The big range, p.9
The Big Range, page 9
I didn’t ride out much the next months. Having knocked off the rest of the summer and fattening my three-year steers for market on special rations took the fall. But I saw him a few times driving past my place in his little buggy. The best route to that rebel roost of his was up my valley and left along the trail that climbed through the notch to the tablelands. Even that must have been a hard pull for his old horse. I didn’t know how often he made the trip because sometimes I’d miss seeing him and only know he had gone past by chancing on his fresh wheel tracks in the mud where the road forded the valley stream not far from my house. Then the cold edge of late fall began to creep into the air and I didn’t see him or his tracks at all.
Winter hit us early that year. It hit us weeks ahead of the usual first snow with a surprise storm that whipped over the near line of mountains and caught plenty of us unprepared. I know because it caught me and shook me for a nice loss. I liked to keep my market-age steers as long as possible, putting on the last possible pounds with good grain, and move them out just before the winter snows when the price was at a peak. I hadn’t even begun thinking about moving them that year when the storm hit. I had checked my fences and filled the trays in the feedlot again and come in and gone to bed early, and along before midnight I woke startled and heard the wind shrieking in the chimney. I crawled out of the bunk and went to the door and opened it and the snow struck me in a sheet and stung my face. It was the worst kind, dry and fine and driving. I was plenty worried, not about the cattle themselves because I had stout shelters, but about what a real blizzard could mean. Not many hours of that kind of snow would choke the trails and even the travelled roads. If the cold held and later snows kept building the drifts, I might have to feed my steers all winter and sell in a dropping spring market.
I pulled on clothes and went out to take care of the horses. They were bunched under the roof-shelter out from the barn. I propped open the door to the stretch of stalls and didn’t have to use any coaxing to get them in. There were knee-high drifts already by the time I pushed against the wind back to the house.
By morning I was snowed in tight, and the wind was still piling it down. I fought and floundered my way to the barn and saw the little path I made filling in fast again. I got one of the heavy work horses and climbed on him bareback and sent him ploughing back and forth from the barn to the house and return till I had a real path showing. But this kept on filling in, too, so I took fence posts from my stock pile and stuck them in the snow on the wind side of the path about six feet apart and found enough planks in the barn to set against them for the beginnings of a barrier. The snow packed against the planks and held them firm and the drifts started this way protected the path quite a bit. Snow kept blowing over the top and into the path, of course, but not so bad that I couldn’t clear it away every few hours without too much trouble. I was set then for as long a siege as that storm wanted to give me. There was fodder in the barn and food in the house, and my woodpile would last a whole winter.
Along in the afternoon of that first day, the snow slackened and almost stopped, but the wind kept at its battering, and sometime during the night it whipped in reinforcements from far up in the mountains and began piling down the snow again. When it finally eased during the third day, my path was almost a tunnel, shoulder high on one side and a foot above my head on the other. If there had been a strong crust on the snow, I could have walked right on to the roof of the barn from the big drift along one side. I settled into a nice routine, catching up on my sleep, fussing around the barn and adjoining feedlot morning and evening, walking the horses along the path to take the stall-kinks out of their legs, and the rest of the time loafing snug and warm in the house. When I didn’t remember about missing the market, I even enjoyed the quiet laziness.
It was late in the morning of the fifth or sixth day, I’m not sure now which, that I heard faint shouts outside. I went out on the porch, and there were two men bucking the drifts towards my house from where the road was under the snow. They were leading and almost dragging their horses by the reins. They were wrapped right for the weather with only a little of their faces showing, and I couldn’t recognize them at first. They came closer, and I saw the big man in front was Bert Pingley and the one plodding behind was Marshal Eakins. They were beat, and no wonder. It was eight miles out from town to my place. They dropped the reins by the porch and nodded at me and went past me into the house and collapsed on the nearest chairs. I set a bottle on the table by Eakins and put the coffee pot to warming on the stove and went out again to their horses. I never knew two more grateful animals than those were when I led them to the barn and worked over them quick and pulled down some hay. They had plugged through drifts so long that their legs were quivering and could scarcely hold them up.
Back in the house I poured coffee around and waited for the others to talk. Bert gulped his cup and sat still, staring at the floor. Eakins finished his and poured himself another.
“Thanks, John,” he said. “Nothing like coffee ever.” He let the warmth work through him. He lifted an arm and pointed it on up the valley towards the hills, and let it drop. “The old man’s up there,” he said.
“Is he?” I said. “What the devil’s he doing there?”
Bert raised his head briefly and let it drop again. “He had to get his flag.”
“Yes,” Eakins said. “Bert finally made it to town this morning for help and found me. The old fool left his flag up there and got to worrying about it. Started for it day before the storm. Must have been caught and couldn’t get back.”
I thought around that. “Well,” I said, “I’d let the old coot hibernate there all winter. He’s got shelter and firewood’s handy.”
“No,” Eakins said. He shook his head and gulped his second cup of coffee and looked at me. “The boy’s up there with him.”
Bert raised his head again and almost shouted. “He had to get his flag, don’t you see? His flag. And I couldn’t go. Who knew about this storm anyway? It was his flag. Do you think I could say no?”
