Hanging Woman Creek (1964) Read online

  But after maybe half an hour had passed and I was still lying there thinking, he said, “Hell, I got a good notion to bust out. You want to try it?”

  “No.”

  “The hell with you!”

  That ended our conversation.

  My hand was getting better, but it needed to, with what I had planned for it.

  At noon on my sixth day in jail the door from the office opened suddenly and Jim Fargo appeared. He had the keys in his hand, and he unlocked the door of my cell. “Come on out, Pike,” he said. “You don’t belong in there.”

  “Am I free?”

  “No, there’s a preliminary hearing this morning. That’s where we’re going now.”

  “Will Roman Bohlen be there?”

  “He had better be.”

  The room was crowded when Fargo walked me to the front of the room, and I could hear the muttering as I passed. Butch Hogan and Charley Brown were there, and at the back of the room there was a row of soldiers wearing side arms.

  Roman Bohlen and his outfit were there, and Red Harleman was with them. When they brought me in Bohlen shot an ugly look at Hardeman, but the gunman never flickered his eyelids.

  Bohlen testified, telling how I’d stolen stock from Justin and himself, how I’d been fired, and how I’d gone crazy and killed the Parleys, then attacked his outfit when Eddie Holt was killed by them.

  “The Parleys were both killed?” the judge asked.

  “Both of them. I saw her body, too. I don’t know what he did with it.”

  At that moment the door opened and Ann walked in on crutches. She was pale, but she looked better than when I’d last seen her, and she walked right up to me and held out her hand.

  “I am very sorry, Barney,” she said, “but I’ve been ill. I didn’t know.”

  She looked wonderful to me. “Forget it,” I said.

  All the while there was a hush in the room, everybody looking at Roman Bohlen. His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and once he moved as if to rise, but those soldiers were all standing now, right across the back of the room, and he stayed where he was.

  Ann took the stand and told her story simply and directly. Then she took from her purse a sheet of folded paper. “Your honor, this was written before my brother died. Surely, if Mr. Pike had been involved in any way at all, my brother would not have done this.”

  The judge glanced at it. “I know that signature,” he said.

  Then Doc Finerty testified that he became doubtful of Bohlen’s story when he examined the wounds on the dead men. They didn’t fit with the circumstances of Bohlen’s story, for both Parley and Holt had wounds older than the recital of events given by Bohlen.

  Then the judge asked me to identify the men with Bohlen, and I did so, until I came to Red Hardeman. He was looking at me out of those steely eyes and showed no emotion whatsoever.

  “Your honor,” I said, “I never saw this man in that bunch—he wasn’t among them. Anyway, I know this man, and he wouldn’t be involved in anything of the kind. There’s been a mistake.”

  Roman Bohlen’s face was ugly. “By the—”

  “Shut up!” Fargo snapped. Then he said to the sheriff, “These men are in your custody. Leave Hardeman here. I want to speak to him.”

  Ann waited at the back of the room. Jim Fargo, Red Hardeman, and me, we stood together by ourselves.

  “Red,” Fargo said, “you know and I know that you were there. What Pike did that for, I don’t know; but if he did it he had a good reason. Do you know anybody in Texas?”

  “I got kin there.”

  “Have you got a fast horse?”

  “I have.”

  “Then go visit your kin … and stay out of Montana.”

  Ann and me, we walked back up the street together, and I was some embarrassed to see the way some of those no-account cowhands stared at us, to say nothing about those bull-whackers from the Diamond R.

  “That was Philo’s will that I gave to the judge. He left his stock to you, all his cattle and his horses.”

  “Why me?”

  “Why not? You helped us, when nobody else would. Just you and that Negro.”

  “He was a good man, Eddie was.” I looked down at my hand and doubled my fist. “He taught me to fight.”

  “Philo had almost three hundred head of fine beef cattle and at least fifty horses. We could start a ranch.”

  Well, I didn’t know what to say. This was what I’d been dreaming of, but dreams are nothing to take seriously. Or maybe they are … I only know that here it was, more chance than a tough-hided cowhand deserved.

