The Poacher's Daughter

by Michael Zimmer

  “I reckon I’m just gettin’ jumpy,” she told her horse, a short-coupled Grulla Shorty had roped for her that morning. “I ought to’ve known better than be thinkin’ about Stranglers today.”

  It was a little dicey going down—the Crow ponies wanted to scatter on the steep slope—but they made it without mishap and bunched the herd on the east bank of the creek, where Shorty met them.

  “Wiley’s man is here,” Shorty informed them, “but he’s playing it close to his vest, trying to get the price down.”

  “Shoot, he ain’t even seen what he’s buyin’,” Rose said. “He ought at least to eyeball ’em before he starts dickerin’.”

  “He ain’t that kind of trader,” Shorty replied.

  “Here they come,” Jimmy said, nodding toward the post.

  Wiley was heading for his horse. A second man had followed him outside but was angling toward the herd on foot. He was tall and lean, dressed in a black broadcloth suit powdered with dust. His hat was black and flat-brimmed, and he wore his blond hair long, combed behind his ears and over his shoulders like an old-time plainsman—or a pistoleer.

  “Who is this jaybird?” Rose asked quietly. “I don’t much like the cut of his outfit.” She meant the arrogant way he carried himself, rather than his clothes.

  “His name’s Frank Caldwell, and you don’t have to like him,” Shorty said. “Hush, now. This deal ain’t done by a long chalk.”

  Caldwell paused on the far bank, paying more attention to Rose, Jimmy, and Garcia than he did the horses. Wiley rode up beside him, his face flushed as if he’d already been at a bottle.

  “Yonder they be,” Wiley said loudly, gesturing toward the herd with a reckless swing of his arm. “Twenty-three of the prettiest ponies this side o’ the Yellowstone.”

  Caldwell, though, was studying Garcia. “Hello, Billy,” he said.

  Garcia gave him a sullen look. “Do I know you, señor?” he replied pointedly.

  Caldwell’s expression went blank. “My mistake,” he said, then crossed the shallow creek to where he had a clear view of everyone. “That’s a pretty scrawny bunch, Collins. You should thank me for taking the whole lot, and not making you cull the scrubs.”

  “The hell!” Wiley snorted. “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between ’em. By God, ye said twenty dollars a head, Caldwell, and I’ll hold ye to that.”

  Smiling thinly, Caldwell brushed back the tails of his coat to reveal a brace of Colt revolvers. Rose swallowed hard at a lump that formed suddenly in her throat. Tension sparked among the horse thieves like static electricity frictioned off a fancy hotel carpet. Only Caldwell seemed unaffected. “My offer was four hundred dollars for a lot of no less than twenty head,” he said coolly. “You have twenty-three horses here. Four hundred is still a fair price.”

  Wiley’s knuckles were as white as tiny, round-headed ghosts where he gripped his reins. “I won’t let ye cheat me, Caldwell.”

  But Shorty was of a different notion. “Take the money, Wiley,” he urged, keeping his eyes on Caldwell.

  “God damn, he’s just one bleedin’ man, Shorty. Are we gonna let ’im rob us like we was a bunch of kids with candy?”

  “There’ll be other deals.”

  Caldwell mugged a smile. “Sure, Collins, I’m always on the look-out for good horseflesh. Maybe we can contract for another bunch before you boys pull out.”

  To Rose, Wiley looked like a boiler about to blow, but then the anger seemed to drain out of him. Flashing a conceding grin, he said: “What the hell, huh, Caldwell. Four hundred, then … in cash.”

  “In cash,” Caldwell agreed cheerfully. “I’ll count it out while you run those horses into the corral.”

  Wiley turned to Rose, Jimmy, and Garcia. “You heard him. Run ’em into yon corral, there. Me ’n’ Shorty’ll stay and help with the countin’.”

  Chapter

  4

  Garcia handled the gate while Rose and Jimmy drove the horses inside. As the gate swung shut, she heard the sound of hoofs from the south and remembered the dust she’d seen from the bench. Wiley, Shorty, and Frank Caldwell were still down by the creek, but they looked up when a band of horses came jogging around the nearest bend of the creek, kicking up a spray of water that sparkled like liquid light in the dusk. Caldwell shouted for Garcia to open the gate, and Rose and Jimmy spread out to help turn the herd into the corral with their own stock. Rose counted roughly thirty horses, driven by a trio of dusty wranglers.

