BUCKING HORSE AND RIDER
BUCKING HORSE AND RIDER
BUCKING HORSE AND RIDER
Behind the closed doors of the living room the tall tree, festooned with ropes of popcorn and garlands of gaudy paper chains, glittered and glowed with its tinsel ornaments and candles.
Owen divided his attention between his “Santa Claus” costume and pails of water, which he placed near the tree in case it should catch fire.
The boys spent most of the morning “slicking up” and put on their red neckties, the outward and visible sign of some important event, then passed the remaining hours sitting around anxiously awaiting the arrival of the guests of honor and—dinner.
Sometimes members of the family were with us or some friends were lured from the city by the promise of a “really, truly Christmas,” and there were always a few lonely bachelors to whom the holidays, otherwise, would have brought only memories.
Christmas was our one great annual celebration, a day of cheer and happiness, in which everyone joyously shared. It was a new experience in the life of the undomesticated cow-puncher, but he took as much satisfaction in the fact that “Our tree was a whole lot prettier than the one I’ve saw in town” as though he had won a roping contest.
Each year the children and their parents were invited for Christmas dinner. They might be delayed en route by deep snowdrifts, out of which they had to dig themselves, but they always arrived eventually. We came to have a sincere affection for those children, gentle little wild flowers of the prairie.
They were very sweet, perfectly ingenuous, gazing in round-eyed wonder upon things which to most of us were commonplace.
I never thought of its being anything new in their brief experience until at dinner one of the small boys turned to his mother after tasting a piece of celery and said, “Look, Mamma, ’tain’t cabbage and ’tain’t onions. What is it?”
They positively trembled with excitement as they learned to read and laboriously spelled out the words in the simple books we gave them. They craved knowledge as a starving man craves bread.
As Santa Claus, Owen wore a ruddy mask with a long white beard and bristling eyebrows, a fur cap pulled down over his ears, heavy felt boots and his long fur overcoat. He looked and acted the part so perfectly the children for years insisted that “there is a Santa Claus ’cause we’ve seen him.”
The first Christmas everyone was gathered about the tree waiting for this mysterious personage to appear when Owen suddenly thought of bells; he must have sleigh-bells. No self-respecting Santa Claus was complete without them. I was in despair; there wasn’t a sleigh-bell within a hundred miles, but Owen insisted that he must jingle. At last after a great deal of argument and searching for something which would give forth bell-like sounds, he finally pranced out before the spell-bound audience with my silver table bell sewed to the top of one of his boots. He had to prance because the bell refused to tinkle unless it was shaken, and for the ensuing hour he pranced so vigorously that between the exercise and the fur coat he nearly perished from heat.
After dinner we all assembled in the big living-room, where my disguised husband presented each person with some little gift and ridiculous toy, accompanied by a still more ridiculous rhyme, over which the boys roared. They enjoyed the jokes most of all. No one escaped; Owen and I came in for our share with the rest. Mine usually bore veiled or open allusion to my particular pet lamb which had developed strong butting proclivities. He butted friend and foe indiscriminately, so that even my fond eyes were not blinded to his faults, and Owen’s remarks were most uncomplimentary after he had acted as a shield for us when “Jackie” had chased my sister and me all about the yard.
Later in the afternoon everybody scattered—our house guests amused themselves as they chose, riding, driving or hunting coyotes, the boys rode over to the neighboring ranches or went to “town,” the store and saloon at the railroad station sixteen miles away, but I spent an hour or two playing with the children or reading to them until their father “brought the team around,” their happy mother climbed up on the high seat of the lumber-wagon and, clinging to dolls, trains and toys, three blissfully happy but perfectly exhausted little children were wrapped up in quilts and coats, stowed into the back of the wagon and started on the twenty-mile drive “back home.”
It had been an eventful day in their short, barren lives, but for us it was the best part of Christmas, except the evening, when we all gathered about the big fireplace which drew everyone into its circle like a magnet.
There was nothing prosaic about those who grouped themselves around the great stone fireplaces on the ranches in the old days. Here again were found those contrasts, so striking and unexpected; university men who had come West for adventure or investment, men of wealth whose predisposition to weak lungs had sent them in exile to the wilderness, modest young Englishmen, those younger sons so often found in the most out-of-the-way corners of the earth, and who, through the sudden demise of a near relative, had such a startling way of becoming earls and lords over night; adventurous Scotchmen, brilliant young Irishmen, all smoking contentedly there in the firelight and discussing the “isms” and “ologies” and every other subject under heaven. But most interesting of all were their own reminiscences.
We were all sitting around the fire one Christmas night when the conversation turned on adventure, and everyone promised to tell the most thrilling experience he had ever had.
Two of the men were lying on the big bearskin before the fire. One, a mining engineer, told of having been captured by bandits and held for a ransom, in some remote corner of Mexico where he had gone to examine a very famous mine. The other, a surveyor for the Union Pacific Railroad, had been lost during a storm and, becoming snow-blind, crawled for five miles on his hands and knees, feeling the trail with naked, half frozen hands until he reached the creek down which he waded until he came to the camp.
In a big chair, the firelight playing over her slender figure, sat Janet Courtland, an Eastern woman, who as a mere girl had come West with her young husband and had gone up into Montana where he had bought a large cattle ranch.
“Come on, Mrs. Courtland, you’re next,” the Surveyor said as he finished his story.
“Well,” Janet began, “Will and I have had so many experiences I scarcely know which was the most exciting, but I think our encounter with the Indians was the most thrilling from first to last.
“Will had to go into Miles City on business and I went with him for great unrest had been reported among the Indians and he didn’t want to leave me on the ranch alone. We had been in town only a few days when we heard that they were on the war path and Will felt he must go back to the ranch. He wanted me to stay in town, but I wouldn’t. If he was going back I was going with him, so we started in the buck-board on that long eighty-five mile drive. I’ll never forget it. The day was fearfully hot and we were constantly looking out for Indians. We had gone about half-way, when we came over the top of a hill and saw a band of Indians just below us. They saw us before we could turn back, we had to go on, and as we came towards them they formed into two lines so that we had to drive between them. It was horrible.” And Janet gave a shiver at the recollection. “I’ll never forget as long as I live those frightful, painted faces. Not an Indian moved; we passed through the line and had gone a short distance beyond, when we heard the report of a gun. Will clapped his hand to his side and said: ‘My God, I’m shot. Drive as fast as you can’—and he threw the lines to me.
“I lashed the horses and we fairly tore. Everything was still, there was only that one shot, the Indians made no attempt to follow us. We did not speak. Will was lying back in the buckboard, his hand pressed to his side. When we had gone out of sight of the Indians I stopped the horses and asked Will where he was struck.
