by Don Bendell
The little man looked perplexed for a second, then grinned with realization.
“Oh, you are half-white and half-Indian. I see,” he said.
Joshua held the door for him and grinned. “Like a bowl of strawberries and cream. Thank you.”
The man left and Joshua headed for the inviting feather bed.
After breakfast, the Pinkerton headed for the stable, feeling more rested than he had in days. His train would be boarding in less than an hour, and he was anxious to get going. On the trip to Canon City, he had to change trains several times, but he was appreciative of being able to ride the rails all the way there.
He worked on preparing a complete written report for Lucky while he rode and enjoyed the scenery. For miles he had vast expanses of prairie to the left side of the train and large forested mountains out the right side of the train. Joshua wished he was up in some of those mountains on his new horse. He thought about Gabriel and what a wonderful companion he had become already. It was strange that so many criminals had the very best horses around, but Joshua knew that was how outlaws were able to escape posses and ride the owlhoot trail, as Dan had always called it.
Grape Creek ran down from the Westcliffe area, a narrow rock-walled canyon, with cutthroat and brown trout filling the clear, bubbling waters, and much wildlife along the way. It was a wild, desolate channel and poured into the Arkansas River right where the 1,100-foot-tall vertical-walled Grand Canyon of the Arkansas opened out at the west end of Canon City. Just east of that junction were some hot springs, and there was a hotel there. Many came to stay there because they believed that the springs had healing qualities.
Joshua rode the big spotted horse up to the front of the hotel and ground reined him while he went inside. He inquired about Lucky and learned he was shopping in Canon City, so he went out, mounted up, and started east at a slow trot. Joshua noticed that his horse loved to show off and seemed to sense when people were watching him. He flipped his white tail up over his rump, so the base of it was arched and the long tail fell over one hip. He would toss his mane from side to side and do more of a prance than a slow trot, but in the saddle he provided the smoothest seat Joshua had ever felt on any horse.
Strongheart spotted Lucky as he was entering a saddlery and leather goods shop near Third and Main Streets. He went in, and they spoke briefly, but it was a very hot day, so they went outside. Both mounted up and rode a few hundred yards downhill to the banks of the fast-flowing Arkansas River, where they sat down in the shade of a number of towering cottonwoods and oak trees. It was shady all along the Arkansas River.
Joshua handed Lucky his written reports. Lucky took them and looked them over.
“You wrote zeese on zee train, n’est ce pas?”
Joshua said, “Yes. Why?”
Lucky grinned and held up one of the papers, saying, “Two burn spots on zee paper from hot ash zat came in zee window.”
Joshua said, “One guy had his suit sleeve catch fire.”
Lucky said, “I do not have to even read zeese, Joshua. We have heard many stories about you and your courage. You faced death, gunfighters, murderers, and all to keep your pledge. Mr. Pinkerton is very happy with you now. Your wounds?”
Joshua said, “They are healing.”
The French-born detective said, “Well, we have a new assignment. We are making you an undercover agent for zees one. Eet ees a promotion. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, Boss,” Joshua replied with a smile and added, “I have to hunt down a wedding ring for the young widow on the stagecoach and return it, Lucky, before I do whatever my assignment is.”
Lucky said, “Eet weel be to work in a mine near Westcliffe and learn about some crooked operation from zee inside out. Why must you get zee ring?”
“I gave my word,” Joshua said with a shrug.
Lucky smiled. “You may think I do not understand, but I do. A man’s word ees like hees shadow. Eet follows him everywhere he goes. Eet is easy to see when zee light is upon a man, and may disappear when things get dark, but weel come back when he sees the light.”
Joshua’s hand whipped for his gun, and Lucky jumped as a flash caught their eyes. Just like that, a magnificent bald eagle, with his white head and tail feathers flashing in the bright sun, swept down out of the sky, hit the water of the Arkansas, pulled out a large brown trout with both talons, and flew off out of sight. Joshua and Lucky gave each other a broad smile and shook their heads. With some shared events, words never have to be spoken.
