Trail to Devil's Canyon Read online

  The Trail to Devil’s Canyon

  Anton Kozlov, a mountain man who wanted no part of trouble, had escaped Russia and made a life for himself living on and near Battle Mountain in Nevada.

  Anton is asked to do a ‘favor’ for a US Cavalry officer – to retrieve a mail-order bride from a stage station and return her to the cavalryman. It sounds easy enough until Anton learns that the stage has broken down near a notorious nest of outlaws. Anton manages to rescue Lucy, the cavalry officer’s bride, and they slowly make their way back to his cabin in Devil’s Canyon.

  However, the journey is fraught with danger, and their arrival at the stockade spells future trouble when it becomes apparent that Lucy’s husband-to-be has endangered them all by committing atrocities against the local Paiute tribe.

  Will this be the last chance or the end of the line for Anton Kozlov?

  By the same author writing as Matt Cole

  Hell Paso

  Shadow Peak

  Gunpowder Empire

  The Dead, the Dying and the Damned

  Trouble at Painted River

  Battle Mountain

  The Trail to Devil’s Canyon

  Cole Matthews

  ROBERT HALE

  © Cole Matthews 2018

  First published in Great Britain 2018

  ISBN 978-0-7198-2728-0

  The Crowood Press

  The Stable Block

  Crowood Lane

  Ramsbury

  Marlborough

  Wiltshire SN8 2HR

  www.bhwesterns.com

  Robert Hale is an imprint of The Crowood Press

  The right of Cole Matthews to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him

  in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This e-book is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  The Mountains – grow unnoticed –

  Their Purple figures rise

  Without attempt – Exhaustion –

  Assistance – or Applause –

  In Their Eternal Faces

  The Sun – with just delight

  Looks long – and last – and golden –

  For fellowship – at night –

  Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)

  What place is besieged, and vainly tries to Raise the siege?

  Lo, I send to that place a commander, swift, Brave, immortal,

  And with him horse and foot, and parks of Artillery,

  And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever Fired gun.

  Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

  Halfway down the trail to Hell in a shady meadow green,

  are the Souls of all dead troopers camped near a good old-fashion canteen,

  and this eternal resting place is known as Fiddlers’ Green.

  Marching past, straight through to Hell, the Infantry are seen,

  accompanied by the Engineers, Artillery and Marine,

  for none but the shades of Cavalrymen dismount at Fiddlers’ Green.

  Though some go curving down the trail to seek a warmer scene,

  no trooper ever gets to Hell ere he’s emptied his canteen

  and so rides back to drink again with friends at Fiddlers’ Green.

  And so when man and horse go down beneath a saber keen,

  or in a roaring charge fierce melee you stop a bullet clean,

  and the hostiles come to get your scalp,

  just empty your canteen and put your pistol to your head

  and go to Fiddlers’ Green.

  Anon, nineteenth-century Irish poem

  Author’s Note

  The Plains Cavalry

  The United States Cavalry existed in countless forms from 1775 to 1942. The cavalry this book is about to describe is the one that existed from 1865 to 1890 and was informally known as the Plains Cavalry. Formed at the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Plains Cavalry was charged with protecting American settlers, railroaders, wagon trains, businesses, gold seekers and others from Indian attacks. It was meant to operate chiefly on the western frontiers of the expanding nation. At that time, almost anything west of the Mississippi River was considered the frontier. Most Americans living east of the Mississippi had no idea of the danger, deprivation or hardship encountered by those who lived on the other side of the river. The cavalry’s orders were to combat the ongoing ‘Indian problem’.

  After the Civil War, the Plains Cavalry was overrun with commissioned officers. Many had held high brevet or temporary ranks during the late war. These temporary promotions were the rewards given for the performance of meritorious service. The officers were not always deserving of their ranks. Ex-Colonels now served as Captains and Captains were now Lieutenants. These men were entitled to wear the insignia of the highest brevet rank they had held in the Civil War. Filling the enlisted ranks was another story. Most of the men who had served during the war were finished with fighting and returned to their families. Non-commissioned officers who had served as officers in the Confederate Army filled part of the void. A number of years passed before ex-confederate officers were allowed to serve in the cavalry as commissioned officers. Some of the more adventurous men with Civil War service, also filled the non-commissioned ranks of the new regiments. It was extremely difficult to recruit men for this problematic, hazardous and sometimes fatal duty.

  In some ways, the Plains Cavalry was America’s version of the French Foreign Legion. Like the Foreign Legion, the cavalry became a place to simply disappear. Most cavalry units operated outside the borders of the states and provided a new start in life with few questions asked. Early on, many of those enlisting in the cavalry had arrest warrants outstanding for them. Some joined the service as an alternative to serving jail time. Some judges believed that a hitch in the military would make a man out of the boy. The ranks of the enlisted were filled with criminals, adventurers and many ex-confederate officers now serving as corporals and sergeants.

  Several forts, both large and small, were set up, from the cold northern Dakota, Nebraska, Utah and Montana Territories to the hot desert areas of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. As the western borders of the United States expanded, so did the areas covered by the cavalry. In some ways, garrison life in a fort was considered a picnic compared to being on patrol or being on a campaign. It was also totally mundane, boring and unrewarding. Experienced soldiers preferred being in the field.

