Long Road to Cheyenne (20 page)

“Yeah, Cam,” Larry chimed in, “you’re still ridin’ with her. What are you gonna do? You gonna keep the lady happy every night after she’s worked all day?”

“Yeah,” Bob echoed. “Has ol’ Mary put you out to stud?”

“You know,” Cam told the two grinning faces, “the two of you ain’t got one bit brighter since the last time I saw you.” He shook his head in mock disgust.

“Well, what are you aimin’ to do?” Bob asked. “I ain’t never heard you say. When you folks left us, you was just gonna guide her up to see her brother-in-law.”

“I don’t know,” Cam answered, “drift, I reckon. I made a bargain with her that I’d see that she got where she wanted to go. So I reckon that’s Fort Collins. After that, I ain’t got no plans. Hell, you heard what happened to her brother-in-law. Do you think I shoulda just said, ‘So long, good luck’ and left her and those two little girls there?”

“No, I reckon not,” Bob replied. “I was just japin’ you a little bit. I’da done the same as you. So would Larry. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.” It was obvious that he had touched a raw nerve in Cam’s mind.

Cam recovered at once, realizing that he might have shown a hint of irritation. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m gettin’ a little touchy.” Hearing himself answer Bob’s questions made him realize that he really didn’t have any plans after Mary and the kids were safe. He hadn’t even thought about the day when he’d be through with them. When he really thought about it, the prospect made him feel kind of melancholy. He kinda liked being Emma’s
uncle Cam
, but what the hell would he do in Fort Collins? He had no trade of any kind. All he knew was cattle and horses, and he wasn’t ready to go back to that just yet. He had money from the weapons and saddle he had sold, an extra horse that was worth a little, plus he knew Mary would insist upon paying him handsomely for his services, no matter how much he protested that his price was forty dollars. “I reckon it’s time I turned in for the night,” he finally said. “What time will you be pullin’ outta here in the mornin’?”

“Not till after breakfast,” Larry said. “We’ve got a short day tomorrow.”

Cam nodded. “Well, I’ll see you in the mornin’,” he said, and left to go bed down with the horses. He was almost positive that Mary was going to take the stage to Cheyenne, but he would have to wait until he saw her at breakfast to decide if he was going to be on it with her.

He walked out the front door of the inn and had started toward the stables before he remembered he had told Ardella that he would stop by her room so she could change the dressing on his wound. Hesitating, he almost decided to skip it, for already the wound was healing to his satisfaction and he was stronger every day. A slight smile crossed his lips then as he pictured the scolding he would suffer from Ardella in the morning.
What the hell?
he thought.
It
won’t hurt to put a clean bandage on it.
He did an about-face and walked around to the back door.

The two rooms that had been added to the original building were connected to it by a short hallway and an outside door in the middle. Cam took the two steps to the door, went to Ardella’s room, and rapped on the door, quietly, so as not to wake Mary and the girls if they were sleeping. Ardella opened the door at once. “Come on in, Cam. I was startin’ to think I was gonna have to go drag you outta the barn to take a look at that wound. Come on over here and set down on the bed. I got a pitcher of clean water and some fresh bandages. Mrs. Kelly gave me an old sheet to use for bandages.” When he had parked himself on the edge of the bed, she continued. “Take that shirt off so I can get at it.”

She proceeded to untie the old bandage and went to work with a washcloth to clean away some of the dried blood. “Won’t be long before it won’t need no bandage,” she said. “You heal quick, just like Long Sam. The thing that helps it to heal fast like that is that poultice I slapped on there when I found you.”

“I reckon,” Cam said, although he was not convinced it should deserve much of the credit.

She finished cleaning the area around the wound and wrapped a fresh bandage across his chest and shoulder. “There you go. You can put your shirt back on now.” He was in the midst of pulling it on when the door suddenly opened and Mary walked in. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t know . . .” Obviously embarrassed, she didn’t finish her statement. “I should have knocked.”

Ardella threw back her head and laughed at the shocked expression on Mary’s face. “Well, that’s all right. We was through, anyway, weren’t we, Cam?”

“I reckon,” Cam replied, with no clue as to what Ardella found so hilarious, “soon as I get my shirt on. Then I reckon I’ll leave you ladies to get to bed.” Walking past Mary, he said, “I’ll see you in the mornin’ at breakfast. Have you pretty much decided to ride the stage on in to Cheyenne?” Mary nodded. “We can decide in the mornin’ what you wanna do with the horses.”

After the door closed, Ardella suggested to Mary that she might want Cam to take the horses to Cheyenne. “You’d most likely get a better price for ’em there. They might take ’em off your hands here, but I doubt they’d give you much money for ’em.” She studied Mary’s face closely, for she had read her first reaction when she walked into the room and found Cam getting his shirt on. To Ardella, there was no mistaking Mary’s concern. “Maybe you’d rather get rid of the horses here, so Cam can ride the stage with us.”

