Bitterroot

by Charles G. West

  “Well now, I’m sorry to hear you talk like that to me. I was thinkin’ on goin’ easy on you, maybe just beatin’ you to death. Now, since you got so uppity, I think maybe I’ll skin you.” He took out his long skinning knife and turned it over, back and forth, in front of Tom’s face, letting the firelight cast its reflection on the steel blade. “I skinned a man once, a Blackfoot Injun—tried to steal my horse. I was plumb surprised how long it took that Injun to die. Matter of fact, I et part of him, sawed off a piece of his flank, and let him watch while I cooked it over the fire. He didn’t like that none. How you think you’d like that?” Finally, Cobb tired of the verbal torment when he failed to get the response from Tom he had hoped for. He reached down and grabbed a fistful of Tom’s hair. Pulling his head up hard, he placed the point of his skinning knife against Tom’s throat. “Mr. Dakota,” he hissed softly in his ear, “your hell is just starting.” Tom felt the point break the skin on his neck.

  “Not just yet it ain’t, you sorry sack of shit!” came a sudden low growl. At the same time, Cobb’s head was yanked back by his own hair, the steel blade of Squint Peterson’s knife pressing heavily against his throat.

  Cobb released Tom and grabbed Squint’s arm, twisting away in an effort to avoid the knife. He broke free and leaped across the campfire, turning to face his attacker. Squint, his knife in hand, moved in a half crouch, stalking. Cobb, also in a crouch, waited and watched as Squint moved to confront him. They stood there for a full minute, measuring each other, the fire between them, two great grizzlies preparing to do combat.

  “You’re pretty handy when a man’s half dead and tied up, ain’t you, you ugly son of a bitch. Let’s see how you like it with somebody your own size.” Squint kept motioning Cobb to come to him while he taunted.

  The two big men circled slowly, keeping the fire between them, each keeping a wary eye locked on the other. Cobb was in no hurry to push the action. It was plain to him that Squint was not to be taken lightly. The look in the man’s eye told him fear had never taken seed there. Then a movement from the shadows caused him to start as a tall figure emerged from the darkness. He was naked from the waist up. His hair, dark and long, held a solitary eagle feather. Beaded armbands bore the markings of the Cheyenne nation.

  “No, my friend,” Squint said softly, “I want this coyote myself. If he takes me, kill the son of a bitch.”

  Little Wolf hesitated a moment, studying the look in his friend’s eyes, and he understood. “It will be as you wish.”

  “Take care of Tom,” Squint added. Then he turned his full attention back to the menacing form across the campfire from him. “Now come on, you murdering sack of shit.”

  Cobb roared like a wounded grizzly and charged straight through the fire, sending sparks and hot splinters flying. Head bowed, he caught Squint in the stomach, and the two of them went down in a heap. They rolled over and over, each fighting to gain the advantage, slashing at each other when possible, fists flailing, their roars of outrage shattering the still night air. Apart and on their feet again, they circled cautiously, both men gasping for breath. Suddenly, Cobb roared again and charged. This time, Squint dodged the outstretched knife and came up under Cobb’s arm, plunging his knife to the hilt in Cobb’s belly. The wounded man doubled up and backed away, Squint’s knife still embedded in his midsection. He stared at it in disbelief for only a moment before pulling it out. His heavy coat had limited the depth of the wound and prevented it from proving mortal. With a knife in each hand now, and Squint with none, he charged again. Squint managed to get a wrist in each hand, and the two giants strained against each other in a test of strength that seemed to make the very forest shudder. Finally, Cobb began to slowly weaken as Squint forced his arms farther and farther back until Cobb was forced to cry out in pain and drop to his knees. Squint sent him down on his back with a blow from his right fist and Cobb lay still, beaten.

  “Now, you bastard,” Squint said, standing over Cobb, his breath coming in short, panting gulps. “Get on your feet.” He glanced over at Little Wolf. “I’m gittin’ too damn old fer this shit.”

  Those were his last words. Unnoticed by Squint, as he stood over him, Cobb slowly reached into a pocket inside his coat where he kept a tiny double-barrelled Derringer. Both shots hit Squint under the chin, killing him instantly.

