by Gwen Moffat
‘What on earth were you thinking of?’ There was silence from Miss Pink. Seale continued: ‘Most likely he was after Tye, to judge from the interest he showed in the party. Irving’s going to come to a bad end. He has got the death wish. Deliberately going out of his way to make sure everyone’s gunning for him in a wilderness area. Shoot, shovel, and shut up is the motto here. Could apply to people as well as grizzlies. D’you realize there are places in these forests where no one’s ever been? Sim was born on this place and he says he’s never gone on the fall drive without finding at least one place he’s not seen before: a meadow, a canyon even, caves. There’ll be a few corpses tucked away in the timber.… Not bodies any longer, of course; the scavengers will have seen to that.’
‘Bones.’ Miss Pink was on her home ground. ‘You can’t hide bones, nor disguise their human provenance.’
Seale yawned. ‘We must go to sleep. We have to be up at six. Sim’s a slave driver. You’re wrong about bones. Rodents gnaw those—for calcium, I suppose. Good night.’
Chapter 4
During the night the rain decreased to a fine drizzle but even that had stopped by dawn and when Miss Pink and Seale rode under the high cross bar at the entrance to the Logan ranch, the cloud was lifting and they saw that trees above eight thousand feet were dusted with snow. Soon the sun was shining in the bottom of the canyon and the ground steamed. Away to the south the high peaks were intermittently obscured by the matt smears of squalls.
Miss Pink was mounted on a tall but muscular chestnut with a roached mane who carried his head high and took rather too much interest in what was going on around him. Seale, on a biscuit-coloured mare which she said was a buckskin, not dun as Miss Pink would have termed it, led the two spare horses.
‘We should meet Shelley and her party,’ Miss Pink observed. ‘Providing they didn’t come down last night.’
‘They won’t take this road; there’s a drier trail in the trees on the other side of the creek. It stays high and it’s not cut up by horses. They’ll take that. It’s much pleasanter on foot.’
What Seale called a road was a morass of mud but the horses didn’t seem to mind and its width meant that they could ride side by side. Seale now took the opportunity to instruct her friend in the reality of the West as opposed to its myths. She identified a huddle of roofs on the other side of the creek as the Farrell place, a dude ranch. Dudes were people who wanted to be part of the myth: ‘They come for a week or longer and they spend all their time on horseback. They wear designer jeans and funny hats and think it’s a privilege to be allowed to catch and saddle their own horses. That should cut out a lot of work for the wranglers but Lee Farrell says most often you have to do it all over again. Saddling up at the Farrells’ must be like a Marx Brothers movie.’
Miss Pink avoided her friend’s eye; this morning she had attempted to saddle her own horse for the first time.
‘They take people hunting too,’ Seale went on. ‘Don’t know who they’ve got in at the moment. We might go over there tonight; they have a bar of sorts for their guests. You have a choice of authenticity at The Covered Wagon or the Farrell place for a giggle. Wilbur—that’s Lee’s grandpa—is fun: a real old-timer who never made a profit until Lee came to run the place and started dude ranching. But no one’s doing very well at that nowadays; there’s too much competition. Farrells can’t even run to hired help. They’ve got Flossie Schmitz but Flossie’s been with Wilbur for ever. She calls herself the housekeeper. We call her the tattooed lady—’ At a rustle in the scrub the chestnut leapt forward, almost pulling the reins through Miss Pink’s hands. ‘Elk,’ Seale said, turned in her saddle. ‘Look at that head on him! That’s unusual; the snow must have brought him down.’
Miss Pink, having gathered her reins, was watching her horse’s ears nervously. ‘Does he often do this?’
‘No. Then there’s Mildred, Lee’s wife. She’s the kind of woman who vacuums the saddle blankets and puts them through the washing machine. Never idle, is our Millie: runs the ranch and everything on it except Wilbur. Flossie runs Wilbur. And every once in a while Mildred races off to Spokane in Oregon to order her mother’s life. She’s a very exhausting person: smiles all the time and has no sense of humour whatever.’
The horses slopped through a long puddle, splashing water and mud. Miss Pink asked if this were the road down which the cattle would be driven after the round-up.
