Crazy Woman Creek (34 page)

Mrs. Nolan watched all this with patient interest. Finally she said, “Is everything alright, Lenora?”

“I’m doomed.”

“What do you mean, ‘doomed’?”

“I mean it’s all over. I’ve lost the ranch. Good
as gone. I’m returning to New York penniless, with child, and alone. There is not a scrap of hope left to me.”

“Lenora,” said Mrs. Nolan, turning to her bench mate
, “I don’t understand your sour thinking.”

“That wily Sheriff Morris, he’s thick with Judge Stillman. I’m sure of it.”

“And what of that? You think Judge Stillman won’t rule fairly on your behalf?”

“Not for Buffalo’s notorious fallen woman, that Jezebel of Jezebels. God only knows what Judge Stillman has heard about me,” she said, shaking her head.
And about my condition
.

“What an imagination you have.”

Lenora grimaced and looked away. She didn’t care to argue with dear Etta.

“Well, if it’s as gloomy as you say, then I suppose it would be futile for the deputy to speak to Judge Stillman as well. He’s an actor in this drama too, you know.”

“But Deputy Davies is a law enforcement officer. Judge Stillman would listen to another representative of the law. Especially another man.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Oh Etta, why doesn’t He just strike me dead?” Lenora wailed. She bent over her lap, her head in her hands.

“And have you miss your appointment to petition Judge Stillman? I think not.”

Lenora bolted upright. “You don’t really think I’m going to speak to him on my own behalf, do you?”

“I don’t think it. I know it. I’m not going to let you lose your ranch merely because you’re afraid to speak up. That would be poor stewardship.”

“But I can’t!” More wailing.

“Don’t be a goose. Of course you can.”

“How? Like this?” Lenora clasped one hand to her growing belly. “Everyone thinks the baby is Deputy Davies!”

“And that is untrue, or so you told me ...?”

Lenora turned then to look Mrs. Nolan in the eyes. “Etta, this is James’ baby. Our baby.”

“I believe you,” said Mrs. Nolan, nodding her head in confirmation. “Then why can’t you march right into Judge Stillman’s office and tell the whole story about James’ disappearance if it’s true?”

Now there was a good question. Was the truth good enough? When James and Lenora had embarked on their great adventure years before, their sheer confidence in the rightness of what they were doing combined with the mutual bravado of youth had kept them afloat in rising waters. Untested confidence alone was their strength, confidence enough to endure every hardship, fight every foe, overcome every obstacle that threatened to steal away their dream.

But what had happened to the self-assured woman Lenora had once been? She hardly knew herself anymore. The thought of standing before Judge Stillman, in a motherly way yet alone,
recounting her specious story of James’ brash foray into the dark of night for no good reason, how his horse was found tied to a tree on the banks of the North-East Creek, and how his body had never been found, it all sounded so, so ... unbelievable. Lenora slumped lower on the buckboard bench. She didn’t have the will to swim upstream anymore.

“This goose is going to be plucked,” she said. “And you know what happens before the plucking.” Lenora drew a hand across her throat. “Whack.”

Mrs. Nolan laughed out loud. “So young to be so negative,” she sputtered, still laughing.

“Other than the baby,” said Lenora, patting her tummy, “I can’t think of anything good that’s happened to me in six months.” Her countenance was as gloomy as her speech.

“That remains to be discovered.”

The ladies rode in silence a while, becalmed by the gentle song of the rolling prairie, a soft breeze stroking their faces. In the distance low hills were beginning to cast bluish-purple shadows on their eastern flanks, blurring the outline of the trees. The lengthening shadows stirred a dark memory for Lenora.

“Etta, I was chased down Main Street by a drunkard while you were at Ellen’s.”

“Really? What happened?”

Lenora was reluctant to give voice to her memory of the run-in with the obnoxious ranch hand, but keeping the disturbing images of the day hidden inside her seemed to strengthen their dark power. She told the entire story to Mrs. Nolan, leaving off that particularly distasteful term the man had used to describe her. It upset Lenora to bring the word to her lips.