  Chapter 1

  Showdown in Devil’s Canyon

  It was the hour before nightfall.

  Reaching for his muzzle-loading Hawken rifle, Anton Kozlov downed the last of his coffee and walked out of his cabin. He slid the percussion ‘plains’ rifle into its saddle scabbard and swung effortlessly into the saddle. Tall and lean in the fading light, he gathered his sorrel’s reins, told his mongrel dog to sit guard and then rode Socks away from the three-roomed log cabin he had raised with his own bare hands, in the fall less than two years before.

  Kozlov, or as he was more familiarly known by many of the locals as ‘Old Moscow’, had been born in Russia, near the River Moskwa, in the vicinity of the City of Moscow. At the age of sixteen he was conscripted and forced into the Russian Army near the end of the war with Napoléon. He witnessed the conflagration of Moscow, and followed the eagles of the French in their disastrous retreat towar
ds the Nieman. It was a favorite theme for the old man to describe the scenes he underwent during that terrible campaign; how, morning after morning, the French soldiers would be found dead about the bivouac fire, lying in the position in which the sleep of death overtook them during the night.

  A cross of the Legion of Honour, taken from the dead body of a French officer at the crossing of the River Beresina, the old man was in the habit of exhibiting, and while looking at it would explain: ‘How I did pity the poor French!’ He used to say Winter came on early that year – in October – as a punishment to Bonaparte. Leaving the army after the capture of the French Emperor, Anton came to Quebec, and afterwards, was for many years in the service of the Hudson Bay Company.

  Some twelve years ago, he came to the Bighorn Mountains, where he used to fit out each Winter for trapping expeditions on the head waters of the Wind and Bighorn Rivers here in Devil’s Canyon. It was a singular sight to see the old man as he was on the point of starting out in the Fall to his Winter quarters. His uncouth-looking little mule, which he had laden with traps, kettles, cooking utensils and other camping apparatus, until scarcely any mule but ears were visible, had died a month earlier.

  Recently, an exploring party in that vicinity were attracted to the hut by the mournful howling of his mongrel dog. Guided by the sound, their steps were directed to the cabin, where a strange, sad sight met their gaze. Near the entrance lay the body of the diminutive mule, dead a few weeks. Beside it sat the dog, who on the approach of the men, ran into the cabin as though to apprise his master that help was near. The ground had been too frozen to bury the creature. With the help of these explorers, Anton was able to inter the mule and they went on their way, leaving him be.

  Kozlov guided the sorrel across the shallow, icy creek and took the deer track.

  It was a trail he knew well, having traveled it many times to set and check his traps.

  He had waged a ceaseless war against beaver and moose and other types of nature’s harmless creatures, against wolf and wolverine, and other types of nature’s destructive agents; against traders who were rivals and Indians who were hostiles, a trapper like Anton almost seemed a type of nature’s arch-destroyer.

  The country was as pretty as a dream. The world seemed to be made up completely of prairie, mountain and forest. It was a world where the trapper moved with a skill and silence as any creature that inhabited that world. With the tools of the trade – cruel steel traps, and the true aim of his rifle – a trapper existed to live off the animals and land. The life was a harsh one, full of misery, weather, and endless hours of work. The reality of the life of a trapper was not immune from being hunted. And most of the times, they were hunted more than the creatures were. They were hunted by both beasts and men alike.

  Crusted whiteness clung to the banks. It was here that the frontiersman had set his traps. Kozlov dismounted and secured Socks to a sweeping, low-slung branch of a spruce tree.

  He pulled the Hawken rifle from its scabbard and rolled a smoke with his free hand. His keen eyes roamed over the canyon, taking in the traps he had set on the previous morning. One held a gray fox. He would use the fine winter pelt or sell it to the trader. There was nothing in the other fur traps, but his supper was waiting in the squirrel trap.

  Anton Kozlov leaned against a pine tree and waited. The day was cloudy, cold and windy.

  For the last two days, something had been robbing the trap line. He had found traces of fur and blood on iron jaws, and now he was ready for the predator.

  He finished his cigarette. Dressed in buckskins, Kozlov fused with the deepening dusk. In a country of tall men, he stood head and shoulders above most. He’d once had raven-black hair, now turned gray or ‘silver’ as he liked to call it, which spilled shabbily from beneath his fur hat, and framed a craggy, leathery face. It was a face hardened by sixty-four years with many under the frontier sun and bitter mountain winds. He had deep brown eyes, keen and piercing still. His nose was bulbous, and his firm jaw warned that this was not a man to take lightly despite his advanced years. Few would call Anton Kozlov good-looking, but when he paid an occasional visit to the distant town of Manderson Wells, women turned their heads to watch him pass. It could have also been his stench.

  The soft beat of wings betrayed a bird returning to its shelter as the sun began to dip below the dark western rims.

  Then Kozlov heard the loud, abrupt crack of a frozen twig. Reaching for his Hawken rifle, he let his eyes sweep the canyon. Swiftly he caught sight of movement. The branches of a spruce shook and dropped a tiny shower of snow. A lone rider guided his pony down into the canyon. Like Kozlov, he was clad in buckskins. He was thin and sinewy. His face was ancient, and his scant hair was white as the snow on his shoulders.

