by Ivan Doig
“Can ye handle sums?”
“Aye.” I could, too.
I am sure as anything that old Cariston then and there hired me on as a clerk and bookkeeper just so he could have a decent Scots burr to hear. There are worse qualifications.
In just as ready a fashion, Rob found work at Weisenhorn’s wagon shop. “Thin stuff,” he shook his head about American wheels, but at least they made a job.
• • •
So there is the sum we were, Rob, as our Scotland-leaving year of 1889 drew to a cold close in new Montana. Emigrants changed by the penstrokes of the Cumbrae Steamship Line and Castle Garden into immigrants. Survivors of the Atlantic’s rites of water, pilgrims to Helena. Persons we had been all our lives and persons becoming new to ourselves. How are past and present able to live in the same instant, and together pass into the future?
You were the one who hatched the fortunate notion of commemorating ourselves by having our likenesses taken on that Hogmanay, New Year’s Eve, as they tamely say it here in America. “Angus, man, it’ll be a Hogmanay gift such as they’ve never had in Nethermuir,” you proclaimed, which was certainly so. “Let them in old Scotland see what Montanians are.” We had to hustle to get to Ball’s Photographic Studio before it closed.
That picture is here on my wall, I have never taken it down. Lord of mercy, Rob. Whatever made us believe our new muttonchop sidewhiskers became us? Particularly when I think how red mine were then, and the way yours bristled. We sit there in the photograph looking as if the stuffing is coming out of our heads. Once past those sidewhiskers, the faces on us were not that bad, I will say. Maybe an opera house couldn’t be filled on the basis of them, but still. Your wide smile to match the wide Barclay chin, your confident eyes. Your hair black as it was and more than bountiful, the part in it going far back on the right side, almost back even with your ear. It always gave you that look of being unveiled before a crowd, a curtain tugged aside and the pronouncement: Here, people, is Robert Burns Barclay. Then, odd—I know this is only tintype history, catching a moment with the head-rod in place on the back of the neck—but there is a face-width gap between us as we pose, Rob, as if the absence of Lucas fit there. And then myself, young as you. As for my own front of the head, there beside you I show more expanse of upper lip than I wish was so, but there is not much to be done about that except what I later did, the mustache. The mouth could be worse, the nose could be better, but they are what I was given from the bin. The jaw pushes forward a little, as if I was inspecting into the camera’s lens tunnel. My eyes—my eyes in our photograph are watching, not proclaiming as yours are. Even then, that far ago, watching to see what will become of us.
GROS VENTRE
* * *
We dislike to speak ill of any civic neighbor, yet it must be said that the community of Gros Ventre is gaining a reputation as Hell with a roof on it. Their notion of endeavor up there is to dream of the day when whiskey will flow in the plumbing. It is unsurprising that every cardsharp and hardcase in northern Montana looks fondly upon Gros Ventre as a second home. We urge the town fathers, if indeed the parentage of that singular municipality can be ascertained, to invite Gros Ventre’s rough element to take up residence elsewhere.
—CHOTEAU QUILL, APRIL 30, 1890
WORD FROM Scotland reached us in early February, and it was yes and then some. As regular as Christmas itself, the Montana money from Lucas had again wafted to Nethermuir; and together with it this:
Gros Ventre, Mont., 23 Dec. 1889
My dear brother Vare and family,
You may wonder at not hearing from me this long while. Some day it will be explained. I am in health and have purchased a business. This place Gros Ventre is a coming town. I remain your loving brother,
Lucas Barclay
“The man himself, Angus! See now, here at the bottom! Written by our Lucas himself, and he’s—”
“Rob, man, did I ever give up on a Barclay? It takes you people some time to find the ink, but—”
We whooped and crowed in this fashion until Mrs. Billington announced in through our door that she would put us out into the winter streets if we didn’t sober up. That quelled our eruption, but our spirits went right on playing trumpets and tambourines. Weeks of wondering and hesitation were waved away by the sheet of paper flying in Rob’s hand: Lucas Barclay definitely alive, unmistakably here in Montana, irrevocably broken out in penmanship—I managed to reach the magical letter from Rob for another look.
