The Long Hitch

by Michael Zimmer

  The roadhouse door was propped open to admit the evening breeze, and Buck spotted the stranger as soon as he stepped inside. He nodded once, then made his way to the bar where Cookie was sitting atop the near end, looking as affable and as dirty as ever. He grinned when he saw Buck, revealing an uneven row of tobacco-stained teeth. “Hey, Buck!” he called loudly. “Good to see you, boy.”

  “How, Cookie?”

  Pushing off the bar, Cookie said: “Want a beer?”

  “I wouldn’t turn one down.” Buck glanced at the stranger. “How about you, pard? Can I buy you beer?”

  The stranger’s brows wriggled uncertainly, as if the question had caught him off guard. He shook his head no.

  “You can buy me one,” Cookie volunteered, pulling a pair of greasy mugs off the back shelf. “I ain’t had hardly a sniff of the stuff since noon.”

  “Pour it,” Buck said, standing so that he could keep his eyes on the stranger.

  “That’s Jasper,” Cookie said, grinning. He had both hands under the bar, where the gurgle of running beer from a hidden tap promised quick relief for Buck’s thirst. “Jasper don’t talk much but he must like my cookin’, ’cause he’s still here.”

  “It’s not your cooking I like,” the stranger replied, pulling his legs under him and shoving to his feet. “It’s the beer.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Cookie murmured. “You must have the magic touch. Buck. Ol’ Jasper here ain’t peeped more’n a dozen words since he rode in several days ago.”

  Jasper walked over to the bar, taking a position a couple of yards from Buck. “I’ve been hearing about you, McCready. They say you’re the lead mule for the Box K.”

  “I captain one of its trains,” Buck replied, “although I don’t remember mentioning my name to you.”

  A cool smile twitched at the stranger’s lips. “You didn’t. Cookie mentioned it when you rode in. My name’s Nick Kelso.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned for a second time,” Cookie said, sounding suddenly wary. “He’s got a name, too.” He set one of the mugs in front of Buck, thick foam sliding down the outside of the glass. “I swear that’s the most he’s talked since Carville and Reese rode outta here a couple days ago.”

  “Gabe Carville and Henry Reese?” Buck asked curiously.

  “Uhn-huh.”

  “Mind your beer, barkeep,” Kelso advised, “and don’t go mouthing off about affairs that are none of your concern.”

  “I’ve heard a lot of bad stories about Carville and Reese,” Buck said, eyeing Kelso. “They’ve been accused more than once of stealing other trappers’ furs. Of course, that’s just campfire talk. Maybe you know them better than I do.”

  “No, I’d say that talk was about right,” Nick replied. “They’ve been known to lift a few mules from time to time, too. They’re not particular.”

  “Stealing mules is a good way to get shot,” Buck said. “Or hung, if they ain’t particular.”

  “There’s some who’d like to, I suppose.”

  Buck sipped at his beer. He thought it odd that Kelso would speak so openly of Carville’s and Reese’s nefarious reputations, although he wasn’t sure it signified anything. Glancing at the barkeep, he said: “You got any grub left, Cookie?”

  “I got some cold oats, and the bread’s almost fresh.”

  “That bread’s got hair in it,” Nick accused.

  Grinning sheepishly, Cookie lifted his well-stained bowler. “I’m gettin’ kinda sparse on top, Buck, and I don’t wear a hat in the kitchen on account of it’s so dang’ hot, so you might find a strand or two, although it ain’t killed nobody yet that I know of.”

  It was widely believed that some of the best and worst cooking a man was liable to encounter could be found in Western roadhouses. It was just as true, Buck thought, that Cookie’s meals usually ran nearer the latter than the former. “What have you got on your shelves?” he asked.

  “I got a heap of elk jerky. In cans I got corned beef, sardines, peaches, tomaters. Outside of cans I got powdered milk, crackers, pickled eggs … shoot, just about anything a feller’d want if he’s hungry enough.”

