Left Hand of the Law

by Charles G. West

  Enraged by the sight of the woman falling back into her daughter’s arms, Ben left the cover of the wagon and headed straight for the forked tree. It was a foolish gamble, but he was sure the bushwhacker’s carbine was empty. Seeing his hated enemy advancing boldly toward him, Dead Man accepted what he perceived to be a challenge from the wasicu. He threw the rifle aside that he had been frantically trying to load, drew his long scalp knife, and leaped up from behind the tree. Emitting another bloodcurdling war cry, he charged to meet the scar-face in hand-to-hand battle. Ben saw then, as the fearsome warrior ran to meet him, that it was one of the Indians who had attacked them before. Not being a foolish man, Ben cocked the Winchester in preparation to let the Indian do battle with a .44 slug. Before he could raise his rifle to fire, the canvas sheet on the side of the wagon rose a few inches, enough to allow the blast of both barrels of Jonah’s shotgun to discharge. The impact at such close range knocked the savage over backward as his feet ran out from under him, and he landed flat on his back no more than a few yards from a startled Ben.

  He walked over to stare down at the warrior, whose chest was torn apart by the double load of buckshot. There was no question concerning whether or not he was dead. Ben figured he was dead while he was still sailing through the air. Astonished, he looked back to see Jonah scrambling out of the wagon box. “Damn!” he exclaimed—all he could think of to say at that moment. Jonah paid no attention to the dead Indian at Ben’s feet, instead crawling under the wagon to go to his wife’s side. Concerned as well, Ben followed immediately after him.

  Afraid to move her mother at first, Victoria was still holding her tightly as a red stain began to spread, from a small spot, until it became the size of a dinner plate. “Mary!” Jonah sobbed when he saw her, calling her name over and over until Mary quieted him.

  “Stop blubbering, Jonah,” she said. “I’m not hurt that bad.” Her statement caused both husband and daughter to blubber then. “Help me out from under this wagon if the shooting is over.”

  Ben and Cleve exchanged glances, then jumped to help the lady out so Ben could pick her up and place her on the tailgate of the wagon. Recovered from her first fright at seeing her mother bloodied, Victoria was quick to take charge then. “We need to see how bad you’re wounded. It may be worse than you think.”

  “You might oughta get that bullet outta there,” Cleve said as Victoria started unbuttoning the bloody blouse. “I’ve took out a right smart number of slugs in my time.”

  “Well, you’re not taking this one out,” Mary informed him, and grabbed Victoria’s hand to stop her. “You men get away from here. I’m not exposing myself for you to stand around and gawk at me. Shoo! Victoria can do the doctoring for me.” Her expression told them that she meant what she said. “And take Jonah with you. He gets faint when he sees the sight of blood.”

  Ben and Cleve looked at each other again and had to laugh. “All right,” Cleve said. “You can holler if you need us, Victoria. Come on, Jonah, we got to get ready to roll before another crazy Injun decides to pay us a visit. I’ll help you hitch up the horses; then I’ll see if I can find my horse. First, I reckon we’d best drag this carcass outta sight of the women.” Cleve and Ben each grabbed an ankle and pulled Dead Man over behind some berry bushes. “You sure made a mess of him,” Cleve said to Jonah as he winked at Ben. “Both barrels—I reckon you’re a sure ’nough Injun fighter now.”

  Jonah did not reply to Cleve’s japing. He was thinking that he had just killed a man. Even if it was an Indian, it was still a man. And he wasn’t feeling well because of it, but he had just gotten mad when he heard Mary cry out in pain, and his instinctive reaction was to punish the man who had hurt her. Later on, when he would think back on this incident, it would serve to give him a greater understanding of Ben’s blatant execution of the Crooked Fork deputy.

