He was awakened the next morning by the pawing of his horse searching for grass inside his pine shelter. Shivering with the cold, for his fire had burned down to a handful of smoldering sticks, he dropped the saddle blanket he had wrapped around him and hurriedly climbed into his underwear and pants, which were now dry. If he had a fortune, he would have been tempted at that moment to give it all away for one cup of steaming hot coffee, and he thought of his supplies and the coffeepot he had left in the stable on his packhorse. He could certainly use those items now, but there were more important things that had been left behind as well—things like ammunition and his bow and beaver skin quiver of arrows. As they came to mind, he began to consider the likelihood that they might still be in Arthur Tice’s stable, and the notion that they would become the stable operator′s property did not sit well with him. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he needed his packhorse and his belongings, and he now second-guessed his decision to leave them. It took me a while to accumulate those things, he thought, and I don’t have the money to replace them. As far as his Henry rifle was concerned, he figured that was definitely lost to him, for it was in Sheriff Tate’s possession. “Damn!” he swore, irritated by the turn of events that had left him wanting. He tried to put his irritation aside while he stoked up his fire, but he was not able to rid his mind of his possessions waiting to be claimed by someone else.
He was not partial to muskrat, but that was the only game he was able to find near the little creek near his shelter. The carbine he had taken from the guard was loaded, and had been converted to rimfire cartridges, but it would be useless to him after the magazine was emptied. For that reason, he would have to be very conservative in deciding when to fire it. His thinking was to continue to pursue the herd of deer, whose tracks he had followed to this stream, but first he had to find food for his horse. With his hatchet and Lucy’s knife, he cut branches from the cottonwood trees by the stream and peeled the bark which the buckskin accepted graciously. Now that his horse was fed, he saddled him and went in search of the herd of deer.
Following the tracks over a low ridge, he spotted them ahead at a distance of approximately five hundred yards, too far to chance a shot with the Spencer carbine. The herd was not on the move, having stopped to search for young shoots growing along the water’s edge of a stream. Looking the situation over, he decided he could work his way along the base of the ridge and possibly circle around to a closer distance. He left his horse there and started out around the ridge on foot and managed to make his way to within about one hundred and fifty yards before his movements were detected by a large buck. The deer jerked his head up, alert, and snorted a warning to the others. In less than a second they bolted, but Rider already had his sights trained on a young doe. His shot was wide, almost missing, but lucky enough to hit the deer in her back leg, causing her to stumble. “Dammit!” he cursed his poor shot, and ran as fast as he could in the snow to get a closer shot before she could get up and run. Knowing now that the weapon had a tendency to miss left, he made allowance for it and delivered a kill shot as the doe was struggling to her feet.
He then went back to get his horse, and when he returned, he found he had competition for his kill. A pack of five wolves had also been following the herd and had already gathered around the carcass by the time he got back. As soon as he approached, they turned in snarling defiance of his interference. Yelling and waving his arms, he advanced toward them, the carbine in one hand and his hatchet in the other, but the wolves refused to retreat. Moving closer, he continued yelling, trying to make them run. It served to only antagonize the beasts, and suddenly a big male attacked, launching his body at the intruder with teeth set to tear into Rider’s flesh. Poised and ready for the attack, Rider deftly avoided the teeth and rendered a blow to the wolf’s head with his hatchet, causing the animal to shriek with pain and slink away to safety.
“All right,” he muttered, “who’s next?” And he set himself to repel another attack. The four uninjured wolves all seemed ready to spring, edging toward him with teeth bared. He would have liked to save what little ammunition he had, but he decided it not worth the risk that they might all attack at the same time, which was typical and damn likely. So he leveled the carbine and killed the foremost of the four. The crack of the rifle was enough to cause the other three to bolt for safety. They retreated to form a circle around him and his horse. “If you’ll just hold your horses,” he said, “there’s enough here for everybody.” And while he quickly set about skinning the carcass, the wolves sat in the snow, watching his every move. Working as fast as he could, he carved off a haunch and left the rest for the wolves. It would be enough to sustain him for a while, and he didn’t have the time to think about smoke-curing the rest for future use, because he had decided that he was going to return to claim his packhorse and possessions. With that in mind, he knew that the sooner he got back to the stables, the more likely his things would still be there.
