Daniel staggered backward as the sound of the report echoed over the town. Coming up hard against the side of the shack, he leaned there breathing heavily.
“You bastard,” Rose grated, climbing to her feet, the Smith &Wesson trembling in her right hand. “If you ever raise a fist to me again, I swear I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”
“You spoiled little brat. I never thought I’d see the day my own little girl ….”
“Shut up!” she screamed, and, for perhaps the first time in all her years, her pap complied. Stooping, she picked up her hat and clamped it on her head. Her cheek was already starting to swell, promising to close off the vision in her left eye; it burned as if someone had shoved a live coal under the flesh, but it was the heat of the growing bruise that kept her anger alive, that prevented her from caving in to the guilt that rippled just below the surface, demanding that she apologize, beg forgiveness. She backed away until she was sure there was enough distance between them that she was safe, then holstered her revolver. Lifting a finger, she said—“Never again.”—then turned and walked to the wagon.
The wind lashed at her back as she drove out of Billings and the snow thickened as an early darkness fell, but she never looked back.
Chapter
24
It was still snowing when Rose sighted the lit window of the cabin the next day. Although it couldn’t have been much past 4:00 p.m., the sky was layered with dingy clouds that made it seem a lot later.
Nora must have heard the rattle of the wagon, because she stepped out of the cabin in her coat, cap, and mittens as Rose wheeled the small wagon into the yard. They wasted only scant seconds on greetings, then hurried to get the supplies inside before they froze any more than they already had.
It was dark when they finished. Wrapping herself in a blanket, Rose sank to a stool in front of the fireplace. With Nora settled on the edge of the hearth, Rose related her adventures in Billings, leaving out only the details of her final parting with her father. No mention was made by either of them about her swollen eye and discolored cheek.
Nora immediately recognized the gravity of Frank Caldwell’s employment with the Flying Egg. Although she’d never met the man, she’d heard about him through her associates at the Silver Star.
Of the money Rose had spent on her pap’s fine, and the title change on the property she’d been unable to secure because of it, Nora seemed unaffected.
“I’d have done the same,” she assured Rose. “Don’t worry about it.”
Her response brought instant relief to Rose. Had it been others she’d known—her pap or Muggy or Wiley—she wouldn’t have heard the end of it. But Nora understood that sometimes a person needed to roll with the punches, else be destroyed by them.
Nora’s time alone at the A-Bar-E had been uneventful. Riding Albert, she’d driven some Egg cattle north into the Bulls one day, but hadn’t seen another human being at all. She’d spent her days chopping firewood, her evenings puttering inside. This would be her first winter away from the security of a town, where there were others to turn to for help in an emergency, and she admitted she was nervous about it.
Her confession made it easier for Rose to acknowledge—as much to herself as to Nora—that she’d always been kind of skittish about wintering alone out in the middle of nowhere, but she reassured Nora that she’d survived more than one season on her own, and that the two of them together could come through this one.
It was still snowing lightly when they awoke the next day. They spent the morning sorting out the supplies Rose had brought back from Billings, then putting everything away. By the time they finished, the snow had stopped and patches of blue sky were showing through the clouds. It was Rose, peering out the frost-webbed window, who spotted the two horsemen approaching from the east.
“We got company,” she announced tersely, then went to fetch her rifle.
Nora moved to the window. “Who are they?”
“Could be some of Caldwell’s men.”
“Would Caldwell’s men be leading pack horses?”
Rose returned to the window. Although the two men were only a couple of hundred yards away, the brightness of the afternoon sun reflecting off the freshly fallen snow prevented identification. Even so, she had to admit they didn’t look very menacing. Each man led a pair of horses laden with bulky packs, and were bundled in heavy fur coats.
“Hunters,” Nora said with sudden conviction, then went to the corner to retrieve her shotgun. “Just in case,” she added.
“Well, we don’t want to shoot ’em if they don’t mean us no trouble.”
“Men are always trouble,” Nora replied, breaking open the double-barreled Remington to chamber a pair of brass, twelve-gauge shells. Then she looked up with a sly smile, snapping the weapon closed. “Although if they ain’t too dumb, I can sometimes put up with a little trouble.”
Keeping the Sharps handy, Rose went to the door and pulled it open. A wave of cold air swept into the cabin, causing the flames in the fireplace to crackle loudly. Nora came to stand at her side.
“What do you aim to do if they ain’t overly smart?” Rose asked. “I’m only curious because I think I recognize one of ’em now, and it’d be a chore to dig a grave in this weather.”
“We won’t worry about a grave. We’ll just haul ’em into the woods and let the buzzards have them.”
Feigning surprise, Rose said: “My, my, when’d you turn so bloodthirsty?”
“When I recognized the other one,” Nora replied. “That’s Gene Sidwell if I ain’t mistaken, which means that other yahoo is probably Lew Parker, who must’ve given up his bartending job in Junction City.”
“Yeah, that’s Lew,” Rose said, allowing the Sharps’ curved steel butt plate to gently strike the floor. “Dang’ fool. It’d be just like him to give up a good indoors job with the first snowfall.”
