Shortgrass Song

by Mike Blakely

  The wooden flume began at the reservoir on Javier’s quarter section. Caleb followed it downstream until it reached the top of the cutbank and emptied into an irrigation ditch on his father’s homestead. The ditch led near the cabin, where Caleb veered from it, passed Buster’s wildflower garden, walked under the limbs of the young cottonwoods, and went into the cabin to throw his dirty clothes in a pile at the foot of his bed.

  He went back outside, passed his mother’s grave, and rejoined the irrigation ditch between two fields of waving wheat. Crimson paintbrushes bloomed along one stretch of the ditch where Buster had scattered their seeds. He jumped the morning glory vines that climbed the fence rails bordering Buster’s claim. The ditch branched into laterals that fed a thirty-acre truck patch. Buster could grow enough there to get through the dry years, as long as it didn’t get so dry that the creek quit running.

  Buster always washed up with warm water and lye soap outside the one-room cabin on his homestead. When Caleb got there, he found the tub emptied and resting upside down on the ground, and heard fiddle music coming from the open cabin door.

  “Come on in,” Buster said, when Caleb stuck his head through.

  “‘Turkey in the Straw,’” Caleb suggested.

  Buster’s cabin stood on bare ground, but he had hauled several loads of sawdust from Colorado City to spread across the floor. He had sewn a bunch of burlap bags together, stretched them over the sawdust, pegged them to the ground around the inside walls, and made a fine carpet of them. He didn’t even have to sweep because dirt and dust filtered through the burlap and into the saw-dust.

  There was just enough room inside for the two pine bedsteads strung with rope, a table and chairs, a cook-stove set on a flagstone foundation, and shelves where Buster kept his food, clothes, and personal possessions.

  One of the shelves held a number of cloth tobacco pouches the cowboys had emptied and thrown away. In the little drawstring pouches, Buster kept different varieties of wildflower seeds, which he planted around his cabin and in the garden Ab made him keep up to supply Ella’s grave with color. He had seeds in such variety that blooms opened from April to November in the garden, along the irrigation ditch, and all around his house.

  Caleb entered the cabin and sat on the bunk he often slept in when he stayed too late at night practicing songs with Buster. “What do you think she’ll be like?” he asked, tapping his foot to “Turkey in the Straw.”

  Buster lifted the bow from the strings. “Who? Matthew’s gal? Well, I gather she’ll be pretty. Matthew has a weakness for the pretty ones. And I reckon she’ll be stuck-up—rich gal like that. What do you think?”

  “I guess she’ll have to be about as crazy as a coot to want to marry that hardhead,” Caleb said.

  Buster laughed, propped the fiddle up in its open case, and tightened the horsehairs on the bow a couple of turns. “Go out to the wagon and get that ripsaw for me.”

  “What for?”

  “Just go get it. I want to show you something.”

  Caleb went out to the wagon and brought back the saw.

  “Watchin’ you rip those boards today made me remember somethin’ I learned a long time ago,” Buster said, taking the tool. He held the saw handle between his knees, with the sawteeth pointing in toward him, and grabbed the end of the blade in his left hand. He took the fiddle bow in his right hand, stroked it against the straight back of the steel blade, and arched the blade with the thumb and fingers of his left hand.

  The saw began to sing. It sang higher when Buster bent the blade in a tighter arch, and lower when he curved it less. Its voice wavered like a tortured soul of the spirit world when he wobbled the vibrating steel. It sang in a tone more lonesome than the most distant wolf howling on the darkest night, and more sorrowful than the coldest winter wind whipping down a smokeless chimney.

  However doleful the saw sang, though, it was still music, and music made Caleb smile. He shivered with the weird vibrations as the saw moaned “Come to the Bower.”

  Pete’s freshly polished boots stepped onto the burlap carpet. “What in the world is that sound?”

  “Buster’s playing’ a ripsaw,” Caleb said over the trembling voice of the musical tool.

  Pete eyed the saw with disbelief. “Well, I’ll be danged. I would have never guessed. It sounded just like a cross-cut saw.” He elbowed Caleb and listened to the saw wail as if every stroke of the fiddle bow pained it like a hot iron.

