by S. K. Salzer
Canton winked at him. “Yes sir. It’s good work, fine way for a man to earn his living. When you get a little older, you might look into it, son. The cattlemen are always looking for a good man. If not for this sheriff business, I’d still be at it.”
“What does a range detective do?” Harry said.
A light kindled in Canton’s pale eyes. “He hunts down waddy scum who build their herds with a long rope and a running iron, and unfortunately there’s plenty of those in this country. Thieves.” He spat, as if the thought of them put a bad taste in his mouth. “A range detective keeps the country safe and secure for those it’s meant for.”
Dixon knew there was tension in the Powder River country between the large cattlemen, members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, and the smaller ranchers. Word of their struggle for the rangeland had drifted north to Bozeman, where it was often discussed in Nelson Story’s household. Story sided with the WSGA, and the subject was a rare point of disagreement between him and Dixon. Clearly, Canton was one of those who believed the country was meant for the big augers alone. Dixon understood at once that he would remain in good odor with Canton and his wealthy employers as long as he kept to doctoring. It occurred to him to ask what a range detective did with a “waddy scum” when he caught one. Dixon had heard stories of necktie parties, when the accused was hung by the neck from the nearest stout tree without benefit of trial. He did not put the question.
The men rode the rest of the way without much talking. The sun had been hiding behind the clouds all morning, but now it emerged in full, baking the ground and scenting the air with sage. Harry felt its warmth on his neck and shoulders and began again to relax in the saddle. Sensing this, his rented horse decided to take advantage, lowering her head and kicking out with her rear legs. Harry very nearly lost his seat and surely would have had Canton not grabbed the mare’s bridle before she could finish the job. Harry thanked his rescuer with embarrassment.
They crested a rise to find themselves looking down on a lush valley that was beginning to take on its rich fall colors. The aspens lining the water were turning gold, the leaves of the wild plum bushes scarlet red, and the stems of the tall bunchgrass in the meadows bluish purple. Wild clematis dusted the creek banks, like bits of fine white lace. A nearly complete, two-story white frame house stood in the bend of the creek, with two men on its steeply pitched roof hammering shingles in place.
“What do you think, son?” Dixon said, turning to Harry with one of his rare smiles. “Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea after all?”
Harry
Dixon sat upright in his bed, his heart racing. What was that? What woke him? He reached for the pistol on the nightstand and waited until the sound came again; someone was on the porch, pounding on the door. Dixon pulled on his pants and stepped into the hallway. Mrs. MacGill stood on the landing at the top of the stairs, a coal oil lamp in her hand. The night was cold and she wore a shawl around her shoulders. Her face paled when she saw the gun in Dixon’s hand.
“Who could it be at this hour?” she said. “It’s two o’clock.” Harry and the twins appeared at her side, frightened faces in the yellow lamplight.
“Children, go back to your beds,” Dixon said. “Mrs. MacGill, make sure they do as I say.” The pounding started again. Dixon walked to the front room and looked out the window. A horse he did not recognize, old and swaybacked, was tied to the porch rail. He opened the door to find Carl Schmidt, a boy of about Harry’s age, the son of a neighboring rancher. His eyes were wild with fear.
“Dr. Dixon, please come! It’s Pa, he’s hurt bad!”
“Come in, Carl, get out of the cold,” Dixon stepped to one side so the boy could enter. “Now, tell me what happened. How was your father hurt?” Despite his instructions, the three children and Mrs. MacGill were watching from the top of the stairs.
Carl took a deep breath and struggled to compose himself. “Three men came to the house when Pa was out in the barn. I saw them go in, then I heard yelling and the sound of shots, two shots. After that the men came running out and rode off. When I went out to the barn I found Pa on the ground, bleeding bad. They shot him, here and here.” The boy put one hand on his stomach and the other on his jaw. “Ma’s with him but she can’t make it stop, so she told me to come for you. Oh, we got to hurry, Doc!”
“All right,” Dixon said. “I’ll come straightaway. Mrs. MacGill, please make Carl a cup of tea while I dress and pack my supplies. I won’t be long.”
Harry followed his father to his room. “Let me come with you, Pa. I can help.”