When Lucas finally put his mind to it, he wrote a bold hand. Bold scarcely says it, in fact. Each and every word was a fat coil of loops and flourishes, so outsize that the few sentences commanded the entire face of the paper. I thought I had seen among Adam Willox’s pupils of the ‘venture school all possible performances of pen, but here stood script that looked meant to post on a palace wall.
I said as much to Rob, but he only averred, “That would be like Lucas,” and proceeded to read us the letter’s contents aloud for the third time. “This place Graws Ventree. Ever hear of it, did you?”
Neither of us had word one of French, and the town name had never passed my ears before. “We can ask them at the post office where it is,” I suggested. “A letter got from the place all the way to Scotland, after all.”
He already was putting on his coat and cap and I mine. To see our haste, you’d have thought we had only to rush across the snowy street to be in Gros Ventre.
• • •
“Grove On,” the postal clerk pronounced Lucas’s town, which was instructive. So, in its way, was what he told us next. “It’s quite a ways toward Canada, up in that Two Medicine country. Not a whole hell of a lot up there but Indians and coyotes. Here, see for yourselves.”
What we saw on the map of post routes of Montana was that our first leg of travel needed to be by train north along the Missouri River to Craig, easy as pie. Then from Craig to Augusta by stagecoach, nothing daunting either. But from Augusta to the map dot Gros Ventre, no indication of railroad or stage route. No postal road. No anything.
The clerk did not wait for us to ask how the blank space was to be found across. “You’ll need to hitch a ride on a spine pounder.”
Rob and I were blanker than the map gap.
“A freight wagon,” the clerk elaborated. “They start freighting into that country whenever spring comes.”
• • •
And so we waited for spring to have its say. In Montana, that is most likely to be a stutter. By the time snow and mud departed and then abruptly came back, went off a second time and decided to recur again, I thought I might have to bridle Rob. He maybe thought the same about me. But the day at last did happen when we stepped off the train at Craig, wandered along the banks of the Missouri River flowing swift and high with first runoff, and presented ourselves at the stagecoach station. There we were looked over with substantial curiosity by the agent. Rob and I were topped off with Stetson hats now, but I suppose their newness, and ours, could be seen from a mile off.
At five minutes before scheduled departure and no sign of anyone but us and the spectating agent, Rob asked restlessly: “How late will the stage be?”
“Who said anything about late?” the agent responded. “Here’s the fellow now who handles the ribbons.” In strode a rangy young man, tall as myself, who nodded briskly to the agent and reached behind the counter to hoist out a mail sack. Likely the newcomer wasn’t much older than Rob or I, but he seemed to have been through a lot more of life.
“Yessir, Ben,” the agent greeted him. “Some distinguished passengers for you today, all both of them.”
The stage driver gave us his brisk nod. “Let’s get your warbags on board.”
We followed him outside to the stagecoach. “Step a little wide of those wheelers,” he gestured toward the rear team of the four stagecoach horses. “They’re a green pair. I’m running them in there to take the rough spots off of them.”
Rob and I looked at each other. And how did you jou
rney from Craig to Augusta, Mr. McCaskill and Mr. Barclay? Oh, we were dragged along behind wild horses. There was nothing else for it, so we thrust our bedrolls and bags up top to the driver. When he had lashed them down, he pulled out a watch and peered at it. “Augusta where you gents are aiming for?”
“No,” I enlightened him, “we’re going on to Gros Ventre.” Meanwhile Rob was scrutinizing the wheels of the stagecoach and I was devoutly hoping they looked hale.
The driver nodded decisively again. “You’ll see some country, up there.” He conferred with his pocket watch once more, then put it away. “It’s time to let the wheels chase the horses. All aboard, gents.”
