Hanging Woman Creek (1964)

by L'amour, Louis

  Eddie had come to the door and watched me. “You can ride,” he said, “but that horse didn’t mean it. He was just dustin’ you off.”

  He handed me up the rifle and I turned the line-back and went into the trees.

  Knowing what might be expected of me, I didn’t do it. Instead of dropping down to the river crossing to see who had been using it, and how many, I circled back of the cabin and went up the ridge under cover of the trees.

  On this side of the ridge the run-off water ran into creeks and then down to the Hanging Woman. On the other side the water ran down to the Tongue River. At this point it was maybe eight miles between the two, and it was rough country.

  At the top of the ridge I looked back across the Hanging Woman toward Poker Jim Butte and the Otter Creek country. You never saw anything more peaceful than that spread of land right then, but I was not a trusting man.

  Most of the ridges and buttes were timbered, and there was a good bit of heavier timber along the creeks, with here and there a patch of willows. Drifting down the ridge, I cut back and forth for sign … lots of deer, and several bunches of cattle. I started a couple of elk feeding at the head of Dead Man Creek, but not wanting to advertise myself, I let them go.

  A time or two I came on horse tracks. One set was two riders traveling together, cutting across country toward the west. A bit later, just after coming on a set of buffalo tracks, maybe six or eight in the bunch, I found the tracks of another horse.

  The hoofprint was light and small, but poorly defined, and that very fact bothered me. Somehow all my instincts told me that hoofprint should be sharply defined. Turning aside, I trailed the prints for a couple of miles until the shadows were growing and it was time to head for the line camp. But before I swung off I had learned a few things.

  The rider of that horse had waited for some time in a small clearing at the head of a gulch overlooking the river’s ford that was near our cabin. From that spot the rider could watch both the ford itself and the trail approaching the cabin.

  There were a good many tracks—the tracks of a standing horse that was impatient to be moving. Although the rider had waited for some time, he had not dismounted, so I had learned nothing of him. Only, judging by the hoofprints the rider could not be a very big man.

  When I rode up to the cabin, Eddie stepped out with a rifle in the. hollow of his arm.

  “See anybody?” he asked.

  “Tracks.”

  I told him about them, and as I was speaking I suddenly knew why those hoofprints had been so poorly defined. That horse wore leather shoes, like those an Indian sometimes uses on his horse. They are fitted snugly around the hoofs, often cut from green hide so they will shrink tight over the hoof, and they are tied or laced there.

  Well, the last thing I wanted around here was Indians. The battles of Little Big Horn and Rosebud were nine years past, but there were still young bucks around hunting trouble, and I’d had my share of Indian fighting as a boy.

  I went on talking to Eddie. “The grass is good,” I told him, “and what I figure we’d best do is wide-circle and push whatever stock we can in toward us. All we can do is sort of start them moving this way. It will save us a lot of riding later if snow starts to fall.”

  Well, sir, Eddie had fixed us a bait of grub that I never tasted the like of. That man could really cook. Me, I had been throwing stuff together for so long, eating baking powder biscuits, beef, beans, and bacon, that I didn’t know what real grub tasted like. When I pushed back from the table I broke a piece of straw off the broom and used it for a toothpick.

  I looked up at Eddie. “You’re wastin’ your time,” I said. “Why, cookin’ like that, any outfit in the country would hire you on at twice the money. In this country, if you want to keep good hands, the best way is with good cookin’.”

  I walked over toward the door, which was standing open, and looked out. I didn’t walk right up to that door and stand in it—I looked out from well back in the room. But I could see the ford, and three riders were crossing the river, coming toward us. It was after sundown, and I couldn’t make them out, but I could see the water where it rippled around their horses’ legs as they splashed through.

  “Comp’ny,” I said. “You take that Winchester and stand back there beside the window. If it comes to shootin’, you take whoever’s on the left.”

  Me, I taken a Winchester and stepped out with it held loose in the hollow of my arm. Like I said, I was never any hand with a short gun, but with a Winchester I could dust things around, and I’d practiced by the hour getting a rifle into action every which way. I could throw one from the hollow of my arm into shooting position mighty fast—or, the way I preferred it, the rifle hanging from a sling, the butt level with the top of my shoulder.

