The Poacher's Daughter

by Michael Zimmer

  owned by an Englishman toting the unlikely handle of Howard Archibald Ostermann, who laid claim to being the third son of the Fifth Earl of Brackenridge. His Montana friends called him Howie, and generally overlooked his somewhat boorish manners in light of the fine polo ponies he’d brought with him from the East. Polo’s popularity was growing by leaps and bounds among Montana’s aristocratic set, and it was widely held that the fresh bloodlines Ostermann was introducing to the region could only enhance the sport.

  Although Howard Archibald wasn’t your typical Montana homesteader, he wasn’t all that unusual, either. In the parlance of the times, Howie was a remittance man, a victim of the Old World custom of birthright, where only the eldest son inherited any real title, along with the lion’s share of whatever family fortune might exist. Howard was forced to survive on a meager—by blueblood standards at any rate—stipend that barely covered his purchase of a Montana cattle ranch, plus an occasional vacation to one of the world’s more celebrated resorts. He’d wintered in Cannes last year, which gossip had somewhere in France, although Rose had never personally seen a map confirming the location of either Cannes or France.

  There were those who pitied the Howard Ostermanns of the world, who saw them as lost youths—albeit sometimes pushing forty or better—forced to wander the continents in search of the respect their older siblings obtained through simple inheritance. Neither Rose nor Nora fell into that company, however.

  “We’d be within our rights to start shooting some of his cows,” Nora said, prying apart a biscuit.

  Rose looked up uneasily. “Well, that’d only aggravate matters, I’m feared.”

  “This is your land, Rose!”

  “It’s our land,” she corrected. It was a thing they’d agreed to last summer, splitting not only title to the property, but to the cattle and other commodities as well—an equal partnership right down the middle. All that remained was to find an attorney in Billings to make it legal.

  “All right … our land. They still don’t have any right to crowd it with their cattle.”

  The Flying Egg and the arrogance in which its managers ran the spread was a constant source of irritation to Nora. There wasn’t much that could darken her mood quicker than mention of the Egg or Howard Ostermann’s name.

  Rose tried to avoid both topics when she could, in part because she’d learned it was Egg cowboys Shorty had killed up on the Pipestem last spring, but also because she’d come to depend upon Nora’s stalwart good nature to get her through her own rough days following the Musselshell Massacre and Shorty’s death. Although Nora’s anger toward the Flying Egg paralleled her own in many ways, it was a handful to bear when they both fell into the same sour disposition on the same day.

  “I reckon if we started shootin’ cattle, they’d just sic the law on us,” Rose said finally. “We got to hang and rattle a while, see what happens.”

  Nora snorted. “You know what’s going to happen. It’s going to get worse.”

  “Well, I guess I feel like our hands is tied, is all. If the Egg wants this range, it’ll be a tough fight for us. They won’t just bull onto it like in the old days. They’ll bedevil us until we do something stupid, like shoot a bunch of their cows, then haul out some hundred-dollar lawyer with all his loopholes and twisty words. Next thing you know, we’ll be throwed in jail for breathin’ Egg air. They won’t fight fair, Nora, if it comes to a fight. I’ll tell you that for dang’ sure.”

  “But you have the deed.”

  “Yeah, I got a deed, but I ain’t got any money. That’s what’ll hurt us.” She ran her spoon absently around the rim of her bowl. “It’s a complicated thing, and all the more so because of that butchered Flyin’ Egg beef we got hangin’ in back of the barn.”

  “Rose, there isn’t a small outfit in the territory that doesn’t lose calves every year to big ranchers who aren’t particular about where they slap their brand, especially during the spring roundup. Not to mention being crowded off the better ranges, like Ostermann is trying to do to us. Or stealing our grass the way his cows do every day. Butchering a Flying Egg beef for meat once in a while doesn’t complicate anything as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I been makin’ that same argument in my head for a couple years now, but it seems to get muddier the more I study on it.”

  “Sometimes you have to consider justice over legality. Do that and you’ll have a harder time condemning the smaller outfits for what they do take. Especially considering how many of those smaller outfits go belly-up every year, fighting fat wallets and shady lawyers.”

