Chapter 6: Nature

The Bighorn sporting ladies turned into mother hens, flocking around Rosie. She was surrounded by gentle attention, by affection. Which, I figured, was mostly to the good side of the ledger.

Rosie was clingy with her mother. Rebecca had been overwhelmed with emotion. Joy, relief, guilt ... mostly joy, I think. The two of them, mother and daughter, were inseparable. But Rosie still hadn’t said a word.

Of course no one asked her about what she’d been through. Not with the Chippewas, not with the three brothers who, we learned later, had paid 20 dollars in gold coins for her. Well, those three buyers hadn’t had a chance to do much more than maul her a little. Humiliate her. Terrify her. And only Rebecca knew about them.

The Indians? I’d provisioned Cayuse up and he was slow-trailing his way back toward the Chippewa reservation.

Three weeks after we’d brought Rosie home to her mother, the US Marshal for this part of the Territory of Montana looked me up. George Autry, huge gunfighter mustache, white hair, around 50 or so, said, “Heard some good things about you, Murdock.”

He was a short man, compact, but didn’t seem to have a chip on his shoulder about his height. Some do.

We were seated in wooden chairs on the boardwalk outside the Buffalo Cut, sipping coffee. There was a better brew across the street, but here we were. We watched two lean cowboys, skin like rawhide, haze a Brahma bull up Market Street, heading north. He was heavy, lumbering, over two thousand pounds by my estimate. Massive horns wider than I could reach.

His maleness swung ponderously back and forth by his rear legs. Across the street on the west side, three young girls, blushing and giggling, nudging each other, walked along the boardwalk following the procession. Whispering and shushing each other.

One of the cowboys tipped his hat, “Ladies,” and they turned even redder. But still stared at the stud bull.

Autry said, “Word is, Goodwin’s getting into the cattle business.”

Figures. Meat purveyor to Camp Métis. The rich get richer, nothing newsworthy about that. Except that if he got a herd going, Goodwin would be hammering the last nails in the sodbusters’ coffins. And Brahmas make some fine eating, so he’d probably be able to charge the Army even more.

Autry and I watched two high-bustled women jiggle their way across Market to Ollie’s emporium.

He said, “I like the way you quieted Little River down.”

I nodded, had the feeling he was going somewhere with this conversation. The longest we’d ever had. Usually he just sent a deputy into town.

“I asked around. Chambers, Mosby, Harlan Goodwin. Consensus being, the town could use an official sheriff and you’d make a good one.”

“Which Chambers?”

He grinned, “The Decider.” Mrs. Chambers.

He stood and spat tobacco into Market Street. “Interested?”
 “Maybe.”

“If it’s money, you won’t lose any. Won’t get rich, but won’t come up short neither.”

“A couple of things. Rules.”

He grinned again, “The famous Flint Murdock Rules. Let’s see, you want to expand them to cover the whole town.”

My turn to nod.

“And the second thing?”

“I pick my own deputy.”

“Whoa. That ain’t part of the usual package.”

I shrugged. I’d pretty much tamed down the entire town and he knew it.

“Who you got in mind?”

“A breed. Name of Cayuse Valdez.”

Autry frowned, not liking the breed part. “Helped you with that little girl, what I heard.”

“Rose of Sharon Robinson. Wouldn’t have found her otherwise.”

He gazed off into the distance, no longer seeing Little River. Two different whores had told Rebecca that Autry had some political ambitions once Montana became a state. Which was looking more likely.

Ying Lee and Dumpling hadn’t conducted business directly with the Marshal, but a couple of his civilian aides blabbed in bed.

So Autry was probably considering the political impact. Well, Little River was just a backwater, barely a dot on the map. The news about one breed deputy probably wouldn’t make much noise down Territory one way or another.

Now some of the local talent might not take too well to a Cayuse Valdez getting into their business. But that way my lookout, not Autry’s.

He held out his slender hand, “Deal. Let’s drink on it.” Strong handshake.

Rebecca and Rosie watched the swearing-in ceremony from the upstairs balcony of the Bighorn. That night, Rosie stared at the gold star and spoke her first words. She cupped her little hands around my ear and whispered, “Don’t leave me.”

I was glad, really glad, to have Rosie back with us. But it sure changed things between me and Rebecca. Bed things. Nevertheless, I had planned on taking the room next door, leaving the Robinsons to their privacy. To their getting-to-know-each-other-again privacy.

But Rosie, wide-eyed, clinging to my arm, shook her head. Rebecca touched my arm, “No, you’ll stay with us, Mr. Murdock.” Her back to Rosie, she mouthed, “Please.”

Rosie, so far as I could tell, didn’t have screaming nightmares. Some nights she whimpered in her sleep and tossed around a little. But mostly she just clung to her mother throughout the night. I slept on the other side of Rebecca, nearest the door.

Rebecca bought me a pair of pajamas from Ollie’s Emporium, first pair I’d had since I was a kid in Indianapolis. I thought Rosie maybe had a little smile on her face, but couldn’t tell for sure.

Mrs. Robinson now wore a floor-length cotton nightdress to bed.

But one room, even with that little balcony, was too cramped for privacy. Rebecca got back to her old bathing everyday ways. And, after four or five mornings, started washing me too. Rosie looked silently on.

