Smokin' Six-Shooter

by B. J Daniels

  He hadn’t paid that much attention to her. Even now he couldn’t recall her exact hair color. Something between russet and mahogany, but then it had been hard to tell with the sunlight firing it with gold.

  Nor could he recall the length, the way she had the weight of her hair drawn up and secured in the back. He idly wondered if it would fall past her shoulders should the expensive-looking clip come loose.

  He did remember her size when he’d bent over her, no more than five-six or seven without those heels, and recalled the impression he’d gotten that while her body was slim, she was rounded in all the right places. He’d sensed a strength about her, or maybe it had just been mule-headed stubbornness, that belied her stature and her obvious city-girl background.

  Realizing the path his thoughts had taken, Russell shook them off like water from a wet dog. He must be suffering from heatstroke, he told himself. No woman had monopolized his thoughts this long in recent memory.

  He told himself he wasn’t even going to look as he passed to see if she was still parked in front of the old farmhouse as he passed. It was too hot to save her from herself, even if she had wanted his help.

  But he did look and told himself it wasn’t disappointment he felt at finding her gone. It was relief that she wasn’t in some trouble he would have to get her out of.

  He slowed the four-wheeler as he noticed the fence lying on the ground. With a curse, he stopped and got off to close it. The woman had a lot to learn about private property and leaving gates open, he thought.

  Glancing at the house, he was glad to see that nothing looked any different. Not that the woman could do much damage to the place. No way could she have broken into the house—not with those manicured fingernails of hers.

  He’d never paid much attention to the old Beaumont place, although he’d passed it enough times since the land just beyond it was Corbett property and seeded in dry-land wheat.

  Standing next to the gate, he stared at the old house, recalling someone had told him there’d been a murder there and the house had been boarded up ever since. People liked to make houses seem much more sinister than they actually were, he thought. He was surprised he hadn’t heard rumors of ghosts.

  But even if nothing evil lurked in that house, it made him wonder what the woman had found so interesting about the place since, from her surprised expression, she hadn’t known about the murder.

  Hell, maybe she’d never seen an old farmhouse before.

  As if he’d ever understood women, he thought, as he climbed back on his four-wheeler, just glad she hadn’t befallen some disaster. If all she’d done was leave the gate open then he figured no harm was done. By now, she would be miles away.

  Still he couldn’t help but wonder what had brought her to his part of Montana in the first place. She certainly was out of her realm, he thought with a chuckle as he headed back to the ranch.

  THE WHITEHORSE SEWING Circle was an institution in the county. Jolene had noticed that when the women who spent several days a week at the center making quilts were mentioned, it was with reverence. And maybe a little fear.

  Clearly these women had the power in this community. Jolene got the impression that a lot of decisions were made between stitches and a lot of information dispersed over the crisp new fabric of the quilts.

  It was with apprehension that she walked over to the center and pushed open the door. She’d been inside before for several get-togethers since she’d been hired as the community’s teacher. This was where all the wedding receptions, birthday and anniversary parties, festivals and funeral potlucks were held.

  The wooden floors were worn from years of boots dancing across them. It was easy to imagine that hearts had been won and lost in this large open room. A lot of events in these people’s lives had been marked here from births to deaths and everything in between. If only these walls could talk, Jolene thought, wondering what stories they would tell.

  As the door opened, sunlight pouring across the floor, the women all looked in her direction. They were gathered toward the back around a small quilting frame. A baby quilt, she realized, as she let the door close behind her.

  “Hello,” Pearl Cavanaugh said, smiling her slightly lopsided smile. Pearl had had a stroke sometime back and was still recovering, Jolene had heard. Pearl’s mother had started the Whitehorse Sewing Circle years ago, according to the locals.

  “I just thought I’d stop in and see what you were making,” Jolene said lamely. How was she ever going to get to her true mission in coming here?

  She knew she had to be careful. For fear the story might stop, she didn’t want the author of the story to find out she’d been asking around about the murder.

  “Please. Join us,” Pearl said.

  The women looked formidable, eyes keen, but their expressions were friendly enough as she pulled up a chair at the edge of the circle and watched their weathered, arthritic hands make the tiniest, most perfect stitches she’d ever seen.

  “The quilt is beautiful,” she said into the silence. She could feel some of the women studying her discreetly.

  “Thank you,” Pearl said, clearly the spokeswoman for the group. Her husband, Titus, served as a sort of mayor for Old Town Whitehorse, preaching in the center on Sundays, making sure the cemetery was maintained and overseeing the hiring of teachers as needed.

  “You have all met our new teacher, Jolene Stevens,” Pearl was saying. “She comes to us straight from Montana State University.”

  “So this is your first teaching assignment,” a small white-haired, blue-eyed woman said with a nice smile. “I’m Alice White.”

  “I recall your birthday party,” Jolene said. “Ninety-two, I believe?”

  Alice chuckled. “Everyone must think I’m going to kick the bucket sometime soon since they’re determined to celebrate my birthday every year now.” She winked at Jolene. “What they don’t know is that I’m going to live to be a hundred.”

  Jolene tried to relax in the smattering of laughter that followed. “This area is so interesting. I’m really enjoying the history.”

