“What’s this all about?” Boone asked.
The cook smiled. “A promise.” Which was just partly true. Tsoyio also wanted to steer Boone away from the grave of Constance Beckett, where the horses would be flattening the mound as Fabian Peña and his guards started the remuda on the trail. Again, they would travel at night, hold up in tight confines the following day. They would have to get back to the camp soon, so Boone could take his spot with the herd, and Tsoyio would drive his wagon, but the patrón, Nelson Story, had agreed to Tsoyio’s scheme, and would be waiting back at camp.
Tsoyio smiled. “Have you ever seen a beaver?”
Boone shrugged.
“Well, we shall wait here awhile. They are funny-looking animals. But beautiful. Hard workers. Yes, we shall wait awhile.” Boone did not seem to hear. “Many years have passed since I last saw a beaver, but this is for you. Y mi amigo José Sibrian.”
* * *
Bullwhackers untied George Dow and hauled him out of the wagon. Jameson Hannah loosened the gag, jerked it down, and shoved the cowboy forward.
Story handed Dow the holstered revolver, the belt wrapped around the rig.
“You’re free,” Story told Dow.
“Free?” Dow stared.
“You can ride with us. Or make your way back to the fort.”
Dow let out a humorless chuckle and held out his hands to accept the gun and rig. “That’s some choice, Story.”
“It’s yours to make.”
“I’ll stick with you,” Dow said.
Story nodded. “Catch yourself a horse. Take over point till Boone gets back with the cook.” He nodded at the revolver. “If you want to use that, now’s your chance.”
Dow strapped the rig on, but shook his head. “You wouldn’t even feel the lead ball, Story. You don’t feel nothing.”
After a slight nod, Story walked away.
* * *
The trail led west, through mountains, but only the nights proved frigid. The days were just damned cold. Numbed by cold, wet from frost and snow flurries, men and animals moved west for days, weeks, millennia. They had done nothing but this for so long, maybe they knew nothing else. Later, however, the Gallatin Valley protected them from most of the weather. When José Pablo Tsoyio and Story decided they were out of the range of the Lakotas, they stopped moving at night—it was too damned cold anymore to travel without the sun’s warmth. Thanksgiving passed without notice, and by the time John Catlin figured Christmas would come and go, Story stopped the caravan.
* * *
“You want us to do what?” John Catlin asked.
“Two cabins,” Story said, and began sketching a blueprint with a stick in the dirt. “Bunkhouse. Main house. Nothing fancy. Just something to get us through the winter.” His mind and the stick continued to work. “We’ll put up a lean-to here. Corrals there. Barn will have to wait till spring or summer.”
He raised the stick and pointed. “Plenty of grass, and this valley will protect the cattle most of the winter.”
George Dow let out a dry, mocking laugh. “I thought we were going to Virginia City.”
“We are,” Story said. “Those who want to draw your time, we’ll take two hundred beeves into Virginia City.”
“I know you want to keep your bulls and cows for your ranch,” Jameson Hannah said, “but you got more than two hundred beeves.”
“That’s just what I want to sell now,” Story said. “In Virginia City. I bet the army at Fort C. F. Smith will like meat. We’ll see what they’ll offer in the spring.”
“How about Fort Phil Kearny?” Luke Beckner said with a chuckle.
“To hell with them,” Story said.
The corrals were built first. Then the cabins. Story said he’d pay the carpenters two and a half dollars a day. That’s what they were doing, when the log slipped, and a man screamed.
Teamsters McPherson, McKay, and the drag riders Williams and McWilliams managed to roll the log off. The others removed their hats as José Pablo Tsoyio knelt, closed the eyes, then placed his fingers on the throat. Snow started to fall. Nelson Story hurried over from the woodcutting detail. He stared down at the body, looked south, shook his head. “See if we can make him a coffin. We’ll bury him in the morning.” He turned, walked away, but a few men swore they heard him curse.
Connor Lehman watched Story for a long while, then looked at the body and said, “Blood for the foundation?”
“What?” Boone asked.
“Nothing.”
And for a long while, they just stood over the body of Jameson Hannah.
“I never thought the son of a bitch could die,” Dalton Combs said.
“I did,” José Pablo Tsoyio said. “But not this way.”
Boone stood. “Get him inside the lean-to. We’ve got work to do.”
* * *
Story nodded at Connor Lehman. “We’ll bring the wagons in to Virginia City. You can take your money, wait out winter here, or move on wherever. Stagecoaches run to Salt Lake. Helena’s a hard ride in winter, but you can go there, too. And there are business opportunities in the Fourteen Mile City, to hang your hat in the winter, or stick it out as long as you can.”
The funeral of Jameson Hannah, obviously, had officially ended.
“I’d like to get back to Texas,” Kelvin Melean said. “See if I can remember what heat feels like.”
Story’s head bobbed. “I’ll pay you off in town. But first, we ought to get some roofs up.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
This was how Story had imagined it, but it wasn’t how he thought he would feel.
