“I will still be proud of you for trying to beat this famous man.”
“What if I have to cut and run from this country?”
“You could send me a letter through your friend the blacksmith, and I would come to meet you wherever you are.”
He put down the sandwich and climbed on his knees to hug her. They quickly kissed and he dropped back on his heels. “I hope I didn’t shock you, but I had to kiss you.”
She looked down and nodded. “Me, too.”
“I better eat and get Ranger ready.”
“They told me you whistled and the horse came with the dog riding him through that big crowd. Someday you must show me how you teach them.”
“Oh, Dulchy, I’d love to do that. I had practiced doing it in town before when it was crowded so I knew they’d come to me. Calico showed off jumping over that low sheep fence.”
“People talked about it all afternoon long in the café.”
“Today it will be serious.”
She moved closer to him. “Eat. I want to see you win today.”
He nodded with his mouth full. That she was so close made every nerve in his body feel like a blasting powder cord sizzling away. His breath grew even shorter and his palms were sweaty. No one had ever done this to him before, and he wasn’t sure what to call it. They were like two magnets ready to snap together.
Good thing she’d never asked him his age. Lots of good things. Her potato salad. Her blue eyes. Her full lower lip. He was out of time. They were blowing the cow horn to get everyone together.
“I must run.”
She rose with him and he hugged her. They kissed harder, and it was even harder for him to let go of her, but at last he whispered, “Good-bye.”
Then he leaped on Calico and told Ranger to join him.
“Win today,” she told him.
When his dog was in place, he short-loped for the starting line. He looked back and waved once. She waved, too. His stomach felt upset as he left her—not because of her food, but because of their separation.
Kissed his first girl. Damn, things were happening fast. Too fast.
A cheer went up as he loped though the opening the large crowd there made for him and his horse. Colonel Armstrong sat on the rise in a tall canvas folding chair with an umbrella for shade. Wulf halted Calico and bailed off close to the man. Ranger jumped down, and Wulf simply let his horse go off grazing.
“You ride that stallion everywhere without reins?” the Colonel asked.
“My knees guide him. He rides fine with a bridle and saddle, too.”
“Why don’t you join me? My show, I mean, with your horse and dog?”
“There are several reasons I can’t. But thank you anyway.”
The Colonel looked over at the crowd. “Are your parents here?”
“My father died. My mother is here with my stepfather, I imagine. I haven’t talked to them in over a week.”
“I see. Ready to start?
“Judge,” Armstrong said to the well-dressed man that Wulf barely recognized without his robes. “Toss the coin. Young man, you may call it in the air to see who goes first.”
“Heads,” Wulf called.
“Tails it is.” The judge looked at the coin, and then he showed them the results.
“I think I will let you go first. Which pen do you want?” the Colonel asked. Then he began to grin. “Or does it matter to you?”
“No, sir. Goats are goats. Especially wild ones.”
“Since you will be first, and the colors of our land are red first, you get the red pen.”
“Fine. Come on, Ranger. We’ve got goats to gather.”
When he was thirty feet from the pen, Wulf stopped and Ranger sat down beside him. “Now, my friend, see that pen down there? That’s where they go.” He pointed to the pen set up at the foot of the hill. People were lined up on both sides of the runway, the lines maybe 150 feet apart. These goats would avoid them unless driven into them by the dog.
“Ready?” the announcer asked, and when Wulf nodded, a .22 shot went off. Three of the toughest-acting big billies came charging out with escape written on their faces. Their curled horns looked like the ones on unicorns, only they each had two.
The goats, seeing the crowd, tried to break back for the pen they had been driven out of, but Ranger was off like a flash. Dodging horns and battering rams, he used his teeth in a series of quick nips to convince them. The fight was short, and the high-headed goats burst for the other side of the line. Wulf shouted to Ranger, “Circle ’em.”
Like lightning, Ranger rounded them up in the center. While they slung their heads at him, they warily stayed clustered in the center of the field halfway to the other pen.
“Easy,” Wulf said, loud enough that Ranger could hear him, and made down signs with his hands.
The crowd applauded. Then, moving like an animal ready to prey on them, Ranger inched them in a mass down the grade. These wild billies had never been so challenged before, except maybe by a coyote. And a coyote wouldn’t bother them unless he was absolutely starving, for he knew they’d taste like the piss dripped off their chins. Foot by foot, Ranger outmaneuvered them. Cutting them off from any possible way to escape, until he finally put them in the end pen and a roar went up when the official closed the gate.
Wulf used two fingers to whistle. Calico threw his head up and came galloping off the hill. Wulf vaulted on his back, caught Ranger to ride behind him. Then, he nodded to the cheering crowd and rode back up the hill to join the Colonel.
Armstrong took off his hat and bowed to Wulf. “I am conceding this contest to you, sir. My dogs are sheep herders and I could not risk injuring them with these wild beasts. They are far too valuable for me to chance their being killed or injured.”
Wulf slipped off Calico and walked over to shake the man’s hand.
“And furthermore,” the Colonel announced loudly, “I wish to inform all of you that I have purchased this dog and horse from this boy’s guardian for three thousand dollars.”
