Part 1

THE MAN WHO HATED HIMSELF

By Walt Coburn

A powerful story of the Montana cattletrails and the Great Blizzard of ’86

Every stockman in the northwest recalls the hard winter of ’86-’87. It broke most of them. One cattleman, spending his winter in the South, wrote back to his ranch to inquire how his stuff was wintering. His line rider took a pencil and drew the picture of a starving cow hung up in the drifts. Under it he wrote:

Waiting for a chinook. The last of the five thousand.

The man who drew that picture was Charlie Russell, the daddy of them all when it came to putting the cow and the horse and the Indian and the cowpuncher on canvas or in clay. But in ’86 Charlie was a cowpuncher.

This is not a story about Charlie Russell. He is mentioned no more in the tale. I speak of him here because when a cowman of Montana recalls the winter of ’86 he invariably mentions that picture of Charlie Russell’s as an illustration for his tale of hardship. It tells better than any words the bitter curse of that hard winter.

The Circle C outfit made their last shipment of steers along about the first of November that fall. It was spitting snow when they finished loading. The cattle train pulled out for Chicago. The boys rode back to where the roundup wagon was camped on Main Alkali. They gulped down hot food and black coffee, caught out their town horses and headed for Malta.

As they jogged along the road with their ears tied up with silk handkerchiefs, heads bent against the raw wind, big Buck Bell rode up alongside the wagon boss.

“Winter’s done come, Horace,” grunted Buck, fashioning a cigaret with numbing fingers.

“Shore has,” returned Horace, humped across his saddle horn.

“Makes a man wonder what’s become of his summer’s wages,” Buck led up to his subject.

Horace nodded a trifle absently. He was wondering how he’d get his mess wagon loaded and started for the ranch before the cook got too drunk to handle his four lines.

“How’s chances fer a winter’s job ridin’ line, Horace?” Buck tried to keep the eager tremor out of his voice.

“We’re full handed fer the winter, Bell. You should ’a’ tackled me a month ago.”

“A month ago,” said Buck Bell with grim humor, “I was fatter’n a bear in berry season. Had a thousand dollars. Had a idee I was a top hand at draw poker; The nighthawk took me fer my roll.”

This story of tough luck was not a new one to the ears of the wagon boss. It is a tale as old as the oldest cow hand. Horace, still thinking of the cook, missed the flicker of disappointment in Buck Bell’s snow bitten eyes. He failed to see the beaten droop of the big boned shoulders inadequately clothed in a soiled flannel shirt and two undershirts. Buck didn’t own an overcoat. His boots were rusty and he kicked his toes against his stirrups as he rode, by way of restoring circulation.

* * * * *

“Looks like when a man begun gittin’ white headed,” said Horace as they dropped down the ridge toward town, “he’d have sense enough to save a winter stake.”

He did not mean to be unkind. There wasn’t a mean drop of blood in the cow boss’s veins. He was sorry for Buck Bell and hid his softer emotions under the words he now mumbled into the upturned collar of a threadbare coat. Truthfully speaking, Horace himself was prodigal as the rest of the cowpuncher clan.

Buck took a last pull at the bit of stub of cigaret and threw it away. Then he chuckled softly. They were riding down the lane that approached town. To the left of them was the Malta graveyard, the wooden slabs whitening with the first snow.

“What struck you as bein’ so comical, Buck?”

“Just thinkin’ how them boys planted in yonder boothill don’t need worry no more about winter jobs and coonskin coats they ain’t got the coin to buy. I kin name three-four that I bet is plenty warm where they went.”

They rode into town and put their horses in the feed barn. The stalls were filling with Circle C horses. There was an unwritten law of the outfit that a man must stable his horse before he got drunk.

Over at Dick Powell’s place the boys were paid off. Dick, saloon man and sheriff, voiced his friendly warning.

“The town’s your’n, boys, Take care of ’er.”

