Hanging Woman Creek (1964)

by L'amour, Louis

We waited in a creek bed near the Tongue River for the sun to go down. Ann’s face was so white it scared me. The death of Eddie and her brother, on top of everything else, had been about all she could stand.

  “Ann,” I said to her, and I took her by the arms, “it’s just a bit longer. We’ll ride into town, and you’ll be safe in the Macqueen House. You’ve friends there.”

  Her eyes were hollow with exhaustion, but there was fire in them still as she faced me. “What about you? What will you do?”

  “What remains to be done,” I said. “I’ve got to see the sheriff and tell him about Philo and Eddie. They’ll send a buckboard out for them.”

  “And then?”

  She was a hard one to fool, and it wasn’t in me to lie overmuch, so I just shrugged and said, “I guess the rest of it is up to the sheriff,” and I turned away.

  Well, she wasn’t long from England, and over there they have respect for the law, and let the law take its course, as should be done everywhere. Only here in the West there sometimes wasn’t much law, and there were some things the law and other folks preferred a man settle for himself. At any rate, I intended to settle what lay between myself and Roman Bohlen.

  As we came down the road into town, I heard a train whistle, a lonesome, far-off sound that always made me want to go to all the places I’d never been. There for a moment I felt the pull of it—but first things first. I had an idea that when Ann was safe among her own kind, then it would be time for me to do what had to be done, and then I would grab myself an armful of boxcars and leave out of there.

  It was late when we finally came up to the Macqueen House. I got down and helped Ann from the saddle. When we went through the door the first person we ran into was Verna Elwin. She was the wife of an Englishman visiting up on the Musselshell, and an old friend of Ann’s, so I left her with her. But Ann turned at the door. “Barney … come to see me. Come tomorrow.”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll do just that.”

  And all the while I was sure it was the last time I’d ever see her. A girl like her, under the conditions we’d been living under, she might say or even believe unaccountable things. But when she had rested a couple of days, the last person she would want to see would be me, a broken-down cowhand.

  And I had a thing to do.

  Outside, I mounted and rode down to the livery stable and left the horse to be cared for. Then I taken my rifle and faced up the street.

  Main Street wasn’t much when it came to that, just those false-fronted frame buildings, some of them with rough-cut boards outside the original logs. There were lights up there, and a few people moving along the street.

  I pulled my hat brim down and walked up the street, the rifle in the hollow of my arm, and went along to Charley Brown’s.

  When I pushed open the door, the first person I laid eyes on was Roman Bohlen.

  He stiffened up as if he was shot, but I give him credit. He thought faster and moved faster than me.

  “Sheriff!” he called out to the man at the bar. “Arrest that man! He and that nigger partner of his murdered the Parleys. Murdered them and shot up my men when we tried to take them!”

  It was the last thing I expected, and it caught me flat-footed. I yelled back at him, “That’s a damn lie, an’ you know it! You—”

  “Take him, sheriff, before he shoots somebody else!”

  And the sheriff stepped back from the bar and said, “Give me the rifle, Pronto. Come on, now. Give it to me.”

  “Sheriff, he’s lyin’! He and those hands of his, they murdered Parley for a rustler. They killed Eddie Holt, my partner, and—”

  “You give me the gun,” the sheriff said, “and we’ll talk about it.”

  There were men in that room whom I counted as friends, but two of Bohlen’s men were standing by the door, their hands on their guns. If shooting started, innocent folks would die. So I handed over my gun.

  When I fell on the bunk in the jail I never even had tune to think or to worry, I just naturally passed out. Fact was, by the time I got to the jail-house I was walking in a daze. The whole thing was out of my hands, and everything inside me just seemed to let go. I’d been running afoot, fighting, going hungry, riding it seemed forever, and when I fell down on that bunk I never even hauled off my boots.

  Next thing I knew somebody was shaking me. “You going to sleep forever? Man here to see you.”

  Rolling over, I sat up, blinking. It was daylight, looked to be noon or after. Standing at the bars was Butch Hogan.

