Bitterroot Valley

by J. R. Roberts

  “Looks like they’re headed for the river.”

  Jim Doubt rode up to the DHS Ranch and dismounted frantically. The men came running over.

  “Get mounted up!” he yelled. “I want everybody armed and ready to go in five minutes. You got that? Five minutes!”

  “What’s goin’ on—”

  “Just do it!”

  Shouting was not Jim Doubt’s usual way to giving orders. The men were galvanized into action, ran for their guns and their horses.

  Doubt rushed up the steps and into the house, slamming the door open.

  “Boss!” he shouted. “Granville!”

  Stewart came rushing out of his office.

  “What the hell—”

  “We been hit,” Doubt said. “They killed Donovan, Sands, and Watts and took two hundred head.”

  Stewart pointed his finger at Doubt.

  “Get the men ready.”

  “They’ll be armed and mounted in three minutes.”

  “I’ll be right out.”

  Doubt left the house, watched as the men gathered there.

  FORTY

  Clint and Piven followed the plain trail left by two hundred head of cattle and at least twelve horsemen.

  They drove the cattle across the river, and then headed north, away from Judith Gap and into the Judith Basin in the Bitterroot Valley.

  “They’re taking these cattle to wherever they’ve got the others stashed,” Clint guessed. “How many head did you say they took from the other spreads?”

  “Probably as many as they took today.”

  “Where could they hide four hundred head of cattle?” Clint asked.

  “There’s any number of valleys or canyons they could be using.”

  “Make an educated guess,” Clint said.

  “You’d do better to get a guess from your friend Doubt, or even Stewart,” Piven said. “I’m usually in town, Clint.”

  “Okay,” Clint said, “I guess we’ll have to wait for them to catch up.”

  They went a few more miles and stopped.

  “What?” Piven asked.

  “They split the herd,” Clint said.

  “How many times?”

  “Looks like they split it into three.”

  “Great, and there’s two of us.”

  Piven stood in his stirrups and looked behind them. There was no sign of Granville Stewart and his men.

  “Whataya wanna do?” Piven asked.

  “Split up, keep tracking,” Clint said. “We just need to locate some of them, some of the herd. Then we can move in and take them, and find the rest of them. Find out who the leader is.”

  Piven looked behind him again.

  “You think Stewart is going to have anybody with him who can read sign and track?” the sheriff asked.

  “Yeah, Jim Doubt can track. Not as good as me, but he can do it.”

  “Well then, let’s hope they’ll follow the third group that way,” Clint said, pointing, “and not one of us.”

  “Can’t we leave them a . . . message somehow?”

  “Sure.”

  Clint dismounted, collected a bunch of stones, and made a crude arrow on the ground. Then he mounted up.

  “I’ll go this way, you go that way, and hopefully your boss will go that way.”

  “Okay. But remember, you don’t have a badge. When you spot them, just follow. When they settle in, come back right here to this arrow and meet me.”

  “Got it.”

  “Good luck.”

  “You, too.”

  When Doubt saw the stone arrow in the ground, he called a halt to their progress.

  “What?” Granville Stewart asked.

  Doubt pointed.

  “What the hell—”

  Doubt studied the ground.

  “They split the herd here,” he said. “Clint went one way, and Sheriff Piven another. They want us to go that way.”

  “How do we know the rustlers didn’t put that stone arrow in the ground to get us to go the wrong way?” Stewart asked.

  “Because years ago Clint used that same trick to direct me.”

  “You and Adams renew your friendship?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Don’t forget where your loyalty lies, Jim,” Stewart said.

  “Why would my loyalties have to divide?” Doubt asked. “Ain’t we all after the same thing?”

  “I guess we’ll have to see,” Stewart said. “So you think we should go that way?”

  “Yeah,” Doubt said. “Somebody definitely drove some cattle that way.”

  “Okay,” Stewart said, “lead the way.”

  Red Mike and Brocky Gallagher drove their cattle into the corral they’d built at Bates Point, near the Musselshell.

  “What about the horses?” Gallagher asked.

  There were several horses in another small corral, which Stringer Jack did not know they had.

  “We’ll have to sell them,” Red Mike said. “If Jack comes here and finds them, he’ll kill us.”

  “When should we move ’em?” Brocky asked.

  “Now, I guess,” Red Mike said. “Right now.”

  FORTY-ONE

  It was Jim Doubt, Granville Stewart, and the DHS boys who followed Red Mike and Brocky Gallagher to Rocky Point. They looked down on the site from a point above it.

  “I never thought of this,” Doubt said. “Rocky Point is a good place to hide a large number of cattle or horses.”

  “Those are our cattle, all right,” Stewart said. “You see anybody around?”

  “No,” Doubt said, “but let’s be careful.”

  There were two corrals, a larger and smaller one, and a small shack.

  “We need somebody to sneak down there and get a look inside that shack,” Doubt said.

  “I’ll do it, boss,” one of the men said. His name was Taylor, and he’d been with the DHS for three years. Doubt trusted him with almost any kind of job.

