by S. K. Salzer
Billy nodded. Like Dixon, he chose not to look back on that bloody day. For the rest of his life, he would regret he had been there, not because of the pain it caused him, but because he wanted to keep Rose in his heart as she had been. Billy wanted to remember her healthy and full of life, with freckles across the bridge of her nose and a right ear that stuck out just a bit, sometimes peeking out through the veil of her auburn hair. Their last hours together had robbed him of that memory.
“Thank you, Doctor,” he said. “This is good to hear.”
“Best of luck to you, Billy. I hope our paths cross again.”
* * *
Late that evening, when Billy returned to the village, he found Biwi in her lodge, sitting alone at her fire. He asked what she had meant when she warned the twins about “the other voice,” the one that brings the wolf.
She shook her head, her eyes on the glowing embers. “The child understands,” she said.
Lorna
Dixon was happy to be returning to the green-skinned hills of Wyoming’s Powder River country. His heart grew lighter with each passing mile, lighter than it had for years, and he felt an almost-forgotten sense of anticipation. This was true, even though his time at Fort Phil Kearny had been difficult. Besieged by Sioux and Cheyenne warriors led by Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, Dixon and Rose, along with others of Colonel Henry Carrington’s 18th U.S. Infantry, had endured long months of bitter cold, hunger, and fear. The night of December 21, 1866, brought horror that would never leave him. The sights, sounds, and smells of Massacre Ridge—where Captain William Judd Fetterman and all of the eighty men who rode with him were slaughtered—had burrowed deep in Dixon’s brain and would haunt his dreams forever. Fetterman’s story was a tale of hubris, like George Armstrong Custer’s ten years later, but now those heady times were gone. Fort Phil Kearny itself was reduced to a charred ruin, abandoned by the army and burned to the ground by the Indians. The departing soldiers saw the smoke as they marched away. Red Cloud and his warriors had won a great victory, though their time in the sun would be short. The Sioux leader and his ferocious fighting men were confined to reservations and no longer posed a threat to anyone.
The Dixons’ journey to Buffalo would take them close by the site of the abandoned fort. Daniel had often thought of someday taking his children there, telling them of the adventure and hardship he and their mother had endured together, but he would not stop now. The sadness of walking those grounds again, standing in the very places where he and Rose had stood together, was still too great.
He hoped his children would come to share his passion for Wyoming’s Powder River country. Dixon had loved it from the moment he first saw its rolling green hills, clear sparkling streams, and lush valleys where the blue meadow grass grew tall enough to brush the belly of a man’s horse. The land filled him with a sense of hope. Perhaps in this lovely country he would come to know and love his younger ones as he loved Harry.
“What will Buffalo be like, Pa?” Harry said.
“It’s a new town,” Dixon said, “just getting started, but it’s growing fast. Already there are two dry goods stores, a bank, a hotel, a dentist, and a school you children will attend. It’s about time. We’ll stay in the hotel until our house is finished.”
Cal and Lorna, sitting in the rear of the wagon with Mrs. MacGill, looked at each other when their father said the word “school.” “He can’t make us,” Cal said in Bird Talk.
Dixon turned his head toward the twins with a frown. “What did I say to you two about talking that gibberish? There’ll be no more of that, you hear?”
“Yes, Pa,” they said in unison. Lorna reached out and took her brother’s hand.
They rode on in silence, the only sound the clop-clop of the horses’ hooves on the rocky road. Late in the afternoon they made camp along a wooded creek. Harry unharnessed the horses, rubbed them down with empty feed sacks, and fed them nosebags of grain while Dixon pitched two tents, one for him and Harry and another for Mrs. MacGill and the twins. The Scotswoman and her charges had no trouble finding dry wood, and soon a good fire was blazing.
“It’s been a while since I slept out under the stars,” she said as she peeled potatoes. “Not since me and my old man, Keddy, first come out here all them years ago. Eighteen and sixty-three, it was and, aye, things was diff’rent then. My hair was black as midnight when me and him set out and white as you see it now by the time we put in at Alder Gulch. It was those nights sleeping rough and fearin’ the Indians and the wolves what did it.” She rose and walked to the fire where she dumped the potatoes into a pot that already held salted meat, chopped onions, and carrots. Their meal would also include fried eggs and powder biscuits, now baking in a Dutch oven, with strawberry jam.
