Calamity

by Libbie Hawker

  Now, I must admit that Billings had been roughening around its edges since Clinton and I first arrived. But the summer Clinton took off for Ekalaka was especially bad. Tempers ran short as a matter of course. Fights often made the papers, for there was precious little else to report on, save fist fights and gun fights, and the jail sentences of the hot-headed men who perpetrated them.

  Oh yes, we had our share of gun fights in Billings. But it wasn’t till the Mulkey gang came to town that I really began to fear. The Mulkeys was a family of rowdies—brothers and cousins, from what I understand—infamous throughout Montana for their cattle rustling and card-cheating. Strength In Numbers seemed to be their clan motto; the Mulkeys ran in such a sizable herd that no sheriff’s posse could suppress a shudder at thought of squaring up to the gang. Bad as their cheating and rustling was, what really made the Mulkeys frightening was their quickness to do violence. Everywhere that pack of feral dogs roamed, breathless accounts followed, filling the papers and telegraph wires with news of their dreadful exploits from Cheyenne to Pocatello.

  I had taken note of the Mulkey gang in Billings’ newspaper, reading each account of their numerous outrages with growing disbelief. When the Billings paper fell silent on the topic of the Mulkeys, I sensed trouble coming. For Billings didn’t yet have a big enough posse, nor a sheriff powerful enough, to handle the menace of that gang. I perceived that the editor of the newspaper thought it more prudent to drop the subject of Mulkey outrages altogether, rather than risk the family’s ire. And that could only mean the Mulkeys was headed straight for Billings. Me and Jessie set right in the path of the storm. There was nothing a fretful mother could do, except hunker down and pray the danger would soon pass.

  The atmosphere of Billings darkened considerably as soon as the Mulkey gang appeared. A few of them took up residence at the hotel, for it was the best accommodation in Billings. The hotel staff went about its duties quick and quiet, heads down, praying every moment that no Mulkey would take exception to an offhanded comment or an unthinking gesture. Day and night, the air seemed to crackle with a dreadful energy, the tension of fearful waiting. A lump rose to my throat and stayed there; my back ached from constant worry, for the town had become a powder keg, and above all else, I feared the first lethal spark would fly within my own hotel, blowing my good life apart in the blink of an eye, landing innocent bystanders—and maybe my daughter, too—in an early grave.

  Well, the powder keg certainly did ignite just a few weeks after Clinton left for the ranch. I’ll never know what set off that gun fight. I suppose the cause is of no real consequence now. All I know for certain is that I was putting Jessie to bed one evening, while a long summer sunset lingered peaceful and red among the pines. Just as I bent to kiss Jessie’s brow, the crack of gunfire split the night.

  The odd shot from rile or pistol was a common enough occurrence, rarely worth marking. But wound up as I was over the gang’s unwelcome presence, I crouched beside my daughter’s bed and waited, wide-eyed, for more. More fire was certainly coming; I knew it, way down deep in my bones. Sure enough, that first report was answered by an over-eager blast from somewheres close by—so close, I near-about jumped out of my skin and barely stifled a shriek of surprise. I tore Jessie from her bed and laid her flat on the floor, then covered her with my half-crouched body. Another shot rang out, then another, and all at once Billings was swallowed in a constant roar of gunfire.

  I couldn’t do a damn thing, except press my daughter to the floor, praying all the while no stray bullet would splinter the wall and find its way to Jessie’s heart. Neither of us made a sound—not that we could have heard one another over a thunder of endless violence. Now and again, when chance brought half a second’s respite from the fire, I could hear men screaming in rage or in desperate agony. The panicked groans of horses came to me, as well. Sure enough, all-out war had broken out between the Mulkey gang and the town’s insufficient posse.

  Me and Jessie huddled on the floor of her bedroom for damn near half an hour. By the time the last gunshot finally sounded, evening light had faded, replaced by the deep-blue chill of night. When I heard no more shots for a proper long while—only the hollering of men and the pounding of hooves on the road outside—I sat up slowly, staring down at Jessie. She never cried out, but tears streamed from her eyes. She trembled where she lay, frightened as a hunted fawn, and clung to my hand with all her small might.