With his meat secured on his horse, he paused to address the watching wolves. “All right, boys, the rest is yours.” As he stood there, he shrugged his shoulders, just then realizing that the itching he felt was a trickle of blood down his back from the bullet wound. There was nothing he could do about it since there was no way he could reach it, so he decided to ignore it, figuring the only way he could treat it was to build his blood up with the deer meat. Stepping up in the saddle, he returned to his pine shelter to cook his meal, leaving the wolves to their banquet, minus the leader of their pack. Just means more for everybody else, Rider thought.
Arthur Tice clamped the padlock tight on the tack room door and placed the bar across the back doors of the stable. He then picked up his lantern and walked to the front of the stable. After one quick look around, holding the lantern up before him, he blew it out and hung it on a nail beside the door. Locking the second padlock on the front doors, he gave it a yank to make sure it was engaged. Then he walked toward the small frame house about fifty yards away, unaware of the figure watching him from the dark shadows of the creek.
Rider waited a while longer after Tice disappeared inside to make sure he was in the house for the night. Then he left the buckskin on the rocky creek bank and moved quickly past the empty corral to the back of the stable, which faced away from the house. By the light of a half-moon, he examined the situation confronting him. There was no padlock on the doors, so he assumed there was a bar holding them. He went through the corral to the front of the building and a quick look told him that the front doors were secured by a padlock. That left the hayloft, and the door was too high to reach from the ground. Not to be denied, he went back to the creek and climbed onto his horse. After another quick look to make sure no one was around, he guided the gelding to the front of the stable and stopped him under the hayloft door. Then by standing up on his saddle, he could reach the bottom of the door. Don’t be locked, he pleaded silently, relieved when the door moved reluctantly back. With a good grip on the sill, he pulled himself up far enough to get his shoulders in and his belly on the sill. After that, it was easy to pull the rest of himself up.
Moving as quickly as he could in the dark hayloft, he found the ladder and hurried down to remove the bar from the back door. Then he ran around to the front to lead his horse back out of sight behind the stable. Moving from stall to stall, he could see horses in most of them, but not well enough to identify his packhorse. He would have lit Tice’s lantern, but he had nothing but flint and steel to make fire, so he entered a large stall that held two horses and stood there motionless. After a few seconds, one of the horses came up to him and thrust her nose against his chest. “Atta girl,” Rider said softly. “Let’s get outta this stall where I can take a better look at you.” He led the mare out in the alley between the stalls into a patch of moonlight near the open doors. “I ain’t that sure,” he muttered, “but you’re close enough and I ain’t got a lotta time.”
He proceeded to the tack room next where his packs had been
placed, only to be confronted with a padlock. “Damn!” he swore under his breath, for it was a heavy lock and appeared to be uncompromising. He studied it for a long minute before realizing that the door was not uncompromising. So he hurried to his saddle and got his hatchet. His concern now was for the noise he would make, chopping away at the man’s door, so he decided he’d better make each swing of the hatchet an effective one. Selecting the second board in the door, he aimed a powerful blow at a crack in the wood. Then he stopped to listen, afraid the impact had been heard up at the house. There was no sound that would indicate anyone was coming to investigate, and he decided the sound wasn’t as loud as he imagined, so he went back to work on the board. After a half-dozen blows with the hand ax, the board split down the middle, giving him room to get a solid hold on part of it. He grabbed that part and wrenched it from the door. He then put his strength behind the other piece and removed the entire board. Then he used the blade of his hatchet to pry the next board until the nails were loosened and backed out of the frame far enough for him to pull the board off. He continued this procedure until he had an opening in the door frame large enough for him to get through.
