Taking a more southwesterly route than she would have used to go directly home, Rose passed through the Judith Basin toward the gap of the same name, at the valley’s southern extremity. It was her first visit to the Basin in several years, and she was appalled by the changes she saw. At one time this had been a veritable hunter’s paradise, teeming with game of every description. Now it looked like a wasteland, overgrazed, weedy, spotted with old cow chips but nary a beef in sight.
She saw plenty of ranches, though. Four on the Judith itself, plus several more back in the hills. She avoided them all, fearing that every man’s hand would be against her now.
Below the Judith Gap she entered the Musselshell drainage. From there on, south and east, she was on Flying Egg land, and rode more openly. Although she figured every man’s hand would be against her here, too, she was feeling fighty, and would have welcomed a good mix. But in two more days of travel she saw no one, and so approached the Musselshell feeling as prickly as a cactus patch.
Uncertain as to the location of the Flying Egg’s headquarters, she took a gamble and turned downstream. As luck would have it, she came in sight of the sprawling complex of barns, sheds, and corrals shortly after sundown. Although the size of the place was impressive, Rose was more intrigued by the main house, an imposing two-story affair of log construction, with a single, towering cupola on the southwest corner and a covered verandah that ran along three sides. The area immediately surrounding the house warranted more than a passing glance. There was an irrigated polo field, complete with freshly painted goals, a well-tended yard in front of the house, and hedges the likes of which she’d never seen, trimmed in the shapes of various Rocky Mountain fauna—a grizzly bear, a mountain goat, two bison. Behind the house and to one side of a summer kitchen was an extensive kennel containing an assortment of long-legged hunting dogs.
“Dangnation,” Rose muttered, eyeing the spread. “I guess it ain’t such a bad deal, being the third son of a Fifth Earl.”
Bats were just starting to make their appearance in the smoky light as Rose rode past the dark mansion. They darted among the cottonwoods along the river, swooping low over the water. As she came abreast of the house, the hounds set up a baying that brought forth a pair of huge mastiffs. Rose wrapped her fingers around the Smith & Wesson’s hard rubber grips, her pulse accelerating, but the dogs remained obediently at their posts beside the front steps, and allowed her and Albert to pass along the lower edge of the lawn unmolested.
“Now that’s something to remember,” she murmured, keeping an eye on the dogs until she was a couple of hundred yards away and approaching the ranch proper—bunkhouse, equipment sheds, and the like. “I reckon I’d dang’ near rather face Frank Caldwell and all his hired guns as them two,” she added to Albert.
A match burst into flame in the shadows beside a small cabin across the lane from the bunkhouse, and Rose drew up. A short, bowlegged individual in a broad-brimmed hat detached himself from the dark wall and approached casually, lighting a pipe. Shaking out the match, he dropped it in the thick dust of the lane and crushed it under his heel. Tipping his head back to reveal a chiseled chin and a small, iron-gray mustache, he said: “How do you do, ma’am?”
“I’m Rose Edwards,” Rose said. Although this pipe smoker with the big hat seemed polite enough, she hadn’t forgotten that this was the camp of her enemy, and that it wouldn’t do to let her guard down.
“I thought you might be. I’m Mason Crabb, foreman of the Crooked Bar-O-Bar.” He touched the brim of his hat. “I hope you don’t mind my smoking. I’d gladly put it out if you found it offensive.”
“No, pipe smoke don’t bother me.”
From the bunkhouse came the searching notes of a guitar, played softly. It brought a smile to Crabb’s shadowy features. “That Toby Joe is gonna get that instrument roped one of these days. It was painful to listen to, last year this time.”
“It ain’t so bad now, though I don’t recognize the tune.”
“The scales, he calls them. He won’t play until he’s run his scales a time or two. Sort of like checking your cinch before you saddle a bronc’, I suppose.”
Rose was giving the bowlegged foreman a thoughtful look. “You ain’t hardly what I’d expected for an Egg man,” she allowed.