“‘In the side; I can feel the blood oozing through my fingers,’ he said. He took his hand away and gave an exclamation as he looked at it. It was wet but not with blood. We could not find the sign of a wound. We got out to investigate and discovered—that just as we passed the Indians the cork flew out of a bottle of root beer we had in the back of the buckboard and struck him in the side. Poor old Willie, no wonder he thought he was shot,” and Janet smiled at her husband, who laughed with the rest of us.
“Now, Owen,” he said, “I know some of the things you’ve been through, so you can’t beg off,” and Owen began his story.
“In the spring of ’81 I came West to visit my brother, Ed., on his ranch in Wyoming. I was a tenderfoot, never having been on the plains before—and yet—I had scarcely arrived when I announced that the one thing I wanted to do was to kill a buffalo. He told me that if my heart was set on it I should have the chance, but that it was dangerous sport even for experienced hunters, as a buffalo frequently turns and gores the horse before it can get out of the way.
“The very next day the dead body of a professional hunter was brought to the ranch. He had wounded a buffalo bull which had turned, caught with his horn the horse he was riding, thrown him to the ground and gored the hunter to death. The sight of his mangled body was shocking and made a terrible impression on my mind, but my purpose was not changed.
“My brother assigned Al. Turpin the responsibility of serving as my guide. He was one of the best riders on the ranch, cool-headed and a good shot. We took breakfast before daylight in order to get an early start. After riding a considerable distance three dark objects were discovered far away on a hill which sloped toward us. A pair of field glasses confirmed the opinion that they were buffalo lying down. We rode in their direction and kept out of sight, except as we peered cautiously over the top of each succeeding ridge until it was possible to approach no nearer in concealment, when we rode to the top of the nearest hill and were in full view. The buffalo saw us and quick as lightning were on their feet running away. We sent our horses at full speed down the slope, across a level piece of ground and up the hill after them. We were gaining rapidly. My horse was the faster of the two and was in the lead. He was one of the best trained cow ponies I have ever ridden and was my brother’s favorite for cutting out cattle.
“When about thirty yards behind the buffalo, one stopped. The bit I was using was severe. I pulled and threw my horse back on his haunches. The buffalo was an immense bull. He appeared to me as big as a mountain. He turned facing me, his body at an angle, cocked his head on the side, then threw it toward the ground and, quicker than a flash, came down the hill like a landslide.
“My horse struggled against the bit and tried to jump toward the buffalo and turn him as he would a steer. I tried to swing his head away and dug my spurs into his sides to make him move, but he did not understand why he should run from a buffalo. He did respond a little and turned so that his haunches were toward the great brute coming down the hill.
“The head of the buffalo was in striking distance. He looked like a great devil. His beadlike eyes flashed fire. The next instant I expected the horse to be pitched down the hill. I could feel myself thrown into the air and then gored to death when I struck the ground. I could see the mangled body of the dead hunter.
“While my six-shooter was a powerful gun, I knew that if I should shoot the brute in the head, the ball would not go through the mass of matted hair and the thick skull. Still there was nothing else to do. I thought my time had come. In order to hit him at all it was necessary to shoot over my left arm. In my haste I pulled the trigger too soon. The loud report startled the horse into a run and turned the buffalo. Its discharge, so near my head, gave me a terrible shock. I thought the shot had blown away all the right side of my head and I put up my hand to keep my brains from falling out, but there were neither brains nor blood on my hand. The bullet had just grazed my head and gone through the rim of my hat. That brute looked like an infuriated demon. I couldn’t have been more frightened if I had met the devil himself at the mouth of hell.
“When it was all over, I was not in a mood for challenging him again, but as he loped away, Al. ran his horse abreast and from a safe distance put a shot into his brisket. He fell dead. Believe me, I have had many close calls, but that was the one time in all my life when I was really scared.”
“What extraordinary experiences people do have in this country,” Will Mason exclaimed, as he leaned forward to light a fresh cigar. “Speaking of Ed. reminds me of a strange coincidence which happened the year after he came West.
“We had been together the year before in New York, where we had met a chap named Courtney Drake. He was a Yale man and a member of the University Club, so we saw quite a good deal of him. He was very congenial and one of the most lovable fellows I ever knew. He was married but he seldom spoke of his wife and we never met her.
“One morning we picked up the paper and were horrified to read that Mrs. Courtney Drake had shot her maid. There it was in glaring headlines, the whole wretched affair. The Drakes were one of the oldest and wealthiest families in New York and it was spicy reading for the scandal lovers I assure you.
“It seems that Drake had gotten mixed up with this woman when he first came out of college and in order to force him to marry her she told him that she was soon to have a child. He wouldn’t believe it, and how she worked it I don’t know. She must have been mighty clever, for she and her maid got hold of a baby somewhere and she made Courtney believe it was hers and that he was the father—so he married her.
“They had only been married a short time when the maid began to demand large sums of ‘hush money’ and Mrs. Drake gave her whatever she asked, for she was in mortal dread of having Drake discover the truth. The girl found blackmail so profitable she became more and more insistent in her demands and nearly drove Mrs. Drake wild. At last she could endure it no longer and in a perfect frenzy, shot and killed the maid and then the whole thing came out. Mrs. Drake was sent to prison, where she died later, but Courtney vanished utterly after the trial—no one knew what became of him.
“The next fall Ed. and I came West and two years later were up in the Jackson’s Hole country with a party, shooting. Ed. and one of the guides went out one morning to get some ducks, but in a short time they came back to camp carrying the dead body of Courtney Drake. They had come across his body on the shore of a small lake, lying face down in the mud. There was a single bullet hole in the back of his head.
“Think of his having been found out there in the wilderness by the only man in the country who knew who he was! Talk about chance,” Will sighed, “Poor devil, he was living out there under an assumed name. His family had no idea where he was. Ed. notified them and then took his body East.
“Just after his death Drake’s partner produced a bill of sale for the entire ranch and took possession of it. Everyone suspected him of the murder, but it couldn’t be proved. About three years later the man killed his wife and at the time of his conviction the question of Drake’s murder was brought up and he confessed. Isn’t it strange the way things happen?” Will’s question was general. “What on earth do you suppose sent Ed. Brook into the Jackson’s Hole country at that one time of all others?”
No one answered.
“I wonder if all new countries abound in such tragic mysteries?” The Surveyor looked up at me.
“What tragic mysteries have you encountered, Mrs. Brook, that makes you speak so feelingly?”
Just then the clock struck twelve and I got up.
