Montana Revenge Read online

  “Look all right?” Toby asked, raising his sweaty face to look at him.

  “Looks respectable. I’m going to search for a board to carve a marker. There may be some in the river.”

  “Yes, sir,” Toby said, and went back to work.

  Herschel walked the banks until he found a small log-jam and spotted some boards in the tangles. They were too far out to reach from the shore, so he removed his boots, rolled up his britches, and waded into the river to extract a couple of short boards, which he tossed on the bank, then came out.

  Out of the river, he looked at the two pieces. One carried dim traces of green paint, and he suspected it had been a gate board on the back of a wagon, probably lost crossing the Musselshell somewhere upstream. He dried his feet, then replaced his socks and boots. Above the sounds of the rustling cottonwoods and the river’s murmur, he could hear the boy chunking out dirt and rocks. Satisfied, he picked up the green board and began to carve BARLEY BENTON—DEPUTY KILLED ON DUTY.

  The letters cut into the wood board looked deep enough to last awhile. He didn’t notice the time his painstaking efforts took, until a pair of run-down boots came into his vision and he looked up into the sweaty face of the boy.

  “Can’t dig any deeper and get out of the hole.”

  Herschel nodded. “We’ll put Dick in there first.”

  “Oh, thank God,” the boy said, and wiped his face on his wet sleeve, looking relieved.

  “Why?”

  “I figured you needed two graves.”

  Herschel rose stiffly and shook his head. “One’s fine. Let’s get Dick up there.”

  They carried the rustler’s corpse up there and, gently as they could, placed him in the fresh-smelling hole. Then they went back and brought Barley to the site. Somehow, wrapped in the dull weathered canvas, he now seemed to Herschel just another body to bury.

  When they straightened and stood on the brink of the hole, Herschel removed his hat and the boy did the same. A strong gusty wind like the hand of God swept Herschel’s face and he raised his chin.

  “Dear Lord, deliver these men to heaven. Barley was a family man and leaves a wonderful woman alone and she’ll need your help and strength. Lord, he was a good man”—a large knot in his throat cut off his words for a few seconds—“and my best friend. Lord, L.T. was another wayfaring cowboy, lost in the hard times. He’d rather’ve been working cattle than stealing horses, I’d bet a good hat. Take these men to heaven. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  The kid’s green eyes were wet. He nodded. “You had Dicky right. He told me time and again, we didn’t belong with Hootie Brown and should go on. But we had little money and no jobs or prospects of getting any.”

  “Tell me who is with Brown.”

  “Frenchy, Bateau is his name. He’s a Canuck. Mean bastard. He’s maybe as mean as Hootie.”

  Herschel rubbed his palms on his pants. “I’ll go make us some food. You cover them up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He stopped and looked at the boy. “You pick up your pistol back there?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “Get them covered up, then go back up there and find it.”

  “Any reason, sir?”

  Herschel gave him a short bob of his head. “Before this is over, you may need it.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  Satisfied, Herschel went to camp. He restarted the fire, then found some dry brown beans and some bacon. He put some river water on to boil for the beans and coffee. Then he set in to sort the beans. Gave him plenty of time to think about the boy and his trustworthiness—armed, he might— no—he shook his head. He’d give Toby a chance, but the boy had better not disappoint him. At last, the beans were on to cook. He sliced off some bacon to toss in. Toby came back and told him the job at the grave was done—did he want to check it?

  The sun was dropping low in the west. He considered the boy’s question and answered him. “Go find that pistol. I’ll have food here in a while. I trust you did a good job.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When the youth rode off, Herschel went to the rise and looked in approval at the marker and the pile of fresh soil and rocks. Hard to believe it contained his friend. Tougher even to think about the task of telling Barley’s wife. Heart would be torn up by her loss.

  He looked at the thunderheads piling up in the south. Sunset bled on the taller towering ones. Better try to make them a shelter. He hurried back to camp and stretched some of the ropes he found from tree to tree. With the wagon sheet from the rustlers’ things, he soon had a tent up. He looked up from driving some quickly hacked-out stakes to hold it down when the boy arrived on the run.

