Long Road to Cheyenne (5 page)

“He might notta gone to Deadwood, mighta stopped at Custer City or somewhere,” Cheney said. “We might better wait till your hand heals up. There’s folks that could identify you.” Cotton was easy to identify, with shoulder-length, almost white, blond hair and piercing blue eyes set deep under dark eyebrows. He had the look of a predator. Cheney watched while Roach fumbled with his spoon in his left hand in an effort to eat his supper, and couldn’t help chuckling. “Next time you have to reach for a rifle, you’d best use your left hand, partner. It makes it kinda hard without your right hand, don’t it?” He laughed again. “Hell, that’s your wipin’ hand, too.”

“I’m glad my miseries bring you so much enjoyment,” Roach snarled. He held his wounded hand up before his face to examine it. The bullet had gone straight through, but it must have done major damage. At this stage in the healing, he wasn’t sure if it would remain permanently stiff, or if the flexibility would gradually return. In the meantime, he had been forced to reverse his hand gun and wear it on his right side with the handle facing forward. Worse than that, firing a rifle with any accuracy was almost impossible. He was glad Cheney felt the same way about splitting up the gang after the holdup when Sam Bass and Joel Collins wanted them to run to Texas with them. The thought of their former partners caused further comment. “At least we got our share of the money. Pickin’s are a helluva lot better in the Black Hills right now, and there ain’t a damn thing I want in Texas.” He released a painful sigh. “Yeah, I’ll find that son of a bitch.”

“Maybe,” Cheney remarked. In his opinion, the odds of Roach catching up with the man who shot him were pretty slim. But he had ridden with Roach long enough to know he was a dangerous man to have on your trail, and Lord help the rifleman if Roach ever did find him. Roach never said a word about losing Jack Dawson, a man who had ridden with them for a year. As far as Cheney knew, he was the only man who had been able to stick with Roach for any length of time. “We got a little money to lay back for a while, and you’re gonna need some time to let that hand heal. Why don’t we ride on down to Bill Foley’s place and drink up all his whiskey?”

•   •   •

The morning broke bright and clear in the camp by the confluence of the two streams. It would be almost impossible not to enjoy the serenity of the dark pine-covered hills, and the lack of the dry parching winds that typified most of South Dakota. The stream that they were to follow that morning would lead them higher up toward the mountaintop. Cam stood near the horses and peered up at a waterfall high above them. According to Mary’s map, the camp named Destiny was at the foot of that waterfall. His attention was distracted then by the sounds of the girls waking up, so he walked down to rekindle the fire. “Mornin’,” he said when Mary turned back her blanket. “You ladies sleep all right?”

“Yes,” Mary replied cheerfully, “I think we did. At least I slept like a rock, and I think the girls did, too. Is that right, Grace?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Grace replied, and pulled her blanket up around her shoulders to protect against the morning chill.

“We’ll have this fire goin’ in a minute,” Cam told her. When Emma came to stand close by the fire, he handed her a broken ax handle he had found near the stream. “You can put that on the fire when it gets goin’ a little better.” When he saw the look of curiosity in Mary’s eye, he explained. “Found it by the stream. Like I figured last night, it looks like somebody musta been pannin’ for gold right here at the fork. Looks like they mighta had a little bad luck.” He pointed to the mound of dirt Mary and the girls had used for a pillow. “Looks like that’s where one of ’em’s buried.”

His casual comment caused Mary to jump quickly away from the mound. “What!” she demanded. “That’s a grave?” She quickly reached down and jerked the blanket off it. “You knew it was a grave? Did you know it was a grave last night?”

“Well, I suspected that’s what it was. I didn’t know for sure. I couldn’t think of no other reason for a pile of dirt that size to be there.” He glanced down to see two scrunched-up faces on the girls. “Figured you didn’t care.”

“Ooh.” Mary shivered in disgust. “We were sleeping on top of some old dead miner?”

“You said you slept good,” he reminded her.

“Well, I shouldn’t have,” she replied, still trying to decide how perturbed she was going to be with him for letting her lay her head on a grave. After a minute, she grudgingly admitted there had been no harm done. “Don’t you ever let me do something like that again,” she ordered with one last shiver.

Breakfast was another hurried affair, since they were so close to their destination, and the girls were eager to see their uncle Raymond. Mary explained to Cam that Grace and Emma had never been around their father’s older brother to know him really well, but they had heard tales of his adventures in Virginia City and Bannack, so he was somewhat of a hero in their minds. When the horses were saddled and all were packed up, they started up a path no wider than a game trail that held close to the stream.

