The Poacher's Daughter

by Michael Zimmer

  “I have to go after them,” Rose said suddenly. “I have to let Wiley and Dirty-Nosed Dave know who’s trailing them.”

  “What does it matter who’s trailing them. They knew when they stole that horse that somebody would.”

  “The law’s one thing, Nora. Garcia and Web is something else.”

  “Let them go, Rose. Don’t get dragged into something that’s none of your concern.”

  “They was my friends. I won’t turn my back on ’em.”

  “Shorty Tibbs might’ve been your friend. Wiley Collins was never anyone’s friend, and Dave Merritt’s a drunk and a fool.”

  “They took me in, Nora. They accepted me when I hit rock bottom, when the fancy, God-fearin’ kind wouldn’t’ve given me the time of day. I can’t no more turn my back on them than I could you or Callie. I just can’t.”

  • • • • •

  She saddled Albert and gathered some grub, then took off at a gallop, following the Helena trail. The prints of Wiley’s horse, the black stud called Midnight Blue, and Dirty-Nosed Dave’s mount were as plain as newsprint in the dust, which vexed Rose no end. Wiley, of all people, should have known better than to be so careless, especially after leaving her cabin, which was sure to be a focal point in the minds of any pursuing posse.

  The trail led her over a gently undulating plain for most of the day, skirting to the north of the small pine forest that lay west of her cabin and southwest of the Bulls. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that the land began to change, the hills becoming more rugged, marred with rocky outcroppings. Although a warm day, it wasn’t especially hot; early grasshoppers leaped buzzing out of her path, and meadowlarks trilled sweet tunes in the grasses. Rose kept Albert at a steady pace, alternating between a jog and a slow lope, and his ears remained perked forward, as if he were enjoying himself.

  By nightfall Rose estimated they’d covered thirty miles, and Albert was starting to show the strain. Sweat darkened the gray-peppered red hair around the gelding’s cinch, and his head hung low as Rose picketed him next to a creek. Her heart ached for the aging gelding. She knew his spirit was willing; it was his muscles and joints that had seen too many hard miles, endured too many frigid winters.

  The land began to climb in earnest the next day, the snow-streaked peaks of the Crazy Mountains looming dead ahead. The trail to Helena would swing north of the Crazies, but Rose was hoping that Wiley and Dave would leave it at its bend and disappear into the mountains. It continued to aggravate her that they weren’t making any effort to hide their tracks.

  By noon the country was becoming increasingly broken. Sparse groves of lodgepole pine shaded the hills, and aspens as green as lime shimmied in the gulches. Despite a cooling breeze, there was trace of perspiration across Rose’s upper lip when she topped a small rise and saw a scene below her that made her throat constrict and her scalp crawl.

  “Lordy,” she croaked in a dust-dry voice, then grimly heeled Albert forward.

  Chapter

  31

  She rode slowly into a clearing surrounded by piney hills. Two men sat on a sloping boulder near a large oak growing alongside a creek. One of them was smoking a cigar; the other held a rifle across his lap. Both stood as she approached, expressing neither alarm nor embarrassment. Behind them, hanging from nooses tied off over a high limb, were Wiley Collins and Dirty-Nosed Dave Merritt. Both were dead, and Rose knew this time they wouldn’t be coming back.

  “I’ll be damned,” the man with the cigar said. “If it ain’t the wild woman of the Yellowstone.”

  Rose recognized them as members of Ostermann’s entourage from the previous winter. Although she hadn’t known their names then, Lew Parker had identified them based on her descriptions. The one with the cigar was Ted Keyes. The man holding the rifle was Dutch Weinhart. Both were reputed veterans of past range wars, most notably those in central Texas, although rumor also implicated Weinhart in the Lincoln County conflict in New Mexico, the one that had made Billy Bonney so famous.

  Fighting to control the jerky pattern of her breathing, Rose halted some ten yards away. Her right hand was clenched tightly on the top of her thigh, close enough to the Smith & Wesson that she could grab it quickly if she needed to.

  “Come to rescue your friends?” Keyes asked, then cackled loudly. He’d been drinking, Rose realized; she could see it in his eyes and in the darting unsteadiness of his hands. “You’re a little late if that’s what you had in mind,” he added.