  “I’m sure everyone’s told you about the famous outlaws who used to hide out in this part of the state at the end of the eighteenth century,” a large woman with a cherubic face said. Ella Cavanaugh, a shirttail relation to Pearl and Titus, as Jolene recalled. Everyone seemed to be related in some way or another.

  “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as well as Kid Curry,” added another elderly member, Mabel Brown. “This part of the state was lawless back then.”

  “It certainly seems peaceful enough now,” Jolene commented. “But I did hear something about a murder of a young widow who had a little girl, I believe?”

  She could have heard a pin drop. Several jaws definitely dropped, but quickly snapped shut again.

  “Nasty business that was,” Ella said and glanced at Pearl.

  “When was it?” Jolene asked, sensing that Pearl was about to shut down the topic.

  “Twenty-four years ago this month,” Alice said, shaking her head. “It isn’t something any of us likes to think about.”

  “Was her killer ever caught?” Jolene asked and saw the answer on their faces.

  “Do you sew, Jolene?” Pearl asked. “We definitely could use some young eyes and nimble fingers.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “We would be happy to teach you,” Pearl said. “We make quilts for every baby born around here and have for years. It’s a Whitehorse tradition.”

  “A very nice one,” Jolene agreed. She had wanted to ask more about the murder, but saw that the rest of the women were now intent on their quilting. Pearl had successfully ended the discussion. “Well, I should leave you to your work,” Jolene said, rising to her feet to leave.

  “Well, if you ever change your mind,” Pearl said, looking up at her questioningly. No doubt she wondered where Jolene had heard about a twenty-four-year-old unsolved murder—and why she would be interested.

  As Jolene lef
t, she glanced back at the women. Only one was watching her. Pearl Cavanaugh. She looked troubled.

  DULCIE DROVE BACK INTO town, even more curious about her inheritance. She returned to the real-estate office only to find that April was officiating a game at the old high-school gym.

  The old gym was built of brick and was cavernous inside. Fortunately, the game hadn’t started yet. She found April in uniform on the sidelines.

  “I’m sorry to bother you again,” Dulcie apologized. “Who would I talk to about the history of the property?”

  April thought for a moment. “Talk to Roselee at the museum. She’s old as dirt, but sharp as a tack. She’s our local historian.”

  The small museum was on the edge of town and filled with the history of this part of Montana. Roselee turned out to be a white-haired woman of indeterminable age. She smiled as Dulcie came through the door, greeting her warmly and telling her about the museum.

  “Actually, I was interested in the history of a place south of here,” Dulcie said. “I heard you might be able to help me.”

  Roselee looked pleased. “Well, I’ve been around here probably the longest. My father homesteaded in Old Town Whitehorse.”

  Even better, Dulcie thought.

  “Whose place are we talking about?”

  “Laura Beaumont’s.”

  All the friendliness left her voice. “If you’re one of those reporters doing another story on the murder—”

  “I’m not. But I need to know. Was it Laura Beaumont who was murdered?”

  Roselee pursed her lips. “If you’re not a reporter, then what is your interest in all this?”

  “I inherited the property.”

  The woman’s eyes widened. She groped for the chair behind her and sat down heavily.

  Dulcie felt goose bumps ripple across her flesh at the look on the woman’s face. “What is it?” she demanded, frightened by the way Roselee was staring at her—as if she’d seen a ghost.

  The elderly woman shook her head and struggled to her feet. “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well.” She picked up the cane leaning against the counter and started toward the back of the museum, calling to someone named Cara.

  “If I come by some other time?” Dulcie said to the woman’s retreating back, but Roselee didn’t respond.

  What in the world, she thought, as a much younger woman hurried to the counter and asked if she could help.

  “Have you ever heard of a woman named Laura Beaumont?” Dulcie asked.

  Cara, who was close to Dulcie’s age, shook her head. “Should I have?”

  “I don’t know.” Dulcie felt shaken from Roselee’s reaction. “Do you have a historical society?”

  The young woman broke into a smile. “You just met the president, Roselee.” She sobered. “Wasn’t she able to help you?”

  “No. Is there someone else around town I could talk to?” She dropped her voice just in case Roselee was in the back, listening. “Someone older who knows everything that goes on around here, especially Old Town Whitehorse, and doesn’t mind talking about it?”

  Cara’s eyes shone with understanding. She, too, whispered. “There is someone down south who might be able to help you. Her name is Arlene Evans. She’s…talkative.”

  JOLENE GLANCED AT HER watch as she left the Community Center. If she hurried she could make it into Whitehorse before the newspaper office closed.

  Now that she knew there had been a murder, she was anxious to go through the Milk River Examiner newspapers from twenty-four years ago to find out everything she could about it.

  Back in the schoolhouse, she went to her desk and opened the drawer where she’d put the stories. All six were there. She had yet to read the other five, so she stuffed them all into her backpack.

  Turning to leave, she was startled to find a dark shape filling the schoolhouse doorway.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” Ben Carpenter said as he stepped inside. He was a big man who took up a lot of space and always made Jolene feel a little uncomfortable. She suspected it was because he seldom smiled. Ben was at the far end of his forties and the father of her moody eighth-grader, Mace.