  Javier entered the little cabin and took off his sombrero. “¡Válgame Dios!” he said. “That music, it makes my heart like a bullet.” He clutched his shirt in the V of his vest.

  Buster ended the tune with a long, lonesome note that climbed two octaves and quavered to death on its way to the third.

  “I swear, Buster,” Caleb said, “I believe you could make a sledgehammer play if you touched that fiddle bow to it.”

  “Y’all had the dogs howlin’ all the way over to the bunkhouse.” Sam Dugan, the new ranch hand, followed his voice into the cabin. “What was that god-awful racket, anyhow?”

  “Buster burned hisself pissing up the stovepipe,” Javier suggested with a ribald grin.

  “Sounded like it.” Sam leaned his lanky body against the doorframe and stuck his thumbs under his belt. “What are y’all doin’ sittin’ around here. There’s a lady comin’ to the ranch, ain’t there? Shouldn’t we be shovelin’ up all the horseshit or somethin’?”

  “What for?” Javier asked. “Matthew is going to bring her here in a surrey. She is going to have to look at a horse’s ass all the way here anyway.”

  “Two horses’ asses, countin’ Matthew,” Caleb said.

  Sam sat down on Buster’s handmade table and seemed not to care that it creaked under his weight. “I guess y’all don’t appreciate the fairer sex the way I do. I’d have shoveled up all the horseshit for her. At least that around the house that she might step in.”

  “Hasn’t anybody showed you where the shovels are?” Pete asked.

  Buster put the ripsaw aside and grabbed his fiddle. “Get that guitar out and we’ll tune up,” he said to Caleb.

  As they plucked the strings and adjusted the tuning keys, Sam said, “Buster, the fellers tell me you escaped as a slave.”

  Buster glanced and nodded.

  “They say you rode off to the Indian Territory to rescue one of these boys.”

  “It was Caleb,” Pete said. “The Comanche had him.”

  “I want you to tell me about all of that sometime,” Sam said.

  “That high E is still flat,” Buster said to Caleb. He looked at Sam. “What for?”

  “Well, I got me an idea. I’ve been punchin’ cows too long. I’m gittin’ so bowleggedy I couldn’t stop a pig in a ditch. I’ve decided I’m gonna make a writer.”

  “A writer?” Javier said. “Do you know how to write?”

  “Hell, yes, I know how. I went to school four winters in a row when I was a kid.”

  “You want to write about Buster?” Caleb asked.

  “Well, see, I got me this idea. Since the war, all them slaves across the South have been allowed to go to school and learn to read, ain’t they? How many of ’em you reckon there are? Well, I bet there’s a hundred thousand. And once they learn readin’, what do you think they’ll want to read? You think they’ll want to read about white folks? Hell, no, they’ll want to read about their own kind. So, I’m gonna write a story about a nigger hero, and Buster, here, sounds like just the feller. I guess that ought to make a writer of me. Hell, anything’s better than punchin’ cows.”

  Buster smirked and said he would tell Sam all about his adventures some other day. “Give me the A string. Caleb!”

  The boy was staring dumfounded at Sam. Anything better than punching cows? This Sam Dugan didn’t have the sense of a goat.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  After tuning up the instruments, Buster went to Ab’s cabin and started cooking the meal for Matthew’s guest. Pete, Caleb, and some of the boys sat amon
g the leaves that had fallen from the rows of cottonwoods and waited for the arrival of Amelia Dubois. At last they saw the one-horse surrey approaching, and got up as a body to tuck in their shirts and rake their bangs under their hats.

  When the surrey arrived, Caleb knew instantly that Amelia Dubois was the prettiest thing he had ever seen. He had flirted with a few farm girls at harvest festivals and risked some glances at the painted ladies who worked the sawmill dances in Colorado City, but Amelia had them all beat. Her chestnut hair hung in ringlets around her face, and her hazel eyes batted mischievously. She didn’t seem all that stuck-up or crazy either.

