Montana Territory

by Charles G. West

  “Let’s go,” Booth prompted. They paid Bodine for the supper, plus a bottle of whiskey to take with them, and filed out the door.

  Disappointed by their early departure as well, Bodine walked out on the porch and watched them ride off toward the narrow path by the river. “There ain’t a doubt in my mind, those boys are the ones that done for that party of church folks. And they’re settin’ on a whole pile of money.” He turned to Dinah Belle when he heard her come up behind him. “And I’m aimin’ to get me a chunk of it before they ride outta here.”

  * * *

  The path to the cabins led through a heavily wooded area and was only wide enough to ride single file. Booth led the others along the path, now shrouded in heavy darkness. Halfway back to the cabin, he pulled his horse up hard when he suddenly met a horse coming toward him, causing him to back into Jesse’s horse. He saw a moment later that the saddle was empty. Then he realized it was Tater’s horse, wandering loose. He immediately pulled his. 44, which prompted Jesse and Trip to do the same. “Keep your eyes open,” Booth warned. “That’s Tater’s horse!” They started up again, pushing Tater’s horse in front of them until reaching a wide spot in the path where Tater’s horse moved aside. “Grab his reins, Trip,” Booth said as he rode by the riderless horse.

  With no sign of Tater along the dark path, they spread out and pulled up when they reached the clearing and the two cabins, all three with guns aimed at the cabin. “Tater!” Booth yelled, but there was no response. He turned to Jesse and Trip. “Let’s take a look around the cabin before we go walkin’ in there. I don’t like the looks of this.” They did as he ordered but found no one.

  “Hell, I’m goin’ in,” Trip declared, and stepped down from the saddle. With his six-gun in his hand, he walked up, gave the door a hard shove, and stepped quickly to the side in case his entrance was met with a few rounds from a .44. When there was no response after the door swung open and banged against the wall, he went inside. In a few seconds, Booth and Jesse heard him call out. “He’s in here.”

  Booth and Jesse went inside the dark cabin to find Trip kneeling beside the body. “Damn,” Booth swore when he saw him. “That son of a bitch shot him.” He knew without doubt who the killer was. Then it occurred to him. “As close as this is to the store, we shoulda heard the shot.”

  “There weren’t no shot,” Trip said. “He didn’t shoot Tater. He cut his throat.”

  “Damn,” Booth swore again. “He’s figurin’ on gettin’ us one by one. We’ve got to stick together, so he don’t get a chance to catch one of us alone again. Light that lantern over there,” he directed, pointing to a lantern on the table. They all bent over Tater’s body then. “Looks like he caught him in the gut first,” Booth observed. “Tater musta walked in on him when the bastard was searchin’ in here.” He looked at his brother. “He was lookin’ for the money.” He reached in Tater’s vest pocket. “He got it, too. Look in Tater’s saddlebags.”

  “I’ll do it,” Trip volunteered, and got up at once. He went outside where the horses were standing. After a quick search through the saddlebags on Tater’s horse, he was back inside with the news. “He cleaned him out.”

  Booth looked at Jesse. “I told you he ain’t no lawman. He’s after the money, and he knows each one of us has got as much as he just took offa Tater. We’ve gotta go huntin’. We’ve damn sure gotta find him before he catches one of us alone again.”

  “Well, we can’t do much huntin’ tonight,” Trip said. “Maybe we can pick up his tracks when it gets daylight.”

  “We’re gonna have to track him down,” Booth declared again, this time even stronger. “We can’t wait around for him to get another chance to ambush one of us. He might be watchin’ out there right now, but as long as the three of us are here inside the cabin, there ain’t much he can do.”

  “I ain’t gonna go far from the cabin when I have to get rid of this coffee I drank,” Trip stated, “and everythin’ else I ate is gonna have to stay right where it is till daylight.” He looked down at the body and asked, “What are we gonna do about ol’ Tater? We gonna bury him?”

  “Not tonight, we ain’t,” Booth said.