  “I was just finishing up for the day. Is there something Mace needed?” The boy resembled his father, large and beefy. Jolene had only once seen his mother, Ronda, but recalled she was tiny and reserved.

  “I stopped in to see how Mace is doing,” Ben said. “I ask him, but he doesn’t say much. You aren’t having any trouble with him, are you? If you are, you just let me know and I’ll see to the boy.”

  Jolene didn’t like the threat she heard in Ben’s tone. “He’s doing quite well and, no, I have no trouble at all with him.”

  “Good,” Ben said, looking uncomfortable in the small setting. “Glad to hear it. His mother has been after me to find out.”

  Jolene doubted that. Ronda Carpenter seemed like a woman who asked little of her husband and got even less. “Well, you can certainly reassure her. Mace is doing fine.”

  Ben nodded, looking as if there was more he wanted to say, but he changed his mind as he stepped toward the door. “Okay then.”

  Jolene was relieved when she heard his truck pull away from the front of the school. She felt a little shaken by his visit. Ben always seemed right on the edge of losing his temper. His visit had felt contrived. Was there something else he’d come by for and changed his mind?

  Was it possible he was the author of the murder story? It didn’t seem likely, but then some people wrote better than they spoke.

  Locking up behind her, she biked to her little house. Then, with the installments of the murder story in her backpack, she got in her car and headed toward Whitehorse.

  She took the dirt road out of town. Old Town Whitehorse had been the first settlement called Whitehorse. It had been nearer the Missouri River and the Breaks. That was back when supplies came by riverboat.

  Once the railroad came through, five miles to the north, the town migrated to the tracks, taking the name Whitehorse with it.

  As Jolene drove, she mentally replayed the conversation with the women of the sewing circle and was even more curious why they had been so reticent to talk about the murder.

  RUSSELL FOUND HIS FATHER waiting for him when he returned to the ranch. Grayson Corbett was a large man with graying hair and an easygoing smile as well as attitude. Grayson had raised his five sons single-handedly from the time Russell was small and had done a damned good job.

  Actually there was little his father couldn’t do. That’s why seeing him like this was so hard on Russell.

  Worry lines etched Grayson’s still-handsome face and seemed to make his blue eyes even paler. Russell knew what he wanted to talk about the moment he saw his father and felt his stomach turn at the thought.

  “We have to make a decision,” Grayson said without preamble. “We can’t put it off any longer.” Clearly his father had been thinking about the problem and probably little else since they’d last talked.

  “You already know how I feel,” Russell said. “It’s a damned-fool thing and a waste of money as far as I’m concerned. What did the other ranchers and farmers have to say at the meeting?”

  “Some agree with you. But there are more who are ready to try anything if there’s a chance of saving their crops.”

  Russell shook his head, seeing that his father had already made his decision.

  “If some of these farmers and ranchers don’t get some moisture and soon, they’re going to lose everything,” Grayson said. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

  “So what did you tell them?”

  “I told them I had to talk to my son,” his father said. “This is your ranch as much as mine, more actually. You get the final word.”

  Russell could see that his father was worried about the others, who had the most to lose. “What choice do we have?”

  If he and his father didn’t go along with the rest, he doubted the fifteen thousand dollars needed to hire the rainmaker could be
raised. “I’ll go along with whatever decision you make.”

  Grayson looked relieved, not that the worry lines softened. They were throwing good money away, Russell believed. But if the ranchers and farmers wanted to believe some man could make rain, then he wasn’t going to try to stop them.

  “Thank you,” Grayson said as he laid a heavy hand on his son’s shoulders. “At least by hiring a rainmaker, they feel they’re doing something to avert disaster.”

  THE MILK RIVER EXAMINER was the only newspaper for miles around. It was housed in a small building along the main street facing the tracks.

  Andi Blake, the paper’s only reporter, a friendly, attractive woman with a southern accent, helped Jolene.

  “What date are you looking for?” Andi asked.

  Jolene told her it would have been this month twenty-four years ago. “I’m not sure of the exact date.”

  “I wasn’t here then, but you’re welcome to look. Everything is on microfiche. You know how to use it?”

  Jolene did from her college days. She thanked Andi, then sat down in the back of the office and, as the articles from May twenty-four years ago began to come up on screen, she began to roll her way through.

  She slowed at the stories about the drought conditions, the fears of the ranchers and farmers, talk of hiring a rainmaker to come to town. A few papers later, there was a small article about a rainmaker coming to town and how the ranchers were raising money to pay him to make rain.

  With a shudder, Jolene thought of the murder story and her feeling that the weather conditions were too much like this year.

  The headline in the very next newspaper stopped her cold.

  Woman Murdered in Brutal Attack

  An Old Town Whitehorse resident was found murdered in her home last evening.

  Heart in her throat, Jolene read further, then backtracked, realizing that the article didn’t say who found the body.

  The sheriff was asking anyone with information in connection to the murder of Laura Beaumont to come forward.

  If this Laura Beaumont was the same woman that the author of the murder story was writing about, she had at least one lover.