Contention and Other Frontier Stories Read online

  The sterile, bony knobs had seemed close when he first spotted them. Now they looked a hundred miles away. The gray lunged up the steep slope, hooves gouging at the loose soil. The grizzly had lost momentum in taking her swipe at the horse, giving up nearly a dozen yards, but she quickly scrambled over the bank to resume pursuit.

  A saddleback opened before them, the knob on the right only head high to a mounted man, but the one on the left towered nearly thirty feet into the blue summer sky. Dropping over the far side, Rémi jerked the gray to the right, guiding him deeper into the labyrinth. There was a trail here. Or at least he thought it was a trail. He reined the gray onto it, pounding the horse’s ribs with his heels. The maze grew close. Rémi could never see more than twenty or thirty feet ahead of him at any time. He couldn’t see the grizzly either, but he knew it was still following them. He could hear her growling and coughing, and so could the gray.

  Rémi wished he’d reloaded his musket after his second shot. He hadn’t even thought of it at the time, and now, with the gray twisting and dodging, it was all he could do to stay in the saddle.

  When they rounded the last bend and found themselves boxed in, he wanted to cry out in frustration and anger. He had looked forward to this hunt for so long, and now it had turned against him. Through his mind flashed the image of the cabin along the Red River where he had been born. And he remembered his mother and how he’d so foolishly rebuffed her affection only days before when she’d offered him a tidbit from the kettle; how he longed for it now, the quiet comfort and safety he’d always felt when she was near.

  The walls rose slick and trackless around him, too steep for the gray to climb. Maybe too steep for him, too, without time to carve grips in the hard earth for his fingers and toes. And he knew there wouldn’t be enough time for that. The grizzly’s wet, slobbering snarls filled the tiny cul-de-sac, smothering him with its promise of destruction.

  Rémi was unable to hold the gray back when the stallion wheeled and plunged back down the trail, which had apparently never been anything more than a track for runoff. Rémi let him go, pushing off with his hands and allowing the horse to run out from under him. He landed against the slope and tumbled down in a heap. Even before he stopped rolling, he heard the abrupt, terror-filled shriek of the gray, the fearsome roar of the grizzly. And above it, once more, the awful sounds of ripping flesh, the brittle snap of bones.

  The gray was dead, Rémi was certain of that. The question was whether the bear would stay with the horse or come on. Did she know it was Rémi who had shot her? Or in her small, dim mind did she equate horse and rider as one?

  Fingers trembling, Rémi pulled his powder horn around and unplugged it with his teeth. He poured a massive charge down the barrel, then dropped an unpatched lead ball down the muzzle and slammed it home with his ramrod. Tipping the frizzen forward, he sprinkled a hefty charge of priming powder into the pan. He checked the flint with his thumb, cutting it and drawing a thin line of blood, then pulled the hammer back to full cock and brought the stock up between his arm and ribs, bracing the butt against the steep pitch of the ridge.

  He could hear the grizzly ripping at the gray’s flesh just around the bend, venting its fury on the helpless beast. Then a silence so abrupt and deep it sent a chill down his spine. He closed his eyes for only a second, and when he opened them he saw her standing before him, no more than ten feet away.

  Even on all fours she seemed as big as a buffalo. She was working her jaws and tongue against some pink meat lodged in her teeth, her mottled gums red with the gray’s blood, the hair around her muzzle matted with it.

  Rémi took a deep breath and slowly lifted the musket’s barrel toward the bear. His finger curled around the trigger. Now that the moment had arrived, he felt strangely calm and in control, his fear dissipated. The huge grizzly took a tentative step forward, then another, and Rémi smiled coolly. She was watching him curiously, perhaps wondering why he didn’t try to flee. Then her eyes met his and fogged in rage. With an earth-tilting roar she lunged forward, her dagger-like claws slicing, jaws yawning, slobbering. Rémi felt the tip of her claws touch his chest and slide across his belly like rolling embers as her mouth closed on the musket’s iron muzzle just as he pulled the trigger.