  “Okay,” Doubt said, “but be careful. We don’t want them to start shootin’, because then we’d have to shoot back. We want at least one of them alive.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Taylor said, and dismounted. He started to work his way down to the shack on foot.

  Clint tracked three rustlers and their part of the herd to a box canyon, where all they had to do was construct a gate to keep the cows in.

  There were only three, so he rode up on them confidently.

  Dutch Louie, Orville Edwards, and Bill Williams drove the cattle into the box and closed the gate. When they started congratulating each other, Dutch noticed the man riding toward them.

  “We got company.”

  The three men turned to face Clint Adams.

  Stringer Jack returned to Bates Point with Frank Hanson, Silas Nickerson, Paddy Rose, and California Ed. Old Man James and his two sons were still there. That made seven of them. The rest of the men were hiding the cows they’d stolen.

  Old Man James came out to greet them.

  “You know when Granville Stewart finds out what you’ve done, he’ll come after us,” the old man said.

  “We’ll be ready,” Jack said.

  Dixie Burr and Swift Bill watched as Sheriff Nat Piven rode up on them. Behind them the stolen cows stirred inside a corral.

  “Damn it,” Burr said. “The law.”

  “How’d he find us?” Bill asked.

  “It don’t matter,” Burr said. “We got to kill him, or Stringer Jack will kill us.”

  “Then we better get to it,” the two men said, and drew their guns.

  Before Clint reached the three rustlers, he knew they’d go for their guns. He tried to cut them off before they did it.

  “Take it easy, boys,” he called out. “Nobody needs to get hurt.”

  “What do we do?” Dutch Louie hissed at his two partners.

  “Run!” Bill Williams said. “That’s got to be Clint Adams.”

  “We have to fight,” Orville Edwards said. “If we don’t, Jack will kill us
.”

  Clint reined his horse in, looked down at the three men.

  “The easy way to do this is for you to lay down your guns.”

  Williams wanted to run, but if Louie and Orville survived, they’d mark him as a coward.

  “Come on,” Clint said. “Nobody has to die.”

  “Wrong!” a panicked Orville said. “You do.”

  He went for his gun . . .

  Dixie Burr and Swift Bill went for their guns, and Piven quickly dove off his horse as they started to fire. He rolled on the ground, came up with his gun in his hand, and fired several times. The two rustlers went down after firing several shots of their own, and it was only when Piven stood that he realized he’d been hit.

  Clint had no choice.

  He drew, Eclipse keeping rock still beneath him, and fired three measured shots.

  The three men drew their weapons and tried to fire quickly. Their shots went wild as Clint’s shots flew straight and true. When the sounds of the shots faded away, all three rustlers were on the ground, dead.

  Clint ejected his spent shells and replaced them before he dismounted and checked the bodies. Satisfied that they were dead, he checked the herd, made sure they were secure in the corral. He’d have to ride back to the stone arrow and meet up with the others. Then they’d return with shovels to bury these men, and any other rustlers who had ended up dead this day.

  Hopefully, some of them had been taken alive.

  Jim Doubt and Granville Stewart watched as the rest of the men strung up the two rustlers.

  “You can’t do this!” Red Mike yelled. His face was bloody from the beating Stewart had inflicted on him.

  The other man, Brocky Gallagher, was barely conscious as they slipped the noose around his neck.

  “Boss,” Doubt said, “this ain’t right. They gave us the name.”

  “Don’t watch if you don’t want to, Jim,” Stewart said, “I’m makin’ a statement here. Rustlers can’t steal my cattle and get away with it.”

  “Yeah, but the law’s out here,” Doubt said. “Piven could ride up on us at any minute.”

  “I’m not hiding anything, Jim!” Stewart said. “I want people to know this is what happens to rustlers if they come near the DHS.”

  “But . . . this is vigilantism.”

  “It sure is,” Stewart said. “And we’re going to track down the rest of the rustlers, and this Stringer Jack who’s running them, and give them the same.”

  “Boss—” Doubt started, reaching for his boss’s arm, but the man pulled away and rode up to the two mounted men with nooses around their necks. Their hands were tied behind their backs.

  “Ready, boss,” one of his men said.

  “Do it!” Granville Stewart said.

  Two men slapped the horses’s rumps, and the two rustlers were swinging.

  FORTY-TWO

  When Clint arrived back at the stone arrow, he found Sheriff Nat Piven squatting there, picking up stones and tossing them into the distance. When he saw Clint, he stood up.

  “I got three,” Clint said.

  “Dead?”

  “Yes,” Clint said, dismounting. “Didn’t have a chance to question them, though.”

  “Well, I got two,” Piven said, “same story. They gave me no choice, opened fire as soon as they saw my badge.”

  “That’s what you get for wearing a target on your chest.”

  “Yeah, what’s your excuse?”

  Clint opened his canteen and took a drink, extended it to Piven, who shook his head. He’d already drunk from his own.

  “We gotta get back to the bodies, get ’em buried,” Piven said, “and tell Stewart where to pick up his cattle.”

  “Wonder where he and Doubt and their men have got to?” Clint asked.

