“Take ’em,” Bullock insisted. “You can settle up with me later if you want.”
“I’m obliged. I can sure use ’em,” Rider said. “I’ll pay you back when I get the hides.”
“I ain’t worried about it. You just watch your back and good huntin’.”
He left Fort Laramie, guiding the buckskin north, once again following the old Bozeman Trail through Powder River country, hoping to cut down some of the two-day lead Bodine had.
There was no way he could know, but the outlaws were not wasting any time on the trail, so he was not really gaining on them. Even though he rode long days, they were doing the same, anxious to put places and people where they were known behind them. It was a three-day ride to Fort Reno, and when he reached that post and asked about the three, he was told that they had stopped there briefly two days before and continued on after a stop only long enough to rest their horses. Planning to do the same, he was delayed when he had to take a longer route, following the Powder River instead of heading more westerly to strike Crazy Woman Creek, because of the reported presence of a large band of Sioux camped on the Crazy Woman near the Bozeman crossing. He was more cautious about avoiding hostile war parties, unwilling to take any chances that might endanger or hinder his mission. When he reached the confluence of the Crazy Woman with the Powder, well above the usual Bozeman crossing, he guided the buckskin directly west toward Fort C. F. Smith. He was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that he had lost ground to the three killers. He continued on his way as soon as his horse was rested.
“My ass is gettin’ damn tired of settin’ in that saddle,” Bodine complained as he rubbed his backside.
“Huh,” Quincy snorted. “Think how sore that horse of yours must be from totin’ your big ass all the way from Fort Laramie.” His remark caused Billy to giggle, but the remark was more fact than jest. They had pushed their horses hard over the last week in snow over a foot deep in some places, and they were constantly on the lookout for an opportunity to trade for fresh mounts. So far, none had been encountered.
“My ass is about to freeze off,” Billy said. “If it keeps snowin’ like this, the damn trail is gonna be hard to find.”
“All we gotta do is follow the river, you dummy,” Quincy said.
“We ought’n to have more’n three, four days to Helena,” Bodine said, “and I’m damn glad of it.” He got up to move closer to the fire.
“I hope we strike it rich pretty quick,” Billy said. “I need to hit a saloon before I perish of thirst.” He helped himself to another cup of coffee. “You reckon there’ll be any fuss about that business back at that Crow camp? I mean, them Crows is pretty tight with the soldiers. They mighta told them troops over at Laramie.”
“What are they gonna tell ’em?” Bodine replied. “The only one knows our names is Johnny Hawk and he’s dead, and that’s a fact. Besides, we ain’t told nobody we’re headin’ to Helena, even if they was to look for us.”
They were within a hard day’s ride from reaching their destination before finding an opportunity to switch to fresh horses. Approaching Sixteen Mile Creek, a mile or so east of its confluence with the Missouri, they came upon a ranch house built hard up against the south side of a low hill. A couple of hundred yards from the house, a small herd of about twenty-five horses were pawing around in the snow by the creek, looking for the grass underneath. “There we go, boys,” Quincy sang out, “fresh horses.”
“Let’s go look ’em over,” Bodine said, and turned his horse toward the creek.
“Go ahead if you want to,” Quincy said, “but I think I’ll go talk to the owner there in that cabin. That bunch of horses is in easy rifle range of the cabin, and he might not be real generous with anybody cuttin’ out his stock.”
“Quincy’s right,” Billy said, looking at the smoke curling up from the chimney. “Besides, I wouldn’t mind warmin’ my feet by that fire in the house there.” That thought appealed to all three of the cold, weary riders, so they headed directly to the cabin.
As they suspected, they had been spotted as soon as they had topped a rise about six hundred yards south of the cabin. Pulling up in front of the door, Quincy called out. “Hello the house. Anybody home?” In a moment, the door opened ajar, far enough to see a man standing there with one hand holding a shotgun by the barrel. “Howdy, neighbor,” Quincy said. “You’ve got nothin’ to fear from us. We’re U.S. Marshals on our way to Helena and our horses is about wore out. We was wonderin’ if you’re interested in tradin’ us some fresh horses. We’ve got government cash money to pay to boot, if you’re willin’.”
