Shortgrass Song (58 page)

“How close is she?” Buster asked.

“She's got milk drippin' from her bag.”

“Could be any time, then. Don't worry about her. I'll look after her.”

“Thanks, Buster.” He pulled himself up into the saddle seat and held a tight rein. Whiplash wanted to run. “I better get goin' before the boys wake up and see me. Put that lantern out for me, will you?”

“Sure. Good luck.”

Somewhere out on the prairie a pack of coyotes greeted the new day with a weird vocal fanfare that sounded like the echoes of ancient war cries. Pete pulled his scarf up under his chin and held the stallion to a walk until his hoofbeats were beyond earshot of the bunkhouse. Then he let Whiplash trot across Monument Creek, lope up the bald hill, and gallop down the other side, taking the old Arapaho Trail into the Rampart Range.

SIXTY-EIGHT

By noon, dark roiling clouds were catching on the mountaintops. Pete looked up at them with gratitude. He knew he was in for miserable weather, but there was nothing like a norther to get the deer moving. Animals could sense coming changes in the weather—even domesticated animals. Whiplash knew the norther was coming. He tossed his head and flared his nostrils, hoping to get a whiff of crisp arctic air.

Pete stopped a moment to figure his strategy. Ol' Cedar Root's canyon was just over the next ridge. With rough weather coming, the buck would almost surely be there already, seeking shelter. The trail Pete was riding would bring him to the south rim, which, like the north rim, dropped at sheer angles to the canyon floor. There were only a few trails where a horse could get down into the canyon. A mountain deer, on the other hand, could come or go by any one of a hundred routes.

Pete decided that, once he reached the south rim, he would turn east, toward the mouth of the canyon, and ride along the rim until he found a trail to the bottom. He would set up a camp at the mouth of the canyon and spend the next few days hunting for the buck of a lifetime. If he succeeded in killing Ol' Cedar Root, not even Caleb would be able to match the story.

When he reached the south rim, blue clouds were boiling down the mountainsides, shooting blasts of frigid air into the canyon and up the sheer face of the south wall, whipping sleet and snowflakes over the brink. He paused to survey what he could see of the canyon. It wound a good three miles from its mouth to its head, flanked by cliffs along its entire length. The north rim was visible through the frozen mist, five hundred yards away. It would take days of hunting to sneak up on the wily old buck in there. A silent bolt of lightning struck a distant mountainside.

He turned eastward along the south rim of the canyon and looked into it as he rode, searching for a trail that would take him safely down. Only a few wind-whipped piñon pines clung to the rim of the canyon, but dense stands of white firs, quaking aspens, and ponderosa pines mottled the canyon floor. The buck wouldn't be as easy to find among them as the Hereford bull had been in August. It would take plenty of luck to hang those freak antlers on the parlor wall.

Whiplash tossed his head incessantly. Pete jerked the reins to settle him down, but the blue norther and the distant rumble of thunder were making him nervous. As he approached a lone pine on the trail ahead, a sudden gust shot up the cliff face and caused the little tree to flail its limbs violently. The stallion spooked and jumped sideways toward the escarpment. Pete got him settled down before he could slip, but he came so close to the edge that rocks clattered over the canyon rim and fell among the crags below.

“Whoa, boy.” He stroked his shivering mount on the neck.

The stones seemed to echo forever, until Pete realized they had rattled too long. Looking over the precipice, he saw a deer bounding across the canyon floor toward the north rim, its hooves mocking the sounds of the falling rocks. He only caught a glimpse before it disappeared into the trees, but only one buck could carry such a rack. He saw it again, briefly, bolting headlong among the leafless aspens. The sprawling antlers hooked bare white branches, wrenching Ol' Cedar Root's head from side to side as he fled.

The buck vanished in the pines, but the rattle of hooves continued up the far wall of the canyon. A flash of lightning struck the nearest mountain slope, and the huge old deer vaulted into view again, above the trees. He was going to quit the canyon! He made tremendous leaps up the steep face of the bluff, five hundred yards away. Sleet pitted against Pete's hat brim as the thunder reached him.

