Hanging Woman Creek (1964) Read online

  Hanging Woman Creek

  Louis L’amour

  *

  Chapter One.

  It was raining by the time we reached the railroad bridge. Evening was coming on, and the pelting rain was cold. We dug in our heels and slid down the embankment to get under the bridge, where there was shelter of a sort. We built a fire, then huddled over it wondering what had become of our summer’s wages.

  Three of us were there, strangers until a few hours ago, now joined in the idea of going west. I’d be going home, or to as much of a home as I could lay claim to, being rootless as a tumbleweed, blowing on, resting here and there against this fence or that, but staying nowhere long. As for the others, I had no idea.

  The black skeleton frame of the trestle danced in the wavering light from the fire, and from time to time the flames guttered and hissed as the wind blew down the draw, spattering us with cold drops from off the bridge.

  Rustling around for wood reminded me of a winter I spent in Montana one time … at the Hartman & Liggett horse camp. No snow on the ground all winter long, only flurries from time to time, but cold. The ice froze rock-hard on the creek that year, and never broke until late spring.

  Taking all in all, that had been a good winter. The cabin was snug against the wind, the pot-bellied stove gave off almost too much heat, and there were old magazines and a couple of books lying around.

  When not in a mind to read, I’d sit and ponder. Whilst only a youngster I had taken to rebuilding places in my mind, places I’d lived in or seen, and when I’d nothing else to do I would put a place together, every single thing in place, then bit by bit I’d recall the folks I’d known there and what was said—what we talked about, and the like. It gave me something to do, but no great respect for the high art of conversational talk.

  When a man sets out to recall in detail as I did, he sets more to working than he’s figured on, for he never looks at anything after that without thinking how he’ll recall it in time to come. It also sets a man to thinking about himself, and when a man stands himself up to ponder at, he can’t always be pleased at what he sees.

  No working cowhand is going to get very far unless he’s a hand to notice. Punching cows takes you over a lot of rough country, and pretty soon you get to know every draw, hill, or clump of brush. You notice the game trails and the springs, and where the cattle go for shelter, and a lot more besides. A man has to notice or he won’t get very far at punching cows.

  Back there at the Hartman & Liggett horse camp there’d always been a brown crock of baked beans, and I’d never had my fill of beans. Sitting there beside that hateful fire under the trestle with night coming on, I kept thinking back to that horse camp and those crocks of beans. They would be tasty, mighty tasty, right now.

  That big colored boy, he looked at me and he said, “You look like you been in a fight.”

  “Here an’ there,” I said.

  “You fight with the mitts?”

  “Nobody ever showed me. I just fight the best way I know how.”

  “I’ve boxed,” he said.

  He was a big boy, maybe a year or two older than my twenty-six years, standing around six feet, and built strong. And he had good hands.

  That was the first thing he said about me. “You got good hands.” He doubled up my fist. “Flat across the knuckles. Stands shock better. You could punch, I think.”

  Puttering around, I fetched back a few more sticks. A branch or two, a few old sticks and suchlike—anything to keep the fire going.

  “When did you say that freight was due?” Van Bokkelen asked.

  “Ten-twelve, if it’s on time.”

  Van Bokkelen was a big blond man, raw-boned and with an uncurried look—shaggy hair and a broad, tough face, yet not bad-looking. He had small, ice-blue eyes, no more warmth in them than in the head of a nail.

  Twelve hours before no one of us had known the others. We’d come together in jail, in the drunk tank. Only I’d been pulled in for fighting, and it wasn’t the first time. Seemed like I was always being arrested for fighting. Not that I knew much about it, but I just naturally liked to fight.

  The wind blew cold. Rain spattered over us, and I hitched the collar of my cloth suit-coat higher around my ears and stretched my hands toward the flames. We were sheltered in part by a bank of drift sand; on our left ran a small stream. The rain was falling harder now, the gusts were more frequent.

  “You got a place?” Eddie Holt, the colored boy, asked. “I mean, you got a place to go to?”

