The Winter's Trail

by Sharon Breeling

  David liked to brush this one. His defined muscles rippled under his velvet skin.

  When he was done, he rode towards the canyon. The canyon was like an arroyo that ran across the northwest side. The cattle didn’t go that far but he liked to go there. He rode in at one end and it dead-ended about four miles to the west. At first, it just looked like a simple arroyo but when it opened up, there were chalk towers. Some were yellow and some were red. Some were brown with white tops. Some formed caves and narrow walkways. All of the colors were the colors of a sunset in the desert and today, the colors were so bright that they hurt his eyes. Even he was on Old Dan, he was careful to leave before the sun started to set so his horse wouldn’t lose his footing and stumble. There was also more dangerous wildlife in the canyon such as diamondbacks and mountain lions. He was remembering the early days when he took Ruth for a ride there. She loved the chalk canyon and said it reminded her of fairy castles. It was more of a maze and a person could get lost in there. David’s dad always kept the cattle away from the entrance. The colors were so many. Some were yellow and some were orange and white; they reminded David of his favorite ice cream treat. And some were brown. Last year, David and Ruth went on a picnic in the canyon and found a hidden gem, a blue formation.

  After he left the pretty canyon that was starting to change colors in the afternoon light, David made a beeline towards the house. The ranch hands were cooking out on the grill tonight and he could smell the smoke all the way to the canyon. At one point, the cool air in his face made him want to run Old Dan. The big horse seemed to sense it and when his rider leaned forward in the saddle, the horse took off like a bolt of lightning. His silky mane blew in the wind and his long legs made him look majestic while he ran. He slowed down as he got to the barn. Juaquin took the horse inside to clean him up, feed him, turn him out, and told David to go wash up. Before he could leave the barn, David walked around and took a long look. The horse stalls were clean with fresh hay and the door at the corral end was wide open. There was a wooden floor down the center aisle that had been hosed off and smelled damp and clean. He took the saddle from Juaquin and put it away in the tack room. His mother had organized that room and everything always had to be put back where it belonged. The large clean window looked out towards the house and David could see Ruth on the porch waiting for him. She was beautiful with her golden ponytail. He had never noticed the house before. It was large and a single story. It started out as a large kitchen with a wooden stove, one bedroom, and a bathroom. David’s dad had built onto the house and now it had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a large living room with the biggest hand-carved mantle on the fireplace. The outside was a nice honey-colored wood with a porch that went around three sides. That way, they could always be either in the sun or in the shade. It had posts and rails around it so the horses could be tied there if needed.

  The front door was the centerpiece of the house. It was very big and had a giant tree carved in it. There were two oval windows and some of the leaves overlapped the glass. The kitchen had a Dutch door that his mother insisted on. She could have fresh air and the dogs would stay outside. The sun was going down as he walked towards the house. Even as he stepped onto the porch, he knew what he was going to ask of his wife.

  After dinner, they both went out to look at the stars and listen to Juaquin play the guitar. His funny old guitar broke a couple of years ago and David sent away for another one. The sound was deeper and warmer than the old one. Juaquin played all the time now. As they sipped on coffee on the porch, David remarked how pretty their rocking chairs would look on it. His mom and Ruth spent three weekends braiding rags into a rug for the porch and he recognized some of his childhood whippersnappers woven into the rug. Ruth nodded and said she could spend every mild evening out here in her pretty rocker. He got up, kissed his wife, and went to get the coffeepot. When he came back, he was startled when she asked him if they could keep the ranch. She had practiced almost the same speech as he did all day and he decided to let her have her say first. She said she could drive to school and it would only be an extra hour. And while she was in town, she could buy groceries and maybe even feed and supplies. When she finally took a second to catch her breath, she saw David was chuckling. He confessed he wanted to ask her the same thing. Ruth was so excited; she jumped in his arms and almost knocked the pot out of his hands. She let him go and said this was home to her.

  That night, David wrote more in his book. All he had to say about how he felt about the ranch took up a whole book and at the very end, he wrote that he loved his wife in tiny letters that barely fit. He put it in the box and went to bed. There was much planning to do and he couldn’t wait to tell Juaquin.

  The next day was full of excitement and planning. Ruth had a big notebook with plans. The attorney was invited to lunch and Juaquin made three peach pies. No one was happier than he was that day.

  There was the house in town to rent out and moving to do. But before all that could be done, David had to go through his parents’ things and pack them away. There wasn’t much, but he wanted to put them in the hand-carved cedar trunks his dad made. Ruth was so excited to move and call the ranch home. She moved so much when she was a child that there was no place like this. She was humming while she was cooking and making her to-do list. She had to go back to work on Monday and it was already Thursday. She had some artwork to hang on the bare walls here and was planning where everything would go. Her love of this ranch was almost as much as the love she had for her husband. The first thing she did was go out to the porch and decide where her chair would go.

