The Poacher's Daughter

by Michael Zimmer

  “Being put out with me don’t cull the herd down much any more.”

  “He was hinting around about Muggy’s gold.”

  “Muggy’s gold!” She laughed, shaking her head. “That’s the first I’ve heard of that old rumor in nearly a year. Did you tell him it weren’t true?”

  Daniel gave his daughter a sly look.

  “You son-of-a-bitch,” she said wearily.

  Anger sparked in his eyes, then ebbed under Rose’s scornful stare. “I told him you didn’t have it,” he admitted finally. “You could tell the damn’ fool didn’t believe me.”

  “Well, maybe it was that mansion behind you that tipped your hand.” She turned toward her horse. “I wouldn’t worry about skinny-assed kids dumb enough to think I’m sitting on a pile of gold,” she added over her shoulder. “Sooner or later, even the idjits’ll figure it out.”

  “Where are you going?” Daniel called.

  “I’m looking for a fella named Pine Tree Manning.” She paused, reins in hand. “You wouldn’t know him, would you?”

  “Heard of him. He the one who killed Nora Alder?”

  “One of ’em.” She mounted, then sat there a moment, staring at her father, who’d refused to rise. He looked frail, she thought, old and worn-out, as if the loss of the Remington-Hepburn rifle and the life he’d lived with it had somehow shrunk his body as well as his soul. “You gonna be all right, Pap?” she asked, pity twisting in her breast at last.

  “I’ve been fine so far, ain’t I?”

  “I could send for you, once I resettle.”

  “Resettle?” He looked momentarily perplexed.

  “I gotta leave Montana pretty quick. I was thinkin’ I’d go west to the coast and see the ocean, then maybe south. Somewhere where the winters ain’t so long.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere. It ain’t me everyone wants to lynch.”

  Rose nodded, knowing then that her visit was finished, as was a relationship that had haunted her since childhood. It struck her as odd, though, that she felt neither sadness nor regret at this final parting, and made her wonder if it hadn’t been over for a long time, and that maybe she was just now realizing it. “Good-bye, Pap,” she said.

  “Ain’t you gonna fix me some breakfast?”

  “No, you can fix your own breakfast from here on. It’ll do you good.” She reined away, riding back up the alley at a walk. On the street she turned east, kicking Albert into a shuffling trot.

  Chapter

  38

  Rose quit the Miles City road shortly after leaving Billings, following the old Coulson to Fort Custer route as far as the northern boundary of the Crow Reservation. There she abandoned the road altogether to cut across country.

  Although she’d never had any trouble with the Absarokas—or Sparrow Hawk People, as the Crows referred to themselves—she knew things could get a little dicey for outsiders on the reservation. Game was scarce, and bellies went consistently empty. Annuities promised under treaties either didn’t show up or were so horribly misrepresented when they did arrive that they proved useless for the jobs at hand. Crooked agents became rich; honest ones chafed with frustration and disheartenment, while the tribes grew more and more sullen at what they considered a long list of broken promises by the Great White Father in Washington.

  Nor could Rose forget the ambush Wiley, Shorty, and Billy Garcia had tripped against the Crows right after she’d thrown in with them. Although she hadn’t been involved in the fight itself, she doubted if that would cut much ice with the Absarokas. So it was for that reason, as much as any, that she decided to take to the hills.

  Bird flight, it was roughly a hundred miles from Billings to Sheridan. On a good horse she could’ve made the trip in two days. It took four on Albert, and Rose was limping badly by the time she came in sight of the tiny burg. The roan had lost his footing on the long climb out of the Yellowstone Valley and come up tender in his shoulder, forcing Rose to walk a good portion of the way.

  Sheridan was a rough compass point rather than an actual destination, and she skirted wide around the town to avoid being seen. She knew only one person in Wyoming well enough to approach for the kind of information she needed, although she wasn’t sure how she’d be received. The last time she’d seen Fred Baylor, he’d been riding south out of the Bull Mountains with a bullet hole in his leg from her pistol. She could only hope it would be as Lew Parker had speculated, that Fred and his wife Della would both be so grateful for Rose’s interference that they’d forgive her on sight.

