Powder River

by S. K. Salzer

Billy raised his rifle to his shoulder and positioned the barrel so the stranger was squarely in his sights. His shot went wide, hitting a tree to the man’s left. He turned and dived back into the woods.

  “Nestor?” Billy left the window and kneeled by his friend. Lopez held his right hand to his jaw while bright red blood dripped from his fingers and onto the floor. Lopez’s frightened eyes told Billy all he needed to know.

  “I’m sorry, Nestor, but can you still handle a gun?” Billy said. “Can you shoot if they come through that door?”

  Lopez managed an animal sound. Billy picked up the fallen man’s rifle and put it in his hands. “Do what you can,” he said, and Lopez nodded.

  Billy returned to the window. The day would be a warm one. Already the snow was beginning to melt. Billy’s eyes were in constant motion, moving from the barn to the creek and the scrubby hill behind it. He needed to know how many men were concealed in the trees and if there were others in another location. The barn troubled him. Billy knew that’s where he would hide if he were stalking the house. After about twenty minutes his vigilance was rewarded. The barn door opened slightly to allow a yellow arc of urine.

  “Damn, Nestor, they’re in the barn, too.” When he got no response he turned to find his friend dead on the floor. Nestor’s hand had fallen to reveal his ruined face, with its shattered jawbone and broken, blood-covered teeth. Billy turned away. Russ and the boys were his only hope. According to Kinch, they were expected on Friday, still more than a day away. Could he hold out that long?

  Odalie

  If she lived to be as old as Methuselah, Odalie knew she would never forget the misery of that long ride to Buffalo. The snow that had melted during the day froze again at night, making the road icy and treacherous. Several times the horses lost their footing and nearly fell, once the buggy slid sideways and almost went down a steep hill, taking horses, buggy and passengers with it. But bad as that was, the cold was worse. In addition to two coats, Odalie wrapped a thick woolen horse blanket around her legs and another over her head and shoulders like an Indian squaw, but even so the cold penetrated to take root deep in her stomach and in her bones. Never in all her years had Odalie known such cold. She marveled at the strength and fortitude of her intrepid escort. Rob Hardy drove all night without complaint, only stopping to rest and nourish the horses.

  “I am so grateful to you, Rob,” she said. “Whatever would I have done had I not met you? My God, what would have happened to me at the hands of that horrible Stubbs?” She shuddered. “It takes all the fly out of me just to think of it.”

  “I would’ve blamed myself,” he said. “After all, I sent you there. Like I said, Stubbs has taken a hard turn, but then plenty of folks around here have done that. The winter of eighty-six changed things, including people.”

  “Yes. That’s when things started to go wrong.”

  Hardy gave her a sideways glance. “Wrong? For people like you? For the rich and mighty Lord Richard Faucett and his wife? Forgive me if I find that hard to believe.”

  Odalie felt a prick of alarm. “How do you know me? I didn’t sign the telegram. I don’t believe I gave you my name.”

  “No?”

  “No. Have we met before? I think I would have remembered.”

  “Yes, we did meet once but very briefly.” He spoke without looking at her. “I recognized you at once, but I wouldn’t expect you to remember me. It was years ago, and I was just one of your husband’s cowpunchers when Anna’s husband died. I had to go back to Olympus, to take care of her and her family.” He turned to Odalie and smiled, his teeth white in the darkness. “But I remember you quite well, Lady Faucett.” His smile faded. “And your husband, too.”

  Odalie heard the change in his voice. “Did Richard mistreat you in some way?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say that. To tell you the truth, I don’t think he ever noticed me. I was just one of his riders. I had more truck with the skunk, Jolly. He cheated us every chance he got, even refused to pay me for two weeks I was due. No, I have no love for that man.”

  “That makes two of us,” Odalie said.

  “I’m curious, what does your husband have planned exactly? What is Frank Canton’s involvement?”