‘Right: straight down Cougar to the ranch. It takes most of a day.’
‘Why is the fall drive such an event? Driving a herd of cattle nine miles?’
Seale stared in astonishment. ‘It’s not the drive; that’s just the last day. It’s gathering them that’s the fun. Well, hard work too and pretty rough. The Logans lease around three thousand acres of forest land—on paper—and there aren’t any boundaries, not even physical ones. The cows could go over Dead Horse Pass if they wanted to but they wouldn’t because there’s no grazing on the pass. But they could, and do, go over the ridges on either side of this creek. It’s the job of Archie Burg—that’s Sim’s hired man at Cow Camp—to see that they stay in the meadows on the Logan land. Archie brings them back when they stray and keeps them moving so they don’t over-graze one place. Cows are stupid; they’ll stay in one meadow when they’ve eaten it bare and not shift to good grazing half a mile away. They have to be pushed. When we gather, Archie’s supposed to know where they are, but you’ve got two hundred cows scattered over three thousand acres in little bunches and although, when you want them to, they won’t shift half a mile, on the night before gathering they can drift miles. And those cows are wild after a summer in the mountains. It’s hard riding. It takes three or four days to get them down.’
‘Do we stay at Cow Camp?’
Seale giggled. ‘Not on your life. Archie has one bunk, his dogs share the other. It’s just a one-room cabin and the interior is what you’d expect of a guy who spends twelve hours a day on a horse. We stay at the ranch in comfort, and commute.’
‘You mean we have an eighteen-mile round trip every day and search for cattle?’
‘That’s right but we don’t ride this stretch. We put the horses in the trailer. The reason we didn’t bring it today is that Sim’s taking some young bulls to a neighbour, that’s all.’
They crossed a side creek by way of a plank bridge and the road forked, a branch heading up the bank of the creek towards thick timber.
‘That goes to the Trotter place,’ Seale said. ‘Jed Trotter’s not very bright—at least, that’s the impression he makes. I’m not so sure about his low level of intelligence myself. He’s a kind of odd-job man: works for anyone, doing anything. Lives in a tent.’
‘You mean, just in summer time.’
‘All the year round. The old-timers did. The mining communities were tent cities until they got around to building log cabins. A tent’s fine if you’ve got a wood-burning stove. It’s a big tent, of course; I was in it once. Jed’s married to a kind of middle-aged hippie called Mae and they’ve got a son, Billy Trotter. And a couple of hunting dogs and a few rough horses and usually some unbranded calves.’
‘Unbranded? You mean—’
‘Circumstantial evidence. It should appeal to you. I was up on Wapiti Ridge above the Trotter place a month ago and I followed this cow trail down to a meadow and found a cow and three calves. I didn’t think anything of that; there could have been a couple of cows back in the timber, but I pushed on down to the Trotter place and told ’em their calves were doing fine: fat as butter. Young Billy said: “What calves?” while Mae was still giving me a dirty look and Jed was gaping as if he’d swallowed a hornet. Sim put me wise. He was coming home from Sweetgrass in the small hours after some ranchers’ shindig and he turned off the highway behind Jed’s pick-up. Jed started to burn up this road as if the cops were after him, bumping like mad, and Sim says he distinctly heard a calf bellow. From the back of the pick-up, I mean. A few days later Otis Lenhart was telling everyone how he’d lost two c
alves.’
‘Isn’t it risky to keep unbranded animals?’
‘He won’t have them now. They’d have been spirited away as soon as possible after I saw them, as soon as Jed could get Zack Coons to visit. Zack is Jed’s buddy; they go hunting together. Zack comes up with one horse in a four-horse trailer. That’s a lot of space for one horse, isn’t it? But then on the return journey, at least on one return journey, it would have been sharing the space with a couple of calves.’
‘Don’t people talk?’
‘Not about that kind of thing. Particularly when Lenhart’s the victim. He’s not exactly unpopular but he did marry a rich widow and benefited a bit too obviously by it. People round here might think his losing a couple of calves occasionally was a kind of justice. They’re a very moral lot in Prosper. But Lenhart hates Jed Trotter’s guts. More so because so far Jed’s never been caught.’
