by Ronald Kelly
Timber pulled himself away from the blunt truth of his thoughts and uttered a soft curse beneath his breath. “You hunt wolves for the money,” he grumbled to himself. “Not because of some damned death wish.”
He gathered some wood and began to build a fire for his coffee. There would be a long way to ride before he reached the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains.
Chapter Ten
It wasn’t long until he discovered an exodus of wolf tracks in the newly-fallen snow. They continued southward, through the vastly timbered foothills of the Bighorns. The wolfer tracked them through the following day, finding where the pack had split several times and regrouped. They seemed to be searching for something, perhaps a way to get to the other side of the mountain range. Whatever the reason for their quest, they were traveling with an uncanny intelligence that Timber Gray had never seen in a wolf pack before. Obviously their leader was a smart one. Perhaps smarter and more dangerous than any single wolf that he had ever set his sights on before.
There was something else that concerned him. For some time, Timber had been aware of travelers ahead of him. He had smelled the smoke of a campfire early that morning and come upon the deep rutted tracks of a wagon and shod horses weaving in and out of the foothills of the Bighorns. Like the wolves, it seemed that these travelers were attempting to find a clear way across the mountains, too.
It was nearing noon that day when he spotted the dark tint of woodsmoke against the heavy mat of stormclouds above. The hunter headed away from the wolf tracks he had been following, intending to find the wayward pilgrims and warn them of the marauding pack. But that was all, he swore to himself. After the friendly warning he would resume his task, hunting down the last of the wolves and trying to reach the town of Greybull before the worse of the blizzard hit the towering peaks. He was a professional tracker of dangerous game, not a guide and nursemaid for ignorant newcomers to this hard and hostile land.
“Hello the camp!” he called as he neared a heavy grove of fir trees. Someone answered, inviting him to come on in. The welcome eased Timber’s mind somewhat and he returned his rifle to its saddle boot.
From the depth of the tracks, he had gathered that the wagon was pretty loaded down. He was right. It was an old prairie schooner, sagging with weight and age, its curved bows shrouded by a covering of patched canvas. The sideboards were adorned with supplies and farming implements lashed there with heavy rope. The four mule team was still harnessed to the iron tongue and looked to be of sturdy Missouri stock.
Timber Gray sat on his horse for a long moment, staring at the wagon. It was the type used when pioneers traveled in mass across the plains back in the 1840’s. Truthfully, the last time he had actually seen one was after the Civil War, when thousands of Southerners traveled westward to escape the poverty and humiliation of a yankee-imposed Reconstruction.
Indeed, he was surprised to find such a wagon standing hub deep in snow among the mountains of Northern Wyoming. But what surprised him even more was the family who sat around a small cookfire to one side of the Conestoga.
The head of the family was a man of about thirty, tall and whipcord lean, dressed in the somber black vestments of a minister. His hair was thin and blond; his face hard and sour in expression. Another Bible-thumping preacher, noted Timber wearily. It wasn’t that he disliked men of the cloth, it was just that they always ended up trying to convince him that his ways were leading him down the pathway to wickedness and sin. And that always seemed to stick in his craw.
The preacher’s family looked cold and miserable. His wife was a wisp of a woman, dressed in a faded calico dress and bonnet. She was pretty in one way and downright plain in another. Her face was lined with fatigue and worry, wreathed in strands of mousy brown hair. The children stared at him with the same strange expression of relief as their mother did. The little girl couldn’t have been over four years old, while the boy was perhaps nine or ten. They sat quietly, crouched near the fire, staring hungrily at johnnycake and beans; apparently the extent of their noontime meal.
Timber Gray swung down off his horse as the lean man approached him.
“Welcome, neighbor,” he greeted, although there was a trace of disapproval and mistrust in his hard eyes. “My family and I were just sitting down to eat. Our meal is a meager one, but we would be pleased to have you join us.”