  Rose’s right foot was throbbing past her ankle by the time she led Albert into the Baylor yard. Fred was sitting on a bench in front of the cabin, repairing a bridle. He looked up when his hounds started barking, then set his work aside. With the ruckus caused by the dogs, Della came to the door, carrying a toddler on her hip. Stopping some distance away, Rose nodded a cautious howdy.

  “Come on in!” Fred called. “You’re welcome here.”

  “All things considered, I wasn’t sure,” Rose admitted, limping into the yard.

  Her confession brought a grin to Fred’s face. “You’ve nothing to worry about, Rose.” He turned to Della. “Hon, warm up some of that stew we had for supper last night.”

  “I can’t stay,” Rose interjected quickly.

  “You can have a bite to eat, can’t you?”

  She hesitated, then said: “Well, maybe a bite.”

  Fred’s gaze shifted to Albert, and his smile disappeared. “Is that the horse you were riding last year?”

  “Uhn-huh.”

  “I didn’t recognize him. There’s not much roan left, is there?”

  Rose backed off a couple of paces for a better view. It was true that age had bleached most of the color from Albert’s hair, but the sight that jolted her worse was his gauntness. In her single-minded pursuit of Nora’s killers, she had lost track of the changes overtaking the aging gelding on their trek to Canada and back. Seeing them with such clarity now alarmed her. “Well, we’ve covered a heap of country this summer,” she said guiltily. “I reckon it’s taken its toll.”

  “He’s favoring his right shoulder, too,” Fred said, heading for the corral. “Wait here,” he added. “Della’ll have some grub ready in a minute. I won’t be gone long.” He slapped a saddle on a bay, then loped south into a fringe of timber.

  Uncertainly Rose pulled the Mother Hubbard from Albert’s back, then found a currycomb in the Baylors’ tack room and started working on the gelding’s coat. She was just finishing when Della returned carrying a wooden bowl and a clunky, earthenware glass filled with fresh milk.

  “You can eat inside, if you’d like,” the younger woman offered shyly.

  “I reckon I ought not,” Rose replied, accepting the bowl and glass. “I’m mighty dusty.”

  Pushing a strand of ash-blonde hair out of her eyes, Della said: “Dust is the least of my worries. It’s stinky inside, is all. The baby’s just getting over the scours.”

  “I saw her when I rode up. She’s a pretty little thing.”

  Della flashed her a quick look of gratitude. “I could bring her out when you’re done,” she said tentatively.

  “Why, I’d like that,” Rose replied. “It’s been a spell since I been around anything that teeny.” After an awkward pause, she dug into her food. The stew was expertly seasoned, and there was a fist-size chunk of coarse bread on the rim of the bowl for sopping. Eyeing the place as she ate, seeing past the hard-panned yard and cobbled-together sheds to what might be, she said: “You ’n’ Fred’s got a nice spread here, Della.”

  “It ain’t like some for fancy, but Fred has his plans. He figures to hang on, build up what we lost last winter. Them of us that lived in more sheltered spots did better than those who built in the open.”

  “Winter played heck above the Yellowstone,” Rose said, then recited some of the stories she’d he
ard, including the one about the Helena legislator who was urging ranchers to import Tibetan yaks to better withstand Montana’s harsh winters. She finished her stew about the same time she finished a joke she’d heard in a Fort Benton saloon about yak’s milk and Indian whiskey, and returned the bowl and spoon fairly polished.

  “You want some more?” Della asked.

  “Naw, I’m full up. It was good, though.” She licked her fingers clean, then dried them on the seat of her riding skirt. Della took the dishes inside. After a moment, Rose followed as far as the door.

  The place hadn’t changed since her brief holdover here last year. The walls were hewed logs, painted white, the floor dirt, although swept clean and recently sprinkled to keep the dust down. An iron bed sat in a rear corner, a crib and pallet beside it for the kids; a tall wardrobe and a washstand completed the sleeping quarters. The dining area consisted of a parson’s table with benches on either side, a Hoosier cabinet with tin-lined bins for flour and such, and an early model Atlantic and Pacific cast-iron stove with a warmer built into the overhead pipe.

