Crazy Woman Creek (5 page)

With Lenora's mind heavy laden with doubts, her body exhausted and achy from bouncing on the buckboard to town and back, and Ulysses curled up on the floor beside her, finally, gratefully she
slipped into their feather bed, a wedding gift from her parents. She shivered under icy sheets and several layers of quilts. How she missed James’ strong arms around her, his sweet kisses, his warm body next to hers!

It didn’t take long for the tears to come.
Come back James. Please don’t be angry anymore. I’m sorry James. I love you James. Please come back.

#

Ulysses’ throaty growl awoke Lenora from a shallow, troubled sleep. What time was it? It must still be night, for there was not the faintest moon shadow to help her see the corners of the room.

Before Lenora had a chance to light a candle or hush Ulysses she heard it, the unmistakable sound of a man’s heavy boot stepping slowly and stealthily to avoid detection outside her bedroom wall, one foot then another, exactly as she had heard it the night before. The sound was heart-stopping close. Every muscle in Lenora's body was taut, waiting for her mind to discern if she was awake or dreaming.

She wasn’t dreaming. Lenora slid her hand across the mattress to poke James awake. In a horrific instant she realized he was not there.

Then Ulysses began to bark ferociously, as if he’d seen the devil himself creep into the room.

“You learn anything more from her?”

With a wet splooth Sheriff Morris spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground, leaving a splotch of brownish-yellow spittle to seep slowly into the rich brown dirt of the Great Plains. Pale green grasses, thin and fragile, were beginning to appear on the undulating prairies, the cottonwoods near the creeks sprouting buds so small one had to stand underneath the branches to see them. Yesterday’s cold snap had broken and the air was pleasant, almost warm. Spring would not hide its face long.

“Sort of,” said Luke, guiding his horse closer to the sheriff’s mount so they could talk. The search party moved in twosomes, Sheriff Morris and Luke in front, two volunteers from Buffalo settlement a hundred yards behind. Other mounted volunteers were scattered to the four corners of the Roses’
ranch and beyond. “She knows more than she’s telling.”

“We knew that already,” said Sheriff Morris.

“I needed to convince myself.”

“Now that you’re convinced, any idea what she’s hiding, or why?”

Sheriff Morris spat on the ground again and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, adding another faint splotch to his mottled brown cuff.

Luke shifted in his saddle, making the leather squeak. “Not exactly. I’ve narrowed it down some though.” But that was an understatement. Luke had thought of nothing else since he’d left Lenora on her ranch the evening before. He had lots of ideas about Mrs. Rose and her motives, most of them unsettling. He could hardly fall asleep for thoughts of her, alone on the wide prairie. He couldn’t get those green eyes out of his mind.

But then, he hadn’t tried.

“Well?” said Sheriff Morris.

“What I can’t figure is who she’s protecting, herself or her husband.”

“Her husband,” said Sheriff Morris. “We been over this ground before.”

“I know. But I can’t get her to talk about what happened before he took off. Either he left on his own, with no plan to come back, or he left on his own and something has happened to him and he can’t come back.”

“I told you he’s a hothead.”

Luke nodded. “Yeah, you told me. But have you thought about this: maybe he never left his house.”

“You think she killed him? That little girl? She didn’t kill nobody. Rose just ran off and got his fool head broke on some rock. Probably his horse fell in the dark. He’s probably lying on the prairie right now, half froze to death with a busted leg and a cracked skull. Stupid kid. No one can tell him
nothin’.”

“We don’t know that,” said Luke. “No one knows for sure what happened to James Rose.”
Except perhaps his weeping wife.
“And there’s the Sioux. Or the Cheyenne.”

“Indians don’t take prisoners,” said the sheriff, sounding disgusted. “And if the Sioux or Cheyenne had him, they would split his head open and run off with his horse.”

Luke was embarrassed. He should have come to that obvious conclusion on his own.  “Any woman can kill a man. I hear Belle Starr carries two pistols and is never far from her rifle. Even a woman can pull a trigger.”

