The Poacher's Daughter

by Michael Zimmer

  The sun was just rising as they exited the mountains, coming into a stretch of rolling hills dotted with scrubby pines and crumbling sandstone bluffs. The Musselshell lay no more than a few hours ahead now. With daylight, Shorty called a halt, then rode to the top of a nearby ridge for a look-see. Wiley was nowhere to be found, and Rose assumed he’d dropped out to watch their back trail. While the horses rested, Garcia eased his mount over to where Rose and Jimmy were waiting.

  “Twenty-three head,” Garcia remarked casually. “Four horses we lost last night.”

  “Four?” Jimmy echoed. “Where’d they go?”

  They’d followed a cañon most of the way down, and Rose hadn’t seen any place to lose a horse, but Garcia only laughed and reined into the herd. Shorty returned a few minutes later and swung down. He looked annoyed when he saw Rose and Jimmy listlessly sitting their trail-worn mounts to one side. Garcia, Rose suddenly noticed, had switched his saddle to a fresh horse while waiting for Shorty’s return, but she’d been too sleepy to think of it. Seeing Shorty tugging at his latigo embarrassed her, and she quickly dismounted. Jimmy also swung down and started to unsaddle his horse.

  “We should’ve had this done already, Jimmy,” she said. “If them Indians had jumped us, we’d’ve been a-straddle tuckered-out bronc’s, while all the fresh horses ran away from us.”

  Jimmy gave her an ugly look. “I wish you’d quit hanging on me all the time. We ain’t friends.”

  Rose paused with her arm under the Mother Hubbard’s frame. “Sure we are,” she said, taken aback. “Don’t you remember me. Rose Ames, from the Gallatin Valley. Our daddies ….”

  “I know who you are,” he replied curtly. “I just don’t want to talk to you, all right?”

  “No,” Rose said stubbornly, but before she could pursue it, Shorty walked past with his lariat.

  “Saddle up, Rose. I saw dust not three miles back.”

  “Dang it, Shorty, quit bossin’ me around like I was some weak-bladdered pup.”

  “Then quit yapping like one,” he tossed over his shoulder.

  Lacking a lariat, Rose had to settle for Albert to replace the buckskin she’d ridden all night. She led the roan out of the herd by his forelock and quickly cinched the Mother Hubbard in place. Five minutes later, they were mounted and on the move, arriving at a horseshoe bend of the Musselshell by midmorning. The land inside the broad, flat curve of the river was knee-deep in grass, the sandy banks lined with trees. By now the horses had been without drink since sundown the night before, and they made a beeline for the river.

  Rose guided Albert upstream, to a spot above the rest of the cavvy and the mud it churned up. There she knelt at an ankle-deep eddy to cup up handfuls of cool, clear water. After slaking their thirst, the drovers rode along the riverside of the herd and pushed it back into the tall grass of the bend.

  “Let ’em eat,” Shorty instructed Rose and Jimmy, “then let them have some more water if they want it. Just don’t let ’em drink too much. We may have to bust out of here at a run. Me ’n’ Garcia’ll ride back a ways, see if we can find Wiley.” He snaked his rifle from its scabbard and laid it across his saddle. Garcia rode up with a new-looking Winchester butted to his thigh.

  “We go now, huh?” Garcia said.

  “Let’s ride,” Shorty agreed. He reined his horse around, and within minutes the two men were out of sight.

  Jimmy walked his mount to the far side of the bend and swung down in the shade of a cottonwood tree, keeping his old, bronze-framed Henry rifle with him. Rose debated going over to talk to him, then decided against it. She was tired and feeling put out herself, and figured whatever was bothering Jimmy could wait.

  She dismounted but hung onto her reins. Nearby, the Musselshell purred like a contented kitten, and the wind soughed in the trees. Birds chirped and locusts hummed, and the warming rays of the sun soothed her aches after nearly twenty-four hours in the saddle. She might have dozed a little. She didn’t think she had, but she didn’t know how else to explain the Indian who seemed to materialize out of nowhere about eighty yards away, leveling a rifle at Jimmy, who sat with his chin tucked against his chest, his hat tipped forward.

