The Poacher's Daughter

by Michael Zimmer

  Gradually the crowd abandoned the food tables and drifted toward the songbird’s table, taking their drinks and sandwiches with them. A murmur of conversation rose from among them, but soft and respectful. Gabby finished a rendition on the three wise men, then began a livelier melody about Christmas on the Ohio. With the exception of “Silent Night,” Rose didn’t recognize any of the songs, but that didn’t diminish the magic. She sat, spellbound, her beer forgotten while her mood soared higher on every note.

  But it didn’t last. Thinking about it later, Rose supposed it couldn’t have. Not with a bunch of drunken miners and fur trappers for an audience. After four or five Christmas songs, Gabby moved on to some of the more popular tunes of the day—“Buffalo Gals,” “Blue-Tail Fly,” “Lorena”—but in time the songs became more provocative, the crowd rowdier. In less than an hour, the gloriousness of the evening had deteriorated into a gutter-like crassness. Gabby started moving her hips suggestively, thrusting them toward the men in front, while they responded in kind, clutching at the hem of her dress, running their grubby hands over the white material covering her thighs. She didn’t seem to mind. She hardly seemed to notice. She was perspiring heavily, sweat tracking her face, soaking through the fabric of her dress under her breasts until it became transparent.

  Rose didn’t know what to do. The evening was ruined, but she still had nowhere to go. She stared at an empty spot across the room until a scream from the makeshift stage made her flinch. A miner had pulled Gabby off the table and draped her over his shoulder, and her wig had fallen to the floor, exposing her real hair. It looked dark and stiff as fine wire, so thin the scalp was clearly visible. Gabby struggled on the miner’s shoulder, shrieking and cursing as she reached unsuccessfully for the wig, but a lanky trapper had already picked it up. Holding it aloft, he let go a war whoop, hollering: “Lookee hyar, boys, she’s done been skelped.”

  Laughter erupted from the crowd. Gabby screamed for the trapper to return her hair, but he shook his head. “Hell, no,” he said. “I ain’t never horned me a bald-headed woman afore.”

  “You bastard!” Gabby yelled. “Gimme my hair!”

  Rose stood and drew her pistol. She intended to shoot the trapper if he didn’t relent, but, before she could level the muzzle, he said: “I’ll give you three dollars.”

  Gabby immediately shut up. Twisting her head around to look up at the fur hunter, she echoed: “Three dollars!”

  “Uhn-huh, without the hair.”

  “Damnation, I’d give three dollars without the hair,” said another.

  “I’ll be go-to-hell,” Gabby said, allowing her arms to hang limp. “All right, three dollars without the hair.” She slapped the miner who held her on his buttocks. “Lemme down, honey, I gotta get back to work.”

  More laughter followed Gabby’s declaration, but Rose didn’t hang around to hear it fade. She crossed the street in the dark and saddled Albert, turning a deaf ear to Asa Carson’s inquiries. Fifteen minutes later she was riding toward the cabin on the Pipestem, alone in the frigid darkness.

  Chapter

  11

  They went back to wolfing, but it wasn’t the same after their holiday sojourn to Lost Gulch. At first Rose put it down to her own blue funk, for she felt as cheerless as an old mule, but it soon became apparent that Wiley and Shorty were feeling the same way. They moped through the long evenings like pallbearers, and growled more often than they talked.

  January passed, then February. The bitter temperatures of midwinter moderated somewhat, but still dipped into the sub-zero range at night with an aggravating frequency. Despite the bone-numbing weather, Rose and Shorty made it a point to run their traps every day, just to get out of the cabin. They were bringing in the pelts, too. Better than two hundred so far, with most of March and some of April still to go. Even if they only got a couple of dollars apiece for them, it would be the best winter’s wage Rose had ever earned.

  Wiley became more lackadaisical about his trapping as the seemingly endless cold continued. He put out fewer sets, and often didn’t even bait the ones he had for days on end. There were no hard feelings about it. They all understood wolfing was just a means of passing time until the grass greened up again in the spring. Still, Rose considered it odd behavior for a man of Wiley’s restless nature. It wasn’t until a cold, sky-blue day in early March that she discovered the cause of his discontent.

