Montana Territory

by Charles G. West

  “No,” Booth said, and holstered his weapon. “That ain’t Hawk.”

  “Reckon what he’s tryin’ to say?”

  Booth chuckled and replied, “Most likely that he ought notta come in that door.” His answer caused Jesse to chuckle as well.

  Frightened moments before, when the gunfire went off, Dinah Belle and Josie had taken cover in the pantry. Now that it was over, and everything was quiet in the saloon, they came out and peeked around the kitchen door to see the two men standing over the body. Frightened to see who it might be, they hurried to the saloon door. “It’s Mose!” Dinah Belle shrieked. “You shot Mose!” She dropped down on her knees to see if she could do anything for the unfortunate victim. “Mose,” she begged. “It’s me, Dinah Belle. Can you hear me? I’ll try to help you, just try to hang on.”

  Failing fast, the little man tried to apologize. “I was just wantin’ a drink,” he managed to sputter weakly through the blood in his mouth, and then he lay still.

  Josie glared at Booth. “What did you shoot him for? Mose ain’t never done nobody any harm. Why’d you have to shoot him?”

  Booth answered her with an indifferent smirk. “I don’t know,” he said, “maybe because he didn’t knock before he walked in.” His retort triggered another laugh from his brother.

  By this time, the sound of the gunfire had brought Bodine and Tom running to see the cause of it. “What tha . . . ?” Bodine blurted as soon as he saw Mose crumpled up on the floor.

  “I swear . . .” Tom started. “Old Mose . . . He just got his horse fixed up.”

  “What happened?” Bodine addressed his question to Dinah Belle and she told him how the harmless old man came to be gunned down when he walked in the door. Bodine looked first at Booth and then at Jesse, shaking his head slowly in disgust. “Hawk has got you two so spooked till you’re shootin’ at shadows. Who you gonna shoot next?”

  “Maybe you, old man,” Booth answered, “if I take a notion.”

  “Maybe it’s time for you and your brother to pack up your mess and get outta here,” Dinah Belle blurted since her husband was reluctant to do it. “See how you do outside where there’s somebody to shoot back at you. One man’s got the two of you so scared you can’t walk out the door.”

  Her remark brought an angry glare from both brothers and a warning from Booth. “You’d best put a bridle on that wife of yours, Bodine, or I’m gonna do it for you.”

  Bodine was as disgusted as his wife, but her angry remarks had placed him in a bad spot. He took her by the arm and pulled her away from Mose’s body. “Go on back in the kitchen, you and Josie, before one of ’em decides to shoot you.” Though reluctant to do so, Dinah Belle did as he said, and Josie went with her. Once they were gone, Bodine decided it was time to stand up to the notorious outlaw. “I reckon my wife is my business and none of yours,” he told Booth. “I ’preciate the business you and Jesse brought me, but you also brought a world of trouble I didn’t have before you came.”

  It was obvious to Booth that Bodine was trying to work up to the point where he told them to get out, so he interrupted him before he got that far. Calm now, he said, “You want us to leave, and we wanna leave, so I’ll make you a deal. Me and Jesse will stay two more days. We’ll pay you for everything we owe, plus we’ll leave you the extra horses that belonged to Trip, Tater, and Blue. Now, that’s a pretty good deal for you. You just make sure your wife does the cookin’ like she’s supposed to, and we’ll be gone in two more days.”

  “All right,” Bodine said, relieved to think he wasn’t about to get shot after all. “I’ll see you get your money’s worth.” He turned his attention back to Mose’s body. “Come on, Tom, gimme a hand. We’ll carry old Mose outta here.” He and Tom picked up the body and started out the door when Bodine called back to Booth. “We got all Trip’s stuff at the barn. I’ll bring it to you. He wasn’t carryin’ any money.”

  “Right,” Booth said, and winked at Jesse.

  * * *

  Two miles away, Hawk paused to listen when he heard the faint sound of shots fired. They were in a quick series of four and had come from the direction of Bodine’s. He continued listening for a while, but no more shots followed. He looked at the cup of coffee he had just poured and hesitated, but he knew he had to investigate the cause of the shots. “Damn,” he swore, took a few quick gulps of the hot liquid, and whistled for Rascal. After he put his fire out, he climbed up into the saddle and rode back around to the ridge where he had watched the trading post before.

