“It wound up saving our lives.”
I didn’t think about that. Instead, I stepped back to the table.
John Henry just stared at the orange flames. Seemed to have forgotten all about us.
“I wonder,” I began, “if the major and Mister Gow . . . ?”
“They’re all right,” Tommy said as he hobbled back to me. “Likely made it back to Mister Gow’s ranch before the blizzard even hit.”
“No.”
We turned to face John Henry. He gathered his coat and gloves, pulled them on despite the blowing Chinook, and picked up his bridle. “I lied to you boys,” he said softly. “I didn’t send MacDunn and Gow north. I led them into the cañon, then doubled back. Told you otherwise, hoping you’d keep on riding to Gow’s ranch, and you likely would have, if the blizzard hadn’t hit. No, that storm caught Gow and MacDunn in the cañon.”
He lifted the saddle to his shoulder.
“Where are you going?” Tommy asked.
“To fetch them home.”
“You can’t do that,” I said. “They’re dead.”
John Henry lowered the saddle, put his hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “There’s one horse. You can’t ride. Not yet, anyway.” He turned to me. “I’ll go. I’ll find their bodies. I’ll bring them back.” He swallowed, and his voice almost cracked. “Least I can do.”
Adamantly I shook my head. “You can’t go, John Henry. I won’t let you. That Chinook’s melting a lot of snow. In that cañon, you might get caught in an avalanche. Besides, if they’re dead, they . . . well . . . you couldn’t find no bodies till spring. Maybe summer.”
“Maybe never,” Tommy said.
John Henry just lifted the saddle. “I’m proud of you. . . .” He grinned. “No, I can’t call you-all kiddoes no more. You’re grown men. I know I promised you that old six-shooter of mine, but, well, I traded it for a bottle of rye a while back. I’ll buy you both a new one, though, come summer.” His face hardened. “I’m going. You stay put. If the weather stays warm, the Bar DD will send somebody here. You’ll be fine. So will I.” He gave a little chuckle. “A little snow ain’t gonna kill John Henry Kenton.”
Chapter Thirty
We never . . .
Well . . .
It was a hard winter. Worst winter I ever saw. Just as quickly as it had blown in, the Chinook died. Did nothing but start melting the snow, and, when the next storm hit that night, it turned that slush into solid ice.
That night, we sat by the fireplace, never talking, staring at the door, hearing the wind, the creaking cabin. Felt like the gusts would just tear that line shack apart. We kept waiting for John Henry Kenton to walk in.
’Course, he didn’t.
I wonder if he planned it that way. Nah, couldn’t have. He didn’t know another blizzard would blow in. Impossible. Storm probably surprised him as much as it surprised everybody else. Or did it?
No point in wondering. Don’t matter. Maybe it was better that way. John Henry doing something good, maybe something right. Better than swinging from the gallows.
Well, that’s the way January and February went. It would warm for a little bit, then another storm came blasting in from the north. Me and Tommy were stranded. Without any horses. Wasn’t no game around, either, but in February I come across one of those black heifers that had wandered up from the river to the horse pen, where it had finally died. That fed us some.
Tommy got to walking pretty good, almost wore holes in the soles of his moccasins, and my left hand healed. Got to where I became used to not having all my fingers. So, we went through the rest of the winter together, but we seldom talked. Just worked at staying alive.
* * * * *
One morning, I stepped outside, feeling the strong gust of another Chinook, and stood staring at a clear sky. Felt like forever since I’d seen the sun. Then I heard the whinny of a horse, and moved through the melting snow to the clearing, looking below at the Sun River, hoping to see John Henry Kenton riding out. Four riders came, one leading a pack mule, another pulling a string of four horses, but they came from the east, not the cañon.
Blinking, I stepped back, unbelieving. A minute later, I whipped off my hat, waving it over my head till my arm hurt. The horses plodded on, but one of the riders responded by signaling me with a black hat. Instantly I turned, slipped on a patch of ice, climbed back to my feet, and yelled: “Tommy!”
“Riders!” I shouted when he appeared in the doorway, and he walked out slowly, picking his way gently, and we stood together, waiting.
* * * * *
Gene Hardee, his busted ankle healed, just stared at us. We couldn’t find the words, either. He turned to Ish Fishtorn, who grinned, and broke the silence.
