Powder River

by S. K. Salzer

  “I’ve got all the work here I can handle,” Billy said. “But thanks for the offer.”

  Waggoner smiled and half turned his head, as if he suspected Reshaw’s silent signal. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But let me know when things change—and they will.”

  Dixon

  Though weeks had passed, Dixon had been unable to put the experience at the Crow village out of his mind. The old woman was Biwi, but she had not looked as he remembered and her voice had been different, too. And though he didn’t think of it at the time, it was odd that she had spoken to him in English. When he knew her, she had no language other than Crow and relied on Billy to translate. She could have learned English in the years since last he saw her, though he thought this unlikely.

  It would be easier to put the episode aside if not for her warning. Lorna was unusual, unlike any child he had ever known and certainly nothing like her brothers. Of the three, Dixon was closest to Harry, and he had been very pleased when his older son announced he wanted a career in medicine. Already, Dixon was writing the necessary letters, laying the groundwork for a training position in the East, either Philadelphia or Cincinnati where Dixon had attended medical school. Bookish and curious, Harry’s personality was suited to a life of intellectual inquiry and a home in the city. Dixon had been aware of this for some time. Caleb was a quiet boy, small for his age and so retiring his father felt he hardly knew him. His sister dwarfed him, and had done since they shared the womb. Though both were small at birth, born weeks before their time, Lorna was healthier and stronger, her color more vibrant and her cries more lusty. It was as if she had overpowered Cal since conception and taken the lion’s share of placental nutrients for herself. Dixon had been struck by this from the first moment he saw them. Though crushed by Rose’s death, and—to his shame—repelled by the infants who took her from him, his detached, medically trained brain could not fail to notice the difference in the two newborns. Indeed, he initially doubted the boy would survive. That he did was due solely to Biwi.

  Indeed, Lorna eclipsed both her brothers in strength of personality. Despite her youth, she dominated a room the instant she entered, even without speaking a word. With her white-blond hair, olive skin, and pale, penetrating eyes, she was lovely to look at and elegant beyond her years in her movements. Harry and Cal adored her, and she them, though there was never any doubt who held the whip hand. Only one man commanded her respect and admiration, and that man was Billy Sun. The Indian boy had intrigued her since she was just a toddler, and this fascination had only deepened as she grew. Dixon had thought it merely a girlish infatuation, and Billy himself appeared indifferent, treating her as he would any other child.

  Could Lorna be capable of harming Billy, or anyone? Dixon did not believe it, but try as he might, he could not dismiss Biwi’s spectral warning. Even if he had been dreaming, which he doubted, her words had had an impact. They forced him to confront a reality he wanted to avoid. His children, the twins especially, needed more from him. Despite his proclamation that he feared no one, Cal showed signs of effeminacy. He needed a father’s love and guidance, and Dixon resolved to give it to him. He had been a poor parent, and he was ashamed. If nothing else came of his ill-fated visit to the Crow village, his investment in his children would change.

  It was a warm spring evening and Dixon, returning to Buffalo from Fort McKinney, had been riding for more than an hour, lost in thought. Unnoticed by him, daylight had been replaced by a red twilight. He saw the lights of Buffalo twinkling in the distance. Again, his heart swelled with love for this beautiful country. No place in America matched Wyoming Territory for the purity of its air, the spaciousness of its skies, its natural majesty. He was fortunate to live here, fortunate to be raising three healthy children in such an unspoiled place, a land wrested with much violence from the Indians who loved it, too. Dixon raised his eyes to the fiery sky.

  “Rose, I’ve been absent since you went, as if I left this world when you did. I’ve been self-indulgent in my loneliness and neglected our children.” Alice turned her head at the sound of his voice. The horse knew her rider’s habits, and it was unlike him to speak when they were alone. “This will change. The children need a woman in their lives—not a mother, only you will ever be that, but a softening, female presence. I must find another wife. Whoever she is, she will never replace you in my heart, but she must be worthy of love, or the purpose is defeated. Please understand, Rose. I believe you do.”

  He urged Alice forward, toward home. He had not felt desire for a woman since Rose died, that is, not until very recently. Odalie Faucett could not be his, but he wanted her, and that, in itself, was cause for hope. Maybe he wasn’t dead yet after all.