“It’s too late for more mysteries, it’s time to go to bed—and we don’t want tragedies to keep us wide awake on Christmas night.”
“Oh, come on Esther, tell us your most thrilling experience,” they begged. “We won’t move a step until you do.”
“Marrying Owen,” I replied, looking over at my unsuspecting husband, “I’ve never had a chance to get my breath since.”
And amid a shout of laughter the Christmas party broke up.
Ted landed in our midst with all the attendant violence of a meteor. He didn’t arrive, he landed, bag and baggage, and until his departure weeks later our tranquil existence was sufficiently hectic to suit even Bill.
After numerous letters from his doting aunt, we reluctantly consented to look after Ted while she was in Europe recuperating from a nervous break-down. At the end of the first week, we understood why Aunt Elizabeth found recuperation necessary, and I suggested to Owen, it might be well to engage our passage on a later steamer, for I had a premonition that my own nerves might require a rest after two months of Ted’s strenuous companionship.
He wasn’t bad; there was not a bad thing about him. He was just overflowing with youth and energy, which had been pent up for years, between boarding school in the winter and Newport in the summer.
Motherless, fatherless, rich, neglected or over-indulged by a none too wise aunt, Ted was an appealing young person, a character easily to be made or marred by circumstances.
He looked like a member of the celestial choir—blue-eyed, fair-haired and mild—but he produced the effect of a Kansas cyclone.
There was nothing he did not see, there was nothing he did not hear and there was nothing he did not do. Even on eighty thousand acres of land his activities were somewhat limited.
He was wildly enthusiastic about the West, fascinated by the men, and was Bill’s shadow, so we promptly turned him over to those “rough persons” Aunt Elizabeth had especially hoped that he might avoid, to get it all out of his system.
“Let him stay at the bunk-house,” Owen advised after Ted had besought me to allow him to stay with the men. “It will do him more good than anything else in the world, if he has the right stuff in him.”
Ted stood on the porch, uneasily shifting from one foot to the other, when I came out of the office.
“All right, Ted, Mr. Brook and I are perfectly willing for you to stay with the men, if you really want to.”
He hopped up and down and almost embraced me in his joy.
“Oh, thank you, Mrs. Brook. You see,” he explained, carefully, “I’ve seen people like you and Mr. Brook all my life, but I never had the chance to be with real cow-punchers before.” Evidently, from Ted’s point of view, Owen and I were very commonplace individuals compared to these heroes of the prairie, and I laughed to myself as he bounded down the steps to break the joyful news to Bill that he was to share his bed and board.
The next day we had to go to town to meet some prospective wool buyers, and, after having his breakfast interrupted five different times by Ted’s dashing in to see if we were ready, Owen was moved to inquire finally, “What on earth is on the boy’s mind now?”
“His outfit,” I answered. “He’s been planning it for days; wishes to select it himself and we are not to see it until we get home.”
That was a wise stipulation of Ted’s, for if we had seen it, we should never have been able to get home.
He put it on as soon as we reached the ranch, and when he finally emerged, the flaming sunset paled with chagrin at its futile effort of years.
The “outfit” consisted of tan corduroy trousers, chaps of long silky angora wool, which had been dyed a brilliant orange, a shirt of vivid green, a bright red silk handkerchief for his neck, an enormous Stetson hat, high-heeled tan boots, silver studded belt and huge spurs.
We gasped when we saw him, but he was so intent on showing himself to Bill, as to be utterly unconscious of the effect he produced.
We followed him into the yard where the boys were waiting the call to supper. Bill looked up from the quirt he was braiding and blinked.
“Gosh! I thought the sun had set an hour ago,” he remarked.
“No,” Ted laughingly responded, giving him a push, “but he’s going to ‘set’ now,” and he threw himself down by Bill’s side. “I knew you fellows would guy me, but all the same I think this outfit’s great,” and he surveyed himself with infinite pride and satisfaction.
“It’s all right,” said Bill, taking in all the details of the resplendent costume, and looking up at Owen and me with twinkling eyes, “I like somethin’ a little gay myself; but round here where everything’s green, we won’t be able to tell you from a bunch of soap-weed,” and Ted good naturedly joined in the laugh at his own expense.
“Wouldn’t his Aunt Elizabeth die of heart-failure if she could see him now?” I asked Owen as we went into the house.
“She certainly would,” he answered, “but we’ll trust to luck and let Nature take its course.”
Everything, including Nature, took its course rapidly with Ted, and for the next few weeks wise prairie dogs, rabbits and rattle-snakes stayed in their holes. By the end of his stay that energetic young person had enough rattle-snake skins to provide belts and hat-bands for all of New York, and scores of live prairie-dogs he had trapped to be shipped to his aunt’s place in Newport.
I tried to picture the joy of Aunt Elizabeth and her neighbors when they found informal prairie-dog towns in the midst of their formal gardens. If life is measured by experiences, a few additional years were in store for Newport.
Bill taught Ted to shoot and he spent hours and a fortune shooting at old tin cans on a post before Bill finally consented to say:
“I’ve saw fellers do worse,” the sweetest praise that ever fell on mortal ears, judging by Ted’s expression.
And, then, Owen went to New Mexico to buy some sheep and Bohm came to sleep on a claim.
This claim was one over which Owen and Bohm had been having a controversy for months. It had been included in the sale of the ranch, and after one of our most important sheep camps had been built upon it, Owen discovered that Bohm could not give a deed to it, as he had not made final proof on the land.
Bohm never ceased to regret having sold the ranch, and had never forgiven Owen for buying it and making him live up to his contract, so was only too glad of the opportunity to cause him all the trouble possible. Time after time he promised to come out and “prove up”, but he never came, so although I was most anxious to have him come, I was far from pleased to have him about when Owen was away.
Ted, however, was overjoyed; he seemed to feel that Providence had arranged Bohm’s visit to the ranch for his especial entertainment, and from the moment the old chap arrived Ted dogged his footsteps.
At first, old Bohm seemed quite flattered and laughed and joked with him, praised his shooting, told him stories of the Indian days, promised to show him the underground passage to an abandoned stage station, but later he became annoyed, for no clinging burr ever clung more closely than Ted. He scarcely allowed Bohm to get out of his sight for one moment.
How much the boy had heard of old Bohm’s history I did not know, but I concluded a few rumors had reached those ever-attentive ears, for one day he came in fairly beaming.
“Gosh! Pudge and Soapy haven’t got anything on me, they’ve only seen Buffalo Bill in a show, and I’m right in the same house with a man that’s a holy terror!”
“What do you mean, Ted?” I asked, anxious to find out how much he had heard.