“You two boys need a shave,” he said.
I rubbed my face with the back of my hand.
One of the men I didn’t know, but he was riding a 7-3 Connected horse, and the string behind him was all 7-3 Connected geldings, too. I knew the last rider, the one pulling the mule. Camdan Gow tried to talk, but it took him a while. He was afraid, I know. Afraid of the answer. He kept looking past me and Tommy, staring at the shack, waiting, hoping, praying that someone would walk out.
“Is . . . ?” His eyes landed on me. “Is anyone . . . ?”
My sad reply broke Camdan’s heart, but he had grown up a lot that winter, too. He tightened his lips, nodded, and swung from the saddle.
“What happened?” Gene Hardee asked.
“We thought you were dead,” Ish added.
* * * * *
Took some explaining, which we did in the cabin. I’m not sure we told them everything. Not sure we even remembered it. I forgot a lot, just blacked out whole chunks, but later, over the years, bits and pieces would come back to me. Fill in the holes. Some I was glad to know, happy to remember. Others . . . well . . . I wish I didn’t recollect everything.
It hadn’t just been hell on the Sun River range. Cattle wandered down the streets of Great Falls, Ish told us, starving, eating the saplings the citizens had planted that summer in hopes of making their town more beautiful. Eating garbage. Dying in the streets. Dying in the doorways. Dying. Dying. Dying.
The temperature reached sixty-three below zero somewhere. Gene Hardee couldn’t remember the exact place, and we told him how cold it had gotten here.
“How’s Lainie?” I asked.
“She’ll be finer than frog’s hair cut eight ways,” Ish Fishtorn said, “when she sees you two boys.”
Camdan stood in the doorway, staring toward Sun River Cañon. “We need to go,” he said. “Need to find. . . .” His head dropped.
He was right, of course. We needed to go fetch his pa and Major MacDunn back home. Fetch John Henry home, too.
* * * * *
Figuring the last of winter had blowed itself out, we left the line shack, putting two horses in the corral. The 7-3 Connected rider, a man named Ryan, led the pack mule. ’Course, me and Tommy had no saddles, so we rode bareback.
Into the cañon.
Oh, we didn’t get far, not that first day. Ice and falling snow forced us back, so we returned to the cabin, and waited. Our first plan had been to split up, and fire a shot if we found anything, but Gene Hardee rethought that when he saw all the snow still packed atop the mountain. He wasn’t about to fire no shot. Start an avalanche. Bury all of us.
The weather held, and, two days later, we rode back into the cañon. Quiet, I remember, except for the wind, the sound of dripping water. The sound of hoofs pushing through snow and mud.
That night we camped. Saying nothing. Wondering. Hoping.
Hackers come down the following morning, hauling a load of timber on sleds. When they learned what we was doing, they joined us, and we started covering the woods, and the wall of the cañon. Working cautiously. Using poles to feel our way through the snowdrifts.
* * * * *
It was Tommy who found them.
Had to be toward midday when me and Ish Fishtorn rode out of a thicke
t, and spied him on the far side of the river, standing in front of a cutbank, waving his hat over his head with his right hand, his left clutching the hackamore to the horse he’d borrowed. We eased our mounts across the riverbed.
Tommy pointed. “They’re around the bend,” he said.
“Who?” I asked.
“The major,” he said softly. “Gow.”
My chin fell against my chest. I made myself look up. “John Henry?”
Tommy shook his head. “He’s not there,” he said.
“Wait here,” Ish said, and he rode off to fetch the others.
I climbed from my horse, and me and Tommy stood together, silent. A coyote yipped, and I thought I even heard a bird sing out.
The hackers arrived, rolling smokes or lighting pipes. Nobody spoke. Nobody went around the bend to see for themselves. Maybe ten or twenty minutes later, Gene Hardee rode up, followed by Ish, the 7-3 Connected hired hand, and Camdan Gow.
The hackers agreed to hold our horses, give us our privacy, but said we could use the sled to cart those bodies to the line shack. Gene Hardee led us into the brush, but he turned before he had gotten to the path, icy still as it was well-shaded, and asked Camdan if he was up to this, said he could stay behind with the hackers if he wanted to. Wasn’t no shame in that. A good thing, the 7-3 Connected man said. “Remember your pa as he was alive.”
