Showdown at Buffalo Jump (15 page)

They hadn't argued. There were no shouts or flaring tempers. They spoke when necessary, but only then, and Max felt as though a coyote had gnawed a hole in his belly. And today, when he thought he could tolerate no more, it grew worse.

Catherine had walked in as he was rummaging through her dresser. Temper flared across her face, giving way to incredulity as he turned to face her, and she realized what he was holding.

“What are you doing with my shoes?”

“Have to go to town. I'm taking your shoes with me.”

“In a pig's eye.”

“The ones you're wearing, too.”

“You'll have to take them from me.”

“I'll do it if I have to, but that won't be pleasant for either one of us.”

Catherine sighed and sat down at the table to remove her shoes. “You would enjoy that, Mr. Bass. I think you enjoy playing the bully, subjecting me to these indignities. I think you enjoy going through a woman's personal things.”

Max slapped her. He hadn't meant to. He didn't even know what he was doing until it was done. He stood in disbelief, his hand stinging from the blow, watching tears spill from Catherine's eyes as she sank to the floor in a heap.

Catherine looked up at him, and the hurt he saw was more devastating than her anger had ever been.

“Mr. Bass,” she said, her voice racked with sobs, “there was a time when I thought there was kindness and gentleness hidden somewhere in you. I was wrong. You have been around beasts for so long you've become one. I pity you, Mr. Bass. I pity you.”

Max walked white faced from the dugout, Catherine's shoes under one arm. He saddled the mare, dropped the shoes into the saddlebags, and kicked the horse into a lope toward town. He felt nothing, not the easy gait of the horse, not the wind in his face, not the tears on his cheeks—nothing.

It was dark when he reached town, and he rode down Main Street, looking neither right nor left until he reached Millard's. Max tied the mare to a post and loosened the cinch on the saddle, thumping across the boardwalk and past the double doors, both ajar to invite the cool night air inside.

It was a busy night, the bar lined with men and two or three of the tables filled. They all looked up as Max stepped through the door, their attention lingering longer than he thought it should. He walked to an open stool, and just before he sat down, Len Hawks yelled, “What's the matter, Max, you look tired!”

Hawks hooted and there was scattered laughter at his table, but the line of men at the bar appeared uncomfortable, trying hard to pretend they hadn't heard.

Thomsen appeared and leaned down, both massive arms braced on the bar. “What'll you have, Max?”

“Glass of beer,” Max said, and then quietly so only Thomsen could hear him, Max asked, “What's up?” inclining his head toward the table.

But Thomsen didn't answer, turning instead to draw Max's beer. Before he returned, the banker Phillips walked through the back door of the bar, returning from the outhouse behind the building.

Max refused to do business with Phillips, trusting most bankers very little and Phillips not at all. Since the banker had arrived in Prairie Rose, he had been involved in some shady, if not downright dishonest, deals.

Phillips spotted Max and strutted over. “Howdy, Max,” he said, hand on Max's shoulder. Max stiffened. He didn't like to be touched, least of all by Phillips.

“Suppose you got your wheat in before the rain?”

Max nodded.

Phillips grinned and said in a stage whisper, “Can't beat experience, can you, Max?” Hawks hooted again, and Phillips joined that table.

Thomsen returned just as Max was beginning to step off the stool. He grabbed Max's arm. “Give me a hand out back?”

Max nodded. There wasn't anything in the back room, or Prairie Rose for that matter, that Thomsen couldn't handle by himself. He wanted to talk.

The back room was filled with boxes of whiskey and oiled sawdust for sweeping the floor and a cot Thomsen threw drunks on to sleep off their night on the town. The room was lit by a kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling. Thomsen had bumped it with his head, and it was swinging, leaving the room distorted and oblique. Max felt himself swaying with the light. He was glad he hadn't had anything to drink.

“What is it?” Max asked.

“Phillips has been in here all night,” Thomsen said, hesitating before continuing. “He's been saying that an … uh … inexperienced girl wouldn't have come all the way out here from Boston to marry you. He's been saying that Catherine is
very
experienced.”

