It didn’t surprise Rose that Wiley had heard of her encounter with Stroudmire, even though neither he nor Shorty had mentioned it. Both Lew Parker and Levi Wilson had questioned her about it at length, however, and it was Lew who’d filled her in about Stroudmire.
It turned out the gunman was fairly well-known in the mining camps of Idaho, where he was considered a deadly pistol shot and no man to trifle with. Stroudmire favored a pair of .45-caliber Merwin Hulbert revolvers, which they’d both agreed spoke highly of his taste in firearms. Rose considered the Merwin Hulbert to be one of the finest pistols on the frontier, easily the equal of Smith & Wesson or Colonel Colt’s popular six-shooters.
It was Lew’s contention that the ranchers had upped the ante considerably by hiring Stroudmire and Theo Haus—Haus having created something of a shooter’s reputation down in the Pecos River country of New Mexico a few years earlier. Although the consensus was that Joe Bean was still officially in command of the loosely confederated body of Regulators—and no one outside of a select few seemed to know exactly how large a body of men that was—Lew reckoned it was only a matter of time before he was dethroned.
“Joe’s bit off more than he can chew,” Lew had confided to Rose on her second day in Junction City. “Or maybe someone fed him more than he can chew. Joe ain’t fool enough to hire men like Stroudmire and Haus without someone forcing them on him.”
Rose was inclined to agree, in part because she trusted Lew’s opinion.
Rose had been impressed with Lew the first time she allowed him and his on-again, off-again hunting partner, Gene Sidwell, to bunk in her small barn one rainy night several years ago. Although Lew wasn’t a horse thief, and was, as far as Rose knew, as honest a man as any the territory had ever produced, he understood the idiosyncrasies that made the Yellowstone Basin tick—including its shadier aspects. That he’d ridden the Outlaw Trail a time or two meant little to Rose, for it was common knowledge that not everyone who rode the Trail was a bona-fide desperado.
“You got a problem riding with a woman?” Shorty asked, bringing Rose back to Wyoming.
“I got a problem riding with her,” Jeremy Frakes replied. He was glaring hard at Shorty, an expression Rose remembered well from his brother Jimmy.
“Rose rides with us,” Wiley said flatly. “I don’t give a damn what you do. I’ve ridden me butt into the ground settin’ up this deal. The money’s waitin’ for us in Canada. All we have to do is run the horses up there and collect it.”
“We don’t need any of you,” Jeremy flared. “Me and Fred’ll do it alone, and Miser’ll help.”
Miser. The name jogged Rose’s memory, but it took Wiley’s reply to put a face to it.
“Miser ain’t givin’ up no cushy job slingin’ beans to go run the Owlhoot with a pup like you,” Wiley said.
That was when Rose remembered old man Frakes’s cook, and his words as she’d started to rein away from the chuck wagon. I’m Miser, he’d said, as if the name might mean something to her. Suddenly it did. As one of the roundup cooks, Miser was in a position to know the latest plans for the spring gather—what valleys would soon be populated with working cowboys, what ranges they wouldn’t get to until later. He would know about such things as the winter cavvy, too—those horses that had recently been turned loose for the summer while the cowboys used their summer string to work the calf roundup. And of course Jeremy would know Miser, and how to approach him without the old man catching on. It was even possible Miser had known who she was; it would explain his boldness in introducing himself that day.
But Rose knew there was more here than met the eye. It took deep feelings to turn a man against his own kin, to dredge up the kind of anger young Jeremy was demonstrating. Recalling the elder Frakes and his new hat, string tie, and sturdy range clothes—all marks of a successful rancher—Rose was struck by the sharp contrast with the scene before her now, his own children and grandchildren living such a hard-scrabble life.
It was the stocky man on the gray who salvaged the deal. Dismounting, he stepped between Wiley and Jeremy. Turning to his brother-in-law, he said: “I vote we go with Wiley’s plan, Jer. He’s done this before and we haven’t. I’d like to have his help.”
“He don’t know everything,” Jeremy replied, giving Wiley a withering look.
“No, but he knows more about it than I do. All I want is to get those horses to Canada and get back home without being seen. With a little luck, nobody’ll even know we’re gone.”
