The Poacher's Daughter

by Michael Zimmer

  She halted beside the chuck wagon, but the cook didn’t even look up until she called a greeting. Grudgingly he ventured out from beneath the shade of a canvas fly stretched over the long tailgate that served as his table. Rose asked for Frakes and the cook allowed he was probably at the branding fire, keeping tally on his stock. Rose thanked him and was about to rein away when he made a statement that brought her up short.

  “I’m Miser,” he said, then paused expectantly. When she didn’t immediately reply, he got an angry look on his face and retreated into the shade of the fly.

  Although puzzled by the exchange, Rose was too nervous about her impending conversation with Frakes to worry it. She guided Albert to where the dust looked thickest. There she found a cowboy on a chunky bay dragging a calf to the fire. The calf’s mother, a lanky black and white animal with traces of Texas in her widespread horns, was nervously trotting back and forth nearby. A couple of calf-throwers grabbed the young one and tossed it on its side. One of them pinned the calf’s head to the ground, the other stretched its upper rear leg all the way back. The mounted cowboy called—“Three-Bar-Clover!”—and a grizzled man with an air of authority walked over with the appropriate branding iron. Back at the fire, a dozen irons from three or four different outfits were heating in the coals.

  An elderly man in a nearly new hat spied Rose and came over. He had a white handlebar mustache and a long white goatee, and carried a dirt-smudged tally book in one gloved hand. The muscles across the back of Rose’s neck tightened when she recognized Maxwell Frakes.

  “Yes, ma’am?” Frakes said in an unexpectedly congenial tone.

  “Mister Frakes, my name is Rose Edwards. It used to be Rose Ames. I knew you when you lived up on the Gallatin.”

  Frakes didn’t even bat an eye. “Yes, how may I help you?”

  “I … ah … it’s about your son Jimmy.”

  “What about James?”

  “Look, can we get away from all this dust and noise. I got some news I ain’t lookin’ forward to sharin’.”

  “Would that message be that James was murdered on the Musselshell by one of Frank Caldwell’s accomplices?” the old man asked.

  “You’ve heard!”

  “I suspect most people have by now. Was that your message?”

  Rose nodded. “Uhn-huh.”

  “Then if you won’t consider it rude, I should get back to my duties. Feel free to stop by the chuck wagon for a meal. Tell the cook I said it was all right.”

  But Rose couldn’t let it go that easily. “Don’t you care?”

  With the kindly countenance of an indulging grandparent, Frakes said: “There’s plenty of food, Missus Edwards. We won’t run short. Help yourself to all you want.”

  “I meant Jimmy. He was your son.”

  “Of course. Yes, Missus Edwards, I do care. Very much. Not about his death, but about how he died, and in whose company. But James was his own man, and responsibility for his actions, beginning on the day he left home, fell exactly where it should. Yes, I regret his death, but I regret the circumstances surrounding it even more. He brought shame to the good name of Frakes. The Lord might forgive him for that. I won’t.”

  “Do you know he blamed me for your leavin’ the Gallatin?”

  For the first time there was a noticeable change in Maxwell Frakes’s expression. The pasted-on smile faded and his brows drew down like gun sights. “I’ll not allow you back into my life, Missus Edwards. What passed between us on the Gallatin is behind us. I would suggest you forget those days.”

  “Wha- … what passed between us?” Rose echoed incredulously. “What in blue blazes are you talkin’ about?”

  “Let sleeping dogs lie, Rose.”

  “You god-damn’ old goat,” she said in sudden comprehension. “You’re the one who started that rumor, ain’t you?”

  “Are you finished?”

  She straightened, gathering her reins. “I ought to shoot you, not for what you said about me, but for what you did to Jimmy.”

  “I’ve warned you for the last time,” Frakes replied stiffly. “I’ll not suffer this abuse any longer.”

  “You killed him, Mister Frakes. Just as sure as you squeezed them triggers yourself.”

  Frakes seemed to pull himself up even straighter. “You are hardly in a position to lecture anyone, Missus Edwards. Now, I’ll ask you to leave a final time. I suggest you do it, with haste.”