  Cobb wasted no time scrambling to his feet, hoping to escape into the night. He had barely cleared the firelight when Little Wolf’s arrow struck solidly between his shoulder blades. He stumbled, but did not fall, and kept on running. Little Wolf was instantly on his trail, his long legs eating up the distance between himself and the heavier, clumsier Cobb. Like a great cougar, he was on him before Cobb had run thirty yards. Seeing it was useless to run, Cobb turned and prepared to fight. Little Wolf stopped barely two paces in front of him. Cobb lunged for him, but Little Wolf deftly avoided the charge of the huge man. Like a great cat, the Cheyenne warrior came up beside him, smashing Cobb’s knee with his foot. Cobb stumbled and Little Wolf was on his back immediately, one powerful arm around his head, the other around his leg. With his knee firmly planted in Cobb’s spine, he closed the powerful vise. A sharp crack echoed when Cobb’s back broke, followed by the eerie scream of a Cheyenne war cry.

  Chapter XIX

  Squint Peterson was dead—a possibility Little Wolf had never considered. He had known death and dying since he was a small boy. It was as much a part of life as being born. Every Arapaho and Cheyenne boy knew this. It had been a possibility that hung over every war party he had led, every battle he had fought. Death waited for every man. But not Squint Peterson. Somehow he had assumed that Squint would always be there, like the mountains and the rivers. It didn’t matter that he had aged, that his eyes had faded during the last two years. Didn’t the mountains age and erode? Still, they would always be there. Though wind-blown and etched by the storms of time, they stood towering over the plains, the very essence of strength and immortality. There was now a great void in the mountains. Squint had left a shadow too large to be cast by any other man. Little Wolf wept silent tears as he carefully sewed his old friend tightly up in a buckskin burial robe. He would take him back to their valley and bury him on the mountainside, overlooking their ranch. From there he could watch the horses run in the meadow. Squint would like that—he always liked watching the horses run.

  But Little Wolf had a more pressing responsibility. Squint had asked him to take care of Tom. The thought of this task brought forth a mixture of emotions. Although the man was his brother by birth, he was, in fact, a total stranger, and for many years of his life, his enemy.

  Little Wolf studied the man’s face intently, looking for something that might provide some spark of recognition. He had never really seen Tom Alfred’s face up close but twice. One time was on the banks of the Little Missouri River when he, Little Wolf, had spared his brother’s life. On that day neither man had known they were brothers. And Little Wolf had sworn to kill him if ever they met again. The other occasion was when he had been captured by the soldiers at the Little Big Horn and Tom, with Squint’s help, had arranged his escape. That incident, Little Wolf reminded himself, caused Tom’s dismissal from the army. He stared hard at the man whose life was now in his hands. It was difficult to read Tom’s face because it was so badly swollen and misshapen from the terrible beating at the hands of the bounty hunter. Squint himself would probably have been unable to identify Tom in his present condition.

  After making Tom as comfortable as possible, Little Wolf went about seeing to his wounds. Tom had taken a severe beating from Cobb’s rifle butt. His arm was broken, so Little Wolf straightened it and bound it. As for the head wounds, he had no way of knowing if Tom’s head was cracked or not. He slipped in and out of consciousness several times during that first night. Little Wolf was uncertain whether his brother would live or die. He did not feel strongly about it one way or the other. He would try to tend to his wounds and watch over him to see which way he would go. He was deeply
in sorrow, but not for his brother. He mourned for Squint Peterson, the common link between the two brothers. Little Wolf did everything he could for the injured man, then lay back to wait and see if his brother would survive the night.

  The next morning, he arose to find his patient peering at him though puffed and swollen eyes. He said nothing at first, returning the gaze and wondering if those eyes were lucid or merely the glazed stare of the dead. Then, as if to answer the question, the split and swollen lips moved slightly.

  “Little Wolf?” The voice was labored, but strong.

  “I am Little Wolf.”

  “Squint,” he rasped. “I saw Squint…”

  “Squint’s dead,” Little Wolf stated without emotion, hiding the sorrow he felt at the loss of his friend.

  “Dead! Squint dead?” Tom’s eyes closed as he tried to digest it in his mind. “How?” He attempted to rise on one elbow, but was forced to lay back.