  The first thing he checked after climbing up on the ridge was the corral to make sure none of the horses were missing. This, even in spite of the fact that they would not have had much time to pack up and go since he was last there. He decided he had rushed off and left his coffee for nothing. But then he saw Bodine and Tom carrying a body out the saloon door, obviously the reason for the shots he had heard. From the ridge where he knelt, it was difficult to see who the dead man was. Hawk watched them as they carried the body across the yard and laid it down near the blacksmith’s shop. He recognized the body then. It was the little man who had hidden behind the forge with the blacksmith during the shooting before. More senseless killing, Hawk supposed. What, he wondered, could the insignificant little man have done to warrant his death? The thought made him even more impatient to end Booth’s trail of terror.

  Hawk sat down on the ridge and prepared to keep watch on the trading post for the rest of the day, leaving only when he thought it too late for Booth to start out for anywhere. It was to be his routine for the next two days, until the third day, when he climbed to his lookout on that morning to discover there were horses missing. Not all had gone, but the one critical one, a black Morgan, was not there, and he guessed three others were gone as well. Two riders and two packhorses, he thought. They had left in the middle of the night while he was sleeping, padded quietly by on the road near his camp, unaware of its existence. And he had not heard them, nor had there been any alert from Rascal. He considered the possibility that they might not have gone to Helena and that was the reason he had not heard them. He quickly discarded that likelihood. Helena was where he was sure they were originally heading, and it was unlikely they would turn around and go back toward Great Falls or Fort Benton. The fact is, he thought, in the middle of the night, we were within seventy-five yards of each other, and none of us knew it. “I guess I’d best count myself lucky I didn’t get shot while I was asleep,” he said.

  He got to his feet and went back down the ridge, where Rascal was waiting. With no thought toward going into Bodine’s to make sure they were gone, he went back to his camp to pack up all his belongings. Soon, he was in the saddle again, on the road to Helena.

  CHAPTER 15

  He had not traveled more than about nine or ten miles when he came to a wide stream. He paused before crossing to let Rascal drink. Sitting there while he waited for the buckskin to satisfy his thirst, he suddenly became alert, distracted by a noise made by something disturbing the leaves of a serviceberry bush on the other side of the stream. He immediately drew his rifle and backed Rascal around, so he would be facing that way, ready to shoot, if necessary. He cocked the Winchester, even though he suspected he might be preparing to shoot a possum or maybe a large snake. It was difficult to determine in the late afternoon there in the shadows of the trees. Staring at the berry bushes, he was suddenly startled to see a young Indian boy get to his feet with his hands raised in the air. “Don’t shoot,” the boy spoke in the Blackfoot tongue. “We can do you no harm. We have nothing left to give you.”

  We, he thought. “Who is with you?” He answered the boy, also speaking in the Blackfoot tongue.

  “My father,” the boy answered.

  “You have nothing to fear from me,” Hawk said. “Tell your father to come out where I can see him.”

  “He can’t. He is wounded, a very bad wound in his side. I pulled him back to hide behind the bushes when I heard you coming. I thought you were one of the me
n that attacked us.”

  “What kind of wound?” Hawk asked, not entirely ready to believe the Blackfoot boy’s story.

  “They shot him with a gun,” the boy said, “and left him for dead. They shot at me, but I ran in the trees.”

  “I might be wrong,” Hawk said in English, “but I reckon you sound like you’re tellin’ the truth.” In the Blackfoot tongue again, he said, “Let me look at him. Maybe I can help.” He rode across the stream, eased the hammer back down on his rifle, put it back in the saddle sling, and dismounted. Just in case he was getting played, he rested his hand on the Colt on his side. He soon saw that the boy was in earnest. Looking helplessly up at him, the boy’s father was lying on his back, holding a bandanna tightly against his side in an effort to slow the bleeding from a gunshot wound.

  As Hawk bent over him and gently moved the Indian’s hand from the wound, the suffering man’s eyes suddenly became wide open and he uttered one word. “Hawk?”