  “Well, let’s drag him out the door,” Jesse suggested. “We can leave him by the front door till mornin’.” That was good enough for the other two, so he and Trip each grabbed one of Tater’s boots and dragged him out the front door.

  “Won’t have to worry about Tater’s snorin’ tonight,” Trip said when they came back inside and dropped the bar across the door.

  * * *

  While the three outlaws spent a watchful night inside a log cabin, the man who was the cause of their cautious fits of sleep was bedded down at the top of a steep ravine that ran up a heavily wooded foothill. He had been fortunate to find this campsite while there was still barely enough light to follow the tiny stream that ran down the ravine to join a larger stream at the bottom. He planned to make his base camp down where the two streams met. He estimated the camp to be about three and a half to four miles from Bodine’s trading post. There was grass there for Rascal, and the water was good. But at night, he would sleep up at the narrow top of the ravine, so anyone who might attack him would have to climb up to find him. It would take a better tracker than he was to find him at night, and if they did, Rascal was there to warn him. He fell asleep knowing there was one less killer in the gang of five that coldly slaughtered women and children. He was at peace with his part in it.

  He awoke the next morning to the sound of Rascal drinking from the tiny stream near his bedroll. He sat up and looked around him to see how secure his campsite appeared to be in the light of day. He decided it was as good as he could expect to find. “Come on, boy, let’s go down to the bottom where you can get some good water,” he said to Rascal.

  Not sure what this day would bring, he decided to make coffee and eat some breakfast before he made his next move. While he ate his meal of venison, he tried to determine just what that move should be. He was still up against three hardened criminals, so he was not at all casual about how he intended to accomplish the task he had set before himself. The only thing he was sure he must do right away was to find out where they were and what they were doing, then hope they made costly mistakes. With that as his first objective, he lightened Rascal’s load by hanging the rest of his meat supply, as well as his other supplies, in the trees by his camp. For his deer meat, he picked a small limb and hung the bundle as far out on the limb as he could without the weight of it breaking the limb. He didn’t mind sharing a little meat with a hawk, but he hoped to avoid donating all of it to a mountain lion. It was high enough off the ground that he could reach it only on horseback while standing in the stirrups. Once that was done, he wheeled Rascal and headed back to Wolf Creek.

  When he was within a mile of Bodine’s, he guided Rascal to the east for what he figured to be about a mile and a half before cutting back in a more southerly direction. So, when he reached the river, he was quite a way downstream of Bodine’s as well as the two cabins. From that point, he made his way upstream, so as to approach the cabins from below them.

  * * *

  While Hawk was having his breakfast and preparing to scout the cabin, the occupants of the cabin had been getting ready to track him. “How do you know he ain’t out there in the bushes somewhere just waitin’ to get a shot at one of us?” Jesse wanted to know.

  “’Cause, if he was, he’da most likely took a shot at me when I was out there waterin’ the side of the cabin,” Trip replied.

  “You walked around to the side of the cabin?” Jesse asked, thinking Trip wasn’t showing much respect for the possibility that Hawk was waiting for just such an opportunity.

  “Tater’s still a-layin’ right in front of the door,” Trip said. “I didn’t think it would be respectful to pee on him. Besides, I ain’t talkin’ about the side of this cabin. I went across the stream to the other cabin.”

  “That’s crazy as hell. You’d best be thinkin’
about the jasper we’re dealin’ with,” Booth told him. “He’s already took care of Blue and Tater.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you why I ain’t worried about steppin’ outside this cabin,” Trip said. “He ain’t waitin’ for us to come outta here ’cause he’s gone.”

  “How the hell do you know that?” Booth asked.

  “’Cause, after I walked around this cabin and he didn’t shoot, I figured he wasn’t here. So I took a look around that other cabin, and I found his tracks where he ran off into the woods,” Trip crowed. “You said we was gonna track him down, so I can show you which way we need to start.”

  This captured both of the brothers’ interest, so they followed him over to the other cabin, where he pointed out Hawk’s tracks from the afternoon before. “Well, I’ll be . . .” Jesse started when Trip pointed out the distinct boot tracks. “He came across that clearin’, musta come up in those trees over there. He musta surprised poor ol’ Tater when he was lookin’ for his teeth.” It looked to be the obvious answer and served to paint a picture of a determined assassin. Actually, it was Tater who surprised Hawk, not the other way around. The picture of a deadly night stalker was fixed in their minds, however.

