The Poacher's Daughter

by Michael Zimmer

  Nothing like that seemed to exist between the monied interests currently controlling local politics and the smaller, earlier outfits, which included, in Rose’s opinion, the hard-scrabble settler families even now moving into the territory. Regardless of whether or not these people had ever stolen a cow in their lives, they were being conveniently lumped together in catch-all categories such as “stock thieves” or “undesirables”—guilt-by-association titles that granted the larger ranchers a conscience-balming license to rid the ranges of nuisances.

  To Rose, these land-hungry cattlemen were every bit as parasitical as the worst rustler, and far more so than the average hunter or settler. Everywhere she looked, it seemed that the big ranchers were willing to destroy what they couldn’t control, to plunder for their own benefit that which others had built before them, and, in her mind, their methods made them as much a class of thieves as the men and women they sought to displace.

  What she found even sadder was the idea that, in all this empty land, there still wasn’t going to be enough room for everyone.

  Finishing her meal, Rose stood and brushed the crumbs from her trousers. Down below, Albert was grazing hungrily on the new grass. The sight of it brought a rare smile to Rose’s face. They’d been together a long time, her and that rangy roan gelding with the graying whiskers. She’d bought the horse off a Fort Benton dealer back in her pap’s hunting and trading days, and could still recall his outrage when she returned to camp with the roan in tow. Daniel Ames had made it clear he considered the purchase a waste of hard cash, the whimsy of a starry-eyed girl who’d forgotten that her only job was to drive a team of mules and keep caught up on the camp chores. He’d ordered her to return the animal, and threatened her with a switching if she didn’t, but Rose’s affection for the strawberry-colored horse had already taken root, and she’d clung stubbornly to her right of ownership, even when her pap came after her with a quirt. Although he’d eventually given in, he’d grumbled about it for months afterward.

  It felt odd to remember those days now, the way she’d been all gangly and overgrown. Her pap had been a terror even then, but still holding his own against the bottle, and her brothers had helped with the hunting and skinning, although they’d lacked the diplomacy for trading. So much had happened since then—her family scattered to the winds and all of them in trouble, one way or another—that it hardly seemed real any more. Only Albert had remained constant.

  At first Rose didn’t notice the trio of horsemen who appeared out of the timber along the Yellowstone. It was only when Albert lifted his head, nostrils distended to test the wind, that she turned her gaze toward the river. She immediately hunkered down among the rocks, pulling the Sharps across her knees.

  Two of the horsemen rode in advance, stirrup-to-stirrup; the third brought up the rear, leading a pack horse. Judging from their line of travel, Rose figured they must have spotted Albert and were coming to investigate.

  Grimly she scampered down off the ledge and hurried to the roan’s side. Although it was likely the three intruders were only drifters, she didn’t intend to take any chances, especially after last night’s conversation with Stroudmire.

  Keeping a wary eye on the approaching horsemen, Rose tightened the cinch, then slipped the bridle over Albert’s head. Although she considered it encouraging that the horsemen weren’t picking up their pace when they spotted her, she also noticed that they weren’t turning away, either. Keeping the Sharps in her right hand, Rose stepped into the saddle, then reined toward the top of the ridge. She would ride in the opposite direction as if to snub them, and know their intent by their reaction.

  Turning west on the far side of the ridge, she kicked Albert into a canter. She kept looking over her shoulder, expecting to see them pounding after her, but she was almost a mile away before they finally hove into view. Slowing, she watched as they came together on top of the ridge as if to confer, but when they came on, it was obvious they were following her.

  Cursing both Stroudmire and the cattlemen who’d hired him, Rose kept Albert at a jog. She held to the north of the ridge, far enough out to avoid the coulées that fingered down on her left. For the first half hour or so she was content to try and put as much distance as possible between herself and the three horsemen, but she eventually realized that, although they hadn’t yet made any effort to close the gap, they also had no intention of being left behind. Deciding that a confrontation was inevitable, Rose began to study on how best to make it work to her advantage.

  In time she came to a broad, deep coulée—almost a shallow cañon—that headed in a tangle of rocks near the summit. At the top was a V-shaped pass leading to the other side. Instinctively she reined toward it. She slowed to a walk as she entered the coulée, but didn’t find what she was looking for until she was almost three-quarters of the way up—a sharp bend in the trail with a cutbank high enough to hide behind, providing she kept low in the Mother Hubbard’s seat.

