Rocky Mountain Lawmen Series Box Set: Four John Legg Westerns

by John Legg

  And now here he was, in the Wind River area just under a month, and he had a wife, and two great friends in Big Horse and Washakie. He had even lost another great friend with Two Wounds’s death.

  He wondered how Night Seeker would deal with the death of her husband. The two had been together a long time—ten years or more. A month ago, Morgan would have figured that Night Seeker would not miss Two Wounds all that much. He would have figured that they had married simply for convenience, and that she would be glad she was shed of him. Now he knew that was not so. For all he knew, they might have married for convenience’s sake, but even if they had, they had come to love each other over the years they had spent together.

  Morgan was glad that Big Horse would be the one to break the news to Night Seeker—if the news needed to be broken. With this entourage, the deaths would be known before they even got to the village. Still, Morgan was glad he would not have to face Night Seeker.

  Morgan thought about Big Horse. The Shoshoni warrior was an enigma at best. Far more educated than most whites, he yet had returned to live with his people in a primitive, sometimes savage existence. Once he considered it, though, he figured that it wasn’t much more primitive and certainly no more savage than that of his own people.

  Morgan liked Big Horse considerably; had almost from the start. He enjoyed the big warrior’s humor, and there was no other man Morgan would rather have at his side in battle. Big Horse was as violent a man as Morgan had ever seen, too, but at the same time he was highly compassionate and friendly with children. All the youngsters Morgan had seen—red and white—took to the Shoshoni immediately. It was almost uncanny. Even now, Dusty and Pearl Ashby were riding at the end of the entourage, breathing in the dust, just so they could ride on either side of Big Horse.

  What really startled Morgan about Big Horse was the Shoshoni’s ability to change from one thing to another in the blink of an eye. One moment he could be a vicious, ultimate warrior bent on killing, as he had in the Ashby home not long ago, and the next moment he would be playing with the Ashby children. He could swing from being a fun-loving, playful man almost immediately to an orator in any one of five languages.

  Morgan wondered if perhaps Big Horse hadn’t been foolish in coming back to the Shoshoni. With his intelligence, education, and natural gifts, he could have gone far in the white man’s world. Something like that made sense to Morgan. The lawman had tried to see it from Big Horse’s standpoint, but that made even less sense. Surely a man as intelligent and educated as Big Horse must see what was happening to all Indian peoples, including the Shoshoni. Morgan had asked him about that once.

  “A man does what he is called on to do,” Big Horse had replied.

  “You think it was your fate to return to the People?”

  Big Horse nodded. “Something like that.”

  “But can’t you see that the Shoshoni way of life is threatened? That it won’t last another fifty years, at best?”

  “Of course,” Big Horse said matter-of-factly. “But what better way to prepare the People for living with the white man when the white man takes over all the Shoshoni land?”

  “You living here and maybe dying in a futile battle to preserve the old ways will prepare the People for living with the whites?” Morgan asked, angry at himself for not understanding. “That makes no goddamn sense at all.”

  “Dying for such a cause doesn’t make any sense.” He sat back and fired up a small clay pipe. “But I don’t intend to die.” He smiled in self-deprecation.

  “No, Buck,” he said, forestalling any protest from Morgan, “I’m not thinking I’m some kind of god or something. I had a vision, though, and in that vision I don’t die, no matter how many men come to fight me.

  Morgan nodded. “So that’s why you’re such a crazy bastard in a fight, eh?”

  “Yes.” Big Horse paused. “You are the same, my friend.”

  “I’ve never had some damn stupid vision,” Morgan said defensively.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Big Horse said evenly. “I have seen it in your eyes. You wade into battle with a self-assurance that few men possess. You are utterly fearless and ruthlessly, relentlessly efficient. As a warrior I can see in you that you know inside that you won’t die.”

  “I think you’re crazy as a bedbug, Big Horse,” Morgan said. Now, though, thinking of that conversation while he and the others were heading back to Washakie’s village, he suspected that Big Horse was more than half right.

  He sighed and partly turned in the saddle to look back. Grace and Bonnie Ashby rode just behind him, side by side. Then came a still handcuffed Private Lee Skousen, who still looked stunned by the fractured eye socket and the clubbing Morgan had given him. Behind him rode Big Horse, with one of the Ashby children on each side. He also held the rope to three ponies bearing their grim cargo.

  “Shit,” Morgan muttered as he looked forward again. He would miss Two Wounds, who had become perhaps his closest friend among the Shoshoni. Closer even than Big Horse. It was almost odd that such a thing would happen. Neither man had been particularly impressed with the other when they first had met. Each had seen the other as an enemy of sorts. Both had been wary and cautious, like two dogs sniffing at each other to determine their place.

  But somewhere along the way they had lost their suspicion of each other. Morgan was not sure when that had started to happen, but he thought it could be that morning he had left Two Wounds’s lodge so that Two Wounds and Night Seeker could make love. It had shown Morgan that Indian people weren’t all that different from whites in some ways. And, in the ways the Shoshoni were different, more than a few were better than what he was used to. Like Night Seeker’s lack of shame in wanting to make love with her husband. Morgan could not picture a white woman—a proper white woman—doing that. Not for all the money in the world. He supposed there might be some, but he had never run across them.