“Indians ain’t nothing to fear, Auntie,” Cal said. “Who would be afraid of Biwi or Billy Sun?”
Mrs. MacGill stirred the stew with a long wooden spoon. “Mebbe they ain’t so fearsome now, but they was plenty diff’rent back then, I can tell you that. Jerusalem!” She batted at an ember that leaped from the fire and ate a hole in her apron. “And I’m not sure you can ever completely trust them. The Injuns, they remind me of the Selkie folk from back home, from the Orkney Isles. You think you know ’em, but you don’t. To think different is to get your heart broke.”
“Selkie folk?” Lorna said.
“I’ll tell you and your brother about the Selkie after dinner, but only if you promise to be good and don’t do nothin’ to set off the doctor.”
The twins were good as their word, and the meal passed without discord, with plenty of stew and biscuits for everyone. After, Dixon smoked his pipe as Mrs. MacGill and the twins cleaned the pots and dishes in a wash pan of hot soapy water and toweled them dry. The snapping logs turned from black to gray and the evening sky purpled as a chill wind blew down from the mountains.
Finally the work was done, and Lorna and Cal wrapped themselves in warm blankets, ready for the widow’s story. Her yarns were almost as good as Biwi’s.
Mrs. MacGill plumped her pillow and lowered the lamplight so they could barely make out her white hair and dark, shining eyes. “So,” she said, “there once was a young man, a hunter of seals, who lived alone on the tiny island of Suleskerry. He was a proud young man, bonnie and strong, and he made good”—“guid” as she pronounced it—“money as well. There was no shortage of lassies on the mainland who had an eye out for him, but he would have none of ’em.
“‘What’s wrong wi’ ye then?’ a friend asked of him, and the proud young man said he simply had no use for females.
“‘Wimmen was put on earth to try us men,’ he said. ‘Adam was an owld fool, who would be living in Paradise still today if he haddna been led astray by Eve.’
“Well, time went by and one day the Suleskerry seal hunter was workin’ on the beach when he spied a group of bonnie young people sunning themselves on a rock by the sea, and they was nekkid as the day they was born.”
“Naked?” Lorna said, her eyes widening. “Out in the wide open?”
“Aye,” the widow said. “As the day they was born. One was a lovely woman with hair yellow as gold, kinda like yours, my loves, and skin white as the finest Italian marble with nary a bump nor blemish on it. Well, the proud young man had never seen a vision like that before, and he was smitten. He started toward her, but the folk saw him comin’ and grabbed up the sealskins that was lyin’ beside them on the rock and dove into the sea. But the lovely woman’s skin had fallen to the beach and the seal hunter got to it first. She fell to her knees, sobbin’ most pitiful she was, and begged him to return it. ‘Please, please, kind sir,’ she said, ‘I kinna live with my folk withoot it.’ The man looked out to sea and saw a pack of selkie—seals is what you English call ’em—bobbing in the water, watchin’ with sad, mournful eyes.”
“The young people turned into seals when they put their skins back on?” Cal said.
“Aye, and the beautiful maiden wanted to be with ’em but couldna withou
t her skin, which the hunter wouldna surrender. Instead, he made her go back to his hut with him and be his wife. She had no choice, for he hid the skin from her and she couldna find it, no matter how she tried.
“They lived together for many years, and the seal-maiden bore the hunter four bairns, three lads and one lassie. They were a bonnie family, but there was a stone in the seal-maiden’s heart. She pretended to be happy, but niver did she stop searchin’ for her skin. One day, the lassie asked her, ‘Mam, watcha lookin’ fur?’ and the seal-maiden said, ‘Oh, peedie, I’m lookin’ for a pretty skin to make you slippers wit.’ The girl said she had seen her father take a very pretty skin from the rafters in the barn.
“Well, that was all the seal-maiden needed. She ran to the barn, found the skin, and fled to the sea where she slipped it on and dove into the waves, aswimmin’ out to her seal-man husband who had been waitin’ for her all these years. The proud man and his children never saw her again, though for the rest of his long life the Suleskerry seal hunter walked along the beach, asearchin’. He died a sad and broken owld man.”
