of the
narrowing valley of the Rio Grande barred all escape, and Linus
knew he was in trouble.
A man of infinite patience, he was patient now, sitting his
line-backed buckskin in the dappling shadow of the aspens. Behind
him trailed three pack horses carrying his winter''s catch of furs,
while before him the mountain slope lay bright with the first shy
green of spring.
Nothing moved along that slope, nor in the valley below . . . only
the trembling leaves of the aspen. Linus, never one to accept the
appearance of things in Indian country, remained where he
was.
Against the background of the aspens he was invisible as long as he
remained still, for his clothing, the horses, and their packs were
all of a neutral color, blending well with their surroundings.
Methodically, his eyes searched the slope, sweeping from side to
side, taking in every clump of brush or aspen, every outcropping of
rock, each color change in the grass.
It had been a long time since Linus Rawlings had sky-lined himself
on the top of a ridge, or slept beside a campfire. He had known men
who did both things . . . they were dead now. It was no accident
that he always stopped with a background against which his shape
could offer no outline.
When in Indian country you never took a risk, whether you suspected
an enemy to be near or not. You learned also to make a fire that
was small, on which to prepare your meal, and after eating to shift
your camp a few miles and sleep in darkness, without a fire.
Such things as these were the simple rules of survival in the
Indian country; and besides these, there were others–never to take
a step without a weapon, as well as to observe the movements of
birds and animals as indications of danger. Linus no longer even
thought about the necessity of doing such things, for they had
become as natural as breathing.
He saw that the Ute war party comprised a dozen Indians; and if
they were headed for a raid on the Spanish settlements to the
south, they might well plan a rendezvous with other Indians along
the trail. They were only minutes ahead of him, and the question
was . . . did they know he was behind them?
He studied the slope with a skeptical eye. Behind his lazy,
easygoing facade, Linus Rawlings'' mind had been sharpened and his
senses honed by thirty-two years of frontier living. Born in the
dark forests of western Pennsylvania, where his family had been
among the first to settle, Linus had moved west with his father to
Illinois when only fifteen, and shortly after his father''s death he
had taken up with a keelboat outfit and had gone west to trap
fur.
In the sixteen years that followed he ranged from the Kootenal
River in Montana to the Gila in Arizona, from the shores of the
Pacific to the eastern slopes of the Black Hills. He trapped in
company with Jim Bridger, Uncle Dick Wootton, Bill Williams, Joe
Walker, Osborne Russell, and Jedediah Smith. In those years he left
the mountains only twice, aside from a brief visit to the Pueblo of
Los Angeles. Those two trips away from the mountains were to St.
Louis and New Orleans.
Now Linus searched out the probable line of travel of the war party
and studied it with care, but he could see no movement, nothing.
But he recalled what Kit Carson had told him many years before:
When you see Indians, be careful. When you do not see them, be
twice as careful.
Linus had great respect for the Indian. He knew him, not as a poor
heathen of whom the white man took advantage, but as a fierce
fighting man who lived for war and horse-stealing. The Indian knew
the wilderness, and how to live with it. No cat could move more
quietly, no hawk had a keener eye; for the Indian lived by and with
his senses, and a man could survive in Indian country only by being
a better Indian.
Time lagged . . . the morning sun touched the ridges behind him
with gold. The grass was still; only the aspens trembled. A pack
horse stamped impatiently, a bee buzzed lazily in the low-growing
brush.
His rifle lay in front of him across the saddle, the muzzle
pointing down slope, his right hand grasping it around the action,
thumb resting on the hammer.
Below him and to the right was another, somewhat larger clump of
aspen. He gauged its height and his own position. To reach it he
need be visible for no more than a minute.
A slight breeze moved behind him dancing the aspen leaves and
stirring the grass, and when the breeze and its movement reached
him, he moved with its movement, keeping the first clump of aspen
behind him. He paused again when he had rounded the second clump,
then started down the slope on the opposite angle to that he had
been using.
A short distance ahead the narrow valley narrowed still more; then
it widened out until it finally opened upon the plains. If the war
party knew of him and planned an ambush, that would be the place.
Not in the narrows, but just before they were reached or just after
leaving them.