  “I got no place, and never had no place except west.” With a gesture I indicated my sacked-up saddle. “My home’s been in the middle of that.”

  “You got to have a horse.”

  “You think so, do you? Sometimes I figure I’ve packed that saddle damn near as far as I’ve rode horses.”

  “I’d be damned if I’d pack it,” Van Bokkelen said. “I’d steal a horse before I’d do that.”

  “It’s been done,” I admitted, not wanting to argue principle with a stranger over a friendly fire.

  We listened to the ram, and hopefully listened for a train whistle, but it was a long while until train time and I was hungry as a springtime bear fresh out of hibernation.

  “Maybe I could get me a riding job,” Eddie suggested.

  “There was a colored boy rode for an outfit I worked for down New Mexico way. He was a good hand. Can you ride?”

  “I never rode for no cow outfit, but I rode in a Buffalo Bill show.” He grinned at me. “I was an Indian.”

  “You ain’t the first,” I said, and then added, “They tell me you really got to ride for Cody.”

  “I can ride. I can rope a little. But I never rode for no cow outfit.”

  “A man who can’t live without working,” Van Bokkelen scoffed, “is a fool. I’d see myself in hell before I’d eat dust behind a bunch of cows.”

  Well, I sat quiet, feeling the Old Ned coming up in me. All my life I’ve punched cows or worked hard for what little I’d had, and I didn’t cotton to this stranger making me out a fool. Come to think of it, he didn’t seem to be doing so well.

  Eddie Holt, he sat quiet, too, and never said aye, yes, or no, and that seemed to be a good idea. This blond gent was a whole lot bigger than me, and my ribs and jaw were still sore from my last fight.

  “You do what you’re of a mind to,” I said after a minute. “I’ll punch cows.”

  “For thirty a month?” he sneered. “You boys come along with me and you’ll be wearin’ silk shirts and broadcloth. I could use two men like you.”

  Back up the line I heard a footstep splash in the water. “Somebody comin’,” I said, and turned my head to look. When I looked back Van Bokkelen was gone.

  “Sit close,” Eddie warned. “It’s the Law.”

  It sure was. There were four of them, four big men wearing slickers and armed with shotguns. They had spread out as they came up to the fire and they looked from one to the other of us.

  “You!” The man I knew as the sheriff gestured with his shotgun. “Stand up!” He came up to me. “You armed?”

  “I owned a Winchester one time,” I said. “Never had no use for a hand gun.”

  He went over me with as smooth and knowing a frisk as ever I got, then did the same for Eddie.

  “You haven’t even got a knife? Or a razor?”

  Eddie lifted his big hands. “Never had use for anything but these,” he said.

  The sheriff looked around at a narrow-faced, red-haired man. “Didn’t you say there were three of them? You had three of them, you said.”

  “That’s right. They didn’t come together, but they left together. The black boy there, he was straight. Loafing around, no visible means
of support. We gave him overnight in jail and a floater.

  “The one in the broad hat, he got into a fight with Salty Breakenridge over to Ryan’s. They busted up the place.”

  The sheriff looked at me with respect “With Salty? I saw him. I figured it had to be a bigger man than you. What do you weigh, puncher?”

  “Hundred and seventy,” I said. “I never seen size makes too much difference.” Then kind of grudgingly I had to acknowledge, “Although that there Salty … I’d say he was a fair hand.”

  The sheriff chuckled. “Yes, I’d say that. Nobody ever whipped him before.” He kicked the sack containing my gear. “What’s in that?”

  “Saddle. I’m headed west.”

  “How’d you come east? Trainload of cattle?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  The quiet man with the gray eyes had said nothing up to then, but he had been looking around. “Where’s the other one?” he asked. “The big blond man?”

  “Ain’t seen him,” I said, “only once since we left jail. He was headin’ for Ryan’s and a drink.” I grinned at them. “I figured I’d no business goin’ back there.”