All along the way, where the stream had furrowed out a deeper and deeper gulch, they saw the evidence of a once busy mining strike, strewn with trash and piles of earth left by the bank, but the miners were gone. Halfway to the waterfall, they came upon a camp that was still inhabited, however. Two men were working a sluice box, unaware of the travelers on the path until they were almost upon them. “Mornin’,” Cam called out.

Both men stopped to gape at the strangers for a long moment before one of them returned the greeting. “Mornin’,” he said, eyeing Mary and the girls openly. “You folks lost?” he then asked. “If you’re thinkin’ ’bout lookin’ for gold in this stream, you’re too late. What was here ain’t here no more.”

“We’re looking for a camp called Destiny,” Mary told him.

Her comment brought a laugh from both men. “You found it. This is Destiny, at least that’s what some folks called it. A year ago, there were close to twenty claims between here and the waterfall. Now you’re lookin’ at what’s left of Destiny, the two of us, and one other feller up at the falls. There was color here for a while, good color, but it didn’t last long. That other feller got most of it. We stayed on ’cause we were still gettin’ a little color, but we’re about ready to admit we’re whipped.”

“We’ve come to find Raymond Bishop,” Mary said. “Do you know if he’s still here?”

“Bishop? Yeah, we know him, all right. He’s the other feller I was talkin’ about. Yes, ma’am, he’s still up there, squeezin’ every last ounce outta this mountain.”

“You kin of Bishop?” the other man asked.

“I’m his brother’s widow,” Mary answered.

“His brother’s widow?” It was a surprise to both men, and the one who had been shoveling dirt into the back of the sluice box walked over to stand beside his partner. “You mean the one named Warren Bishop? He’s dead?”

“That’s right,” Mary said.

“I swear, that’s sure ’nough bad news, ma’am. I’m right sorry to hear it. He seemed like a good man, what little bit we talked to him. The older one, the one still up there, he didn’t ever have much to say to us.” He paused then. “Excuse my manners, ma’am. My name is Cecil Painter. This here’s my partner, Everett Jones. I’m right sorry to hear about Warren’s death. He just left here a few weeks ago, said he was headin’ home. He looked as healthy as a horse then. What happened?”

“He was murdered by road agents,” Mary stated without emotion.

“Oh my goodness,” Everett sighed, though not entirely convincingly. “I sure am sorry, ma’am.”

“We’re on our way to tell Raymond about his brother’s death,” Mary said, and signaled Cam that she was ready to get on with it.

“You folks be careful when you start up to Bishop’s camp.” Cecil spoke directly to Cam. “Sing out loud and clear before you go ridin’ into his place. He’s a mite touchy about anybody he thinks is sneakin’ up on him.”

“He’s the only one’s got anythin’ to protect,” Everett added. “I’d be touchy myself.”

“We’ll let him know we’re comin’,” Cam assured them. “I expect he’ll be glad to see his sister-in-law and his nieces.”

“Good day to you, ma’am,” Cecil said as Mary nudged her horse to follow Cam. “Ladies,” Cecil acknowledged as the girls on the bay passed by him, following along behind Mary’s horse.

The two miners stood and watched them depart. When they were well out of earshot, Cecil said, “I hope that ol’ badger don’t shoot at ’em before they get a chance to tell him about his brother.”

“That’s a shame about Warren,” Everett said. “He had a fine-lookin’ family, didn’t he? And he was on his way home to see ’em.”

“He did,” Cecil replied, “and enough gold to live high on the hog for the rest of his life. Well, I reckon he left a wealthy widow. She won’t have no trouble catchin’ another husband.”

“I’ll volunteer, if she has any trouble.”

Cecil chuckled at Everett’s remark. “I said she was fine-lookin’, not desperate-lookin’. They never said who the feller with her was. He might have his eye on the widow’s share of that gold.”

“Well, she says she’s come all the way up here just to tell poor ol’ Bishop his brother’s dead, but I’d bet she’s more likely comin’ to make sure she gets her husband’s share of all that dust they been washin’ outta that hill.”

“I expect so,” Everett said, “and that young feller totin’ the rifle don’t look like he’s just a friend of the family. Maybe ol’ Bishop better watch he don’t turn his back on ’em.”