He rode in front of the steers, while men, women, children stepped out of their homes or businesses, watching the procession in silent awe all the way down the Fourteen Mile City. He had left seven cowboys, including Mason Boone, back at the ranch. The others pushed the two hundred beeves, followed by the wagons led by Connor Lehman.
As they neared Virginia City, Story turned his bay gelding around. “Combs,” he told the black cowhand, “keep them moving. There will be a newspaper office, the Montana Post, up on the right. We’re taking these to the Eagle Corral. At Jackson and Cover. Tell the owner, Foster, that he owes me a thousand dollars.” He did not smile. “The pens won’t hold them all, but I figure these cattle won’t wander off.”
“No, sir,” Combs said. “But some of these city folks might try throwing a wide loop. They look hungry.”
Story coughed. “Let them,” he said. “If they’re that hungry.”
He spurred back to the wagons, reining up at the wagon driven by John Catlin. Behind him, Steve Grover drove another wagon, with Molly McDonald riding in her wagon, still in her dress. The professor would not know what to think about this, Story thought, or how to write about it.
Story reached behind the cantle and tossed the money belt into the driver’s box at Catlin’s feet.
“Pay off the men,” Story said. “You’ll find the ledger in there.” He started to turn the gelding around, but looked back at Catlin. “You figured out your plans yet?”
Shaking his head, Catlin jerked a thumb back at Grover’s wagon. “We’re still talking about it.”
Story nodded, and loped back, passed the cattle, swinging down in at the newspaper office, where he tied the gelding to the hitching rail. A stranger stepped through the door.
“By God,” the man said. “You did it, Story. You did it.” He held out his hand. “I’m Henry Blake, Nelson, editor . . .”
“Where’s Professor Dimsdale?” Story interrupted.
The man’s face turned waxen. “I am sorry, but the professor passed in September.” He withdrew pencil and pad as Story turned.
“How many cattle?” the journalist asked.
“We started with a thousand Texas longhorns,” Story said. “We’re bringing in two hundred beeves. The rest are back in the valley, though we lost some on the trail.”
“How many men?”
Too damned many to count. And a woman.
Let them, Story thought. He didn’t give a damn.
* * *
“She’s sleeping,” Ellen told Nelson as he stared down at little Montana in her crib. “Who do you think she looks like?”
His head shook, and he walked away, raising the filthy bandanna to his face. “Got dust in my eye,” he said, and sat down on the chaise he had never liked a whit. Ellen moved to the rear entrance, opened the door, and a dog bounded inside, leaping, yipping, then bolting across the cabin and jumped, pressing its paws against Nelson’s chest.
Baby Montana did not even stir.
“Down,” Ellen whispered. “Get down.”
The dog wagged its tail, did not obey.
Story looked at the dog, which turned around and ran back to Ellen. “What’s this?” he said.
“A dog,” she said.
“What’s his name?”
She shrugged. “Montana and I figured we’d let you name it.” When the dog barked, Ellen hushed it, walked past the table, grabbed a bone she had bought from the butcher, and tossed it through the open door. The dog raced out, and Ellen closed the door. By the time she came back, Story had stretched out on the chaise. His eyes were closed.
Outside, Ellen heard the bawling of cattle.
“Hobo,” Story whispered.
“What?”
“Hobo,” he said. “We’ll call him Hobo.”
“All right, Nelson.” Slowly, she knelt beside him and began stroking his nearest hand. “Hobo.”
His eyes opened, locked on hers.
“Hobo,” he said again. “I don’t have to bury him. I’ve buried too many already.”
She stared blankly. “Nelson?”
His eyes closed, and she thought he was asleep, but he drew in a deep breath, exhaled, and the eyes opened again, found hers, and he whispered, “I love you. I don’t say that enough.”
She thought: You’ve never said it. Smiled. But I love you, too.
The eyes closed, and he said, “I’m so tired.” A moment later, he was asleep.
She leaned down, kissed his forehead, looked at Montana, still asleep, and walked back to the front door, opening it, seeing the last of the cattle come down Wallace Street, followed now by a caravan of wagons, jingling traces, bone-weary men. Hobo ran back inside, found a spot by the fireplace, began working on the butcher’s bone. She told herself to remember to close the back door, but for now, she watched the parade, thinking history was being made this very moment, and her husband had done it.
Yet her eyes gazed up the hillside, toward the new cemetery, and she breathed in slowly, and she thought about what Nelson had said, more to himself than to her, and she wondered if he would ever tell her about it.
Finally, she whispered to herself, “Yes, we have buried too many already.”
Then, Ellen closed the door.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This novel is a blend of fact and fiction—and a whole lot of legend. In 1866, Nelson Story drove a herd of cattle—the number of cattle ranges from three hundred to three thousand—from Texas to Montana. John Catlin and Steve Grover, both Civil War veterans from Indiana, did join him at Fort Laramie. The army at Fort Phil Kearny did order the caravan of cattle and wagons to stop, and Story, at least according to legend, did take a vote; George Dow voted not to continue and was silenced and basically kidnapped. Story reportedly used some of the cattle to start his own ranching empire and sold the rest in Virginia City.
