“Winter, she is not so far away any more, eh?” the older man said, pulling a chunk of bread from his saddlebags and breaking it in half. He gave one piece to Ethan, along with a slab of roast elk, and kept the other for himself. They ate without dismounting, staring back the way they’d come.
From here, Turcotte’s cabin was hidden from sight, but they had a good view of the empty plains beyond. It was raining to the north, slanting veils stretched between dark, turbulent clouds and the distant horizon, but to the west the skies were clear with the promise of another hot day. Gerard was right, though. Winter was nigh.
Turning his gaze toward the far-off Rockies, Gerard chewed absently on his breakfast. After a few minutes, he said: “I will ask you now about my daughter, Ethan, and your intentions toward her.”
The bread went dry in Ethan’s mouth; swallowing it was like forcing down Corn Grower’s moose nose. “I have only the best intentions toward her. You know that.”
Gerard fixed his eyes on Ethan, and a chill plowed down the younger man’s spine. “You defile her, yet you say you have only her best interests in your heart?”
“I didn’t defile her.”
“Then she is untouched? Do not lie to me, Ethan. You have not lied to me in the past. Do not start now.”
Ethan sucked in a deep breath. Up here, where the air was so clean you could see a mountain range a hundred miles away, he suddenly felt like he was suffocating, drowning in his own shame. He knew he should tell Gerard that he loved Rachel, that he intended to marry her someday. Lord knew he’d thought about it enough. But was that what he really wanted? To marry a trader’s half-wild daughter, tie himself down to life other than his unfettered own?
Gerard sawed at his reins, savagely yanking his horse around. His expression was furious. “If I did not know you, Ethan . . . if I did not think you would eventually do the right thing . . . I would kill you here and leave your body for the wolves.” Getting his rage under control, the older man’s mien abruptly softened. “You are a good man, Ethan. You will do what is right.” Then he touched the butt of his rifle. He didn’t say anything, but the implication was clear enough. Even for a thick-skulled fool such as himself, Ethan thought.
“Come on. I still want to show you something.” Gerard started to rein away.
Ethan stopped him with a word. “Gerard, I do love your daughter. You know that.”
The old man twisted around in his saddle, his visage like a hardened scab. “Love does not feed a hungry baby, Ethan. Neither does a wanderer, off trapping wolves and hunting grizzlies.”
That irked him. “You’ve trapped and hunted all your life.”
“Oui, after I saw to the care of my woman and children. Now, come, we have talked enough of this.”
They continued on through the breaks, silent again. Ethan finished the food Gerard had given him, but it set heavily on his stomach, side-by-side with his guilt. When they finally topped out on the ridge above the Marias, Gerard turned west, paralleling the river, and Ethan jogged his roan up alongside the old hunter’s mare.
“It does not feel right out here any more,” Gerard said unexpectedly.
“What do you mean?”
“It feels like trouble. Like when the Sioux used to come this way to raid. But this is not the bad feeling of being watched by Indians. This smells more of white men.”
Ethan glanced at him curiously.
“Men have disappeared,” Gerard said. “You have heard of this?”
“Ira Webb mentioned some killings, but he wasn’t specific.”
“No,” Gerard replied with a trace of irony. “These men who have vanished are not of his tribe. He wouldn’t know about them.”
“Ira doesn’t have a tribe. Not unless you know something I don’t.”
Gerard graced the younger man with a patient smile. “There is much that I know that you will not discover until time has turned your head gray, as it has done mine. The tribe I speak of is not of blood. Ira Webb is a white man, a merchant from the East. His tribe is the newer settlers, the homesteaders and cattlemen and townsmen who come to his saloon on Saturday night to drink and tell stories. That is a tribe I do not belong to. Neither does your father, Ethan. Jacob and I belong to a separate tribe, one that came to these plains long before all the Ira Webbs. Someday, I think Webb and his kind will be pushed out, too, but not for a while yet. Not until men like your father and I have disappeared before them.”
“I’d like to meet the man who thinks he’s tough enough to make Jacob Wilder disappear,” Ethan said.
