The Pastures of Beyond (9 page)

My feet were numb in my overshoes, and I stopped frequently at trees to kick the bark to restore circulation. At Teddy Power Meadow, I lost the road and wandered up on the frozen meadows where once I had chased flopper ducks with my friends. It all seemed so long ago.

The going was easier here where the wind had swept much of the snow away. In the darkness I made out the walls of Teddy's old log cabin and took shelter from the wind to rest.

There were only three sides to the cabin. Teddy's Indian wife had been a large woman, so big, in fact, that when she got down with appendicitis, Teddy had to tear out the end of the cabin to get her out the door. She took up the whole front seat of the buckboard, and Teddy stood behind her handling the reins all the way to Beatty, sixteen miles away.

I seemed to hear Teddy's voice in the darkness encouraging me to go on, giving me advice. “Better go on, kid. You stay here, you won't last the night.”

Back on the forest road again, I found signs of the chuck wagon. From the tracks, Shep had passed this way twice. Apparently the old man had lost our trail and headed back to the ranch, leaving us to our fate. Six miles later, I staggered through the door of the bunkhouse to find Shep fast asleep in his bed.

I might have let the old man sleep, but I was mad at him for letting us down. Besides, we were shorthanded and needed his help with the wagon. Grabbing a side of his cot, I dumped him, bedroll and all, on the floor.

I was relieved to find Ginger tied to his stall and see lights on in the big house. Mrs. Biddle had made it home safely. Working quickly, I had a fresh team harnessed when Shep caught up with me at the barn.

“Danged smart-alec pup,” he snorted. “I was dreamin' I was chasin' a beautiful redheaded girl and was just about to catch her too when you dumped me out of my bed.”

“You were layin' there dreamin' when the rest of us were about to die of hunger out in that storm!”

“Don't know where you disappeared to,” the old man said. “That herd of cows just left off leavin' tracks.”

Moments later, wrapped in blankets and canvas, we were bundled up on the front seat of the chuck wagon and headed south toward Eldon Springs with food, tent, bedrolls, and hot coffee, plus some rolled oats for all our hardworking horses. There were grins of relief when we finally cleared the last bend and found the little party still clustered around the fire.

We slept a little late in the morning, for the big tent was swaybacked with fresh snow, and we suspected that today was going to be colder and tougher than the day before. We sat in our bedrolls, dressing slowly, careful not to dislodge the lining of frost that clung to the inside of the canvas from the moisture in our breath.

Old Shep built a roaring pitch fire in the chuck wagon stove and cooked a big breakfast of steak, eggs, black coffee, and biscuits. Once I was mounted, Whingding lost his temper and tried to buck me off in the deep snow, but every time he put his head down, his nostrils plugged up, and he quit trying. Soon he forgot his outlaw ways as we went back to hustling the cattle, trying to gain the spot where the old road plunges over the edge of the rimrocks, where we could hope for a few miles respite from the blizzard.

Once, as the wind died for a time and the snow turned to sleet, we saw Morgan far up ahead, pushing a small bunch of lead cows so the others might have a track to follow. Midway in the herd, we could glimpse Jim O'Connor, bundled up to his eyeballs, flat-siding the flanks. We were so shorthanded Jim had to work both sides, tucking strays back into the herd, crossing over from left to right or right to left, whenever he saw a need. The snow had frozen to his clothes and the right side of his horse so that horse and rider seemed to have been sawed down the middle.

The cows still moved slowly, heads down, seeking out spears of last summer's grasses that managed to show above the snow. The older cows had used up what little strength they had left, and every mile or so we would find one dead or dying on the trail. There was not much we could do except take comfort that soon the fallen animals would have a proper burial beneath a soft blanket of snow.

It was late that afternoon when we drove the cattle into a holding field at the edge of the Sycan River. Ern Morgan had bought a stack of wild hay from Bart Shelley, who lived at the Sycan Bridge. We had no way to handle the hay and scatter it, so we opened the gates and let in the whole herd of hungry cattle to eat. We tied our horses in an old barn out of the storm, and went into Bart's house to thaw out.

