by H. V. Elkin
“At the livery stable,” he said, “guardin’ my rig.”
Bannister did not expect an answer. It caught him off his guard. He stood there trying to figure it out, wondering if Cutler’s new friendliness was an indication that Bannister was as good as dead anyway and that it did not matter anymore what was said to him.
“Livery, eh?” His eyes darted to the people watching from the edges of the room, then quickly back to Cutler.
Cutler slid Iris’ empty glass toward Bannister. “Buy you a drink?”
Bannister smiled. “Well, that’s more like it.” He held out his hand.
Cutler hesitated a moment. He did not want to shake Bannister’s hand. He did not like Hedge Bannister. But if the game had to be played this way, the handshake was a necessary part of the ritual. He pushed out his own hand and shook Bannister’s. As he did so, he could hear the noises resume in the room. They were a mixture of surprise, relief, and disappointment. Bannister looked relieved himself.
“Just as I thought,” he said. “You needed a few drinks before you wanted to talk to anybody. I’m a little like that myself.”
Cutler smiled for the benefit of the people watching, but his voice did not match his expression. “Let’s get a thing straight,” he said. “I’m actin’ friendly so I won’t have to shoot you.”
Bannister smiled back. “Or maybe the other way ‘round.”
Cutler nodded. “Maybe. Now drink your drink. We’ll shake hands again, and then you can go. Everybody in town’ll start lookin’ at you a different way, and you’ll like that. No sense in takin’ a chance on gettin’ killed so you won’t be able to enjoy it.”
Bannister grinned. “Two drinks’d be better.”
“You can have two. Drink.”
Bannister drank, and Cutler filled the glass again.
“Maybe I had you figured wrong,” Cutler said. “You’re actin’ like you got sense after all.”
“Don’t push me, Cutler.”
“No.” Cutler shook his head. “Wouldn’t want to do that.”
“You want to hear my business proposition?”
Cutler did not want to hear it. But it would be foolish not to listen. Despite this moment of truce, both men sensed that, somewhere down the trail, a showdown was waiting. It had to be. It was as real as the bourbon they were drinking or the bullets in their cartridge belts. But right now both men wanted something more. Cutler would have a better advantage if he knew all he could about Bannister. He decided to listen and find out what it was Bannister wanted—more than a showdown.
“You know what business I’m in?” Cutler asked.
“Hell, yes!” Bannister spat and missed a nearby spittoon. He tried again and hit it on the rim. “Who doesn’t know about you by now?”
“Then you got some kind of rogue animal for me to trap?”
“Not exactly.”
“Thought you said you knew about me.”
“I do!”
“Let me deal it out for you,” Cutler said. “I trap rogue animals. I don’t come cheap, but I get results. I work alone.” He stopped a moment to consider. “At least, I usually do. If I want help, I get it myself. Now, what’s your proposition?”
“It ain’t any particular rouge animal, Cutler, that me and George Hobson’s got in mind. It’s just any rogue you do get.”
“I’m listenin’.”
“George and me figures it this way. The ones you trap are famous. Victorio wolf, that jaguar down in Sonora—prize trophies all of them. Now, the folks that hire you don’t want anything but to get the rogue out of the way. You could make it part of your deal with them that you get to keep the hide and head. Then you bring it back here to Cheyenne, George stuffs it, and we sell it to the highest bidder. A three-way split—you, me and George.”
“What about you?” Cutler asked.
“Me?”
“What do you do to earn your share?”
Bannister blinked. “Oh. Well, it was my idea. Besides, George and me have a kind of partnership worked out.”
“Think I’d like to know more about what I’d be gettin’ into.”
“You’d be gettin’ into a lot of money. That’s what you’d be gettin’ into! What more do you need to know?”
“Not my policy to poke my nose into another man’s business.”
“Name it, Cutler. If you’re interested, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Well, I just couldn’t ask. If I was considerin’ goin’ partners with somebody, I’d want to know what it’d do to my reputation, what those other men had done in their lives, and how it might wash off on me. But I couldn’t ask about things like that.”
“I can’t speak for George.”
“Wouldn’t want you to.”
“But speakin’ for myself, sure I’ve had some problems with the law. Don’t think there’s a cowboy alive today that hasn’t.”
“’Course not,” Cutler encouraged him.
“That Johnson County thing. I was in on that. They put me in the guardhouse for it, but they didn’t want to. The soldiers knew who was right in that mess up north, and they didn’t enjoy doin’ their duty.”
“Understand that all right,” Cutler nodded solemnly.
Bannister was about to tell him something else, then he changed his mind. “What do you say?” He faced Cutler’s silence a moment, then blurted, “Cutler, all you got to do is deliver the carcass and collect your money. What do you say?”
Cutler was disappointed that he wasn’t going to learn anything he didn’t already know. He decided to leave the door open. “I’ll have to think about it,” he said.
“Sure. Think about it all you want.” Bannister downed his second drink. “When you make up your mind, you’ll probably find me around town. That is, you will if you don’t wait ’til winter.”
“Pretty close to that now, ain’t it?”
“Yep.”