  Billy Sun

  “You looked stupid,” Lorna said. They were in Billy’s room, a small, windowless lean-to off the kitchen. It was dark, lit only by the coal oil lamp on the Star Crackers box he used as a nightstand. He neatly folded his clothes, including the dirty new ones, and stacked them in a cardboard case. “I can’t believe Lord Faucett hired you—you looked like a nester in those clothes, an East Coast jake just off the train.” She forced a laugh. “It was funny, that’s what it was.”

  Billy kept his eyes on his packing.

  “Didn’t he look like a jake, Cal?” Lorna nudged her brother, silent at her side. “Didn’t he just?”

  “I guess,” Cal said glumly. “Do you have to go, Billy? I thought you were going to stay with us. Don’t you want to anymore?”

  Billy put a hand on Cal’s shoulder. “It’s not about wanting, Cal. Your pa doesn’t have enough work for me. Faucett has horses, and that’s what I’m good at. Not only that, but he gave me a place in the roundup. I can make real money, put some aside to get my own place.”

  Lorna made a sound of disgust and folded her arms across her chest. She fought back tears. “You’ll never have a ranch, Billy,” she said. “They’ll never let you run your own cattle. Don’t you know that? Them big augers won’t let anyone else raise cattle in Powder River country—and an Indian to boot! You’re just fooling yourself if you think that’s ever going to happen.”

  Billy wasn’t going to argue with her. Lorna would never let anyone else win an argument. Not for the first time, he thought how unlike her mother she was. Though Lorna would be a beauty, like Rose, she had none of her mother’s softer, more womanly traits. While Rose had been generous, sensitive to the needs of others, Lorna cared for no one but herself. When she grew to be a woman, she would give the man who loved her a world of trouble.

  Billy knew she had feelings for him, he had always known, but he was not the low kind of man who would take advantage of a girl’s amorous yearnings. The truth was that even if they were closer in age, Lorna would never be a woman he wanted. Kindness was important in a woman, as important as beauty, and Lorna would never be kind.

  “It’s because of her, isn’t it?” Lorna said, her voice rising in anger. “Lady Faucett. She’s the real reason you’re going, isn’t she? Oh, I see her around town, with her curled hair and fancy clothes, queening it in Raylan’s Dry Goods like some sort of royalty, looking down her nose at the rest of us.”

  Billy said quietly, “That’s not how she is.”

  Lorna stamped her foot. “Odalie Faucett is never going to look at you and you’re never going to own your own ranch. Never! You’re being an awful fool and everyone sees it. Everyone’s laughing at you!”

  Billy snapped the case shut. Odalie Faucett was one of the Bar C’s attractions, but not the primary one. This was the best chance he would ever have to make something of himself. As for Odalie, he had no aspirations there—he wasn’t a fool, despite what Lorna said—but he enjoyed looking at a beautiful woman. What man didn’t? He lifted the case off the bed and turned to Cal, avoiding Lorna’s eyes.

  “Take care of yourself,” he said, offering his hand. “And keep an eye on your sister. Maybe next Sunday I’ll come for you, take you to the Bar C so you can help me with the horses. How does
that sound?”

  Call nodded, eyes on the floor. “Good.”

  Billy leaned down to whisper in the boy’s ear. “Don’t let her push you around. You’re good as she is, don’t forget that.”

  Cal nodded again and wiped his nose with the back of his hand as his father entered the room. Lorna stomped out and Cal followed his sister.

  “So it’s true,” Dixon said. “You’re leaving us for the Bar C?”

  “Lord Faucett offered me work and a spot in the roundup. It’s good money. I couldn’t turn it down.”

  “No, of course not. You should go. I could never give you that kind of opportunity.”

  “I thank you for the work you have given me all these years and for setting me up with Nelson Story up north. Not everyone would do what you did for an Indian. I learned a lot from him, and from you, too.”

  Dixon put his hand on Billy’s shoulder. “You don’t need to thank me. You were—are—like a member of the family. Is Sugarfoot saddled?”

  Billy nodded.

  “I’ll walk out with you.”

