Chapter 2: Dumpling

I’d learned from Ying Lee that being the purchasing agent for Camp Métis was a pretty lucrative post. The fort was on the Missouri River, not that far from the mouth of the Judith. Near where Camp Cooke had been before they abandoned it to the rats back in 1870.

The Army needed beef and the purchasing agent supplied it. And, he determined the price he would pay the ranchers.

Another whore, my pal Masie, told me, “They got over 400 soldiers stationed there. To protect the steamboat traffic, whiskey traders, and the like. And fight whatever Indians are left.” She sat up and grinned, “400 horny boys, but they don’t let ‘em out much.”

Then she focused back on me, “You sure got you some blue eyes.”

Ying Lee told me, “We don’t get the sodbusters. No money, they just fuck their wives. That’s why they got so many children out there.” She gestured in a generally southerly direction, making it sound like the other side of the moon.

Meg, a redheaded whore with a pockmarked face, didn’t have the fiery disposition that some of the Irish did, but she had a dark, brooding side to her. And she liked to brood while I was fucking her. She straddled me and frowned, “Mr. Chambers gets them sodbusters in debt to his store. Knows they can’t never pay it off. He’s gonna take all that land, wait and see.”

Now that may be true. But I had no idea what he could do with it, how he could turn a profit. The current ranchers were mostly hard-working, thrifty, and relied on their own families and neighbors for labor.

I began to get a clearer picture once Rebecca and I got together. “All we can grow down there is a kitchen garden. All us wives preserve everything we can for the winter, but it’s still tight. If the price of cattle goes down ... well, that’s what set Chet off. He never hit me before, but now he’s angry all the time. So angry.”

After I left the Cavalry, it had taken me almost two months to ride from Fort Laramie to Little River. The snow was deep in some places; Scarface had to pick his way carefully. Plus, I wasn’t in any hurry — San Francisco was so far away ... well, I wasn’t in any hurry.

Little River wasn’t my destination, just one of the many stopovers along the way. I had the sense that civilization was trailing behind me, following me west. Of course white settlers had been moving in this direction for years. Decades, really.

But Little River, like most of the Montana Territory was ... in between. Not yet settled down, but not the edge of the frontier any longer.

Martin Bisbee, got to say this for him, did it the proper way. The polite, businesslike way. The owner of the Buffalo Cut Bar across Market Street from the Bighorn went to Mrs. Chambers first. Then to Ollie.

The deal they worked out was that I would wrangle the rowdiness out of any unruly Buffalo customers too.

Mrs. Chambers saw it as a money-saving proposition. “Flint, Martin and I will pay you a dollar and a half a day.” I thought back to Laramie, to book-learning days; that would be a 50% raise for me. Not bad. And, Mrs. Chambers would save 25 cents a day. She looked out for herself. Couldn’t fault her for that, not a woman running an operation on her own out in the West.

She said, “You’ll still station yourself in Ollie’s bar. The Buffalo will send a runner if need be.”

Near as I could tell, Ollie didn’t have much say in the matter. Mrs. Chambers seemed to cut the deal directly with Martin Bisbee.

As the weather warmed, I took to sitting on a tilted-back chair on the wooden sidewalk in front of the Bighorn. I liked the morning sun in my face. Sometimes, for a change of scenery, I’d sit in front of the Buffalo and watch the Market Street traffic from the other side.

The Buffalo had around ten sporting ladies, a step down in quality from the ones across the street. Not that I didn’t indulge myself upstairs from time to time. Bisbee wasn’t surprised that I paid his whores — word had spread around town about that particular quirk. Turning down free pussy in order to pay for it. The working girls appreciated it though, that much I was sure of.

When I posted my rules — Flint’s Rules — at the Buffalo Cut, I got a little more pushback from some of their regular customers. But when they realized it was check their weapons or go somewhere else, we usually got past it with nothing more than some mild grumbling.

Ever since I was 12 or 13 or so back in Indianapolis, I was usually the tallest one in the room. And then the biggest within a couple of more years. Size made my whorehouse life easier, generally speaking. Even a pig-drunk cowboy hesitated to take me on once it dawned on him that he was no longer packing.

But there was more to it than size. My mother and her two sisters had drilled some life lessons into me. There was a lot of love in our home and I listened, usually. Especially when three strong-willed women spoke in one voice. The Gilmore Girls. That’s what they were known as when they were growing up. They are to this day, actually — that’s what their Indianapolis friends still call them. The blue-eyed Gilmore Girls.

