On the Trail to Moonlight Gulch

by Shelter Somerset

  A flock of ravens fluttering in a tree lured him to a steep woody decline. Tory detected a cooling in the temperature near where he stood. Looking down, he saw through the trees a small stream meandering along like a gray ribbon. He knew that Wicasha would have to live near a stream or a creek. No one could survive without water. Leaving behind the ravens, he hiked along the high bank for what seemed miles, ensuring that he paralleled the stream. Finally, in a small valley framed by birch and spruce, he saw a column of smoke drifting from a campfire.

  Five minutes later, breathless and perspiring, he found Wicasha cooking over a fire pit. Despite the urgency, he glanced around the camp. Wicasha still lived in a teepee. He had no livestock from what Tory could see. He remembered Franklin telling him that Wicasha kept his mottled gelding at his homestead, where Franklin stabled him at no charge. Wicasha gazed at him. Wrinkles marred his forehead and questions poured from his shiny black eyes. What a sight Tory must look with his muddied clothes, standing in the middle of his secluded camp.

  “It’s Franklin,” Tory said, panting. “The marshal of Spiketrout arrested him… for murdering that old man we found at the homestead. This morning I… I found him dead. We took the body to the marshal, and now he and half the town think Franklin did it.”

  Wicasha did not waste any time. He doused the fire with a vat of water and, after the hiss of steam, they ran off over the hillocks toward the homestead.

  “You best stay put,” Wicasha said after he had led his saddled horse from the barn. “I’ll go see how things are with Frank, and you look after things here. If you think anyone is coming, grab the guns from the cabin. But let them shoot first before you go and blow their heads off.”

  “But I want to go with you,” Tory said. “Franklin might need me.”

  “He needs you more here.” Wicasha hopped on the horse. “He’ll be happy that you’re watching the place.”

  Tory conceded Wicasha was probably right. As his shoulders drooped, he watched Wicasha tug the mottled steed sharply to his right and disappear in a cloud of dust down the trail to Spiketrout.

  TORY paced inside the cabin. No matter what chores he did to kill time, he could not focus. He had deserted supper. For whom had he been making it? The cow had not liked Tory’s unsteady hands, so milking had proved futile. The hens had not laid any eggs since the morning. A while ago, dejected and antsy, he’d quit tending to the wash. Each time he had set the water to boil outside over the fire, he’d upturned the kettle while flinching back from the flames and hissing steam. Even Wicasha’s warning of intruders hadn’t caused him much pause. His mind had fastened on one man—Franklin Ausmus.

  His pocket watch showed that a good six hours had passed since Wicasha had left for Spiketrout. From a quick glance out the window, he saw that dusk was settling over the Hills. Would Wicasha be able to convince the marshal to free Franklin from jail? How seriously would he and the town folks take an Indian?

  He was about to try to eat when he heard galloping hooves approach the cabin. Alert for intruders like Wicasha had warned, he grabbed for a fully loaded rifle and peered out the window. Franklin and Wicasha had given him shooting lessons with rifles and pistols, and he had grown fairly good at knocking the tin cans off the tree stumps from several yards away, but he feared shooting a living creature, even raiders. He sighed in relief when he recognized the stalwart Wicasha trotting in on his gelding. Laying aside the rifle, he rushed outside.

  “What’s happened?”

  “The marshal’s determined to keep Frank locked up until they can throw together a jury,” Wicasha said after he’d climbed down from the horse. “With the way that town is all heated, there’s nothing much to change anyone’s mind. The few on his side with reason are outnumbered.”

  “A trial?” Tory’s mouth went dry. “That’s ridiculous. They have nothing on him. I wish I had never found that body.”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Wicasha said. “Bilodeaux would’ve found one way or the other to get Frank blamed for Johnson’s murder.”

  “I’ve got to go to him,” Tory said, his mind numb from the turn of events. “I’ve got to help Franklin.”

  Standing by his steed, reins in hand, Wicasha locked black eyes on Tory. “There’s nothing you can do for him now,” he said. “If you ride into town, all you’ll do is stir trouble. That’s why I came back. The best thing for now is to let things simmer down. Besides, it’s nearly dark, and you can’t ride that trail alone at night.”

