Shortgrass Song (43 page)

“Hey! Here he is! Saints and angels, boys, we found him! Merry Christmas!” Lee Silvers jumped down from his horse and waded through the snow to get to Caleb. “Can you walk? Let me dig you out.”

His eyes adjusted slowly to the morning light. Between his legs he found a pile of cold rocks. He looked at his hands. The tips of his fingers were discolored. Some of them white, some blazing red. The red ones looked waxy as candles.

He had fallen asleep. What a fool thing, to fall asleep without his hands tucked under his coat!

Silvers grabbed him under the arms as Sam Parker and José García appeared across the little gully. “Get up, Caleb. Are you froze stiff?”

He tried to speak but couldn't. He wanted to tell someone that he couldn't feel his fingers. He got his legs under him and managed to stand with Silvers's help. He brushed his fingers against his coat and felt nothing.

“Bring the firewood down here, Sam. We better warm him up. He's so cold he can't talk.”

FORTY-NINE

For a while the early corn recuperated by night, drawing moisture from the soil, standing straight in the morning to meet the wilting sun of day. But then the dry winds parched the crops even in the dark. The drought was on. Buster could only thank God for his irrigation ditches and his truck patch.

The dry curve of the ancient circle of rain had come around. The country was not getting more seasonable as some overly optimistic settlers had claimed. But Buster felt secure as long as the creek continued to run. The hotels and restaurants in Colorado Springs would buy irrigated crops at high prices, for vegetables would become scarce. The potato bugs and cabbage worms were worse than usual, but they wouldn't get everything. He predicted he would turn a profit even in this, the driest of years he had yet seen on the Front Range.

Then the cloud came down from the north. Buster knew at a glance it was no benevolent bank of vapor, laden with mist and rainfall. This cloud swarmed; it hummed. With the rattle of a million wings it settled onto his truck patch. He waved sacks, but the grasshoppers crawled thicker than bees in a hollow tree. He could hear their jaws stripping greenery from the peas, the cabbages, the potatoes. He tried burning smudges of moistened hay, but the grasshoppers continued to rain from the sky, pitting against the brim of his hat. They crawled down his collar and up his pants legs. They crunched in dozens under every step he took, and the live ones ate the crushed ones left on his trail. At last he locked himself in his cabin and fiddled to beat the sound of the swarm.

In a day the cloud had moved south, having eaten every sprig of cultivated greenery on Buster's farm. But he would last. He had put money aside for years against such a disaster. He would have more than enough to purchase seed and start over when the rains came back. This would be his first year at a loss, however, and Buster considered it a dismal failure. He did not intend to let it happen again.

Monument Creek ran black with the excrement of insects. Willow switches along the creek bank looked as if a basket maker had stripped them of bark. The bugs had eaten every blade from the irrigated corn stalks and bent them to the ground under their weight. They had eaten the onions and turnips right into the ground, leaving hollows underfoot in the truck patch.

Walking the boundaries of his land, Buster couldn't help noticing a stark end to the devastation across his rail fences. The grasshoppers had stripped his land down to bare dirt. But the native prairie grass across the fences, though rather stunted and brown for lack of rain, had suffered little from the insects.

He sat on a top rail that he had installed lower than the others as a crossing place in the fence. There he studied the shortgrass plains for some time. The grass wasn't the only thing that lasted forever here. He found the roll in the prairie where the wind wagon had turned over years before. Wind and grass. The rain and the bugs came in cycles, the snow and the heat came in seasons, and even the wildflowers had bad years. But the winds forever bent the grasses.

He was still sitting on the fence rail, with his back to his farm, when Terence Mayhall rode up on a mule, his burly shoulders almost as broad as his mount, though he barely stood sixteen hands himself.

“I can't hardly stand to look at it either,” the Georgian drawled. “I didn't have much for 'em to eat, dry as it's been, but I had me a garden patch I kept goin' with a bucket. Now I'm good as starved.”

“You givin' up?” Buster asked.

“I just got one chance left,” Marshall answered. “If Holcomb'll let me have some cows on credit, I believe I might hold out till it rains. Them bugs didn't eat the grass. I think what a feller needs to get by in this country is some cows. You think ol' Holcomb'll let me have a few cows on credit?”

