by Lou Cameron
“Not if I build up plenty of coasting speed before I come to ’em. But I fear this has to be the end of the line for ye, me bucko, unless ye plan on riding all the way with me. I dast not stop or even slow down after I next ease off me brakes.”
He glanced outside at the wooded slopes to either side. “Well, wherever I am, you’ve saved me a good two days on horseback. So I guess this is it, Red. You’re one hell of a gal, and I’ll never forget this favor.”
She looked away. “Aw, lave off the mush. I owe ye more than ye owe me. For forst ye saved me from losing money with that grand system I thought I was using in the Lady Luck, and then ye saved me from a holdup. They’d have had us back there at the jerkwater if we’d made our regular run.”
She giggled and added, “Jasus, won’t the boys be ever so surprised when they find out how smart I was? For it’s just about now they’ll be standing in the yard back in Rimrock, gaping at the empty siding and wondering where in the divel me and this combo might be right now.”
“I’d better see how my paint feels about jumping out of that reefer,” he said, and she said she’d help him.
They climbed down and walked back, side by side. The dawn air tasted like wine, and somewhere a bird was already starting to sing. They slid the reefer door open and Stringer climbed inside to untether the paint from the latch on the far side. He’d let it ride saddled, with just this moment in mind. As he led it to the open doorway, it stared down morosely and dug its hooves into the flooring. But while dragging a pony up into a boxcar could be a bother, getting it down was easier. Red Fagan held the reins while Stringer beat the paint’s rump with his hat until it decided leaping to its doom was the lesser of two evils.
It almost landed in Red’s bib overalls. She hung on but wound up on her rump in the grass, and would have wound up dragged across the same had she been much lighter.
Stringer leaped down and dashed over to steady the paint, then turned to the woman at his feet to ask if she was all right. She smiled up at him. “I’d better stick to railroading in the future.”
He reached down to help her up with his free hand. It wasn’t easy. There was a lot of meat to Red Fagan, even if it did curve in and out nicely. He’d meant his assistance in a brotherly manner. She wrapped her arms around him anyway, and hugged him close to her big breasts as she sighed. “It’s a good thing I have a train to catch,” she said. “For it’s over in the bushes I’d be after dragging you if there was time.”
He hugged her back. “I reckon I could spare a few minutes, Red.”
But as he’d halfway hoped, she laughed and said, “Be off with yez, ye great loon. Is that any way to talk to a lady in bib overalls?”
He laughed, too, and let go of her. But she still held on. “Would ye do me one small favor before ye ride off, MacKail?” she asked, in a small, shy voice.
He asked what it was, and she said, “I’d like ye to kiss me good-bye, dacent, with no sneaky feels from thim Gypsy roving hands this time.”
He kissed her, tenderly as one could kiss anything that big, and when they had to come up for air, she said, “Thank ye kindly, and now I’d best be off before ye tempt me to take off these overalls.”
He didn’t laugh. She turned and almost ran back to her cab. He felt sort of wistful, too, as he mounted the paint and rode north, away from the tracks, without looking back. They were among the trees and the grade was getting steeper when he noticed his mount was limping and dismounted. “You think you’ve got troubles?” he said. “You’re a gelding. You don’t know what a morning hard-on feels like.”
He led the way on foot, hoping the paint would recover soon from the sprain or whatever. It would be limping a lot more if it had really broken anything leaping down from the reefer, and what the hell, he could walk uphill almost as fast as he could ride. By full daybreak he might know where they were, and the sun would have warmed the stiff pony enough to push on more seriously. All he knew for sure was that they were just south of the big park, on the same side of the Divide as the presidential party, assuming old Teddy Roosevelt was still visiting the park, or still alive.
Stringer considered that grim angle as he trudged on with the paint in tow. He’d heard special Secret Service men had been assigned to guarding the president on a regular basis since assassinating presidents had become so popular. So even if old T.R. wasn’t as tough as he said he was, there’d be more to killing him than just walking up to him and slapping leather.
