Hanging Woman Creek (1964)

by L'amour, Louis

  “That gun you’re packin’,” I told him, “is the handle that will open a grave for you on Boot Hill.”

  Eddie Holt got up. “Pronto, let’s unload and hunt us some grub.”

  Van Bokkelen chuckled. “You boys on your uppers? Don’t be damn fools. Stick with me and you’ll be rollin’ in money.”

  “You’re ridrn’ the same train we are,” I said.

  An ugly light came into his eyes. “What I’m doing here is my own business, and business is good.” He brought a roll of bills from his pocket. “How about that?”

  “Eddie, there’s a house with a woodpile and two axes,” I said. “Let’s you and me see if we can earn our breakfast.”

  Eddie dropped to the roadbed, ran a few steps, then walked back to meet me. I tossed my saddle out into the weeds, and dropped off myself.

  The last I heard was Van Bokkelen saying, “A couple of finks! Just plain bums!”

  “I don’t like that man,” Eddie said. “There’s trouble in him.”

  He waited by the woodpile while I walked up to the house and rapped on the door. A stout Irish woman looked at Eddie and then at my sack. “What’s in that?” she asked.

  “My saddle, ma’am. I’m a rider, but right this minute I’m ridin’ a two-day hunger. There’s a pair of axes, and we were wondering if we could earn a meal.”

  “Well, now, you’re a couple of stout lads. You heft those axes a while and I’ll be makin’ up me mind.”

  We’d worked only a few minutes when she came to the door. “Come off it, now!” she called. “Pat’ll be home for his supper, and if he found me makin’ you work for a meal he’d take the stick to me.”

  She produced two big plates piled high with ham hocks, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob, and set them down on the stoop. “If that’s not enough, rap on the door. Himself is a healthy eater, and I know he’d make way with twice the lot.”

  We sat down by the food, and she placed a pitcher of cold milk besides us and went back inside.

  “There’s good people wherever you go,” Eddie said. “She didn’t even comment that I was a black man.”

  “Could be she didn’t notice,” I said.

  If her Pat was a healthy eater we’d no idea of putting the man to shame, so after a bit we knocked on the door and she filled our plates again, then brought a paper sack to the door. It was a peck sack, and packed to the top.

  “Here’s a bit to take along,” she said, “and there’s a mite of coffee there if you can find somewhat to make it in.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” I said. “Thank you, indeed.”

  “Obliged,” Eddie said.

  “It’s been said that hoboes mark the gates of houses where they’ll be fed. Is it true, then?”

  “Ma’am, I’ve no idea. Only I shall remember this place as the home of the fairest flower of Old Ireland. You’re the picture of loveliness, ma’am.”

  “Oh, g’long with you! You’ve had your bait. Now take yourselves off!”

  We slept the night in another empty boxcar, listening to the creaking of the car as it rounded curves, the bumping as the train rolled over the tracks. We had seen no more of Van Bokkelen, and I was sure he had left the town before us, and I was pleased at that.

  “Where do we stop next?” Eddie asked. “I’ve never ridden the N.P. before.”

  “Jimtown, I guess. If we can pick up a meal there, we can ride on to Miles City, with a little tightening of the belt.”

  “That’s a far piece,” Eddie objected, “and I’m a man likes to eat.”

  The train rumbled along, accompanied by whistles now and then as it neared some road crossing. The country we were passing through was broken into wheat fields … miles of them … and sometimes there were stretches of pastureland. It was a glaciated region of rolling prairies with occasional low hills and small lakes or sloughs, their fringes lined with cattails. The only trees were those along the streams, or freshly planted ones near farmhouses or villages.

  When the freight slowed down before coming into the station at Jimtown, we dropped off and headed for Mail Street. This was my second time in the town, and I saw that it had changed some.

  “I was shy of fourteen,” I told Eddie, “and came riding in here on the first train over the road. The BB outfit had driven some cattle from Texas to Abilene, they shipped them to Chicago, and I’d gone along.

