Hanging Woman Creek (1964)

by L'amour, Louis

  “That’s right, Eddie.” I spoke seriously. “You’d have thought him the picture of health, never had a sick day in his life, eat enough for two men and work as hard as any man—or half as hard, we might say. And then he found that book.”

  “Deceiving, that’s what it is. I could have been dead right now. Thing that saved me was Peter’s Pills, that and Dr. Fahnestock’s Celebrated Vermifuge. Even so, I like not to made it until spring.”

  He accepted a cup of coffee. “I tell you nobody ever had more symptoms than me. I used to set up half the night studyin’ that there Adviser, until I near wore it out. I hadn’t nothin’ to read but that and a mail-order catalogue, but the catalogue couldn’t hold a candle to that Adviser. Why, I’ve heard folks talk of Shakespeare, but for sheer writin’ the man who wrote the Adviser had it all over him. When he got to describin’ a disease he was somethin’ fierce! And he had him a list of operations that would curl your hair.”

  Gatty took a gulp of coffee. “That Shakespeare, now. I think he borrowed a lot here and there. Why, ever’ once in a while I’d come on things in his plays that I’d heard folks sayin’ for years. All he did was write them down.

  “And for blood and thunder! Why, he killed more folks in one story than was killed in the Newton massacree, the time those Texicans shot it out with the town marshal and Jim Riley come in at the end and summed it up for ‘em with his six-shooter.”

  Gatty glanced over at the table. “What’s that I see? Don’t tell me you’ve got bear sign? Why, I could eat my weight—”

  “Think you should?” I interrupted mildly. “You’re fresh out of Balsam, and I’ve heard it said doughnuts are hard to digest.”

  Tom Gatty’s hand hesitated while his will poised above his appetite and lost. The hand descended and came up with a doughnut. “I ain’t had one of these in years,” he said.

  Later, when Gatty had ridden off into the night carrying with him a sack of doughnuts, he was also carrying the bottle of Dr. Robertson’s Stomach Elixir, dusty from years of standing on the shelf.

  Eddie, he listened to the beat of the horse’s hoofs until they died out. “That man tried to steal our cattle,” he said.

  “It wouldn’t have been polite to mention it,” I said, “on a social occasion.”

  However, while Tom was tightening his cinch, I had mentioned it in a way.

  “Tom,” I said, “we welcome your comp’ny, but if you know any rustlers who might still be thinking of Justin cows, you tell them to stay clean away.

  “The first time I taken that as good fun … the second time I’ll come a-shootin’. I ain’t no gunfighter, an’ you know it, but you’ve seen me lay out a runnin’ antelope, and if I have to come again, this here and our previous ride are all the warning we’ll give. We’ll shoot—like we’ve been shot at—wherever we see anybody near a Justin cow.”

  Tom, he just grinned at me … and then he belched.

  “Sorry,” he said, and he added, “About them cows—if I come across any rustlers, my advice will be to lay off.” He gave me another grin. “I wouldn’t want to cut off the supply of bear sign.”

  Just before I went inside, I felt something wet and kind of light and cold touch my cheek. I turned my head and saw snowflakes on my shoulder and sleeve.

  It was cold when morning came. The inside of that cabin, even with a banked fire, was like ice. Me, I huddled under blankets and a buffalo coat, looking across the room at the fireplace and cussing myself for being the first one awake. I lay there trying to decide how many steps it would take to cross that cold floor, how long to get a fire going, and how many steps back to the warmth of my bunk, where I’d stay until the fire was going good.

  No use to lay there and wish that fire going. Long ago I learned nothing gets done just by wishing. You have to do it.

  In two long steps I was across the room and grabbed up a small handful of pitch-pine slivers, slim, dark red shavings heavy with pitch. Stirring up a feeble glow among the gray of the ashes, I placed the slivers across coals and huffed and puffed until a blaze sprang up. As the fire reached the pitch and discovered what it had to burn, flames leaped up, then I piled on heavy pieces of bark and dry wood and ducked back into bed.

  When I looked across the room, Eddie grinned at me. “I was hoping you’d do that,” he said, and I swore at him.

