by Gary D. Svee
Always, there was the Yellowstone River. Whenever Mac was late coming home, she worried that he had fallen into the river, disappearing downriver until the Yellowstone spit him out on a gravel bar. That thought lay like an abscess on Mary’s mind. She would be left alone, wondering if he were dead or injured or if he had just gone away, seeking the place where the sun set.
Those dangers lived in Mary’s mind. They were old acquaintances if not old friends. But now a man was stalking them for some reason Mary couldn’t fathom. Darkness drew this stranger to the bushes outside their cabin. Darkness was settling over the McPhersons’. The shades were always closed in their little cabin now, and Mary suffered the lack of light.
Mary lay awake well into the morning hours, jerking each time a cottonwood creaked as it twisted in a passing wind. Then she heard the creak of the step, protesting a man’s weight. Mary couldn’t breathe. She pulled her covers tightly to her neck, hiding in the safety of her blankets, pretending she hadn’t heard the sound. But the sound was real. Another squeak and then a voice.
“Mrs. McPherson? Mac? It’s me, Bert Edgar. Sheriff asked me to check every so often to make sure you’re all right.”
“We’re fine, Mr. Edgar. Thank you for stopping by.”
“You sure there’s somebody in that old house?” Sheriff Drinkwalter said, speaking around a really good cut of New York steak.
“Don’t like to talk business while I’m eating,” Big Jim Thompson said, shoving away the remains of his first steak and signaling the waiter to bring him another.
“You don’t like to do anything but eat.”
“True enough,” Thompson said, fidgeting a little as he watched the door where the waiter had disappeared.
“Hell, it shouldn’t take so long to cook a piece of beef. I didn’t ask him to scorch it or nothing.”
“It hasn’t been thirty seconds. You can’t broil a good piece of beef in thirty seconds.”
“Maybe I should go speed him up a bit. You know those guys get a little lazy if you let them.”
Thompson threw his napkin on the table and rose from a chair that looked like a child’s toy under his bulk. “I’ll just go rattle his cage a little. No sense dawdling over a meal.”
At that moment Walt, the waiter, burst through the door to the kitchen, carrying a plate of steak, baked potato, and asparagus strips. Thompson backed into a chair that squeaked in protest of his weight.
“Took you long enough,” Thompson growled at the waiter.
“Damn near a minute.”
“Don’t suppose you expect much of a tip for this?”
“Don’t expect anything from you. About the best thing anyone says about you is that you’re a cheap son of a bitch. I always tell them, they’re too kind. Anyhow, we don’t like you banging around in the kitchen like you did last time.”
“I never hurt anybody.”
“You scared the chef so bad that he took the next two days off.”
“Well, he deserved a few days off. He serves a fine steak. A man ought to get something a little extra for being good at what he does.”
“What, did they cut your pay again, Big Jim?”
Thompson growled. “Damn, when’s this restaurant going to get some decent help?”
“About the time Yellowstone County gets a good sheriff.”
“Well, I guess you’ll have to do, then,” Thompson said, and both men laughed.
“Walt, this is Frank Drinkwalter. He’s sheriff in that little Podunk town west of here.” Thompson leaned back in his chair. “What’s it called? Sparrows Twig. Yeah, I think it’s called Sparrows Twig. Anyhow, he’s sheriff up there.”
“Do you suppose we could get him to run for sheriff down here? We sure as hell could use a good sheriff.”
“You could use a good cuff. You tell that chef not to waste so much time on the next steak.”
“It’s broiling as we speak.”
“Well, get to it. I haven’t even started, and I’ve damn near finished this steak already. Get moving, Walt.”
“Go to hell, Sheriff,” Walt said.
“Not bad food, but the service is slow,” Thompson said to the waiter’s back.
Drinkwalter waited until the waiter disappeared behind the door to the kitchen. “You don’t need anybody to conspire against you, Thompson. You conspire against yourself.”
Thompson paused, fork halfway to his mouth. “You mean Walt?”