Dixon sat on the bed to pull on his boots. His face was worried and gaunt in the flickering lamplight, and, for the first time, Harry thought his father looked old.
“Thank you, Harry, but I need you here to look after the twins and Mrs. MacGill. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone; it may be a while. I noticed Carl’s horse looks done in. Take him to the barn, will you? Rub him down and give him a nosebag. Then put Carl’s saddle on one of ours, the bay. Carl can come back for his horse later.” Dixon stood and put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Thank you, Harry. I depend on you.”
Harry nodded, disappointed. He was tired of being treated like a child and eager to start his own life; he was tired of simply taking up space at the edge of his father’s. Much as he loved Powder River country, Harry was beginning to sense if he didn’t get away soon, he’d end up spending his best years taking care of his brother and sister and Mrs. MacGill. That was not what he had planned.
Glumly, he pulled on his hat and boots and started for the barn. On his way out, he passed the kitchen where Carl sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. He was crying; Harry could see that by the way his shoulders shook. Carl must know there was little his father could do for a man with such serious injuries. Harry felt bad for him, but at the same time he almost envied him. Carl could be his own man now, in charge of his own future. It was a hard world, no doubt, but Harry was burning to get out in it, all the same.
When Harry opened the door, a blast of winter wind grabbed it from his hands and blew it back on its hinges against the wall with a bang, loud as a pistol shot. It was beginning to snow.
Dixon
They rode against the wind. The snow took the form of sharp splinters of ice that stung the skin and eyes. Dixon wished he had thought to bring his sun goggles, not standard equipment for a winter journey in the dead of night. The trip took longer than Dixon anticipated. By the time they arrived at August Schmidt’s small but tidy farmstead, the sky was beginning to lighten.
They went directly to the barn. Only one lamp was burning, and the interior was dark and cold as the grave. A woman sat on the floor in a circle of lamplight, a man’s head in her lap. She was stroking his hair and speaking in a low voice.
Dixon walked to them and looked down on August Schmidt’s lifeless face. His eyes were at half-mast and the front of his shirt was black with blood. The chest wound alone would have been fatal, Dixon saw that at once, but Schmidt had suffered a second injury, a vicious blast to the side of his face that exposed broken, bloody teeth. With a groan, Carl dropped to his knees beside his father’s body. His mother, stone faced and dry eyed, did not acknowledge him but continued smoothing her dead husband’s hair.
“Who did this?” Dixon said. The woman did not respond.
“Mrs. Schmidt, who killed your husband?”
Finally, she raised her eyes to his. Her face was drawn and gray as Mrs. MacGill’s oatmeal. Ordinarily, Doriselaine Schmidt was a good-looking woman, but she was not good to look at now.
“Faucett,” she whispered. “The devil.”
Dixon thought he misheard. Lord Richard Faucett was the wealthiest man in Johnson County, possibly in the whole of the Wyoming Territory. Why would a man with so much kill a hardworking German farmer who barely managed to keep his little farm a going concern? “Lord Faucett shot your husband?” he said.
She smiled grimly at the disbelief in his
voice. “He didn’t pull the trigger—he doesn’t have to, he’s got his killers to do that for him—but he’s behind it, sure enough. I warned Gus, I told him to sell like Faucett wanted, but Gus was stubborn. He wouldn’t listen.” She lowered her eyes to her husband’s face. “Now, look at you.”
The barn was bitterly cold, and Dixon was hungry and tired after his long ride. He wanted a cup of hot coffee but doubted he would get one anytime soon. The woman was distraught and, he suspected, unhinged. A long and difficult day lay ahead.
“We’ll have to notify Sheriff Canton,” he said. “I’m sorry about what’s happened to your husband, Mrs. Schmidt, but I would be careful before making any accusations without solid proof. You don’t want to make things harder for yourself and Carl.”
She shook her head. “You’re still fairly new around here, aren’t you, Doctor? What, been here four or five months or so?” When she looked up at him he was startled by the contempt he saw on her face. “You’ve got a nice new house, your good work, you don’t know how things are in Johnson County. You’re not trying to make your living off the land like me and Gus. You don’t know how Faucett and them claimed land that ain’t theirs by rights and thumbed their nose at the rest of us.” Her eyes filled with tears as she threw his words back at him. “‘Notify Sheriff Canton’ you say! Ha! Fat lot of good that’ll do. You’ve still got a lot to learn about how things work in Powder River country, Dr. Dixon.”