“Son-of-a-bitch,” Jeremy grated. “All right, but I don’t like it.”
Fred smiled. “Things’ll be fine,” he promised. “You’ll see.”
Wiley and Shorty exchanged wary glances. Then Wiley walked over to Rose. “Ye and Davey take that pack horse over to the house and unload what we won’t need. We’ll leave most of it here with Della.”
“I’d been wonderin’ what all them extry supplies was for,” Rose said. “You ain’t goin’ soft-hearted on us, are you, Wiley?”
He shook his head. “I just don’t like seein’ kids go hungry, but I’ll tell ye, Rosie, I’m about ready to skin that Frakes boy out and peg his hide to a wall.”
“Aw, Jeremy’s just young and ornery,” Rose replied as she turned away. “Kind of like you’d be, if you was still young.”
“It ain’t funny, dammit. I’ve been puttin’ up with that boy’s temper all spring, and I’ve about reached the end of me rope.”
Rose’s expression abruptly changed. “I expect you’d best hang onto it a while yet,” she said soberly. “It’s a long way to Canada, and there’s liable to be a lot of Regulators betwix and between.”
Chapter
18
They found the horses where Jeremy said they would. Or rather where the cook, Miser, had told Jeremy they would be—about halfway between old man Frakes’s spread and the Three-Bar-Clover headquarters to the east. It was the winter cavvy they were lifting, as Rose had suspected. The herd was grazing in a sheltered valley, and in another few weeks would have been too scattered to locate, but, having just been turned loose for the summer, the horses were easy to find, and easier still to gather.
They didn’t take the whole herd, but by the time they abandoned the valley at dusk, they’d collected forty-two of old man Frakes’s best saddle stock, already toughened to the long trail ahead by the winter of hard work just behind them.
The horse thieves crossed the Tongue River before midnight and were well into the Crow Reservation by dawn. They shadowed the old Bozeman Trail as much as possible, staying out of sight among the piney ridges to the west. The rough country slowed their travel, but Rose appreciated the proximity of the Bighorns. The rugged mountain range was like a haven towering over her left shoulder, a place of easy retreat, should the need arise.
Shorty rode point and gave the orders. Rose hadn’t seen Wiley all day, but she knew he was out there somewhere, ranging either ahead or behind among the rolling hills. It was a comfort to know it was Wiley doing the scouting. As much as he often infuriated her, she knew there was no one better at this kind of work.
They broke for a meal and a couple of hours’ rest late that afternoon, but were on the move again before the light drained out of the sky. A chill crept over the land as twilight deepened, and Rose slipped into the sack coat she’d purchased in Sheridan. Dawn found them within a mile of the Yellowstone, where Shorty called another halt, then sent Dirty-Nosed Dave ahead to locate Wiley. Those who remained behind gathered below the herd to share a cold breakfast of jerky and raw potatoes, peeled and eaten like apples. Jeremy opted for sleep, curling up nearby with his coat pulled over him like a blanket. Within minutes he was lost to the world.
Listening to the younger man’s snores, Shorty shook his head in disgust. “Just like his brother. Jimmy was a hog for shut-eye, too.”
“Jimmy wasn’t as testy as this one, though,” Rose said around a mouthful of spon
gy potato. Although she felt a certain sympathy for the Frakes boys, knowing their daddy as she did, she wasn’t going to let that blind her to their shortcomings.
Dirty-Nosed Dave returned within the hour with the news that Wiley was waiting for them a couple of miles above Pompy’s Tower, the stubby butte named after the mixed-blood son of Sacajawea, who had accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific eighty-odd years before. Wiley’s plan, according to Dave, was to use the trail past Rose’s cabin to cross the Bull Mountains, then follow the Musselshell to the Missouri.
“Wiley figures we’ll make the foot of the Bulls by sundown, if nothing goes wrong,” Dirty-Nosed Dave added.
It was midmorning when they climbed through the notch in the bluffs above the Yellowstone and topped out on the rim. As he’d done so many times in the past, Wiley guided the herd off the trail and let it spread out to graze.