  Morgan also thought now that that time was when he began looking at Shoshoni in general as good people. They were warm and friendly, for the most part; open and giving; they adored their children, showering much more affection on them than most whites did with their children.

  Two Wounds had been all those things and more. He had a bawdy, often outright vulgar sense of humor, though he also could be very contemplative at times. He clearly loved his wife and children and was well-respected by the other warriors. Despite that, or possibly because of it, he had been of great help not only to Morgan, but also to Washakie, in keeping the warriors from going to war over the killings here. He would be sorely missed by the Shoshoni.

  Morgan would miss him, too, but one could never tell it from his demeanor. He was as calm of expression as anyone ever saw him. But down inside sat his grief, a hard knot of rage and loss sitting in the dark waiting for release. Then it would grow into a ferocious beast that would rule its master for a time, before the master could reassert himself.

  Morgan was thankful that he had Cloud Woman now. She would help ease the hurt and sense of loss. His marriage to the young Shoshoni woman was another source of astonishment, though once he considered it, he realized that just about everything he had seen, heard, or felt since coming out here amazed him.

  Morgan would have bet a gold mine a month ago that he would never marry again. Not after his experience with his wife—or maybe she was his former wife by now—Ivy. And if someone had told him that he would have an Indian wife, he would have shot the man, since someone that mentally deranged could not be left alive to roam the earth and possibly procreate. Yet after only a few days, and fewer words between them, Morgan suddenly found himself married, albeit Shoshoni-style. Such a thing would never hold up in a court of law, but then again, he didn’t really give a damn. He loved Cloud Woman; had no question about that in his head or in his heart. He was equally sure that she reciprocated in kind.

  It was, however, he would admit to himself, still strange between them. While Cloud Woman spoke English, she was hard to understand when she did. He,
on the other hand, spoke no Shoshoni. He had tried to learn a few words here and there, but things had been much too hectic. The only one patient enough to be a teacher was Big Horse, and he was not too inclined to take on such a poor student as Morgan.

  Morgan and Cloud Woman managed to communicate quite well despite their being hampered by a language problem. Cloud Woman was all Morgan could want in a woman. She was well-educated in all the womanly arts: was a fine cook; did beadwork better than anyone else Morgan had seen in the village; she was a willing bed partner, one who gave back as good as she got; she was quiet and retiring when it was proper, but she had a spark in her that would flair into flame now and again.

  Morgan was fairly certain that one of the reasons he loved Cloud Woman was that she accepted him as he was. Any white woman he had ever met had hinted that if she was to marry him, then he would have to change considerably. He was too violent, a man who killed people for his living. Such was not conducive to settling down to have a home and family. But Cloud Woman, who was used to living amid warriors, had no such trouble. Indeed, she was quite proud of him for it. He was a warrior in her eyes as much as any other man in the village. She had no concerns about marrying a man who lived by the gun and the knife.

  He hoped he met her specifications as well as she did his. He had never considered himself particularly handsome, and he usually saw himself as all arms and legs. But Cloud Woman had hinted that such thoughts were incorrect, and who was he to correct his wife in such matters? And as a warrior, he knew she was satisfied with him. But he still worried on occasion if he was providing for her the way he should; and if he was meeting her needs. He supposed that she would let him know if he weren’t.

  As he began seeing the first signs that they were approaching Washakie’s village, Morgan’s thoughts turned to the old chief. He felt a certain kinship with Washakie, and he figured that was due to Washakie having known his father. It gave them a bond.

  Washakie was, Morgan thought, some character. The lawman believed the stories about Washakie’s prowess. Maybe not in total, but he was sure that most of those stories were true. Like Big Horse, Washakie could go from one thing to another swiftly. He was at once a fearless warrior and a friend to white men; full of wisdom and full of mischief; solemn, yet nearly always with a glint of humor in his eyes.

  It was going to be hellacious to have to sit there and explain to Washakie how he had lost three warriors from his band in a place in which they were supposed to have been safe. No, that would not be a good time at all. But Morgan was never one to shirk his duty, no matter how onerous that duty might be. He would do it, for sure; he wouldn’t even try to pawn it off on someone else. That didn’t mean he had to like it though.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “We’ve got a peck of troubles, Buck,” Big Horse said as the procession stopped not far from Washakie’s village.

  “What makes you think that?” Morgan asked.

  “Hear that noise?”

  “That wailin’?”

  “Yes. The People are wailing in grief. It means there’s been death in the village. It might be only that some old man died in his sleep, but the way things’ve been going around here lately...” Big Horse raised and lowered his wide shoulders.

  “Well, hell, let’s go see what it is.’’ Morgan was fatalistic about it. There was only so much a man could do, and one of them was not changing what had already occurred. One might affect the future with whatever decisions one made, but the past was the past.

  “One of us should go in there first and smooth things, especially if there’s been trouble. We don’t want Mrs. Ashby and her youngsters to get set upon if something’s happened in there.”

  “Good point. You best go, though. Even as welcome as I’ve been made this past month or so, I’m still not one of the People.”