The hard earned money went into swift circulation. The tin horn gamblers opened up their games. Bartenders set up free drinks at proper intervals to the laughing, cussing, free handed men who lined the bar and swapped yarns and thawed out.

Boot heels clicked on the pine board floors. Spurs jingled along the streets.

“Can’t spend’er all in one place.”

They moved along to the next saloon. Crumpled banknotes lay along the bar. The men greeted old friends. Jovial bartenders, most of them old time cowpunchers, wiped right hands on soiled aprons and voiced profane welcome.

Fiddles squeaked above the voices loosened by the whisky. Tin pan pianos banged. Lights defied the coming dusk of early night. There would be no night guard to stand tonight. No long circle to ride in the early dawn. While their money lasted these cowboys owned the town.

Buck Bell found the nighthawk sitting in a monte game.

“Here’s that fifty dollars you still got comin’, Cotton Eye.”

The nighthawk looked up, grinned and shook his head.

“To hell with you an’ your fifty, Buck. Pay me half when you die. The rest when you come back. I’m winnin’ off this gamblin’ man.”

Buck grunted an indistinct thanks and clumped up to the bar.

“A little red licker, Dick. Give the boys what they want. Wake up that sheepherder in the corner and tell the gentleman that ol’ Buck Bell is in town. I’m a red eyed wolf from Bitter Crick and it’s my night to howl.” Whereupon he howled long and loud with a quivering, high keyed sadness in his voice.

* * * * *

“See you later,” Buck said as he moved on out and along the street.

The wind moaned darkly down the lonesome lane between the rows of saloons and stores. He stood with bowed legs spread wide, thumbs hung in his sagging cartridge belt, leaning a little against the storm. His howl was blotted out in a flurry of snow that was ushering in the long winter. Buck felt sad in spite of the dozen drinks under his belt. Sad and lonesome and restless. He belonged down in Texas and he was a long way from home. He had aimed to go back home this winter, wearing store clothes and with coin in his pockets. But Cotton Eye had cleaned him. He crossed over to Long Henry’s and was promptly pulled up to the bar by several celebrants. Buck tossed out a ten dollar bill with the air of a man who scorns money. Somebody was singing “Sam Bass”.

“Sam Bass” is a ballad that extolls the deeds of that notorious Texas outlaw. The old time outlaw has always held a place in the hearts of the cowpunchers. His vices are buried, his virtues, real or imaginary, live on in cowland saga.

“Sam first came to Texas a cowboy for to be-- A kinder hearted feller you seldom ever see!”

Buck Bell twirled his whisky glass between thumb and forefinger. The singer had a good voice and his audience was mellow and prone to the sentiment that has to do with white haired mothers, golden haired sweethearts and generosity of dying outlaws.

“Sam met his fate at Round Rock, July the twenty-first; They pierced poor Sam with rifle balls and emptied out his purse.

“Jim had borrowed Sam’s good gold and didn’t want to pay, So the only shot he saw, was to give poor Sam away. He sold out Sam . . .

Buck Bell nodded at his dim reflection in the mirror above the back bar.

“I usta work clost to Round Rock,” he told the man next to him.

He downed his drink at one gulp and reached for the bar bottle as it came down along the line. He became more quiet, more thoughtful, as the night wore on. That haunted restlessness drove him out to the deserted street. He drifted, alone and wrapped in brooding thought, into Cavanaugh’s.

The negro piano player knew the song of Sam Bass. He sang it through three times for Buck. Buck gave him ten dollars. Only ten more remained in his overalls pocket.

* * * * *

After many more drinks Buck Bell started for a place across the tracks. His last ten was spent. His heart was as empty as his pockets. The mournful shriek of a locomotive made him shiver as he halted in the lee of the station to light a cigaret. The train dispatcher stepped out of the lighted telegraph office, an eyeshade across his forehead, train orders in his hand. He did not see the tall form of Buck Bell leaning a little unsteadily in the darkness just to one side of the locomotive headlight.

