Chapter 8: Bump & Run

One thing struck me as odd. Cayuse was off on another of his “Be back” trips and the Gilmore Girls had never asked me about his absence. Three of the most curious people I knew.

So I approached Molly, and of course they already knew all about Cayuse’s mysterious disappearances.

Molly said, “What do you know about the Kiowas, Flint?”

“Well...”

“The name means ‘principal people’. Serious people — people who take their dreams seriously. Interpret them, think about them, analyze them. And the same with their visions, particularly their peyote visions.”

“Peyote? Like opium?”

Molly paused to think about that. “In a way, I suppose. But in Cayuse’s culture, peyote visions are sacred. Holy.”

Huh. That could explain it. Visions.

The question was simple and complicated at the same time. Leave for San Francisco now, or try to resolve that whole mess with the EagleLeague first?

Leaving on the train wouldn’t mean the problem would be left behind. But staying in Helena wouldn’t mean it would be settled either.

We decided, all of us decided, to stay for a while longer. The Gilmore Girls, the Robinsons, Cayuse and me.

Because Mrs. Chambers had shared that Chicago letter with me, I now believed it was possible that the EagleLeague, or at least one member of it, was already here in town. And I felt a little more comfortable facing down an enemy on familiar terrain. Better than in a crowded train car. Or on a station platform in a new town.

In our hotel, Cayuse went back to sleeping with Rosie. And me with Rebecca. The Gilmore Girls, still armed with Autry’s Smith & Wesson Model 2 revolvers, would take turns staying with Miss Melanie. I had added a lock to her hotel room, so all six rooms were somewhat secured.

Plus, there were a couple of practical reasons for staying in town a little longer. Josephine ‘Chicago Joe’ Hensley and Mollie ‘Crazy Belle Crafton’ Byrnes had asked us to delay our departure for a few more days. The presence of Cayuse and me had a calming effect on the understandably skittish sporting ladies in all three establishments. Still skittish even after Patcheye and Stumpy had been arrested.

The two madams — and they did this before asking us to stay on — had given Cayuse and me a total of two hundred dollars. An unexpected bonus for putting a stop to the axe murders. And for somewhat lifting a cloud over the whole issue regarding the upstairs activities that went on above their saloons.

At breakfast, I told Cayuse, “We’ll split the bonus fifty-fifty.”

Cayuse nodded, “Heap fair. Fifty dollars for you.”

Laughter exploded around the table. Fake Indian talk — heap fair — and turning fifty percent into fifty dollars. Molly winked at him, her prize pupil. Not bad.

Big Elk motioned to Cayuse and me from across the street. It was around seven in the morning and we dodged a couple of carriages heading in opposite directions.

Big Elk spoke solemnly, “Hands.”

We followed him around the corner, down a narrow alley, to the back door of the little Chinese restaurant that Autry had recommended. A short, thick man — the only employee I’d seen there — waiter, cook, proprietor — was tied to a chair in the one-burner kitchen. He was unconscious, an ugly purple bruise on the side of his head.

Cayuse and I stared — a human hand, a female hand, a left hand, was lying palm up on the small butcher block that served as the prep area. The index finger had been chopped off by the cleaver that was still stuck into the wood.

I fought down a gag reflex, remembering the tiny chunks of meat in that rice dish with the dark, salty sauce all over it.

I looked at Cayuse, “Autry.”

He left right away. I opened the back door and breathed in fresh, snowy air. I asked Big Elk how he had made the discovery.

“Overheard two Chinamen joking about it. He only served hand meat to white people.”

“Oh.” There must have been a lot of resentment, hatred, coming from this restaurant owner. “Do you speak Chinese?”

“Only a few words. I thought I had misheard, or misunderstood, but...”

I sighed. What people are capable of.

Big Elk nodded to me and wandered away. The hand was white man’s business.

From what Autry was able to piece together — mostly from some mumbled, disjointed comments from Stumpy — Patcheye would lie low for two or three days after each murder.