“Oh, you know well enough, Mrs. Brook,” he laughed, going to the door as he saw old Bohm on his way to the barn. “You can’t fool me. Gee! I wouldn’t have missed him for the world. The fellows’ll just be sick when I tell them.”
“The fellows” were evidently “Pudge” and “Soapy”, his two chums at St. Paul’s, “Pudge” because of “his shape,” as Ted explained, and “Soapy”, whose parental millions came from the manufacturing of soap.
The game between the boy and Bohm was amusing. Clever as the old chap was, he couldn’t evade Ted’s watchful eye. If Bohm thought him miles away, he suddenly appeared with such an unconscious air of innocence he disarmed all suspicion, but he made Bohm uneasy.
“Quit campin’ on the old man’s trail, Kid,” said Bill one evening at the corral after Ted had driven Bohm to the bunk-house to escape his questions. “You’re gettin’ on his nerves; let him go and sleep on his claim and get through with it. You and me’s got to hunt horses tomorrow, anyways.”
Ted cheerfully acquiesced, and old Bohm loaded his wagon alone and drove toward his claim in peace.
The next morning very early, I heard Bill calling Ted. No Ted appeared, and I went out to see where he was.
“Where do you reckon that crazy kid’s went now?” demanded Bill, impatient to start.
“I’m sure I don’t know, Bill, hunting prairie-dogs, probably. Don’t wait for him, if you’re ready to go.”
“Huntin’ prairie-dogs,” echoed Bill. “I’ll bet a hat he’s huntin’ old Bohm somewheres.” He frowned as he cinched up his saddle. “I reckon I’d better ride over that way and see what he’s up to.”
“I wish you would,” I said, vaguely uneasy. “I don’t want him to bother Bohm too much.”
“Me neither,” said Bill, getting on his horse, “there’s his pony’s tracks now,” he looked at the ground. “I’ll find him and take him along with me. Don’t you worry, he’s all right, but he sure is a corker—that kid,” and Bill galloped off.
I felt confident that he would overtake the lad, so I dismissed them all from my mind and settled down to an uninterrupted morning, and a delayed postal report.
I was busy all day and was just starting out for a little walk before supper when Bill and Ted rode up.
Bill and Ted, hatless, clothes torn and covered with dirt and blood, their faces scratched and bruised, and Ted regarding me triumphantly from one half-closed eye, the other being swollen shut.
“What on earth hap—” I tried to ask, my breath fairly taken away. Bill got off his horse and came up to the gate.
“We’re all right, Mrs. Brook. I’m sorry you seen us ’fore we got fixed up a little; we just got mixed up some with Bohm—that’s all—’taint nothin’ serious. We look a whole lot worse than we feel, don’t we Ted?”
“You bet we do,” mumbled Ted from a cut and bleeding mouth, “but you ought to see Bohm, he’s a sight!”
Ted got off his horse with difficulty. “Gosh, it was great,” he said, leaning up against the fence for support.
“Come in and sit down, both of you, Charley will take your horses,” and I led the way into the house followed a little unsteadily by Bill and Ted, who collapsed on the first chairs they could reach.
I gave them some wine, washed off their blood-stained faces, and made protesting Ted go into my room and lie down. He was very pale, and I saw that he was faint.
I came back into the kitchen.
“Now, Bill, tell me about it. What happened and where is Bohm?”
“On his way back to Denver in the baggage car,” announced Bill, draining the last drop from the glass he still held in his hand.
I started, “Oh, Bill, you didn’t kill him?”
“No, but I wisht I had,” he said calmly. “He’d oughter be dead, the old skunk, trying to poison all them sheep.”
“Poison the sheep; what sheep?”
“Your sheep,” Bill’s brows contracted as he looked at me. “Your sheep,” he repeated, his voice rising as I scarcely seemed able to grasp his meaning. “All the sheep at Hay Gulch Camp, that’s what he came out here for, and he’d a done it, too, if it hadn’t been for that kid in there.” Bill jerked his head in the direction of my room.
“Ted?” I asked, my emotion stifling my voice.
“Ted,” Bill affirmed, “he caught him at it red-handed, and probably saved two thousand sheep from bein’ dead this minute.”
“How on earth did he find out?”
Bill straightened up in his chair.
“Them eyes of his’n don’t miss much, I’m here to tell you, and his everlastin’ snoopin’ around done some good after all.” Bill’s eyes glowed with pride. “Yesterday, before Bohm left, Ted come across him mixin’ a lot of stuff with some grain, and, of course, had to know all about it. The old man finally told him he was fixin’ to poison the prairie-dogs on his claim, bit he was so peevish about it, Ted said he didn’t believe him, and mistrusted somethin’ was wrong.
“The kid didn’t say nothin’ to me about it; had some fool notion about playin’ detective, I reckon, at any rate he got up along about four o’clock and rode out to Bohm’s claim to do a little reconorterin’.”
Bill reluctantly put the glass down and tipped back in his chair. “He hid his horse in the gulch and crope up in the grass like an Injin. The herder wasn’t nowhere in sight and the sheep was still in the corral, but old Bohm was there all right, fixin’ little piles of that poisoned wheat just where the sheep would come acrost it the first thing.”
“Oh, Bill, that’s the worst thing I ever heard!” I was sick at the mere thought.
Bill was too engrossed to pay attention to the interruption.
“Ted said he was comin’ back to tell me, but he got so excited when he seen what Bohm was up to, he never thought of nothin’ but stoppin’ him. The old man was stoopin’ over with his back to Ted, and the kid gave a yell for the herder and ran for Bohm and before he could straighten up Ted was on top of him.”
Bill scarcely paused for breath—“the old man reached for his gun, but Ted was too quick for him and knocked it out of his hand, and when I came up, there they was rollin’ all over the prairie, first one on top and then the other.”
Bill looked toward the door of my room, reflectively—“I kinder felt there was somethin’ wrong when I left here, and believe me, I didn’t spare my cayuse none gettin’ there neither, and I didn’t get there none too soon.”
I was incapable of speech. I just stared at Bill.
“There ain’t no doubt about Bohm’s bein’ ready to kill him; he was on top then and reachin’ for his throat. I didn’t stop to ask no questions. I jest grabbed him, and pulled him off of Ted. He was white as chalk and ready to eat us both alive, but I hung on to him while Ted got up cryin’, ‘Look what he’s done, Bill, look what he’s done,’ and pointed at somethin’ on the ground.”
