Powder River (10 page)

“You looked stupid,” Lorna said. They were in Billy's room, a small, windowless lean-to off the kitchen. It was dark, lit only by the coal oil lamp on the Star Crackers box he used as a nightstand. He neatly folded his clothes, including the dirty new ones, and stacked them in a cardboard case. “I can't believe Lord Faucett hired you—you looked like a nester in those clothes, an East Coast jake just off the train.” She forced a laugh. “It was funny, that's what it was.”

Billy kept his eyes on his packing.

“Didn't he look like a jake, Cal?” Lorna nudged her brother, silent at her side. “Didn't he just?”

“I guess,” Cal said glumly. “Do you have to go, Billy? I thought you were going to stay with us. Don't you want to anymore?”

Billy put a hand on Cal's shoulder. “It's not about wanting, Cal. Your pa doesn't have enough work for me. Faucett has horses, and that's what I'm good at. Not only that, but he gave me a place in the roundup. I can make real money, put some aside to get my own place.”

Lorna made a sound of disgust and folded her arms across her chest. She fought back tears. “You'll never have a ranch, Billy,” she said. “They'll never let you run your own cattle. Don't you know that? Them big augers won't let anyone else raise cattle in Powder River country—and an Indian to boot! You're just fooling yourself if you think that's ever going to happen.”

Billy wasn't going to argue with her. Lorna would never let anyone else win an argument. Not for the first time, he thought how unlike her mother she was. Though Lorna would be a beauty, like Rose, she had none of her mother's softer, more womanly traits. While Rose had been generous, sensitive to the needs of others, Lorna cared for no one but herself. When she grew to be a woman, she would give the man who loved her a world of trouble.

Billy knew she had feelings for him, he had always known, but he was not the low kind of man who would take advantage of a girl's amorous yearnings. The truth was that even if they were closer in age, Lorna would never be a woman he wanted. Kindness was important in a woman, as important as beauty, and Lorna would never be kind.

“It's because of her, isn't it?” Lorna said, her voice rising in anger. “Lady Faucett. She's the real reason you're going, isn't she? Oh, I see her around town, with her curled hair and fancy clothes, queening it in Raylan's Dry Goods like some sort of royalty, looking down her nose at the rest of us.”

Billy said quietly, “That's not how she is.”

Lorna stamped her foot. “Odalie Faucett is never going to look at you and you're never going to own your own ranch. Never! You're being an awful fool and everyone sees it. Everyone's laughing at you!”

Billy snapped the case shut. Odalie Faucett was one of the Bar C's attractions, but not the primary one. This was the best chance he would ever have to make something of himself. As for Odalie, he had no aspirations there—he wasn't a fool, despite what Lorna said—but he enjoyed looking at a beautiful woman. What man didn't? He lifted the case off the bed and turned to Cal, avoiding Lorna's eyes.

“Take care of yourself,” he said, offering his hand. “And keep an eye on your sister. Maybe next Sunday I'll come for you, take you to the Bar C so you can help me with the horses. How does that sound?”

Call nodded, eyes on the floor. “Good.”

Billy leaned down to whisper in the boy's ear. “Don't let her push you around. You're good as she is, don't forget that.”

Cal nodded again and wiped his nose with the back of his hand as his father entered the room. Lorna stomped out and Cal followed his sister.

“So it's true,” Dixon said. “You're leaving us for the Bar C?”

“Lord Faucett offered me work and a spot in the roundup. It's good money. I couldn't turn it down.”

“No, of course not. You should go. I could never give you that kind of opportunity.”

“I thank you for the work you have given me all these years and for setting me up with Nelson Story up north. Not everyone would do what you did for an Indian. I learned a lot from him, and from you, too.”

Dixon put his hand on Billy's shoulder. “You don't need to thank me. You were—are—like a member of the family. Is Sugarfoot saddled?”

Billy nodded.

“I'll walk out with you.”

They passed through the kitchen, where Mrs. MacGill was rolling biscuits. She insisted he sit down for a glass of buttermilk before leaving. When he stood to go, she embraced him, leaving flour handprints on the back of his shirt. “Good-bye, laddie,” she said. “Dinnae be a stranger now.”

It was fully dark when they stepped outside, though the spring air was still warm. Sugarfoot raised his head and nickered as they approached.

“I feel we've come to the end of something,” Dixon said. “We'll all miss you, Billy.”

Billy smiled. “It's not like I'm moving to Missouri, sir. I'll be around.”