  “Well, I didn’t see ’em, and neither did you, so they probably went ahead and followed that stone arrow of yours.”

  “I guess.”

  “In fact, that looks like them now,” Piven said.

  Clint turned and saw a bunch of riders in the distance, getting closer. When they came nearer, he saw both Granville Stewart and Jim Doubt at the head of the group.

  They stood and waited for the men to reach them.

  “How did you men do?” Stewart asked.

  “Got five rustlers between us and found your cows,” Piven said. “We can tell you where they are.”

  “We found the rest of the herd, and some horses, and dealt with two more,” Stewart said.

  Clint noticed that Jim Doubt did not look happy, and wasn’t speaking.

  “Dealt with?” Piven asked.

  “They’re dead.”

  “How many?”

  “Two.”

  “So we got seven dead rustlers to bury. I’ll need some of your men—”

  “Forget it,” Stewart said. “I need my men to bring back my cows. Besides, I’m not going to worry about burying some dead rustlers. Just tell me where my cows are.”

  “And you tell me where you left those two rustlers.”

  They exchanged directions, and Stewart and his men rode off, including the unhappy Jim Doubt.

  “Did you notice Jim Doubt couldn’t even look at us?” Clint asked.

  “Yeah, I noticed,” Piven said. “Maybe we should go and see what they did to those two rustlers.”

  They mounted up and followed their own stone arrow.

  As Stewart, Doubt, and the other men rode off, Doubt said to his boss, “You shoulda told them about this Jack Stringer.”

  “Jack Stringer, Stringer Jack, whatever he wants to call himself,” Stewart said, “is mine.”

  “Boss—”

  “And if I find out you told Adams, or the sheriff, you’re fired. You got that?”

  “I got it.”

  “We’re taking care of these rustlers and their leader ourselves. I’m not waiting for the law to put them away. I aim to send a message.”

  “Whatayou think’s gonna happen when the sheriff finds those rustlers swingin’ in the wind?”

  “Nothin’,” Stewart said. “He ain’t gonna do a goddamned thing.”

  Doubt thought his boss was probably right, but it all still didn’t sit well with him.

  They followed Stewart’s directions, crossed the Musselshell until they came to the two rustlers hanging from a tree.

  “Damn it,” Piven said. “Now I gotta arrest ’em.”

  “For what?” Clint asked. “Vigilantism? Good luck getting a jury to condemn them for that.”

  “You’re probably right,” Piven said. “Stewart will have the other ranchers behind him, probably all the businessmen, and the politicians.”

  “Not much you can do about that.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “We better get back to town, come back out with some men as a burial detail and some buckboards.”

  “The undertaker’s going to enjoy the extra business.”

  “Yeah,” Piven said, “with more to come.”

  FORTY-THREE

  It took a couple of days to get the cattle back where it belonged, and to bury the rustlers, which they did on the spot, instead of getting the undertaker involved.

  Evie Loomis wrote up the story for the newspaper, after talking to the sheriff and Clint, and then going out to Granville Stewart’s place to get his side of the story.

  She got an earful from Stewart, who warned in print every rustler in the area to clear out. He said he and his men would take care of any rustler they found the same way they took care of the others. He didn’t bother to mention that he was only responsible for the deaths of two of the seven rustlers. He pretty much made it sound like he’d killed them all.

  For some reason, he and his men started to be called “Stewart’s Stranglers,” probably because of the men they had strung up.

  It was clear that the rancher and his men were now a vigilante force.

  Clint decided to stay around town awhile longer, in case Piven needed to face off with Stewart’s Strangl
ers as well as rustlers.

  He woke up in bed with Evie a few days after her big “Stranglers” story ran.

  She had awakened first and was down between his legs, nibbling and licking at him, trying to wake him up.

  “Mmm,” she said, holding his thickening cock in her hand, “this part of you wakes up a lot easier and better than the rest.”

  “Good,” he said, “then he can entertain you while I finish sleeping.”

  She kissed and licked the underside of his penis and said, “That’s all right with me.”

  He closed his eyes. It was all right with him, too.

  She sucked him until he was ready to burst, and then he flipped her onto her back and drove himself into her. He fucked her hard and fast while she held on for dear life until, finally, he finished with a loud yell, and she clung to him, holding him tightly until her own spasms subsided.

  “I’m gonna miss waking up this way when you leave,” she said into his ear.

  He didn’t respond. He didn’t want her to ask him the question, because he’d been thinking about leaving any day now.

  Things were not going the way Stringer Jack had planned.

  His men had been rattled by the deaths of seven of their number. And although Jack had replaced those men with others, some of them had been picked off by the vigilantes and strung up. This made the remaining men even more nervous.

  Still headquartered at Bates Point, Jack knew it was only a matter of time before the law or the vigilantes found them.

  “Almost time to move on,” Old Man James said.

  “Not yet,” Jack said.

  “The men are nervous.”

  “Then they’re actin’ like old women,” Jack said. “You ain’ nervous, are ya, Old Man?”

  “No,” old Man James said, “but maybe at my age I just ain’t got all that much to lose.”