The Tenderfoot Trail

by Ralph Compton

  The grulla bore a Running W on its left shoulder, the brand of Captain Richard King’s enormous Santa Gertrudis ranch down Texas way, and Garrett made a mental note never to ride the animal south of the Brazos or he’d risk getting hung for a horse thief.

  There was no sign of Yates or the wolfers when Garrett rode out of the dry wash and back to where his dead black lay in a spreading pool of blood. He stripped his saddle and switched it to the grulla. He was about to put his foot in the stirrups when he heard a flurry of gunfire in the distance. Then came a few moments of silence followed by several more bangs. Judging by the sharp sound of the shots, they were made by a six-gun.

  Garrett swung into the leather, his eyes scanning the riverbank, now shimmering in the ferocious afternoon heat. He waited, his rifle across the saddle horn, ready for whatever might come next. This much he knew: this was bad luck country, and the sooner he was back in the Judith Basin the better. Despite everything, could he convince Jenny to give up her dream and leave with him? That was unlikely, but as of now she was still with him, and sometimes the future can be purchased by the present. At least a man could only hope that was the case.

  A figure rode slowly through the mirage near the river, his shape broken up and distorted by the shimmer. But as he emerged he gradually took on the solid form of Temple Yates.

  The gunman reined up close to Garrett. He was smiling. “Killed ’em all,” he said. “The last one died hard. I had three bullets into him before he dropped.”

  Yates’ pale eyes searched Garrett’s face. “You did all right back there, cowboy. If them two had gotten behind me I’d have been done for.” The gunman’s smile widened into a grin. “Damn it all, Garrett, I like you. I think for sure I’m going to gun you in the end, but hell, I like you.”

  “I wish folks wouldn’t get to liking me so much,” Garrett said. “Maybe then they wouldn’t be so all-fired set on killing me.”

  Chapter 23

  The summer drought had lowered the level of the Milk River, and when Garrett led the others into the crossing point opposite Verdigris Coulee, the water was only knee-high to their horses and almost without current.

  Keeping the big bend of the Belly River to their west, they rode across featureless low-lying grass and brush country, and on the morning of the third day, just as their meager rations were exhausted, Fort Whoop-Up came into sight in the distance.

  Yates trotted his horse alongside Garrett and said, “This is as far as I go.” He reached behind him and took field glasses from his saddlebags.

  “Take a good look at the fort yonder. I want you to know the layout before you and the women ride in there.”

  As Yates narrated a sketchy history of the outpost, Garrett put the glasses to his eyes and scanned the place. It was solidly built of logs in the form of a hollow square, with ramparts and loop-holes for defensive gunfire and bastions at opposite corners. A heavily fortified gate hung open, perhaps to catch any passing breeze. Nearby, the flag of the United States hung limply on a pole, informing the traveler that though the fort might be in Canada it was considered by its founder, the notorious whiskey trader John J. Healy, to be American territory.

  Garrett adjusted the focus of the glasses and looked closer. A small cannon was mounted on one of the bastions and the other housed an alarm bell, a mountain howitzer and an artesian well. Through the yawning gate, Garrett noticed that all the doors and windows of the compound’s buildings opened onto the central square, another defensive measure.

  The post seemed crowded with men, but of their type and nature, at that distance Garrett could not guess.

  “Seen enough?” Yates asked.

  Garrett nodded and handed back the glasses. Yates shoved them into his saddlebags, then swung down from his horse. “Get down, cowboy,” he said.

  Stepping from the leather, Garrett purposefully walked closer to Yates until only a few feet separated them. The gunman knew the reason, and his eyes showed guarded amusement. “Not a trusting man, are you, cowboy?” he said.

  Garrett held himself ready. “Man says he plans on killing me, my trust spreads thin. You’re faster than me, Yates, but up close and personal like this I reckon I’ll still have time to get my work in.”

  For a few moments, Yates’ face was expressionless. Then he broke into a wide grin. “Damn it, boy, but you’re true-blue. Hell, I’m not going to gun you. As that feller said back at the Milk, let bygones be bygones.”

  “Yeah,” Garrett said, “and look what happened to him.”

