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Short Stories & Tall Tales
The Stubborn Wench and the Stubborn Mutt
Tom Sheehan
Lonnie Belknap, part-time trapper, part-time miner, all-time loner around the Teton Range, sat at a table in Clyde Cassidy’s Saloon, enjoying his first social drink in more than a month. He did not pay any attention to the man and woman arguing on the balcony above him. The small talk of people around him, a bit of bustle in the saloon, some color splashed on the walls and a decent patch of September sun falling in through the window beside him, offered a sense of comfort and fellowship. More than a dozen men talked about horses and cows and now and then the dog sitting for days in front of the saloon, a big gray-black dog. It was mostly a pleasant place and the loud voices above were a bother to a man who had thought about sitting here for a good part of that month. The woman’s voice was a wretched one, full of a vindictive tone and a mess of cusses and words he had not used himself in that same month, though he had been beset by a few Indians, a seemingly mad peccary loose one night in his small garden, a wolf that frightened one horse from his tether, and a bear who stole a chunk of buffalo meat off a high perch.
Belknap did not once look overhead at the two disputing some as yet unrevealed point of the argument. His attention had finally been drawn to the discussion about the dog he had seen when he came into the saloon, a good-sized gray, smoky black dog, most likely come of an odd mix, which only raised gray-green eyes to look at him as Belknap passed him on the boardwalk. The eyes still sat in the back of Belknap’s mind, as though they contained a story, to him obviously more interesting than the loud argument continuing above him.
One tall cowpoke at the bar tapped on the bar top for a refill, and said to the bartender, “Barney, will you tell Phil here that that mutt’s been out there for more than three months now and he ain’t much moved. I know some folks have fed him now and then, likely you as any of them too, but sure as hell he’s waitin’ for someone to drop by and ain’t done so yet. You know anythin’ about it? Any more than I do, which ain’t much, as I’ve said?”
Barney had not been able to say a word when there was a loud crash above and the man, pushed by the woman, went through the railing and flopped with a crash onto Belknap’s table, his drink and the bottle he had bought tossed onto the floor and the man muttering lightly before the evident pain caught up to him.
The woman, still with the same tone in her voice, said, “Barney, throw that no-good downright thief and cheapskate out of here, but get my money off him first. He stole my poke.” And as if she had heard every word in the saloon while she argued, she added, “Go find Harlan Sarandopolis up in them hills ‘cause that’s his dog. Name’s Herky, short for Hercules.”
Barney and two other gents lugged the thief outside and dropped him on the boardwalk after they retrieved the woman’s money, tucked into a kerchief. Barney said, “Gerty, your money’s down here. How’d you know that’s Harlan’s dog. He wasn’t here but one time.”
“The old Greek had a good visit with me. Told me the dog was at the livery, a gray dog name of Herky, and would wait on him. I guess that’s the last time they were together ‘cause Harlan left here in the middle of the night and was suspicious that some gents had been following him. I’m willing to bet they caught up to him someplace. That’s why the dog was waiting. I didn’t say anything ‘cause he made me a promise not to.”
“Thanks, Gerty, you’re as damned honest as you are noisy, but I think you owe that fellow a bottle. I’ll just take it out of your poke.” He nodded at her, she nodded back, and both of them nodded at Belknap, now seated at another table, still liking the place, but a vivid scene coming back into his mind from several months before.
He had been checking a possible spot for digging in a small canyon when he heard a shot coming from a nearby canyon. There was but the single shot and he thought it must be a hunter with a good aim, though he had not seen anybody in more than a month. He thought it best to check it out, but went leisurely, cautiously, not wanting to disturb what might be a dead shot alone in the hills, among the rocks. The single shot had done his thinking for him.
What he found was a dead man, a single bullet hole in the back, no horse around, no gun belt, no rifle, no possessions in his pockets of any value … apparently he had been stripped of all his earthly goods by his killer or killers. There were tracks about, where they had hid, where Belknap found a spent rifle shell, and little else.
The man’s boots were gone and even the belt off his pants. The fury was alive in Belknap.
For more than an hour he hauled stones and rocks and buried the man where he found him, said the few good words he knew, placed a marker that simply said, “Unk. Dead by bushwhacker. April 1854.”
He fired two rounds in the air that echoed down through a ring of canyons, as much a warning as a salute to the dead stranger. If one shot made him think a bit, perhaps two shots would make a bushwhacker think, and act.
Later, thoughts of life and eternity in the mix of a curious haunting, he realized the worms and the maggots would slowly take the dead man on a further journey, not ravaged by the regular carrion hunters who roamed the hills and mountains tearing the dead to pieces. When he checked the site a few times, it remained undisturbed … on the top side.
Now, as he drank in the saloon, social in the company of more than a dozen people, he thought about the dead man, thinking he had a clue about who he was.
When Gerty came down the stairs, she came directly to his table. “I’m real sorry about what happened, but I’m glad Barney brought you another bottle. I’ll have a drink with you if you don’t mind. You look like you got questions that need answers.” Her voice was entirely different than her arguing voice, and she had a pleasant face and a pair of fierce red lips. Her calico dress said it was worn for noon fare and not for late night. She poured another drink for him.