His interest sharpened by the mention of cash money, the man opened the door a bit wider to get a better look at the horses they rode. It was just wide enough to provide a better target as well and he doubled up and fell back inside when Quincy’s pistol shot ripped into his stomach. “Yee-haw!” Billy shouted as he fired through the open door a split second behind Quincy, and all three quickly dismounted and stormed through the door, their revolvers ready to shoot anything inside that moved.
“Check behind that quilt!” Quincy ordered as he quickly surveyed the room, looking for anyone else that might be hiding in ambush.
Bodine snatched the quilt aside that served to divide the bedroom from the rest of the cabin. “Well, lookee here,” he chortled. “Look what’s hidin’ behind the bedpost. Come on out here, darlin’, and let me have a look at you.” The woman tried to cower farther between the bed and the wall, bringing a chuckle of amusement from Bodine. The big man grabbed the side rail of the bed and flipped it upside down to land out of the way. “There, now,” he said. “That’ll make it a lot easier to get outta there.”
With fearful eyes darting back and forth between the three intruders eyeing her, she got slowly to her feet and stood before them. Bodine took a long look at the haggard old woman, her hair in long dirty strings, framing a face, wrinkled and lean with hollow eyes from too many harsh winters. “Damn,” Bodine muttered, then turned to his partners. “She’s all yours, boys,” he said, preferring to wait to satisfy his primal urges with one of the prostitutes in Helena.
Interest in the woman as a sexual object was also lacking with Billy and Quincy, and their attention immediately shifted from their groins to their bellies. “Get in there and rustle us up somethin’ to eat,” Quincy ordered.
Relieved to see that she was not to be assaulted by the three, she asked, “Can I see to Lonnie first?”
“Lemme see,” Bodine replied, and went back by the door to take a look at the wounded man still doubled up on the floor, grasping his stomach and painfully gasping for breath. Bodine pulled his pistol again and put a bullet in the suffering man’s forehead. “Lonnie’s all right,” he said with a chuckle. “He’s feelin’ a lot better.” He holstered his pistol, grabbed the man by his heels, and dragged him outside to lie on the porch. “Now get to that stove and get busy,” he said as he came back in the door. “I’m hungry.”
“I swear, Bodine,” Billy Hyde said. “You sure got a way with women.”
Quincy watched the woman’s face during the execution of her husband, and he was compelled to remark, “You sure don’t look too broke up over ol’ Lonnie’s death.” There was not a tear in her eye, and he would have expected a hysterical eruption from most any woman in like circumstances. She didn’t respond to his comment, but went directly to the kitchen stove as she had been directed.
There were no tears left in Luella Perkins after a hard unrewarding life with Lonnie Trabert. She had shed the last of them when she had reluctantly followed him down the Yellowstone and up to this wilderness where he was set on building a working ranch. By that time, she had little choice, for her youth was gone, and he had not possessed the decency to marry her, often expressing more concern for the horses he had managed to accumulate than he had for her. Lonnie’s death seemed no more surprising than anything else that happened in this harsh country, and she could not bring it upon herself to weep for him. W
ithout spending a moment’s thought on what was to become of her, she placed her skillet on the stove and plopped a dollop of lard in it, preparing to fry some potatoes.
“I’d say this was a real piece of good fortune,” Quincy commented to Bodine and Billy after satisfying his hunger. He stirred a heaping teaspoon of sugar into his coffee, took a sip, and smacked his lips to express his pleasure. “It’s been a helluva long time since I’ve had any sugar.” He jerked his head around to focus on the woman. “What’s your name, old woman?” When she answered, he repeated it after her. “Luella, huh? Well, Luella, I just might take you with us to do the cookin’. Whaddaya say ’bout that?”