“That was Buck Jennings or my name isn’t Marietta Applegate Nolan,” said Mrs. Nolan with a flourish.

“Yes, that is the man! Deputy Davies pointed him out to me one day,” said Lenora, remembering.

“The only good thing I can say about that despicable ranch hand,” said Mrs. Nolan, giving the reins a little snap to encourage the Morgans, “is that he regularly blesses the people of Buffalo.”

Lenora turned a puzzled face to her friend.

“With his absence,” Mrs. Nolan continued. “Being an itinerant, he’s away from Buffalo much of the time. Did you inform Sheriff Morris?”

Lenora paused, her first thought straying to Deputy Davies’ empty desk and how she had lingered shamelessly in the sheriff’s office, daydreaming about the handsome deputy and missing his tender attentions. She blushed at the memory.

“I took refuge in his office but he wasn’t in, so I left.”

“I’ll talk to Malcolm as soon as I can. Get him to work with Sheriff Morris on running that man out of town for good.”

“Thank you, Etta.”

Four weeks later

The
sun was a wavy red ball sinking slowly into an inky purple sky when Luke rode up to the hitching post in front of the Buffalo sheriff’s office. He pulled on the reins to halt his horse, stiff but grateful that the numbing hours on the trail from Fort Laramie had finally come to a saddle-sore end. It was cold too. Autumn’s chill crept early over the darkening landscape. Luke wanted only to leave a short note for Cyrus, alerting him of his unscheduled arrival, get a hot meal at the Occidental, and fall into his bed at Mrs. Byrne’s as quickly a
s
humanly possible. Every muscle in his body ached for sleep. September twentieth had come and gone. James Rose had been missing more than si
x
months. By now Mrs. Rose ha
d
made her petition to Judge Stillman, and Luke had not been around to speak for her. He felt frustrated by impotence. He hadn’t found James Rose’s body. He hadn’t helped his widow keep title to her ranch. He wondered if Judge Stillman had ruled in her favor or if he had already completed the paperwork to have her homestead transferred to the government. Luke winced, remembering how she had asked him to help her. He had promised to assist, but in the end he had not helped her at all. He wasn’t even sure if his letter to Judge Stillman had ever arrived at the man’s office. The justice of the court had never responded.

Luke wondered as he dismounted and tied his horse, just as he had wondered the two hundred and twenty lonely miles from Fort Laramie to Buffalo. Wondered why his awkward attempt at proposing to the man’s widow had been met with tears. That hurt the most, wounded his pride to the point that he had seriously considered staying on permanently in Laramie. But a Davies didn’t give up that easily. Only a coward ran and hid at the first rebuff. Luke liked to think he was made of tougher stuff. Still, he wondered what kind of reception Mrs. Rose would give him now that he had returned too late to be of any worldly assistance. With a heart heavy with longing for what could have been, he wondered if he would have been a different, cleverer sort of man when it came to women if only he had grown up with a ma to teach him the secrets of these mysterious beings.

And, more to the moment, he wondered if he would lose his job for insisting on returning to Buffalo before his work was finished at Laramie. The only thing Luke was sure of right now was the warm, wiggly puppy inside his coat front that was excitedly licking his neck and jaw. He had purchased the pesky mutt, a black-and-brown cutie with big trusting eyes, at Laramie for Mrs. Rose. Luke pressed one hand to his chest, directly over the excited pup, to restrain his slobbery affections while he gazed up and down the shadowy hulks that lined Main Street.

He was glad to be back in Buffalo. Beautiful Buffalo, where his heart was.
Then, as he stepped onto the boardwalk, he heard someone shout his name.

“Deputy Davies! Deputy Davies!”

Luke looked in the direction of the shouting and saw Octavius Dunn walking determinedly toward him, his hand on the shoulder of a very unhappy little boy. It was his son, the same boy who had come to Luke’s office carrying James Rose’s pocket watch. Octavius stopped shouting when he saw Luke look in his direction.