“Then she took the ... item and left it at the back door of the restaurant. Didn’t know, and probably didn’t care, what he did with it.”

While the Patcheye and Stumpy arrests had eased the atmosphere around town, the Helena reformers had really found their voice when the murder spree was ongoing. The cry to enforce the anti-prostitution laws in the City Charter had gained some considerable support in the local churches.

Well, all of that would eventually play out. We’d all be long gone for San Francisco before any of the brothels were seriously threatened by the bible-thumpers and other concerned citizens.

As a favor, Mrs. Chambers had asked my mother, “Will you take over the Palace for now? I’ll come back here as soon as I can and start training Miss Melanie to run the place.”

“I thought she was taking over the Bighorn?”

“She was, but the Palace is too profitable to pass up. It’s does around 25% more business than the Bighorn, so I need her here. George had a talk with Chicago Joe and Crazy Belle — they won’t be poaching any of my girls. At least they’d better not.”

Now that was interesting. Marshall Autry and Mrs. Chambers were in the process of establishing a stronghold in Little River. One that would grow when they added the bordello up in No Name. He had appointed the new sheriff and two deputies. So he and Mrs. Chambers were consolidating their power there.

But apparently they were also going to carve out a piece of the Helena action as well. The soon-to-be state capital seat in addition to the soon-to-be county seat of government.

With Autry as both a Territorial Marshal and a state senator. He had the political backing of Governor Leslie and the word was that Autry wouldn’t have any serious competition for the seat.

Well, he’d been loyal to the governor and I appreciated loyalty myself. In fact, it was near the top of my list as one of the best qualities a person could have.

“Georgie, I’m thinking of visiting Chinatown this afternoon. Some lunch, then next door for a little opium. Care to escort me?”

“You’ll be safe enough, Miss Emma. During the day, Kuang’s has more white customers than Chinese.”

My mother shot me a glance across the breakfast table. If Emma was really serious, someone would need to take her. Someone being me.

“Are you turning down my invitation, Marshal Orvon Grover George Autry?”

His cheeks turned red; Emma can do that to people. Male people.

Molly said, “Marshal Autry, how safe is it? Really? For a young woman on her own?”

“Well, it’s legal. And a lot of our citizens visit there.”

He thought for a moment; I liked that he did that — took the time to get his words right.

“Kuang is from, he and his family are from, a province in China called Guangdong. My understanding is that his dialect is hard even for other Chinese to understand.”

“And?”

“So when he retired from laying track, building trestles, and the like, he wanted to do something that didn’t aggravate his back pain. Even a cafe or laundry would have been too much. That and the language problem.”

Molly, “So, his opium den. Is it safe?”

Autry sighed, “I’ll escort Miss Emma. Be my pleasure.”

And that turned out to be the start of Emma’s little fling with the Territorial Marshal. At least she waited until Mrs. Chambers had returned to Little River.

Autry told me, “I’m glad you’re staying around, Flint, but the Territory can’t keep paying you five dollars a day.”

I looked directly at him. He had asked us to interrupt our San Francisco trip. We did, all seven of us. And we had caught Patcheye and Stumpy in the act. I wondered if his new relationship with Emma had entered into his sudden financial calculations. Was some sort of guilt causing him to worry about paying his new lover’s companions?

To his credit, Autry was a little embarrassed, “But we can continue covering room and board at the Lenoir for all seven of you for the duration.”

I guess he and Mrs. Chambers had already taken care of Miss Melanie.

He groomed that gunfighter mustache and said, “The Gilmore Girls can keep those revolvers too.”

I said, “What about the Robinsons?”

I guess we were negotiating, although I wasn’t really aware of it at the time. He had stopped paying Cayuse and me, and seemed to feel a little bad about it.

“I can give them a revolver too. Each of them. Do they know how to shoot?”

“A little. I gave them some lessons back in Little River. Cayuse and I can take them out of town to practice some more.”

“We’re square then?”

I shrugged, “It’s up to Cayuse. Whether it’s worth his time to stay on for no pay.”