They spoke for some time, and Lucky got the entire story of the holdup and the events that followed. His office already had numerous reports and eye-witness statements filed, plus everybody was talking about Joshua Strongheart and his exploits in saloons, mercantiles, and bawdy houses.
At Lucky’s suggestion, Joshua rode with him and checked into the Hot Springs Hotel, and spent a lot of time in the hot springs during the next twenty-four hours, letting some of the soreness simply melt away.
After breakfast the next day, he rode off in search of a wedding ring. He learned from Lucky that Annabelle Ebert had purchased a home on Macon Avenue in Canon City, one block north of Main Street. The tall brave did not want to see her until his promise was fulfilled. Little did he know that while he had been riding up the long stage road toward Cotopaxi and was now paralleling the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas, she was in her sitting room with a cup of coffee staring up at Razorback Ridge, later called the Hogback, which jutted up just west of Canon City, and was again daydreaming about the tall, mysterious half-breed.
Joshua wondered what surprises awaited him on the trail ahead.
7
A Pair of Buzzards
Big Scars Cullen was nicknamed that for two reasons: one, he had big scars on his face and body, and two, he was just plain big. He was not just big. He was gargantuan. Some estimates had him at seven feet tall and more than 350 pounds. He had one scar that was jagged and very pronounced, causing puckering from the corner of his right eye, down past his mouth, and all the way to his neck.
Big Scars had grown up in the Seven Mountains area near Oil City, in Pennsylvania, in fact within just a few miles of the first oil well in the U.S., drilled by Colonel Edwin Drake in 1859; however, Big Scars grew up on a farm, in the broad valley between the Seven Mountains. Big Scars was full of wonder as a boy and loved the outdoors. He spent many days honing his stalking skills crawling up on woodchucks: groundhogs, which were plentiful throughout the valley. They covered the many farm fields, and he would spot them from the many patches of hardwoods between the plowed fields. His uncle, who was an exceptional hunter, taught him how to make a bow and arrows and told him that if he could sneak up on woodchucks and shoot them, especially with their telescopic eyesight, he would be able to sneak in close to any deer, elk, or moose.
As a boy, he was known as Butler Cullen, and the lad practiced stalking groundhogs all through the late winter, spring, summer, and early fall. Groundhogs fatten up in the months leading up to August and binge all through August, before going into hibernation in September. They then come out of hibernation usually the second week of February.
Butler could not wait until February each year, so he could pursue stalking them. They would come out of their burrows and sit on their hindquarters while surveying the large fields around them. He learned to find which way the wind was blowing, because they could smell him easily when upwind of him.
By the time he had gotten into his teens, his skills were being used on deer, which he found were easier to stalk than woodchucks. Butler was always challenging himself, and he started dreaming of living out in the Wild West.
When he was fifteen, he was taller than any of the men his family ever saw in the big valley. Walking through town one day, two toughs, both in their twenties, spotted him and chose him as a target, since he was so large but youthful and inexperienced.
When the fight started, Butler was very meek and tried talking them out of it, as he was so frightened. Afte
r all, smaller size or not, these were grown men. But as he tried to talk to them nicely, it seemed to fuel their desire to harass and dominate him. The fight was on, and as it continued, he kept getting more enraged. He learned that he was large enough and strong enough to toss these men around at will, even grabbing both at the same time. Many of their blows seemed to be merely a nuisance because he was so large and solid. As he gained the upper hand, Butler let years of taunting by older bullies affect his emotions, and his anger grew and grew. Soon, one of the men was down, and Butler sat astride his chest choking him for all he was worth. Even though the man’s eyes rolled back in his head, it did not deter the fifteen-year-old. Butler kept choking him to death. The other man was scared and ran screaming down the street.
Butler’s uncle helped him make his way all the way until they crossed the Clarion River, and the man told him how to work his way out west, going to blacksmiths, livery stables, and ranches or farms and doing what the uncle told him was “back work.” He defined that as work that gave most men aching backs but that Butler could easily out-work them at because he was so strong and large. He gave him what money he had and a good pack, as well as a strict caution to never come back. Butler’s family was older, a farming family, and his uncle was actually a good man, and his true mentor.