By ten o’clock they reached Cow Camp and the sun was blazing on the Silvertips. A small cabin stood among the lodgepole pines, seeming to be only an appendage to the corrals, in one of which a bony and excited horse squealed at the new arrivals. A saddled bay was tied to the hitching rail. Two blue and black Australian sheepdogs erupted from the cabin, smashing open its screen door, and Miss Pink’s horse laid back its ears.
A large young man appeared in the doorway, filling it. He wore three-quarter-length chaps and spurs, and a mottled feather dangled from the brim of his black hat on a thong. He had lazy eyes and he chewed rhythmically like a tired cow.
‘Hi,’ he said perfunctorily, and focused on the led horses. ‘They’re fat.’
‘They’ll lose that soon enough.’ Seale stared pointedly at the horse in the corral. ‘Jack’s ribs are coming through his hide.’
Archie spat a stream of brown juice. ‘He’s fit enough. He never fleshes out. Did you bring my coffee?’
‘Sim didn’t say you wanted any. You’ve only got to stop by when you go to The Wagon.’
‘Can’t. The pick-up’s got a puncture. I thought you’d bring the trailer today and could take the tyre down.’
‘What’s wrong with your spare?’
‘That’s punctured too.’
‘All right. We’ll be up tomorrow maybe and I’ll bring the trailer and some coffee.’
‘You do that. Someone should go into Loon Basin. I got a feeling there’s a bunch in there should be brought out and pushed down Hell Roaring.’
As she listened to this exchange about coffee and cattle, spiced with names from fantasy, Miss Pink had the sensation that she was living in a dream; her thoughts did not wander but her mind went momentarily blank, at least until she became aware of a certain lassitude, not unpleasant, but certainly uncharacteristic. She regarded this youth in stained chaps, scuffed boots and spurs and she knew that a part of her had withdrawn from a situation which was incomprehensible. In the heart of the Rockies two cow-hands discussed their work while their horses waited patiently, coiled lariats on the saddle horns.
Returning down the track, Seale said: ‘We’ll have some fun tomorrow, getting that bunch out of Loon Basin. Since the snow hasn’t pushed them down, they won’t want to leave.’
‘Sim will let us do it?’
‘He’ll send us. You’ll cope; the horse knows what to do.’
And that, thought Miss Pink, was typical; one day you walk eighteen miles up and down a muddy canyon, the next you’re galloping through timber, herding recalcitrant cows.
They were back at the ranch by noon and, having eaten a quick and somewhat subdued lunch of venison (food was fuel here, not an opportunity for conversation) Logan and Seale went out to fix the corrals and Miss Pink was left to her own devices.
Seale, catching sight of the solid figure emerging from the great shingled barn, sauntering across to the old hog-house, observed to Logan that it could be a bit boring, just looking at things: ‘She needs something to get her teeth into.’
‘Like what?’ he asked with interest, extracting a nail from his mouth and hammering it home.
‘Like murder. Rustling, illegal killing. You’re looking embarrassed, Sim; you’ll have to watch your step with her around.’
‘Keep your eye on the job, woman; you let that rail drop three inches.’
Miss Pink was not bored so much as somnolent. The afternoon was warm and still and the sun glared through the thin air. She noticed that the night’s dusting of snow had melted from the high ridges and the Silvertips showed in such bright contrast to the sombre cleft of the canyon that they could have been on another planet, peeping over the rim of this world. She went to the bunkhouse for her binoculars and strolled down to the creek to sit on the bank and wait for something to happen. She saw some sandhill cranes, a large slate-blue kingfisher with a crest, and a scatter of small birds resembling sparrows with chestnut heads. Idly she focused on the dude ranch but all she could see was its roofs backed by a slope of timber. Through the sound of running water she heard an engine. At first she thought it was a generator but as its volume increased she recognized it for a car engine and with the inevitable reaction of the country person needing to know who was abroad, she stood up and looked across the sage to the road. A brown station wagon was passing down the canyon.
