Montana Revenge

by Dusty Richards

  His brother Tom told him the red devils had killed their collie Buster. At the news of Buster’s murder, Herschel had wanted to cry. He knew all about full moons and the harm they held for ranch folks. Horse rustlers, red or white, used them often.

  He finally took Marsha upstairs and they slept in each other’s arms.

  Before dawn she had him up, letting the girls sleep in. He wondered if she wanted him to herself without having to share his attention. Concerned, he asked her if she thought she should see the doctor.

  “I will while you’re gone. Now—” She straightened his vest as if it needed it, and forced a smile when he bent over to kiss her. “You don’t worry about me. You take care of yourself.” Her finger poked his chest. “The girls and I need you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Cob had one of those mornings. He buried his head between his knees and bucked for a full block alongside the garden and pasture on their property. He even sunfished twice, and the sun wasn’t even up that early to shine on his belly. Herschel was about to get angry when Cob’s head finally popped up and they were off.

  At noontime, Heart fed Herschel a meal. She seemed worried about her husband’s decision to go on alone. She’d wrapped herself in a blue and orange blanket despite the midday heat, and could not sit still over a minute at the table with him.

  “It’ll be all right,” Herschel kept saying as she hovered around him. “He’ll be fine. This ain’t his first time.”

  “I know—” She raised her smooth copper face and then tossed the thick braids behind her back. “I still worry this time.”

  “I’ll be with him by nightfall.”

  “Good,” she said, and reached out to squeeze his hands. “You know, an Indian woman who’s lived with a white man can never go home.”

  “Don’t worry. Barley will be fine.”

  He left for where Barley told her he’d take up the rustlers’ trail. According to Heart, the Crawford Cattle Company had sent a rider to tell Barley that someone had stolen twelve head of using ponies from their line shack on Cherry Creek, leaving the hands there afoot. Herschel could imagine the cowboys mad as hornets when they awoke and learned that they would have to hoof it back to headquarters for something to ride.

  Herschel carried some crackers, dry cheese, and jerky to eat. With that, plus the noontime meal he’d just eaten, he felt equipped to get by till the next kitchen or chuck outfit came along.

  No one was at the Crawford line shack, but he discovered that Barley’s horse tracks went north, so he fell in at a short lope and by sundown was miles north. No sign of Barley, but he hobbled Cob and threw down his bedding. A coyote came over the ridge, yipped a little at the rising moon, then was gone in the sagebrush and bunchgrass. Seated cross-legged on his bedroll in the twilight, he gnawed on some peppery jerky and washed it down with canteen water.

  About midnight, he awoke in the silver brilliance of the huge moon and decided he could see enough of the tracks to ride on. His mind was like a butter churn in the hands of an aggressive kitchen helper. Hanks’s lynching, Casey Ford’s whereabouts, Marsha’s health, and even Barley’s safety had all begun niggling at him. Even trying to find some way to stop Stokes’s black journalism.

  Somewhere, a wolf howled on a distant ridge, and another answered closer by. The cold long-winded cry made him kind of hunch his shoulders against the night’s coldness, and be grateful for the .44/40 under his right leg deep in the scabbard. Damn stock killers anyway.

  TWENTY-ONE

  AT mid-morning, he cut the tracks of two shod horses that looked fresh. He swung Cob westward, and soon overtook the rider, who reined up when he hailed him.

  Herschel didn’t know the man, whose eyes were shaded under the wide brim of a felt hat. The cowboy in the saddle hadn’t shaved in a week, and his clothes looked like it was longer than that since they’d been washed.

  “Howdy,” Herschel said and set Cob down. Hands on his saddle horn, he stretched his tight back muscles. His senses were alert, but the rider made no threatening move for the gun strapped on his waist, so Herschel settled into what he hoped would be helpful palavering.

  “Howdy yourself,” the man said. “Got the makings? I’m out.”

  “Sorry, I don’t smoke.”

  “Must be a preacher,” the man said as his saddle horse went hip-shot under him.

  “No, I’m looking for some horse rustlers.”

  “Don’t know any.”