• • • • •
They had venison for lunch, compliments of a young muley Gene had kicked up in a draw earlier that morning. The women supplied brown rice, beans, and a couple of cans of Blue Hen tomatoes, with a dried apple pie for dessert.
They idled the afternoon away in front of the fireplace, drinking coffee laced with bourbon and catching up on old news. It soon become apparent to Rose that Nora and Gene were more than casual acquaintances. Lew must have seen it, too, or else he’d known about it all along. It was he who suggested, after a light supper, that Rose accompany him to the barn to check on the stock.
Rose pulled on the heavy horse-hide coat and seal-skin troopers’ cap she’d worn last winter while trapping wolves with Wiley and Shorty. Slipping into a pair of four-buckle India rubber overboots, she followed Lew through the ankle-deep snow to the barn. It was early evening and the sky, dark but clear, with a sliver of moon riding low in the east. Glancing skyward, past the transparent clouds of her breath to the twinkling canopy of stars, Rose was struck by the artistry of the night, the immensity of the blue-black dome. She felt small beneath it, insignificant.
They stopped in front of the barn, and Lew said: “You knew about Gene and Nora, didn’t you, Rose?”
“No, Nora never mentioned him.”
“I guess I ain’t surprised. Gene asked Nora to marry him last winter, but she wouldn’t on account of him being so fiddle-footed. He’s got his heart set on winning her over, though. That’s why we’re heading into the mountains. Gene wants to use the money he makes trapping to start a business. He wants to see if Nora’ll reconsider.”
Rose kept her expression neutral, her eyes locked on the pitch-dark interior of the barn. “I didn’t even know they was acquainted. Are you sure Nora feels the same. Seems like she would’ve mentioned it if she did.”
“Whoever knows what a woman thinks. No offense, Rose, but a man generally gets better odds bucking the tiger at faro than he does courting a female. It’s only a sad phenomenon of nat
ure that some men are attracted to it. Courting, I mean.”
“But not you, huh?”
“I might regret my wandering ways someday, but I ain’t even thirty yet, and that’s young to think about settling down like Gene wants to do.”
“Well, Nora has an obligation here,” Rose said bluntly. “She’s part owner of the A-Bar-E, and can’t go gaddin’ off after some wayward hunter who don’t know his butt from a bull-hide ledger.”
Lew gave her a searching look. “They’re fine people, Rose … Gene and Nora. Most folks would think it was a good thing if they hitched.”
Rose glanced at the cabin, feeling a panic growing in her breast. It rattled her mightily, and made her feel so light-headed she thought she was going to pass out.
“Rose?”
“I’m fine,” she said, forcing a smile. “I just got to feelin’ a mite … discombobulated, thinkin’ about runnin’ this place by myself again.”
Alone, again.
“Hell, you ain’t got nothing to worry about until spring, at the earliest. Gene ain’t even set his first trap yet.”
They went into the barn where it was marginally warmer, although there wasn’t anything to do in there; they’d fed and watered the stock before supper. Rose didn’t even light a lantern, and after a while she and Lew settled down against the rear wall, sharing a thick wool blanket out of one of Lew’s packs. At one point he placed a hand on her knee, then let it slide a few inches up her thigh—a question she responded to by pushing his hand away. She did it without rancor, though, and Lew, always a gentleman, didn’t pursue it. Under different circumstances she might have obliged him, but she was still feeling unbalanced over Shorty’s death, as well as her miscarriage last spring.
They sat in silence, snuggled together against the cold, each pursuing their own thoughts. Finally Rose remembered Fred Baylor, who she’d shot in the leg last summer, and asked Lew if he’d made it to Hannahman’s Saloon in one piece.
“Well, he did for a fact. That hole in his leg had festered up pretty bad, but the town barber has some experience in those matters. He lanced it, then put leeches on the flesh around the wound, and it healed nicely.”
“Did he say anything about how he got shot?”
Lew chuckled. “He told folks he was on his way to Fort Benton when bandits jumped him. Said there was four or five of them, and that he fought ’em off until one of them put a bullet in his leg, then he had to make a run for it.” Lew’s voice turned sober. “Of course that was before we heard about the ambush on the Musselshell. That took the starch out of him real quick. He told me everything, including how it was you who’d shot him to make him give up the Owlhoot. He was pretty shaken. Nobody knew what’d happened. There was some that said you was there, and that you’d been killed, too. Fred and I kept our yappers shut, and when he could ride again, he went home to Wyoming. They say his woman had a little girl not too long ago.”
Rose smiled. “I knowed Della when she was playin’ with dolls. Dang if it ain’t funny to think of her having young ’uns of her own.”
“I’d wager Fred has given up the outlaw life for good. I imagine he and Della are mighty thankful for what you done.”
“He seemed like a nice enough fella,” she admitted. “He just got caught up with the wrong crowd. Not that I’m in any position to be talkin’.”
“They took young Frakes’s body back to his daddy, along with the stolen horses. They say the old man didn’t even come in to attend the funeral. That he sent word to the undertaker to bury the boy at Sheridan, and that he’d stop by later to pay the tab.”
“That old man is a rocky son-of-a-bitch,” Rose allowed. “Them boys of his might’ve turned out different, was he a better pap.”