Cutler made it sound like a joke. “You move south with the birds when it starts gettin’ colder?”
“Nah,” Bannister laughed. “I move into the places other folks move out of.” He stood up in a way that made it look as if he were in charge. He raised his voice so that he could be heard through the room. “You let me know then, you hear?” Then he turned and sauntered from the room without looking back.
Cutler wanted to kill him, but he settled for another shot of bourbon instead. Then he opened the envelope Iris had given him.
“Dear Mr. Cutler,” the letter began. “News has reached me of your exploits and success in trapping rogue animals. The bone of contention in this case is a particular grizzly. I hasten to add it is not the one with a stump leg. It is also rumored that you also can handle men. If this is true, we could use a man of your abilities in Yellowstone Park.”
Cutler frowned and poured himself another shot of bourbon.
The letter continued. “The details are unimportant unless you choose to take the job. Suffice it to say, the Army is kept busy with other, more important matters. To direct necessary manpower toward capturing the bear would endanger the Army’s other areas of concern.”
Cutler’s frown turned into a smile. He thought he recognized the careful words of a politician. He glanced at the signature. It said: “Judge John W. Meldrum, United States Commissioner, Yellowstone Park.” The judge was skating on thin ice, it seemed. Reading between the lines, Cutler guessed that Meldrum was really telling him that the Army was opposed to outside interference in its affairs, but Meldrum thought specialized help was needed. He was placating the Army by mentioning “other important matters,” but was very careful not to mention how bad the situation was. “Details are unimportant unless you choose to take the job,” meant he didn’t care to wash dirty linen in public and further antagonize the Army’s captain in charge who was obviously less than agreeable to Cutler’s showing his face in Yellowstone.
It sounded like most of the other jobs Cutler had undertaken. In addition to the people who respected the work of
a professional, there were those who felt that local people should handle their own problems.
There was more to the letter. “I have been reliably informed of your normal fee. You may take that matter up with me in Bozeman, following your successful completion of the job.”
Cutler figured Meldrum wanted to keep the size of the fee between him and Cutler. An Army captain would have to work a long time to put a thousand dollars together; if he knew Cutler got that much for one job, it wouldn’t improve this working relationship.
“If you will help us, please apply to Captain Anderson at Fort Yellowstone, from whence I write this letter. The Captain assures me that, although the new road entering the park from the south is not yet completed, it will be passable for you and your rig until the heavy snows.”
Then came his signature.
When Cutler looked up, Iris was sitting at the table again.
“Thanks for not putting bullet holes in my saloon,” she said.
He had forgotten Bannister. “I figured I owed you that.”
She was serious. “I know it wasn’t easy.”
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t easy at all.”
“John, I’ve seen you in most of your moods. But this is a new one.”
“Yeah.”
She did not ask about it. “The mayor’s over there.” She let her eyes move slightly to the left. Cutler did not follow the direction they pointed in.
“Glad your place is so respectable,” he said.
“When he saw how friendly you were feeling, he asked to meet you.”
“What for?”
“Think he wants to make you a citizen.”
“No thanks.”
“He also is trying to get some kind of annual celebration going in town. Wants you to be a part of it. Something called Frontier Days.”
“Iris, I’ve already got my kind of work.” He held up the letter. “I don’t want to talk to the mayor. I don’t want to listen to any more business propositions tonight.”
She smiled. “Isn’t there anything you want, John?”
The bourbon had done its job well, putting a warm glow between him and his painful memories. He was able to be totally in the Silver Dollar in Cheyenne, Wyoming, with the beautiful Iris Shannon sitting next to him.
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s something I want.”
Iris looked him straight in the eyes. “I want it, too, John.”
Chapter Three
Cutler always woke up fast, rising suddenly and with great speed from deep sleep without dawdling. There was only a brief fragment of time before he opened his eyes when he did not know where he was. As a man who had wheels and who woke up someplace different most mornings, it always took him a second to adjust. Most mornings he could count on a rising sun or the morning light coming through the back opening of his wagon to waken him. Seldom did he wake up in a clean bed, with the smell of perfume around him instead of the smell of the traps and dew covering his bedroll along with accumulated sweat. Seldom did he see a naked blonde beauty looking down at him on awakening.
This was one of those seldom times.
Iris wasn’t smiling. Her wrinkled forehead looked unnatural atop her smooth, well-rounded body. For a moment, before Cutler had totally adjusted to where he was, Iris looked to him to be a little girl playing grownup, about to scold a puppy dog the way her parents scolded her. But then he reached out and touched her thigh, and knew she was not a little girl at all. All of him was suddenly awake.
Iris Shannon knew what was about to happen. “No,” she said, “wait a minute.”
Cutler raised his eyebrows in a question as his hand continued to stroke her.
“John, will you tell me what’s wrong?”
It was not like her to ask personal questions. Cutler had always admired the way she kept her distance until she knew he did not want her to. Usually, it worked both ways.
“You worried because you woke up first for a change?”
“I woke up first because you were tossing and turning. That’s not like you.”