  The little white house on Boulder Street was rented out and everything was moved. David quit his job and worked at Ironwood Ranch full time. He was very happy there. Old Dan was his constant companion. Juaquin was training new horses and there were new calves. Ruth helped out and cooked for them and Juaquin and the three full-time ranch hands. This was a big year for calves. His dad had added more cattle through the years and was smart to add more hands. Moving them from one pasture to another was a big undertaking that time and sometimes they needed more hands. Juaquin helped to maintain the buildings, horses and other animals, and gardens. He helped to cook and was putting the finishing touches on what would turn out to be the biggest barbeque grill in the county. Since Ruth was going to continue to teach, the extra cooking help was appreciated. Ruth returned to school. She would get up early, fix breakfast, and drive the hour or more into town to teach. In the evening, she would stop at the post office and the store and co-op if needed before heading home. David decided to get her a bigger car to do all of these chores in. Sometimes his wife would come home late and that was when Juaquin would jump in and cook for him and the crew. There was a spring storm that put three feet of snow on the ground throughout the day and Ruth didn’t make it home until one in the morning. But summer came and she was happy to not leave the ranch except for getting supplies in Colorado Springs. Every morning after breakfast and coffee on the big porch, she would put her new Ropers on with her Levi’s. Her long blonde hair would go up into a ponytail and then off she would go to the barn to help out or to garden, or sometimes she would take Juaquin’s mild-tempered black mare out to the pastures to help David and the crew. She would pack food and drinks and meet them in her new pickup, or she would just spend the day cooking and canning the way David’s mother taught her to do. Her skin would take on a warm glow and the sun would make only one or two freckles on her tender nose. These were the days she loved the most. Long sunny ones with her husband by her side. But fall would come and for a few weeks, she would cry on her drive to the school. It was so hard to leave the ranch.

  Several years went by, the ranch was making money and David was very happy. Last winter, there was a surprise in the barn, a new foal. She was Old Dan’s and looked like his father, Rusty. She was a pretty red color with white feet and a white mark on her forehead that looked like a long-stemmed white rose. Ruth named her Rosie. She would follow Ruth around li
ke a puppy and made her laugh. Juaquin was breaking horses that summer and he was wanting her to be with him. She was a very funny horse, since she seemed to understand Spanish. Juaquin would get excited around the horses and would speak Spanish. Rosie seemed to understand him. The whole ranch liked this horse. She was a free spirit who thought she was human. Sometimes she would push open the kitchen door and walk right in. She didn’t have time for the dogs, though. It made her nervous to have them underfoot. When the dogs came near, she would freeze and if she had a foot up, it would stay there till she knew the dog was far away from her. Like Rusty and Old Dan, she was allowed to go anywhere she wanted. She stayed close to Ruth, though. Ruth had carrots, apples, and other goodies. One time, Rosie went into the kitchen and ate all of the fresh peanut butter cookies Ruth had made for the church bake sale. She was angry with the horse and yelled at her. Rosie hung her head and left for the barn. She didn’t leave the barn for three days until Ruth came and got her. She took her to the porch, gave her two apples, and sat and had coffee with her. Ruth felt bad for making this precious young horse hide from her and wanted to be her friend again, so they talked all afternoon and had coffee and apples and finally, the beautiful red horse let Ruth rub her and hug her neck. They found their trust again and Ruth never yelled at Rosie again. She was still standing by the porch when David came back from the south pasture. He shook his head but smiled and was happy his girls made peace.

  That summer was a tough time for Ruth, she didn’t want to go back to work. She didn’t want to leave the peace and serenity of the ranch, and she had suddenly become so very tired. Anytime she had to drive to the springs or Kiowa, she would come home exhausted. It made her unusually sad to leave and happy to be home.

  David and Juaquin had a lot of horses the last two years and it was time to break and sell them. Horse Day at the auction was coming up and Juaquin wanted to make a lot of money to get a new truck. They only kept enough horses to work the ranch. It seemed David was at the auction in Calhan or in Greeley. He was selling an unusually large amount of cattle this year.

  Chapter 7

  Ruth quit going to the auctions with David. They hired big trucks to come get the cattle and horses. David always went to the giftshop or over to the fairgrounds to find a craft or small gift to take to Ruth. Several times, he would come home and she would be sound asleep on the porch with dinner simmering away in the oven. She barely made it through dinner sometimes. David built in a dishwasher for her but sometimes, he and Juaquin would clean up. She would beg to stay home on weekends and seemed to be extra quiet and tired. Summer was coming to a close and it seemed the closer it was to school starting, the lesser she spoke. Her face still lit up when he walked in the door, but she never let him talk about her going back to work. Juaquin saw how tired she was and asked to drive her to work and back a couple of days a week. He would go into the springs for supplies and then get her at three on his way back. He was always buying extra fruits or juice for her and it seemed that Rosie always got the leftover fruit. The drive into town and back was unusually quiet and sometimes she just fell asleep in his truck. He tried to chat with her, but she would just stare straight ahead and didn’t seem to hear him. David noticed the changes in her. Her eyes were blank and she wouldn’t talk anymore. Most of the time, she stayed up late grading papers and he would find her asleep on the couch in the morning. He wanted to hold his wife again, brush her long hair, and go for rides and walks. Mostly, he missed sitting on the bench at the top of the hill and watching the sunset on Pikes Peak. One day, David was walking through the kitchen and noticed Ruth’s gently worn Ropers on a towel by the door. Mud was still crusted on them and he knew they had been in the same spot for weeks. She loved her cowboy boots and took such good care of them. He picked them up and took them out to the porch to scrape the mud off, clean them up, and even polish them for her. As he worked on her boots, he noticed how worn they had gotten, even a spot by the heel in the back. That was where she rested her feet on the porch railing when she sat on her rocker to have coffee. He noticed she didn’t do that much anymore. By the time he was done, the leather was soft and supple and ready for their owner’s tender feet. He put them back but made a note to keep an eye out to see if she would put them back on.