“He exists. Maybe he lives here even now.”
“That ain’t likely,” Ethan replied flatly.
“You live in two worlds, Ethan, yet you belong to neither. Like the half-breed of Indian and white heritage, although yours is an exile of culture, rather than blood.”
“I pretty well go where I want, and I don’t intend to change.”
“But are you welcome there? Does the name Wilder grant you entrance into any man’s lodge, or only some?”
“That’s a crazy question,” Ethan remarked, but he was remembering his encounters with Tim Palmer and Sam Davidson in Sundance. Of course, they’d been upset about Joel allegedly beating up the Merrick girl . . . but, still, was there any proof of his crime? Or had Palmer and Davidson been willing to judge solely on the Wilder name, Jacob Wilder’s reputation?
“Your silence tells me you know that my words are true. You respect my daughter, Ethan. I see that, or I would have killed you by the river and let the current have your body. But the Webbs and the others of Sundance, what would they think of a half-breed wife, a squaw? Would Rachel be welcome in their homes?”
Ethan sighed. “Probably not, but would Ira Webb be welcome in your home?”
“For the things I know he feels toward Rachel and Corn Grower, no. The gap”—he made a quick back and forth motion with his hand—“it is too great. The distrust between tribes has a long history, Ethan. Not just tribes of blood, but of culture, language, religion. Especially religion.”
Ethan was silent as he mulled that over. He knew there was more to what Gerard had told him than was obvious, and sensed that it concerned not only him, but also Rachel. But what did he care what the Ira Webbs of the world thought? Why should any of them care?
. . . not until men like your father and I have disappeared.
Ethan pulled back sharply on the roan’s reins, causing the horse to toss its head, nicker its displeasure.
Gerard stopped, too, staring back with a taut smile. “You are a smart boy, Ethan. It is good that you do not have your father’s ways. Maybe for you and Rachel it will be different. Come, we are here.” He guided his horse onto an old buffalo trail leading toward the river.
Ethan fell in behind, the sudden epiphany of Montana’s future, and his own, raging through his mind like floodwaters.
They wound deeper into the breaks, coming at last to a sheltered cove neatly hidden by a sparse grove of bastard maples. The small cabin was little more than a shack, an empty corral beside it. Ethan could tell at a glance the place was deserted.
“Old Emile,” Gerard said, jutting his chin toward the cabin. “You know him?”
“Sure. Emile comes past the Bar-Five every once in a while. He gave me shooting tips when I was younger.”
“Emile is a great shot. I have seen him clip blossoms off of a prickly pear at two hundred yards with his rifle.”
Emile Rodale had been a beaver trapper during the waning days of the fur trade; in the years since, he’d roamed the West from Mexico to the Arctic Circle. Ethan had never seen him clip blossoms off a prickly pear, but he didn’t doubt the old mountain man could do it. Emile had been an impressive shot before his eyes started to go bad.
They rode up to the cabin and dismounted. Ethan still believed the place was deserted, but the implements scattered around the yard were disturbing—an axe embedded in a stump next to the woodpile, traps hung from the outside rafters, the fly-blown carcass
of an antelope hanging from a tree branch a dozen yards away. His muscles tightened apprehensively as he approached the cabin’s single door, sagging on leather hinges. A spider web clung to the jamb and latch, a half-eaten fly drying in its clutches near its center—proof, Ethan supposed, that no one had been here in a long while.
Gerard hung back. “Go on,” he said, indicating the door with a tip of his head.
Resisting the urge to draw his revolver, Ethan brushed the web aside and jerked the latch free. The door swung open on its own weight, and Ethan ducked inside.
Emile’s cabin was little different from many of the others Ethan had seen, especially those built and used by old-timers who had spent a lifetime doing without, and figured they could end their days the same. It was maybe fifteen feet square, with a low ceiling and a single window hewed out of the wall facing the cove’s entrance. There was a fireplace in the rear wall, humped with gray ash, robes and blankets that constituted a bed in one corner, the odds and ends of a hunter’s life—spare springs for traps, pieces of leather for repairs, a smattering of cooking and eating utensils—scattered around, filling corners and niches. A saddle rested on its horn and pommel next to the door, a bridle draped over the rear skirt. Ethan’s gaze roamed the cabin once, then came back to the saddle.