  Whilst he worked up some batter for hot cakes I went outside. It was cold … the snow lay six inches deep all over the place, and the air was still filled with heavy, slow-falling flakes.

  I forked hay to the horses and prowled around a bit. Any tracks not made within the past hour or so would have been covered, and I saw none. I took up an axe, and I listened to the crunch of my boots in the snow as I walked down to the Hanging Woman. It was frozen over, bank to bank.

  I chopped a hole in the ice, and mentally tabbed places for the other holes I would have to open here, and in a couple of creeks nearby. Maybe, even, I should do it in Otter Creek.

  No sooner had I thought that than I asked myself whether it was really necessary to do this, or whether it was an excuse to ride by the Parley place. But all the time I knew—necessary or not, I was going to ride over.

  The ride would be long and cold, but with a good breakfast under my belt and a lunch packed, along with a sack of Eddie’s bear sign as a gift, I started off, riding a big roan gelding that I thought would be a good winter horse.

  It was after seven when I rode away from our place, and shy of three in the afternoon, guessing by what sun I could see, when I topped out on the rise above Farley’s cabin. Twice I had stopped to chop holes in the ice, once on the South Fork of Lee Creek, and again in Tooley Creek.

  The wind had started to rise, swirling the snow in the air. I came up through the pines and paused there, looking for a good way down the mountain to Parley’s. And then suddenly I realized that Parley’s cabin wasn’t there any more.

  For what must have been a couple of minutes I sat my saddle staring down into the basin, unable to believe it. Had I made a mistake in the snow and chosen the wrong valley? No … what remained of the corral was there, although covered with snow. And the cabin was gone, no question about it.

  My heart began to pound and my mouth felt dry. Without hesitating any further, I started down the slope. When I rode into the clearing I could see the snow-covered ruins of the cabin, and when I got down and kicked away the snow I saw that the, remains of the logs were charred by fire. A section of the corral fence lay flat on the ground, and I knew what that meant. It had been pulled down by a rope thrown over a post, as I had seen many a nester’s fence destroyed.

  Right then I was scared … I was scared of what I would find next. But when I looked the place over, I found no bodies. Whatever had happened to Philo and Ann Parley, they were not here. And just then my roan whinnied.

  Two riders were coming down the slope opposite to the one down which I had ridden. When they saw me they spread apart a little, and I shucked my Winchester and looked right and left for shelter. There was none. If I started to run for the woods I’d be caught, cold turkey, against the white of the new-fallen snow.

  True, the snow that was falling now blurred the air between us, but it wouldn’t stop a bullet. So I sat my saddle and waited, letting my horse shift around nervously to keep his muscles loose and ready if we had to run anyway.

  Both of the men were known to me. Johnny Ives was a youngster with a reputation as a gunfighter. He was said to have killed a man in Kit Carson, Colorado, and another at Doan’s Store on the Texas Trail. The only man I actually knew of him killing was an old Indian up near Glendive.

  The man with him was a bad one, known around as George Woll. Somebody had said that Ives was riding for Roman Bohlen.

  “Kind of off your range, ain’t you?” Ives said.

  “Don’t know. My range has always been wherever I wanted to make it.”

  “Like down around Squaw Butte?”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Ives
had the thong off his six-shooter butt but I had my Winchester in my hands. He would never lay a hand to that gun in time, and I think he guessed as much. George Woll sat his saddle, motionless.

  “I don’t know,” Ives said, “only you might have been driving cattle down there.”

  “I was. I drove some back.”

  “You better be able to prove it,” Ives said, grinning unpleasantly. “Bohlen’s figuring on asking you.”

  “Let him ask.” Gesturing at the remains of the cabin, I said, “What happened here?”

  “Hell, do you need a map? Parley was a goddamn rustler an’ nester. He got what was coming to him.”

  Like I said, I’ve got a temper, and right then it got away from me. “If you say Philo Parley was a rustler, you’re a damned liar!”

  Ives’ face went white and he started a hand toward his gun, but my rifle muzzle had him dead center in the belly, at no more than fifteen yards. “Go ahead goddamn you!” I said. “Go ahead and lay hand to that gun!”

