Basque Moon

by Julie Weston

  A shy smile lit Pearl’s face. “From an old darkie woman—part Chinee, part something else—in a mining camp.” She ducked her head, but not before Nell saw a tear slip down.

  “Saloon girl” was no longer an apt description for Pearl.

  “Where’d you learn to take pictures with that big machine?”

  “In a studio in Chicago. A friend of my mother’s helped me get a job there. Mostly I helped the main photographer by posing his subjects seated and keeping the darkroom—that’s where film is developed into negatives and then into prints—supplied. But then Mr. Scotto, he was my boss, began to teach me about cameras.” Those days seemed long ago and easy and simple.

  Nell cleaned the knife on grass and tucked it in her pack again. Those days were gone. “We better get going. That auto hasn’t returned. Do you suppose they’re waiting for us around some bend?” An involuntary shiver made the hair on her arms stand up. As carefree as the two of them seemed catching and cooking trout, Nell knew danger lay ahead if they were caught. Better to focus on finding the campout or Alphonso. Either place would be safer than here in the wild stretches of the Stanley Basin, vulnerable to four-legged and two-legged creatures alike.

  Their hike took them over piles of brush, fallen tree limbs and trunks, and rock piles. Always, they climbed. The creek wound back and forth, sometimes far from and sometimes too close to the road. They scuttled through those areas as fast as possible. In the late afternoon, they rested below a talus scree against boulders that placed them out of sight of the road.

  “Are you afraid of Dick?” Nell asked. She wanted to get to the bottom of why Dick had shot the dog. His actions seemed so erratic. Maybe Pearl would open up a little more. They’d been fairly easy with each other since the last scare of the automobile and their Robinson Crusoe cookout.

  “Why should I be afraid of him? He’s in love with me.” Pearl didn’t sound happy about that fact. She twisted long pine needles around a finger, then held up her hand to show Nell a green “wedding band.”

  “Are you married to him?” Nell hesitated to ask, but knowing the relationship between the two might be helpful when they all met up again, which was almost sure to happen, whether here in the mountains or elsewhere. She felt like a snoop, burrowing for information the sheriff could use in his investigation of murder.

  Pearl shrugged. “Not really. He likes to say so, and I don’t say much against it. Comes in handy, sometimes, havin’ people think we’re hitched.”

  “And other times? What about Ned Tanner. He seems taken with you.” Nell wanted to mention the rancher, Cable somebody, but sensed Pearl would clam up if questioned about that relationship. Something wasn’t quite right there, from the way Pearl had reacted in the bar when the rancher talked with her. Was it fear or anger that had caused the young woman to turn so white?

  “Oh, Ned. He likes anything in skirts. Even you.” Pearl laughed and added, “Except you don’t wear skirts!” Her laugh faded and her expression turned serious. “Watch him, Nellie Burns. He ain’t what he seems.”

  “Dick doesn’t seem to be, either. Shooting that dog to save me. I wasn’t sure he had a good side, the way he talked to you at the Galena Store and acted at Smiley Creek. But if he loves you and if he’d saved me—there must be a tender side to him that he doesn’t let show, except maybe to you.”

  Pearl stared at Nellie. Two bright red spots flared in her cheeks. “You mind your own business.” She stood up, started to walk, picked up a small, sharp rock, and then turned back to Nellie. “Dick didn’t shoot the damned dog. I did. He grabbed the gun to save me.” Pearl was practically shouting at Nellie. She looked at the rock in her hand and dropped it. “Why do you think I been practicing so much with the gun?” Pearl clamped her mouth shut and strode forward again.

  “But . . . he . . . you . . .” Nell had seen with her own eyes Dick holding the gun in the crook of his arm. So had everyone else. Wolfman’s rage had been directed at Dick, not Pearl. Nellie shook her head and hastened to catch up. Maybe Pearl was crazy.

  Then Pearl leaped for Nellie, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled them both down again behind a large bush and a boulder. “They’re comin’ back,” she whispered.

  Nellie couldn’t hear anything but the river below and one raven cawing to another, one across the road from the other. She spied the first raven in the top of a scraggly fir tree above where they hid. Then she, too, heard another auto, but coming up the hill, not down, this one making the grade more easily than the first, and so more quietly. What they both feared, happened. The vehicle stopped just short of where they lay hidden. A door opened. A man’s voice said: “Someone else motored this way. A while ago.” A mumbled answer and another door opened. A dog barked.

