Chapter 44
Thou hast a head and so hath a pin.
It had been two days since they left the rest of the wranglers in Bozeman and Jasper already was driving Rory crazy with his constant chatter.
I want to clear the Wyoming Territory before the snows come then I’ll get rid of this saddle tramp, Rory thought as he glanced over at Jasper who had pulled up along the ridge line of the canyon below. Their time in the saddle had been pretty uneventful until now.
“How did he git down there? “ Jasper asked, looking at the body stretched out on the rocks at the bottom of the canyon, while he picked at rabbit meat stuck in his teeth using a stick he had been whittling on for the past few minutes.
“Damned if I know,’ Rory replied, even though he knew Jasper wasn’t looking for an answer.
They had spotted the vultures circling when they were about a mile away from the Laramie River. So they knew something was dead. They just didn’t know what. From where they sat on their horses, it was clear that it was a white man, maybe about forty years of age. They had been sitting there looking at the body for a couple of minutes and hadn’t noticed any movement.
“The vultures are on the ground and headin’ over to peck at the body” Jasper said.
“I can damn well see that, Jasper. What, you think I’m blind?”
Jasper ignored him and continued, “The eyes are their favorite part, you know and they will be the first to go. It will take them awhile to tear off the clothing to get at the rest of the body. They like the ass too. God damned vultures. I hate ‘em. If we go down there, we might find some gold on that sorry cowboy. One never knows.”
“Yeah, one never knows,” Rory said to himself. Spending a couple of months movin’ cattle for I.P. Olive and Major Frank Walcott and being paired up with Jasper just about drove him crazy. He never shut up. They had just finished driving about two thousand head of beef up to the Black Foot Reservation near Bozeman Montana and he agreed to ride with Jasper to El Paso and then into Mexico for a couple of months, which he was now regretting. The Texas Kid wanted to ride with them but he was just plum loco and Rory didn’t want anything to do with him. He was trouble a walkin’, as his pa used to say. Luckily Jasper agreed with Rory and they cut out before the Texas Kid crawled out of the bunkhouse.
The snows were about to hit the plains and it would be nice to spend some time where it was warm. They would head back and catch on with another drive in the spring when the snow was gone.
He made a mistake. Maybe it wasn’t too late to leave Jasper and take off for California.
“There’s twelve of ‘em Jasper continued. Vultures I mean.”
“I know what you mean, Jasper. I can see ‘em too.” Rory replied, coming out of his reverie.
“Can’t ride these horses down there, can we Rory? Too dangerous, what with all them loose rocks and shit. They’d cut their legs and might even bust up one, what you think, Rory?”
“I ain’t takin’ ol’ Sage Brush down there, that’s for sure. That ol’ saddle tramp probably never had enough gold in his life worth risking ol’ Sage Brush for,” Rory mumbled.
“It might be too dangerous to climb down there on foot too. We might slip and end up like that stranger,” Rory said.
“Whaddya think, wanna go down and check ‘im out Rory?”
“What, didn’t you hear me Jasper? It looks plumb dangerous to try and go down there. And for what? A few nuggets of gold? We don’t even know if he has any gold on him. I can see his gun. It looks mighty big. Probably a .45.”
Rory knew that Jasper was thinking about stripping the body of anything of value and was speculating on whether it was worth taking a chance of slipping and falling among those rocks.
“I sure could use that gun,” Rory said.
“Then let’s get on down there, Jasper said. He might have been a prospector and he might have his poke on him.”
“More than likely, someone pushed him down there and if they did, they probably took everything this guy had,” Rory replied. He still wasn’t keen on climbing down that cliff, but he sure did like the looks of that .45 and he could use some cash. He hated to think about digging into his pay envelope before he got out of Wyoming.
All they had to eat the past two weeks was some wild jack rabbit and some berries. Rory thought he would shit little round pellets if he took one more bite of rabbit.
“Sure would be nice to get some good ol’ home cooked food when we get to
Meriden,” Rory said as he dismounted from Sage Brush and hobbled him in a stand of Ash trees.
“Let’s go git it,” Jasper cried as he scrambled down the cliff.
“Aw hell,” Rory said and he started to follow Jasper down the steep incline. They watched as the stones they dislodged rolled and crashed down into the basin below. A few of them bounced off the body, causing the vultures to take flight. They didn’t go far. They landed on the branches of an old scraggly dead oak tree about twenty five yards up the canyon.
When Rory and Jasper reached the bottom, the stench from the rotting flesh caused them both to gag. Jasper turned and retched last nights’ rabbit before he could go forward again. He bent down picking up a dead tree limb and turned the body over.