The problem was, as frightening as the fight was, Butler was thrilled by the damage he had been able to inflict. It was to him an awakening. He could not believe he had actually killed a man with his bare hands, while fighting another, too. Butler got into more fights over the next several years, and in Denver he killed another man, but this time he also used a piece of firewood to beat the unconscious man to a pulp. He fled north and west and ended up in the Wind River country. He fell in with some trappers and became a mountain man. By the time he was in his early twenties, he had filled out to enormous proportions and started his accumulation of scars.
The one on his face came from a large bull elk at the base of the majestic Grand Tetons in Wyoming Territory. Butler was so mad at himself that time because he committed an error that he had learned as a young boy never to do. He had shot a massive, sable-colored seven-by-seven bull and seen the bullet impact the beast’s chest area right where the heart should be. The animal ran a short distance, not even forty yards, and went down unmoving in a large grove of aspens.
Instead of waiting to allow the animal a chance to die, and then tapping him on the eye with the tip of his rifle, Butler walked up to the bull, set his rifle down, and drew his skinning knife. As soon as the blade touched the bull near his genitalia, the bull exploded. The bullet had nicked a lung and both shoulders, lodging in one, but he was still full of adrenaline, and his right horn ripped upward, catching Cullen under the chin and tearing all the way up to his eye. Blood shot out everywhere as the big young mountain man screamed in pain. But he was so tough, he grabbed the rifle and put another round at the base of the fleeing animal’s rib cage. It traveled through the lung and right into the heart. This time the bull went down for good.
Butler made it to a Cheyenne village, and even though he was a wasicun, they took him and nursed him back to health, even going back for his bull, which he shared. Because of their medical treatment for such wounds, however, he ended up with a hideous scar on his face.
Within the next couple of years, he gained a scar on his neck from an Assiniboine arrow after a little shooting scrap and a scar on his left hand from a Crow war club in another scrap. By the next mountain man rendezvous, everybody was calling him Big Scars Cullen.
Another fight with a much smaller young trapper, who was all enthusiasm with little muscle or size, made him sort of an outcast among his peers. The young trapper was small but popular because he had big courage and aspirations in his quest to be a man of the high lonesome. When Cullen beat the youngster half to death, other trappers started shunning him. When he got tired of being cold and sleeping on the ground, he ended up on the owlhoot trail.
Holding up stages and occasionally committing highwayman robberies seemed to assuage his need for the adrenaline to pump like it did when he got into fights. He noticed that he seemed to fight less when he kept busy robbing and intimidating people that way.
Now the big man was astride his seventeen-hands-tall chestnut Thoroughbred, riding toward a meeting with Harlance McMahon in Maverick Gulch, north of Cotopaxi. The gulch was narrow, and the intermittent stream that sprang up here and there in the sandy soil now made a serpentine rivulet running the length of it. Big Scars was riding toward the desolate Big Hole country, and he could see the distant bowl of high ridges that made up the large canyon, which was north of the Arkansas River, between Cotopaxi and Canon City, but much closer to the former. Small herds of mule deer moved ahead of him, where they would be sleeping under the low-hanging cedar and piñon branches along the steep, rocky, and sandy sides of the otherwise dry and very hot and unforgiving gulch.
He rounded a bend and came upon a large black bear eating the remains of a lightning-struck range cow. The bear stood on his hind legs, scenting him, and gave him a woof, then retreated off down the gulch at a lumbering gait. The green-dotted ridges along both sides of Maverick Gulch rose up steeply for about a five-hundred-foot rise in most places. From a large jumble of rocks near the top of the northern ridge came a bright flash of sunlight reflected from a mirror.
Big Scars looked up and saw Harlance, no small man himself, waving his arm. The ridges were steep but manageable, so he started a zigzag switchback course up the incline. Farther on he saw that the rocks flattened off and there was a natural fortress made of boulders. There was also a small, hidden spring-fed tank full of water and green grass growing around it. Harlance’s horse was grazing there, and Big Scars stripped his saddle and gear off his horse and let him get reacquainted with Harlance’s mouse-colored dun gelding.