“I’ll go,” Camdan said. “I have to go.”
Gene Hardee give a little nod. “You’re a man now, Camdan,” he said, and he looked over Camdan’s shoulder at me and Tommy. “You’re all men.”
We walked along the side of the cañon, feeling our way gently, hands pressed against the limestone rocks or shrubs to keep our balance.
* * * * *
Never found the horses or pack mule, not even the bones. Tommy pointed to the shelter. Gene went in first, then called for Camdan. We give him a few minutes before ducking underneath the overhand.
“So peaceful,” the man called Ryan whispered.
Wolves hadn’t gotten to Major MacDunn or Mr. Gow. I feared they might have. In fact, it looked like they’d just made camp there. Pretty good place, I thought. I bet Major MacDunn had carried some pine splinters soaked in coal oil, had gotten a fire going underneath that overhang. They’d stayed by the fire, their backs to the wall, huddling together when the last piece of wood had burned.
“What are those?” The man named Ryan pointed, and I saw the red hand prints.
“Indian sign,” Ish Fishtorn answered.
“Wonder who made them,” Ryan said.
“Shut up,” Gene Hardee snapped. He walked over to Tommy, asked him in a low voice about John Henry Kenton, but Tommy just shook his head.
“We’ll keep looking,” Gene Hardee said. He glanced over his shoulder, saw Camdan Gow kneeling, staring at the two dead men.
“I’ll look,” Tommy said. “I’m the line rider here. I’m supposed to be here till spring. That’s my job.”
“There’s nothing for you to do here, Tommy,” Gene Hardee said. He suddenly sounded so old. “The Bar DD’s finished. Hell, I think half of the ranches in Montana are finished. Maybe all of them.”
“Can’t be that bad,” Ish Fishtorn said, but he didn’t sound certain.
“I’ll stay,” Tommy said. “Leave me a horse and a saddle.”
“You can barely walk,” Hardee said. “Even Frank Raleigh quit after . . .”
“I’m not Raleigh. I’m staying,” Tommy said. “I can walk just fine. And I earn my pay. You take care of . . .” His head tilted.
There wasn’t no arguing with Tommy. Gene Hardee understood that.
“Well,” he said, turning away, looking back at Camdan. “We need to get Camdan home. Need to get his pa . . . get the major . . . home.” Sadly he shook his head.
I was looking at Tommy, but he give me a nod. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll see you back at the ranch. When it’s really spring.”
That’s how things would be. Tommy would stay at the line shack, searching for cattle. If any cattle were still alive. Searching for John Henry. Well, searching for his body.
Camdan’s head was bowed, and his hands were clasped, as he prayed. We took off our hats, waiting, staring.
It struck me then, seeing Major MacDunn and Mr. Gow sitting there, together, leaning against one another, right hands clasped together.
Like they were shaking hands when they died.
Chapter Thirty-One
Riding tired horses, heading southeast, they crest another hill, and Henry Lancaster recognizes the land, knows he and his grandfather will be home soon. As they head down the easy slope, Henry gives Jim Hawkins a sideways glance. The old man hasn’t spoken much since they left Sun River Cañon, but Henry understands there must be more to his story. Too many questions that haven’t been answered, details left unexplained, and he knows he must have those answers before they’re back home.
“So,” he begins, “you married Grandma.”
With a harrumph, Jim Hawkins spits to his side. “Appears obvious, don’t it?”
The boy blushes, stares ahead.
Silence. He feels his ears starting to turn red, and he realizes he does have a healthy dose of Hawkins blood shooting through his veins, but a gust of wind cools his embarrassment and anger, and his grandfather apologizes.
“I didn’t mean to be smart, boy. I know you want more to my tale. I don’t know if I got the words.”
Silence.
Then: “Don’t know what Lainie ever saw in me,” Hawkins says with a mirthless chuckle, “but we’ve had some good years together. Some bad times, but mostly good.”
“Did she ever . . . talk about . . . your friend, Tommy O’Hallahan?”
Another hill. A calf bawls. Henry sees a tree atop a hill just a few hundred yards away. Beyond that is home.