  “Pike,” he said, “no matter what they say, I don’t believe it. You’d never murder anybody.”

  Looking past him, I could see the sheriff standing there with Bill Justin and another man. When they saw me looking at them, they turned their backs on me.

  “They’re saying you killed Parley and his sister. Murdered them,” Hogan said.

  “That’s a damn lie! It was Bohlen.”

  Butch Hogan, who wasn’t much on the talk, gave me the story as he’d heard it. Roman Bohlen had come into town and had spread the story that after Justin had fired me for rustling I’d gone hog-wild. That I’d shot and killed Parley, and had ambushed them in company with Eddie Holt.

  Nobody knew anything about Holt, and I had a bad reputation for fighting, though I was a hard-working hand. And there were plenty to recall the bad things about me and forget the good. Bohlen, after all, was an established rancher, a man with some standing, and I was just a cowhand who might drift on out of the country.

  Parley’s friends were as sore as I’d thought they would be, only they believed I was the killer and it was me they were sore at. Some of the toughs around town were talking a lynching party. And the funny thing was that the only one standing by me was a man I’d fought twice on mighty little provocation.

  Nobody had mentioned Ann Parley, and I wasn’t about to. When she heard of all this she’d come forward. Tired as she was, she was likely still asleep, and no use to have her waked up. Besides, jail was as good a place to sleep as any, and Bohlen could wait.

  “You’re in real trouble,” Hogan said to me. “You’d better get you a lawyer.”

  “With what?”

  “Well, me an’ the boys could probably—”

  “Don’t worry your head about it. I ain’t worried. Roman Bohlen did it, and—”

  “That ain’t going to he’p none,” Hogan insisted. “You can’t lay it on him.” He glanced right and left. “You want to bust out of here, the boys an’ me will he’p you.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Ain’t there anything I can do?”

  “Come to think of it, there is. If you see Jim Fargo around, you tell him I want to see him.”

  After Hogan had gone I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn’t. The way the sheriff and those others had turned their back on me stayed in my mind. Of a sudden, my eyes opened wide. They really believed all that! They believed that I had murdered the Parleys….

  But Ann was still alive!

  Didn’t they know that? The answer was obvious: they did not know it or they wouldn’t be accusing me of it. What was more, Roman Bohlen didn’t know Ann was alive, either.

  What would he do when he found out? The answer to that was simple. She’d have to be stopped from talking. She would have to be killed.

  But why hadn’t she told them the truth of what had happened out there?

  Thinking back over my few words with Hogan, I realized that while he believed me, at least in part, he didn’t think I had a chance or he wouldn’t be offering to help me break out. For the first time I was scared.

  Suddenly I wished Ann was here. I surely didn’t want to hang, and I didn’t want Bohlen to go scot-free.

  Nobody else came near me. The jailer, a man I’d often bought drinks for and talked with, brought me my meals, but he didn’t say a word. The dislike in his manner was mighty apparent, and it began to look as if I didn’t have a friend anywhere.

  During the next couple of days, I overhear
d talk. They said I’d been stealing from Justin all the time, and from Bohlen, that I had always been a troublemaker and was never any good.

  Hogan came back to see me and told me they’d tried to get a lawyer for me, but not one would touch the case.

  “Look,” I said, “go out to the Macqueen House and ask Ann Parley to come and see me.”

  Hogan looked at me as if I’d gone crazy. “What are you talkin’ about? Ann Parley’s dead.”

  “No, she isn’t,” I said. “She rode in with me that night. I left her at the Macqueen House with Verna Elwin.”

  He looked at me uneasily, and I could see he was doubting me, only it was my sanity he was doubting.

  “I’ll go ask,” he said reluctantly, and then he added, “Jim Fargo’s not in town. He’s been appointed a Deputy U.S. Marshal, and he’s workin’ on some rustling down along the Wyoming border—some new outfit. They came in out of nowhere and drove off most of Justin’s stock and some of Bohlen’s, to say nothing of almost everything in the Badlands.”

  Well, that had to be an exaggeration, but they must have done plenty to cause all that talk.

