Wild Side of the River

by Michael Zimmer

“It isn’t, but I expect a lot of people think it is.” He picked up his hat and slapped it against his leg, raising a cloud of dust. Vic just stared, clearly having trouble grasping the significance of what he’d been told.

  At twenty, Vic was the second oldest of the Wilder boys. He wasn’t as tall as Ethan, or as broad through the chest and shoulders, but he was as quick and wiry as a catamount, with the Wilder’s strong jaw and piercing pale blue eyes. Right now, those eyes were shot through with disbelief, the first glistening drops of grief gathering in the corners.

  “That can’t be,” he said, lips barely moving.

  “We’ll sort it out,” Ethan promised. Vic looked away, and Ethan knew he was embarrassed by his tears. To change the subject, he said: “Ben told me you went up north with a band of horses.”

  “Yeah, a string I’ve been working with this summer,” he replied distractedly. “I got word the Mounties were looking for remounts, so I ran a bunch up to their buyer in Medicine Hat.”

  “Did he buy them?”

  “Yeah.” Vic flashed a grin. “Forty bucks a head.”

  Ethan whistled appreciatively. That was good money, especially for that part of the country.

  If Ethan was the best rifle shot in the family, Vic was just as good, or better, with horses. He had a way with them that few others could match, and was always working a few head for market. A Vic Wilder-trained horse was a sought-after prize on the Marias, even as word of his skills were beginning to spread beyond the valley’s drainage.

  “I’m glad you sold them,” Ethan said after a pause. “We might need every penny we can rustle up to keep Ben from hanging.” He clamped his hat on his head. “Come on, let’s fix some grub, then clean this place up. Doc and his wife and a few others are coming out tomorrow for Pa’s funeral.”

  The house was a mess, thick with a male’s collection of bric-a-brac, multiplied by five—tiny animal skulls and discarded saddle tack, buntings of spider webs hanging in the corners. The dirt floor was dusty and uneven, but the smell was the worst—dirty clothes, horse sweat, food that should have been tossed out weeks ago.

  Ethan dropped his saddle just inside the front door, leaned his rifle and cartridge belt against the wall, then went into the kitchen to survey the carnage.

  Vic followed. Lifting the lid off of an iron skillet, he turned his face away with a grimace. “Whew! This was probably beans a few weeks ago, but I’d rather eat those horse apples I tried to rub your nose in. I’m gonna pitch this and everything else I can find that’s gone bad, then start scrubbing pots and pans.”

  “Suits me,” Ethan said. “I’ll find a broom and start knocking down spider webs.”

  They worked until dusk, then broke off to eat some cold roast beef Vic had brought home with him. Afterward, sitting outside in the cool twilight with coffee and a cigar—Vic had brought a box of them back from Medicine Hat—they talked about the place and what they wanted to do with it. Vic was keen to build it up, to make the Bar-Five an outfit to be reckoned with, although with more emphasis on horses than cattle.

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” he confessed. “Pa was against it because he figured an Indian pony was as good as a thoroughbred, but it ain’t. A lot of people are saying a mustang is too small to work cattle, and I think they’re right. I want to go back East and buy a couple of good studs . . . a Walker for sure, and maybe a Trotter, then cross them with our mares.”

  “That’d be an interesting combination,” Ethan said.

  “It would,” Vic replied with a budding excitement. “Eastern blood to give ’em size and a good, easy gait, and mustangs for toughness and sure-footedness.”

  “Or the other way around,” Ethan pointed out.

  “Aw, hell,” Vic said, chuckling. “We wouldn’t let that happen. What do you say, Eth? If all of us throw in together, give it a few years, we could end up with some of the best stock in Montana.”

  Ethan studied the tip of his cigar, its gray ash curving gently toward the ground. “And Ben and Joel?” he asked quietly.

  Vic sighed. “I know. I guess I just wanted to think about something else for a while.” He tipped his head back against the cooling adobe, his sunny mood effectively snuffed out. After a moment, he shot Ethan a worried look. “You don’t figure he did it, do you?”

  “I’d hate to think so.”