  “I see you got some shelter,” Toby said, jumping off his horse.

  “Better get our saddles in under it.” Herschel used the small shovel for a hammer to finish the job.

  “Looks like a mean storm,” Toby said, unlacing his latigos.

  “It’ll be bad enough,” Herschel agreed, and threw his own saddle inside. They were better off there than on the trail, anyway. Thunder growled like a mad silver-tip grizzly and the storm opened its huge mouth to eat them.

  When the first winds, filled with the sourness of rain, struck, Herschel knew the beans would never be done before the storm came. The few airtight tins of tomatoes and peaches he’d found would have to be their supper, along with the fried bacon.

  “I’ll get the coffee. We can have it, anyway,” he said as Toby finished hobbling the horses and came on the run.

  Fierce gusts threatened him as he used his kerchief for a holder to carry the granite pot and ran for the “tent” Toby held open for him. The canvas sides danced in the wind and pulled at the tie-downs as their world turned into darkness. Big drops began to batter the material; soon pea-sized hail struck and made the tent’s sides drum, as bolts of blinding lightning flashed and deafening thunder boomed. Seated on the ground, cradling a cup of hot coffee in his hand, Herschel listened to the storm.

  A limb cracked overhead, broke off, struck the tent’s top, then toppled off, but the structure held.

  “Heckuva storm,” Toby said.

  “Yeah,” said Herschel. “It’s like he wants to tear us from this earth.”

  “I never thought of it like that. But I’ve been in some bad ones that sure tried to get me.”

  Thunder rolled across the land. Tall cloud tops, still in sunlight, were laced with brilliant streaks of lightning. It would be a tough night. They’d be lucky if his makeshift shelter lasted till the storm was over.

  Rain began again, then big drops, and the world grew darker. Soon pea-sized hail began to rap the sides of the tent again. Waves of thunder boomed again. Lightning illuminated the boy’s solemn face as they sat out the fierce weather.

  In a while, the rain let up, but the storm stayed around them. Herschel looked out, and could see more dark clouds churning like a stampede coming in their direction.

  “Don’t count your chickens yet,” he said. “The next round is coming.”

  Toby stood up and stretched all he could under the canvas. “I’m plumb grateful for this tent.”

  Herschel turned back from the gathering weather and nodded. “I’d gave my soul a couple of times driving cattle to have had one like it. ’Cept there weren’t any trees down there to tie it on.”

  They both laughed.

  “Oh, yeah. I found my gun.” Toby started to take it out.

  Herschel shook his head. “In the morning, you better take it apart and clean it. I don’t figure you plan on killing me.”

  Toby’s face turned red in the dim light. “No, sir.”

  “Clean it up. A gritty gun won’t work when you need it.”

  “Yes, sir. This deputy that Hootie shot, he was your friend?”

  “Yeah, we knew each other for years. Helped me get elected. Had lots of good advice.”

  “I had a good pal once. We borrowed some horses and ran off together twice. Our pas must have got tired of running us dow
n the second time and gave up on us. Johnny was good-looking and all the girls liked him. Dark eyes and real curly hair. I was surprised he wanted to go with me.

  “We was in west Texas and he got the bends. You know bending over, hugging his guts, and about crying from the pain. Weren’t no doctor out there—nothing. He died two days later under a mesquite tree, and all I could do for him was hold his hand and cry.”

  “Bad deal for you to go through.”

  Toby nodded quickly in agreement. “I packed him over his horse and rode another day to borrow a shovel off a Messikin to bury him. And you know, Sheriff? Things ain’t gone good for me since then.”

  “How did you ever get hooked up with Brown?” Herschel turned his ear to listen to more thunder roll. It was coming back.

  “I did some horse wrangling on roundups. You know, that’s the worst job in camp. Frenchy told Brown I was good with wrangling horses. So he said for me to come along.”

  “Who’s this Frenchy?”

