The Poacher's Daughter

by Michael Zimmer

  “You were fast asleep when we found you, so we took the liberty of peeking,” Johnny explained.

  Rose leaned forward to keep an eye on the proceedings. Flashing a reassuring smile, María spoke rapidly in Sioux, a language Rose recognized but was unable to follow. “What’s she saying?” she demanded of Johnny.

  “She says your injury isn’t bad, but it’ll need to be doctored or it could get worse. Best you just let her do what needs to be done. Cow Elk Running will help her if she needs it. Cow Elk Running’s a healer.” A look of affection came over Johnny’s face when he glanced at María. “She’s passing on what she knows to my wife.”

  “You sound proud.”

  “I am. I’m a Blood Blackfoot myself, but raised more white than Indian by the missionaries at Saint Peter’s. I was afraid marrying a Blackfoot might hurt María’s standing with her people, but times are changing. The tribes aren’t nearly as clannish as they used to be.”

  “Her people?” Rose glanced at Fights His Enemies.

  “Hunkpapa Sioux,” Johnny replied laconically, then grinned at the expression that came over Rose’s face. “Kind of puckers the ol’ bunghole, doesn’t it?”

  “Sitting Bull’s people,” Rose breathed.

  “Fights His Enemies was a good friend of Sitting Bull’s, but when Bull went south in ’Eighty-One to surrender to the American soldiers, Fights His Enemies stayed in Canada. He said he’d rather starve a free man in the Grandmother’s Land than as a slave on the White Father’s reservation in the United States. He’s almost done it a time or two, too. Starve, I mean.”

  At Rose’s feet, María was gently probing the tender flesh of her injured foot. Cow Elk Running raided the coffee pot, pouring some over a piece of clean trade cloth and handing it to María, who began to dab carefully at the wound, washing away the dried blood.

  Rose stiffened, then sucked in a lungful of air. “Hell’s fire,” she gritted, leaning back on her elbows.

  “They have to remove a couple of bone fragments,” Johnny explained, but his comment elicited only a grunt from Rose. For the next several minutes she was too busy trying to keep from hollering or passing out to care much about the cause of her hurting.

  With the picking and prodding finished, Cow Elk Running brought out a small tin kettle with a rawhide lid. Pulling off the stiff hide, she dipped a finger into the gooey black mess and began slathering it over Rose’s wound. Within seconds, the throbbing was cut by half.

  “Hey,” Rose said softly. “That ain’t bad.”

  María spoke, Johnny interpreting. “It will prevent the red swelling that poisons the blood,” he said, then amended: “She means infection. She says you’re to keep salve on it for the time it takes the moon ….” He paused, struggling to make the translation from Sioux to English, via Blood Blackfoot. “She means a quarter … a week. Keep this beaver dung on your foot for at least a week.” He switched to Sioux, speaking rapidly. María replied without looking up. “Keep it bandaged, too,” Johnny said. “We’ll leave some stuff with you for that, some salve and cloth.”

  Rose frowned. “You … ah … you say there’s beaver dung in this concoction?”

  “Not much,” Johnny replied, then flashed another quick grin. “Hardly enough to stink?”

  “Shoot, I’ve smelled worse many a time,” she assured him.

  At the lower end of the glade, Fights His Enemies had dismounted and was addressing her horse. Rose edged a hand toward her revolver, a move not lost upon anyone. “I can pay for this here beaver dung,” she told Johnny.

  “I doubt if he wants your horse,” Johnny replied curtly. Then his voice softened. “The old bugger does like them, though. He’s told me that when he was younger, before the Long Knife soldiers stole his land, he used to own forty or fifty head at a time.”

  Albert whickered softly as Fights His Enemies approached, but made no effort to evade the gray-haired warrior’s hand. Shaking her head in reproach, Rose muttered: “It’s a wonder he ain’t pullin’ a Sioux travois somewhere.”

  Fights His Enemies allowed Albert to smell the back of his hand, then stepped closer. He ran his palm along the roan’s neck, then back over his withers and spine and down his croup. He examined the gelding’s belly and legs and hoofs, looked into his eyes and ears, then checked his long, yellowing teeth. When he was finished, he came over to the fire and sat down just as María finished tying a fresh bandage on Rose’s foot. Smiling amiably, Fights His Enemies said: “Hau kola.”