  “The boss, he decided to have a look at the Dakota grass, so he rode that first train west with a few horses and a couple of hands. He took me along to feed the stock.”

  “Nothing much here then, I reckon,” Eddie commented. “Ain’t much now.”

  “Mostly tents then,” I said. “Now they’ve got hotels and everything.”

  It was in my mind to look around for a man I’d known as a boy in Fargo-in-the-Timber. Back in those days that was the roughest place a man could find, and it stayed rough until Custer’s soldiers cleaned it out. Jack O’Niel had killed three of the soldiers before they moved in to get him.

  This friend of mine was one of the BB cowboys who decided to stay in Dakota, like I had, and we stayed together in Fargo-in-the-Timber. There was a Fargo-on-the-Prairie, too, but that was mostly decent folks, but not so exciting to me as Fargo-in-the-Timber.

  This man I knew, he was wise enough to decide we should leave Fargo-in-the-Timber after Jack O’Niel killed those soldiers. He had known the Seventh Cavalry down in Kansas, and they weren’t likely to stand by when some of their outfit had been killed. We had nothing to do with it, but my friend taught me a good lesson then. “Stay away from trouble,” he told me. “It’s the innocent bystanders who get hurt.”

  So we went west to the end of the line on the James River … to Jamestown, which everybody called Jimtown. It was built in a valley where the Pipestem River flowed into the James, and there were a few soldiers stationed there when we first came.

  Now there were no uniforms about, and small as the place was, it looked prosperous.

  “If we find this friend of yours,” Eddie asked, “will he stake us to a feed?”

  “That’s my guess,” I said, “and if he’s around I know how to find him. I’ll hunt up a drug store. Tom Gatty never could pass up a drug store. I never knew a man who had so many ailments. He told me he never knew how sick he was until he was snowed in one winter with a Home Medical Advisor, and read it cover to cover. If it hadn’t been for that book, he might have lived a long life in bad health without knowing it.”

  We found a drug store, and while Eddie watched my saddle on the street, I went in the store. “I’m hunting a man named Tom Gatty,” I said.

  “Three like him, and I wouldn’t need anybody else for customers,” the druggist said. “He’s the strongest dying man I ever knew, but you’ve come too late. He went west … Medora, I think.”

  “Just my luck,” I said.

  The man came from behind the counter. “You might learn something from Duster Wyman. He handles Gatty’s local business.”

  The Gatty I knew had no head for business, nor for poker, either, when it came to that. “Last time I saw him he was punching cows,” I said. “We worked for the same outfit.”

  “That must have been several years ago. Mr. Gatty has been shipping cattle, trading in horses and mules. He’s done very well, I believe.”

  We found the Duster loafing in front of a saloon, and when I told him I was hunting Tom Gatty he got up carefully, and looked me over, and then looked Eddie over, too.

  “Just what do you want with him?” The Duster was carrying a gun, tucked back of his belt, under his coat. A rough guess told me that Duster Wyman was a pretty salty character; and if Gatty was trading in horses, mules, and cattle they must have some fancy work for brands. Come to think of it, Tom Gatty used to brag he could write a Spencerian hand with a cinch ring, so I began to understand some of the phases of his business.

  “As a matter of fact,” I explained, “I was hunting a road stake. Me an’ Eddie here, we’re broke and headed for Miles
City. Tom was an old friend of mine. In fact, we came to Dakota together.”

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Pike … they call me Pronto.”

  Well, his face cleared right up. He had been looking mighty suspicious until then. “Oh, sure! I’ve heard him speak of you.”

  He ran his hand down into his Levis and came up with a handful of silver dollars. He counted out ten of them. “You take this,” he said. “I’ll get it back from Tom.”

  “Where’ll I find him?”

  “Well, he moves around a good deal. Don’t you go askin’ for him. If you want to see him, look around Miles City. You stay around a while and he’ll find you.”

  When we walked away from there, Eddie looked at the money with respect. “You got you some good friends,” he said.