  Pulling Albert alongside the crumbling dirt wall, Rose took off her hat to peer cautiously downhill. Her breath thinned when she spotted the horsemen, still a mile away but on a line with the mouth of the coulée. Although she figured they’d pause when they reached it and discovered she was no longer in sight, they didn’t. They entered the coulee, single file, without hesitation, and she wondered irritably if they would’ve been so lax had they been trailing a man.

  She’d been carrying the Sharps unloaded across her saddlebow. Now she lowered the trigger guard to open the breech in much the same manner a Winchester’s lever is opened. Fingering a shell from her cartridge belt, she slid it into the chamber, then slapped the breechblock closed with the flat of her hand. She stayed down, but kept her eyes on Albert’s ears, knowing the roan would warn her when the horsemen were close.

  That moment came all too soon. Albert suddenly lifted his head, ears pricked forward, and Rose hauled back on the reins to cut off any questioning nicker. Seconds later she heard a low cough, then a man’s voice speaking a question, another answering. Her pulse accelerated, but it was too late to back out now. Muttering a nervous—“Lordy.”—she heeled Albert into the bend, in plain view of the men coming up from below. She held the Sharps butted to her thigh and kept her chin thrust forward in what she hoped was an authoritative pose.

  The horsemen were about fifty feet away, their eyes glued to Albert’s prints in the soft soil. The man in the lead looked more stocky than fat. He wore a narrow-brimmed bowler over curly red hair, his unshaven cheeks giving his face an appearance of rust. The man behind him was slim and poorly dressed, not yet out of his teens; with his hunched shoulders and scowling mien, he reminded her all too much of Jimmy Frakes.

  The third man was tall and middle-aged and black, with a full curly beard and shotgun chaps striped with rope burns. It was the black man who spotted Rose first. He pulled up with a low warning to the others, the pack horse bumping up beside him. The red-headed man looked up next, then jerked his horse to a stop. The skinny teenager hauled up last.

  “By hell, girl, you led us a merry chase,” the red-haired man called.

  “Why are you followin’ me?”

  “We just want to talk. We mean you no harm.”

  Rose felt a moment’s apprehension. She’d braced herself for Stroudmire’s men, no matter how inept, but it was plain these three didn’t work for any stockman’s association. They looked more like saddle bums than Regulators, and were poorly armed to boot. Then the red-headed man spoke again, and Rose knew she hadn’t been a victim of chance, after all.

  “You’re that Rose Edwards gal, ain’t ’cha. The one whose husband stole all that gold in Helena. Nearly fifty thousand dollars is what we heard.”

  It was the absurdity of the question that wiped away her fear. She let the Sharps tip deliberately forward until its muzzle was pointed down the coulée. “Do I look rich to you?” she asked.

  “Christ, girl, don’t get careless
with that thing!” the red-headed man cried. “That’s a buffalo gun.”

  “I know what it is. I’m glad you do, too.”

  “We ain’t here to hurt you,” the black cowboy hurried to interject. “We just want to talk.”

  Rose cocked the Sharps, the sound loud in the narrow confines of the coulée. “I reckon that’s a lie. You gonna tell me it ain’t?”

  When no one denied her accusation, she continued: “What I want you boys to do is what I tell you to do, and no arguin’ about it, understand?”

  “Axel,” the skinny kid said in a ragged voice, “we ain’t gonna let this woman hooraw us, are we?”

  “Hush now,” Axel replied. “I’m thinking we made a mistake.”

  “Maybe you did,” the kid snarled, reaching for his pistol, “but I’ll be damned if I’ll ….”

  Rose fired, the Sharps like a clap of thunder going off in her hands. The 450-grain lead bullet smacked the ground in front of the kid’s horse like a small cannonball, kicking up a geyser of dirt that struck the animal squarely on its nose. The horse jumped straight up with a squeal, its hoofs churning the air a good three feet above the ground. Then it returned to earth like a streaking meteor. The kid grunted loudly as his crotch slammed into the saddle. His face turned pale and the pistol tumbled from his fingers.

