by Bill Brooks
missed and the man shot him through the rib meat and
knocked him ass backward over the chair he’d been
sitting on. He scrambled to try and get to his feet but
another of them shot him somewhere high up be-
tween his shoulder blades and knocked him to the
dirty floor again. He pulled and pulled the trigger on
that Deane Adams, shooting any goddamn thing he
could see, but hell, before he knew it, they’d shot him
to pieces.
The Stone brothers moved in quick, shot him like
he was one big fish in a barrel and they kept shooting
him until he stopped moving. Zack kicked the Deane
Adams out of his hand and waited for him to reach
for it. And when he didn’t, Zeb stooped and picked
the gun up and put it in his coat pocket, then
thumbed back the eyelids and said, “He’s as dead as a
tree stump.”
The Stone brothers waited until the following day
when there was an article written up in the Soda
Springs Tribune about the shooting, complete with
the dead man’s name and the names of those who had
shot him. The man from the newspaper even took
their photograph standing next to the dead man laid
out in a lead-lined coffin in the local funeral parlor.
They were more than happy to give their names, stat-
ing clearly they were bona fide bounty hunters. They
bought several copies to take back to Montana along
with the spoils of victory: Fancher’s piebald gelding,
his well-oiled, brass-fitted Henry rifle, two shirts and
six pairs of socks found in his saddlebags, a razor,
and a small shaving mirror. And oddly enough, a pair
of lady’s stockings.
And once the reward was collected for Fancher,
they began in earnest to find the partner—one William
Sunday who, it was said, was a very dangerous man.
10
Jake wondered what he’d do with the orphan
once he got him back to Sweet Sorrow. The child
sat quietly, but looking round every so often. Jake
said, “Here,” and handed the boy the reins, fulfilling
his promise to let the child handle the horse. The
boy’s face lit up like it was Christmas. Jake looked
over at Toussaint who seemed not to be paying any at-
tention to the two of them.
They rode at an easy trot, sun shattering in the
water-filled pockmarks along the road, tufts of snow
sparkling in the grasses.
Finally they saw the buildings of Sweet Sorrow ris-
ing up out of the grasslands, the sun glinting off some
of the metal roofs, and for once Jake was glad to be
returning to this place. It was beginning to feel like
home in a way.
They came first to Toussaint’s lodge and Toussaint
pulled up, said, “You make up your mind what you’re
going to do with that one?”
“Not sure.” Then Jake said, “Son, slip on down
and stretch your legs while I talk to Mr. Trueblood
here.”
Toussaint handed the boy his reins and said, “How
about walking this animal over there to that water
tank and giving him a drink. You think you can do
that for me?”
Without speaking the boy did as asked.
“See, the thing is,” Jake said. “I could just take
him down to that orphanage in Bismarck, but that
would take about a week down there and back and I
feel like that’s time better spent trying to catch the
Swede before he decides to shoot anymore folks.”
“Then that’s what you need to do.”
“Yeah. I need to find him and I could use your help
on this since I don’t know shit about tracking.”
“And you think I do because I’m half Indian?”
“I was hoping.”
“I’m half French, too, don’t mean I like to eat
frogs.”
“You want to help or not?”
“This a paying job or you asking me to volunteer?”
“I can get the council to come up with some funds
for it.”
“Council,” Toussaint said derisively. “You mean
the one was headed up by Roy Bean who left the
other day for Texas? That group of paper collars who
have a hard time agreeing on whether rain is wet or
not?”
“Their money is as good as anyone else’s. You sud-
denly got particular about whose pocket you get paid
out of?”
“What the hell.” Toussaint had been pondering a
pretty silver ring he’d seen down at the jeweler’s a
month previous. Thought it might make a good peace
offering if he was to give something like that to
Karen. Till now he’d never had much need for money,
just what little it took to get by. But silver rings just
didn’t grow on trees. A job about now might not be
such a bad idea. Long as it wasn’t long term and he
wasn’t beholden to anyone. Besides, he told himself,
that damn Swede had it coming for what he did.
“I still need to find someone to watch the boy until
we catch the Swede and I can take him to Bismarck,”
Jake said.
“There’s Otis’s wife, but I don’t know if she’d take
to him. She doesn’t even take to Otis that well, much
less strangers.”
“Anyone else?”
Toussaint looked over at the boy, said, “Might be
some of these ranchers around here would take him in,
except he looks too thin and little to get much work
out of.”