• • •
No two conveyances can be more different, but that stagecoach day was our voyage on the Jemmy out the Firth of Clyde over again. It has taken me this long to see so, among all else that I have needed to think through and through. But my meaning here is that just as the Clyde was our exit from cramped Scotland to the Atlantic and America, now Rob and I were leaving one Montana for another. The Montana of steel rails and mineshafts and politics for the Montana of—what? Expanse, definitely. There was enough untouched land between Craig and Augusta to empty Edinburgh into and spread it thin indeed. Flatten the country out and you could butter Glasgow onto it as well. So, the widebrimmed Montana, this was. The Montana of plain arising to foothills ascending to mountains, the continent going through its restless change of mood right exactly here. And the Montana of grass and grass and grass and grass. Not the new grass of spring yet—only the south slopes of coulees showed a green hint—but I swear I looked out on that tawny land and could feel the growth ready to burst up through the earth. The Montana that fledged itself new with the seasons.
The Montana, most of all to us that wheel-voyaging day, of the world’s Rob Barclays and Angus McCaskills. We had come for homestead land, had we? For elbow room our ambitions could poke about in? For a 160-acre berth in the future? Here began the Montana that shouted all this and then let the echoes say, come have it. If you dare, come have it.
• • •
The stagecoach ride was a continuing session of rattle and bounce, but we had no runaway and no breakdown and pulled into Augusta punctual to the minute, and so Rob and I climbed down chipper as larks. Even putting up for the night at what Augusta called a hotel didn’t dim us, cheered as we were by word that a freight wagon was expected the next day. The freighter had passed with supplies for a sheep ranch west of town and would need to come back through to resume the trail northward. “Better keep your eyes skinned for him,” our stage driver advised. “Might be a couple weeks before another one comes through.”
Toward noon of the next day, not only were our eyes still skinned but our nerves were starting to peel.
“He must’ve gone through in the night,” Rob declared, not for the first time. “Else where to hell is he?”
“If he’s driving a wagon through this country at night, we don’t want to be with him anyway,” I suggested. “The roads are thin enough in daylight.”
“Angus, you’re certain sure it was light enough to see when you first stepped out here?”
“Rob. A wagon as long as a house, and four horses, and a man driving them, and you’re asking if they got past me? Now maybe they tunneled, but—”
“All right, all right, you don’t have to jump on me with tackety boots. I’m only saying, where to hell—”
What sounded like a gunshot interrupted him. Both of us jumped like crickets. Then we caught the distant wagon rumble which defined the first noise as a whipcrack.
Rob clapped me on the shoulder and we stepped out into the road to await our freight wagon.
The freighter proved to be a burly figure with a big low jaw which his neck sloped up into, in a way that reminded me of a pelican. He rubbed that jaw assiduously while hearing Rob, then granted in a croaky voice that he could maybe stand some company, not to mention the commerce. We introduced ourselves to him, and he in turn provided: “Name’s Herbert.”
Rob gave him the patented Rob smile. “Would that be a first name, now? Or a last?”
The freighter eyed him up and down as if about to disinvite us. Then rasped: “Either way, Herbert’s plenty. Hop on if you’re coming.”
We hopped. But while stowing our bags and bedrolls I took the chance to inventory the wagon freight. You don’t work in a store such as Cariston’s without hearing tales about wagonloads of blasting powder that went to unintended destinations.
Boxes of axle grease, sacks of beans, bacon, flour, coffee. Some bundles of sheep pelts, fresh enough that they must have come from the ranch where the freighter had just been. Last, a trio of barrels with no marking on them. Herbert saw me perusing these.
“Lightning syrup,” he explained.
“Which?”
“Whiskey. Maybe they’ve heard of it even where you men come from?”
• • •
The first hours of that journey, Rob and I said very little. Partly that was because we weren’t sure whether Herbert the freighter tolerated conversation except with his horses. Partly it was because nothing really needed speaking. Now that we were on our last lap to Lucas’s town, Rob all but glittered with satisfaction. But also, we were simply absorbed in the sights of the land. A geography of motion, of endless ridges and knob hills and swales the wagon track threaded through. And instead of mountains equally all around as in Helena, here tiers of them were stacked colossally on a single horizon, the western. Palisades of rock, constant canyons. Peaks with winter still on them. As far ahead north as we could see, the crags and cliffs formed that vast tumbled wall.