“I know.” Dixon looked toward the craggy mountains, and Billy sensed there was more the doctor wanted to say. “I never got a chance to talk to you about what happened in the village.”

“You said it was empty. No one was there.”

Dixon nodded. “Yes, I did say that, but someone was there. Biwi, your aunt. Only her, not another soul. We spoke . . . it was very odd. That is, she seemed to think we—all of us, my family and you, too—were in some sort of danger . . .” He could not bring himself to say from whom.

Billy frowned. “You saw Biwi in the village and she spoke to you?”

“Yes. As I said, she was alone; the whole thing was very peculiar. She spoke to me in English. She must have learned it quickly.”

Billy shook his head. “Doctor, that cannot be. Biwi died the morning I found Cal and Lorna near the old soldier fort. I didn't say it then, because I didn't want the twins to know, but I wrapped her body myself. I carried her to the wagon.”

“This makes no sense.” Dixon looked at his thumb, where a scar remained. He remembered the glowing lodge, the powerful animal smell. “Then who was in the lodge with me? Who was I talking to?”

Billy smiled. “Visitors from the world behind this one sometimes appear to us. I have never experienced this myself, but I have known those who have and I do not question the truth of it. I believe such a visitor came to you. You have been given a gift. Honor it, Doctor. This is my advice to you.”

Frank Canton chose not to seek a third term as Johnson County sheriff in the fall of 1886. Though he claimed to be on the fence about running, and confident of another victory, most people did not believe he could win re-election. He barely scraped out a victory in 1884, and he had lost popular support during those two years. There was a growing sense he and his deputies were no longer a good fit with the people of Buffalo, now a community of some one thousand souls. No one questioned Canton's skills or commitment as a lawman, but, more and more, he was seen to be overly impressed with his own importance. Worse, his deputies had acquired a reputation for ruthlessness. One of these, Chris Gross, a large, oafish Swede, mistreated a prominent citizen who fired off a letter to the local newspaper, the
Big Horn Sentinel
, complaining about the “unwonted zeal of that most enthusiastic officer.” Later, Gross shot an accused horse thief in the head, killing him without benefit of trial. The death was widely regarded as unnecessary.

“Yes, I believe it's time to let someone else shoulder the load for a while,” Canton said to Dixon one evening over glasses of beer at the Occidental Hotel restaurant and saloon. The two were not friends, but they had run into each other in town and Canton extended the invitation. Dixon accepted reluctantly. He had not been able to shake off his suspicions about the sheriff, suspicions that had only grown since the seeds were planted that cold winter night in Doriselaine Schmidt's barn. The image of the young widow stroking her dead husband's hair haunted him still, along with her words:
You've got a lot to learn about how things work in Powder River country.

“It's not that I don't enjoy the work,” Canton said. “I do, but I'm a married man now, with a child, and I believe I can do better for my family, financially speaking, in another line. In fact,” he paused and leaned closer to Dixon, “I've already got something lined up. I'll be working again as a range detective for the WSGA, riding the entire Big Horn Basin.” He dropped his voice to a whisper, so low Dixon could barely hear him in the noisy room. “I'll be getting twenty-five hundred a year, plus expenses.”

“That's a lot of money,” Dixon said. “A lot of country, too.”

Canton nodded with obvious pride and settled back in his chair. “All of Johnson and Crook counties, plus parts of five others, a bigger area than some Eastern states. Yes, Dixon, it's a big responsibility, but the organization will give me plenty of latitude to do the job as I see fit.”

He looked down at the glass in his hand. “Still, I've got to say it was hard to give up sheriffing. Like I said, I'm sure I'd be re-elected, and I gave another term serious thought, but the job can make a man crazy. The damn rustlers run hog wild, and when you try to do your job they cut you off at the knees. That Holmberg business stuck in my craw.” On that occasion, Canton had traveled all the way to Kansas to bring accused horse thief H.H. Holmberg to justice, only to see him released without charge. “And One-Eyed Tex Cherpolloid—I had that cockeyed son of a bitch dead to rights, and even there I couldn't make the charges stick. Public indecency and a damn ten-dollar fine—that's all I could get on the bastard. I tell you, Dixon, I get hot just thinking about it. I can't get an honest jury, nothing but a bunch of lily-livered nesters who wouldn't indict Judas Iscariot.” He shook his head and raised the glass to his lips. “How many men do you reckon I've sent to prison for livestock theft in my four years as sheriff?”

“I have no idea.”

“Go ahead, take a guess.”

“I don't know,” Dixon said. “Forty?”

