Outlaw Pass

Henry Plummer stood staring at the telegram in his hand, a wire that had taken two days to reach him. “Damn it,” he cursed, “a man on horseback could have made it here in that length of time.” He glared at Joe French, as if his deputy was somehow responsible for the lateness of the wire’s arrival. “All Ainsworth knows is that they left Bannack and headed north. Hell, they could be anywhere. Ainsworth sent six men to track them, and he’s pretty sure they might be trying to sneak out with a helluva big shipment of gold, too big to let slip out of our hands.” He paused to consider where they could be heading, and decided upon two obvious choices, since they were apparently intent upon avoiding the road between Bannack and Virginia City. “They’re either planning to keep riding north to Butte or cut back east and head for Three Forks—doesn’t make sense to go anywhere else.”

Still deep in thought, Plummer was oblivious of French’s comment. “Joe,” he ordered, “go find Bailey Cruz and tell him I want to see him right now.” French turned immediately to follow Plummer’s instructions. “Tell him he’s gonna need to get his boys together and ready to ride.”

“Good morning, Sheriff, or is it Marshal now?” Lois Caldwell asked with a bright smile for the town’s law enforcement officer. Taller than average, but not towering, Plummer cut a dashing figure among the ladies of Virginia City. With a brutish forehead framed by thick coal black hair, and cold penetrating eyes, he was a handsome man, who seemed to be a pure guardian of the town’s merchants. The fact that he was also a quick and accurate man with a gun was more commonly known by the legion of robbers and murderers he secretly led.

“Ben was going to come talk to you about it, but he’s busy parceling a new shipment of flour that just arrived, so I came instead. We were wondering if there was something that could be done to cut down on the wild drinking at the saloon two doors down from our store. Last night we heard gunshots, and when we opened the store this morning, we found part of our front window broken.”

Plummer fashioned a frown of deep concern for Mrs. Caldwell’s benefit and offered his sympathy. “I’m right disturbed to hear that. I’ll certainly look into it right away to find the guilty party. I’ll try to get your window paid for. Thanks for stopping by to tell me. Sometimes it seems like my whole job calls for keeping the drunks under control, so citizens like you and Ben don’t have to worry about their safety.”

“Not at all,” Plummer replied. “That’s what I’m here for.” He walked over to the door and held it open for her, returning her smile as she breezed through. As soon as the door was closed, his thoughts returned to the possibility of a sizable amount of gold dust slipping through his fingers.

Plummer wasted no time in getting to the problem at hand. “Yeah,” he replied. “I want you to round up some of your men and find somebody for me.” He went on to explain who they would be searching for and which way they had gone. Then he cautioned Cruz that one of the men he would be hunting was the suspected hired gun who had already accounted for more than a half dozen deaths since he hit town. “I’m thinking it might be a good idea to send for Briscoe, since this fellow is supposed to be such a grizzly bear.”

His suggestion brought a frown to the otherwise bored face of Bailey Cruz. “Briscoe?” he questioned. “That man spooks me. He’s such a damn loner, anyhow, I ain’t sure he’ll wanna ride with me and my boys. Besides, accordin’ to what you’re sayin’, we’re goin’ after two men and two women. I don’t see why we need no high-priced hired gun to get that job done.”

Plummer considered Cruz’s remark for a moment before deciding. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. Briscoe was a mysterious sort of assassin, hard to figure out, and not always easy to find. He could always call him in later if Cruz couldn’t stop the fugitives. “All right, what I want you to do is take the road to Three Forks and search all up and down the Madison River in case those people cut across that way.”

“Maybe Lady Luck will be lookin’ our way,” Cruz said as he headed for the door. “I’ll take John Red Blanket with us.” He wouldn’t presume to tell Plummer his business, but he was still of the opinion that his was a fool’s mission. Riding out in a world of wilderness, hoping you’ll bump into four people heading God knows where, he thought. Must be one helluva lot of gold those folks are carrying .

After Cruz had gone, Plummer opened a cabinet behind his desk and weighed out ten dollars’ worth of gold dust from a pouch kept there. He handed the dust to Joe French. “Here, take this over to Ben Caldwell’s store and give it to them to fix their window. Tell ’em we investigated it and got the money from the drunk that shot it out.” It was important to retain the trust of the businesspeople of Alder Gulch, especially in recent times when Plummer had heard rumors of some dissatisfaction with the lack of curtailing outlaw activity on the trails between the claims of the miners.