“I’m not looking for someone to take him on as a
working hand.”
“What about that new schoolteacher, Mrs. Mon-
roe? I hear she’s a widow and she’s got a couple of lit-
tle ones already. She might take him in on a temporary
basis.”
“I hadn’t thought of her.”
“Well, you ought to give her a try since she’s used
to handling kids.”
“Can you be ready to leave in the hour?”
“You still ain’t said how much it pays.”
“How much you charge for tracking a man?”
“I never tracked one before. How about twenty
dollars for the whole job?”
“Done.” Toussaint was surprised at the quick
agreement, thinking he’d start at twenty dollars and
let the lawman barter him down; twenty dollars was
the price of the silver ring.
“I’ll be ready when you come back around,” he
said, thinking he’d just take a stroll down to the jew-
eler’s and put his name on that ring before someone
else did.
Jake called the boy and set him up on the horse
and said, “You ever been to school?”
The boy simply stared at him. It seemed to be a
trait of the Swedes—to stare at you when you asked
them a question.
Clara Monroe felt caught between the sense of safety
of living in such a far-flung place as Sweet Sorrow,
and the isolation that came with it. She’d arrived only
two weeks earlier having responded to an advertise-
ment she’d read in the Bismarck Tribune for a school-
/> teacher. It seemed at the time a godsend to her. Fallon
Monroe had become more and more abusive since his
discharge from the army. He could only seem to find
glory in the bottom of a whiskey bottle now that his
Indian-fighting days were behind him. He’d tried his
hand at various things but found them all too uninter-
esting to suit him. He was a man riveted to his past,
and could not, it seemed, adjust to his present circum-
stances: that of an alcoholic ex-soldier who’d gotten
the taste of war blood and now that there was no war,
he felt lost. With the Plains Indians all whipped, the
army had little use for men whose personal shortcom-
ings and demons would not allow them to rise higher
than the rank of a lieutenant. Finding himself out of a
career only exacerbated his drinking, and his drink-
ing led to being abusive. Clara found it a relief those
nights when he did not find his way home. So too did
her young daughters.
And so when she’d seen the ad, she knew what she
would do. Escape proved no problem, since Fallon
was often passed out on the bed until midday and the
stages leaving from Bismarck generally left at an early
hour.
But once upon the grasslands, Clara began to suf-
fer doubts that nagged at her until each time she
looked at her girls, April and May—Fallon’s insis-
tence that they be named after the months they were
born in. Still, Sweet Sorrow seemed as far removed
from civilization as the moon, and she was struck by
its stark placement in the world, by the vast emptiness
they’d crossed to reach it. She could not imagine a
more desolate place.
Two weeks wasn’t very long to settle in, but she’d
found a small house to rent, fortunately; the man
who’d occupied it had died recently, she was told, and
later heard via rumor he had died of gangrene from
having lost a hand. She was not told the full details:
that he’d chopped off his own hand after cleaving his
wife’s head in with a hatchet—nor would she have
wanted to know. It was enough to find a place for her
and the children.
Roy Bean, as he explained, was the self-appointed
“temporary town’s mayor.” And he personally
showed her around, took her out to the little one-
room schoolhouse, saying as he did, “You’re very
young and attractive, Miss Monroe, is it?”
“Yes,” she lied.
“But I see you have children?”
“I’m widowed,” she said. “My husband was killed
fighting Indians.”
Roy Bean had offered the proper amount of condo-
lences before asking her to join him for supper at the
Fat Duck Café that evening. She politely declined. She
did not want any possibility of personal involvement,
not yet, and certainly not with a man of Roy Bean’s
obvious reprobate character. She made sure that her
rejection was most kind so as not to risk losing the job.
Roy Bean hired her on the spot, saying, “Well, I
suppose there is always time for suppers later on,
once you’re settled in.”
It hadn’t been easy, the adjustment, the fact that
she had to school her own daughters into lying about
the fate of their father. And at night she wept, but by
morning she steeled herself and met her obligations—
teaching arithmetic, reading, writing, and Latin to a
roomful of children whose ages ranged from seven to
fourteen. Boys and girls.
The one saving grace of all this was that the
weather was pretty that time of year: the sun yet warm
with just a hint of the winter to come once the sun
had set. Of course the locals warned her the weather
was like a woman, highly changeable in her moods.
She found nothing amusing in such references.
It was during recess that she saw the rider ap-
proach, saw the boy being held by the man.