  Rose sighed. “I ain’t ag’in’ you on this, Nora. I just figure we need to sit quiet a spell, not draw too much attention to ourselves. If nothin’ else, it might give us time to think up some better way we can fight ’em.”

  “Don’t kick up a dust?” Nora asked, her sarcasm impossible to miss.

  “More or less, dang it.”

  “And when Flying Egg cows come onto our land?”

  “We chase ’em off, like I did today. I ran ’em back into the Bulls.”

  “Sooner or later Ostermann will send his men down here to push them back. They’ll come armed, too, to make sure they stay. What do we do then?”

  Rose looked up, a peculiar hardness coming into her eyes. “Then we’ll fight. By God, win, lose, or jail, we’ll fight.”

  Chapter

  22

  Although it was an e`e A-Bar-E to Billings by horseback, the trip took considerably longer by wagon. Because the trail that ran up through the gap in the bluffs behind the cabin was too narrow to accommodate a wheeled vehicle, Rose had to drive east almost ten miles before she came to a break in the wall where she could get down to the Yellowstone. There, she picked up the road that followed the river’s north bank, making camp about fifteen miles east of town and getting a leisurely start the next morning to arrive about 9:00 a.m.

  Billings was about as pretty a little burg as any to dot the Northern Pacific railroad. It sat under the same line of bluffs that ran past Rose’s cabin to the east, and was surrounded by good grass and plenty of trees. In its own way the town was a tribute to the same type of shenanigans that had marked the cattlemen’s advance onto the plains, and proof, Rose figured, that avarice existed just about everywhere.

  Billings had been laid out in 1882, a couple of miles above an existing community called Coulson. The citizens of Coulson had naturally assumed the NP would build its depot there, and had marked off plots of land to sell for the expected boom. But the big money they’d set their sights on had gone into the pockets of more enterprising men when the railroad, for purely political reasons, built its depot west of the city. Nowadays there wasn’t much left of Coulson—a couple of faltering businesses, a handful of homes, an overgrown cemetery. It seemed to Rose the town shrank a little more each time she passed through.

  Wheeling into a Billings alley beside the Jepson & Lane Livery, Rose halted beside the complex of small corrals and holding pens out back and stepped to the ground. She was wearing a warm wool skirt and blouse in concession to the morals of the day, but had retained her sack coat, Stetson, and boots, recognizing a long time ago that while propriety might have its place in society, a sharp wind demanded its own code.

  After snapping the tether-weight to the bit ring of the near mule, she stared across the animal’s dusty roach at a squalid shack about fifty feet beyond the farthest corral. She wasn’t looking forward to this, but she knew that delay wouldn’t change the inevitable. Gathering her skirts in one hand and pulling determinedly at the brim of her Stetson with the other, she headed for the shack.

  “He ain’t there.”

  Rose jerked to a stop, her hand dropping instinctively to her hip for the reassuring touch of the Smith & Wesson, but it wasn’t there, either; it was tucked safely under the wagon’s seat next to the Sharps, where she’d placed it that morning before entering town.
/>
  A tall black man in a heavy, plaid coat stood at the livery’s rear door, chewing on a stem of straw. “Danny Ames ain’t there, if that’s who you’re looking for,” he said. “You his daughter?”

  Rose nodded, returning to the wagon. “Is he all right?”

  “I expect he is, though he’d likely disagree. He’s in jail.”

  Resignation settled over her. “I ain’t all that familiar with Billings. Can you direct me there?”

  “Why, surely.” He stepped into the alleyway and nodded toward the center of town. “Couple of blocks down, is all. You’re welcome to leave your rig here, if you’d like.”

  “I’d be obliged,” Rose said. “Do you know my pap?”

  “Sure, I know him. Folks call me Skinny Jim. I been friends with Danny a couple years now.”

  Rose reached under the seat to extract the Smith & Wesson, and Skinny Jim’s eyes grew wide.

