by Gary D. Svee
The boy could smell the salmon thirty feet from the cabin door, and his mouth watered. He was hungry, not hurting hungry, but hungry nevertheless, and salmon was a treat.
The boy was about to step into the cabin when something moved through the dark shadows to the north of the McPherson home. It slipped away before Mac’s eyes found it—a deer probably. Probably a deer going to the river to drink. The boy stepped into the cabin and his mother’s smile.
Jack Galt waited until the door closed, and then he eased toward the railroad. Wild rose tugged at his pants as he passed. Damned roses. Not good for one damn thing except tearing clothes and sticking passersby. If it were up to him, he would pile all the roses in the world in one big heap and set them afire.
What a fire that would be, its flames roaring to the heavens. All those timid little souls who spent their summers on their knees worshiping at the altar of roses would wail and gnash their teeth. Galt grinned, light glinting from his teeth.
The thought eased Galt’s temper. He had caught only glimpses of Mary McPherson as she fussed around the stove fixing dinner. He wanted to know more about her. He needed to know more about her. He might be wrong about Mary McPherson, but Jack Galt wasn’t wrong often. If he watched the woman long enough, his mother would appear from her hiding place in the McPherson woman. It had always been that way.
Galt scrambled up the gravel bank to the track north of the McPherson shack, pausing to see if anyone was watching. Then he stepped over the track and walked toward Main Street. The sun was fading behind the hills to the west. That was good, Jack Galt thought as he walked toward the Absaloka Saloon. Darkness was always better than light. Maybe he would stop for a beer before he went back to his place.
20
Sheriff Frank Drinkwalter stared at the telegram in Mac’s hand and shook his head. “It never rains, but it pours.” He stood, peering through the office’s dusty window at the lilac bushes north of the jail.
“I’m out here for years, and nothing happens. Once a month I fetch Tippins from the Absaloka. Once in a while I go tell Milt Jenkins’s wife to stop beating on her husband. Every now and then I shake Leaks Donnan down for one petty theft or another. And once in a blue moon I go to school because a bunch of kids get together to beat up on one.”
“But now, just when Catherine is coming, the whole thing falls apart. Jack Galt and now this.”
Drinkwalter shook his head, turning to stare at Mac. “Don’t read the telegram again: Just tell me what it means in your own words.”
Mac cleared his throat. “Yellowstone County Sheriff Big Jim Thompson requests your presence in Billings because one of his deputies is in cahoots with a known crook. The miscreants are plotting to have his preeminence booted out of the sheriff’s office. Thompson knows one deputy is involved, but he doesn’t know if anyone else is. So he wants you to go to Billings and…”
Mac glanced again at the telegram. “And stake out the building where the crook lives. He has to know who the other traitors are. He says he’ll pay your expenses on the milk run. You can stay with him, and he promises to take you out to dinner at the Northern Hotel one night.”
“One night? He’s dragging me to Billings just before Catherine comes to Eagles Nest, and he’s willing to take me to the Northern one night? I buy Tilly’s sandwiches by the ton every time he journeys up the Yellowstone to visit his preeminence on me. And he will take me out to dinner one night at the Northern Hotel? He is the cheapest son of a bitch in the whole state of Montana and beyond.”
Drinkwalter shook his head. “One damn dinner. That son of a bitch!”
Mac cleared his throat. “It might not be so bad.”
Drinkwalter’s eyes jerked to the boy.
“You said you wanted Ma to go through your place and put a … uh … feminine touch to it. She can’t do that while you’re banging around in there, so maybe while you’re gone, she could go in and put up some curtains and things like that.”
Drinkwalter rubbed his chin with the palm of his hand. “That’s true. It wouldn’t really be a total loss of time, and it would give me something to do so I wouldn’t be worrying so much.”
Drinkwalter peered down at Mac. “You asked your mother yet?”
“I talked to her, but—”
“She say no?”
Mac shook his head.
“Well, how about I walk home with you. I’ll ask her myself. She can tell me what it’ll run for curtains and towels and stuff like that, and I’ll make sure she’s got enough. That all right with you?”