Purposefully Rose reined her mount—she was riding a line-back dun today, while Albert ran with the rest of the horses—away from the cavvy and pulled up, facing the cabin. The place looked pretty much as she remembered it. The cabin walls weren’t quite as black as they’d been on the day she left, and a top pole on the corral had somehow been knocked down and busted, but the wagon was still in the barn, the harness still hanging from pegs in the wall beside it. Across the creek, too far away to read the brand, were a couple of hundred head of cattle, ranging across the rich buffalo grass. Then her gaze touched the old, lightning-struck pine at the lip of the bluff, and for a moment a blackness fluttered at the edges of her vision, as if she were going to faint. Then Wiley and Shorty reined over beside her, having also spotted the disinterred grave.
“God dammit …,” Wiley started, but Rose cut him off.
“No!” she said, her voice sharp but fragile. Gripping the saddle horn with her free hand, she gigged the dun forward. She didn’t want to deal with Wiley’s outrage or Shorty’s sympathy today. She just wanted to do whatever needed to be done and put it behind her.
But the boys wouldn’t be dismissed that easily. Spurring alongside, Shorty said—“Don’t, Rose”—and reached for her reins.
Batting his arm away, she said: “I already buried him once. I reckon I can do it again.”
“You shouldn’t have had to do it the first time. It ain’t right that a woman has to lay her own man to rest that way.”
“I ain’t the first wife to dig a grave for her husband. I doubt I’ll be the last.”
Having no reply to that, Shorty meekly gave up his objections, although he remained quietly at her side as they rode toward the grave. Wiley also stayed close, following a couple of horse lengths behind.
From a distance, Rose had assumed the site had been dug up by wolves or badgers. It wasn’t until she got close that she noticed the shovel and grubbing hoe lying next to the despoiled grave. She dismounted stiffly, her legs like oak as she approached the torn earth. Behind her, Wiley was swearing softly but viciously.
“Who the hell would’ve done this?” he finished.
Staring at the rusting implements she’d once used in her gardening, Rose suddenly knew the answer. “They was lookin’ for the gold.”
“What gold?” Shorty asked.
“The gold they thought Muggy stole off them Helena miners.”
Her comment created a moment of silence. Then Shorty said: “I’ll be damned.”
Rose’s steps dragged as she approached the grave. It wasn’t until she was nearly at its edge that her breathing returned to normal. “Lazy misfits,” she said with relief. “Didn’t even have enough gumption to go all the way down.”
“Likely they got spooked,” Wiley said. “It chills my heart just thinkin’ about it.”
Rose stared into the shallow pit until her vision started to blur, then looked away. Whoever had done this had given up after digging down only a couple of feet, so perhaps Wiley was right. Maybe they had turned yellow-livered at the thought of disturbing a corpse, when all they’d wanted was its gold.
“Get out of here, Rose,” Shorty said gently, picking up the shovel. “Me ’n’ Wiley’ll fill this in.”
“You boys don’t have to do that. Shoot, there ain’t much to throw back, anyway. I could dang’ near scrape it in with the side of my boot.”
“No, there’s more than that,” Wiley said, reaching for the grubbing hoe as if grateful for the diversion. “Go on, we’ll take care of this.”
Rose didn’t argue. Turning, she walked down to the cabin. Across the creek, one of the cows lowed plaintively. It galled her that folks could be so careless in letting their stock wander. Although she was tempted to catch her horse and chase them off, she knew it would be a waste of time. It would take most of a day just to round up the cattle she could see from here, and Wiley would never stand for that kind of delay. Besides, left unattended, the cattle would soon drift back. It was the water that attracted them. From a cow’s point of view, Rose supposed there wasn’t much logic in making the difficult descent down through the bluffs to the Yellowstone when there was such a clear-running creek so close.
Approaching the cabin, Rose saw that the inept grave robbers had been busy here, too. They’d deepened the hole she’d dug last fall to retrieve her cash and legal documents, then burrowed several inches into the other corners. In the barn, the dirt floor was pockmarked in half a dozen places. Judging from the amount of debris in the bottoms of the holes, she estimated they’d been here sometime last autumn, before the ground froze.
