Chance's Bluff

by Catherine McGreevy

  Best of all, it would give those thieving, murderous bankers a taste of their own medicine, Chance thought bitterly. A cancer, that’s what banks were. Tricking hardworking farm folk like his mother into signing up for a mortgage so they could buy barbed wire, then calling in the loan when they knew the people couldn’t pay! Serve ’em right to get a piece of their own back.

  So … why not?

  His conscience struggled to assert itself, but this time he shoved it ruthlessly down. It wouldn’t be robbing an innocent person, Chance told himself. No, it would be fighting against a ruthless entity that preyed on the weak and ignorant, like Robin Hood in those stories his mother used to tell him, except it would be his own money he’d be liberating.

  He withdrew his pistol from its holster and examined the intricate grooves and carved grip that glinted in the firelight. New ideas, radical ones, ignited in him and blazed like a prairie fire. It wasn’t in him to be mean or to harm anyone. What a man had to do in wartime didn’t count. Therefore, if Chance agreed to help Walter, they must abide by rules.

  First, they’d rob only banking institutions. Banks were the enemy, not people. Second, there’d be no violence. After all, that’s what got him into this mess in the first place. Last, as soon as Chance had recovered his two thousand dollars, he’d quit and buy another farm, just like the one he’d lost. Maybe the plan wasn’t strictly legal, Chance thought with sudden passion, but golldarn it, it seemed fair!

  When Walter stopped jabbering about life in the mines, his hat-making business in Boston, and his string of bad luck, Chance informed him of his decision.

  “You mean it? You’ll help me?” Walter’s jaw slackened with surprise.

  Chance nodded. “Yup, we’re partners, but I’ll be the one making decisions. Here’s the rules.”

  “Rules?”

  “Yeah, rules. Now shut up and listen.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Annabelle

  Cascade Mountains, Oregon

  Summer, 1865

  After nearly five years in the narrow valley, Annabelle was amazed that she and Richard managed to grow enough food in their small field to tide both of them and their cow, Millie, over the winters. Of course, toward the end of the long, cold months, the youngsters had to ration what they ate, but so far they’d always pulled through, and her confidence had grown. With a feeling of pride, she watched Millie munching tall meadow grass outside the small cabin, and was glad to see the cow’s formerly bony sides to fill out.

  When the weather turned cold, Annabelle and Richard brought the chickens inside, where the fowl clucked underfoot, pecking at the earth floor and causing Annabelle to nearly stumble over them. It was a relief when summer finally came and she could shoo them outside.

  Now, stew bubbled in the kettle over the fire and Richard sat whittling on the hearth while Annabelle mended socks, thinking of the long years that had passed and, inevitably, of the even longer years that stretched ahead, more summers of hard work broken by moments of relaxation swimming in the pond they’d created in the creek and eating handfuls of wild huckleberries, and more winters of cold and privation. Endless months of boredom and solitude mixed with occasional laughter and games, whenever she could coax Richard out of his nearly impenetrable shell.

  The red-bearded murderer had never returned, and although Indians occasionally crossed the valley on the far side, driving their horses up the mountains or down to pasture, they had not bothered the children.

  We made it after all, Annabelle thought, but her feeling of triumph was tinged with melancholy. The fear that had driven her to hide in the valley had transformed into its opposite: fear that they would never be discovered, that they would grow old and die here in the mountains, never having fully experienced what life could be.

  Annabelle looked at her brother sitting cross-legged on the floor a few feet away whittling an image of an elk out of a piece of wood. Her fingers tightened on the knitting needles. It was time to discuss leaving the valley, but every time she edged near the subject, Richard’s temper flared and she backed down.

  Annabelle decided it was time to try again. “We don’t have to be stuck here forever, you know,” she said, keeping her voice casual. “In just a few hours we could be at the bottom of the canyon. There’s nothing holding us here.”

  Richard did not look up, but his chin jutted out in a stubborn way.

