Riding the Line

by Will DuRey

  As he rode his thoughts dwelt on Jim Braddock. For weeks he’d been ashamed of the way he’d involved the Broken Arrow man in his personal tribulations. None of the other Red Hammer riders had spoken outright about the incident in The Garter, but there had been comments implying that he would now be dead if Sheriff Stone hadn’t clubbed him when he did. Despite that, he’d still tried to insinuate that Jim had cheated. No one believed him. Jim Braddock might never amount to anything more than a drover on a cattle ranch but he’d never shown any desire to be anything else. Around Big Timber he was respected for his past experience and current contentment.

  That, in Zeb’s opinion, was where he and Jim Braddock differed. Perhaps they were of equal status on their respective spreads, senior hands capable of undertaking tasks with very little supervision, but Zeb had come to Montana having already failed to establish himself as a homesteader in Nebraska and that failure had gnawed at his sense of self-worth. When his yield had been poor he found cause to blame the land, the climate and his tools, but deep down he knew that the fault lay with none of those. It was an accepted fact that Nebraskan farmland was so fertile that a good farmer could plough a straight line from sunup to sundown; they’d had four of the mildest winters in living memory; and he couldn’t blame the equipment because he’d invested in the latest tools. The fault was his; he had the ambition but not the ability to be a farmer.

  He’d brought his wife and daughter west, claiming that he would succeed in Montana where he’d failed in Nebraska. The house he’d bought on the outskirts of Big Timber was supposed to be a temporary home until they found a suitable strip of land to farm, but he’d gone to work for Charlie Grisham’s Red Hammer outfit and after eight years was still there, reaping forty dollars a month for his labour and loyalty. In the meantime, his wife, Alice, had earned money by spells of taking in laundry, dressmaking and baking cakes and pies that were sold by the owner of Big Timber’s emporium. Jane, Zeb’s eighteen-year-old daughter, now worked in the emporium and they projected the image of a settled family.

  From time to time, however, both Zeb and Alice recognized that the early ambitions of their marriage had not been achieved and both blamed the failure on Zeb. That had been his mood when he’d sat at the card table opposite Jim Braddock that payday, with something in his psyche telling him that a big poker win would mollify Alice and prove to himself that he could support his family. It hadn’t worked out that way. He’d lost more than twenty dollars, incurred a five-dollar fine and spent a night in jail with a lump on his head. In addition, he’d tried to shift the blame for it all on to Jim Braddock. To cover his own weakness he’d almost accused Jim of cheating and had made comments for which some men might seek retribution.

  Yet Jim Braddock had barely referred to the matter, had, indeed, offered an olive branch, and Zeb knew that the Broken Arrow man wasn’t afraid of him. He was simply confident and capable, so capable that he could even admit that he didn’t know what to do to help Harv, then set about issuing instructions to get the injured lad to a place of warmth and send a rider for help. He, Zeb, hadn’t known what to do either, but he’d merely stood around looking at the unconscious man and his mangled leg.

  That was the difference; Jim knew his limitations and worked around them while he, Zeb, knew his limitations and succumbed to them. He pricked the flank’s of his pony, urged it on; he wouldn’t let anyone down this day.

  Zeb had almost covered the eight miles back to the line cabin that he and Harv had shared when he caught sight of a riderless horse off to his left. It was Harv’s mount, returning instinctively to the place of shelter it had known for the last few nights. It crossed Zeb’s mind to catch it: a second horse might be an asset on the long run to the ranch house when he reached the floor of the valley, but, having reached this lower plateau, his own mount was now settled into a ground-eating rhythm that he was reluctant to interrupt. Half a dozen strides later, however, he did just that. Something else had caught his eye.

  The cabin had been built close to the hillside and within a sharp recess, to provide protection from the ravages of winter. A stand of trees acted as a westerly windbreak and obscured its existence from anyone travelling from that direction. Now, above those trees, a thin column of smoke could be seen; it could only be coming from the stove within the hut.