Canton nodded. “Should be that many. Hell, should be twice that. No, Dixon, I worked my butt off for four years to put eighteen rustlers behind bars. Eighteen. The job's a pitiful waste of a man's time. Pitiful.”

“I'm surprised,” Dixon said. There was plenty of thievery in Johnson County, everyone knew that, and whatever his other faults, Canton was not lazy. “Why would a jury not convict a man who is obviously guilty?”

Canton laughed. “Hell, Dixon, you know the answer to that well as I do. Those dirt-eaters on the jury don't shed any tears when Lord Richard Faucett or one of his sort lose a few horses or a dozen head of cattle. They're happy when the no-good trash gets away with it, and by no-good trash I mean fellows like Nate Coday and Jack Reshaw, those boys your man Bill Sun threw in with.” Canton balled his fist and pounded the table, drawing looks from their fellow drinkers. “That Reshaw is a goddamn troublemaker. I hear he just bought himself the Lazy L and B from old man Hathaway over on the Red Fork. Bought the ranch and a dozen head of worn-out emigrant cattle. You hear about that?”

Dixon nodded. All of Buffalo was buzzing about Jack Reshaw's bold move and waiting to see what the ranchers were going to do about it. It would be messy, of that Dixon had no doubt. Reshaw had already drawn the ire of the WSGA as one of the leaders of a cowboy strike just before spring roundup. The trouble started when the men learned some of their colleagues were working for as little as thirty dollars a month. They refused to ride unless the bosses agreed to pay everyone no less than forty. “There's no justice in this,” Reshaw told a gathering of cowboys and foremen. “We are brothers in this work. When you cheat my brother, you cheat me!” Eventually the cowboys prevailed, though Reshaw paid a heavy price for the victory. After the roundup, the association passed the word around that Jack Reshaw would never ride for a Wyoming outfit again.

In buying the Lazy L and B, Reshaw was sticking his finger in the WSGA's eye again. The association's members would not tolerate small homesteaders or ranching operations on land they perceived as theirs, and this was especially true if the aspiring stockman used to cowboy for them. Indeed, they vowed to blackball any puncher who started his own brand, saying it would increase thievery. Reshaw's latest act of defiance had drawn widespread attention, and everyone had taken a side.

Association members knew they would have to tread carefully. Reshaw, the son of a prominent Charleston, Virginia, planter was confident, well-educated, and a leader not only among the cowboys but in the community as a whole. Any injustice done to him would fan the flames of discord.

The controversy added to an aura of foreboding in the air that fall, beyond the usual tension between the stockmen and cowboys. Dixon felt it in his trips to town and in his conversations with patients, a sense that a hard winter was coming, bearing down on Powder River country like a giant, crouching bear. The October wind had a bite, and the ponies were laying down an unusually thick coat of hair. Old-timers spoke of an early migration of birds.

“He's a hard one, Jack Reshaw, and crook to boot,” Canton said, drawing Dixon from his thoughts. “If I were you I'd tell Sun to keep away from him and Coday before someone gets hurt. Your girl, Lorna, she'd take it mighty hard, I bet, if anything happened to that good-looking Indian boy.” He winked and finished his drink.

Dixon was annoyed. “Billy doesn't work for me anymore. In fact, we hardly see him. And not that it's any of your business, Sheriff, but there's nothing going on between him and Lorna. She's known him all her life. He's like a brother.”

Canton shrugged. “Maybe so, but I don't think that would make a difference, if it was up to her.”

Dixon got to his feet, fighting an overpowering urge to punch Canton in his drink-flushed face. “You talk too much, Canton,” he said, putting on his coat. “You should be more careful about what you say.”

“Take your coat off and sit down, Doctor. Don't get your pants in a bunch. I didn't mean any disrespect. Lots of girls around here are sweet on Sun. Like I said, he's a good-looking boy and the best horseman in the Territory. Everybody says so.”

“Good night, Frank.” Dixon started for the door.

“Just tell him what I said, all right?” When Dixon did not stop, Canton raised his voice. “Tell Bill Sun to keep away from Jack Reshaw and Nate Coday. Tell him I said so—for his own good.”