  Annabelle cleared her throat. “I know I’m the one who said it was dangerous out in the world, that we’d be better off up here. But maybe I was wrong. Let’s do it, Richard. Let’s leave.”

  Fresh curls of wood joined those already littering the floor as his jackknife moved over the piece of pinewood.

  “If you’re thinking about all the work we put into building this cabin and clearing the field,” she continued, “they’ve served their purpose. We can start over, near a town with other people.”

  Richard kept working on the elk, shoulders hunched, not looking at her. Annabelle sighed. She could spend hours appealing, arguing, persuading, but it would avail nothing. “Maybe I’ll just leave by myself. You can stay here.”

  It was a bluff, of course. She would never leave Richard behind in the mountains by himself, but he deserved to be taught a lesson. When her brother still didn’t respond, Annabelle made up her mind. She’d leave for a day, and when she returned, Richard would have realized how much he needed her and that he should follow her advice.

  The next morning at daybreak, Annabelle packed herself a basket of food and started down the trail that led out of the mountains. She fought the urge to turn and see if Richard was standing at the cabin door watching her leave. It would spoil the effect.

  A small voice inside wondered, What if you’re wrong? What if he doesn’t care that you’ve gone? Annabelle tried to ignore it. If Richard won this argument, he would never listen to her again. It was worth trying.

  The day was warm and bees buzzed in the bushes. Soon her pique at Richard lessened, and Annabelle found herself enjoying the walk. Why she hadn’t traveled down this trail more often? It was only a few miles to the bottom of the mountain. Richard must have come this far during his explorations, although he had never told her so.

  Then, there it was—the pile of rocks cutting the trail off from the outside world. She stopped and looked at it, pulse quickening. On the other side of those rocks lay everything she and Richard had escaped. Did she really dare leave their haven?

  Over the years, more falling rocks had filled in the small gap through which their wagon had once lumbered. Hoisting up her skirts, she clambered up. At the top of the mound, Annabelle stopped and stared down, shocked at what she saw.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chance

  Cascade Mountains, Oregon

  Summer, 1865

  “Hey, Chance! What’s that noise?”

  Chance was studying the campfire, wondering if he’d made a mistake coming to Oregon. Running into his old friend Ben Marlowe out here was as likely as finding a grain of rice in a silo full of wheat kernels. “Hear what?” he asked when Walter’s question finally penetrated.

  “Listen. Over there.”

  It came again, faint but unmistakable: the clatter of sliding pebbles coming from the direction of the pile of boulders at the bottom of the cliffs. Chance had headed toward this part of the Cascades hoping to find caves or nooks that could serve as a hideout, but so far they had searched in vain. Tomorrow they planned to head northeast, toward the Idaho border, where they might have better luck.

  While Walter reached for his gun, Chance jumped to his feet, scanning the shadow-dappled rocks for whatever had caused the sound: a deer, a bear, anything.

  It was a girl.

  A young girl with two brown braids and wearing an ill-fitting, faded calico dress. She was staring at them as if she had never before seen a fellow human being.

  He stared at the small form in disbelief. Appearing out of nowhere, miles from the nearest outpost of civilization, the child
looked like a sprite or pixie from one of the stories his grandmother, Abby Rose, used to tell him.

  Suddenly the girl turned and scrambled back the way she had come, as agile as a squirrel.

  “Wait!” Chance shouted. “Come back!”

  “I’ll get her,” Walter said, starting after her. “We can’t let her go. She’ll tell someone about us.”

  “Why? For all she knows, we’re just a couple of ordinary travelers, like anyone else. She probably needs help.” Chance thought it wasn’t surprising that she’d run away from a pair of rough-looking men pointing pistols at her. If they caught up to her, he could reassure the girl that they meant no harm, maybe even offer help.

  Having a head start, his partner reached the girl first and grabbed her arm. She screamed and twisted to free herself, as desperate as a rabbit caught in a trap. The former hatter solved the problem by picking her up and hoisting her over his shoulder to carry her back to camp. “Hush, miss, and stop kicking. Ouch, that hurt!”