She felt a twinge of interest, quickly suppressed. Even if this were the man she had met yesterday, his coming round to this side of the range meant nothing to her. He was taking photographs perhaps, but more likely trying to cope with problems which were none of her business. She started to stroll back to the ranch, wondering if she might prevail on Ginny to share a cup of Lapsang Souchong.
By supper time her mood was so constrained that even the Logans noticed it, and when Seale suggested they should visit the dude ranch and Miss Pink demurred, her hosts were insistent that she should go. Surprised at her own boorishness she retracted and, seated in Seale’s old Bronco, apologized.
‘I must be suffering from delayed jet-lag,’ she confessed. ‘I feel overwhelmed by a sense of ennui. It’s not unpleasant but I can’t raise any enthusiasm.’
‘It’s the whole wilderness scene,’ Seale said. ‘People who live here build up defences. You haven’t had time.’
‘Defences against what? Am I being obtuse?’
‘Against its savagery.’ Seale was cool. ‘You’re blocking it out. The wilderness rules here, hadn’t you realized that? Man is on sufferance.’
Miss Pink absorbed this in silence as they rattled over a bridge and drove through the entrance to the Farrell ranch. A knot of horses lifted their heads to gaze at the Bronco.
‘No cows,’ Miss Pink commented.
‘Wilbur brings his cows down after we do. The Farrells help us, then we help them.’
‘These horses look a bit scrawny.’
‘Overworked and underfed. No one would buy good animals for dudes, of course, but Farrell’s animals are something else. That blue roan with the limp and the saddle sore will be bear meat before the week’s out.’ Miss Pink frowned. ‘It’s unsporting,’ Seale went on, ‘but the only way these dudes will ever get to see a bear is over bait. They’ll take the horse up in a canyon and shoot him there. Then they’ll sit out over him—that is, if they’ve got hunters in at this moment.’
‘You’re telling me that hunters know that they’re killing bears illegally?’ Miss Pink’s voice rose.
‘No, of course not. Bear season started in September. The Farrells’ guests will have licences. The horse would have to be shot anyway, Mel. It’s too old for work and you can’t afford to keep a horse as a pet in the West. Think of the cost of hay and vet’s bills. If you’ve got cats you feed them canned horse or kangeroo meat, so you can’t get uptight about it.’
‘My cats are fed on mutton and beef.’
‘Same thing,’ Seale said, braking to a halt in front of the ranch.
Miss Pink stared at the house. Like herself, it had its back to the wall; the wall, in the case of the building, being the timbered ridge that rose so steeply behind it that any rooms at
the rear must be appallingly gloomy. The place was not large, and guests would be accommodated in a row of rough cabins to the left of the main building. Barns, sheds and corrals were on the right.
Apart from one picture window and drooping power lines, there was little evidence of progress and scarcely any of prosperity about the Farrell place. The corrals looked solid enough but shingles were missing from the roof of the barn, doors sagged from their hinges, the rusted hulk of a truck rested on its hubs beside an ancient combine. It looked as if the younger Farrells were making no more profit from dudes than the old man had from his cattle.
‘Good evening.’
Miss Pink paused as she was about to follow Seale across the porch, and only the need to return the greeting with courtesy prevented her from betraying surprise. The woman coming up the steps was startling but far from the figure of fun one might have expected from Seale’s description of dudes. Her slacks and loose waistcoat were smoke-grey, the high-heeled boots and her blouse, the sheen of which was surely silk, were in charcoal. Slacks, waistcoat and boots were made of leather so soft that they could be doeskin. Against these subdued shades pendants in a brilliant mosaic of enamel glowed between her breasts, suspended on silver chains.
The lady was as smooth as her clothes. Faintly tanned and flawlessly groomed, her wide grey eyes challenged them to find her, if not beautiful, then beautifully turned out. The hair was blond, in bangs on the forehead, turned under in a pageboy bob.
Seale was staring, and the newcomer smiled as she might at a child. ‘I’m Tara Osborn. And you’re—?’
There was a pause. ‘Melinda Pink and Seale,’ Miss Pink said firmly. ‘We’re from the Logan place, across the creek.’
‘Really? You live there?’
Seale found her voice. ‘I’m the hired help. Melinda’s just visiting.’