Bill’s eyes were like two live coals. “Bohm was cussin’ like a steam engine ’bout the kid’s jumpin’ him when he was puttin’ out poison for the prairie-dogs. I just took one look around and seen all them piles of poison wheat there by the corral when there wasn’t a prairie-dog within two miles. I—well, I aint goin’ to tell you what I said, Mrs. Brook, ’taint fit for you to hear.”
FACING DEATH EACH TIME THEY RIDE A NEW HORSE.
FACING DEATH EACH TIME THEY RIDE A NEW HORSE.
FACING DEATH EACH TIME THEY RIDE A NEW HORSE.
Bill looked down and turned the glass on the table around and around. He looked up again and smiled, but his brows contracted as he went on—“We had words then, sure enough. All of a sudden Bohm made a lunge and caught the handkerchief round my neck with one hand and reached for somethin’ with the other, and the first thing I knew he was slashin’ at me with a pocket knife. I guess I saw red then, ’cause I knocked him down and nearly pounded the life out of him.”
Bill stopped a moment—“His eyes was rollin’ back in his head and his tongue was hangin’ out and there was a pool of blood ’round us, three yards across.” Bill’s description was so vivid I shut my eyes. “I reckon I’d killed him if Ted hadn’t tromped my legs and kinda brought me to myself. He’d oughter been killed, but I let him up then and told Ted to go for my rope. We tied his hands and legs. I guess he had about all he wanted for he wasn’t strugglin’ much.” Bill smiled grimly. “We carried him into the cabin, and there was the Mexican lying in his bunk—doped. We knew who done it all right, and I tell you we didn’t handle Bohm like no suckin’ infant when we laid him down, neither.”
Bill’s face was stern and set and I shared his indignation too much to trust myself to speak.
“We left him there and went to get the wheat out of the way before we opened the corral gates for the sheep. Thanks to Ted, Bohm hadn’t had time to put much around. He’s a great little kid, that boy.” Bill’s voice broke.
“Bless his heart,” I said, my own heart filled with gratitude and tenderness for the plucky little chap in the other room. Bill’s eyes were moist, but his voice was steady again.
“Steve and Charley came up just then with the supply wagon, so Steve set Charley to herd the sheep. We loaded Bohm into the wagon and Steve took him over to the railroad. He said he’d see he got on the train all right.” Bill grinned, “You’re rid of Bohm for good now, Mrs. Brook, for I kinda think he gathered from what me and Steve said the ranch wouldn’t be no health resort for him if he ever showed his ugly face round here again.”
“Oh, Bill, I’m so thankful; it makes me sick when I think what might have happened.”
“Don’t thank me, Mrs. Brook, I ain’t done nothin’.” Bill’s face was red with embarrassment as he stood up. “Ted’s the one to thank, he’s some kid, believe me,” and Bill’s eyes were very tender.
“Let’s go in and see how he’s making it.” Bill followed me into the room.
Ted was sitting up on the couch, regarding his battered visage in my hand-glass with the greatest interest. I could see at once he was in no mood for emotion or petting.
“Hello, I’m all right,” he murmured with a one-sided grin. “Say, Bill, wasn’t it great? I wouldn’t have missed it for a million dollars.”
He sank back with a sigh of supreme satisfaction. “I just wish I could remember all the things he called me. I want to spring them on the fellows when I go back.”
Bill looked at him with genuine concern. “See here, kid,” he said decidedly, “you want to forget all them things as quick as you can. Don’t you go springin’ any such language back where you come from. I’m no innocent babe myself, but I’m here to tell you old Bohm’s cussin’ made anything I ever heard sound like a Sunday School piece. You forget it now, pronto,” he commanded as he went out of the door. “It’s a reflection on me and Mrs. Brook.”
After Bill had gone, Ted looked at himself again, then at me. “What do you suppose Aunt Elizabeth would say if she could see me now?” We both laughed.
“I would be a ‘disgrace to my family and position’ now, sure enough.” He felt his blackened eye tenderly.
I sat down on the couch beside him. “You will never be more of a credit to your family than you are at this minute, Ted, nor more of a man.”
He looked up, for my voice shook a little. He knew what I meant and his lips twitched as he patted my hand gently, and turned his face away.
It was just like Louise Reynolds to arrive on the wings of a blizzard, wearing a straw hat and spring suit. Louise led the seasons, she never followed them, and she preceded that particular storm by about two hours; but she was justified, for it was April and she was on her way from California.
In this land of the unexpected even the weather disregarded all established precedents. A glorious Indian Summer night extended into January, or a sudden blizzard would swoop down from the North in October or April and leave us snowed in for days.
That is exactly what happened upon this occasion and most of Louise’s visit was spent in shovelling snow for the pure joy of the exercise. That energetic young person had to do something in lieu of tennis or golf.
The prairies were covered with a fluffy mantle of purest white, great drifts filled the gulches and the roads were utterly obliterated. Long after the storm the men had to go about on horseback for no wagon could be moved through the deep snow.
At this juncture Louise announced that she had all of her reservations through to Baltimore, where she was to officiate as bridesmaid. She was obliged to go and we had to take her to the railroad.
We could scarcely go on horseback with baggage, there wasn’t a sleigh in the country, certainly none on the ranch, but if Necessity was the Mother of Invention, Owen was a near relative. He never failed to find some way of meeting the most difficult problem. If Louise must go it devolved upon him to see that she reached the station and so he produced a sled, a disreputable old affair, used for the exalted purpose of hauling dead animals to “the dump”—but still it was a sled and under Owen’s direction it was scrubbed and transformed into the most luxurious equipage by having a packing box nailed on the back and covered with rugs. Louise and I perched on the box, with heavy robes tucked in about us, the suit cases were at our feet and Owen sat on the trunk in front to drive.
There was only one draw-back, the sled had no tongue to keep it from running on to the heels of the horses, so Owen cut a hole in the bottom of the sled through which he stuck a broom-stick. My task was to work this improvised brake when we went down hill by jabbing the broom-stick into the snow. It worked beautifully except that the friction against the hard snow broke pieces of it off and it grew perceptibly shorter as we advanced.
In order to avoid some especially deep gulches we left the valley and followed a high ridge. It was much longer, but we had allowed the entire day for the trip. There was no danger of becoming lost as long as we could see, for we knew too well the country and the general direction to be followed.
No incident marred the joy of that day. When the horses floundered and almost disappeared from sight in a snow-filled gulch, leaving the sled stranded like an Ark on a gleaming Ararat, we had only to dig the horses out with a shovel which had been taken for the purpose and after getting them on the level ground, go back and hitch a long rope to the sled, draw it across the gulch and proceed upon our way.
