The Three-Fingered Pinch: An Orville and Pike Novel

By Donald Tripp

Three-fingered pinch, known in New Mexico as the Carlsbad crease, in the Indian nations as the Seminole crease, and in modern times as the Gus crease after the hat the actor Robert Duvall wore in the miniseries Lonesome Dove. At the time of this story, the crease was an indication that the rider was from New Mexico. The style is believed to come into being around Carlsbad, New Mexico, in the 1870s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514457221

Donald Tripp

Donald E. Tripp was born a month prematurely on October 4, 1951, at five pounds, eight ounces and promptly lost twelve ounces. He was promptly placed in an incubator and thus survived. He rode his first horse at eleven years old in spite of his overprotective mother's demand that he not and retrained his first spoiled horse at the age of fifteen. He has been a small-town newspaper reporter, horse wrangler, and drover. He now lives in Bismarck, North Dakota, among the people he writes about.

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Copyright © 2016 by Donald Tripp.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016901874

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5144-5724-5

                Softcover        978-1-5144-5723-8

                eBook            978-1-5144-5722-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 02/26/2016

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

BOOK II

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

I need to take a moment here to acknowledge Bismarck State College, The North Dakota Heritage Center, and the Olli Writing Class for Older Learners, The University Iowa Creative Writing Department, History Department and English Department. Larry Mencken the onetime Producer of Captain Video and Playhouse 90 for inspiring me to write and teach me the first rules of writing.

Also from the Olli class, I would like to thank Barry Wolcott, Sonvy Sammons, Patricia Olson, Herb Wilson, Gale Schuck, Lorraine Dobson, Barb Wright, Gary Kraft, Mindy Raulston and Kathy Snider. I would also like to thank Hal Lyness my first American History teacher for sending the note home to my parents and telling them that I wasn't applying myself and could be doing much better in school.

The jig was up. Otherwise I might have ended up playing a piano in a whorehouse. Hmmmmm?

For Mom, Dad & Mary

August 23, 1878

Prologue

I woke up in the wee hours of the morning, going on four am by the big dipper. The stars weren't fading yet and I could hear Orville snorin' away like a fat boar hog. There's some'll make claims that you didn't head up the trail with a snorin' man. They also make us all sound like we was all a bunch of kids out on a lark.

We weren't kids on a lark. We did head up a tough trail and we took along tough men, and sometimes boys, who could spend long hours in the saddle. Dead tired men tend to snore at night.

We rode a long trail up to Dakota Territory to find our baby Sister, Minerva. Twelve years ago we had put her in a Nunnery with the Divine Sisters of Providence. We needed to protect her from a pimp who went by Lester Alvah.[1]

I still don't know if that's his given name or a summer name.[2] Last I heard he was plyin' his trade in El Paso and walkin' with a limp courtesy of Doc Holiday.

A little bit after four I pulled out of my henskins[3] and rolled out of my bedroll. I told myself once again, Nobody ever said it was gonna be easy. I don't think I said it aloud.

I shook out my boots and didn't find any snakes. I got up and jangled my spurs over to where we left the fire last night. It was cooled down to near dead, I dropped some pine knots in it and the fire popped alive. No Brains, our pie-bald[4] pack horse, snorted at the popping knots.

Orville woke up and looked up at the same big dipper I did.

He looked at me. Are you thinking about that woman?

My brother was reachin' way back along the backtrail. Way back. Nope. But thank you for bringin' up a sore subject. Now let's drop it.

Nonsense, you think about her all the time."

We're goin' to find Minerva today. Can we talk about that?

Sure if you want. I just don't want you to get distracted is all."

You got a funny way of goin' about it.

I looked into the dark. Orville is a colored man. Me, I'm white. Orville is Papa's get by Penelope Henry, the slave woman that became my nursemaid shortly after my mother died. Judge Henry made Papa buy Penelope Henry even though he didn't want to own no slaves. You would know about that if you read the story Valley of Tears written by a man named Donald E. Tripp and published in The Shootist Magazine.

Orville butted into my thought. Besides, we might not find Minerva today, Orville said.

I don't think Bismarck, Dakota Territory is Boston or Philadelphia, or even New York.

You mean, New York City, said Orville. New York is the whole state.

Whatever you say. You are the one who knows it all.

We sat by the fire and drank coffee. It was all we had. We ran out of food two days before, sixty miles out. We tried to catch fish but didn't have any luck. I shot two rabbits and they turned out to be wormy. White worms speckled their livers. Our stomachs growled.

Chapter 1

Daybreak finally came. We broke camp in the quiet. Not a word passed between us. We've been doing this since we were boys and have a routine. One morning it my turn to catch up our black paint packhorse and pack him with the camp gear while Orville gathered whatever gear was out and packed it away. That morning it was Orville's turn to catch the piebald[5] while I packed the gear.

We called him No Brains, or The one we'll eat first. Because he would never train to saddle. We tried to lady break him slow like and he just wouldn't take a cue. If you even touched him on the side bare heeled and he would go to bucking. I don't think it was that he was so much stupid as he was just ticklish as all hell. Finally instead of selling him to a butcher who would pass him off as beef we just threw a pack saddle on him and he worked out fine doing that.

Once everything was picked up we made extra certain the fire was out. We doused it with what was left of the coffee and grounds. Then and only then do we saddle our own hosses.

In those days I rode a fourteen-hand high[6] Red Roan gelding call called Red. He had four white stockings. And white markings on his belly and chest. Orville said he was a red paint and I should know better than to call him a red roan. I said I'd call him whatever the hell I wanted to.

Orville rode a fifteen-hand-high shaggy bay without a white marking on him and with tiger stripes.[7] He was snorty and allergic to about half the stuff in Dakota. He sneezed a lot when we got up here and his nose ran all the time.

