Charles West - Lawless Prairie

Cross laughed. “I know it,” he said, “and I’ll do just that when I make up my mind if I’m gonna stay here or move on to someplace else. I ain’t sure if this is a good spot or not. Riverboats don’t come up this way like they used to. Folks say the railroads will be comin’ before long. I might pack up my wares and head farther north.” He laughed again. “Hell, you’re only the second man I’ve seen this week. Another feller rode by day before yesterday, and he didn’t need nothin’.”

He reached over and pulled a fur coat from a stack of various furs. “Now, here’s the very thing you’re lookin’ for,” he said, shaking out the heavy bearskin coat and holding it up before him. “Try this on. It’ll keep you warm when it gets so cold piss freezes.” While Clint tried the coat on, Cross stood back a step to watch. “That what you’re lookin’ for? Spring Flower stitched that coat. She’s got some deerskin shirts and britches you oughta take a look at, too. ’Course I need to see what kinda guns you’re lookin’ to trade.”

Expecting old and worn-out weapons, Jim Cross opened his eyes just a touch wider when Clint pulled a Henry rifle out from under the deerskin. He hoped Clint hadn’t noticed the sparkle in his eyes when he saw the rifle, but the young man’s wry smile told him his reactions had not escaped Clint’s notice. “I reckon there ain’t no use in beatin’ around the bush on this,” Cross admitted. “This weapon looks to be in fine shape. I’d have to shoot it to know for sure.” Clint opened one of the packs and produced a box of .44 cartridges. He took out three and handed them to Cross. Cross loaded them in the magazine and cocked the rifle. Then he walked toward the riverbank and picked a cottonwood on the low bluffs on the other side as a target. An interested observer, Clint watched. He had never fired the rifle himself. It had belonged to one of the men who tried to jump him when he, Joanna, and Karl were camped at the Tongue River.

The huge man fired three times at the tree, placing all three shots in a pattern roughly the size of a chair seat. He brought the rifle down and examined it again. “Pulls a little to the left,” he said.

“Damn little,” Clint replied, knowing Jim was working up a trade. “I expect that rifle’s worth the price of that bear coat and then some.”

“Maybe,” Cross said, scratching his beard and pretending to give it a lot of thought, “if you throw in that box of cartridges.”

“And you throw in that buckskin shirt your wife is holding over there,” Clint replied.

Cross laughed and conceded, knowing he could exact a greater price for the rifle from the Blackfoot Indians. And so it went. They drank coffee and ate food that Spring Flower cooked over her fire. At the end of the day, Cross had acquired the Henry rifle, with ammunition, a shotgun, two pistols, and a single-shot Springfield rifle. In addition to the bearskin coat, Clint gained a fringed buckskin shirt and pants, and rid himself of the weapons he had no use for. Cross definitely got the better deal, but both men were happy.

At Jim’s invitation, Clint made his camp there that night. After talking late with the jovial trader, he retired to his blankets, feeling confident that he was now ready to wrestle old man winter in the mountains. He did not go to sleep right away, however, as he lay there thinking about his plans to find a place to hole up for a while until lawmen gave up looking for him—at the same time wondering how he would be able to stay away from Joanna for very long. It was during moments like these, alone at night, when he let his confidence slip a little, and he wondered whether there really was any future for him on the path he had chosen. The image of Billy Turnipseed surfaced again in his mind.

Chapter 17

“Whaddaya say we move on back upriver?” Pete Yancey suggested as he emptied the dregs of his coffee cup on the ground beside him. “I’m gettin’ pretty damn tired of sleepin’ outside when I’ve got plenty of money to buy me a hotel room.”

Clell Ballenger grunted as he reached under him to remove a small rock that had begun to bore into his behind. “Maybe you ain’t heard,” he said sarcastically, “but there’s a bunch of folks wearin’ badges lookin’ for us upriver.”

“Hell, I ain’t talkin’ about goin’ back to Helena or Butte, no place like that. Why don’t we ride on over to Virginia City? Ain’t nobody over that way knows us.” He shifted his lean body around to find a more comfortable position. “Now, that’s a proper city for two gents like us. They got saloons and hotels and whorehouses that ain’t tents. Besides, I expect they’ve gave up lookin’ for us by now.”

Ballenger gave it some thought. It did seem pointless to have a bundle of money if you couldn’t spend it the way you wanted to. He kind of liked Coulson, though. It would suit him just fine if they had finished the hotel they were building. There were plenty of saloons for drinking and card playing, and Sophie, down by the sawmill, seemed to satisfy his needs in that department. Still, the thought of Virginia City, with a much greater array of pleasure palaces, was tempting. “Maybe you’re right,” he finally replied. “I am gettin’ tired of campin’ by this river. Hell, let’s go to Virginia City. If they do send another marshal after us, we’ll take care of him like we did the last one. I tell you what, let’s go to the River House for a drink, and one more round with ol’ Sophie, and we’ll start out for Virginia City in the mornin’. Whaddaya say?”

“It by God suits me,” Yancey replied enthusiastically. Never one to pass up an opportunity for a physical encounter with a willing woman, he nevertheless would just as soon have started to Virginia City right then.

Deputy Marshal Zach Clayton spent most of the day trying to watch the town as inconspicuously as possible, first from one end of town, and then from the other. He rode out of the quiet settlement after noon and scouted along the river and various creeks in search of a camp. It was all to no avail, and he began to fear that the two outlaws had decided to move on to another town. After cursing his luck for missing the notorious pair yet again, he turned his horse back toward Coulson.

He was well familiar with the horses the two outlaws rode, and there were none matching their description tied at any of the several hitching posts in town. Walking the dusty street, leading his horse, he checked every saloon, ending up at the River House.

“Well, I see you came back to see us,” Sam Crowder said when the marshal walked in the door. “You need a little drink of whiskey?”

Clayton thought it over for a moment before deciding. “No,” he said, his mind still on whether to hang around the town another day or to move on to the next one. “Have you got any coffee?”

“Yeah, I’ve got a pot on the stove over there. I made it first thing this mornin’, so it might be a little stout about now.”

“Hell, that’s all right,” Clayton said. “I like it a little burnt.” Suddenly feeling tired, he took the cup Sam offered and took it over to a table when another patron walked up to the bar. Ballenger had told the bartender they’d be back. Clayton knew that didn’t necessarily guarantee their return, but they might return, so he decided to wait for a while. If they had left town already, it was going to be another chore to find them, not knowing whether they went east or west.

He could see a cluster of buildings ahead as he guided Rowdy around a series of gullies that ran to the river. In the distance, he could see the faint outline of a range of mountains. The sight made his heart quicken as he realized that he might reach them in a day or so. He had planned to avoid towns of any size, like the one he could see ahead, but Rowdy’s left front hoof had somehow managed to loosen the shoe and Clint wanted to fix it as soon as possible. So in that sense, he guessed it was lucky he came to a town.