“No,” Mary replied at once, then paused while she thought the matter over. Frightened by her reaction to the scene she at first thought she was walking in on, she feared she had developed an interest in her young guide beyond that of a paid employee. She promptly lectured herself that her reaction had been ridiculous to even imagine. Ardella was merely changing Cam’s bandage. The thought of anything beyond that was what Ardella found to be so amusing. But the discovery of deeper feelings for her soft-spoken protector troubled her a great deal, especially since she could not imagine a successful outcome for such a union. After a few more moments of thought on the matter, she told Ardella what she had decided. “I’m thinking of giving Cam those horses, as part of the payment I owe him. If we find we need horses when we get to Fort Collins, we’ll get them there. I don’t think we need Cam’s protection anymore. From here, into Cheyenne at least, we aren’t supposed to risk much danger of road agents. And if we do, I feel confident with Bob and Larry to see us through.”

“Plus, you got me and my rifle,” Ardella interjected, “unless you’re fixin’ to turn me loose here, too.”

“No, no,” Mary quickly responded. “I’m counting on you to stay with me. I need your help and your strength.” She patted the plaintive woman on the shoulder. “Besides, I couldn’t deprive my two girls of their aunt Ardella.”

“Well, I’ll do my best to look out for you,” Ardella assured her, “but if a time comes when you think I ain’t pullin’ my share of the load, all you have to do is tell me and I’ll leave.”

“Don’t even think such a thing. You’re stuck with me.”

Cam was at breakfast half an hour before the women showed up with the girls, and happened to be there at the same time as Bob and Larry. He took the opportunity to advise the two of the “luggage” they would be transporting, although he chose not to tell them of the real value of it. “The lady got a little bit of gold from her husband’s interest in the mine, and that’s what she’s countin’ on to set herself up in business, so I’d sure hate to see her lose it.”

“We ain’t got no strongbox on this coach,” Larry said, “it bein’ one of the small ones. But I don’t think we’ll run into any trouble between here and Cheyenne. We ain’t for a long time now.”

“You ain’t ridin’ with ’em, then?” Bob asked.

“Reckon not,” Cam replied. “I’ll be comin’ on behind you with the horses.”

“Well, me and Larry will take care of ’em,” Bob assured him.

“If you do run into trouble, don’t forget you can count on Ardella. She has a rifle and knows how to use it, so you might wanna let her carry it with her in the coach.”

“Good to know,” Bob said. “I’ll sure keep her in mind.” He looked right and left to make sure there was no one else to hear. “She looks tough enough to whip a grizzly.”

Cam chuckled. “I don’t think she’d back down from one, and that’s a fact.”

“Well, we’d best get movin’, Larry,” Bob said, pushing back from the table. “Sure good seein’ you again, Cam.”

“I’ll load Mary’s things when you get hitched up,” Cam told them as they were leaving. He started to get up, but Mary, Ardella, and the girls came in the back door. Emma ran ahead to greet Cam, so he had to stay a few moments to hear what was on her mind after a night’s sleep. “I just finished my breakfast,” he told Mary and Ardella. “I’m thinkin’ I can load your things on the stage as soon as they’re ready to go.” He wondered at the odd little smile Ardella favored him with as he spoke, but dismissed it as just one of the rambunctious woman’s many eccentricities. Mary, on the other hand, had a definite look of concern on her face.

“Cam,” Mary said, still standing while the others sat down at the table, “I need to talk to you a minute, back in my room.”

Curious, he replied, “Sure. Is somethin’ wrong?”

“No,” she said, “nothing’s wrong. I just want to talk to you in private.” She looked around her at the half dozen passengers filing in around the long table, then turned and walked back to the door. He followed her out the door and down the short hallway to her room.

“I see you pulled all your gold sacks out in the middle of the floor,” he commented upon entering the room. “Where’d you have it, under the bed?”

“Yes, we did,” she confessed with a slight smile. Then the smile disappeared immediately as her face took on a serious facade. “Cam, I think it’s time to release you from your obligation to watch over me and my girls. I think we’ll be fine from here on, and it’s not fair to delay you any further from where you were going when we first met.”

He wasn’t sure what she was telling him at first, but then it began to sink in. “You mean you’re firin’ me?” he asked.

She reacted at once. “No, don’t say that. I’m not firing you. It’s just that I think we’ll be safe from here on in, and I don’t want to bind you to any sense of obligation you might feel you have. You should be free to go on with your life, the life I interrupted with my troubles. In your efforts to keep me and my children safe, you’ve been shot twice. I’ll never forget that, and I’ll always be grateful to you for coming to my aid when I so desperately needed someone I could trust. I think Emma may have been right when she called you an angel.”