  Oh, he wanted to! He wanted to the worst way. And Woll, he just sat there and looked at me as if his face was frozen from the cold, but he kept his hands in sight and didn’t make a move or say a word. I decided that I was going to watch my back when George Woll was around.

  I was mad clean through. “Philo Parley,” I said, “was a gentleman, and if he has been murdered, I’ll lay a bet every damned one of you hangs for it!”

  “Hangs?” Ives said startled. “For killin’ a nester?”

  “If you’ve killed him, you’ve killed the wrong nester,” I said, more quietly. “Philo Parley was a former officer in the British Army, a man of good family, a man with connections, and if you’ve killed him you’ve blown the top off this whole country!”

  “Aw, he wasn’t that important,” Ives scoffed. “And if he was, what difference does it make? This here’s a long distance from England!”

  “Is it? I can name you five big outfits within two days’ ride that are English, and all of them friends of the Parley family.”

  Right there I was stretching a point, but Ann had said they knew some of the ranchers’ families in England, so I might be more right than I could swear.

  “What became of her?” I asked then.

  “Her?”

  “Ann Parley … Philo’s sister.”

  Ives shot a quick, scared look at Woll. Then he said, “He didn’t have no sister that I ever heard of.”

  “He had one. She just got here from England. I rode out with her myself.”

  They were really scared now, and Ives gave an apprehensive look at the snow-covered ruins. “I never saw any woman. Parley was always alone.”

  Woll spoke for the first time. “You seen him?”

  So Parley was not dead. Or if he was, they were not sure of it.

  Chapter Eleven.

  Whatever their urge for trouble when they rode into the valley, it was gone by now. They would need time to figure out whether I was lying about Ann Parley, and also they would want to ask Bohlen about Philo himself.

  These were not outlaws. They were cowhands, a bit tougher than average, or perhaps only more callous, and to their way of thinking they had been doing the right thing. They rode for their outfit, and the big outfits all hated nesters, and some nesters stole cattle. At least, they lived off the beef of the big cattlemen—or so it was generally believed.

  And to the cattleman’s way of thinking, it was even worse that they squatted on good grassland close to rivers, springs, or water holes. They planted crops, they put up fences. And to the cattlemen water and grass were their very life blood.

  It was a war for the land, with the initial odds all on the side of the big outfits, but as time went on the numbers were on the side of the nesters. It was not that they were organized, but simply that they kept coming. They were murdered, starved out, or driven out, or they simply couldn’t take the hard work, the cold winters, and the endless struggle to make a living that was necessary to homestead in Montana and the Dakotas, and therefore many of them left. But others came, and continued to come.

  Some, like Philo Parley, started small cow ranches of their own, and some—and this was also true in his case—came because they liked the wild, free riding country and the rugged life out at the end of creation. The average cattleman was contemptuous of the nester, but in that he was often wrong. Many of those who came west to homestead were just as tough, just as enduring, and just as able to fight for their rights as any cattleman.

  Philo Parley was born to the wild lands, and when he got a taste of it on the Northwest Frontier of India, he knew he could never settle for anything less. I had a feeling that Ann was the same sort … or maybe I was just telling myself what I wanted to believe.

  Not many of the riders for the big outfits knew Parley, although he was well known among business people in Miles City and Cheyenne, and he had friends among the backers of the big cattle outfits, and among those ranchers from England who had themselves settled in Wyoming.

  Actually, I was one of the few who knew him well. Most of the boys thought him too British and stand-offish, but I knew better. He was a strong, rugged man, a dead shot with any kind of weapon, a fine horseman, and a good stockman. He’d had a lot to learn when he came west, but he learned it fast.

  Roman Bohlen, who had the largest outfit of any of Parley’s neighbors, simply did not like him. He didn’t know him, but to a man of Bohlen’s temperament that was not at all necessary. Had he known Parley he would have liked him even less, for Bohlen’s bullying nature would have clashed with Parley’s.