  Puzzled, Zeb halted his mount. He and Harv had decided not to bank up the stove before leaving that morning. They had planned a long day along the creek, sorting out cattle and chasing Broken Arrow strays back on to their own range and no matter how much wood they put in, the fire would certainly have burned out before their return. By now the fire should be no more than embers at best. Someone else had to be using the cabin for so much smoke to be rising into the air. The obvious candidate was a rider with a message from the ranch owner. The unexpected possibility of having an ally near at hand cheered Zeb. Perhaps the newcomer could provide some practical assistance in the care of Harvey Goode, or could take the news down to the ranch so that he, Zeb, could return to the line cabin on the Broken Arrow range. Snow began to fall again as Zeb turned his horse in the direction of the cabin.

  Harv’s mount had paused at the end of the tree line, its black form a stark image in the falling snow. Its head was high and its breath made misty grey trails in the air. Zeb kicked on towards it. After grabbing its bridle he turned his attention to the cabin about fifty yards distant. Instead of the solitary mount of a messenger from the ranch, he was surprised to see four horses tied to the hitching post. He paused a moment, studied the horses and knew that none of them belonged to the Red Hammer string. Curious, but boosted by his belief that the visitors were allies, he quickly satisfied himself of their identity. They had to be members of the Big Timber posse sent out to recapture Frank Felton. It was possible that among them was someone with greater medical knowledge than he or Jim Braddock possessed. Leading Harv’s horse, he made his way towards the shack. He was only halfway across the clearing when the door opened.

  A man, huddled in a long leather coat with his wide-brimmed hat low on his brow, stepped outside. As he emerged he threw words over his shoulder, back into the cabin, then looked up at the dark sky with annoyance. For several moments he was unaware of the approaching rider, the lying snow already muffling the sound of the horses’ hoofs on the hard ground. Pushing between two of the tethered horses he prepared to unsaddle one of them but at that moment looked up and over the animal’s back and ceased his task before it had truly begun.

  He shouted back to the cabin: ‘Phipps,’ but a second man had already emerged and his gaze was fixed steadily on the oncoming horseman.

  At the appearance of the second man Zeb Walters pulled on the reins and stopped his mount’s progress. He hadn’t recognized the first man to leave the shack but that wasn’t surprising: he was wrapped up against the cold so that his features weren’t easily discernible. Besides, Big Timber was a growing community, Zeb no longer knew every man who lived there. This, he guessed, was some stolid citizen who had felt it his duty to join the posse. But his sight of the man who now stood in the doorway of the line cabin revised Zeb’s assumption.

  Gus Phipps wasn’t a man he’d ever spoken to but the features of his long face had been printed in newspapers and displayed on wanted posters throughout the territory. The black patch covering his left eye left no doubt in Zeb’s mind that the man he was looking at was Frank Felton’s right-hand man. The men in the cabin weren’t members of the posse, they were the men the posse was hunting.

  A long-barrelled Colt suddenly filled the hand of the one-eyed outlaw. Zeb jerked the head of his mount and turned it away from the line cabin. A shot sounded: the deeper report of a rifle, and Zeb felt the bullet tug at the shoulder of his heavy winter coat. He stretched forward, getting his body closer to his horse to make himself a smaller target. Two more shots sounded and he threw a look backwards as he urged the horses in flight away from the guns.

  Smoke was rising from the pistol in Gus Phipps’s
hand and from the end of the rifle that the other man now had resting across the saddle of the horse he was stationed behind. A third man had emerged from the cabin and soon all three were scrambling to mount their horses. They meant to pursue Zeb, hunt him down and kill him. Zeb yelled in his horse’s ear and pricked its flanks with his rough spurs as they raced for the edge of the plateau to the timber and prairie land below.

  Zeb kept his horse running flat out; the caution that had governed the first portion of his ride was now cast aside; slipping in the snow was a secondary consideration to the risk of a bullet in the back. He had a head start on his pursuers and was, he suspected, more familiar with the territory, but that was an advantage nullified by the snow. His tracks were easy to follow; he had to get below the snowline before the outlaws caught him.