  “I figured you been riding the grub line. You might have slept a night with some boys in this country that borrowed other horses.”

  He shook his head.

  Injun’d up, Herschel called it. No need to waste any more time on this one unless Herschel wanted to beat the soup out of him, and then the answers might only be what he wanted to hear.

  “See you down the trail. Sorry I didn’t have a smoke,” he said, and started to leave.

  “Hold up.” The man kept looking at his hands in the thin goatskin gloves that held the reins and rested on the pommel. The expression on his hard face said he intended to tell Herschel something but didn’t know how to word it. “There’s a place in the Breaks north of here. I’ve never been there. But they say Hootie Brown is holed up there.”

  “Who’s Hootie Brown?”

  “A sorry sumbitch. One time, Hootie and two kids held up a Wells Fargo stage. When they got away and were stopped for the night, Hootie shot the lock off the strongbox and told them boys to get all they wanted out of it, then he’d get his part. Pretty generous of ole Hootie, huh? Both them poor Texas boys dove in that strongbox like starving hawgs at a trough full of milk and sour corn. They were so busy sifting them silver and dollar coins through their fingers that they didn’t hear him cock his pistol and shoot both of them in the back.”

  “You survived?”

  “I ain’t saying. He just shot them two in the back, took the money, and vamoosed.”

  “I reckon you’re telling me this Hootie Brown ain’t worth much?”

  The man nodded. “Mister, don’t ever turn your back on the sumbitch.”

  “I appreciate it.” He reined Cob around and set out in a short lope. There was no way to warn Barley that they might have a real badger in on this rustling business instead of some itinerant cowboys. It could make a world of difference from the sound of things.

  At midday, he found a cow camp and the horse wrangler was there. The waddy took off his sweat-stained gray hat and scratched his head when Herschel asked him about Barley passing through.

  “Yeah, Benton was here last night. Told us about them rustlers passing right by here. But after grub this morning, your man lit a shuck about daylight. Headed for the Breaks after them.” He indicated northward.

  Herschel nodded and thanked him. He left the camp still on what he thought were the tracks of Barley’s dun. A long narrow shoe that stood out in the soft spots kept reminding him that his deputy was ahead of him and close to the rustlers. By late afternoon, he knew he was near the Musselshell River. It was long past the Yellowstone County line. He wondered how far the thieves had ridden before resting. Perhaps as far north as the Missouri Breaks.

  In the late afternoon, he spotted smoke coming from a large cottonwood grove. Had he found their camp? Plenty of horse tracks led there from a bunch on the move. The horse droppings were scattered, which meant the horses were being pushed. It was an old Texas Ranger trick to tell unshod horses from Comanche horses. Since the Injuns were on the move, their barefoot horses left scattered horse apples. The mustangs’ were in a pile.

  He leaned back and jerked the rifle out of the scabbard. He levered a shell in the chamber and sent Cob off the high hill for the camp. No need to take any chances. Even the roan felt the tension. He began to prance despite the hard day’s ride he’d been through. Sidling off the hillside, Herschel kept a wary eye on the trees and the smoke. The rush of the river and the dancing dollar-size leaves overhead were the only sounds he heard. No whinny of horses. He began to
realize they probably were gone.

  At a hundred yards from the grove, he saw some scattered bedrolls, then a body lying facedown and not moving. Alert to everything around him, he stepped off the roan and dropped the reins. Cob would ground-tie. The skin on the back of Herschel’s neck itched. He dried his right palm on his pants, and then took up the rifle in both hands and advanced toward the camp.

  The dead man wasn’t Barley, he was certain of that. Herschel saw nothing else, but the coffeepot still hung over the dying fire. He knelt and turned the corpse over. To judge by the man’s unshaven pale face, he looked to be in his early twenties. Two bullets in his back had stopped his life. The blood from the wounds had mostly dried, telling Herschel it had happened a few hours before. He found a letter in the man’s pocket addressed to L.T. Rademacher, and a return address on the worn envelope in Gonzales, Texas. Enough to notify his next of kin, anyway.