  The Baylors’ oldest child, Chad, sat in a rocker in front of the stone fireplace, studying a small, paperbound book on veterinarian care. Rose could tell at a glance he was too young to read, but he seemed content to study the drawings and graphs.

  At the crib, Della had straightened with a wiggling bundle in her arms. Coming over to the patch of sunlight that spilled through the front door, she brushed back a corner of the blanket. “She’s squabby,” she warned. “She’s tired after feeling so poorly.”

  “Why, sure she is. I won’t keep her but a minute.”

  Keeping her eyes on the baby, Della said: “I … wanted to thank you for what you done last year.” Shifting the baby, drawing Rose’s attention back to it, she added: “We named her Rosalie, in honor of the woman who saved her daddy’s life, but we call her Little Rose.”

  Rose blinked rapidly. “You … ah … you named your baby after me?”

  Nodding, Della said: “Would you like to hold her?”

  “Naw, I’d better not.” She laughed nervously and looked away, then brought her eyes back to the slowly churning limbs under the quilt. “Yeah, I reckon I would, if you don’t mind.” Della placed the child in her arms, then stepped back. Staring at the tiny face, Rose felt tears building at the corners of her eyes, spilling down her cheeks as they rarely did since she’d left her own childhood behind. “She’s just about as pretty as they come, ain’t she?” she said quietly.

  There were tears in Della’s eyes, too. “She takes after her father, I think.”

  Rose looked up, bawling silently but unable to wipe the tears away for the child in her arms. “Della, them stories about me ’n’ your pap, they weren’t none of them true. Not a one.”

  “I know,” Della said. “My father … he ain’t a good man. It took him not coming in for Jeremy’s funeral for me to realize that, although I think now I’d been working on seeing it for some time. You making Fred come on home like you did, for the reason you did, that got me to thinking. It made me realize you wasn’t the monster my mama thought you was. I believe you, Rose, and I’m sorry for the grief my family’s caused you.”

  Rose caught her breath, the tears coming faster. “That means a bunch, Della, you believin’ me. That means a whole bunch.”

  Smiling past her own tears, Della said: “My father hasn’t visited us once since Fred and I were married. Now they say he’s deathly ill, but he won’t let me come to care for him unless I renounce my marriage and get a divorce.”

  “Lordy,” Rose whispered.

  Della wiped her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. If I don’t have a father, at least I have Fred and Chad and Little Rose.” She paused, looking almost embarrassed. “You can’t stay, Rose. Not in Wyoming or Montana. They’ll kill you if you do.”

  “So I been hearin’.” There was the clop of hoofs out front, and she knew Fred had returned. Glancing down, she saw that the tears she’d shed had dripped onto the little one’s wraps. “Shoot,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time. “I got your blanket all salted up.” Della laughed, too, reaching for her daughter. Handing her over, Rose said: “She sure is a sweetie. I hope she grows up in better times than these.”

  “She will,” Della said fiercely. “She has to. These big ranchers can’t run without reins forever. Sooner or later there’ll have to be stopped. If enough people … if enough people would just do what you’re doin’ and fight back, instead of always waitin’ for someone else to do something … I don’t know. I don’t know what’s needed.”

  After a moment, Rose said—“I don’t either, Della.”—and left the cabin. She hauled up short when she saw Fred throwing her saddle atop a dark sorrel stallion with perky ears.

  The horse was short-coupled and stocky, chiseled with muscle; he had flaring nostrils, intelligent eyes, and a thin, crooked blaze. Before she could protest, Fred said: “No, you don’t. You saved my life that day, Rose, keeping me away from the Musselshell. You gave me the gift of seeing my little girl, and maybe being able to watch her and her brother grow up to have young ones of their own.”

  “Fred, that’s a dang’ fine horse. You need to hang onto him, put him to stud.”

  “We’ve already got some good foals out of him. Besides, it’s already decided. Me ’n’ Della weren’t sure you’d ever come back, but we’d been hearing about your troubles and wanted to have him ready, just in case. He’s a four-year-old and rambunctious, but I’ve seen you ride. You can handle him as well as any bronco artist.” He glanced at his wife. “Della, fetch that bill of sale, would you?” He got an apologetic look on his face. “I went ahead and wrote one out, in case you showed up on the run and couldn’t tarry.”

