Hanging Woman Creek (1964)

by L'amour, Louis

  When I finished my soup I put the bowl aside and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. Eddie he was looking at me.

  “What’s eatin’ you?” I asked.

  “What about that Ann Parley? You going to leave it this way?”

  Well, that did it. That put it right on the line, and he knew just as well as I did that in spite of all my talk I wasn’t going any place without knowing what had happened to Ann Parley.

  “Come daylight,” I said, “we’ll look around.”

  “Mr. Pike,” Eddie said gently, “it’s daylight now. It’s been daylight for a spell.”

  It was true, and with the realization of it I got to my feet and we packed our little gear and stuffed in our packs what we could of the supplies that remained, leaving a-plenty for whoever might come after.

  In Shorty’s pockets we found about thirty dollars, which I put into a worn envelope that contained a letter from his sister in Missouri. She would get the letter and what else there was. We took his horse for a pack animal, and left Shorty there.

  “We haven’t got a shovel, and the ground is frozen,” Eddie said.

  Suddenly my mind went to the note I’d left when I’d first visited the cave. Turning quickly, I caught Eddie by the arm.

  “Did you see a bit of paper back there? A note?”

  “Something fell to the floor … I don’t know what it was.”

  Stepping past him, I went over to where I’d left my note and picked up the piece of paper lying there. It was my own note, but written across the bottom of it was something else:

  The cabin of Kilworth.

  Only that, but it was signed Pedlar Brown, and I needed no more.

  When we had come riding up from Miles City and had left the Tongue, we had taken an old trail over Poker Jim Butte, and we’d seen a tumbled-down cabin. Ann had said it reminded her of some she’d seen in Ireland, in the Kilworth Mountains.

  And it was the Kilworth Mountains from which Bold Brennan of the song had come, and Pedlar Brown had been a man he’d robbed, who robbed him back, and they became partners.

  So they had been here after all, but seeing the supplies, they had left, fearing to be found. Ann had been here! Suddenly there was a singing inside me, and I went outside quickly.

  “Mount up, Eddie,” I said. “We’ve a ride to make!”

  It was only five or six miles, but they would be long, long miles until I saw Ann Parley again, and knew that she was safe and well.

  Chapter Thirteen.

  As we took the trail toward Poker Jim, I tried to study out what Shorty Cones had said. Their outfit had been wiped out by a bunch of strange riders who came on them so suddenly there was no chance to put up much of a fight.

  Cones himself had not even realized he was shot, and he must not have realized how badly he was hurt. And that last thing he had said? There was no one there except …

  Except who? Somebody he had not expected to be dangerous to him. Somebody he had considered harmless, or somebody who was a friend.

  “That cave, Eddie. I figured Parley had stocked that cave, but he didn’t. That means somebody else did. And not Shorty, either.”

  “How about Baker? He knew of it.”

  Chin Baker was an old outlaw, and he had operated in this country for years. He was said to have run with Clyde Drum’s gang, and he had known of the cave.

  When we came upon the cabin on Poker Jim, it was half buried in snow. It sat back among the rocks, under some pines, not easily seen under normal circumstances, and under a fresh fall of snow almost perfectly hidden.

  Our horses buckjumped through the deep snow and into the trees, and when we reached the cabin we could see a few tracks around the door and out to the dug-out stable. Eddie took our horses, and I went up to the door and rapped.

  Ann Parley opened it. She had a gun in her hand, and from the look in her eyes she wouldn’t have hesitated to use it. When she saw me the gun muzzle lowered. “You found us! I knew you would!”

  She stepped aside and I bent my head to enter the low doorway. Many mountain cabins were built in a hurry by men short of materials, and sometimes the doorways were low like this one. But inside you stepped down several niches to the floor and there was standing room.

  Across the room lay Philo Parley, stretched out on a bunk, and he looked bad, very bad. He lifted a hand. “Pronto, I am glad you’re here. Take care of her, will you?”