  “You go to hell, you sorry old goat bastard,” Rose said thickly, pulling her horse around. She slapped Albert’s hips with the ends of her reins, racing for the tree-lined creek and the trail that would take her north again. Her eyes blurred from the dust and the wind, tearing up so she could hardly see. It was a long time before they cleared up completely.

  She picked up the Rosebud road above Sheridan and stopped that night at a freighter’s campground along the Tongue, where she shared a cup of coffee with the muleskinner she’d met on the Yellowstone several days before. It was the muleskinner who told her about the resumption of hangings throughout the Yellowstone Basin, and of the deaths of some of Montana’s more notorious horse thieves, including Wiley Collins and Shorty Tibbs.

  • • • • •

  It was funny how a person’s priorities could change so abruptly, Rose thought two days later, guiding Albert down the rutted Fort Custer trail to the Yellowstone River. Below her, the lights of Junction City beckoned. That evening back on the Tongue, when the muleskinner told her about the renewed activities of the Stranglers, Rose hadn’t even paused for details. She’d dumped her coffee on the ground, shoved the cup into her saddlebags, and ten minutes later was riding north toward the heart of the Crow Indian Reservation, that sprawling, grass-rich reserve that bordered the Cheyenne Reservation on the west. Only a few days earlier she’d fretted over just being close to Indian country—that concern didn’t even enter her thoughts now.

  She hadn’t experienced any trouble, and ran into only one Indian, that on the day after leaving the freighter’s camp. She’d stopped to water Albert at a spring running into the Little Bighorn, then bellied down to slake her own thirst. When she looked up, there he was, not forty yards away and proud as a peacock aboard a handsome black and white pinto rigged with a McClellan saddle and a jaw-line bridle of woven horse hair. He wore moccasins, baggy wool trousers, and an Army vest decorated over each shoulder with quilled epaulets. His hair was long, braided with red trade cloth, and included the familiar high pompadour of a Crow warrior. He carried a bow and a quiver of arrows across his back, and an ivory-handled revolver in a holster at his waist.

  Such a blending of cultures was no surprise to Rose, who’d cut her teeth on Montana’s quirky frontier. Standing, she wiped her lips with the back of her wrist. The Indian watched stoically for a moment, then deliberately lifted his gaze to the empty miles surrounding them. A slow, haughty smile touched the corners of the brave’s mouth, at which point Rose said the hell with this and drew her Smith & Wesson, informing the Indian that she was in no mood to tolerate male foolishness, be that male red, white, or some shade in between. Then she cocked the revolver for punctuation.

  Although it was unclear to her whether or not the Crow understood English, the Smith &Wesson effectively transcended any barrier of the tongue. He yanked his pony around and rode out of there at a fine gallop, the pinto’s hoofs kicking up little spurts of dust from the green grass.

  She passed the Custer Battlefield site early the next morning, but didn’t ride up to inspect the gray stone obelisk towering impressively against the sky, shielded from vandals and name-carving, souvenir-chipping curiosity seekers by a tall iron fence. The tenth anniversary of the 7th’s inglorious defeat was only a few weeks away now, and she’d heard there were plans for a memorial service, complete with visiting dignitaries and returning veterans, although there were no signs of preparation for it as yet.

  Rose tr
ied not to look at the weathered bones still visible in the grass. That there were a few left was something of a shock. She would have expected them to be gone by now, either buried or dragged off to some distant coulée by the military. She knew they were just the skeletal remains of horses—the graves of fallen troopers were clearly marked by wooden stakes dotting the slopes above her—but it was still disconcerting. It gave her an odd, spooky feeling to ride that winding trail below Custer Hill, a sense of unresolved presence that made her scalp crawl and the hairs along her arms stand up. Even Albert seemed disturbed, and Rose was glad to leave the place behind. She thought she understood now why the Crows never camped there.

  Mindful of her status as a trespasser on the reservation, Rose rode in a wide arc around the Crow Agency headquarters and Fort Custer, near the forks of the Bighorn and Little Bighorn Rivers. Shortly after dusk she guided her weary mount down the long slope of the Fort Custer Road to the Junction City ferry.

