Butchery of the Mountain Man Read online

  [Fort Shaw was established June 30, 1867. It was located on the right bank of the Sun River, some twenty-five miles above its junction with the Missouri, and five miles above the point where the Fort Benton–Helena stagecoach road crossed the Sun River. Fort Shaw was established to protect the route between Fort Benton and Helena and to prevent the movement of hostile Indians into the settled area to the south. Four companies, under the command of Major William Clinton, 13th U.S. Infantry, selected the site. First called “Camp Reynolds,” the post was designated “Fort Shaw” on August 1, 1867, in honor of Colonel Robert G. Shaw, 54th Massachusetts Infantry, killed before Fort Wagner in 1863. Abandoned on July 21, 1891, the military reservation was transferred to the Interior Department on April 30, 1892. The former post served as an Indian school from 1892 until 1910.—ED.]

  Boulder

  Smoke couldn’t believe he had let Sally talk him into coming to the Jordan car dealership.

  “Yes, sir,” the slick salesman said. “There she is, the Jordan Playboy. The niftiest car on the road today.”

  “What do you think, Smoke?” Sally asked. She got into the car, sat behind the wheel, and flashed a big smile.

  “Why don’t I just buy you a jar of perfume?” Smoke proposed.

  Sally laughed. “A jar? A jar of perfume? Honey, do you think they put perfume up in jars, like ajar of pickles?”

  “I know it comes in little bitty bottles, but for what this thing would cost, I could buy you ten jars of perfume.”

  “I can see that I’m getting nowhere with you,” she said. She got out of the car. “Okay, take me out to dinner. And if you aren’t going to buy me this car, then I want to most expensive dinner in town.”

  “That, I will do,” Smoke replied.

  Boulder’s newest, and quickly one of its finest, restaurants was Summer’s Sunken Gardens, a European-style eatery. The focal point was a large pool-like fountain in the center of the dining area.

  “Please don’t tell Pearlie or Cal that we ate lamb,” Smoke said as they began on the entrée, crown roast of lamb. “I’ll never live it down.”

  “How are your sessions with Professor Armbruster going?”

  “It’s funny,” Smoke said. “But talking to him like this, I mean bringing things out in great detail, not just a quick story here and there, it’s as if I am actually reliving it.”

  “Are you all right with that?” Sally asked as she carved off a bit of lamb.

  “Yes, I suppose I am. Some of it, I’m actually enjoying. But some of it has been hard, much harder than I would have thought.”

  “I know you talked about Nicole and Arthur, and I know how difficult that had to be for you.”

  “Yes, it was difficult. And, it was also difficult talking about Denise and Louis, especially Louis, since it hasn’t been that long since he was killed.”

  “At least we have our grandchildren, Frank and Elyse,” Sally said.

  “How old are they now?”

  “Frank is eleven, Elyse is nine.”

  “They’re living with their mother and her new husband, and we never get to see them.”

  “The trains run in both directions,” Sally said. “We could go back East to see them easier than they could come here. They do have school, after all.”

  “Yeah, we can, can’t we? Sally, what do you say that after I’m finished with this business with Professor Armbruster, that we go see the grandkids?”

  “Oh, Smoke, I think that would be wonderful!” she said. “Yes, let’s please do it!”

  “We will,” Smoke promised.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Old Main Building

  “Do you need to listen to where we left off yesterday?” Professor Armbruster asked Smoke the next morning when he showed up at the Old Main building to continue with the narrative.

  “No, that won’t be necessary,” Smoke said. “I know exactly where I left off, and I know where it’s going next.”

  Smoke was silent for a long moment.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “The part that is coming up isn’t going to be easy,” Smoke said.

  “Do you want to take a few moments to compose yourself before we begin?” Professor Armbruster asked.

  “I’ve had all night to compose myself, Professor. A few more minutes won’t make any difference.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “Tell Wes I’m ready.”

  Professor Armbruster reached down to click the toggle switch. “We’re ready, Wes,” he said.

  Through the window Smoke saw Wes nod, then bring his hand down. Smoke resumed the story.

  John’s cabin

  Whips His Horses held his hand up as a signal for the others to be quiet. He didn’t have to say anything, though, because they were all good warriors, and they well knew the value of stealth. Then, they saw the woman come from the house with a basket. She walked into the garden and began picking vegetables.

  Whips His Horses signaled to three who were armed with bows and arrows. All three fired, and Whips His Horses watched the rapid and graceful flight of the arrows. All three arrows struck the woman and she dropped the basket, took a couple of stumbling steps, then fell.

  “Ayiee!” Whips His Horses shouted, hoping the shout would bring out the man who had killed his brother.

  But no one came from the white man’s house.

  They waited for a few moments, then they heard a baby crying. The baby cried for several minutes without letup.

  “I think the man is not here,” one of the others said. “He would not let the baby cry for so long. He would come for the woman, but nobody has come for the woman.”

  “We will see,” Whips His Horses said.