Bailey Cruz found Tom Seeger in O’Grady’s Place, where the gruff professional road agent was in the process of finishing off a breakfast of pork chops and potatoes, washed down with a mug of beer. A cheerless man of constant dyspeptic nature, Seeger dabbled with his food as if reluctant to ingest it. He glanced up to frown at Cruz when he walked in the door.

“We got a job to do,” Cruz said as he pulled a chair away from the table and sat down. Seeger’s only response was a bored grunt as he continued to gnaw on the bone from his pork chop. “Where’s John Red Blanket?” Cruz asked.

“He’s sleepin’ off a drunk in my storeroom,” O’Grady answered. “And I wish to hell you’d get him outta there, before he wakes up and pukes all over the floor, like he did the last time you fellers were here.” O’Grady’s Place had become the informal base of operations for Bailey Cruz’s gang of cutthroats when they were in town. O’Grady was not particularly happy with the arrangement, but he had let it develop because of the amount of money they spent in his establishment. Now it had progressed to the point where he was afraid to complain about their patronage, even though it had cost him business from the peaceful citizens of Virginia City.

Before Cruz could embellish, O’Grady turned on his heel and promptly headed for the bar. “Whatever it is, I don’t wanna know about it,” he said, figuring that the less he knew about their activities, the better. This was especially important in the face of recent vigilante retaliation on some of the road agents that had been identified. It worried him that he knew as much as he did, just from conversations he had overheard in his saloon, and he wondered how long it would be before he might be visited by the vigilantes.

“Long as you keep it that way,” Cruz said, “you’ll be all right.” Back to the business at hand, he instructed Seeger, “We’re goin’ on a little huntin’ trip that oughta tickle you. Plummer wants us to see if we can head off a couple of fellers that run off from Bannack with a full load of gold dust. One of ’em’s supposed to be some kinda sharpshootin’ hired gun, brought in by the miners up there. There’s just the two of ’em, and they got two women with ’em. You know one of ’em, that ol’ whore that Plummer run outta town a while back—Bonnie somebody.”

Seeger paused to suck a sizable piece of meat from his front teeth, which he took a moment to examine before popping it back in his mouth. “That hired gun,” he asked, “is he the same jasper that had a run-in with Rafe Tolbert and Frank Fancher a few days back—broke ol’ Fancher’s nose?”

They both paused to recall. “Mighta been. I don’t know.” Then Cruz got back to business. “Get through suckin’ on that bone and ride out to the camp and get Buster and Rawhide. And don’t dawdle. We got to get movin’.”

“We might need some heavy liftin’,” Cruz said, “just in case.” The oxlike man was not endowed with a great deal of brains, but he was as strong as a mule, and had no better sense than to do whatever he was told to do. The only person with the patience to deal with him was Rawhide, a lean, saddle-hardened man who was tough as the name he went by. The name, however, came from the rawhide whip he always carried, which he was ready to apply with the slightest provocation. He had somehow adopted the simpleminded brute over the course of a couple of years and Buster followed him around like a puppy—a puppy capable of breaking a man’s back if Rawhide gave the word. It was for this reason that some of the men, like Seeger, were not always happy with Buster along on a job. But Cruz liked having the hulking man with the child’s brain with him. He had laughingly commented to Joe French that it was like having a grizzly in a harness, as long as Rawhide was there to make him dance. “Meet me back at the stable,” Cruz told Seeger, “and we’ll get started while there’s still plenty of daylight. I’ll go get John Red Blanket.”

As O’Grady had said, Red Blanket was in the storeroom. Cruz found him sprawled on his belly across a couple of flour sacks, dead to the world. O’Grady’s Chinese cook had placed a bucket under the sleeping man’s head. “John!” Cruz shouted loud enough to be heard in the barroom out front, but evidently not loud enough to penetrate the deep alcohol-induced slumber of the Crow Indian. “John, damn it! Get up from there!” Cruz yelled at the unresponsive body. He looked around him, searching for something to hasten the procedure, and spying a bucket with a mop standing next to the wall, he picked it up and emptied it over Red Blanket’s head, mop and all. It was effective in accomplishing the awakening of the drunken Indian, and the sudden intrusion of light through the half-opened eyelids was enough to signal the same rumblings deep inside his belly as the last time. He made an attempt to get up, but was still on hands and knees atop the flour sacks when the contents of the night before rushed to evacuate his stomach, leaving a putrid waste on the storeroom floor close beside the empty bucket.