  For a long moment Rose didn’t say anything. Staring at Wiley, it was all she could do to keep from screaming. She wanted to pull her pistol and empty it into Keyes’s face, to smash Weinhart’s skull with the butt of her rifle until it resembled a flattened gourd, but reason prevailed. “I guess I came to take ’em home,” she said eventually.

  “Ve vill be taking keer of dem, miss,” Weinhart replied.

  “We aim to let ’em rot,” Keyes added.

  “They’re my friends,” Rose persisted, forcing herself to look at Keyes and Weinhart, to keep her gaze away from Wiley’s limp form, the wooden leg cocked at an unnatural angle. “They deserve a proper burial.”

  “No, to leave dem hang is vhat Mister Caldwell told us to do, and dhat is vhat ve do.”

  The fingers of Rose’s right hand stretched flat along her thigh, then came back into a loose fist. Albert shifted nervously, sensing her tension. “Naw, I’m gonna take ’em home.”

  “No,” Weinhart stated obstinately.

  Rose blinked and glanced around the clearing. It was empty save for the three of them and Wiley and Dave. She saw a pair of Flying Egg horses that belonged to Keyes and Weinhart, but the black stud and Wiley and Dave’s mounts were gone. “Where’s Caldwell?” she asked.

  “He is not here,” Weinhart replied. “It is us you today ’ave to deal vith.”

  “But he was here,” Rose said with sudden comprehension. She looked at Weinhart. “Where’s the horse, Dutch. The one they call Midnight Blue.”

  Keyes laughed brashly. “It got away.”

  “Shut up, you,” snarled Weinhart. “Too much talk.”

  “He stole it, didn’t he?” Rose charged.

  “Dhat is foolish talk,” Weinhart replied, his accent thickening. “Is best you don’t say dhat tings no more.”

  “Maybe we ought to hang her, too,” Keyes suggested. “I’ll bet ol’ prissy-britches Howie would appreciate our initiative.”

  “Vhen to take keer of dis von is to be done, Mister Caldwell vill tell us,” Weinhart answered. “You!” he said to Rose, then pointed to the trail behind her. “Go now. Go home.”

  “I ain’t some dog that’s gonna be shooed off.”

  “Yah, you go.”

  “They’re my friends,” she repeated. “I won’t leave without them.”

  “Dead men are not so much vorth dying for, are dey?”

  Rose stared hard, but she knew there would be no back-down in a man like Dutch Weinhart. “How far,” she asked, her voice drawn thin, “how far do you let others push you before you fight back?”

  Weinhart shook his head sympathetically. “Maybe I tink only you can answer dhat question, eh?”

  “Yeah,” Rose said through clenched teeth. “Maybe you’re right.” Wheeling, she rode back the way she’d come. Half an hour later she pulled up in the middle of the trail. After a couple of minutes she turned Albert to face the way they’d come. Yanking the Sharps from its scabbard, she shoved a cartridge into its chamber, then rested the rifle across her saddlebows. For a long time she just sat there, staring in the direction of the clearing. As she did, a peculiar calm began to replace the anger. Finally, resolutely she squeezed Albert’s ribs with her calves and rode back toward the clearing. She kept the Sharps across her thighs and loosened the Smith & Wesson in its holster, but there was no fight. By the time she came in sight of the oak and its grisly crop, Keyes and We
inhart had already departed. Crude Ts had been scrawled across Wiley’s and Dirty-Nosed Dave’s shirts in blue chalk, marking them as thieves.

  Rose cut down the bodies, then tossed the severed nooses into some nearby bushes where she wouldn’t have to look at them. Although she would’ve preferred burying the two men on the A-Bar-E, she had no way of getting them there. Besides, she knew it wouldn’t have mattered to Wiley or Dave. They’d both loved the wide-open places.

  Using her knife and fingers, Rose scraped a shallow trough out of the flinty soil, ruining the blade and making her nails bleed, but managing an adequate grave. After positioning the bodies side-by-side in the hole and scrubbing the chalk off their shirts as best she could, she covered the corpses with loose soil, then finished the job with stones hauled up from the creek. When she was done, she washed up, then sat in the shade to rest and think. As she did, Albert wandered over, nickering curiously.