  Big Horse nodded. “I had thought the same. You’ll be all right here by yourself?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You’ll be left with a woman, three kids, a prisoner, and three bodies.”

  “I’ll be fine. You go on. We’ll follow in a few minutes.”

  Morgan watched as Big Horse trotted off, his long, unfettered hair flying out behind him. Finally Morgan turned and said, “Let’s go.”

  “I ain’t movin’,” Skousen announced. The facial and head wounds had eased their paining somewhat, and Skousen was feeling defiant.

  Morgan trotted back and stopped alongside Skousen, their horses nose to tail on opposite sides. He pulled his rope off his saddle horn and quickly fashioned a noose.

  “Hey, goddammit, what the hell’re you doin’?” Skousen demanded as Morgan placed the noose over Skousen’s head and let it settle on the soldier’s shoulders.

  Morgan leaned over, until his mouth almost touched Skousen’s ear. “Watch your language, shit ball,” he said softly. “There’s women and youngsters around.”

  “I don’t give a good goddamn what...”

  Morgan turned his horse and walked it away. The noose tightened on Skousen’s neck and then pulled him off the horse. Morgan stopped and looked back. “You got a choice, sh…” He caught himself. “You have a choice, Private. You can walk, or I can drag you. It don’t matter to me which one.”

  “I want to ride,” Skousen insisted.

  “That’s not one of the choices.” He turned and began to move off.

  “Wait, goddammit!” Skousen shrieked. “Let me get up!”

  Morgan stopped. “Best make it quick.”

  “It’d go a heap faster if you was to come down here and help me.”

  “I don’t help shit balls,” Morgan said. He looked at Grace Ashby. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  Grace nodded and even put forth a small, weak smile. “As offensive as such language is, Marshal Morgan, it does seem to describe that miserable creature,” she said quietly.

  Morgan nodded and rode off, moving slowly enough for Skousen to keep up, but not slow enough that he had much room to pull something.

  Grace and her children were white-knuckled with fear as they entered the village. The only Indians they had ever seen up close had been at the agency. It was different now, Grace figured, because her family was in the Shoshonis’ home. She found she was almost as curious as she was frightened as she watched the Shoshoni women who were watching her and her family. It was an odd situation.

  Big Horse came trotting up on his pony. “It’s bad, Buck,” he said. “Murdock and his men—apparently he rounded up a mess of new ones—roared through the village this morning. They killed three and run off a bunch of horses.”

  “Who?” Morgan croaked, his mouth and throat suddenly dry with worry.

  “Cloud Woman wasn’t one of those killed, Buck,” he said, knowing how his friend must be feeling.

  “Now, let’s get the Ashbys into your lodge and then go to the council Washakie’s having.”

  Morgan nodded. “What about shit ball back there?”

  “Hell with it, we’ll bring him with us.” He smiled tightly. “I don’t think he’ll be much of a bother,” he added dryly.

  “I suppose not. What’s the attitude of the People?”

  “What do you mean?” When Morgan indicated the Ashbys with a move of his head Big Horse nodded. “It’s all right, I think. There’re a few hotheads who want to cause trouble, but most of the People know that Orv had nothing to do with it. With Orv’s family under our protection—and I expect Washakie’s too, once he’s told of it—they’ll be safe.”

  Morgan nodded. “Best get going then.”

  They rode to Morgan’s lodge. Morgan figured that Cloud Woman must have been watching; she burst out of the tepee the moment Morgan came into her sight. He slid off his horse and swept her up in his arms and kissed her hard and deeply.

  “I missed you, woman,” Morgan said when they finally parted.

  “And I missed you, husband.” Then she hesitantly asked, “Who are the others?”

  “All but the blue coat are Mr.
Ashby’s family. They’ll be stayin’ with us for a spell.” He didn’t need to ask, but he did anyway. “If that’s all right with you.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said. “Come,” she said to Grace, who had gotten gingerly off her horse. “We go inside and you have food. You be safe here.”

  Grace smiled weakly, still scared half to death. “Mrs. Ashby,” Morgan said, “this is my wife, Cloud Woman.” The two women smiled at each other.

  “The others are Bonnie, Dusty, and Pearl,” Morgan said to Cloud Woman.

  She nodded. “Come,” she said again. “It’s all right.”

  Grace looked at Morgan, worried and scared.

  “Go on in, Mrs. Ashby,” Morgan said. “You’ll be safe here. Nobody’ll bother you.”

  “How can you be so sure of that?” Grace asked. “I heard what Big Horse said about some people getting killed here. And I know it was done by a white man. Won’t these people treat my family poorly because we are white?”

  “No, ma’am,” Morgan said. “A few might think to do that, but the majority won’t allow it.”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t.” She very much regretted having agreed to this wild scheme. Here she was in the midst of a band of bloodthirsty savages, ones whose anger had been pumped up to great heights by the raid of white men on the village. It was insane, she thought now, to have come along.

  “I’ll guarantee your safety, ma’am,” Big Horse said. “Marshal Morgan might be new to our village and to our ways, and because of that some of the People might not listen so closely to him. But they will to me, and if anyone here wants to harm you, he’ll have to get through me—and Buck—first.”