  “If you mean it,” I said, “I’ll try to make it so you won’t be sorry later.”

  “Philo said you’d never marry me unless you had something of your own, and he said you’d earned it during all that terrible trip across country.”

  “I’d be a fool to argue,” I said.

  We stopped near the steps of the hotel and I didn’t know what to say. It was the first time I’d ever been engaged to a girl, and the first time I’d been in love since I was fourteen, and then the girl never knew it. I stood there, wanting to kiss her, thinking I should, and feeling like a damned fool. And then she reached up and kissed me very gently on the lips and went inside, and I turned around quick, expecting somebody to laugh.

  There were a few cowhands in sight, and a couple of bull-whackers, but all of them were very busy at whatever they were doing, which wasn’t much. So I walked over to Charley Brown’s, my feet scarcely touching the ground.

  Some of the boys were there and I bought a drink, and looked off into a fine, friendly world, suddenly richer and better off than I’d ever expected to be, and engaged to an Irish girl who would soon be my wife.

  Looking at myself in the mirror, my face still ugly from the beating I’d taken from Bohlen, I couldn’t figure what she saw in me. But a man’s life is much in his own hands, and what I was did not have to be the measure of what I would be. Sure, I wasn’t brilliant, but I’ve seen a few of all kinds, and in the long drive give me a man who is persistent rather than brilliant. Too often the brilliant ones are flashes in the pan, no more.

  I finished my drink and stepped out on the walk and stood there, breathing in that good Montana air and figuring I had the world laid out before me like a banquet.

  Sure … it would take a lot of work. Philo had left me whatever he had here in Montana, and though it wasn’t such a lot as wealth goes, it was a good start, and with my know-how and savvy I should make a go of it.

  First things first. I must walk down to the livery stable and check on that horse of Ann’s. He’d been badly beat when I took him in, and while they took good care of horses, I’d better have a look.

  The horse turned his head and nickered when I came up to the stall and spoke to him. I expect he was lonesome, for once a horse becomes addicted to people he likes them about, and he likes people he knows. So I stood there, telling him about Ann and me, and what he could look forward to in that ranch over against the Big Horns. Then I slapped him on the hip and stepped out of the stall, and looked right into a gun.

  Van Bokkelen was holding it, and he was looking across that gun and grinning at me. Roman Bohlen was right there beside him.

  I wasn’t wearing a gun and it wouldn’t have done me any good if I had been.

  “You wouldn’t bust out with me,” Van Bokkelen said, “so I brought Bohlen along.”

  “I’m going to kill him,” Bohlen said, “with my bare hands.”

  Deliberately, Van Bokkelen holstered his gun. “You do what you are of a mind to,” he said. “I’ll saddle the horses.”

  Roman Bohlen was big, and he was fast and mean. He had whipped Hogan, who had whipped me twice. He stood between me and the door as if he thought I would try to get away. The only way I was going out of here was through him or over him.

  He didn’t say a word, he just cut loose and swung, and I hit him in the belly with my right fist. The blow was perfectly timed and
it caught him coming in, just like Eddie had showed me. It stopped him dead in his tracks, leaving him wide open for the left I smashed into his mouth.

  That was my sore hand, and it hurt, but it also plastered Bohlen’s mouth. And then he went berserk.

  He came at me swinging and all I could do was slip inside of one punch and grab hold with both hands. He backheeled me, but when we hit ground I jerked my knee up, and while it didn’t hurt him it threw him on over me and I whirled around and slid from under.

  We both came up punching. Over the saddle he was cinching on a horse, Van Bokkelen was watching, unconcerned as though he was at the ringside of a fight.

  After those first two good punches I must have got hit a dozen times, but they were mostly mauling, bruising punches that battered at my shoulders and chest without doing me much harm. The one or two that did get through shook me to my heels.

  My face was already sore, and his punches there really hurt. But I got in another good smash to the body. He knocked me down twice, but both times I got out of the way before he could kick me, and then we tied into each other again, and he threw me with a rolling hip-lock. I dove into his knees and he came down, half on top of me, and I squirmed from under and was the first man on his feet. When he was halfway up I caught him on the nose with a full swing, and the blood gushed.