Autry was surprised. I liked reminding people that Cayuse was a valuable member of our little team. Of our little family.

Riles received some good-natured kidding about her role as a professional madam.

Emma said, “I can’t wait to write Caroline and Ellen and Margie and...”

My mother just laughed. She’d never paid much attention to the Indianapolis gossips.

Autry had the Chinese restaurant boarded up, and sent the owner packing on the next train to Bozeman. Threatened to shoot him if he ever came back.

Autry had decided not to arrest the man, not to say anything to anyone about the hand that Big Elk had discovered. Probably four hands had been involved — Abigail Murphy, Sheryl Cummings, Jane Goodnight. And the latest — Pru Collingsworth.

“Putting the word out won’t bring the ladies back. And the entire town would be revulsed.”

He didn’t need to mention the effect that a sickening, sensational scandal like this one could have in Washington DC. Or if Anaconda got wind of it. The murders themselves had been horrific enough. But this...

I agreed with Autry — no good would come by explaining why the popular Chinese restaurant with no name was suddenly boarded up. And I certainly didn’t want the Robinsons and the Gilmore Girls to hear about that grisly secret.

I said, “What kind of twisted mind would Patcheye...”

Then I caught myself. The killings were the important thing and they were finished.

Snow continued falling almost every day. But Autry assured us, “This is nothing like the Hard Winter.”

Still, our horses picked their way carefully as we rode north out of Helena. In the distance, we could barely make out the Sleeping Giant, tallest of the Big Belt Range.

He had asked Cayuse and me to ride along with him to check out the temporary camp that Varner had established at the Miracle Mine claim. “He hired six gunmen in all — they work in shifts of two.”

I said, “Gunmen?”

“Wannabes, mostly. Young Helena punks except for a guy named Harmon. John Wesley Harmon. He has a reputation over in Wyoming Territory. May be deserved, may not be.”

It was a rough camp. One big canvas tent to house the men and their equipment. A makeshift stone fire pit under some raw boards that provided little shelter from the weather. No outhouse dug into the frozen ground that I could see.

The men weren’t unfriendly; they just seemed a little wary. Autry knew the five locals and introduced us to the other one — Harmon. He was around 30, slim and leathery and watchful. Droopy eyes, but alert. He looked at us the way a bear studies bee swarms.

We dismounted and accepted the coffee Harmon offered. Strong and black and a day or two old. I’d had worse, far worse, when I was traveling on my own.

Autry said, “Any trouble out this way?”

Harmon shook his head, “Nobody has stopped by. Seen some riders off to the west the other day, but that’s about it.”

He had a deep voice, the voice of a much larger man.

Autry said, “Mind if we look around?”

“Nope.”

Autry and Cayuse and I walked over to what had been the start of the mine more than twenty years earlier. It was abandoned until a few months ago when that California prospector, Gil Olbaum, started digging a little deeper into the hillside.

I could see the old tailings — gravel, dirt, some rocks.

It was a small excavation and even Autry had to bend over in order to enter the mine.

I thought to myself, “I’d sure hate to do this for the rest of my life.”

We could easily see where the old mine ended and the new work had begun. The timbers in the crib wall were older and more worn than the part of the wall that had gone up last summer.

The mine itself hardly qualified as a mine. More like a sideways hole that was dug ten or twelve feet into the sharp slope of the foothills.

Harmon came in holding a gas lantern. He pointed, “See.”

I bent forward; sure enough, a few tiny specks glistened dully in the lamplight.

The hand in the Chinese restaurant led to a different kind of problem, one I couldn’t have seen coming in about a thousand years.

Autry carefully wrapped Pru Collingsworth’s hand and index finger in a copy of the Helena Weekly Herald and personally delivered the package to Doctor Adams. I went along; it seemed like the right thing to do. Sort of a ritual in a way.

Adams just shook his head sadly, “We’ll bury the hand along with the body, I guess.”

And that was the snag. Marshal Autry wanted a proper burial ceremony for the four sporting ladies. He also wanted it to be brief, not covered by the paper, and soon forgotten.