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Authors: Hanging Woman Creek

Tags: #Western Stories, #Westerns, #Fiction, #Irish Americans, #Montana, #General

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BOOK: Louis L'Amour
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And it made a lot of sense.… But who was he after? Van Bokkelen?

They had said Van Bokkelen was wanted for murder, and the Pinks usually only hunted train robbers or the like. I said as much.

“That Van Bokkelen, maybe he murdered a Pink,” said Eddie.

CHAPTER 3

W
E DROPPED OFF the freight before it reached Miles City station, and walked up Pacific Avenue.

“This here’s a live town,” I said to Eddie, “and it’s purely cattle.” But after a few steps I amended that. “Now, I better back off on that, for I should say this here is a stock town—there’s folks around who favor sheep.”

We turned off and went past the cat houses to Main, and kept on to Charley Brown’s saloon. A couple of Hat X punchers were loafing in front of the saloon, and one of them, seeing me packing that gear, commented, “Now lookit there. First time I ever seen Pronto when he had the saddle in the right place.”

“Least I chase the steers,” I said. “They don’t chase me.”

Dropping the saddle to the boardwalk, I dug into my pocket for the stub end of the cigar Fargo had given me. They eyed me whilst I lit up, making a great show of it to impress them with my prosperity.

“Eddie and me,”—I jerked my head to indicate my Negro partner—”are huntin’ a business connection where we can invest our time and my saddle.”

“You might try the Diamond R,” one of the punchers said, grinning wickedly. “They always seemed ready to take you on.”

“You can spread the word,” I said solemnly, “those Diamond R bull-whackers are safe. I’m a
ree
formed man.”

“Now, they’ll be mighty relieved to hear you said that,” the other puncher commented dryly. “Butch Hogan was around on’y last night, sayin’ how dull it was with you out of town. There was nobody around to whip.”

“He on’y whupped me once.”

“Sure … you on’y tried him once. You stick around. You can have you another chance tonight.”

“He still around over at John Chinnick’s?”

They exchanged a glance. “You surely been gone. Chinnick left out of here one night … by special invite.”

That was news, but not unexpected. Chinnick’s saloon had been a long-time hangout for the wild bunch. If anything was going on, you could hear of it over to Chinnick’s … if they knew you.

Big-Nose George and his crowd hung out there when they were in town, and come to think of it, Tom Gatty had a few friends in that outfit. But when I started to ask about Tom, something warned me to hold off. Tom an’ me, we’d been friends, but never saddle partners.

We went into Charley Brown’s and I led the way to the stove. Charley always kept a big pot of mulligan stew going on the stove, and you could help yourself. Eddie an’ me, we couldn’t afford to pass up a social invitation of that sort.

“That Butch Hogan,” Eddie said, “did he whup you?”

“He did that, and good. He’s big and he’s fast, and much as I hate to admit it, he’ll probably do it again.”

“Then why fight him?”

Well, I just looked at Eddie, plainly surprised. “He whupped me, and when a man whups me once, he’s got it to do again … and again, if need be, until either I whup him or he leaves the country. A couple of times,” I added, “they’ve done just that. Maybe they just plain got tired of having me to whup every Saturday night.”

“We get a job together,” Eddie said, “we can box some. Get you in shape.”

We ate for a while without talking, and then Eddie went on, “I boxed forty-seven times in the ring for money. I boxed Paddy Ryan before he was champion, and I boxed Charlie Mitchell over in England. I boxed Joe Goss, Dominick McCaffrey, and Joe Coburn.”

Little as I knew about prize fighting, I’d read the
Police Gazette
enough to know who they were, and they were the best.

“You could learn me,” I said. “All I ever knew about fighting I picked up by working at it.”

“I’ll rustle up some mitts,” Eddie said.

There was no sign of Tom Gatty in Milestown—or, as they were calling it now, Miles City—although I covered the whole of it. Most of the time I listened, and what I heard didn’t make me feel any better. Yet it was less what I heard than what I didn’t hear. There were a lot of suddenly suspicious folks around town, and a lot that wasn’t being said.

A stranger coming to Miles City would see just the dusty main street with a row of false-fronted frame buildings along either side. The signs mostly extended
from the buildings to supporting posts on the edge of the boardwalk. There were water barrels here and there along the street, in case of fire. Usually one of the Diamond R bull teams was standing in the street, and there were buckboards or other rigs in from the ranches about.

An eastern man looking along that street would think there wasn’t much to it, but he would be wrong. In my time I’d been a sight of places, and I’d call Miles City a big town—big in the outlook of most of the folks who lived there, and big in the country it took in all around.

They had law there, but nobody paid it much mind. I mean, when trouble came nobody thought of going to the law about it; you handled it yourself. If somebody made trouble in the town, usually the marshal would run them in for the night; or, if they packed a gun, he’d take their gun away and tell them to go sleep it off.

Times were changing, and there were new faces around. The big outfits were losing stock and they didn’t like it. And that meant they would do something about it when they got to the point where they decided action was called for, and I had a hunch that time had come.