  “They never got along, Ben and Pa. Ben was always the wildest of the Wilders, and, the way Pa sometimes whomped him, I ain’t sure I’d blame him for popping a cap on the old bastard.” He rolled his shoulder as if in unconscious memory. “He’s whomped us all pretty good, one time or another.”

  “It ain’t a thing to kill a man for.”

  “I don’t know, Eth. Was some stranger to do that to one of us, we’d all hunt him down.”

  “We might whomp him right back, too, but we wouldn’t kill him. Besides, Pa was Pa, and that’s just the way he was . . . at least ever since Ma died.” An image flashed through his mind, his mother standing silently at the stove, head bent to her cooking, eyes averted. One cheek had been shadowed, and a frown creased his forehead. That had been just a shadow, hadn’t it?

  “I’d have to take your word for that,” Vic said. “I was too young to remember what he was like before Ma died.”

  “He was a hard man,” Ethan conceded. “But as far as Ben is concerned, even if he’d done it, he would have told me. He’s a wildcat, but he’s not sneaky.”

  “And Joel?” Vic asked pointedly.

  Ethan shot him a look. “I guess I’d have to talk to Joel before I made up my mind about him.”

  Vic drew thoughtfully on his cigar, and Ethan knew they were both recalling incidents from their past—Joel lying or stealing something small. Even out of Davidson’s store. Pa finally caught him at it and pounded him good with a hickory ramrod from the shotgun, but Ethan knew the beating had only made Joel more cautious in his thieving.

  It was well after dark when they decided to turn in. “I’ll dig a grave up beside Ma’s tomorrow,” Vic said as they climbed to their feet. “You can go into Sundance and fetch Pa.”

  Ethan could tell Vic wasn’t eager to see Jacob’s body, and would probably get a lot more done around the house if he stayed behind. Neither of them had ever been shy about work, a distinction Joel or Ben couldn’t come close to claiming. Or Jacob, for that matter; the old man had never replaced a broken corral rail when it could be more easily patched with rawhide.

  They said their good nights and Ethan went into what passed as his room, a corner of the old storeroom partitioned off with blankets. There was a window high in the wall, and he climbed onto the shooting platform under it to throw open the shutters. He stayed there a moment, looking down toward the curve of Wilder Creek that bent past the rear of the house. With the rain-starved leaves clinging stubbornly to the cottonwoods and willows, he couldn’t see the Marias, but he could hear it, purling icy cold down out of the Rockies.

  Taking a final, deep breath of the cool night air, he hopped down and shed his clothes. Even with the window open, he had trouble falling asleep. The air seemed thick enough to slice, and his bunk, coarse as it was—dried grass stuffed inside a sagging blue tick mattress, ropes for springs—was too soft. He tossed and turned for a couple of hours, then hauled his blankets into the front room, where he opened the door to create a cross draft. He slept better after that, but was still up before dawn, groggy and yawning.

  Vic came out of his room with a buffalo robe pulled over his shoulders, hair tousled, mood grumpy. “God A’mighty, Eth, you trying to freeze me out?”

  “It was hot.”

  “The hell it was. You’ve been up near timberline too long. For those of us who stayed below, it’s cold.” He kicked the door shut, then went into the kitchen to stir up a fire in the stove.

  Ethan chuckled after him, but, when he saw his breath, he had to admit Vic was probably right.

  They had coffee and biscuits, eating in silence as the day’s single chore
loomed ever larger before them. When they were done, Vic gathered the cast-iron biscuit pan and their dishes in his arms and headed for the kitchen door. “I’ll wash these while you find the mules for the wagon,” he said. “I saw ’em down near the river, under the trees, when I came in yesterday.”

  “I’ll look there first,” Ethan said, pushing away from the table and heading in the other direction for his saddle. He was barely into the front room when Vic opened the side door. An explosion, like a bolt of lightning, shook the house, and Vic was flung backward, the utensils he’d been carrying clattering across the floor.

  “Vic!” Ethan shouted, dropping into a crouch as a second volley of gunfire erupted from outside. Bullets tore through the open door with angry whines, pinging off the stove, thudding into the walls. Ethan crabbed across the floor on his hands and feet and slammed the door shut, then dropped the heavy crossbar into its iron brackets. Sprinting into the front room, he barred that door the same way, then he grabbed his rifle and cartridge belt and ran back into the kitchen.

