by Julie Weston
While she filled up the gasoline tank on the Oldsmobile and checked the level of oil, she watched Nellie and Sheriff Azgo. They argued over something next to his auto. Even so, she thought there was an understanding of some sort between them, even if they didn’t know it themselves. Sheriff Azgo was a courteous man, but his attention to Nellie went beyond courtesy. Lulu had never known him to work other than alone, and taking a young, good-looking woman with him on an investigation was unheard of. Still, this woman was determined. Lulu had seen that from the beginning, although she wasn’t sure just where that determination was headed.
“Your car’s ready,” Lulu called.
Nellie’s face was red. “He doesn’t think I can back it up the road, so I’m going to drive his auto to the top and he’ll follow with mine.” She leaned close to Lulu. “He’s probably right. I just learned to drive this past winter and I’ve not had to back up often. Just once, though, I’d like to prove him wrong.”
Lulu reached out to take Nellie’s hand. “Don’t let him rile you, Miss Burns. He’s an old hand around here and you aren’t.” She squeezed. “But I know what you mean. Most men think women are helpless, scared of mice, and just want someone strong to carry them off. I ain’t that way, and I can see you ain’t, either.”
After Nellie drove off in the sheriff’s auto, Lulu stopped Charlie as he was climbing into the Oldsmobile. “Don’t you treat her as if she was some pussyfootin’ easterner. That girl has heart.” She smiled. “Or do you know that already?”
“Courage is what she has, but also she is foolhardy. The Basin is not a safe place these days. You are close to civilization here,” he said, nodding to the store. “There, telling the difference between coyotes and men is not always easy. Miss Burns does not have enough practice.” Lulu swore the sheriff blushed when he said Nellie Burns’s name, but his skin was dark and she could have been mistaken.
At the pull-out on the other side of Galena Pass, Nellie stopped and climbed out to take in the panorama again. The sun sloped down to the Sawtooth ridge and its light reflected off the headwaters of the Salmon River below. She knew talking the sheriff into helping her retrieve her auto had angered him, but she wanted her freedom in the Basin. Also, she worried her presence might hamper him. And his might get in her way. He was so . . . so nursemaid-y around her. Below the edge of the road, she heard a meadowlark in the grass. Its warbling was joyful, and Nellie felt her own breast swell with the sound and the summer day’s warmth.
A paneled truck held together with wire and rope pulled off the road and stopped next to her and the driver leaned out his window. “Trouble?” He was unshaven, and his one-word question was surrounded by the odor of alcohol. His dog sat on the seat beside him.
“No, I’m fine, thank you. I was just enjoying the beauty of the mountains.”
The dog growled and Nellie looked more closely. It lunged across the man and tried to leap from the cab.
“Shut up, you hound dog! This here’s a lady.” The man jerked the dog back hard enough to make it yelp. “Say, ain’t I seen you before?”
His breath was so intoxicating, Nellie stepped back. Had he been one of the men at Smiley Creek? “Perhaps . . . at Smiley Creek a week or so ago.” She wished she’d said no.
“Oh yeah. That black cur of yours attacked Cowpie, my friend’s dog. Bled for two days.” A scowl darkened the man’s face. “You oughta keep him tied up better.”
“I!” Nellie wanted to spit in his face. “That dog attacked mine!”
“You alone up here?” His voice changed abruptly from accusing to leering. He winked, or blinked, she wasn’t sure which. “No place for a little lady. Never know who might come along.” He stepped out of his truck. The automobile door groaned as it opened. “Some men might take advantage—”
Nellie stepped back again, her eye on the dog. She could handle the man. That animal was another thing. Its light blue eyes looked part wolf. It made to follow its master and her stomach squeezed.
“Don’t be scared now. All I want is a little smooch.” The man grabbed her shoulder and pulled Nellie toward him. He smelled of dirty clothes and old tobacco along with the liquor, and as he moved in close, she saw white spittle in the corners of his mouth. Still, the teeth of the dog as it snarled scared her more.
“Let me go!” Nellie lifted her boot and stomped on the man’s foot. At the same time, she shoved on his face, feeling the whiskers with her fingers and the sweat on his neck as her hand slid across his throat.