  They passed through the kitchen, where Mrs. MacGill was rolling biscuits. She insisted he sit down for a glass of buttermilk before leaving. When he stood to go, she embraced him, leaving flour handprints on the back of his shirt. “Good-bye, laddie,” she said. “Dinnae be a stranger now.”

  It was fully dark when they stepped outside, though the spring air was still warm. Sugarfoot raised his head and nickered as they approached.

  “I feel we’ve come to the end of something,” Dixon said. “We’ll all miss you, Billy.”

  Billy smiled. “It’s not like I’m moving to Missouri, sir. I’ll be around.”

  “I know.” Dixon looked toward the craggy mountains, and Billy sensed there was more the doctor wanted to say. “I never got a chance to talk to you about what happened in the village.”

  “You said it was empty. No one was there.”

  Dixon nodded. “Yes, I did say that, but someone was there. Biwi, your aunt. Only her, not another soul. We spoke . . . it was very odd. That is, she seemed to think we—all of us, my family and you, too—were in some sort of danger . . .” He could not bring himself to say from whom.

  Billy frowned. “You saw Biwi in the village and she spoke to you?”

  “Yes. As I said, she was alone; the whole thing was very peculiar. She spoke to me in English. She must have learned it quickly.”

  Billy shook his head. “Doctor, that cannot be. Biwi died the morning I found Cal and Lorna near the old soldier fort. I didn’t say it then, because I didn’t want the twins to know, but I wrapped her body myself. I carried her to the wagon.”

  “This makes no sense.” Dixon looked at his thumb, where a scar remained. He remembered the glowing lodge, the powerful animal smell. “Then who was in the lodge with me? Who was I talking to?”

  Billy smiled. “Visitors from the world behind this one sometimes appear to us. I have never experienced this myself, but I have known those who have and I do not question the truth of it. I believe such a visitor came to you. You have been given a gift. Honor it, Doctor. This is my advice to you.”

  Odalie

  Frank Canton chose not to seek a third term as Johnson County sheriff in the fall of 1886. Though he claimed to be on the fence about running, and confident of another victory, most people did not believe he could win re-election. He barely scraped out a victory in 1884, and he had lost popular support during those two years. There was a growing sense he and his deputies were no longer a good fit with the people of Buffalo, now a community of some one thousand souls. No one questioned Canton’s skills or commitment as a lawman, but, more and more, he was seen to be overly impressed with his own importance. Worse, his deputies had acquired a reputation for ruthlessness. One of these, Chris Gross, a large, oafish Swede, mistreated a prominent citizen who fired off a letter to the local newspaper, the Big Horn Sentinel, complaining about the “unwonted zeal of that most enthusiastic officer.” Later, Gross shot an accused horse thief in the head, killing him without benefit of trial. The death was widely regarded as unnecessary.

  “Yes, I believe it’s time to let someone else shoulder the load for a while,” Canton said to Dixon one evening over glasses of beer at the Occidental Hotel restaurant and saloon. The two were not friends, but they had run into each other in town and Canton extended the invitation. Dixon accepted reluctantly. He had not been able to shake off his suspicions about the sheriff, suspicions that had only grown since the seeds were planted that cold winter night in Doriselaine Schmidt’s barn. The image of the young widow stroking her dead husband’s hair haunted him still, along with her words: You’ve got a lot to learn about how things work in Powder River country.

  “It’s not that I don’t enjoy the work,” Canton said. “I do, but I’m a married man now, with a child, and I believe I can do better for my family, financially speaking, in another line. In fact,” he paused and leaned closer to Dixon, “I’ve already got something lined up. I’ll be working again as a range detective for the WSGA, riding the entire Big Horn Basin.” He dropped his voice to a whisper, so low Dixon could barely hear him in the noisy room. “I’ll be getting twenty-five hundred a year, plus expenses.”

  “That’s a lot of money,” Dixon said. “A lot of country, too.”

  Canton nodded with obvious pride and settled back in his chair. “All of Johnson and Crook counties, plus parts of five others, a bigger area than some Eastern states. Yes, Dixon, it’s a big responsibility, but the organization will give me plenty of latitude to do the job as I see fit.”