“I’m an old cow man from the San Saba country of Texas,” he replied. “I was hired this summer to manage the day-to-day operations of the Crooked Bar-O-Bar, but I don’t involve myself in its politics. The last foreman did, but Mister Ostermann fired him this spring.”
“You ain’t no friend of Frank Caldwell, then?”
“I don’t allow Mister Caldwell or his men to reside in the bunkhouse. They have rooms in the main house they can use when they’re here, which isn’t often. I personally have fourteen good men and one of the finest cooks in Montana under my hire, but I won’t allow them to associate with gunhawks.”
“I’ll be danged,” Rose said.
“If I could help you in some way?” Crabb encouraged gently.
“I’m lookin’ for Howard Ostermann. I won’t call him Mister.”
Crabb hesitated. “You understand that, although I don’t involve myself or my men in activities outside the scope of running a cattle ranch, I’d consider the safety and protection of my employer to fall within the realm of my duties?”
“Is he around, Mister Crabb?”
“Mister Ostermann is away right now. I expect him back in a couple of weeks, when we’ll all go to Billings to pick up the first shipment of shorthorns.”
“Shorthorns?”
“I don’t believe I’m betraying anyone’s confidence when I say he’s bringing in three thousand head of shorthorns from Oregon and Washington, and another fifteen hundred from New Mexico.”
Rose didn’t know what to say to that. For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to her how easy it might be for men like Ostermann to start over, just to go out and buy new stock.
“I suppose he’s still gonna want the A-Bar-E, then, too?” she said after a while.
For the first time, Mason Crabb appeared somewhat flustered. “As I said, Mister Ostermann doesn’t share his plans with me, outside of my duties as foreman.”
“Yeah,” she said dryly, her esteem for the grizzled old-timer withering. “Well, it’s easier that way, I reckon.”
Crabb’s lips thinned under his mustache. “Perhaps you’d better leave, Missus Edwards. Unless I could supply you with some supper … something to take along.”
“Is Caldwell or any of his men around?”
“Not at present.”
“What about a Pine Tree Manning?”
Crabb hesitated, then lowered his voice. “Manning was here about three weeks ago, delivering some documents to Mister Ostermann. He returned south immediately. That’s all I can tell you.”
Rose swore softly. “I bet it was the deed,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Them documents … I’ll bet they was the papers Manning and his pards stole off my property the day they killed Nora Alder. I’d been wondering what they wanted ’em for. I guess I should’ve known.”
Gently Crabb said: “I think it’s time you left.”
“I’ll go, but you tell Ostermann I was here. Tell him I ain’t forgot who my real enemy is, and that, one of these days, I’ll be back. Tell him that him and me has got some unfinished business to ’tend to.”
“Is that a threat, Missus Edwards?”
“Yeah, Crabb, that’s a threat.” She pulled her horse around without waiting for a reply. Judging from the agitated manner in which Mason Crabb’s jaw was working in the shadows of his hat, she suspected it would have been taken as one, anyway. Giving Albert a nudge with her heels, she rode off into the night.
• • • • •
Reaching home, she discovered that either Caldwell’s men or Joe Bean’s h
ad not been idle in their efforts to drive her off. Piled in the center of the yard, stacked in and under the remains of her wagon, were the ashes and debris that had once been the furnishings of home and barn.
Virtually nothing had been spared. Tools from the barn, harness, even the pitchfork had been tossed on top of the chests, crates, table, and spice cabinet from the house. Rose was so stunned she felt half sick. All that remained was the cabin with its two built-in bunks, the empty barn and lean-to, and the corral and water trough.
Letting Albert wander loose, she sat down on the stoop and just stared. It wasn’t until she glanced toward the lightning-struck pine above Muggy’s grave that she noticed a man sitting his horse there, silhouetted as sharp as a steel etching against the blue Montana sky. Startled, she jumped to her feet, but stopped when it dawned on her that whoever it was had had ample opportunity to slip away undetected. Or shoot her, depending on his frame of mind or place of employment. Moving away from the cabin, she waited until the solitary figure realized he’d been spotted and rode down the slope to the yard. He hauled up about twenty feet away.