  Pearl grabbed Nell and pulled her head down as Nell began to get to her knees. She knew that voice and she knew that dog. The sheriff and Moonshine! From nowhere it seemed, Pearl dragged a gun and pointed it at Nell. Shut up, she mouthed, then leaned over to whisper in the slightest of breath, “Or I’ll kill your dog, too.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Nell froze. What if Pearl weren’t crazy and she had shot the wolf-dog? That meant she was an excellent shot. And a quick one. Target practice. Now she understood. Nell would endanger herself; she already had, but she wouldn’t endanger Moonshine, or indeed, the sheriff. Her face was almost smashed into Pearl’s leg. She could feel the tension and strength in it as she waited, trying to figure out what to do. If she wrestled with Pearl, the noise would draw the dog closer. If she could pull away and run toward the sheriff, she didn’t think Pearl would shoot. Or would she? Seconds passed, then a minute. A muffled conversation drifted over to the two women. Neither moved.

  Sheriff Azgo called the dog. Doors slammed. The auto started again, traveling up the road and winding out of hearing. Nell wanted to cry with frustration. Rescue so close! And relief. Moonshine had survived his leap into the roaring river!

  “Why did you do that?” Nellie pulled herself out of Pearl’s grasp and sat back on her haunches, glancing along the road, knowing it was empty. “They would have taken us back down to safety! How could you be so stupid?”

  Pearl stood up, her face caught between anger and relief. “Safety for you, maybe. What about me? If I show up with the sheriff anywhere, I’m a dead cookie.”

  “I can’t believe that. You’re just dramatizing everything.” Even as she said it, Nellie wavered. The memory of Wolfman Pitts’s rage and his deliberate cutting of the dog’s rope told her enough about the nature of at least one of Pearl’s companions. “Besides, the sheriff would make certain you were safe. You could come to Ketchum, stay with me.”

  “If he stays around up here, he’ll be dead, just like that other sheriff. Just like your precious sheepherder. Dumb Basque.” Pearl stood up and brushed accumulated sand and dust off her clothes, not that it made any difference. “You say you’re from Chicago. I heard there were gangsters there. Now you’ve met the Idaho kind.” She gave Nellie a twisted smile. “And what would I do in Ketchum? Be your helper?” She shook her head. “Not me. Find another flunky.” She tossed her head again and her hair came loose, a cascade of blond, not as pale as earlier because of dust and grease. “Damn.” She tucked the gun in her satchel and plaited her hair into a braid, wrapped it on her head, and pinned it up with bobby pins taken from the satchel. “Let’s go.” Abruptly, she moved up the road.

  Nellie followed, thinking furiously. Domingo was killed by this troop of outlaw moonshiners, that much was clear. And Pearl knew who did it. Nellie couldn’t help worrying what would happen when the first auto that passed turned around and met the sheriff and Moonshine and probably Gwynn. They might be in grave danger. The sheriff was armed, she knew. But what about Gwynn? Who was in the first vehicle? Was it the sedan? She guessed not, judging by the way it had labored up the road. It must have been an older automobile with narrow tires.

  Hiking along the road sped the women’s progress. Nellie knew how tired she was from clamb
ering over obstacles along the creek and welcomed the relief of easy walking, while fearing the return of either auto. Hunger gnawed at her; surely Pearl must be hungry as well. They carried two fish and could get more. Pine cones from the lodgepole trees abounded. Maybe she could find nuts inside them. She picked up several as they strode along, side-by-side.

  “What’re you doing?”

  “I thought I’d see if there were nuts or seeds in these cones. I’m hungry. Aren’t you?” The sun had dropped behind the steep mountainside in the canyon, so they walked in shade but still plenty of daylight. “How far do you think we’ve come?”

  “Maybe a mile or two, if that, along the creek. That’s too slow. If we’re gonna make the campout by dark, we’ve got to move along.”

  “Maybe we’ll run into both autos meeting each other. Then what?”

  “Then we watch the fireworks, from a distance.” Pearl laughed. “I’d like to see that!” She almost skipped ahead.

  “Wait for me,” Nellie called. Her feet ached; her head ached; her stomach ached. Her camera pack burdened her shoulders like a pack of rocks and she longed to leave it by the wayside. Little sleep for two nights running and little food over the same period was wearing her down. She wondered at the strength and resilience of Pearl.

