Hard Winter Part 10

Chapter Seventeen.

Shortly thereafter, Major MacDunn sent me back to string wire at Castle Reef. Oh, he had learned from his mistake, wasn't about to let a bunch of boys do that work by themselves, so he made sure a grown-up supervised us. Sure, I hated leaving Tommy behind at the bunkhouse, but there just wasn't anything else I could do for Tommy. He had to mend himself. Thought about him, though, with every mile of wire I stapled to a post.

Thought of John Henry, too. Thought of Judas.

Felt like Judas.

Bitterroot Abbott bossed us. Hadn't met him before, and the thing I noticed about Abbott was the fact that he didn't do no work, just watched. Slim fellow, he was, with bright blue eyes, rode a high-stepping dun horse, and kept a Winchester carbine across his lap. Bald on the top of his head, with hair that once looked to be blond before turning gray. Kept to himself mostly, cleaning a Smith & Wesson revolver, smoking his Bull Durham, and sipping from a flask till he'd emptied it. Had no use for a bunch of teenagers.

"Never does a lick of work," I complained to Walter Butler one night when Bitterroot went off to answer Nature's call. "Gene Hardee and Ish Fishtorn, now those boys'll work right alongside us. They don't fancy it. I mean, stringing wire ain't a fit job for a cowboy, but Gene and Ish, they do their share of the work. But not that bald-headed gent."

"He works," Walter said softly.

"I ain't seen it," I said.

Walter snorted, and sat up. "He rode with Major MacDunn with the Montana Stranglers," he said. "If I were you, I wouldn't get cross of Bitterroot Abbott. He's killed fifteen men."

"You mean he's a gunman? Like Wild Bill?"

"No," Walter said. Sounded kind of old for his age, like he knew a lot more than I did about those kinds of things. "He's nothing like Bill Hickok was."

"Well, what's he doing here for?"

"Working." Walter Butler threw his blanket over him, and rolled over.

Working? My stomach got all twisted. Major MacDunn had hired himself a gunman.

Tommy rode up one afternoon, must have been the last of October, maybe early November. Cold, it was. I remember Bitterroot Abbott laughing at my blanket. Thin, old woolly piece of moth holes that had served me well most nights down in Texas. "That hen skin won't protect you from Kissin-ey-oo-way'-o."

I asked him: "Protect me from what?"

"Kissin-ey-oo-way'-o. It's Cree. Lived with them up north for three years when I was a young buck. Kissin-ey-oo-way'-o."

"What's it mean?" I asked.

"Well, you can't really put it in English. More like you have to feel it, and I've felt it. It means, more or less, that the wind blows cold. You'll feel it, boy, especially if that's all you have for your sougans."

"I feel it already," I told him.

"Hawkins," he said with a wry chuckle, "it ain't even cold yet."

That was the most I'd ever talked to Bitterroot Abbott. He sounded almost human then, made me forget that he was nothing more than a man-killer, but I pretty much forgot about our little talk because Walter Butler ran to the campfire screaming that Tommy was coming, Tommy was coming. Sure enough, he was.

Wearing a new heavy coat with the sheepskin collar pulled up high, and his hat down low, Tommy swung down off Midnight Beauty. He looked a mess, but it did my heart a world of wonder to see him again. Tossed down his war bag, then untied a package he had secured behind his cantle, and threw it to me.

"Present," he said, "from Blaire MacDunn. And Lainie."

The bandages were gone, and he had a big black leather patch over his missing eye. He wore a yellow silk bandanna kind of like a pirate. At least it reminded me of how I pictured some of Long John Silver's black-hearts from Treasure Island. It was wrapped around his head, like a lady's bonnet, hiding the missing ear, though he couldn't hide the scars, bruises, and scabs below his missing eye.

Still, he was Tommy, my pard. Only I couldn't think of anything to say to him.

"What brings you here?" Walter Butler asked.

"I earn my keep," he said, looking past our camp at the line of wire fence we'd already put up.

What was the package? Oh, just a coat. Not a Mackinaw, and nothing as fancy as Tommy's sheepskin rig. A heavy canvas coat with a wool blanket lining. Nice to know the MacDunns thought of me. I thought about how cheap Mr. Gow was, figured he would have bought me a coat, too, but take it out of my wages.

When we started work next morning, I was pretty much all thumbs. Nerves took hold of Walter Butler, too. We just couldn't help it, what with Tommy back with us, just a few miles from where the terrible accident had happened. Tommy, he noticed it right off, turned angrily from a post he was setting, and just glared at us.

Didn't say a word, just stared with that blazing eye of his. Stared us down. I mumbled something to Walter, and started pulling wire from the reel.

Got to do some exploring, which suited me a sight better than building a barbed wire fence. I rode up into the mountains once, I recollect, picking up wood to use for our fires.

One time, me and Walter Butler come to a creek to find a muskrat, busy working on his house. Peculiar-looking animal, but he made me smile, watching him work, till he must have heard us or caught our scent, and disappeared in the woods.

"Big house he's building," Walter said. "Twice as big as anything I've seen."

"Maybe his gal's expecting triplets. Maybe he's been a mighty busy muskrat," I said, mighty pleased when Walter Butler blushed.

I've told you about Tie Camp Creek, where the hackers set up camp, cutting down wood for the railroad. We rode up to that camp one day to fetch some more fence posts, or at least prod the hackers into bringing us the supply they owed us.

"I bet they have some whiskey at that camp," Bitterroot Abbott said enviously.