He was more confused than hurt. He knew there was no reason to fire him before he saw them safely to Fort Collins, but it felt as though he was being fired. “Hell, Mary, you’re the one callin’ the shots. You don’t have to worry about lettin’ me go. I just thought I’d feel better knowin’ you were safely in Fort Collins. But you’re probably right, there ain’t much chance you’ll run into any trouble between here and Cheyenne, anyway. I’ll help you load up your possibles on the stage. Bob and Larry oughta be able to tell you where you can deposit that gold. You’ve got some horses to do somethin’ with. I’ll still take them down there for you.”

“I’m giving you the horses,” she said. “I don’t need them, and I think you certainly deserve them.” Before he could comment on that, she continued. “And I’m giving you the payment I promised.”

“Mary, you don’t owe me anythin’ but the forty dollars we agreed on, and you really ought’n owe me that, since you’re givin’ me a lot more’n that in those horses and saddles.”

“I owe you my life, and the lives of my babies. How can I ever repay that?”

He smiled and said, “You don’t owe me anythin’. We’re square. Now, you’d best get back in there and get some breakfast before they throw it to the hogs.” He walked over and held the door for her. She shook her head sadly, knowing she was leaving someone who meant so much to her. Before she walked out the door, she paused, went up on her tiptoes, and kissed him on the cheek. Then she hurried up the hall, not trusting herself to look back at him.

•   •   •

When Bob Allen walked into the dining room and announced that the stage was going to leave in thirty minutes, everyone at the table hurried to their rooms to get their belongings. While the passengers had been eating their breakfast, Cam went down to the stable to get what odds and ends had been left there with the packs. He put them on one of the horses and led it over to the back door of the inn. As a favor to Cam, Larry drove the coach around to the back to make the loading easier. Cam unloaded the luggage off the packhorse, then helped the women load the items from their rooms. Also helping in the loading, Bob soon realized that there was quite a bit more weight than he had assumed. He cast a suspicious eye in Cam’s direction and commented, “I’d say the lady came away with more than a little bit of gold from that mine. No wonder those outlaws were chasing after you. Maybe we shoulda been drivin’ one of the Concord coaches and six horses, instead of this one and four horses.” A good portion of Mary’s fortune was packed in the front boot, under the driver’s box. The rest was packed in the rear boot, causing some of the passengers’ luggage to have to ride on top, along with two colorful suitcases with bullet holes.

“I’d say she’s got enough to build a right nice boardin’house,” Cam replied. “It’s her whole future, now that her husband’s gone, so take care of her, Bob.”

“I will,” Bob said.

When everything was loaded, Cam checked the canvas cover to make sure it was secure. Unknown to him, it was all there except for one bag of gold dust. He failed to notice Mary when she walked over to the packhorse he had tied to the stair rail at the back stoop, and slipped the missing sack inside an empty bag on one of the packs.

When all was ready, Cam stood by while the passengers boarded the coach. Ardella gave him a hug, then climbed up on top where she could breathe, she said, rifle in hand. Emma and Grace each gave Cam a hug, and Emma had to be pried loose from his leg by her mother. “Why aren’t you going with us?” Emma wanted to know.

“I got other things I gotta do right now,” Cam told her. “I’ll come see you when I get a chance.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. I’ll come see you,” he said, with no idea when that might be, if ever. He knew of no other reason to go to Fort Collins.

The last to get on board was Mary Bishop. She smiled at Cam and whispered, “Thank you for everything.”

He nodded in reply and touched a finger to his hat brim as he stepped back away from the coach and looked up to meet Bob’s gaze and one quick nod confirming his promise to take care of her. He stood there in the yard and watched the stage depart until he could no longer hear Larry’s shouted commands to his horses and the coach rolled out of sight. It was an odd sensation he was aware of, and he realized that he had never missed anyone since his mother died. But this feeling he now experienced was an empty feeling, as he imagined it would be if one lost a family.
Uncle Cam,
he thought, and smiled when he thought of Emma and Grace—and Mary and Ardella. They
had
been his family for the short time they were together.
I’m getting downright sentimental,
he told himself, sighed, and returned to the back stoop to get the packhorse. “I’m free to go where I damn well please again,” he told the sorrel. He would have to think about that and decide if he wanted to go back to the Black Hills, or head for Montana maybe. “First, I gotta see about the horses.” He led the sorrel back to the stable to decide what to do.

