Shortgrass Song (63 page)

This Caleb did not care for. “All right,” he said through clenched teeth. “But, major, if you ever want to stop the music again, I'd just as soon you grab
me
by the neck instead of my guitar.”

He took his place in the shadow and listened to the major sing, coming quickly to the conclusion that the man had wasted whatever money he might have spent on voice lessons. Caleb had played songs for men who could stutter off-key with more feeling than Bull Bannon sang with. He hit all the pitches, but there were no guts in anything he said.

After a tense two-hour rehearsal, Bannon let Caleb go. He saddled Powder River immediately and rode to town. He had been trying to get into St. Joseph for four days, but rehearsals had kept him busy. Bannon was probably expecting him to practice his own routine for the cast again tonight, but Caleb had taken enough orders. He had business of his own to attend to in town.

He asked a few people on the streets if they had ever heard of a woman named Sarah Ludlow. Finally, an old gentleman scratched his head, stared at the stars, and brought her to mind.

“Ludlow, Ludlow,” he muttered. “Sounds familiar. Yes, come to think of it, there's an old lady named Ludlow who runs a boardinghouse at the end of Hall Street. I don't know if her name is Sarah. Everybody calls her Widow Ludlow.”

Caleb tied his reins at a hitching rail in front of the rundown two story. There were lights on in most of the rooms, so he didn't think it too late to call. When he knocked on the door, an old man answered.

“I'm looking for Mrs. Ludlow,” he said.

The old man left the door open, disappearing into another room. Caleb waited on the porch until a stooped, shriveled, gray-haired woman appeared.

“We don't have any rooms,” she said curtly, closing the door in his face. “Good night.”

He blocked the door with his hand. “Wait, ma'am! I'm not lookin' for a room.”

She looked him over suspiciously. “What do you want, then? You're not a drummer.”

“No, ma'am. I'm a friend of a friend. That is, if your name is Sarah Ludlow.”

“It is, but you're obviously mistaken. I don't have any friends.”

Caleb felt suddenly awed by the ravages of time. Burl Sandeen had described his Sarah as the prettiest thing in Missouri. But that had been fifty years ago.

“I met a friend of yours ten years back,” he said. “He helped me out of a bad spot. I've always wanted to make it over to Saint Jo and tell you he's still thinkin' of you.”

“Young man, what on earth are you talking about?” She pursed her lips and glared at him. The old man had wandered back into the parlor behind her and was cupping his hand behind his ear.

“I'm talkin' about Burl Sandeen. He's a friend of mine.”

The widow's eyes grew wide and she stepped back from the door.

“What'd he say?” the old man shouted.

The Widow Ludlow whirled as if starlted by the voice. “Go to bed, Mr. Hazelwood, it's none of your concern!” She walked out onto the porch with Caleb and closed the door behind her. “Sit down, young man,” she said, pointing at a rocking chair on the porch. She sank into a porch swing facing the rocker. She seemed quite aggravated. “Now, tell me what you know of Burl Sandeen.”

“Well, he saved me from freezin' in the Medicine Bow Range ten winters ago. Let me stay with him in his cabin. We nearly starved, but we made it on wolf meat and beans.”

“And what did he tell you about me?” she demanded.

“He said he wanted to marry you a long time ago. Said he went on a trip to the mountains and when he came back, you had married some other fellow named Ludlow. Said it nearly broke his heart, and he moved back to the mountains. He said the last he heard of you, you had moved to Saint Jo. That's how I found you. I wasn't sure you'd still be here, but I thought I'd try lookin' you up. I thought you'd like to know where old Burl is at.”

“I would at that,” the old lady said, shaking as she rose. “I most certainly would. I would like to dispatch a marshal to arrest the old
bastard.
There is no statute of limitations on murder.” She had become hateful, her voice vindictive.

“Ma'am?”

“Count yourself among the luckiest fools on the face of the earth, young man. Thank God for your life. If you wintered with Burl Sandeen, you might as well have survived a season in hell with the devil!”