Eakins didn’t pay any attention to him. Eakins just looked at me. “The boy’s up there. They didn’t take any supplies. Maybe a meal or two. We’re coming back in the morning.”
Eakins looked at me and I fidgeted on my chair. I felt the way you feel when there’s something you know you have to do and don’t want to do it.
“Hell, man,” I said, “it can’t be done. The notch will be plugged with drifts higher than this house.”
Eakins just looked at me. “John,” he said, “the old man’s had his time. But the boy’s up there. You know this country out here better’n about anyone else. Thought maybe you could figure a way through. An hour’s rest and we’ll start”
I left them in the house and went to the barn and put out plenty of feed for the cattle and hay for the horses. I fastened the door open so the horses could go out all right if I was awhile getting home again. I passed by the gray and the big buckskin and the mare. She was with foal anyway. I looked over the work team and decided they were the ones. I didn’t want speed or quickness or know-how. I wanted power and pull. I gave them a couple of quarts of grain each, and when they had eaten put on them the bridles with the long driving reins. I led them out by the porch and went in the house and wrapped myself good. I dropped the bottle in a side pocket and shook Eakins awake in his chair. I didn’t need to shake Bert. He was up and had found my saddle-bags and was packing them with food. He strapped them together and went out and slung them over the back of one of the horses and Eakins and I followed him.
“We’ll use the horses to break trail as far as we can,” I said. “We’ll alternate them in the lead. Then we’ll be on our own.”
I took the reins of one horse and started him down the track already broken towards the road and Bert followed with the other horse and Eakins tagged us. When we reached the road, I swung towards town, keeping to the track they had made coming out. I heard Bert shouting behind me and he sounded angry, and I kept straight on and I heard Eakins’s voice. “Shut up and follow him.” I held to the track till we cleared the entrance to my valley, and then swung sharp right across the open land and the untouched whiteness of the snow.
I had it all clear in my mind, the one way we might have a chance. I kept the lead, trying to stay out of the hollows where the snow was too deep for movement and to follow the rolling rises that the wind had swept fairly clear and work my way through the foothills to the right place in the rimrock where the mountains soared into their high climb. It was hard going almost every yard of the way. The snow was dry and loose and gave no real foothold, and there were times when there was nothing to do except plough ahead and try to smash through. More than once the horse fought forward till he was helpless, unable to strike down through the snow to the ground, and I had trouble getting him back out for a swing around to try another spot. After the first twenty minutes, he was dripping sweat and in about an hour he had enough.
I stopped and called back to Bert it was his turn and gave him the general direction and he took the lead with the other horse. He made a faster pace than I had, I guess because it was his boy and his father up there and not his horse fighting the drifts, and he was harsh urging it ahead. I thought of calling him on that, then thought better of it and kept my mouth shut. But I shouted time on him quicker than I had on myself. If we were going to kill my horses, we were going to do it the right way and conserve their strength and get the most out of them. We had a long way to go.
I don’t know how many turns I called and alternated the horses. Time got to be hazy as we plugged along. Walking in that snow even with the trail broken by those big hooves wasn’t easy. And for the last couple of hours we were moving uphill most of the time I know the horses were done, completely exhausted, with the strength out of them, when we hit the steep rocky slope, almost a cliff, I was looking for. I didn’t dare tell Bert where we would head next or he would have started right on. I let him stew while I scraped the thick sweat out of the horses’ matted hair and tied them under the shelter of an overhanging ledge and yanked down some pine branches for them.
“All right,” I said when I was ready. “It’s not far now. If we can scramble up here, we’ll come out on those flat stretches. They’re like steps up the mountain. Third one up’s the place.”
I was right that this was where we could make it. That rocky slope was almost bare of snow except where out-cropping ledges had caught it. We could zigzag up where the footholds were best and pull ourselves along by grabbing at the big rocks. Climbing took the breath out of us, but the flat stretches themselves were the really hard going. They had their own drifts and we had to break our own trail. I doubt whether Eakins and I could have crossed them without Bert smashing ahead of us. We were at the bottom of the last slope when we heard a shot somewhere above us. We shouted, but our voices would not carry, and then we couldn’t shout because we needed all our breath for the final scramble to the top.
I wonder sometimes what exactly we expected to see when we reached the top. Not the peaceful scene we found. Everything was quiet and lovely in the late afternoon light. For some reason the quietness and the loveliness remain in my mind. All the long way we had been too busy fighting the snow to appreciate what was around us. Now it hit me suddenly. The cabin off in the distance, small and alone against the mountain wall behind it, was serene and untroubled in the midst of the white wonder and smoke was rising from its chimney. Close to us, where the wagon trail swung in an arc, was the little buggy, the wheels buried in a drift, and we could see the track it had made from the cabin and the spread snow where the horse had floundered and been caught and had been unharnessed and led back towards the cabin. And perched on the buggy seat was the boy, alive and alert and staring at us with the battered Sharps carbine across his knees.
Eakins was the first to speak. “What was that shot?” he said.