“Sure. We both talked about Tommy. Still do, often enough. Well, maybe not often, but I’ll bring him up, or she’ll mention something he did or said or read. I don’t think she’s regretful none, and I ain’t jealous. Things burn themselves out sometimes. That’s what happened between Tommy and your grandma. Not that she or Tommy knew anything. Hell, we was all kids.” Jim Hawkins smiles, remembering. “Kiddoes.”
He turns, one hand holding the reins, the other gripping the cantle. “I know you think I’m Methuselah, boy, but I ain’t but fifty years old. That’s how old the major was when he died. This country, though, ages you fast. Except Lainie.”
Henry swallows. He feels impatient, but he wants to be careful. “Can you tell me what happened?” he begins.
“Thought I told you.”
“Not everything,” Henry says.
Silence.
“What happened to Tommy?” That’s not the real question, though. He chews his bottom lip. A dog barks in the distance. Smoke serpentines from a chimney into the cloudy sky.
“What happened to John Henry Kenton?”
No answer. Hobo, their hound, has raced over the hill, barking, its tail zipping back and forth with happiness. Henry grins at the dog, but looks back, eyes hopeful, at his grandfather.
“Things change,” Jim Hawkins says at last. “Between people. Like Tommy and Lainie. Like the major and Mister Gow. Like between me and Tommy. And John Henry. Things change. People change.” He sighs. “Times change.”
He opens up . . . one last time.
Spring, 1887
[The] day of vast herds is coming to a
close . . . but instead of one man or one
company owning 10,000, one hundred
men will own them. The day of great
losses, too, will then be over.
Honest cattlemen concede this. It is
inevitable.
—Laramie Daily Boomerang,
August 6, 1887
Chapter Thirty-Two
Everything changed with the winter of ’86 and ’87. We thought the cold and snow would go on forever, but the Chinooks came, and spring soon followed. It always
comes—spring, I mean—and with it blooms new hope. ’Course, it took me a long while to realize that.
Somehow, the 7-3 Connected fared better than most ranches, maybe because Tristram Gow’s herds weren’t fresh off the trail like a lot of Major MacDunn’s beef, and he leased some range up along the Milk River that wasn’t so overgrazed. Overall, the Gow spread reported a loss of twenty percent. Lucky. Only a boy, Camdan Gow went back to his spread, and took Ish Fishtorn with him, started building his daddy’s ranch up again. Built it up by cutting it back, fencing in pasture, reducing his herds, growing hay. I don’t reckon he was the first to change, to see how things must change, but he was one of them. Before long, a body would be hard pressed to tell a sodbuster and a cowboy apart.
But, I remember the afternoon when Camdan Gow rode up to the Bar DD. It was later that year, and he told Mrs. MacDunn he’d come back to school. Well, that teacher broke down crying, but she toughened herself up, and led us into that broken-down schoolhouse. That time, I was glad to go. Glad for her. I kept right on going to school, although Mrs. MacDunn would be the first to tell you that I never bettered myself as a student. Tried, but I wasn’t cut out for schooling like Tommy. Or Camdan. Or Walter Butler. I was a cowboy. And Blaire MacDunn was a teacher, and a mother to us all.
The board of directors in Aberdeen liquidated the Dee & Don Rivers Land and Cattle Company, Incorporated, but offered to pay return passage to Scotland for Mrs. MacDunn and Lainie. They wrote Sir Alistair Shaw back, thanking them for the offer, but letting them know they’d stay. Montana was their home. So Mrs. MacDunn went right on teaching at that schoolhouse till it burned down in ’91, then moved up to Great Falls, and taught there till she went practically blind. Even then, she’d help teach anybody who’d stop by her cottage, and I expect she’d still be at if the influenza hadn’t called her to Glory a while back.
The influenza also claimed Ish Fishtorn and that Fort Shaw girl he up and married. Killed a lot of good men, women, and children. It’s always something, ain’t it? If not the winter, then the drought. If not the floods, then the locusts. I remember one thing my pa told me. He said: “Farming starts with a seed and a prayer. That’s the way it always has been, and that’s the way it always will be.” That’s one thing my pa said that made sense to me, and I reckon it holds true for ranching, too. Ranching starts with a cow and a prayer.
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