The Road to Ratchet Creek Read online

  Smoke rolled lazily up from the muzzle of a revolver in the left hand of the medium-sized man who walked along the center of the street toward the loafers. Ablack Texas-style Stetson hat sat back on a head of rusty red hair. While not handsome, his face had a rugged attraction despite the luxuriant moustache and a solemn expression. His stocky, powerful frame was clothed in a sober black suit, one of the less formal religious sects might wear. However a stiff, two-and-a-half inch wide belt circled his waist, carrying the revolver’s holster at the left side. Although he handled the gun with a casual competence, the holster rode a mite higher than the real tophands’ rig and looked different in other details.

  Rintel gave no thought to the holster, being more concerned with its owner. From the sober tone of his clothing and general appearance, the newcomer could easily be a Mormon. If so, that made his actions the more heinous in Rintel’s eyes.

  “All right, folks,” the man said, bending down to haul John off the now howling and defeated Chub with his right hand although not relaxing his watch on the loafers. “Let’s stop all this fooling afore somebody gets hurt real bad.”

  “Who the hell asked you to bill in?” Rintel snarled. The man spoke with a Texas drawl and in general the Mormon faith made least impression on the Southern States, but that did not make Rintel feel any better disposed toward him.

  “Don’t let the clothes fool you, brother,” warned the man. “I’m ‘billing in’ in my official capacity as U.S. marshal for the Utah Territory, hired by the Government to keep the peace and dispense legal justice on all sides. Cole’s the name. Solly Cole to my friends, none of who I see afore me, I’m right pleased to say.”

  Once again Rintel’s hand fled from the butt of his revolver, after moving there ready to assert his superiority over the stranger. Behind him, all the other loafers put aside their thoughts of interceding on his behalf. Standing loyal and true to a friend against a Mormon or an unimportant travelling preacher was one thing; facing and threatening a U.S. marshal on his behalf was a horse of an entirely different color. Apart from in Texas—where a captain of Rangers held pride of place—a United States marshal ranked as top man in the law enforcement of every Western State or Territory, packing a whole heap of authority in his sphere of operations.

  As Solly Cole stated, he had been brought in by the Governor to keep some semblance of law and order throughout the Territory. Already the transcontinental railroad had brought in many people not of the Mormon faith. Some of them wanted to live peaceably with the Latter Day Saints who had opened up the area and could claim the rights of prior occupancy. Others did not. So Solly Cole faced the problem of acting as mediator between Mormons and Gentiles in addition to his other duties. Newly arrived to the Territory, he was not known to the loafers. One thing they could guess without being told: any man hired as U.S. marshal must be tough as they come and better than fair with a gun.

  Only Rintel continued to show any hostility and he did so in the safest manner for himself. Assuming the righteously-indignant air of a tax-payer faced by one whose salary he helped to pay, he glared at Cole and pointed to the girl who stood coiling her whip with the air of one who knows the incident to be all but closed.

  “If you’re a U.S. marshal, why ain’t you arresting that Mormon brat and her for assaulting me ’n’ my kid?” Tintel demanded. “Anybody can see what she is—.”

  “You want for me to show you my badge?” Cole inquired sardonically, catching the girl’s arm as she cut loose with a curse and started for Rintel. “Forgive him, sister, for he knoweth not what damned fool things he does, or who you are.”

  “Who is she?” asked one of the loafers.

  “Miss Martha Jane Canary, brother,” intoned Cole with all the solemnity of a newly-appointed bishop addressing a rich congregation. “Or, to a bunch of ignorant bastards like you, Calamity Jane.”

  Chapter 2

  TO ERR IS HUMAN

  HEARING THE GIRL’S NAME EXPLAINED A WHOLE HEAP of things to the watching, listening and impressed loafers. All now saw why she came to be dressed in that unconventional manner and showed such dexterity in the use of the long-lashed bull whip.