He was sure she was a crazy woman now. The dark porch and the old creaking house began to spook him. “Are we talkin' about the same Burl Sandeen?”

“The old fugitive obviously forgot to mention that I never wanted nor intended to marry him in the first place. It was the happiest day of my life when he left to go trapping in the mountains. I hoped Indians would scalp him. He was the vilest boy I had ever known and hadn't given me a moment of ease since I was sixteen. He
disgusted
me. I don't suppose he told you that.”

“No, he didn't tell it quite that way,” Caleb agreed.

“I don't suppose he told you that when he returned from the mountains, and found me married, that he flew into such a rage that he murdered Mr. Ludlow in our own home!” She put her hand over her mouth.

By the light from a window, Caleb saw a tear sparkle in her wild old eye. “No, ma'am,” he said. He was stunned. No one had treated him with more kindness than Burl Sandeen.

“That horrible devil will never cease to torment me!” she murmured. “To think of him speaking my name … Haven't you heard the stories?” she demanded.

“I just couldn't believe…” he said.

“Believe it, young man. He's a bloody murderer who eats human flesh!” She staggered back and clutched her chest, heaving.

Caleb thought she would collapse. He jumped from the rocker to grab her bony elbow and felt the cold, loose flesh of her forearm. “Are you all right, ma'am?”

She jerked away from him. “Don't touch me!” She glowered at him, her face half shadowed by the light from the window. The one eye glistened, the only living part of her dried and wrinkled face. Crisp stalks of gray hair stuck up around her head and caught the light like a shattered halo. “He should have eaten
you,
” she hissed.

Caleb remembered tracks in the snow: Burl's over his own. Following him. Hunting him? He backed away, stumbled down the porch steps. “I'm sorry,” he said.

The old man opened the door and looked out as Caleb mounted. “Who is it?” he shouted, cupping his hand behind his ear.

Widow Ludlow watched Caleb ride away. She screamed: “Go to bed, Mr. Hazelwood!”

SEVENTY-FIVE

He thought he would feel relieved to reach the show grounds again and to be among his new acquaintances. But he didn't really know any of them. He thought he liked Seagrass Gibson, but what did he know about him? No more than he had known about Burl Sandeen. He wondered about every man he had ever met, from Milt Starling to Washita Jack Shea to Bull Bannon. He didn't really know any of them. Not even Javier Maldonado. Not Horace Gribble nor Chief Long Fingers. Who were they?

He knew only Pete and Buster. Pete was dead.

This was the drifter's life. Loneliness. He knew more about music than he knew about people. He knew his horse better than his friends. He barely knew his woman. He didn't know his children at all. He was wasting his life. A saddle tramp. He should have stayed. Amelia wanted him there. Buster Thompson was the one man he knew. He should have stayed home.

“Hey, Catgut!” someone said, stepping out of the glowing beer-garden tent. “The girls'll dance if you'll fiddle for us. Will you?”

He held the gelding back. “Will I? Hell, that's all I'm good for. I
reckon
I will.”

So he carried his fiddle into the tent and leaned his bow hard on the strings, escaping in song. He made the instrument moan and sing; he made it drone like a bagpipe he had once heard played by a Scottish ranch manager. He stomped music from his boots, sweated harmony from his pores.

And he played his crowd as well as any song or hollow box with strings, soaking in the applause, filling for a time the loneliness inside. When he sang, the air he breathed was pure elixir. They took turns looking up at him in wonder and envy, and Major Bannon could hardly tear his admiring eyes away. Finally Bull had to stop the music and send the players to bed.

But the great power continued to engulf Caleb as he traveled alone through the darkness of the tent city. Tunes merged in his head as he went about the motions of removing his saddle and turning Powder River into the pen. He carried his weightless tack to his canvas tepee and dropped it inside. He fell on his bedroll, almost exhausted.