  Yates laughed, showing teeth as long and yellow as piano keys. “Nah, no guns. You and me are going to reach an understanding, right here, right now.” He waved an arm. “Look around you, Garrett. What do you see?”

  Without taking his eyes off Yates, Garrett answered, “I know what I see—miles of grass and over there a solitary white spruce.”

  “Right, and that’s where I’ll be this evening. When you and the women skedaddle from the fort, meet me here.”

  “Yates,” Garrett said, “I told you I won’t be a party to fleecing those miners.”

  “Nor will you be,” Yates said, smiling and spreading his hands wide. “We’ll leave that to the little gals.”

  Before Garrett could answer, Yates turned to the women, who were still sitting their horses, listening to the men talk. “You ladies step down and get over here,” he said. “We got plans to make.”

  The women did as they were told and Jenny’s eyes sought Garrett’s. Gone was the horror he’d seen after the fight at the dry wash, replaced by a softness and warmth he’d never seen before, a look that should have reassured him, but didn’t, and he couldn’t tell why.

  Like a schoolteacher lecturing his students, Yates said, “You remember the names of your husbands-to-be? Jenny?”

  “Hiram Van Sickle,” the girl answered.

  Yates’ eyes shifted to the next woman. “Abbie?”

  “Bob Rucker.”

  The gunman nodded. “Paloma?”

  “I know his name,” the woman snapped, her face flushing. “We’re not children here.”

  “Say it anyhow,” Yates said. His voice was suddenly low and flat, the threat obvious.

  “Ezra Hacker,” Paloma said, reading the gunman and not liking what she was seeing. “How could I forget a name like that?”

  “All right, you know the deal,” Yates said, ignoring the woman. “You make real nice to those miners. Get yourselves baths, splash on the perfume, and then unbutton some. Show them what will be on the menu for their wedding night. Hell, tell them if you have to, but get them to up the ante to four thousand each. Even at that, it’s cutting Charlie Cobb’s profit mighty thin.”

  Yates turned to Garrett. “Don’t worry, cowboy. You’ll get your five hundred.”

  “I told you, Yates,” Garrett said. “I want no part of this. All I want is to see Jenny safe back to Fort Benton.” His eyes angled to the girl. “Or my ranch if she’ll change her mind about things.”

  To his surprise, Jenny smiled at him and said, “That might happen, Luke. A woman changes her mind all the time.”

  “Do you mean that, Jenny?” Garrett asked, sudden hope rising in him.

  Yates interrupted. “You two can talk pretties and make calf eyes at each other later. Right now we have more business to discuss.” He stepped closer to the women. Jenny looked as pretty and fresh as ever, and any man would think Paloma close to being beautiful. By contrast, Abbie looked plain and mousy, her fair skin peeling off her nose from the sun.

  “Listen up,” Yates said. “You get the money from the miners, then make some excuse to leave for a few minutes. Then you head for the livery stable, where Garrett will be waiting.” He turned. “Cowboy, we don’t need anyone else to supply horses and that cuts down on expenses. You saddle the mounts the women are riding right now and then escort the gals back here. After that, we all light a shuck for Benton.”

  “Suppose the miners don’t pay us up front?” It was Abbie, looking uncomfortab
le, who asked the question. “And maybe they shut the gates at night.”

  “The gates won’t be shut. It gets as hot as hell inside that stockade and they keep the gates open unless hostile Indians are in the area. As for the money, you tell them miners that Garrett is Charlie Cobb’s specially appointed representative and he’s demanding immediate payment.” Yates’ lips thinned. “Do anything you have to, but get that money. Hell, you’re all whores, give ’em a taste if need be. Whet their appetites, like.” He paused for effect, then his lips pulled back from his teeth in a wolf grimace. “Just get the four thousand from each of them.”

  Garrett stiffened, anger spiking at him, but he caught Jenny’s warning glance and held his tongue. If he braced Yates now it would lead to gunplay and Jenny could get hurt. He couldn’t risk it, especially now that the girl seemed willing to go to the ranch with him.

  He would also probably die, and that would ruin everything. Garrett smiled at the thought, at the terrible finality of a killing and how a man didn’t have to seek death—it had a way of finding him.