  “A cowboy, I thought. Dicky and I met him after roundup and we were out of work. Frenchy’s older and he knew Brown, so I figure they had worked together before.”

  “Frenchy wanted anywhere?”

  “I can’t say. You know, you meet lots of cowboys looking over their shoulders a lot and don’t ask no questions.”

  Herschel nodded. He never believed his best friend Buck Jones had murdered his wife and her lover. But they hung him for it after some Texas deputy sheriff finally ran him down in Dodge and took him back for trial.

  The boys in the cow camp considered jumping that banty-legged badge toter and giving Jones a head start, but in the end, Jones waved them off. “Hell, they ain’t going to do nothing to me back there.”

  Herschel never took that answer for the truth from the hard look on the deputy’s face. Buck might not have told them all of it. Men like that always tell their side as they see it.

  “Tell me what happened here,” Herschel said.

  “Your man, the deputy—he rode up where I was gathering the horses.”

  Herschel nodded for him to continue and took a seat. It would be raining again in a few minutes.

  “He told me who he was and asked me to give him my gun. I did. Figured we were caught.”

  “Where was Brown?”

  Toby shook his head. “I ain’t sure. Maybe out scouting. I told your man he wasn’t in camp. Your man—”

  “Barley.”

  “Yeah, Barley and I rode into camp. Frenchy acted kind of prodded, but he dropped his gun. Dicky was beside himself. I mean upset. He never liked Brown or the deal from the start.”

  “He go for a gun?”

  “No, sir. About then, Brown snuck up and got the drop on Barley. Dicky, he got all nervous and started to run off. Brown shot him. I never saw—”

  Herschel turned an ear to the increasing rain as darkness settled in their world. “He ain’t the first of his own men that Brown shot in the back.”

  “I don’t doubt that. Anyway, we got on our horses and Brown said to get the horses moving, there’d be more law behind this one.”

  “When did he shoot Barley?”

  “I guess when Frenchy and I were starting the horses in the Musselshell ford. I heard the shots, and pretty soon Brown caught up.

  “Frenchy asked about our stuff in camp. I wouldn’t of asked Brown nothing ’cause he was mad as a rabid dog. Figured my life wasn’t worth ten cents. ‘We’re getting out of here!’ was all he said, and we headed north.”

  “Thanks,” Herschel said, knowing the boy had had a hard time telling him the story.

  The storm had returned in fury. Herschel sat in the darkness, listened to it batter their fragile shelter. Marsha and the girls were in the solid house at home. Barley Benton was resting on the rise above this copse of trees. Herschel would sure have to screw up lots of courage to tell Heart about him, and Billy Hanks’s killers still walked the stormy night.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THEY hit their saddles in the predawn. Herschel checked the ford and figured they could cross, but they needed to be across before the water rose any higher. They’d picked the things they needed the most, loaded four panniers, and caught Barley’s dun and another loose horse left behind to use as pack animals. The loose one was an older cow pony with white scars on his back who had taken up with their mounts. Herschel decided the rest of the stolen horses would be too scattered after the storm and take too much time to recover—so his decision was push on after the outlaws.

  Herschel and Toby gnawed on some jerky for breakfast on top of the far bank of the river, then turned their wet-bellied ponies and headed north. In the weak cloud-shrouded light, Herschel looked back, grateful they were across the stream—the river would surely rise all day. He knew the outlaws’ tracks were gone, but he led the way north. The outlaws couldn’t hide their horse tracks for long.

  At mid-morning, he discovered signs and they nodded to each other. They were on the right course. By noon, Herschel found an old cow camp where the outlaws had corralled their horses. The roof had fallen in on the shack, but a nearby shed must have been their shelter during the storm the night before. Squatted on his haunches, he found some recent cigarette butts on the floor.

  “They both smoke?”

  Toby nodded.

  Stiff, Herschel rose and flexed his tight shoulder. “They were here last night.”

  “Then we ain’t far behind?”

  “Half a day. They’re probably hungry, ain’t no sign of a cooking fire here.”

  “They ain’t got nothing to cook or cook it in.”