* * *

Dixon decided to stop by the small office he kept in Buffalo, a single room above Raylan's Dry Goods, before heading home. He kept hours in town only one day a week, Saturday, and often arrived to find he had let supplies of linen bandages, plasters, and other materials run low. Canton's words echoed in his head as he walked along the boardwalk, eyes down, lost in thought. Of course Lorna was infatuated with Billy, this had been true as long as Dixon could remember, but that's all it was, a girlish adoration that would pass when she found her first real boyfriend. When would that happen? She was almost sixteen years old; most girls her age had already had a boyfriend by now, hadn't they? A friend from school or a neighbor? But Lorna didn't seem interested in other young people her age, and neither did Cal for that matter. They seemed satisfied with each other's company, as they had when they were young and spoke that gibberish to each other. Did they still do that, when they were alone? Dixon shook his head. If only Rose had lived . . .

He fished the key from his pocket as he climbed the stairs. As he inserted the key, he felt a pricking on the back of his neck. He turned to find a woman in a dark, hooded cape standing behind him.

“I followed you,” she said. “I've been hoping to catch you alone.”

There was no mistaking the voice. “Lady Faucett?”

“Please open the door, Dr. Dixon. Hurry, before someone sees me.”

The landing was dark and he had trouble with the lock. Finally the tumbler turned and she swept by him as he pushed open the door. Dixon followed her inside. Other than the pale gray light from the lone window, the room was dark. Dixon heard her sigh as he walked to his desk and lit the coal oil lamp he kept there. As he replaced the glass chimney, Odalie flew across the room and pulled down the paper shade. She removed her hood but kept her back to him and did not speak. When at last she turned, he was alarmed by her appearance. Her face was pale and there were shadows below her eyes, half moons of purple.

“Are you ill?” he said. “Please, sit.” He took her arm and guided her to a chair. “Can I get you some water?”

She shook her head. “No, thank you. I'm sorry to ambush you like this, you must find it odd.”

“Not at all. If there's something I can do, I'm happy to help.”

Odalie looked down at her hands and pulled off her gloves. “This is difficult. I don't know how to begin.”

“Take your time, Lady Faucett. Remember, I'm a physician, there's nothing I haven't heard.”

She smiled at him with gratitude. “Please, call me Odalie. Yes, I'm sure it would be difficult to shock you.” She took a deep breath, then exhaled. “I do have a problem, you see, and there is no one else I could turn to. No one I trust, at any rate.”

She hesitated, twisting her gloves in her hands. Dixon suspected he knew what she wanted to tell him and thought he would make it easier.

“Are you with child?” he said.

“Yes.” She responded immediately, clearly relieved to be unburdened of her secret. “How did you know?”

“It was just a guess.” But in fact he had detected faint brown spots on her forehead, splotches on her otherwise creamy skin that had not been present when he saw her last. These spots, known as chloasma, were a sure sign of pregnancy, though more common in women with darker skin. When she removed her gloves he had also noticed a distinct redness on the palms of her hands. This was another sign, though usually not seen until twelve weeks' gestation. “But why is this a problem, Odalie?” he said.

She got to her feet and began pacing. “Because my husband is an odious little man and I do not want his child. In fact, I have absolutely no desire to be a mother at all.” She stopped and looked him directly in the eye, smiling slightly. “There, have I succeeded in shocking you?”

He returned her smile. “Well, I admit I'm a little surprised to hear your opinion of Lord Faucett. Having seen you together, I wouldn't have guessed it. It must make your marriage difficult.”

“And that's all that surprises you?”

Dixon sensed he was entering a minefield. He had never met a woman like this one, and he was uncertain how to proceed. “I know some women feel . . .” he searched for the right word, “apprehensive about pregnancy. It's understandable and there's no shame in it. I've known many women who believe they don't want children, who fear childbirth, but when their baby comes they feel quite different.”

She laughed shortly. “You disappoint me, Dr. Dixon. I do not fear childbirth, and I assure you I will not become a crooning idiot when I hold my new baby in my arms.” She resumed pacing.

“May I ask why you dislike your husband so intensely? Does he mistreat you?”

“Would you consider boring someone to death mistreatment?”

“Without a doubt. In fact, it may be legal grounds for murder.”

She laughed again, this time genuinely. “So we agree.”

“Really, Odalie, why have you come to me? Do you want me to deliver the child? I'll be happy to do that, of course, though I can also recommend several local women who are capable.”

She made a sound of impatience. “No, Dr. Dixon, I do not want your help delivering the child. I told you, I do not want it. I want you to help me. I cannot have this baby—I will not have it.”

Dixon was hoping she would not ask this of him. Though he was sympathetic, motherhood was an overwhelming responsibility, and the burden of caring for a child—even a much wanted one—fell heavily on a woman, she asked of him something he could not do.

“Do I disgust you?” she said.