  There were six others with him. Eight had started in pursuit of the man and his woman when they left the village, but two were killed in the pass. Then, the rocks fell, and it took a long time to move the rocks so they could continue. Now they were here, and Whips His Horses did not think the man they had followed was here.

  He started toward the cabin, moving in a crouch, and on the balls of his feet, ready to run if need be.

  But the man did not appear.

  One of the other Indians in the party darted quickly up to the cabin, stood with his back to the wall near the door, then, cautiously, looked inside.

  “Only the baby is here!” he called back to the others.

  “Bring the baby out,” Whips His Horses said.

  The Indian by the door went into the cabin, then came out again, carrying the baby upside down, holding him by his foot. The baby was still crying.

  “What shall we do with the baby?” the man holding it asked.

  “Throw it on the ground by the woman.”

  With a huge smile, the Indian holding the child swung his arm back and forth a few times to get the momentum he needed, then he let the baby go. It flew through the air, then landed, hard, on the ground, next to its mother. There it lay quiet and still.

  “Shall we burn the house?” one of the other Indians asked.

  “Yes,” Whips His Horses said, then he changed his mind. “No. Leave the house as it is. When the man returns, I want him not to know what has happened until he sees the woman and the baby.”

  “Will we wait for him?”

  “No,” Whips His Horses said. “If we wait for him, we will kill him, but he will die only one time. When he sees his woman and his baby dead, he will die two times. Then, we will kill him a third time.”

  “Yes, he will die three times. That is very good,” one of the other Indians said.

  “Let us return to the village now. It will be good to let him find his dead woman and child and weep over them.”

  It was dark by the time John returned to his cabin. All the way home he had been thinking about the soup Claire had promised him, and he thought it would be very good, with the vegetables grown in his own garden. He even thought he might be able to smell it when he got close enough.

  He smelled nothing a
nd was disappointed. Then, when he got to the little clearing where he had built a home for himself, Claire, and the baby, he was surprised to see no light shining through the window. Instead the cabin sat there, gleaming silver under the full, bright moon.

  Why could he see no light from within the house?

  Then he thought of what a hard ride it had been for Claire and the baby, and with a smile, he realized they must already be in bed.

  That was all right. The soup could wait until tomorrow. He was tired too, and it would be good to climb into bed beside his wife. And if she wasn’t too tired . . . he smiled at the implications of that.

  He took his horse around to the lean-to attached to the back of the house, unsaddled him, then tied him to the hitching rail alongside Claire’s horse. The watering trough had water, and he pitched some hay into the feeding trough, then he went inside.

  “Claire, I’m home,” he said, speaking just loudly enough for Claire to hear, but not to wake the baby.

  “Claire?”

  John went over to the baby’s crib and felt down inside. The baby wasn’t there, and he realized that he must be in bed with Claire. He lit a candle. If he was going to move the baby back to his crib, he didn’t want to trip over something.

  “Claire, I’m going to put the baby back . . .” He stopped in mid-sentence. There was nobody in the bed, and in fact, the bed was still made.

  “What?” he asked aloud.

  She couldn’t have gone anywhere, her horse was still in the lean-to.

  John stepped outside. “Claire?” he called. “Claire, are you out here?”

  John heard something from the garden, low and guttural, like the sound of wolves, feeding.

  “Get the hell out of my garden!” he shouted loudly, and, with yelps, the animals ran.

  John started out to the garden to see what kind of damage the wolves might have done. That was when he saw the two bodies . . . one large, and one small. Or at least, what was left of the bodies.

  “NO!!!!!” The agonizing cry of horror and despair rolled back from the walls of the little canyon. “God in heaven . . . no!!!”

  John fell to his knees in the garden beside the bodies of his wife and baby, and wept aloud as he hadn’t done so since he was a small boy.

  Old Main Building

  “Please, stop the recording,” Smoke said.

  Professor Armbruster waved at Wes, who stopped the session.

  Smoke sat there for a long moment, his eyes closed as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Are you all right, Smoke?” Professor Armbruster asked.

  “I need to walk around a bit if you don’t mind,” Smoke said.

  “No, I don’t mind at all. Go ahead, walk around the campus all you want. I’ll be in my office when you are ready to resume recording. You do intend to continue, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know,” Smoke said. “This has become . . . difficult,” he said. “Much more difficult than I ever imagined it could be.”

  “I understand.”

  Smoke forced a smile. “I’m glad you understand, because I’m not sure that I do. In the first place, this happened many years ago. And in the second place, I’ve told this story before without it affecting me as it is now.”

  “But the way you are telling it now is different,” Professor Armbruster said. “You have never before been as powerfully absorbed in the story as you are now. This intense immersion has heightened your reaction to the events so that you are, in effect, reliving, rather than merely retelling the details. There is a psychological explanation for this. It is called ‘cognitive context-dependent memory.’ You see, you lost your own wife and child by an act of violence, much in the same way as John Jackson lost his. And now, in the retelling of this story you are, in effect, redoubling and experiencing again, your own trauma.”