“Where is he?”
“A good question, I think,” Gerard replied, standing in the doorway.
Ethan moved deeper into the room, studying the dirt floor. It was hard-packed from years of use, but layered with dust that revealed a story in itself. Old Emile’s moccasin tracks created a familiar pattern; the boot prints looked out of place.
“I’d say he had some company recently,” Ethan said.
“I was here a week ago, but did not enter the cabin. The fly on the latch was fresh then.”
“Were there boot tracks here then?”
“Outside, oui. Three men wearing spurs, but no sign of trouble.”
“So they were invited in?”
“Either that, or they came inside after Emile left.”
“What do you think?”
“I think maybe they came to the cabin and somehow managed to draw their guns before Emile could reach his rifle. Had it been otherwise, there would be blood, and at least one dead man who would no longer need spurs.”
“You figure they left with Emile?”
“I think so, yes. I think, if I had come a few days earlier, I would have been able to find Emile by the buzzards circling in the sky, but there were no buzzards on the day I came.”
Ethan stepped outside, gaze straying toward the corral. “And his horses?”
“Emile was always trading back and forth. I could not say how many he had or where they were taken.”
“Why would anyone want to kill old Emile Rodale?”
“That question is simple. Emile had something they wanted.”
“His rifle? Horses? What else would he have had that was of any value?”
“Horses, maybe. His rifle was old and temperamental. Not many men today would have the patience to learn its quirks. But Emile never had many horses. I think it was something else. The land, maybe.”
“His land? I don’t think he ever filed on it, did he?”
“No, but if a man wanted this land, what would Emile have told them?”
Ethan smiled. “He’d have told them to get the hell out, before he gut-shot every one of them.” His smile faded then, recalling the offer Nolan Andrews had made him in the Bullshead. Claiming he represented a nebulous outfit called Westminster Cattle and Mining, Nolan had said he wanted to buy the Bar-Five, but when Ethan refused, as Jacob had earlier, the gunman had attempted to goad him into a fight. With revolvers at first, then with fists, after Ira had flourished his Derringer. But what might have happened if Ira hadn’t pulled his two-shooter, if Ethan had allowed Nolan to egg him into a gunfight?
“You are thinking of something,” Gerard prodded gently.
Ethan had briefly explained his fight in the Bullshead to Gerard last night. He elaborated on it now, filling him in on Nolan’s offer to purchase the Bar-Five, and about his earlier conversation with Jacob.
When he’d finished, Gerard said: “I think maybe you should warn your papa to watch for this one, Ethan. He sounds dangerous, and maybe not so honorable, no?”
“Honor isn’t a word that comes to mind,” Ethan admitted. “I don’t reckon Pa needs to be told to watch his back, though.”
“And old Emile?”
Ethan hesitated. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”
“I am right.” Gerard moved out into the cove, looking around as if for some new sign he’d missed earlier. After a while, he said: “I fear very strongly that I am right about old Emile, too, and that makes my heart weep. Come, we will go home on a different trail, one that winds through the breaks. It will take longer, but it will give us a chance to hunt for Emile’s body.”
“You’re that convinced he’s dead?”
Gerard nodded sadly. “Tomorrow, I will come back with more supplies, and I will not leave until he is found and buried. That is how convinced I am, my young friend.”
* * * * *
It was after dark by the time Ethan and Gerard returned to Turcotte’s cabin. Lamplight glowed cheerfully from the open front door, and Ethan could see Rachel sitting on the stoop. She stood when she heard their approach, but didn’t come to meet them.
Movement drew Ethan’s eye toward the creek, and he tensed instinctively. There was a man sitting in the shadows close to the water. He rose and walked over to the cabin when he spied Gerard and Ethan, nothing threatening in either his stride or Rachel’s response.
“Jimmy Chews!” Gerard called, even before the stranger had identified himself or come into the cabin’s light.