  They just looked at me, and then the quiet man said, “Don’t cover for him, boys. He isn’t worth it. That’s a bad man.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said, “but you had him in jail—why didn’t you keep him?”

  The sheriff spat. “Because we didn’t know who he was. Like damn fools we let him go. Then Fargo here, he got to thinking about an old reward poster. There’s a reward on that man … dead or alive. He’s wanted for murder.”

  Eddie, he never even looked at me. “How much?” I said, for I was curious. “Five thousand.”

  Hell, I never seen that much money in my whole lifetime. You don’t see much, working for thirty a month and found. It was a lucky thing when I put forty saved dollars into a saddle.

  Fargo looked at me. “What’s your name, cowpuncher?”

  “Pike,” I said, “Barnabas Pike. Some places they call me Pronto.”

  “Pronto? Because you’re fast?”

  Me, I grinned at him. “Maybe because I swing too quick,” I said. “I got a mean temper when I’m riled, but it ain’t always that. I never had much fun … except fightin’.”

  “I can believe it,” the sheriff said. “I saw Salty Breakenridge after.”

  They poked around a little, stared off down the stream bed, and then they started off. Only Fargo lingered. He kicked at the ground where Van Bokkelen had sat. “Five thousand,” he said, “is a lot of money.”

  “Mister,” I said, “I seen that gent in jail and I didn’t cotton to him, but I never sold anybody out yet, and I ain’t about to start.”

  “I thought you’d be that way,” Fargo said quietly, “but don’t tangle with that man. You leave him alone, cowpuncher. He’s bad medicine.”

  “You been west,” I said.

  “A time or two,” he said. “And maybe again.” Then he walked off after the others, and we said nothing, Eddie Holt and me, watching them go.

  Finally Eddie picked up sticks and added them to the fire. “Murder,” he said—“that’s bad. I wonder who he killed?”

  “He’s full of mean,” I said. “I could see it in him.” I looked at Eddie. “You goin’ any place particular? If you ain’t, come along with me. Two can starve as free as one, and if I get a ridin’ job I’ll speak for you.”

  “I take that kindly,” he said.

  The fire was warm; the wind had gone down and the rain had about stopped. There was still the sound of the big drops falling off the trestle.

  A long time we sat quiet, and me wishing I could catch some shuteye, but little time remained if we were going to catch that drag. I kept squatting there thinking about how I wished there’d be an empty on that train. I’d never liked riding freights unless there was an empty.

  “We’re partners, Pronto?” Eddie said.

  “Why not?” I said, and then the train whistled far off.

  We got up and Eddie kicked out the fire mostly, and then scooped water from the creek with an old can and poured it over what was left to put it out. Then we struggled up to the trestle together.

  The train slowed up along here, with a good grade ahead, and a man could take it moving.

  “Can you make it? Totin’ that saddle?”

  “You watch me.”

  We let a dozen cars go by, and then Eddie saw an open door as it passed a red light on a switch, and called out to me. He was a fast man, making the run easy and swinging up, and he caught my saddle as I swung it at the opening. Me, I caught the edge of the floor and hauled myself up, the ground slipping away behind me.

  Long after Eddie had rolled up in some paper he found at one end of the car, I sat there by the open door, a-looking out at the country. Here and there we flipped past lonely farms with lights in the windows … one time there was a man walking toward the house with a lantern and a milk pail, and a dog barking at the train.

  “Dirt farmers,” I sneered. “Home guards!” But away down inside I wasn’t sneering at all. That man was going into his own house to set down to his supper at his own table, with his kinfolk around him.

  And me? All I had was a lonesome whistle sound as the train bent around a curve, the distant glow of the firebox, and somewhere down the line a flea-bitten cow pony, and a chuck wagon for home.

  Chapter Two.

  When I woke up it was daylight and the train was bumping along at a good pace. Walking to the door, I could see patches of woods, a stream and miles of wheat fields slipping by.

  Eddie sat up. “That right, what you said? We’re partners?”

  “Sure.”

  “Where all we goin’?”