Even in the dark tack room, he found his packs, only because he remembered where Tice had shown him to stack them. One by one, he passed them through the hole in the door, and in a short time he had his pack harness on the horse and the packs secured. His last act before leading his horses out the back door was to fill a bucket of oats from the bin and dump them into a cotton sack he found on top of it. He paused to pull the doors shut again before climbing in the saddle and pointing the buckskin toward the main street running along the gulch. There was one more task to complete, and he paused to consider the risk involved. He had to feel fortunate to have recovered his packhorse and his belongings, but he needed his Henry rifle. Hell, he thought after a moment, it’s my rifle, and they got no right to keep it.
It was after midnight and no one paid much attention to the solitary figure riding slowly down the slushy street, leading a packhorse. The responsible citizens of Helena were long since home in their beds, leaving the streets to those who frequented the saloons and the bawdy houses. When he approached the sheriff’s office, he paused to see if there was anyone there. Inside, he could see just one person, a deputy, he presumed, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped on the desk. Rider dismounted and looped the reins over the hitching post. Drawing the carbine from his saddle scabbard, he stepped up on the walk and moved silently to the door. A slight groan of rusty hinges as he slowly pushed the door open was not enough to arouse the sleeping deputy at the desk.
Rider stood looking at the unsuspecting lawman for a moment before walking around behind him and pulling his revolver from his holster. The slight reduction of weight was sufficient to wake the sleeping deputy, and he abruptly sat straight up and slapped his hand on the empty holster. Still confused, he started to look around on the floor, thinking his weapon had dropped out of his holster. He froze when he felt the cold barrel of the pistol against the back of his head.
“Get up,” Rider commanded. When the deputy did as he was told, Rider said, “In there.” He pushed him toward the door to the cell room, taking the keys off a hook by the door when he passed through it.
“You’re makin’ one helluva big mistake, mister,” the deputy said.
“Maybe,” Rider replied, and prodded him with the rifle barrel again. He marched the lawman up to a cell door and unlocked it. “Get in,” he said, and when the deputy balked, he gave him a shove and locked the cell door while the infuriated lawman turned at once to face him.
“You!” the deputy blurted, dumbfounded. “How the hell did you . . . ?” he sputtered, hardly believing his eyes. “Are you crazy—breakin’ in the sheriff’s office? How’d you get away from the soldiers?”
Rider had no time to answer questions, even had he been inclined to. “I came to get my rifle,” he said stoically, “and then I’ll be on my way.” He turned and walked back into the office, leaving the deputy fuming after him, promising that he would be hunted down and hanged. Seeing a gun rack on one wall, he scanned the weapons locked in it and spotted his Henry right away. He then searched through the desk drawers until he found a ring of keys. One of them fit the lock on the gun rack. After retrieving his rifle, he replaced it with the Spencer carbine, then dutifully locked the rack again and returned the keys. While rummaging through the drawers, he noticed some blank paper, so he took a sheet of it and dipped a pen in the inkwell he found on the desk. He was not practiced at writing, but he remembered some from his childhood, so writing as neatly as he could manage, he left a message.
I owe A. Tice for a door I broke and a bucket of oats I took. I will pay him when I get the money. The Henry
I took is mine, so I don’t owe nuthin for it.
He paused before signing it, and then wrote Rider.
Before leaving, he closed the door to the cells in an effort to muffle some of the deputy’s yelling. Then with his Henry rifle in hand, he closed the front door and climbed into the saddle to continue on his way out of town, feeling that he had rectified all accounts.