  With over fifty head inside, the little pole corral seemed to bulge. Garcia latched the gate and two of the wranglers—mixed-bloods wearing a combination of Indian and white clothing—hitched their mounts to a corral rail, then trooped inside the trading post.

  The third wrangler was a loose-jointed white man who must have been pushing sixty. He was as stubbled and gnarled as an old cedar stump, and looked about as tough. He remained mounted, exchanging a long look with Garcia. Finally he leaned to one side and spat past the toe of his boot. When he straightened, he said: “Hello, Billy. I see they ain’t hung you yet.”

  “Is that my name?” Garcia asked in annoyance. It was considered rude to blurt out the name of a man you hadn’t seen in a while, not without giving him an opportunity to declare a new alias. That was especially important along the Outlaw Trail, where a fresh sobriquet might be all that stood between a man and the gallows. Yet that simple courtesy had been denied Garcia twice in the space of half an hour, and Rose could tell it was gnawing at him.

  The old man seemed unimpressed with Garcia’s ire, though, and with a snorting dismissal he said: “It makes no never mind to me, boy.”

  “Call me Garcia, old man, or Billy. Call me boy again, I’ll cut your balls off.”

  “That’ll be the day … boy.”

  Rose figured Garcia would go for his pistol then, but he didn’t. “Web, you are a hard-headed son-of-a-whore. I ought to shoot you for being so ignorant.”

  “That’ll be the day, too,” Web replied. He glanced toward the creek where Wiley and Shorty were dividing the money between them, then at Rose and Jimmy. “Damn, Billy-Boy, you’ve run onto hard luck, riding with an Irishman, an elf, a woman, and a kid.”

  “The hell with you,” Garcia replied, then heeled his mount closer, making any further conversation inaudible.

  Rose rode over to Jimmy’s side. “That Mexican worries me,” she confided. “I figured he’d pull his shooter, for sure. Instead, he turns around all chummy. What if he’s been spyin’ for Caldwell?”

  “Wiley and Shorty know what they’re doing.” Jimmy lifted his reins as if to ride away, but Rose put a hand on his arm, stopping him.

  “What’s the matter, Jimmy. We was friends once, remember?”

  He looked at her, then away. “Not as good as you and my daddy were, I guess.”

  She lowered her hand. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’d know better than me,” he flared loud enough to draw a glance from Garcia and Web.

  Tears filled Rose’s eyes; she blinked them away. “Yeah, I reckon I do, but it ain’t what you think. Not between me ’n’ your daddy, nor any of them Bozeman chuckleheads who … said things. They was all a pack of lies.”

  “You’re the liar. Everyone knows that. Why do you think we left the Gallatin Valley. Because we wanted to be closer to the Sioux?”

  “Aw, Jimmy, no!” But even as she protested, she knew it must be true. She remembered Jimmy’s ma, and the hateful way she’d looked at her every time Rose attempted a conversation. At fourteen, she’d been too young to know how to handle the rumors floating over the Gallatin Valley about her, or how to respond to the leers of men as she sat alone in her pap’s wagon while he ducked inside some saloon for a last drink before heading home. She hadn’t known then how it was for the daughter of an alcoholic, but she’d learned. God damn them, she’d learned.

&n
bsp; “It weren’t true, Jimmy,” she whispered. “None of it.”

  “Sure it was. Mama died less than a year after we moved. Died with the shame of what you and my daddy did, back there on the Gallatin.”

  Rose shook her head even as she recognized the futility of denial. After a while, gossip became its own truth. “They said a lot of mean things about me back then, mostly because of my pap and the way he was.”

  “The way he still is, from what I hear.”

  Her face tightened. “Yeah, I reckon so.”

  “I’ve hated you for years,” he said, his voice taut with anger. “I swore that someday I’d tell you that, make you see how you ruined my family. I’m glad now that I did, you … whore, you stinking, worthless ….” Tears streamed down his face, cutting muddy channels through the dust that clung to the downy fuzz on his cheeks. His throat worked a time or two more, as if he wanted to go on, then he wheeled his horse and spurred hard for the Missouri.