  “Son-of-a-bitch!” Rose exclaimed, then hurriedly ejected the spent cartridge and chambered a fresh round. Axel and the cowboy were so caught up in watching the kid that Rose had the Sharps reloaded and cocked by the time they turned back to her.

  “God damn,” the kid wailed, sitting folded over his saddle horn, hands pressed to his crotch.

  “Listen up,” Rose said loudly, her eyes wide. “Axel, pull that hogleg and let it drop.”

  After Axel did as instructed, Rose had the black cowboy drop his revolver. Then she ordered all three men to back their horses away from their guns. Riding down, she dismounted and gathered up the revolvers, wedging them under the pannier behind her saddle. Then she clambered back into the Mother Hubbard’s seat, not once taking her rifle off the three men.

  “Now get off your horses,” she commanded.

  “Go to hell,” the kid grated, but Axel and the cowboy complied without hesitation.

  “Loop your reins under their headstalls.” Rose pointed her rifle at the kid. “You, too, friend.”

  “Get down, Bud,” Axel said resignedly. “There ain’t no point in getting shot.”

  “God damn it, she ain’t gonna shoot nobody,” Bud argued. “She ain’t got the craw for it.”

  Axel glanced at Rose. “Oh, I’d say she’s got plenty of craw.”

  “You boys start walkin’,” Rose ordered.

  “You’re taking our horses, too?” the cowboy asked, looking truly frightened for the first time.

  “I ain’t stealin’ ’em. You can catch ’em after I’m gone. I’ll drop your pistols off up top, too. But you boys listen now, don’t you ever follow me like this again. I won’t be so easy to get along with next time.”

  “You ain’t been all that easy to get along with this time,” Axel pointed out.

  “You damn’ yellow dog,” Bud said to Axel, then carefully dismounted, mindful of his injured crotch. He tied his reins above his mount’s neck. “You satisfied now?” he asked Rose, looking like he was just about to burst into tears.

  “I’m gettin’ there,” she said, then made a motion with the Sharps. “Go on now, before I start thinkin’ too much about what you boys tried to do. Start walkin’.”

  Silently Axel and the cowboy turned down the coulée. Bud stared at her a moment longer, then spun and followed his partners. When they were far enough away, Rose circled their horses and drove them toward the top of the ridge. She stayed behind them until she was sure they wouldn’t immediately stop or go back, then pulled up. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that the three would-be thieves had stopped about a hundred yards downhill and were waiting for her to leave.

  Returning the Sharps to its scabbard, Rose continued on toward the pass. She’d entered the coulée aimlessly, not knowing where she wanted to go or what she wanted to do, but as she climbed toward the notch above her, a new goal came to mind. She would go to Sheridan and talk to Jimmy Frakes’s daddy, let him know what had happened to his son. It was something that had been nagging at her ever since they’d left Miles City last fall to trap wolves, and it was time, she decided, to tie up that loose end from her past. Time to close one door firmly, before opening the next.

  Chapter

  16

  Rose crossed the Yellowstone that same afternoon. The rickety ferry that served the tiny community of Rosebud creaked and groaned as it bucked the river’s swollen current, but made the trip without mishap. Albert stood with his legs braced wide, his nose nearly brushing the weathered oak decking, then scampered up the opposite shore like a frightened colt as soon as the ferryman lowered the gangplank. Rose paid two bits for the ride, then walked up the bank to catch her horse.

  A twelve-mule jerk-line rig with merchandise bound for Sheridan was just pulling out as Rose passed through town, but she declined the teamster’s invitation to accompany the wagon southward. It would be a wearisome two-day ride to the isolated little cattle community as it was, and she had no hankering to prolong the undertaking.

  The days were growing warmer as spring turned into summer. On the hills south of town, the roundup was in full swing. Rose saw cowboys nearly every hour, hazing small bunches of cattle toward distant holding grounds. In all her years in eastern Montana, Rose had seldom ventured into this country below the Yellowstone, once the heartland of the stalwart Sioux and a sort of no-man’s land for whites. She was struck now, as she had been on those rare southern excursions in her past, by the contrast between the timbered, well-watered valleys here and the more arid region to the north that some called the Big Lonesome.