  Smoke smiled, wanly. “Yeah,” he said. “Something like that.”

  As Smoke walked around the campus he heard the sound of an engine from above, and looked up to see an airplane passing overhead. Across a landscape covered with fallen leaves, and under a tree he saw a group of college students. They were listening to music on the radio, and two young girls, wearing bobbed hair and short skirts, were doing some sort of dance that seemed to require a lot of kicking.

  He couldn’t help but think what drastic changes there had been within his lifetime, and as he looked at the students, he wondered how many of them could have stood up to the ordeal of a two-month-long wagon train trip, or a winter in the mountains with nothing but their own wits for survival.

  But even as he contemplated such patronizing thoughts, he recalled the Great War so recently concluded, and he realized that despite the outside trappings, nothing had really changed. The principles of courage, honor, and self-reliance were still present, and he was satisfied that these young men and women would be able to rise to whatever challenges they might meet in the future.

  He wished he could go into Longmont’s Saloon for a beer, but knew that, even if he were back in Big Rock, that option wouldn’t be open to him. He wondered if the country would ever come to its senses and repeal the idiotic amendment that was prohibition.

  Finally, the melancholy he had been experiencing since the moment he told of John finding the half-eaten bodies of Claire and Kirby passed. He turned and started back toward the Old Main building, the fallen leaves crackling under his feet.

  When he returned to the recording room, he saw a glass of amber liquid sitting by the microphone, and he smiled.

  “Something tells me this isn’t tea,” he said.

  “I thought you might need a little . . . what is it you men called it in the old days? Snort?”

  “Snort, yes,” Smoke said. He picked it up. “And, yes, I do need a drink right now.”

  He tossed the drink down, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and nodded.

  “I’m ready when you are,” he said.

  On the other side of the window, Wes brought his hand down, and Smoke resumed talking.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Montana

  John carried Claire and the baby back into the house and he laid them both on the bed. The same bed that he and Claire had shared, the same bed on which Kirby had been conceived. He covered their bodies with a bright red blanket, then he pulled a chair up beside the bed and sat there, staring at the covered mounds on the bed.

  As John sat there, unbidden, episodes of his past flashed through his mind. He saw himself as an acolyte in his father’s church, and as a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Terrible images of the war tumbled by, as well as his difficulty in adjusting when he came back. He recalled his rejection by Lucinda, and his experiences in Annam.

  But nothing, nothing in his entire life, had ever hurt him to the degree he was hurting now. The pain was unbearable, and he wanted to scream until he had no voice left.

  “God, why?” he asked aloud.

  He remembered asking that same question to his father after he came back from the war, when he was having such a difficult time adjusting.

  “Why, if He is a just God, would He allow such evil things to happen?” John had asked.

  “God allows things to happen for His reasons, whether or not we understand them,” John’s father had answered. “Above all, however, we must remember that He is a good, just, loving, and merciful God. I know that things have happened to you that are beyond your understanding. But you must trust in the Lord, and put aside all doubts.”

  Nathaniel’s short homily had done nothing to ease John’s inner turmoil then, and recalling his words was doing nothing toward easing his pain now.

  “Why, God! Why?” John shouted at the top of his voice. Then, in an angry snarl he added, “Never mind. I’ll set things right on my own.”

  When the sun rose the next morning, John went out into the garden where he gathered every flower that had been planted. Bringing them in, he spread them on top of the bed until the bed was covered with colorful blooms and
petals.

  That done, John emptied a container of kerosene, then he set fire to the house. He stood out front watching the flames leap up around the logs that he and Claire had cut, shaped, notched, and put into position to build the house.

  He could feel the heat of the flames, and even though it was uncomfortable, he made no effort to back away. He stood right there, until the cabin was completely consumed by the fire, so that there was not one recognizable thing about it remaining. He looked where he thought the bed might be, but could see nothing but blackened ash. He made no attempt to look closer.

  Not until the last wisp of smoke had died, did he mount his horse and ride away. In less than twenty-four hours, his life had taken a turn that closed off his previous thirty-five years, as if none of it had ever happened. He was now a man consumed with hatred, and a determination to avenge his wife and child.

  Old Main Building

  Smoke stopped talking and Professor Armbruster waited for a moment, then he reached down to flip the toggle switch on the intercom box.

  “Wes, this will be all for the day,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Wes replied.

  “Are you okay, Smoke?”

  Smoke nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. I guess it’s just a little more of this cognitive context-dependent memory you were talking about earlier.”

  “Yes, it can be very intense. Look, why don’t you take off early today. You and Sally take in some of the sights of the town.”

  When Smoke returned to the hotel room, Sally was sitting on the sofa, her legs curled up under her, reading Babbitt, a novel by Sinclair Lewis. She looked up in surprise when Smoke came in.

  “Hello,” she said. “You’re back early.”

  “Yes,” Smoke said without further explanation. “Enjoying the book?”