Timber was reluctant to accept the man’s offer, partly because he wanted to get back on the trail of the wolves and partly because he felt downright uncomfortable. It had been years since he had sat down to eat with decent folks like these and especially with a man of God. He wasn’t sure if his manners were up to it or not.
“Well, now, I wouldn’t want to intrude on you folks,” he told them. The aroma of cornbread and white beans reached his cold-reddened nose and, he had to admit, it did smell mighty appetizing compared to his recent meals of beef jerky and hardtack.
“Nonsense,” smiled the woman. She took a spare plate and began to ladle food onto its patterned surface. “Please, sit down.”
“Much obliged,” Timber said, nodding. He found a fallen log near the fire and sat down. The china plate felt warm as the woman handed it to him. Their eyes met for a second and, again, he noticed that puzzling look of relief, as if she were glad to see him, or anyone for that matter.
The wolfer was about to bring a forkful of beans to his mouth, when the preacher’s withering glare stopped him. “Please, sir… let us give thanks to the Lord first.”
“Sorry about that,” mumbled Timber, returning the fork to his plate in embarrassment.
The reverend removed his black hat. The hunter did the same with his Stetson. It was during the man’s long, rambling prayer that Timber noticed a disfiguring scar on the crown of the man’s balding head. It was a deep mark, clearly the crescent shape of a horseshoe. He pulled his eyes from the scar just as the fellow ended his blessing with a hardy “Amen!” Then the curious indentation was hidden once again by the low, straight-brimmed hat.
“I am the Reverend Isaiah Cook,” introduced the preacher around a mouthful of hot beans. “And this is my wife, Lenora, and my children, Paul and Sarah.”
“Glad to make your acquaintance,” Timber said. He tipped his hat politely at the nervous woman, then winked at the two young’uns. They giggled, until their father’s steely eyes warned them back into obedient silence.
“What name do you go by, sir?”
“Timber Gray,” answered the wolfer.
Isaiah stared at him for a long moment. “Oh, I see.”
Timber was becoming increasingly uncomfortable under the disapproving study of the cassocked man. Maybe the preacher thought him to be an outlaw and his strange nickname nothing more than an alias. But he didn’t care. He would tell them of the danger nearby, then ride on.
“I saw your tracks a few miles back and thought I’d stop and warn you that there’s wolves in these mountains. A fair amount of wolves, and dangerous, too.”
“Wolves!” exclaimed the woman, flustered at the frightening news. “Oh my!”
“Come now, Lenora!” Isaiah said sternly. “They too are creatures of God. If we pray for a safe journey across these mountains, I am sure that He will deliver us from the danger of the beasts.”
“Praying is fine, I reckon,” agreed Timber Gray. “But I’d still keep a couple of rifles loaded and ready just in case. Those mules there will be a mighty hard meal to pass up if that pack can’t find anything else up here to satisfy their hunger.”
Timber regretted having to be the bearer of bad tidings, especially since it was clearly beginning to upset the woman and her children. But the preacher seemed to blatantly dismiss his warning, piling his plate high and starting on a second helping of beans and cornbread.
“May I ask what you folks are doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“We are traveling to the town of North Fork,” said the Reverend Cook. “The good citizens there need a minister for their town, so the family and I have
left Minnesota to serve as missionaries of God’s word in this sinful land.”
Timber set his empty plate aside and took out the cloth bag of smoking tobacco. Again, he looked toward Lenora Cook and saw her eyes full of helplessness. They seemed to plead with him, as if saying “Please, talk some sense into him!” The children’s faces held the same desperation, the little girl seeming close to tears. It was plain to see that they were all scared plumb to death of Isaiah and the potential danger he was dragging them into.
“What route are you taking to North Fork?” Timber asked the young preacher. “How are you gonna get over these mountains before the big snow hits?”
“That, sir, is no concern of yours,” the reverend answered gruffly. “The Lord will provide us with a will and a way, and that shall take us to our destination safely.”
