Shortgrass Song (35 page)

Mayhall laughed. “At those prices I couldn't even buy a garden patch. I'll just have to wait it out five years to earn my title.”

“I can help you out,” Ab said. “If you commute, I'll buy you out at a dollar and a half. That way you'll make forty dollars profit off your place and you can file on a better quarter section somewhere else.”

Mayhall chewed a piece of meat and studied Ab's face. “Why would you want to do that?”

Ab shrugged. “I like to see a man make good. I don't think you have much of a chance of it up the creek. Uncle Sam's betting you a hundred sixty acres against five years of your life that you can't make a farm. The odds are in old Sam's favor in Monument Park. I think you should get yourself another claim where the odds favor you.”

“Six months from now there may not be any land left to claim on the whole Front Range. This country is settling up fast. I'll take my chances with what I got. Besides, I never asked for no man's help, and I don't aim to start now.”

Ab slurped at a cup of coffee and glared at the squatter. “I'll tell you what I'll do,” he said. “I can get my hands on two quarter sections over on Camp Creek. The water's good there all year, and it's only two miles from town. I'll trade you those two claims for your one, even money.”

Mayhall put his silverware down and leaned back in his chair, sucking his teeth. Pete and Buster glanced up from their plates as Ab waited for the reply.

“I ain't got a team to work one claim with, much less two,” Mayhall said. “A man needs just so much land, and I got all I need up the Monument.”

“Maybe I can get three quarter sections on Camp Creek,” Ab said.

Mayhall snorted and shook his head. “Holcomb, what in hell do you want my claim so bad for?”

Ab pulled a napkin out of his shirt collar and threw it down on the table. “You wouldn't understand,” he said. “You're a farmer. I'm a cattleman. I need that land. Me and the boys brought the first cattle to this valley. We've got claims on this creek the land office doesn't recognize. We fought Indians in this valley—just ask Buster. I lost a wife and a son here. I mean to own it all, and I want solid range. I won't stand for homesteaders squatting in the middle of my spread.”

Mayhall pushed himself away from the table. “If the damned carpetbagger government hadn't took my farm in Georgia, I wouldn't have come here in the first place,” he growled. “But damn it, I'm here to stay now, and I have as much right to government land as you have. I can't help that you got here first. You're an older man than I am, that's all.”

Ab ground his teeth and snarled for a few seconds, then he turned away from his guest and stared at the wall.

“If y'all really do like to see a man make good,” Mayhall said, “you'll show me how to build an irrigation ditch. How'd you learn how to do it?”

Ab said nothing.

“Buster and my little brother, Caleb, built 'em,” Pete said.

Mayhall gawked at Buster. “You built 'em?”

Buster nodded.

“How'd you know how?”

Buster glanced at Ab. “Well, I read up on it,” he said.

“Read up on it!” Mayhall blurted.

“And I saw some irrigated farms down on the Arkansas. It ain't hard to do. Water flows downhill. If you know that, you can figure it out.”

“Who built your dam? Who surveyed your ditches?”

“Buster did it all,” Pete said.

Mayhall slapped the table. “Well, I'll be damned, Buster. You must be the smartest nigger I ever heard tell of!”

Buster forced a smile. “And smarter than some white folks,” he replied.

Mayhall tilted his chair back and laughed, slapping the legs of his pants stretched tight around his thighs.

Ab rose from the table, went into his bedroom, and came back with a double-barreled shotgun and a handful of shells.

Mayhall heard him break the breech open and turned to see him loading the barrels. “What's this?” the nester said.

“You better leave, mister,” Buster warned.

“What does he mean, pullin' a shotgun on me?” Mayhall demanded, rising from the table.

“He don't like that name you called me.”

Ab slammed the breech shut on the double barrel.

“I didn't mean nothin' by it,” Mayhall protested.

Ab thumbed back the hammer behind the first barrel.

“You better git,” Buster said.

Ab thumbed back the second.

“All right, I'm gittin'!” Mayhall grabbed his hat from a deer antler and slipped through the door as Ab's aim followed him. “Damn Pennsylvania Yankee!” he shouted when he was safely outside.

