The Blackfoot Trail

by Charles G. West

  Glad that he didn’t have to go into the town of Helena, he left the saddle on Starbeau’s big bay gelding and chose a spirited little sorrel that had belonged to one of the miners Starbeau had murdered. He took his pick of their two saddles. He didn’t want a horse or saddle that might remind him of the ruthless killer and the misery he had caused for someone he held dear to his heart. With a wave of his hand to the Lester family, he led the packhorse back down the valley.

  Chapter 17

  It was good to be in the mountains again with no sense of urgency to get anyplace. He still had tasks to perform, but he decided he would do them at his leisure. He took time to hunt, and time to dry the meat. He had plenty of cartridges, thanks to Starbeau’s packs, but he still hunted with his bow to conserve his supply of ammunition. He felt that he was home again, alone again, where he was before he encountered Malcolm Lindstrom and Pete Watson. It seemed a longer time ago than the few months it had been. He still thought about Callie, and hoped that she had managed to put her ordeal behind her. He would continue to think about her for a while, but like everything else in the mountains, he told himself, those thoughts would fade with the seasons.

  Sheriff Lon Pedersen sat at his desk, reading the newspaper. His deputy, Jim Blackburn, stood looking out the front window, one foot propped on a wooden cartridge box. Things were back to normal in the sheriff’s office, although Jim suspected that Pedersen still left most of the blame for the bank robbery and murder of Wallace Tolbert at his feet. A posse had scoured the mountains all around Butte with no results until they finally admitted it useless to continue. Jim argued that there was little he could have done to prevent the holdup, and his best tracker came up empty on finding a trail to follow. He figured Pedersen was equally to blame for having gone fishing, although he didn’t voice it to his boss.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Blackburn muttered when a rider leading a packhorse pulled up to the hitching post and dismounted. When Pedersen looked up from his paper, Blackburn went on. “It’s that crazy son of a bitch that looks like a wild Injun. I told you about him—came ridin’ through town scarin’ the hell outta everybody.” This garnered Pedersen’s interest, and the sheriff put down his paper, got up, and came to the window. “The only reason I didn’t lock him up was a feller came running down the street hollerin’ about the bank being robbed and Tolbert shot,” Blackburn continued. “I didn’t have time to mess with no fool half-breed or whatever he is.”

  “You figure he had anything to do with the bank holdup?” Pedersen asked.

  “I don’t see how he could,” the deputy replied. “Like I said, he was talkin’ to me when it happened.”

  “Well, let’s see what he wants.” Pedersen went to the door and opened it just as Joe Fox was untying a large cotton sack from one of the packs.

  “You didn’t learn much the last time you came through this town, did you?” Jim Blackburn blurted when he joined Pedersen at the door. “You’re lucky I didn’t lock you up then.”

  Joe did not answer right away, just gazed at Blackburn for a few seconds, as if deciding whether or not to bother. He finished untying the sack before speaking. “You the sheriff?” he asked Pedersen. When the sheriff nodded, Joe said, “I got somethin’ here to give you.”

  “All right,” Pedersen replied, “come on inside.”

  “All the same to you,” Joe responded, “I’ll just give it to you out here.” Glancing at Blackburn, he said, “You folks are too quick to wanna put people in that jail and not let ’em out.” Holding his rifle in one hand, he tossed the sack on the steps. “That’s all my business here. I’ll be goin’ now.”

  “Wait a minute,” Pedersen responded. “What’s in it?” He was beginning to share Blackburn’s opinion of the strange mountain man.

  “The money Starbeau stole from the bank,” Joe answered.

  “The hell you say,” Pedersen exclaimed, and reached for the sack. Peering inside, he asked, “Is it all there?”

  “I don’t know,” was the stoic response.

  “How much is in here?”

  Again, “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Pedersen exclaimed, hardly believing. “Didn’t you count it?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  Becoming impatient with the word game, Joe said, “Because it didn’t belong to me, so it didn’t make any difference how much there was.”

  Pedersen could hardly believe his ears. Then a more important question came to mind. “Where’s the man who stole it? What did you say his name was?”

  “Starbeau,” Joe said. “He’s dead.”

  It was obvious that the sheriff wanted more details than Joe was inclined to offer, but the adopted son of a Blackfoot warrior was eager to leave the busy town and return to the mountains. He didn’t feel it necessary to explain that he had not counted the entire sack of money, but he had counted out two hundred and fifty dollars that he felt belonged to Callie’s people in the mule train. He was not certain there would ever be an opportunity to return their money, but he would hold it for them in case he decided to see the Oregon country for himself. There was also the matter of the sacks of gold dust he assumed had been stolen from the two miners Starbeau killed. He hadn’t decided what to do about that.

  His talking done, he grabbed the saddle horn with one hand, and with his rifle in the other, stepped up in the saddle. Backing his horse away from the hitching post as if expecting the lawmen to try to stop him, he suddenly turned the sorrel and was away at a gallop.

  “Hey! Hold on there!” Blackburn yelled.

  “Let him go,” Pedersen said. “Hell, he didn’t rob the bank. I don’t think we’ll see him around here again.”

  Grace Templeton stood in the door of her husband’s store, watching the slender young woman bending over a large iron pot, stirring the clothes with a paddle. After a few moments, she turned to her husband. “Horace, I think this is a mistake.”

  “What is?” Horace replied.

