Bendigo Shafter (1979) (23 page)

There's a man coming to the landing. He'll pick us up and take us on down to The Dalles. There's a man there who'll hire both me and the wife.

All right. It's a deal then. I held out my hand. I'm buying the cattle, everything wearing the P Bar ... is that right?

Yes, sir. It surely is.

We shook hands on it and I ate a last cookie, picked up my hat, and turned toward the door.

Pierson! Come out here!

It was Norm Shelde's voice. I would have known it anywhere. Pierson started for the door and I stopped him.

You'd be a damn' fool to go out there. Ask him what he wants.

What you want? Pierson yelled from the crack of the door.

I hear you been talkin' to that damn' Yankee Shafter! Now you get this! You sell him one head of stock an' we'll kill you!

My hand was on the door latch, and I opened it and stepped out. There are some things that make me mad, and one of them is a man who bullies other folks. Right now there was something coming up in me that I didn't like the feel of, but it was there. I stepped outside.

I've bought every head of stock Pierson owned, I said. What have you got to say to that?

Well, you'd have thought I'd slapped him. He hadn't seen my horse and had no idea I was anywhere around. It might have made no difference, but I think it would have. Men of his stripe don't want witnesses or other men who'll stand up to them.

He had the same two men with him, the one I picked for his brother Frank, and the other this Bud Sallero.

I don't like it, Shelde said. He was surprised but he was mad, also. I don't like it at all. My suggestion to you is to get on your horse and ride out of here.

All of which I intend to do, I said, when I have bunched my stock so's I can drive it with me. Pierson and his family are coming along.

He didn't like me one little bit. He rolled his quid in his jaw and spat. You're askin' trouble, he said, an' I'll tell you once more ... get out!

Sallero had his rifle in his hands and so did Frank Shelde, but it wasn't a thing that mattered to me right then. My eyes were on Norm, and he was trying to decide how much of me was talk and how much was man.

All of a sudden his manner changed. He'd been trying to make up his mind, and I felt him change right in front of me. There had to be a reason and my guess was that somebody else had entered the picture ... another man.

But where was he?

Pierson, I said, leave Norm Shelde for me. You can have Sallero.

Shelde's eyes flickered, and I knew where the other man was. Near the shed ... must be the far end because there had been no sound from horses. If I'd put Shelde at twelve o'clock on a clock dial, that would put this other man at ten o'clock. If I were to step quickly back and left as I drew, he'd be likely to miss ... of course, a man never knew. You have to play them the way they're dealt.

Pierson? Shelde sneered. You got you nothing at all there. He wouldn't shoot.

He glanced quickly to his right, then said, All right, boys, shoot him!

My foot went back and left and I shot at Shelde, then turned, dropped to my knees and shot at the man by the corner of the barn.

At the same instant there were a half dozen other shots, then silence.

Bud Sallero was hanging to his saddle horn with both hands, his eyes round and staring. His rifle lay in the dust where it had fallen, and his face grew red from blood, then turned gray. There was a spreading stain of darkness on his shirt.

Frank Shelde was in the dust of the ranch yard, and Pierson had stepped out of the door, holding an old Sharps .50.

Sallero slowly let his hands slip off the horn, and he fell from the saddle into the dust.

The man at the corner of the barn was crawling. Pierson nodded at him. He's gettin' away, Ben.

Let him go. He won't travel far with what he's carrying. I know where I put it.

Norman Shelde was still in the saddle, and he was alive. Either I'd shot too quick, trying to get the other man, or his horse had stepped over, for my bullet had smashed his gun hand, cutting deep into the web of flesh that joins the thumb to the hand. The bullet had gone, right up the forearm and smashed through the arm at the elbow.

We just stood there, I don't know how many seconds, and the shock was getting to me. I was shaking a little from reaction, and to cover it I started to talk.

The odds weren't just like you figured, Shelde, I said, so now you're finished. Unless you're pretty good with your left hand you'd better just ride out of here to some place where nobody knows you.

The blood was dripping from his hand and arm, and when he moved the hand it looked like the thumb was dangling. That his arm was smashed at the elbow anybody could see.

He just stared at me, then at it. He was numb, shocked into silence.

I didn't want to kill anybody, Pierson said. I'm a friendly man. I never figured to hurt anybody at all, but they come at me.

Elsa was out there. You did just fine! she said. You did just what you had to do, and I'm right proud of you! You'd have done it before if I'd kept still, only I knew they'd never leave you to one man. It wasn't like them.

I still want to leave here, Pierson said. I want to go to The Dalles.

Let's round up those cattle, I said, it's a long ride to South Pass.

Chapter
24

I had picked up mail from home at the last station, but there had been no time to read it. Hurriedly, I had stuffed it into my saddlebags and had been busy on other things.

Now I was trailing southeast toward the Blue Mountains with one hundred and twenty-two head of mixed stuff, most of it young. The grazing was fairly good, and by scouting ahead and locating likely meadows I would have little trouble with my small herd.

I had picked up three more horses from Pierson, and he and his daughters had helped with the crossing and to get started on the trail away from the Landing.

At the end of the first day Pierson drew up and thrust out his hand. Ain't likely I can ever thank you enough, he said simply. I would have faced those men but ma couldn't see me leaving my two girls without a pa in this country, an' she was right. I'd likely have got one or two, but they'd surely have killed me.

Maybe, I said. You never know. Anyway, your family will do better at The Dalles, I'm thinking.

I lifted a hand to them and turned away. The heads of the cattle were bobbing, dust was lifting from the road, and deep-marked in the sod to left and right were the ruts of long-gone wagons, the pioneer wagons, the first to cut this road.