But to do the job right, a Secret Service man had to be alerted and on the prod. It was one thing to expect an assassin in say the Buffalo railroad depot, and another thing entire to expect a bushwacking in the wide open spaces of a national park. He could only hope he was ahead of those rascals who’d missed their chance down in Granger.
He knew some of them, at least, had started out far enough ahead of him to cut that telegraph wire, assuming it had been cut, and not just blown down. Either way, his recent attempts at rapid transit should have put him well ahead of anyone riding up from Granger the old-fashioned way.
Unless, he grunted, half aloud, they’d caught the plain old Union Pacific spur to Yellowstone Station! By now that wire had surely been repaired. Even if it hadn’t, there was no reason confederates of the murderous bastards in Granger couldn’t have beaten even the presidential party to the place.
He kept walking as he rolled a smoke and told his pony, “Do you know why my boss puts out the San Francisco Sun every day, paint? It’s to spread news of the world about to anyone who’s interested. I don’t know how folk learned the news before there were daily papers, for as you can see, we’re in the total darkness about anything important that’s happened since I commenced this fool adventure. Wouldn’t it be a bitch if headlines clear across the world were screaming that old T.R. had been assassinated while I’m still dragging you up this mountain? For all we know some gal in London or Paris is reading about it in her beauty shop this very minute and going tisk tisk tisk while we go puff puff puff. Hell, when that redhead we just kissed goody-bye gets to the end of the line, she may find out what’s really going on before we do, and I wonder if she’d have really let me, if I’d really tried.”
He told himself not to think about big redheads in the buff, on pine needles, as he kept on scuffing up the same with his boots. He’d gone to all this trouble to warn the president, not to get laid, damn it. Old Red had likely been too shy in any case. No gal that big and strong had ever lost her maidenhead before she was good and ready to, and despite her bold mouth, he suspected she wasn’t ready yet. In either case, any man trying to get in that pair of bib overalls was assuming an awesome responsibility. He’d likely been smart about that gal on the second landing, back in Frisco, too. Painful as it might feel, there were just times a man had to think with his brains instead of his glands, and why was he mooning over that big tough redhead in the first damned place?
They came to a saddle offering a view across the valley beyond. But even though the light was good enough to gaze clean across to the next ridge, there wasn’t much to see. The ride to the north looked just like the one they’d just climbed. The valley between was open and paved with ungrazed summer-cured grass, still half green and yummy at this altitude. A shallow braided stream ran down the center line of the uninhabited valley.
Stringer snubbed out the butt of his smoke on a nearby tree trunk. “We’ll enjoy a good breakfast down there, paint,” he told the pony. “But what say you carry me downhill at least? I know it ain’t fair, but I’ve had my morning constitutional.”
He mounted up. The pony didn’t protest. But as he rode it down the easy slope at what should have been an easy walk, it was still limping.
Stringer stayed aboard until they made it to the meadow stream. The sun was coming up now, so as the pony drank eagerly, Stringer examined all four hooves. He found no sign of injury. All four shoes were firmly nailed and free of any stones or even mud, after that long clean walk across soft pine duff. None of the fetlocks
seemed swollen or tender as he gently explored them with his hand.
“This is a pure puzzle, if you ain’t faking, paint,” he muttered. “From the way you were walking, I was sure it had to be your off foreleg. But all four of your fool hooves look sound as a dollar. So what’s left?”
He unsaddled the pony. He didn’t curse until he removed the damp saddle blanket. The circle of blood-matted hair was about the size of a tea saucer, centered on the paint’s right shoulder blade. It hardly mattered where the stray bullet had punctured the leather of the old saddle sprawled in the grass at their feet. But Stringer gripped the reins close to the wounded pony’s jaw, lowered its head to where it could have chewed the saddle horn—had it wanted to—and threaded the reins through the fork to keep the poor brute’s head in place down there. Then he gently placed a thumb and forefinger to either side of the puncture and spread it open. The pony didn’t like it much. The saddle alone wouldn’t have been enough to keep its head down, but Stringer had a foot firmly planted on the saddle’s fender, and that was that.