“I need a drink of likker,” Red Blanket complained as he got himself together and followed Cruz, who was already heading for the door. He stumbled after him, almost bumping into O’Grady’s cook, coming for something in the storeroom. They went out into the saloon, ignoring the thunderstorm of irate Chinese profanity behind them.

It was later in the morning when Seeger returned with Rawhide and Buster to find Cruz and a now sober Red Blanket waiting for them with supplies and ammunition on a packhorse. They left town immediately with Plummer’s final caution. “I know how much gold that old man has,” he lied, “so all of it better damn well be there when you come back with it.”

The party Bailey Cruz and his four partners sought was at that moment following a narrow canyon that divided two lofty mountains that stood like giant sentinels on either side of them. There was a wide stream that ran down the middle of the canyon, and Adam continued to follow it until he found a smaller stream that fed into it from a ravine that climbed higher up into the mountain. Thinking this was what he was looking for, he herded the women, the wounded Irishman, the mules, and the extra horses up the ravine, following the smaller stream a distance of about two hundred yards until he came to a waterfall. Beyond it, the slope leveled to form a shelf with a small glen of pine trees surrounded a clearing of grass. “This’ll do,” he announced, dismounted, and led his horse over to tie it to a pine limb.

“Well, thank goodness,” Bonnie said, weary of the saddle. “I thought you were gonna make us climb all the way to the top of the mountain. She slid off the horse and rubbed her sore bottom. “I ain’t used to spending this much time on a horse.”

Adam ignored both complaining women while he looked around his choice for a campsite more closely. Anybody looking to find us will have to come up this stream the same as we did, he thought. And they’ll be easy to see until they get to the trees. It’s a ways to the edge of the tree line, so they ain’t likely to see us from above without coming out in the open. It might not be perfect, but it’ll do us just fine for a while. Satisfied, he went over to help Finn off his horse.

As soon as Finn was settled as comfortable as possible, Adam set about making a more permanent camp. Selecting a stand of younger pines, he picked four for the framework of his shelter and took his hatchet to the few standing in what would be the center. Once they were cleared, he bent the four remaining trees over together and bound their tops together. Using a slicker he had found rolled behind Billy Crabtree’s saddle, he covered part of the shelter with it, covering the slicker and the remaining roof with pine boughs. Once he was well along in his structure, Bonnie and Lacey saw what he had in mind, so they joined in to help fashion their temporary home. There was already a good start for a floor provided by a thick layer of pine needles upon which they spread what blankets they had.

Leaving Bonnie and Lacey to finish up and start a fire, Adam left on foot to scout out the mountain above their camp to make sure he knew about anything around them that might give an enemy advantage. He was pleased to find abundant sign of deer, some of it fresh, and he knelt by the stream where they had recently crossed. Studying the hoofprints carefully, as Mose Stebbins had taught him when he was a boy, he estimated that the deer were four in number and had crossed above his campsite no more than one or two hours before, judging by the amount of water that had seeped up in the tracks at the edge of the stream. Possibly they might have been frightened off by the approaching horses. Fresh meat. The thought came immediately to mind, but he paused to consider whether or not it would be wise to fire a shot, not sure if anyone might be close enough to hear his rifle. He decided to see if he could track the deer while he thought about it.

After following a trail through the thick belt of pine trees for over a half hour, he discovered a high meadow, just below the tree line. Grazing in the center of the meadow were three does and one young buck. Adam knelt in the trees to watch them while he made up his mind. How much of a risk would it be if he shot one of the deer? He had no notion if there was anyone around to hear the shot or not. Finn needs some fresh meat, he told himself. Hell, we all do. I’m gonna chance it. He raised his rifle and laid the sights on one of the does. The Henry bucked once and the deer dropped heavily to the ground, shot through the lung. Seeming like the sound of a cannon, the shot reverberated off the steep mountain slope. Adam shook his head and looked around him as if expecting someone to fall upon him at any minute. But all was quiet again, and he told himself that it was highly unlikely anyone had cut their trail this soon after following the stream up from the canyon. He paused a few moments to watch the remaining deer disappear in the trees above the clearing. Then he hurried out to claim his kill.

“It’s Adam!” Bonnie sang out when a figure appeared at the edge of the clearing. “Damn, look at that,” she said when the tall man walked out of the trees carrying the carcass of a deer across his shoulders. She put her Spencer carbine back where it was next to her blanket and stood up to meet him. “We heard a shot—didn’t know what to think, but we hoped it wasn’t someone come to call this soon.”