  He charged at me and I stood my ground, swinging in with both hands. He hurt me with a right hand, and then tried it again, but that time I hit him with another right to the body, then a left and another right to the same place. He backed up, a sick look on his face, and I walked into him, suddenly confident that I could take him.

  All the time I could hear Eddie’s words. “Make him miss, then hit him. He’ll be a head-hunter, always punching for the face and jaw, so make him miss and hit him where he lives. No matter how tough they are, that’ll bring ‘em down.”

  I feinted, and when he lunged at me I belted him with an uppercut in the wind. He gasped and his jaw fell slack, and I moved on into him.

  “Looks like you need some help,” Van Bokkelen said then, and he stepped in, balancing that six-shooter for a chop at my neck. “You ain’t doing so good, Roman.”

  Bohlen, getting a moment’s breath, lifted a hand to wipe the blood off his mouth, and I threw the works into a right-hand punch to the belly. As he fell I stepped around him to face Van Bokkelen.

  “You’re a damn fool,” I said to him. “You’d have to shoot that to stop me, and that would bring the town. If you’re going out of here, you’d better ride.”

  He hesitated, then he laughed. “Why, sure! I never expected you to make so much sense, Pike. You were always such a lily-livered fink.”

  “Van Bokkelen,” I said, “one of these days, when they have that rope around your neck, you think back to this moment. I may never have an awful lot, but I’ll live my life out, eating good food, breathing the fresh air, taking a drink now and then, being married to a fine woman, and seeing my youngsters grow up.

  “And you? You’ll have a fat roll of greenbacks from time to time, and years in prison to pay for it, and always the fear that the next step you make will be the wrong one.

  “Back there in jail you said they only wanted you for rustling. Fargo told me they wanted you for murder … somewhere back east.

  “You can run out of here, and out of the next place, and after a while, even if you’re lucky, you’re going to run out of places to run to. And then the law will catch up to you.”

  “The law?” Van Bokkelen said contemptuously. “I never saw a lawman I couldn’t out-figure, Pike. Not one. I’m smarter than any one of them.”

  “Maybe … but are you smarter than a hundred of them? A thousand of them? They’ve got numbers, and they’ve got time. You haven’t got either.”

  Bohlen started to get up and I moved into position where I could slug him if he tried it

  “I’m keepin’ him,” I said. “You goin’ to argue about it?”

  Van Bokkelen looked at me oddly. “You damn fool,” he said. “I’m holdin’ a gun.”

  Bohlen hadn’t the strength to make it, and he sagged back on the floor.

  “That’s right, you’ve got the gun,” I said, “and you’ve got time for one shot before I get to you. Your kind always has the idea that a gun makes the difference. I saw a man take four slugs from a gun like that, and kill the man who was shooting it. Want to gamble?”

  “No,” he said frankly, “I’ll be damned if I do. Here I stand wasting time when I should be riding.” He paused. “You going to set the law on me? You going to tell them now?”

  “Why should I? You’re behind the eight-ball, Van Bokkelen. You’re running down a blind trail. No, I’m not going to tell them any sooner than I have to. You make your run—you ain’t going any place.”

  He led the horse to the door and stepped into the saddle. For a minute he looked back at me. “You beat the devil, Pike. I never saw anybody of your kind.”

  He rode off and I watched hirn go, and then I went back to where Bohlen was trying again to get up.

  He looked up at me like a whipped dog, all the bombast and bluff gone out of him. “You busted my ribs!” he moaned.

  “I figured on it.”

  When the jail door shut on him, the jailer said, “Did you see the other one? The big blond man?”

  “He’s gone.”

  The jailer looked at me, saw the fresh blood on me and the bruises. “He gave you no trouble?”

  “Only this one. Van Bokkelen … him and me, we talked some.”

  Tired, I walked slowly up the empty street, my footsteps sounding on the boardwalk. But for the first time I walked without being alone. Seemed strange, looking back on the past, that all my life I’d been riding alone and walking alone. The reason was, I’d nobody to do for. What a man needs in this world, if he’s any kind of man, is somebody to do for, to take care of. Otherwise there’s not much sense in working.