  The weapon’s report was muffled in the bear’s throat, but he could see the look of surprise that crossed her face as the back of her neck and head exploded. She reared back on her haunches, her closed jaws dribbling powder smoke. But she was still slapping, her claws whistling through the air above him. He could never recall exactly how long she pawed at him, but at the time it seemed to go on forever—five minutes, ten?

  Probably not, he knew. Probably she hadn’t cuffed the air more than a few spastic times before she keeled over dead.

  Rémi shivered in the cool dimness of his cabin as he relived that day. He could still feel the tight skin of the old wound across his chest and stomach, and sometimes when the weather was especially cold or damp, there was a little pain, like a distant burning. The grizzly’s claws hadn’t gone very deep, but they’d left wide, wicked-1ooking scars from his left shoulder to a spot just above his belt, over his right hip, like furrows turned over by a plow.

  “Big medicine,” Old Joe had said when he heard the story.

  And Rémi had agreed.

  He was sitting on the cabin’s porch when he heard the automobiles approaching through the cottonwoods bordering the Missouri River. He couldn’t tell how many there were, but thought there was more than one. Maybe two or three.

  He had been expecting them for several days, going out at dawn and waiting patiently until dusk. He had the grizzly’s robe draped over his shoulders, taking comfort from its warmth, strength from what the tattered badge represented. Pulling it close, he struggled stiffly to his feet. He wanted to be standing when the government man arrived, not tottering like a stem of autumn grass until he got his knees locked, his balance steadied.

  The first car into the clearing was driven by the government man. Close behind came a second vehicle, this one with the county’s insignia on the door. Rémi recognized the driver through the windshield. Ed Clark had been around a long time and was a good man, although Rémi had no doubt that he would do what the law required of him.

  Rémi didn’t know the man riding in Clark’s auto, but he’d seen him around, tall and lean with hard eyes and an immutable smirk—a bully always on the prowl for his next victim. Rémi had once watched him pistol-whip Tom Standing Bull for public intoxication and resisting arrest, although Tom had barely been able to stand when the deputy cornered him in an alley behind the Hi-Line Bar.

  The government man drove straight up to the cabin and parked with his car’s nose pointed toward the front door. Clark stopped some distance away, where the dust from his wheels wouldn’t drift forward onto the porch. The government man was first out of his car, gripping a sheaf of papers in one hand so tight he was crumbling the sides. His expression was one of parental exasperation crossed with anger. He started talking before he even got his door slammed shut.

  “You were supposed to be gone by now, Caron. What the hell is the matter with you? I know you can speak English, you just don’t seem capable of understanding it.”

  Rémi didn’t reply. His gaze moved to Deputy Clark, climbing the gentle slope toward the porch. Clark was looking at the government man with disgust but didn’t try to interrupt his tirade. The other deputy was close behind, his familiar smirk solidly in place. The government man turned to Clark and thrust his papers toward him.

  “Here,” he said. “He’s been warned more times than I can count, and I’m fed up with it.” Clark took the papers, and the government man turned back to Rémi. “These are eviction notices, Caron. You’re being evicted . . . today. Do you know what that means?”

  “Easy, Mr. James,” Clark said. “We’ll handle it from here.”

  Clark advanced several more strides, until he was standing at the foot of the porch steps. The other deputy sto
od beside him, his smirk turned up in a taunting grin.

  “How are you, Mr. Caron?” Clark said.

  “This is my home,” Rémi replied. “I have nowhere else to go, and no desire to go wherever this man wants me to go.”

  “All I want is you outta here,” the government man—James—snapped.

  “You understand what’s going to happen here, right?” Clark asked Rémi.

  Nodding solemnly, Rémi replied, “You are a good man, Deputy Clark. I am sorry you are the one they sent.”

  “Now, don’t do anything foolish,” Clark replied, but it was already too late.