  Taken by surprise, Hawk did not respond immediately. A picture of the little goblinlike man the Quaker survivors had called Frog came to mind. He wondered if the wounded man was commenting on the feather in his hat, like Frog had. “Yes, I am John Hawk,” he said, bringing a weary smile to the man’s face.

  “Hawk, friend of Blackfoot,” the man said faintly. “Swift Runner,” he said to the boy, “Hawk is friend of Blackfoot.” He closed his eyes as if in peace, alarming the boy.

  Hawk felt for a pulse and told the boy his father was just resting. He was not dead. “Swift Runner, is that your name?” The boy nodded. “Who shot your father?”

  “Two white men,” Swift Runner replied. “They waited in ambush and shot my father and shot at me. Then they took our horses.” He studied Hawk’s face as the tall scout made a bandage from an old sheet he carried for that purpose. “I pretended I was hit, then when they were chasing our horses, I got up and ran.”

  “You’re lucky to have gotten away, if it’s the two men I’m thinking about,” Hawk said slowly, thinking before forming his words. It had been some time since he had talked in the Blackfoot tongue. “You speak any white man talk?” he asked in English. When Swift Runner nodded, Hawk asked, “What is your father’s name?”

  “He is Black Elk,” the boy replied, also in English.

  “Tell me about the white men who shot you. Why did they shoot at you?” Hawk asked.

  “They were waiting in ambush to kill us and steal our horses, I think,” Swift Runner replied. He went on to tell Hawk the entire circumstances that brought him and his wounded father back to this stream. He and his father were on their way to Lost Creek, hoping to find deer there. They were on the road that leads to Helena, and as they approached the creek, they were suddenly shot at by the two white men hiding in ambush. Black Elk was hit and told Swift Runner to play dead until the shooting stopped and their attackers went after the horses. When they were chasing the horses, he got up and ran to hide, hoping the white men would leave, and he could come back to help his father. “We had only our bows,” he explained. “We could not shoot back.” Black Elk managed to get to his feet with his son’s help and tried to walk back to their camp in the mountains. But it was too much for him, and he was barely able to get to this stream before he collapsed. “When I saw you coming, I pulled my father up under these bushes. I thought you were one of them.”

  Hawk was beginning to get a clear picture in his mind of what was supposed to have happened. The two men he pursued had set up an ambush that was intended for him. Thanks to Black Elk and Swift Runner’s unfortunate luck, they unwittingly might have saved his life. There could be no other reason for Booth and his friend to wait on that road in ambush. “Where is your camp?” he asked then.

  “In the mountains the white man calls Big Belts.”

  “Ain’t that a long way to go huntin’?” Hawk commented. No matter which part of that mountain chain their camp was located in, it was a long way from here.

  “We have to go where the deer are,” Swift Runner answered.

  “Reckon so,” Hawk said. He studied the wounded man now seeming to rest easily. And just by Black Elk’s reaction when he recognized him as a friend, he guessed that Black Elk felt that he would help them. Hawk thought about the two men who had been waiting for him in ambush, and he was more anxious than before to catch up with them. He knew he was not far behind them now. Maybe they had even set up their ambush again and he might not have a better chance to circle around it and get behind them. This business with the wounded man and his son would greatly delay any chance he had to settle with Booth right away. He knew he had no choice, however. “How far is your camp from here, seein’ as how you have to walk it?” Swift Runner said it would be more than half a day. Hawk took another look at Black Elk and shook his head. “I don’t think he can sit up in the saddle. We’d best make him a travois and my horse can haul him home.” The boy’s immediate reaction told Hawk how thankful he was for his help.

  The next hour was spent chopping down two small trees to use as poles for the travois and some stout limbs to tie across them for the platform. The crude conveyance took all the rope Hawk had, plus some vines that Swift Runner found, to hold it together. When it was finished, however, Hawk spread his piece of canvas and his bedroll on the platform, then laid Black Elk on it. Rascal was a little uneasy at first, when the two poles were tied on each side of the saddle, but as soon as he understood what Hawk wanted, he was all right with it. With Swift Runner pointing the way and Hawk leading Rascal by the bridle, they set out on a journey that would ultimately take them a full day’s walk. It would result in the necessity to camp overnight before they would reach their destination. Hawk could have ridden Rascal, but he elected to walk with Swift Runner to make Rascal’s job easier.