  Me, I didn’t say anything, because I was wondering why the Duster was so quick to hand out ten dollars and say Tom would pay him back. Tom Gatty never had much money, but the way I remembered him he was mighty poor pay. Of course, that could have been because he never had much. Maybe he was doing better now.

  If he could afford having a man living around Jimtown like the Duster was, well, he was doing a lot better. But why ship from here? Why not from Miles City itself?

  We had ourselves a meal, and when we came out of the restaurant a man was standing on the curb. “Hello, Pike,” he said.

  It was that man Fargo that we’d last seen a couple of hundred miles east.

  “I figured you’d settle in eastern Dakota, with a town named for you,” I said.

  “It wasn’t named for me.” He took some cigars from his pocket and offered them. “Smoke?”

  It was a good cigar. He took one himself and we all lit up. Then he said, “You’re living good.”

  “We got a right.”

  “I was wondering how somebody broke enough to cut wood for a meal could suddenly pay cash for one.”

  “Look, mister, you ain’t the law here. You want to start something, you keep poking that long nose into my business.”

  He chuckled. “You have the best of me there. I can’t break yours. Somebody beat me to it.”

  Well, what could I do but laugh? My nose had been broken a couple of times. “The hell with it! You followin’ us?”

  “No. Just going west. Have you seen any more of Van Bokkelen?”

  Odd thing. I’d been so busy thinking about Tom Gatty that I’d forgotten all about Van Bokkelen. When I didn’t say anything, Fargo glanced at his cigar and commented, “Pike, you strike me as an honest man. Maybe a hard one to get along with, but an honest one. So I don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  “I been up the crick,” I said, because I had. Most ways, I knew my way around.

  “All right.” He held out his hand. “Boys, my name is Jim Fargo—call me Jim. And if you ever want to talk about things, or if there’s anything I can do, call on me.”

  We walked away and left him standing there, and when we had gone several blocks toward the west end of town where we would catch our freight going out, Eddie said to me, “He’s a Pink, Pronto. That’s a Pinkerton man.”

  And it made a lot of sense … But who was he after? Van Bokkelen? They had said Van Bokkelen was wanted for murder, and the Pinks usually only hunted train robbers or the like. I said as much.

  “That Van Bokkelen, maybe he murdered a Pink,” said Eddie.

  Chapter Three.

  We dropped off the freight before it reached Miles City station, and walked up Pacific Avenue.

  “This here’s a live town,” I said to Eddie, “and it’s purely cattle.” But after a few steps I amended that. “Now, I better back off on that, for I should say this here is a stock town—there’s folks around who favor sheep.”

  We turned off and went past the cat houses to Main, and kept on to Charley Brown’s saloon. A couple of Hat X punchers were loafing in front of the saloon, and one of them, seeing me packing that gear, commented, “Now lookit there. First time I ever seen Pronto when he had the saddle in the right place.”

  “Least I chase the steers,” I said. “They don’t chase me.”

  Dropping the saddle to the boardwalk, I dug into my pocket for the stub end of the cigar Fargo had given me. They eyed me whilst I lit up, making a great show of it to impress them with my prosperity.

  “Eddie and me,”—I jerked my head to indicate my Negro partner—“are huntin’ a business connection where we can invest our time and my saddle.”

  “You might try the Diamond R,” one of the punchers said, grinning wickedly. “They always seemed ready to take you on.”

  “You can spread the word,” I said solemnly, “those Diamond R bull-whackers are safe. I’m a reeformed man.”

  “Now, they’ll be mighty relieved to hear you said that,” the other puncher commented dryly. “Butch Hogan was around on’y last night, sayin’ how dull it was with you out of town. There was nobody around to whip.”

  “He on’y whupped me once.”

  “Sure … you on’y tried him once. You stick around. You can have you another chance tonight.”

  “He still around over at John Chinnick’s?”

  They exchanged a glance. “You surely been gone. Chinnick left out of here one night … by special invite.”

  That was news, but not unexpected. Chinnick’s saloon had been a long-time hangout for the wild bunch. If anything was going’ on, you could hear of it over to Chinnick’s … if they knew you.