  I watched my daughter’s pale face among dusky shadows, and I considered my options. The sheriff’s posse wasn’t likely to have won that battle—I knew it was true. The Mulkeys far outnumbered the law; they was wily and hardscrabble, to boot. But even if (through some unaccountable miracle) the law had come out on top, I made up my mind right then and there to spirit Jessie out of Billings till all danger was past.

  “You get some sleep,” I told her, lifting her back to her rumpled bed. “In the morning, we will take to the trail again, just like we did in olden days. We’ll go to find your daddy at that ranch out in Ekalaka. We’ll pass a lovely summer out there, among the horses and cattle, and come back to run our hotel again in the fall.”

  To myself, I promised, We won’t be back again till the Mulkey gang has left Billings for good. And if they never leave, then so be it. I won’t keep my daughter in a town where she’s as like to get shot as trip over her own feet.

  We set out for Ekalaka at daybreak, just as I promised. The streets of Billings lay silent—not with the righteous peace of rest, but with the hunkered-down, cringing silence of a whipped creature waiting for its cruel master to return. Shutters had been drawn across’t every window. Wherever morning duties forced a body out of doors—tending to stock or assessing damage done in last night’s storm of gunfire—work proceeded at a tentative pace, with the small rustlings and scrapings of mice creeping between walls. Now and then, a fella turned his wary eye at the sound of my horse’s hooves, peering from the marginal safety of a livery corral or peeking around the corner of a building. When my watchers saw that I was just one woman—and riding with a small child, at that—they shook their heads with scorn at my foolhardiness. No one but a plain idiot would ride out where the Mulkey gang might see; not after last night.

  Once we put Billings at our backs, the fog of danger lifted. All the bliss I had known some years before, when I had ridden in blessed solitude with my sweet Jessie, returned with fulsome strength. The Montana terrain was a welcome departure from the prairies and long, dry valleys I had known in Wyoming. Great, flat-topped buttes surrounded the town, pale sandstone cliffs all slanting at the same angle up toward an astonishing sky, broad and blue, still colored at its eastern border by the rosy flush of sunrise. Canyons split the earth between those layers of mesa, and the canyons was damp and fragrant with gathered dew, or with trickles of water that still came down from higher ground, even in the heat of summer. Wherever water collected, forests of birch and slender evergreens crowded in. The breezes smelled of pine sap and flowing water; the morning was lively with the music of foraging birds.

  Jessie would see her fifth birthday that autumn. She was a big girl, far more talkative than she had been on our last trail ride. She asked me to sing the old songs, of course, but she soon took over, changing the words in ways that made me chuckle and hug her closer to my heart. She invented stories, too, spinning her own legends about Bill Hickock and Charlotte Burch, the fabled beauty of far-off Deadwood. In Jessie’s stories, Bill never died. He came home and married Charlotte, and they lived in happiness all their days, with never a sorrow to trouble them. It gave me a pang, to hear my daughter weave such pretty fancies. I wished her stories was true.

  We journeyed more than a week, leaving the forested canyons behind as the land returned to the flat, bland monotony of the prairie. By and by, we found ourselves among the Medicine Rocks, strange outcrops of pale stone standing upright in a sea of sage. The Medicine Rocks towered above us; smooth-sided holes pocked every face of those strange monuments, and evening shadows se
ttled into the holes, giving the impression of countless eyes that turned to watch us as we passed. The effect was nothing short of eerie. I didn’t like being among the Medicine Rocks, for the sight of them made my skin creep. But I knew they was a signpost; Ekalaka lay just ahead. So we made our night’s camp at the foot of one of those odd, upright stones, and in the morning I woke Jessie early so we could press on.

