Hanging Woman Creek (1964) by L'amour Louis

Author:L'amour, Louis [L'amour, Louis]
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-12-12T06:26:20.031000+00:00

Chapter Twelve.

It was night and it was cold, and we had no more home than a busted poker chip. There at the end Bill Justin had got all upset and insisted we didn't have to leave at night, with it getting colder by the minute, but I had my neck bowed and would rather freeze to death than spend another night in that cabin.

It was worth leaving to see their faces when Eddie dumped all that bear sign into an empty burlap sack. Why, their faces were longer than a mule mare's, and Nebraska he almost reached for one of them, but Eddie picked up the meat cleaver.

"You go ahead, Mister Cowpuncher. You just pick that up and you'll find yourself liftin' a stub. You'll leave your hand right there on the table."

Nebraska was an ornery man, but he looked up at Eddie Holt and then at that cleaver and he was in no mind to take the chance. So we gathered up our things and lit out.

The snow crunched under our boots as we walked over to saddle up, but it wasn't until we were riding out that Eddie said, "You got a place to go? I mean, you got something in mind?"

First thing I thought of was that cave. There was grub there, shelter, and firewood, and there was a creek only a whoop and a holler down the canyon.

When we rode out from the place the snow was a good twelve inches deep on the level. Here and there where it could drift it was three or four times that deep, and no sign of easing off. All we needed now was a wind and we'd have a first-class blizzard. And unless a man has seen a blizzard in Montana or Dakota he hasn't seen anything.

Me, I was wearing a pair of wore-out shotgun chaps and I envied Eddie, who had him a pair of woolly chaps left over from his days with the Buffalo Bill Show. Not that others didn't wear them. A good many Montana cowhands went in for woolly or angora chaps for winter riding, but they'd always seemed a mite too fancy for me.

With my coat turned up around my ears and my hat tied down under my chin with a scarf, I surely didn't look the romantic picture folks have of a Montana cowhand, but I wasn't thinking of looks. I was thinking of that cave and wondering what Ann Parley was doing now--if she was alive.

My face grew stiff from the cold and my ringers were numb, even though I changed hands on the bridle to beat them in turn against my legs. Several times we got down and walked to keep our feet from freezing.

One satisfaction I had to keep me warm. Before leaving I had outlined the work we'd done to Justin and the men who were taking over from us, told them where we'd chopped holes in the ice, where the feed had been best, where the stock had taken to holing up in bad weather to get out of the wind, and generally giving them the layout.

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