thirty-six

Dirk made his way through Lewistown to Kiskadden’s Saloon, which was probably a cut or two above the others. Just the place for the United States Marshal for the Territory of Montana to set up shop. Parked in front was Bain’s ebony carriage, the matched trotters yawning in their traces. Dirk had a hunch about this, and now it was proving true.

This would be the confrontation. Strothers had gotten Bain into town for a talk, and what better way than to bring in Dirk, and start the talk with Dirk’s letter to Governor Hauser. This wouldn’t be easy. Bain would challenge everything. And probably play the Indian card too. They were white men.

He resolved to keep his temper, keep his voice low, and to lay out what he knew and what his friends among the Métis had experienced. He swung the creaking door open, found the long saloon poorly lit, discovered the barkeep staring, ready to boot him out for having the wrong cheekbones, but the keep subsided, wiped his hands on his grimy apron, and let Dirk pass along a row of bar stools to the rear, where there were four tables, one of which had Bain and Strothers sitting at it sipping something gold.

They looked oddly alike. Both were graying at the temples and had recently seen a barber. Strothers wore a three-piece suit of gray twill; Bain a charcoal three-piece suit with a woven gold watch fob draped across his waistcoat. They could have been brothers. They would be drinking Old Orchard, the best whiskey to be found in Lewistown, using hands with trimmed fingernails. Dirk felt a little uneasy, but pushed to the table.

“Ah, Skye, you’re here,” the marshal said. “Good. I presume you know Harley Bain?”

“We’ve met.”

“Have a seat, Skye. I can’t offer you a drink; it’s against territorial law, of course. But maybe a sarsaparilla?”

“I’m fine without, thank you.”

Bain gazed blandly, revealing nothing, his thoughts apparently buried deep. Yet his gaze was unblinking, and it traced Dirk, and somehow intimidated him. Bain was a man with some sort of wild force barely contained within him, a force that could burst out anytime. But for the moment, he merely nodded and even smiled slightly.

“Harley, how about another?” Strothers asked.

“Mighty kind of you, Bill,” Bain replied.

The marshal signaled the barkeep, who nodded and began his pour.

“Now, Harley, young Skye here’s written us in Helena, and we’ll just go over a few things in his letter. I take it you’re familiar with it?”

“Oh, I’m familiar with Skye here. He got booted by the army and joined up with these illegal immigrants flooding down from Canada.”

“He wrote out some complaints, Harley.”

“I can’t imagine what. But that’s how it goes, you know.”

“Do you know what they are?”

“Oh, the usual, you know. Not really. I haven’t seen the letter.”

“Well, Harley, have you been mistreating some redskins?”

Bain laughed. “Bill, I always mistreat everyone, red, white, or blue.”

“What do you think. Shall we send this pup back to his reservation?”

Dirk was swiftly realizing that his foreboding about this meeting was well founded.

“What is he? Shoshone, Bill?” Harley asked.

“When you mix Shoshone with English, what have you got? A mutt!” Strothers said.

“I don’t think you need me here,” Dirk said, rising.

“Oh, sit still, Skye. Beg a little,” Strothers said, amused. “Say woof, woof!”

The barkeep arrived, laid the two tumblers of whiskey, served neat, on the battered table, and stared at Dirk.

“I will leave you to your joking,” Dirk said, and rose.

And found himself facing the muzzle of a small black revolver that had magically emerged from Strother’s breast pocket. The marshal was enjoying himself.

“Sit. Stretch out those paws, pup!”

Slowly Dirk held his arms before him. Strothers tossed some black manacles to Bain, who snapped them over Dirk’s wrists.

“Now, then, Skye, we’ve got some entertainment ahead.”

Skye had sensed it all along and now was trapped. The options looked bleak. They might ship him back to Wyoming. But he doubted they would bother.

“Splendid father you had, pup. Barnaby Skye’s a legend in the West,” Bain said. “Too bad you don’t carry more’n a spoonful of his good English blood.”

Dirk refused to acknowledge anything. The half-dozen patrons were staring. The barkeep was blandly enjoying this entertainment.

Dirk eyed Strothers, seeing a different man from the one he had met a couple of days earlier. That Strothers was too good to be true. This one was the real article. Dirk felt himself sliding into melancholy, which happened now and then when he confronted the wall that stood silently between white men and himself. He wondered where it would lead.

“Well, Harley, I thought you might like to see justice done,” Strothers said.

“Why, Bill, you and the governor are fine fellows, looking after the territory and its good folks. I must say, being libeled is something that requires your attention.”

“This fellow’s daddy was a well-known rogue, you know.”

“Deserted, I heard. Stuffed it to the Queen and quit her navy. Sorry about the whelp here. You’ll ship him out?”

“Oh, we’ll think of something,” Strothers said. “Now, then, Harley, how many of these Canadian rascals have slipped across the border, and what’s being done?”

Bain glanced briefly at Dirk. “I think the matter’s taken care of itself. Army drove them north, but a few of these carpet beetles have been sneaking back. They hid up in the breaks, but shot away all the game, and now winter’s doing the rest of the job.”

“Winter, Harley?”

“Can’t get through a Montana winter on prayers,” Bain said. “Trouble is, they’re a shifty lot, slipping through at night, linking up with others, like they’ve got some private telegraph telling ’em where to go. Which is mostly right here, where this sorceress has ’em all fevered up to build a church on my land.”

“Who’s that now?”

“Therese somebody. I hear rumors that she’s Therese Skye, married to this gent sitting here. But so far, I’ve not confirmed it.”

“Well, we’ll have to do something about that,” Strothers said. “She your wife, Skye?”