I at last had to ask. “How far do these mountains go on like this?”
“Damn if I know,” responded Herbert. “They’re in Canada this same way, and that’s a hundred fifty miles or so.”
On and on the country of swales and small ridges rolled. Here was land that never looked just the same, yet always looked much alike. I knew Rob and I would be as lost out here as if we had been put on a scrap of board in the middle of the sea, and I was thanking our stars that we were in the guidance of someone as veteran to this trail as Herbert Whomever or Whoever Herbert.
Just to put some words into the air to celebrate our good fortune, I leaned around Rob and inquired of our shepherd: “How many times have you traveled this trail by now?”
“This’ll make once.”
The glance that shot between Rob and me must have had some left over for the freighter, because eventually he went on: “Oh, I’ve drove this general country a lot. The Whoop-up Trail runs along to the east of here, from Fort Benton on up there into Canada. I’ve done that more times than you can notch a stick. This trail meets up with that one, somewhere after this Gros Ventre place. All we got to do, men, is follow these here tracks.”
Rob and I peered at the wheel marks ahead like two threads on the prairie. This time Rob did the asking.
“What, ah, what if it snows?”
“That,” Herbert conceded, “might make them a little harder to follow.”
• • •
After we stopped for the night and put supper in us, Herbert grew fidgety. Twice he got up from beside the campfire and prowled to the freight wagon and back, and then a third time. Maybe this was only his body trying itself out after the day of sitting lumplike on the wagon seat, but somehow I didn’t think so.
Finally he peered across the fire, first at Rob, then at me.
“Men, you look like kind of a trustable pair.”
“We like to think we’re honest enough,” vouched Rob. I thought I had better tack on, “What brings the matter up?”
Herbert cleared his throat, which was a lot to clear. “That whiskey in the wagon there,” he confessed. “If you two’re interested as I am, we might could evaporate a little of her for ourselves.”
I was puzzling on “evaporate” and I don’t know what Rob was studying, when Herbert elaborated: “It ain’t no difference to the saloonk
eeper getting those barrels, if that’s what you’re stuck on. He’s just gonna water them up fuller than they ever was, you can bet your bottom dollar. So if there’s gonna end up being more in those barrels than I started out with anyhow, no reason not to borrow ourselves a sip apiece, now is there? That’s if you men think about this the way I do.”
If Rob and I had formed a philosophy since stepping foot into Montana, it was to try to do as Montanians did, within reason. This seemed within.
Herbert grabbed the lantern and led as we clambered into the freight wagon. Rummaging beneath the seat, he came up with a set of harness awls and a hammer. Carefully, almost tenderly, he began tapping upward on the top hoop of the nearest whiskey barrel. When the barrel hoop unseated itself to an inch or so above its normal latitude, Herbert placed the point of a small awl there in a seam between staves and began zestfully to drill.
“That’s a thing I can do,” Rob offered as soon as the freighter stopped to rest fingers. Rob had hands quick enough to shoe a unicorn, and now he moved in and had the drilling done almost before he started.
This impressed even Herbert. “This ain’t your profession, is it?”
“Not quite yet. Angus, have you found the one with the tune?”
A straw to siphon with was my mission, and from a fistful off the floor of the wagon I’d been busily puffing until I found a sturdy one that blew through nicely. “Here’s one you could pipe the Missouri River through.” Rob drew his awl from the hole and delicately injected my straw in its place. Herbert had his cup waiting beneath when the first drops of whiskey began dripping out. “She’s kind of slow, men. But so’s the way to heaven.”
When each of our cups was about two inches moist and the barrel hole plugged with a match stick and the hoop tapped back into place to hide it, Herbert was of new manufacture. As we sat at the campfire and sipped, even his voice sounded better when he asked intently: “How’s the calico situation in Helena these days?”