Massacre at Crow Creek Crossing Read online

  Travis was a little slow between the ears. It was not noticeable right off, but his lack of common sense exposed itself within a short time in any company. Malcolm was looking forward to seeing Travis’s reaction to having a tussle with a respectable woman, even if it was against her will.

  Malcolm grinned. That would be after he had his tussle with the unfortunate woman, of course. He laughed to himself, thinking that Travis would probably try to pay her afterward. Malcolm shook his head when another thought occurred to him. She’s a right handsome little filly. Too bad I’m gonna have to kill her before we hit town. “Come on,” he blurted. “Let’s get on down there and get us a fire goin’. I’m hungry.” He gave his horse a kick and started off down the rise, leading Carrie’s mule.

  Travis followed, leading their two packhorses, the foolish grin of anticipation still in place.

  They weaved their way through the stand of pines that bordered the stream and pulled up just short of the water. Travis slid off his horse immediately, drew his knife to cut the rope binding her wrists, and rushed to pull Carrie off the mule. Kicking at him furiously, she tried to resist his efforts and for a few moments it appeared to be a draw, since he only had one free hand. Finally in frustration, he dropped the knife, grabbed her ankle, and jerked her roughly off the mule. Landing hard on the ground, she nevertheless kicked at him before sliding on her backside under the mule to escape him. The mule naturally jumped sideways to avoid the frantic woman under its belly, almost knocking Travis down in the process.

  Highly entertained by his brother’s clumsy attempts to subdue the terrified woman, Malcolm threw his head back and laughed. “Damned if you ain’t got a strange way of courtin’ a woman,” he chided. “Just hold off a bit before you get all lathered up and I have to throw you in the water to cool you off. Take care of the horses first, then we’ll get a fire goin’, so we can get somethin’ to eat. We got all night to see that the lady gets all she deserves. Don’t that make more sense?”

  After a moment, Travis settled down and stepped back to stand beside Malcolm. They stared down at the frightened woman for a few moments as she continued to slowly push herself away from them until she was stopped when she met with the trunk of a young cottonwood at her back.

  “That’s as good as any,” Malcolm smirked. “Fetch me that rope,” he said to Travis. When his brother stepped quickly to get the coil of rope from his saddle, Malcolm took it from him and proceeded to tie Carrie to the tree she had unintentionally selected. “There,” he declared, “now you just pull yourself together and we might give you a little somethin’ to eat to keep your strength up. And, Buttercup, you’re gonna need it. That boy’s as rank as an unbroke mustang.”

  Like a calf roped and tied for branding, Carrie stared up at him with eyes wide with fear. For the first time since her abduction, she spoke, pleading for mercy. “Please don’t hurt me,” she sobbed.

  Enjoying evil satisfaction from the doomed woman’s helplessness, Malcolm replied, “Why, we ain’t gonna hurt you much. You might even have a good time.” He left her then to contemplate the ordeal awaiting her while he went to help Travis unsaddle the horses.

  A multitude of thoughts collided inside her brain, thoughts of terror and the recurring image of her husband as he lay dying, seconds before the sickening sight of the final shot to his head. Friends in Bozeman had advised against starting back to Cheyenne alone, but Robert had been determined to get back before hard winter set in. She sobbed when she thought about it, ashamed that she could think of blaming him for delivering her to this fate. She even envied him, now dead, with no suffering left to face.

  From the tree where she was tied, she could see the two men thirty yards away by the side of the stream, joking and teasing each other as they unsaddled the horses and began to collect firewood to build a fire. After they have had their way with me, she thought, they will kill me, just as they did Robert. It was enough to cause the tears to flow down her cheeks again. The thought of the assault upon her body was more horrifying than the death that was sure to follow. She could think of only one way to deprive them of their wicked pleasures. Even though she truly believed that it was a sin to kill one’s self, she felt sure that God would be forgiving in this case. Resolved then to try, for she was not sure she had the strength to accomplish it, she strained to reach under her heavy skirt for the knife knocked from Travis’s hand when the mule bumped him. He had evidently forgotten it in the excitement. It had fallen between her legs, and she had managed to drag it with her on her skirt tail as she had backed away from the two men.