  “Oh, my,” he said with a hint of veneration. “Is that the pistol you used to run John Stroudmire out of Miles City?”

  “Skinny,” Rose said, “you’d do well to discount most of what you’ve heard about that incident. It weren’t that impressive.”

  “I heard you run Stroudmire out of town like a dirty dog. I’d call that impressive.”

  “I would, too, if there was a lick of truth to it. Stroudmire didn’t run anywhere, and I was the one who left town.” She buckled the belt around her waist, then settled the holster on her hip, under her coat. She considered taking the Sharps but decided too much armament might be misconstrued. Jails made her nervous, though—jails and forts and other hubs of civil authority. She’d always gotten the impression they were built for the convenience of others, and not the likes of her.

  “What’s my pap doin’ behind bars?” she asked.

  “Poaching.”

  Rose had been so certain Skinny’s reply would include some reference to booze that it took a moment for what he’d said to sink in. “Poachin’. Are you sure?”

  “Uhn-huh. They got laws against shooting buffalo nowadays.”

  “Buffalo!” For a minute she thought surely he’d gone daft. Then, with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, she knew he hadn’t. “That old fool!” she exclaimed angrily, starting back up the alley. “Keep an eye on my wagon for me, will you, Skinny?”

  “Sure, miss,” Skinny Jim promised. “Won’t nobody bother it here.”

  But Rose wasn’t fretting about the wagon as she turned toward the center of town. She was thinking of her pap and all the damned fool things he’d done in his life—and those being just the ones she knew about.

  With her mind thus occupied, Rose barely noticed the handsome stranger in a sharply-tailored herringbone suit and cream-colored derby until he pushed away from the telephone pole he’d been leaning against to intercept her. Doffing his hat to reveal a thatch of yellow hair as fine as corn silk, the young man said: “Good morning to you, ma’am. I’m Deputy Phillip Allen, of the Billings Police Department. Might you by chance be Martha Jane Cannary, otherwise known as Calamity Jane?”

  Rose came to a wary halt. “No, I ain’t.”

  “Then you’d be Rose Edwards, alias Rose of Yellowstone?”

  There it was again, that same sobriquet the cowboys up on the Pipestem had tossed at her last summer, just before they killed Shorty. It disturbed her that the appellation kept popping up. Coupled with the outlandish tales she’d already heard about her encounters with Stroudmire and Caldwell, it was adding up to quite a character, and considerably larger than the actual person. Worse, it was putting her on a pedestal she knew she was doomed to topple from.

  “I don’t like that name,” she said curtly. She didn’t care much for Deputy Allen, either, having long ago developed a distrust of men who used too much bay rum or dressed too nattily.

  “Then I must apologize,” the deputy said. “I didn’t mean to offend such a lovely lady, nor did I mean to presume you were ….”

  “I’m her,” Rose interjected irritably. “I didn’t say I wasn’t Rose Edwards. I said I don’t like that other name … Rose of Yellowstone. It sounds dumb.”

  “Why, I disagree,” he replied, flashing a smile. “It’s a colorful title. You should wear it with pride.”

  “You got a reason for whoain’ me here in the middle of the street, Deputy. Other than makin’ a fuss over my name?”

  “I do, if you are indeed Rose Edwards.”

  “I thought we’d already established that.”

  “Then Missus Edwards, it’s my misfortune to inform you that your father has been incarcerated in the city jail.”

  Rose’s fingers twitched impatiently at the deputy’s overblown style.

  “Please.” He gripped her elbow and attempted to steer her toward a nearby bench. “Won’t you sit down?”

  Planting her feet, she said: “Deputy, this conversation is wearin’ me out, so just for the record … and I’m sorry as heck if I’m wrong … but I ain’t likely to be wooed by someone with enough toilet water in his hair to choke a skunk.” She pulled her arm free. “I ain’t partial to bein’ grabbed uninvited, either. Now, what’s the charge against my pap?”