Wulf whirled and saw the smug look on Kent Hughes’s face as he stepped over and took the money from Armstrong. “They’re all yours, Colonel. Let’s go home, son.”
Home—son? His knees threatened to buckle. His breath left him. No way.
EIGHT
THE weather stayed clear the next day, and when Herschel reached the trading post at Hardin near where Custer had made his last stand, he found and spoke with a half-breed named No Horse. The man described the three men and their paint packhorses to him.
“The big man, he tell ’em what to do. They were not boys, but they did as he said, and stayed to guard the horses with rifles while he went in the trading post. Everyone see them say, my, they must have valuable load on them horses to guard them so well.”
“You get a good look at those two?” Herschel asked, squatting with the man wearing the unblocked black hat in the late afternoon sun.
“No. Their collars were turned up and they looked so mean, no one got close. One Indian woman went to offer her services to them. She talked to them.” No Horse shook his head, amused. “But they did not want her.”
“What else?”
“That big man has a scar on his face. His eyes are gray and so is his hair. I thought I knew him, but so many white people look alike. Under his coat, he wears two guns and carries many knives One in his boot, one on his back—I saw it. He could reach up and have it. I bet he could toss it and sink it in a man’s heart.”
“Do you think this woman got a good look at those two?”
“Judy White Goat is her name. She doesn’t speak English. Oh, a little, but you’d never understand more than what her trade is about.”
“I’ll hire you to find her and pay you to translate what she saw.”
“I can do that.”
“What does she charge?” Herschel stopped when his man broke into a grin. “No, I mean, what does she charge her customers? I can pay her that for helping me.”
“Two bits, huh?”
“You a dollar. Her fifty cents, if she knows anything constructive to me.”
“I will find her.”
Herschel raised his gaze to the log trading post on the hillside above them. “I’m going to put up my horse in the wagon yard. Then I’ll eat some supper. You find her while I am there. I will feed you and her, too.”
No Horse nodded his head in agreement. “I can find her and we be there to eat with you.”
Herschel rose and watched the breed jog away. Fastest he had probably moved in years.
Maybe this woman had noticed something about the robbers. No one else got closer before they rode on. The better the description he could get, the easier it would be to find them. With his horse, Cob, eating grain and hay, he went in to the outpost office and wired the sheriff in Sheridan to be on the lookout for three men with five packhorses. Three of the horses were loud paints. The men were armed and dangerous.
When he came out of the telegraph office, No Horse and a tall Indian woman wearing soiled beaded buckskins stood waiting for him. Her long thick hair was in her face, but cleaned up, she might be handsome. Then she burped, and followed that with a giggle. No Horse scowled at her, squeezed her arm, and she tried to square her shoulders.
At the outpost restaurant, the waiter put them in a booth. Roast beef, potatoes, gravy, and corn was the menu. Herschel ordered them all coffee.
“This Judy White Goat,” No Horse said in hardly more than a whisper.
“You ask her about the men?”
No Horse nodded. “One had a mustache. She thought the third one was a boy.”
She said something that came out fast in Crow.
No Horse translated. “She says she knew that one was a virgin.”
That was no help. “What color were his eyes?”
When her answer came back, No Horse said, “They both had blue eyes.”
“Any scars or noticeable things?”
No Horse translated her answer. “She says they both wore heavy gold crosses on chains around their necks. Their coats were unbuttoned and she saw them.”
Those items probably came from the treasure in those trunks. Blue eyes, and maybe the young one was hardly more than a boy. Their food came and Judy White Goat gathered her hair and tied it in back, then sitting very straight, began to cut up her food.
“Where did she go to school at?” Herschel asked, pointing his fork at her. This woman had been schooled in how to eat at a white man’s table.
“A mission school, I think. They say she got with child there. They were going to give her baby away. She ran away from there to keep it. The baby died at birth. She had it alone with the coyotes. Disgraced by her own people, she came here. That is why she does what she does and drinks firewater to forget the good days.”
“Judy White Goat,” Herschel said to get her attention. “These men I’m after burned an old man’s feet so he can’t walk to get this treasure. He has a young Sioux wife, and they threatened to cut off her breasts, so he told them where his money was at. If you know one thing more about them, tell me, please.”
She put down her fork. “The young one has only three fingers.” She showed Herschel how the last two were missing on his right hand by grasping them in her hand.
No Horse shook his head in disgust, and before he went back to eating, said, “She never talks in English. Never have I heard her say a word in English.”
She smiled privately at Herschel. “There are not many worth talking to in English.”
The next morning, Herschel rode south. It was a long two days’ ride to Sheridan, and he felt certain by this time that the robbers weren’t going to try the outlaw trail that was buried in snow on top of the Bighorns. But where would they go next? They’d left Hardin headed south three days earlier after buying a gallon of white lightning from a character called Louisville Shorty. The stable man Ira told him about Shorty’s sale to the older man before they rode on. Paid Shorty two gold Mexican coins for it.
Ira had seen the older man, who, he said, bought grain for their horses, but he said the boys stayed back like they needed to be with the pack animals. He’d never caught the man’s name, but said he acted gruff and short.