  They traveled again through thick forests of short, skinny trees. From time to time, a meadow appeared either to the right or the left. Wildflowers grew in a riot of color. Nellie wanted to stop and look at and smell the profusion of purple, red, white, and yellow. She knew quite a few from a book Goldie showed her, and some bore slight resemblances to domestic flowers. The leaves in which the fish were wrapped had grown below small white blossoms, like lily-of-the-valley. “Wait. I want to look at the flowers.” She wanted to rest.

  Pearl stopped and waited, then grew impatient. “We can’t lollygag.” She sat on a broken tree trunk, gray, twisted, and gaunt as if it were older than the forest itself, much larger than anything they’d seen growing. She closed her eyes and her whole body sagged. “We’re not gonna make it tonight. We better think about where we can hide and rest and maybe catch us another fish or two, before it gets dark.”

  The creek was smaller but noisier because of the pitch of the hillside and the number of rocks in it. The uneven thrum of water lay off to their right. “If we go back to the creek, we’ll miss the ‘fireworks’ as you say,” Nellie said. “Where do you suppose both autos went? I’d have thought at least one would have returned by now.”

  “The road ends up there a piece, and then there’s a horse track to the lake, two lakes. Maybe they all hiked in, thinking that’s where we’d be.”

  “We know the sheriff is looking for me. We don’t know who was in the other one. Maybe it was someone bringing up supplies.”

  “Hmph. You don’t know outfitters, that’s clear. If they don’t pack it in on their horses, too bad.”

  A depressing thought occurred to Nellie. “Maybe there isn’t any campout going on right now. Maybe no one is at the lake except . . . and then the sheriff will show up with Moonshine. . . .”

  “All hell’ll break loose,” Pearl said, discouragement in every line of her body and every syllable of her words. “We better hope Luke or Joe or somebody is up there with a passel of tourists.”

  “Let’s go a little farther and keep an eye out for something that might work as a shelter. I doubt we’ll find another half cabin, though,” Nellie said, thinking of the protection those walls had given them, whether real or only perceived. They walked in silence for a while and then rounded a bend. Three automobiles were parked at the end of the road: the sheriff’s car, which Nellie recognized, and an old Model T Ford, which she didn’t. Both were empty. The third auto was an Oldsmobile: Nellie’s own. She dashed over to it.

  “This is mine. This is my auto.” She touched and patted it, then turned to Pearl. “How did it get here? Do you know?”

  Pearl shook her head and turned away. Nellie was certain she did know. The door opened easily. There was no key in the ignition, but nothing seemed harmed inside. She wished she knew how to start the vehicle without the ignition key. Surely, anyone who stole automobiles knew how to do just that. She closed the door, feeling frustrated and sad that she had the means to escape, but not the knowledge.

  “All right. Now what? It’s going to be dark soon. The sheriff and my dog must be at the campout, thinking I’ll be there, too, because my auto is here. Whoever came up in that Model T must be at the campout, too. You don’t want to be seen with the sheriff. I want to go home.”

  No sound came from Pearl; she chewed on her lip instead. “I don’t know what to do. Seems like there’ll be a big brouhaha up in that camp. Maybe it’s goin’ on right now.”

  They both listened. Only a slight breeze at treetop level disturbed the silence, and then the scolding of a squirrel. Nell noted the lack of birds; not since the ravens when they’d been hidden down by the scree had she seen anything flying.

  “I say we keep hiking as long as we can see. How far is the lake?”

  “Maybe a mile. Maybe a tad more.” Pearl kicked at the dust, clearly undecided.

  “There are tourists, we hope. We should both be safe no matter who is there. Your outlaw band isn’t going to hurt a bunch of tourists, are they? The sheriff is looking for me, not the moonshine men. My dog—” Her heart ached at the thought of him. “He won’t take on anyone as long as he’s with the sheriff, I wouldn’t think.” Except whoever had stolen her from the roadhouse cabin. Wolfman Pitts, maybe. Her skin flinched at the thought of that man wrapping her in a blanket and knocking her out.

  “All right. But you go first. And remember I have this gun.” Pearl patted her bag. “Don’t you do anything to tell the sheriff you’re on the trail, or I’ll shoot your damned dog.”