Buster shrugged, but he knew Ab wouldn't do it.

“Where is he?”

“I saw him go in the barn a while ago.”

Mayhall shifted his burly body in the saddle. “Let's you and me go talk to him. He might have that double-barrel again, and I'd rather you be there than not.”

Buster grinned and jumped down from the fence rail. He, too, wanted to talk to Colonel Ab. Mayhall was right. A man should keep some cattle in these parts.

They found Ab in the barn, saddling his aging Appaloosa.

“You're old gelding's gettin' fat,” Mayhall said. “Hope you'll have corn enough to keep him that way.”

Ab whirled on his peg leg and watched Mayhall slide down from the mule. “Buster laid up plenty in the crib last year,” he said. “We'll make out all right. What are you doing here? If my cows are on your claim again, I've told you before it's your responsibility to keep fences up, not mine.”

Mayhall approached Ab but stopped six feet away. “That's not why I'm here. Where you headed on ol' Pard?”

“Just going to see you. Looks like you'll save me a trip. Buster, take that saddle off for me, will you?”

Buster nodded and led Pard back to his stall.

“What did you want to see me for?” Mayhall asked.

“Thought I'd help you out of the fix those grasshoppers put you in.”

Mayhall glanced at Buster. “Well, that's neighborly,” he said, surprised. “That's what brung me down here. Thought you might help me out with some cattle on credit.”

“Cattle?”

“Yes, sir. Grasshoppers didn't get much grass. If you could let me have some cattle so I can start my herd, I'd make it through till it rains.”

Ab put his hands on his hips and squinted. “There's a drouth on, Mayhall. Last thing I want is some other man's beeves eating my grass.”

“Your grass? That's free government grass.”

“If Monument Creek drains it, it's my pasture. There's no room for anybody else, especially with a dry spell on. Don't you realize I'm having to thin my herd to make the grass go around?” He began to pace as he lamented his misfortunes. “I've sold hundreds of head at a loss. The drouth and the money panic's got prices on the rock bottom. There's no room for you.”

Mayhall swelled up. “If Horace Gribble would give me some cows, I reckon you'd have to make room for me. As long as I own my homestead on the creek, my cows can come to water there and graze government grass right along with yours.”

Ab smiled out of one side of his mouth. “Mayhall, there isn't a rancher in the whole Territory of Colorado who would help a nester get in the cow business now. Not Horace Gribble or anybody else. Surely not with a drouth on.”

Mayhall's burly muscles began to crawl under his sleeves. “You just said you meant to help me out. How do you mean to help me out if you won't let me have no cows?”

“I'll help you get a fresh start. You've been on your homestead long enough to commute your claim, so I'll give you the money to buy it if you'll turn around and sell it to me. That'll give you cash to file somewhere else and buy seed for next year.”

Mayhall spit on the ground in front of Ab. “Damn it, that's all you ever wanted was my claim. You never meant to help another feller out in your life.”

“Will you take my offer or not?”

“Do I have a choice in it?”

“I don't see that you do. You got no money, no crops, and no cattle. You know you can't keep that claim. Sell out to me, and at least you'll have money to start over.”

Mayhall fumed and turned to his mule, but stopped halfway there. He turned back toward Ab, kicked a mound of horse dung, and let a string of cuss words fly. “All right, Holcomb. There's bound to be a better neighbor to settle with than the likes of you anyhow. I'll sell at a dollar fifty an acre.”

“Dollar thirty-five,” Ab said.

Mayhall's muscles almost ripped his clothes. “You told me before you'd pay a dollar fifty!”

“That was a year ago. The market's changed. There's a drouth on. Land doesn't fetch what it did last year.”

“Why, that won't bring me more than … than…”

“Sixteen dollars profit. That'll pay your filing fee on a new claim, and maybe buy a little seed.”

“How will I hire a team to plow with?”

“Talk to Buster about that. He's broken sod for poorer men than you.”