  Buck ordered a can of corned beef, another of peaches, a dozen crackers, and a couple of pickled eggs. While Cookie gathered his supper, Buck laid out change for the food and beers. Keeping his mug in hand, he gathered his purchases in his arm, telling the bartender: “I’m going to bunk outside tonight. I’ll bring your mug back in the morning.”

  “That works,” Cookie agreed.

  Buck glanced at Nick. “Good to meet you, friend.”

  Kelso’s tight smile remained unchanged, although he did lift his mug in a short farewell salute.

  Outside, Buck checked his mules first, then sank down, cross-legged, beside the barn to eat his supper. When he’d finished, he set his empty beer mug on the porch, then took his bedroll across the road and spread it out in the sage. Although he was tired, sleep was elusive. He kept running over everything that had happened since Mase’s murder. Some of it, like the shots fired at him and Dulce along the Bear River and the murders of Lotty Beals and Sally Hayes, was already starting to seem like a long time ago. But the terror he’d seen in Peewee’s eyes that afternoon when the two big Murphys had almost gone over the edge was still so fresh in his mind he had to force himself to relax.

  He must have dozed, because when he opened his eyes next, the moon was already well up. He didn’t know what had awakened him until he heard Zeke’s nervous whicker. Rolling up on one elbow, he peered through the lower branches of sage, spying a man at the far end of the corral, a saddled horse hitched to one of the rails. The light was too poor to make out any details, but Buck had a good idea who it was. He kicked free of his blankets and pulled on his boots. When he looked again, the man had moved close to the barn, creeping through its shadows like a stalking cat. Even in that murky light, the silhouette of the man’s pistol against the pale log wall was unmistakable.

  Buck’s throat worked convulsively as he slid his own revolver free of its holster and thumbed the hammer to full cock. Although the distance was a good forty yards, the sound traveled clearly in the still night air. The dark figure whirled smartly and fired, the bullet crashing through the sage near Buck’s shoulder. A second round probed the brush on his other side, and Buck dropped flat with a startled epithet. At the barn, the man was racing for his horse, swinging smoothly into the saddle and wheeling it on a short rein. Buck scrambled through the sage, hollering for the man to halt, but the lanky stalker laid down two more quick rounds instead, the second one coming close enough for Buck to hear the bullet’s sizzle. Then the man was racing out the roadhouse yard, his horse stretched low to the ground as it pounded north along the Montana Road.

  “God damn!” Buck roared, breaking free of the sage. He skidded to a stop in the middle of the road but held his fire. The distance was already too great. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he breathed.

  He hurried across the yard to the corral. Zeke met him at the gate, his long ears perked inquisitively forward, nostrils flaring at the sharp, sulphurous odor of burned gunpowder. Buck patted the john’s neck affectionately. He was pretty sure there was one horse missing, a bay, if he remembered correctly.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on out here?” Cookie demanded from the porch, standing there in a flowing nightshirt, a double-barreled shotgun in his hands.

  “Over here!” Buck called, shoving the Colt inside the waistband of his trousers. He walked over to where Cookie had stopped at the near end of the porch, his bare toes wiggling over the edge like a troop of stubby worms.

  “Buck? That you?”

  “It is. Someone took a shot at me.”

  “The hell you say? Who?”

  “I could make a guess. There’s a bay horse missing from the corral. I’ve got two bits says it’s Nick Kelso’s pony.”

  “Huh,” Cookie said thoughtfully, lowering his shotgun. “Jasper rode in on a bay, all right. Let me check.” He disappeared into the roadhouse. When he c
ame back a couple of minutes later, he was still toting the double-barrel. “He’s cleared out, all right.”

  “I was wondering,” Buck said softly, “did he own a lever gun, maybe a Forty-Four-Forty?”

  “Yeah, he did. How’d you know that? He kept it in his room with the rest of his stuff.”

  “Just a hunch.”

  “That’s a hell of a hunch,” Cookie said doubtfully.

  Buck stepped away from the porch to stare north along the Montana Road. “It is, ain’t it?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Sitting quietly before her evening fire, Gwendolyn Haywood pondered the monumental mistake she had made in pirating her brother’s summer position with Bannock Mining. She’d wanted to prove her maturity, to flaunt her independence in the face of her father’s disapproval of her lifestyle and the friends who shared it. In the beginning, it had seemed like a grand adventure, little more than a continuation of the game she and her father had embarked on the night of her coming-out ball.