More than once, I said, Send that animal back down to Texas.

More than once, Orville replied, Mind your business.

We were through the hills and riding down towards Fort Abraham Lincoln. An ambulance sat outside the wheelwrights building, a long narrow white shed. A single story high. Gray-black smoke bellowed out of the chimney. I watched it, looking over Orville's black Boss of the Plains Stetson. His brim was folded up in front partly by design and partly from riding into the wind.

Is that ambulance driver white? Orville said.

I saw the soldier with green military marking indicating medical corps on his uniform. He came out and checked the draft mules. They hee-hawed at him.

I do believe so.

I thought all the ambulance drivers were colored.

No. Only in the colored regiments.

Orville shook his head. I thought those jobs were set aside for us.

The Irish need work too, I said.

I heard two long toots from a steam whistle and looked across the river. It was about a mile wide where we stood and the landing was earthen with an earthen ramp leading up to where a wooden ramp would be let down on an earthen landing. We were at the edge of it.

I heard the trace chains of a buggy and a Standardbred Trotter[8] come up behind us.

Orville didn't look back. The bigger horse pressed down hard against pie-bald. He pushed against me. I heard a woman speak sharply in Deutch behind me.

I looked back. The buggy was enclosed on three sides. The glass was crystal and engraved. The paint job as fine. The wood was fitted precisely and the thing was custom made out of some shop back east I thought. It was meant to take a person's breath away. I didn't look long. The front doors and windows were open.

I spied the woman in the left seat. She wore a blue checked dress festooned in bows, that even I knew was the latest fashion from Paris, because mama earned her living hand stitching them. Only this fabric was silk not the cotton that the ladies in San Antone could afford. It fattened this woman's figure nicely.

It showed off every curve and hugged her corset, if she needed one. Her parasol was folded up and pointed at the shiny bottom of the buggy that was more than a buggy. The race horse snorted.

The woman smiled at me. Her smile warmed every inch of me. I looked at the man beside her.

I looked at the man beside her. I could see the blue and white cloth of his Tallit under his waistcoat. It peaked out just a little. I knew the word because I'd been taken in by a Jewish family in New Mexico once when wounded. His wife had nursed me. They treated me with more love than any Christians I'd ever known. But then I'd saved their son's life. He was a Lieutenant in the 9th Cavalry.

A Tallit is a Jewish prayer shawl.

A rider came out from behind the buggy. He was dressed up in buckskins that probably came out of a New York City Haberdashery. The beadwork didn't resemble any I saw on the plains at the time.

He rode a McClellan saddle and the same kind of big Plains hat that Buffalo Bill wore on the stage. It would make a nice target for Indins I thought.

You two. Get out of the way of your betters, he said.

His voice was rough.

I don't see no betters, I said.

I fought in the late unpleasantness, said the Jew, speaking of the Civil War. I've heard the balls fly before.

You don't hear the one that kills you, said I.

That works for you too, said the man in buckskin.

He had a fine tooled belt wrapped around his waist with a silver belt buckle. In his holsters were a Smith & Wesson number 3 each. Butt forward.

I said, Then jerk your pistols and see what happens.

The woman laughed.

If she'd meant to distract me it didn't work. I looked into the gunman's brown eyes.

Jacob, Orville said. There's a lady present.

I doubted the word lady applied when she laughed when two men were about to fight to the death.

I didn't look at my brother. I continued to await the gunman's nest challenge.

Jacob? the woman said. She nodded at my brother. Then you must be Orville and you must be Pike. That makes you Orville and Pike."

Bah, he husband said. These are the kind that Amos Bledsoe hires.

The color faded from the gunman's face. He backed the black thoroughbred behind the black buggy.

You two, the woman said.

I looked back at her. Go see Amos Bledsoe at Logans Livery. He's still hiring cowpunchers. You'll need a job or the law will throw you out of town.

I started to answer. But...

Orville cut me off. Don't tell family business on the street.

I nudged Red up beside Bay. The Steam whistles screamed from across the River again.

I did not know we were that well know, said Orville.

I told you we get wrote up in newspapers all over all the time.

It is written up, Jacob.

Whichever way it spreads our likenesses and names all over.

Orville was angry. He left it that way and they waited for the boat. While they waited the wheelwright opened his shop behind them and fired up his furnace and put on his leather apron.

An Ambulance came drawn by a span of mules and a soldier with the green insignia of the medical corps unhitched the mules and tied them to a hitch post beside the long shop. He had two corporals' stripes and he didn't help the wheelwright take off the wheel. The wheelwright had and the apprentice did most of the taking off the wheel. The wheelwright and the apprentice heated the iron tire together until they were ready to take it off.

The corporal with the medical insignia on his sleeves came over and took his pipe out and filled it with tobacco. He stood north of Jacob and lit his pipe and the breeze blew in from the northwest and blew the pipe smoke in Jacob's face.

Jacob gave the corporal a surly look. Do you think you might stand downwind of me with that thing?

The corporal wore an imperial mustache that hid his whole mouth and a kepi with a leather visor that came down just above his eyebrows and put his eyes in shadow. He wasn't armed and became effusive with his apologies immediately.

I don't use tobacco, said Jacob.

It is the devils weed, Orville emphasized.

The soldier looked at Jacob and then Orville. I don't take orders from darkies.

Neither Jacob nor Orville replied. They looked straight ahead.

The soldier said, You waitin' for the ferry?

Yep, Jacob said.

It won't be here until enough people from the other side get on. And they might hold it today.

Jacob looked at him. The soldier waited until Jacob asked him, Why?

I hear the Goodgold's are comin' over.

Who are they?

The riches people in the world. Why, I hear they own banks on both sides of the Atlantic.

You hear that, huh? said Jacob.

Orville stared straight ahead and appeared to ignore the