  Occasionally, he cast a glance behind him. Twice he saw the threesome in relentless pursuit and knew that the gap between him and them was diminishing. There had been no more shots fired but he figured they wouldn’t want to advertise their presence in case the posse was within hearing distance. Gunshots, he thought, were to his advantage.

  When he next saw his pursuers they were less than a quarter of a mile behind. He fired two shots in the air and saw the trio pull their horses to a halt. Perhaps he’d fooled them into thinking he was signalling for assistance, or perhaps they’d decided it was too risky to continue the chase any closer to the ranches and settlements. The tree line was within sight. Zeb heaved a sigh of relief. He’d outrun them.

  There was no snow on the ground among the trees, nor had it fallen on the rangeland he needed to cross. If he was smart it would be easy to lose the men on his trail as he headed for the Red Hammer ranch. But he was confident that they would no longer continue the pursuit. He’d dismounted to give his horse a breather but he knew he couldn’t delay too long. Getting word to the sheriff that Frank Felton and his men were in the territory around Fetterman’s Pool was important but, for him and the people at Red Hammer, getting help for Havey Goode was more so. It was only when he relaxed for a moment that he realized he’d been wounded by the bullet that had tugged at his coat. It wasn’t a serious wound but it was stinging and, he suspected, bleeding. He’d been holding the reins of Harvey Goode’s horse but now he released them, allowed the animal to run free, knowing it would follow when he set out on the last leg of the trip to the ranch house.

  When he broke from the tree line on to the open pasture his thoughts were fixed on the weather and the possibility of getting a wagon back up to the Broken Arrow line cabin before nightfall. He would go back with them, he decided, Harv was his partner and he should be with him.

  The bullet smashed into his back. He threw his hands in the air before pitching forward along his horse’s neck, then tumbling slowly to the ground at its feet. The horse stopped and waited for its rider to remount; when he didn’t, it began to munch the tough grass.

  Among the trees Gus Phipps watched for a moment, then, when his victim didn’t move, he slid his rifle back into its scabbard, turned his animal and followed the hoofprints in the snow back to the rest of the gang. He didn’t know if the man he’d just killed was a cowboy or a member of the posse that was chasing them, but it no longer mattered, he wasn’t going to pass on what he knew to anyone else. Still, Phipps thought, they could no longer stay in that cabin. They needed to get out quickly, cross the border into Canada where they would be safe for a while.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  His horse’s reluctance to tackle the higher ground when Jim Braddock turned its head to the north was obvious and understandable. Dark clouds covered the highest mountain peaks indicative of heavy falling snow. Like its rider, the beast beneath him sensed that it would soon be calamitous to be exposed on the open hillside. Jim calculated that they had less than two hours to get back to the shelter of the cabin where he’d left Dean Ridgeway nursing Harvey Goode. He wasn’t sure that that gave him enough time to climb as high as the burial ground but not for a moment did he entertain any thought of not pressing ahead. He took money to tend Hec Ridgeway’s stock so that was what he would do. Cows hadn’t the sense to move away from an oncoming storm, they just sat down and waited for it to pass. That was why, if someone like him didn’t chivvy them along, they froze to death and were eaten by wolves. Jim pulled the collar of his coat closer to the back of his neck and coaxed the beast beneath him onwards.

  He had ridden back towards the creek that separated the Broken Arrow land from its neighbour but reached it a few miles north of the spot where the meeting with Zeb and Harvey had taken place. So far he hadn’t found any cattle or any sign of them. Perhaps there weren’t any other strays to find, but it wasn’t his place to make assumptions. He pushed north towards the old Sioux burial ground, where there were one or two small valleys and ravines into which other cattle had wandered over the years. That was the last place to search, then he would return to the cabin as quickly as possible.