  It was the next morning before Hogan came in again. He looked worried, and his eyes searched my face—he seemed to be looking for something there, maybe some sign that I was going off my head.

  “She ain’t there,” he said, “and they never saw her.” That made the bottom drop out of everything. I stood there, clutching the bars. “Butch,” I said, “damn it, they’ve got me. If you can’t find Ann Parley, and if she won’t come forward, Bohlen’s going to swear me right into a hangman’s noose.”

  Hogan stood there uneasily, and I could see that not even he believed me any longer.

  “I got to go,” he said. “I’m goin’ out with a freight outfit. Goin’ down to Cheyenne.”

  My shoulders sagged. “Luck,” I said, “and thanks, Butch. Looks like you’re the only friend I’ve got.”

  He sort of relented then. “No, I ain’t. Charley Brown still swears he don’t believe it. In fact, he nearly got into a shooting with one of Bohlen’s men over it.”

  Hogan paused as he turned away from the door. “One thing you were right about,” he commented. “Mrs. Elwin was at the hotel that night. Only she left and drove out to that ranch where she’s stayin’.”

  For a moment that gave me a bit of hope. Then maybe Ann wasn’t just ignoring me. Maybe she had gone off to the ranch with the Elwins to recover, and didn’t even know what was happening. Suddenly I was sure that was what had happened. Verna Elwin was a nice woman, but she was also a bossy, managing type, and Ann would have been in no state to argue with her. It would be just like Mrs. Elwin, seeing the shape Ann was in, to cart her off to give her a rest. From what I knew of the Elwins, though they were nice folks, they were stand-offish. Out on that ranch they might not be seeing many people and they might not know what was going on at all.

  I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was scared. And all the time, Bohlen was out there, walking the streets and trying with every word to be sure that I’d hang.

  On the fourth morning the jailer showed up with Doc Finerty from Fort Keogh. The Doc was a man I’d seen around town but I didn’t know him. It seems the local doctor was out of town, so they’d asked Doc Finerty to have a look at me.

  Or he had decided himself on coming? I never did know the straight of that.

  He checked the cuts on my face, which was several shades of blue and yellow and still swollen. “You’ll carry a couple of scars,” he said.

  “From the way they talk, I’ll not carry them long.”

  “Well, you did it, didn’t you?”

  “Like hell!” I said.

  He had me take off my shirt. As he checked me over he asked questions and talked all around it until he got me to tell the whole story. He didn’t make any comment while I talked, just taping up my ribs and putting some medicine on my torn hand, which was still in bad shape.

  “They ever bring the bodies in?” I asked. “Ann would be mighty upset if she knew her brother’s body was lying out for the wolves, like that.”

  “Wolves didn’t touch them, Pike,” Finerty said. “I examined the bodies when they were brought in.”

  “I wish we’d had you out there,” I said. “Parley was dead game. He had a rough ride on that sled, and then on horseback after. Funny thing, he seemed to be getting better. If it hadn’t been for them killing him, I think he’d have recovered.”

  Finerty made no comment at that; he just rolled the cigar in his mouth and closed his bag. Then he said, “That’s the first time I’ve heard of a sled. Parley was wounded then?”

  “Roman Bohlen,” I said, “started out with a bunch of his own private vigilantes. To him Philo Parley was just another nester, and to him all nesters are rustlers. He didn’t know a damned thing about Parley’s background, and cared less.

  “Parley told me that Bohlen shot him when he, Farley, was unarmed, that Bohlen would have hung him if he hadn’t escaped. Then I helped them. We built a sled because Parley was in no shape to ride.”

  “What happened to the sled?”

  I told him about the ambush on the pass in the Cook Mountains, and how we abandoned the sled.

  “You know,” Finerty said, “they are accusing you of killing Johnny Ward too.”

  Well, why not? I was being accused of everything else. Why not throw all the crimes in a basket and hang me for the lot?

  “Did Bohlen do that?” Finerty asked. He studied me with those steely gray eyes of his and chewed on his cigar, waiting for my answer.

