Dorothy Garlock - [Wyoming Frontier] (3 page)

Mary turned the pages, scanning the entries where she told about their first few days alone in the deserted town, and how frightened they were when they heard a cougar scream in the night. When she came to a blank page, she moistened the lead of the pencil with the tip of her tongue and began to write.

June 5, 1874.

Roy has been gone for two months. I’m afraid that he will never come back, although I don’t let on to Katy. I don’t want to think that he would leave us here deliberately, without even a horse to pull the wagon. Now I’m wondering if something could have happened to him. Oh, I know he’s selfish, but he wouldn’t leave his baby daughter. At least I don’t think he would. I feel terrible about Katy being stuck here with us. She has devoted the best years of her life to me and Theresa. As far as I know, she has never had a serious beau. She could have had her pick of men this past winter, but she wanted nothing to do with any of them. She said she would stay single for the rest of her life before she’d marry a miner. Today we saw the stranger again. He is big with a coal black beard. I can’t tell if he’s young or old. I’ve not seen his horse or his pack mules since he rode in, but we’ve smelled his cookfire several times, and the fresh meat he was cooking smelled so good. We’ve not had fresh meat since Katy shot a baby deer. She cried because the mother was so frantic. We didn’t know anything about skinning it, so we cut off a leg. Something carried the rest of it off in the night.

Mary closed the journal and sat for a while, gazing out the window. She could have written more, but she had to be saving with the paper. The prospects of getting another book to write in were small, if not nonexistent; that is, if they ever got out of this lonely place. A mouse scurrying across the floor drew Mary’s attention, and she wished for a cat. Rats and mice were becoming a problem, but a minor one, she admitted silently, compared to their other concerns. She got up to make sure the lid to the flour tin was in place. She was returning to the chair by the window when she heard Katy shout.

“Mary! Get Theresa. I’m bringing in the cow!”

“What in tarnation—!” Mary ran to the back and out the door. She grabbed Theresa who was standing with her finger in her mouth as if she were thunderstruck. Mary darted back to the door, shoved the child inside, and went to help Katy tug on the rope around the neck of the bawling, frightened cow. “Is
he
out there?”

Katy was too busy to answer. “Get in there, damn you!” she shouted and whacked the cow on the rump with the palm of her hand. “You stupid, brainless creature, I’m trying to save your flea-bitten hide!” She got behind the cow and shoved. The cow lifted her hind foot threateningly. “You kick me and I’ll brain you,” Katy yelled.

The frightened cow had become tame during the last two months, but she was reluctant to go inside the building. The doorway was narrow and the sound of her hooves on the plank floor terrified her. She balked, bawled, shook her head, and tried to break free.

“Yeeeow!” The primitive scream of a cougar came from close behind them. Ingrained fear of the beast caused the cow to lunge, her forelegs collapsing, and she sprawled half-in and half-out of the doorway, almost knocking Mary off her feet.

Katy looked over her shoulder to see the large, slick cat move with effortless grace along the rim of the slanting cliff behind the building. Its head jutted forward; its long sweeping tail hung close to its powerful hindquarters; its yellow eyes gleamed as it viewed its prospective prey.

“Oh, blessed Father!” The words came from Katy’s stiff, dry throat. The cat’s huge eyes glared fixedly at her. The big body arched, and a powerful growl exploded from its huge mouth.

“Yeeeow!”

Blocking the doorway, Mable was scrambling to get to her feet. Katy cowered against the side of the building, her eyes fixed with horror on the stalking beast. Fear raced through her; her knees felt like water. The cat prowled a few steps closer, then froze in immobility. Screaming again, it bunched its powerful muscles to spring.

The sharp crack of a rifle penetrated Katy’s stunned senses as she had begun to lift her arm to her face. The sound of the shot rebounded from the mountains. As the bullet found its mark, the cat dropped from the ledge. It landed in the brush a few yards from where Katy stood.

“Don’t move!”

The gruff words hit Katy like a slap in the face, and she came out of her near-hysterical trance to see a buckskin-clad figure in a round-brimmed leather hat approaching the cat with his rifle ready. Katy’s eyes were on the cougar, expecting it to spring up and attack the man. He nudged it a time or two with the end of his rifle, grabbed its tail and pulled. When he was sure it was dead, he turned and trotted away without so much as a look in her direction.

