Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [10]
They rode through the morning, Beatrice sitting tall on Ulysses’s back, the snow falling around them. Lionel thought that Beatrice seemed different. She was quiet, which was not unusual, but her silence was stronger, almost as if she were more at ease out here on the open plain despite their troubles. He watched her as she scanned the horizon, looking back from time to time to make sure that they were not being followed.
About midmorning they came to a bluff that overlooked a small group of log cabins and a corral. This was the first time that Lionel and Beatrice had ever laid eyes on the two hundred forty acre plot of Big Bull Boss Ribs.
Chapter Six
CORN POE BOSS RIBS • BIG BULL • HAM HOCK • “THEY’LL HANG YA, ALRIGHT.”
LIONEL SPOTTED a small boy watching them as they passed. He was squatting out in the high grass that poked through the snow on the far edge of the bluff. Beatrice saw him too, but continued to ride toward the cabin. The boy pulled up his britches and ran after them.
“Hey, Pa, Pa!” the boy yelled as he ran. “Pa, some riders comin’! Pa, there’s riders!”
Lionel could tell that this annoyed Beatrice, but she continued to ride toward the cabin, ignoring the trailing child and his yells. Then the largest man that Lionel had ever seen stepped from the door, bending to clear its low frame. He stood around six feet five and weighed up toward three hundred pounds. on his head sat a bowler derby with a cluster of goose feathers trailing off the back brim.
“My name is Corn Poe, if anyone’s asking. That there’s my pa, Big Bull Boss Ribs, and this here’s his place.” The small boy, Corn Poe, panted as he ran up behind them. “Just as a word of caution—he’s not real fond of trespassers.”
Corn Poe Boss Ribs was eleven, but looked to be about seven. He was the ninth of Big Bull’s thirteen children and was considered the runt. He was small, had poor lungs, and had been born a month premature, which Big Bull considered to be a bad sign.
As Beatrice and Lionel rode closer to the door, Big Bull finished gnawing on an old ham bone then threw it to a couple of mangy dogs that circled his feet. Big Bull looked the great horse over, which made Lionel feel uncomfortable to say the least. He couldn’t help but think that Big Bull might be capable of eating the horse, or maybe even them. Beatrice must have felt the same because she kept them just beyond the edge of Big Bull’s reach.
“That’s a good-lookin’ horse you two be travelin’ with there,” Big Bull said, scratching his enormous gut. “What’cha doin’ way out here on a horse like that?”
“This horse or his origins is of no concern to you,” Beatrice replied.
Big Bull looked them over. “I think that you and that there horse would be bringin’ trouble to the Boss Ribs, and that sure as hell concerns me.”
“We don’t want no trouble. Just the way to the Milk River,” Beatrice said firmly.
“We’re lookin’ for our grandpa who lives up that ways,” Lionel added, drawing a glare from Beatrice that did not go unnoticed by Big Bull.
A woman Lionel assumed was Big Bull’s wife and a few of his other children gathered in the doorway. Lionel was surprised to see that the woman Big Bull kept as his wife was white like the priest and Brothers back at the boarding school. He hoped that Beatrice would ask her for some food, maybe a blanket to drape around their shoulders as they rode.
“Yep, I think that the soldiers would be comin’. Comin’ with troubles for the Boss Ribs. You best be movin’ on, alright.”
Corn Poe reached up and stroked Ulysses’s long mane. “Them soldiers come, I betcha they hang ya.”
“Hang us?” Lionel asked. “Why would they wanna hang us?”
“Why, for horse thievin’!” Big Bull bellowed. “I doubt that two mangy Injuns such as yerselves got legal claim to a horse like that one yer ridin’ on!”
Big Bull’s laugh startled Lionel. It sounded as though he might explode like one of the soldiers’ cannons.
“They tryin’ to break us Blackfeet