CHAPTER 45
Evening shadows had started to gather when Brice Rogers swung down from the train that had just stopped in Stirrup. He had a rifle in one hand and hefted his saddle with the other. He was traveling light. Everything he needed was in his saddlebags.
The platform was small and so was the station building, just large enough for a postage-stamp waiting room and a combined ticket and telegraph office. Mostly, trains stopped in Stirrup to pick up cattle. There wasn’t much passenger traffic.
Brice set his saddle down by the wall and went into the waiting room. A few steps took him to the ticket office window. He looked through and saw a crotchety-looking man in late middle age flipping through some paperwork. He didn’t glance in Brice’s direction until the deputy marshal cleared his throat.
“Yeah?” the man asked.
“I’m looking for the telegrapher.”
“That’s me. Name’s Robeson. I manage this place for the railroad, too. And sweep it out. What do you want?”
The man’s cold, impatient attitude annoyed Brice. He had never been one to flash his badge, but he drew the leather folder from his pocket and opened it, holding it up so the man couldn’t miss the symbol of authority it contained.
“Deputy United States Marshal Rogers,” Brice introduced himself. “I need to ask you some questions, Mr. Robeson.”
The station agent sounded a little less surly as he said, “Sure, Marshal. What do you want to know? We ain’t had any trouble around here lately, as far as I recall.”
“Did you get a telegram yesterday addressed to a man named Calvin Woods?”
“I’m not supposed to talk about what’s in any of the wires that come through here—”
“You don’t have to tell me what was in it,” Brice broke in. “I know what it said. I just want to know if it came and was delivered all right.”
“Oh.” Robeson leaned back in his chair and nodded. “Yeah, I remember it. Woods was one of those cowboys who brought in the horse herd to take up to the Circle C.”
“That’s right.” Brice felt his impatience growing and wished he could hurry up the old-timer.
“To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have minded going with them. I used to be a top hand myself, you know, until I got too stove up to sit a saddle anymore. Now I ride this chair instead and wrangle a telegraph key.”
“Did Woods get the message or not?”
“No need to get snippy with me, even if you are a lawman.” Robeson sniffed. “Yeah, he got the message. Handed it to him myself.”
A wave of relief went through Brice. He closed his eyes for a second and blew out a breath. “Do you have any law here? Was one of the cowboys arrested and locked up?”
“What?” Robeson frowned. “Not that I know of. I didn’t see it with my own eyes, but I heard they all pulled out with those horses this mornin’. If there had been any trouble, somebody would’ve told me. And to answer your question, the county sheriff’s got a deputy who has an office here, but he ain’t in town right now. He’s off servin’ some legal papers, I think. He’s gone more of the time than he’s here.”
Brice was relieved that Cal had gotten the warning about Steve Markham’s possible connection to the Santa Rosa Kid, but at the same time he was puzzled about the foreman’s evident failure to do anything about Markham. Maybe Cal had decided to keep the information under his hat for the moment and just watch Markham like a hawk. That struck Brice as a risky strategy, but he couldn’t guarantee that Cal hadn’t gone that route.
“You say they left with the herd this morning?”
“That’s right.”
Brice had gotten very lucky on changing trains in Chicago. The schedule had worked out so that he’d barely had time to get off one train before he was boarding another one. That had allowed him to reach Stirrup only about twelve hours behind the horse herd.
“I need to rent a saddle mount. Maybe a couple of them.”
Robeson nodded. “Fulger’s Livery Stable, other side of the street in the next block. He’ll rent a horse to you, and a rig, too.”
“I’ve got my own saddle.”
Brice started to turn away, but Robeson stopped him by asking, “Is this here official deputy marshal business you’re on?”
Brice didn’t have any idea if that was true, but he said, “Yeah, that’s right.”
“I wouldn’t tell that to ol’ Fulger. He hates the gov’ment and will charge you the highest price he thinks he can get away with.”
Brice didn’t care about that. He just wanted a good horse with speed and sand, and the sooner it allowed him to catch up with Denny and the rest of the Sugarloaf crew, the better.
* * *
They made about thirty miles with the horses that first day, moving at a decent pace without pushing either man or beast too hard. Late in the afternoon, they came in sight of snowcapped mountains to the north and west. Denny had seen the Rockies farther south in Colorado, of course, and the Alps and the Pyrenees in Europe, but those Montana mountains still struck her as beautiful.
They also reached a creek with small but sturdy cottonwood, aspen, and willow trees lining the banks. The stream flowed swiftly and was cold from snowmelt.
Cal said, “We’ll make camp here tonight. If we cover as much ground tomorrow as we did today, we’ll get to the Circle C early afternoon the day after that.”