“Owww! You little bitch!” He’d fallen back two steps but lunged for her, his arms stretched out, his hands grasping for her neck. His dog jumped from the cab and headed straight for Nellie, the growl in its throat as wild as anything she’d ever heard.
Before she could swing her leg to kick at the dog, he’d tangled himself in his master’s legs and they both tumbled to the ground. Nellie opened the door of the sheriff’s auto and jumped in on the passenger side, slamming it behind her. The wild dog was on its feet again and smashed against the auto, barking and clawing as if it would force its way in after her. She was sorry she had left Moonie in her Oldsmobile, but maybe not. This dog would kill hers.
Charlie must have a gun! She searched the box in the dashboard. Nothing but two papers. She turned around and glanced across the back bench seat. His coat and a leather satchel rested at one end. She grabbed the coat, felt for some kind of weapon, found nothing, pulled the satchel toward her, and a revolver with a brown handle and blue-black in color slid out and onto the floor.
The wolf-dog scraped at the window and the man had recovered his feet. Anger reddened his features and his snarl was as wide-mouthed as the animal’s. The only difference was his teeth weren’t pointed. They were rotten. He grabbed at the door handle, twisted, and pulled. At the same time the door opened, Nellie brought the revolver around and pointed it.
“Get away from me! And take that wolf with you.” Her voice sounded as panicked as she felt. But she knew one thing. She would use the gun. She lowered the muzzle until it aimed right at his genitals. “And I’ll shoot this right where it’s pointing if you put one hand on me.”
The man had been about to grab at the gun but stopped short. “Now, now. You don’t want to do that.” He backed up. His dog growled low and crouched, ready to spring at Nellie.
“If that wolf so much as moves a whisker in my direction, I’ll still shoot you.” The gun didn’t waver in her hand.
“C’mon, Wolf. Down.” The last word was an order and the dog turned to his master as if to verify something it couldn’t believe. “Down.” The man backed up again. “Now, lady, I didn’t mean nothin’. Just a little tom-foolery.” He bumped against his truck and opened the door. A short, sharp whistle called his dog to him. They both climbed in and the man pulled the door shut. He leaned out toward Nellie. “Next time, bitch.” His engine coughed, and he drove away.
Nellie trembled as she slipped the gun back in the satchel and returned it and the coat to the bench seat. The wild honk of a horn brought her attention back to the road up which she’d come. She stepped out of the auto again and went to the edge of the turn-out. Her own Oldsmobile put-putted around the bend and into sight, tail end first.
“Goddamn drunk,” Charlie muttered as he jumped from the driver’s side.
Nellie had never heard him swear before. She laughed, realized she sounded half-hysterical, and forced herself to stop. “If you’d enforce the liquor laws, then maybe the roads wouldn’t be dangerous with drunken drivers.”
“Did he trouble you? He looked like a bull who had tangled with a red flag.”
“Just call me Red,” Nellie said, speaking as lightly as she could. Her insides still squished around like gelatin, and she had an urgent need to relieve herself.
Charlie stopped short. “He did trouble you. That man is a moonshiner. Wolfman Pitts, because of the animal he keeps—part wolf, part hound. You do not want a run-in with him.”
“Indeed, I didn’t. But I managed
.” She dusted off her pants. “Um, I need to visit a bush. Could you wait here for a moment?” Without waiting for him to answer, Nellie crossed the road and climbed up the short bluff. Any other time, she would have been too embarrassed to acknowledge she had any bodily need at all, let alone needing to “pee,” as Goldie called it. She found a place, took several deep breaths, made certain she was out of sight, and squatted, being careful to keep her pants out of the way. By the time she returned, the sheriff was sitting in his car, its motor turned on. She wondered if he were embarrassed. He leaned out his window. “I plan to stop at Smiley Creek, ask a few questions. Just continue on this road and it will lead you to Stanley. I should be there an hour or so after you arrive. Gwynn will be at the main store. It used to be a saloon. You can’t miss it.”
Moonshine waited in the Oldsmobile for Nellie. “I’m not getting separated from you again.” She climbed in and waited for the sheriff to lead the way. The dog clambered over the seat and sat upright beside her. Without him, she had been vulnerable, but he might have been killed by the wolf dog.