Her story was met with shocked silence. Lorna spoke first. “But what about her children? Didn’t she love them?”
“Aye, she loved them well enough, but she loved her seal-folk more.”
“She was a bad woman,” Cal said flatly.
“No,” Mrs. MacGill said, shaking her head. “The Selkie maiden was not bad, she was just bein’ true to her natural self. That’s the way the world is. No matter how much you love a person, ye canna change him or her, no matter how you try. Sometimes you have to say your good-byes and move on, no matter how it pains ye. Otherwise, you’ll end up like the Suleskerry seal hunter, walkin’ alone up and down that beach for the rest of his days.”
She expected more questions but none came. Soon she heard rhythmic breathing and thought the children were asleep. She was drifting into sleep herself when Lorna’s voice startled her.
“You told that story because of Billy Sun,” she said. “You think me and him will never be together because of the difference in our ages and because he’s Indian, but you’re wrong. I love him and I am going to marry him someday. Just you wait and see.”
“Has Billy ever given you cause to think this, child?” Mrs. MacGill said.
“No, he doesn’t know yet. I know things other people don’t. You’ll see.”
Frank Canton
Buffalo did not look prosperous, but neither did the Dixon family by the time they finally rolled into town. The journey had taken two days longer than the doctor had expected, and there had been snow the second night out. When they woke in the morning, they found four fluffy white inches on the ground, though the day warmed and it melted quickly. Even so, it turned the road to a muddy gumbo that clung to the iron wheels and the horses’ feet and slowed progress to a crawl. They arrived at noon, cold, dirty, and hungry.
Dixon stopped the wagon by the town’s largest building, a structure of chinked log construction fronting the muddy main street. A hand-lettered sign saying OCCIDENTAL HOTEL hung over the front door. Nearby were a freestanding kitchen and a livery stable. A number of hard-looking men lounged in chairs on the boardwalk, watching the Dixons’ arrival with amused curiosity.
Dixon climbed down and handed the reins to Harry. “Make sure the twins stay in the wagon, and keep an eye on those dogs.” He nodded toward a pair of mangy-looking hounds rounding the corner of the kitchen. “Hold tight on the horses.”
The mud was so deep Dixon sank almost to his ankles as he made his way to the boardwalk. He tipped his hat to the watching men and stopped to scrape his boots before entering the lobby. The interior was dark after the bright noontime sun, and it took several seconds for his eyes to adjust. On the far wall was a long counter, with a pale, bespectacled clerk standing behind it. A restaurant occupied one side of the cavernous, barnlike interior and a saloon the other. At the bar stood a tall man, with one foot on the rail. He watched Dixon cross the room and address the clerk.
“I’d like three rooms,” Dixon said. “My family and I need a place to stay until our house is finished.”
“Three rooms?” the clerk said. “Well, I don’t know if I can do that. I only got six and four are occupied. I guess I can let you have the two for a time. When will your house be done?”
Dixon smiled. “I hired Jim Kidd and his boys about a month back, but I haven’t heard from him for a while. I’ll be going out there tomorrow. I’ll let you know.”
The tall man put his drink on the bar and crossed the room, his boots loud on the uncarpeted floor.
“So,” he said, “I’m guessing you’re the new doctor. Dixon, from Bozeman?”
“Yes, I’m Daniel Dixon. And you are . . . ?”
“Frank Canton.” He offered his hand with a smile, studying Dixon with clear blue eyes. “Welcome to Buffalo, Doctor. You are most welcome. This town needs a good medical man; we have for a while now.”
The clerk smiled for the first time. “So, you’re the doctor we been hearing about? Well, you’ll have plenty of business here, though maybe not so many bullet holes now that Frank, here, is sheriff. Things have calmed down considerable.”
Canton ran a hand through his straw-colored hair. “Slow down, Milo, I’m not sheriff yet. Election ain’t till November.”
“Don’t matter, Frank. You been the law around here for the past year and everybody knows it. Nat James and that deputy, Tom Ferrell, they’re good at cowboying and not much else. You’ll get elected, Frank. Ain’t no doubt about that.”
Canton gave Dixon a wink. “I do have an opponent.”