Drinkwalter nodded.
“Walt’s okay. He’s one of my best informants. People say things over dinner and a few drinks that they won’t say in public.”
“Like the conspiracy to boot you out of office?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it isn’t much of a conspiracy, not if today is any measurement.”
“Quiet around the house?”
“Dead closer to it.”
“Word is that’s where they’re meeting.”
“You trying to put the shuck on me?”
Thompson looked hurt. “You think I’m lying to you?”
“Hard to tell, but you sure as hell haven’t worn out the truth since I’ve known you.”
“I’m surprised that you feel that way. I thought we were friends.”
“Friends tell each other the truth.”
“Like that part rainbow, part alligator you caught on the Stillwater?”
“That wasn’t a lie. That was fishing.”
“Fishing? What you know about fishing I could write on the corner of this napkin. If I had gotten to Mac earlier, he would have landed that big rainbow.”
“He was doing fine until you showed up.”
“Well, maybe.” Thompson leaned back in his chair. “What makes you think I’m lying about the conspiracy?”
“Hell, they wouldn’t dare boot you out of office. Only thing you’ve ever done is law enforcement. If they gave you the boot, you’d be on the county dole. Yellowstone County hasn’t got enough money to feed someone like you.”
“S’pose not.”
“You going to tell me why you dragged me down here?”
Thompson sighed. “Well, I didn’t want to tell you this, but I haven’t been feeling too well. So I went to see the doc, and he told me … Well, he told me that I didn’t have long. I didn’t want to tell you, ’cause it might spoil your summer, but I wanted to see you before—”
“That’s pathetic,” Drinkwalter said, shaking his head. “You are maybe the worst liar I have ever seen. Can’t you come up with something better than that?”
“Don’t see why we have to chatter so. A man sits down to eat, he wants to eat. He doesn’t like having his lying criticized. I’m pretty damn good at it: You can ask anybody. It’s a hell of a thing to call a man a pathetic liar, and you a sorry son of a bitch, too.”
“Hell, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. You eat your steak. Then we can talk.”
The Yellowstone County sheriff nodded, burying himself in his meal, raising his eyes occasionally to glower at Drinkwalter.
When the last bite of steak disappeared down Thompson’s maw, he sighed, too soft an expression for a man like him, but appropriate for the end of a really fine meal. Walt the waiter appeared at the table, and Thompson looked up.
“Just half an apple pie, Walt. You tell the chef that his apple pies are the only fit ending for a dinner like this. You tell him that for me, will you?”
Walt smiled and nodded and headed for the kitchen.
Drinkwalter growled, “Now, can we talk?”
“I’ve got enough food in me now that I could tell you a really good lie. Not so good a lie as I could tell you after the apple pie, but a good lie, good as anybody’s. But I’ll tell you the truth straight out, if you’ll promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That you’ll stay down here in Billings for the whole three days.”
“Hell, I can’t do that. Not with Catherine coming, and Galt up there. He’s been after Mary McPherson—”
&nb
sp; “No, he’s been watching her.”
Drinkwalter cupped his chin in his hand. “Yeah, he’s been watching her. How’d you know about that?”
“That’s the kind of thing us big-city sheriffs know about.” Thompson leaned across the table. “We’ve got a whole file on him, reports we’ve gotten from other sheriffs. He spends some time picking out who he’s going to…”
Thompson left the words hanging in the air like an ax. “When he makes up his mind, and we don’t know what makes him do that, then he comes in nice as can be, a real gentleman suitor. Then he drags the woman through the mud and … kills her.
“You’ve got Bert watching the McPhersons, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“And Mac’s there most of the time now that school’s out?”
“Sure, but he’s just a kid.”
“I think the kid in him wore out some time ago.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Mac and Mary are okay. You don’t really have to be up there the next three days.”