  Victoria performed the surgery on her mother’s shoulder, extracting the bullet without a great deal of difficulty. The slug had not gone very deep into the muscle, probably as Cleve speculated, because the shot had evidently ricocheted on the wagon side boards before striking Mary. As patiently brave as any soldier, she lay quietly during the entire procedure while Victoria probed the wound with a knitting needle. When the innocuous-looking piece of metal was finally extracted, Mary insisted that Victoria should cauterize the wound, but her daughter didn’t want to do it. It seemed so merciless to sear her mother with a redhot knife blade. “If you don’t, I’ll do it myself,” Mary threatened.

  “Maybe Papa should do it, or Cleve. He says he has done it many times,” Victoria pleaded.

  “Certainly not,” Mary replied in a huff. “I’m lying here with my shoulder bared almost to my breast—a little more than I care to show Cleve—and your father would be worse than you. So heat a knife in the fire and bring it to me. Hurry, now, we’ve got to get started sometime today.”

  Although reluctant, Victoria performed the cauterization, just as she had done the surgery, and Mary was back on her feet, her shoulder freshly bandaged. One of the first things she did was to thank Ben and Cleve for protecting her family once again. “The one you need to thank is Jonah,” Ben told her. “He’s the one who came stormin’ up outta the wagon to blow that Indian into kingdom come. He probably saved my bacon, too.”

  Surprised, Mary turned to cast an inquisitive look upon her husband. “Did you do that?” she asked.

  “I did,” he answered simply with a slight hint of embarrassment.

  With a proud smile upon her face, she walked over to him and planted a modest kiss on his cheek. “You’re my hero,” she said, “just like always,” deepening his embarrassment to the point of producing a blush.

  “Let’s get going,” he commanded. “We’re wasting daylight.”

  “Yes, sir,” Cleve replied smartly, a wide grin on his face as he strode past Ben and headed for his horse. “We’d best get movin’, Ben.”

  Chapter 9

  Jonah pulled his team to a stop beside his two scouts as they sat waiting for him at the top of a road that led down into the lower end of Deadwood Gulch. Both of the women climbed down to gaze at the long-awaited end of their desperate journey, and Caleb wedged his way between them to see for himself. “Well, there she is,” Cleve announced. “Deadwood. It took us a sight longer than I figured, but we made it.”

  “It’s bigger than I expected,” Jonah declared, “a regular city.”

  They paused there for a few minutes more, most of them finding it hard to believe they had actually found the town. Looking down upon the main street that appeared to be about a mile long, they were surprised to see the line of wooden stores, shops, saloons, even a couple of hotels, that ran the length of the street. It was not a serene town, for even seen from their lofty perspective, it resembled a beehive of activity. There appeared to be people everywhere, filling the streets with all manner of conveyance: horses, mules, bull wagons, even carriages. The canyon was obviously too narrow to accommodate more than one street, but that had not prohibited the building of houses on the north hill on streets cut into the slope, like steps that ran parallel to the gulch. The south slope, being too steep, had no buildings except for a few shanty-type dwellings, each one seeming to clutch the side of the hill in desperation, threatening to go bouncing down upon the people below at any minute.

  “How will I ever find Garth in this place? It looks like an anthill.”

  Ben glanced down when he heard her speak, unaware that she had moved over to stand by his horse. “We’ll help you look for your husband,” he said. “Did he give you any idea where to find him—or where he was stayin’?”

  “Well, no, not really,” she said, a note of hesitation in her voice. “The last I heard from him was that he had joined a large mining company. He doesn’t really know I’m coming, but it’s been so long since I’ve received word of any kind that I’m worried that something might have happened to him.” The sight she was gazing upon at the bottom of the gulch was not the picture of Deadwood sh
e had formed in her mind. She had not thought that there would be so many people concentrated in the narrow canyon, instead expecting a town like the small cow towns they had come through in Kansas and Nebraska. The scene that confronted her now was discouraging to the point of despair.

  “We’ll look till we find him,” Ben said, trying to encourage her.