“A man doesn’t like talkin’ about what ails him, especially not to a pretty woman, especially not in the morning in bed with her.”
“I know.” She shook her head helplessly. “It’s a stupid thing, too. If you’d talk about it, it might help.”
“No,” he said. “It wouldn’t help. Talkin’s never helped me much any time in my life. There are things I have to do, that’s all. And doin’ ain’t talkin’.”
“John, I’m not questioning the way you live.”
“Know that.”
“I just want to help, if I can.”
“Know that, too.”
“Won’t you let me?”
“Iris, you are my post office. You’re the person people come to about the grizzly, the person I can always find within ten thousand square miles of Wyoming. I know if you’re not in Tensleep, you’ll be at one of your other four saloons. And you make the end of the trail a good place to get to. That’s plenty for you to be doin’. The only other thing I could ask of you is, don’t change on me, not right away.”
As the sun filled the room, Iris’s frown faded. Then Cutler reached up, put a gentle hand on the back of her neck, and pulled her toward him.
He left town later than he planned.
The morning was half over when Cutler picked up his trap at the hardware store and got directions to the Taylor ranch. By the time he had settled the bill at the livery and loaded up with supplies, it was close to noon. That put more people on the street when he rode out, people who would have otherwise been working in the shops but were now out for their midday meals. They were not gawking at him in the same way as when he rode in. Word always spread fast in towns like this. By now the rumors about who Cutler was and what he had done would have grown into fantastic lies, and each narrator added a little something of his own to the legend.
Iris was standing outside the Silver Dollar. The disturbing frown was back on her face until she knew he saw it. Then she smiled and waved. It was a gesture meant to be casual, but it was one in which Cutler sensed a note of finality.
That thought stayed with him along the two mile trail to the Taylor farm. The sense of foreboding he had picked up in Oklahoma had not ended when he survived the rattler. That had been only the beginning. The man who was not sensitive was convinced he would not return from this new adventure. Yet, he rode steadily toward it.
Back in Cheyenne now, they were talking about the John Cutler who had cleaned up the Boone gang and brought in the Thomas boys, about an imaginary John Cutler who laughed at death because he was invincible. The John Cutler who rode out of Cheyenne knew better. He was as mortal as anyone. There was no such thing as immortality.
The only way a man survived death was through the mark he made when he walked the earth. He survived through his children.
But Cutler’s child had died unborn. There was no one now. The men who acted and thought as he did were few and far between. Most of them were also close to dying.
Once Cutler saw an image of himself in a younger man. That had been about six months back. The boy had entered Iris’ Elkhorn Bar in Tensleep very much the way Hedge had come into the one in Cheyenne, cocky and looking to prove something. The boy had been humiliated by some cowboys who had ridden through his father’s farm. He had set out to make a name for himself. All he got for his efforts was a strong punch from Cutler that sent him on a fast trip across a table. What he paid for this gift was a couple of front teeth. He also got a chance to cool off in jail.
Then he followed Cutler, who was headed for Oklahoma. He was not out for revenge, though. Instead, he wanted Cutler to know that he was not the gun-happy person he pretended to be in Tensleep. He wanted to team up with Cutler and learn how to be somebody whose reputation was based on something better than scaring people.
Cutler had been impressed with the boy. But at the time Cutler said he worked alone. Anyway, before the boy could become a man, he had to go
back and finish the things he had left undone. For one thing, he had to return the horse he had taken from his father. For another, he had to finish a fence.
Cutler’s rig stopped atop a small hill, and he looked down at the Taylor spread.
The fences were up. Judging by the upright posts, they were straight. A good sign. But what would Bill Taylor be like now? True, it had been less than a year since Cutler had seen him. But living out here was hard. People aged fast, died young, changed.
One enclosure held a few steers. Another was a garden, most of it going to seed at this time of the year. There were some chickens and geese in it. There were also a few sheds, a small barn, and a white frame house. It looked like the kind of place a man could call home. Cutler knew that if Bill Taylor left this place, no matter how far he went or how much he did to belong somewhere else, he would always be drawn back here.
Red’s head turned sharply, his ears up. The dog was curious about something. He was not prepared to defend his master, which was strange, because a rifle barrel was pointed at them from behind a rock, a shock of red hair visible above it.
“Hold it right there, mister!” The voice cracked halfway between a high and low register, then it settled for a hoarse monotone. “Now just turn yourself around and backtrack.”
Red looked at Cutler.
“It’s okay,” Cutler told the dog. “Stay.”
“You hear me?” The volume rose, but the tone stayed the same.
“I hear you. But I don’t much like goin’ back over where I’ve been. You want to shoot me, or you want to come out and talk like a man?”
The red hair rose. It topped off a boy about ten years old. He had freckles and squinted to look serious. He wore a faded cotton shirt and overalls with one strap missing. “What you doin’ here?” he asked, as if he suspected the worst.
“Well, you lower that barrel, and I’ll tell you.”
The boy lowered the gun just low enough to get it back in time if he had to. “That’s as low as she goes.”
“I’m lookin’ for the Taylor farm?”
“Why?”
“Because Bill Taylor told me to.”