The three of us went downstairs for breakfast, then I was off to render lawman duties to the town. Rosie never left her mother’s side. Assisted with the waitressing work at lunch and then again at night. Cleared tables, helped with the washing up, did whatever needed doing, never speaking a word.

But no matter how small she walked, you could tell the memories were still haunting her.

Rebecca and Rosie both worked steady, but I knew it was nothing like what they’d been doing back on that little hardscrabble ranch.

The neighbors down there had simply buried what was left of Chet Robinson. A small ceremony, over quick because there was always more work that needed doing. Rebecca hadn’t attended; so far as I knew, she and Rosie never visited the grave that was marked only by a cairn of rough stones. Well, their business.

A couple of weeks after we’d brought Rosie back, Cayuse Valdez moseyed back into town. He looked at the star on my chest, but didn’t comment. Not much of a talker, Cayuse. He took out his Bowie; honing it when he was seated seemed to be kind of an automatic habit.

I said, ““Chippewas?”

He made a brief slashing motion across the front of his neck.

I held up three fingers.

He nodded.

So, that’s that.

Well, there was one more thing. Cayuse opened a buffalo skin pouch. Chippewa markings. Gold coins.

I smiled, “Yours.”

Rosie couldn’t look in our new mirror. Shielded her eyes every time she passed in front of it. I hadn’t actually noticed it, but when Rebecca turned the mirror to face the wall, she explained things to me. Speaking from my experience back home, I knew mothers could be especially perceptive.

Having a breed as a deputy sheriff didn’t cause as much of a local stir as I had thought. For the most part, the townsfolk seemed to appreciate the no-gun policy I’d established for the whole of Little River. A newcomer couldn’t buy a drink, sample a whore, enjoy a meal, until he’d stopped by the new jail at Second and Market.

It wasn’t a proper jail yet, funds hadn’t come through for the construction of the cells. But I had a sturdy, padlocked closet inside the Market Street office for holding guns and knives. Rebecca even figured out a system to keep track of whose was whose when it came time to return the weapons.

Cayuse had gained some favorable attention for tracking down Rosie’s abductors. Word got out about the three missing Chippewas and several people whispered Cayuse’s name. Officially, the Army, the agent for Indian Affairs, and Marshal Autry had no comment about the missing braves.

The three men who had paid for Rosie ... well, the first night after we’d taken Rosie away from them, Cayuse showed me a saddlebag he’d packed and brought back from their campsite. I looked at the three wallets, about 20-some dollars. I handed over the cash to him. He nodded and put it away. I was getting paid every week; he had been a volunteer on that operation.

I poked through the rest of their stuff — three brothers, worked at a boiler manufacturing operation owned by their father, Ward Riggers. The company was headquartered just over the border in Wyoming Territory. No one ever connected the Riggers brothers to Rosie, to the Chippewas, to Cayuse and me. Their horses were eventually rounded up and identified by the Riggers’ brand, but no one knew where the riders had disappeared to. Hell, I hope.

Nature took its course, had her way with me. Rebecca giggled; she was soap-and-watering me and ... well, nature took its course. I was pointing straight up at the ceiling. She winked at Rosie, “Don’t think this here is normal, Rose of Shannon, it ain’t, not by a long-shot.”

My face felt pretty hot, but Rosie seemed more curious bout the proceedings than upset. Rebecca got that impish look on her face and held me around the base with both hands and shook it in the air, soapy water flying around. Rosie had that maybe-smile on her face, but didn’t say anything, just watched.

Rebecca put on a Southern drawl, “Why, Mr. Murdock, I do declare.”

For some odd reason my two aunts, Aunt Molly and Aunt Emma, popped into my mind. They, and my mother too, joked around considerable. The Gilmore Girls. While I didn’t understand a lot of the undercurrent of their comments back then, I had a vague sense of something playful, maybe even naughty.

Two mornings after her mother had waggled my equipment at her, Rosie leaned across the Bighorn breakfast table and cupped her hands around my ear. So far as I know, I was the only one in the world she whispered to.

“Mama said you’re the town stud. The girls say you’re the biggest man around.”

Rosie sat back, dabbed a piece of biscuit in a pool of honey and took a small nibble. Looked about 10, maybe 8-years old.

Cayuse and I took turns walking Market Street, up the east side, down the west. The other one of us would walk back and forth on the twelve numbered streets — three blocks to the east of Market, four to the west. Little River kept expanding, slow but steady.

And more growth was coming. The town had taken up a collection for its first schoolhouse. They bought the lumber from the Hank Mosby Sawmill. He had offered a discount for green lumber, but too many citizens had been burned by that one already. The cracked and warped and split boards called for a lot of replacement lumber, which Mosby was happy to supply.

The town advertised and hired a schoolmarm who had attended the same land-grant college I’d spent a year at in Laramie. But she’d been before my time. Miss Helen Maple had just turned 50. Probably a story there — why’d she pick up and leave home to come to Montana? Where she didn’t know anyone?

But most of us around here had some sort of story or another. Besides Miss Maple was the only one to answer the ad. Mrs. Chambers patted the application and approved, “She can read and write, do her numbers, that’s all we need.”

Mrs. Chambers spent some time talking with her newest permanent hotel guest, Rose of Sharon Robinson. It wasn’t hard to figure out that palaver — Rosie was 14, bosomy, had a great smile like her mother. And a pussy. Pussy most of all.