He introduced himself to her as Jake Horn, and the
boy as Stephen Kunckle.
The boy was fair and frail, the man was not. She
saw he wore a lawman’s badge and her heart jumped
a little figuring his business had to do with her, that
somehow Fallon had set the law to find her and that
this man was going to arrest her and take her back to
Fallon and back to a life she dreaded.
“Why don’t you go and play with the other chil-
dren,” Jake said to the boy, who did not have to be
asked twice before he was off.
“I’ve got a situation,” Jake said.
She listened with dread.
But rather than say he’d come to arrest her for de-
sertion of her husband, he told her about the murders
of the boy’s family.
“I just need someone to watch after him until I can
find his father.”
She felt deeply relieved that the lawman’s business
was not about her.
“Why me?” she said. “I hardly know anyone here
and I’m sure there are others much more capable of
caring for that poor child.”
He explained he knew of no one else he could call
on, that he was fairly new to the territory himself. She
appeared reluctant.
“I’ll be happy to see you’re paid for his upkeep and
your troubles. It shouldn’t be for more than a few
days until I can arrange to take him to the orphanage
in Bismarck.” She flinched when he said that, for she
could easily imagine her girls in an orphanage if any-
thing was to happen to her—knowing as she did that
Fallon was incapable of caring for them. The thought
of that child losing his entire family, of living out his
childhood in an orphanage, tugged at her emotions.
“Okay,” she said.
Jake liked what he saw in this woman. She was nei-
ther young nor old. She wasn’t beautiful or plain. He
couldn’t define it, exactly, but there was something
extraordinary about her that showed through her or-
dinariness, even though she tried hard not to show it.
He looked over to the boy who was busy running
around in circles with other children. He wondered
how much the murders would haunt the child, or if
they would at all. Children were resilient, this much
he knew from having treated so many of them as a
physician.
“I appreciate it,” he said.
He stood there for a moment longer than was neces-
sary, then said, “I’ll come back just as soon as I can cap-
ture the father. Not longer than a week at the outside.”
She thought he seemed terribly sure of himself, and
that bothered her a bit. Fallon had been terribly sure
of himself as well when he was an army officer. He
wasn’t anymore, however. She knew that men like
Fallon, and possibly this lawman, were men who
could fall far when they fell. She told herself to be
wary of him. But then she saw what he did and it
caused her to have doubts about her own judgment.
/>
He walked over to the boy and knelt down in front of
him and spoke to him, then put a comforting hand on
the child’s shoulder and the boy suddenly hugged him
and the lawman returned the gesture and in seeing it,
she was touched again.
Otis Dollar had taken the occasion of the sunny day to
propose to his wife they ride out to Cooper’s Creek.
“Whatever for?” she’d said.
“It’s been a very long time since you and me did
anything saucy,” he said.
“Saucy? Have you been drinking?”
“No, but I’m about to start if you don’t find a way
in your heart to forgive me and getting us back to reg-
ular man and wife again.”
She knew what he wanted forgiveness for—his af-
fection and undying love for Karen Sunflower. She
could never prove it, but she was positive that twenty
years ago he and Karen had had an assignation. And
though she’d confronted him, he never would admit
to it. It had started what was to become twenty years
of icy tolerance between them. They worked the mer-
cantile together, they ate together, and they slept in
the same bed. But rarely were they intimate with each
other, and when they were it was always at Otis’s in-
sistence even though he knew she could barely tolerate
it; he could almost see in the darkness her squeezing
her eyes shut as though it was the worst kind of pain
she could suffer.
He’d often considered just leaving her. It was true,
he still carried a torch for Karen Sunflower, and it was
true there had been one occasion when he and Karen
had relations—this, during that winter Toussaint had
gone off somewhere to see his people and had not re-
turned till spring. And yes, there was even some un-
certainty as to whether Dex had been Toussaint’s son
or Otis’s. The boy had the strong looks of his mother,
but his eyes could have been either man’s and his
ways were strange because he’d been born a bit daft.
So there was no clear indication one way or the other
who his daddy was.
Otis had thought and thought about the situation
and had come most recently to conclude either he had
to leave his wife, or try one more time to mend their
differences. After all, he told himself, I’m almost fifty.
So when he saw the weather break clean and clear the
day after the snow and rain, he had a sudden thought
and made some sandwiches and had taken from a
shelf a bottle of blackberry wine and put everything