  “He died saving your hide. That bounty hunter killed him. Now you lay back and rest. You took a helluva beating, but I reckon now you ain’t gonna die.”

  Tom wanted to know everything that had happened, but Little Wolf promised to tell him the whole story after he had rested. He busied himself catching up the horses and loading Squint’s body on one of the mounts that Cobb had ridden. He loaded Breezy Martin’s body on his horse and the marshal’s body on his. Then he dragged Cobb’s body over to the rim of a deep gully and dumped it over the side, determined not to waste his time and effort on the treacherous dog. That done, he returned to the campfire and stood for a long time looking down at the injured man. He decided Tom was too sick to sit on a horse so he fashioned a travois using two lodgepole pines and skins from Cobb’s packhorse. When he finished, he returned to get Tom.

  “We can’t stay here. This time of year there ain’t much time to leave Squint’s body out of the ground. You can ride on the travois until you feel strong enough to sit a horse.” He gestured toward the bodies of the two lawmen. “When we get near Bozeman, I’ll cut these two loose. Maybe they’ll find their way home.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Little Wolf shrugged. “To my valley, I reckon, till you get on your feet anyway. Squint says we are brothers. Maybe we are, I don’t know. But I reckon I owe you that for saving my neck from the army’s rope.”

  “Maybe you oughtn’t,” Tom replied. “I’m a wanted man. I might bring the law down on you. Maybe you better just leave me here and get on back to your valley. The army would still like to get their hands on you. You better not take a chance on them finding out you’re still alive.”

  Little Wolf looked at him with a cold eye. “I leave you here, you’ll be wolf bait before morning.”

  “I appreciate what you want to do for me, but I’m telling you, as long as I’m alive, they’ll be sending somebody looking for me. No sense bringing them down on your valley.”

  Little Wolf studied Tom’s face while he thought over his words. After a few minutes of silence, he said, “Then I reckon it’s best if you was dead.”

  Tom was startled. He wasn’t sure what his brother was telling him. Brother or not, it was Little Wolf looking deep into his eyes. His fears were unfounded, however, and he felt a little sheepish when Little Wolf later shared his plan—a plan not without risk to them both if unsuccessful, but one worth trying at any rate.

  * * *

  Aaron Crutchfield strode out on the wooden walkway in front of his office to see what the commotion was about. His eyes were met with a curious sight. A lone rider was leading a string of horses down the middle of the muddy street. Directly behind him another horse pulled a travois with what appeared to be a man on it. Following the travois were four more horses, and three of them carried bodies. One of the horses he recognized as Breezy Martin’s paint. The sun was sinking below the hills, and he had to cover his eyes against the glare as the somber caravan approached him. He did not recognize the leader, a tall man sitting ramrod straight in the saddle. He looked as wild as any Indian Crutchfield had ever seen, but he was obviously a white man. At least he was wearing white man’s clothes.

  “You the sheriff?” Little Wolf asked.

  “I am,” Crutchfield acknowledged.

  “Well, I reckon I got some bodies for you,”

  Crutchfield looked suspicious. Glancing at the paint, it wasn’t hard to figure that one of the bodies was his deputy, Breezy Martin. The thought that Breezy was dead didn’t cause him any grief, but he couldn’t help but feel the irritation in knowing he had lost yet another deputy. He looked back at the stranger, straining hard to remember if he had ever seen him before. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Robert Peterson,” Little Wolf quickly replied. He figured that, if he had to use a fictitious name, he could do a lot worse than taking on Squint’s.

  Crutchfield continued to study the stranger. “Maybe you better start doing a little explaining, mister.”

  “Nothing much to explain. I came up on these fellows on the Utah trail. Looked to me like there musta been one helluva gunfight. That fellow on the travois was the only one alive when I found ’em. He said to take the bodies back here. You’d know what to do with ’em. Said he was just in to see you a week ago. He’s pretty bad hurt. I’m taking him back home to die, and it looks like I ain’t gonna make it before he croaks if I don’t get a move on.”

  “What…?” Crutchfield was confused. “Wait a minute. Who shot who? How did my deputy get shot?”