He could think of nothing to say. Although he had come to help, he sensed he had only added to the woman’s distress. He wanted to comfort her, but he felt clumsy and useless.
“Carl,” she said, “take the doctor into the house. Make a pot of coffee and give him some of last night’s corn bread, then let Dr. Dixon get on home to his family. You and me can handle things here.” She placed her husband’s head gently on the barn’s earthen floor and got to her feet, smoothing her blood-soaked apron. “Good-bye, Doctor. There’s nothing for you to do here. I am sorry for your trouble.”
Frank Canton
When he finally arrived home, Dixon was surprised to see Sheriff Canton’s horse, Fred, tied to the porch rail. He’d had plenty of time to consider Doriselaine Schmidt’s words of reproach on the long, lonely ride. Though his first impulse had been to dismiss her allegations as the rantings of a grief-stricken woman, her calm dismissal of him had altered that perception. Could Canton be one of Faucett’s hired killers? She had not mentioned him by name, but still . . .
He entered his house to find the sheriff sitting at the table in the warm kitchen, a steaming cup of coffee in his hand and a plate of Mrs. MacGill’s pancakes in front of him. Harry and the twins were at the table, too.
“Hello, Doctor,” Canton said as Dixon took off his hat and brushed the snow off his shoulders. “Your boy Harry was telling me about some trouble over to the Schmidt place. Is that so?”
Dixon did not answer at once but crossed the room to hang his coat on a peg beside Canton’s. The sheriff’s demeanor was friendly, but Dixon felt a worm of unease. When he turned back to the table, Canton was watching him attentively.
“Harry,” Dixon said, “see to the horses, will you?”
“But what happened at Carl’s? Did you save his pa?”
“No, I did not. The man was dead when I got there. Now Harry, please see to the horses as I said. Cal and Lorna, give your brother a hand cleaning the tack.”
Reluctantly, Harry and the twins obeyed. Dixon poured himself a cup of coffee and sat at the table, waiting until they were out of earshot before answering Canton’s question.
“Someone murdered Gus Schmidt,” Dixon said. “Shot him in the stomach and the face. He’d been dead for hours by the time I got there.”
“Murder you say?” Canton’s eyes locked on Dixon’s, and there was no surprise in them. “Doriselaine or her boy have anything to say about who might’ve done it?”
Dixon hesitated. Something told him not to repeat the woman’s allegations. “No,” he said. “If she has any ideas, she didn’t share them with me.”
Canton sipped his milky coffee, wetting his long mustache and cleaning it with his lower lip. Dixon found this habit disgusting.
“They didn’t see anything?” Canton said. “Well, that does surprise me some. I don’t know the boy, but Doriselaine is a sharp woman. She don’t miss much.” He maintained a cordial smile.
“No, not that she said. She was upset, of course. I didn’t want to press her.”
“I guess not.” Canton finished his coffee in one long draught. “Reckon I better get on over there. You know my deputy, don’t you? Jim Enochs? If he shows up here, send him along, over to the Schmidt place. Could be I’ll run into him on the way.”
Dixon watched Canton put on his hat and well-tailored wool overcoat, obviously new. Johnson County must pay its lawmen well, he thought.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Canton said, “the reason I came out here in the first place. Lord Faucett wants you to come to a dinner party at his house this Saturday night. He says it’s time you met. You seen The Manor, Doc?”
“No, I haven’t.”
Canton smiled. “It’s quite a place. You’ll understand why folks around here call it that. Bring a bag, he wants you to come on Friday and stay over till Sunday. Lord Faucett won’t have his guests traveling at night. It ain’t safe, too many road agents and cutthroats around nowadays.” Canton winked. “But that’s about to change.”
After he had gone, Mrs. MacGill turned from the sink where she had been washing breakfast dishes. “I wouldn’t trust that man, Doctor,” she said. “That one’s a right devil, and no mistake.”