Ab reopened the breech and took the shotgun shells out. “As long as I live, that word won't be spoken in this house. Ella wouldn't approve of it.” He went back into his bedroom to put the gun away.

Buster sighed with relief, then looked at Pete and shook his head. He might have appreciated Ab taking up for him if he didn't know the man so well. Buster thought Ab seemed certain that Buster should be ashamed of his race. He never even allowed the words
colored
or
Negro
to be spoken in reference to Buster—afraid they would embarrass him. He went out of his way to keep from reminding Buster of his blackness, as others took pains not to mention his wooden leg to him.

He was trying to do the right thing, but Buster knew he was misguided. Ab was almost hopeless when it came to dealing with other people. He couldn't get along with anybody.

“That was a good one, Buster,” Pete said. “‘Smarter than some white folks.'”

“Yeah,” the black man said. He pushed his unfinished meal away and went to the window to watch Terence Mayhall stalk away up the Monument.

THIRTY-NINE

The drifter rode in on a westerly breeze,

To the shortgrass country, out of the trees.

Down t'wards the meadows he galloped until

He stopped in the shadows cast long 'cross the hill.

He swung from the saddle, loosened the girth,

Dusted his clothes of the soil of God's earth,

Hung his old hat on a slick saddle horn,

Looked o'er the wheat fields and broad rows of corn.

The words came to Caleb as freely as if he had sung them a thousand times. From which cloud they had issued, he could not say. He stood on the Arapaho Trail overlooking Monument Park and sang the words to himself repeatedly to make sure he wouldn't lose them.

The song should say something about the wildflowers, he thought. From where he stood, Buster's flower patch looked like a crazy quilt staked to the ground.

They were all sitting outside—some cowboys in a group around the door of the bunkhouse—others outside Buster's cabin, listening to him pluck the banjo. An unfamiliar figure in a Chinese hat burst from the cabin and hustled past the cottonwoods. Under the eaves of the cabin, Caleb could just see the wooden leg of his father pushing against the porch rail, tilting the rocking chair.

He had cultivated a fanciful hope over the winter that Ab would welcome him home, apologize for the harsh words spoken a year ago, and install him as a foreman. It seemed suddenly very unlikely as he looked down on the familiar homestead. He knew, however, that he was not going to be the one to try patching things up. It wasn't his responsibility. None of it was his fault.

When he saw Pete riding up the creek valley from Colorado Springs, he cinched his saddle down, put his hat on, and mounted for the ride down to the ranch. He was anxious to talk to Pete again. He had some wild stories to tell. He couldn't wait to see the faces looking at him as he talked and sang.

Sam Dugan looked up from soaping his saddle and let out a shout: “It's him! Caleb's back!”

Buster's fingers tripped and fell from the banjo strings when he saw Five Spot corning down the hill. The spotted mare disappeared behind the trees lining the other side of the creek, and Buster glanced toward the Holcomb house to see Ab petrified in the rocker. When Caleb emerged on the near creek bank, Buster looked at the cabin again and saw the chair rocking empty.

Pete galloped up the road and met Caleb at Buster's cabin, shaking his hand from the saddle. “It's about time you got back,” he scolded. “We've been puttin' off the roundup, waitin' on you.”

“Sam's damn near soaped all the hide off his saddle,” said Piggin' String McCoy.

Caleb was untying the fiddle case behind his cantle. “I left as soon as I could get over the mountains,” he said. “Now, if one of you boys'll put my horse away, I'll get tuned up with that banjo.”

*   *   *

Caleb fiddled until dark, when the men moved to the bunkhouse to get under the lantern.

“Where all have you been since last year?” Pete asked, sitting on a narrow swaybacked bed. “You said you were gonna tell me some stories.”

“I've got a few to tell,” Caleb answered, and he put his fiddle aside to talk.

Lee Fong brought him some steak and beans, and a biscuit or two, but Caleb talked right through them. He told about his drunk in the saloon of Milt Starling, the ranch of the Scotsman in South Park, the trip to the Palouse country, and his winter in the cabin of Burl Sandeen. He drank in the attention they showered him with. It made the whole year worthwhile.