  One final stretch of trail lay ahead before we reached Clinton’s ranch. The trail led through a gully cut by a bubbling crick. The water smelled spicy and welcoming, and the air in the gully was cool, so I slowed my horse to a lazy walk and took my time traversing its length. Jessie was deep in one of her stories about Wild Bill; I listened only halfway, for I couldn’t shake the lingering anxiety that had tightened my chest and clouded my thoughts since we’d made camp among those rocks the night before. The day was bright, the sky cheerful with little sheep-flocks of bustling white clouds. Yet still I felt as if I rode under a heavy shadow, and not even the summer sun could drive away my chill.

  Just before we reached the end of that gully, we came across’t a forlorn huddle of shacks clinging to the banks of the crick. I reined in quick; my immediate fear was that I had stumbled onto a Sioux encampment. But of course, the Sioux lived in teepees—not these haphazard lean-tos made from pine branches and scraps of tin. Naught but white men could have built those shacks. Yet the sun was well up, and the camp was silent—unnervingly still. The only sign of life was a peaky stream of smoke rising from a rusted chimney pipe. I set rigid in my saddle, clutching my daughter hard against my body, and stared at that smoke as it drifted up into the whispering pines.

  After a spell, Jessie said quietly, “What is it, Grandmam?”

  “A camp,” I answered. “A miners’ camp, I guess.”

  “Ain’t nobody there?”

  “I don’t know, Cushie Butterfield. Guess we ought to find out before we go any farther.”

  I sucked in a deep breath, more to steady my nerves than to power my voice. Then I shouted, “Hullo!”

  No one answered. I couldn’t even hear a stirring from inside those shacks, nor from the strip of woodland around us. The birds went on scolding in the pines, and the crick tumbled and pattered over the rocks, but the camp was quiet as a grave.

  I should have ridden on with my daughter and thought nothing more of that blasted encampment. But the persistent stillness struck me as too odd to ignore—maybe dangerous, as well. I had to learn the cause of the silence, for if the Sioux had recently struck, they might still linger in the vicinity. They might even carry their violence on to Clinton’s ranch, unless I warned the ranchers first.

  “You stay here,” I said to Jessie. I put the reins in her small hands. “If any trouble should befall me, you kick that horse and go straight ahead—same direction we been riding. You follow this crick right up to your pa’s camp and don’t stop for nothing. Understand?”

  Jessie nodded, but she was mute now with fear. I could sense her reluctance, her sudden consciousness of her own small and fragile self. All I could do was pat her little arm and tell her everything would be all right. Then I slid from the saddle and approached the shack with a rusted chimney pipe. My hand never left my pistol the whole while.

  “Hullo,” I said again as I edged closer to the lean-to. “Anybody home?”

  No answer came. A bit of canvas hung across the lean-to’s opening, a door of sorts. Cautiously, I pushed the canvas aside, bracing my guts for what I would find within.

  What I found inside that shack was ten times wors’t than the remains of an Indian massacre.

  Two cots dominated the shack’s interior; a small potbelly stove crouched between, running its chimney up through the pine-bough roof. Two men lay abed among a scattering of filthy blankets; their limbs hung limp and feeble from the edges of their cots. The stench of sickness walloped me so hard I reeled on my feet, covering my mouth with one hand, fighting not to gag and puke up my breakfast right there in the doorway of the lean-to.

  But the smell wasn’t the worst of it—no. Worst of all was those men’s faces. And their hands. Every bit of skin that showed had blistered and raised into hideous, pale boils. They looked more like lizards than men—or like demons sent up from Hell. The boils crowded around their eyes and mouths; I could scarce make out their features through those painful, weeping distortions.

  So this is where my dark mood has come from, I told myself. This is what haunted me all morning long.

  I had never encountered the smallpox in my life, yet still I knew that devil at first sight.

  They’re dead, I told myself. They must be. Surely no man can survive such affliction.

  But even as I comforted myself with those words, one of the men groaned in helpless suffering and the other shifted a little—just the barest motion of his hand, yet I saw the movement. I couldn’t deny the truth. Those poor men still lived, lingering in agony at death’s welcome door.