  “Letting that child stay here with us. Every time I look at her it breaks my heart.”

  Horace Templeton walked over to stand behind his wife. “Well, I don’t know . . . ,” he began. “She’s a good worker, and she sure don’t eat much. I didn’t think she was all that much trouble.”

  “I declare, Horace, you don’t even know what I’m talking about, do you?” When her husband responded with a mystified look, she just shook her head. “Men,” she uttered, exasperated.

  For a fact, Horace didn’t know what his wife was complaining about. The young lady really wasn’t much trouble. She seemed content to live in a corner of the back storeroom and she was a genuine help with the chores. Besides, what choice did a Christian family have? She refused to go on to Oregon with her own family, and they were about to give up their dream of finding a new place with friends and family already waiting for them until Grace said Callie could stay with them.

  Luke and Jenny Preston, the only family from the congregation that had decided to settle in the Missoula Valley, had extended an invitation to the girl to stay with them. But Callie declined, saying she would work for her room and board with the Templetons. The two Flynn brothers had volunteered to stay to help Preston build his cabin, planning to rejoin the congregation in Oregon when the cabin was finished. “Seems to me everythin’ worked out all right,” Horace commented. “Callie’s gettin’ along just fine, as far as I can see.”

  Grace favored her husband with a look of astonishment. “I declare, you really can’t see what’s happening right before your eyes, can you?”

  “What?” he demanded, impatiently.

  “She’s dying of a broken heart,” Grace declared. “Maybe not so much as you’d notice right away. But she’s telling herself that he’s gonna come for her one day.”

  “Who?”

  “Joe Fox, that’s who. The poor child hides that pitiful scarred-up face from everybody that comes around here—taking those long walks by the river at night—and it ai
n’t been that long since those Indians raided this place.”

  Horace was struck dumb for a second. “You think she’s really waitin’ for Joe Fox?” He found that hard to believe. “Hell, Joe Fox is somewhere so far back in the mountains . . . I doubt we’ll ever see him around these parts again.”

  “And that’s why that poor child is dying of a broken heart,” Grace said.

  “Well, I reckon she’s welcome to stay here as long as she wants,” he said, and went back to the barrel of molasses he had been in the process of opening before his wife started the troublesome discussion.

  “She’s too young to be giving up on her life,” Grace continued, still watching Callie. “The best thing for her is to go back to her folks. I’m gonna talk to her about it. Luke Preston has almost finished his cabin, so the two Flynn boys will be heading to Oregon pretty soon. Maybe I can persuade Callie to go with them. She needs family, and we can’t give her that.”

  As if sensing that she was the subject of someone’s conversation, Callie paused and straightened up to ease the strain on her back. She had in fact stopped turning away from the stares of strangers and regulars alike who came to the trading post. She had learned to ignore the pitying stares as well as the rude, curious gawks, and keep her head held high. She could have told Grace that, although she watched the valley road every day for Joe’s return, she did not expect it. They had said their good-byes, and gone their separate ways. The hardest part had been trying to explain to her mother and father why she just couldn’t go to Oregon with them. She felt that if she had remained with the congregation, the stigma of her brutal assault would go with her, forever alive in their minds. Here in this valley, she was just the woman with the scarred face. She knew that she could not stay with the Templetons forever, but maybe God would show her a sign before long, and she would know what to do. She brought her mind back to the wash. Better get these out of the pot and hung up if they’re going to dry before dark, she thought.

  The evenings were getting warm enough now to be quite pleasant for a walk along the river. Callie hurried to help Grace clean up the supper dishes so she would have time to walk before it became too dark. She knew it worried Grace and Horace if she stayed out after dark.

  Taking a light wrap for her shoulders, she left the house behind the trading post, and turned away from the valley road. In a melancholy sense of mind, she decided to walk down by the old line of caves where she and her family had spent the winter. It had been some time now since she had visited the caves. Horace had warned her that there was no telling what manner of vermin or animals might have taken up residence there since they were vacated. She wasn’t concerned.

  Walking down the line of dark holes in the bluffs, she counted the openings until she came to her family’s cave. She stood staring into the dark entrance for a long time, thoughts of a happier time filling her mind. Remembering a night that seemed long ago, she climbed over the top of the cave and stood gazing out toward the stand of cottonwoods across the clearing—where he had made his camp. There was nothing there now but the lonely darkness. She closed her eyes and pictured him, dressed in animal skins, his hair in two long braids, like an Indian, tall and straight as he walked toward her with long fluid strides. It brought a smile to her face.

  She opened her eyes to find the vision still in her mind. Blinking rapidly to clear her senses, she thought at first that she was dreaming. Then her eyes began to fill with tears of joy, for she realized that it was no dream. It was him, striding toward her, leading two horses behind him. She didn’t wait any longer, but ran to him, desperate to capture the dream before it could fade away.

  He caught her in his arms and kissed her scarred face again and again while she clung to him as if afraid he might slip away. “I’ve come to take you home,” he said, “our home. That is, if you’ll have me.”

  “I’ll live anywhere as long as it’s with you, Joe Fox,” she answered, “even if it’s in a tent.”

  Thinking of the sacks of gold dust in his saddlebags, he said, “I think we’ll do a little better than that.”

  With her heart threatening to burst with joy, she squeezed him tighter still and whispered, “How did you know I’d wait for you here?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I was on my way to Oregon.”