  Despite his conscience growling at him about not burying the dead rustler, he felt he needed to ride on and catch up with Barley. Obviously, his deputy had the rest of the rustlers on the run. Before he left, he downed some of the thick coffee and stuck the tin cup back in his saddlebags. Where were the horses?

  Cob crossed the Musselshell easily, and the tracks of the herd went north. Still, Herschel felt confused. One rustler shot, their bedrolls and some packs abandoned. There must have been a gunfight in that camp. There was lots to find out. Barley would tell him the details when he caught up with him.

  In a new land of rolling grassy hills, he short-loped Cob, at times squinting hard against the sun’s glare for a sight of anything that fit the tracks he followed. Recent rains kept down the telltale cloud of dust that a herd of horses would usually stir on the move.

  At mid-afternoon, he caught sight of them. Maybe a mile ahead and moving hard—the streak of mixed colors had to be the rustlers. Where was Barley? Herschel wet his cracked lips and stood in the stirrups. Still too far away. He dropped in the saddle and pushed the roan. Cob responded, and in a short time he drew close enough to see the three men driving the horses. No Barley. When the riders saw him, they left the horse herd and started to ride away. He could hear them swearing at him above the wind and the drum of Cob’s hooves. Their foul words meant nothing to him. He wanted to know what had happened to his deputy, if he had to beat the information out of them.

  The rustlers went in different directions, and he went after the one going left. Later, he planned to track down the other two. In a short while, he was gaining on the outlaw and closing the gap. The wide-eyed outlaw looked back twice at him as if that would stop Herschel’s pursuit. Then, the desperate outlaw went to beating his horse on the butt with his pistol and lost it.

  Herschel sent Cob in for a burst of speed, and undid the lariat from the pommel as he drew closer. At a full run, he built a loop, then stood up in the stirrups and made three swings above his head. The rope flew out and settled over the rider. Herschel slung the slack to the side to cinch the rope around his quarry. In a swift move, he dallied the hemp around the horn and sat back. When he braced himself, on cue, the roan horse planted his feet in the sod and plowed up some dust.

  The rider came out of the saddle off the tail of the still-running horse, and landed hard on the ground. Herschel tossed the rope and stepped down, six-gun in hand. He checked to see if the other two had come back to rescue the moaning outlaw on the ground. Herschel saw no one. He strode over and jerked the rustler up by the collar. He was hardly more than a boy. Tears ran down his peach-fuzz cheeks as he rubbed his backside from the fall.

  “Where’s my deputy?”

  “Don’t—don’t shoot me.” He held his hands out and his voice sounded whiny, like some girl. “I never kilt him. I swear—Hootie shot him—I couldn’t stop him.”

  “Where in the hell is he at?”

  The boy blinked his wet eyes. “He must be back in camp on the ground.”

  Herschel frowned. “All I found was some dead puncher.”

  “No—no—that’s Dicky. I mean where the horses were up the bottom.”

  Damn, had he missed him? “You go catch that horse of yours and ride up there and meet me. Try one trick and I’ll shoot you when I find you.” He hauled him up close to his face. “You savvy that?”

  The boy pulled away from him. “Oh, yeah, I’ll be right back. I promise.”

  Herschel turned him loose and went for Cob. In the saddle, he watched the boy, with his hand on his hip, no doubt sore, limping after his mount. If he did run away, Herschel could catch that half-pint easy. At the moment, he wanted to try and find Barley. He spun Cob around and sent him hard for the camp.

  He crossed the Musselshell in a big splash, avoided the copse of cottonwoods, and circled left of them. Cob cleared patches of sagebrush in leaps and then hit a game trail that led up the bottom. They passed through a head-high thicket of box elders. The branches whipped Herschel’s legs, and on the other side he spotted the familiar saddled dun horse, who threw its head up at the sight of them. A knot began to form in his throat—if anything had happened to Barley, what would he tell Heart?

  The sight of the fringed buckskin coat and Barley lying facedown made him sick to his stomach. The wounds in his back were obvious as Cob slid to a halt and Herschel bailed off him. In his rush to Barley, a sage bush caught his boot toe and about tripped him. He caught himself before he sprawled facedown, and moved up to the body on his knees to turn Barley over.