“I can show you how,” he said, and dumped the deer on the ground. “First we’ll have to skin it.” He set to work right away, knowing that everyone would be happy to have something other than salt pork for a change. Bonnie did not hesitate to jump right in beside him, with Lacey standing ready to help whenever either of them needed something. In no time at all there were strips of venison on hastily made spits over the fire, and soon the aroma of the roasting meat reached Finn where he lay on his saddle blanket over a mattress of pine straw. Convinced that he was about to enter death’s dark corridor a few minutes before, he decided he had enough life left in him to partake of the feast.

“Look at him wolf down that meat,” Bonnie remarked to Adam. “Before you came back, he had us about ready to start digging a grave.” Addressing Finn directly then, she teased, “Looks like we’re gonna have to wait a little longer before we get our hands on that gold.”

Adam stood by without joining in the playful banter between the two. It was good to see Finn’s spirits up. It would help him to heal faster. He feared that Finn might have been correct when he said he thought the shoulder was broken. He needed a doctor and the closest one was in Virginia City, which meant Finn was going to have to hang on for a while longer. So the little Irishman was on his own as far as healing was concerned. Adam intended to see him safely out of this lawless territory, if he possibly could. As he watched the two women tending the fire and seeing to the needs of the patient, he again asked himself how in hell he had come to be in such a fix. His simple mission to find Jake had mushroomed into a traveling circus. He sighed heavily and sat down by the fire to test the venison for himself. Lacey poured a cup of coffee and brought it to him. When he thanked her, she smiled shyly and seated herself beside him. “Finn’s going to be all right,” she said. “He has a lot to live for.”

“I reckon,” Adam said. He studied her face for a moment. “How ’bout you?” he asked. “Are you gonna make it all right?” She was such a contrast in nature to Bonnie, seemingly lost in the danger of their circumstances, and he wondered if she was strong enough to survive another attack if it occurred. Jake’s puppy, he thought as she gazed up at him with wide innocent eyes.

High above the little camp on the opposite side of the canyon, an interested observer made his way down an old game trail to a position where he could see the camp near the top of the ravine. Though they were far below him, Black Otter could easily count the white people who had entered the mountains to make a hasty shelter. He counted one man and two women, but there appeared to be another—man or woman, he could not tell—who was sick or wounded. They had many horses and three mules that the white man often used to carry heavy burdens. This was not a welcome sight. The white men had not ventured into this part of his mountains before this, and he immediately worried that they would be followed by others, just as had happened west of there in the lower hills. There had been a handful of white men who had come seeking the yellow dirt that they thought so precious, but they had moved on when the yellow dirt was not there.

The day before, when he had been hunting, he had been startled by the sudden report of a rifle on the far side of the mountain. There was only that one shot, but it was enough to cause him concern, so he went in search of the source. The camp had not been easy to find, but he had been fortunate to catch the scent of roasting meat on the wind and followed it to the point where he now knelt, watching the intruders. The question on his mind now was what he should do about the situation. He was inclined to avoid them and hope that they did not intend to stay. Maybe, he thought, he should move his camp deeper into the mountains, but decided that he should keep a watch on them. It would be better to know what they were doing, and if they intended to build a permanent home here. That thought disturbed him. Unlike the others, they did not appear to be searching for the yellow dirt.

Black Otter and his wife were here in these rugged mountains to escape the soldiers who wanted them to live on the reservation at Fort Hall. His people, the Bannocks, had been pushed from their home west of these mountains, in the Idaho country, ravaged by the white man disease, smallpox, and driven by the increasing inroads made by the Siksika into their lands. He had found peace in this rugged fortress of sheer peaks and narrow valleys with plenty of game for his bow, as well as roots and plants to eat in the many streams. It was a good life, but now he wondered if he had discovered a threat to that existence. Gravely concerned, he got up and moved down through the trees to seek a point that would afford him a closer look.

Lying prone at the edge of a small cliff, he found that he could look right into the white man’s camp. The one man he had observed from higher up seemed to be the big medicine, for the others appeared to listen respectfully whenever he spoke. Black Otter could see now that the person lying on a blanket near the fire was a man, and judging by the bandaged shoulder, he was wounded. They are running, he thought at once, and considered the possibility that others might come seeking to find them. This is not good, he told himself. His attention was caught again by the leader of the party. He was a big man and carried himself well, like a warrior and hunter.

There is nothing I can do about this now, he thought as he slowly pulled himself away from the edge of the cliff. But I will come back to see what they are doing every day. Getting to his feet, he picked up his bow again and started back up the slope.