The town of Stanley fit Lulu’s description to a tee: a row of log lean-tos and ramshackle out-buildings. The only structure that looked habitable was the saloon. Even the sign painted in large, uneven red letters remained, in defiance of all authority. The entire scene composed the kind of Wild West photograph she thought the railroad man would love.
The day was three-quarters spent with coming down from the camp, driving to Galena Store and back, but a second wind and the fresh mountain air energized Nellie. With relief, she saw Gwynn’s pickup at the end of a line of Model Ts. The sun was at the right angle, the time of afternoon in the summer when ridges backed one another like glass in an art deco lamp. Her news for the sheep man could wait. It was all bad, anyway.
While Nellie again assembled her gear, a woman strolled onto the porch of the saloon, glass in hand. It was the same woman in the auto at Lulu’s. Her profile would lend elegance to a picture, although her clothes might not. Her shirtwaist and skirt were rumpled but still looked too modern, too short, for an old-fashioned photo. Then she sat on the rail and a slit in the skirt bared her leg to the middle of her thigh, showing pale skin. A dance hall girl, Nellie thought.
“Do you mind if I photograph you, Miss—?”
The sullen cast on the woman’s face brightened. “Pearl. That’s my name. Do I get a copy?” She stood up and walked closer. Her voice was almost as deep as a man’s, but she minced, as if unused to the high heels on her shoes.
“No, stay where you were. And yes, you’ll get a copy.” Nellie adjusted the camera on the tripod. “I’m Nellie Burns. My studio is in Ketchum.”
When Pearl sat, it was with more modesty, her hands, like two small birds resting, holding her skirt together. “Like this?” She smiled wide, showing small, crowded teeth. The expression was as unnatural as a painted doll’s face.
“The way you were before was better. More like a true western scene. Maybe you should look up that way, as if you were waiting for your cowboy to ride home.” Nellie pointed toward the saw teeth of the mountains, catching her breath at the rugged beauty. She ducked under her black cloth to focus the lens.
Pearl did as requested, letting the split of her skirt open to reveal her leg again, tilting her head up and turning it to the western sky. She held her hand against her heart, as if it ached, and closed her lips over her teeth. “Like this?”
“Perfect. Hold it.” Nellie held her breath and took the photo. “One more?”
“Sure. This is fun. I feel like a movie actress.”
If it weren’t for her teeth, Pearl could have passed for a movie star. She didn’t look as innocent as Mary Pickford nor as seductive as Clara Bow, but her profile could have walked onto an Egyptian set and been right at home with sphinxes and pyramids and Valentino. Nellie replaced the first dark slide and turned the film carrier over, then removed the second dark slide. For the second photo, Pearl leaned forward across the porch railing with her arm outstretched as if she were waving goodbye. Nellie released the shutter. The saloon door opened and a man with coffee-ground stubble on his face, a handlebar mustache, and wearing a dirty apron wrapped around what looked like a sack of rocks stepped out.
“Get in here, Pearl. Customers are thirsty.” He turned to Nellie. “Who are you? Pearl works for me. You want pictures of her—do it when she ain’t busy.” He stomped back in.
Pearl followed his instructions, just as she had followed Nell’s, but at the doorway, she executed a graceful two-step, glanced back, and winked.
Nellie folded up her camera and tripod and followed the two into the saloon. Total black met her until her eyes adjusted. Along the left wall was a long bar made of split timbers and varnished so thick and shiny it might have been glass instead of wood. Backless stools were mostly filled with rough-looking men, their faces shadowed from several days’ growth of beard, their clothes dusty, and their boots worn from age if nothing else. Two of the men were young with only downy hair on their chins. Tables filled a large space to the right and at one of them sat Gwynn, deep in conversation with another man, the only one in the room who looked as if he had bathed in days. The man’s salt-and-pepper hair was neatly combed and his face, anchored by a clean-shaven square jaw below a forehead that verged on being too narrow, was shaped like a pear. His clothes were black but clean and he wore a belt with a large silver buckle. All this Nellie took in with her photographer’s eye in a few seconds. On black boots, he wore spurs, which made Nellie smile. No cowboy she’d seen yet had worn spurs. This man must be a dude.