The light of the sun upon the snow was so intense it was necessary to wear colored glasses to avoid snow blindness, and being muffled in furs, we looked like three bears in goggles. Our wraps kept us perfectly warm and it was a merry ride. The adventure filled us with joy as we glided over the trackless world in which we alone moved.
There was no suggestion of dreariness or desolation in the scene. Under the magic touch of the sun the world burst forth into a miracle of glory and beauty which held us spellbound. The sky was cloudless, not a shadow fell across that dazzling white expanse, which flashed and sparkled with all the prismatic colors. Far to the west Pike’s Peak stood, a marvel of varying lights and shadows, its head resting on the soft blue bosom of the sky. Its commanding height had filled the Indian of the Plains with worshipful awe, it was to him “the Gate of Heaven, the abiding place of the Great Spirit.” According to his own testimony, the one inevitable duty in the life of the Indian is the duty of prayer—and how often as he looked upon that distant mountain must the red hunter have paused in the midst of the vast prairies, his soul uplifted and an unspoken prayer on his lips!
The whole aspect of the country was changed, all the familiar landmarks were gone. Except for the hills, the surface of the prairie was perfectly level as though the Great Spirit had stretched his hand forth from that mystic mountain and passing it over the world had left it smooth and stainless.
It was a wonderful experience, and when toward evening we reached the railroad we were thrilled and triumphant over our accomplishment. The night was spent in the little four-room “hotel,” we saw Louise safely on board the eastbound express the next morning, then returned to the ranch.
To be out after a blizzard is one thing, to be out in one is quite another, and we always grew apprehensive when the sky became suddenly overcast and the snow began to fall from leaden clouds. What if the storm should catch the herders and the sheep too far away from the camp?
They were all warned to range their sheep to the North if it threatened to storm, as most of the blizzards came from that direction and the sheep would go before the wind back to camp and safety. But they will not face it and, if unmindful of his orders, the herder took them South and a sudden storm came, he could not turn his sheep back to the camp; they would drift on and on before the wind, sometimes plunging over a bank to be buried beneath the drifting snow or piling up and smothering each other.
One winter just as Owen and I were starting home from California we received a telegram from Steve saying that during a blizzard the buck herd had been lost. Owen had some very important business which detained him when we reached Denver, so he asked me to go on to the ranch, have Steve organize the men into searching parties and look through every gulch in the vicinity for any discolored holes on the top of the drifts which would be caused by the breath of the sheep if they were under the snow. For two days the men searched and finally came to a deep bank of snow on the top of which were found the discolored holes they sought; they dug down and discovered the bucks. A few had been smothered, but most of them were taken out alive after having been buried for ten days! During the storm the herder had left them and the poor distracted things had drifted over an embankment and were entombed under the snow.
When anyone speaks of “good-for-nothing Mexicans” I think of Fidel, a mere lad, who had taken his sheep South on a clear morning, but was overtaken by a storm before he could get them back to the corrals. He and his dog did everything they could do to turn them, but they drifted farther and farther away. Fidel stayed with them, guiding them away from the gulches until they reached a railway cut. There Steve found them twenty-four hours later when we feared that Fidel had perished with his sheep. Facing death alone in the freezing wind and blinding, smothering snow, hour after hour he had kept his sheep from piling up. He not only saved them all, but they were in better condition than many in the corrals at the camps. Not for a moment had he left them. His hands and feet were frozen; he barely escaped freezing to death and on that day we learned the true meaning of “Fidelity.”
Then once more Fate took a hand in our affairs and a blizzard changed the whole course of our lives.
We owned our land and no one could encroach upon us, but after a few years we began to notice forlorn little shacks built here and there on the open range by the poor home-seekers who, attracted by the prospect of free land, had begun “homesteading.” They built flimsy little houses, scratched up the surface of the prairie for a few inches and raised pitiful, straggling crops. The settlers were coming in! The opening wedge of that great onrush had been thrust deep into the heart of the prairie. In the undisputed possession of our own land we were not disturbed. While we knew that it meant the occupation of the free range and the passing of the large ranches, eventually, we scarcely realized how soon it would come and were not prepared to receive an offer from an Eastern syndicate to buy the entire ranch—to cut it into small units to be sold as farms.
The era of “dry-farming” had just begun, when by scientific methods, deep ploughing and the conservation of all moisture, dry land might be successfully cultivated without irrigation. It was a dream of the future of the prairie region, impossible to visualize, and I laughed in my ignorance, as Owen read me the letter.
“How perfectly absurd. Imagine trying to farm out here; the grangers would starve to death in a year unless they had stock of some sort. Surely you would never think of selling out?”
“I don’t know, Esther, the homesteaders can’t come on to our deeded land, but they are filing on all the Government land. In a short time there will be no more free range, and did you ever stop to consider that our land will soon be so valuable that we can’t afford to run sheep on it?”
In that last sentence I saw the handwriting on the wall. It was only a question of time and this phase, too, of our life would pass.
In the East life seems to be static, but in the West it is in a state of flux and conditions are constantly changing.
Perhaps I had inherited the static state of mind for I had taken it for granted that all the rest of our days were to be spent there on the ranch under the shadow of the mountain. Suddenly a realization of the facts swept over me. In a sense we had been pioneers, we had blazed a trail that others were to follow and like the Indians we, too, were destined to move on. However, before you are thirty to regard yourself as a hoary-headed pioneer requires a series of mental gymnastics and, while my brain was going through a few preparatory exercises, I did not take the question of selling out very seriously. After all those years of struggle just as it had been brought to perfection, after we had put into it the best of our life, youth, energy and work, a part of our very selves, it did not seem possible that we could part with the ranch. Owen felt much as I did, but he was the first to realize that we had come again to the parting of the ways and that a decision must be made.
Yet—in the end—it wasn’t the financial consideration nor a deep conviction that the future development of the country would be retarded if we remained, but an unexpected blizzard which turned the scale and set us adrift again.
The sun rose clear on the 19th of October, but during the morning it began to grow cloudy.
Owen and several of the men were at the railroad station where they were shipping lambs. During the afternoon the wind began to blow, it grew much colder and snow fell.
The next morning it was storming very hard and Steve, after arranging to have hay hauled to the various camps, went out on horseback to see that all the sheep were kept in the corrals. I was greatly relieved when Owen got home in the middle of the afternoon. Ten thousand lambs had been loaded and started on their way in spite of the storm, but the drive back to the ranch had been very hard, for hour by hour the storm increased in fury. The ground was covered and even the dull grey sky was hidden by dense clouds of powdery snow which did not seem to fall upon the earth but was blown in long horizontal lines across the prairies by the force of a mighty gale. It filled the gulches and piled in deep drifts. It was driven against the house with such force it sifted through the smallest crack. The windows on the North and West were covered with a solid coating of snow, the wind whistled and moaned and tore at the shutters as if trying to carry them with it on a wild race over the plains. It was impossible to see the corrals, even the garden fence was lost behind the driving, swirling snow. To open the door was to inhale a freezing gust of snow-laden air, millions of icy particles blinded the eyes and took away the breath.