  Deputy Allen seemed to lose all his puff in a single heartbeat. In a voice several degrees less amiable than before, he said: “Daniel Ames was arrested for poaching bison in Yellowstone National Park, in violation of federal law. I should add that this isn’t his first offense for the crime, in case you’re unaware of his recent history.”

  “Well, he was a buffalo hunter in the old days,” Rose acknowledged. “I reckon it’s in his blood.”

  “Times have changed, Missus Edwards. The days of wanton slaughter are over. Save for a few head kept on preserves, the buffalo are all but extinct.”

  “What do you intend to do with him?”

  “Your father was apprehended attempting to sell the meat, hides, and heads of three bison to a local butcher. He was arraigned on Thursday last and will stand trial this coming Monday, day after tomorrow. It is to my utmost chagrin that he’ll probably be released with little more than a slap on the wrist, since the local courts seem averse to upholding federal jurisprudence. Be that as it may, I’ll not lessen my efforts to uphold the law. In co-operation with the United States Marshal’s Office, of course. You may wish to inform your father of my will in this matter, Missus Edwards. I fear for his safety if he continues this course.”

  “Just for my own curiosity, what’s your definition of a slap on the wrist?”

  “In the last incident, Daniel Ames was found guilty of destruction of federal property, to wit, killing a bison for profit. He was fined fifty dollars and the evidence … the robe, a head suitable for mounting, and meat … was confiscated by federal authorities and turned over to the local community. If I had my way in the matter, he would have served time in the Deer Lodge penitentiary. I don’t consider these trivial infractions.”

  “If he had his way, he’d probably kick your butt up between your shoulder blades and tie your ankles together above your ears, so it’s probably a good thing neither one of you got your own way. Now, how do I go about gettin’ my old man outta jail?”

  Although he remained stiffly at attention, Deputy Allen kept his temper in check, his reply coolly professional—a feat Rose admired in spite of herself. “Your father’s bail has been set at seventy-five dollars,” he informed her. “You can pay it at the jail. Is that your intention?”

  Rose’s intent was suddenly sliding into turmoil. That amount represented almost everything she’d brought with her for supplies, and she knew she could lose it all if her pap jumped bail to avoid his court date, which he was just ornery enough to do. But the thought of letting him languish in a tiny, iron-strapped cell, even for a few days, gnawed at her more. Sighing, she said: “I reckon it is. Let’s go bail him out.”

  • • • • •

&n
bsp; Rose waited in the outer office while a jailer in a smart-looking blue uniform disappeared into the bowels of the two-story brick building to fetch her pap. A feeling of dread hammered at her as she fidgeted on a polished hardwood bench. She figured it was the jail that was making her feel so flustered. The last time she’d rescued her father from a cell had been in Bozeman, where he’d staggered out of the back room lashing the air with his raspy curses. His shirt had been half torn from his shoulders from fighting, and a dried urine stain had darkened the front of his trousers. The thought of seeing him again in such wretched condition made her want to bolt, but she forced herself to remain seated, allowing only an occasional twitch of her leg or jerk of a shoulder.

  Fearing the worst, she was more than a little dubious when the jailer returned with an elderly, well-behaved male in tow. She had to look twice to be sure it was her pap. His hair, which had once been a stringy salt and pepper, had gone almost completely white in the past year and a half, and he’d grown it long again, in the fashion of an old-time plainsman, combing it back over the collar of a red, double-breasted shirt. His mustache was equally canescent—a great, drooping monster that hid his mouth like a dead trout balanced precariously atop his upper lip.

  His face was thin and deeply lined, the cheeks hollowed from missing teeth along either side of his jaw, but he was clean-shaven save for the stubble he’d sprouted behind bars. He wore buckskin trousers and worn but cared-for boots, and carried a broad-brimmed black hat in his left hand; a lightweight buckskin jacket was draped over the same arm, its fringe nearly sweeping the floor. He didn’t sparkle. There were grease and blood stains on his clothes from handling the carcasses of dead bison, and the cuffs on his sleeves were fraying, but he looked no worse for wear than any self-respecting buffalo hunter in town for a spree, and nothing at all like the whiskey-soaked bum she’d feared.