Centennial

by James A. Michener

  It was true that she wasted money, but principally it was her own. That Oliver had “begged and borrowed a bit from the ranch,” as he put it, was his decision, not hers, and no matter what defalcations Finlay Perkin might uncover, they would rest on Seccombe’s head and not his wife’s.

  “Why is Venneford sending Finlay Perkin out?” Charlotte asked.

  “We’ve spent somewhat more than we can account for,” he evaded.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Book count. We ought to have a lot more cattle on the land than we do.”

  “That’s easy to explain. Cows sometimes don’t have calves.”

  They rode by wagon back to Line Camp Four, and there he forced her to face up to the difficult problems that would be raised when Perkin arrived with his notebooks and papers.

  “He’ll have a list of every cow we ever bought, and he’ll want to tick off each one.”

  “Will that be possible?”

  “Not with a thousand cowboys could he do it.”

  “Then, what’s the worry?”

  “He’ll niggle away until he turns up every discrepancy, and in the end he’ll see that somewhere around twenty-four thousand cattle have disappeared.”

  “What in the world ...”

  “They have disappeared, Charlotte. No one’s stolen them, like that, but they just aren’t here. And how can I explain that to a man like Perkin?”

  How indeed? He arrived at Cheyenne on September 15, 1886, and insisted that he be taken immediately to Line Camp Four. He was a small, wispish man sixty-six years old, accompanied by so much luggage that it required two porters to lift it off the train and into a special wagon. In the past eighteen years he had never once been outside Bristol, not even to visit his parents in Kincardineshire or the bankers in London, yet from reading reports and studying maps he had an exact knowledge of Wyoming and northern Colorado.

  “Ah yes,” he said thinly as he sat in the carriage, hands folded, looking left and right. “This is the Union Pacific and our lots eighty-one through eighty-seven lie just over there. Yes, this is the deep well we drilled in 1881, and I see it’s still pumping. This, I take it, is the new Glidden barbed wire. Is it standing up well?”

  He knew to the quarter mile when they should be turning south to reach the camp, and as he approached it he recognized new fencing and pastures from which cattle had been removed. “It’s a pity,” he said, “a great pity that the government won’t sell us these intervening sections.”

  “We have the use of them anyway,” Seccombe said with an attempt at airiness.

  “Using is never the same as owning,” Perkin said abruptly. “Ah, this is the gate to the camp itself.”

  When the carriage drew up before the cabin, he did not even look at the living quarters but went directly to the low stone barn, inspecting its woodwork and the stalls for the horses. “Splendid building,” he said. “In 1868 when Skimmerhorn recommended wood I counseled stone. See how it’s stood, as good today as when it was built. Clinger did a fine job.”

  “Who?” Seccombe asked.

  “Clinger. The stonemason from Cheyenne. Expensive, but in the long run the cheapest. Tell me, before we go in, do you happen to have any of the Illinois Shorthorns pastured nearby?”

  “They’re off east.”

  “Very good.”

  During three days of preliminary investigation, everything Perkin wanted to see was either off east or off west, but this absence apparently did not disturb him. He simply noted in his books that the Illinois Shorthorns were for the moment grazing to the east.

  He wanted to know everything, and quickly demonstrated that he comprehended much more of the intricate maneuvering of ranch management than Seccombe. His questions were quiet, never provocative, and never abandoned until he had a specific answer which he could write in his book.

  “He is on to every discrepancy,” Seccombe told Charlotte the third night as they went to bed.

  “He seems to be building a case against you, Oliver. I had the strong feeling that he was recording your answers so that later on he could show them to Skimmerhorn and Lloyd and invite them to contradict you.” To this Seccombe had no response, for he, too, had guessed the nature of Perkin’s game.

  “Tell me, Oliver, will those two support you?” No reply. “I mean, can we trust them to be fair?” No reply. “What I mean, Oliver, is, will it be to their advantage to betray you ... No, that sounds as if you were guilty of something evil. What I mean is ...”

  “I know what you mean. Skimmerhorn and Lloyd are two of the most honest men in ranching. That’s why we’ve done so well ... if it weren’t for that damned book count Bristol’s been relying on.” He paced the floor. “Why can’t they realize that on a ranch this big, you can’t go around earmarking every cow?”

  “That’s what Perkin wants.”

  “That’s what he’ll never get.”

  “Then you trust Skimmerhorn?”

  “I’d better. He has our fate in his hands.”

  They had estimated Perkin correctly, for he was patiently building a document against them. It would be meticulous and just, but it would be terribly damning. What they had not anticipated was his thoroughness when it came to cattle.

  “We’ll ride down to headquarters,” Seccombe suggested on the fourth morning.

  “No,” Perkin said, “we’ll start over at Line Camp Five.”

  “What do you wish to see there?”

  “I’m going to count the cattle,” he said matter-of-factly. “We’ll start west and work over to the Nebraska border.”

  “You can’t count ...”

  “That’s been the trouble, Seccombe. You may not be able to count, but I can, and I propose to start tomorrow. Assemble the cowboys.”