  Junction City was a dying town, and everyone knew it. Built near the sites of old Fort Pease and, later, the supply dump known as Terry’s Landing, it sat at the head of steamboat navigation on the Yellowstone, a jumping-off point for settlements both military and civilian to the west, south, and north. But when the Northern Pacific Railroad laid its tracks across the less broken country south of the river, on the Crow Reservation that was off limits to white settlement, it had sealed the town’s fate as effectively as a cholera outbreak.

  Nowadays Junction City was slowly strangling between the more prosperous communities of Miles City to the east and Billings on the west, while the Yellowstone itself carved huge chunks of land from the banks below the town each spring. Soon, the local wags claimed every time a few more feet of the town peeled off into the river, the city’s limits would stretch all the way from the Bighorn River to the mouth of the Yellowstone, some two hundred miles away.

  Junction City had a reputation as a tough town. It was a favored watering hole along the Outlaw Trail, which wasn’t rightly a trail at all, but a general route with numerous branches—including the one that ran past Rose’s cabin to the west—chosen for characteristics favorable to the rapid advancement of stolen livestock and men on the dodge. As a result, the town attracted a rougher element than most, and it was a rare individual who walked its streets unarmed. Perhaps it was for that reason that Junction City was considered a relatively safe haven on the frontier. As far as Rose knew, no one had ever been robbed or murdered in Junction City, which was a lot more than could be said for Miles City and Billings.

  Reining up in front of Hannahman’s Saloon, Rose dismounted awkwardly, hanging onto the saddle horn until she could put her full weight on her legs. She was sore all over and so tired her eyes burned. She’d lost track of the number of days she’d spent in the saddle since leaving Miles City. Less than a week, she supposed, but it seemed longer, having covered so much territory. Walking up beside Albert’s head, she ran a hand over his clipped roach, scratching the dusty hair beneath his headstall.

  “I reckon you’ve earned some time off,” she told the gelding affectionately. “Just let me check out how things is standing hereabouts, and, if it looks all right, we’ll bunk in for a few days.”

  Albert twisted his head sideways, allowing her better access to his itchy hide.

  “You’re a dang’ ol’ con pony is what you are,” she accused, scratching harder. Then she patted the roan’s neck and climbed the steps to the saloon.

  Hannahman’s was similar to most of the drinking establishments Rose was familiar with. The lighting was poor, the furnishings few but sturdy, the odor strong yet not unpleasant. There was a bar with a brass foot rail, spittoons scattered around the room like metallic stumps, and a backbar that glittered with an assortment of whiskey bottles. Kegs of beer under the counter constituted the bulk of the saloon’s business, but there was bottled beer, too—Coors from Colorado; Falk’s & Schlitz’s out of Milwaukee; and Bullards, freighted in from Miles City. There was a faro table up front and chuck-a-luck in the rear, but no women. Some saloons, like the Silver Star, employed either dance hostesses or hookers, but most didn’t. Mostly, or so Rose had been told by those who knew, a Western saloon bore more resemblance to a quiet East Coast tavern than it did the orgy-infested houses of Kansas cow town fame, although there were exceptions to that rule, even in Montana. Rose considered it an indisputable fact that wherever there were men and money, there were bound to be hookers.

  She studied the crowd carefully for anyone who might be a Regulator, but it appeared a fairly common lot. There were a few cowboys who hadn’t been hired for the roundups, some muleskinners who probably freighted for the Fort Custer sutler or the agency, plus the usual array of drifters. She didn’t see anyone who looked like a bona-fide range detective, although she knew that could be a dangerous assumption.

  She was about to push inside when her gaze was arrested by a slim figure in striped pants and a red leather vest, standing at the bar. Her fingers tightened on the top of the swinging door, and for a moment she thought she might faint, so great was her relief. Then she slipped inside and moved up next to him, saying: “Howdy, Dave?”

  Dirty-Nosed Dave Merritt turned a pair of bloodshot, green eyes on her. “Huh?” he said.