  Cleve interrupted their conversation bluntly. “We ain’t doin’ no good standin’ here gawkin’,” he said. “We’ll help you find a spot to park your wagon and make camp.” He paused to look around for a few moments more when he realized that it was not going to be a simple task. It appeared that every foot of ground in the gulch had a building on it. “You might have to camp up here on the hill,” he said, “but, hell, we’ll find someplace.” He was of a mind that the arrangement made with Jonah was completed. He and Ben had escorted them to Deadwood. That was all they had agreed to do. Jonah and his family were on their own from this point forward, as far as he was concerned. The extra time it had taken to travel at the wagon’s slow pace and the approaching winter were cause for anxious thoughts regarding his and Ben’s camp. When they had decided to go to the Black Hills, it had never been with Deadwood in mind. They were too late to mine for gold there where every inch of land had already been turned over and run through a sluice. He remembered how hard winters were in the Black Hills, with heavy frosts coming in September and heavy snows sometimes falling well into June—too much of the year when a man couldn’t do any mining. So if he and Ben were going to go deeper into the mountains to set up a camp, there wasn’t any time to spare. It was already late August.

  “We’ll help you find your husband,” Ben repeated to Victoria, whose frown lines were etched deeply into her forehead. “First, let’s find a place to set up camp before it starts to get dark.”

  Finding a place to camp proved to be easier than they had anticipated, for they found several abandoned shacks on the hillside above the Bella Union Saloon. There was only one such house with space enough behind it to park the wagon, however. It sat on the second street up the slope from the main thoroughfare. As could be expected, the former occupants had not been especially keen on keeping a clean house, so Victoria and Mary, with her arm out of the sling now, set about making the place livable while the three men went down to walk the main street in search of information.

  “We don’t know much about this son-in-law of yours,” Cleve told Jonah. “Do we look for him in the church or in the saloon?”

  “It’s hard for me to say,” Jonah replied. “We never got much of a chance to know Garth very well. He and Victoria lived with his folks for the first three years they were married. His folks have a good-sized farm about fifty miles from Omaha, so Mary and I didn’t get to see them very often. Then Garth took off to look for gold and Victoria came back home.”

  It seemed that almost every other building was a saloon, but there were also stores and shops of all kinds, even a newspaper office. “We might as well start askin’ around,” Cleve said. “We can start with this saloon here. Probably wouldn’t hurt to have a little drink while we’re at it. It’s been a long time since Ogallala.” The suggestion caused a wry smile to appear on Ben’s face, because he knew Cleve still didn’t have the price of a drink. To his surprise, however, Jonah thought it was a good idea also and insisted that he certainly owed them a drink.

  The saloon was doing a lively business for this early hour of the evening, and when Cleve commented on it to the bartender, he replied, “I reckon you fellers are new in town. Hell, we don’t ever close. It’s busy as hell all the time.” He was about to ask them their pleasure when he looked into Ben’s face. The sudden look of surprise in the bartender’s eyes reminded Ben of the stigma he carried. Over the past weeks, he had forgotten the impact caused by his appearance and the guarded expressions it caused.

  “Whiskey,” Jonah called out boldly. “My friends and I will have a drink of whiskey.”

  “Yes, sir,” the bartender responded, and placed three glasses on the bar.

  Cleve looked at Ben and winked. Ben nodded in response. They were both thinking of the last time they had been in a bar with Jonah, and how meek he had been when facing the cowboy who spilled his drink. I guess killing a man changes your attitude a little, Ben thought.

  “I reckon you boys are here for the same reason everybody else is,” the bartender commented as he filled the glasses. “If you are, you’re a little late to find much gold. Placer mining is still turning up a little money—that and quartz mining—about enough for grub, but nobody’s getting rich, except maybe the big outfits. They own most of the gulch now.”

  “That a fact?” Cleve said, not really interested because he and Ben were intending to forge deeper into the mountains to find their fortune. He raised his glass and proposed a toast. “Here’s to us gettin’ our asses safely to Deadwood.”

  “I’ll certainly drink to that,” Jonah replied. After he downed the whiskey, he turned to the bartender again. “Actually, we’re here to find someone, my son-in-law. By any chance do you know him? Garth Beaudry’s his name.”