Lew was silent a moment, then said: “There’s talk they might elect the old man president of the Bighorn Valley Land and Cattle Association, and that he’s promising to clean out the undesirable elements for good. That’s a pretty popular sentiment right now. Was a bunch of boys hung in the Little Missouri country this past summer, then a family burned out and run off over by Powderville.”
“I heard about that,” Rose replied quietly. “Little girl got killed, right?”
“Trampled by a horse, though they say it was an accident.”
“Still dead, though.”
“Yeah, still dead, and not a soul brought to justice for it, either. The word is her daddy wasn’t doing anything illegal. Not that it matters anymore.” He cleared his throat. “I guess you’ve heard about their list?”
“I reckon that’d be the same one Joe Bean mentioned to me last year.”
“Probably. They’re saying John Stroudmire is growing impatient with the way Joe’s handling things for the Montana outfits, and that the local cattlemen are starting to feel the same way. They want the Outlaw Trail shut down from Utah to Canada. I’d say that’ll include the A-Bar-E.”
“They’ve got some right to their opinion of me, but they’re tootin’ on the wrong horn if they think I’m any kind of threat. I learned my lesson on the Musselshell.”
“It’s not just the rustlers they want out, Rose. It’s the competition.”
“Competition?” She laughed. “I got forty cows and a little white-faced bull calf against the thousands of head a fella like Frakes or Ostermann will run. I ain’t no more competition to them than a whistle is to a windstorm.”
“Maybe not outright, but you’ve got that little crick yonder, and you know a reliable source of water is more important than grass to a stockman. Especially after the dry summer we just had.”
“The Yellowstone’s less than an hour’s ride from here, Lew, even on a poky horse. They ain’t got enough cattle in Montana to drink that dry.”
“The Yellowstone is the northern border of the Crow Reservation, and that’s trouble enough right there. Plus there’s the railroad and the toll road, and people going back and forth winter and summer. It’s getting congested along the Yellowstone, and it’ll only get worse. It stands to reason a cowman would want another source of water. Then you’ve got those bluffs out there, a natural barrier between the high plains and the Yellowstone Valley. Using those, it wouldn’t take much fencing to keep an outfit’s cattle up high and out of the way. More important, it’d help keep sodbusters down below. Nesters ain’t a big problem in Montana yet, but they will be, just like in Kansas and Nebraska.”
Sighing, Rose said: “You ain’t told me nothin’ tonight I ain’t already thought of myself, but, dang it, why can’t they leave a body alone?”
“They can, if you ain’t got something they want.”
A silence grew between them after that. Finally she said: “Now that’s scary, hearin’ you say it out loud like that. It makes it seem more real, somehow.”
“It is real,” Lew said gently. “It’s scary, too. That’s why I’m telling you. Times are going to get rough, Rose, and it’s looking like you’re going to be right in the middle of it.”
Chapter
25
Lew and Gene saddled up early the next morning. Coming out to see them off, Nora exhibited a flush to her cheeks that Rose never would have expected. Standing beside the corral, she studied Gene’s face, wondering what it was that Nora saw in him. Certainly it wasn’t his looks. Gene was long and lanky and as graceless as a newborn colt. His hair was close-cropped and red as a brick, and his ears stuck out on either side of his head like tiny skillets. Even his grin was lop-sided.
Yet there was no denying an attraction, so obvious it was almost funny. Even Lew seemed amused. Looking at Rose, he declared: “If we’d have stayed out in the barn another hour last night, they might’ve been engaged by now.”
“I dang’ near froze my hinder off as it was,” Rose reminded him, her breath coming in quick, vaporous clouds. “We’d’ve had to’ve had a funeral and the wedding on the same day.”
“You two just
hush,” Nora said, laughing.
Gene’s face reddened to a point that he almost lost his freckles. Mounting and taking up the lead rope to his pack horses, he said: “I’ll be back in the spring, Nora honey.”
“Don’t get your toes caught in a bear trap,” she advised.
Gene’s blush deepened. “We ain’t got a bear trap, Nora.”
Lew snorted loudly, then swung onto his horse, and the two rode off. They skirted the corral to pick up the Helena trail, which ran a little south of northwest from Rose’s cabin, rather than the more northwesterly route that would have taken them over the Bulls to the Musselshell. Rose and Nora watched for a while, but it was too cold to linger and they soon retreated to the cabin. Rose poured a cup of coffee, then went to stand in front of the fireplace, but Nora confined herself to the area immediately surrounding the stove. “I like him,” she said at last.
“Who?”
Nora gave her a strained look but let it slide. “It wasn’t fair that I didn’t tell you about him earlier.”
“Lew says he asked you to marry him.”
“Last year. I said no, but he’s been tenacious.”
“You gonna do it?”
“I don’t know.” She glanced almost sheepishly at Rose, a new look for someone who, until recently, had seemed iron-skinned and nearly indestructible. “Do you think I should?”
Rose’s answer surprised them both. “Yeah, I reckon I do.” Setting her coffee aside, she went to get her coat and hat. “I’m gonna take a ride up along the north line, see if any Egg cows has drifted down with the storm.”
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