Mac nodded, his mind forty miles away in Billings: crooked deputies and a plot to unseat the Yellowstone County sheriff? How could a fisherman foist such a feeble lie off on people who had heard him tell masterpieces?
“I’ll tell you, that was the biggest damn fish I’ve ever seen. Saw him rise, but I didn’t have fish line, so quick as could be, I braided my horse’s mane into a line. It was strong, but I didn’t know how long it would hold a fish like him. I’d been fighting him for near an hour and had him skittering along the top of that pool when this really humongous bull trout came up and swallowed him in one bite. Well, I’ll tell you I had a fight on my hands, then…”
That was a lie a man could be proud of, but nudge Big Jim out of his genre, and he comes up with a story a two-year-old kid wouldn’t believe, and Drinkwalter falls for it.
Mac’s faith in the sheriff was shaken. Drinkwalter must be the most gullible son of a bitch in the Pacific Northwest. Telling lies was an honorable profession, but believing them … Mac shook his head.
“Something wrong, Mac?” Drinkwalter reached to take his hat from the tree beside the door.
“Think I’m getting a headache.”
“Oh,” Drinkwalter said.
Mac shook his head and followed. Now the headache was a lie, a nice easy irrefutable sort of lie. It didn’t stretch anyone’s imagination. It didn’t have crooked deputies and a crook trying to unseat the Yellowstone County sheriff. Next time that sorry son of a bitch came to Eagles Nest, Mac would have to give him a remedial course in lying. A man shouldn’t be so awkward at it; it was an embarrassment to him and to his friends.
Mac stepped ahead of the sheriff at the cabin, opening the door only wide enough for him to slip through. “Ma, Sheriff Drinkwalter’s here.”
Mary McPherson looked up from the rinsing tub steaming on the stove. She picked the last piece of clothing from the water to wring it dry and hang it on the line outside, but then she realized that it was a woman’s undergarment. It would not be proper to handle a woman’s undergarment while the sheriff was in her home. She threw the piece back into the water and smiled at Mac. “Invite him in.”
She reached for a towel, blowing back a wisp of hair that fell across her eye. She smiled at the sheriff as he stepped through the door, but the effort seemed to exhaust her.
Drinkwalter removed his hat and smiled at Mary McPherson. The woman was tired, as well she might be. Mary and Mac had hung clotheslines from every available tree outside the cabin, and each of the lines was laden with clothing, drying in the soft breeze and warm sun. Drinkwalter had caught the scent of sun-dried clothes as he neared the cabin, and for a moment he envied Mary McPherson. Not many people could capture the sun, however briefly.
“Ma’am, you’re busy now. Maybe I could come back tomorrow?”
Mary smiled. “Please sit down, Sheriff. I put a roast on this afternoon, and it should be just about finished. We would be pleased to have you join us.”
“I don’t want to intrude.”
Mary smiled. “It would be especially nice for me to talk to another adult. Mac has gotten much too smart for me.”
“He’s been pretty smart with me lately, too,” Drinkwalter said.
“Sit down, Sheriff. Mac, could you set the table? I’ll check the roast.”
Mary bent over, bracing her back with one hand on her knee as she pulled open the heavy oven door. She lifted the lid from the roaster. The meat was done to a golden brown a
nd the potatoes soft to the fork and brown from the meat’s juices. The smell of the meal washed over her, and she almost fainted with the scent of it, but she didn’t know how she would get the roast from the oven. She couldn’t lift the roaster one-handed, and she couldn’t kneel on the floor as she did when she was alone. She didn’t want them to see how much her back ached.
Mary pushed herself upright with her arm.
“Mac, could you get the roast, please? I forgot to wash my hands.”
Mac cocked his head and studied his mother. Her hands were almost bloody with washing, but he nodded and stepped toward the stove.
“Use those towels, so you don’t burn yourself,” Mary said. “Maybe you could cut the roast into slices for me.”
Mac nodded, reaching for the family’s only knife: bread cutter, meat carver, and vegetable slicer. The meat was done to perfection. Mac’s mouth watered as he cut slice after slice from the roast. He was thinking how the meat would taste tonight and how it would taste in sandwiches later. They would be as good as Tilly’s sandwiches, better because his mother had made them.