  “I’ll take care of you both,” I said. “Eddie’s out there, and Eddie’s a hand with a wounded man. You wait, we’ll have you up and about in no time.”

  “Take care of her—that’s all I ask.”

  “Was it Roman Bohlen?”

  He looked at me, and the expression in his eyes changed. “It was … in person. He shot me when I was unarmed. He would have hung me if we hadn’t escaped.”

  He gestured to indicate Ann. “She got me back into the house, just reached out and grabbed my collar and hauled me back inside. But then she proved to be smarter than I would have been, for she hurried me right across the room and out of the back window.”

  “We had our horses hidden back in the woods,” Ann explained, “for we were all saddled and ready to ride to Miles City. I knew if they would shoot him down like that, they would continue the attack, and wouldn’t hesitate to burn the house.”

  “Did they know you were a woman?”

  “They may not have even seen me. No, I don’t believe they knew.”

  Just then Eddie ducked through the low door, so I stepped back and waved him to Parley.

  “What happened?” I asked Ann.

  “By the time the house was burning, we were riding away. It was only a few feet from that rear window to the bushes.”

  Now, all my life I’d had a temper. Not that I ever got mad when I was fighting, but it could explode into real trouble from time to time, which was the reason I kept a tight rein on it. In a fight there was no reason for being mad, and usually I fought only for fun. But now something curious was happening to me, and it scared me. Turning away from Ann, I went outside. There was a heavy overcast of gray cloud, but the snow made everything bright. I stood there, looking across the narrow canyon at the black trees, tufted with snow. For the first time in my life I was mad, with a cold, ugly anger that shocked me.

  These people, and good people they were, had been shot at and hunted like wild animals. Their home had been burned, their belongings destroyed; and if they were found now they would be killed. And I, because I was with them and because I was myself suspected, would be killed too.

  My hands were shaking, my whole body was quivering with fury, and I fought myself into calmness. At the same time that my fury gripped me, another part of me seemed to be standing by in surprise that this could be happening to me.

  Suddenly I did not want to run. I did not want to get away. I wanted to hunt them, smash them, break them, show them what hatred could be. They had begun it; now they must accept the consequences.

  A saner part of me kept warning me that nothing was to be gained by such tactics; but another part of me was telling me that violence breeds violence, and that those men would not be content with what they had already done, but would strive to do more, to do worse. And I knew that when such men turn to violence they seem to seek out the weak and the helpless. Many a mob has been turned back by an armed and determined man, though that same man, unarmed, would have been destroyed without a thought.

  When evil takes up to violence, the good have no choice but to defend themselves.

  Presently Ann came out and stood beside me. “I knew you would come, Mr. Pike. I knew you would,” she said.

  “My name is Barnabas. But everybody calls me Pronto.”

  “I’ll call you Barney.” She paused. “I told Philo you would come.”

  “We’ve got to get him into Miles City,” I said. “We can rig a travois, and in the snow the trip won’t be too rough.”

  We talked there for a few minutes, and then she went back inside, and
I walked off a few steps and stood under the trees, where I could watch both up and down the canyon. As I stood there, I tried to figure things out.

  There was a party of would-be vigilantes out … maybe only Bohlen’s outfit. They would be hunting Parley, and they would be hunting me.

  There was also the bunch that shot up Gatty’s rustlers, and I was sure they were a different crowd altogether.

  And there was the rider who rode the horse with the leather shoes. And that rider was a cold-blooded killer who didn’t seem to fit in anywhere.

  All of those people were our enemies, all of them a danger to us. Under the circumstances, our only hope was to get into Miles City or some good-sized community where we could at least have the benefit of public opinion. Out here we could all be killed, buried, and after a short time forgotten. In town, right among folks, it would be an almighty great risk to try killing us. At least, it would be a big risk to try killing the Parleys.

  But it was a long hard trip into Miles City, which lay a good many miles off to the north and east, and every mile of it a danger. We couldn’t move as fast as a man riding free, but we could make fair time in the snow if we could rig a sled.

