Robert Adams - Bili the Axe

To their astonishment, all of the defenders had lived through the suicidal action, their well-used rifles having taken so heavy and ghastly a toll of the attacking Ganiks that the leaders of the savages had finally rounded up their own survivors and ridden back whence they came, apparently counting on a smaller contingent led by Johnny Skinhead Kilgore to chase down and slay Gumpner’s party.

Instead, Corbett and his force had surprised Old Johnny and his Ganiks camping along the trail and shot or sabered all of them save Old Johnny himself. Then Corbett’s group joined with Gumpner to continue on south, to Broomtown.

Now, arriving at the northern mouth of the pass, they confronted another difficulty, this one of their own making. What remained of the low breastwork of rocks they had had to erect so quickly before that long-ago battle was easy enough to shift aside with so many hands to join in the work, but the huge fallen tree that they had tumbled from one of the verges above proved another matter entirely.

There seemed to be no way that they could shove hard enough against the thick mass of splintery roots or heave on ropes hitched around the trunk to do more than shift the tree a few bare centimeters. The spread of branches that had spanned the defile from wall to rocky wall and thus provided so excellent an abattis in last year’s defensive battle now fought against their efforts to clear the gap. Those same branches that had forced the charging Ganiks to dismount and come slowly in afoot into the murderous fire of the rifles now sought out and wedged tightly into every crack and crevice and cranny of walls or floor and so added their resistance to the massive weight of hardwood against which the sweating, panting, cursing parties of men strained.

Nor, in the confined area, could enough mules to make a difference be hitched to either side of the stubby trunk of the mountain oak. Moreover, as the wood had had time to weather and season, efforts directed at the thick branches with axe or saber seemed endless and exhausting.

Finally, Old Johnny opined, “Gin’rul, I thanks the bestes’ thang we kin do is to burn the bastid out.”

Corbett shook his head. “I’d love nothing better, Johnny, and were we not now into Ganik country, I would. But on a clear, almost windless day like this, we’d be sending up a smoke you could see forty miles away. And since most fires are the work of men, just how long do you think it would be before we had a mob of your kinfolk on top of us?”

Kilgore shrugged. “Not lawng, gin’rul. Ganik’s is awl curious. But thin why not jes’ camp wher we is and do ‘er’t’night?”

Again, Corbett demurred. “Johnny, look up there.” He pointed at the verges ten and more meters above. “Against anything more original or innovative than a direct frontal assault, this gap will be a deathtrap for anyone fool enough to get caught in it. I want to be clear of it well before dark. If only there were some way to get a dozen span of mules through the mess up there…”

Johnny scratched at his bald scalp and commented, “If it’s jes’ mules and riders you wawnts to git out yonder, gin’rul, ain’ no trick to thet. R’member, me ‘n’ my boys, we rode raht roun’ yawl, las’ year?”

Corbett slammed clenched fist into palm. “Damn! What the hell was 1 thinking of? Of course you did. But those were mountain ponies you rode, Johnny. Do you think these big mules could negotiate those trails?”

The old cannibal sniffed. “Onlies’ really rough part’s gon’ be gittin’ ‘em down the bluff inta the valley yonder. The rest of it’s jes’ a wide swing th’ough the woods, is awl.”

Corbett nodded briskly. “All right, Johnny. Take any man you choose, trooper or civilian, and any animal. Gumpner, you go with him and see that he gets no lip from anyone, then report back to me when he’s on his way. Once you and your party get into the valley, Johnny, we’ll hook up the ropes and pass them through those damned branches to you.”

Johnny Kilgore proved as good as his word, and, with twelve pairs of brawny mules hitched to the tree and a clear expanse of valley before them, the heavy, unwieldy hulk soon was hauled clear of the gap, leaving in its wake only splinters and hunks of half-rotted bark. And the column moved on through.

Although there were several hours more of daylight, Corbett halted the bulk of the column in the meadow just to the north of it, along the banks of the wide, shallow brook that flowed southeast to northwest across it. They all waited there, setting up the night camp, until a strong patrol led by Lieutenant Vance and Old Johnny returned to report no sign of any nearby Ganiks or even of any recent movements of them along any of the network of smaller tracks.

At that juncture, Corbett announced that they would camp in their present location for two or three days. He thought that after the recent strenuous weeks of rain and cold, both the animals and the men needed a rest before they pushed on; it was a certainty that he, Jay Corbett, did.

On hearing this news, the indefatigable Johnny Kilgore found a fresh mount and a few kindred spirits and set out to fetch back fresh game. Corbett let the old man and his companions go with heartfelt wishes of hunter’s luck, for he too was sick unto death of the monotonous rations on which they all had been subsisting these past wet weeks.

So quickly did the hunters return that Corbett at first suspected that they had run into Ganiks or some other trouble, but such was not the case. All were heavily laden with game, and the old man was ecstatic. “Gin’rul Jay, long’s I lived in theseheanh mountins, an’ thet’s a passul of years too, I ain’t nevuh come fer to see the critters be so thick an’ easy to knock ovuh as they is, naow an’ heanh. A body he’d thank they hadn’ been huntid fer months. An’ not one place could I fin’ where nobody’d been a-diggin’ no roots, neethuh, an’ Ganiks is allus diggin roots, ‘speshly in spring.”

As it developed, they stayed for six days, leaving thevalley only when the mules and ponies had grazed it out. Butthey had mounted a strong, concentric perimeter guard twenty-four hours per day, while Corbett and Johnny or Gumpner and Johnny or Vance and Johnny led out large, far-ranging patrol and hunting parties to north and northeast and northwest, to find not one living Ganik of any sort, nor any trace of recent occupation of two deserted bunch camps and a handful of small farms.

One of the bunch camps was utterly abandoned and fast falling in upon itself, the new plants of spring quickly commencing overgrowth of the untenanted spot that had been some years before, or so Johnny assured them, the camp of his son, Long Willy Kilgore. But the other camp had been both slighted and burned, nor had the progress of seasons and weather and predators been able to entirely erase the traces of a large and hard-fought battle in and around the camp at some time prior to the conflagration. Nor could Old Johnny shed any light on the matter, confessing readily and with much scratching of his hairless scalp that he never before had seen the like.

The abandoned farms presented even more of a puzzle. No one of them seemed to have been subjected to any sort of violence, yet all looked to have been deserted well before harvesttime, for many of last year’s uncollected crops had obviously reseeded themselves and were springing up afresh if a bit randomly. Aside from evidences of neglect and weather damage, all of the farm buildings were structurally sound and most still contained larger and bulkier items of furniture and household effects, only smaller, easily transportable items being missing.

With the sole exception of a few wild-looking chickens— most of which succulent fowl were downed with darts or sling stones and added to the day’s bag—and a single, blat-ting billy goat which proved too elusive and chary for even Old Johnny to dart, no livestock remained anywhere. Nor did any wagon or cart remain on any of the farms, although quite a collection of larger agricultural implements were still in place.