Crow Fair (10 page)

Weekdays Clay listened for as long as he could; and on weekends his sister, Karen, came over from Powderville, sometimes with one of her kids. There were three boys, but two were too wild for that long a ride. Karen said that while she was gone they always got up to something obnoxious if their dad couldn’t find time to come in off the place and kick their asses.

The hospital sat right in the middle of the old Matador pasture, where the longhorns coming up from Texas had recovered from the long trail. Clay’s great-grandfather had been one of the cowboys, and the story was that when they first arrived the Indian burials were still in the trees, and the ground was covered with stone tepee rings. A picture of that first roundup crew, with the reps from five outfits lined up in front on their horses, was Bill’s most cherished possession, and he fretted constantly about its safekeeping when he was gone. He seemed to feel that no one in his family cared anything about it. That was probably true. Either that or they were sick of hearing about it.

It had begun to rain, and with the rain came the smell of open country. Karen was supposed to have been there already, and Clay really wanted to get back to the lot. No matter how often intuition betrayed him, he could still convince himself that someone was going to come along and buy a car today. Apart from that he felt a little angry, but at what he wasn’t so sure, maybe everything.

“I don’t know what’s keeping her,” he said to his father.

“Probably had to wait for Lewis to get out of school or find someplace to stash them two other little shits.”

His father couldn’t see as far as the door. So when Karen appeared there, she was able to summon Clay discreetly. For a small brunette, in her jeans and boots and hoodie she could be as emphatic as a trooper telling you to pull over. She was proud to be married to a cowboy.

“I’ve got to take Lewis in for a shot. He got bit by a skunk and, now, the poor little guy is going to have to have that series. So you need to hold the fort.”

“My God, Karen, I can’t stay anymore. I’ve been here all morning.” He couldn’t say he’d been fucked over by that sawed-off rancher just half an hour past breakfast, because Karen had zero sympathy so far as his job was concerned.

Karen said, “You’re going to have to,” and just walked on out. By the time it had occurred to him to offer to take Lewis for the shot, his sister was gone and his father was awake. What good had it been, the old man herding thousands of cattle over all those years only to wind up with his arms like Popsicle sticks and pissing through a tube. Nothing to show for his trouble but stories his son would have to hear all over again, with no relief but the chance of picking up something new about Leo the Illegal or O.C. or Robert Wood or some horse plowed under way back when. Sometimes during these tales, Clay would think about pole dancers or money pouring out of a slot machine or some decent soul appreciating something he’d done, such as that time he acquired the nearly new fire engine the government had bought because the Indians on the Rez didn’t want it, since they already had a bunch just like it they hadn’t gotten around
to wrecking. The town enjoyed a lot of use out of that engine, even though no one seemed to remember who found it for them, or even that day the big red beauty first rolled down the street, sirens blazing and blinding chrome all over it. So much for quiet acts of heroism. Maybe it was time to start drawing attention to himself. A Ford dealership in Great Falls was having a Christian fund-raiser with TV stars on Saturday, and something like that might well be in his future. Or just toot his own horn down at the chamber of commerce.

It was the last Mother’s Day before World War II. You and Karen was just little bitty. Your ma and me drove into the ranch yard, and Leo, the illegal who worked for me then (
Here we go
, thinks Clay), said some old fellow had arrived about sundown on a wild horse and rolled out his bedroll under the loading chute, put his head on his saddle, and gone to sleep. I had this feeling that it was old Robert Wood, and sure enough it was.
(Yep!)
Of course I caught him before he fell asleep, just caught his eye to tell him I would see him in the a.m. I pretty much knew what he was after.
(So do I.)
He had a band of mares up on the mesa behind our mares, and they were running out with wild horses there. Folks from town had come out from time to time to chase them around, and they was absolutely wild. I had been hoping for the chance to gather them for Robert when we had enough hands, because it wasn’t going to be easy at all.
(And what a bitch it would turn out to be.)

Clay’s only defense against these onslaughts was the things he couldn’t say aloud.