The boy gulped and found his voice. “Grandpa told me to shoot every so often, so somebody might hear. You took an awful long time. I’ve only got two bullets left.” He stared at us, and suddenly he dropped the gun clattering on the buggy floorboards and jumped down and struggled through the snow towards us, and Bert leaped with long strides to meet him and gather him up, and the boy was crying and laughing in his arms and saying, “I knew you’d come.” And after a moment he quieted and looked at Eakins and me. “Grandpa said some of you’d come too. He said even if you are Yankees, you’d worry about us and come get us.”
Bert jerked his head towards the cabin. “Is he all right?”
“Oh, sure he is. I’ve kept the fire going like he said.” Suddenly the boy was very serious. “He’s broke his leg, though. But he says that isn’t bad. He chopped and chopped an awful lot of wood and then he fell on something and his leg broke. But he says that’ll get all right. He says he has good bones.”
We started towards the cabin, Bert carrying the boy, and when we were almost there the boy was serious again.
“Please be quiet,” he said. “Grandpa’s awful tired and sleeps a lot. He hasn’t waked up at all yet today.”
We went in quietly, and when we saw the stillness of the thin old figure on the bunk, we knew that he would never waken. I saw Bert’s face set in stern lines, and he put the boy down gently and went over and stood staring at the still figure. Eakins took the boy by an arm and led him outside, and I followed.
“Is daddy going to wake him?” the boy said.
“No,” Eakins said. “Not right now.” He looked off into the distance and then at the boy again. “You hungry?”
“No,” the boy said. “I don’t think so. My stomach feels kind of puffy. We’ve only had a bag of dried apples that was here, and I only eat a little bowlful at a time and only twice a day the way grandpa says. But dried apples make your stomach feel puffy.”
Eakins looked off into the distance again, into the wide vast openness where the slope dropped away as if it were the edge of the world. “Your grandfather,” he said, “has he been eating them too?”
“Oh, no,” the boy said. “He doesn’t want any. He says dried apples are bad for anyone with a broken leg.”
I saw Bert in the doorway and Eakins did too and spoke quickly to him. “Take the boy, Bert, and backtrack to where we left the horses. Get a fire going and rustle out some food. Start him in easy on it. John and I’ll take care of things here.”
We stood by the bunk and looked down at the wasted figure, at the thin old face with its sunken cheeks and pathetic fringe of chin whiskers.
“He was a stubborn old coot,” I said.
“Yes,” Eakins said, “he was.”
I pulled the blanket up over the face, and together we made the best temporary grave we could to hold him till spring and proper burial in town. We scraped away snow and used the axe to dig into the hard ground. We yanked down part of the chimney to pile rocks over the grave so no animal could get at him. And just before we left, Eakins went inside again and came out with the torn flag and tied it to the pole from the corner of the cabin and struck the pole firmly in among the rocks.
The last thing I saw in the fading light, as we went over the edge of the tableland and started down the steep slope, was that old flag whipping out straight and stiff in the mountain wind.
PART TWO
Sergeant Houck
Sergeant Houck stopped his horse just below the top of the ridge ahead. The upper part of his body was silhouetted against the skyline as he rose in his stirrups to peer over the crest. He urged the horse on up and the two of them, the man and the horse were sharp and distinct against the copper sky. After a moment he turned and rode down to the small troop waiting. He reined beside Lieutenant Imler.
“It’s there, sir. Alongside a creek in the next hollow. Maybe a third of a mile.”
Lieutenant Imler regarded him coldly. “You took your time, Sergeant. Smack on the top too.”
“Couldn’t see plain, sir. Sun was in my eyes.”
“Wanted them to spot you, eh, Sergeant?”
“No, sir. Sun was bothering me. I don’t think—”
“Forget it, Sergeant. I don’t like this either.”
Lieutenant Imler was in no hurry. He led the troop slowly up the hill. He waited until the men were spread in a reasonably straight line just below the ridge top. He sighed softly to himself. The real fuss was fifty-some miles away. Captain McKay was hogging the honors there. Here he was tied to this disgusting sideline detail. Twenty men. Ten would have been enough. Ten, and an old hand like Sergeant Houck with no officer to curb his style. Thank the War Department for sergeants, the pickled-in-salt variety. They could do what no commissioned officer could do. They could forget orders and follow their own thoughts and show themselves on the top of a hill.
Lieutenant Imler sighed again. Even Sergeant Houck must think this had been time enough. He lifted his drawn sabre. “All right, men. If we had a bugler, he’d be snorting air into it right now.”
Sabre pointing forward, Lieutenant Imler led the charge up and over the crest and down the long slope to the Indian village. There were some scattered shots from bushes by the creek, ragged pops indicating poor powder and poorer weapons, probably fired by the last of the old men left behind when the young braves departed in war paint ten days before. A few of the squaws and children, their dogs tagging, could still be seen running into the brush. They reached cover and faded from sight, disappeared into the surrounding emptiness. The village was silent and deserted and dust settled in the afternoon sun.
Lieutenant Imler surveyed the ground taken. “Spectacular achievement,” he muttered to himself. He beckoned Sergeant Houck to him.
“Your redskin friend was right, Sergeant. This is it.”
“Knew he could be trusted, sir.”