  And when the cowboys reported at Line Camp Five, not far from where the dinosaur bones had been found, Seccombe discovered that Perkin’s luggage consisted mainly of cans of special blue paint developed in Germany, and a dab of this paint was to be placed down the spine of every living animal on the four million acres of Venneford Ranch, insofar as Perkin could catch them.

  When word was passed, the cowboys began to laugh. Perkin showed no displeasure. “If we paint each cow, then we won’t be tempted to count twice,” he explained. “By the time we reach Nebraska we’ll know exactly how many we have.”

  “We’ll miss thousands,” a foreman protested. “You can’t ride up every draw. Half our cattle may be in Wyoming right now, looking for good grass. We ain’t got much left here.”

  “It will be your job to search the draws and if necessary ride into Wyoming,” Perkin said calmly, and for five weeks this prim little man rode in a buckboard eastward across the great prairie, dabbing blobs of German paint on such cattle as could be rounded up and brought before him. He was tireless. Cowboys who had been in the saddle all their lives grew exhausted in the warmth of this unusual autumn, merely following Perkin and his buckboard.

  By the time he had worked his way to the Nebraska border he had used up gallons of paint and had been up every draw on the ranch, seen all the watering places, the homesteaded areas and the government sections inter-spliced with the Venneford holdings.

  “You were wise to run the sheepmen off those eastern edges,” he said approvingly, and he praised the fencing program. “I like to see our own land protected.” But it grew painfully apparent to everyone that no matter how many Crown Vee cattle were daubed with paint, the grand total was pitifully short of what the Venneford outfit had presumably purchased.

  “We’ll ride back to headquarters,” Seccombe proposed during the last week in October, but Perkin astonished him yet again by saying, “No, we’ll go directly back to Line Camp Five.”

  “But why?”

  “I want to run a test. We’ll inspect all the cattle we find there. Check the paint. See how many we overlooked the first time, then correct our figures accordingly.”

  It was a hilarious undertaking, one that cowboys sang about for year
s afterward:

  Finlay Perkin is a-jerkin’

  One end of an empty rope.

  His bright blue paint has grown quite faint

  The little guy has got no hope.

  The song was accurate, if unkind. When the buckboard reached Chalk Cliff the cowboys corralled some two hundred Crown Vee steers, and not one bore a sign of paint. There were sniggers as the little Scotsman inspected each animal and recorded it as a new find. But after he did this for each of the two hundred, it occurred to him that for the first inspection to have missed every one of these steers was unlikely.

  “We’ve had no rain,” he said reflectively.

  “None,” Skimmerhorn said.

  “Catch me some more animals.”

  So they moved to a different area and rounded up another three hundred, and not one of them showed any paint, either. “The chemist assured me the paint was waterproof,” he said with no intimation of complaint. He was merely reporting what he had been told.

  “How about sun-proof?” Skimmerhorn asked.

  “On that he didn’t commit himself,” Perkin said, so they got some boards and he painted stripes, and the sun that autumn was so strong that after a few days the stripes began to disintegrate, and the costly, time-consuming experiment proved worthless.

  “We’re back to book count,” he said primly. “We know there ought to be fifty-three thousand cattle and we hope there are more.”

  “It always comes back to book count,” Seccombe said.

  Now, at last, they rode to headquarters, and after one look at the costly mansion Perkin knew that he had a substantial case, whether German paint lasted or not.

  “I should like to check the books on your buildings,” he said in clipped accents. “Barns first.”

  Seccombe was able to prove how the red barns, the most handsome in Colorado, had been paid for, and the corrals and the storage areas. But when it came to the castle the accounts were in deplorable shape.

  “Now, these funds, if I interpret correctly, came from the account of Henry Buckland, your wife’s father in Bristol? Good, that can be checked. But these funds over here?”

  Seccombe fumbled, and never once did Perkin hurry him or in any way agitate him. If Seccombe drew back from explaining exactly where the funds had originated, Perkin said nothing, made notes and passed on to the next item. His thrust for the jugular was insatiable. He knew that grave misapplications had occurred, but he could not easily penetrate to the specific defalcation, and until he could do so, he had no case, and he knew it.

  Then abruptly he left the house and started probing into the irrigation expenses. He could see no reason why Venneford should have spent so much money bringing water onto land that didn’t need it, and the more he saw of the ditches and the useless meadows, the more concerned he became, until Skimmerhorn prevailed upon him to visit Potato Brumbaugh, who reacted with enthusiasm: “Mr. Perkin, look at those grasslands. Look at those stacks of hay for winter feeding.”

  “But in this climate we’ve never needed hay for winter feeding,” Perkins pointed out. “This is a waste.”

  “Mr. Perkin!” Brumbaugh shouted. He pronounced the name Berkin, much to the Scotsman’s irritation. “The winter will come when that hay will be gold. On my farm I have almost as much hay as you do, and the winter will come when I shall sell it for dollars uncounted.”

  When the interview ended Perkin asked acidly, “Who is that man?”

  “The most successful farmer in these parts,” Skimmerhorn said. “A Russian.”