She paused to think the suggestion over for a few moments before answering. Already having witnessed Bodine and Billy ransacking the cabin and pulling out every useful food staple they could find, she could imagine that there was going to be very little left after they’d gone. Maybe, she thought, she could go with them and look for a chance to escape when they were close to Helena. That was evidently where they were heading, according to their conversation as they sat around the table, drinking their coffee. Considering the alternative, she knew she would likely perish if she stayed here alone. “It’s all right with me,” she answered then.
“How ’bout that, boys?” Quincy exclaimed. “Luella’s joinin’ the gang.” He tapped his cup on the table. “Bring that coffeepot over here, Luella.”
She went over to the table and poured more coffee in all three cups, oblivious to Bodine’s hand on her weary backside. “I swear, Luella,” he said, “if you were a few years younger—hell, if you was just one year younger . . .” The three men all enjoyed a good laugh over his remark. She returned the pot to the stove and sat down on a stool in the corner.
They enjoyed a leisurely morning in the cabin, but eventually decided it was time to move on. Once again in possession of something they could sell, they planned to drive Lonnie’s herd of horses into Helena. There were only a couple dozen to drive, easily handled by the three of them. They packed all the provisions they could find from the cabin on a couple of packhorses, and they were ready to ride. After putting a saddle he found in the barn on one of the horses, Quincy went back inside the cabin, where he found Luella gathering up her clothes to put in a cotton bag. “Looks like you’re gettin’ ready to go,” Quincy said. She did not reply as she struggled into a heavy coat. “You ain’t gonna need that,” he said. She turned around to find his revolver in her face and carried her tired, overworked expression into the next world as the gun exploded.
He walked outside to find both Billy and Bodine staring at the cabin door with guns drawn. “What the hell was that?” Bodine asked.
“Luella decided she ain’t goin’ after all,” was Quincy’s casual reply.
“Damn, Quincy,” Billy whined, “you shot our cook.”
Quincy cast a condescending eye toward Billy and replied, “Have you got one single brain in that thick head of yours? We can’t take a witness to town to run off and tell the sheriff what happened here.” He shook his head in disgust for Billy’s ignorance.
“Well, what did you throw a saddle on that horse for?”
“Because it’s worth a little money,” Quincy answered impatiently. “Now let’s get movin’.”
They drove their herd of horses to within a few miles of the busy town of Helena, and Bodine and Billy stayed to watch them while Quincy went in search of a buyer, promising that he would bring a bottle of whiskey back with him. After making the rounds of the larger mining outfits with no prospects, Quincy wished they had stolen mules instead of horses. There seemed to be no market for horses, and they wanted to get the animals off their hands as quickly as possible, so he had no alternative but to keep trying. On his third attempt, luck finally came his way. Talking to a stable owner in town, he was told that an army officer had been in his stable the day before looking for replacement horses for a detachment of troops sent all the way from Fort C. F. Smith to escort a gold shipment back. The lieutenant had said that his troop’s horses were in poor condition and he had been authorized to buy replacements. “Well, I’ve got the horses he’s lookin’ for,” Quincy said. “Is he still around town?”
“I expect so,” the owner of the stables said. “He said the shipment he was sent to escort ain’t ready yet, so he’ll be around for a few days, maybe a week.”
“Reckon where I can find him?” Quincy asked.
“Well, his men are camped east of town, but you might see the officer in town. I’ve seen him a couple of times on the street. There ain’t that many soldiers at Last Chance Gulch, so if he’s here, it oughta be easy to spot him. I wish I’d had the horses. The army don’t haggle much on price. You just tell ’em the price and they wire the money.”
The officer Quincy was hoping to find was at that moment in Helena’s newest dry goods store, talking to the wife of the owner. “Is the army thinking of building a fort near Helena?” Lucy McGowan asked. The prospect of the increased business that might bring her way was intriguing.
“Not that I know of, ma’am,” the lieutenant replied, “but then I wouldn’t know what the army’s plans might be for the future. It seems like you folks might need the presence of the military, since you’re now the capital city of Montana.”