Today was special in the McPherson household. Roast beef was a rarity.
Mary offered her hands to Mac and the sheriff, wincing a little as they took them.
“Dear Lord, thank you for the bounty you have given us. Thank you for our health, for the beauty of your creation and the time you have given us to share in it. Please give us the wisdom to see the path you have set for us and the courage to follow it. Amen.”
“Amen.”
“Amen.”
“Sheriff, would you please serve yourself?”
Drinkwalter nodded, taking a piece of meat and a potato as though he were taking the sacrament in church. And when each had been served, they began to eat. The meat was excellent and the potatoes heavenly.
Each time Mac took a bite, he closed his eyes as though transported by the epicurean delight.
“Ma, this is so good.”
“Thank you, Mac.”
The boy cocked his head. “Why did you fix roast tonight?”
Mary stopped eating, hesitating before she cleared her throat. “Today is our anniversary, your father’s and mine. He loved roast beef, so I try to serve roast beef on our anniversary.”
“Happy anniversary,” Drinkwalter said.
Mary smiled. “Thank you. Now you have to tell me about Catherine.”
Drinkwalter hesitated.
“You are among friends, Sheriff.”
Drinkwalter shook his head in exasperation. “I can’t bend my words around Catherine. They’re too brittle, and she’s …”
Drinkwalter sighed. “I can’t for the life of me understand why she would have me.”
Mary smiled. “It’s no different for her. She’s wondering if you will still be attracted to her, or forget the wedding or perhaps marry someone else. She will be wondering how someone like you could possibly be interested in someone like her.”
Mary leaned across the table toward the sheriff, wincing a little at the pain in her back. “You aren’t the first two people in the world who have gone through this. It’s the same with all of us. If you want me to, I’ll look through your place and soften the edges for you. But I won’t hang curtains or do anything like that. Catherine will want to do that. It’s up to her to build a nest for the two of you.”
Drinkwalter sighed and stood. “You know she wants you to stand up with her at the wedding.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Mac didn’t tell you?”
Mary shook her head. “Mac?”
“What’s so important about standing up with someone?”
“It’s important,” Mary said, wondering where she would ever find a dress for the wedding.
“Ma’am?”
“Mary. Please call me Mary.”
“Mary, I noticed that your hands seem awfully sore.”
“It’s the lye in the soap.”
“I’ve got just the thing for that. It isn’t fancy, but it works like a charm. Would you mind if I bring you some?”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“You didn’t have to share your dinner with me, either.”
Mary nodded. “I would be pleased to try your magic elixir.”
Drinkwalter grinned. “Well, I’m no Merlin, but I think this will work.”
He stepped to the door and then turned back. “Thank you, ma’am, I appreciate what you said.”
“Mary.”
“Yes, Mary.”
The sheriff tipped his hat and stepped out into darkening shadows.
Sheriff Drinkwalter pawed through the contents of the upper drawer of the three-drawer chest, slouching beside his bed in his two-room house. The single bulb hanging from the ceiling lighted little more than a dim ball of yellow reaching down from the ceiling in the center of the room. The contents of the drawer were hidden in shadows, and the sheriff’s fingers probed the drawer as a raccoon feels along the bottom of a river for freshwater clams and crayfish. A jar, wider than a silver dollar and about three inches tall. There it was.
Drinkwalter held up the jar to the dim light. That’s it: Uncle Saul’s Bag Balm. Guaranteed to heal a milk cow’s bag. The balm filled that promise and more. Montana’s winter wind wrings the moisture from man and beast. The bag balm healed cracked lips and chapped hands. It would work wonders for Mary McPherson.
He slipped the jar into his trousers and looked around his room. Spartan, some might call it, more army barracks than home. No pictures representing his view of life hung from the walls. No family photographs decorated his single dresser. The wardrobe held only uniforms and fishing clothes. Two pairs of boots poked their toes from beneath the bed, one for work and the other for rare days when he took time off to go fishing or hunting. Not a single book lay propped open on a chair beside the bed. Nothing in the room said Drinkwalter lived there.