  “A Russian!” Perkin exclaimed. “What’s he doing here?” And Brumbaugh’s evidence was discounted. The irrigation project was an indefensible wastage of Bristol funds.

  On the fifteenth of November, Finlay Perkin knew all he required to know, and that night, in fairness to the Seccombes, he told them frankly the results of his investigation: “Lord Venneford sent me here to ascertain certain facts. I’ve done so. You’ve wasted our money. You’ve accepted cattle without counting them. I have a strong suspicion that you’ve been in concert with the sellers. And it’s clear that you’ve sold off our calves and cows to pay for this monstrous castle. I’ll present my findings to his Lordship, and I must warn that he may decide to start legal proceedings. Certainly, if he seeks my counsel, I shall advise him to do so, for if I ever saw fraudulent conversion of corporate funds, it’s here.” With that he went to bed.

  He was not able to catch the train at Cheyenne, for that night the thermometer dropped crazily to several degrees below zero, most improbable for that time of year. “We’ll go tomorrow,” Seccombe advised, but before morning a howling storm attacked, depositing seven inches of snow and piling it in drifts.

  “In November it melts quickly,” Seccombe assured his visitor. Certainly he did not want to keep the unpleasant little man a day longer than necessary, but that afternoon the storm increased, throwing down another six inches. On the third night seventeen inches fell. From the northern borders of Montana to the Platte the west was snowbound, and it would remain that way through a long and disastrous winter.

  The burden of the blizzard fell principally on Jim Lloyd, for it was his job to keep the cattle alive, and he proceeded in his efforts to do so. In the first hours of the storm he rode to Potato Brumbaugh’s farm and told the Russian, “I’m buying all your hay.”

  “Smart move,” Potato said. “We’re due for a long, hard winter.” He would not give Jim all his hay, for he had a few cattle of his own and his bones warned him that this snow was different, but he did sell a portion, keeping the brown piles, now under two feet of snow, on his place till Jim sent his men to haul them away.

  When Jim presented the bill on the afternoon of the first day, Finlay Perkin said furiously, “One little storm and you panic.” To his surprise Jim fought back, briefly but with silencing effect: “It’s my job to feed those cattle. I’m gonna do it.”

  On the second day, when drifts had closed the roads and were beginning to cover the windward sides of the ranch buildings, Jim saddled his strongest horse and tried to visit the longhorns in nearby pastures, but he was unable to breast the accumulations of snow. No matter what direction he chose, he could not get far from the ranch, and during that whole day he saw no cattle.

  On the third day he had difficulty getting his horse from the stable. A howling wind had sent the snow whipping across the countryside until it encountered some stationary object; then drifts piled to an amazing height. At the headquarters they reached ten and twelve feet.

  On the evening of the third day Jim saw his first cattle. They had come down from the north, moving stolidly with the storm, keeping the wind to their backs. In this way they hoped to stumble upon feed and, more important, water.

  The first freezing beasts packed up against a fence, and when later arrivals pushed in behind them, those in front broke down the fence and drifted eastward. Jim tried to halt them, threw out thin supplies of hay from the barns, but they pushed on, always keeping their heads away from the whipping wind. For days they pressed on, till the storm abated, eating nothing, drinking nothing, never resting until they came upon a fence or some other immovable object. At that perilous moment they would begin to pile up, and if not led to safety, many would perish as one heaped upon the other.

  “They’re drifting with the storm!” Jim told the hands. “We’ve got to stop them!”

  So the cowboys scattered across the frozen ranch, miles from food or water, and tried valiantly to head off the slowly moving cattle. It was heartbreaking work. The frostbitten men struggled through drifts, their horses deep in snow, and when they did get to the cattle, they could only try to head them in directions which seemed safer than those they were pursuing.

  To feed them was impossible. “We’ll have to wait till it quits,” Jim advised Skimmerhorn, and he reported the situation to Seccombe and Perkin.

  “Will the loss of cattle be serious?” Perkin asked.

  “We could lose them all,” Skimmerhorn said bleak
ly.

  “Oh, dear!” Perkin said. And he canceled his trip back to Bristol. If the blizzard posed a threat of that magnitude, it was his job to stay on the spot and provide what help he could.

  He proved surprisingly resourceful. When no thaw came and cattle at the far reaches of the ranch would surely starve, it was he who proposed, “Load boxcars with Brumbaugh’s hay and ship it out to Julesburg. Hire men to distribute it from there.” And when the railroad, sensing that the ranchers had no alternatives, upped the freight rates, it was Perkin who fought them, threatening to write letters to the London Times. To Jim this seemed a futile gesture, but it had prompt results in Omaha, since the railroad had to depend substantially on financing from London, and realized that a condemnatory letter in the Times might adversely affect bond issues.

  But as before, the principal burden fell on Jim Lloyd, and it was he who took teams into the remotest corners of the great ranch, succoring cattle wherever he found them. Thousands of head had wandered down from Wyoming, and he fed them, too, when he came upon them along the Platte. He guessed that perhaps as many as ten thousand Crown Vee longhorns had wandered into Nebraska.