Belknap felt the social bug still about him, though the thought of a dead man under rocks in the hills sat yet in his mind. “The man with the dog, this Sarandopolis you talked about makes me think I know what might have happened to him. Can you tell me what he looked like? How he was dressed?”
Gerty had sat upright in a hurry. “Oh, boy, I hope you can tell me. He was a big dude, hair like ashes in a dead fire, gray and black. He wore bulky black pants you don’t see around here a lot and a green shirt, but he had a buckle on his belt like I’ve never seen. Said it was right from the homeland, from Greece, made by his father.”
She half smiled, which made Belknap smile, when she said, “Oh, I didn’t pay much attention to it, but it looked like a building was carved on it.” The redness was in her face and it pleased Belknap to see it. “Hope,” he said to himself, “is eternal.”
He tipped his glass to her and said, “Gerty, here’s one for you. I’m glad to be in your company. I found a man, a big man in a green shirt and black pants who was shot by bushwhackers in the mountains. His horse, his weapons, his belt and his boots were stripped from him, so I can’t swear he was your friend from Greece, but it makes it possible in my mind. I’m going to try to take his dog back up there with me. It might take me time to curry his favor, but I’ll do it. I’m pretty good with animals, but you can do me a favor by remembering until the time I come back for my next visit, if anybody shows extra interest in me and the dog. Smells always leave a trail and bad smells get special at some point as well as good smells.” He made a point of inhaling her perfume.
He refused her offer to share her room for the night, but said, “I’d better get busy with that dog. Do you have anything your friend from Greece might have left behind?” He leaned forward for her answer, visibly inhaling the sweet aroma again.
“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed, red-faced and flustered for a few seconds, “I have a green bandana he left one night.” The blush, solid again, gave her face the hopeful glow that Belknap found pleasure in.
When he walked out with the green bandana in one hand, the dog Herky sniffed the air immediately, rose to his feet and came close to Belknap’s hand. Belknap, seeing how the dog reacted, walked toward the livery and the dog followed right behind him, scent and intention leading their way.
Gerty was watching from a window in her room, the window looking out over the road in front of the saloon. She did not see anybody follow Belknap and kept watch for almost an hour. Just at the end of that hour she saw two riders come from between two buildings across the road and slowly ride out of town … the same way Belknap had gone. She saw what they were wearing, what kind of horses they mounted, and figured she could identify them again under the same conditions. She wanted to tell Barney, but the promise to Belknap kept her silent on that account: that was for Belknap alone, and for the dog Herky.
But the more she thought about it, the more she knew she had to tell someone, just in case. She told the sheriff on the sly, and got his promise not to say a word about it.
Out of town the dog Herky still trailing him, Belknap tied the green bandana to his rope and dragged it behind him; Herky never deviated from the course, hurrying after Belknap whenever he spurred his horse into a trot. The dog was faithful, was unerring in his sense of smell, and somehow was on the track to find his master, Harland Sarandopolis.
The trio, Belknap, horse and dog, were a hundred yards from the stone burial when the dog went began to howl and yowl and made a sudden rush toward the burial site. He sniffed the ground where Belknap had rolled Sarandopolis into a low spot to help make the burial easier. The howling continued for several minutes, and then the dog, in possession of some sensation Belknap felt he understood, placed his body over the stones and settled himself into place. In the morning Herky was still there, and Belknap felt the sadness deep in his heart, deep in his bones. For the best part of that day Belknap sat on the ground beside the pile of stones and when the darkness started to set in, the dog crawled into Belknap’s arms. They slept for uncounted hours, oblivious of sounds around them, the night sounds of the mountains and the critters in their roaming and hunting.
When dawn came, breakfast cooked on an open fire, the horse and dog fed, saddle placed on the horse, Belknap took the dog to where he had found the expended shell he thought must have been responsible for Sarandopolis’s death. The dog seemed to be checking all smells in the vicinity, and at a long turn at such work looked back down the trail toward town. He set off on a dead run, howling all the way down the mountain pass.
Belknap, himself also possessed of sudden awareness, assumed the dog was now the hunter of killer or killers. He gave chase on his horse he’d quickly saddled, thinking the dog Herky was going right to town and would point out the killer.
But the dog didn’t go too far, and stopped on the trail in a tight pass. He sniffed the air and Belknap saw his tail twitching, and then stop, as if the dog was frozen in place.
A voice from a hidden place in the rocks yelled out, “It’s that damned dog. He’s been tracking us. Shoot him, Roscoe. Kill him.”
Shots rang out, bullets ricocheted off canyon walls and whistled aimlessly away. Herky kept still in his place, the shots nowhere near him, but the echoes ringing off the tight walls.
Belknap managed to get on the other side of the tight pass by passing behind a large rock fall. When he came in behind two men, his rifle at a deadly aim, he hollered for them to drop their weapons or they’d be dead and left for the dog to wreak his revenge.
They dropped their guns, one man saying to the other, “I told you to kill him. I thought you said you was a great shot.”