“Deputy Davies,” said the elder Dunn as he drew closer, “we didn’t think you’d be back in town for months.”

“Plans changed,” said Luke, offering no explanation and too tired for small talk anyway. “What can I do for you?” Luke glanced at the boy and was disturbed to see tears brimming in his eyes. The child looked terrified and then incredulous as his eyes grew wide at the bumping and shoving inside Luke’s coat.

“I’m glad I saw you,” said Octavius. “My daughter Lucille came by my shop yesterday afternoon to tell me a story.”

“She tattled!” said the younger Dunn.

“Hush, Harold!” said the father, shaking the boy’s shoulder slightly for emphasis. “You’re in enough trouble as it is.” Then he turned back to Luke. “I’m afraid my son has not been entirely truthful about the item he brought to you several months ago. That gold watch, I mean.”

At the mention of the watch, the boy started to cry. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffled. The words had an entirely different effect on Luke. The fog of tiredness that had clouded his brain cleared instantly. He studied the boy.

“This time Harold is ready to tell the whole truth, aren’t you
, Harold?”

The boy hesitated, his body trembling.

“Look up at the deputy, son,” commanded the father.

Harold turned a wet face to Luke. Luke was anxious to hear what he had to say, but he felt awful for the boy. He looked utterly miserable. Luke remembered feeling exactly like that more than once over the course of years, although usually his mortification was associated with hijinks he had exercised on his hapless brothers. Other than keep
quiet when he should have spoken, to date he’d done nothing wicked that involved a gold watch and a dead man, but time would tell.

“I didn’t find the watch on the church steps,” Harold said, his voice hardly above a whisper. He stared at Luke’s coat. A furry little head popped up and two black eyes stared back at Harold.

The boy had Luke’s undivided attention.

“Tell the deputy where you found it,” said Octavius, prodding the reluctant miscreant.

There was a long, pregnant pause.

“I found it ... I found it ...”

Octavius tightened his grip on the boy’s shoulder.

The boy got the message. “I found it in the cemetery,” he said all at once.

“And what were you doing in the cemetery?” said Octavius.

Another long pause. “Shooting rocks at head stones,” said the frightened child. His voice cracked as he spoke and he started to cry again.

“And why didn’t you tell the deputy the truth, Harold?”

The boy’s chest heaved.

“Look at the deputy, Harold.”

The boy looked up at Luke. “Because I didn’t want you to find the owner.”

Luke squatted then, still cradling the puppy in his coat, to look at the boy face to face. “Where in the cemetery, son? Where exactly did you find it?”

“On the ground.”

“Harold, the deputy wants the truth.” Octavius grabbed the child by the chin and forced him to look up into his face. “I’ll double your whipping if you don’t tell Deputy Davies exactly where you found that watch.”

“That is the truth, pa. I found it on the ground. I saw the gold chain sticking out by that German lady’s grave, and I pulled it, and up came the watch.”

Luke hardly heard the child. He had stopped listening. While Octavius handed his son a handkerchief, Luke stood and turned, stroking the puppy through his corduroy coat and gazing silently toward the eastern edge of Buffalo, where Main Street ended and the short ride to the church began.

“Mrs. Rose, looky,” Ben Slocomb said, his arm gesturing west.

Lenora clutched the wire handle of the egg basket at her side and shaded her eyes with her free hand, looking westward to the Big Horn Mountains. Two men on horseback, possibly more—it was hard to tell from the distance and the angle—were riding toward her ranch. The early morning sun shed dazzling white light over the frosty prairie, making the riders appear more shimmery than distinct.

“They don’t look like they’re in a hurry. Probably not Indians,” said Ben, shading his eyes too and squinting.

“No,” agreed Lenora, her eyes trained on the riders. “I’m going to fetch James’ rifle, his Colt too, just the same.”