As he’d hoped, the blunt end of the pistol round was winking out at him like the silvery pupil of a bloody eye. After going through the siding of the reefer, saddle leather, and thick wool, it had been stopped by the shoulder blade instead of shattering it. Stringer’s shaving kit with styptic pencil and such was waiting for him at the Cheyenne baggage room, if he was lucky. “I’m sorry, paint,” he said. “We got to do this the rough way.” Then he got out his pocket knife.
The pony fought like hell as Stringer pried the lead loose from the bone and got it out the rest of the way by popping the wound like a boil with his fingers. Judging from the way the pony reacted, it could already feel some improvement. But now it was bleeding seriously. “Hold the thought,” Stringer said. “We ain’t out of the woods yet.” Then he moved over to the edge of the stream, hunkered down, and washed his hands before he took off his battered hat and filled it with clean cool water. He lay the hatful in the grass by the saddle and got on board it with one foot again, muttering, “This is going to hurt you more than it hurts me, paint. But you were the one those train robbers winged.”
He removed a .38 round from his gun belt, gripped the soft lead, hard, with his back teeth, and twisted the brass shell off. It wouldn’t have worked with old-fashioned black powder. But the DuPont smokeless was more or less waterproof. So he packed the bullet hole with as much gunpowder as it would hold, thumbed a match alight, and cauterized the wound in one spectacular steaming flash. Then he threw the whole hat full of cold water at the pony’s singed hide while it was still screaming and trying to spit out the bit.
He soothed it with soft words and rough pats until it was settled some, then untethered it from the saddle tree and tied it to a streamside clump of briar to water or graze, as it saw fit. It mostly stood there staring at him reproachfully as he hunkered down by the saddle, broke out a can of beans, and ate breakfast. To save on tomatoes, he washed his beans down with cold water dipped from the stream with the same can. Then he rolled a smoke. After he’d smoked it down entire, he got back to his feet and walked back over to the pony. Fortunately the briar roots held, as the now dubious paint tried to avoid the company of anyone who treated his species so mean.
Stringer slapped some uninjured hide reassuringly and had another look at his own rough surgery. “I’d be fibbing if I said that looked pretty,” he said. “But at least we got the bleeding stopped, and it’ll take a day or so to tell if we stopped enough infection to matter. Meanwhile it’s getting later by the minute, and I only need a day or so more out of you.”
He glanced over at the morning sun, grimaced, and took a walk along the stream bank, staring down. He had to go farther than he wanted to before he spied a clump of jewelweed, or a weed that looked close enough. He plucked it and walked back to the pony, squashing the weed to mush with his fingers instead of his teeth, just in case his botany was wrong.
But whether the stuff was jewelweed or not, it did seem to soothe the pony when Stringer rubbed the green mush into its singed as well as punctured hide. Jewelweed was more a salve than a medicine. It didn’t really cure poison ivy or bee stings as much as it calmed the hurt and itch of abused hide.
Stringer left as much of the green pulp clinging to the wound as he could get to stick. Then he got out a pocket kerchief, rinsed it clean as he could get it in the running water, and wadded what was leftover in the soggy cotton.
He waited until he’d led the pony back to where he’d left the saddle and blanket before he applied the improvised jewelweed poultice, holding it in place with the saddle blanket. He let the pony get used to that before he put the heavier saddle back in place and cinched it tight, growling, “Don’t puff up like that, damn it. You know I’m not a greenhorn you can trick that way, and we want that jewelweed wad to stay in place.”
Trying to ride on aboard the injured brute would be asking for trouble, as well as cruel. But at least he didn’t have to tote the saddle and his possibles as he led the paint afoot, getting said feet sort of soggy as they forded the cold stream. Had things been different, he would have loped the paint as far as the wooded slopes ahead, and then had to walk it up through the timber in any case. So he figured this new arrangement only slowed him down by about a third, and hell, he didn’t know where they were in any case.