No. 3 squealed to a halt to deposit two sleepy traveling drummers. The door of the express car opened. The armed messenger dropped a heavy iron box on the waiting truck alongside the car. The train dispatcher was now signing for the box. The drummers hurried for the Malta House.

“Payroll for the mines,” the express messenger, explained. “Wish I had that much. I’d quit riding these damn’ night runs. Blizzard comin’.”

The door of the express car slid shut. A yellow lantern circled in the night. The train pulled out slowly and the dispatcher wheeled away the truck with its steel box.

The wheels of the truck creaked its dismal passage. The form of Buck Bell moved in a blackness made more opaque by the departure of the train lights. The man was pushing the truck within arm’s reach of the tall cowboy.

Buck lifted his gun from its old scabbard. He balanced its weight in his hand, moved out of his tracks. Swung the long barrel in a swift arc. The man wheeling the truck slumped down gently, an indistinct lump on the deserted platform.

Buck Bell moved swiftly now. He picked the steel box up in his arms and ran down the tracks. He did not halt until he reached the stockyards, a mile or more from town. He hid the box under the loading chute, then started back.

The walk in the cold air had driven the whisky fog from his brain. Buck was sober now. The sadness, the brooding restlessness, had gone and in its place came swift regrets. He fought down those regrets as best he could. He’d been a fool to do it, but he was into it now. He’d hang and rattle. Play ’er out as the cards fell and ask no man for better than even odds. He wondered how hard he’d hit that depot feller. Can’t let a man lay out in the cold that way. Besides, there was the trains to attend to.

But, as he circled the depot, he saw the sheriff and the train dispatcher talking earnestly inside the lighted telegraph and ticket office. Buck moved away, across to Dick Powell’s place. Nobody took notice of his entrance as he slipped in the back door and dropped into a chair by the stove. Then somebody called the house up for a drink and Buck joined the crowd. He had not been missed.

“How’s things stackin’ up, Buck?” It was old Horace who voiced the question. “Need a little money? I was talkin’ to the Old Gent and he said to let you have what you need. You kin come back and work it out in the spring. It ain’t every man I’d do that fer. But like I was tellin’ the Old Gent, you’re on the square and kin be depended on.”

Buck’s mouth opened, then closed without saying a word. He had been on the verge of telling the wagon boss the whole thing. Until now, Buck Bell had accepted the trust of his fellowmen as a matter of course. Now, well, now it was all over. He was beginning to pay already for his crime.

“I’ll just make ’er out fer a hundred dollars, Buck.”

Horace was misinterpreting the cowboy’s silence. Buck shook his head.

“I’d ruther not, Horace. I’ll make ’er somehow. It’s right white of you and the Old Gent. I won’t fergit it.”

* * * * *

The sheriff came in, an icy gust of wind and snow following him inside the lamplit, smoke hazed saloon.

Dick Powell was a blunt statured man, husky, reddish of hair, with keen gray eyes and a drooping mustache. A good natured sort of fellow who was rated as a crackerjack cow hand. The grin on Dick’s mouth held a grim twist as his eyes swept the crowd with slow deliberation.

“Belly up to the mahogany, Dick,” invited some one.

Dick Powell did not seem to hear. A hush fell over the gathering. The fiddle in the hands of a Cree breed squeaked thinly and went silent. The bartender, from force of habit, reached for the sawed off shotgun under the bar.

“Boys,” said the blocky sheriff, his voice heavy with sadness, rather than anger, “there’s a damn’ skunk amongst us tonight. When you boys rode in, I give you the run of the town. A man hates to think he has to watch boys that he’s worked with in the wet and cold and hot weather. I never thought a Circle C man would coyote on me.”

“What the hell you drivin’ at, Dick?” asked Horace, his mild eyes glinting a little.

“Some polecat knocked the depot man on the head and got off with five thousand dollars, that’s all.”

“Where did that key pounder ever git five thousand bucks?” asked some one.

“Payroll fer the Landusky mine. Five thousand in cash.”