When approaching a dangerous place a traveler''s attention is
directed ahead, toward the likely spot for an ambush, and he
overlooks the seemingly innocent ground he is just about to cross.
After passing a dangerous place, there is a tendency to let
down.
Linus was in no hurry. The fleshpots of the East could wait a few
hours or a few days longer. Using infinite care and holding well to
the side of the valley, he worked his way along the bottom of the
valley, following the river and keeping close to the trees or under
them.
When he reached the place where the Utes had crossed, he drew up
and allowed his horses to drink, and when they had drunk their fill
he dismounted and drank himself, choosing a spot upstream from the
horses. He was rising from the ground when he heard the shot.
He remained where he was, without changing position,
listening.
How far off? A half mile? A mile?
The second shot barked hoarsely, followed by three more shots fired
in rapid succession, one of them overlapping a previous shot.
Stepping into the saddle, he crossed the stream and pushed on,
keeping in the shadow of the trees. When he approached a rise in
the ground where the stream dipped through a cut, he left the
stream and mounted the rise until his eyes could look over the
top.
Before him lay a grassy meadow of some three hundred acres or more.
On his left the waters of the stream pooled–perhaps behind a beaver
dam–and they caught the sunlight and sparkled with the ruffling
wind. Beyond the meadow the stream again crossed the valley to flow
through the narrows along the opposite side.
At this point the walls of the mountain towered over a thousand
feet above the meadow, sloping steeply up to the crests of the
ridges. A man on foot might have climbed those walls at almost any
point, but at no point could a horse scale them.
A puff of blue smoke hung above the dew-silvered grass, and some
fifty yards this side of that smoke a horse was down in the grass,
threshing out its life in bitter, protesting kicks.
At first Linus saw nothing else. The morning held still, as if
waiting . . . a slight coolness remained in the air despite the
bright sun on the ridges. The Indian pony gave one last, despairing
kick and died. The blood on its shoulder was bright crimson where
it caught the sun . . . And then an Indian moved.
When the Ute moved, Linus immediately saw two others, their
presence revealed by his suddenly focused attention. All were
facing down the meadow, their backs toward him.
Obviously the war party had ridden into an ambush. Linus thought
they must have been following a party of either Arapahoes or
trappers without being aware of it. Rising in his stirrups, he
looked beyond the dead horse, and from the vantage point of the
knoll he could see them clearly . . . five trappers lying in a
buffalo wallow. Undoubtedly their horses were hidden in the trees
where the stream again crossed the meadow, with a man or two on
guard.
Near the body of the horse lay a dead Indian. If there were any
wounded they had been hidden. It was not much of a score against
the Indians, and the white men were still out-numbered two to
one.
Searching the terrain before him, he picked out several other
Indians. The others in the party must be hidden somewhere among the
trees along the stream.
There was nothing he could do. To advance was to lay himself open
to attack by the Utes, and perhaps by the ambushing party, who
might not recognize him as a white man. All he could do was wait .
. . a chance might come for him to make a run for it across the
open meadow.
Where he was the trees were scattered, but close on his left was
the thicker forest along the stream, which meandered back and forth
across the narrow valley. Shadows fell about him and he was in a
good position to remain unseen. He stayed in the saddle, ready to
fight or run, as the developing situation might demand.
The smoke disappeared. The echoes of gunfire lost themselves down
the canyon, and the sun crept further down the slope. Here and
there the clefts in the mountain allowed shafts of sunlight to
reach the meadow and the river.
Birds chirped and twittered in the brush nearby, and Linus relied
on them for a warning if an Indian started to move in his
direction. His eyes continued to search the meadow.
And then he saw what he had half suspected. Two Indians were
creeping through the grass toward the buffalo wallow. When the
others fled, these two must have deliberately fallen from their
horses in simulated death, for the sole purpose of this
attack.
Lifting his rifle, he estimated the distance. The target was poor,
the range too great. He was hesitating whether to chance a warning
shot when someone fired from the trees where he believed the horses
were hidden.
One of the Utes screamed hoarsely and leaped to his feet. Two
buffalo guns boomed from the hollow and the Indian was slammed back
...
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