He walked up and nodded, accepting a hot cup of coffee. “Nice perch ya got here, Harley.”
Harlance grinned. “Thet ole half-blood son of a buck ain’t put’n the sneaks on us heah. Look at the view.”
Cullen looked up the gulch and could clearly see both sides and the entire gulch, and he had the same view in the other direction. They were only vulnerable from above. The jumble of rocks were positioned like a natural fortress, with some piñons above them to break up any possible smoke from their smokeless fire. The horses could graze and would stay in the area, and the group of boulders would not allow the light of a nighttime cooking fire, if kept small, to reach the ridgeline.
Harlance was proud of himself. He had found a great hiding place, the best.
He boasted, “Ah shot me thet steer comin’ down the draw, ’cuz I figgered he’d smell and bring in critters to help cover our tracks. Never figgered on a bear. He covers ’em up purty good, Ah ’spect.”
Harlance had a problem, though, covering all of his tracks. Joshua Strongheart had just ridden into Cotopaxi and was now drinking a cup of coffee with Zack Banta.
“Wal,” Zachariah said, “reckon old Harlance McMahon’s looking fer a place ta hibernate north a here.”
“Really?” Joshua asked, knowing Zack liked to play mind games before letting all his news out.
“Reckon so. He bought a speck a fixin’s, and he headed out Maverick Gulch,” Zack said, as he pulled out a brown block of tobacco and bit off a chew.
He looked like a white-haired chipmunk to Joshua, who grinned to himself, seeing the large bulge in Zack’s cheek, as he started chewing. He offered the plug to Joshua, who declined with a slight nod, still waiting patiently for more information to come out.
Zack poured Joshua another cup of hot coffee and went back to braiding some leather reins he had been working on. Joshua enjoyed the strong coffee and still waited.
“Cain’t hardly believe how these ole boys on the owlhoot trail stay alive,” Zack mused.
Joshua decided to play Zack’s game and finished his cup then responded, “Oh?”
Zack said, “Yep. Tell ya tomorrow over breakfa
st. ’Spect you’ll wanna rest up next door in the hotel.”
“If McMahon is around, I don’t want him to get away.”
Banta winked at him and grinned, “They’ll keep.”
“They?” Joshua said.
Zack said, “See ya at breakfast. I’ll draw ya up a purty map tonight.”
Joshua went out the door, laughing with a wave.
Zack waited until Joshua was halfway through with breakfast before he said, “Reason I said that was ’cause they don’t cover their tracks good.”
“How is that, Zack?” Joshua asked.
“Wal, he come in here fer supplies and tole me ta give a message to thet ole he-bear Big Scars Cullen,” Zack replied. “I swear when he walks, he scratches the clouds with his hat, he is so durned tall.”
Joshua grinned and waited. He had learned this game in the lodges of the Lakota.
Zack buttered a couple rolls and ate them, swallowed some coffee, then went on. “He was never smart enough ta ask me ta keep it quiet.”
“What was the message?” Joshua queried, then had to wait through another cup of coffee.
Zack said, “The ole boy has him a hideout somewhere up Maverick Gulch. Reckon he tole me thet he wanted Big Scars ta jest ride up Maverick Gulch till Harlance give him sign.”
Zack walked over to the table and sat down, pulling out a piece of paper. It was a very carefully handwritten map. Strongheart was impressed.
Pointing out the window, Zack said, “Now, ya cross the river and head right up thet trail. It ain’t long fer ya get to Maverick Gulch. It’ll be runnin’ off to yer right, headin’ east. It’s gonna cut inta Long Gulch, right heah on the map. Long Gulch opens up and comes out on the river.”
Joshua said, “I really appreciate this, Zack. You did a great job on this map.”
“Reckon I figgered McMahon and Cullen are disposable. You ain’t.”
Joshua chuckled. “How is that, sir?”