  The Indian was near the top of the ridge that sloped up just south of the horseshoe bend, partially hidden in the sage. He looked young, and had thick black braids that hung forward over his shoulders. A bandoleer of cartridges and what might have been a coiled lariat criss-crossed his chest.

  Rose tried to shout a warning, but she was so startled by the Indian’s appearance that the words wouldn’t come. It seemed an eternity that she sat there with her mouth agape, although it couldn’t have been more than a second or two. Then a flurry of gunfire erupted from far up the trail and her paralysis broke. Jumping to her feet, she yanked the Sharps from its too-short scabbard and brought it to her shoulder. The Indian hesitated, then swung his rifle toward her.

  “Oh Lordy,” Rose murmured, earring back the big side hammer.

  The Indian got his shot off first, the bullet plowing harmlessly into the dirt several feet in front of her. Then Rose touched the Sharps’ trigger and the big rifle roared like a grizzly. Through the powder smoke she saw the Indian flip backward out of sight, hidden by the sage.

  Jimmy jumped to his feet, clutching his rifle in both hands.

  “Indians!” Rose shouted, scrambling into her saddle. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the Sharps, and it took a moment before she recalled that she’d fired her only cartridge. She returned the rifle to its scabbard, then palmed the Smith & Wesson. Jimmy loped over, owl-eyed at the sound of gunfire drifting down the trail from the south.

  “What is it?” he demanded in a voice that was too loud. “What’d you shoot at?”

  “A danged Indian is what I shot at,” she said, her heart racing. “He was about to take your head off with a needle-gun, Jimmy.”

  “Where?”

  She nodded toward the ridge. “Over yonder.”

  Jimmy looked, but there was nothing to see. “Are you sure? Maybe you dreamed it. I almost dozed off myself.”

  “He was there,” she said darkly, staring at the sage where she knew the body still lay.

  In the bend, the Crow ponies were milling nervously, watching to the south. Then the rattle of gunfire abruptly ceased, and Rose licked her lips uneasily. “That don’t sound good,” she remarked. After nearly twenty minutes of straining to hear more, she eased back in her saddle. “What do you think?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “Dang it, what are you so cantankerous about?”

  He gave her a withering look. “You ever …?” He let whatever he was going to say die. “Just drop it.” He looked back up the trail, then straightened his shoulders with relief. “Here they come.”

  Shorty was in the lead, his head swiveling back and forth as he surveyed the ridge lines. Garcia came next on a limping horse, while Wiley brought up the rear.

  “What happened?” Shorty asked, drawing rein. “We heard a shot.” He was looking at Rose, but it was Jimmy who answered.

  “She says she saw an Indian, but I think she just dreamed it.”

  Shorty never took his eyes off of hers. “Where?”

  Rose pointed out the spot with her chin. “In that patch of sage. I figure he’s still there. I hit him center.”

  “What happened up the trail?” Jimmy asked, hogging in. “It sounded like a real battle.”

  “It was,” Wiley gloated. “As pretty a fight as any ye’d ever want to see. Custer hisself couldn’t’ve done any better.”

  “Probably not,” Rose replied tartly. “Else he’d still be alive, and a lot of good boys with him.”

  Laughing, Wiley said: “Well, at least ye kept the horses from runnin’ off, and killed an imaginary Indian, to boot.”

  “Ride on over and take a look if you think he’s imaginary,
” Rose charged hotly. “I’d go myself, but I’ve already seen him.” She didn’t add that she wasn’t curious to see him again, to view the results of a 450-grain lead slug ripping through human flesh and bone.

  “I’ll go,” Shorty offered, but Wiley stopped him.

  “It doesn’t matter what Rosie saw or thought she saw. We cut that bunch up pretty bad, and they ain’t likely to jump us again, but there’s no point taking any chances. We’ve got a long way to go, so let’s just get these ponies movin’.”

  While Garcia switched horses, the rest of them started the herd downriver. As they left the horseshoe bend, Rose couldn’t help a backward glance. In the sage where the Indian had stood she spotted a flash of black and white, then heard the raucous call of a magpie, scavengers already homing in on a meal.

  Turning away, she said in a quavery voice: “This ain’t the way it was supposed to be, Albert. I reckon I made a mistake ridin’ along with this bloodthirsty bunch, and drug you in with me. Likely we’ll both end up dead before it’s over, just more fodder for the magpies.”