“Ha! Ain’t no way some granger’s gonna beat out Frank Canton. Ain’t no way.”
“Thank you for your confidence, Milo, but I’m sure Dr. Dixon doesn’t want to hear about this. As for your place, Doc, I was just out there the other day and Jim and the boys have been working hard, for them anyhow. Your place is nearly done and I think you’ll be pleased with it too. I’ll ride out there with you tomorrow, if you want. Maybe I can light a fire under Jim, get him to speed things up a little.”
“Thank you. I’d appreciate that.”
“My pleasure.” Canton turned to Milo. “Four rooms occupied, you say?”
Milo nodded.
“Occupied with who?”
“Well,” Milo said, clearly nervous. “There’s Fred Jolly and two of Lord Faucett’s associates, up from Denver. Then there’s Hi Kinch, sleeping off a drunk.”
Canton laughed. “Kinch? Why, there’s your solution. Kick him out, clean it up, and give his room to the good doctor and his family. There’s your three rooms.”
“I don’t know, Frank,” Milo said. “Hi paid for it.”
“So what? Kinch can stay at the jail if he wants. It’s not like he ain’t been there before.” Canton turned back to Dixon. “I’ll be by tomorrow around ten or so. We’ll go see how Jim and the Kidd boys are getting along.”
* * *
Dixon and Harry were having breakfast in the restaurant when Canton arrived the following morning.
“I thought my boy Harry might come along, too,” Dixon said. “He’s anxious to see his new house.”
“Of course,” Canton said. “Glad to have the lad.” He clapped a warm hand on Harry’s shoulder, causing him to drop the buttered biscuit he was lifting to his mouth. “When you folks are done here, come over to the livery. I’ll have the horses ready.” Canton had an unusual voice, Harry noticed, deep and resonant, as if coming from a vault. On the way out, Canton stopped to talk to three men having breakfast together, the restaurant’s only other customers. They wore fine clothing and polished boots, and Harry thought he and his father looked shabby by comparison.
“Morning, Fred,” Canton said. “Morning, gentlemen. Will you be heading out to The Manor this morning?”
“This afternoon.” The man spoke with a British accent. “First I thought we’d tour the range some. Weather favors it.”
The conversation continued, but Ha
rry could discern only a few words: nesters . . . crowded . . . roundup . . .
“Finish your eggs, son,” Dixon said. “We’ve got a big day.”
Twenty minutes later, Harry, Dixon, and Canton were riding south out of Buffalo, three abreast on the Big Horn Road, toward the small ranch Dixon had purchased on Clear Creek, midway between the town and Fort McKinney.
“You found yourself a good spot, Doctor,” Canton said, “and you were damn lucky to get it for the price you did.” Dixon was surprised Canton knew what he paid, but in a place small as Buffalo secrets were probably hard to come by. “You plan on running any stock?”
“Maybe a few animals for our own use. Horses, a few head of beef cattle. My medical practice will be my livelihood—if things work out.”
Canton nodded, apparently pleased with Dixon’s answer.
“How long have you been in these parts, Mr. Canton?”
“Call me Frank, Doctor, everyone does. I settled here a few years back.”
“What made you leave Texas?”
Canton turned in the saddle, looking at Dixon with surprise. “What makes you think I’m from Texas?”
Dixon sensed he had trod on sensitive ground. “Only the way you talk. I thought I heard some Texas in it.”
Canton smiled. “No. I was born in Virginia. From there we moved to Missouri, then on to Colorado in sixty-eight. Me and Pa raised stock outside of Denver, and after that I bounced around some. Montana, Cheyenne. Didn’t put down roots till the stockmen here in Wyoming hired me on as stock detective. That’s how I come to know Fred Jolly, that English fellow back at the hotel. His boss, Lord Richard Faucett, also from across the pond, owns Powder River Cattle Company, the biggest outfit in the territory. He’s a man you’ll want to know.”
Harry, drowsing in the saddle, perked up. “You’re a detective?” In his eyes, Canton seemed to sit a little taller in the saddle. He wore a gun holstered below his right hip, and his hands were not red and calloused, like those of a farmer, but elegant with long, slender fingers and clean, squared nails. The hands, Harry thought, of a gunfighter.