  Big-Nose George and his crowd hung out there when they were in town, and come to think of it, Tom Gatty had a few friends in that outfit. But when I started to ask about Tom, something warned me to hold off. Tom an’ me, we’d been friends, but never saddle partners.

  We went into Charley Brown’s and I led the way to the stove. Charley always kept a big pot of mulligan stew going on the stove, and you could help yourself. Eddie an’ me, we couldn’t afford to pass up a social invitation of that sort.

  “That Butch Hogan,” Eddie said, “did he whup you?”

  “He did that, and good. He’s big and he’s fast, and much as I hate to admit it, he’ll probably do it again.”

  “Then why fight him?”

  Well, I just looked at Eddie, plainly surprised. “He whupped me, and when a man whups me once, he’s got it to do again … and again, if need be, until either I whup him or he leaves the country. A couple of times,” I added, “they’ve done just that. Maybe they just plain got tired of having me to whup every Saturday night.”

  “We get a job together,” Eddie said, “we can box some. Get you in shape.”

  We ate for a while without talking, and then Eddie went on, “I boxed forty-seven times in the ring for money. I boxed Paddy Ryan before he was champion, and I boxed Charlie Mitchell over in England. I boxed Joe Goss, Dominick McCaffrey, and Joe Coburn.”

  Little as I knew about prize fighting, I’d read the Police Gazette enough to know who they were, and they were the best.

  “You could learn me,” I said. “All I ever knew about fighting I picked up by working at it.”

  “I’ll rustle up some mitts,” Eddie said.

  There was no sign of Tom Gatty in Milestown—or, as they were calling it now, Miles City—although I covered the whole of it. Most of the time I listened, and what I heard didn’t make me feel any better. Yet it was less what I heard than what I didn’t hear. There were a lot of suddenly suspicious folks around town, and a lot that wasn’t being said.

  A stranger coming to Miles City would see just the dusty main street with a row of false-fronted frame buildings along either side. The signs mostly extended from the buildings to supporting posts on the edge of the boardwalk. There were water barrels here and there along the street, in case of fire. Usually one of the Diamond R bull teams was standing in the street, and there were buckboards or other rigs in from the ranches about.

  An eastern man looking along that street would think there wasn’t much to it, but he would be wrong. In my time I’d be
en a sight of places, and I’d call Miles City a big town—big in the outlook of most of the folks who lived there, and big in the country it took in all around.

  They had law there, but nobody paid it much mind. I mean, when trouble came nobody thought of going to the law about it; you handled it yourself. If somebody made trouble in the town, usually the marshal would run them in for the night; or, if they packed a gun, he’d take their gun away and tell them to go sleep it off.

  Times were changing, and there were new faces around. The big outfits were losing stock and they didn’t like it. And that meant they would do something about it when they got to the point where they decided action was called for, and I had a hunch that time had come.

  As we were going along the street Eddie said to me, “You ought to get you a place of your own, Pronto. A man’ll never get nowhere working for the other fellow.”

  “Never had money enough,” I said. “Most money I ever saved was forty dollars, to buy a saddle.”

  “Why, you must have spent more’n that in Chicago, the way you tell it.”

  “I did. On’y that was gamblin’ money, and gamblin’ money don’t stick to a man. Down by the stockyards I got into this dice game, and I was hitting a few hot licks. I started with less than thirty dollars, and ran it up to more than three hundred. Then the cops came, and somebody hollered ‘Bull’ and everybody grabbed. Mostly they grabbed my money, and I came up short with on’y sixty bucks, and a fine to pay.”

  “You sure played in hard luck.”

  “Never knew any other kind, come to think of it, but I never kicked up any fuss about it. I’m a man does his job, and fights a lick or two come Saturday.”

  “You got to get you a place of your own. Little outfit down on one of these cricks you been tellin’ of.”

  “Trouble is,” I said, “big ranchers run cows on most of those cricks. They take it mighty unkind for anybody to go to nesting on their water.”

  “You need to save your money, get yourself a front,” Eddie insisted.

  “What’s a front?”