The trees to either side as they trudged up the easy but trailless route didn’t tell him much. Red Fagan had told him they were only a few miles south of the big park’s unfenced and unmarked border as they’d crossed over the Divide a spell back. She hadn’t been able to be more exact than that. Folk getting from here to yonder by way of railroad tracks had small use for maps of country where no rails ran. He knew the job of patrolling the national parks had been left to the U.S. Army. He also knew it was an article of faith, no doubt taught at West Point, that when in doubt, the Army painted it white. Whitewash was cheap, and there was no telling what sort of trouble enlisted men might get into if someone didn’t give them a tedious chore to keep their hands busy.
But none of the granite outcrops they were passing had been painted white. Of course, there were no doubt outlying comers of the big old park the Army seldom got around to, if at all. Back in the ’70s, when Congress had decided to set aside the natural wonders Colter and later explorers had reported out this way, they’d just drawn a big square on the map with Lake Yellowstone more or less in the middle, and to hell with expensive surveys. They’d left out the just-as-pretty Jackson Hole country, even while they’d included parts of the Continental Divide to leave about a quarter of the park on the Jackson Hole side. The part of the park everyone seemed to think of as the Yellowstone Park was really just a small part of it, connected by coach roads to Yellowstone Station and the railroad. Since tourists were more likely to get scalded by a grizzly or swallowed by a geyser in that area, the Army patrols probably didn’t worry much about other parts.
The sun was higher when Stringer and his wounded pony reached the top of the rise. Stringer climbed up on a house-sized granite outcrop for a better view ahead, but all he could make out, for as far as the eye could see, was more of the same.
But he knew that the higher bumps of the Continental Divide rose to his southwest, or would until he was closer to the big and hard-to-miss Lake Yellowstone. Once he found the big lake, he had to start searching farther to the west for the geyser area, tucked into a sort of loop of the great Divide. If the presidential party had decided to head somewhere else, all bets were off. But the plotters should be betting on old T.R. wanting to be photographed next to Old Faithful too. It was T.R.’s problem if he managed to get lost in a park big enough to be a state back east.
Stringer led the pony down into the next valley, watered it again at a stream which seemed a twin of the one they’d watered at the last time, and headed up a tediously similar slope outfitted with aspen, lodgepole, and fir. Stringer was getting a feel for the grain of the land now, so he knew they were crossing the fish-bone
ribs of the bigger spine to his left. It didn’t make them any easier to cross, but it had to beat going around them. He didn’t think there’d be a road over to the northeast, where the foothill ridges petered out to prairie. He couldn’t see a party of political fat cats going anywhere there was no road. If he ran into them at all, it would be farther north—a lot father north than he was getting at this speed. He had to pick up another mount, fast. But that figured to be a problem in these parts, since the area was off-limits to either cowboys or Indians. He’d read the Army had commenced its “improvement” of the park set aside by Congress by chasing away the few Indian bands and barring such open range as there was to cattle grazing.
But a man afoot could always hope. Having grown up in the beef industry, Stringer knew how cattlemen felt about allowing good grass to go to waste, and there was a lot of mighty fine grass, as well as good water, in every parklike valley he’d crossed so far. Aside from cow outfits that might have sort of wandered over the line by accident, he didn’t know for sure that he was in the infernal park yet. So each time they topped a rise, he stared hopefully ahead for rising smoke or the sunlit shingles of some independent thinker’s spread. This was good horse-raising country, wherever he was. So if he threw in the almost good as new paint, they ought to let him have a fresh plug for no more than twenty. If they demanded more, he had more, the inconsiderate sons of bitches.
But they didn’t come across anyone with ponies to sell as they trudged on, past high noon. Stringer let the paint graze and water some, but didn’t feel like eating himself. His stomach felt like a hard rubber ball now as it sank in that after stealing a horseless carriage and almost stealing a railroad locomotive, he still hadn’t gotten—and didn’t seem to be getting—anywhere important. He no longer wondered whether that gent with the message for Garcia had been tempted to give it up and turn back. He knew. He knew why that other poor soul had kept going too. Once a man was out in the middle of nowhere, it didn’t hurt walking one way any more than it might the other. They were probably as close to Yellowstone Station as any other now. Even if he’d failed, he still had to get home some day, right?