The sound of approaching hoofs drew Rose from the barn. She found Shorty sitting his cayuse nearby, the reins to the line-back dun in one hand, the shovel and hoe balanced across his saddle like a pair of skinny rifles.
“We can’t tarry, Rose,” he said apologetically, “but if you want to stay a while, then catch up, nobody’ll mind.”
“No, I’ve seen all I need to see.” She put the tools away, then came back to accept the dun’s reins. Out on the prairie, Wiley was starting the cavvy northward. Hooking a toe in the stirrup, Rose swung into the Mother Hubbard’s cradle.
Shorty’s mustache twitched above a smile. “You’ll come back one day,” he said. “You’ve got the makin’s of a fine spread here.”
“I ain’t sure I want to come back,” she confessed.
“Aw, you don’t mean that. You’re just upset about Muggy’s grave.”
It not being a point she wanted to belabor, Rose let the subject drop. Staring at the grazing cattle, she said: “Who’s got hisself an outfit nearby, Shorty. I can’t think of a soul who’d own that many cows.”
“I can’t either, unless it’s one of the Musselshell outfits pushing south. You knew it was only a matter of time before someone started grazing the Bull Mountains.”
“Maybe,” she said thoughtfully, but the question continued to nag at her as she reined away.
They made good time after that, and still had a couple of hours of daylight left when they reached the trail that would take them to the fenced-off box cañon where they’d cooked supper last fall, on Rose’s first day riding the Owlhoot. Wiley was all for pushing on while there was still some sunshine left, but the others talked him out of it. It was Dirty-Nosed Dave who made the most persuasive argument, pointing out that they’d covered a lot of territory already, and left a poor trail for anyone to follow in the process.
“We’re doin’ good, Wiley,” Dave said earnestly, “but these bronc’s are pure frazzled. We need to hole up, rest ’em a spell, and it ain’t likely we’re gonna find a better place than this until we reach the Mo’.”
“Davey’s right,” Shorty said. “We’ve pushed awfully hard so far. It’s time we started saving something for the long haul.”
“All right,” Wiley grumbled, “but we hit the trail again at first light. By God, this ain’t no picnic we’re on.” He rode off along the path that led to the box cañon a couple of hundred yards aw
ay, his spine rigid with nervous energy.
Rose and Shorty took the point positions, guiding the weary herd off the main trail toward the cañon. Rose could just make out the top of its rim from here, etched as sharply as a serrated blade against the blue Montana sky. It took only a few minutes to reach the little flat below the jack-leg fence where she’d gathered wood last year; the coulée where they’d eaten supper away off to the east, out of sight.
Rose was still among the junipers, though, when she spied Wiley sitting hunched in his saddle just ahead, as if frozen in place. Muttering—“Here’s trouble”—she put her hand on the Smith & Wesson. Coming around the last bushy tree, she drew up suddenly, unable to comprehend what she saw even as she stared at it straight on.
“Sweet Jesus,” Shorty rasped, jerking his horse to a stop.
The cavvy, without guidance and still being driven from the rear by Dave, Fred, and Jeremy, started to fan out across the flat, unaware of the dead men that hung before them like grotesque piñatas.
Chapter
19
It took a few minutes for Rose to make sense of it all, to understand how someone had rigged a gallows from poles dragged off the fence, binding them with pigging string to create a pair of tripods tied off about ten feet above the ground, then running a crossbar between them.
It seemed like a lackadaisical affair to her, something that would probably blow down in the first strong wind, but it had served its purpose, and not just as a means of execution. Here was notice served to those who would use this trail for nefarious purposes, as plain as any road sign. The Stranglers were back, and they hadn’t forgotten how to tie a noose.
The man on the right and the one in the center had died slowly, their faces still showing signs of asphyxiation, but the neck of the man on the left had snapped cleanly and his features were barely disfigured, save for the neck which, with the spinal column severed and the weight of the body pulling at it, had stretched out like a giraffe’s, until it was at least two feet long and thin as a man’s wrist. His head was cocked at an almost one hundred and twenty-degree angle from the rest of his body and his feet, bent at the ankles, rested loosely on the ground.
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