Lauraine Snelling - [Wild West Wind 01] (22 page)

Back at camp, Micah was chopping wood while Runs Like a Deer worked on her mittens, sewing the pieces together, fur side in, with slender strips of gut. Two rabbit carcasses were sizzling on sticks leaning over the low fire.

“Sure smells good.” She handed the sack to Micah. “We can have cornmeal mush in the morning.”

“Good.”

“Chief is out with the livestock?”

“And Othello. Two yearlings joined our herd.”

“What?” Cassie looked over her shoulder as her feet hit the ground. “Did you say two cows?”

He nodded. “Yearlings, no brands.”

“So how do we find the owners?”

“Chief says they’re ours now. Law of the land.” He stepped over and uncinched her saddle, pulling it off Wind Dancer’s back. He dumped it on the horn and led the horse beyond the camp to hobble him in a patch of grass.

When he returned, Cassie had the foodstuffs put away in the wagon, and she was inspecting what all they had left of their stores. Flour, beans, dried venison, lard, and the salt and pepper in small packets. She should have bought more salt too. While she’d enjoyed the visit with Reverend Kemp and his wife, they’d not sent food along for the others. She stepped out on the steps.

“Did Chief catch any fish in the creek?”

“No, said none there.”

“Really? I thought all rivers and creeks had fish in them.”

“Not all.” Runs Like a Deer looked up from her sewing. “Not in Black Hills.”

“Did you used to come here?”

She nodded. “Black Hills sacred to the Indian tribes.”

“What was the other name you told me earlier for the Black Hills?”

“Paha Sape.”

“That’s right. Do you and Chief speak the same language?”

“Almost.”

“But you can talk and understand each other.”

A nod. “How did you learn to speak English?”

“School on the reservation.”

“And then you married and left the reservation?”

When she didn’t answer, Cassie recognized she’d gone too far. Obviously Runs Like a Deer did not want to talk about the life she’d left behind.

“Not go back.”

It was Cassie’s turn to nod. She brought the bean kettle from the wagon and set it in the coals. The three legs held it up off the hottest portion of the fire. She stirred it with the long-handled wooden spoon and set the lid back in place. Tonight they would empty this pot. While she hated to admit it, she was getting mighty tired of beans. She reminded herself she’d had a marvelous dinner with the Kemps.

When Chief came in, he hobbled his horse and sat down next to Cassie. “Need a branding iron.”

“Why?”

“Because our cattle have the LT brand, and any animal we add to the herd needs the same thing.”

“Like the two that found us?” At his nod, she sucked in a deep breath. “Is that stealing?”

“Law of the land on open range. During roundup they brand the cattle, calves with same brand as cow. No one can say these belong to them, because they missed out on the branding.”

“So how do we get a branding iron?”

“You have one made. Just like the show brand.” He watched her face. “At a blacksmith.”

“Oh.”

He nodded. “Tomorrow.”

“I have to do it?”

His nod looked a bit frustrated. “They are your cattle.”

No, they are our cattle
. She huffed a sigh. If this was the beginning of the herd her father had dreamed of, they were in pretty poor straits. Three Longhorn cows, one calf, four steers, and no bulls. Even she knew they needed a bull in order to have more calves. “Are either of the new ones a bull?”

“One.”

This must be like the story of Abraham and the ram in the thicket. God providing in unusual ways. “All right. I’ll draw the brand and take it to a blacksmith.”

“Easy.” He leaned over and with his finger drew an L in the dirt, and the body of a T in the middle of the lower part of the L. “Wind Dancer has that brand, so you can show him that.”

After supper Cassie returned to her sorting. How much would a branding iron cost? Where was a blacksmith? She’d not noticed one yesterday, but then, she’d not been looking. While the pile of paper in the woodbox continued to grow, she found no more money or bills of sale. She finished the one drawer and started on the next, finding only socks with holes in them, gloves with the tips of the fingers worn away. Could they all be mended or should she just toss them away? While her first reaction was to toss them, something made her combine several drawers of cast-off clothing into one. One of the women in the show had mended things. Surely she could learn to do that too.

When Runs Like a Deer stumped her way into the wagon, she handed the mittens she’d been working on to Cassie.

“For you.”

“Really?” Cassie pulled them on and clapped her hands together like a small child. “They’re wonderful. Thank you.” So soft inside. She pulled one off and stroked the back of the soft skin. “I can’t believe how soft they are.”

“Rabbit skin like that. Warm for winter.”

“Do you have a pair?”

“I will make mine next.”

Cassie pulled open a drawer, then changed her mind and put her new mittens in her trunk. She’d found traces of mouse in the cupboards and drawers. No mouse was going to chew on her new mittens. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for my life.”

Cassie looked into the woman’s eyes. “You are welcome.” Maybe they could become friends after all. She sure hoped so.