  “That’s near about the situation,” Rose admitted. “Truth is, I’m lookin’ for Pine Tree Manning. I’m thinkin’ he might’ve been with Jed Plover’s posse a few weeks ago.”

  “He was,” Fred said. “He didn’t come back with Plover, though. I heard he went to Miles City.”

  “Miles City, huh?”

  “That was a couple weeks ago.”

  “It’s still the latest word I’ve heard on him since leavin’ the Musselshell.”

  Della returned with a sheet of paper and a pencil. Using the outside bench as a writing pad, Fred inscribed his name across the bottom of the page, then added the date in the lower right-hand corner. Stepping back, he offered the pencil to Rose. “You can read it if you’d like, see if you think it’s an adequate description of the horse.”

  “I, ah ….” Rose scanned the page but it was all in script, as foreign to her as Chinese. There were two bold Xs at the bottom, however, and Fred had signed his name beside the first one. Bending over the bench, she scrawled, ROSE EDWARDS beside the second in rough, blocky letters—that sole literary talent the result of many a lonely winter’s evening spent painfully extracting the individual characters from a Bloomingdale Brothers catalog. When she finished, she folded the document and shoved it into her pocket. “I reckon that’ll do just fine,” she said. “I just hope you don’t come to regret your decision.”

  “We won’t. You can leave that roan here if you’d like. I’ll look after him until you come back, or until he gets too old to forage for himself. I won’t sell him, and I won’t let the wolves get him if I can help it. I’ll promise you that.”

  Fred’s words struck her like a hard jab. Until that moment it hadn’t occurred to her that her acceptance of the sorrel would mean the end of a trail she and Albert had followed together since Rose was little more than a sprout herself.

  “I … ah ….” She started to look at the skinny roan, then quickly averted her eyes. “His name’s Albert,” she said, accepting the sorrel’s reins. “I don’t know why I ever come to call him that, but it’s been his handle ever since ….” She moved around to the sorrel’s side, straightening the reins above t
he stallion’s thick neck. “He could use some rest, and good grass’ll fatten him up again in no time. He’s been a good ol’ boy.” Realizing she was speaking more to herself than to Fred, she abruptly shut up. Hooking a toe in the stirrup, she swung into the Mother Hubbard’s seat. The stallion threw his head up and attempted a few choppy crow hops, but Rose brought him around and back with a minimum of effort.

  “He’ll be a handful for a while,” Fred predicted, “but he’ll settle down with a steady hand.”

  “He’s full of fire, all right. I feel like I’m sittin’ on top of a cannon and can hear the fuse burnin’, but ain’t sure which way the dang’ thing’s pointed.”

  The Baylors laughed. Even Little Rose gurgled happily. But Rose’s insides were twisted in anguish for the worn-out gelding she was leaving behind. She dared not look at him. Even a glance, she feared, would rip her apart. “I gotta git,” she said, “but I thank you for the horse and food. I’ll bring him back after I find Manning.”

  Fred nodded, but it was clear he didn’t expect to see her or the horse again.

  “Be careful,” Della said, but Rose was losing control and didn’t attempt a response. She slapped her spurs against the sorrel’s ribs, and the horse took off with a squeal. He settled into a run far swifter than anything Rose had ever experienced aboard Albert. The wind created by the stallion’s passage was so stout that it blew the tears off her cheeks and back across her ears. But it was a long time, a very long time, before it dried them completely.

  Chapter

  39

  Rose didn’t find Pine Tree Manning in Miles City, although the leggy ex-Texan had been there recently, leaving only after he’d gunned down Gene Sidwell in a fight some said was fair, but others argued was as rigged as a back-alley shell game.

  She heard the story first from Tom, the Silver Star bartender, but before the day was out she picked up two additional versions of the shoot-out, which had occurred behind Russell’s Roller Skating Rink on the east side of town. Although all three stories agreed on the major points—diverging only in areas of motive and who had fired the first shot—Rose deemed Tom’s account the most accurate.