“Well,” drawled Cotton Eye, the nighthawk, “I reckon them mine folks will keep on runnin’ things just the same. Have a drink and fergit it.”

“Whoever lifted that roll won’t have to worry none about forkin’ hay and openin’ water holes this winter,” chuckled another cowboy.

“Dad burn the luck,” complained a third, “why didn’t I think about glaumin’ that payroll? Now I gotta break out of a early mornin’ from now till spring, shovelin’ hay into a lot o’ bawlin’ dogies. Some gents gits all the luck.”

But for all their banter, they felt uneasy. Who among them had stolen that five thousand dollars? Oddly enough, no man blamed the thief. They rather admired his ingenuity. He had made a lucky haul.

“Well, Dick,” said Horace slowly, “whoever done it, must ’a’ been blind drunk. You know every man in the outfit. There ain’t one rotten egg in the bunch. Say, how do you know it wa’n’t some tramp er some stray miner that done it?”

“The depot man heard his spurs jingle, so he says,” growled the sheriff, “just before he got beefed. It was some cow hand. And outside of you boys there ain’t a cowboy in town. He heard them spurs.”

“Got ary idee who might ’a’ done it?” asked Horace.

“If I have, I’ll keep it to myself,” came the tart reply. “I look to you boys to lend me a hand and all I git is some horrawin’.”

“No need to git hot about it,” grinned the wagon boss, toying with his drink.

The sheriff ignored that remark and turned to his bartender.

“Was all of these men in the place at midnight when No. 3 come in?”

The bartender smoothed his bald head in grave thought. He had taken a goodly amount of drinks since the boys got in. Owl eyed, he tallied the crowd.

“Near as I kin recollect, Dick, not a man o’ them has left since I come back from supper at eleven.”

“Then that alibis this bunch of cow dodgers,” and the sheriff moved on out and down the street.

* * * * *

The robbery gave the cowpunchers a meaty topic for talk--talk and more drinks. They hit upon the idea of following Dick Powell in his sleuthing.

From one saloon to the next they waddled in the wake of the annoyed sheriff. The crowd had taken on numbers until by the time they reached the Bloody Heart the entire outfit was crowded into the saloon.

Various bartenders had furnished iron-clad alibis for every Circle C man. Powell gave up in disgust and slipped away from the throng, which was growing somewhat boisterous. Horace followed the sheriff out the back door. Twenty-five cowpunchers set about to make the most of the momentous occasion.

Months of hard work in the saddle and branding corrals without a holiday, long days from the crack of dawn until dark, with two hours night guard for good measure, had starved them for a little fun.

These men belonged to a breed that has no equal. For forty dollars a month and grub they ride mean horses, face death and hunger and thirst and cold and bitter discomforts. They ask no favors, whine out no complaint, taking the good along with the bad. It is all in a day’s work. Most of them were cowmen at twelve years of age. At sixty there would be much of the boy left in their big hearts. It is not for those who have not known their breed to censure their faults. They lived according to their lights.

John Law and his rules meant little in their lives. They had a way of settling personal affairs, those men who roamed the West in the Eighties when the country needed them.

So they held kangaroo court. The bartender at the Bloody Heart was found guilty and fined several rounds of drinks. Then they moved on to the next saloon and again held court. Another dispenser of redeye was found guilty. Guilty as hell, by ballot. The fine was duly paid in liquid form. And at daybreak they had routed the sheriff from his warm bed, stood him up on the bar, clad in a knee length nightshirt, boots, hat and a cold cigaret. Ballots were passed, signed and dropped in Dick’s hat. He read them, one by one.

“Guilty as hell.”

“Gash damn’ you bonehead, misfit, loco idiots!”

But he paid the fine, setting out the glasses and bottle with his own hand.

It was a large night. Guns popped jubilant greeting to a day that held no hard ride after stray cattle.

Most of them were flat broke. Cotton Eye, the bloated financier, had lost his money and hocked his spurs for a bottle to take along. Then he engaged the bartender in conversation while a confederate stole back the spurs.