  The bartender shook his head. “Mister, there’s thousands of people come through this town. I mighta seen him. I couldn’t say. I don’t ask any of ’em their names.” He glanced briefly at Ben before adding, “A lot of ’em ain’t using their real names, anyway.”

  “The last we heard he was working for a large mining company,” Jonah said.

  The bartender shrugged. There were several companies operating in the gulch, some modest that employed ten to twenty men, others truly larger in scale and payroll. “Maybe he’s working at the Homestake Mine, about three miles over the hill in Lead,” he suggested. “That’s the biggest one.”

  “We’ll check on it,” Cleve said.

  After leaving the saloon they stopped in a few other stores that were still open in the early evening, but no one they asked knew Garth Beaudry. “I expect we’d better get back up the hill,” Jonah said when they were leaving the Gem Saloon, where they indulged in one more drink. “The ladies might be getting worried about us. I’ll go find the Homestake Mine in the morning. That’s probably the place Garth was talking about, and we won’t take up any more of you fellows’ time. You’ve already done more for us than is reasonable for a person to ask.”

  Cleve glanced at Ben, already knowing that his partner had a great deal of concern for Jonah and his little family. With that in mind, he also knew that Ben was not going to leave them until they had found Victoria’s husband, and they were settled in safely. If he was as mean as he looks, he thought, we’d already be on our way into the mountains. Since he wasn’t, Cleve decided to extend their help a little further. “Why, hell, Jonah, we’ll go to Lead with you. Me and Ben ain’t in that big a hurry to leave.”

  Ben smiled when he saw the look of relief in Jonah’s face.

  With their generous supply of antelope meat, and the provisions they had carried in the wagon, the party had all the food they would need for a while, until some permanent arrangements could be made. They were counting heavily upon Victoria’s husband to lighten the burden of subsistence. When they returned to the shanty they had claimed, supper was ready, and Victoria met them at the door, searching their faces anxiously. “We didn’t talk to anybody who knew Garth,” Jonah said, “but we got the name of a big mining company we’ll go see in the morning.”

  There was little trouble in finding the Homestake Mining Company, the operation founded by Fred and Mose Manuel and their partner, Hank Harney, recently bought out by George Hearst. When directed to the engineering office, they were met by Arnold Freeman. “Oh, you can’t talk to Mr. Hearst,” Freeman told them when asked to speak to the owner. “He don’t hang around here. What is it you want? Lookin’ for a job?”

  Jonah spoke up. “No, sir, we’re looking for my son-in-law and wondering if he works here. His name is Garth Beaudry.”

  The mention of the name brought an immediate reaction from Freeman, although he quic
kly tried to disguise it. He cocked a wary eye, foremost in Ben’s direction, before a cautious reply. “Your son-in-law,” he repeated, while he paused to choose his words carefully. “Garth Beaudry did work here at one time.” He hesitated again. “And still does some work for Mr. Hearst from time to time.”

  Ben was not comfortable with the man’s obvious reluctance to talk about Victoria’s husband. There was more to the story than Freeman seemed willing to discuss. “Do you know where we can find him?” he asked.

  “Well,” Freeman responded, still hesitant, “I don’t know if he’s in town or not.”

  Growing more impatient by the moment, Ben said, “That ain’t what I asked you. Where’s he live? Has he got a house? His wife and son have come all the way from Omaha to find him, and you’re actin’ like you don’t want to tell us where the hell he is.”

  Seeing the anger building up in the menacing face, Freeman sensed that he might be dealing with a powder keg with a very short fuse. Two other men at the other side of the office, upon catching the irritation in Ben’s voice, began to shift around nervously. Just as a precaution, Cleve sidled over toward them and smiled. “How you fellers doin’?” It was enough to discourage any action they might have been considering.

  “I’m sorry,” Freeman said. “I can’t tell you where Mr. Beaudry lives.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?” Ben pressed.

  “I mean I don’t know for sure,” Freeman quickly replied. “He was livin’ in the hotel for a while, but I don’t know if he’s still there or not.”