  “I’m coming to that. Your man and that other lawman”—he turned and pointed toward Pickens’s horse—“they was jumped by that big bounty hunter there.” He indicated Squint’s body. “His name was Cobb. Anyway, Cobb shot ’em all before the fellow on the travois got Cobb. When I came along, this fellow was about done in. He said to bring the bodies to you so you’d know what happened.”

  Crutchfield was not at all satisfied with the explanation he had just heard, but he wasn’t quite sure which part of it he disbelieved. He stepped off the board walkway and, walking over to Breezy’s horse, pulled a corner of the hide covering away to get a look at the body. He immediately backed up a couple of steps as the odious stench assaulted his nostrils.

  “Goddam, man! How long have they been dead?”

  Little Wolf scratched his head thoughtfully. “I can’t rightly say. They were pretty ripe when I found ’em.”

  “Goddam! We got to git them in the ground!” He grabbed a young boy who had been listening wide-eyed to the account. “Go fetch Doc Brewster and be quick about it.” He only gave Squint’s body a glance. “I’d know that murderin’ coyote by his size.” He stopped for a moment by the travois where Tom lay, covered up in animal hides to disguise the difference in his size and that of Squint Peterson’s. He stooped and peered through the small open hood over Tom’s head at the swollen face, covered with dried blood and hair. “Huh,” he grunted, “looks like somebody busted him up pretty good.”

  Little Wolf relaxed. His hand, which had casually come to rest on the stock of his rifle while Crutchfield bent over Tom, moved slowly back by his side. “I reckon. Well, like I said, I best get moving if I’m gonna get this poor devil home to his loved ones.”

  “Wait a minute!” Crutchfield bellowed. “What about the prisoner? Where the hell’s Allred?”

  Little Wolf was busily untying the lead rope from the horses. “Oh, him, well, I reckon that’d be the fellow laying at the bottom of that gully with the handcuffs on.” He casually finished with the rope and got back on his horse.

  “What gully? Where?”

  “Well, let me see. It’d be about four days back in the mountains. I saw him down there, but there was no way for me to get him out. He was dead anyway, so I just brought in the ones I could get to.” He nudged his horse gently with his heels. “Well, good evening to you, Sheriff. I best be getting on.”

  Crutchfield stood scratching his head for a moment, unsure what his official reaction to this turn of events should be. Little Wolf was almost f
ifty yards away before the sheriff called out, “What about that wounded man? Don’t you want Doc to take a look at him?”

  “Waste of time, Sheriff,” Little Wolf threw back over his shoulder. “He just wants to go home.”

  Little Wolf wasted no time once he and Tom were out of sight of Bozeman. He headed directly west for several miles until they came to a wide stream running heavy with winter’s runoff. He followed it south for about a quarter of a mile until he came to some small rapids where rocks bordered both sides of the stream, carving a scar through the low rising hills.

  “You think you can ride now?”

  “Yeah, I think so, if you can help me get up in the saddle.”

  Little Wolf halted the horses on a flat outcropping of rocks. He stepped down and helped Tom off the travois. It was all the wounded man could do to keep from toppling over. “Think you can make it?”

  “I’ll make it,” Tom replied emphatically. Supporting himself on his brother’s wide shoulder, he struggled to get up on the horse. Once in the saddle, he had to hold onto the saddle horn to stay upright, his head was spinning from the sudden change of position. He had not been lucid enough to even question the probability of the success of Little Wolf’s ruse. Now he asked, “What if they ride out and find Cobb’s body? They’ll know right away it isn’t me.”

  “I doubt if they’ll even look for it right away. And I didn’t exactly draw them a map to that gully. I don’t think it’ll be that easy. It wasn’t that easy for me to climb down there and put the handcuffs on him. By the time they do find him—if they find him, I doubt there’ll be more than bones left anyway.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Tom closed his eyes to the pain that was starting to build in his head again, his hands clutching the saddle horn.

  Little Wolf watched for a moment to make sure Tom wasn’t going to tumble off the horse. Satisfied that he was able to ride, Little Wolf led the horses into the stream. He stopped in the middle and cut the thongs holding the travois and let the poles drift downstream. Leading Tom’s horse, he backtracked upstream until he found a place where they could leave the water without leaving tracks. Once out of the stream, he started directly northwest toward his valley in the Bitterroots.