  Rémi’s shoulders heaved and the ancient grizzly’s robe flew back against the cabin’s wall. One corner hooked on the door’s latch, but it didn’t matter where it landed. Drawing an old Colt revolver from the waistband of his trousers, Rémi eared the hammer to full cock. His thumb screamed in protest, but his hand remained steady. He wanted to laugh at the look on the government man’s face as he dived into the dirt in front of the porch. Clark was holding up a hand and telling him not to shoot, and Rémi nodded his approval. Clark understood, and would not pull his own weapon unless Rémi lowered the Colt’s muzzle toward him.

  But the other deputy, the one who, finally, was not smirking, didn’t understand how these things worked. He didn’t understand what Rémi was saying when he drew his Colt. He was already snatching his service revolver from a Western-style holster on his hip. Although Clark yelled at him not to fire, the deputy didn’t listen.

  Rémi saw the service revolver spit a thin cloud of pale blue smoke toward him. He heard the first bullet as it passed his shoulder, but he didn’t hear the second one. He felt it, though. Like a carnival strong man’s hand pressed flat against his chest, then pushing suddenly. The force of it took the wind from his lungs.

  Rémi’s shoulders hammered the cabin’s door and his feet flew out from under him. He fell hard to a sitting position, and as he did the bear’s robe came free of the door’s latch and settled across his shoulders. In the yard, Clark was still yelling at the second deputy, whose face now registered fear, and the government man named James was still in the dirt with his arms pressed tight over his head.

  Then the scene faded and Rémi looked to his right, where his name was being called with urgency.

  “Rémi, come on.”

  “Etienne?”

  The boy grinned. “Come on, we’ve been waiting.”

  Rémi looked past his boyhood friend to where Simon Quesnelle and Louis Girard and Joseph Demer waited with eager expressions. They were all mounted, and Simon was holding the gray’s reins in his hands.

  “Let’s go, Rémi. There are buffalo over the horizon, a big herd, and we want to get there in time to join the hunt.”

  Laughing, Rémi rose to his feet and strode swiftly across the porch. He left the medicine robe where it lay, draped over the shoulders of someone he no longer knew. In the cabin’s yard, he was aware of white men arguing, but their words no longer mattered. He accepted the reins Simon handed him and swung lithely into the buffalo-leather saddle atop the gray’s back. Mounted, he shoved his feet into the wooden stirrups, then reached out to catch the old smooth-bore musket Louis tossed him.

  “This way,” Etienne shouted, and Rémi drove his moccasined heels into the gray’s sides.

  They rode fast, as true horsemen should, like the wind flowing through the cottonwoods toward the distant horizon where the buffalo still ran free.

  Michael Zimmer is the author of seventeen novels, including The Poacher’s Daughter, winner of the prestigious Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. His novel, City of Rocks, was chosen by Booklist as a Top Ten Western for 2012. Zimmer resides in Utah with his wife, Vanessa, and their two dogs. His website is www.michaelzimmer.com.

  MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY

  BY KATHLEEN MORRIS

  Kansas, 1876

  If they came back tonight, I’d kill them both.

  I brushed the hair off my face, dirt mingling with the blood from my cut lip, and stood up. The front door to the cabin hung open, but at least they hadn’t burned the place. They hadn’t killed me, either, and that was a mistake they’d come to regret. It had been dusk and I was cleaning up after dinner, the sun like a big sunny-side up egg, low enough it was sinking into the prairie.

  Ray went to the barn to check on the horses when I heard the shots, then the laughter, which near froze me on the spot. I peered out the window and saw two men, both still on their horses, and then Ray, on the ground beside the open barn door, unmoving, a crimson flower blooming on his white shirt and spreading beneath him. I grabbed his Colt from the holster where it hung beside the door and crouched beside the stove.

  “Little Missus, we come by for some dessert,” said the first one, ducking his head as he came through the door, while his friend, a bit shorter, followed close behind. “We was thinking some pie?”

  “Jesus, Seth, you kill me,” said the short one. “Pie. Huh.” He fingered his mustache and peered around. It was a small cabin and it wouldn’t take them long to see me. I shot the big one but he’d turned at the last minute and the bullet winged him, rather than hitting his heart. He screamed like a gutted pig anyway.