Realization spread across Drinkwalter’s face. “That’s it, isn’t it? Mac wanted me out of there so his mother could clean up my place and put some curtains and things in it. He even said that the three days would give his ma the chance to do that. That’s what it is, isn’t it? They want me out of there so they can get the place ready?”
Thompson shook his head. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
23
“Ah, Ma, that looks beautiful.”
Mary McPherson looked up from her roaster pan filled with potato salad and smiled.
“The way you put those sliced eggs around the outside, and the cluster of them in the middle, it’s just beautiful, Ma.”
“No, Mac.”
Mac, all innocence, looked up at his mother in surprise. “No what, Ma?”
“No, you can’t have any potato salad now. Come noon, you’ll have more food to eat than you’ve ever seen.”
“Wonder if Tilly’s going to bring some sandwiches?”
“Probably. I’m looking forward to that. I’d like to know what she does to make them so special.”
“It’s a secret, Ma. I don’t think she’ll tell you her recipe. Some day it will be worth a fortune.”
“It’s about time someone shared a fortune with me.”
“Wonder why Sparks isn’t here yet.”
“They’re probably still loading his wagon at the lumberyard. You can’t very well criticize someone for being a little late when he’s been nice enough to offer you a ride.”
“It’s going to be fun, isn’t it, Ma.”
Mary stopped fussing with the potato salad. “Yes, Mac, it’s going to be fun, more fun than we’ve had in a long while. It’s always fun when good people get together to do something for someone.”
“I’ll bet the sheriff will be surprised when he sees his new house.”
“Flabbergasted would probably be a better word,” Mary said, and the two laughed.
“I can’t wait to see her, Ma.”
“I can’t, either, Mac. She must be special to hold someone like the sheriff for so long. How long did you say they’ve been apart?”
“Ten years, the sheriff said ten years.”
“That’s just about how long it’s been since your father left.”
“You’re still hanging on to him, aren’t you, Ma?”
Mary cocked her head and looked at her son. “Yes, Mac, I suppose I am.”
The jingle of a harness pulled their attention to the door, and a moment later the door rattled with a decisive knock. Mary glanced around their single-room cabin. It would never look nice, but Mary wanted to be sure everything was in its place, and then she opened the door to Sparks Pierson.
Pierson, who labored daily in a stiff white shirt, was wearing a pair of bib overalls, stiff still with starch that marked them as just off the rack.
“Madam, your chariot awaits.”
Mary smiled, and Pierson grinned. “Well, not exactly chariot.”
They both grinned and stepped into a beautiful spring day. The air was clear and sweet as wine, and it was early enough for stillness yet to rule. Mary’s roses were blooming, red and white and yellow, sharing their scent with the day.
Pierson helped Mary take her seat on the wagon, and then he and Mac climbed up. Mac found a perch on a barrel of nails standing in the wagon bed. Lumber, good lumber, most of it clear of knots and blemishes and smelling of high mountains and tall trees, occupied the wagon bed.
“Back, now, back,” Pierson said, urging the horses to back away from the cabin so he could turn them around in the narrow track. The horses swung wide in the turn, pulling the wagon free of the riverside shadows.
“Beautiful day,” Pierson said.
“Beautiful.”
“County crew was out there almost all last night. There’s a natural seam of sandstone that leads right up to the building site. They’ve been cutting into the hillside a little, clearing off the track. Chuck Gilson was in this morning. He said it was probably the best road in the state of Montana.”
The wagon clattered over the railroad crossing, steel shoes and wheels bumping against steel track. Then Pierson pulled the team west down Main Street. It was early still, but the street teemed with people loading picnic lunches and tools into wagon beds. They looked up and waved as Pierson’s wagon passed. “Be out there in a minute, Sparks.” “Don’t build it all until we get there.” And each time someone called, Pierson thrust his arm into the air, waving a thumbs-up at the people of Eagles Nest.
“Good bunch of folks,” Pierson said. “Couldn’t find any better.”
“Mac was saying that you put it together.”