  “West… I dunno. Maybe Miles City … Medora. First place that looks likely.”

  “I could eat. Boy, but I could eat!”

  “You an’me,” I said.

  “You been punchin’ cows a long time?”

  “Uh-huh. Since I was twelve. Worked along with my brother until he got killed, then on my own for the BB. My brother was never no hand with a gun, but he surely figured he was. Finally one time he braced a cowtown marshal.”

  The train was slowing a little. Leaning out of the door, I could see the long sweep of the cars ahead as they rounded a curve and started up a steep grade.

  “I never blamed that marshal. My brother was dead set on proving himself a fast man. The marshal told him to go home and sleep it off, but Alex, he just went ahead and dragged iron.”

  “You see it?”

  “Sure. That marshal, he walked over and looked at the body, and then he looked up at me, an’ he said, ‘Boy, I’d no choice. I hope you don’t hold that again’ me.’

  ” ‘He was huntin’ you,’ I said, an’ I tried to talk him out of it, but he sure had a streak of mule in him. Figured he was fast.’

  ” ‘He wasn’t fast, son. He wasn’t even close.’ “

  We sat down in the boxcar door and dangled our legs. The sun was warm and pleasant. You could smell coal smoke from the engine, and that hot dry smell you get from ripening grain fields. They’d be shocking wheat in no time at all, but I’d had my fill of that, even though it paid better than punching. I never hunted no kind of work a man couldn’t do from the back of a horse.

  “Comin’ to a town,” Eddie said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Seems to me you could get you a pass. I mean on this railroad. They tell me when a man ships cattle or rides with cattle, the railroad will give him a pass back home.”

  “You heard it right. On’y I didn’t take to that new clerk back in Chicago. The one I used to know, he was all right. This one looks down his nose at a man … nobody does that to Barney Pike.”

  Suddenly footsteps drummed on the car top, and then a face leaned over, grinning. It was Van Bokkelen. He turned around, lowered his feet, then his full length, and, swinging by his hands he swung in and dropped to the floor of the car beside us.

  “You could get
killed that way,” I said.

  He chuckled. “My number’s not up.” There was a hard, reckless light in his eyes that I did not like. Maybe because they were also lighted with contempt. The way I figure it, a man has no right to hold anybody or anything in contempt … especially the odds. From time to time I’d seen a few men die, and I couldn’t bring myself to think there was any special providence looking out for any of us.

  Seems to me we work out our destinies subject to a lot of accident, incident, and whim. The men I’d seen die, died mostly because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and the kind of men they were mattered not in the least. The good seemed to go as easily as the bad, the brave as quickly as the cowards.

  As for me, I did what I had to do, what I believed I should do, and tried not to take any unnecessary chances. Here and there I’d seen more than one man die showing how brave he was, or doing something he was dared to do … which didn’t make sense anyway you looked at it.

  “That Law back there,” Van Bokkelen asked, “he ask about me?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothin’ much. On’y they seemed anxious to lay hands on you. If I was you,” I added, “I’d fight shy of places. And we’re comin’ into a town now.”

  “You call that a town?” he sneered. “That’s nothing but a wide spot in the road. The town clown in a place like that won’t worry me.”

  The “town clown” … I’d heard that name given to small-town peace officers before, but not by me. More often than not the constable or marshal in those little towns is a good enough sort if you give him a chance, and often he’s mighty salty when pushed. Right then I decided the further we stayed away from Van Bokkelen, the better. He was a trouble-hunter, and Boot Hill graveyards were filled with his kind.

  “They don’t bother me.” He slapped his waistband. “I’m packing the difference.”

  Why do all those would-be toughs talk like echoes of each other? How many times had I heard such talk since I was a kid, knocking around? And each one of them figures he’s got a patent on luck and brains. They live like animals in their hideouts, coming out every once in a while, and the rest of the time hiding from the law and bragging about all they plan to do. And then, like the James-Younger gang, they run into a bunch of farmers and small-town businessmen and get shot to doll rags.