  She’d returned earlier than usual from checking her traps and, after caring for Albert, went inside to warm up. To her chagrin, the cabin was cold and dark, rank with the odor of unscraped hides. Wiley was sitting in front of the fireplace with a bottle of whiskey in his lap, but he’d allowed the flame to die to a handful of dull red coals, covered by a layer of ash. Even in the murky light, Rose could see his breath puffing above the hearth.

  “You’re gonna freeze to death one of this days, taking your warmth from a bottle,” she said irritably.

  Wiley twisted in his chair, squinting into the light spilling through the door behind her. “What are ye doing back so soon?” he asked hoarsely. “Sun ain’t even reached the mountains yet.”

  “My traps was empty.”

  “Now ain’t that a hell of a note?”

  “It is if you’re tryin’ to pay off a debt.” She shut the door, but kept her coat and cap on, with the flaps of the hat tied under her chin to protect her ears. Kneeling in front of the fireplace, she shoved Wiley’s feet to the side.

  “Git them shovels outta my face,” she said, then picked up a handful of kindling and began breaking it over the coals. “Dang it, Wiley, you ought to’ve kept this goin’.”

  “I like it dark. It makes it easier to think.”

  “Dark is one thing, cold is another.”

  Lurching awkwardly to his feet, he said: “Ye sure are a pretty thing, Rosie.”

  “Aw, hell,” she breathed, sliding her fingers around a sturdy piece of firewood the size of her forearm—solid enough, she hoped, to dent even an Irishman’s head.

  “We’ve had us some good times, ain’t we?” he continued.

  “Some, a long time ago. We’ve growed up since then.”

  “Hell, maybe ye have, but I ain’t. I’m still the horny ol’ hound I always was.”

  “Shut up, Wiley, before you say something stupid.” She pivoted on the balls of her feet, coming up fluidly while keeping the length of firewood tight along her leg where he wouldn’t see it.

  Wiley’s expression reminded her of a small boy who’d had his feelings hurt. But instead of advancing, as she feared, he backed away until he was leaning against the table. “I know what I’m sayin’,” he murmured. “I know what that hostler in Lost Gulch said, too.” His voice turned suddenly harsh. “What happened to the thirty thousand in dust, Rosie?”

  “Thirty thousand. Is that what you think … that I’ve got a bunch of gold stashed away somewhere?” She shook her head. “So that’s why that old coot, Asa Carson, was looking at me so queersome?”

  “Carson says some of the boys from Helena made a ride past ye place last fall, after ye threw in with me ’n’ Shorty. Said they found ’emselves an empty tin box that’d been buried in a corner of ye cabin. ’Tis it true?”

  The box. She wanted to laugh at the absurdness of men and their obsession with riches that glittered, but then it occurred to her that maybe it wasn’t all that funny. Not if half the territory thought she was toting around a sack full of gold.

  “Is it?” Wiley asked.

  “There was a box, but there weren’t no gold. Just some change I’d saved up and some papers. Six bucks and some, is all.”

  “Six dollars, and Muggy known to have reached your place with the dust still on him?”

  “I don’t believe that. I didn’t see no gold.” Then she tossed the piece of firewood aside, her lips growing thin at the image of Muggy secreting the gold away somewhere, not even husband enough to
let her know he was riding flush for a change. That bastard, she thought. She felt like bawling, but knew the tears wouldn’t come. They never came any more.

  She sensed Wiley slipping around behind her, saw his arms encircle her shoulders, felt his hands paw roughly at her breasts through the thickness of her horse-hide coat. “Don’t,” she said.

  “We’re pards, ain’t we?” he asked, his moist breath worming through her hair to tickle the flesh along her neck.

  “No!” She shrugged her shoulders, forcing his arms away. “Not like that we ain’t. Not any more.”

  He backed off with a curse, scooping his bottle off the table and taking a long pull. Lowering it, he drew a ragged breath. “So that’s the way ’tis gonna be, is it?”