There were two main rooms, but one was filled clear to the ceiling with old western magazines which Bart had read and discarded. I could hardly walk without stepping on a cat, and Bart had a habit of spitting tobacco juice on your boots as he talked. He wanted us to put our bedrolls on the floor, but we muttered something about checking on the cows, and soon had our tent set up out in the snow.

That night the wind howled and shook the canvas as we tried to sleep, but soon the snows drifted over the tent and all was silent. Shep had slept in the chuck wagon, and in the morning he dug the snow from in front of the tent and rousted us out. We could smell bacon frying and the fragrance of coffee and dressed in a hurry in the cold.

We knew the town of Beatty lay somewhere south of us, but the blizzard still raged and familiar landmarks were few. Our best chance to save the herd was to cross the Sycan at Bart's Bridge and head across the flats toward Paiute Camp and the pine forests north of Charley Mountain and Five Mile Creek.

We had gone perhaps three miles when the drag slowed and stopped, and I trotted back to see if the kids were having trouble. The two boys were nowhere to be seen. From their tracks, they had left the herd and set off to try to find Beatty, abandoning us to the storm. I took over the drag myself, riding back and forth in the blinding snows, pushing cows as best I could. Minutes later, Jim materialized in the whiteout. He took in the situation without comment and went to work pushing animals across the sagebrush plain.

“Those kids,” he mused. “Be the Jaisus, those kids are sure going to miss out on a lot of fun!”

Three of us, six hundred cows, and one of the worst storms in history. In the good old days, in good weather, we used to figure one cowboy for a hundred cows. The lives of every one of those cows depended now upon three men and an old chore man. There wasn't a choice but to carry on.

At noon Morgan appeared through the drifts, so caked with snow that at first we did not make him out. He saw at a glance that the kids were gone and Jim and I were pushing the herd alone. But there was more on his mind than that.

“I missed the trail in the storm,” he said. “Instead of heading east and to the north of Charley Mountain, the cattle took off south until they hit the railroad tracks and turned east along the tracks at a long trot. No way I could hold 'em. They got the Sprague River on their right and rocky cliffs on the other. If the trains are running, the cattle will have no way to escape being killed.”

Morgan rode close to us so he could read our faces. “Listen good,” he said. “If a train does come along while you're on the track, you won't have a chance to save yourselves or the cattle. I'm going to try to push the cattle through, but I'm telling you both to head on north of the mountain. You got that? I'm ordering you not to come with me.”

As Morgan trotted back to talk to Shep and send him north with us, Jim and I grinned at each other and moved off after the cattle. When Morgan caught up, we were already hurrying the cattle down the narrow track as fast as we could go.

As luck would have it, we moved the herd through the steep cuts of the railroad grade without getting caught by a train. We left the track at the Elder place, hoping we would catch someone at home. The hungry cattle milled around the buildings looking for shreds of hay. The Elder cattle had been trailed out to the desert earlier in the fall, and there were only a few butts of stacks left in the stackyards.

Morgan slipped from his horse and pounded on the door of the house. Snow cascaded from the tin roof, burying the old cowboy in the pile. There was a screech of rusty hinges, and the door opened a crack. One of the Elder boys stood looking out in surprise at Morgan buried to the waist, then at the hungry cattle milling around his yard. But he was quick to gather his wits. “Come in!” he said. “There's hay in the barn for the horses, and the cattle can make do in the stackyards!”

None of us had a word to say, for at that moment, a logging train came thundering past, its snowplow flinging up clouds of frozen snow.

The next morning we left the Elder place in a storm that seemed to have doubled its fury. Ernest Paddock had sent out a four-horse team with a wagonload of hay from the BK, six miles away, and the team had broken a trail through the drifts. I led Jim's horse, and Jim rode the hay wagon, tossing flakes of hay from the wagon racks. The cattle herd flowed on behind the wagon, their backs white with new snow. To our right, whenever the storm moderated, we could catch glimpses of the great Bly Valley, and occasional distant ranch buildings huddled against the storm.