Pierson shook his head. “No. I might have talked to some people, but they took over. They just want to do what’s right for the sheriff, and they want to meet his intended. You’d think the Queen of Sheba was coming right here to Eagles Nest, Montana. Guess I’d have to count myself in that bunch.”
“And me,” Mary said.
“And me, too,” Mac added.
The horses tugged the wagon up the little hill on the west edge of Eagles Nest. Nelly Frobisher’s place, freshly painted, stood out beside the road. Both Sparks and Mary averted their eyes, looking down from the bench to the river bottom and the Yellowstone glowing green in the morning light. Here, the road edged around a slough, once a loop in the river, but cut off now by the Northern Pacific track. The slough was filled with cattails and blackbirds, some with bands of red across their wings, and a few even with yellow heads.
The birds set up a clatter as the wagon passed, each warning the others to guard their nests from the passing two-leggeds.
And then the road dipped down to a bridge over Keyser Creek.
“Saw this run bigger than the Stillwater one time,” Pierson said. “Big summer thunderstorm and hail out north and all the water collected in this creek and roared downstream. It ran over this bridge, well over it, and we figured it would be washed out. Never saw anything like that. More water than the Stillwater: I’d bet on that.”
Mac piped up from the wagon box. “Out on the west side of the creek, about there,” the boy said, pointing with his finger. “There’s a whole bed of sego lilies. They’re beautiful, just beautiful.”
“Segos are beautiful,” Pierson said, and then he gestured toward the river. “Good fishing along that stretch. Not now with the water up, but in early spring, it’s good fishing.”
“In the fall, too,” Mac said.
“You a fisherman?”
“You bet, had one on this spring that was as long as my leg, but he shook himself loose.”
“Yeah, you’re a fisherman all right,” Pierson said, and all three laughed.
Ahead, they could see the county road crew putting the finishing touches on the road. Pierson nodded at them. “Came out here on their own time. Worked half the night so we could get the lumber up for the house. Good people in this town. Really good people.”<
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The wagon jolted, horses’ hooves clicking and wheels ringing as the wagon pulled up the hill toward the dale where the house would be. And then they were there; Mary gasped. It was beautiful, the Yellowstone stretching off east and west and the Stillwater twinkling to the south. And south, at the edge of the world, the Beartooths, snowcapped still, poked into the sky. Blue they were, blue scraped from the belly of heaven by rough crags.
Tables were lined up along the southern edge of the dale, and Mac could smell fried chicken and potato salad and baked beans and fresh biscuits. At the end of a table a whole side of beef rested on a spit over hot coals. All night it had been broiling. About noon it would be just right. Horace Bumgartner would see to that.
The German immigrant stood in the smoke of the coals and the scent of the roasting meat, his weariness marked in his movements. He would serve this congregation the best beef they had ever had. That was the way Horace Bumgartner did everything, the best way he could.
Mac looked at the growing repast, and his mouth watered.
Pierson pulled his attention back to the tasks at hand. “Mac, might be you could give your mother a hand and carry the salad over to the table. By then I should have the wagon backed up somewhere in the vicinity of that lumber there. Maybe you could give me a hand unloading it.”
Mac nodded.
“Brought an extra pair of gloves, just in case I could recruit some slave labor,” Pierson said, handing a new pair to Mac. “You can get a handful of slivers from handling lumber without gloves, even good lumber like this.”
Mac nodded, turning to climb down from the wagon. The boy gasped, “Ma, look at that.”
The track they had just traveled was filling with people from Eagles Nest. It seemed that someone had pulled a plug, and the town was draining, spilling toward the west. On they came from the morning sun, wagons, horses, and even a few pedestrians carrying shovels over their shoulders. They were nodding and waving to one another. Occasionally a shout, too faint to be understood, would ride the clear morning air.
“Almost the whole town,” Sparks said. “Few curmudgeons left, but there’s always a few curmudgeons. I suspect we’ll have this house up today. Tomorrow we’ll be painting and finishing.