“I expect,” Cecil agreed. “Hell, they better watch out they don’t turn their backs on Bishop. That ol’ son of a bitch ain’t likely to share anythin’ with that woman. If anybody oughta have a share in whatever he’s got hid up there, it’d be us. We’re the ones been siftin’ through his leavin’s.”

“Wouldn’t it be a damn shame if ol’ Bishop and that young feller got into a tussle and shot each other?” Everett said facetiously. “Then we’d have to go up there and take care of the lady and her gold.”

Not much escaped the watchful eye of Raymond Bishop. It was a vital trait to possess for a man sitting on a fortune in gold, and this was the fact in Raymond’s case. He was the one who first realized the potential the little stream below the waterfall concealed, but in all fairness, the initial discovery was made by Warren. While watering their horses in the little pool at the bottom of the fall, his brother decided to get out his gold pan and work some of the gravel at the edge of the stream. Much to their surprise, he sifted out about fifty cents’ worth of gold in his first pan. They immediately made camp right there and went to work to see if the potential they hoped for was really there. It had proven to be a genuine strike, one that Raymond could appreciate much more than Warren, because Raymond had already invested years of fruitless search for the strike that would justify his frustrations. For Warren, this expedition with his brother was his first endeavor to gain instant wealth.

They staked off their claim and began to work it day and night in an attempt to amass a fortune before anyone else happened along. The pace soon became too much for Warren, but he was spurred on by his older brother, who was consumed by his lust for every ounce of gold the mountain had hidden. He sent Warren back to the sawmill in Custer City to buy boards to build a sluice box. It was a welcome break away from the constant toil for the younger brother, but the trip created almost instant competition for them. A pair of curious prospectors found it interesting when they saw Warren leading a packhorse loaded with pine boards on the road out of town. Having no real prospects of their own at that time, they decided to tail him just in case he was onto something they might be able to take advantage of. So Cecil Painter and Everett Jones staked claims next to the Bishop brothers’. The incident caused an argument between the two brothers, creating a rift between them that lasted for several days, with Raymond faulting Warren for carelessly leading the two interlopers to their strike.

Painter and Jones were soon followed by others who somehow got wind of the strike, and the little stream became the site of frantic clambering to strip the mountain of its gold. Their activity only served to encourage Raymond to work longer and harder, and he was quick to tell any who approached him that this stream was his destiny, and his alone. Before long, the other miners began to refer to the area as Destiny, a fact that Warren found amusing. The second argument between the brothers came about when Raymond found out that Warren had drawn a map of their claim and sent it to his wife, thinking she would find it interesting to know exactly where her husband toiled. That disagreement was still unresolved when Warren announced that he had been away from his family for too long, and he had decided to go home to see them. Raymond ranted in protest, but Warren was determined to go, promising to be back in a month. And that was how they left it.

Now, on this morning, Raymond’s ever-watchful eye caught sight of the party of strangers heading up the trail toward his camp. Instantly aggravated, he dropped his shovel and picked up his rifle. “Now, what the hell. . .?” he muttered, and walked forward to meet them.

“Hello the camp!” Cam called.

“Hello yourself,” Raymond roared. “What the hell do you want?”

“Raymond!” Mary called out then. “It’s Mary!”

“What?” Raymond returned, shocked. “Mary, is that you?”

“It’s me and the girls,” she replied, and pushed past Cam.

Still clutching his rifle, Raymond stood there, a man fully astonished, as if seeing ghosts approaching his camp. “Warren ain’t here,” he finally muttered.

Watching off to the side, Cam found it to be an odd reaction to the sudden appearance of his sister-in-law. The bay carrying Grace and Emma edged up to stand beside him, and the two little girls stared at the gruff-looking, silver-haired man, glaring at them in return, with such inhospitable eyes. Cam glanced toward them and said, “I reckon that’s your uncle Raymond.”

“He looks so old,” Grace remarked.

“He looks mad,” Emma commented.

“He most likely ain’t as old as he looks,” Cam told her. “Hard work will make you look a lot older than your years sometimes.” He dismounted and said, “Here, I’ll help you down.” When he had lifted both girls off the horse, he waited while they ran forward to join their mother, who had already dismounted.

Raymond Bishop stood like a man turned to stone until Mary extended her hand to him. “Raymond,” she said, and gave him a polite peck on his cheek, “I’m afraid I have come to bring you some very sad news.”