  A strong gust of icy wind carried snow into his face. While he rode he wrapped a scarf around his head in such fashion as to keep his hat secured to his head and keep his ears warm. As he tied it under his chin he wondered about the chances of help reaching them before the snow became too deep. It was difficult enough for a wagon to reach the outlying cabins without that additional handicap. But Jim was a practical man and knew there was nothing he could do to amend the situation.

  At that moment a movement at the other side of the creek caught his attention. He halted and focused on the distant dark shapes. He counted seven riders, too many to be Red Hammer hands this far from the ranch. Posse-men, he figured, still hunting for the escaped outlaw, but then he saw a pennant fluttering and realized that there was a semblance of order in the group’s formation. He hadn’t seen a cavalry patrol in this area for seven years, not since 1877 when the ‘Christian General’ Howard’s army had harried Chief Joseph’s Nez Percé into starvation among these hills.

  Although he knew they were only obeying orders, Jim Braddock had had little empathy with the conduct of those soldiers, but he hoped that the ones that he could now see across the narrow water channel would be able to provide assistance. Among them, he hoped, might be someone with more medical ability than he and Dean possessed.

  The leader of the patrol was a young lieutenant called Cooper who, for gravitas, wore a long moustache. With an upraised hand he halted the men in his wake when he saw the approaching rider. Despite the long overcoats that each man wore it was clear that they weren’t happy in the cold conditions.

  After introducing himself Jim told the cavalry officer of his need.

  ‘A man’s injured,’ he said, ‘his leg’s crushed and he needs more attention than my partner and I can give him. Can you come and take a look at him? Perhaps one of your men has some experience with battlefield injuries?’

  A sergeant had ridden forward to sit alongside the officer while he spoke to the civilian. He was an older man, with experience, no doubt, of the foibles of young officers. However, he didn’t speak, merely waited for the lieutenant to seek his advice.

  Jim allowed his eyes to sweep over the remainder of the patrol. It was difficult to see their faces; most of them were hidden behind turned up collars and the yellow bandannas that had been employed to protect their cheeks and jaws from the biting cold, but, apart from the sergeant, there was just such an expression in their unhappy eyes as to make their military inexperience a certainty. They were young, weary and cold and eager to be a long way from the Montana hillside on which they had halted.

  Even while Jim’s glance was taking in the men of the patrol Lieutenant Cooper’s words were confirming his thoughts.

  ‘Can’t help you, Mr Braddock. Even if I had anyone capable of treating your friend I couldn’t spare him. Some Sioux have quit the reservation and we have to get them back before they stir up any trouble.’

  ‘Sioux?’ Jim’s voice was heavy with incredulity. ‘There aren’t any around here.’ Jim knew that that wasn’t the absolute tru
th; one or two former tribesmen worked as horse wranglers on the bigger spreads and some Americans living on isolated farms had taken a Sioux woman as a wife, but there were no hostile warriors of the type these soldiers were seeking.

  ‘A bunch led by Grey Eagle escaped the Pine Ridge Agency. They were heading in this direction.’

  The name held no significance for Jim. He looked up at the dark, threatening sky and wondered what lunacy would cause a handful of warriors to endure the coming winter weather with very little to protect or shelter them.

  As if reading Jim’s thoughts Lieutenant Cooper spoke again.

  ‘Grey Eagle is confined to the reservation. Leaving is a breach of his parole for which he and those assisting him will be punished.’

  Jim looked at the sergeant as though expecting the older man to confirm his own reading of the situation.

  ‘Even when they were roving free the Sioux didn’t make war at this time of year,’ he told the lieutenant.

  ‘They’ve raided farms on their way west,’ the officer told him. ‘That’s how we’ve been able to trail them.’

  ‘Anyone hurt?’

  ‘No, and we mean to catch them before someone is. They will be treated as hostiles and I’ll demand their unconditional surrender.’

  Jim Braddock looked again at the men of the patrol. It struck him that seven inexperienced soldiers made a feeble force to put in the field against a Sioux war party.

  ‘My advice, Lieutenant,’ he said, ‘is to get back down to the valley.’

  The cavalry officer bristled, sensing criticism of his command.