  How lightning fast things had turned around. Tory had experienced that horrible jolt when he’d gone to the twelfth floor with Joseph van Werckhoven. One minute they were both eager and full of life, the next, Tory had stood, helpless and numb with disbelief, by the glassless window gazing down at Joseph’s sprawled body on Van Buren Street.

  He shivered, remembering the decapitated head of the Indian in the drugstore back in Deadwood. The druggist had said a prospector had killed the Indian for trying to take his claim. Would Bilodeaux and the marshal prove equally ruthless and bloodthirsty?

  “Why, Wicasha? Why doesn’t he just pan the gold?”

  In his usual manner, Wicasha waited a good few moments before responding. “He just don’t want it,” he said with a shrug. “To some people, gold is like whiskey. You either want it or you don’t. If you don’t, the thirst against it is as powerful as the thirst for it. I’ve seen people vomit after just one shot of whiskey. Others can’t stop even after twenty. I guess Frank is that way with gold. He just doesn’t want it. It makes him sick. For Frank, it’s probably more the principle of the thing. He’s not about to give in to Bilodeaux. Frank can be a stubborn man.”

  Tory had heard of the expression “drunk with gold.” Perhaps there were those who, like Wicasha had said, just couldn’t help themselves. Franklin was sturdy enough to resist. The thought made him yearn to help Franklin all the more.

  “Has he ever considered charging a fee to let others pan for what gold might be in his creek?” Tory said, desperate for a solution. “Maybe then Bilodeaux and the others would get off his back.”

  Wicasha shook his head, his black hair brushing against his shoulders. “You got a good business sense, misu, but Franklin doesn’t want strangers on his land. He moved here to get away from folks.” He seemed to read Tory’s body language. “Don’t worry,” he said with a chuckle. “Frank no longer sees you as an intruder. I think he stopped seeing you that way the day we found you in the barn.”

  Tory’s cheeks heated against the evening chill. “You think so?”

  “Yep,” Wicasha said. “I think so.”

  The sun eased below the western peaks and the sky grew dim. Wicasha said he needed to turn in for the night. He agreed to Tory’s request that he remain at the homestead but said he wanted to stay outside under the stars. Remembering the sight of Wicasha’s camp with its primitive teepee and fire pit, Tory figured the Indian preferred the outdoors.

  With Wicasha asleep outside the cabin in a bedroll, Tory chose to sleep on the feather bed rather than on the cot. He felt closer to Franklin that way. He could smell his musk enmeshed in the sheets. He laid awake most the night, staring at the dark ceiling, worried what Franklin must be enduring alone in a dungy jail cell.

  Chapter 19

  WIND plucked the twigs of the aspens abutting the back of the jailhouse like the strings of a banjo. If Franklin weren’t locked in a wretched cell, the cascading sound might have lulled him to sleep. Moonlight sliced through the barred window facing west. Judging from the shadows cast by the iron bars, he reckoned it was near two in the morning.

  The town was hardly quiet, however. The Gold Dust Inn pulsed at full swing. He imagined most of the drunkards were already collecting a pool on what his fate would be—hanging or acquittal?

  Deputy Ostrem was snoring and wheezing in the front office. If Franklin pressed his forehead tight against the bars, he’d get a glimpse of the deputy’s booted feet kicked up on the desk. Sitting upright on the thin cot, he gl
anced around. Urine and vomit stains covered a large portion of the floor, a clear snub of the bucket in the corner. Former inmates had carved their initials and the dates of their incarcerations above the cot (“JJ, ’74”; “CP, ’77”; “JHB, ’82”), along with meaty expletives expressing discontent with confinement.

  He’d kicked off his boots. Might as well get comfortable. He was alone, at least. The other three cots remained unused, the bedcovers pulled clear to where the marshal or Ostrem should’ve placed pillows. And the second cell remained empty. He wondered when the deputy would be called to load the cells with brawlers following a night of heavy drinking.