  All the while I was standing there in the cold, I was watching for anyone coming our way, but the canyon was empty. And I knew the little smoke we made could not be seen outside the canyon, for by the time it had lifted that high it had faded out to nothing.

  Eddie came out and stood beside me. “He’s hurt bad, Pronto. Real bad.”

  “Could he stand a two, three-day trip into Miles City?”

  Eddie shrugged. “Maybe. I’d guess he couldn’t, but that’s a tough man in there.”

  He paused, then took out a couple of cigars. “Mr. Parley gave me these … have one.” He lit up, and then asked, “Couldn’t we make it no faster?”

  When I shook my head, he asked, “Who is Lottie?”

  “Lottie?”

  “He talked about her some. I mean when he was delirious … he had a spell of it for a while.”

  “Somebody he knew back home, I reckon. I don’t know of any Lottie around here.”

  While Eddie took a spell on watch, I went inside to drink some coffee and warm up. Also, I wanted my rifle, which I’d left inside, although I had the six-shooter belted to me.

  Ann poured out coffee and handed it to me, along with a sandwich of bread and warmed-up meat. “What are you going to do when this is over?” she asked.

  “Homestead.”

  My answer came out so quick it surprised even me, but when I thought about it I knew that was what I was going to do. I was going to homestead on some good water and start my own outfit, and if they wanted to trouble me about it they could try. They wouldn’t be picking on any amateur. I had been there before when it came to trouble.

  “I want a place of my own,” I said, “a ranch with tome cattle and some good horses.”

  Now that I’d said it out in words, I knew the idea had been there all along. I even knew the place, and I’d only seen it one time, and that quite a while back. It was over against the Big Horns where the Lodge Grass headed up. It was rough country, but there was water, and I liked it.

  We talked about it for a while, and Ann Parley surprised me by knowing quite a lot about range life. Of course, as she explained, Philo had written her of his own troubles and plans, as well as what was going on around him. But she knew more than that, and she told me she had talked to some of the Englishmen who had invested in Wyoming and Montana cattle, and had read something about it in the papers.

  “There were some very good articles in the Fortnightly Review,” she added, “written by men who had been over here. I was curious about what Philo was doing in Montana, so I tried to learn everything I could about it.”

  “You did a job,” I admitted, surprised that anybody could learn that much about range conditions and cattle from books or magazines.

  Later, when I went outside to relieve Eddie and to check on the horses, I thought about it a good deal. If a girl like that could learn something about such things by reading, I might learn something myself by studying. And if I was going to make something of myself, I’d better get down to brass tacks and do something about it.

  “Nothing to see,” Eddie said, “but man, I don’t like the feel of it. I think we should get out.”

  “Tonight?”

  Eddie was reluctant, but finally he said, “Better wait until almost daybreak. He’s resting well in there, or was when I came out.”

  “He still is.”

  “He can use it.” He looked at me. “Why don’t we make a sled? I brought an axe along and I noticed an adze there in the cabin. She ain’t much account, but I could sharpen it up a mite.”

  “Are you any good with an axe?”

  “I’m a fair hand,” Eddie admitted, “but I’ve noticed you cutting wood. You’ll do.”

  “I grew up with an axe in my hand,” I said. “All right, sled it is. I’ll take the axe and go hunt some runners.”

  Taking the rifle and the axe, I went up the hill into a young stand of lodge-pole pine, and picked a couple of slim young trees and cut them down. Back at the cabin we smoothed off the bark and with the adze cut a flat surface to slide on.

  Eddie was a better hand than me. He showed he had some knowledge of such things, and he had skill with his hands. Like I’ve always said, I could do any work that could be done from the back of a cow pony. Otherwise, I wasn’t much account.

  Yet if I decided to homestead I’d have to do all kinds of work, I’d have to build my own cabin, even plow a mite to put in a home garden. But first off, I’d need some cattle and a couple of horses.

  Every few minutes while I was working I looked around and studied the country, and I was getting the same feeling Eddie had, the itch to be away from here. The place had an eerie feel to it, added to by the ghostly white of everything under the new fall of snow.