  Before I could get off another shot, the other man hit me in the face and the Colt clattered to the floor, with me right beside it. He moved quicker than I could’ve believed and picked up the Colt, pointing it at my head.

  “Get your bitch ass outside.”

  I had little choice, and while Seth banged around inside, smashing things and presumably bandaging up his arm, his friend hit me enough to keep me down before he unbuckled his pants. By that time, I couldn’t move much except my eyes, but that was enough to see Ray’s eyes, only a few feet away, were open too but never going to shut again. I could feel the grit and little pebbles in the grass embedding themselves in my back as the man shoved into me again and again.

  “Ruben, you ever going to get finished?”

  The short man grunted and stood up, hauling up his pants.

  “Your turn.” He kicked me hard in the side. “A little payback.”

  “My damn arm’s hurtin’ too bad to worry about that,” Seth said. “Let’s just get those horses and get out of here.” He held up the tin box I’d hidden under the mattress. “What I got here and what’s in there,” he jerked his head towards the barn, “is worth more’n her.”

  Bastards. I watched as they stepped over Ray on their way into the barn. The two horses we’d saved so long for were inside, the mare and stallion that we’d bought to start our quarter-horse ranch. We’d brought them back from Dodge City two days ago. All I could figure is they must’ve seen us at the auction there and followed us back here, thinking we’d be easy pickings.

  I crawled closer to Ray and took his hand, still warm. The men came out of the barn, leading the two horses they’d tied with rope halters, and turned towards their own mounts.

  “What you want to do with her?” the one called Seth said.

  The shorter one gave me a glance. “Shoot her, I guess. She wasn’t much of a lay.” He got on his horse.

  Seth pulled out his pistol but a snarling blur of black fur barreled into him, jaws locking on his wrist and knocking the gun from his hand. The dogs and their constant companion, the wild colt I’d tamed, had been out on their evening ramble. Susie, always faster than the other two, had arrived first, but we all heard more barking and the thunder of hoofbeats approaching fast.

  Seth was screaming again, Susie pulling him down, when Ruben shot her.

  “Goddamnit, Seth,” Ruben yelled, “get on your horse, more’s comin’.”

  Seth kicked the dog, picked up his gun, and vaulted into the saddle, turning back to fire a final shot at me. The bullet tore through the grass inches from my head but I couldn’t move. The last thing I remember was their hoofbeats as they galloped away, towing their bounty. It was full dark when I came to, the quiet broken only by the sound of
whimpering, both mine and a dog’s.

  Dawn was breaking, pale streams of rose and gold tearing through the curtain of night. Poe whined and scratched softly at the dirt I’d just tamped down over the grave. I patted his head and sat down, dropping the shovel. I’d chosen a spot on the hill behind the cabin, under the only big tree we had. I’d buried Ray and Susie in the same grave. I didn’t think either of them would mind and he’d appreciate the company, sort of like those Egyptian kings that got put in a tomb with their pets and food for the journey into the afterlife. Some preacher might not like it, but then I didn’t much care for their interpretations of what God might like anyway, and there was no time for that.

  “Safe journey, my love.”

  I picked up the shovel. Poe and the colt, the three of us the only mourners, made our way down the hill. At the cabin, I stripped off my clothes and threw them in the fireplace, watching as the dying embers razed the pain and hurt from the cotton. I scrubbed head to toe, trying to do the same for myself. I put on an old pair of Ray’s pants and one of his shirts, braiding my long hair into a single plait. Pulling on my boots and cinching up the pants with a leather belt to which I added Ray’s Bowie knife, I headed to the barn.

  Rather than building a bigger house yet, we’d made a magnificent barn, at least by Kansas standards. The idea was to breed the best quarter horses and riding stock in the state, and the two stolen horses were the beginning of that dream. Our four other horses were still inside, nickering softly as I came in. I opened the stall doors and sent them into the pasture, then filled their water troughs and tossed out enough alfalfa and hay for a few days and left the door open to the corral. The colt I’d ride myself. He was a tricky little devil, but with a sure step and a stamina that the others would never match, and we worked well together.