“Mister!” Katy choked, then called. “Hey, mister! Thank you—” She followed him to the front of the building, watched him lope down the road and disappear between the jail and the blacksmith shop.

Katy hurried back to the side-door. Theresa was crying and Mary was calling to her frantically.

“Katy! Katy!”

“I’m all right. Bushy-face killed it. Glory! I’m going to sit down. My legs are trembling.”

“I was never so scared in my life.”

“I see that you got Mable inside. The stubborn beast. It would serve her right if she broke her leg.”

“Her legs are all right. She cut her udder. It’s bleeding on the floor.”

“Tie a bandage around it while I get my breath. That was just a whisker too close.”

Two

“Damn woman’s gutsy; I’ll say that for her.” Garrick Rowe spoke aloud to the dog who lay flat on his belly, his big head on his crossed paws. “Didn’t scream or faint. I can’t figure out what the hell two gentle womenfolk are doing here without men. Jesus! It’s a wonder they haven’t been carried off by a Cheyenne war party or some half-civilized, woman-hungry fur trapper.”

Rowe turned the squirrel carcass on the spit. His cookfire was built beside the eight-foot-square stone building where he had decided to take up residence. He didn’t need much space for now, just a place where he could store his supplies and hold off an attack if the occasion arose.

He viewed the meat critically. It was browning and the juices were dripping. He’d had his fill of fresh meat. Right now, he would give a silver dollar for a biscuit with butter on it. The women in Grog’s Funerary had butter. The day he arrived, the brown-haired one had been sitting on the porch working the dasher up and down in a churn. She scrambled inside when she saw him coming, a sure sign there were no menfolk around.

“After we eat, Modo, we’ll get one of the mules and drag that cat off down the gully. In a day or two he’ll stink so bad the ladies will be cussing me for shooting him. You can gnaw on him if you want, but first I’ll take his pelt. No sense in letting it go to waste.”

Rowe fingered his beard. It had protected his face from the cold during the winter, but now that it was getting hot, he would have to shave. He slid the teakettle close to the fire to heat some water. Usually, he shaved with his hunting knife, but with a winter’s growth of whiskers, he’d need help or he’d not leave any skin left on his face.

Why were the women here? They were not Grogs. He had set up shop in Bannack. As far as anyone knew, this town would never revive. Rowe didn’t have time to play nurse-maid. Their men should be here looking out for them unless they were widows. If that were the case, why hadn’t they left with the others? Big John Beecher, the blacksmith, had been one of the last to leave Trinity. John hadn’t mentioned any permanent residents when he and Rowe met in Virginia City. In another week Hank would be here with tools, Big John, and a couple of wagon-loads of men. Hell, Rowe hadn’t counted on two lone women to complicate things.

While he ate, his mind went back to the woman with the heavy rope of blond hair hanging down her back. It irritated him that he hadn’t been able to get her face out of his mind since he first saw it five days ago. It was etched there as if he had looked upon it a million times. Her profile was classical, her neck long, and her eyes blue. How did he know that, he wondered. He hadn’t been within a dozen yards of the woman. Her eyes could be green or brown, or black like his. He stopped eating and held the meat in his two hands. No, they were blue. He could see them clearly in his mind.

Rowe now had that same strange feeling he’d had when he’d first seen her walking to the creek to get water. She had seemed to float over the ground without so much as a bob of her head. It was as if he had known this woman before, known her well, as if he could have picked her out of a crowd of hundreds had she been strolling amid the ruins on the flat-topped hill known as the Acropolis in Athens.

He cursed in Greek, the language of his mother, as he always did when he was frustrated. He didn’t like blond women. He’d never bedded a blond woman, had shunned them when possible. Hell and high water! Hadn’t he had enough of the fair race to last a lifetime? He was sure he had never set eyes on this woman before, yet today, when he had heard her talking to the little girl, her voice had sounded familiar. He heard the child laugh and call her Aunt Katy. He was not surprised that the child was not hers. When he heard her call out, somehow he found his rifle in his hand and his feet had moved automatically. He saw the cougar on the ledge—as if it had all happened before—and shot it, knowing that he wouldn’t miss.