  Odalie hesitated, turning her face to the craggy mountains showing black against the starry sky. How much should she say? She wanted to save Daniel and Billy, but beyond that she had no plan. Vile though he was, did she really want to consign Richard to the black maw of frontier justice? Even if the law did not prosecute him—as seemed likely, given Sheriff Angus’s timidity and Richard’s connections—would he be safe from the mob? Again, she glanced at her escort. Richard had misused him. Did Rob represent the mob? No, he was unlike the average unwashed, unschooled sodbuster, a creature she believed fully as capable as Richard of savagery. And Odalie had to think of herself. Without Richard, and his money, where would she be? She trusted Rob, but she had to tread carefully.

  “I’m not sure exactly,” she said. “I overheard bits of Richard’s conversations. I know he was assembling an army; they planned to storm the courthouse and seize the weapons there, but after that, I don’t know. I’m afraid they mean to harm good people, people who are my friends. I can’t let that happen.”

  Rob kept his eyes on the snowy road. He was quiet for a long time, and Odalie thought he meant to let the matter drop. Then he said, “I think your husband and Frank Canton and the WSGA stockmen plan to do a lot of killing, and there’s no one in Johnson County who can stop them.”

  Odalie shivered and burrowed deeper in her blankets. Rob was right, but she did not want to say so. She did not want to admit that a man she had given so many years of her life to, the best years, she feared, was a murderous animal. Unbidden, a memory of her girlhood home in New Orleans came to her, so strongly she felt a lump form in her throat. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be sitting in the warm, sweet-smelling kitchen, sipping a hot mug of chicory coffee with milk and sugar, and eating from a plate of fresh, powdered-sugar beignets. How sad that young people take their moments of happiness and security for granted. If only I could have known how rare and precious they were at the time!

  Rob shook her from her reverie. “We’ve got company.” He pointed to a solitary rider on the road, approaching from the north. “Who’d be out in this cold, at this time of night?”

  “He may well be thinking the same of us,” Odalie said.

  The horseman stopped, and she saw the moonlight reflect off the field glasses he raised to his eyes. After a pause, he urged his horse forward. She recognized something about the way he sat a saddle, tall and straight as a rifle barrel. “I believe I know this man,” she said in a low voice, pulling the blanket up over her head and shoulders. “Please, Rob, do not reveal my identity.”

  They met in the road. Rob reined in his team.

  “Hello, friends,” the rider said with a broad smile. “What brings you out on this cold night?”

  “My wife is ill,” Rob said. “She needs a doctor. I’m taking her to Buffalo.”

  “Buffalo? What’s wrong with her?” The rider moved closer, guiding his horse toward Odalie’s side of the buggy.

  “Female trouble,” Rob said. “She’s in a family way.”

  Odalie turned her head from the rider’s curious gaze. She could almost feel the heat of his black eyes on her, trying to penetrate the woolen blanket.

  The horseman laughed. “Why, if I didn’t know better I’d think this fine lady was none other than Lady Odalie Faucett. But, now, that couldn’t be, could it, friend? I mean, you just said she was your wife.”

  Odalie threw off her hood and raised her head. “Hello, Mr. Horn.”

  Tom Horn’s smile widened. “Well, I’ll be. So it is you after all. Now, why would this young fellow lie to me? Did you tell him to do that?”

  “What do you want?” she said.

  He shook his head in exaggerated puzzlement. “Why, I just don’t understand. I mean, ain’t you supposed to be in Denver? Sir Richar
d says you are. He told me himself. He said his man, Jolly, took you to the station.”

  Odalie’s heart was thudding like a bat in a barrel. “Once again, Mr. Horn. What do you want?”

  “Well, ma’am, your friend here says you’re going to Buffalo. If that’s so, I believe I best come along to make sure you get there all right. I’m sure this fellow is fine, but I wouldn’t want you to meet up with any troublemakers.”

  Odalie withdrew a pistol, a Merwin and Hulbert five-shot, double-action revolver with a birds-head grip, from the folds of her blankets and pointed it at Horn. Her hand, she was pleased to notice, was steady. “The only troublemaker here is you,” she said. “Rob, get down and take Mr. Horn’s long gun.”

  Horn’s smile faded. Even in the darkness, she could sense him coiling, like a snake preparing to strike. “You can’t do much damage with that little lady gun,” he said.