He cut his six horses out of the corral and tied them to the rail while he evaluated them to decide which one he would ride and which one to keep as a packhorse. The other four he planned to sell, along with the three extra saddles. There was not much time spent in selecting his saddle horse; he would keep the dun he had been riding. As for his packhorse, he settled on the other sorrel, thinking it the stronger of the two, so he went about transferring the pack rig from the one he had used that morning. It occurred to him as he removed the straps that Mary had forgotten to pay him the forty dollars they had agreed upon. He had to chuckle at the thought, for she had been so adamant that she was going to pay him. It didn’t matter to him that she had forgotten. He would have helped her for nothing, anyway. And besides, he was well paid in horseflesh. Thinking there was nothing but a couple of empty cloth sacks left on the packhorse, he pulled the rig off and almost dropped it. “What the hell?” he muttered, then saw where the weight came from. “Well, I’ll be . . . She forgot one.” He immediately thought to throw his saddle on the dun and chase the stage down, but he hesitated. He had unloaded the dust from the packhorse, and he was sure he had loaded every sack on the stage. Shaking his head with a sigh and a chuckle, he realized that she had not forgotten after all.

The next bit of business was the sale of his horses, so he went into the stable looking for Lou, the man charged with running it. He found him in the tack room, working on a harness. Right from the start, Lou didn’t show much interest in buying any horses, but he walked outside with Cam to take a closer look. “I’m gonna be honest with you, mister,” Lou told him. “Mr. Kelly ain’t gonna be interested in buying any more horses. He raises his own, and he’s got a lot more than he needs to run this ranch. You can talk to him about it, and he might give you a little somethin’ to take ’em off your hands, but it wouldn’t be much.” When Cam grimaced in response, Lou suggested an alternative. “You’d be a sight better off if you was to take those horses down to Cheyenne. They’re always lookin’ for good horses, and they’ll give you a decent price for ’em.”

Cam scratched his chin while he thought about it. Cheyenne wasn’t in the direction he was figuring on going. There had to be someplace else where he could sell them—Custer City, maybe, or Deadwood. He hesitated. Cheyenne was a lot closer.

Seeing him struggling with the decision, Lou said, “Fellow to see in Cheyenne is Jim Pylant. He’s got a ranch right outside of town—sells a lot of horses to the army. He’s most likely your best bet.”

“What the hell?” Cam decided. “I ain’t in a hurry to go anywhere, and that ain’t but fifty miles or so. Jim Pylant, huh? I might as well get the most I can for the horses.” A factor that figured in with his decision making was the fact that he was now in possession of the most wealth he had ever had in his entire life. He wasn’t sure of the value of the sack of dust that Mary had slipped into his saddlebag, but it had to be considerable. He could just give the horses away if he so chose, but that would go strictly against his nature. He had been forced to scratch out a meager living ever since he was big enough to ride a horse, and he wasn’t going to change his respect for money at this point. Gold dust was good to have, but it ran out, just like everything else. “Well, thank you for the advice,” he said to Lou. “I reckon I’m goin’ to Cheyenne.”

With thoughts of missing his adopted family already in the back of his mind, he set out along the stage road to Cheyenne, leading a string of horses behind him. It was still early on a clear, bright day, and it felt good to be riding without having to constantly peer over his shoulder lest someone should overtake him to do harm to him or those he cared for. There was no need for hurry. It was going to take him two days, because of the extra horses he led, so he figured he might as well make it two leisurely days. Crossing Horse Creek well before noon, he let the horses drink, then pushed on, following the stage road. There was still daylight left when he struck Lodgepole Creek and the horses were showing signs of tiring, so he followed the creek a little way upstream to make his camp.

•   •   •

Cotton Roach slow-walked his horses into the yard at Chugwater Station, his eyes constantly darting back and forth warily for any sign of the people he trailed. It was already dark and his horses were in need of rest, since they had been ridden hard all day. He wasn’t sure how far behind he was, but he was going to have to stop for the night, so he decided he might as well stay in the inn. He could use a good meal, paid for with some money he had found at Foley’s, and he might get an idea how far behind Red Bandanna he was, if they had happened to stop here as well.

He nudged his weary horses toward the stable, where he saw a man at a corner of the corral, pumping water into a watering trough. Lou looked up as the white-haired stranger rode up to him. “Howdy,” he said. “You look like you’ve been ridin’ hard. You thinkin’ about puttin’ ’em up for the night?”

“Maybe,” Roach replied. “How late do they serve supper over there at the hotel?”

“Oh, it ain’t too late. They’ll fix you a plate even if they’ve started to clean up.”

“I reckon I’ll leave my horses here, then,” Roach said, and dismounted. Lou looked quickly away when Roach glanced up and caught him staring at his bound-up hand. Something about the sinister scowl on the stranger’s face told him it was best not to ask questions about it. While Roach removed his saddlebags, he said, “I’m lookin’ for some folks, a man travelin’ with a woman and two young’uns, leading some horses—mighta had somebody else with ’em—thought they mighta stopped here.”