  Rose felt an unfamiliar coldness creep over her. It took all of her will to kick the memories away, to slam the door on that deep, painful shaft where so much of her early life resided. Shivering, she turned away. Wiley, Shorty, and Caldwell were returning from the creek, their transaction completed. Wiley walked beside Shorty, leading his horse, while Caldwell angled toward the trading post.

  Stopping beside the Grulla, Wiley said: “Where’d the kid take off to?”

  “He got a bug in his eye,” Rose answered dully. “I reckon he went down to the river to wash it out.”

  “Dumb little shit,” Wiley said. “’Twas a creek right behind him.” Then he glanced over his shoulder and bellowed: “Garcia, come get ye pay!”

  Shorty was watching Rose as if he’d already guessed there was more to her story than bugs, but he didn’t pry.

  “Forty dollars, huh?” Garcia said, coming over.

  “A month’s pay for a week’s work,” Wiley agreed. “That ain’t too bad, is it?”

  Garcia shrugged without taking his eyes off the greenbacks Wiley was dropping one at a time into his outstretched palm. When they were done, Garcia folded the bills and shoved them into his pocket. “We are finished then, no?”

  “Unless ye be interested in another job?”

  “I already got another job.”

  Wiley’s gaze hardened. “Partnerin’ with Caldwell, are ye?”

  Garcia gave him the same look a man might give a dung beetle, crawling across his boot, then walked away.

  “Cocky little bastard,” Wiley muttered.

  “We don’t need him,” Shorty said. “I never cottoned to him, and I don’t think Rose did, either.” He glanced up with an easy smile. “Unless I missed my guess.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt my feelin’s if I never saw him again,” she admitted.

  “Mine, neither,” Wiley agreed. He began thumbing bills from the pile in his hand. “Me ’n’ Shorty decided on twenty bucks for ye, Rosie. We figure that’s fair, no more’n ye did.”

  “You did real good, Rose,” Shorty quickly amended, “but you joined up late, and it wouldn’t be fair to the others to give you full pay.”

  Accepting the cash, Rose said: “That’s all right, Shorty. I’m satisfied.” She walked the Grulla to the corral and hitched it next to Shorty’s sorrel, then made her way to the cabin. Although it was her first visit, the place was so similar to every other trading post she’d ever been in, she barely paused at the door.

  A plank counter running down the center of the room served as a barrier between the merchandise stacked on wooden shelves against the rear wall and the dirt-floored trade area where customers bartered for the items they wanted. A squatty Indian with an ample belly and collar-length gray hair stood impassively behind the counter. He wore a Hudson’s Bay Company medallion from a leather thong around his neck, and pierced through the lobe of his right ear was a pair of twelve-inch long watch chains—sans timepieces or fobs—that served as earrings, the flat silver links draped over his shoulder like pet snakes.

  The two half-breeds who’d helped Web bring in the second herd were sitting at a table, wolfing down a greasy-looking stew. Caldwell and Web stood at the far end of the counter, where Caldwell was adding figures in a column on a piece of butcher’s paper. Garcia was also at the counter, about halfway between Caldwell and the dumpy Indian who, Rose figured, had to be Two-Hats. He was working on a cup of whiskey, but looked up when Rose walked in. His dark eyes followed her all the way to the counter.

  If Two-Hats was surprised to see a woman in man’s clothing sauntering up, he didn’t show it. Scanning the shelves behind him, Rose said: “You got cartridges for a Sharps Forty-Four-Ninety?”

  Two-Hats neither moved nor spoke, and after a moment Rose flushed and showed him the money Wiley had given her. Holding up two fingers, Two-Hats pulled a box of factory loads off a shelf and set it in front of her. Meeting the chunky Indian’s stare, Rose’s anger started to boil.

  “You’re charging me two dollars for a box of cartridges. That’s ten cents a gol-darned shell!”