  “Right.” Yates was speaking again. “Mount up and get this thing done.”

  Garrett stepped into the saddle and glanced at Yates. The man stood straddle-legged, his thumbs in his crossed gun belts, his cold eyes missing nothing. He looked hard and mean and ready for anything, more than able to handle any trouble that might come his way.

  Yates, Garrett decided, was a bad enemy, and he didn’t think for one moment that the gunman would let him live after he got Charlie Cobb’s money. He was not a man to forgive and forget, nor one to trim his boss’s profit margin.

  Garrett led the women toward Fort Whoop-Up, crossing open ground that allowed the fort’s defenders an excellent field of fire against marauding Indians.

  The Canadian Mounties were doing their best to stamp out the illegal whiskey trade, but they were spread thin and men like Johnny Healy still prospered. When the redcoat police were near, Healy traded guns, cooking pots, axes, ammunition, sugar, flour, tea, salt, knives, tobacco, cloth and blankets to the Indians for buffalo robes, rather than the intoxicating firewater that would surely land him behind bars.

  Once a visiting Mountie moved on, the going rate was two cups of whiskey for a robe, and for a fine pony the Indians expected four gallons of Healy’s rotgut, raw alcohol diluted with water and spiked with red pepper.

  The whiskey trade was devastating the local Indian population, a fact well known to the Blackfoot and the Bloods. Both of those proud tribes hated whiskey traders and had often attacked the fort, but had never succeeded in breaching its sturdy defenses.

  But now Luke Garrett rode unchallenged through the gates, the women with him an open passport to anywhere, their presence already attracting a curious throng. The press of men around the horses forced the four riders to a stop, and Garrett sat his saddle and looked around him.

  There seemed to be several hundred men in the compound, mostly bearded miners in plaid wool shirts and heavy boots, all of them carrying revolvers and huge bowie knives on their belts. Here and there aloof buffalo hunters in elegant buckskins, beaded and chewed to the softness of fine suede by Indian women, watched the proceedings, Sharps rifles cradled in their arms. The skinners, lesser mortals, were undistinguishable from the miners except for their bloodstained clothing and pervading stink. Mingled with the rest were the usual flotsam and jetsam of the frontier, gamblers with white faces and thin fingers, shaggy wolfers as wild as the animals they hunted, thugs and gunmen of all stripes, and ragged drifters with hollow eyes who lived as best they could, trapped at the fort by the lure of forty-rod whiskey or the lack of funds for a miner’s outfit or a good horse. Foulmouthed freighters jostled missionaries in black broadcloth who preached the Christian God to the Indians, and a few of those blanket-wrapped natives stood at the edge of the crowd, watching what was going on with empty faces that revealed only defeat.

  Garrett saw several whores in the sea of people around him. They were unattractive women who looked as worn and used up as old saddles and they studied Jenny, Abbie and Paloma with calculating, hostile eyes.

  A big miner wearing a battered plug hat and a belligerent expression lurched from the crowd. Garrett glanced at him and their eyes met. The man had been drinking and he was either on the prod or ready for a woman, and the latter proved to be the case.

  “You, little lady,” the man said, ignoring Garrett as he pointed a finger at Paloma. “How much fer a poke?”

  “She’s not for sale,” Garrett said, the sharp lash of his voice quieting the crowd who’d been lustily cheering the miner’s question.

  “You keep out of this, mister,” the big man said. “This is between me and the young lady.”

  “I told you, she’s not for sale,” Garrett said. Then, to placate the man, he added, “She’s promised to another.”

  For a few moments the miner stood in silence, slowly shaking his head as he looked down at the toes of his boots. When his eyes lifted to Garrett again, they were hot with anger. “Right. Mister, I told you to keep out of this. Now I’m gonna clean your plow for you.”

  The big miner roared and his huge, hairy arms shot upward to pull Garrett from the saddle. But quickly the young rancher drew back out of range as he shucked his gun. In a single fast movement he sideswiped away the reaching arms with his left hand, then leaned forward and lifted the plug hat off the miner’s close-cropped head. The barrel of the Colt chopped downward and slammed onto the man’s skull with the sound of an ax hitting a log. His eyes rolling in his head, the miner staggered back a step, groaned deep in his throat, then dropped like a felled ox.