They taught me manners, or maybe just common-sense courtesy. And to look out for those who ... needed help, I guess. They didn’t teach me to hate bullies, although mostly I did. Rather to be ... protective isn’t the exact word, but close to it. So that kind of outlook — be nice, but be smart — combined with my size ... well, it sort of fit in with keeping the peace so far as the Little River saloon customers were concerned.

My grandfather, Clive Gilmore, had showed me how to be ... not a man, exactly. I was too young for that when he taught me how to ride horses, took me fishing, taught me how to hunt. Turned out I had what he called a natural talent with guns. Long and short; I was pretty good from the start and got a lot better over time.

But I’d become convinced that judgment was often more important than marksmanship. A lot more.

I’d gotten so I can usually tell when a man just can’t take it anymore. I hadn’t done anything to him personally, but he’d let weeks, or months, or maybe a lifetime of resentment build up. And there I was. The authority. Standing in the way of ... whatever he imagined he needed and couldn’t ever get.

Deke Adams, his name turned out to be, ended up testing me my first week under commitment to the Buffalo. It was only about six in the evening and I was leaning back in my chair in front of the Bighorn. I heard a sharp whistle and saw Rumsfeld across the street with two fingers in his mouth. Bartender.

I picked up my shotgun and dodged a fancy two-horse carriage with a leather seat and a canvas canopy as I trotted across Market Street. Rumsfeld said, “Boot knife,” the evening sun glistening off his thick wire-rimmed glasses. He followed me into the Buffalo.

A tall, skinny man with a cavalry campaign hat had his left arm around the neck of a terrified young whore named Dumpling. She was red-faced, having trouble breathing. The man had a wicked-looking knife used for skinning game in his right hand. The curved tip of the knife was in Dumpling’s right ear.

I spoke softly, “What’s your name, bub?”

The question surprised him. He frowned in confusion. He wasn’t blind-drunk, just brave-drunk. Not staggering, but a little unsteady.

“Your size don’t scare me.”

As usual, it all slowed down for me. I saw everything in the room more clearly, could hear better than ever. I felt the atmosphere in the room change, like weather. I took it all in and knew in an instant what I’d do. The key was to see all of him, all at once. Not his eyes, not his shoulders, not his gun hand. Or knife hand. All of him. That way I got a feeling, a sense of when a man was going to make his move.

I held my shotgun in my left hand gripping it just below the trigger guard, pointing it at the floor.

He was sweating out cheap whiskey, and his whiskered cheeks were flushed with excitement. He licked his lips and swayed a little, but held that knife rock steady.

I continued to speak softly, “Ever see a man shoot his own hat?”

“Huh?” More confusion.

Dumpling had tears streaming down her face. I could smell her piss.

I said, “Watch my hat. I’m going to take it off up and toss it in the air. Then...” I raised my shotgun a couple of inches, “I’ll blast it smithereens.”

“Huh?”

“Watch this.”

I moved my right hand up slowly, never taking my eyes off him. I gripped the brim of my black Stetson and lifted the hat off my head. He was staring at it. I curled my wrist back and sailed it up and to my right.

As his eyes tracked it, I whipped my shotgun up and cracked his wrist. Dumpling screamed as the knife flew up, ripping open her upper ear.

The man howled in pain and outrage as I stepped forward and used both hands to club him in the face with the butt of my gun.

Dumpling collapsed just as Rumsfeld and a miner got to her. I said, “Carry her upstairs, let Nurse Nellie see to her.” I doubt she was really a nurse, but she had a way about her.

I was standing on the man’s broken wrist; he still had the knife clenched in his unconscious grip. I nodded at a sawyer from Hank Mosby’s Sawmill, “Bring Lee.”

Four Chinamen were right there to wheelbarrow the drunk over to the little shed behind the Bighorn. Excitement over.

Little River didn’t have a sheriff, not even a jail. But things were getting to the point where we needed some official law enforcement. In a way, watching over two whorehouses, I was it.

The Marshal, George Autry, sent a deputy around every few weeks, but that was about it as far as the Territory of Montana was concerned. A circuit judge rode around to some of the larger towns, but Little River didn’t have anything resembling a courtroom. There had been a lawyer fella before my time, but he wandered off somewhere else.

That Buffalo drunk, name of Deke Adams, stayed in the Bighorn shed for three days. A bucket for a toilet, some scraps from the dining room at the Bighorn Hotel for vittles. But that was ridiculous. We couldn’t keep him penned up like a mule.

Mrs. Chambers called a meeting. Her husband and Martin Bisbee. Harlan Goodwin, the mine owner, and Hank Mosby. And me.

We met in the Bighorn bar, in the back room where Ollie kept his books. He ran the little confab, but I had the impression he was saying his wife’s words.

He was dandified up as usual, gray suit, watch chain. “We got to do something about that Adams fella.”