  “Dang!” Rose swayed back from the stench of his breath. “What have you been eatin’, skunk cabbage with alkaline sauce?”

  “He’s drunk,” the bartender said, coming over.

  “Lew!” Rose exclaimed.

  “Hello, Rose.” There was a welcoming smile on the bartender’s face. “How have you been?”

  “Fit enough, I reckon. Keepin’ my hinder outta trouble as much as possible.” She felt a sudden giddy happiness that not everyone she knew had been strung up or shot by the Stranglers. Dirty-Nosed Dave Merritt and Lew Parker were both old hands on the frontier, men Rose had known for years. “It looks like you’re doing the same,” she added.

  “Sometimes a fella needs to just set a spell,” Lew confided. “Figures I’d pick a town like Junction. The Yellowstone must’ve washed away another thirty feet of bank this spring.”

  “At least you’re alive.” Rose lowered her voice confidentially. “I heard about Wiley and Shorty and them.” She gave Dirty-Nosed Dave a quick glance. “I reckon ol’ Davey here must’ve hid out. I’d heard they got him, too.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lew asked, puzzled.

  “The Stranglers. Ain’t you heard?”

  “I guess not, though I know for a fact Wiley and Shorty ain’t been hung. Not unless it was within the last hour. I saw both of them this afternoon, shooting tin cans down by the river.”

  Rose licked her lips. “Shorty Tibbs?” she repeated hesitantly. “You saw Shorty, just today?”

  “Sure. Him and Wiley have been hanging out at Levi Wilson’s digs for a couple of weeks now, playing poker. You know Levi, don’t you?”

  “Levi. He ain’t been hung, either?” She felt thoroughly confused now.

  Frowning, Lew said: “Who have you been talking to?”

  “Ben Bradley, that freighter who runs an independent line outta Miles City.”

  “That old liar!” Lew laughed, but then quickly sobered. “You had me going, Rose. I’d heard there’d been some more hangings recently, but nobody seems to know any of the particulars. But Bradley … hell, that ol’ boy couldn’t get a story straight if it was written down for him on a piece of paper.”

  Rose hooked her elbows on the bar. “That dang’ windbag. I been worried half sick the last couple days. About wore Albert to a frazzle gettin’ up here from Sheridan. I don’t know why. I reckon I had some fool notion of havin’ to bury you-all.” She looked at Lew, expecting a chuckle. Instead she saw an unexpected warmth. “Now, don’t go gettin’ doe-eyed on me,” she warned. “I wasn’t gonna plant you deep, just enough to keep the smell down.”

  “But you still would’ve done i
t. I can see you now, riding up and down the Yellowstone Valley with a shovel and a bunch of crosses strapped to the back of that old roan horse of yours. You’re a good woman, Rose, and if I wasn’t so fiddle-footed ….” Looking suddenly embarrassed, he pushed away from the bar. “What’ll you have?” he asked gruffly. “It’s on the house, so pick something expensive.”

  “Lew, I’m too danged bushed to want a drink, even a free one. Where at’s Levi got his digs. Maybe I’ll mosey over and say howdy to the boys before I find a place to throw my bedroll.”

  “Levi’s got a tent down by the river, just up the bank from where his cabin used to sit, before it got washed away, but if they don’t have room, come back here. I’ll find you a bed, with a mattress and pillow if you want one.”

  “Thanks, Lew, I’ll keep that in mind.” She looked at Dirty-Nosed Dave, standing as he had when she first walked in, oblivious to the world. “Good-bye, Dave,” she said.

  “Yeah, g’bye, Dave,” Dirty-Nosed replied, jerking his head around in a startled fashion.

  “Dang,” Rose murmured. “That boy is drunk!”

  Chapter

  17

  Levi Wilson’s big wall tent was set up between a narrow coulée on one side and a cluster of small wagons and a blacksmith shop on the other. There was a corral behind the tent, the rushing sound of the river just beyond it. Lanterns from within silhouetted the shapes of several men sitting at a table in the middle of the tent, and at least two more standing toward its rear.