Several months before this, Robert went out into the sagebrush
to catch his red roan stud, which was running with some draft horses by the springs. He came with nothing but a little pan of oats and a lariat.
(Wait’ll you see how good this trick works.)
Just as he got his stud caught, one of the draft horses bites the stud, and Robert gets hung up in the rope and dragged. Your uncle O. C. Drury was plowing up wheat stubble about two miles away and saw the dust cloud from where Robert was being hauled. At his age, Robert really never should have lived, but he did. He was in the hospital all winter.

I ran into him after he’d healed some, and he said to me in his kind of whiny voice, “Bill, I been laid up. Can you carry me to the place?” I went with him into his little shack of a cabin, and he stripped down to his long underwear. He pulled back the covers of his bed, and there was a great big nest of mice, just full of little pink babies. He carefully moved them to one side and got in next to them, pulled up the covers, and nodded thanks for the lift.
(Set your watches for hantavirus.)

Gradually, I heard rumors that he was back at work pulling up his poor fence and halfway cowproofing it. He brought back his black baldies and his bulls. He was even seen crawling around the cockleburs packing a sprayer with a full tank and a rag tied across his face. He had always lived and worked alone and was still on the place where he was born.
(Same dog bit me.)

Robert was an old-time spade-bit horseman. His horses were quick and bronc-y, and the only safe place around them was on their backs. But they were quiet in a herd of cattle and had the lightest noses in Montana. O. C. Drury hauled cattle as a sideline, and he hated to haul Robert’s calves. Invariably, he’d arrive in the ranch yard mid-October, and Robert would complain, “O.C., I’m so shorthanded just now. Would you catch up that
bay and help me bring these cattle in?” O.C. would feel obliged, and he’d crawl on the old bay or the old sorrel, both of which would know right away it wasn’t Robert Wood. So one false move, and the bronc ride was on.
(Nice way to treat someone helping you out.)

So I let Robert sleep through the night, and by the time I woke, just before sunup, I could smell his fire and coffee. Then in a bit I could hear Leo’s voice, and I knew the two of them were working on a plan. I threw on the lights and got dressed, went into the kitchen, and started cooking. I knew I didn’t want to put on a breakfast for everyone. I was buying time, and I was still hoping I could talk Robert out of his dangerous plan to bring these horses off the mesa with such a small crew. Leo came in with Robert, who had to be helped up the steps, and we shared a big breakfast, and then we smoked and shot the shit. Leo was a little Indian-looking feller from Sonora, with black bangs over his face. You couldn’t joke with him, because he was always serious, but he could work like nobody’s business and make any kind of a horse do like he said, even the ones you’d rather not get on.
(Of course he didn’t have a sense of humor. Wasn’t nothing around there that was funny.)

Robert had an old-fashioned, long-nosed face, and you could see a little blue vein in the thin skin of his forehead. He was a puncher who had outlived his time.
(Sound familiar?)
He hated farming and especially alfalfa, which he thought was the enemy of the Old West. I suppose he was seventy-five. The hat he wore was just the way it came out of the box—no crease, no nothing. He wore it year-round. He said a straw hat was a farmer’s hat. He said that was what you wore when you went out to view the alfalfa.

We always laid our plans at breakfast, except if I was sitting on the john writing out the day’s work on a matchbook cover. Robert wanted us all to go up the switchback together all the way to the mesa. “When we get there,” he said, “I’ll ride around to the crack.” The crack was a deep washout, and Robert didn’t want the horses to get past it and escape. Instead, he’d hide in the brush and keep them from getting there. Once they were out on the flat, we’d just ride on past them and turn them down toward my corrals.

That crack was deep and steep, and personally I didn’t think Robert was going to be able to turn them there. I felt sure this herd of canners would jump the crack even if it meant breaking their necks and no horse or rider would consider following them. If it had been me, I’d just fog them off toward the neighbors’ and gather them up when we had us a big-enough crew.
(Why take a knife to a gunfight?)
But Robert didn’t think a lot of our horsemanship after all his years on the N Bar and Niobrara. So I thought better of voicing my doubts.