  Maybe it was because I was expecting trouble, expecting Roman Bohlen and his outfit to catch up with us, or even that other crowd, the bunch who had shot up Tom Gatty’s rustlers … these things going on in that country made a man uneasy.

  All the while in the back of my mind was the nagging thought that I had a showdown coming with Bohlen. It had to come, but I couldn’t see how I could win. He had the money, the influence, the men back of him; and in a fight he was a whole lot bigger than me.

  “I wish we could have boxed more,” I told Eddie. “I surely wish we had.”

  “You learned a lot,” Eddie said. “You took to it. You just remember what you learned and you won’t have any trouble. You’re a natural. Believe me, if you’d started younger you could have made it; but a man should start boxing when he’s young.”

  Philo Parley slept the day through, and most of the night. Toward daylight, when I was in the cabin drinking coffee, he woke up and lay with his eyes open. Ann was wrapped up in her blankets, fast asleep.

  “Pike? Is that you?” Parley said.

  I walked over and sat down on the edge of the bunk. “You want some soup or something?” I asked. “We’ve got some ready.”

  “Not just yet.” He stayed quiet for a minute. “Pike, is Ann asleep?”

  When I nodded, he said, “She should never have come out here, but she was always like that. She loved to climb in the mountains back home, and to ride the wildest horses. Ann should have been born in Montana, not Ireland.”

  He was quiet again, and I told him of our plans to get him into Miles City. He listened, then nodded slightly. “You can try. It will get Ann there, anyway. But I won’t make it, Pike, I am sure I won’t.”

  “That’s a fool way to talk!”

  “I’ve got the feeling, Pike.” He looked at me curiously. “You take good care of Ann. She belongs in this country.”

  “She’ll be going home.”

  He turned his head slowly from side to side. “She might, but I don’t believe it. She’s very like me, Pike. She’s seen those Big Horns against the
sky, and she has ridden over the range. I think she’ll stay.”

  He gave me a sudden sharp look. “You know, Pike, living out here gives a man different standards. Over there, education and position seem the most important things, but out here … well, it’s the way it should be everywhere—character comes first. Not that a man should underrate either education or position. But it is the man that matters, not where he came from or where he went to school.

  “Take you, Pike. I don’t know anything about your blood lines and I care less, but you’ve got what this country needs—what it will always need. You’ve got stamina, courage, and a strong sense of justice.”

  I was kind of surprised and embarrassed. I went over and knelt beside the fire, where I dished up a cup of soup for him, and I helped him to it.

  He looked up at me. “I’d like to make it to Miles City. I’d like to recover, Pike. If I do, I’ll kill Roman Bohlen.”

  “He needs it,” I agreed, “but this country is outgrowing that way. Maybe that time is already past and Bohlen himself didn’t know. He’s gone too far this time.”

  Just short of daybreak I went up into the woods to get their horses, and led them back down. We hitched our pack horse to the sled, and the rest of our gear we put on their extra horses. Eddie got up in the saddle to lead off.

  It wasn’t until I was helping Ann into her saddle that I noticed the tracks of her horse. When I looked at its hoofs I saw that it wore leather Indian-style shoes.

  Chapter Fourteen.

  By the time the sun came up we were crossing a shoulder of the mountain near Padget Creek, and when we actually caught sight of the sun we were already down in the valley of the Otter. It wasn’t easy going, but by taking turns at scouting ahead and breaking trail, Eddie and me found out way. We took our nooning on Ten Mile Creek, and since then we had come a mite further.

  “How’s it going?” I asked Philo.

  “All right,” he said quietly.

  He looked drawn and pale, and I knew he was taking a beating on this trip. If he lived through this, he’d be almighty lucky, but he would have died anyway without proper care. Or he would have been hung or murdered if he was found. We had no choice but to make the try. We poured him a cup of coffee, and I squatted alongside him while he drank it. It was strong enough to peel paint off a barn, and it seemed to do him good.