  So I stepped out front and waited, watching them come up the slope to the cabin.

  Right away I knew these were no punchers riding the grub line. Their horses were better than any remuda would be likely to have—maybe one puncher would have such a horse, but not three in a bunch. I said as much, speaking over my shoulder to Eddie. Three men riding horses like that … if they weren’t ranchers owning cattle—unlikely away out here—they were likely to be a posse hunting outlaws, or the outlaws themselves, and Eddie knew where I was putting my money.

  When they saw the rifle they pulled up some fifty feet off, and I said, “You boys huntin’ somebody?”

  “You alone?” one of them asked.

  “No, I ain’t alone. I got me a Winchester.”

  “What’s the matter? You expectin’ trouble?”

  “Mister,” I said, “I was born to trouble. I never did know anything else, so I’m spooky. Why, I’m so spooky that if anybody was to come prowlin’ around I’d be apt to start shootin’ without even askin’ questions.”

  “We’re huntin’ Rafter 88 stock.”

  When a man has been punching cows since he was knee-high to a short pony, he doesn’t have to draw pictures. A Rafter 88 would cover a Bar J like a blanket, and it was a copper-riveted cinch that whoever invented that brand had that in mind.

  “Mister, I ain’t seen any Rafter 88 stock, but if I do I’ll shoot it and look at the hide from the reverse side.”

  They were sitting back in the shadow thrown by the trees, and I wished I could see their faces better. Nobody seemed to be paying much mind to the cabin, so it was likely they believed I was alone. If they had been tipped off by somebody in town, that might seem possible, for I’d been lying in the back of the wagon and the informer might have seen only the driver.

  “That kind of talk won’t get you anywhere.” The speaker was a tall man with narrow shoulders, and he carried bis gun low on his leg like some of the gunmen were starting to do. “You’ve got a long winter ahead of you, friend. I’d start figuring on lasting until spring.”

  “You know,” I said confidentially, “that’s a good thought. That’s a thought should be in all our minds. Why, when I came into town and found they’d lynched Rigney and run Chinnick out of town, I decided folks around Miles City were changing.”

  Right then I lied in my teeth, but I had a hunch that I wasn’t far off the track. “Especially after I heard Granville Stuart talkin’ to Beidler.”

  Now, Stuart being one of the wealthiest ranchers in Montana, and Beidler being a lawman who had been one of the vigilantes who cleaned up Virginia City, I figured those names would carry weight, and they did.

  “What did you hear?”

  “Well—nothing, when it comes to that. On’y they were talking mighty confidential, and Stuart wanted to hire Pike Landusky for some kind of a job. And after what had happened in Miles City, I just had an idea they were settin’ up a new vigilante outfit to go after stock thieves.”

  I knew no such thing, but it would do no harm to worry this outfit a little.

  “I think he’s lyin’, Chin.” The rider who spoke was a stocky, barrel-chested man. “This here’s Barney Pike, and he thinks he can fight. Let me have him.�
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  “Lay off, Shorty,” Chin said. I could see him gather his reins a mite. “We’ll ride on.” He looked over at me. “Pike, you stay close to that shack this fall and winter, and you might find yourself with a nice road stake come spring.”

  “I don’t need it. I can always ride the grub line.”

  They turned their horses and rode away, only as they went off Shorty turned in his saddle and said, “One of these days.”

  And I said, “Any time you want your eyes dotted, you come to me.”

  Backing into the house, I closed the door. “Stay shy of the windows,” I told Eddie. “They might come back.”

  “What we need,” Eddie said, “is a dog. A good dog is a mighty fine thing around a place.”

  I was thinking about those three men. Chin Baker was an outlaw from down in the Cherokee Nation. The last I heard of him, he’d killed a deputy marshal in the Cross Timbers and was supposed to have lit out for Colorado and the mines. He was said to be a handy man with a six-shooter.