“Lenora Rose ain’t no Belle Starr.”

“Maybe.” said Luke. “But Mrs. Rose is clever enough to weave her story in a way that suits herself.”

“Meaning?”

“If he ran off because he wanted to, she doesn’t want us to know. And I’m of a mind to believe that’s the case,” said Luke.

“Finally you come around. What made you change your mind?”

“I didn’t change it. I’m not sure what I believe, not even about that. But a sane man doesn’t risk his neck and his horse by riding into the prairie in the dark unless he’s got a good reason.”

“Yep.” Sheriff Morris spat again.

“He’s running to something or he’s running away from something.”

“I follow you,” said Sheriff Morris as they ambled along, eyes to the ground, looking for any sign of the missing rider or his horse. High above them a hawk floated soundlessly on an air current, circling slowly, lazily, as it eyed the thin grass below for a warm-blooded lunch.

“Everything around that ranch had something to say,” said Luke, mulling aloud.

“Such as?”

Luke turned around to see how far back the other two members of the search party were. Satisfied that they were still within sight, he turned back to Sheriff Morris. “I went inside everything ‘cept the house. The barn, the shed, the chicken house, the smokehouse, even the privy. Everything was good quality and in good order. James Rose is a man who cares about his stuff.”

“So?”

“So Rose may have left his ranch on his own power, but he didn’t abandon it. He had enough money to stock it right. Keep it repaired. It didn’t look to me like he was fixing to leave and not come back.”

“Then he left, like I said, and he’s injured,” said Sheriff Morris.

“Mrs. Rose insists that’s not possible. Says her husband is too smart for that.”

Sheriff Morris shook his head in disgust and spat on the ground again.

Luke pulled his broad-brimmed hat down a little farther on his forehead. The sun was higher in the sky now, and though its warmth was welcomed by the riders after the cold snap they’d shivered through the last few days, he was sweating under his heavy coat, and they were all thirsty. They’d been scouting for several hours on the far eastern reaches of the Rose ranch and had found no sign of James Rose or his horse. The ground had been soft enough for his horse to make impressions the night he disappeared, but the hours of rain after he had ridden away from his ranch had obliterated any clues to his movements.

“We’re not far from the North-East Creek,” said Sheriff Morris, halting his horse. “You can see the cottonwoods,” he said, pointing to the gray smudge at the eastern border of the Roses’ property. “Let’s rest a bit, water the horses.”

Luke nodded. He halted his horse too, turned around in his saddle, and motioned with his arm to the two other men to catch up with him and the sheriff.

In about twenty minutes the foursome was near enough to the creek to see that another rider had stopped for a drink. A handsome brown Morgan stood just feet from the rushing waters, which flowed icy cold and fast from spring runoff. The horse’s lead was looped tightly to a leafless red ash. Its head drooped unnaturally, and it acted as though it was sleeping, because it did not lift its head as the four riders approached. A nearby stand of cottonwoods, naked from the ravages of winter, provided no camouflage for whoever had tied up the Morgan, neither did the low scrub pine that grew along the prairie’s edge that led to the drop-off to the creek. Yet the horse’s owner was nowhere in sight.

“Hullo!” called Sheriff Morris as he halted his horse some twenty feet away.

Instantly the Morgan became alert, jerking its head and snorting. It yanked at the lead, frantically trying to free itself. It jerked violently, again and again, raising its front legs high into the air for added leverage, all the while whinnying piteously.

“Something’s wrong,” said Luke, and without waiting for Cyrus’ opinion, he goaded his horse closer to the creek bank. Luke’s heart beat rapidly as he approached; he dreaded what gruesome thing he might see in or near the rushing water. The drop from the bank was straight down—this part of the creek was no good for wading. But the drop was only about two feet. A man could lie on his belly and easily scoop water into his mouth without fear of falling in. But if he fell, he would be sent on a one-way ride to eternity, especially if he fell at night, when no one was around to hear him yell for help. The shimmering water was swift, deep, and cold enough to squeeze the breath out of a man. Luke looked downstream and wondered if that was what happened to the horse’s owner.

