Shortgrass Song

by Mike Blakely

  “I don’t suppose he told you that when he returned from the mountains, and found me married, that he flew into such a rage that he murdered Mr. Ludlow in our own home!” She put her hand over her mouth.

  By the light from a window, Caleb saw a tear sparkle in her wild old eye. “No, ma’am,” he said. He was stunned. No one had treated him with more kindness than Burl Sandeen.

  “That horrible devil will never cease to torment me!” she murmured. “To think of him speaking my name … Haven’t you heard the stories?” she demanded.

  “I just couldn’t believe…” he said.

  “Believe it, young man. He’s a bloody murderer who eats human flesh!” She staggered back and clutched her chest, heaving.

  Caleb thought she would collapse. He jumped from the rocker to grab her bony elbow and felt the cold, loose flesh of her forearm. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  She jerked away from him. “Don’t touch me!” She glowered at him, her face half shadowed by the light from the window. The one eye glistened, the only living part of her dried and wrinkled face. Crisp stalks of gray hair stuck up around her head and caught the light like a shattered halo. “He should have eaten you,” she hissed.

  Caleb remembered tracks in the snow: Burl’s over his own. Following him. Hunting him? He backed away, stumbled down the porch steps. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  The old man opened the door and looked out as Caleb mounted. “Who is it?” he shouted, cupping his hand behind his ear.

  Widow Ludlow watched Caleb ride away. She screamed: “Go to bed, Mr. Hazelwood!”

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  He thought he would feel relieved to reach the show grounds again and to be among his new acquaintances. But he didn’t really know any of them. He thought he liked Seagrass Gibson, but what did he know about him? No more than he had known about Burl Sandeen. He wondered about every man he had ever met, from Milt Starling to Washita Jack Shea to Bull Bannon. He didn’t really know any of them. Not even Javier Maldonado. Not Horace Gribble nor Chief Long Fingers. Who were they?

  He knew only Pete and Buster. Pete was dead.

  This was the drifter’s life. Loneliness. He knew more about music than he knew about people. He knew his horse better than his friends. He barely knew his woman. He didn’t know his children at all. He was wasting his life. A saddle tramp. He should have stayed. Amelia wanted him there. Buster Thompson was the one man he knew. He should have stayed home.

  “Hey, Catgut!” someone said, stepping out of the glowing beer-garden tent. “The girls’ll dance if you’ll fiddle for us. Will you?”

  He held the gelding back. “Will I? Hell, that’s all I’m good for. I reckon I will.”

  So he carried his fiddle into the tent and leaned his bow hard on the strings, escaping in song. He made the instrument moan and sing; he made it drone like a bagpipe he had once heard played by a Scottish ranch manager. He stomped music from his boots, sweated harmony from his pores.

  And he played his crowd as well as any song or hollow box with strings, soaking in the applause, filling for a time the loneliness inside. When he sang, the air he breathed was pure elixir. They took turns looking up at him in wonder and envy, and Major Bannon could hardly tear his admiring eyes away. Finally Bull had to stop the music and send the players to bed.

  But the great power continued to engulf Caleb as he traveled alone through the darkness of the tent city. Tunes merged in his head as he went about the motions of removing his saddle and turning Powder River into the pen. He carried his weightless tack to his canvas tepee and dropped it inside. He fell on his bedroll, almost exhausted.

  Then, before he could sleep, the helplessness returned, rushing down on him like an avalanche. The crowd was gone, its memory worthless. He was suddenly sick and hollow. Glory forsook him like a bullet and discarded him, a smoking empty shell. He lay in his tent, desperate and vacant. He had no one, felt nothing. Cold blowing winds seemed to echo inside of him. Stones falling in hollow canyons, blasts of faraway lightning. Every breath hurt like black smoke. What was the use? Pete was dead. What was the use of anything?

  It should have been me, he thought. Oh, why couldn’t it have been me?

  Then the words began to whisper. They sang down to him, and he breathed them in like oxygen. He lay limp, absorbing the lyrics like a tree taking life from sunlight. They formed the essence of everything he knew, all that had gone right and gone wrong in his past and all that would move him into the future. He sang them soundlessly, again and again in his head. It was the end of something he had started years before under the Rampart Range. It was the beauty and sorrow of his life in song.

  There was a guitar somewhere in the tepee. He rolled to all fours and crawled around in the dark, feeling. His knuckle thumped against the box and knocked a chordless sound from it. He pulled the instrument across his lap and placed his calloused fingertips over the strings.

  * * *

  Bull Bannon was walking from the darkened beer garden to the shiny red Pullman car when heard the singing. He stopped, tossed a golden curl back from his ear, cocked his head to one side, and listened. He stayed for a verse or two, then shrugged and walked away as the strange sad words faded behind him. That Catgut Caleb Holcomb knew songs he had never even heard of.