  Vic had pushed himself up to lean against the inner wall. He looked pale and scared and maybe not altogether there, the way his eyes kept flitting back and forth. Dropping to one knee at his side, Ethan gently pried his younger brother’s arms away from his torso. His breath caught in his throat when he saw the bloody wound in the center of Vic’s chest.

  “Barn,” Vic croaked, a tremble racking his shoulders.

  In back of the house, too, Ethan thought. Listening to the rattle of gunfire from outside, he figured there had to be at least half a dozen men out there.

  Clambering onto the platform under the high, narrow window beside the kitchen door, Ethan eased a shutter open. From here, he had an unobstructed view of the barn. He saw movement inside the stables, more along the creek that curved behind the house. Cursing under his breath, Ethan ran into the back bedroom. The shutter was still open from last night, and he peered out cautiously. There were two men making their way along the creek about thirty yards away, staying to cover as much as possible. Ethan quietly slipped the Winchester’s long, octagon barrel through the window. The men following the creekbed were so intent on their approach that Ethan didn’t even think they knew they were being targeted as he caught the lead bushwhacker in his sights. He pulled the trigger and the big Winchester roared, spewing a thick cloud of powder smoke from the back wall. The rifle’s kick was harsh, but he was expecting it, and recovered quickly. Peering outside, he saw the lead bushwhacker crumbled on the far side of the creek, where the Winchester’s slug had tossed him. Even from here, Ethan could see the bright smear of blood covering his chest like a bib.

  The second ambusher had already dropped from sight. Or at least he was trying to. The creekbank was low, cover scarce. Bits and pieces of the man’s body were sticking out everywhere. He was shouting something to the men in the barn, but Ethan didn’t bother trying to make out what he was saying. Lining his sights on the bushwhacker’s hand, protruding above the near bank clutching a revolver, Ethan squeezed the trigger. The scream that rent the air along the creek was like that of a treed cougar, so piercingly shrill Ethan involuntarily flinched.

  He dropped to the floor and ran into the front room to check that window, but there was nothing to see. Cover to the front and east sides of the house were minimal, and he suspected the bushwhackers would want to take advantage of every bit of concealment they could find.

  The east window revealed no surprises—a chokecherry patch a couple of hundred yards away, clumps of grass and prickly pear. Jumping down off the platform, he went back into the kitchen. Vic hadn’t moved, although his eyes followed Ethan across the room.

  “Vic, where’s your horse?”

  “Probably . . .”—he wet his lips—“probably with . . . yours. Somewhere on the . . . the Marias.”

  “Is there anything in the barn?”

  “No . . . I don’t think . . .” Vic’s effort to speak was taking its toll, and his voice gradually faded, then died.

  Ethan watched to make sure he was still breathing, then turned back to the window. He slid the Winchester’s muzzle through the shallow slot. As he did, gunfire blossomed from deep within the barn—two, maybe three men crouched back in the shadows. Ethan turned his face away from the dust and chunks of flying adobe that sprayed across the opening. He tried to picture the barn’s interior as he’d last seen it. There was the tack room—empty now that they’d taken to keeping their gear in the house—stalls filled with old straw, a water barrel that hadn’t been filled in years because they no longer kept their saddle stock penned up at night. Hadn’t since the Indian wars had ended.

  “The water barrel,” Ethan murmured. One of the ambushers was hiding behind the water barrel in the barn’s entryway. He adjusted his aim, aligning the barrel’s location in his mind with the rifle’s front sight, then opened fire, slamming three rounds into the barn as fast as he could work the lever.

  There was shouting, a pain-filled scream, cursing that broke into sobs.

  Then silence.

  Ethan glanced toward the creek. From this angle, he could still make out the crumpled form of the first bushwhacker. The second man, the one he’d shot in the hand, had disappeared.

  Swinging away from the window, Ethan shoved fresh cartridges through the rifle’s loading gate. “I figure there’s five or six of them out there,” he told Vic without looking up. “I got one of them for sure, then wounded another. I’m thinking I may have hit a third man in the barn. Either that or I scared the bejesus out of him.”

