The Poacher's Daughter

by Michael Zimmer

  Rose scanned the country to the east, but the cattle were nowhere in sight. That wasn’t particularly alarming. The A-Bar-E might be small compared to outfits that encompassed thousands of acres, but it was still large enough to hide a herd of forty shorthorns.

  What did worry her was Howard Ostermann. She and Nora had rehashed their conversation with the Flying Egg owner daily since the encounter, and were in agreement that he’d follow through. Ostermann had been challenged by someone he considered inferior to himself, and that was an affront a man of his station couldn’t ignore. Especially if it stood in the way of something he coveted.

  I need your land. I want it, he had told them. The simplicity of his reply, the logic behind it, sent a chill down Rose’s spine even today. That men like Ostermann expected preferential treatment, and were usually granted it, had been made abundantly clear to her during the Stranglers’ raid three summers before, but she hadn’t grown up in the company of such men. It had taken Howard Ostermann to personalize it, to give elitism countenance and voice and quirky mannerisms. No longer were “they” a nameless entity somewhere “out there.” She understood now that they were here, and had been all along, living on fine country estates or in secluded enclaves, growing fat and opulent on the sweat of the others.

  To men like Howard Ostermann, raised in sheltered environments, skating through adulthood secure in the knowledge that, no matter how difficult times became, someone—father, uncle, brother—would always be there to bail them out, life could be that simple.

  I want it, Howard Ostermann had declared. And so he would come for it, Rose knew.

  Entering the cabin with thoughts of Ostermann still on her mind, Rose didn’t immediately pick up on the changes that had been wrought since she had gone outside. It was only as she was slipping free of her outer garments that a splash of color on the mantle caught her eye.

  “Nora?” she said uncertainly.

  “Just don’t make a big deal out of it,” Nora replied.

  Turning, Rose took in the cabin’s interior. A new red candle sat in the middle of the table, its base wreathed with tiny juniper limbs, their dusty blue berries still attached. Evergreen boughs were draped over the mantle, held in place with red ribbons, and on Rose’s bunk lay a package wrapped in brown butcher’s paper. Nora stood at the spice cabinet beside the stove, her hands powdered with flour, the smell of yeast and cinnamon and percolating coffee suddenly strong in the warm air.

  “What’s goin’ on?” Rose asked.

  “It’s Christmas, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah, but ….” She nodded toward the package on her bunk. “What’s that?” She shrugged out of her coat and hung it on a peg beside her cap.

  “Something to celebrate all the hard work we’ve done around here. I figured we could use some holiday cheer.” She made a face. “Just open it. It ain’t that much, anyway. I bought it last summer in Miles City because I thought you could use it, but I swear if you make a fuss out of it, I’ll throw it in the fire.”

  “Naw, I ain’t gonna make a fuss about it. It just caught me by surprise. My kin weren’t never much for exchangin’ gifts, but since I figured you might ….” She went to the roughed-together chest at the foot of her bunk and lifted the lid. Nora followed, peering over her shoulder. Rose dug down under her extra clothes until she found what she was looking for, then brought it into the light. “I wish I’d thought to wrap it,” she said.

  “Why, that’s pretty,” Nora exclaimed. She took the cup and saucer in her hands, turning it slowly. They were tiny things compared to the dented tin mugs they normally used, the cup shaped like an inverted bell with a delicately sculptured handle; both pieces were made of bone china, the color of fresh-churned cream save for a row of little blue flowers on a green border around their rims.

  “It’s a tea cup,” Rose explained. “I considered the whole set, but it was pricey.”

  “I’m not sure I’d want a whole set,” Nora said, taking the gift to the table and setting it next to the red candle. “Having only one makes it more personal.” She gave Rose a quick look. “Not that you can’t use it once in a while.”

  “Naw, I been frettin’ over that thing ever since I brought it back from Billings. I wasn’t sure it’d make it to Christmas without gettin’ broke. Now that I’m shet of it, I got no need to handle it any more, although, if you wanted to, you could set it on the mantle when you ain’t usin’ it. Them flowers remind me of summer.”