We knew that the sheep were all in the corrals, but we feared that unless the herders watched them carefully they would pile up as the snow drifted over the high sides of the inclosure. The rest of the stock was protected and my heart was filled with thankfulness that Owen and the men had been able to reach the ranch. They went about the place like white wraiths doing the necessary things. Above the howling of the wind not a sound could be heard; a shout was carried miles away as soon as it left the lips. By five o’clock it was dark.
About eight o’clock, Mary came in and told Owen that Steve wanted to see him. When Owen returned, instead of coming into the living-room, he went to the closet, took down his short, fleece-lined riding coat and began to put it on.
“What’s the matter, Owen, you are not going out?”
“I must,” he said, quietly, winding a long scarf about his neck, “Steve says that Dorn went out yesterday afternoon with a load of hay for the camp on Six Shooter; he should have come back last night or certainly this morning. He’s new and doesn’t know the country and he may be lost. I’m going to see if I can find him.”
My heart stood still; the camp on Six Shooter gulch was fully eight miles away. Eight miles in that storm! It did not seem possible that a man could live to go a mile.
“Oh, Owen, I can’t let you go! Don’t you suppose he is at the camp?”
“I don’t know, he may be, but I must go and find out. We can’t take a chance on a man’s being lost.” In the face of that argument there was nothing to say and nothing to do but accept it.
“Who is going with you?”
“No one”—Owen did not look at me as he answered—“I can’t ask any of the men to face this storm.”
I understood; he couldn’t require any of his men to risk their lives. A hand of ice closed about my heart and deadened every sensibility. Like a machine I went about helping Owen get ready and at last went to the kitchen to bring him some coffee just before he left. A man was standing by the door muffled in wraps. I stood still.
“Why, Bill, where have you been?”
“I ain’t ‘been’, I’m goin’. I’m goin’ with Mr. Brook. A man ain’t got no business out a night like this alone.”
“Bill!” It was all I could say—but he understood.
When Owen came out he tried to dissuade him, but Bill was determined.
“I know I don’t have to go, Mr. Brook, you never asked me, but I’m a goin’, there ain’t nothin’ can keep me.”
I had never seen him so serious, all the old half bantering tone was gone and they went out together, master and man, each risking his life for the sake of another.
I tried to watch them but instantly they were lost to my sight as a vague grey cloud closed about them.
How the night passed I do not know. I kept the fires up and the coffee hot and walked miles, back and forth, back and forth. I did not think of sleeping. It was useless to try to read. I could not see the words—the printed page was blank and I could only see the figures of two men on horseback, beaten, buffeted, fighting for their lives against the cruel snow-laden gale. I saw them separated, perhaps, trying to get through the gulches on their floundering horses, or walking to keep from freezing and then perhaps exhausted—lying down to rest while that last deadly sensation of sleepiness crept over them.
Daylight came at last, but still I walked. I pushed my breakfast away untasted and tried to occupy myself with the duties of the day. I felt as though I should scream aloud if that howling wind did not cease, but hour after hour passed and there was no other sound. The men came and went about their work quietly, speaking but little and then in subdued tones as in the presence of death; over us all hung the pall of terrifying uncertainty.
When occasionally it was possible to catch a glimpse of the corrals or the blacksmith shop I knew that the wind must be abating and time after time I knocked the snow from the windows and stood straining my eyes into that misty, vague out-of-doors. Ten o’clock, eleven o’clock. Something moved along the edge of the pond, the vague outlines of some animal, a slight lull in the wind and I could see that it was a horseman, another followed—I caught up a cape, flung open the door, dashed out into the storm through drifts, over every detaining obstacle until I reached the corral and—Owen.
They were safe, but so weary and worn they could scarcely speak. Their faces were swollen, having been whipped and lashed by the icy particles the wind had driven against them like bits of steel from a mighty blast furnace, their eyebrows and lashes were solid ice, their lips cracked and bleeding.
After a night of horror, at three in the morning, they had found Dorn at the Six Shooter camp comfortably sleeping with the Mexican herder! When the storm began he made no attempt to come back to the ranch, not stopping to think that his non-appearance would cause any anxiety, besides endangering the lives of two men.
“I was so hot when I seen Dorn nice and warm all cuddled up there with that Dago I jest drug him out by the collar and shook him. Anybody that’ud sleep with a Mexican had orter freeze to death. Gosh! Here was Mr. Brook and me amblin’ over this whole blamed country, flounderin’ through snow drifts as high as this house, gettin’ our horses down and most freezin’ to death, blintin’ a no account thing like that.” Bill was himself again.
Their knowledge of the country and presence of mind had saved them, for once when they found that it had grown warmer and apparently the wind had ceased, they realized that the horses had turned with the wind so that it was at their backs, they forced the poor things into the face of the bitter gale again and went on. They passed the camp without seeing it and had gone beyond when the wind brought them the smell of the sheep, they turned back and after searching found the cabin. It was a narrow escape for they were too exhausted to have gone farther.
A few days later we learned that old John, who had been our mail carrier, had perished in the storm. He had gone out to try to find his cattle and did not return. His wife and little son were alone and when they were able to get out and look for him, they found him just outside the garden fence lying frozen and half eaten by the coyotes.
I thought much during the following days and finally I came to a conclusion.
“Owen, if you want to sell out I’m willing—it will have to come some day, I realize that, and besides—there is too much at stake. I don’t believe I can ever live through another blizzard.”
In three months all the stock on the ranch was sold, a caretaker was placed in charge of the home ranch, which we retained, and we moved to Denver. But instead of selling out to the syndicate, Owen decided to put our lands on the market himself and they were listed for sale.
It was the end of the old life; we had made way for the settlers.
The curtain of years had fallen and risen again on the same scene, the valley which stretched off toward the setting sun and the guardian mountain which stood unchanged at its head. But this was October, the royal season of purple and gold and red, when the asters and sunflowers were blooming their lives away in one lavish outpouring of beauty and the rose bushes were crimson under the kiss of the frost. A shimmering mass of gold clothed the great cotton-woods along the winding course of the creek and hills of russet brown replaced those of vivid green I had first seen sixteen years before.