“Help us with this animal!” yelled Cyrus.

Luke broke from his morbid reverie, tied his horse securely to a cottonwood, and joined the others as they tried to get control of the Morgan. It took several minutes of false starts and many soothing words, but finally the exhausted Morgan was calm enough to be led to the creek. Its eyes were cloudy and it trembled. Luke filled his hat with the refreshing water to make drinking easier for the horse. It drank like it hadn’t put its mouth to water in days.

“It’s his, isn’t it?” said Luke as he watched, amazed, as Beauty slurped noisily from his hat. He bent down and filled his hat again from the creek and lifted it to the horse’s mouth.

“It’s his alright. I’d know that Morgan anywhere. James Rose always had to have the best of everything,” said Cyrus.

And that’s why he had the prettiest wife in the Territory.
The memory of Lenora, waiting alone at the ranch for her James to come home, pained him. Someone would have to tell her. “Sad to see such a beautiful animal go three days without water,” said Luke, steering the conversation away from his true thoughts.

After the search team’s horses had drank all the water they wanted, the four men sat on the ground, their horses and the Morgan tethered nearby, munching quietly what little spring grass they could forage. The men needed to rest a while before handling the depressing tasks ahead of them. Most urgent, James Rose’s body must be found and returned to his widow. His horse must be returned too.

“His body is probably mighty far downstream by now,” said Sheriff Morris, reaching into his pocket for his tobacco pouch. “We got more searching to do, but at least now we won’t waste time looking where he ain’t.”

“Wherever his body is, it’s well preserved,” said one of the volunteers with a grin. Ben Slocomb was a slender young man, hardly out of his teens, with sandy hair and eyes that twinkled with mischief. His attempt at humor in this dark circumstance provoked chuckles.

But Luke barely nodded in agreement. He was thinking. “How do you suppose he fell in?” he said.

None of the men answered.

“Even in the dark the creek wouldn’t surprise him,” Luke surmised aloud. “He’d hear it before he saw it, and it’s his land. A man knows his own land.”

“I was wondering the same thing,” said Sheriff Morris, gazing downstream, his chewing tobacco temporarily forgotten.

“And he tied up his horse,” said Luke, motioning toward the red ash, “as if he had stopped for a drink. He didn’t stumble onto the creek in the dark. He came here on purpose.”

“Maybe he leaned over too far.” Jed Whitehall, a plainspoken, plain-faced rancher of about thirty, idly tugged at a dry bit of straw still clinging to the soil since fall. He put the clean part of the creamy-white reed in his mouth and started to chew. “Accidents happen. People lose their footing. It happens to the best of us one time or another. It probably happened very fast.”

The others nodded in silence, humor forgotten while each searched up and down the water for answers. As he searched Luke imagined the terror of James Rose as he slipped and fell into the icy water, all alone under the cloudy black darkness of a late spring rain. Luke studied every bush, every spindly, leafless sapling that rooted along the bank, but the creek wasn’t revealing its secret. James Rose may have called for help, panicked and frightened, but his cries would have been swallowed by the night. The knowledge that a man died on this spot seemed to hallow it for Luke.

“Maybe he killed hisself,” said Ben. The other three stopped their search and looked at him.

“Son, you’re too young to know how it was with James Rose,” said Sheriff Morris. “Suicide is for losers. James Rose wouldn’t take his own life. That’s not the way winners do. He had too much pride in him to just give up.”

The older men nodded in sober agreement.

“Besides, he had everything going for him,” said the sheriff. “Best piece of land in the county, prosperous ranch, pretty wife. No, James Rose didn’t take his life.”

Luke and Jed nodded silently in agreement. Ben looked chastened and said no more.

The men agreed they should notify Mrs. Rose of the loss of her husband as soon as possible, return Beauty to her stall on the Rose ranch, and then go back to town to assemble a new search party for the next day to retrieve the body. This second group of searchers would focus on the banks of the North-East Creek that marked the eastern edge of the Rose property, downstream from where they’d found Beauty.