There was no way to corral the horses, but after a day of traveling they were tired and likely would stay where they had good graze and water. Just to make sure of that and prevent any stampedes, some of the cowboys would take turns riding nighthawk. The sky was clear, so bad weather wasn’t expected, but one never could tell when a wolf or even a bear might come along and spook the livestock.
After supper, which Cal took charge of himself since he had more experience than anyone in the group at cooking on the trail, the hands spread their bedrolls along the creek bank. For propriety’s sake, Denny made sure that hers was a decent distance away from the others. Even so, she thought about what some of the older ladies back in Big Rock must be saying about her, an unmarried young woman traveling with a bunch of men out in the middle of nowhere. She was sure most of them thought it was terribly scandalous . . . which meant it was a good thing she didn’t really care what they thought of her, she told herself with a smile.
Steve Markham came over to her and asked, “Are you gonna be all right?”
“What do you think?” she shot right back at him.
“I think that if you hear some ol’ lobo start howlin’ durin’ the night and it scares you, you know where I’ll be.” He pointed to one of the bedrolls about twenty yards away. “You just gimme a holler, and I’ll come a-runnin’.”
“There’s not going to be any hollering,” Denny told him. “No wolf is going to bother a bunch this big, and if one does, I’ll just shoot it.” She paused. “The same goes for any bothersome varmint, four-legged or two.”
Markham chuckled. “I’ll be sure to remember that.” He ambled off toward his bedroll.
The night passed quietly, no wolves, bears, or other “bothersome varmints.” None of the horses strayed.
All the hands were up early the next morning, well before dawn, and were ready to start pushing the herd north again once it was light enough to see where they were going.
Since Denny and Markham had ridden drag the day before, Cal put them out on the left flank. Denny was grateful for that. The previous day hadn’t been unpleasant, but the view would be better on the flanks.
Markham noticed her shifting around a little more than before in the saddle and said with a grin, “All those hours on horseback yesterday sorta took a toll after all, didn’t they?”
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “Maybe I am a little sore, and it didn’t help that a rock was poking me through my bedroll last night and I couldn’t seem to find it. So I’m a mite sleepy, too.”
“I’d ’ve been happy to help you look for that pesky rock.”
“Oh, I’ll just bet you would have.”
“Just tryin’ to be helpful,” drawled Markham. “You know me.”
“Yeah, I do.” Denny thought about the way he had looked for a moment the day before and added, “Although sometimes, I’m not completely sure that I do.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked, his forehead creasing.
Denny shook her head. “Never mind. We’d better keep an eye on that bay that gave us trouble yesterday. He seems even friskier today, like he wouldn’t mind a chance to gallop off and run for a while.”
“Maybe there are mustangs up in those hills over to the west. Wild fillies can be a powerful temptation.”
“I’ll bet,” Denny said dryly. “Just watch him.”
Once again, Cal set a brisk but not punishing pace.
By the middle of the day, the mountains to the west had extended much closer to their route. Denny could see rugged foothills cut through with canyons stretching to within a mile or so of where they stopped to rest the horses and make a meal of jerky and biscuits left over from the night before.
After eating, Denny sat down with her back against a little hummock of ground and closed her eyes, figuring she would bask in the sun for a few minutes and enjoy its heat.
She had barely gotten settled when a dark shadow fell over her, blocking the sun. She cracked her eyes open and glared up at the man standing so that he loomed over her, looking enormous. “What do you want?”
Markham hunkered on his heels in front of her. “It’s that dang bay horse you were talkin’ about earlier. He ain’t with the herd no more.”
Denny sat up sharply. “What? We need to tell Cal—”
Markham’s lifted hand made her pause. “Hold on. I think I saw that troublesome nag wanderin’ over toward those foothills. We should go take a look once the herd starts movin’ again. We’ll be on that side, so it won’t take no time at all to ride over there, have ourselves a gander up the canyon where I might’ve seen that hoss, and then get back to the herd. Ol’ Cal will never know we’re gone.”
“But how could the bay have gotten away from the other horses without anybody noticing?”
Markham shrugged. “All the fellas are a mite drowsy, just like you were. I ain’t sure who was supposed to be watchin’ the herd, but whoever it was, I wouldn’t want to get ’em in trouble just because some hardheaded critter wandered off.”
“Damn it,” Denny muttered under her breath. “You’re right about that.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re sure you saw the bay heading for those foothills?”
“Now that I think about it, I’m plumb certain.”
“This isn’t just some trick so you can get me off by myself and steal a kiss?”
“Denny!” He placed a hand over his heart. “You wound me, girl.”
“I’ll do worse than that if you try anything funny. But I guess we can take a look up that canyon when we go by. If we don’t find the bay pretty quickly, though, we’ll have to tell Cal so he can stop the herd and find it. My pa wouldn’t want to lose even a single head of stock.”
“Neither do I,” said Markham. “But I got a hunch we’ll find what we’re lookin’ for.”