  “Right now,” she said, standing and putting on her hat. “Let’s go home.”

  • • • • •

  It was a fourteen-hour ride back to the cabin, and although Rose made the journey in easy stages, largely on account of Albert, she was eager to get back, and rode through the night.

  The sun had barely risen the next day when she came in sight of the A-Bar-E. She’d already made up her mind that she wasn’t going to do any work that day. She would nap through the morning, then fix a cup of tea after lunch and take it up to the bluff where Muggy was buried, there to sit and stare out across the miles and daydream, as she’d done so often when she lived alone. But as the little ranch took shape, Rose began to get an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, like something had gone horribly wrong in her absence. Kicking Albert in the ribs, she raced toward the cabin.

  Her heart was pounding as she came around the barn and dismounted on the fly. She approached the cabin with the Smith & Wesson drawn, her senses bucking wildly. She saw smokeless chimneys, a whiskey bottle smashed against the stoop, the door standing ajar. The corral gate was open; the mules were gone. Pausing on the stoop, she took a deep, fluttery breath, then stepped inside.

  Nora lay naked on her bunk, her flesh pallid, already starting to decompose. A sharp cry broke from Rose’s throat, but she held herself together otherwise. Summoning up all of her strength, she forced herself to look closely for any sign of an ambush before advancing any farther.

  The inside of the cabin was a shambles. Trunks and boxes lay everywhere, their contents spilled and smudged with boot prints. The cook stove had been knocked apart in an eruption of soot and ash, the shaker bar ripped loose and used as a club to crush the dangling stovepipe. The spice cabinet had been turned over and sacks of sugar, coffee, and dried fruits had been slashed open and scattered. All their glassware had been destroyed, even the tea cup and saucer Rose had given Nora for Christmas. Whoever had done this had been familiar with the rumor of Rose’s secret hiding place under the water barrel, for that had been tipped aside as well, the water splashed across the floor and the tin box under it dug up and emptied.

  Finally Rose turned to Nora. Perhaps it was best that way, she would later reason. Perhaps, during her methodical examination of the cabin, something inside her had been busily reconstructing that familiar wall separating reality from emotion. Whatever it was, it was working. There was very little feeling left when she holstered the Smith & Wesson and kneeled at her friend’s side.

  Nora’s death had been violent. She’d been raped and beaten. Tiny circular blisters—dried now, yellowed—had been raised on the flesh of her cheeks and torso by burning cigarettes, and teeth marks and deep scratches scarred her breasts, shoulders, and thighs. She’d survived a nightmare, and when the terror had ended, they’d cut her throat, the wound gaping like a demented grin.

  “God damn,” Rose rasped, reaching out with a trembling hand to brush back the stiff, dark hair from Nora’s forehead. The coldness of the flesh was disconcerting, and she quickly stood and turned away. Her eyes darted around the cabin until they lit on a wooden bucket.

  She brought water from the creek and warmed it in a kettle in the fireplace, then washed Nora and dressed her in her favorite blue dress. Afterward, Rose wrapped the body in their heaviest quilt and sewed it shut with needle and thread. She would have preferred a coffin, but she knew she didn’t have time to construct one.

  She chose a spot under the trees along the creek for the grave, digging it deep and squaring off the corners. Then she rough-hitched Albert to the wagon and hauled Nora’s body to the site, where she jumped into the grave to arrange the corpse the way she wanted it.

  Rose performed these chores with the same inscrutable detachment that had served her so well the day before, while burying Wiley and Dave. It wasn’t until she was near the end that her composure began to crumble. As she patted the final shovelful of earth into place, her movements became awkward, her self-control deteriorating. The gentle curve of the bit flashed in the dappled sunlight, whistling louder as Rose swung harder. She was gulping in air, yet felt as if she were suffocating. She began to pummel the grave, putting her back into it, leaving deep, clear imprints of the shovel’s heel in the loose soil.

  “Damn you,” she choked, speaking to Nora.

  “Damn you,” she repeated to Wiley and Dave and Muggy.

  “God damn you,” she said to Shorty, her voice rising.