The Blue Mountains hung in the misty distance, shadowy, changing, elusive, until a man could not say if they were mountains or only a mirage of mountains. We worked the cattle slowly on, taking our time, letting them fatten for the long drives to come, and saving our few horses.

Uruwishi, ancient as the ancient hills, rode like a young boy, and the gleam in his eyes was good. Once, reined in beside the road to let the cattle pass, I said to him, I would like to have seen you as a young man, Uruwishi. You must have been something then!

I was a warrior, he said simply. I counted plenty coups, took many scalps.

What do you want for Short Bull? I asked. What do you see for him?

He stared after the young Indian and then said, I would wish he could ride the land as I did when I was young. Now he cannot, for the land has changed. He must go the white man's way.

You think it is the best way?

He looked at me. No, he said, but it is here.

After a while I told him, Both of you can stay at South Pass with us. You're good men, and we need good men.

In a white man's town?

It is a man's town, I said.

To tell the truth I'd never given much thought to that side of it and thought there might be some argument from Webb and Neely. Webb would grumble, but when he saw the Indians would stand to their guns in time of trouble and do their share of what had to be done, he would say no more. As for Neely, I was used to him. Of course, I had not opened the letters yet. It wasn't until a few days later, camped under the pines at Emigrant Springs, that I finally read them. There were three, from Ruth Macken, from Lorna, and from Ninon. I opened Mrs. Macken's letter first, for she was the one who would tell me most about our town and the people in it, and I was hungry to know. It seemed I had been away for such a long, long time.

Dear Mr. Shafter:

You will wish to know what has happened, or is about to happen, but first let me say there is no sickness here. That all is well I would hesitate to say. Since you left there has been a great change, and not all of it for the better.

Neely Stuart has done well with his mining. I believe he exaggerates what he takes from his claim, but it is considerable. He has hired both Ollie Trotter and that Pappin man to work for him on his claim, and that gives him more time to stir trouble.

Moses Finnerly has taken to preaching. John was holding services in the school building so Neely built Finnerly a church of his own, which the Stuarts, the Crofts, and several new families attend. I gather he devotes most of his time to preaching against. Against Mormons, Indians, John Sampson, our school, Drake Morrell, and often veiled references to your brother or myself.

Ninon will tell you what she wishes in her letter, but she is discontented. Since you left she has been unhappy, continually wishing you were back, and fearing you will marry somebody while gone. She has been used to a more exciting life than we can offer here, and I know she yearns for the theater.

Moses Finnerly has several times stopped her and tried to get her to come to his church, to sing in his choir. He wants her to be a soloist. I am not sure his motives are what one would expect of a minister of the gospel, but our Ninon is not one to be misled. She is young, but much too wise in the way of the world to befooled by anyone as clumsy as the Reverend.

Mr. Stuart has evidently been paying Pappin and Trotter very well, for both men spend more than any honest workman should. Mr. Webb still attends our church, and has taken a profound dislike to that gospel shouter and his cohorts.

We still do not have a marshal, although Mr. Trotter considers himself such. Mr. Stuart appointed him guard at the mine, and Trotter hat taken to wearing a badge. Two weeks ago a stranger in town suddenly untied one of Mr. Webb's horses and started to ride away. Webb came to the door and shouted at him to come back and when he kept going, Mr. Webb shot him. I saw it, and it was a very good shot. It was with a Dragoon Colt and the man was at least one hundred yards off. The man fell, hit the dirt and started to rise, and Mr. Webb shot him again.

Ollie Trotter was in the saloon (oh, yes, we have one of those!), and he stepped to the door with a gun in his hand and demanded who had shot, and Mr. Webb turned on him and said he had, and what did he propose to do about it?

Mr. Trotter looked down the street at the horse thief, then at Mr. Webb, and went back inside the saloon.

The saloon was opened by a huge man who calls himself Dad Jenn. I suspect that part of the money came from Mr. Stuart from the way Jenn defers to him and to no one else. There are several toughs hanging about there much of the time.

My store is open, and I have done well. On the day it opened a dozen Mormons appeared and bought supplies. The freighting is done by a young Irishman named Filleen who has a livery stable. At last count we had sixty-two people in our town and four business establishments. Bud is working for Mr. Filleen and conducts the store for him when Mr. Filleen is out of town, freighting.

There was a little more, but that was the gist of it, and I wondered at how much had happened in the short time since I had been gone. The other letters I saved until later.

We moved on to Meacham's Blue Mountain Tavern, nooned there, where I mailed a brief reply to Mrs. Macken and a note to Cain. We drove on into the Blue Mountains with the Wallowas a purple haze off to the east. After crossing the divide we turned over into a mountain meadow and bedded down. The next day we drove to Brown Town and bedded down southeast of town. I needed more help the old man wasn't going to stand up to this night work, and there was also the question of supplies. We'd managed to keep eating, all right, shooting an occasional deer, elk, or big horn, but we needed coffee.

Leaving the Indians with the stock I took a packhorse and rode over to Brown Town.

A few years before, maybe two or three, a man named Ben Brown had come back up the country to establish a home on a bench above the Umatilla River. Later he opened a store in his house as Ruth Macken had done in a like situation. A couple of other places had sprung up nearby.

Howdy, Brown said as I came through the door. Seen your cattle. Where you headed?

South Pass, and I need another hand. Close up your store and come along.

Brown chuckled. Now that's an idea. Fact is, I'd like to. Always wanted to prowl around in them Wind Rivers. The mountains, I mean. Afraid I can't help you thataway.

He took the list of supplies I'd made out and glanced over it. Well, I can't come up with most of this stuff. He indicated my herd. See you got a couple of Injuns along.