Rocky Mountain Justice (The Legend of Camel's Hump) (10 page)
Read Rocky Mountain Justice (The Legend of Camel's Hump) Online
Authors: Jeff Noonan
Straining to hear, the boys were totally silent. Then they both clearly heard Ike’s boisterous guffaw, followed by, “You should’ve seen that fat-assed Preacher. He just folded up and laid there in his own puke. What a loser!” Sheriff Montgomery said something in reply, but the boys couldn’t hear him. Then Ike, still speaking loudly, went on, “I don’t see anything to worry about. There’s no one in this town with the balls to argue with us. Hell, we could probably go down there and screw their wives and daughters and they would just ask us which ones we liked better! They’re a bunch of gutless wonders.”
As the conversation continued, Ike’s wife, Bird appeared in the doorway. She looked at the two men on the porch and told them, “Well, you can set there and guzzle wine, but some of us have to work. The garden needs weeding.” Ike and the sheriff both laughed at this with Ike saying, “So what, Woman? Do you need us to carry the whip or something?’ Bird cackled and waved a strip of what looked like leather. “No, I can handle it.” With that, Bird turned and walked to the low stone building with barred windows that the boys had noticed on their last visit. She had the strip of leather in her hand. She fumbled with the lock and then threw the door open. “Get out here, Bitch.”
A woman slowly came out of the building, shielding her eyes against the bright sunlight. She was a small woman, dressed in a simple calico shift. But, both boys noticed that she stood straight, glaring at Bird. She said something that couldn’t be heard on the hill. Without a moment’s hesitation, Bird grabbed her by the hair and threw her halfway across the yard where she hit the ground hard.
“Damn,” the sheriff remarked, “She’s still feisty, eh? You would think that she would learn after a few weeks of this. She must be dumber than she looks.” With that, he walked over to where the woman lay in the yard. Not unkindly, he picked her up and began dusting her off. But soon the dusting turned to something else and the boys could see his hands touching where they shouldn’t be touching. The woman stood straight, her head up, looking defiantly at the distant mountains. To the watchers, it looked like she was totally ignoring the animal groping her. The only sounds reaching the hilltop now were the piercing sound of Bird’s laughter as she watched Sheriff Montgomery paw at the woman. Finally Bird spat her tobacco juice to one side and moved between the two. “That’s enough playing. She has work to do!”
Sheriff Montgomery slowly walked back to the porch steps and sat down beside Ike, taking a big swig from the wine bottle. Together they leaned back, grinning widely as Bird pushed the woman ahead of her, walking toward the big vegetable garden on the far side of the house. Slapping the leather strap on her hand, Bird said, “OK, Bitch. Start weeding. You know what to do.” She stood there as the woman, who was obviously a prisoner of some sort, began moving on her hands and knees through the rows of vegetables. The two men sat on the porch and talked quietly to one another. The boys watching from above couldn’t hear the conversation.
Jerry drew back to a spot behind the hillock that was screening them and motioned for Ray to join him. When Ray got to the sheltered spot, they whispered excitedly about the scene they had just witnessed. Both of them were stunned and shocked, but they both knew that there was nothing that they could do against two armed men. Ray was the first to comment. “She must be a prisoner from the jail that they have up here doing hard labor or something like that.” “Yeah, but I don’t think it’s legal to have the prisoners doing work for Ike and Bird. I’m not sure, but it doesn’t sound right. Plus, I know it ain’t right for that asshole to have his hands on her like that!” Ray agreed. “Do you want to see any more?” “No, let’s take a look around to make sure that we have the best hiding place up here. We’re going to want to come back. Then let’s get out of here. We don’t want to put that woman in any more jeopardy. There’s no telling what they’d do to her if they knew that we knew about this.” They then searched around the area, but finally decided that their first spot was as good as they could find. A quick glance told them that the scene below them hadn’t changed. They gathered their belongings and silently made their way back to the car, erasing their tracks with a pine branch as they moved.
Still stunned, they didn’t talk until they were almost back to town. Then Jerry pulled the car over. “We need to talk before we get back to Otto’s place. Too many people are there and we need to think about what we just saw before we start telling the world about it.” “You’re right. I need to think for a minute.” The two of them sat in silence for a while, both totally engrossed in their own thoughts.