Gwynn saw her and stood up as she made her way to the table, carrying her equipment. “Lassie, how’d you get here?” He held out a chair for her and placed her camera gear on the fourth chair. “Meet Cable O’Donnell.” The dude stood with a grace that his age and size belied. He was the tallest man Nell had ever seen. She came to the middle of his chest. “This is Nellie Burns, Photographer,” Gwynn said.
“How do you do?” Nellie said, extending her hand. Mr. O’Donnell, instead of extending his own, took hold of hers as if to kiss it. Nellie quickly retracted it, embarrassed, and sat down. Gwynn grinned at her, apparently pleased with her discomfiture.
“Nellie’s new to the West, Cabe, not used to courtly ways. She’s from Chicago where all them gangsters live.”
Nellie wanted to kick him under the table but forced a laugh instead. “Nice to meet you, Mr. O’Donnell. Indeed, I am not used to such good manners. I’ve been spending my time with sheepherders and fighting with cowboys. The cowboys in particular have shown evidence of no manners at all.”
What had been a slight smile on Mr. O’Donnell’s face dropped away. He sat down and she saw that his face was as pale as any woman’s who had never been outdoors, and that his eyebrows cut across above his eyes in a salt-and-pepper line. “Have my cowboys been bothering you, Miss Burns? If they have, I’ll see they pay for it.” His voice was soft, with a dead quality to it because of the lack of any inflection.
“Oh, they have,” she answered, then turned to Gwynn. “Alphonso is fine. So are the sheep. Sheriff Azgo came up yesterday to begin his investigation, and he took me to gather up my automobile this morning. He’ll be along shortly.” If Lulu knew of Domingo’s death, then so did everyone else. “My cowboys” could only mean that this man owned the cattle being herded up Fourth of July Creek. Nell wondered how many of the cowboys at the bar worked for him, too. Although most of them had turned when she walked into the room, they no longer paid her any attention.
Pearl sidled up. “Drink, Miss?”
Mr. O’Donnell began to say something to Pearl and Nellie interrupted him. “Yes, Pearl, I would like a seltzer please, if you have one. Also, I’m hungry. Do you serve food?” She had noticed shot glasses in front of the two men. She smiled at Mr. O’Donnell.
“Sorry, Lassie, I should have ordered for you. How about a steak? I bet you’re full up to your back teeth with mutton.” Gwynn motioned for Pearl
to bring food to all three of them. “And bring some of that rotgut wine back with you and two glasses. If you’d order in some Basque wine, it’d be better for everybody.” When she left, he turned to O’Donnell and continued. “I figure you only drink whiskey, Cabe.” He laughed.
“What was Azgo doing at your sheep camp, Gwynn? He belongs in Blaine County, not Custer.” He picked up a bottle from the floor and splashed liquid into his shot glass and Gwynn’s. “I don’t want him snooping around in my country.”
“You ain’t got nothing to worry about, Cable, unless you killed my sheepherder,” Gwynn said. No laughter softened his words this time.
“I’m not worried. He’s the one who should be. A strange lawman in these parts might provoke some of the . . . residents.”
Again, that flat voice, cold and menacing.
“Did Azgo find anything worth talkin’ about?” Gwynn asked Nell.
Even if the sheriff had found the killer, she wasn’t certain she’d say anything in front of the cattle man. “Not that I know of. He keeps to himself.” She almost added, “as you know.” She would tell Gwynn about the other troubles—the tearing up of the camp, Alphonso’s apparent tussle with someone, and the moving of the camp—for later. She leaned forward. “Do you know Pearl? Isn’t she stunning? Why is she working here?” She didn’t mean to sound snobbish but realized that was how her words could be interpreted. “Not that here isn’t as good as any other place, but with her looks, she could be a magazine model or movie star.”
“Some folks don’t think a woman should get above her station in life,” Mr. O’Donnell said.
“Oh, and that would be . . . ?”
“Takin’ care of her husband and children.” O’Connell’s bland expression dropped for the barest of moments, becoming hard and bony. He forced a sham laugh and a smile.