  She slammed the grave, beat at it in a fury of rage and despair. “Damn you!” she screamed, bringing the shovel down maniacally. “God damn you god damn you god damn you!”

  The rage faded abruptly, there one minute, vanished the next. She dropped to her knees, her eyes wide with guilt and shame. Then she felt something move inside her, a rippling sensation that started in her stomach and slid quickly upward, exploding past her lips. It was a sob, and it was immediately followed by another. She groaned when a third cry tore loose, a fist-size chunk of anguish hurtling upward like bile. Tumbling onto her side, Rose wrapped her arms around her stomach and drew her knees to her chest. The tears came then. Not the pooling kind that had embarrassed her so often in the past, but the real thing, slowly at first, creeping across the uncharted territory of her cheeks, then faster and freer, a salty flood that turned the dirt on her face to mud.

  She tried to stop them by clamping a hand over her mouth, afraid that her body wouldn’t be able physically to withstand the trauma, but her grief was too deep. It couldn’t be stopped that simply. Not anymore. Her precious wall had been breached; there was no turning back.

  After a while she quit fighting it and the crying became easier. The tears flowed warmly and her sobs found a rhythm her body could adapt to. Eventually it stopped. When it did, she rolled onto her back to stare numbly at the interlacing branches overhead. After a few minutes, she began to cry again.

  The day passed that way. In time she moved—first to a tree, then to lie in the grass in the sun, then to cross the creek and huddle against a fallen log too large to cut into firewood—crying in spurts and jags that rose and subsided and rose again. By nightfall her cheeks felt hot and chapped, her throat raw.

  In darkness she got up and made her way to the cabin, but she couldn’t force herself to go inside. She spent the night in the barn instead, wrapped in a smelly horse blanket. The next morning she returned to the grave to cover it with stones to keep the wolves away. Then she went up to the bluff and did the same for Muggy, not because she feared scavengers at this late date, but because it was the right thing to do. The tears had ended for good by the time she finished, the sobs retreating deep within. In their place had crept a cold, hard resolve. Albert grazed nearby, still saddled. Rose caught the horse and tightened the cinch. Then, dry-eyed and resolute, she led him to the cabin.

  Rose of Yellowstone

  Chapter

  32

  Even taking into account her own shortcomings as a tracker, it didn’t take Rose long to decipher the maze of prints surround
ing the A-Bar-E buildings. What she found convinced her that Jed Plover and his posse had returned from their short probe toward the Bull Mountains either on the same day she’d left in pursuit of Wiley and Dave, or early the next.

  Rose had already dismissed the posse as suspect. She couldn’t believe Plover would sanction the kind of brutality Nora had been subjected to. She was looking for something else, and she found it behind the corral—three distinct sets of tracks facing the rails, as if the horses had been hitched there in stealth or under cover of darkness.

  Two of the sets of tracks were indistinguishable to Rose’s unskilled eye and could have been made by any horse in the territory. It was the third set that aroused her interest.

  Indented clearly in the soft soil under the right rear hoof was the imprint of a bent horseshoe nail, the mark of a negligent blacksmith or an uncaring rider. As soon as she saw it, Rose knew that in the days ahead, that single act of slipshod workmanship would prove invaluable.

  Returning to the cabin, she began a more thorough inspection. The killers had taken just about everything of value, including the deed to the ranch and Rose’s marriage certificate. They’d taken Nora’s costume jewelry and the pocket watch and fob Rose had purchased in Sheridan the year before. They’d taken Nora’s shotgun and her little Colt Rainmaker. They’d even taken the A-Bar-E branding iron. But they hadn’t taken any of the food. There was jerked beef, tins of peaches and tomatoes, and, on the floor, piles of flour, dried apples, and coffee, portions of which she was able to scoop into small cotton sacks to stuff into her saddlebags.

  Although they’d taken all of the extra ammunition, Rose still had full cartridge belts—thirty-six rounds for the Smith & Wesson, thirty more for the Sharps. She also took along gloves, her sack coat, and the butcher knife she’d purchased from Two-Hats, a replacement for the clasp knife she’d ruined scraping out a grave for Wiley and Dave.