  Peewee Trapp’s near-fatal wreck that afternoon had crushed that view, and the consequences of what they were attempting, she and these rough-barked men of the Box K, and the repercussions that were sure to follow no matter who won this race to Montana, were only now starting to sink in.

  This was no longer a game. This was deadly serious.

  A heavily-accented curse startled Gwen, and she raised her eyes from where she had been staring into the low, yellow flames of the campfire. Paddy O’Rourke sat across from her, sucking resentfully on his thumb. A butcher knife lay in the dirt at his feet, its tip glistening with blood. Gwen assumed he’d cut himself while wiping the steel blade clean on a rag, but she didn’t inquire. Paddy O’Rourke frightened her, and she was pretty sure he frightened Dulce Kavanaugh, too. She wished Thad hadn’t hired him, but Thad had insisted reliable linesmen were hard to find, and that O’Rourke came highly recommended. Perhaps that was true, Gwen thought, but it didn’t calm the feelings of dread she felt whenever the swarthy Irishman turned his brooding gaze upon her.

  O’Rourke looked up now, and Gwen quickly averted her eyes. She knew he was aware of her slight, angered by it, and a chill skittered down her spine. She stared at the rear boot of the mud wagon, its sloping leather cover dyed the color of the night, and wondered how long she could pretend interest in something she could barely make out. She could feel the jehu’s thorny visage still hard upon her and feared he would continue to stare until she was forced to acknowledge him. Then, with a muttered curse, O’Rourke pushed to his feet and stalked away, leaving his knife where it had fallen.

  Gwen shuddered and lowered her face. Tears welled in her eyes. She recalled the passion of the linesman’s oath, the dark power of his gaze, and knew that this was a thing she had no control over. She had discovered quite a few of those recently. Life was larger out here than anything she had ever imagined, harsher than she would have believed possible. But she wouldn’t go back, wouldn’t give her father the satisfaction of quitting almost before the journey was begun.

  She stood and glanced around the camp, dabbing at her eyes with a small, powder-blue handkerchief. Most of the muleskinners had already retired, and all but her own fire had burned down to coals. With a sigh, she turned toward the tent she shared with Dulce. Its interior was dark, suggesting that the younger woman was already asleep.

  Gwen made her way to the tent, where a tin basin filled with cold water sat on top of a wooden stand next to the entrance. She washed her face, then brushed her teeth with baking soda, all the while reflecting upon the private bath in her family’s home on Society Hill, the little stove in the corner where water could be heated. She hadn’t had a proper bath since leaving Ogden and dreaded to think how she must appear to others. It was a blessing, she’d decided early on, that she had brought along only a small oval hand mirror; anything larger might have shamed her into a long coat and veil.

  She changed into her nightgown and quickly slipped under her blankets, shivering from the cold. That a country could be so hot during the day, then turn so abruptly cold at night, was just another reminder of how far out of her element she truly was. In Philadelphia, the heat and humidity during the summer never seemed to let up.

  Despite her weariness, Gwen managed only a light sleep, enough to start her down a path filled with familiar faces and illogical conversations. Her friends from home and school were there, as was Buck McCready and Thad Collins. The path led to a ballroom filled with light and laughter, and dancers swirled by on every side. But she sensed there was something wrong, too, and went in search of Buck, riding his mule, Zeke. Only it wasn’t Buck she found, but Paddy O’Rourke, still angry over her refusal to recognize the cut on his finger. O’Rourke cursed and began to advance on her, covered in blood from a now severed thumb, his eyes like twin sockets drilled into a misshapen lump of skull.…

  Gwen awoke with start. The fire outside had died and everything around her was without form. Moving her hand experimentally in front of her face produced only the faintest of shadows. Lying back, she tried to slow the beating of her heart. She could hear the mules grazing on the hillside below the camp and coyotes in the far-off hills and … crack.…

  Gwen’s eyes flew open. She threw her blankets back and swung her legs off the cot. Her sheepskin-lined slippers rested on the carpet beneath her and she eased her feet into them before rising and pulling a shawl around her shoulders. She debated lighting a lamp or waking Dulce, then decided against it. Gwen already felt like an outsider. She didn’t want to risk making a laughingstock of herself by reacting too hastily. This was a wagon train after all, perched on the side of a mountain in the middle of a wilderness. Of course there would be unexplained noises.