  Shorty Cones was a tough cowhand who had a reputation as a troublemaker. It was said he was hell on wheels in a rough-and-tumble. He sure seemed to be scratching dirt for trouble now.

  The third man hadn’t said a word, but I’d noticed that he was a big man … mighty big.

  “What did you mean about those brands?” Eddie asked presently. “I never had no truck with branding.”

  “Ours is the Bar J. Well, in the course of branding a lot of stock you slap those brands on fast, and mighty few of them are set straight. In the Justin brand, the bar is over the J, but supposin’ a man takes a running iron and adds another bar to the end of the one already burned on? He would rarely find that bar just straight and perfect, so he would slant his bar down a mite and make the bars into a rafter … you know, like a peaked roof.

  “Then he would finish the curve on the J, bending it around into a loop, and then into another loop to make an 8. Then all he has to do is add another 8 and that steer is wearing a Rafter 88 brand.”

  “What was that about skinning?”

  “When you skin a steer and look at a hide from the back, you can tell if the brand has been worked. That’s why cow thieves usually try to get rid of the hides if they do any butchering.”

  When the shutters were closed and we were tight in our own cabin, I sat by the stove, for there was chill in the evening air, and studied about the situation. The more I studied, the less I liked it. Aside from Indians, I’d done mighty little shooting at folks, and didn’t really care to do any. As far as that goes, Indians and me usually hit it off all right. There’d been war parties a time or two, or young bucks hunting a reputation, or trying to steal horses. This here was different. It looked like I’d sure enough bought myself a ticket into a shooting war, and worst of all, I’d brought Eddie Holt along with me.

  I kept thinking back to Tom Gatty. Was he mixed up in this? I didn’t want him to be … he’d been my friend, was still my friend so far as that went, and right now I owed him money.

  Those bullet holes in the door meant somebody had been trying to run Bud Oliver out of here. Would they try that on me? That was a question I needn’t ask. If they would try it on Oliver, who was a good hand, they would try it on me. And I was too damned stubborn to run.

  Something told me I should pick up and light out, get out of whatever I was in, but something else went against it. I’d never learn to run from trouble. I just bowed my back and went in swinging with both hands.

  Well, there was work to do if I was going to stay—and I knew I was. If we didn’t want to be riding all over south-eastern Montana, we’d best be bunching some of those Justin cows. There was plenty of feed, unless it was a late spring.

  Those stolen cattle … to get them to market they’d have to be driven to the railroad, or driven down country. The chances were they were bunching them somewhere in the wild country, holding them for a big drive. It surely wouldn’t pay to make a lot of small drives for a long distance.

  A man who picked his country could take a big herd quite a ways east without being seen by anybody. There were places he would have to be careful, of course, and he would need some good hands and some organization. If he shipped east, he wouldn’t dare hold the cattle long near the railroad—he’d have to drive them in, load up, and ship out.

  Of course, a man could sell cattle at Deadwood and in the mining camps, but that was a small operation, bandied by ranchers closer to the Black Hills, or in them. All in all, I had a fair idea that the stolen cattle were being driven to the railroad.

  When I finally dropped off to sleep that night I was thinking of what Eddie had said: that I should ought to have a place of my own.

  Maybe … maybe someday. If I got out of this alive.

  Chapter Six.

  When I came out of the cabin in the freshness of daybreak it was right nippy. It was early for frost, but you could feel the coming of it in the air. Made a man feel glad he’d a snug place to hole up in, with winter coming on and all.

  One thing I could say for Justin. He didn’t stint any on the grub. We had cases of tomatoes and peaches in cans, a sack of sugar, plenty of flour, beans, dried fruit, rice, and some big cans of Arbuckle.

  When I’d rustled a fire I said to Eddie, “We can take turns cookin’ if you’re of a mind to, but after you taste mine you may feel you’d like to take over. I was never no hand to cook.”

  “I don’t care if I do, on’y I want to punch cows and I’ll never learn how in this here cabin.”

  “You any good at makin’ bear sign?”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Bear sign is doughnuts … sinkers … crullers — whatever you’re of a mind to call them.”