Ethan relaxed. Jimmy Chews was a half-breed Crow who had a cabin a day’s ride west of the Bar-Five. Like Gerard and Jacob, he was another old-timer who had ridden and hunted these plains long before the first longhorn came up the trail from Texas. Gerard would have said Jimmy was a member of the same spiritual tribe as he and Jacob, and Ethan wouldn’t have argued the point.
Jimmy was tall and slim, wearing buckskin trousers, a calico shirt, moccasins, and a derby hat. He carried an old muzzleloading Hawken rifle in his right hand, its shooting bag and powder horn slung over his left shoulder. A shaggy gray mare with a full udder and a foal at its side followed him, heavily packed for travel.
“Jimmy,” Gerard said with a welcoming grin. “A long time now since your shadow has fallen over my door.”
“A long time,” Jimmy Chews agreed, then graced Ethan with a quick, guarded nod. “Ethan.”
“Jimmy.”
“What brings you, old friend?” Gerard asked, dismounting and handing his reins to Rachel.
Ethan also dismounted, but he hung back, sensing something out of kilter in the half-breed’s rigid stance.
“I have a debt,” Jimmy said. “I have come to pay it.”
“Oui, money for a hatchet and some tobacco.”
Jimmy drew some coins from a leather poke and handed them to Gerard. “Is this enough?”
“Too much,” Gerard replied, returning several coins. It was the way of traders, Ethan knew, and why some prospered and others grew rich in friends alone. “You will stay the night?”
“No, I came only to pay you the money.” Jimmy returned the poke to his shooting bag, studiously avoiding looking at Ethan.
Gerard said: “Something troubles you, my friend?”
“You know of McMillan and his woman?”
“I know Ian McMillan, yes.”
“He is dead,” Jimmy said bluntly. “His woman, too.”
Gerard’s face went slack. “What happened?”
“The white man’s death.” Jimmy made a motion beside his neck, as if pulling tight an invisible noose. “Crazy Dog found them.”
Crazy Dog was another mixed-blood Crow with a shack close to Jimmy’s.
“Who did it?” Gerard asked, his ex
pression darkening.
“It was not seen, but it is known that men came to McMillan’s place and told him the land was no longer his. McMillan did not understand this talk, as he knew the land did not belong to anyone, no more than the sky or the clouds can belong to one man. But these men wanted the land under McMillan’s cabin, and told him he must leave. Then they rode away. They came to my place and said the same thing. Then they went to Crazy Dog and told him these same words. Crazy Dog came to me after these men left and we agreed we would not leave. Then we rode over to McMillan’s place to talk to him and found him and the woman hanging from a tree in front of their cabin. That was when Crazy Dog and I decided we would leave.” A fearful look came into Jimmy’s eyes. “That is not a good way to die, Turcotte. It causes the spirit to become trapped inside the body, so it cannot leave. It rots inside, and. after the body falls apart, the spirit is forced to wander the earth forever after, without home or friends.” He shuddered, this man who had fought the wilderness for a lifetime, who had battled bears and blizzards and other men, yet now looked as frightened as a child who believes there are monsters under his bed. Jimmy pulled his mare close, gathered his reins above her withers. “I came here to warn you, Turcotte. Crazy Dog went west along the Marias to warn those who live in that direction. We will meet later, he and I, above the big cut bank, and together we will ride to the Grandmother’s land. You should come with us.”
Gerard shook his head. “I will not be driven from my home.”
Jimmy nodded understandingly. “I felt the same way until I saw McMillan and his woman. Now I think I will find a new home.” He stepped into his saddle, paused, then looked at Ethan. “I went past your father’s place as well, Ethan.”
“What did Pa say?”
Jimmy ducked his head, and Ethan’s gut drew taut. “Jacob Wilder is dead. Your brother Ben was taken to the village called Sundance, where it is said the people of that village want to hang him for the murder of your father.” He shook his head remorsefully. “I do not believe this thing they say of Ben, but I don’t think the people of Sundance care. I think they want to hang a Wilder, and that maybe they will hang Ben whether he killed your father or not.”
Wild Side of the River Page 5