  Chapter

  3

  Wiley related the details of the fight to Rose and Jimmy at noon, while Shorty watched the herd. According to Wiley, he, Shorty, and Garcia had attempted to set a trap for the pursuing Indians, but the Crows spotted them before it could be sprung and fled into the hills. The horse thieves followed, and soon the Crows turned and began a mounted attack that ranged back and forth across the side of a small hill.

  Wiley counted eight braves in the Crow party, all well-armed and crack shots by his reckoning. Finally Garcia knocked a warrior off his pony and the Indians pulled back, taking the wounded brave with them. Although Wiley claimed numerous hair’s-breadth escapes for the White Eyes, only the one Crow had been wounded. Garcia’s horse hadn’t been shot, as Rose at first suspected, but had pulled a muscle jumping a shallow coulée.

  Wiley’s enthusiasm as he relived the battle troubled Rose. It made her realize how much she’d come to depend upon Shorty’s influence within the group, and how badly she’d miscalculated Wiley’s dependability. Worse than Wiley, though, was Garcia. Yesterday he’d barely acknowledged her. Today his gaze seemed to follow her everywhere, with a boldness she understood all too well.

  In her blanket that night, the image of the Indian she’d shot returned. With something of a start, she realized he hadn’t been a Crow. He hadn’t worn his hair the Crow way, and his clothing had been wrong, too—at least what she’d seen of it. A Blackfoot, she decided, or an Assiniboine, off by his lonesome and thinking he’d stumbled onto a trove of horses, with a woman thrown in for fun and only a dozing youth in his way. What a surprise it must have been for him, Rose thought, and what a shock for her. She’d never killed anyone before, and was distressed to discover how easily it had been accomplished, how simple it was to take a life, then just ride away. There should have been more to it, she fretted; with a human life involved, a human’s soul set free to drift, there should have been more.

  They left the Musselshell the next day and struck out northwest, on a line with some badlands that bordered the Missouri River. The short tan grass crackled beneath the hoofs of their horses, and in the blazing sun the scrubby junipers looked more black than green. There was no trail that Rose could discern, but Wiley led them with conspicuous confidence, riding up front with his chest out like a strutting game cock.

  It was nearly sunset when they came to a bench overlooking a small creek. Two-Hats’s trading post sat on the opposite bank, under a cliff. Maybe half a mile to the north, Rose could make out a stretch of the Missouri through a gap in the hills.

  While Garcia and Jimmy held the cavvy out of sight, Rose, Shorty, and Wiley drew up on the rim of the bench. Rose pulled down her bandanna and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “I hope Two-Hats has got something cool to drink,” she said thickly. “My tongue keeps stickin’ to the roof of my mouth.”

  “We’ll save ye a sip,” Wiley promised, “but right now I need ye to stay put. Me ’n’ Shorty’ll mosey on down for a look-see. If something goes wrong, get the horses outta here quick. Keep ’em movin’ until me or Shorty catches up.”

  A frown creased Rose’s brow. “You expectin’ trouble, Wiley?”

  “Ye never know, darlin’, ye never know. I’ve not dealt with this jasper before. For all I know he could be a marshal, or a Regulator.”

  “Or a horse thief,” she commented dryly.

  Laughing, Wiley said: “Horse thieves don’t worry me, but government agents and Regulators can sour a man’s milk mighty fast.” He lifted his reins. “Keep ye eyes peeled, now.”

  “Just see you don’t get to palaverin’ and forget about us wranglers!” she called as the two men began their descent.

  Rose narrowed her eyes against the glare of the setting sun. The trading post looked like a slovenly affair, to her thinking. There was a single log building with a gullied sod roof, and an empty corral to the north. The cabin’s front door was thrown open as if expecting a breeze for company, and there was a bench under the lone window but no glass in the dark, square opening, or smoke from the chimney. Several ribby hounds lolled in the shade nearby, but only a couple raised their heads as Wiley and Shorty approached.

  It was a lonely, desolate place, and not rightly a trading post at all, but a kind of watering hole and overnight stop along the vaguely defined Outlaw Trail that ran south from Canada all the way through Montana and Wyoming, before peeling off a corner of Colorado and plunging into the cañon lands of southern Utah. Having lived along a branch of the trail for some years, Rose had often heard of Two-Hats, but this was her first view of the place.