“Mary,” was all he seemed able to say, as if still finding it hard to believe, all the while looking beyond her at the strapping young man by the horses.

Noticing his obvious curiosity about her guide, she said, “That’s Cam Sutton. He’s a friend and our guide.” Raymond nodded slowly when Cam touched a finger to his hat to acknowledge. “And this is Grace and Emma,” Mary went on, trying to dispel the icy atmosphere between them. “Emma was just a baby the last time you saw them. Girls, say hello to your uncle Raymond.” Their response was less than enthusiastic, bordering on fearful, since their uncle seemed a baleful sort. Grace managed a cautious hello, while Emma chose to cling to her mother’s leg. Raymond lowered his gaze only briefly to look at his nieces, equally disinterested in a reunion. Mary delayed no longer in giving him the news about his brother’s passing.

When she had finished giving him all the details she knew about Warren’s murder at the hands of a road agent, Raymond at last responded in a more normal nature. “Warren dead?” he gasped, and shook his head in disbelief. “Murdered, you say?” She nodded mournfully. He shook his head slowly back and forth. “That is truly sorrowful news. I tried to tell him to wait till I could go with him. I wish he had listened.” He glanced again at Cam before asking, “What are you gonna do now? I ain’t got much of a place here.” He turned to gesture toward the tent he had been living in.

“I guess I’ll be going back to Fort Collins after we’ve rested,” Mary said. “I just felt that we should make our way up here to tell you of your brother’s passing. It was the least I could do.”

Her last statement seemed to give him visible relief, and he warmed a bit. “I sure appreciate it, Mary.” He looked around at the tent again. “I wish I had some more comfortable accommodations for you.” He then smiled, for the first time since their arrival. “Warren and I didn’t build a camp with comfort for ladies in mind.” Quickly reverting to his expression of sorrow, he said, “That sure is bad news about Warren. He and I worked hard on this camp. We got a little bit of dust outta this stream, so I reckon half of it belongs to you now, might be enough to help you get back to Colorado. I’m afraid I’m running awful short of supplies right now, though. I ain’t been able to get down to Custer City since Warren has been gone.”

“That will certainly help,” Mary said. “It cost me almost everything I had just to get out here, but we’ve got some food with us.”

An interested witness to the conversation, Cam wondered what the man planned to do when he ran out of food. Remembering what Cecil had said about Raymond being the only one who had anything to guard, he could pretty well guess that he was virtually a prisoner of his success. He couldn’t leave his camp unguarded long enough to go after supplies. Curious, he took a longer glance at Raymond’s tent; the little trench dug around it to drain water away, the large pile of dirt behind it. The pile looked to be enough dirt to fill a hole three or four feet deep, the size of the tent.
He’s dug himself a fort under that tent,
he thought,
and I wouldn’t be surprised to find it’s lined with little sacks of gold dust. I’ll bet the cheating bastard’s planning on keeping Mary’s share of her husband’s gold
. He decided then that he wasn’t going to let him get away with it if he could help it. Since it was obvious that food was in short supply, he volunteered to provide some. “I reckon we’re gonna be here long enough for you folks to visit a little, so I think I’ll go on around the other side of this mountain and see if I can find one of those deer I’ve been seein’ sign of. A little fresh meat would help out.”

Raymond addressed him for the first time. “That would sure help out,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about going hunting myself, but I ain’t been able to find the time.”

“I was gettin’ a little tired of Mary’s salt pork,” Cam said, with a grin for the lady. “We’ll see what kinda luck I got.” He climbed back into the saddle and turned Toby around. “If I get some luck, I oughta be back by suppertime with fresh meat.”

Raymond watched him closely as he rode away, and as soon as he rode out of earshot, he turned to Mary and asked, “Where’d you hook up with him? What do you know about him?”

Surprised, Mary replied, “Truthfully, I haven’t known Cam for very long, but I trust him completely.” She went on to tell him about her initial meeting with Cam when he appeared out of nowhere to stop what could have been a fatal stage holdup. Raymond made no further comment, but he was not ready to disregard his suspicions about the man’s true intentions.