  Although some of the stories going the rounds about her were pure fabrication, Miss Martha Jane Canary could claim to be something of a legend in her own young life-time. She was not a rich Eastern girl come to the Western plains to forget a broken romance, or the daughter of a famous plainsman and his Indian princess wife (despite both stories having appeared about her in issues of the Police Gazette). The truth, while less romantic, would have made just as dramatic and entertaining a tale.

  On the way West in search of a new home, Martha Jane’s father died. Finding herself unable to support a family of three young children, Charlotte Canary left them in a St. Louis convent and continued on her way. There was too much of her mother’s restless spirit in Martha Jane for her to accept the discipline of the convent. On her sixteenth birthday, she slipped off and stowed away in one of Dobe Killem’s freight wagons.

  Discovered at the end of the first day’s journey, the girl might have been returned to St. Louis immediately but for the indisposition of Killem’s cook. One of the few things the nuns had managed to instill in Martha Jane had been a thorough knowledge of cooking. Setting to, she prepared a good meal for the hungry men of the outfit and earned herself a ride to the next town. Due to various incidents along the way, Martha Jane not only endeared herself to Killem’s roughneck drivers but also came to be regarded as something of a lucky charm. By the time they reached the town, Martha Jane found herself adopted as one of the outfit.

  During that, and subsequent trips, the men taught Martha Jane their trade. She learned to care for and drive a six-horse team, to maintain a wagon, handle firearms with some skill and to wield a bull whip equally well as a means of equine inducement or as a weapon.

  Travelling the Great Plains with the freight outfit, her education naturally took in other basic, but vitally important matters. She knew how to live off the land and possessed some skill in the healing arts, using remedies picked up from Indian medicine women and other such practitioners. Entering saloons with the other drivers brought her into conflict with the female employees, so she quickly became adept at defending herself in cat-clawing brawls. Leading a healthier life than the average saloongirl, in addition to having received instruction in both fist and roughhouse fighting from the men of the outfit, she started with an edge over her opponents. So far she had not been defeated in a fight.*

  A good-hearted, happy-go-lucky girl, Martha Jane had developed a penchant for becoming involved in any disturbance going on. Not that she looked for trouble. She never needed to, it found her like a spawning salmon locating the river of its birth. So much so that her given name rapidly was forgotten and she gained the name Calamity Jane.

  Returning her whip to its sling on the waist belt, Calamity walked over to where John stood holding the rifle and staring at its fractured butt. Apart from a bleeding nose, the boy looked no worse for his beating. However his suit bore a coating of street-dust and he appeared to have lost his back-stud, for the collar stood clear of the shirt.

  “How bad did they hurt you?” she asked.

  “N—Not bad, ma’am,” he replied. “Look at this!”

  “Yeah!” Calamity said angrily. “That lard-gutted yahoo did it deliberate. Say, is there anything bust-able in your bag?”

  Clearly John had been more concerned with the condition of his rifle than over the remainder of his belongings. Putting aside the rifle, he collected the bag. Blood from his nose dribbled into the bag as he drew open its top and studied the contents, so he shut it again hurriedly.

  “It’s all right, ma’am.”

  “Come on then. I’ve got something to fix your nose like new.”

  John dabbed an oil-stained handkerchief on his nose, studied the blood it gathered and glared at the blubbering Hughie who still knelt in the street.

  “Maybe I ought to——.”

/>   “And maybe you oughtn’t,” grinned Calamity. “You come with me, if that’s all right with the marshal.”

  “I’d say ‘yes’ to that, sister,” Cole replied. “Unless this gent here wants to take action against you under the legal law.”

  “What if I do?” growled Rintel hopefully.

  “Then I’ll do my duty, brother,” Cole assured him. “Only I’ll take you to the pokey with them.”

  “What for?”

  “Assaulting the lady, to wit, shoving hell out of her on the street as a starter. Making a public nuisance. Wouldn’t even be surprised if she couldn’t have that miserable sinner who stomped on her whip throwed in for damage to her rightful owned property. You still wanting me to do something?”

  “Naw!” admitted Rintel, a sullen note replacing the hope. “I don’t.”

  “Now there’s truly true Christian generosity, brother,” drawled Cole. “Like the Good Book says, to err is human, to forgive when things could go wrong if you don’t shows right good sense.”