“Please, Isaiah,” said Lenora. “He’s only trying to be helpful.”
Isaiah Cook glared at his wife and, at first, Timber was afraid that the man might strike her. But his outrage was vented only with harsh words. “Still your tongue, woman! I’ll not hear any disrespect from you!”
The woman shrank back, the moistness of tears welling in her eyes. The little girl joined in with frightened sobs of her own. The boy, Paul, stood stiffly beside the wagon’s rear wheel, a look of pure hatred directed at his father’s unsuspecting back.
Timber felt anger creep up on him, but he held his temper in check. “I reckon you could go through BurialPass. It’s about five miles south and it’ll get you to Greybull before the blizzard gets here.”
“Blizzard?” asked Lenora, her voice bewildered. “You mean there is more snow coming?”
“Afraid so, ma’am,” said Timber, feeling like nothing but a doomsayer since he rode up.
Suddenly, the Reverend Cook stood up, as tall and unyielding as a black oak. His eyes burned angrily, almost insanely, at the bearded hunter. “I must ask you to leave now.”
“Didn’t mean to upset you or your family none,” shrugged Timber. “Just trying to give you some friendly advice.”
“I do not need the advice of a heathen gunfighter such as you!” declared Cook. His feverish eyes settled on the holstered .45 at Gray’s hip, regarding it as though it was something obscene.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Timber felt the heat of rage prickling the nape of his neck.
Isaiah gestured his leather-bound Bible at the six-shooter. “You carry a gun freely and without shame. Guns are the fiery tools of Satan himself, spitting forth death and vileness in the robbery of hard-working folk and the drunken brawls of whorehouses and cowtown saloons. Any man who insists on carrying one is utterly lost. They, like you, will be damned to an everlasting hell!”
Timber Gray was on the point of slugging the man, when he remembered the cassock and Bible. He had never struck a man of God before, but was mighty tempted to do so at that moment. “Seems that I’ve outlived my welcome here,” he said. He avoided looking at the frail woman and her two frightened youngsters as he turned and walked back to his horses.
Gray was untying the reigns from the trunk of a knotty pine, when he heard someone’s footsteps in the snow behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to find Lenora Cook standing a few feet away, her lean arms crossed against the cold, her drawn face pale and etched with worry.
“Mr. Gray?”
“Yes, ma’am?” The wolfer turned back to his horse and fidgeted with the saddle straps, tightening those that seemed too loose, slackening those that seemed the least bit binding.
Lenora held out a small bag that jingled with the sound of coins. “I have thirty dollars in gold here, Mr. Gray. It may not be much to a man like you, but it is yours… if you’ll get us safely to the nearest town.”
Timber Gray tried not to look at the woman. “Keep your money, lady. I’m a wolf hunter, not a guide. Besides, your husband should’ve seen fit to hire one long before you got to territory this rough.”
“We did hire a man to guide us, back in the Dakotas. His name was Joe Tully. We paid him fifty dollars, but he only led us to the Black Hills before he cut out one morning and left us to fend for ourselves. I reckon he’d had enough of my husband’s preaching.”
Timber nodded. He felt the same way. “I’m awful sorry, ma’am, but I’ve got wolves to find. The pass I mentioned is five miles or so due south from here. If you can beat the blizzard, you’ll likely make it to Greybull safely.”
He had put one foot in the stirrup and was about to swing into the saddle, when Lenora’s frail hand clutched the sleeve of his coat. Her hold was tight and desperate, like the grasp of a drowning woman.
“If you don’t help my children and I, Mr. Gray, we will all die out here in this godforsaken wilderness,” Lenora said softly. “I believe you know that as well as I do.”
Timber said nothing at first. There wasn’t much that he could say. She and her children were in a bad way, stuck out in the middle of nowhere with very little food and practically no means of defending themselves. They were victims of Isaiah Cook’s stupidity, at the mercy of a man who refused to carry a gun and knew nothing of the harsh land they now traveled.