“Was this your doin’?” Rose demanded.
Joe Bean shook his head. “I would suspect Caldwell’s men, although I have no proof.”
“No, I didn’t figure you would.”
He glanced at the rubble surrounding the charred, sagging wagon. “I judge this was a symbolic gesture,” he said. “A statement of ownership.”
“Ownership!”
“My guess is that they left the cabin and barn unfired because they hope to use this place as a line camp, but the rest ….” He shrugged. “They mean to have it, Rose. There’s nothing you can do to stop them.”
“I can fight ’em. Maybe a bullet through Howard Ostermann’s skull would slow ’em down.”
“Killing Ostermann would only afford the rest of them a legitimate excuse to hang you. Howard Ostermann might be your particular thorn, but he’s hardly the whole bush.”
“Joe, they’re gonna hang me anyway, they catch me.”
He nodded morosely, his gaze flitting once more to the pile of blackened lumber. “They took your branding iron, didn’t they?”
“How’d you know that?”
“It would be their way, something they’ve done before. They’ll brand some of their calves with it as proof that you’re as incorrigible as they’ve claimed. They’ll get a federal marshal out to verify it, but he won’t stay to see it through. At least he never has.”
“Those sons-a-bitches,” she said. “Those dirty, rotten ….” She laughed then, shaking her head. “Well, it don’t matter. I was on their list long before I helped Wiley and Shorty run them Crow ponies up to Two-Hats’s. I reckon I was on their list as soon as they saw that crick yonder and decided they wanted it for themselves.”
“It’s not just the Cattlemen’s Association you’re at odds with, Rose. There are other organizations involved. I’d venture that Web, Garcia, and Manning were working for one of the smaller alliances.”
“You know what them three did to Nora?”
“I know what I’ve heard. Pine Tree quit me some time ago, but he wasn’t a Caldwell man, either. This bunch”—he indicated the wreckage at the wagon—“may not even be in operation any more. It has the earmarks of a one-job deal. I don’t know who orchestrated it, but I do know Howard Ostermann was involved, even while Caldwell and his men, who work strictly for Ostermann, weren’t. I have it on good authority that Caldwell’s group has been … occupied … farther west.”
“Christ, Joe, what kind of mess have you boys created?”
“A rather large one, I’m afraid. Most of the smaller syndicates are fairly loosely organized. Many seem to be splinter groups, dissatisfied with the direction the larger Association is taking, yet unwilling to give up their membership in it.”
She felt her anger growing. “What about you, Joe. How many innocent men have you strung up since all this begun?”
His face flushed red. “That’s an ugly accusation.”
“Hangin’s an ugly business.”
“I’ve helped bring an end to horse stealing and cattle rustling. I’m not ashamed of that.”
“What was Nora’s crime?”
“I won’t dignify that with a reply. You know who killed Nora.”
“I don’t know who ordered it. Do you. Do you know who ordered me ’n’ Nora killed, our stuff burned?”
Joe’s composure was beginning to crumble. “You’re mistaking honesty for a poor man’s privilege and a rich man’s deficit. What I’ve done has been honest enough. Can you say the same?”
“I ain’t never in my life claimed to be no angel, nor have I always been honest, at least not accordin’ to the letter of the law. But I’ve always been honorable and aboveboard with folks, and never stole from no one just to get rich or get my way. Them that know me, trust me, and them that say I’m a killer or a thief, it’s because they don’t know the whole of it, or want to. What Ostermann’s doin’ is wrong, Joe. It’s underhanded and unethical, and, was there justice in this land instead of the damned law that can get all tangled up in words, it’d be them run outta their homes, instead of me gettin’ run outta mine.”
“You can whine all day about justice and the law and it won’t get you anywhere. Time moves forward, Rose. You either go with it or get left behind.”