  “Let her go,” Chance ordered his partner. “Shhh, miss, it’s all right. We just want to make sure you’re not lost.”

  Walter reluctantly set down the girl, who stood as still as one of the cliff’s battlements. Although her chalk-white face showed terror, she’d fallen silent after that first scream.

  Chance realized their captive was not a young child after all. It was her diminutive stature, the shapeless brown dress, and the hair scraped into those two long braids that had made her seem so. Why, she wasn’t much younger than himself, Chance thought. A pretty thing too, if a mite on the skinny side.

  In spite of himself, he wondered what she’d look like with a fashionable dress on and her long, shiny hair loosed from those thick braids. “Who are you, miss? What are you doing out here, in the middle of nowhere?”

  The girl remained silent, gray eyes stony in her thin face.

  “I think she’s mute,” announced Walter. “Or maybe touched in the head. She don’t seem able to speak.”

  The girl frowned. “I can speak.”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Walter said with satisfaction. “Like my friend here asked, miss, who are you?”

  Her voice came clearer now, stronger. “Who are you two? Are you …are you bandits?”

  Walter beamed with pride. “Yep, we sure are. How’d you guess?”

  Chance was annoyed at his partner. Now they couldn’t claim to be ordinary travelers, and it was more likely than ever that this girl would tell someone who they were, just as Walter had feared. That threatened to spoil their plans before they got started. He shot his partner a dark-browed look.

  The girl’s expression changed, confusion warring with fear. “Th-that’s what I thought, but there’s something different about you two. Y-you don’t seem like the other ones.”

  “What others?” Chance said immediately.

  It was the wrong thing to say. The girl shut up again.

  “Well,” he said heartily, “Never mind. We’re not going to rob you, miss. I’m in Oregon looking for a friend, and I had a hunch he might be around these parts.”

  “And to rob any banks we find,” Walter put in.

  Chance shot him another angry look. “Just banks. Not children or young ladies.”

  She looked at him with those big eyes, and to his surprise his heart flipped, the way it used to do when he kissed Betty Cuthbert. “You really are an odd pair of bandits,” the girl said slowly.

  “That may be,” he admitted. “Hungry, miss? We’ve got some beans left over.”

  She seemed to relax slightly. “Well … all right. I suppose that would be all right.”

  On the short distance to where they’d stopped for lunch, Chance was tempted to introduce himself, but there was no point in giving out his name to a stranger, however pretty, who might decide to turn him in later. She didn’t offer her name either.

  He watched as the girl scooped beans onto the plate he offered her and noticed that in spite of her old clothes, she seemed well bred and mannerly. She ate neatly, as if she weren’t starving. If the girl was in need of help she’d have told them so, unless she was touched in the head like Walter said. However, she seemed perfectly sane to Chance.

  “You got kinfolk nearby?” he asked. The girl did not answer, seemingly intent on her food. He waited a few moments longer before offering, “We can take you to the nearest town, if you’d like, and drop you off.”

  She glanced surreptitiously at the mountains looming behind them. “N-no, thank you.”

  “Well, all right then. If there’s anything else we can do to help, let me know.”

  He was sitting close enough to feel the warmth of her body through the old brown dress. Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought he saw a blush creep up her cheek.

  “Hey, Walter,” Chance said. “Go fetch some firewood.”

  “We don’t need any.” Walter was busy packing his saddlebag. “We’re done eating, and I’m about to put out the fire.”

  “I said, get wood!” Chance stood.

  Walter looked up. Seeing his partner’s expression, he slapped on his hat. “Sure, Chance. You bet.”

  When Walter disappeared, Chance turned to look at the girl again. She was the opposite of Betty in every way, with straight brown hair instead of golden curls, small-boned instead of buxom. Not his type at all, and yet attractive for all that. Intelligent. Well educated. Who’d have thought intelligence and breeding could be so appealing in a young woman?