  I stepped back from the lean-to, let the canvas curtain fall. With my hands braced on my hips I breathed, slowly and deeply, desperate for some useful thought, warring with my instinct to bolt in fear and loathing—to get my child away from that place, quick as I could go. My eyes rolled frantically, searching the other three shacks for signs of life. How many prospectors? More than the two I had seen, of a certainty. I had to know the extent of the illness—had to know what to tell the ranchers at Ekalaka. They needed to know the smallpox was coming; that disease was every bit as deadly as the Sioux, and every bit as feared, too.

  Resolute, I marched to the next shack, then the next, and peered inside every one. Seven men lay in misery, some on cots, some felled upon hard bed rolls. And all of them suffered terribly—that was plain enough to see. Even when I backed away from the last shack, I could still hear those poor boys’ rattling breath, still smell the tainted air, though a fresh wind was blowing down the gully, sharp with the scent of juniper and sage.

  I scrambled back to my horse and swung up into the saddle. What else was I to do? I could only pray I hadn’t carried the infection with me—straight to my daughter. But I couldn’t leave Jessie alone. Despite my command to ride on to the ranch, I knew the odds was small that a girl of her tender age could find the place on her own. There was nothing for it but to mount up and ride on—and beg God to spare my girl from that dreadful affliction.

  “What did you find, Grandmam?” Jessie asked.

  “Nothing, darling girl—nothing a-tall. The shacks was empty. Guess all the prospectors went out looking for gold.”

  We pressed on towards Clinton’s ranch, and after a spell Jessie took up with her stories again. I had half-listened before, but now I couldn’t seem to hear my daughter’s voice. That hellish rattle, the rasp in dying men’s throats, filled my ears; a vision of their distorted faces hung before my eyes, imposed like a veil over everything I saw. The suffering I had witnessed ate at my heart. Before we reached the ranch camp, I had already made up my mind what to do.

  By afternoon, Jessie and me could see a distant cluster of tall, white-canvas tents ringed around a stand of pines. Temporary corrals dotted the prairie, and great herds of cattle moved across’t the grass, rivers of flesh warm and flowing beneath the summer sun. I could make out riders working their stock on quick cow-ponies, and the sight of so much industry cheered me considerable, for it meant the smallpox had not yet come.

  As we drew nearer to the camp, a lone rider broke away from the corrals and loped toward us. Long before he reached us, I recognized Clinton’s appy-loosy horse, white with red dots like the pelt of a leopard.

  Clinton’s grin was about a mile wide when he circled us, then fell in beside. “I’ll be damned. I never expected to see you here.” I couldn’t quite tell whether he was glad or regretful; that grin might have been purely for Jessie’s sake, not mine.

  “Billings got real bad, and fast,” I said. “The Mulkey gang came in—shot the place up. I had to get Jessie away. It ain’t safe to stay in Billings just now
. Didn’t know where else I should take her.”

  Clinton said nothing. His lips pressed into a thin line beneath his curled mustache—a grim sort of acceptance.

  I said, “Guess we ought to stay here till the summer’s out. I can be of some use with the stock, but I got to keep Jessie safe.”

  “I suppose it’s best if you do stay. There’s a good camp set up for all the ranching folk and their families. Nice, airy canvas tents—a mess tent for eating, too, and the cook’s real good.” He reached across’t the space between us, patted Jessie’s knee. “There’s even some other children for you to play with, little bee. You can pass the summer here happy enough.” To me, Clinton said, “With any luck, Billings will have settled by the fall. You can go back then.”

  You can go back. Not we.

  “That sounds fine, Clinton, but you got to take Jessie to the camp yourself. Get her all settled in.” Jessie looked up at me, confused and maybe a little frightened. To her, I said, “There’s nothing to fret over, Jess. I got some business to tend; that’s all.”

  “Business?” Clinton reined to a stop and I did the same. He squinted at me below his broad-brimmed hat. “What’s this talk?”