Sheriff Sam Tate walked out the front door of the hotel and paused on the board walkway to work with a toothpick on some remnants of the bacon he had just eaten in the dining room. Looking up and down the quiet street as he deftly maneuvered his toothpick between his front teeth, he felt satisfied that all seemed peaceful in his town. As he passed a doorway next to the Dry Gulch Saloon, he was surprised to find a miner scrunched up in the fetal position, evidently sleeping off a drunk. He kept a deputy on duty all night to prevent things like that. Jeff Dwyer was on duty last night and he was usually reliable to rid the street of drunks who were unable to find their way home. Tate nudged the drunk several times with the toe of his boot without results, so he administered a firm kick to the man’s backside that succeeded in shaking the drunk from his slumber. “Get up from there!” Tate ordered. “You’re lucky you ain’t froze to death. Get your sorry ass home, wherever that is. I oughta lock you up for drunk and disorderly conduct.”
The dazed man took a minute to focus his eyes before realizing it was the sheriff who had awakened him. He staggered to his feet with an assist from the door frame before speaking in his defense. “I ain’t drunk, Sheriff. I was drunk last night.” He paused while a wave of nausea swept over him. “I’m just sick now.”
“Well, get on off the street before you start puking your guts out,” Tate scolded.
“Yes, sir, Sheriff,” the drunk replied.
Tate watched him as he staggered into the alley beside the saloon and disappeared around behind the building. He’ll probably pass out again behind the saloon, Tate thought, but at least he’ll be out of sight. Not inclined to bother with harmless drunks first thing in the morning, he was more concerned about the reason Jeff had failed to dispatch him the night before.
He was surprised to find no one in the office when he walked in the front door. The deputy on duty usually caught a few hours of sleep during the early hours of the morning, but they were always up and in the office when he came in—in an effort to appear they had been awake all night, he suspected. The door to the cell room was closed, which was also unusual for this hour of the day. He opened it and found Jeff Dwyer asleep in one of the cells, having succumbed to fatigue after he had yelled himself hoarse during the wee hours. “Well, if you ain’t somethin’,” Tate spat in disgust, and yanked on the cell door, realizing at the moment that it was locked and his deputy was confined. “What the hell?” Tate roared, and continued to pull on the locked door, waking Jeff in the process.
The mortified deputy sprang from the cot and exclaimed in a voice so hoarse he could barely be understood, “That Rider, son of a bitch! He got the jump on me! He musta got away from the soldiers!” He went on to excitedly relate the circumstances of the night just passed while Tate unlocked the cell.
Astonished and flustered by the incredulous return of the wild m
an of the mountains, Tate went back into the office to see if anything was missing. It was then he discovered the rough note on his desk. After reading it, he looked at once to the gun rack, but there was none missing. A closer look revealed the carbine in the slot where the Henry had been. He read the note again, shaking his head in amazement. “He’s crazy,” he muttered. “He’s crazy as hell.” He bit his bottom lip in frustration. He had not come in prepared for a hard day, but there was no alternative but to go after Rider. “Round up Fletcher, Giles, and the others,” he ordered. “We’re gonna have to track the crazy bastard down.”
On his way out the door, the deputy almost collided with Arthur Tice, who came to report the break-in at his stable and the missing horse and packs. “He broke up my tack room door,” Tice complained, “and them packs and stuff were rightfully mine to pay for his bill.” Tate showed him the note left on his desk. After reading it, Tice asked in a huff, “Where the hell is he gonna get the money? He ain’t plannin’ on comin’ back here no time soon.”
“Arthur, there ain’t nothin’ I can do for you,” Tate said. “Me and my men are goin’ out to see if we can pick up his trail. That’s all I can do.” It was not enough to satisfy the stable owner, but he understood the sheriff’s position.
It was close to midmorning by the time the sheriff′s posse was rounded up and prepared to ride. The futility of their quest was evident almost immediately as they rode down the middle of the churned-up quagmire of snow and mud that the recent storms had made of the main street. There were trails in every direction to and from the gulch—the tracks of horses, mules, wagons, even oxen were all mixed together in an impossible stew. The posse wandered almost aimlessly up and down the gulch until one of the deputies, Jake Fletcher, finally asked the question they had all been thinking. “What the hell are we doin’? There ain’t no way we can pick up his trail, even if he painted us some road signs to follow.”
Ride the High Range Page 21