  Matthew, on the other hand, appeared to have lost his mind. He was helping her out of the surrey like some kind of gentleman. He even dressed above his means, wearing a silk suit with a red cravat.

  “Good evening, boys,” he said, with Amelia on his arm.

  She was trying to practice a lot of fine manners but could not hide her distaste of the rude surroundings.

  “Allow me the honor of introducing you all to Miss Amelia Dubois,” Matthew said. “Amelia, this is Javier Maldonado, the manager of the Holcomb cattle interests. And these are a few of the boys: Slim Watkins, Piggin’ String McCoy, and Sam Dugan, lately of Texas.”

  “How do you do, gentlemen,” Amelia said in a melodic voice.

  Sam’s hair fell down in his eyes when he lifted his hat.

  “This is my brother, Pete, straw boss of the ranch. And this is my other brother, Caleb, the hardest-working man in the outfit. He does all the work these dumb cow punchers can’t figure out. Plays a lot of musical instruments, too.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” Amelia said. “Matthew speaks of you so often.”

  Pete said something to her, but Caleb felt too stunned to hear it. Had Matthew called him the hardest-working man in the outfit? Was that the same Matthew he had grown up with?

  Amelia eyed the cabin with caution as she entered. Matthew introduced Ab as a hero of two wars and a noted pioneer of the Front Range. He styled Buster the household chef and general overseer of the Monument Park Agricultural Cooperative.

  Before he would allow Buster to serve the food, Matthew asked Pete to say grace, after which he remarked, “Well said, Pete.” Then he turned to Amelia. “Pete’s going to start a Sunday school on the ranch.”

  Pete blushed.

  “Oh, how wonderful,” Amelia said.

  “Buster and Caleb grow all these vegetables on the farm. Caleb, would you pass the mashed potatoes, please?”

  “Huh?” Caleb said.

  “Kindly pass the potatoes.”

  “Oh. All right.” Caleb didn’t know what to make of it. Matthew couldn’t seem to say anything offensive.

  “Matthew tells me you’re going to play at the Engineers’s Cotillion tonight, Caleb.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I mean, Miss Dubois. Me and Buster will be playin’ there. And Javier, too.”

  “I look forward to hearing some of the regional music. But please, call me Amelia. I’m your age, you know. There’s no need for all the formalities.”

  Caleb nodded and turned red. She didn’t seem his age. She seemed more mature and worldly than he ever thought he would be.

  “Will you be there also, Pete?” Amelia asked.

  “Yes, I always go to the dances,” Pete said.

  “You must be quite a dancer then.”

  “I know the steps, but I can’t quite step ’em like Matthew.”

  “Don’t believe him,” Matthew said. “He can shake a leg with the best of ’em.”

  “I’m certain he can,” Amelia said with a seductive glance.

  “Excuse me,” Ab said impatiently, “but let’s get that fried chicken started.” He took a drumstick and said, “Just what is it your father does down there in that big house south of town, Miss Dubois?”

  “He’s the general manager of the Colorado Springs Company.”

  “Well, just what is that?”

  “It’s one of General Palmer’s ideas,” Matthew said. “Captain Dubois served with General Palmer in the war.”

  “All right, but what does he do?”

  “He’s in charge of getting the town of Colorado Springs started,” Amelia said.

  “Now, that’s something you’ll have to explain to me,” Ab said. “There’s already a town down there. Colorado City, the seat of El Paso County. Why did the general figure he needed another town just to the south of the one that was already there?”

  “General Palmer is quite an idealist,” Amelia said.

  “Yes, quite,” Matthew agreed.

  “He doesn’t approve of the saloons, nor of the mismanagement and squalor of the common frontier settlement. So he sent my father here to organize an ideal little city. We will have parks and libraries and colleges and wonderful neighborhoods.”

  “Even trees,” Matthew added. “Captain Dubois already hauled in a thousand Cottonwood sprouts they dug up on the Arkansas and planted them on the plains where the new town is gonna go.”

  “And we will have a system of waterworks and irrigation, too,” Amelia continued. “In fact, I think I shall suggest to father that he send an engineer to inspect your network of ditches here.”