  In his hurry to make camp, Malcolm had not deemed it necessary to bind her securely to the tree since he was planning to untie her again in a matter of minutes. Consequently, Carrie was held to the tree by several loops of the rope around her upper body and her arms down to her elbows. Even though her wrists were still tied, she found she could just reach the knife by straining as hard as she could. Once she secured the handle in her hands, she drew it up to her to see if she had enough freedom to make the move necessary to plunge the blade into her breast. The question she could not answer was whether or not she could summon enough strength to force the knife into her bosom. Determined to do it, however, she hesitated a moment to ask God for forgiveness. Then she closed her eyes, and calling on all the strength she could muster, she snatched the knife toward her breast. She was immediately stunned when her arms were blocked by an unyielding force and a hand was clamped tightly over her mouth.

  “Don’t make a sound,” a voice behind the tree ordered. Her eyes fluttered open and she could still see the two brothers down near the stream. “I’ve come to help you.” The arm that had blocked her knife thrust was cloaked in a buckskin sleeve, leaving her to believe her rescuer was an Indian. Thinking she had been saved from one fate only to be threatened by another, she was too terrified to decide which would be worse.

  As the hand covering her mouth was slowly withdrawn, she thought to scream until the voice said, “My name’s Cole Bonner. I’m gonna try to get you outta here.” He took the knife from her hand and cut one strand of the rope around her shoulders. When he had freed her, he pulled her back behind the tree with him.

  Less fearful now, she quickly scrambled back to him, eager to do anything he ordered.

  “Any minute now, they’re gonna look over here and see you’re gone,” he said, speaking softly. “Are there just the two of’em? Anybody else with ’em?”

  She shook her head anxiously, her tears flowing freely, as she uttered, “They killed my husband! They murdered him!”

  “I know,” he said, doing his best to calm her as he cut the ropes binding her wrists, for she looked as if she might lose control of her emotions. “And I’m gonna try to get you somewhere safe while I take care of them. Just do what I tell you. Can you do that?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.” He led her a few steps away, keeping the tree between them and the two, so far, unsuspecting outlaws. Pointing toward a small gap in a bank of laurel, he said, “Run just as fast as you can through that hole in the bushes. Twenty or thirty yards on the other side of ’em you oughta find my horse standin’ in the trees. Wait for me there.”

  Before he could say more, the sharp report of a handgun rang out and a chunk of bark flew from the tree behind them at almost the same instant. It was followed in rapid succession by three more shots, each one impacting with the tree trunk.

  “Go!” Cole ordered, and Carrie did not hesitate. He watched her briefly to make sure she gained the bank of bushes and disappeared beyond, then he turned his attention back to the two men inching their way toward the tree, firing wildly as they approached.

  Lying flat on his belly, Cole inched up closer to the trunk of the tree, wishing they had picked a bigger tree to tie the woman to. The unfortunate cottonwood was suffering a major assault as the two brothers concentrated their fire at the foot of it. The rain of bullets made Cole reluctant to expose his head and half his body to get off a
shot in return. Knowing he couldn’t remain there much longer before one of their shots found him, he pulled a piece of a dead limb out from under him. With almost one movement, he tossed the limb at some bushes to his right, then quickly rolled to his left, his rifle held tightly up against his chest. There was little time to aim, but the moment’s distraction caused by the limb he had thrown afforded him the opportunity for a quick shot. He pulled the trigger before the butt of the Henry was even close to his shoulder. The shot caught one of the men in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground.

  “Travis!” Malcolm Womack cried out when he saw his brother fall. He dropped immediately to take cover behind a rotten log. “You all right?”

  “I’m hit!” Travis answered.