  Her gaze kept wandering back to the corral. For some reason the vacant enclosure nagged at her. With the cabin’s door and window hanging open, it gave the place an eerie, unfriendly feel. It called to mind the fear and uncertainty she’d experienced last summer, during the Stranglers’ sweeping raid.

  To this day, neither Rose nor any of her acquaintances knew the identities of the men involved in the hangings, but there was little doubt that they’d had some powerful backing. Some even went so far as to suggest old Granville Stuart himself, one of Montana’s earliest pioneers and a leader in the cattle trade, had led the raid personally, riding a big white horse with a pair of hangman’s ropes tied off either side of his pommel. It was possible, Rose thought. Granville Stuart was a tough old bird.

  Vigilante style, the Stranglers had swept across southeastern Montana like a bloody scythe, and when they vanished a few weeks later, more than sixty men had either been strung up or shot.

  The Eastern newspapers had had a field day condemning the Stranglers’ blatant disregard of due process, as well as their attacks upon the workingman. Collaboration had been implied as high as the territorial governor’s office, and the story—widely believed—was that not everyone dispatched by the Stranglers had been rustlers. More than a few, it was rumored, had been guilty of nothing more sinister than holding title to some choice piece of rangeland coveted by a wealthy cattle baron.

  Yet the Stranglers had their defenders, too, men who considered the determination of the hangmen to rid the region of its outlaw elements essential to the salvation of the cattle industry. These champions of the noose, many of whom were long-time residents of the frontier, pointed out that the Stranglers had accomplished only what the law had failed to do, and that the men they’d hung had been confirmed thieves and hardcases.

  Rose considered both sides of the issue to be filled with about as much hot air as solid substance. All she knew for sure was that the Stranglers had started their raid among the breaks of the Missouri River, concentrating on the hide-outs and rendezvous sites within the badlands between the mouths of the Judith and Musselshell Rivers. Then they’d come south to employ a private train at Billings, with slatted cars for the horses and coaches furnished with bourbon and champagne for the men. The train had
traveled east from Billings, paralleling the Yellowstone and making frequent stops along the way to complete another of its grisly tasks.

  The thought of that much power—to be able to rent a train incognito—had frightened Rose almost as much as the possibility of being hung. For weeks she’d slept in the trees along the creek behind the cabin, keeping her carbine with her constantly. But no one came, and in time she’d learned that a lot of the smaller outfits, some of the more isolated hide-outs and individuals like Wiley and Shorty, had escaped the Stranglers’ net.

  Although nothing had been heard of the Stranglers since their breakup last year, Rose knew their shadow lingered on the high plains. It made her wonder what Wiley and Shorty were thinking as they approached Two-Hats’s.

  The boys hauled up on the near side of the creek, and Wiley hailed the cabin. After a couple of minutes a figure appeared at the door, calling out a question that Wiley answered. Their words were indistinct to Rose, but apparently satisfying, for soon Wiley and Shorty were splashing their horses across the creek and riding up to the post.

  It seemed to Rose that she waited there a good long while. She passed the time by running her fingers through her hair, teasing out as many of the tangles as she could. From time to time she would glance behind her to where Jimmy and Garcia were grazing the herd about a quarter of a mile away. Garcia sat his mount off to one side, and although his face was hidden beneath the broad, curled brim of his sombrero, Rose knew he was watching her.

  Jimmy had dismounted and was sitting in the skimpy shade of his horse—even from here, Rose could tell he was half asleep.

  A cooling breeze began to stir when the sun went down. Rose pulled off her hat and turned her face to the stirring zephyrs, closing her eyes to savor the moment. When she opened them, the first thing she saw was a cloud of dust rising in the south. After a startled exclamation, she froze in indecision. Before she could make up her mind whether to ride down and warn the boys or get the cavvy started for the Musselshell, Shorty appeared at the trading post door and waved her in. Rose pointed south, toward the dust. Shorty looked but seemed indifferent. He waved again, making a broad gesture of it so that she knew he wanted her to bring the herd down, too. She glanced once more at the dust, at least a mile off and advancing slowly, then reined away.