Finally, Ray broke the silence. “You know - I don’t feel good about telling everyone in the soda fountain. This is too serious for some of them.” Jerry agreed, “I was just thinking the same thing. Dawn and Otto would have good ideas. Maybe Little Red too – but Dale and Rick would be no help at all. We need to hold this close until we can get my Dad and your Mom and maybe Dawn’s folks together. We need some brainpower on this.” After a moment of deep thought, Jerry broke the silence. “OK. Let’s go. We won’t tell them anything while we’re with the crowd. But as soon as we can, we get Dawn out of there and tell her. I won’t keep any secrets from her.” Ray just nodded. Satisfied, Jerry put the old car in gear and aimed it toward Otto’s store.
T
he boys were mistaken if they thought they would be the center of attention when they returned. They arrived in town just as one of George Parker’s trucks arrived with a big bulldozer being towed on a trailer behind it. Just moments later, a truckload of 2X4 lumber came through from the mill at Big River. Both trucks headed through town in the direction of the Moore’s burned out home. Ray came alive in the passenger seat, “Follow them! Jerry, follow them!” Jerry stopped long enough to pick up Dawn, who was standing on the store steps. Then the three of them followed the two big trucks toward the site of Ray’s old home.
Dawn couldn’t wait to hear what the boys had found at Ike’s place. Before she was even in her seat, she was asking questions. “What happened up there? Did you see anything? Are they drunk again?” Jerry laughed at her excitement. “Whoa Dawn. Gosh, you would think that we were on an Arctic Expedition or something.” At that, she punched him sharply in the shoulder and laughed. “OK, then, what did you see?” Jerry pulled the car over and looked at her steadily. “Dawn, if we tell you what we saw, I want your word that you won’t tell anyone until I give you the word that you can. Will you agree to that?” Dawn was startled by this and she held Jerry’s stare unflinchingly. “OK Jerry. I trust you. I won’t blab. Now what happened?”
Jerry then told her the whole story, with Ray chiming in occasionally. When they got to the point where they first saw the prisoner come out of the stone building, Dawn gasped aloud, but maintained her silence. Then, as Jerry described the woman being thrown across the yard, Dawn started crying, a rivulet of silent tears running down her face. But still she remained quiet. When Jerry finished talking, she sat for a moment. “I guess she’s probably a prisoner working off her sentence. If it weren’t for that, we should probably get that girl out of there. But if she’s a prisoner from the jail in Big River we probably can’t do anything. In any case, it’s wrong to throw her around, or feel her up, or chase her with a whip. Is there anything we can do about it?” Jerry answered with a simple, “I don’t know.” Then, after a moment, “Let’s watch the place for a while and see if we can figure out if she is really a prisoner – I mean a jailhouse kind of prisoner. When we find out, we can talk to our parents and see what they think. But let’s not go to them too fast. I don’t want to get our folks on the wrong side of those two and none of us want to rush into a battle with two armed men, no matter how right we are.” Lost in thought, Dawn nodded her agreement.
Jerry started the car again and headed for Moore’s place. Arriving at the site, they pulled over out of the way. George Parker and Wayne Flynn were already there, along with several townspeople. George was unloading the big D-8 and Wayne was supervising the unloading of the load of lumber. From where they parked, Jerry could see that people were already working and that they had already laid out the outlines of the new house with stakes and some white powder from the baseball diamond. The town wasn’t wasting any time, he thought cheerfully. He and Ray headed over to help unload the lumber.
The townspeople soon had the lumber neatly stacked to the side of the planned home construction site. Then Wayne held a short meeting with them and they agreed to have a workforce, composed mainly of school-age boys and older, retired, men on site the next morning. Wayne said that he would be there to get them started. In the meantime, George Parker had already used the big bulldozer to dig a hole for disposal of the debris from the fire. Now he was breaking ground for the new home’s foundation.