  “Leave me alone, Wiley. There weren’t no gold, and I doubt if there ever was. I imagine they killed Muggy because of his cheatin’.”

  Wiley nodded resignedly. “Ye’re probably right, darlin’. I came near to shootin’ him meself a time or two.” He corked the bottle and set it on the table, his movements wooden. “I hate this place,” he said softly. “’Tis little better’n a cell, and not near as warm.” He turned and walked outside, leaving the door standing open behind him, the cold air rushing in to snuff the tiny blaze struggling in the fireplace.

  • • • • •

  Wiley was gone the next day when Rose and Shorty returned from running their traps. Rose was the first to notice the empty corral, but she wasn’t alarmed. Neither was Shorty, when he cynically observed that spring must be near for Wiley to leave off his hibernation.

  “He’s worse than usual this year,” Shorty admitted, swinging down from his saddle. “Probably because we’re so far from any town where he can blow off steam once in a while.”

  “He has me spooked, for a fact,” Rose confessed.

  “It’s mostly the short days, I figure. Wiley likes his sunshine. He’d probably be rich if he lived in some southern climate.”

  But when they entered the cabin a few minutes later, it quickly became apparent Wiley wasn’t out setting traps.

  “His outfit’s gone,” Rose said, startled.

  “So are a bunch of the skins.” Shorty’s face clouded over. Stalking to the middle of the room, he batted one of the remaining bundles with a mittened fist. “That coyote ran off with nearly half our catch.”

  “But where’d he go?” Rose had never known a man to just up and leave without even a good-bye. Not even Muggy had been that inconsiderate.

  “Who gives a damn?” Shorty replied. Spying a bottle of whiskey on the table, one of the dozen Wiley had brought back with him from Lost Gulch, he added grimly: “At least he left us a note.”

  “A note?”

  Shorty nodded toward the bottle as he passed it on his way to the fireplace. “His way of saying adiós. He probably laughed his ass off when he thought of it.”

  “You’re mad,” Rose said, trying to sort it out.

  “I ain’t mad. Why should I be mad?” He leaned forward to gently blow the ash off that morning’s embers, then carefully covered them with a teepee of twigs. Soon he’d coaxed a tongue of flame from the coals that curled tentatively through the brittle limbs. He added larger pieces until he was satisfied the fire had caught. Only then did he glance at Rose. “There’s no point standing there wondering about it. He’s gone. He won’t be back.”

  “Is that it, then? The partnership’s finished?”

  “Would it matter?”

  She thought it over, then shook her head. “I guess not.”

  A grudging smile crossed Shorty’s face. “Good, although I doubt if it’s over. I plan to keep trapping, then in the spring I’ll mosey on down to Miles City. Likely that’s where we’ll find Wiley, waiting for us with some pony herd scouted out and ripe for the plucking.”

  “He’s done this before?”

  “A time or two.” He rocked back on his heels, gazing at her thoughtfully. “What happened between you two yesterday? Things seemed different when I got in last night. Did Wiley try something?”

  “Naw, it weren’t that.” She told him about the tin box that had been found inside the wreckage of her cabin, and what Asa Carson had told Wiley about it in Lost Gulch.

  Shorty whistled when she finished. “That ain’t good, Rose.”

  “It ain’t so bad. It’d take a pretty ignorant lump of coal to think I’ve got thirty thousand dollars in gold, then want to spend the winter trappin’ wolves.”

  “Well, there’s no shortage of coal in Montana. You ought to know that. You’re going to have to get the word out that you don’t have it, then watch your back until the rumor dies out. It will, eventually. Sooner or later, folks’ll see you ain’t living the life of a nob, but you’ll have to be almighty careful until they do.”

  “You’re a worrywart, Shorty, but all right. I’ll keep my eyes peeled.”

  Rose put the threat of assassins and gold thieves out of her mind. She considered Wiley’s defection a far more critical issue. Although she didn’t know how, she was sure her relationship with Shorty would change without a third party in the cabin. It was inevitable, and even a little scary, for she’d grown comfortable in her position on the Pipestem. Yet she couldn’t deny a sense of fluttery expectation, either, recognizing an old familiar itch, and a desire to scratch it that she hadn’t felt in a long time.