  Vic didn’t reply, and Ethan looked up, his heart skipping a beat. For the first time he noticed the amount of blood soaking the front of Vic’s shirt, seeping through the sleeves at his cuffs. Throat constricted in dread, Ethan went to his brother’s side. “Vic,” he said in a low voice. “Vic, are you awake?”

  Pulling the younger man’s hands aside, Ethan used his knife to slice open the shirt, then peel it back. The wound itself looked tiny, but the flesh around it was an ugly mass of swollen discoloration.

  “Aw, hell,” Ethan breathed, then hurried into the front room where they kept their shooting gear—reloading equipment for the rifles, cleaning solutions, grease, oil. In a latched box under the reload bench was the only truly unsoiled material in the house, several yards of soft cotton fabric used for cleaning the bores of their firearms. Ethan ripped the white cloth into length-wise strips on his way back to the kitchen, then bound Vic’s wound as best he could. When he was satisfied he’d done everything possible, he went back to the window. No one was in sight, either in the barn or along the creek.

  “I don’t like this,” Ethan said, even though he knew Vic couldn’t hear him or respond. It didn’t matter. It made him feel less vulnerable, not quite as outnumbered, to speak to Vic as if he were standing next to him. “It’s too quiet. I’m going to check the other rooms.”

  He left the kitchen for the bedroom, where he had a better view of the creek, but there was nothing to be seen. Not even the corpse of the first man he’d shot. That worried Ethan, too, knowing they had been able to retrieve the body without him being aware of it. What else were they doing out there without his knowledge?

  Shuttering the bedroom window, he quickly checked the other two, then returned to the kitchen. Vic was conscious when he walked in, but unresponsive. Offering him water, Ethan spilled as much down his chin as his throat. Rocking back on his heels, he clenched his fists until the knuckles turned white. He knew Vic needed a doctor badly, that he could die if he didn’t receive adequate care soon. With Jacob already dead, Ben in jail, and Joel dodging the law, Ethan wasn’t sure he could handle another tragedy.

  Time passed and the day grew warmer. The air inside the closed-off house became stuffy at first, then hot and miserable. The buzz of autumn flies attracted to the blood on Vic’s shirt seemed to grow louder with every passing minute, a torture almost as nerve-racking as his sense of helplessness. Vic lost consciousness sometime around midmorning, and on
ly stirred occasionally when Ethan moistened his lips with a wet cloth or bathed his feverish brow.

  It was noon when Ethan heard his name called from the barn. After hours of silence, the voice caught him by surprise. Scrambling onto the ledge, he peeked out warily.

  “Ethan Wilder! Are you there?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Never mind who’s asking. We want to make a deal.”

  Ethan’s fingers flexed nervously on the Winchester’s forestock. “What kind of deal?”

  “Come out unarmed and walk down to the river. Don’t look back. That’s all you’ve got to do. We don’t want you. It’s your friend we’re after.”

  Ethan glanced at Vic. “What do you want with him?”

  “He robbed a bank in Bozeman. We intend to take him back to stand trial.”

  Ethan tipped his head against the wall, wishing he could just close his eyes and go to sleep. Then slowly, wearily he pulled himself up straight. “I reckon not!” he shouted.

  “Don’t be a fool, Wilder. Whoever he is, he isn’t worth dying for.”

  “You should’ve known I wouldn’t believe you,” Ethan returned. “You ought to know this isn’t a stranger, either. It’s my brother Victor.”

  There was no reply to that. After a couple of minutes, Ethan slipped away to check the other windows. Nothing moved that he could see, and he went back to the kitchen, climbing onto the platform under the window. Licking his lips, he shouted: “I’ve got all the time in the world, boys!”

  It almost choked him to say it. He knew he had time, but Vic certainly didn’t.

  Chapter Seven

  The afternoon seemed to drag on forever. Although Vic drifted in and out of consciousness, he never again fully regained his senses. From time to time, Ethan would soak a piece of cloth in water and hold it to his brother’s lips, letting him suckle like a nursing babe, but Vic’s fever continued to rise, and his breathing became more labored.

  Ethan also kept a close eye on the barn and creek, but no further attempts were made to approach the house. He knew they were still out there, though. He could occasionally hear the quiet murmur of their conversation and, once, the sobs of someone begging for whiskey to dull his pain.