As we were going along the street Eddie said to me, “You ought to get you a place of your own, Pronto. A man’ll never get nowhere working for the other fellow.”

“Never had money enough,” I said. “Most money I ever saved was forty dollars, to buy a saddle.”

“Why, you must have spent more’n that in Chicago, the way you tell it.”

“I did. On’y that was gamblin’ money, and gamblin’ money don’t stick to a man. Down by the stockyards I got into this dice game, and I was hitting a few hot licks. I started with less than thirty dollars, and ran it up to more than three hundred. Then the cops came, and somebody hollered ‘Bull’ and everybody grabbed. Mostly they grabbed my money, and I came up short with on’y sixty bucks, and a fine to pay.”

“You sure played in hard luck.”

“Never knew any other kind, come to think of it, but I never kicked up any fuss about it. I’m a man does his job, and fights a lick or two come Saturday.”

“You got to get you a place of your own. Little outfit down on one of these cricks you been tellin’ of.”

“Trouble is,” I said, “big ranchers run cows on most of those cricks. They take it mighty unkind for anybody to go to nesting on their water.”

“You need to save your money, get yourself a front,” Eddie insisted.

“What’s a front?”

“Clothes, that’s what. Get yourself some new boots, keep them polished up, get yourself a new hat. Maybe a suit. You look like money, money will come to you.”

“Man I knew once, Eddie, he figured like that. He got himself all that outfit you’re speakin’ of, and a new horse and saddle along with it. So they hung him.”


Hung
him?”

“Sure. There was stock missin’, and everybody began to wonder where this cowpuncher got the money for that outfit. They taken him out and hung him on the bridge, just on general principles.”

“Didn’t he give ‘em any argument?”

“No use. He just looked down at the water and told ‘em to for God’s sake tie the knot tight, because he couldn’t swim.”

I found that Granville Stuart, who owned one of the biggest outfits in Montana, was in town. He stopped me on the street and offered me a job, but the joker was that I’d be holed up all winter in a line camp with Powell Landusky … they called him Pike, too.

There wasn’t a better man on the frontier. He was a cowman, trapper, hunter, woodcutter for the steamboats, and one of the best rough-and-tumble fighters you ever saw. Only he had a mean temper, and was quick to fly off the handle. We’d wind up killing each other.

There were a hundred stories about him. One time he tackled a camp full of Indians with a clubbed rifle. They figured nobody but a crazy man would do that, and afterwards they left him alone. Another time an Indian bullet hit him in the face. He rode for a doctor, but his jaw was broken up and it pained him so much he just reached in and tore out a chunk of jawbone so big it had two teeth in it. Marked him for life. I never did hear whether tearing that piece of jawbone out made the pain any better.

M
E AND EDDIE finally went back to Charley Brown’s and hit that stewpot again. We got there early and Charley looked over at us and said, “You broke again, Pronto?”

“You ever seen me when I wasn’t?”

“You always paid up.” Charley put his hands on
the bar. “Pronto, do you need some cash? I can let you have some.”

“We can sleep over to the livery,” I said, “an’ eat here until you throw us out. Soon as we find a job, we’ll ride out.”

He stood there quiet for a minute, and then he said, “Pronto, I’m going to put you onto something you may not thank me for. Bill Justin needs two men for his line camp on the Hanging Woman.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

He just looked at me, and didn’t answer. Only after a minute or so had passed he said, “You boys step up to the bar.”

We were alone in the place, but I guess he didn’t want to talk too loud. He filled a couple of cups with coffee and shoved them toward us.

He leaned his forearms on the bar. “Pronto, this here country is walking wide open into trouble, and you’d be a fool not to see it. And that trouble may bust loose right on the Hanging Woman … that’s why that job’s open.”

Well, I looked around at Eddie. “What do you say, boy? It’s going to be a cold winter, and a man doesn’t have to hunt far for wood up there.”

“I been in trouble most of my life,” Eddie said, “on’y this time I’d not be alone.”

“Charley, you tell Bill Justin he’s caught himself a couple of live ones. We’ll go.”

We finished our coffee and started for the door.

Just then it opened up wide, and a man filled the open space with his shoulders. It was Butch Hogan. Hogan was a bull-whacker for the Diamond R freight outfit, and a fighter from who-flung-the-chunk.

“Howdy, there!” he said, grinning. “If it ain’t the little man who likes to fight!”

Now I’m no little man, being five-ten and weighing an easy one-seventy; but alongside his two hundred and forty pounds and his six feet four inches, I might be considered small.

The room was filling up, and I could see they’d been egging him on, anxious for a fight. Well, I hadn’t had no fun since the night they pitched me out of that honky-tonk back in Chicago, and maybe tomorrow I’d be headed for the breaks along Hanging Woman Creek.

“Butch,” I said, “how tall are you?”

“Six feet four in my socks,” he said.

“I didn’t know they piled it that high,” I said, and hit him.

CHAPTER 4

W
HEN MY EYES opened, the sun struck right into them, but it was that spring wagon jouncing over rocks and rough road that woke me up.

BOOK: Louis L'Amour
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