  “Are you sure of that, Mr. Horn?” Odalie said. “I won’t miss at this range, and I’ve got five opportunities. I wouldn’t risk it if I were you.” As she spoke Rob pulled Horn’s rifle from its scabbard and pointed it at him.

  “Throw down your pistol, Mr. Horn,” she said. “Throw it to the ground or I will shoot you.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  She smiled brightly. “I’ve never liked you, Mr. Horn, or your great friend Frank Canton, either. You are sycophants and vermin, the pair of you, and I would enjoy shooting you. Canton, too, if it comes to that.”

  Rob stepped forward, holding the rifle only feet away from Horn’s belly. After a brief hesitation, Horn unholstered his revolver and tossed it to the ground where Rob recovered it.

  “Now, climb down off your horse,” Odalie said.

  “Wait just a minute,” Horn said. For the first time Odalie heard fear in his voice. “You can’t mean to leave me out here without my horse. I’ll freeze.”

  “I said get down.”

  “I won’t.” Horn folded his long arms across his chest. “Go ahead and shoot me, lady. Shoot an unarmed man. I will not surrender my horse.”

  Odalie fired her pistol, sending a bullet whistling past Horn’s ear. He quickly dismounted, handing the ribbons to Rob who tied them to a ring-bolt on the back of the buggy. Horn watched with narrowed eyes as Rob climbed back onto the bench and took up the reins, slapping them on the horses’ backs. Throughout all this, Odalie never took her eyes, or her gun, off Horn.

  “Lady, you are the devil,” he said as the horses lunged forward. “I knew it. I saw what you were all along. You’ll be sorry you didn’t kill me!”

  And that, Odalie thought as Horn grew small in the dark and distance, may be the one true thing Tom Horn said tonight.

  Billy Sun

  There was no water in the cabin, other than the warm, stale fluid in Billy’s canteen. He took it sparingly as he waited and watched by the window. How many men am I up against, and when will they make their move?

  He got his answer at noon. A man he well knew, a small man with a long, thin face and white-blond hair, stepped out of the tree line with his arms raised above his head.

  “Billy!” he yelled, “Billy, don’t shoot! It’s me, Cal.”

  Billy was stunned. Was Cal a captive, like Kinch, or was it something else? “State your business,” Billy shouted, careful not to show himself in the open window.

  “These men are keeping me prisoner,” Cal said. “They want me to deliver a message. Can I come up?”

  Billy did not respond, trying to make sense of what was going on. A nagging thought stirred in the depths of his mind. What was it? A warning? A memory? He tried to bring it forward.

  “Billy, they’ll kill me if you say no. They got no use for me otherwise.” Cal looked over his shoulder toward the trees where two or three men were barely visible. One was the stranger Billy had shot at earlier; the others he could not make out.

  “Don’t let them kill me, Billy!” Cal’s voice broke.

  “All right,” Billy shouted. “Come on, but come unarmed.”

  Cal’s body sagged with relief as he lowered his arms and started climbing the hill. The melting snow made the slope slippery, and twice he fell. Billy kept his eyes moving from Cal to the barn. He hadn’t seen any motion from that direction since the urine stream, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t there.

  Cal was within fifty feet of the cabin when Kinch burst out of the tree line, running full out and yelling at the top of his lungs. “No, Billy, no! He’s with them—he’s got—” Shots rang out and Kinch fell like a stone, facedown in the snow. At the same moment, Cal dropped to a crouch and struggled to pull a six-shooter from his belt. Billy fired a shot at his feet and Cal froze.

  “Put the gun down, Cal,” Billy said. Cal did as he was told.

  “Who are those men? What’s this about?”

  An ugly smile, one Billy had not seen before, twisted Cal’s features. “You know who they are,” he said. “Faucett’s men. He means to kill you, you and all the range trash you ride with. Nate’s dead, by the way. I finished him off myself, after my father was done with him.”

  Poor Nate. Billy could only imagine the shock he must have felt when Cal attacked him. “And you’re with Faucett?” he yelled. “Why? What’s in it for you?”

  “Money, that’s in it for me. Money buys freedom from my father, from Wyoming, from this godforsaken, punishing country. This was never the life I wanted, but no one ever asked me. No one ever gave a damn about what I wanted!”