  Kozlov recognized the old man as a Northern Paiute. He looked down his rifle sights as the rider approached the squirrel trap. The frontiersman looked around at the darkening trees. He saw no other movement – this Paiute was alone.

  He watched the Indian get off his shaggy pony.

  The horse moseyed a few paces as the old warrior bent over the dead squirrel.

  Anton let the white-haired Indian pry the iron jaws apart. Then he padded to the rim of the canyon.

  ‘Don’t you move,’ Kozlov said, in the Paiute language, and his grasp of it cut the silence like a steel knife. ‘There is a gun pointed at your head.’

  The old Paiute Indian froze. Squatted by the trap, he held the limp squirrel aloft and stared at the white man.

  ‘I’m a-comin’ down,’ Kozlov said, his Russian accent nearly gone with his years in North America. ‘You just hold still.’

  The old Indian’s eyes were faced straight-ahead as he waited.

  ‘Since when do the Paiute steal food?’ Anton asked.

  Anger darkened the Indian’s face and he replied, ‘My people are not thieves!’

  ‘You are a thief!’ Anton accused, looking down his rifle sights.

  ‘I am old,’ the Indian told him. ‘I can no longer hunt with the younger men.’

  ‘Heck, neither can I as I am old too,’ said Kozlov. He paused and then asked, ‘What are you called?’

  ‘Looks At The Bear,’ the old Paiute Indian replied gently.

  ‘Now you listen to me, Looks At The Bear,’ Kozlov said. ‘I once wintered with the Northern Paiute. I learned your ways and your tongue. I know that when a warrior grows old, the younger men hunt for him.’

  ‘Looks At The Bear has pride,’ the old Indian simply said.

  ‘So, you have been robbin’ my traps and takin’ back meat, pretendin’ you are still a hunter,’ Kozlov said. ‘You lie to yourself and to your tribe.’

  ‘Does this small squirrel mean so much that you will shoot me with your fire stick?’ Looks At The Bear challenged.

  There was silence between the two older men, and for the first time, the Indian’s face betrayed a twitch of fear.

  ‘Put my meat down,’ ordered Kozlov.

  Reluctantly, the Northern Paiute lowered the dead squirrel.

  ‘Your hand is close to your knife,’ Kozlov said softly. ‘I wouldn’t try it if I were you. This rifle would blow your head off before you could throw that knife.’

  The old Indian stared at Anton. ‘Looks At The Bear is not a fool.’

  ‘Then keep your hand real clear of that knife and stand up,’ Kozlov advised.

  The Northern Paiute rose to his feet slowly. He appeared frail and vulnerable in the last light of the day. The whispering, rising wind stirred the thin, white hair.

  ‘Listen to me, Looks At The Bear,’ Anton said. ‘I am not goin’ to spill blood. You will ride back to your village alive. But if I catch you robbin’ my traps again, I may forget you are an old man.’ He motioned with his rifle. ‘And take a piece of advice. Tell the young men that your eyes are dim, and you can no longer hunt.’

  ‘I will tell them,’ the old Indian said resignedly.

  ‘Now ride home, Looks At The Bear,’ Kozlov directed.


  The Paiute Indian started to shuffle towards his shaggy pony. He took a last, rueful look at the dead squirrel and climbed on to his pony’s bony back.

  ‘Hell, Old Moscow, you are not gonna let this thieving old Indian just ride out!’

  The loud taunt came from a rider dressed in a blue cavalry uniform.

  Dark, curly hair spilled over his high forehead. His face was in shadow and his eyes, sighting down the barrel of an army rifle, were fixed on the old Indian.

  ‘Stay out of my business, Judd,’ Anton told him frankly.

  ‘Now that’s no way to welcome your own kin.’ The newcomer grinned. ‘I came to pay you a visit, and as it turns out, I arrived just in time. Like I said, I covered you – just in case this thieving devil tried anything.’ Judd Reed leaned forward in his saddle and snickered. ‘You are kinda slipping, Old Moscow! You didn’t hear or see us coming. . . .’

  The man wasn’t really kin. Anton had married his mother – Beulah Reed – years ago, before disease took her shortly after. The boy’s father had left long before he had arrived.

  ‘I heard you and I saw you,’ Kozlov said coldly. ‘You can tell Troopers Yacey, Gravens, and Copeland and the beanpole I don’t know, to come out of that thicket now. We are not facin’ a war party, just an old man lookin’ for food.’

  ‘The beanpole’s name is Trooper Alan Loomis – he was posted to Fort Bighorn a few weeks ago,’ Judd said coolly. ‘If you saw us coming, why didn’t you let us know?’

  ‘Why are you here? I didn’t ask you to come,’ Anton said bluntly.

  Lieutenant Reed spat into the snow and then said, ‘You are a damn ungrateful cuss, my step-father . . . huh?’

  ‘Looks At The Bear, I told you to go,’ Anton Kozlov reminded the old Indian in the Paiute tongue.