He looked pretty stove up leading his sorrel mare out of the pen behind the scales and tied her to a plank of the chute, just his kind of horse, sickle hocked, good withers, short pasterns, low crouped, and coon footed, a real mutt of a cow horse you wouldn’t take to a halter class.
(In short, the whole reason God invented cars.)
Robert looked barely strong enough to throw his old Miles City saddle up on her or reach over to pull the Kelly Brothers grazer into her mouth. He led her around to the front of the chute, threw one rein up around the horn, and looped the other around the corner post. She had her nostrils blowed out and white all around her eyes, but then all his horses looked half loco.

Robert limped around to the holding pen, squeaked open
that old gate, went inside, crawled up the chute, out the end, and sorta fell onto his horse. She snorted, backed away stretching out that one rein until he could reach down and retrieve it, plait them both through the fingers of his left hand, which he lifted a tiny bit, and the mare sat down on her hocks and backed across the ranch yard. Robert lifted his hand, and she stopped, straightened up, and looked around for some work to do.

Karen came in with Lewis, who wanted to talk about his rabies shot, but Karen raised a finger to her lips, and now all three of us had to hear this damn thing all over again. Lewis at least had a coloring book, and Karen could tap around on her smartphone. I was dying for a cigarette.

Ramrod straight as we go single file up the trail, Robert had his boots plumb home in iron oxbows; he turned to look us over. It wasn’t long before we were on top. Leo loped out to the west and made a little dust. His small form sank and then nearly disappeared as he made a big ride around the horses. They had wheeled up to watch him and only began to disperse and feed as the circle he made came to seem too grand to concern them. I was able to ride straight back to the far side of the mesa, and by the time I got there, Leo was closing in my direction and those horses, two miles off, had already begun to drift away.

We rode straight at them, and in two jumps they were smoking. Our horses caught their wildness and for a minute or two were pretty hard to handle, kicking out behind and trying to run slap through their bridles until we got the best of them.
(I admit this is actually scary.)
The mares had such a cloud of dust behind them it just seemed to drift off into that day’s weather, like from a grass fire. We’d seen Robert just float out of there to remind us how coarse broke we had our ponies.

Robert was nowhere in sight, and there was no possible way to turn them down the road the way we had planned. We knew the mares had winded him somewhere because they suddenly slowed down and blew out their nostrils. The crack, which was big enough to be an earthquake fault, was the place to turn them, so long as they didn’t try to jump it. All we could do then would be to throw them down the slope and let them play hell with the farming on all those little ranches along the river. What a mess.
(Here comes the part I still like hearing even if I sometimes wish I could have been there.)

Then, everything changed. Way past the crack, Robert broke out of the brush on his horse. Hell, we didn’t even know he was in there, and Leo on the back of his sweaty gelding just looked at me. The mare came out in a flurry, greasewood stobs racking off in the air around her. Those wild horses froze. Either they would leap that crack and fly past him, or Robert could jump it himself and turn them down toward the house. I couldn’t see doing much of anything to save this wad of cayuses, Roman noses, and big feet. Back at the time of the Boer War, some remount outfit had turned draft studs to put some size on them, but it turned up in all the wrong places. Leo looked like they hurt his eyes.

They boiled back toward us, and we whooped and hollered at them. Leo took down his slicker and got them bunched up once more toward the trail, where they didn’t want to go, but Robert kept yelling for us to drive them. They advanced his way like a bright cyclone; and just before they broke around him, Robert spurred his horse straight at the huge crack like he was riding into hell, but the mare just burned a hole in the wind, and when she reached that yawning gap, she just curved up, into the
air, Robert easing back into the saddle with his stirrups pushed out in front, the mare’s legs reaching toward the far shore. I saw them land, but Leo had his eyes covered.

I guess when the wild horses challenged Robert to raise them, he just raised them out of their chairs, because as he leaned up in his saddle, deep slack of reins hanging under the sorrel’s neck, taking time to count them, they were just the quietest most well-behaved herd of critters, ready to jog on home to my corrals. When we had them locked in, Robert said, “There, got that out of the way. I was afraid we might have trouble with them.” He rode over to where he left his bedroll and said to me, “Mind if I ask your Mexican to cheek this mare while I slide off? She’s bad to paw at you when you get down. Man’d rather piss down her shoulder than go through that.”