  While they walked together, Hawk learned a great deal about the Blackfoot man and his son. Like Hawk’s friend Walking Owl, Black Elk and his wife and son lived with a small village of mostly older people who were not willing to go to the reservation. The younger men had all gone north into Canada, but Black Elk and the other elders were not up to the bold attempt to live free again. Their only alternative was to keep a low profile so as not to attract the army’s attention. Hawk was very compassionate toward this group of people and had willingly steered army patrols away from old Walking Owl’s village more than once.

  At the end of that day’s walking, they stopped beside a small stream to make camp. Hawk and Swift Runner lifted his father off the travois and settled him as comfortably as they could. Then Swift Runner gathered wood for a fire while Hawk relieved Rascal of his burdens. Their patient seemed in reasonable condition, all things considered, even to the extent of eating a little of the smoked meat Hawk was carrying. A special treat was the coffee Hawk provided. He had only two cups, so Black Elk and his son shared one.

  As they sat by the fire after eating, Black Elk, in spite of his pain and discomfort, was curious about the man called Hawk. “I have heard of you,” he said. “There was talk among the tribes about the white man who lived with Walking Owl’s people many winters ago. He wore the feather of a hawk in his hat, and he came to help the people. It was said that this man’s medicine was very strong, and that the feather he wore was given to him by a great hawk, to be a symbol of his great medicine. And now the hawk has come in my and my son’s hour of need.”

  Hawk knew that Black Elk was looking for validation of stories he had heard from others because he believed, as all Indians did, in the mystical powers of the earth’s wild creatures. It was not the first time he had been questioned by both Blackfoot and Crow about stories of the white man with the hawk feather in his hat. This was the first time, however, that he had heard that an actual hawk had plucked one of his wing feathers and given it to him. He didn’t have the heart to tell Black Elk that he usually found a feather lying on the ground, most likely the result of a fight with another bird. And he only stuck it in his hat because his name was Hawk. So he neither denied it or confirmed it, but
said, “A man’s medicine may come from many things. Only that man can know from which it comes.” He thought that sounded pretty mystical, and evidently so did Black Elk, for he nodded solemnly and sank back on Hawk’s bedroll.

  When morning came, Black Elk seemed to be some better, but Hawk thought he was still too weak to walk, especially since they would now be climbing up into the mountains. At this point, they were only a few miles from the village, according to Swift Runner, and he wanted to run on ahead of them to tell the people what had happened to Black Elk. “That would be a good idea,” Hawk said, “so they can be ready to help him. But I’m gonna feed you some breakfast first, so you can run fast.” So, after some coffee and deer meat, the boy helped Hawk settle his father on the travois and they set out on the last leg of their journey. After telling Hawk that the trail he had led him to would lead to the village, Swift Runner started out ahead of them and was soon out of sight. “I reckon I can see where he got his name,” Hawk commented to Black Elk, who nodded, smiling.

  The entire village, which consisted of no more than four tipis, stood waiting for Hawk and Black Elk. It was a sight Hawk had seen on other occasions, one that always saddened him. Gaunt, gray-haired men and tired-looking women, standing at the edge of a clearing, staring at him as he led the travois toward them. He could see right away that Black Elk was the youngest man in the village, and little wonder it was primarily his responsibility to hunt for food to feed the village. It was also obvious that Swift Runner had told them that his father had been saved by the white man who wore the hawk feather in his hat, for their eyes were full of wonder. But Hawk imagined he could also see the disappointment in them as well for the fact that Black Elk and Swift Runner had not returned with fresh meat. He looked beyond the tipis to see half a dozen horses that, in spite of ample grass, looked to be in as poor shape as their owners. His thoughts returned to the mission he had accepted as his own, and the time he was spending away from that mission. It was poor timing, this encounter with a group of poor-devil Indians, who looked to be starving. Once again, he told himself he had no choice. He could not turn away from them without offering some help.