  Garcia chuckled. “There are all kinds of thieves, no?” He tapped the side of his tin mug with a blunted finger. “One dollar he charges for this snake piss. I would cut his throat, except he keeps a twelve-gauge under the counter. Ain’t that right, chico?”

  Two-Hats’s expression remained unchanged, his gaze unyielding.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” Rose grated, then slid $4 across the counter. Silently Two-Hats placed another box of .44-90s beside the first.

  In the next ten minutes, Rose purchased cartridges for the Smith & Wesson and a used butcher knife in a plain leather sheath. The knife set her back $5 and had a split handle mended with copper wire. She also bought matches, a tin billy for meals, a cup, fork, and spoon, a pair of used socks, and a picket rope for Albert. Although in dire need of a better blanket and a heavy coat, she’d nearly lost her rifle three times since leaving the Yellowstone, and decided a scabbard large enough to accommodate the hefty Sharps might be a wiser investment. Counting out what remained of her cash, she shook her head woefully. “Looks like I ain’t gonna get no coat, for sure,” she said to Two-Hats. “Not unless you got one for under two bucks.”

  “Has blood on it,” Two-Hats replied, speaking for the first time.

  “How much?”

  “Two dollars.”

  “I mean how much blood, dang it?”

  At the far end of the counter, Caldwell chuckled. “Quite a bit, isn’t there, Two-Hats?” The Indian shrugged, and the smile vanished from Caldwell’s face. “That redskin’s stealing you blind, girl. Are you so dumb you can’t see he’s charging you double for everything?”

  “I know what he’s doin’,” Rose snapped, “but this ain’t Billings, and Herman Sutherland ain’t got a store nearby where I can get my stuff for a fair price. If he did, that’s where I’d be.”

  “Well, the competition’s limited, that’s true, but I still hate to see a pretty girl being cheated out of her hard-earned money. What would you say if I got Two-Hats to lower his prices. You’d do that for an old friend like me, wouldn’t you, Two-Hats?” What passed for a smile returned to Caldwell’s lips, but Rose saw the threat of violence in the gunman’s eyes. Two-Hats must’ve seen it, too. He looked at Rose like he wanted to strangle her, but could only nod in compliance.

  “Of course, I’d want something in return,” Caldwell added.

  “What’s that?” Rose asked, thinking of Albert and how she’d be damned if she let Caldwell have him—not for all the rifle cartridges in Montana. Then Web laughed and Garcia guffawed; even the two half-breeds grinned. Rose’s face turned hot as a banked fire. “You ain’t no gentleman,” she said to Caldwell, “and I’d rather sleep with a pig in a pig sty than share the fanciest bed in Billings with you.”

  “Well, there’s no accounting for taste,” Caldwell replied blandly, “although I might
have expected different from a woman who wears trousers and rides her horse clothespin style.”

  Teeth grinding, Rose gathered her purchases and walked outside. Laughter from everyone except Two-Hats followed her through the door.

  Coming from the corral, Wiley flashed a grin. “Where ye headin’, darlin’?” he asked in that old, easy-going manner she remembered from earlier days.

  “Get outta my way, Wiley,” she answered testily. “I ain’t in no mood to bandy words with you.” She stalked to the Grulla, leaving Wiley standing outside the trading post with a startled expression on his face.

  After stowing her merchandise on the horse, she led it over to where Shorty had picketed his sorrel and rigged it out the same way. Then she lugged her gear to the fire Shorty had kindled beside the creek. He looked up as she approached, noting her cloudy mood.

  “Two-Hats give you a skinning, did he?”

  “Scalped me to my ears is more like it.” She spiraled down opposite him, sitting cross-legged with her chin cupped in her hand.

  “Some food in your belly will brighten your outlook,” Shorty promised. “Bacon’ll be ready in another minute.”

  “You don’t have to feed me, Shorty. I ain’t workin’ for you boys no more.”

  “Shoo, how many times have you fed us. I bet you could eat free in this territory for ten years, just on the hospitality you’ve shown others.”

  She looked up with a grateful smile. “Thanks, Shorty.”

  He handed her an empty cup. “We still don’t have any coffee, but that crick water’s free, and it ain’t too alky. I guess Two-Hats ain’t figured out a way to charge for it yet.”