•   •   •

Cam figured it was too early in the day for deer or elk to be feeding, so he rode along the ridges, looking for likely spots where they might be resting in the dense pine belts. While he looked, he thought again of Raymond Bishop. The man didn’t appear too happy to see Mary and the girls.
And he eyed me with a definite look of suspicion
. He remembered Painter and Jones joking about Raymond’s inhospitable ways, and his claims on the mountain as his destiny alone. After meeting the man, Cam could readily understand why he wasn’t thought of as neighborly by the other miners in the small gulch. Then his thoughts went to Mary and her daughters. He supposed that his agreement with her was completed. She had asked him to take them to Destiny, and in Destiny they were. But he felt that to do his part, he should see them safely back to Custer City, where they could catch the stage back to Cheyenne. Then there was the question about Mary’s rightful share of the gold Raymond and her husband had found.
The man was his brother, for God’s sake,
he thought. Further speculation was interrupted by a slight movement in a pine thicket below him.

I can’t be that lucky,
he thought, but grabbed his rifle and dismounted anyway. Dropping Toby’s reins to the ground, he made his way down through the trees on foot, moving slowly and cautiously, stopping frequently to look and listen. They were lying near a tiny trickle of water that wound its way between the trees that sheltered them. It was so dark beneath the branches that he could not tell how many there were, and he had only shadows for targets, so he had to get closer. As he strained to keep his eye on the shadows, his foot caught on a root and he stumbled and caught himself on one knee. It was enough to cause alarm in the resting group of deer, resulting in a flurry of motion among the shadows. With only seconds to pick a target, he raised his rifle and fired at the silhouette of a deer’s neck. It disappeared, but so did all the others, so he wasn’t sure if he had hit anything or not.

By the time he made his way down through the thicket, all the deer had fled, all except the one doe that lay dying on the ground. He quickly put the deer out of its misery.
Lucky shot,
he thought.
I won’t be bragging about that one. I almost fell on my ass and let them all get away
. The result, however, was fresh meat, so he dragged the carcass out of the thicket, then went to get his horse.
Anyway,
he thought,
I won’t have to go back to that camp with a rabbit or squirrel after I said I’d get them a deer
. It was a fair-sized doe, causing him to grunt a little when he hefted it up on Toby. “Damn,” he said to the horse, “maybe I shoulda butchered it here.”

When he returned to the camp, he found that Mary had built a fire and had coffee on to boil. It was still a strange picture, with Raymond sitting apart from his guests on a bench-high boulder. When she heard his horse approaching, Mary turned to greet him. Apparently it had been a difficult task trying to make conversation with her brother-in-law, so she was doubly glad to see Cam again. She got up from her seat on a blanket to help him with the deer. Emma’s eyes got bigger and bigger when she saw the carcass draped across Toby’s withers. The girls had never seen a dead deer before. She and Grace ran after their mother to get a closer look.

Raymond got up from the rock he had been seated on, his interest definitely aroused. “You work fast,” he commented to Cam. “I heard the shot.”

“Didn’t take long to find ’em,” Cam replied with no elaboration of the details. He was thinking that it took the prospect of fresh meat to foster any animation on the part of their stoic host. It was a sign of the desperation the man must certainly be in.
He must have been eating grass,
Cam thought. It caused him to make an offer to help. “Say, if you need to get into town to get supplies, I could stay here and watch your claim for you.” He figured Mary and the girls could go back to Custer City with him. But as soon as he said it, he saw the narrowing of Raymond’s eyes and his look of concern.

“I don’t need anybody to sit on my claim for me. I don’t need supplies that bad, and I’ll be leaving here for good pretty soon.”

“Well, I was just offerin’,” Cam said, shrugged, and went to work skinning his deer. Mary volunteered her help, but he told her he had butchered enough game to have his own methods of doing it. “You just take care of the cookin’,” he said. “Besides, it looks like I’ve got all the help I need,” he added, nodding toward the girls, who were crowding in to get a closer look at the procedure.

Before long, there were strips of fresh venison roasting over the fire on a spit that the brothers had fashioned, but that looked to have not been in use for some time. Mary served the hot meat as soon as it was done, and no one was more eager than Raymond.
Like he ain’t had anything solid in days,
Cam thought. He began to suspect that Raymond might have been searching for gold for too many years. He had heard of men who had spent so many lonely years of hard labor, brutal weather, and danger from Indians and outlaws that they had gone crazy in the head. The image of Raymond, choking down strip after strip of meat like a hungry wolf, easily verified his suspicions. When all had had their fill, Cam finished the butchering, portioned out some to cook later, and prepared the fire to dry out the rest, smoking it over the flames.