  In that vaguely flat-iron-shaped wedge of country bordered roughly by the Musselshell on the west and pinching down between the Yellowstone and Missouri to the east, there were as yet no large ranches, and precious few cattle. That would change in a very short time, Rose knew. In their quest for more land, the cattlemen would invade that last stronghold of the buffalo as they had already invaded the better-grassed country along the Rosebud, Tongue, and Powder Rivers, changing forever the face of the country and the spirit of its people.

  Rose took pains to avoid the cowboys and their working grounds, knowing that even a distant sighting of a woman on horseback would raise speculation. She wasn’t necessarily hiding, but she didn’t want to furnish the Regulators with an itinerary, either.

  She stayed as close to the Rosebud as she could until it began its curve toward the Cheyenne Reservation to the southwest, then crossed the divide to the Tongue River, skirting the reserve on the east. She kept a wary eye on the hills for Indians as well as drovers. The Cheyennes were deemed friendly nowadays, but friendly could be a subjective term in that land.

  The town of Sheridan lay at the confluence of Big and Little Goose Creeks, south of the Tongue, a crude square of humanity cradled in a broad, beautiful valley, the majestic Bighorn Mountains towering above it in the west.

  It was dusk when Rose entered town, feeling tired, hungry, and out of sorts. She’d eaten the last of Callie’s provisions for breakfast the day before, and had subsisted on river water and old jerky from her wolfing days since then. After paying a hostler 50¢ to stable Albert overnight, she walked toward the business district with her saddlebags over her shoulder, the Sharps rocking easily in her left hand, tolerating the snooty stares of the townspeople in silence. It had been her intention to find a place to eat first, then locate lodging for the night, before seeking out old man Frakes in the morning, but the reaction of the town’s citizens convinced her it was time to retire her old, blood-stained wolfing apparel.

  Turning into the first dry goods store she came t
o, she purchased a new suit of clothes—sturdy wool pants, vest, and a light sack coat, all in brown, plus a white shirt with a detachable collar, second-hand boots in good repair, and a flat-crowned dove-gray Stetson with a kettle-curled brim. On impulse, she added a pair of polished spurs with a bronze heart brazed to the outside of each shank and jinglebobs on the rowel pins for extra ching. While she was in the mood, she also bought a red silk bandanna to wear around her neck and a $1 pocket watch with a twelve-inch chain and an elk-tooth fob.

  It grew dark while she suppered in a tiny hotel café. She went upstairs afterward and stretched out on a squeaky, iron-framed bed. Light from a waning moon slanted through the window, illuminating the cubicle’s sparseness. There wasn’t even a carpet to dampen the sound of footfalls.

  Staring at the ceiling, Rose contemplated her loneliness. It hadn’t affected her so deeply on the long ride south, when she’d been able to occupy her mind with details like caring for her horse and worrying about cowboys and wandering Indians, but it was bad tonight. Lying in bed, listening to the heavy snores that bled through the walls on either side, or the murmur of conversation between a husband and wife across the hall, made her realize how much she missed Nora and Callie and the others. She even missed Shorty, and it occurred to her that she felt more alone tonight than she ever had in her cabin above the Yellowstone.

  She fell asleep in her clothes and awoke the next morning feeling grumpy as a bear. At the livery where she’d stabled Albert, she learned that Maxwell Frakes had a spread south of town, although the hostler doubted if he was there.

  “Old man Frakes is probably with the roundup somewhere along Big Goose Creek,” he told her. “Assumin’ he ain’t at the bank countin’ his money.”

  Saddling Albert, Rose rode out to find him.

  She located the holding grounds shortly before noon, guided the last few miles by clouds of dust kicked up by the milling herds. Roundups generally consisted of several area ranches combining their efforts to cover a larger section of land. Reps from the more distant spreads would be on hand to help with the branding and cutting, and to claim any far-wandering cow that might turn up. The spring roundup was sometimes called the calf roundup. It was when the ranchers brought in the spring crop of new calves to brand. Bull calves were also castrated, the severed testicles tossed into a nearby bucket for roasting at the campfire in the evening. Mountain oysters, they were called, and about the only good thing to come out of the cattleman’s invasion of the northern plains, to Rose’s thinking.