  A few lights glowed from windows. Here and there dark, empty windows looked lonesomely at a man. But I had girl, I had a place to go, and I never was going to be quite so alone again, no matter what happened.

  I’d been walking toward the hotel, and just as I neared it I saw a dark figure standing there in the shadows—a strange, bulky figure, looking up at a hotel window. My eyes were used to the darkness, and I could make out the mule, standing there waiting.

  “Hello, Lottie,” I said. “This is Pike. We talked back on the trail.”

  “I recall.”

  “Lottie, that was Philo’s sister out there, his sister Ann.”

  She didn’t speak for a few minutes, and then she said, “He was a kind man. Do you suppose he liked me?”

  “I’m sure he did, Lottie. You’re a nice girl.”

  She moved out onto the walk, facing me. She was as tall as I was, and looked heavier in her bulky man’s clothes.

  “What am I goin’ to do, Mr. Pike?” Her voice was puzzled, wondering. “Clyde, he used to always tell me what I should do, but he’s been dead a long time, and then Mr. Parley, he told me.” She peered at me. “I never had no case on him, Mr. Pike, only he talked nice to me, like I was a lady. Nobody ever done that before, not even Clyde. What am I goin’ to do, Mr. Pike? I got nobody.”

  “Lottie,” I said, “I’m not the one to ask, but if I was you I’d ride clear away from here, ride some place where they’ve never heard of Clyde Drum. Then I’d get myself some proper woman’s clothes and get myself a job.”

  She sighed deeply. “I reckon … but what could I do?”

  “Can you cook?”

  “Yes, Mr. Pike, Clyde always said I was the best cook he ever knew. Mr. Parley liked my things too, so I taken them to him. Only when I saw her there, well, I hated her. When a man has his own woman around he don’t have time for no big old girl like me.”

  “Ride out of here, Lottie, get some clothes, and hunt a job as a cook. Don’t tell anybody anything about yourself. If you cook well enough, they won’t ask anything els
e.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Pike.” She turned toward the mule.

  “Have you go any money, Lottie?”

  “No, Mr. Pike. I ain’t had no cash money in a long time.”

  There wasn’t much in my pocket. I never had much my ownself, but Justin had paid me off out there, and a man in jail has no chance to blow it in. And I hadn’t spent much since, except to pay Charley Brown what I owed him.

  “Lottie, here’s twenty-eight dollars. You get yourself out of here. It ain’t much, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  She took the money and stood silent, and then she said, “Mr. Pike, I was goin’ to kill that girl. I was fixin’ to shoot her.”

  “I know you were.” I paused. “I’m going to marry her, Lottie. Philo wanted it that way.”

  She stood there for a moment, then walked heavily to her mule and I heard the saddle creak as she got up.

  “Lottie,” I said, “did you put Indian shoes on your mule?”

  “Yes, Mr. Pike. I done that.”

  “Don’t do it again, Lottie. That’s all over now. You ride out of here, Lottie, and you be a good girl. There’s lots of men who like a big girl who can cook real fine. Especially,” I added, “if she keeps herself nice. Neat like, and clean. And keeps her hair combed. You’d best do that, Lottie.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Pike. I’ll do that.”

  She rode away then, and it seemed to me she sat up a little straighter. Or maybe that was just what I hoped.

  Standing there, listening to the hoof-falls as she rode away, I thought there wasn’t much difference between the two of us after all. Only I’d found the way I was going, and now maybe she had, too.

  I turned around and started toward the hotel, where I’d be sleeping that night.

  Well, now, let’s see. I’d have to make a deal with the Crows about that land back up against the mountain, or find a place just out of their country. A place with plenty of good water, some high meadows where there’d be hay to cut or late summer grazing. Then I’d need a hand to help me round up those cows.

  But that could wait. I was a rancher now, a man with stock, and my credit had always been good. First off, I was going to get myself a new outfit of clothes, some that really fit me proper.