  Gwen made her way to the canvas door, her fingernails rasping softly on the stiff fabric as she searched for the first of the four cloth ties that held the entrance closed. She freed the one nearest to her face first, then two others below it. Easing the right-hand flap back a couple of inches, she pressed her face to the narrow gap. The darkness outside was intimidating, but not as complete as that within. Moving deliberately so as to make as little noise as possible, she slid through the door. Starlight capped the small cove, illuminating the nearby brush and boulders. Screwing up her courage, she stepped away from the entrance. As she did, movement from the corner of her eye caused her to whirl just as a tall, lean figure slammed into her. She caught the strong odor of teamster, of leather and sweat and mule hide, even as she stumbled backward, falling hard. A calloused hand grabbed her chin and yanked her face around to the dim light of the stars. A knife flashed. Gwen tried to scream but couldn’t force the sound past her throat.

  “Bitch,” a voice growled in her ear.

  “What’s going on over there?” a second voice demanded from the far side of the tent. It was Thad, curious but not yet alarmed.

  The man above her hesitated, then shoved her roughly back and fled. Gwen’s head thumped solidly against the rocky ground and she rolled onto her side with a low whimper. She heard footsteps coming toward her, and for a moment she lay there waiting to be rescued, reassured, then returned safely to her bed—as her father had done so many times before.

  Stubbornly Gwen pushed to her feet, brushing the dirt and grass from her nightgown, straightening her shawl. Her lips were pinched tightly when Thad rounded the corner of her tent, her anger growing.

  “Miss Haywood,” Thad said uncertainly. “Is everything all right?”

  “No, everything is not all right. I interrupted a prowler.”

  “A prowler? Where?”

  “Here!” She waved a hand over the spot in front of the tent. “Where do you think? He pushed me down and threatened me with a knife.”

  “Someone pushed you down?”

  “Must I repeat everything?” Gwen snapped. “He threatened me with a knife, while you slept blissfully away.”

  Thad came closer and Gwen saw that he was in his stocking feet, but that his revolver was drawn. He was studying th
e nearby bushes speculatively. “Did you see who it was?”

  She hesitated. He had called her a bitch with more hatred then she had ever heard before, and her face flamed with humiliation. “How dare he?” she whispered.

  “What was that?” Thad asked, turning.

  “Nothing.” She took a deep, quavery breath. “It was probably just one of the mule drivers.”

  Thad frowned. “Why would one of the drivers threaten you with a knife?”

  “How should I know, Thaddeus? Perhaps I reminded him of an old girlfriend.” Tears came to her eyes. She blinked them back, grateful for the darkness. “It was nothing,” she said then. “An accident.”

  Thad came closer, sliding the pistol into the waistband of his trousers. “Miss, we can’t assume anything after what happened on the mountain today. If someone threatened you, I need to know who it was. If it was a deliberate attack, action needs to be taken.”

  Gwen shuddered. She hadn’t considered the possibility that there might be a connection between what happened to Peewee Trapp that afternoon and the dark figure tonight. “Very well, you may report the incident to Mister Newton, but … don’t tell him I was threatened. Just tell him there was a prowler, and that you frightened him away.”

  Thad hesitated. Gwen could tell he was uncomfortable with those restrictions, but not yet ready to defy her authority. “All right,” he said finally, “but I’ll tell him now. I want to have a look around before I go back to bed, and Newton can help.” She nodded and turned toward her tent. “I shall await your return in my quarters,” she informed him.

  “Newton will want to talk to you,” Thad reminded her.

  “I have no doubt,” Gwen replied crossly. Milo would want to talk to her and so would Dulce, when all she wanted right now was to escape into blessed sleep.