“I don’t know,” Skye said.

They laughed. “Now there’s the best answer I’ve heard in years. Skye, you’re a card.”

“She might be,” Dirk said.

“Well, that makes a difference. I was going to export her to Canada,” Strothers said.

“He’s not a citizen, Bill. It don’t make a bit of difference.”

“He was born here, Harley. He’s got rights. And if they’re married, she’s got rights. I have to follow the law.”

Bain sighed. “You pick nits, Bill.”

“Law’s law, Harley.”

They sucked more amber fluid and smiled like a pair of adolescent burglars.

“Harley, old pal, how the hell did you do it?”

Bain smiled. “I didn’t do it. Winter did it. I just told the boys, don’t stick it to me. Don’t waste powder on ’em. Just burn them out, grab their boots, and leave them in their winding sheets, and what’s going to happen will happen, once the thermometer drops.”

“How many, would you say?”

Bain shrugged. “I tell the boys not to tell me. There’s whole canyons and coulees between me and what happens out there on my range. I’m not privy to what goes on.”

“Your range, Harley?”

“You know as well as I do that when it comes to grass, you got what you hold, you keep what you defend. And I don’t pay taxes on any of it.”

“Were these all newcomers, the Canadians? The ones been drifting in this year?”

“Oh, not all. There were some around here who came in during the seventies, after that dustup on the Red River. They were using up good pasture here, and welcoming the new ones, so I told the boys it was time for a bonfire or two.”

“The Sylvestres,” Dirk said. “In the churchyard.”

Bain smiled blandly. “They can be moved, boy.”

Strothers stared at Dirk, as if he had entirely forgotten he had a prisoner sitting at the saloon table.

“I did the arithmetic, Bill,” Bain said. “Each breed family that moved into the basin, here, cut my pasture back by fifty head. I’ve pushed about ten families out now, and that means I’ve saved pasture for five hundred beeves I would’ve lost. That’s a lot of meat, and a lot of profit.”

“Ten, you say?” Strothers asked.

“Oh, about that. My boys don’t tell me, and I don’t want to know, but just between us, it’s ten or eleven. They won’t be found. Just ash and bones and a rag or two, once the wolves get done. We never burned powder. Not one bullet. That was my rule. Just let nature rip.”

“How many to a family?” Strothers asked.

“Those breeds are breeders, Bill. Lots of kitties in their litters.”

“Lots of children, right?”

“I imagine so. That keeps the population down and keeps the basin open for the right people,” Bain said.

Dirk had never seen the man so talkative. There were moments when he was so absorbed he scarcely remembered the manacles around his wrists.

The keep came over with the Old Orchard and refilled the glasses, and stared long at Dirk’s wrists, and the chain knotting his wrists together.

“I didn’t have to tell my boys a thing,” Bain said. “They got the whole idea without my saying much. Just the general idea. I just told them to keep me out of it. I had five in particular, great fellas, Shorty, Swede, Lucas, Nate, and Barney. When they were out, I knew the country was being cleaned up fine.”

The gents at the bar were staring, especially a pair of skinny ones with high boot heels.

Bain was sipping again, but Bill Strothers had stopped, and was staring off into the gloom of the lamplit saloon. The other patrons stared ahead, pretending not to notice or hear, but in fact nothing escaped them. Dirk eyed the door, wondering whether he could break into the night and escape before Strothers, in his cups now, could pull a gun and shoot. But he knew better.

“Skye, lay your arms ahead of you on the table, palm up,” Strothers said.

Dirk did as he was told, and then Strothers pulled a small key from a vest pocket and unlocked each of the wrist manacles.

“There,” he said.

Harley Bain smiled.

“Harley, lay your hands out on the table,” Strothers said.

Bain thought that was pretty funny until Strothers snapped the manacles over the rancher’s wrists and tucked the key back in its vest pocket niche.

“What’s this, a joke?”

“Pretty funny, burning out people and leaving them to the wolves and the weather, I guess, Bain. Clever too, not leaving anything behind, no thread connecting any of it to you, even telling your men not to let you know what was happening out there in that dark. It was pretty dark out there, Bain. People dying of the cold, barefoot, couldn’t walk a hundred yards. Not a shoe or a boot or a moccasin that might have given them life.”

“I thought I was speaking in confidence, Bill. Between old friends.”

“Long trip to Helena, Harley. Do you want me to rent a saddle horse, courtesy of the territory, or shall we ride in that fine hooded carriage out of the weather? It’ll take three, four days, more if we run into weather.”

“Talk to the governor, that it?” Bain said.

“No, Harley, talk to the territorial courts and the prosecutor.”

Bain stared. “Well, damn. I guess I’m going to have to fight you.”

Strothers turned to Dirk. “Thanks for bearing with me,” he said.

“Am I free?”

“I said thanks, dammit.”

Only then did it dawn on Dirk that he was not a prisoner.

“I may need you to testify. And I’ll get the names of everyone in the saloon. No one in this joint missed a word.” He eyed the staring crowd. “Don’t leave here before I get your names and addresses.”

But the two little ones with the high heeled boots slapped coin on the bar and walked into the evening.

“Your riders, Harley?” Strothers asked.

“I didn’t notice,” Bain said, sounding like a church bell.

“Probably the last you’ll see of them,” Strothers said. “I’ll get some warrants sworn out and go for a visit. But first we’ll see about you.”

Dirk stared at his freed wrists, arms he could move hither and yon, lift and lower, arms that could rein a horse, lift him into his saddle, and lift into a prayer of thanksgiving.

“And, Skye, if you haven’t married the lady, do so. She’s as sweet as they come.”