“I’d rather get left behind than throw in with that bunch.”
He snorted. “Who are you to sit in judgment of men who have brought prosperity to this land. You, who helped destroy the buffalo and the wolf and the Indian?”
“Sure, I’ve done things I ain’t proud of, or that ain’t turned out the way I’d hoped they would, but I never run over nobody to do it. I got along with them that was here first, and done it on their terms, too, rather than try and force them to live on mine.
“I ain’t denyin’ I lived a hunter’s life while it lasted, but it was shared on equal terms with the red man, and I’ll tell you this, it wasn’t me nor mine who fought so hard to put the Indians on reservations, or paid the bounty on wolves. It was them you’re workin’ for, Joe … the Ostermanns and old man Frakes of the world … who ruined what we had and loved, then had the audacity to call it progress and prosperity.”
“Rose, I swear I’d like to ….” They glared at one another for almost a full minute, until Joe suddenly looked away. In a voice unfamiliar to her, he said: “Maybe you’re right. About some of it, anyway. I used to think I was serving a greater cause. But lately … it seems like I’m just … serving.”
“You could quit,” she said, her anger gone.
He smiled dismissingly. “So could you.” Loosening the strap on his pommel bag, he pulled out a handful of coin-size globs. Riding closer, he dropped them into her hand. “I found these under the wagon,” he explained.
Rose’s throat constricted when she recognized the half-melted objects. “These was the buttons off a ridin’ skirt Nora gave me for Christmas last year,” she said. “I never wore it because I always thought it was too pretty for chorin’. I wish now that I had.”
“I found these, too.” He pulled her spurs from the bag, the ones she’d purchased in Sheridan, with the bronze hearts affixed to the outside of each shank. The spurs had come through the fire in better condition than the buttons, and were undamaged save for a layer of baked-on grime and curled straps.
“I regret taking them,” Joe said. “I suppose I had some notion of keeping them as mementos, but I should’ve known you’d come back.” He straightened and cleared his throat, his eyes hardening. “You need to be more vigilant, Rose. Had I been so inclined, I could have easily picked you off from the bluff while you were strolling around the yard.”
She nodded, knowing the moment of clemency between them had passed, that Joe Bean was a Regulator again, she a wanted woman. “I reckon you could’ve,” she agreed.
“So long, Joe.”
He reined away, riding toward the gap in the bluffs that would take him down to the Yellowstone. But Rose didn’t watch him leave. Something else had caught her eye—a spot of tawny yellow, far to the east. Staring at it, she felt her eyes mist over. “You ornery old devil,” she said affectionately to the distant buckskin, then added fiercely: “You stay free, you hear. Don’t you ever let ’em put a rope over your neck again … and, by damn, I’ll try to do the same.”
Chapter
37
Rose went to Billings next. It was out of her way, but she had obligations there she couldn’t ignore.
It was midafternoon when she reached town, and although she looked as she passed the Jepson & Lane Livery, she didn’t see any activity at her pap’s cross-tie shack behind the corrals. She would need to see him before she left, but she wasn’t looking forward to it.
Her first stop was Sutherland’s Mercantile, near the center of town. The store was housed in an old-fashioned wooden-framed building, complete with false front and covered boardwalk. She hitched her horse to the rail, then climbed the steps to the store. It was a warm, lazy day, and the scent of cheeses, spicy meats, leather, tobacco products, grains, and kerosene met her at the door like a faithful dog.
Herman Sutherland was a tall, handsome man in his early sixties, with a full head of soft gray hair and a kindly smile. He was waiting on a customer when Rose walked in, but he gave her a smile and a brief wave of recognition when he saw her. Rose waited beside the pickle barrel until he was free. After calling into a back room for his wife to watch the counter, Sutherland motioned for Rose to follow him to a small desk in the corner. Pulling out a cane-bottomed chair, he invited her to sit, then settled onto a wooden swivel chair at his desk and spun it around to face her.
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