Then, before he could sleep, the helplessness returned, rushing down on him like an avalanche. The crowd was gone, its memory worthless. He was suddenly sick and hollow. Glory forsook him like a bullet and discarded him, a smoking empty shell. He lay in his tent, desperate and vacant. He had no one, felt nothing. Cold blowing winds seemed to echo inside of him. Stones falling in hollow canyons, blasts of faraway lightning. Every breath hurt like black smoke. What was the use? Pete was dead. What was the use of anything?

It should have been me, he thought. Oh, why couldn't it have been me?

Then the words began to whisper. They sang down to him, and he breathed them in like oxygen. He lay limp, absorbing the lyrics like a tree taking life from sunlight. They formed the essence of everything he knew, all that had gone right and gone wrong in his past and all that would move him into the future. He sang them soundlessly, again and again in his head. It was the end of something he had started years before under the Rampart Range. It was the beauty and sorrow of his life in song.

There was a guitar somewhere in the tepee. He rolled to all fours and crawled around in the dark, feeling. His knuckle thumped against the box and knocked a chordless sound from it. He pulled the instrument across his lap and placed his calloused fingertips over the strings.

*   *   *

Bull Bannon was walking from the darkened beer garden to the shiny red Pullman car when heard the singing. He stopped, tossed a golden curl back from his ear, cocked his head to one side, and listened. He stayed for a verse or two, then shrugged and walked away as the strange sad words faded behind him. That Catgut Caleb Holcomb knew songs he had never even heard of.

*   *   *

The next day, after the opening performance of his Extravaganza of the Western Wilds, Major Bannon caught up with Caleb on his way to the beer garden. The showman was beaming over the reaction of the audience to his first show. He strode long in his famous buckskin suit, well pleased with his success.

“Come on, Catgut,” he said. “I'll introduce you. I know just the tune to grab the crowd's guts.”

When they entered the tent, Caleb made his way among the saloon girls to the stage, Bannon falling behind, being swamped by admirers. The fiddler began tuning up, hoping he wouldn't disappoint Bull. He didn't know if he was in much of a mood for playing today.

When he finally reached the stage, the major turned to the city gents in the beer garden and said, “Gentlemen, your attention please. Our own Catgut Caleb Holcomb—authentic minstrel of the western wilds, Rocky Mountain troubadour, a cowboy of no small renown—will now favor us with a song.” He gestured so pointedly that the fringes on his buckskin suit almost shook themselves into tangles. “Catgut!” he cried. “Play the ‘Shortgrass Song'!”

Caleb raised his fiddle but only gawked at Bull. “Sir?”

“The ‘Shortgrass Song.' You know, the one about the drifter. He comes riding down from the mountains, out of the trees, and into the shortgrass country. I heard you practicing it last night in your lodge, son. The ‘Shortgrass Song.'”

Caleb balked. Some of the words were not even a day old. Others he had known for years. He put his fiddle down, picked up the guitar, and put the strap of rattlesnake skin behind his head. “I'll give it a try,” he said. “But I only just learned it here lately.”

Bannon laughed. “Such modesty!” he cried. “They only make them like this out west, gentlemen!” He urged Caleb to play with a flourish of his hand.

The minstrel of the western wilds stepped to the edge of his platform and looked over the audience. He had never intended to play this one for anybody. It was like doing “Camptown Races” the day his mother died. He thanked God they didn't know he had made it up himself. To them, it was just another western ditty. He started strumming with his short-fingered left hand and entered uncertainly into a thing Major Bannon had termed the “Shortgrass Song.”

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.

Indian blankets grew 'round the gravestone.

Paintbrushes, too, where their seeds had been thrown,

And his home was not even a mile out of sight,

But he'd throw down his bedroll and stay for the night.

He rode in from the West,

Down from the Rockies and onto the plains

To the land he loved best,

Where he could never remain.

Born within sight of the high mountaintops,

He grew up 'round plow horses, cattle, and crops.

With his older brother, he carried his load.

They tended the fields and the ranges they rode.