  The girl was starting to look frightened again. Maybe he was staring too much. “Sorry, miss,” Chance said, removing his hat. “I guess you’re not used to hanging out with bandits. I promise, we’re not all as black as we’re painted.”

  She sat up ram-rod stiff, and an expression crossed her face that puzzled him. Pain? Anger? Determination? Possibly a mix of all of them. “Don’t try to justify what you do,” she said coldly. “There is no excuse for banditry. Or kidnapping.”

  “I promise, my friend only wanted to make sure you were not lost or hurt. And as for banditry …” He paused. This was not something that was easy to excuse, even to himself. Sometimes he still wondered how he had agreed to enter this lifestyle, even though he had not actually attempted a robbery yet. “I’m only going to take from those who stole their money from others.”

  “Like Robin Hood?”

  “Yes.” He seized on this.

  “And so the money is actually for the poor, not for yourself?”

  “Well …” He hesitated again. How to explain that he was only going to take money he considered already his? Somehow, Chance had a feeling it would be harder to convince the girl of this than himself.

  “That’s exactly what I thought.” Her mouth thinned when Chance did not answer.

  He felt impelled to justify himself further. “And besides …” He was about to confess that he never planned to use bullets when robbing banks to avoid any chance of more accidental deaths, but paused. Something told him that mentioning guns or bullets would not help matters. The girl was starting to look just as pale and frightened as when he met her, as if remembering that she was talking to an outlaw.

  “Please, miss,” he said, leaning forward to comfort her, “I just want—”

  The girl must have misunderstood his intentions, because she suddenly reared back and slapped him across the jaw. “Get away from me, bandit!”

  For a skinny little thing, the girl packed a surprisingly strong wallop. Caught off balance, Chance tripped over his saddlebag and sprawled on the ground, conking his head against a rock hard enough to see stars.

  When he sat up, shaking his head to clear it, she was gone. Disappeared back into nowhere, like the sprite or elf Chance had originally mistaken her for.

  “Well, I’ll be golldarned,” he said to himself. When Walter came back bearing a skimpy armload of twigs, Chance was still sitting on the ground, wistfully wondering if he would ever see her again.

  Chapter Twenty

  Ben

&n
bsp; Montana

  Summer, 1865

  The band of Nez Perce rode three days before spotting the herd of buffalo. Earlier in their travels, Ben and Chance had passed thousands of hides crammed into storage sheds across Missouri and Iowa, towering piles awaiting trains that would ship them to factories in the east, where the hides would be made into coats, gloves, and other necessities. The sight that spread now before his amazed eyes was completely different.

  Living creatures formed a sea of shaggy, brown bodies that stretched to the horizon, as innumerable as blades of grass. The ground rumbled as they trod past, throwing up a haze of dust that made him cough. “There are so many!” Ben said, awed.

  Spotted Eagle shot him a surprised look. “This is small herd. Big herd take three, four days to pass.”

  Ben watched the Indians shoulder their bows, thinking it must be easy to kill the slow, clumsy beasts. Having never hunted before, he could hardly wait to try his hand at it.

  Spotted Eagle goaded his palomino toward an old bull ambling near the rear of the herd. Holding his bow steady, he waited for the right moment then released the arrow. It hissed through the air and pierced deep into the animal’s bulky shoulder, where the shaft stuck out, quivering. The buffalo paused and turned its heavy head from side to side, as if wondering what had struck it. After a moment, it continued lumbering forward.

  Following at a careful distance, the Indian set another arrow to his bow and launched it into the thick hide, then a third. As the fourth arrow penetrated the heart, the bull stumbled and fell to its knees with a mournful bellow. As the animal pitched over, Spotted Eagle jumped from his horse with a triumphant cry. One or two cows shied away from the bull’s corpse, but the rest of the herd thundered onward without diverting course, as if unaware of what had just happened.

  How easy! Ben thought. A fellow could just walk up to any one of the placid creatures and dispatch it instantly. No need to go to the bother of untying his carbine from where it hung across the saddle. One well-placed shot from his Colt should do the job.