  “Can you move?” Malcolm asked. When Travis replied that he thought he could, Malcolm said, “Crawl back to the riverbank. I’ll keep this son of a bitch busy till you get there.” Seeing Travis making his way backward toward the cover of the low bank, Malcolm raised his head to take a shot at the rifleman, only to receive a face full of wood splinters when a slug from Cole’s rifle tore into the rotten log. It was enough to cause him to push himself backward while keeping as flat on the ground as he could, hoping to reach the riverbank, firing in the direction of the rifle blast as he did. He dropped below the low bank just as the hammer of his pistol clicked on an empty cylinder. Using the cover of the bank, he quickly reloaded the empty cylinders. Ready to fire again, he raised up to find his adversary standing no more than fifty feet away, his rifle aimed, waiting for Malcolm to show himself.

  In the next instant, the .44 slug from the Henry struck him in the center of his chest. The loaded pistol dropped from his hand as he slumped to the ground, never wondering why his brother had not shot the tall figure in buckskins as he stood unprotected, waiting to take the fatal shot.

  Cole walked cautiously to the edge of the bank to make sure Malcolm wasn’t playing possum. The blank, wide-eyed look of surprise frozen on Malcolm’s face told him he was no longer a threat. He looked then toward the north when he heard the sound of hooves, just in time to see a horse and rider disappearing beyond the bend of the river. The thought of pursuit crossed his mind, but he discarded it. It would take too much time, and he had the woman to think about. It would be best to do what he could for her, wait for Harley to catch up, and move on. It seemed unlikely to think they’d see any more of the outlaw that had escaped. He was wounded, how badly Cole wasn’t sure, although it appeared to be no more than a shoulder wound. From the way the outlaw had run off, leaving his partner with no backup, told Cole the man had no stomach for a face-off.

  Beyond the bend in the river, Travis Womack urged his horse for more speed. When he had been shot and retreated to the cover of the riverbank, he had not been sure how many were in the party that attacked them. His first thought had been to get away, with only a brief concern for Malcolm, thinking it his brother’s choice to run or stay. There had been no time to saddle his horse or grab his saddlebags. Before galloping away along the river, he looked back to see the one lone man, standing in the open, waiting for Malcolm to pop up from the riverbank. In mere seconds, he saw Malcolm raise up to be immediately shot down. He felt bad for his brother, but his death only served to convince him that he had been wise to run. Too bad Malcolm didn’t. He would retain that vivid image of a wild man in buckskins, Indian or white, he wasn’t sure.

  CHAPTER 2

  Tense with fright after hearing all the shooting on the other side of the thick laurel bushes, Carrie was not sure what she should do. What if the mysterious man who had come to help her was killed by the two murderers who had taken her? When the shooting finally stopped, she wondered if she should take the stranger’s horse and flee. When she looked at the dark horse tied to a laurel branch, it looked so big and powerful that she questioned her ability to ride it. She was no rider by any means, having barely been able to hang on to the mule’s mane to keep from falling off. Flustered by indecision, she decided not to try riding the horse and chose to hide instead. She ran farther back in the trees to find a place to hide. A deep gully that ran back toward the river seemed the best place, so she stepped down into it and huddled up against one side of it.

  Pushing through the bushes again, Cole found Joe where he had tied him, but there was no sign of the woman. He called out, “Ma’am?” But there was no answer. Surely she didn’t run off, he thought. Maybe she just tried to find a place to hide. Thinking that to be the most probable thing, he looked around him at the ground. He couldn’t help shaking his head in wonder when he looked at the obvious footprints in the thin layer of snow. He proceeded to follow them, pausing several times when they led in one direction, then back in the opposite, first right, then left. It was plain to see that the woman had run in fright, unable to find a place to hide. Finally finding a deep gully leading down to the water, she had evidently settled on it to take refuge. With the tracks in a straight line toward it, Cole stopped some distance short of the gully and called out again. “You can come outta that gully now. Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you.”