Max's face went white, and a shudder shook his body. His eyes glazed and the muscles at the hinge of his jaw knotted. He turned to go back into the bar.

“No!” Jake grabbed his arm, and Max tugged to get free. They struggled for a moment, and then Max cocked his fist.

“Max! It's me!” Thomsen hissed. “Don't do that. Just give me a minute.”

Max shook his head. His fury had disconnected the link between mind and body. Thomsen was desperately trying to bring reason back.

“Max, you do that, and every man jack in here will think Phillips is telling the truth.”

Max's fist knotted again.

“Max! Think! You know Phillips is lying, and I know, but they don't. If you jump out there to defend your wife's honor, word will get around that it
needed
defending. I'd like to feel Phillips's fat little neck under my hands, but …”

“I'll take his neck!”

“Max, if you give a damn about Catherine, you better listen. You bull in there and put your boots to the banker, and Catherine will be the one with the bruises. Think about her for a change.”

Max's voice squeezed between clenched teeth. “What the hell do you think I've been thinking of? I haven't thought of anything else since she stepped off the stage.”

“Jake, she's a good woman, and the idea that that bloated banker is playing fast and loose with her reputation makes me want to break him apart, a little at a time.”

Rage overtook Max again. He growled and jerked to free his arm from Thomsen's grip.

“Max, there's a better way. We can shake Catherine loose and let the banker punch himself in the nose. The first thing is that you've got to put on your best poker face, and then we'll need a little help from my friend K.O. here.”

Thomsen held up a small glass vial filled with a clear liquid.

They stepped out of the back room ten minutes later. Phillips watched as Max took his seat at the bar. He started to rise. “Best be going. It's past my bedtime.”

But Thomsen overheard the banker. “Thanks, Aloysius. I was going to buy a round for the table, but if you're going, I'll save a little money.”

“He ain't going anywhere,” Hawks said, jerking Phillips back into his chair. “Long as you're buying, the night's young.”

Thomsen shrugged. Max sat at the bar, playing poker in his mind. Jake had dealt him a winning hand. All he had to do was keep a poker face and a low profile, at least for the next half hour. He was halfway into his second beer when Hawks called from the table again.

“Max, your ears are red. Must have been hot in that back room, or maybe somebody is talking about you.”

Max turned around on his stool and lifted his mug to toast the table. The grin on his face was hard as the rimrock above the dugout.

“Ears get red, I know I've had enough to drink.” He pulled a double eagle out of his pocket and tossed it to Thomsen. “Give me a bottle, and let 'em drink up the change.”

Thomsen growled loud enough for everyone in the saloon to hear, “When Max Bass buys for the house, you
know
he's had too much to drink.”

A spattering of good-natured laughter followed Max into the darkness. Everything was going according to plan. Now, to hide the horse in the copse of trees down by the river and sneak into the back room to await the results of the drops that Thomsen had just put in the banker's drink.

It was nearly two o'clock in the morning when Max pointed the mare's nose home. Above, the sky was lit with stars and wide as forever. Below walked Max and the mare, their journey not even a scratch on time.

As they plodded along, Max drank at the bottle, sips at first and then long pulls. He paused at the hill above the solitary cottonwood. Catherine was awakened by the sound of his laughter, echoing up the creek bottom loud enough to quiet the coyote that had been barking from the ridge.

“Son of a bitch,” the banker Phillips whispered.

The cold had awakened him, and he quickly realized he had the granddaddy of all hangovers. He lay with his eyes shut tight against the pain. He would have liked to have groaned, but he didn't think he could tolerate the noise.

“Son of a bitch,” the banker Phillips whispered again.

As his head began to clear, he realized that he was cold. What the hell? Somebody had stolen his covers. His eyes opened in slits. Middle of the night; the stars were still bright.

Stars?

Phillips lurched into a sitting position, and the movement transformed his head into a bass drum. The banker tried to ignore his hangover long enough to take stock. He wasn't in his bed: He was alone out on the prairie, and … he was naked! Stark naked! Not a stitch! Not even socks! As that realization jolted into his brain, Phillips reached down reflexively to cover himself and lost his balance. He rolled over a prickly pear.