  He was surprised again that his thoughts should fall back to Tory. He never did get his last name. He wondered what his ancestry was suddenly, as his mind’s eye scanned down over Tory’s yellow hair and blue eyes and smooth skin that had bronzed rather quickly under the Dakota sun. Hadn’t he mentioned something about his Swedish parents? Must be a lot of Swedes in Chicago, he mused, remembering with a wince that his former penmate, Torsten, was also of Swedish extraction.

  Nearly two weeks had gone by without the image he had created of her pestering him. The same span of time in which Tory had worked as his hired hand. Other than a random pinching memory, he had swept her from his mind. He had expected to hanker for the woman much longer, considering the pain she’d dumped on him. He hadn’t even reread any of her letters, not since the day Old Man Johnson had encroached on his land. He again wondered if he had written something awful that had made her stop writing. Maybe she really couldn’t handle his having only one arm or that he’d cursed a priest. What did he care?

  Tory had kept him busy enough that the Chicago woman rarely entered his mind. The young man was a handful. That was why she had escaped from his thoughts. He was too occupied making sure Tory did what was proper and right on his homestead. He had to teach him from the ground up. Other than the cooking and cleaning, which the young man seemed to take to as naturally as Franklin took to looking after livestock, Tory had no experience running a subsistent homestead.

  He had learned fast, Franklin conceded as a grin crept over his face. The stretch of his skin around his horseshoe mustache felt strange while he waited for what could possibly be his execution. Did he like the young man so much that he’d smile just from the thought of him, alone in a gloomy jail cell? He supposed he’d hungered for companionship, more than he’d realized. Yet Wicasha, as much as he valued his friendship, had never been able to alleviate the pressing loneliness the way Tory had.

  A fart from the deputy startled him. The man let loose another fart, grunted, and then began snoring anew. Franklin would have found it all funny if his life weren’t in the hands of a bunch of drunken deadbeats.

  He lay back down on the dingy cot, his ankles crossed, his one hand resting over his belly. His fate had never loomed more uncertain. Even when he had found himself lame in an Army hospital with no arm, his life had never teetered so off balance. Perhaps the ignorance of youth had shielded him then. Encroaching middle age made life’s punches more stinging.

  The moon must have descended lower over the western peaks, for the blue haze and shadows in his cell faded. Darkness covered him like a wet wool blanket. His isolation took on a new, tangible form.

  Alone and weary, he calculated his chances of acquittal. There were some decent citizens in Spiketrout he could count on. The young Lutheran minister, Reverend Jacob Dahlbeck, and his new bride, Matilda, were considerate and mannered. They tried to rehabilitate the whores and drunken gamblers of Spiketrout. Yet they’d never looked down on their charges like some of the other missionaries. They even intervened on Madame Lafourchette’s behalf whenever a customer became excessively violent toward the whores. Reverend Dahlbeck was a lot more considerate than that self-righteous Father Peter Fisk, who often did Bilodeaux’s dirty work on his behalf, all in the name of God. Franklin had found it difficult to cleave to his tongue in the padre’s presence.

  Doc Albrecht, widowed at fifty and never remarried, was a good man. He’d moved to town a little more than a year ago and made a fast friend of Franklin. He not only kept the drunks and opium addicts alive as best he could by giving them vitamins and tonics, he tended to those with genuine ailments, like cholera and whooping cough. His ego wasn’t so large that it prevented him from tending to even the area’s livestock and pets when they needed it. Madame Lafourchette’s adored cat, Beau Belle, had even been the recipient of his solicitous attentions.

  And there were the taxidermist and butcher, Clarence and Walter Grishin, brothers who worked in the same shop on the north side of town. Franklin often sold his deer kill and jerky to them for a fair recompense. They were known for their politeness and quickness to rush out of their shop, their knives raised, whenever they heard a ruckus on the street and thought someone might be in harm’s way. And the Chinese family, the Tangs, who ran the laundry, always minded their own business but were known to stand their ground against ruffians. Franklin, who brought them much business, might expect their support.

  Would any of those kind folks intervene on his behalf? Even if they did, what influence could they wield over a town full of nefarious drunks, all clamoring for whatever gold lay in the creek pool on Franklin’s homestead?