The sheriff stepped out the door, shutting it behind him. Maybe Catherine could turn his little rental into a home. Mary and Mac lived in a shack. There was no other word for it. Most north winds would blow through it, not around it. But for the shade of the giant cottonwoods along the river, the place would be baking hot in summer.
Still, the McPherson home glowed with life. It had a sense of warmth that went beyond the huge range. Maybe Catherine could bring life to the Drinkwalter shack. Drinkwalter knew that she would bring light and warmth and laughter. Maybe he was worrying too much.
Drinkwalter’s step slowed. It was a wonderful night, stars clear in a black sky. The Little Dipper hung from the North Star, like the dipper hanging from a nail in the McPherson shack. Most of Eagles Nest was buttoned up for the night. He glanced across the street to the Baldrys’ place. It was the Baldrys’ turn to host the whist game. Sometimes they asked the sheriff to sit in. He enjoyed those nights: quiet talk, good coffee, exasperation and triumph, all without leaving a table.
The railroad tracks shone pure white starlight as the sheriff neared. He climbed the roadbed carefully, not wanting to slip and bang his head against the track or the oaken ties. Creosote, always the smell of creosote around the railroad track, and the gravel, warm still from the afternoon sun, kept the creosote warm and redolent far into the night.
Over the track the sheriff’s feet found the path Mac used on his way home from school. The scents along the river pulled the sheriff into the night. He wondered whether the heavy dark air pulled the scent from the roses, the river bottom grasses, and the wild mint, or if being partially denied the use of one sense, his sight, that his olfactory senses grew sharper in the darkness.
Drinkwalter might have seen the man sitting on his haunches along the path if the light from the McPhersons’ cabin hadn’t pulled the sheriff’s eyes to it, dulling the darkness. Drinkwalter might have seen him before he bumped into him.
“What the…?”
The man, surprised as the sheriff, jumped to his feet, knocking Drinkwalter off balance. The sheriff stumbled backward. He caught
himself and leaned forward, his arms seeking the dark shape he had stumbled across. And then he felt the coming blow.
Frank Drinkwalter had been a fighter in his youth. Other children pecked at him, as chickens peck at any wounded pullet in their flock. They pecked at him until he thought they would peck him to death, and then he struck back.
He didn’t learn to fight so much as open his mind to it. One has to fight below the cognitive sense, in the deep recesses of the brain that govern other animals that stalk this earth.
Drinkwalter’s lower brain felt the blow coming at him from the darkness. His lower brain sent his left arm to brush aside the blow. His lower brain computed at a speed imaginable only by the stars above that if the blow was coming from that direction, then the man’s nose must be…
Drinkwalter’s consciousness sent no message to his right arm to send his fist crashing into the darkness where his assailant’s nose should be. The fist simply flew its way with incredible speed and certainty.
The hard bones of the fist crashed through the soft cartilage and then the bony tissue of the nose. The fist continued its crushing blow to the hard bones of the man’s face. Blood sprayed into the night, and the man was driven back into the darkness.
Drinkwalter’s brain switched levels, edging back toward consciousness and reason. He heard the body of his assailant crashing through clinging branches. Drinkwalter heard the man’s breath leave him in a loud WOOF as he fell, and then the scrambling sounds of a man seeking his feet. He heard the beat of feet against the earth. Little yowls of pain marking thorny patches of rose and thumps the occasional collisions with trees.
And then the noise was gone, and the adrenalin drained from Drinkwalter. He took a deep breath, wondering what he had done.
Drinkwalter felt exhausted as he walked toward the McPherson cabin, consciously lifting each leg, consciously taking each breath.
Mary had spent the sheriff’s absence doing the dishes and straightening the house. She considered sweeping the floor again, but since there was no foundation, sometimes a broom stirred up more dust than it cleared.
Mac was sitting at the table reading Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, wondering at a sea so vast it must match Montana’s prairies, when the knock came to the door. He looked up to see if he should answer it, but his mother was already on her way, brushing back a stubborn wisp of hair that defied the severe bun she wore most of the time.