Horace gathered his men one, by one, mounted them, and started them out of town. They bucked their horses down the street, emptying their guns at a leaden sky. Behind them was their night’s pleasure. Ahead lay the dread winter.

* * * * *

Buck Bell got his private horse from the barn. Because he owned no overcoat, he donned his slicker and wrapped his feet in strips of gunnysack. Alone, his hat pulled down across his eyes, his ungloved hands shoved down against the saddle cantle, he rode out of town.

As he neared the stockyards he glanced about. No living thing moved in the snow swept world that met his eye. He swung off his horse and dragged the steel box from under the loading chute. A heavy padlock fastened it. Buck drew his .45 and shot off the lock. His stiff fingers pried up the lid. There lay the banknotes in piles bound with wide rubber bands. He shoved the money into the deep pockets of his angora chaps. Then he buried the empty metal box in the débris under the chute.

Five minutes later he rode on again into the storm. He looked old and sadly troubled. The bitter cold was pinching the color from his face. He was a little sick from the liquor that he had drunk. Sick and lonesome.

Through the lane and past the graveyard, on to the wind swept benchland, headed south toward the badlands of the Missouri River, almost a hundred miles away. With the wind at his back, Buck Bell drifted. His heart was as heavy as the leaden sky. Ahead of him rolled a giant tumbleweed. On and on, across the bench, grotesque, almost alive, blown along by the north wind. Headed south.

In the pockets of his black chaps was stowed more money than he had ever seen or even dreamed of. There was not a chance of the theft being fastened to him. It had been easy, almost too easy to seem true. With five thousand dollars a man could buy a good bunch of cattle down in New Mexico or Arizona. Buck was cowman enough to make a herd pay. It would mean that he no longer need work for wages. For forty a month ... Forty into five thousand. Buck was a good hand at figures. One hundred and twenty-five months. Ten years and more, even if a man didn’t spend a dime for poker or redeye or smokin’--or clothes. Socks and such. He had sold his bed for twenty dollars. That twenty was in his vest pocket now. He had kept it separated from the other money--the money he had stolen.

“Sam Bass was born in Indiana; it was his native home....”

The song, high pitched, quavering, drifted along the wind from behind Buck, blurred a little in the flurry of hard snow that swirled across the ground like white sand. Buck halted as the singer came up out of the storm. It was Dick Powell, the sheriff.

* * * * *

Something hot scalded Buck Bell’s heart as the rider came alongside. Had the sheriff somehow found him out? Buck almost hoped so. But Powell grinned as easy greeting. He was warmly clad in chaps, overshoes and a buffalo coat. The stock of a carbine jutted from his saddle scabbard.

“You look fer all the world like a bull that’s been whipped outa the herd, Bell. Here, see what this’ll do to you.”

He passed over a quart of whisky. They drank together and rode on with the storm.

“Trailin’ that gent that done the robbery, Dick?”

The sheriff grunted into his fur collar.

“Trailin’ hell! Whoever done it didn’t leave a sign. But mark my words, Bell, he’ll give hisself away.”

“How?”

Buck Bell slapped his cold hands against the slicker to beat the blood into circulation.

“Here, take these.” The sheriff pulled a pair of yarn mitts from his pocket. “I brung along an extra pair. The missus knit ’em.”

Buck pulled on the red mittens, mumbling his gratitude.

“How?” The sheriff replied to his question. “Well, it’s thisaway, Bell. I know every man that was in town that night. I know where each man will be workin’ this winter. Horace gimme their names and what camps they’d be at. I wired fer the serial number of them stolen banknotes. When that money begins goin’ into circulation, I’ll nab my man. Er if ary man quits this range, I’ll be follerin’ him. I’ll have the other towns posted. He’s corralled.”

The sheriff consulted a little book.

“Here’s the list. Stuart and Contway at Big Warm. Howe and Smith at Little Warm. You and Cotton Eye at Rocky Point, down on the Missouri. And so on.”