  “Funny thing, about that. I never have figured it out.” I explained about the leather-shod hoofs, and even about finding those same tracks near Parley’s place.

  “One time there I thought it might be that strange woman, but her mule didn’t wear leather shoes—though he did have mighty small feet.”

  “What woman was that?”

  So I told him about the woman I’d seen, and what Ann had told me about her spilling a pot of beans at Parley’s place when she saw Ann there.

  “This woman—what did she look like?”

  “A big woman, big frame anyway, and kind of stupid-looking. Dressed in a man’s rough cast-off clothes—clothes for a much bigger person than she was. I’ll admit she worried me some, spooking around like that.”

  “Pike, when did you first come into this country?”

  “Me? Around ‘74, I guess, but I didn’t stay long. I was back in ‘79, and a couple of times after that. Those times when I came back I worked around over the country.”

  “You weren’t here when Clyde Drum was around, were you?”

  “Hell, the way I hear it, not even Miles City was here.”

  Doc Finerty took a cigar from his pocket and handed it to me. “Clyde had quite a family. I was reared over west of here, Pike, over south of Butte, near Virginia City. I knew the Drums.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Clyde Drum had a sister, much younger than he was, and she worshiped the ground he walked on. I don’t think she was quite right mentally.”

  “What I hear,” I said, “Clyde was kind of an odd one himself.”

  “Do you see what I’m getting at, Pike? If that was Lottie Drum out there, she would have had reason to kill Johnny Ward. He was in the posse that rounded up Clyde, and he testified in court against him.”

  “What about Shorty Cones?”

  Finerty shrugged. “I don’t know about that, although she might have had a reason there too.”

  “Doc, can you get word up to the Elwins? I mean, no matter what anybody says, Ann Parley is still alive. That Drum woman now, her seeing Ann there like that, she probably thought Ann was Parley’s woman, and I think the Drum woman was sweet on Parley her ownself.”

  “So?”

  “So she might try to kill Ann. Thing is, not one of those folks she killed was expecting it.”

  After Finerty had gone I lay back on. my bunk and stared up at the ceiling. No matter wh
ether he had said anything that helped, I surely did feel better. I felt a lot better. Now if I could only get out of here.

  Rubbing out the cigar, I laid it on the window sin for future use. My hand felt better already. Doc had told me it should be soaked twice a day in hot water and Epson salts. I’d heard him tell the jailer that.

  Chapter Nineteen.

  About an hour after Doc Finerty left, the jailer came with a cup of coffee, which he passed through the bars.

  “Doc thinks you got a bad deal,” he said.

  “He’s got company,” I said.

  When darkness came again I went to the window and got my cigar. I lit up and smoked a couple of minutes, then I rubbed out the cigar again, went to my bunk, and went to sleep.

  About midnight I suddenly woke up, startled out of a sound sleep by a lot of banging around. The cell next to mine was opened and a man was shoved in, the door closed, and the jailer went away.

  For a while there was silence, but when I turned over the bunk creaked and a voice said, “Who’s in there?”

  “It’s me,” I said, “Pike. What did they get you for?”

  “Hell, what d’you think? Rustling. I stole all the damn cows in the country, and then that Jim Fargo showed up. Won’t do him no good. I got those cows clean out of the country, and when this trial is over and I go free, I’ve got me a stake.”

  I knew the voice, knew the familiar sound of the bragging. It was Van Bokkelen, and I might have guessed he had moved into rustling. It was about the only big crooked operation around, and just the sort of thing he would seek out.

  “You think you’ll go clear?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Why, you damn fool, this country has the best judges that money can buy, and believe me, they can be bought If this case ever comes to trial, I’ll go free. I’ll have me a good lawyer, and I’ll prove it was all a mistake.

  “Anyway, they could only get me for rustling, and I could do the years I’d get for that standing on my head.”

  “You talk a good show.”

  “I’m better off than you,” he said contemptuously. “At least, I’m in here for something I did.”

  He had me there, so I turned over and tried to go to sleep again.