  It was one of the few Sioux phrases Rose recognized. “Howdy,” she replied.

  Fights His Enemies glanced at the clean-up work his daughter was doing, then turned to Rose. As he began to speak, Johnny set his cup aside to translate. From that point on, the voice was Johnny’s, but the words belonged to Fights His Enemies. “Is there much pain, little sister?”

  “I’ve hurt worse. Hurt worse and smelled worse.”

  Fights His Enemies’s smile widened as Johnny turned her words into Sioux. “Wounds earned in war are never painful for long. Not if the battle was honorable, the warrior brave.”

  “You heard about that fracas at Harker’s Fort, did you?”

  Fights His Enemies nodded. “It is told on the wind,” he replied, which Rose figured was sufficiently vague to mean just about anything.

  “What’s the wind have to say about anyone following me?” she asked.

  “No one follows.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief at that. Then, remembering her manners, she waved a hand toward the coffee pot. “Have some. They’s plenty.”

  “Is there sugar?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then I will not have coffee.” Fights His Enemies broke off a stem of tall grass, running it back and forth between his fingers. “I am on my way to Fort Walsh to assure the Grandmother’s chief that I will not fight with the half-bloods against the red-coated Mounties, if that war comes to pass.” He meant the Métis, Rose knew, and specifically those who had fought with Riel and Dumont during the troubles at Batoche in 1885. “But I wanted to speak with you first,” Fights His Enemies continued. “I wanted to say hello one more time.”

  “Once more?” Rose asked, puzzled.

  “Do you not know that I know you?”

  “I figure I’d remember, had we met.”

  Fights His Enemies’s eyes twinkled. “We did not meet, but I still know you. Many of my village do. We called you Sunflower Girl because of the color of your hair. Once I spied upon your father’s camp for the passage of two suns, and considered stealing you so that you might become a Hunkpapa woman. I liked the way you handled the horses and mules, and cared for the hides the young men in your camp skinned so carelessly. I thought you would be happier as a Hunkpapa, but the other members of my party persuaded me to leave you with your father and brothers. We had come south from the Grandmother’s Land to kill some white buffalo hunters, but my friends did not want to risk the wrath of the Grandmother’s Red Coats by kidnapping a white child.”

  “Lordy,” Rose breathed, wide-eyed. “That was over to the Square Butte country below Fort Benton, wasn’t it?”

  Fights His Enemies looked pleased. “You saw us?”

  “No, but I sure as heck felt you. Them mules was god-awful fractious for a spell then, too. What was that … eight, nine years ago?”

  “Yes, about that. It was after we followed Sitting Bull north into Canada, but before he surrendered.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Rose said, nodding.

  Gathering their things, María and Cow Elk Running returned to their horses, calling to the children. Fights His Enemies’s expression sobered. “You would have made a good Hunkpapa,” he said. “I think maybe I should have taken you that day.”

  “Well, thanks just the same, but I’m used to being who I am.”

  “Your horse is not well,” Fights His Enemies sa
id, changing the subject.

  Rose sat up straighter, her gaze going to where Albert was watching the ponies of Fights His Enemies’s family.

  “He is long in the tooth, and your travels have taken much out of him,” Fights His Enemies went on. “Maybe it is time you stole a younger horse and allowed this one to go free.”

  “I reckon times have changed for everyone,” Rose replied. “Nowadays they’d hang me for stealin’ a horse, rather than just steal another one for themselves, like folks used to do. That’s how come I’m in all the trouble I am.”

  Fights His Enemies nodded gravely. “It is true, little sister, that I do not understand the values that guide the White Eyes who now come onto our lands. But listen to this story. When I was a young man, long before even the first iron horse crossed our lands along the river called the Platte, the White Eyes came like streams of ants in their white-topped wagons. They came but they did not stay, for they were bound for a land called Oregon, beyond where even the Nez Percé live. In those days the white men killed our buffalo for food and sport, and never paid for them or asked permission to hunt them. But one day an Indian, a Cheyenne, if I remember correctly, killed a whoa-haw … one of the white man’s spotted cows that they use to pull their wagons … and the Army came and took that Cheyenne away and hung him.