  He had never wanted help from people before. Had never needed it except for his stint at the Army hospital in Maryland. Helpless and battered, he could barely move for weeks. But that did not count. If it weren’t for ruthless people, he’d never have spent an entire month in a hospital in the first place. Now, he had no choice but to hope for his fellow man’s help.

  Wicasha had little sway with the men of Spiketrout, but it was nice for him to have rushed to his side when he needed it. He had always cherished his friendship. And Tory? He barely knew him. But he’d proven just as loyal. It was astute of him to go after Wicasha. He nearly chuckled aloud remembering how Tory had dared to fight with the rowdy men while the marshal had hauled him into jail. Feisty, for sure. And sharp.

  He saw Tory in his mind, standing stoically beside him while the town hurled unfounded accusations. Tory’s hair falling from under his rawhide hat in golden waves and his crystal-blue eyes sparkling in the sun….

  HE AWOKE to a much brighter cell than when he had fallen asleep. What sounded like thousands of finches chirped in the ponderosa grove behind the jailhouse. Stunned that he had actually slept at all on the lumpy stinking cot, he rubbed his eyes and gazed about the grungy cell. It looked worse than the day before.

  Chattering from the front office roused him. He pressed his head against the iron bars and peered toward where Deputy Ostrem had spent most of the night snoring and farting. The deputy had moved, but Franklin recognized his voice coming from somewhere in the office. He sounded as if he were speaking with someone but Franklin heard no responses. Then Franklin figured he must be talking on that strange audio transmission apparatus that had first come into existence ten years prior. Workers had strung the wires for it from Spiketrout to Deadwood and into Rapid City on towering creosote-soaked pine poles a year before. Wicasha had been one of the laborers.

  “Yes, sir…. It’s already been taken care of…. No problem…. I reckon we can do that….”

  It was difficult to gauge the details of Deputy Ostrem’s conversation, but Franklin had little trouble guessing who the subject was about.

  “All right. I’ll see to it. … Right away. … Yes, sir. … See you then. … Good-bye.”

  With the click of the apparatus, Franklin shouted down the short hallway toward the deputy, “Can a man freshen up some?”

  Deputy Ostrem sauntered down the hall, his ring of keys rattling. Franklin had always had a difficult time judging the deputy’s true age. Fine lines streaked over his weathered brown face, and the skin around his taut mouth sagged. But the rest of him looked no older than a twelve-year-old boy.

  “You don’t expect me to use that bucket, Ray,” Franklin said once the deputy faced him.

  �
�You promise to get right back in here?”

  “I’d be stupid to face the whole town hunting me down.”

  “All right.” Deputy Ostrem unlocked the cell door and escorted Franklin to the back. A few paces beyond sat the outhouse, sparkling with morning dew. When Franklin emerged a few minutes later, Deputy Ostrem was waiting for him.

  Just as the deputy slammed the cell door on Franklin, he heard the grating, shuffling gait of Marshal Reinhardt, followed by his gruff voice calling for Ostrem. Like an obedient serf, the deputy double-checked the lock and rushed to the front office. Franklin cocked his ear toward their voices.

  “I just got off the telephone with the Deadwood judge,” Deputy Ostrem told the marshal. “He said he’ll be here by eleven for the trial. He’s taking the eight thirty stage. He’s agreed to use the Gold Dust Inn for a courtroom. He said he wants a room for the night.”

  Franklin relaxed at knowing a little more of what was to come. So they had already arranged for a judge from Deadwood to preside over his trial. He wondered which one. Franklin was familiar with a few of the Black Hills judges. Some had better reputations than others. At least he would be in friendly environs. Madame Lafourchette would see to it that nobody got out of line.

  The marshal murmured something. A minute later he shuffled over to Franklin’s cell. “All right, Frank, I’m telling you right now, don’t give me any trouble this morning.”

  “I want to know more about this judge you got coming here,” Franklin said, his eyebrows squeezed together to emphasize his concern. “What’s his name?”

  “You don’t need to worry about that, Ausmus. Just be glad you’ll be getting one. We’re making sure you get all your rights and due process and whatnot that you’re entitled to.”

  “If you were concerned about all that, you never would’ve locked me up in the first place. You know I didn’t kill that Johnson.”