  He looked down at the glass in his hand. “Still, I’ve got to say it was hard to give up sheriffing. Like I said, I’m sure I’d be re-elected, and I gave another term serious thought, but the job can make a man crazy. The damn rustlers run hog wild, and when you try to do your job they cut you off at the knees. That Holmberg business stuck in my craw.” On that occasion, Canton had traveled all the way to Kansas to bring accused horse thief H.H. Holmberg to justice, only to see him released without charge. “And One-Eyed Tex Cherpolloid—I had that cockeyed son of a bitch dead to rights, and even there I couldn’t make the charges stick. Public indecency and a damn ten-dollar fine—that’s all I could get on the bastard. I tell you, Dixon, I get hot just thinking about it. I can’t get an honest jury, nothing but a bunch of lily-livered nesters who wouldn’t indict Judas Iscariot.” He shook his head and raised the glass to his lips. “How many men do you reckon I’ve sent to prison for livestock theft in my four years as sheriff?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Go ahead, take a guess.”

  “I don’t know,” Dixon said. “Forty?”

  Canton nodded. “Should be that many. Hell, should be twice that. No, Dixon, I worked my butt off for four years to put eighteen rustlers behind bars. Eighteen. The job’s a pitiful waste of a man’s time. Pitiful.”

  “I’m surprised,” Dixon said. There was plenty of thievery in Johnson County, everyone knew that, and whatever his other faults, Canton was not lazy. “Why would a jury not convict a man who is obviously guilty?”

  Canton laughed. “Hell, Dixon, you know the answer to that well as I do. Those dirt-eaters on the jury don’t shed any tears when Lord Richard Faucett or one of his sort lose a few horses or a dozen head of cattle. They’re happy when the no-good trash gets away with it, and by no-good trash I mean fellows like Nate Coday and Jack Reshaw, those boys your man Bill Sun threw in with.” Canton balled his fist and pounded the table, drawing looks from their fellow drinkers. “That Reshaw is a goddamn troublemaker. I hear he just bought himself the Lazy L and B from old man Hathaway over on the Red Fork. Bought the ranch and a dozen head of worn-out emigrant cattle. You hear about that?”

  Dixon nodded. All of Buffalo was buzzing about Jack Reshaw’s bold move and waiting to see what the ranchers were going to do about it. It would be messy, of that Dixon had no doubt. Reshaw had already drawn the ire of the WSGA as one of the leaders of
a cowboy strike just before spring roundup. The trouble started when the men learned some of their colleagues were working for as little as thirty dollars a month. They refused to ride unless the bosses agreed to pay everyone no less than forty. “There’s no justice in this,” Reshaw told a gathering of cowboys and foremen. “We are brothers in this work. When you cheat my brother, you cheat me!” Eventually the cowboys prevailed, though Reshaw paid a heavy price for the victory. After the roundup, the association passed the word around that Jack Reshaw would never ride for a Wyoming outfit again.

  In buying the Lazy L and B, Reshaw was sticking his finger in the WSGA’s eye again. The association’s members would not tolerate small homesteaders or ranching operations on land they perceived as theirs, and this was especially true if the aspiring stockman used to cowboy for them. Indeed, they vowed to blackball any puncher who started his own brand, saying it would increase thievery. Reshaw’s latest act of defiance had drawn widespread attention, and everyone had taken a side.

  Association members knew they would have to tread carefully. Reshaw, the son of a prominent Charleston, Virginia, planter was confident, well-educated, and a leader not only among the cowboys but in the community as a whole. Any injustice done to him would fan the flames of discord.

  The controversy added to an aura of foreboding in the air that fall, beyond the usual tension between the stockmen and cowboys. Dixon felt it in his trips to town and in his conversations with patients, a sense that a hard winter was coming, bearing down on Powder River country like a giant, crouching bear. The October wind had a bite, and the ponies were laying down an unusually thick coat of hair. Old-timers spoke of an early migration of birds.

  “He’s a hard one, Jack Reshaw, and crook to boot,” Canton said, drawing Dixon from his thoughts. “If I were you I’d tell Sun to keep away from him and Coday before someone gets hurt. Your girl, Lorna, she’d take it mighty hard, I bet, if anything happened to that good-looking Indian boy.” He winked and finished his drink.