  A few long moments passed, then finally she peeked up over the edge of the gully. Seeing him standing several yards away, patiently waiting, she sheepishly climbed up out of her hiding place, realizing she had not thought about the obvious trail she had left in the snow. Seeing him standing tall and powerful, she wondered if she could trust his intentions any more than those of the two he had just freed her from. As soon as he spoke, however, she sensed an honest quality about the man. Although dressed like a savage, he obviously was not, and she felt safe almost immediately.

  “I’m real sorry about your husband, Ma’am,” Cole said. “What were you doin’ out in the Bighorn Valley by yourselves? Where were you headed?”

  “We were on our way to Cheyenne,” Carrie said. “My husband’s father has a store there. We were going to try to make a new start there.”

  “Farmin’?” Cole guessed.

  Carrie nodded.

  “Where did you start out from?” Cole asked.

  “The Yellowstone. About six miles from Bozeman. We had a piece of land near the river, but it was a sorry piece of land, so we decided it best to go to Cheyenne. Robert’s father told him he could help in the store while he looked for some decent land to work. But now this has happened, and with Robert gone, I don’t know what else to do but to go on to Cheyenne. I’ve got nobody to go back to in Bozeman.”

  “Yessum, I can see that you’re in a real bind,” Cole said. “I reckon if you’re still wantin’ to go on to Cheyenne, though, I can take you there.” He had no desire to see Cheyenne again. There were too many memories in the little town that was originally called Crow Creek Crossing. So many of those memories were bitter ones. But he didn’t see that he had much choice, now that he had rescued this woman. He felt responsible for her, at least as far as seeing her safely to Cheyenne.

  “I would certainly be beholden to you,” Carrie said, although without her husband she was not sure Cheyenne was the best place for her. She had never met his parents, and she could not be certain she would be welcome there now that Robert was gone. How would they react, she wondered, when a strange young woman appeared, claiming to be their daughter-in-law?

  “Maybe you got family somewhere else,” Cole suggested when she confessed her concerns.

  “No, no family,” she replied. “Robert was all the family I had.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Carrie,” she replied, Carrie Green.”

  “Green,” Cole repeated. “Your married name?”

  She nodded.

  “That’d be Douglas Green then. Is that your husband’s father?” He remembered the owner of the dry goods store in Cheyenne.

  She nodded again.

  He stroked his chin as he thought over the circumstances in which he now found himself. After a minute, during which Carrie watched him anxiously, he sighed and said, “Well, Carrie, I’ve had dealin’s with Douglas Green and I’ve
met Mrs. Green. They both strike me as nice folks. They’ll most likely welcome you in their home. Tell you what. I’ll see that you get to Cheyenne to your in-laws, but we’re gonna have to make a stop at a Crow village on the way. We’re packin’ a right smart load of meat that’ll look mighty good to those folks in that village. My partner’s comin’ along behind me with the packhorses, so we’ll wait for him to catch up. He’s seein’ that your husband’s body gets a decent burial. While we wait, why don’t you come on back and sit by that fire those fellows started. Maybe I can fix you something to eat, if you’re hungry. First I’ll see if I can round up the horses they left behind.”

  Already, Carrie felt she was in safe hands, even though she felt as limp as a rag now that the tension in her body was reduced. “I’m not hungry right now, but I could sure use some coffee.” She was trying, but it would be a while yet before she could recover from the events that just happened. And she wasn’t sure she could eat, even if she had been hungry. “Thank you for taking care of Robert,” she said softly.

  * * *

  Before Harley showed up with the packhorses, Cole had caught the sorrel that Malcolm Womack had ridden as well as their two packhorses. Carrie’s mule wandered back on its own. Seeing the body before Cole had dragged it out of the clearing, Carrie identified it as the one called Malcolm. She told Cole they were brothers, and the one who had fled was Travis Womack, the youngest of three.

  When Cole had stripped Malcolm’s body of weapons and ammunition, he had found forty-seven dollars in his pockets and he promptly handed it to Carrie. “Ain’t much in the way of makin’ up for the loss of your husband,” he had told her, “but if anybody’s got a right to it, it oughta be you.”