Buster thought he had never heard any finer stories than the ones Caleb told.

“… so old Burl helped me find Five Spot when the snows broke and led me through a place he called Sandeen Pass. Last thing he said was, ‘Good luck, son, and don't come back.' I swear winter will never catch me in North Park again.”

“Hell, you ain't hardly done much to talk about over the past year, have you?” Sam complained.

“I haven't finished yet. I didn't tell you about Denver.”

“When did you go to Denver?”

“I just came from there. I had to fiddle in a saloon a few nights for grub money. A dang bloody fight broke out while I was there. A couple of drunks had it out over a whore.”

“You sure you weren't one of 'em?” String asked.

Laughter began to bathe Caleb like a balm, but Pete chose the moment somehow to spoil the fun. “Why don't you go over to the house and see Papa?” he asked.

The bunkhouse became silent. Caleb picked up his fiddle and plucked vacantly at one of the strings. “I reckon he knows I'm here,” he finally said. “If he wants to come over and see me, I'll speak with him. But I really came back to see you and the boys, Pete. Not him.”

Pete turned immediately for the door.

Lee Fong picked up Caleb's plates and stacked them on one arm. “You are a very lucky boy,” he said.

Caleb regarded the Chinese man suspiciously. “What would you know about my luck?”

“I lived at Fort Bridger. I pressed the beaver skins into bales there. That was my job. I was there when Burl Sandeen and Cheyenne Dutch came back from Canada.”

“He told me about that. Said him and Dutch were the only two of the party to live through the winter.”

“But he did not tell you how,” Lee Fong said. “Sandeen and Cheyenne Dutch killed the other three men and ate them! You are lucky he did not eat you, too.”

The cowboys exploded with laughter, but Caleb did not think it funny. In the first place, Burl had saved him from starving to death. In the second place, he did not appreciate being upstaged as a storyteller by a Chinese cook. “That's a He,” he declared. “Them others froze, that's all.”

Lee Fong shook his head and jutted his finger toward the mountains. “Some trappers went to get the bodies that summer. They found the bones of the legs and arms inside the hut. The skulls had bullet holes.”

“Don't pay that little Chinaman no mind,” said Dan Brooks. “He says Joaquín Murietta's head gets a haircut once a week in a pickle jar in San Francisco.”

The cowboys' laughter erupted again, and Lee Fong stalked angrily out of the bunkhouse, leaping into his sandals outside the door.

“We'd better practice some of those old war songs,” Buster suggested, trading a guitar for Caleb's fiddle. “Mister Ab is gonna have a reunion of the old Colorado First here in a couple of weeks.”

“He is?” Caleb said. The idea of his father hosting a reunion made him think maybe his year adrift had changed the old man for the better.

“Let's do ‘Tenting on the Old Camp Ground,'” Buster suggested.

As the boys sang along with the musicians, Pete slipped back into the bunkhouse and took his seat. Over the fiddle strings, Buster caught his eye. Pete shook his head and looked at the floor.

*   *   *

Ab did not show himself in the morning when Caleb rode out with Pete and the rest of the cowhands to get the roundup work started. But after they left, he went out to apologize to Ella.

“I can't talk to that boy anymore,” he said to her grave. “He won't do what I say. I've failed at what you wanted. I just can't talk to him.”

FORTY

When the branding and castrating had been accomplished and the market steers herded to the Holcomb Station on the Denver and Rio Grande, Pete and Caleb took one last ride through the park, looking for strays and late calves. They took their time, combing the country thoroughly, camping out at night. Caleb played his harmonica or told stories he had heard across the divide.

One rainy afternoon he was telling Pete about the Palouse country where the Nez Perce raised the spotted horses. “You know that bald hill across from the house?” he said.

Pete nodded.

“Well, take about a thousand hills that size, all different shapes, and you got the Palouse country. There ain't a tree on one of them hills, but danged if there ain't grass to beat…”

Pete had stood in his stirrups and was squinting to see through the mist.