  The barn door swung open and Frank Canton jumped out into the bright sunlight, his carbine at his shoulder, and fired. His shot was wide, striking the side of the cabin. As Billy returned Canton’s fire, Cal dove for his gun, raising it and shooting in one motion. He was not a practiced gunman, and his bullet hit the window frame above Billy’s head, driving a sliver of wood into the skin just below Billy’s left eye. Still, he got a shot off. Cal clutched his stomach, dropped to his knees in the snow, and pitched over onto his side, doubled in pain. He rolled, moaning, on the ground between Canton, who had retreated to the cover of the barn, and Billy. He raised his head in Billy’s direction. “Finish me, Billy,” he said. “Please!”

  Neither Billy nor Canton responded. Cal continued to whimper and cry, twisting on the wet, muddy ground. He called out again. “Billy, please. Just do it!”

  No matter what he had become, Cal had once been a small, lonely boy with a shy smile. Billy had taught Cal how to ride and groom a horse, how to make coffee over an open fire, how to skin a rabbit. In many ways, Billy thought, Cal had never had a chance. From the womb, his sister had dominated every aspect of his life. If his mother had lived, maybe he would have known some love and tenderness, but as it was he had been denied that.

  He would expose himself to Canton’s fire, but Billy owed Cal at least this. He took a deep breath, then moved to the window and aimed carefully at Cal’s head. His Winchester barked once, and the boy’s misery was over.

  Canton and the others opened up on the cabin, pouring lead through the window and splintering the walls and the door. One bullet took Billy’s hat off, but otherwise he was lucky. He fired back from alternating positions around the cabin, hoping to delude his attackers into thinking they were fighting more than one man, though he knew there was little chance of that. Kinch would have told them how many were in the cabin.

  During lulls in the shooting, Billy sat on the floor by the cold fireplace, writing in his notebook.

  Boys,

  It’s about three o’clock and I’m the only one left. Faucett’s men and Frank Canton have done for Hi Kinch, Nestor Lopez, and Pat Comstock, and they’ll probably put me through before the day is out.

  They are splitting wood down by the creek and I see smoke. Probably they aim to fire the house tonight and I will have a job of stopping them. They can come at me from the back as the wall is blind with no window. If they burn me out I’ll have to run for it. My only hope is that Russell Burnell and the boys get here first.

  He wet the lead of
his pencil on his tongue, then continued.

  Doc Dixon’s boy Cal was with Faucett’s men and he is dead. He killed Nate back at Doc’s house. Why I don’t know. Cal took that to the grave with him.

  Billy stared at the cold ashes. More than anything else, he wanted to write of his love for Odalie and to tell her good-bye; he wanted to tell the world she was a woman of heart and courage and not what they thought she was, for he knew the people of Johnson County did not hold her in high regard. But he could not speak of these things because the love of an Indian would not lift her in their eyes.

  Well, good-bye, boys. If I never see you again, I hope you will remember Billy Sun as your friend. There was a woman I loved from the first time I saw her and I love her still. She might someday see letter, and if she does, she will know.

  He tore the sheet from the notebook, folded it, and put it in his shirt pocket.

  The hours passed and it grew dark. Billy ate a piece of elk jerky and washed it down with the last of his water. He stood by the window, watching the fire burning by the creek. They would come soon. He patted the paper in his shirt pocket and sent a prayer to his protector in the spirit world behind this one. Please let her see it.

  Billy heard a dull thud as something landed on the wood-shingled roof. It was starting. At first there were just a few tongues of flame, but they grew quickly, licking upward. Soon the entire roof was engulfed, and the fire spread fast, descending the walls. The heat and smoke were suffocating. Billy crouched on the floor, catching gulps of clean air where and when he could. Occasionally the thick smoke would part and he could glimpse his attackers, creeping up the hill with their long guns before them.

  The killers expected him to make his run through the door, but Billy had other plans. The north wall, opposite the door, had burned first and most fully; it was partially collapsed. The roof would fall in any second. Billy’s only chance, though a skeletally thin one, was to dash through the diminishing sheet of fire, like a finger through a candle flame, and make for the dry ravine north of the cabin.