  While accepting Cole’s version of Alexander Pope’s wise saying as something from the Bible, Calamity felt it hardly covered all the affair.

  “Forgiving’s fine, marshal,” she said. “But that Jasper’s son bust the boy here’s rifle.”

  “There’s that,” Cole agreed.

  “Hell, it’s only a busted up old relic——,” began Rintel.

  “And it’s still the boy’s property,” Cole reminded him.

  Some Mormons resented the coming of the Gentiles to their land and, given the chance, showed much the same kind of bigotry that other people practiced toward them; but not John’s father. A shrewd man, he knew there could be no stopping the arrival of non-Saints and had always advocated living peaceably with the newcomers. In addition he had taught his sons to avoid leaving hard feelings when in contact with even hostile Gentiles. So John made a decision. Removing the handkerchief from his face, he looked at the marshal.

  “It’s all right, sir,” he said. “I can fix this up, it’s only the wood that’s bust.”

  “If that’s the way you want it, boy,” Cole replied.

  “That’s the way I want it,” Johnny insisted.

  “Then we can all part friends,” the marshal said.

  “I’m all for friendship,” Calamity remarked, laying a hand on John’s shoulder. “Come on, friend.”

  With that she steered him to his property and when he had gathered both rifle and bag, headed him down the street. A bedroll stood on the sidewalk with a Winchester Model 1866 carbine resting against it. From the way Calamity went to and picked them up, John concluded that she owned them, having left them there when she came to his aid. Regaining possession of her property, she walked with the boy toward the Wells Fargo office. Instead of entering the building, she took him to the rear and told him to wash off in the horsetrough.

  Removing his collar with an air of relief, John obeyed the order. Although he cleaned off the dirt collected during the fight, his nose still bled. Calamity appeared to expect this, for she stood alongside her open bedroll and held what looked like a horn snuffbox.

  “Set on the side and tilt your head back,” she ordered. “And, afore you ask, this stuff I’m going to use’s powdered witch-hazel leaves.”

  “Ma always uses it to stop bleeding,” John replied as he followed her instructions.

  “Which only proves that all women have better sense than men, most times,” Calamity told him, deftly shooting some of the powder up each of his nostrils. “Now sniff her up as high as she’ll go.”

  John did as ordered, feeling his nose clog up as the powder and blood mingled. After fighting down a desire to sneeze, he wrinkled his face and reached up a hand to touch the nose. Letting out a snort, Calamity flicked his hand away.

  “Damn it all, boy,” she objected. “I put that stuff there to do something. Leave it have time to work.”

  “Sure, Miss Calamity.”

  “And don’t call me ‘miss,’ or ‘ma’am,’ you make me feel old. The name’s Calam—to my friends.”

  “Yes’m, M—Calam,” Johnny said, trying to avoid twitching his nose and ejecting the powder.

  “My name’s Browning, John Moses Browning, M—Calam.”

  “You’d be kin to Jonathan Browning, the Ogden gunsmith, I’d say,” the girl acknowledged, shaking hands as formally as two bankers meeting to discuss a loan.

  “He’s my pappy.”

  “I’ve never met him, but my boss allows he’s the best gunsmith west of the Big Muddy. Say, that’s one of his old slide-rifles ain’t it?”

  “Yes,” John agreed, pride showing on his face.

  Stepping forward, the girl picked up the old rifle and looked at it. Considering the primitive conditions under which it had been made, it showed very good workmanship. That fact interested Calamity less than the principle on which the rifle worked. It had been one of the first successful repeating-fire shoulder-arms—as opposed to revolvers—to be made and it was Jonathan Browning’s own invention, possessing a capacity for continuous discharge unequalled in the days before metal-case ammunition. Its magazine was a rectangular iron bar with holes—from five to twenty-five depending on the customers’ needs—drilled in to take the loose powder, ball and percussion cap. After sliding the bar into the breech aperture, the user pressed a small lever on the right side of the frame, moving the magazine forward, lining the first chamber with the barrel and ensuring a gas-tight seal. Each pressure of the lever moved the bar along to the next chamber, while the under-hammer permitted easy cocking without removing the butt from the shoulder.