  After supper, they sat in front of the fire without speaking. To Rose the silence seemed deafening, the shadows in the corners of the cabin more intimidating than ever before. It was as if in all the world there was only that little ball of warmth and light directly in front of them. All else seemed cold and hostile.

  In time, Shorty chunked up the fire and announced he was going to bed. The cabin had four bunks, two on the north wall, where he and Wiley slept, and two on the south, where Rose made her bed. It had been Shorty’s idea to hang the bundles of pelts in a line between the two sections to give Rose a sense of privacy, although in doing so they’d also shut her off from the rest of the cabin. From the rolled-up wolf hide she used as a pillow she couldn’t see anything after bedtime except the play of light along the rafters. She couldn’t even see the windows. Tonight, without the murmur of conversation between Shorty and Wiley as they settled in, the sense of isolation began to overwhelm her. She endured it for as long as she could, then threw her blankets back and padded across the room in her socks and long-handles. She paused at the line of dangling hides to peek through.

  “Shorty?”

  “Yeah?” He was lying in bed with one arm propped under his head, smoking a last cigarette.

  “I … I can’t sleep.”

  “You want to talk?”

  She took a deep, convulsive breath, then went over to stand above him.

  “What is it?” he asked, but she could tell from his voice that he knew, that he was just making up his own mind about it. “Are you sure?” he asked finally.

  “I reckon if I don’t, I’m gonna go crazy.”

  He ground his smoke out against the wall, then scooted over, lifting a corner of his blankets. Rose slid in beside him, still in her long-handles, and Shorty dropped the blankets over her. Brushing a strand of hair away from her face, he said: “You sure are pretty, Rose. I always did think that of you.”

  “Shoot, we been alone so long, ol’ Albert was probably startin’ to look pretty to you.”

  Shorty smiled but didn’t laugh. He continued to stroke the side of her face, his fingers gentle as a breath of air. The sensations that poured through her body made her shudder.

  “Dang,” she said, quivery. “That feels good.”

  “I want it to feel good.”

  “Shorty, if I’d’ve known this was gonna happen, I swear I would’ve washed up. I’m ….”

  “Shhh,” he whispered, pulling her close at last.

  Chapter

  12
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  They didn’t have a thermometer, but Rose figured it must have been at least fifty degrees on the day they left the Pipestem. The sun was shining and the sky was deep and cloudless. Water dripped from the eaves with an upbeat, musical patter, and on the south-facing slopes, the snow was nearly gone, the short buffalo grass showing through like patches of smoked buckskin.

  On the far side of the Pipestem, Shorty was driving in the extra horses. He would cross them at a shallow ford about a hundred yards above the cabin, where the ice was already breaking up. It was the creek that finally convinced them it was time to leave. As it started to rise, it quickly became obvious that whoever had chosen this site for a home hadn’t done so with an eye toward spring floods. Already the ice in front of the cabin was turning rotten, buckling and popping from the pressure upstream. In another day or two the melt-off from the higher elevations would swell the creek above its banks. When that happened, it would be only a matter of hours before water started lapping at the cabin’s walls.

  Shorty yipped as he splashed his horse through the icy waters of the ford, bringing a smile to Rose’s face. They’d gotten along all right since she went to his bunk that first time in March. For her, the past few weeks had been some of the best in her life. With Shorty, she’d been able to open up in ways she never would have attempted with Muggy or Wiley or her pap, confiding secrets that had been locked away inside her since childhood.

  She told him what she could remember of her mother and their life along Grasshopper Creek in Bannock, and of the emptiness that had pervaded the family following her death; she told him of her father’s fall from grace, and the craving for whiskey that plagued him still; she described her brothers and their reckless ways, and the ill fortune that had smote all three of them. She even told him about the family Bible that her pap still kept, and of the names and dates of family, written in front and going all the way back to 1780 and the Cumberland River country of Tennessee.