  “That was a bad day for the Indians, to see how the White Eyes could come onto their land and kill their buffalo, then hang a red man for shooting just one of theirs. I think that is when I started to hate the White Eyes, even though I had been friendly to them before. But also I think I knew even then that our days would be like snow in the summer, and that our time upon the plains would soon be no more. I did not know then if I would live to see that day, or if it would be a thing for my children’s children to behold, but now I think I will see it, and so I mourn for my children’s children as I mourn for my own children, and for myself. Yet I also mourn for some of the White Eyes, little sister. Those who I used to fight but always respected. I think they have been lied to, as well, and that their time on the plains will be short, as the Indian’s is. They will suffer as the Indian has suffered, these hunters and traders, and then they will go the way of the Indian.”

  He stopped, and for a long time no one spoke. Finally Fights His Enemies said: “It is a bad way to die, hanging. It closes off the throat and prevents the spirit from escaping, so that the spirit is trapped inside the body to rot along with the flesh.” Pushing to his feet, he tossed aside the sprig of grass he’d been fiddling with. “Perhaps you should steal a horse from the herd outside the fort that once belonged to the man named Harker. There are many good ones there, and they do not watch them too closely. It is where I would go, if I was in the mood to steal a fresh horse.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that,” Rose said, although she knew she wouldn’t. Fights His Enemies knew it, too.

  With a gesture from her husband, Cow Elk Running came forward with a haunch of meat and a small cloth sack. “This is from a deer my son-in-law shot last night,” Fights His Enemies said. “There is also some rice traded from a Cree. It will be enough until you are able to ride again. Perhaps by then your horse will be rested.”

  “I thank you for your kindness,” Rose said.

  “May you have good hunting, Sunflower,” Fights His Enemies said, then headed for his horse.

  “He was more of a gentleman than I would’ve expected,” Rose said to Johnny Long, when Fights His Enemies had moved out of earshot.

  “He is,” Johnny concurred. “There’s no finer man, red or white, between the Athabasca and the Platte. Of course, he’s got a scalp pole in his lodge that carries almost thirty pieces of hair from the White Eyes he’s killed over the years. Most of them belonged to men, but a few came from white women and children.”

  “Ain’t that the way,” Rose said softly.

  “It’s a funny ol’ world,” Johnny agreed. He shook the last drops of coffee from his cup. “Good luck, Rose of Yellowstone.”

  His words startled her. “How’d you know I was called that?” She half expected him to reply that a grasshopper had told it to him, but he surprised her.

  “Hell, everyone knows your name. You’re famous. You’re going to be even more famous if the Stranglers don’t catch up with you too soon and hang you.”

  Chapter

  36

  Johnny Long was right. Rose of Yellowstone was becoming a sensation, much to the chagrin of Rose Edwards, who was hurrying down a Fort Benton alley, simmering over the inconvenience of her unexpected fame.

  After six days of convalescence in the forest east of Harker’s Fort, she’d come south in easy stages, hoping to continue her recuperation in Fort Benton. That would be out of the question now. From the size of the crowd gathering outside the cobbler’s shop where she’d had her boot repaired, she knew she’d have to hustle if she wanted to stay ahead of the rumors floating down from Canada.

  Edgar Willard was sitting on a bench behind the livery, working diligently on a bottle of Anheuser-Busch beer, when Rose came around the corner. Albert stood saddled nearby, his bridle hanging off the horn. On the gelding’s hoofs, new shoes shone like buffed pewter.

  Propping the dark bottle on his knee, Edgar said: “I saw the crowd gatherin’, so figure ya wouldn’t be stayin’. I can take that saddle off, iffen I’m wrong.”

  “Naw, you ain’t wrong,” Rose said in annoyance. “You’d think them jaybirds would have jobs to go to, though.”

  “I expect they ain’t never seen a lady shootist before, let alone one wearin’ britches. Pants don’t leave much to a fella’s imagination, ya know?”