  “I helped Buster dig ’em,” Caleb said.

  Buster beamed with pride at the kitchen table by the fireplace. He normally ate with the family, but he knew the Dubois mansion employed black servants, and he didn’t want to upset anybody.

  “What does a town need with irrigation?” Ab asked.

  “The Fountain Colony has purchased ten thousand acres around the town site,” Amelia said with little interest as she cut morsels from a chicken breast. “Members of the colony have the option of obtaining farmland in addition to residential lands in town.”

  “Captain Dubois was the first member of the colony,” Matthew said. “He built the first house in town, and the biggest.”

  Ab pointed his fork at Amelia. “What kind of people are they letting in this colony?”

  She dabbed her mouth daintily with a napkin and virtually recited the rules of the colony. “Any person of good moral character may become a member of the colony with a contribution of one hundred dollars and may then choose such lots and lands as are available. The members win title to their lands after making the required improvements. However, there is a clause attached to each land title that says ownership will revert to the colony if the members engage in selling intoxicating liquors as a beverage. General Palmer is a staunch believer in temperance.”

  “As all men should be,” Ab said, punctuating his approval with a bump of his fist on the table.

  “Indeed, all men,” Matthew agreed.

  Pete almost choked on a chicken bone.

  “You sure know a lot about it,” Caleb said.

  Amelia shrugged. “It’s all very tedious, but father rambles on about it constantly.…”

  With all his questions about the Colorado Springs Company and the Fountain Colony answered, Ab abstained from any further conversation around the supper table. He didn’t know whether to consider the intelligence good news or not. General Palmer’s railroad was going to attract more settlers than ever to the region, and with ten thousand acres removed from the public domain by the Fountain Colony, Ab was going to have trouble finding homesteads outside of Monument Park for the settlers. He figured he could pass some of them off as persons of high moral character and get them memberships in the Fountain Colony, but the majority would not have the hundred dollars needed. The general’s narrow-gauge railroad was shaping up as a bag of mixed blessings.

  After dinner, Matthew had to take Amelia back to town so she could get ready for the Engineers’s Cotillion. As soon as the one-horse surrey rolled over the hump in the prairie to the south, Buster sat down on the porch, slapped his knee, and started laughing. “He sure forks it high for that gal!”

  “Yeah, look,” Caleb said, slapping Buster on the back. “Here sits the general overseer of the Monument Park Agricul
tural Cooperative!”

  “And here goes the hardest-working man in the outfit!”

  “Y’all shouldn’t make light of him,” Pete said, grinning all the same. “He’s got it bad for that gal.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Caleb and Buster let Matthew get a few miles down the road with his sweetheart, then piled their instruments into the former wind wagon and hitched a horse. The buggy had long since been restored to its original form, except for the holes in the floorboards where the steering wheel and mast had gone. The mast had become a roof pole for Buster’s cabin, and the sail had rotted covering a stack of whipsawed lumber. The wind wagon had charted no course after its maiden voyage. Buster couldn’t bring himself to sail it without Caleb.

  The engineers and laborers for the Denver and Rio Grande had worn ruts in the road south, but the spring seat made the ride go easy for the musicians. Javier and Pete and half a dozen cowboys followed the buggy on their best horses. They rode past a few homesteads and beyond the rough-hewn cabins of Colorado City to the new railroad town of Colorado Springs.

  Caleb played the harmonica as they traveled, his stomach fluttering with excitement. It happened every time he got ready to play for a crowd. Entertaining was routine to him by now, but still, he always felt nervous for the first two or three tunes.

  The two-story Dubois house rose from the bare plains like a castle. It towered above the log Fountain Colony Building, the tents, and the small frame houses that had taken shape near the new tracks. Only furrows showed where the streets would crisscross the planned neighborhoods.

  Caleb saw the one-horse surrey at the Dubois mansion but noticed Matthew’s spotted mount down by the circus tent that would host the Engineers’s Cotillion. There a dozen cook fires painted smoke across the twilight sky, and the smokestack of the two-ton locomotive, Montezuma, added its own plume of black.