  “We’ve got to track this son of a bitch down and kill him,” Booth said. “’Cause he’s gonna keep comin’ till he gets all of us and all the money.”

  “Let’s get at it, then,” Trip said. “I just wish I’d get a chance to take him on face-to-face. I’d like to see if he’s as good when he’s facin’ me as he is when he’s hidin’ in the bushes.”

  After following the obvious tracks across the sandy clearing, they easily found the spot in the trees where Hawk had left his horse. There had apparently been no effort on his part to hide his trail as he rode out of the trees and into the hills beyond. The trail ended, however, when they came to a wide stream. From that point forward, Hawk had become careful about hiding his trail. They spent almost an hour riding up and down both sides of the stream, but to no avail. Booth reined his Morgan gelding to a stop and sat there gazing at the mountains before him, feeling the frustration of knowing Hawk would be hard to find in that wilderness. In a short while, both Jesse and Trip came from opposite directions and pulled up beside him. “I can’t find a track where anything came out of the water,” Jesse complained. “He’s just disappeared.”

  “Well, I reckon that’s one more thing we know about him,” Trip said. “The son of a bitch can fly.”

  Booth made no comment as he continued to stare at the dark hills and the mountains beyond them. The loss of Hawk’s trail led him into more serious speculation about the man who was stalking them. He had met and had a conversation with him, so he knew he was a white man. But he wore a shirt made out of buckskin, he wore a feather in his hat, and he had attacked Tater with a knife. All those things added up to make Booth think they were dealing with a half-breed, or at least a man who had lived with the Indians. On the other hand, he thought, he didn’t scalp Blue or Tater. The more he thought about it, the less he wanted to play hide-and-seek in those hills with a man who might be at home in them. Sensing his brother’s deep thoughts as usual, Jesse asked, “What’s on your mind, Booth?”

  “I’m thinkin’ we’re in that jasper’s backyard and that ain’t the best place for us to be,” Booth answered.

  “You think we oughta go back to the cabin and wait for him to come after us?” Jesse responded.

  “No, I’m thinkin’ we’d best go back to the cabin, get our stuff, take it to Bodine’s, and move into one of those rooms he’s got over the saloon.”

  Hearing his comment, Trip blurted, “I thought we said we was gonna track him down.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ve changed my mind,” Booth replied. “Runnin’ around out here in the woods, or holed up in that cabin, he’s got us where he’d rather have us. If we were stayin’ at Bodine’s, he’d have a lot more to deal with, and it won’t be so easy to get at us. He’ll have to come out in the open.”

  “That’d be more to my likin’,” Trip claimed. “I would surely like to stand face-to-face with that sneaky bastard.” Then another thought entered his mind. “It would be a lot closer to the supper table at Bodine’s.” He grinned. “And Josie’s room is over the saloon. Everything’s handy.”

  In line with his brother’s thinking, Jesse was inclined to agree. “I think that would be a smart move for us,” he said. “He’s gonna have to think twice before he steps into Bodine’s to make trouble. Ain’t no use to hide out in that cabin anymore, anyway. Hawk knows where we are, so we might as well make things a little bit easier on ourselves. I know we were planning to move on after a couple of days here, but I’d rather make sure that bastard’s dead and not trailin’ along behind us before we go.”

  “Good,” Trip commented, and nodded to show his agreement. “And I’ll bet ol’ Dinner Bell is cookin’ up some breakfast. I don’t know about you boys, but I could use some coffee and biscuits right about now.”

  “Let’s get our possibles outta that cabin first,” Booth said. “Then there won’t be no need to go back after breakfast.”

  Since they had not gotten very far before losing Hawk’s trail, it was a short ride back to the cabins. Even so, the three outlaws were not careless in approaching them, and once they were sure Hawk was not about, they quickly packed their things and were headed up the path to Bodine’s and the prospects of a hot breakfast. Behind them was the body of their late partner, Tater Thompson, dumped in a gully behind the second cabin to await his final reckoning.