  “Fellas like that generally don’t need much to kick off their imaginations,” she replied. “I just hope my wearin’ trousers and packin’ a shooter was worth the bother for them. If they hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t’ve had to sneak out the back way.” She pulled Shorty’s old buckskin poke from her pocket. “What’s the damage, Edgar?”

  The old man guffawed. “Why, half of Harker’s Fort is what they’re sayin’.”

  She made a face. “That ain’t funny, dang it.”

  “No, it ain’t,” he agreed. “Listen to an old man, girl. Ya need ter hightail it back ter yer ranch and pull yer head in for a spell, ’cause the grease is fixin’ ter fly around here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re sayin’ yer name’s been moved to the top of Joe Bean’s list, and that don’t shine, no matter how ya polish it.”

  “Dang, Edgar, I ain’t hurtin’ them boys. What do they want to keep wavin’ that list in my face for?”

  He leaned forward, brows knitting. “I don’t reckon it’s about money no more. It ain’t hardly about range or water, either. It’s about image, and yer a-tarnishin’ theirs plenty by hangin’ onto that property ya own down there by the Yellerstone.”

  “Ain’t Ostermann got enough. It’s already ten times more’n what most folks has.”

  “It ain’t that simple. Tell ya the truth, I ain’t sure Ostermann really wants the A-Bar-E. I ain’t even sure he wants the Flyin’ Egg, at least not the way someone like you’d want a place. It’s prestige ol’ Howie is cravin’. With yer property, he can claim all that land between the Musselshell and the Yellowstone as his own little empire, and that’d be one hell of a claim. It’d be one hell of an image, too, can he pull it off.” Edgar’s expression changed. “Ya got to cache, girl, ’cause ol’ Howie’s still hungerin’ for that prestige. Wants it like a starvin’ wolf wants a colt, and he’ll likely get it, too, if ya don’t pull yer head in like a turtle in its shell.”

  “It ain’t my intention to cache until after I locate Pine Tree Manning,” she said stubbornly.

  “Manning, huh?” He stroked his whiskered jaw reflectively. “I’ve heard of him. Mean, they say.”

  “Mean or not, I aim to run him down for what he done to Nora.” She bounced the bucksk
in poke in her hand a couple of times. “I gotta git, Edgar. What do I owe you?”

  “Put yer money away, girl. I don’t want it.”

  “I ain’t no bum.”

  “I know ya ain’t. It’s just something I want ter do. Call it an investment in my future.”

  She frowned. “How’s my not paying my tab an investment in your future?”

  “Think about it.” Setting his beer aside, he walked over to lift the bridle from the Mother Hubbard’s horn. With Albert bitted and ready to ride, he handed the reins to Rose, his expression grave. “Best ya sleep with one eye open from here on,” he advised.

  “I plan to.”

  “I mean it. Seems like ever’ other ranahan what stables his hoss here is a-whisperin’ yer name. That don’t bode well in my book.”

  “All right, Edgar, I hear you.” She held out her hand and the old man shook it. “I thank you for Albert’s new shoes, and wish you prosperity when the railroad comes through.”

  “Good luck, Rose Edwards,” he replied, his voice suddenly thick with emotion. “It’s been an honor knowin’ ya.” That said, he turned and hurried away, leaving his beer behind, unfinished.

  • • • • •

  Although Rose considered hunting down Pine Tree Manning a priority, she decided to swing past the Flying Egg on her way home to confront Howard Ostermann. She figured the Egg owner had remained hidden for too long behind his shield of money and title, and she wanted to see what he’d say when she accused him of Nora’s murder. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to accomplish by her action, other than to remind him that there were human beings involved at the other end of his decisions, people with names and faces and dreams of their own that would never be fulfilled now, because of blind greed. Where it went from there would be up to him, she supposed.

  The thought of killing Ostermann had occurred to her more than once on the long ride down from Canada, but she doubted if she’d have the gumption to gun down someone in cold blood, no matter how much he might deserve it. And she was pretty sure Ostermann wouldn’t fight her. Not with men like Frank Caldwell on his payroll.