  The sight of the lifeless blue eyes kicked him hard in the gut. How long ago had it been? A few hours? He hugged the stiffening body in his arms. What had he done wrong for this to happen? He closed his eyes as hard as he could. Despite the lump constricting his throat, no tears came, and the muscles in his arms tightened on the dead man. At last, he released him in dismay and filled with guilt.

  He’d had no last words with his best friend, the man who he considered his mentor as a lawman. The one who’d aided his campaign from the start, and told him all he knew about people and how they might behave. Herschel had lost his brother on the last cattle drive coming up there a few years before. Their father had ridden off one day when they were young boys, and never returned. Barley Benton was both father and brother to him. Damn, oh, damn.

  He looked up and saw the boy coming. Herschel hefted Barley’s body in his arms, staggered some getting to his feet. “There a shovel in camp?”

  The boy, still at a good distance, reined up and shouted, “Huh?”

  “There a shovel in camp?”

  “A small one.”

  “Good. Catch them horses.” He indicated the dun and Cob. “Bring them along.”

  “Yeah, I will. He’s dead, ain’t he?”

  Herschel nodded and walked on toward camp with the heavy burden in his arms. There was no way to get his body back to Heart. He’d have to bury him there. His arms and shoulder ached like penance for letting this happen, but he strode on under the load. The cottonwoods looked a mile away, but they weren’t that far. Each boot heel struck the ground, step by weary step.

  He never looked around when he heard the boy and horses catching up with him. The boy went past him looking shaken. “I’ll go find the shovel.”

  Herschel nodded like a wooden Indian. Step by step, he bore his best friend—like a pallbearer—he closed his eyes to the reality. Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a sheriff. He’d screwed up by not catching Casey Ford twice, had not found the lynchers of Billy Hanks, and now had gotten Barley killed.

  The boy met him at the edge of the trees holding up a small shovel. “I got it.”

  Herschel stopped like a man in a trance. He dropped to one knee and gently laid Barley’s corpse on the ground. Before he rose, he shut his eyes. Then, looking around, he decided he wanted his friend buried above the flood line.

  “We’re going to dig his grave on that rise.”

  The boy nodded and with a limp started in that direction.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, realizing that he didn’t even know i
t.

  “Toby, Toby Grayson.”

  “I want a grave, not a hole, Toby. You know the difference?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll fix the bodies.”

  “East to west?”

  “I always heard the morning sun should shine on his face.”

  “I’ll dig it that way.”

  “What’s the story on L.T. Rademacher?”

  “Who?” Grayson asked.

  “The dead man over there.” Herschel gave a toss of his head toward the other body.

  “I thought his name was Dick Smith. I called him Dicky. He was all right—my friend.”

  Herschel shook his head. “His name was L.T. Rademacher.”

  The kid stuck the short shovel in the ground, took off his weather-beaten hat, and scratched the unbrushed thatch of wild black hair. “Guess no one uses their right name in this business.”

  “I guess you’re right. Get started.”

  “Yes, sir.” And he moved off toward the rise.

  Herschel removed the few things from Barley that he knew Heart would want and tied them up in a bundle. A skinning knife, some money, a few Indian tokens, and the charm that hung around his neck—Herschel spent little time examining anything. The job was tough enough, he didn’t want to linger on it any more than he had to. Then, as much as it hurt him, he went and took a canvas ground cloth from a bedroll abandoned by the rustlers. He popped it free of the blankets and then wrapped the body in it. He used a lariat he found to make the bindings around the canvas shroud.

  With Barley’s body prepared, he went and checked the rustler’s pockets again, removed a small sum of money and change, pulled off the man’s boots and found ten dollars more. He stood. Rademacher’s mother would like him buried without his boots on. Then he wrapped the corpse in another groundsheet. Seemed like such a waste to Herschel, two men dead over a handful of horses. Especially Barley. . . .

  The boy had made good progress when Herschel went up to check on him. Herschel knew digging under the tough sagebrush must have been hard, but the dirt the boy was tossing out of the knee-deep hole was alluvial and had only a few small rocks in it.