  Forty yards downstream from the cabins, Hawk reined Rascal up short when he thought he heard voices through the trees. He paused there for a minute or two, listening, then he was sure. The voices had come from the cabins, and they had to be outside the cabin for him to have heard them. He nudged Rascal with his heels and the big buckskin gelding started walking slowly ahead until a glimpse of the cabins came into sight and Hawk stopped him again. Dismounting with his rifle in hand, Hawk moved cautiously through the growth of pines close to the river. He made his way to a spot where he could see both cabins clearly, just in time to see the rear ends of the packhorses as they were swallowed up in the darkness of the narrow path that led to Bodine’s. They’re leaving, he thought, for good, if they’re taking their packhorses! He thought of his food and supplies hanging in a tree three and a half miles away. If Booth was heading out for who-knows-where, there was no time for Hawk to recover his supplies. He was going to have to survive on what he carried in his saddlebags, because he couldn’t afford to let the three of them leave without him on their trail.

  He hurried back to his horse. “It’s your fault,” he said to the buckskin as he picked the reins up from the ground. “If I hadn’t tried to lighten your load, I wouldn’t have to worry about starvin’ to death.” He climbed up into the saddle and rode on through the trees to the clearing where the cabins stood. With no thought that anyone was left behind to take a shot at him, he held Rascal to a fast walk across the clearing and onto the path to Bodine’s. Once the trees enclosed on the narrow track, he slowed the horse down, so as not to catch up with the three men he knew were riding ahead of him, leading the horses.

  As he approached the point where the path opened up to the shady bluffs where Bodine’s buildings stood, he had to pull his horse to a stop to make sure he wasn’t spotted following Booth and the others. When they rode through the willows and cottonwoods scattered around Bodine’s little cluster of buildings, he could see them as they led their horses straight to Bodine’s corral and began to unload their saddles and packs. While Hawk watched from his vantage point at the entrance to the river path, Booth and his two remaining gang members carried their saddles and packs into the barn. During the process, Bodine joined them when he was summoned by Tom Pointer, who took care of Bodine’s barn and stable. Pointer seemed to have been surprised when Booth and his two friends showed up with their horses and belongings. Hawk guessed that their arrival was as much a surprise to Tom as it was
to him. From the distance Hawk watched from, it appeared to him that Bodine was making them welcome. After a short conversation between them, Bodine and the three walked into the store, with their saddlebags on their shoulders and their rifles in their hands. The exception was Tom Pointer, who stayed behind to take care of the horses that had suddenly come under his care.

  So they moved into the store, Hawk thought. I wonder for how long. He felt certain that Booth and his partners had no intention to stay at Bodine’s for any great length of time. Until they catch me sleeping, he thought, answering his own question. This was going to change his plan of attack. They obviously felt they would be a great deal less vulnerable to his efforts to settle with them. On the other hand, they would have to come out of there, if they intended to kill him. Could he afford to wait them out? It could very well turn into a game of who became desperate enough to first take the big risk.

  For the first time in the last couple of days, he wondered if his prolonged absence had already jeopardized his position as a scout for the army. He wasn’t sure Mathew Conner could save his job again. As quickly as the thought occurred, it was just as quickly discarded. His friend Bloody Hand would tell him that he was walking the path that had opened for him. He wasn’t sure about that, but he knew that he was already too heavily invested in the quest to avenge the families these men had destroyed. Maybe I’ll finish what I’ve started, then go up to Canada to find Bloody Hand.

  Thinking Booth would not be coming out of the trading post anytime soon this morning, since they had just moved in, he thought about going to get his meat and supplies while they were getting settled in their new quarters. He needed to set up a camp closer to the trading post, now that he would be watching it most of the time. And he knew that anytime the Morgan that Booth rode was gone, he was likely being hunted. Unless, he reminded himself, the Morgan and all the other horses they had were all gone. In that case, he would be trying to find their trail again.