“Yes, that would be nice,” Lucy said. “What was your name, sir?”
“Carrington, ma’am, Lieutenant Jared Carrington.”
“Any relation to Colonel Henry Carrington?” she asked.
Carrington smiled. “I get asked that question a lot since I was reassigned to the Wyoming district. And yes, ma’am, Colonel Carrington is my uncle. Do you know the colonel?”
“Not really, but I do know of him. I met him at Fort Reno on my way out here with my sister and her husband. We left there and continued on with a wagon train led by Jack Grainger.”
“That is interesting,” Carrington said. “You no doubt remember an odd pair of civilian scouts named Johnny Hawk and Rider somebody, or somebody Rider. I don’t know which.”
Lucy raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I certainly do. We still see Johnny Hawk occasionally, but his partner, Rider . . .” She paused then. “His name is actually Jim Moran . . . Seems to spend all his time in the mountains.”
If she had hit him with a pickax, the blow to his senses could not have staggered him more. He was right! He had known it all along! This simple confirmation of what he had known to be true caused his heart to pound with the excitement of justification when others had advised him to forget about his suspicions of the fraud perpetrated right under his nose. He thought of Johnny Hawk’s implication in the hoax and was convinced now that it was the little scout who had actually helped Moran escape. Knowing that he now had what he needed to bring Jim Moran to justice, he fairly beamed at Lucy, his strange reaction to her innocent comment having left her astonished. In a moment, when he could speak again, he asked, “Would you know where in the mountains Jim Moran—this Rider character—is hiding?”
“Why, no, I don’t have any idea,” she replied. After witnessing the lieutenant’s exaggerated reaction to her comment, she sensed that she might have unintentionally brought trouble to Jim, which was never what she had in mind. It also occurred to her that he had asked where Jim was hiding, not where he had a camp.
“What about Johnny Hawk?” he asked, his mind racing with possibilities. “Have you seen him recently? Do you know where he is?”
“No,” Lucy stated firmly, “I don’t know where he is, and I haven’t seen him in quite a while.” Fully realizing that she might have caused trouble for two people she would not wish any harm, she resolved not to give the lieutenant any more information than she already had.
It didn’t make any difference to Carrington. He had the information he needed, and neither Hawk nor Moran could know that he did. If I don’t find Moran while I’m here, I’ll run into him somewhere. He took his leave of Mrs. McGowan, thanking her graciously for her conversation, and went directly to
the telegraph office to request permission to extent his stay in Montana Territory to look for the escaped prisoner. He could not wait to tell his uncle that he had been correct in his suspicions about the mysterious Mr. Rider.
Some of the troopers in his command knew Johnny Hawk and the man called Rider. The two had ridden scout with his uncle’s command as far as Fort Reno, so Carrington could count on a positive identification from these men. He divided his detachment into four scouting parties, making sure that every party had at least one man who knew the two on sight. He then sent them out to scour the town of Helena, up and down Last Chance Gulch, hoping to get lucky enough to catch Johnny Hawk on one of the visits to town Lucy McGowan had spoken of.
Because of the existing network of telegraph wires and the necessity to relay signals, the lieutenant did not receive a reply to his request to extend his mission until later the next day. In effect, his orders were to delay his return no longer than that already necessary to prepare the shipment he had been sent to escort. That didn’t leave much time, but it no longer mattered because the wire also told him that Johnny Hawk was in the hospital at Fort Laramie, and Rider had brought him there. Had Carrington known that Rider was on his way to Helena, he might have been tempted to disobey his orders and wait for a chance to arrest him. Not knowing that, he bought replacement horses from two former scouts for his uncle and prepared to return to C. F. Smith, confident now that he would eventually bring Jim Moran to justice. The following day brought changes to everyone’s plans in the form of a heavy winter storm that dropped two feet of snow on top of close to a foot that was already on the ground—and it continued to fall throughout the day. Miners, businessmen, freighters, and everyone else—including soldiers—had no choice but to settle in to wait it out.
Ride the High Range Page 17