Most of the townspeople stayed for a while, watching the big bulldozer do its work. First it carefully smoothed the ground where the home would be built. Then it started following the white lines on the dirt, digging down about three feet in the soft dirt in an outline of the home, where the foundation would be poured. Jerry watched as the big D-8 bulldozer traced the home outlines, remarking to Dawn that, “using that D-8 to dig those trenches is like driving a ten-penny nail with a sledge hammer!” She nodded, still lost in deep thought - as she had been since hearing about the prisoner out at Ike’s sheep ranch. Instead, Ray took it on himself to reply. “Yeah, but you have to admit, the price is right!”
It was Jerry’s turn to nod solemnly. He was watching Dawn, finally realizing that she was deeply upset. He put his arm over her shoulders and gave a small squeeze, intending to reassure her. But, to his amazement, her tears started again, silently running down her cheeks. Not knowing what to do, he squeezed her again, holding her as her shoulders began shaking. Quietly he turned her away from the crowd and they walked a few paces as she composed herself.
As they stood there, a truck drove into the site, loaded with a cement mixer, cement and the plank forms that would be placed in the trench so the foundation could be poured. Jerry was surprised to see Otto, with a big grin on his face, riding in the truck’s passenger seat. With his thick accent, Otto was almost unintelligible as he yelled out the window, “Hey, my Cherman friends can help also, py golly!” He was obviously proud of himself. He had called an old friend in Missoula who owned a construction business. The friend had volunteered the forms, cement, and the big cement mixer riding on the truck. The townspeople spontaneously broke into cheers. This contribution would save days of backbreaking labor. The men crowded around the truck and soon had it unloaded.
The construction project totally consumed the next few days. The town’s boys and older men congregated on-site every morning at 8AM. They brought their personal tools (or those of their fathers) and everyone worked until dusk. At mid-day, Otto and ladies from the town brought lunches for the workers. In the late afternoon, men would come from their day jobs and lend a hand, often providing the guidance that was needed for the next day’s construction. Soon the frame was erected and the walls begun.
George Parker hauled logs to the mill in Big River and traded them for lumber. His workers all agreed to work for free during the time they were cutting the “trading logs”, so the impact was spread more evenly. The home that was being built was truly a community project and they were all tremendously proud of the effort.
However the plight of the prisoner woman was never far from the thoughts of the three people who knew about her. They had no idea about what to do, but they knew that they had to do something. When they finished work for the day, they would meet at Jerry’s home and sit, talking, at the old picnic table under the trees in the yard. By agreement, they never talked about the woman when any others people, were present. They agreed that they would start watching Ike’s place regularly to try to get a better idea exactly what was happening there.
But Jerry and Ray found that they didn’t have enough free time to do the watching. After a couple of frustrating days, Dawn volunteered to go to the knoll above the house every day for a few hours and watch. But Jerry refused that idea. “You can’t be out there alone,” he would state adamantly whenever the idea came up. “Just wait until Ray or I can break free and go with you.” But, as the days drug on, it became apparent that neither Ray nor Jerry would be able to get free of the work. Jerry was the acknowledged leader of the teen-aged building crew. Ray was the one who was going to be living in the house when it was done. So both boys were too obvious on site to leave for even an hour. In the meantime, Dawn was getting more and more adamant about helping the woman in the stone dugout.
Finally one evening, Dawn put her foot down. “Tomorrow I’m going out there. I’ll take binoculars, like you guys did, and I’ll watch from the hill. But I am not going to ignore this any longer. It’s too important!” Ray immediately tried to argue with her, but Jerry was surprisingly quiet. He, too, had been having his own pangs of guilt about the woman out there. He didn’t want Dawn going out there, especially not alone. But he knew it couldn’t be postponed any longer. He leaned back and thought, as the other two argued. Finally he broke his silence. “Wait a minute, Guys. I’ve got an idea.” When they quieted down, he said, “What would you think about letting Little Red in on our secret? He could go with Dawn and be her backup. If anything were to happen, there’s no one around here that can catch Red in the woods. He could raise the alarm, if nothing else.”
Dawn and Ray thought about this, slowly accepting the idea of bringing someone else into their little conspiracy. They all knew Red and trusted him. He was younger than them, but he had proven to be a good friend on many occasions. They discussed the idea and finally agreed. Red was going to be the fourth person in their search for the truth.