Belknap believed the killer had been pointed out to him but could not prove it. And there was the possibility of these types of men to dump off on their pals. Even in disgust it did not take him very long to hog-tie their legs to a log and their arms to a pole stuck under their arms behind them. He left them in a small open spot beside the trail leading up into the mountains, a small place with easy access.
Belknap asked again, “Where did you stash the stuff you stole from the Greek, Harland Sarandopolis? Like his gun belt and his boots and his weapons? You even took the belt off his pants. It’s a wonder the likes of you didn’t take his pants, too.”
He let that sink in on them, saw the quick grimaces on their faces when he said, “Well, maybe your turn at losing your britches will come tonight. I don’t suppose that’d be any polite at all, but you never know, do you?”
The facial looks told of their imagination … and their fear.
He asked them several times who had fired the single shot and they refused to answer. Belknap said, “I’ll ask one more time: Who shot him in the back? If you don’t tell me, you’ll be here all night and I wouldn’t want to be without a gun in my hand up here in the mountains, or even a small knife, not with all those critters around I hear every night looking for something to eat. Plumb mean they get when they’re hungry. Plumb mean.”
Neither one answered him and he said, “When you hear the sounds out and about tonight, you’ll wish you had told me. But I’ll be asleep. You might not be able to wake me. I’ve done a powerful amount of work this day and need my sleep. I don’t know what’ll come first or most, but there’s wolves and other dog-like critters and peccary and, most of all, there’s bears that ain’t any polite at all. One of them big ones stole my buffalo steak just the other night right off my tree store 10 feet or more off the ground.”
As he walked off, he said, “Don’t expect the dog Herky here, Sarandopolis’s dog, to give you any warning about strange goings on, not while he’s got this thing in him about you two after he smelled around here. Your own stink gave up a lot of trail sign.”
Belknap tied his horse off about 100 feet away, so the two men could see him as he bedded down in the light of his fire, the dog beside him, and darkness well on its way into the canyon.
Several times during the night the bad dudes heard sounds from the darkness, scratching, claws working on stone, claws getting sharpened, the dread coming at them from unseen sources.
Belknap, feigning sleep, heard every sound that came out of the night and every sound the two men made as they tried to get loose of their bonds.
Only an hour into full darkness, only a few stars visible in the narrow passage, the night erupted with stones falling near the men, saying something above them was on the move. Seconds of silence passed and another boulder came crashing down and hit a rock surface with a thunderous smash. In the tight stricture it sounded like thunder on the loose over their heads and at their feet not far away.
The scream came. “It was him who shot the dog, mister. It was Roscoe, always runnin’ his big mouth how good he can shoot. It was him who did it.”
“You damned skunk, Taylor,” the other man said, “you was never good at anythin’ we did.”
After that, it was a simple effort. Belknap, standing guard for the balance of the night, firing off a couple of shots anytime a night sound came too close, tied the men on their horses, tended to his place in the little valley further into the mountains, and led the way out of the lower hills and onto the long road toward town.
It was the sheriff, standing opposite the saloon, who saw the parade entering town at the northern end, the gray-black dog leading the way, and Lonnie Belknap, part-time trapper, part-time miner, all-time loner around the Teton Range, who had a rope tied to the reins of two horses, two men mounted on the horses, each as described to him by Gerty from the saloon.
He yelled as loud as he could, “Hey, Gerty, here they come, those two you told me about and that stubborn dog and your friend Belknap.”
He pulled his pistol and had it aimed at the two men as Belknap untied them from the ropes holding them to the saddles.
And he yelled out again, “Hey, Gert, did you hear me.”
She yelled down from her window, “That’s them, Sheriff, the ones I told you about. Say hello to my pal, Lonnie. I’ll be right down.”
Her window slammed down and the sheriff walked the prisoners into the jail.
The iron door slammed behind them.
Gerty and Belknap sat alone at a table in the saloon, a bottle in front of them that Barney had brought over. “Herky’s out front like he was for months,” he said, “but we know he’s waiting for you now, Lonnie.”
Gerty said, “Lonnie, it’s like I’ve been waiting for you forever. I’d like you to have a drink in my room, if you would. That’d please me all outdoors.”
“Look, Gertrude,” he said, the blush now having its turn on his face, “I know I ain’t much but I know you’re a good friend, and you did what I asked, and you helped, ‘cause the sheriff says it will be an easy case and they’ll get what they deserve. You and me had a good part in it. We make a good pair. You can have a drink in my place and stay as long as you want. That’s what I’d really like out of all this, if you’re willing, ‘cause I sure am.”
Her blush showed again. And Lonnie Belknap, part-time trapper, part-time miner, all-time loner around the Teton Range, was warmed all over and he dared move his hand across the table.
The sheriff saw the new parade going out of town; Belknap on his mount, Gerty on one of the mounts from the convicted killers, the other mount loaded with supplies, which he suspected held some of Gerty’s personal stuff, and the gray-black ashy-looking dog Herky leading the way.
The sheriff figured it’d be months before he saw them again, if then.
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