"You should go," Tommy told him.

"Can't." He jutted his jaw at the wire. "Somebody's got to keep an eye on things, and I'm paid to do that."

"I'll stay," Tommy said.

"You?" Bitterroot had to choke back his laughter.

"I got one eye," Tommy snapped, "so I can keep an eye on things. And you'd be better at persuading those lumberjacks to fulfill their end of the bargain. You've said so yourself . . . Major MacDunn paid them for two loads of fence posts. We've gotten only one."

Bitterroot chewed on that thought with his salt pork, but finally shook his head. "Should wait. Hardee or Fishtorn should be here in a day or two. Send them up there."

"Suit yourself," Tommy said.

"We might be out of posts by tomorrow," Walter Butler said. I knew Butler's intentions. He was sick of working with wire, and probably still felt uncomfortable working alongside Tommy. He wanted to get out of camp.

n.o.body said anything else for a spell, till I got up to throw another piece of wood on the fire.

"All right," Bitterroot said. "We'll ride up there come first light. You two boys will ride with me. Might need you to drive the wagons down."

I guess I knew what made Bitterroot decide to go, too. He had a big thirst for whiskey. Figured why Tommy volunteered to stay, too. Since the bad accident, he kept to himself.

Up higher, that's some country, but I tell you what. That high up, it was a lot colder than it was down on the river. Those log men had also built themselves a couple of cabins, so I figured they planned to be up there in winter, too. They reminded me of the beaver pond we'd pa.s.sed on the ride to Tie Camp Creek. Those lumber men were working hard, even harder than the beavers that had been stacking up piles and piles of saplings. 'Course, them beavers didn't have all the axes and adzes and saws and contraptions that we found at that camp of hackers.

We unsaddled our horses, rubbed them down, gave them some water and grain, and went to find the boss of the outfit, find out where our fence posts were, and why we hadn't gotten them yet. Never heard such noise, the flying sawdust worse than dust on a cattle drive. Saws singing, axes thudding, it wasn't nothing like a cow camp. Except for the men cussing.

They also had this monster-looking machine, which looked and sounded like a steamboat that was about to blow its boiler, belching out steam and cinders, shaking on its sled made of logs.

"What's that thing?" I yelled above the racket to a choker setter-that's what he called himself-a kid about my age, holding one end of a slack cable, with the other end attached to the drum on that noisy, steam-driven contraption.

He looked over my shoulder, and yelled back: "Steam donkey!"

Well, we watched him do his work, fasten that cable to a felled pine, watched that steam donkey start pulling the log, and then the kid warned us to get out of the way, and he took us to the boss' cabin.

"Best wait here, out of the way," he told us. "It's warmer inside, anyway."

The boss hacker was a thin, mustached Irishman named Burke. He poured us all two fingers of whiskey from a jug, pushed back his bowler, and give himself a whole tumbler full of rotgut.

"I work for Major MacDunn," Bitterroot told him. He killed his own drink, then took Walter's.

"I know."

"Then you know you owe the major another delivery of fence posts."

Burke sighed. "There will be no more fence posts, I'm afraid."

"Why's that?"

"We work for the railroad."

"You were working for the railroad when the major and you cut this deal."

"Aye. But that was before Mister Pego, me boss, learned of that, ahem, side bet." He drank thirstily, coughed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. "I'm lucky to still have me job and me hide. It cost me a month's pay."

Muttering an oath, Bitterroot refilled his gla.s.s from the jug. He could have taken my whiskey, like he'd done Walter's, because I wasn't about to pour that stuff down my throat.

"MacDunn'll have to find his fence posts somewhere else. And since he hasn't paid me for that second load, we're square."

Well, I didn't like that no better than Bitterroot Abbott, because I figured the major would have me cutting down posts, and my hands were blistered already.

"If you blokes will excuse me, I've work to do." He reached for the jug, but Bitterroot put his hand on it, and gave him a hard look. Burke swallowed, then turned, and headed for the door. He stopped when something made me ask him a question.

"How did your boss find out what you was doing?"

"Someone wrote him. I do not know who."

I had a pretty fair inkling, but I didn't say so. Reckon if Tommy's hands had healed enough to work fence, he could write a letter to the Northern Pacific.

Waited till noon the next day, when Bitterroot's hangover allowed him to saddle his horse. We rode back to camp, empty-handed, me glad to get out of those mountains, away from those woodcutters, all that sawdust, and that screaming steam donkey.

Rode to our camp, and stopped, staring.

Chapter Eighteen.

"That double-crossing, little . . ." Bitterroot Abbott swung off his horse, and walked to the fence line.

What was left of the fence line.

Tommy had poured coal oil over the remaining posts, and we found nothing left but smoldering ash and charred stumps. Sections of wire had been roped, and pulled down. Not all of it, mind you. Likely didn't have time or inclination to tear down that much fence. There was still a solid line from the base of the mountain to near the line shack, and other sections had been left alone. But what remained wouldn't keep cattle in.

Or out.

The wagon hauling the barbed wire was gone, but Bitterroot picked up the trail. It climbed into Sun River Caon.

"You come with me," the gunman ordered me, and told Walter to raise dust, get to Gene Hardee's camp on the far side of Castle Reef, tell him what happened here.

"He had help." Bitterroot's voice sounded harder, louder within the caon walls.

We rode on, side-by-side. I didn't look over at him.

"You hear what I said?"

"I heard you."