  “I will,” Nora promised. “But now it’s your turn.” She retrieved the package from Rose’s bunk and handed it to her. “Open it.”

  Carefully Rose slid the string from the package, then unfolded the paper. Her eyes widened as the gift was revealed—a dark green riding skirt with a double row of brass buttons down the front. Nora smiled hesitantly at the look of pleasure that crossed Rose’s face. Holding the skirt to her waist, Rose said: “It looks like a perfect fit.”

  “Doris kept your measurements after you bought those dresses from her last spring.”

  “Is that where you got this?”

  Nora nodded.

  “Shoot, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything, just take it.”

  “All right, but … thanks.” Rose’s thoughts flashed back to Christmas a year ago, and the bald whore named Gabby. That day seemed years gone now.

  “Well, thank you for the cup and saucer, too,” Nora said. “And Merry Christmas. Come on, let’s have breakfast.”

  • • • • •

  The brindled cow with the crooked horn was the last to drop its calf that winter, a bull born in early January. It brought the total number of newborns on the A-Bar-E to seven, not counting the little heifer they’d lost in December’s blizzard. Although calves were the purpose of the cows, Rose was glad to see an end to the birthing. She considered it poor luck to have so many little ones born in the middle of winter, rather than in the spring when their chances of survival would have been better. With the worst of the season yet to come, she figured they were bound to lose a few more calves before warmer weather.

  Rose discovered the spindly legged calf late one afternoon on her way back from the hills south of the Bull Mountains. She knew something was up as soon as she spotted the wolves. There were six of them, led by a cream-colored doyen with a dark-tipped tail. The other five members of the pack were various shades of gray, all noticeably smaller than the alpha. Rose slid the Sharps from its scabbard while still several hundred yards away and chambered a cartridge. Although never particularly afraid of wolves, she’d developed a healthy respect for them. She knew the wild canines were becoming desperate, hunted and trapped at every quarter, their food sources dwindling as overgrazing by cattle drove the deer and elk—the wolf’s natural diet—to increasingly higher elevations.

  The cow and calf were alone, the cow having instinctively sought out a sheltering grove of wild plums as her time of calving neared. It was there the wolves had cornered her. Never very far away, the pack must have scented the warm, musky odor of the birth. Although the cow had kept its predators at bay so far, Rose knew it was only a matter of time before one of them slipped past her and got at the calf. Likely the cow would have been doomed as well, had Rose not come along when she did.

  She rode to within two hundred yards of the pack and dismounted. Keeping Albert’s reins in her left hand, she dropped to one knee and took careful aim at the lead wolf, squeezing the trigger. The big rifle slammed into her shoulder, and the cream-colored wolf was knocked spinning across the snow. Rose quickly reloaded, but the rest of the pack was already scattering toward the Yellowstone. At the edge of the thicket, the cow continued to pace nervously, the calf wobbling at her heels. Keeping the rifle in her right hand, Rose stepped into the saddle and jogged over. The cow lowered its head threateningly as she approached, but moved off when Rose yelled. The little one stumbled after it, emitting
a series of short, plaintive bleats.

  Dropping her reins over a handy plum branch, Rose cautiously approached the wolf. It lay on its side in the trampled snow, its jaws parted to reveal a curved, yellowed incisor; although its eyes were open, they were already glazed in death, the liquid film freezing around the lids. Exhaling loudly, Rose lowered the Sharps’ hammer to half cock. The tangling of emotions that had accompanied the death of every animal she’d taken since she started hunting as a girl thrummed through her.

  “It weren’t nothin’ personal,” she assured the limp form. “Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.” She could have said more, but figured the spirit of the wolf would understand. Besides, she’d never set much store by people who prayed too long or too loud.

  Setting her rifle aside, Rose knelt next to the carcass and ran her gloved fingers through the thick, luxurious hide. Then she pulled a clasp knife from the pocket of her coat and leaned forward to skin the wolf of its $5 pelt. She was rolling the hide into a bundle to tie behind her saddle when she noticed the sky to the northwest. “Oh, Lordy,” she breathed, unable to look away.