Thomas Dimsdale was the editor at Virginia City’s Montana Post until his death in 1866. Ellen Story did give birth to a daughter while Story was away; Alice Montana Story died in 1869, but the Storys had several more children, with three sons living well into the 1900s. And by most accounts, Story could be a downright nasty man.
The participants on the cattle drive and wagon train and other characters—with the exceptions of Catlin, Grover, Dow, Jack and Jenette Langrishe, George Overholt, Tommy Thompson, Thomas Meagher, Fort Laramie’s Major James Van Voast, Fort Phil Kearny’s Henry Carrington, William Fetterman and James Powell, and many of the Virginia City townspeople—are fictional. But all are used fictitiously. The diphtheria epidemic is also my creation, loosely based on other outbreaks in Montana during the 1870s and 1880s.
In the spring of 2019, I followed the route most historians believe Story would have taken—in a rented car, not on horseback. The flooding, thunderstorm, and hailstorm scenes were developed on that drive. The idea of the locusts came about on follow-up trips that summer and fall in Dodge City, Kansas.
Sources for this novel, listed alphabetical by the author’s name, include Laura Joanne Arata’s May 2009 thesis, “Embers of the Social City: Business, Consumption, and Material Culture in Virginia City, Montana, 1863–1945,” for her master of arts in history at Washington State University’s Department of History; Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad by David Haward Bain; Gold Camp: Alder Gulch and Virginia City, Montana by Larry Barsness; Fort Phil Kearny: An American Saga by Dee Brown; Cowboy Culture: A Saga of Five Centuries and Frontier Medicine: From the Atlantic to the Pacific, 1492–1941, both by David Dary; The Vigilantes of Montana by Professor Thomas J. Dimsdale; Great American Cattle Trails: The Story of the Old Cow Paths of the East and the Longhorn Highways of the Plains by Henry Sinclair Drago; Montana Mainstreets Volume 1: A Guide to Historic Virginia City by Marilyn Grant; Montana: High, Wide, and Handsome by Joseph Kinsey Howard; The Bloody Bozeman: The Perilous Trail to Montana’s Gold by Dorothy M. Johnson; Fort Worth: Outpost on the Trinity by Oliver Knight; Fort Laramie: Official National Park Handbook by David Lavender; Railroad 1869: Along the Historic Union Pacific Through Nebraska by Eugene Arundel Miller; Golden Gulch: The Story of Montana’s Fabulous Alder Gulch by Dick Pace; Fort Worth: Outpost, Cowtown, Boomtown by Harold Rich; Treasure State Tycoon: Nelson Story and the Making of Montana by John C. Russell; Virginia City and Alder Gulch by Ken and Ellen Sievert; Following Old Trails by Arthur L. Stone; and The Trampling Herd: The Story of the Cattle Range in America by Paul I. Wellman.
I also read through many period newspapers in Texas, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, and Montana on Newspapers. com and NewspaperArchive.com, as well as articles in America’s Civil War, True West, Wild West and the Texas State Historical Association and Remington Society of America websites.
The text of Major General John Pope’s General Order No. 27 in Chapter 49 comes from Senate Documents, Volume 242, Indexes to the Executive Documents of the Senate of the United States for the First Session Fortieth Congress, and for the Special Session, 1867 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1868).
Thanks also to Micki Fuhrman Milom of Nashville, Tennessee; Michael Zimmer of Roy, Utah; and Steve and Candy Moulton of Encampment, Wyoming, for answering questions and steady coaching; Denise Beeber and Cindy Bagwell for lunch in Dallas, Texas; Max and Kim McCoy for lunch in Emporia, Kansas; Monty and Ann McCord for supper in Hastings, Nebraska; Charles Rankin for lunch at Wheat, Montana; Mary Hedge of the La Porte County (Indiana) Public Library, and Tom Lea and Lori Van Pelt at WyoHistory.org for helpful background research; and the staffs at the Greenwood County Historical Society in Eureka, Kansas; Kansas City Public Library’s Missouri Valley Special Collections; Frontier Army Museum at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas; Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne; Fort Kearny State Historical Park in Kearney, Nebraska; Dawson County Historical Society in Lexington, Nebraska; Fort Laramie National Historic Site in Fort Laramie, Wyoming; Fort Phil Kearny Historic Site in Banner, Wyoming; Gallatin History Museum in Bozeman, Montana; Montana Historical Society in Helena; and Thompson-Hickman Museum in Virginia City, Montana.
Special thanks to Lisa and Jack for putting up wi
th me through another historical novel.
—Johnny D. Boggs
Santa Fe, New Mexico
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Johnny D. Boggs has won four Spur Awards from Western Writers of America and the Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum for his western fiction. A Spur Award finalist five times, he has been praised by Booklist as “among the best western writers at work today,” and True West named him the Best Living Fiction Writer in its 2008 Best of the West Awards. His novels include the Spur-winning Camp Ford, Doubtful Cañon, and Hard Winter, as well as Walk Proud, Stand Tall, in which he first introduced Lin Garrett, the hero of “The Trouble with Dudes.” Boggs’s website is www.johnnydboggs.com.
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