There was no time. Once over the rim and into the cover of stunted evergreens, the buck would never show himself again. Pete pulled the Winchester from its scabbard. An impossible shot! Running? Five hundred yards? He flipped up the rear sight and adjusted it for the yardage. No time to dismount. The buck devoured the cliff face in heroic leaps. Some hunt! Some strategy! He levered a live round into the chamber and felt Whiplash trembling with excitement.

He shouldered the rifle. There was not enough time! He couldn't steady the sights on the leaping animal; the bead covered the entire buck. In the distance, through the frozen drizzle, the antlers waved strangely on the monarch's head. They were colossal, unreal. They rose like the wings of a soaring bird, to the very brink of the north rim. Another leap would win the buck his safety.

There was only one chance. Pete sucked in a chest full of cold air and forced a piercing whistle between his teeth. Whiplash flinched. Ol' Cedar Root, one leap from cover, stopped on the brink of the north rim, standing broadside, looking south.

The hunter held his sights above the target and curled his trigger finger. A deafening blast split the mountain air and flared with volcanic caliber. The stallion ramped and bucked. Pete let the rifle slip from his hands as he groped for the saddle horn. He flew, empty-handed, fire and ice below him.

Above: a glorious vision!

SIXTY-NINE

Nothing was whiter than new snow under lantern light. Surrounded by the darkness of a cloudy night, the powder flew from Buster's toes like showers of white-hot coals as he slogged through it to the barn. He had left Amelia's mare standing at midnight and didn't expect to find a newborn foal in the stall this morning.

Why did mares nearly always foal in hours of darkness? He didn't think they had the reasoning power to do it on purpose. It was probably instinctive. Probably had something to do with some signal relayed through the eye. When darkness came, the signal relaxed and told the dull brain of the mare that time for dropping the foal had come. That was Buster's theory. Maybe someday he would blindfold a mare in foal to see if she would drop in daylight.

As the lantern light filled the barn, Buster stopped short. Whiplash was standing against the door to his stall, as if trying to get in.

“Pete?” he said. He hung the lantern and looked in on Amelia's mare, still standing. No foal yet. “Pete?” he called again. There was no answer. He spoke to the stallion and looked him over quickly. He was wet but seemed sound. The saddle was cinched tight, the rifle missing from its scabbard, the bedroll tied in place. He searched the saddlebags. Bacon and biscuits all there. Pete was in trouble—cold and hungry. Buster prayed he was well.

*   *   *

Lee Fong came when Buster pounded on the cabin door.

“Get the colonel up,” Buster said.

“I am up. What's wrong?” Ab hollered from his bedroom.

Horace Gribble had ridden down with the norther the day before to trade horses. He looked out of the other bedroom in his underwear.

Buster told Ab and Horace about Pete's horse coming back without him. “Sam knows where the canyon is. He and Pete found that Hereford bull there in August.”

“Thank the Lord for that,” Ab said, strapping on his wooden leg. “You better go tell Amelia. And rouse the boys out of the bunkhouse. Send Sam. Lee Fong! Breakfast for everybody. We'll ride as soon as we can see the ground.”

*   *   *

“I'm coming!” Amelia shouted as she ran down the stairs with a lamp. “Is she all right?” she asked, opening the door.

“It ain't the mare, Miss Amelia. It's Pete. His horse came back without him, and we have to go find him.”

As Buster explained, she thought about Caleb's old tale of No Man's Land and the frozen fingers. “Are you going, too?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“What can I do?” She couldn't stand the thought of waiting, idle and alone, while the men searched for her husband.

“Stay here and look after your mare. Gloria will help you if the foal comes.” Buster turned and trotted toward the bunkhouse.

*   *   *

The boys sprang like trail hands after a stampede when Buster woke them with the news. They threatened to bring the bunkhouse down in their tumultuous attempts to dress themselves. They stomped their feet into their boots and walked briskly to Ab's cabin, pulling on their coats as they went.

*   *   *

“Sure, I can find it,” Sam said, his mouth full of bacon and eggs. “It's a narrow canyon, out of the weather. Pete will be fine there. He carries his matches in his pocket. He must have got off that damn stallion with his rifle, and the horse run off.” He slurped his coffee and shook his head. “I just can't believe Ol' Cedar Root ran right in front of me and Pete didn't tell me.”