  A storm approached. Low-ceilinged, massive, its belly as black as midnight, its dark, angry front towering thousands of feet above her. Even as she watched, a gust of wind swept across the plain, flinging up sheets of grainy snow that tossed and writhed and fell back to earth. She stared in awe as the clouds began to swallow the sun, plunging the afternoon into an eerie, early twilight.

  Hurrying to Albert’s side, Rose sheathed her rifle and flung the pelt across the pommel, then vaulted into the saddle. Albert needed no urging. He could sense the danger speeding toward them as readily as she could, and ran like a two-year-old, as if the wind itself were a quirt.

  The cabin was less than a mile away, but the blowing snow obscured it until Rose was within fifty yards of the buildings. She reined into the barn and dropped from the saddle. Nora was already there, a lantern lit at the entrance to guide her home. The buckskin and mules were already secured inside, and Nora hurried forward to help Rose strip the rigging from Albert’s back. Rose tossed everything, including the hide, into the lean-to while Nora led Albert to an iron ring stapled to the wall and tied him firmly in place.

  With the stock sheltered, the two women plunged headlong into the maw of the storm. The wind immediately snuffed the lantern’s flame, while battering gusts tried to knock them off their feet. They reached the cabin and followed its walls with their hands until they came to door, then almost fell inside.

  “Thank God,” Nora gasped, after they’d pushed the door shut. “I was afraid you wouldn’t make it.”

  “I’d have hated to’ve been much farther away,” Rose agreed. “Folks is gonna die in this one.”

  “Don’t say that,” Nora said. Shivering, she went to stand at the fireplace, crossing her arms under her breasts.

  “Shoot, we won’t have any trouble,” Rose said. “We got plenty of wood and enough feed to last till spring.”

  “It scares me,” Nora confessed. “Back in Miles City I thought I’d enjoy the solitude, and I did last summer. But it gets to be too big sometimes.”

  “It’s a big land, all right, but the only part we got to worry about is right here in this cabin and out at the barn. We can string ropes between here and the barn and here and the privy if we have to. This storm’ll wear itself out soon enough.”

  “Of course it will,” Nora replied. “Besides, it’s only snow.”

  “Sure, it’s only snow.”

  But before it was all over, it turned out to be quite a bit more. Rose’s prediction that the storm would blow itself out didn’t come to pass for another couple of days, and then not before it had dumped almost two fresh feet of snow on top of what was already on the ground. There was no way she could have foreseen what would follow, though. No one could have known that, when the snow quit falling, the temperature would plummet, bringing the north-central tier of an entire nation to a jarring halt.

  For weeks the thermometer ranged well below zero, sometimes as much as forty-five degrees below. Although those bitterest temperatures lasted less than two weeks, it was almost March before a warm, South Pacific wind—a Chinook—arced up over the Rockies to melt the tortoise shell-like cap of ice and snow, releasing the grass underneath.

  The winter of 1886 and 1887 was a time unlike any in Rose’s memory. Unable to turn the horses and mules loose to forage for themselves, they quickly depleted their meager supply of hay and grain. The creek froze solid and they had to melt snow over the stove for water not only for themselves, but for the livestock. They kept the fires in the fireplace and cook stove burning constantly, and began working in shifts so that one of them would always be awake to monitor the twin blazes. Even that failed to keep the frost from creeping inside, whiskering the interior walls along the chinking and completely obliterating the view through the tiny front window. The cold was so intense that in the early hours of dawn, the sound of trees popping and splitting in the forest to the west reminded Rose of the tales Wiley’d told her of the battles he’d fought in during the Civil War.

  They stacked all their canned goods in front of the fireplace and around the stove to keep them from freezing and bursting, and piled a small mountain of sacked potatoes, turnips, apples, and dried fruits in the middle of the room for the same reason. On the worst nights, they slept on the floor beside the stove, their feet shoved so close to the firebox that whoever was awake would also keep an eye on the blankets, in case they caught fire.