Odalie
Lord Richard Faucett’s home was south of Buffalo, on a flat, grassy meadow near the place where the three forks of Powder River came together. The short, balding Englishman was on the piazza, smoking a cigar, when Dixon arrived. Despite the cold, Faucett wore only a long silk jacket, tied at the waist, trousers, and velvet smoking slippers. He bounded down the stairs to shake Dixon’s hand.
“Lady Faucett cannot abide the smell of a cigar, even the fine ones I smoke. Takes a cruel woman, Dixon, to force a man out into this beastly Wyoming cold just to enjoy a smoke.” He tossed the burning cylinder into a snow bank where it sank with a hiss. “It’s almost enough to make a man swear off cigars! Come, let’s get inside.”
A waiting servant, a Chinese man, opened the heavy, oaken double doors, and Dixon stepped into a gleaming world of grandeur and richness beyond anything he had ever seen. They stood in a great hallway that ran the length of the house and was open to the two-story roof. Roaring fires burned in giant, stone fireplaces at each end of the hall, heating the vast space and lending it the look of a medieval palace. Indian artifacts, tanned buffalo robes, and the preserved heads of bison, elk, deer, and mountain cats hung on the walls. A curving staircase of solid walnut, highly polished, led to the rooms of the second floor. Just below it was a gallery level, furnished with potted plants and hanging vines. “That’s where the musicians will be tomorrow night,” Faucett said, pointing to the gallery. “I can fit a full orchestra up there. Works brilliantly. The acoustics are splendid and putting the musicians up there leaves more room for dancing. My idea. Brilliant, if I do say so myself.”
They toured the ground floor, which included a dining room—large enough, Faucett said, to accommodate twenty diners—a library with all four walls lined in leather-bound volumes, a pantry, and a kitchen. Faucett’s office was equipped with a telephone, a device Dixon had read about but never seen.
“The first in Wyoming Territory,” Faucett said of the instrument with obvious pride, “hell, maybe the only one for all I know. It connects me to my store, supply depot, and post office twenty-four miles away. I tell you, Dixon, that gadget saves me all sorts of time and trouble. It’s expensive to keep the lines up, man hours you know, especially in the winter, but it’s damn well worth it.”
In the summer and fall, Faucett said, he and his wife, Odalie, liked
to keep the place full of relatives and guests from England. “I take them on hunting trips, fishing, that sort of thing. Only the best people—here, take a look.” Faucett led Dixon to a guestbook in the great hall, standing open on a pedestal. Dutifully turning the pages, Dixon saw the signatures of lords and ladies, dukes and earls.
“Very impressive,” Dixon said, wondering how a man so young—Faucett looked to be about thirty or thirty-five—had accumulated such a fortune. Dixon also was curious as to why Faucett had invited him and what he wanted. When he looked up from the guest book, he saw his host smiling, as if he read Dixon’s thoughts.
“Come, Doctor,” he said, “let’s sit by the fire, have a drink and chat a bit before dinner, shall we? Chang, take Dr. Dixon’s bag upstairs to the blue room.”
They settled into comfortable leather armchairs before a warm fire. Chang served them whiskey, a fine, single-malt, in cut-crystal glasses that sparkled like diamonds. They sipped their drinks in silence for a few minutes, then Faucett said, “So, what do you think of all this, Dixon?” He waved his hand about the room.
“As I said, it’s most impressive. I admit, I am wondering what brought you here all the way from England. The people, the country, it must seem very primitive.”
Faucett smiled into his drink. “It does, rather. It’s ironic, I came for my health—weak lungs, you know—but in fact, the country almost killed us. By us, I mean my brother, Dick, and me. It was in seventy-eight, mid-November, and we’d been on a hunting trip. Started out from Fort Washakie. Make a long story short, we ended up crossing the Big Horns in the dead of winter. When we finally reached the headwaters of the Powder River, everything was buried in deep snow and no landmarks were recognizable. Our guides couldn’t find the pass and brother Dick was gravely ill. Well, I thought we were finished when our chief guide, Jack Hargreaves, brilliant fellow, came up with a solution. He stampeded a herd of buffalo, knowing when they started running they would instinctively make for the pass, which is exactly what they did. Not only that, they pounded the snow down, making a hard, smooth road that we followed right to a place called Trabing. Perhaps you know it?”