Along the county road were miles of split-rail fences with only a few top rails showing above the drifts. The cattle seemed to sense that they were nearing the end of the trail, for they ambled down the road, heads hanging low, too tired to try the drifts on either side. At the top of a rise, the ranch tractor had cleared the drifts from a gate, and here Morgan turned the point of the herd off the county road. The cows gathered speed, and soon the whole herd was trotting down the hill toward a level field where Paddock's men were using pitchforks to roll hay off loaded wagons.

That night we sat at the long ranch table in the BK dining room, thankful to be warm once more. We would rest up for two or three days, take fresh horses, and set out a-horseback over the long road back to the ranch. With luck we would make it with only one night spent on the trail.

Chapter Eight

I
T WASN'T LONG AFTER THAT MURDEROUS CATTLE DRIVE
in the snow that the Yamsi crew left me to batch it alone. One by one they vanished from my life. Once she thawed out, Margaret Biddle went south to a retirement community in Santa Barbara. Buck stayed warm in a geothermally heated apartment in Klamath Falls or made the rounds of health resorts in California. Old Shep could generally be found in Main Street coffeehouses; Jim O'Connor went to live with a daughter; and Ern Morgan abandoned lifetime work in the cattle industry for wartime work in, of all places, a California doll factory owned by his new wife. It left me boss by default, and I could have hired and dismissed at will, except there wasn't anyone left to fire.

Not unless you counted Al Shadley. Al was drunk as a boiled owl when I first saw him. I had cut up a dozen big ponderosa pine logs into blocks with an old Wade drag saw and was resting on the pile in the snow, getting my strength back, contemplating splitting the blocks into my winter wood supply, when an old thirty-eight Chevy pickup came thundering down the road from town and made a wild, skidding turn into the ranch gate.

All four tires were wrapped with chains for traction, and the front bumper was pushing snow. A left rear tire was flat, putting out clouds of smoke. Only the snow kept it from catching fire. In the back of the truck was a spare tire, also in complete ruin, an old, battered snow shovel, and a rusty fivegallon can of swamp water filled with shiner minnows, most of which had sloshed over the lip of the can and were dead and frozen on the floor. Sticking out over the tailgate was a rusty spinning rod, with a big ruby-colored glass tip that was worn through to the point I got the notion the owner fished a lot more than he worked.

The jack pine sapling wedged in the well of one front tire was packing in the snow, making the truck difficult to steer, and the old man accounted for two more small trees before the pickup belched steam, farted, and lurched to a stop just inches short of my shins.

The old Indian rolled down his window and sat for a few moments looking at me, silent but grinning. He swung his head back toward the bucket of minnows and the rod. “I'm goin' fishin', see. I'm goin' fishin' on your propity. I fought like hell through thirty miles of driftin' snow to get here, so I won't take no for an answer. On the other hand, I don't want to end up in jail, so I just came by to let you know I'm goin' fishin' on your river, see.”

“Sorry,” I said, moving back from his breath. “The cattle rustlers have been working us over lately something fierce, and the only folks we let on the property are guys who work here.” The old man looked at me with a bemused smile as though he well knew what had happened to some of our beef. He held out his gloved hand.

“This old Pit River Indian has a real hankerin' to fish that river,” he said, grinning, “so shake hands with yore new hired man.”

He shoved open the door of his pickup and fell out face-first into the snow, pulling himself up spitting, sputtering, and blinking through thick, iced-up lenses to where he could lean on a battered fender. There was a graveyard of dried insects left over from summer on the radiator that looked like the collection from a fisherman's hat, and he brushed them off with a wave of a gloved hand. Staggering to the huge pile of wood, he picked up a splitting maul and began to split the drums.

Suddenly he looked toward me where I stood, a little astonished at how well he had controlled the conversation. “I know I don't look like much,” he said with a sly grin, “but believe me, yore gettin' one helluva man!”

I went off a-horseback through the snow looking for strays and came back that evening expecting to find Al gone or passed out beside that huge mountain of blocks without much done. Instead, my winter wood supply was neatly split and piled, and from the window of the kitchen came the fragrance of frying venison. On the table as I entered was a square cast-iron frying pan of fresh, hot frying-pan bread. He was, as promised, one helluva man.