  “But what if we run into them? I can’t help that.” Nell was eager to begin the trek up the rough track, but she didn’t want to endanger Moonshine or the sheriff.

  Pearl chewed on her lip again. “Go. If they’re fightin’ with each other, we’ll hear that.”

  The dusty trail, spotted now and again with horse manure, wound up and through the trees. By now, Nell figured the altitude was quite high; she felt how much harder she had to breathe, and she’d spent a couple weeks at the sheep camp. Pearl must feel it even more. The forest was less densely packed, but ancient trunks and stumps still littered the floor, looking like ghosts in the deepening twilight.

  “I can’t see anymore,” she complained in a low voice to the woman behind her. “We’re going to have to use the flashlight if we want to continue.” She sat down on a huge old log and Pearl sat beside her, breathing harder than usual.

  Nellie knew her pace was slow, but she also felt she’d walked five miles since they left the vehicles behind. Many nights Alphonso had come back late from his rambles. How had he seen? And where was he now? For some time, Nell had realized that the direction the two of them had been climbing was not the same direction that Alphonso, the sheriff, and she had taken that night they moved the camp. And yet, the Fourth of July Creek splashed down the mountainside in a narrow canyon with few side canyons, if any.

  It would be easy in this dense forest to pass by Alphonso and the sheep if they were only a hundred yards off to either side. Still, she would have expected to smell the lanolin or smoke from a campfire, or hear the bell of a lead ewe or the ping of a horseshoe on rock. Instead, the dark silence of the forest surrounded them. It seemed unnaturally hushed, as if waiting for something to happen.

  As if on cue, a gunshot cracked and echoed. Then a second one.

  “Omigod. They’re killing each other!” Nell stood, preparatory to fleeing down.

  “Hsst!” Pearl was standing too. “Listen!”

  In the distance, voices swelled, then diminished. To Nellie, the sound came from all directions. “What is it?”

  “Huntin’ is my guess. They shot a bear or an elk. Maybe a mountain lion.” She cackled. “That’ll get ’em in de
ep doo with the sheriff, I’d guess. There’s rules about when you can hunt and when you can’t. ’Course the outfitters don’t care.” Her spirits seemed very much improved. “Let’s go. We’re almost there. We can say we was stranded when our horse shied at a lion and ran off without us. Them tourists believe any such story, even if the outfitters don’t. They’re no never mind anyway.”

  “What about the sheriff?”

  “What about him? It’ll be clear I ain’t with him. You, neither.” She swung around and faced Nellie. “You can’t leave with him, though. If we go down with the tourists, then I’m not in no trouble with Dick.” She pondered that statement. “I don’t think. I’ll just tell the boys I followed you up here and couldn’t stop you. But if you go out with the sheriff, then—” She sat down again. “Oh, hell, it’s too complicated. Why did I ever go with you? I’m in Dutch no matter what I do here.”

  Even in the dark, Nellie knew Pearl was crying. She was young and troubled and in danger, not the tough cookie she portrayed herself, capable of handling any circumstance. Tentatively, Nell placed an arm around the young woman’s shoulder. “Let’s just see what’s going on up there. We don’t know the moonshiners were in that Model T. There’d be no reason for them to hike to the lake, would there? I’m sure you’re right. They would have gone down to the road and out, looking for us that way.”

  When Pearl didn’t flinch under Nellie’s touch, she ventured another proposal. “Don’t kill Moonshine, Pearl. I’d never forgive you if you did, and it isn’t necessary, no matter what. Moonie is just an innocent dog, an animal that loves me, even if I’ve exposed him to danger. It wouldn’t be fair.” She wanted to ask for the gun, but she didn’t know how to use it anyway. Next time she saw Lulu, she’d remedy that lack.

  Pearl snuffled, a loud, guttural sound. Then she dug in her bag and pulled out the long flashlight. “We better use this, but cover up everything except a teeny beam. Just in case.”

  The two of them inched along, Pearl in front, Nellie walking in her footsteps as much as possible. No one jumped out at them. The voices grew louder, interjected with laughs and an occasional woman’s squeal. Finally, through the trees, they could see a large flat meadow and a campfire surrounded by men and women, outlined in profile or visible in the leaping flames. To one side in the light of a flashlight held by someone not visible, a man worked over a pile of fur. Several canvas tents stood in a row behind the fire. The scene looked like what it was: tourists having an adventure in the Wild West.