  “Right, we have it. So they’ll strike for a place that has food.”

  “I never been in this country before—and I ain’t coming back.” Toby looked around in disgust at the abandoned camp.

  “This was probably built by some of the first cow outfits came up here,” said Herschel. He swung on Cob ready to go.

  The tracks became easy to follow from there. Herschel set Cob in a long trot and they ate up lots of ground. They found a used road with wagon tracks cut through the short grass that was waving in the afternoon wind. The horse sign went east on it.

  In the late afternoon, Herschel spotted a soddy. The small house looked freshly built and sat on a rise with wash flapping on a line. Not a tree for miles, not a soul in sight. A half-acre of hilled corn churned out of the prairie. The plants in the hills looked pale; their sheaths rattled in the wind when Herschel and Toby rode by them.

  The front door stood open, and that made Herschel frown. Perhaps someone was home. He dismounted heavily, straightened the crotch of his pants, removed his hat, then called out. “Hello.”

  No answer.

  “Look over there,” Toby said.

  “What’s that—” Herschel blinked. Then he saw the small multicolored dog in the grass beside the house, shot several times.

  A knot rose in his throat. He unholstered his gun and barged in the door. In the dim light coming in the bottle window, he saw the woman’s pale flesh and the crimson blood. The long hair obscured her face and he turned to block the door.

  “Bad?” Toby asked, stopped short by Herschel in the doorway.

  “Real bad.” His gun arm hung like a pendulum at his side.

  “What’re we going to do?”

  Herschel drove the Colt back in his holster, feeling useless. “Bury her and leave a note. No telling when her man will be back.”

  “Bad, huh?”

  Herschel stepped aside and let him in. He went out and squatted on his heels. What kind of a killer was this Brown? Shot his own man, raped and murdered an innocent woman. He needed to be removed from society.

  Seconds later, Toby came out and made it a few feet before he vomited. Bent over, he choked and then puked some more. “Jesus, that’s bad. I never—”

  “Best we get that shovel. You start the hole and I’ll wrap her body up in some quilts. Then I’ll come help you.”

  “Where?” Toby blinked his watery eyes and
wiped his mouth on the kerchief.

  “On the high point, I guess,” said Herschel.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Two hours later, they ate some pancakes Herschel cooked and spread on them some lick, a sorghum and molasses mixture the woman kept in a crock. It was a quiet meal and they ate outside off tin plates. Neither man had said much since the brief funeral and Herschel’s terse words over her body wrapped in the blood-soaked blankets.

  “I need to write her man a letter.”

  Toby took off his hat, scratched his thatch of hair, and nodded. “You better. I ain’t no good at words.”

  Herschel took a pencil and some paper from his saddlebags and they went inside. Toby lighted a couple of candles.

  To her family,

  We found her murdered, no doubt at the hands of an outlaw called Hootie Brown who we are chasing. Not knowing your time of returning, we buried her on the rise and spoke the word of the Lord over her as best we could. Regretful we cannot look you up but we did the best we could.

  God bless you

  Herschel Baker, Sheriff Yellowstone County

  Billings, Montana Territory

  “I sure don’t aim to sleep in here tonight,” Toby said, hugging his arms and looking around in the dimly lit interior.

  “Me, either,” Herschel said, and put a saltcellar on the paper to weigh it down if the door blew open before the man came back. He put out the candles and went through the doorway into the twilight after Toby.

  “You reckon we can catch him—Brown, I mean?”

  Herschel considered the last rosy light of day on the western horizon. “We ain’t stopping till we do.”

  “I better clean my gun, then, just in case.”

  “Good idea.”

  At dawn, they pulled out with their packhorses, and at mid-morning, they met a wagon coming on the road. Herschel spotted it a mile away and shared a grim nod with Toby. The meeting he faced wouldn’t be nice—no way. He hoped the man was strong.

  At last, the homesteader reined up two large draft horses. Young and fresh-faced, he set the brake and nodded to both of them, using the stop for a chance to roll himself a smoke.