Bar E Ranch

T
he next morning Ransom woke up sometime in the dark before dawn and couldn’t go back to sleep. Rustlers and a party and getting ready for winter . . . And here he’d not even gotten around to patching his boots yet. The only way he could see was to sleep less. It seemed he was going full tilt from dawn to dark as it was. He dressed as quietly as he could, carried his boots out to the kitchen, and sat down by the door to put them on. He heard the floorboards creak before his mother entered the kitchen.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Something woke me.”

“You want a cup of hot milk?”

“No thanks. I’m going out to the barn and find those lasts. If I don’t get my boots patched soon, there’ll be water soaking my feet.” He looked at his mother in her flannel nightdress with a shawl thrown around her shoulders. “You go back to bed. One of us needs to get enough sleep.”

“There are some small pieces of elk hide in my sewing room. I’ll leave them on the table for you.”

“Do you remember how Pa made the soles?”

“I think he used pigskin and treated it some way to make it hard. Let me think on that.” She stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder. “Might be easier to buy the soles.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Good night, or good morning, whatever it is.”

“Sleep in.”

She waved as she returned to the hall.

Ransom heaved a sigh. He pushed against his thighs to stand and snagged his sheepskin jacket off the rack. Taking a lantern off the shelf by the door, he lit it with a match from the box on the stove and closed the door gently behind him.

Benny crawled out of his house on the porch, stretched, and joined him.

“You don’t have to get up too, you know.”

Benny nuzzled Ransom’s hand and ran ahead with a yip. Benny was the second dog in Ransom’s life. Abner had raised Ransom, making sure his charge was safe, in between herding cattle and guarding the place. But they’d buried Abner, at fifteen, under the maple tree where he liked to lie in the summer. They heard of a litter of cattle-dog pups sometime later and brought Benny home. He took charge of Gretchen and shadowed the men, loving to ride in the wagons with them and making sure no one trespassed.

“How come you didn’t hear the rustlers?” Ransom asked him. Benny looked over his shoulder as if to say
Are you talking to me?

Ransom hung the lantern on a post above the junk pile, where anything that didn’t have a place got dumped. It had been growing in the last couple of years. He pulled off a broken rake, a three-legged table, and various machinery parts, and finally pulled out one boot last and then the other. Neither was attached to the board Ivar used to nail to the heavy workbench to support them. Rust roughened the steel post and the foot-shaped last.

He tossed the remaining things back in the pile. All he needed was a few handles for the rakes and hoes and the old axhead. For that he needed to go find an ash tree or an oak and trim a few straight branches off. Once they were seasoned, he could use the lathe to form the round handles. While handles for various tools were sold at the general store in town, his pa had always made his own, usually in front of the fire on a winter’s eve.

By the time he had the lasts sanded and anchored down, the rooster crowing announced that dawn was there. He stared at the workbench, a picture of his father working there taking over his mind. Ivar moved with an easy precision, methodically going from one stage of a project to the next. When repairing boots, he always studied the whole boot first, turning it this way then that, testing the stitches. He would work the elk hide with his powerful hands, then lay it over the hole and study it again. By the time he finished by rubbing bear grease into the leather, the boot would be as good as new. He never smiled much, but when he held the finished boot to the light, Ransom remembered the look of pride on his father’s craggy face. Pride in a job well done—that was Ivar Engstrom.

Ransom blinked a couple of times and went to let the cow in. She’d announced her presence about the time the rooster crowed. He forked hay her way, knowing that Gretchen would dump some grain in front of her before she sat down to milk. The rooster crowing again, the cow chewing her hay, Benny scratching with his foot thumping on the wood floor, all were sounds of a peaceful barn coming awake in the morning. Ransom held his breath, waiting for the sound of his father clearing his throat. A sound so familiar that it had to be ingrained in the posts and floorboards.

Benny jumped up and ran to the closed door. He heard Gretchen before Ransom did.

She pulled open the door and stepped into the light. “I wondered who was out here. You’re up early.”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Oh. Thanks for letting Bess in. Did you grain her?”

“No, but I will.”

“Mor must have had the same problem. Bread is already on its second rising.” She unhooked the stool from the post and sat down, talking to Bess all the while.

Ransom went outside and whistled for her horse. When he trotted up, he patted the brown neck, slipped a halter on, and led him out of the pasture and into the barn for a brushing.

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Sure, why?”

“Well, cow in, getting my horse—not your normal behavior, you know.” When she got all she was going to get, she rose and, after setting the milk bucket out of the way, hooked the stool back in place. After rubbing Bess’s favorite place, on the soft skin of her throat, she pulled the wood block up on the stanchion so the cow could back out and meander out of the barn.

Ransom tightened the cinch, and leading the horse, he and Gretchen headed for the house. He took the bucket. “I’ll strain that.”

“You better be careful, big brother, you might spoil me.” The lightening sky allowed him to see the twinkle in her eyes.