“Son of a bitch!” the banker Phillips roared. He felt his head split and his brain fall out, bouncing on the ground: BOOM! BOOM! When the spasm passed and some semblance of reason had returned, the banker eased himself to his feet, carrying his head as though it were chock full of dynamite and would explode at the slightest jolt.

Nothing. Not a road, not a tree, not a hill, nothing. Phillips was in the middle of the big empty, and he didn't know how he had gotten there or how he would get out. He wrapped his arms around himself. He didn't want to shiver. If he started shaking, his aching head would fall off.

He'd had hangovers before, but never anything like this, not even when he drank that green grain alcohol brewed on the Musselshell and seasoned with juniper berries. A wave of nausea swept over him, and he crouched hands on knees until it passed.

He had blacked out before, but never had he awakened on the prairie in the middle of the night stark naked.

Fear was building in Phillips, rising from his gut and winding around his throat. The prairie was home to wolves and coyotes and cougars and rattlesnakes and cactus and yucca, sharp pointed fangs and claws and spines. Late as it was, he could even be caught in one of those early fall blizzards.

Phillips didn't like the prairie under the best of conditions. Tonight, he hated it.

The sound played in his ears until his fears quieted enough for him to hear it. Strange sound, like the Klaxons on some of those motorcars he had seen in Billings.

Geese! Something in the night had disturbed geese. Must be the Lanning place, only place Phillips knew of that raised geese.

The banker's hopes soared. He could walk over to the Lanning place and ask for a ride to town. Getting out of this mess would be as simple as … whoops! Couldn't do that. Couldn't have a story spreading around town about a banker who gets drunk and winds up naked and lost on the prairie.

Phillips would have to get out of this himself. He took a deep breath of cold night air. Had to get his brain functioning. The Lanning place was south of town. He was facing the sound of the geese and the North Star hung over his left shoulder. All he had to do was go straight ahead until he reached the road and then turn north toward town. He had to hurry though. The Lanning place was a good four miles from town, and that would make it close to dawn by the time he reached Prairie Rose.

His course set, the banker reminded himself that the longest journey begins with the first step. His first landed his foot on a sharp rock. He roared, hopping on his good foot until he lost his balance and pitched headfirst into a patch of greasewood. The thorns scratched furrows down his back wide enough for plowing.

There was some good that came of it. His high, inhuman screech set the geese honking again.

The banker crawled gingerly out of the grease-wood. Too dangerous to wait here and too dangerous to walk. Nothing left to do but crawl. Phillips dropped to all fours, his free hand ranging warily in front of him, muttered curses marking its encounters with prickly pears.

And so he made his way toward the road, white hide shining dully in the starlight, unfettered belly sagging, grunts and snorts enhancing the illusion that something primitive and porcine was loose on the Montana prairie.

Phillips reached the road forty-five minutes later. Gratefully, he stood. His back, unaccustomed to crawling, had been protesting for the past twenty minutes, so he couldn't stand straight. Still, even walking hunched over, shuffling along the road was better than crawling across the prairie. So on he walked, groaning with the ache of his back and muttering each time his foot found a rock in the road. When he heard the high-pitched Eeeee-eeee from the side of the road, he assumed it was the call of some night bird. Phillips looked at the stars and picked up his pace. Dawn was not long in coming, and he was still four miles from town.

Matilda Harris had arisen early that morning. She always did after one of “those nights.” She had seen it coming. Edwin had been particularly attentive, fetching her a second cup of coffee after dinner and offering to dry the dishes. Not that she would let him, of course. The kitchen was hers, and she didn't like anyone else bumping around in it. She had tried putting it off, sitting downstairs in the parlor reading the Bible. She thought if Edwin saw her with the good book it might set his mind on more spiritual matters, but it didn't.

About midnight, he came downstairs, took the Bible away from her, and led her to bed where he had his way with her, grunting and groaning until he got done whatever he felt so compelled to do. She always lay in bed those times, eyes shut, thinking about the week's menus. Run a boardinghouse and the work was never done, not for the woman anyway.