  True, I’d been out of this part of the country a good bit, but I had stopped by his place when riding through, had eaten supper with him several times, and we’d had drinks together in Miles City and Cheyenne. Once we had run into each other in Deadwood, where he had come to see how the mining was done. We rode from there to Cheyenne together.

  Woll and Ives had plenty to think about now. It was no small thing to kill a woman, and if they had done that they were in real trouble. They would ride off to think about it now, and probably to see Roman Bohlen.

  So what was there for me to do? Sitting my horse as they turned away from me, still holding them under my rifle, I puzzled it over in my mind, anxious to make the right move.

  Whatever my move was, I had very little time. If Philo or Ann was wounded or hurt, they could not last long in the cold. It was hovering around ten above zero right now, and would fall to zero with night. A man who has lost blood is in no shape to survive under such conditions.

  The snow had covered all tracks and was still coming quietly down, not a thick snow, but steady. It would, within an hour or two, cover my own tracks. My horse was restless, so I swung a wide circle around the ruined shack and the pulled-down corral. Parley had had some fine horses here, but more than likely they had been driven away to survive as best they could somewhere on Bohlen’s range … he could always pick them up later. Bohlen was no thief, but horses left behind on the range, or cattle, would be appropriated without any thought about it.

  Their bodies weren’t in the ruins, that was sure, and the two Bohlen riders seemed to believe Parley had escaped. So his sister probably had, too. To where?

  The nearest place where they might be welcomed was the Justin line shack, where they knew I was. Ann did not know where it was, but she had an idea, as I’d pointed out the way to her. And Philo had ridden by there a time or two in times gone by.

  Where else would they have gone? They would need shelter at once, and they might well have escaped while the cabin was under fire … or perhaps when it had been left burning. But Woll and Ives evidently believed that Parley was either dead or dying, so they must have hit him. Which could only leave the possibility that Ann had gotten him away. Philo might have been conscious enough to direct her where to go.

  There were always places a man could hide if he knew where to go, and in riding around the country, hunting or rounding up strays, a man soon knew every nook and cra
nny of the hills—or thought he did. So I went through my mind trying to think of a place they might have gone. It would have to have shelter from the snow, and wood to burn, and be a place Bohlen’s men either didn’t know or would not think of—at least, not right away.

  My thoughts sifted every possible hideout from the Hanging Woman to the Powder, estimating their chances of getting to them. I thought it more than likely they were close by. Without horses, which I doubted they had, they could not have gone far. Of course, there was always the chance they had horses saddled or were even in the saddle when the attack came.

  On a hunch, I rode up the ridge toward Horse Creek Buttes.

  There might be a dozen places of which I knew nothing, but I’d suddenly recalled that Philo had killed a grizzly that he’d trailed to a cave in the buttes. It was just a chance, but I had nothing else in the way of a lead.

  The roan horse made good going of the mountain trails, even in the snow. The difference in elevation was only a few hundred feet, but the trails were none too good and the snow did not help.

  First I led off as if riding back to the line cabin, for I might be trailed. There was a place on the North Fork of Lee Creek where I had rousted some cattle out of a hollow where they might be snowed in, and I rode by there, and trampled around in the snow, found a couple of steers and started them out, then cut into the brush and worked my way along the slope. Several times I drew up and studied my back trail.

  The falling snow drew a veil across the distance, but within the area which I could survey there was no sign of pursuit. Nor did I really expect any. Woll and Ives were probably well on their way back to their own outfit by now.

  The bear cave, when I found it scarcely an hour later, was empty. Yet somebody had prepared it for an extended stay, and some time before. A large pile of carefully cut wood was there, plenty of kindling, and on a rock shelf hacked out of the wall was a double row of canned goods, enough for a stay of at least a week, perhaps longer.

  Philo Parley had been expecting trouble, or someone else had who knew of the cave.

  All the time I was avoiding the memory of those leather-shod hoofs. The rider of that horse had been to Philo’s outfit not once, but several times. Was it Parley himself? He looked too big a man for the weight that horse was carrying, but I could be wrong. Whenever those tracks came to mind I felt uneasy, almost scared.