“Don’t worry. I won’t make a habit of this.”

Later, on the road to Argus, Ransom let himself think about the mine again. What if they did find color? What if there really was a pocket or even a vein behind that cave-in? In spite of the metallurgists who said otherwise?

He snorted at his dreaming. When would they have time to mine it? Maybe that was a good thing for the winter. After all, the inside of the mine was supposedly the same temperature no matter what was going on outside. Getting to and from the entrance from the ranch could pose problems.

The old cabin. The thought made him smile. Of course. That was the answer. The cabin was only a couple hundred yards away from the mine. How long since they’d been up there? Was it in livable condition? Who had been up there last? Since that was the first home built on the property, his mother said she had a special place in her heart for it. It was thanks to her that the roof had not rotted out years earlier. It wasn’t far from the apple trees. Maybe they’d do a foray up there before picking the apples.

He rode into town, waving to those who called greetings, and dismounted in front of the false-fronted building with the sign
Sheriff
in fading letters.

“Well, if it isn’t Ransom Engstrom come to town. That hot place hasn’t frozen over, has it?” The man wearing the badge stood and reached across the desk to shake Ransom’s hand. “Good to see you, son. Have a seat. Coffee?”

“Thanks, but I value my stomach too much.” Ransom sat down and propped his hat on the knee of his crossed leg. He leaned back slightly, glancing around the office. “You don’t look too busy.”

“And that’s the way I like it, no trouble to go solving. Since I know how you dislike coming to town, it has to be something important that brought you in.” Edgar got up to pour himself some coffee from the pot on the stove. He added a healthy dollop of cream and motioned to his cup. “Now, that is how you tolerate my coffee.” He sat back down, setting his cup on a cup-sized block of wood. “Now, what’s up?”

“You had any ranchers in here complaining about cut fences and missing cattle?”

His eyes narrowed. “So much for peace and tranquillity. I hate to say this, but you are the third. I was so hoping this was going to blow over.” He scrubbed a calloused hand over his nonexistent hair, heaved a sigh, and propped himself on his elbows. “Fill me in.”

After Ransom told his story, the sheriff pulled out a paper and pencil. “Run that by me again so I can take notes. You never saw or heard anything?”

“Nope, but I’m surprised that our dog didn’t sound an alarm. He’s usually real good about that.”

“Interesting. And you say you saw shod-horse prints? Anything else?”

“Just a gaping hole in our fence. We’re missing at least two cows.”

“Why would someone go to all that trouble for two, three head?”

“The others say the same?”

“That’s what the guys at the Rocking R said. At the Bar S they didn’t know how many were missing, but there weren’t tracks enough for a larger bunch.”

“So, say they got between six and ten head. Where are they hiding them?”

“I don’t know. None have been shipped out of here. I would have known about that.”

“What about Hill City or Rapid?”

“As I said, I’ve not checked, because I thought it was just a fluke.”

“Lucas is out checking with the other ranchers. Oh, and he’s inviting them all to a cider party Saturday at our place. He’s pit-roasting a deer.”

“Sounds mighty good. I remember when I was a young feller and your pa would roast a steer in that pit of his. Best meat I ever tasted.”

“If you have extra apples, bring them and a jug. We’ll have a lot of arms to crank that press.” The apple-cider press was another thing Ivar had built that was still in use. He’d ordered the gears from someplace east, and while they’d had to replace some of the staves in the basket, the grinder worked just fine.

Edgar turned and looked at the calendar on the wall. “How about we set a meeting for Sunday after church? Save everyone an extra trip. We’ll see if anyone knows anything at all and devise a plan to catch whoever’s doing the thieving. Cattle rustlers in this day and age . . . I thought that went out with the Old West.”

“I’ll tell everyone I come in contact with. I’m heading to the store and Reverend Brandenburg to let them know about the party. Spread the word.” Ransom stood. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.”

“We’ll catch him, son. No matter how long it takes.”

“I hope so, before someone goes off their rocker and—”

“Me too.”

Ransom stepped outside and settled his hat back on his head. A rustler. Could you beat that? He groaned inside. One more thing to take care of—watch for rustlers.

With his forehead in the milk cow’s flank, Ransom forced himself to calm down, or he knew she would put her foot in the bucket. He knew that from experience. The cow did not like angry hands milking her. When she switched him with her tail, he stopped and spoke gently to her, then resumed milking calmly and let the peace of the cow and barn flow over and around him.

When she was dry, he pulled out the bucket and hung up the stool. “There you go, old girl. Thanks for the respite.” With the handle of the bucket over his arm, he let her out of the stanchion and watched as she backed up, turned, and meandered out the back door. As always, she would go get a drink, then graze for a bit, and lie down to chew her cud with the other cows. She and Rosy were the only ones trained to come to the barn to be milked; the others produced milk for their calves and then dried up to be ready to calf again.