Mayhall thought for a second about kicking Ab's good leg out from under him. Then he gritted his teeth, turned away, and climbed onto his mule. There was more than one way to bring a man down. He would have to think about it for a while. If kicking Ab's sound leg out from under him turned out to be the best way, he could always come back and do it.

“You damn Yankees think you can keep a southern man down,” he said. “You'll see in the end who comes out on top.”

“I'll give you today to get your things together,” Ab shouted as the mule turned. “Meet me at the county clerk's office first thing in the morning and we'll transfer the claim.”

As Ab watched the broke nester trot away, Buster came to stand beside him. Ab slapped him on the shoulder. “Solid range, Buster. By gosh, it took fourteen years, but I got the whole valley. The water's all mine now, and the grass goes with the water. The boys will have a ranch when I'm gone.”

“Yes, sir,” Buster said.

They stood and watched until Mayhall disappeared. For one of the few times in his life, Ab felt downright giddy. He felt craftier than all get-out. His joyful moments in life were few, but he felt them with great intensity, perhaps because of their scarcity.

“Did you want something?” he finally asked Buster.

“Yes, sir. I was wondering' if you'd sell me a few heifers.”

Ab stepped back and puzzled. “I just told Mayhall I wouldn't sell to him. What makes you think I'd sell to you?”

“Well, me and you, Colonel, we been workin' together too long. You know I ain't after your grass.”

Ab's mouth quivered unnaturally in a smile. “How many heifers did you want?”

“Eight.”

“May I ask what you intend on doing with them?”

“Gonna pen 'em up and raise 'em. I figure I better have some cattle to get me through the years when the drouths and the bugs get my crops.”

“Do you want a bull, too?”

“I'm gonna buy me a Durham bull up in Denver. I want to raise some good beef I can sell to the restaurants in Colorado Springs.”

Ab punched his hat back on his head with a knuckle. “Where are you going to pen these fine cattle of yours?”

“Gonna file on more land,” Buster said.

“You're not going to use free grass?”

“No, sir. Wouldn't want to crowd you. I'm gonna file on another quarter section.”

“How do you plan to do that? A man can't have more than one homestead.”

Buster laughed. “Colonel, you done got yourself about fifty of 'em all up and down Monument Creek!”

“Well, I had a plan,” Ab said. “What's yours?”

“Don't need no plan. I can file under the Timber Culture Act.”

“The Timber…? You'll have to grow forty acres of trees to prove up!”

“Yes, sir. I'm gonna grow 'em along the north side for windbreaks. Maybe build me a new house up in 'em someday.”

Ab looked toward Buster's ruined crops, trying to visualize a grove of trees next to them. “Well, all right. I'll have Pete cut you out some good stock. You better build a stout fence. Those wild two-year-old heifers will bust right through those rails you got over there if you try to pen them in.”

“I'm gonna build with that new wire,” Buster said. “That's supposed to turn them longhorns.”

“Barbed wire?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How do you plan on getting water to your stock in that pen? Are you gonna carry it in a bucket?”

“No, sir.”

“You're going to build a lane down to the irrigation ditch and let them drink from there?”

“No, sir, they'd stomp the banks down on my ditches. No, I'm gonna build a windmill.”

“Windmill?” Ab laughed. “Buster, when did you think up all this nonsense about barbwire and windmills and Durham bulls?”

“Just a while ago. Sittin' out yonder on that stile.”

FIFTY

The road between Colorado Springs and Denver, well-worn now, passed within sight of Holcomb Ranch. Before coming into view of home, however, Caleb left the road, crossed Monument Creek, and took a trail into the foothills.

He had several reasons for choosing this route.

For one thing, he wanted to look over the place from above, to see if any new buildings or fences had gone up. He also wanted to scout the ranch before riding in, to be sure he wouldn't blunder onto his father. And, most important, he intended a dramatic approach. He knew how a horseman on the bald hill looked from the ranch at this time of day, standing tall against the backdrop of the Rampart Range and the glow of the falling sun.

By the time he rode down the Arapaho Trail, every man on the place—except Ab—had gathered at Buster's house. He made his bay mount jump the rail fence and the irrigation ditch and loped into the crowd playing his harmonica in gloved hands.