  Near the end of the first month, with the hay gone and the water coming less frequently as the women’s pace slowed, the horses and mules started to grow unruly. As if they also sensed the gravity of the situation. With nothing else available, the women began feeding them potatoes and apples, and when that ran low, they gave them flour.

  It was nearly six weeks into the freeze that Rose discovered the buckskin had broken its halter and disappeared. She trailed it for nearly half a mile, far enough to determine that it was headed for the gap that would take it down through the bluffs to the Yellowstone, then she returned to the cabin. By the time she stumbled inside, her eyelashes were frozen, her hands and feet painful to touch.

  “You could’ve died,” Nora scolded, rubbing Rose’s pallid toes by the fire. Then she abruptly shut up, a haunted look coming into her eyes.

  Rose regretted the loss of the buckskin. It had been a connection to a past she could never retrieve, friends she still missed. She hoped it was for the best, that things weren’t quite so harsh down below. She couldn’t help thinking the horse would stand as much of a chance on its own as it did trying to subsist on a dwindling supply of paste and dehydrated fruits.

  After a while the unrelenting cold and the exertion it took just to get through another day began to take its toll on the women. Their steps became draggy, their speech slurred with fatigue. Their cheeks shrank to craters and the flesh under their eyes turned dark and puffy. And as their strength waned, their pessimism grew. Dreams as dark and ugly as a grave robber’s soul began to plague Rose’s sleep, so that she often awoke trembling, her heart pounding.

  At first she kept the disturbing images of her nightmares to herself, burying them under her work as she had so many other unpleasant memories, but as the freeze continued and her hopes flagged, that effort became more and more difficult.

  It was noon on a hazy day well into the seventh week of the freeze that Rose finally caved. The temperature had warmed to around five degrees below zero. Tiny ice crystals danced and twinkled in the still air, and the snow crunched like crushed glass underfoot. Rose and Nora had paused on their way back from the barn, although Rose couldn’t have said why. Perhaps it was to search the plains to the east for some sign of their cattle. Or maybe it was to stare wistfully at the indistinct sphere of the sun, remembering when it had been more kindly, more forgiving. For whatever reason, they stopped and turned together to
face the brittle, gray-white world, a hushed and featureless landscape that was without perspective or even horizon, so perfectly did the shades of earth and sky blend together. Neither spoke, and in the silence, Rose began to shake. A chill wracked her shoulders and her limbs weakened until it seemed her knees would surely buckle and throw her to the ground.

  “Rose?”

  It passed then, with that single query from Nora, but she was badly shaken and it showed. They went inside, but even there Rose was unable to slow her chills. She was so cold she kept her cap and coats on, and stood shivering in front of the fireplace.

  Finally Nora said: “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t seem to warm up.”

  Coming over, Nora touched the inside of her wrist to Rose’s forehead. “You don’t seem warm.”

  “I sure as heck don’t feel it, either.”

  “Would you like some tea?”

  “Yeah, tea sounds good.” She sat down on a stool, and after a few minutes sweat began to bead up above her brow. She removed her coats—the horse-hide outer coat and the sack coat and vest she’d purchased in Sheridan—and tossed them on her bunk. Even then she couldn’t stop the tremors. By the time Nora returned with a cup of Earl Grey, Rose was certain she was going to explode.

  “Rose,” Nora said, kneeling at her side. “What is it. Are you sick?”

  “I don’t feel so good.” Her teeth chattered and her legs and arms tingled with an unfamiliar numbness. After a couple of minutes the feelings began to subside, replaced by an incredible sadness. She wanted to cry, but couldn’t. The tears wouldn’t come. The tears never came, not the way she needed them—fast and furious, washing away a torment she didn’t fully understand.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Nora said gently.

  Rose almost laughed. “Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m seein’ ghosts.” She stared into the fire, watching the flames blur into shimmying waves of yellow and gold.