Ira dug out and held up a five-sided coin for Herschel to see. “He paid me this for the grain. It any good, Marshal?”
“Worth over twenty-five dollars, they tell me.” Herschel never bothered to correct him. Marshal—sheriff, what was the difference? He always carried his deputy U.S. marshal badge with him, just in case.
“Holy cow, I hope he comes back.”
“If he does, wire the sheriff’s office in Billings. There is a big reward out for him.”
“I will. I sure will.”
Late afternoon, Herschel stopped at the Dare Stage Stop near the halfway mark to Sheridan. It was a log-adobe low-roofed building that made him duck to enter. Inside, the candle lamps threw quaky shadows on the wall and the shake ceiling.
“Aye, sir, ya just passing through?” a plump, red-faced, Irish-sounding gal asked, drying her hands from washing dishes in a tub.
“I’d like to spend the night and take a meal here.”
“Aye, and to rest your weary butt. No doubt ya rode a lengthy way to get here. I’ll stir up the stable boy, Erin, and he can grain and put up your horse for twenty cents. Beds are a quarter and meals the same.” She turned and shouted for the stable boy. “Erin!”
“Coming. Coming. What ya need?” the sleepy-eyed boy asked, coming from the side wing.
“We got a customer. Put up his horse and grain him well.”
“Aye, I can do that, sir.” And Erin hurried off.
Herschel removed his thick gloves and then unbuttoned his coat at her invitation. She helped him out of it, hanging it with his Scotch cap and scarf on the wall pegs.
“And where you be from, sir?”
“Billings. I’m the sheriff up there. My name’s Herschel Baker.”
“Mine’s Birdie. And you must be through here on business,” she said, pouring him some steaming coffee in a tin cup. After putting the coffee in front of him, she took a seat on the bench opposite him and pushed up her sleeves. “I don’t get many folks to talk with here. They get off the stage, poop in me outhouse, complain about the food they eat, and then get back on the stage.”
Herschel chuckled at her words. “I’m looking for three men that committed a major robbery in my county in Montana.”
Her clear blue eyes met his gaze. “And they had a five-horse pack train.”
“Yes. Did they stop here?”
“Two days ago.” He could tell by the grim set to her once-open face that something bad had happened.
“There was trouble here?”
She hunched her shoulders and dropped her chin. “There was, sir.”
“Were you assaulted by them?” He waited for her answer, seeing that she was pained to speak about the matter.
“Yes, Calvin and Grayson McCafferty both.” Her eyes flooded with water, and she dug out a rag to sniff into.
“Two of them?” He reached over to squeeze her arms. “Where was the third one?”
“Watching the damn horses. He wouldn’t come inside.” She stopped and blew her nose. “They tied up Erin and made him watch.”
“What happened next?”
“They rode on—thank God.”
“So you and the boy were the only ones that saw them?”
“I can’t hardly talk about it.” She cried some more, and finally said, “Yes.”
“And their last name is McCafferty?”
“Yes. Calvin is the father. He’s the meanest one. Grayson imitates him, but he’s not that tough. The young one’s name guarded the horses is August. They call him Auggie.”
“He a son of this Calvin, too?”
“By another woman, they said. That was why he didn’t come in.”
“How long were they here?”
“Maybe an hour or so. That boy grained their horses, and a
fter those two bastards were through with me, they rode on.” She shook her head in despair. “It was a horrible experience.”
“I imagine so.” He’d never heard of Calvin or Grayson McCafferty, nor did he recall ever seeing any posters bearing their names. But there would soon be wanted posters out on them. He’d wire Art from Sheridan and get him on that.
“Sorry I am so slow on their trail, Birdie, but I intend to bring them to justice.”
“God bless ya. I had a shotgun up there by me door. I started to shoot at ’em as they were leaving, but Erin, he stopped me saying I shot one, the others’d be back and kill us both.”
“He gave you good advice.”
“I won’t ever feel safe here again. I loved this place before. They ruined me Garden of Eden, huh?”
“You probably won’t ever have another bad incident like this happen in your whole life here.”
“Thanks, Sheriff Baker. I’ll pray over it.”
Before daylight, she made him a big breakfast. He thanked her, then left to saddle his horse. Mounted, he started to head for Sheridan. She rushed out in the frosty cold to stop his steam-blowing horse and give Herschel a cross and a chain of black beads.
“May the Virgin Mary protect you,” she said, and clapped his stomping horse on the shoulder. “Get them devils, Sheriff Baker, before they hurt another woman.”
“I will. I’ll get them. Thanks.” He pocketed the cross and beads and rode on.
NINE
ANDY and Bob held Wulf by the arms and herded him away. He knew both men were fiercely upset but had a good reason for getting him out of there. Good thing he didn’t have a gun.
“Hold your temper. Hughes has dropped the charges. Said the entire matter of the will and probate didn’t need a lawyer. You would get your equitable portion. That your mother had agreed that the sale of the horse and the dog was better for both you and Hughes to get along.”
Shock hit his heart like a sledgehammer blow. “I don’t even have anything to say about this?”
“No. Not here. Hughes has the judge convinced it was all a misunderstanding. Family matter, and he’s going to heal it.”
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