  It seemed like Ruth would get home later and later from town. And when it snowed, she would arrive home around eleven. David was always asleep so another night went by with his wife sleeping on the couch. As the school year went by, it became worse. Sometimes she would sit at the table and just have a blank stare. David didn’t know how to talk about this. He just hoped she would snap out of it. He missed his wife. After a while, he just gave up. She clearly didn’t love him anymore and he wasn’t comfortable talking about it. He did try a few times but became shaky and had to go outside to gulp in the fresh air under the stars. Winter came and went and it was soon early summer. The ranch smelled of grass and wild flowers. David picked a bouquet of pretty, fiery red Indian paintbrushes, yellow sunflowers, and even a few purple columbines for Ruth. He put them in a mason jar on the table for her. She didn’t say anything, just gave them a blank stare as if she didn’t know what they were. Then she got up from the table, scraped the food off the plates into the garbage disposal, picked up the jar, and emptied it in there too. She finished cleaning up and went to the living room to rest on the couch. The cattle operation was really starting to pick up. They were keeping more calves and even hired more ranch hands. Juaquin called some of his nephews to bring their horses and work there too. The bunkhouse was full and it gave Juaquin time to do the gardening that Ruth had stopped doing. He was very puzzled. Sometimes he would mention to David that she was pale and not strong, but David didn’t know what to say. He would just shrug his shoulders. The only things that Ruth seemed to enjoy on the ranch were cooking and Rosie. There were several times he would return to the house to find Ruth reading to Rosie in the kitchen. He would shoo her out and ask Ruth what she was thinking. She would just go outside and take Rosie back to the barn.

  School started again and Ruth was gone and was even more tired. David asked her to go see her doctor, but only a couple of times. Finally, he gave up. One Saturday, she was sitting on the porch with coffee and the paper reading to Rosie, who would take the pages out of her hands and noisily chew them up. David wondered why he hadn’t seen a paper in a while. If he tried to take the paper away from the horse, she would stop and lick his face like a puppy. He gave up. After the game with Rosie, he asked Ruth if she could listen to him for a few minutes. She looked at him and focused on what he had to say. She looked so pretty with the afternoon autumn sun in her blonde hair. Her skin was pale and she had put on several pounds that he had not noticed before. He took a deep breath and told her that there was no need for her to come all the way home from work anymore. The little house in town was empty and he thought she should move. He told her to pack what she wanted to take with her and he and the ranch hands would take it to the house. At first, he thought she was going to say something. He saw a glimmer of sadness in her eyes. But she just got up and went inside. She didn’t speak a word. For the next few weeks, David would hear her crying, but she would not let him see her.

  Before the snows came, she was moved into the little white house on Boulder Street where they started. Her rocker was back on the porch. She decided to walk the few blocks to the school and David would see her almost every weekday when he would go to town. He knew at around three, she would be out walking. She started to lose the weight and she would wave at him when her hands weren’t full of homework. Sometimes he would stop at her house and drop off mail for her and ask how she was. The ranch was so busy, the sales and rodeos kept him busy on the weekends. David even started going to the dances with his friends. But he never saw her there. A couple of times, he met some girls at the dances; some from Kiowa or the springs. They would go out a few times, but he was really too busy to drive any distance to continue a relationship. He was starting to like time alone
on the ranch. He would ride the fences and stay out more than just a day. He wrote in his notebooks about the life he had then. Often, the writing was about Ruth. His best friend seemed to be Old Dan and he would go to town to get large bags of carrots and apples for the horses. More than a year went by, David was starting to feel his age. He got a new truck and Juaquin talked him into buying an old Jeep to drive to the fences. He tried it, but it wasn’t the same as a ride on Dan. The cattle took a lot of time. Spring and summer were busy. David would end his day on the porch watching the sunset and listening to Juaquin sing. He would write in his notebooks and laugh at Rosie. Juaquin was breaking her and she would walk around with the saddle on her pack as if she was a model. She would hold her head up high and come see him on the porch for treats. He could tell she missed Ruth, so he kept plenty in the kitchen for her. In the evenings, she would sometimes go stand with Juaquin. He would sing and she would make the strangest sounds and stomp her foot. If David didn’t know better, he would have thought she was singing too.