  Despite its simplicity of mechanism, lack of production facilities prevented Browning from making a significant number of rifles. At the time he was also mainly concerned with supplying arms for the Mormons’ departure from an unfriendly East, so few reached Gentile hands. Before he could settle down and build a factory capable of turning out his rifles in quantity, B. Tyler Henry’s improvements on metal-case cartridges rendered percussion-fired rifles, even a successful repeater, obsolete. Browning found too much with which to occupy himself in Utah and could no longer spare the time to dabble in inventing or making guns.

  “That damned fool kid!” Calamity said, examining the broken butt. “He’s ruined a good gun.”

  “It can easy be fixed,” John assured her. “When I get back, I’ll have Brother Matt whomp up a new butt and fit it on.”

  “Are you learning to be a gunsmith like your pappy, Johnny?”

  “Yes’m,” he replied with enthusiasm.

  Learning might be something of an understatement, for he had been involved in his father’s work since he could first hold a tool and follow an order. Shortly after his thirteenth birthday he had made his first gun, using old parts retrieved from the shop’s junk-pile. While that gun did not prove a great success, his next effort, recently completed, could stand up alongside the rifles produced by some of the smaller firearms factories which had sprung up back East.

  “It’s a good trade,” Calamity stated. “And one that’ll allus be needed. Maybe one day you’ll be as good at it as your pappy.”

  “I sure hope so,” John answered. “What’re you doing in Promontory, Calam?”

  “I’m catching the noon stage out too.”

  “Driving it?”

  “Naw!” she snorted, grinning to show him that her disgust was at the thought of a freight wagon driver handling the ribbons on anything as cissified as a stagecoach. “I’m headed for Ratchet Creek on a chore for my boss. Come here by train and couldn’t find a hoss worth a cuss in the livery barns, so I’m riding the stage. I sure hope none of the outfit hear about it.”

  “I’m going to Ratchet Creek myself,” Johnny told her.

  “That’s a tolerable long trip for a b——,” Calamity began, then stopped as she saw him stiffen slightly, and made a correction, “young feller. Are you visiting kin?”

  “Nope. Pappy’s sending me to buy up some machinery we saw when w
e went down there in the spring. We’d gone down for a couple of week’s hunting and wound up doing gun repairs most all the time.”

  “That’s allus the way,” smiled the girl. “Let’s take a look at what we’ll be riding in, shall we, afore we go buy our tickets.”

  Carrying their belongings, Calamity and Johnny walked over to where the stagecoach stood alongside the corral which held its team of six light draft horses. In the days before the completion of the transcontinental railroad the stage they approached had made the “Big Run” which followed the old Pony Express route from St. Joseph to San Francisco via Julesberg, Forts Laramie and Bridger and Salt Lake City. With its team of specially bred horses, it still offered the fastest, most comfortable means of transport, other than the railroad, out West and reached towns that its new competitor did not touch.

  The thorough-braced coach they looked at had been manufactured by the New England company of Abbot & Downing, designed for its specific work over the miles of rolling, almost roadless plains country. To hold down the weight, the minimum of metal went into the construction, only the finest Norwegian iron being used. Mostly the body work consisted of carefully laminated and dried sheets of plywood, but the oak or linden timber used as supports had been cut and allowed to age for not less than four years before the makers regarded it as suitable. The thorough-braces which supported the roughly egg-shaped body above the draft and running gear were of the finest, stoutest leather produced by the master tanners Lynn and Framingham, no less than eight specially selected steer hides going into the making of a single coach. The yellow-spoked wheels of handhewn ash could not be bettered. Nor had leaving the “Big Run” caused any neglect of the outward appearance. All signs of past mishaps, bullet or arrow holes and the like, had been removed or covered, and the original vermillion paint of the body-work was kept fresh as was the yellow and black trim of the running gear. Even the New England landscape scenes by artists John and Edwin Burgum were replaced as needed.