The wolfer was torn between doing one of two things. He could do as he had for the past fifteen years, shunning humanity and minding his own business. Or he could do the decent thing. He didn’t have to think twice to know that he really didn’t have any choice in the matter.
“What about your husband?” he asked the woman. He looked toward the campfire where the good reverend knelt and prayed in a frighteningly loud voice, his stern face raised to the grayness of the heavens. The two children cringed from him and his fiery words, watching him as if he were a madman.
“This is a matter between you and I, Mr. Gray,” said Lenora Cook. Her face had steeled itself with a calm born of inner strength. Obviously there was more backbone in this woman than Timber had first thought. “All that matters to me now is getting my babies to a town before they can freeze to death… or be set upon by wolves. As far as I’m concerned, my precious husband can stay out here in this frozen purgatory and take his chances. I won’t continue to follow him and his stubborn blindness any longer.”
The woman’s words were harsh, but in Timber’s mind they were also honest and admirable. “Keep your money till we get to Greybull,” he told her.
“Then you’ll help us get there safely?”
“Yes, ma’am. We’ll head out now and most likely reach BurialPass before dark. Wouldn’t want to travel it by night, though. It’s an awful treacherous canyon.”
The woman gave Timber a rare smile, revealing a hint of the true beauty that hid beneath her drabness. “Then I will see to readying the wagon.” She regarded the wolfer warmly. “God bless you, Mr. Gray.”
The hunter blushed. “It’d be the first time in a long time, ma’am, but I thank you all the same.”
Timber Gray turned back to his work and Lenora turned back to hers as well. The wolf hunter listened silently as the preacher argued with his wife over her hiring Gray as their guide. The minister grew more angry and indignant with each enraged word, but Lenora didn’t give one inch. She stood up to her strong-headed husband for the first time in her life. And when the Reverend Isaiah Cook had finally ran out of steam and grown silent and brooding, Timber grinned and chuckled quietly to himself.
Chapter Eleven
The snowfall resumed by the time evening rolled around and they camped at the mouth of BurialPass. It was not yet the blizzard they were expecting, but was much heavier than the light flurries that had powdered the mountain range on and off for the past few days.
Several yards outside the camp stretched the dark canyon of the pass. The walls of the ravine were extremely steep and sloped on each side, heaped with loose boulders and snow. Timber Gray knew the potential danger of that mountain thoroughfare. A single gunshot or even a loud yell could very well send an avalanche crashing down on unwary travelers. It had happened more than once in the years since Wyoming w
as first settled and the bodies of the unfortunate victims had lain beneath feet of rock and ice until spring thaw revealed their whereabouts. That was why it was known throughout the territory as BurialPass.
As evening drew on into night, Timber and the Cook family sat around a blazing campfire. Their supper had been spare; the Cooks finishing off the leftover beans from earlier in the day, while Timber partook of his jerky and hardtack. Soon, Isaiah, who had been broodingly silent throughout that afternoon’s journey, retired to the covered wagon. There he read his Bible by candlelight, leaving the others to pass the time in idle conversation.
“Your husband is mighty dedicated to his work,” Timber said over a tin mug of steaming coffee.
Lenora’s face was resentful. “Yes, much more dedicated to his work than to his own family, I’m afraid.”
“Ma’am, you almost sound as though you disapprove of your husband’s preaching.”
“I am a religious woman, Mr. Gray,” Lenora Cook told him. “I rejoice in hearing the word of the Lord preached by a capable minister. However, in my mind, Isaiah is not a rightful minister at all. He just took it upon himself to be one all of a sudden. He’s not even a member of any particular church. Not Catholic, not Baptist, not Mormon.”
“What about this church in North Fork? What denomination are they?”
Lenora was quiet for a long moment. Then she lifted troubled eyes to the bearded hunter. “There is no church waiting for us in North Fork, Mr. Gray.