Where the young bride had stood on that July day, amid the strange surroundings, looking with inexperienced eyes upon a new world, she stood again, seeing it from the angle of a participant, from the viewpoint of a woman, fused by the furnace of experience into a part of that life.
It was the same scene, but the setting had changed and as a flood of memories swept over me I felt as though I were a reincarnated spirit, walking the earth in a third phase of existence, having passed through the first, a light-hearted girl among family and friends in urban surroundings, having lived through the second, an atom in the midst of those vast wind-swept plains amongst elemental conditions, a part in the great primitive struggle for existence and coming back again to find the prairies transformed by cultivation into farms, with the crops covering the hills and bottom lands like a huge patch-work quilt of green, brown and brilliant yellow, fastened together with black threads of barbed wire.
Above on the hill stood a church and a school-house, those certain indications of community life. Across the meadows great red barns and towering wind mills overshadowed the less pretentious houses. Bridges spanned the creek with its shifting, treacherous sand and in place of the dim winding trails across the prairie, neatly fenced county roads decorously followed the section lines.
It was the same—yet everything was changed. This well-ordered farming community seemed prosaic, it lacked the romance and charm of the old ranch life and the glorious sense of unlimited freedom.
The bunkhouse was occupied by the family of a hard-working farmer who had married the daughter of our caretaker, Parker; tractors, ploughs and harrows filled the space about the blacksmith shop. I resented those unfamiliar implements and the prosperous farms. On all sides there was heard a strange language of silos, separators and “crop rotation”. I had become a part of the old life, but here I felt restricted and out of place—an alien.
Inside the house all, too, was changed. The books which Joe had scorned, the crystal clock and our Lares and Penates were in our Denver home, but on the ranch I missed them and most of all the old familiar faces. All had gone. Several of the boys had stayed in the country, married and taken up farming, raising bounteous crops and numerous children. Some, individual and picturesque to the end, had crossed the Great Divide, others had sought new positions in Wyoming, the last of the frontier states. Bill was there cooking in an oil camp. We received characteristic, though infrequent, letters from him, usually in the early summer, labored epistles over which he had “sworn and sweat,” as he expressed it, which began by assuring us that he was well and hoped that we were the same and ended by an earnest request to go with us as cook “in case you was thinkin’ of goin’ campin’.” He went with us when we did go, the same old Bill, unchanged in heart or humor.
Old Bohm was dead. The final act of that great tragedy took place in an isolated mine where he had sunk all his fortune in a golden prospect. Hoping to regain it, the fortune he held in trust for a friend had followed, but the game he had played so successfully before failed when Nemesis took a hand. His friend went to the mine to demand an accounting and several hours later Bohm’s body, broken and bleeding, was taken from the depths of the mine. According to the story of his companion, the only witness, he had slipped and fallen to the bottom of the shaft—and his death, as his life, remained an enigma.
But down through the long years the echoes of the past reverberated. Again and again we heard them, sometimes very faintly, then with perfect distinctness and on that day of our return after a long absence we felt again that mysterious suggestion of tragedy and the echoes were startlingly clear.
As I came in from my walk just before supper, a strange man rode up and Mr. Parker asked him to stop.
He told us his name and during the progress of the meal took little part in the conversation, but after he had eaten his supper he leaned back in his chair and in response to Owen’s question, said:
“No, I ain’t exactly a stranger round here, but this old kitchen is about the only thing that ain’t changed. I used to know every inch of ground in this country when I was punchin’ cows for the Three Circle outfit. This was the only ranch within twenty-five miles. I’ve et here lots of times.”
“You knew the Bohms then?” I asked, trying as always to find the answer to the riddle of old Bohm’s personality.
“Sure, I knew the Bohms,” the stranger replied, his clear blue eyes meeting mine frankly. “I knowed everybody there was in the country, there wasn’t many in them days, jest the Bohms, the Mortons, the Bosmans and the La Montes. They’re most all gone now except Bosman. I heered old La Monte died last winter—but Lord, he’s been worse ’en dead for most twenty years. Did you folks know him?”
“Scarcely, we only saw him once,” and before me rose the picture of the desolate old place, the slowly opened door and that living ghost on the threshold.
The stranger again spoke.
“You folks bought from Bohm, so you knowed him, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yes, we knew him.” Owen answered for my thoughts were far away.
“Well, sir,” said the old cow-puncher, reaching for a toothpick, “Jim Bohm was a great one, he was the slickest man in this country. He didn’t have nothin’ but a little band of horses that he drove up from Texas when he came, but he kept gettin’ richer all the time.” I came back to the present with a start, his words were almost the same Mrs. Morton had used sixteen years before.
“Wasn’t he honest?” I asked, wondering what the reply would be.
He did not answer for a moment.
“Well, I can’t say as to that. I jest knowed him from meetin’ him on the round-ups and when I stopped here. I never had no dealin’s with him, but he sure had a reputation for all the meanness there was, and I guess he deserved it. He was good company though, and Lord, how he could play the fiddle.” He was interrupted by a sudden clatter. Mrs. Parker had dropped her spoon and was looking at him as if fascinated. “I liked Mrs. Bohm, but I never had no use for him. I don’t know about the other things, but he sure done Jean La Monte dirt.” He rose from the table and walked toward the door. “Well, I reckon I’d better be movin’ on, I want to get to Bosman’s tonight.” He looked up the valley, “I can see Bohm now, ridin’ that big black horse of his, carryin’ a little cotton-wood switch for a whip, and laughin’ at everything, he was a queer one, sure enough. Well, so long—thank you for my supper,” and he went out into the evening.
“Big black horse! He was always on a big black horse!” That pitiful refrain of Jean La Monte as he had sought the rider of that horse through all those weary years. Again I saw the men waiting in the wagon and that poor half-clad figure stooping to pick up a little cotton-wood switch, and I wondered if across the great divide La Monte had caught up with Bohm at last.
Owen was busy in the office making out contracts for recently purchased land. Mr. Parker and an agent were entertaining some land-buyers, scraps of their conversation “bushels to the acre” and “back in Kansas” reached me from time to time as I walked up and down under the stars.
“Where are you, childy?” Dear Mrs. Parker was always concerned when I was not in sight. “Out there alone?” she asked as she came across the yard to join me. We sat down on the bunk-house steps, glorying in the beauty of the night. We were silent for a few moments and then she spoke.
“Do you know, Mrs. Brook, him talkin’ about Mr. Bohm tonight at supper has made me think of so many things. I never paid much attention to all them stories old Mrs. Morton and other folks told, but some mighty queer things have happened since we’ve been here.”