Damnation! Was he losing his mind?

Darkness comes suddenly in the mountains. The town lay on a long bench that bordered the creek on the far side. Actually, the creek curved around the bench. The town was backed up against the mountain; behind and above it was a thick growth of trees. Rowe had been pleased to see that the town had at least a dozen buildings and a scattering of houses and shacks on the slope above it, including a long bunkhouse that offered bunks to those less discriminating than the hotel patrons. Behind the livery was a stone reservoir some ten feet across and about eight feet deep. Water ran from the rocks into it. Now a thin stream made its way to the creek below. Within the rail fence surrounding the tank he had left his mules and his horse.

During the final minutes before dark, Rowe leaned against the side of the building and fingered his newly shaved chin. He scarcely recognized himself in the small square of mirror he carried in his saddlebag. His hair, cut with his hunting knife, was no more than two inches long. After it was washed it would curl up even shorter. His face had felt so bare once the hair was off his cheeks and chin that he had left the hair above his lip. He stroked it now, first on one side and then the other.

It was still light enough for him to see the great empty eyes of the windows of the vacant buildings and the swaying of the sign in front of the boarded-up eatery. The day after he arrived, he had smashed the hasp from the saloon door and pushed it open. The mirror behind the bar was intact, but the space above it was strangely lacking the usual picture of a naked woman lying on a couch. The owner had taken all the whiskey but left a supply of glasses. Tables and chairs stood in the room, and a thick layer of dust covered everything. In the back of the saloon a stairway led up to a hall where doorways opened to a half-dozen small rooms.

Eager to profit by a boom such as the one at Virginia City, money-hungry men had flocked to Trinity. When the crash came the people had fled, leaving behind all they could not pack on a horse or in a wagon, hurrying to the next strike, carrying their dreams and ambitions, knowing that success was just around the corner.

Rowe realized that he had gotten a lot more than he bargained for when he bought the town. Suddenly he saw a dim light appear in the window of Grog’s Funerary. Almost as soon as he saw the light, one of the women approached the window with a quilt or a blanket and the light was gone. It was a smart move to cover the window. Any drifter who came into town would have headed directly for the light. Rowe knew that wasn’t the reason they covered it. It was because they feared he could spy on them. The sound that came from him was almost a chuckle. They were like two babes in the woods. He knew almost every time they went out the side door to empty the chamber pot.

After he made his rounds of the town and was satisfied that the population was still only two women, a child, and himself, Rowe took a bar of carbolic soap and clean buckskins and headed for the creek. Modo padded silently behind him.

“You’ll be getting a bath one day soon,” he told the dog. “You gather fleas like a bee gathers honey.”

Cleanliness was almost a fetish with Rowe. He used the carbolic soap in case he had picked up a flea from Modo. Before he left the building, he sprinkled his bedroll with kerosene should the building be infested with bedbugs. He shed his clothes and stepped naked into the icy cold water that came down from the snow-covered mountains above. He ducked until the water flowed over his head, then stood knee-deep in the stream and lathered the hair on his head, chest, and groin with the soap.

Modo lay on the bank beside Rowe’s discarded clothes. Suddenly he stood, his head slung low, his tail extended straight out. Rowe started toward the bank. A second later he heard the sound of something coming down the path from town.

“Shhh . . .” The hissed sound was a command the dog obeyed.

Rowe moved toward the bank and into a screen of willows. Knowing automatically that his master wanted him out of sight, Modo slunk silently amid the drooping branches.

The blond woman came quietly down the path, a rifle in one hand, a lead rope in the other. It was the cow she was leading who had made the noise. She led the animal to the stream not a dozen feet from where Rowe stood shivering in the icy water. While the cow drank, she knelt down, and with her free hand splashed water on her face, then stood waiting patiently, turning her head slowly from one side to the other, watching and listening. She was fully alert. Rowe found himself nodding his head in approval. This was no empty-headed woman. He had no doubt that if he made a move toward her, she would shoot him. He glanced at his clothing on the bank. Because the buckskins looked like a rock in the darkness, he doubted that she would notice them.