The men drained a pot of coffee and went to choose their mounts. Buster saddled his two best mules, one for himself and one for Pete. The cowboys made fun of his mules, but he knew they had good feet for the mountains. Horace borrowed one of Ab's spotted horses. He had ridden down on a gelding of Kentucky blood whose long legs were more suited to plains than mountains.

“You takin'
him?
” Buster said when he saw Ab saddling Pard.

“Why not?”

“Colonel Ab, that horse is near ‘bout twenty years old.”

“It's just a half day's ride. Pard will come in ahead of your mules.”

Dawn came late through the cloud cover, and the rescue party left at a trot for Ol' Cedar Root's canyon.

*   *   *

The sky had cleared by noon, and the day became crisp and breezy in the high country. Periodic gusts whipped snow from the tree branches, stirring brief blizzards. Sam got lost once. The mountains looked very different in winter. But he rode to a bare mountainside to get a look at the country and saw the canyon from there. He followed a low trail that led to the mouth of the canyon, coming in the way he had herded the bull out in August.

“This is the place,” Sam said. “There's not a doubt in my mind. This is where we found the Hereford.”

An even blanket of powder covered the grass on the canyon floor, but at the bases of the cliffs it stood deep among the crags. Ab felt thankful that the canyon was narrow—a quarter mile in some places, no more than six hundred yards at its widest point. It would be easy to search. Their own tracks in the fresh snow would show them where they had already looked. If Pete was there, they would find him.

“How far up does this canyon run?” he asked Sam.

“Only about three miles.”

He sat on Pard, squinting at the blinding snow. Under him the old horse was shivering in a way he had never felt. “Sam, you ride on ahead,” he ordered. “Go at a walk in case he sees you and calls out. Take Buster's spare mule to bring him back on. The rest of you boys spread out and start searching the canyon. Look for him in the timber, and keep your eyes open for a cave or something he might have crawled under. Look close, but don't go too slow. We have to find him before dark.”

“Call his name out,” Horace suggested. “Maybe he'll hear us.”

The men fanned out at the mouth of the canyon and started searching. Sam took the extra mule and rode up the floor of the canyon at a trot, calling Pete's name as he went.

Tracks of the searchers zigzagged and crisscrossed until almost every square rod they left in their wake had been trampled. When they had covered a mile, Sam came trotting back to the search party, leading the mule.

“Well?” Ab said.

Sam shook his head. “No sign. Nothin'.”

Ab looked worried. He hurried back and forth between the canyon walls, behind the men, searching the thickest cover and deepest snow drifts. He had to spur Pard constantly to keep him running.

“The colonel looks damn near pale as the snow,” Sam said quietly to Buster.

Another half hour passed, and then Ab heard a cowboy shout. Spurring Pard to a gallop, he rode to the site of the find, at the base of the north canyon wall. The men sat on their horses in a half circle, staring at a snowdrift in a craggy niche of the canyon wall.

“What is it?” Ab was filled with hope and dread.

“Look, Colonel,” one of the hands said. “It's Ol' Cedar Root.”

“We didn't want to move it until you got a look at it,” Dan Brooks said.

Ab rode closer and got down. He saw only the tips of the antler points above the snow. The rest of the buck was completely covered. “Give me your rope, String. Let's pull him out.” He struggled to get closer on his wooden leg and tossed Piggin' String's loop over the antlers.

String backed his horse away, tightening the noose, pulling the dead buck out of the snowdrift and down from the niche in the rocks. The carcass was twisted grotesquely and frozen stiff. Cedar Root's nose was stuck against his side, as if he were licking his shoulder. His back was humped and his legs protruded at unusual angles. His rigid carcass slid down a slope, startling the horses, and came to rest against a tree trunk. The men tied their mounts and gathered around to investigate.

“Is he gutted?” Horace asked.

“No,” Sam said.

“Shot?”

“I don't know. I'm lookin'.” Sam brushed snow from the vital areas of the carcass.

“What kind of shot does Pete like?” Horace asked.

“Lung shot,” Ab said, clamoring down the slope to join his men.