  “Man, I make the best doughnuts you ever ate.” So, if I got shot, at least I would die happy. But I wasn’t harboring any illusions. Nothing in life had given me cause for hopefulness. A man went ahead doing the best he could, but it always seemed there was more trouble lurking just around the bend of the road. I had seen some folks to whom nothing ever happened, but that wasn’t the way it was with me.

  One time I was telling some eastern folks about life on the range. The man of the house, he was a fat, comfortable man eating three big meals a day, he had a fine house and family, and he said to me that he wished he could live my adventurous life. Me, I just looked at him. He should crawl out of bed on a chilly morning on a cattle drive, stagger half blind to the chuck wagon and gulp scalding coffee that would take the paint off a wall, and then saddle up a mean-minded bronc. Then he should get out with a stiff rope and try to do some roping. He should go tearing off down a hillside on a fast-moving cutting horse, and suddenly find a ditch ahead of him that’s maybe twenty feet wide and just as deep…

  He should work himself half dead with tiredness, and come dragging up to the mess wagon long after dark, eat food that he wouldn’t feed his dog, and then roll up in that same cold bed.

  Eddie I could understand. He was a colored man and he would get a better shake out west than almost anywhere. He might find some folks a bit stand-offish … some people believe because a man looks different that he feels different; but out on the range a man is judged by how he does his job and stands up to trouble.

  Me, I wasn’t going to do him no favors. If he did his job, well and good. I couldn’t care what color he was, or even if he had two heads—so long as both of them didn’t eat. I’d already seen him shape up on that trip across country, and I liked the way he did things. He was a stand-up man with pride and strength.

  That first day we rode out and around, getting acquainted with the country, moving a little stock. For most of that work we’d be riding out twenty miles or better, but now we were just getting the lay of the land. As we rode I talked to Eddie, telling him what being a cowhand was like.

  “Winter is the time when a cowhand—if he isn’t out of a job and riding the grub line—is supposed to catch up on his sleep. I never got that lucky. Seems to me I always fall into jobs where
I work harder than ever.

  “Now, Justin put us out here to bring his stock through the winter, as much of it as we can. Mainly, we’ll have to keep holes open in the ice so the cattle can drink. A small hole is best, and make it long. You scatter leaves and truck on the ice so the cattle won’t slip and slide too much.”

  Eddie was listening as I went on talking.

  “The grass around here is mostly blue grama—and there’s nothing any better—mixed with buffalo grass. It’ll stand a lot of grazing, and it re-seeds itself. If the stock can get to the grass, it will do all right, even in winter.

  “First, we’ll start swinging wide and moving the stock closer home. There’s feed enough and we won’t have to ride so far. Pay attention to weak stuff first.

  “But most of all, you never stop looking. You look for cattle in trouble, you look for Indians, and you’ll look for rustlers. You’ll look for anything different or out of the way—for strange tracks, or any movement of cattle in a bunch and on a straight line.

  “Left to themselves no cow crittur will walk far in a straight line … they graze around here and yonder, or they lie down and chew their cud. If they move in a straight line for long, it means somebody is driving them. Going to water is an exception, sometimes, but you’ll soon learn to judge.”

  All the time I talked I was busy looking. There was a big old grizzly in this country, I could tell … I’d seen his claw marks high up on scratch trees where he’d made his mark. Grizzlies do that to stake a claim to a piece of territory. If any other bears want to come in, they look at those scratch marks, and if they’re too high on the tree they turn around and heist out of there—if they’re smart.

  I saw wolf tracks, too—tracks of a big lobo that I’d guess would weigh a hundred and fifty pounds … and few get that big. There was lots of deer, elk, and antelope too.

  We rode up the Hanging Woman to Trail Creek, and then turned east toward the Otter. We found the trail of a travois … the two trailing poles on which Indians load their gear to drag it behind a horse or a dog … and a small party of Indians—two men and several squaws and youngsters. They were riding west toward the Big Horns. One of the horse tracks looked like something I’d seen before, but I couldn’t place it.