“Oh shit, Rory cried. It’s Sheriff Hayden, from Bosler.” He reached down and yanked the tin star off his vest.
The body was well along the way to decomposing and the smell was overpowering. There was a large hole in his shirt just below the pocket. It looked like it was made by something big, a .45 or larger.
There was a black circle of blood on the ground where he bled out.
“I don’t like this.” Rory said. “I say we git the hell outta here and act like we never found ‘im.”
Jasper ignored him and started rifling through his pockets. He reached for the lawman’s gun and pulled it out of its holster sticking it in his belt. Normally Rory would have been pissed and let Jasper know that he said he was gettin’ that gun, but he didn’t want anything to do with this anymore.
“Come on Jasper, let’s get outta here,” Rory cried as he started scrambling up the canyon wall.
Jasper ignored him and started to turn out the dead man’s pants pockets.
“Look, a twenty dollar gold piece. Drinks is on me tonight Rory.”
Jasper reached in and pulled out a folded piece of paper from the sheriff’s vest and started to unfold it when a shot rang out. He looked up to see Rory sliding down the hill and landing next to the lawman. There was a hole in Rory’s forehead the size of a silver dollar. Ol’ Rory’s eyes were wide open but he sure as hell wasn’t seein’ nothin’. He was dead as soon as that bullet tore into his skull. Same as this lawman here died as soon as that bullet tore that hole in his chest. It was one mighty big gun that done Rory in, bigger than the one that got the sheriff, that’s for sure.
Jasper looked down at the piece of paper in his hand and said, “Mr. Olive?” He quickly dropped to the ground as a bullet kicked up dirt near Rory.
“Holy shit,” he yelped, trying to crawl under Rory’s still warm body. Jasper knew he needed better cover than just Rory, so he grabbed him by the arms and dragged him on top of the lawman and dove behind them. He heard a dull thud as another bullet struck Rory.
If ol’ Rory wasn’t dead before, he sure as hell is now, he thought.
Another round struck the ground close to his face, sending a stone flying, cutting into his cheek. The pain caused tears to well up in his eyes. Blood ran down his face. He wiped his eyes trying to see where this guy was. He knew he had to find better cover soon or he would end up like his buddy Rory and this lawman. There was that ol’ oak tree that the vultures had vacated, but that was a good twenty five yards away and he knew he could never make it before the shooter dropped him dead in his tracks. He hoped his horse was still up there.
Hell, what difference does that make? I’ll never git to the horses, let alone up this canyon wall, he thought.
He had an idea. Jasper cupped his mouth with his hands and yelled. “Hey, you up there. Hold your fire. I ain’t tellin’ no one ‘bout this, I promise. Jist let me git outta here and you won’t hear from me agin. I’m headin’ for Ol’ Mexico and I ain’t comin’ back. I promise.”
It wasn’t long before he got his response. He heard a crack and a soft “thwat” as a bullet struck Rory in the face, disintegrating his left eye.
Well, that’s one those damn vultures won’t git, Jasper thought.
He pulled the lawman’s gun out of his belt and raised his head over the stacked bodies looking along the canyon ridge. He saw a figure dressed in buckskin leggings and shirt with long yellow hair and a big ol’ buffalo gun aimed right at him.
“Aw shit, a damn injun with yella hair.” Those were Jasper’s last words before the .50 caliber round blew off the top of his head. The folded paper he held in his left hand floated to the ground landing in the blood and gray matter that was oozing out of Jasper’s skull, covering the picture of I.P. Olive on the Wanted poster Sheriff Hayden was carrying in his vest pocket.
Yellow Hair slid down the steep embankment and walked over to the three prone bodies. It looked like the body these two were rifling through, was that of Sheriff Bill Hayden of Bosler. The other two were two of the Washichus who killed his mother and Gray Wolf.
He took the barrel of his Springfield and pushed it into the side of one of the cowboys rolling him over. His eyes were open probably wondering where the top of his head went. There was a blood soaked piece of paper lying beneath him. Yellow Hair reached down and picked it up and wiped the excess blood off on the cowboy’s shirt.
“Well, I’ll be,” it was a Wanted Poster for the arrest of Isom Prentice Olive for the murder of the Brule Sioux.
“Hmm, took them long enough. If it were white folks he killed, you would have had him arrested a year ago.” he said to the body of the dead sheriff.
He pulled out his knife and reached down and grabbed the hair of the first cowboy and sliced it off. He did the same to the other, leaving the sheriff be.
This time he didn’t yell to the Spirits. He would save that for the next one.
He stuffed the paper in his shirt pocket and scrambled up the hill.
He removed the saddles and bridles from the dead cowboys’ horses before turning them free.