  Up until that moment the crowd around Garrett had been good-natured, keen for any diversion, but now an angry growl went up and a few guns were drawn. A man’s voice, loud and clearly used to command, stopped the uproar. “What’s going on here?”

  Garrett had his gun held high and ready as the mob parted to allow a small, stocky man in an ill-fitting frock coat to stomp his way forward, his face flushed. The man looked tough but wore a starched collar, and to Garrett, that meant he’d have to prove himself. The newcomer glanced down at the fallen miner, then his icy blue eyes lifted to Garrett. “Did you do this?”

  Garrett nodded. “That man mistook my female companions for ladies of easy virtue. I corrected his mistake.”

  “Did you now?” the small man said. His eyes swept the three women. “I’d say it’s a natural enough error to make in a place like this.” He looked up at Garrett again. “My name is John J. Healy and I own this fort. What are you and your . . . ah . . . female companions doing here?”

  Before Garrett could answer, Healy held up a warning hand. “Before you say a word, let me tell you that disorderly conduct means immediate expulsion from Fort Whoop-Up. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Clear as ever was,” Garrett said. Then, deciding that the times called for a speech, he rose in the stirrups and his voice lifted to the crowd. “The young ladies you see before you are catalog brides, pledged to three lucky men at this post. They have traveled all the way from Fort Benton and suffered through Indian attacks, drought and hunger, so eager were they to get here and meet their future husbands. Surely they should have expected to be treated with respect, not manhandled. These are innocent brides, not fancy women.”

  “Hear, hear!” somebody yelled. Garrett couldn’t see the man but he silently thanked him.

  Healy held up a hand to quiet the chattering crowd and spoke directly to Jenny. “Who are these three lucky men, young lady?”

  In a breathless, little girl voice that sounded wonderfully virtuous, Jenny answered, “Oh, kind sir, my name is Jenny and I am pledged to wed Hiram Van Sickle, Esquire.” She waved a hand toward the others. “Abbie has plighted her troth to Mr. Bob Rucker and Paloma to Mr. Ezra Hacker.” She dabbed a tear from her eye with a tiny handkerchief. “There were two more of us, but, alas, they fell to Indians and bandits.”

  “Shame!” a man yelled, and others took up t
he same chorus.

  Looking up at Garrett, Healy asked, “Who is the marriage broker? You?”

  Garrett shook his head. “No, I was hired as an escort. The man who arranged it all goes by the name of Charlie Cobb.”

  Jenny slanted a warning glance to Garrett and said sweetly, “Mr. Cobb is such a kind man.”

  “I’ve heard Charlie Cobb called a lot of things,” Healy said, “but kind wasn’t one of them.”

  A roar of laughter went up from the crowd, but again Healy held up a hand and silence followed. “Be that as it may, the three gentlemen of whom you speak, Miss Jenny, are enjoying a refreshment at my bar this very moment. All three have struck it rich at the diggings, and I know for a fact that from time to time they . . . ah . . . pine for female companionship. It comes as no surprise they have chosen you lovely ladies to be their wives.”

  Healy waved an arm toward one of the log buildings facing the square. “Boys, here’s a lark! Let’s carry the brides to their prospective grooms. And the first drink is on me!”

  Amid rousing cheers, Garrett watched helplessly as Jenny and the other women were pulled off their horses, lifted onto the broad shoulders of miners and carried away in the direction of Healy’s tavern amid roaring laughter and coarse comments.

  Within a few moments, Garrett was left alone, the dust cloud kicked up by the miners’ boots already settling. The big man he’d buffaloed rose groggily to his feet, looked after at the departing crowd, then searched around for his plug hat. Garrett forgotten, he waved the hat in the air and yelled, “Hey, wait for me!” Then he went pounding after the rest.

  Garrett gathered up the reins of the horses and his eyes scanned the compound, trying to locate the livery stable.

  A buffalo hunter in buckskins with foot-long fringes and elaborate, geometric Blackfoot bead-work paused to look at him, taking in his wide hat, spurred boots and shotgun chaps. “Fair piece of your home range, ain’t you, cowboy?” the man said.