  * * *

  The next day, after the opening performance of his Extravaganza of the Western Wilds, Major Bannon caught up with Caleb on his way to the beer garden. The showman was beaming over the reaction of the audience to his first show. He strode long in his famous buckskin suit, well pleased with his success.

  “Come on, Catgut,” he said. “I’ll introduce you. I know just the tune to grab the crowd’s guts.”

  When they entered the tent, Caleb made his way among the saloon girls to the stage, Bannon falling behind, being swamped by admirers. The fiddler began tuning up, hoping he wouldn’t disappoint Bull. He didn’t know if he was in much of a mood for playing today.

  When he finally reached the stage, the major turned to the city gents in the beer garden and said, “Gentlemen, your attention please. Our own Catgut Caleb Holcomb—authentic minstrel of the western wilds, Rocky Mountain troubadour, a cowboy of no small renown—will now favor us with a song.” He gestured so pointedly that the fringes on his buckskin suit almost shook themselves into tangles. “Catgut!” he cried. “Play the ‘Shortgrass Song’!”

  Caleb raised his fiddle but only gawked at Bull. “Sir?”

  “The ‘Shortgrass Song.’ You know, the one about the drifter. He comes riding down from the mountains, out of the trees, and into the shortgrass country. I heard you practicing it last night in your lodge, son. The ‘Shortgrass Song.’”

  Caleb balked. Some of the words were not even a day old. Others he had known for years. He put his fiddle down, picked up the guitar, and put the strap of rattlesnake skin behind his head. “I’ll give it a try,” he said. “But I only just learned it here lately.”

  Bannon laughed. “Such modesty!” he cried. “They only make them like this out west, gentlemen!” He urged Caleb to play with a flourish of his hand.

  The minstrel of the western wilds stepped to the edge of his platform and looked over the audience. He had never intended to play this one for anybody. It was like doing “Camptown Races” the day his mother died. He thanked God they didn’t know he had made it up himself. To them, it was just another western ditty. He started strumming with his short-fingered left hand and entered uncertainly into a thing Major Bannon had termed the “Shortgrass Song.”

  The drifter rode in on a westerly breeze,

  To the shortgrass country, out of the trees.

  Down t’wards the meadows he galloped until

  He stopped in the shadows cast long ’cross the hill.

  He swung from the saddle, loosened the girth,

  Dusted his clothes of the soil of God’s earth,

  Hung his old hat on a slick saddle horn,

  Looked o’er the wheat fields and broad rows of c
orn.

  Indian blankets grew ’round the gravestone.

  Paintbrushes, too, where their seeds had been thrown,

  And his home was not even a mile out of sight,

  But he’d throw down his bedroll and stay for the night.

  He rode in from the West,

  Down from the Rockies and onto the plains

  To the land he loved best,

  Where he could never remain.

  Born within sight of the high mountaintops,

  He grew up ’round plow horses, cattle, and crops.

  With his older brother, he carried his load.

  They tended the fields and the ranges they rode.

  Hardworkin’ farm boys and ranchers by trade,

  They lived with the fortune the family had made,

  But the drifter forever looked over the hills

  And dreamed of the mountains’ adventures and thrills.

  When he came of age, he decided to roam.

  He said, ‘There’s a life I must live on my own.’

  And he promised his brother, that day, one sure thing,

  He’d return with his tales of adventure each spring.

  And then he rode into the West,

  Up to the Rockies, away from the plains,

  From the land he loved best,

  Where he could never remain.

  The drifter was faithful, returned every year.

  His brother was eager his stories to hear,

  And he’d watch o’er the hilltop when wildflowers bloomed,

  ’Til the drifter rode down through the air they perfumed.

  At nights, by the fireplace, he’d listen to tales

  Of wild West adventures and hard-ridden trails,

  Of mountains so high that the trees didn’t grow,

  Of deserts so wide and of canyons so low.

  The brothers, together, would ride o’er the plains,

  Bound by the blood that ran red through their veins,

  And they’d savor each moment together until

  The drifter would saddle up, bound o’er the hill.

  And then he’d ride into the West,

  Up to the Rockies, away from the plains,

  From the land he loved best,

  Where he could never remain.

  Early one mornin’ while coyotes cried,

  The elder son went for a deer-huntin’ ride,

  For he’d saddled his pony and loaded his gun,

  And was off with the first eastern glow of the sun.

  The stallion was nervous to smell of the snow

  Whistled in by a norther beginnin’ to blow,

  When across a box canyon, the hunter, in luck,

  Leveled his sights on a wide-antlered buck.

  The cloudy sky rumbled, the Winchester roared,

  The cow pony stumbled, the freezin’ rain poured,

  The wide-antlered buck and the hunter both fell

  Into the box canyon, as deep as a well.

  He died there in the West.

  Over the prairies, the drifter rode on.

  When they laid him to rest,

  None could bear sayin’, ‘He’s gone.’

  So they buried him under the homecoming trail

  That the drifter returned on each year without fail

  When he read the inscription, he got down and cried,

  For he knew from the gravestone his brother had died.

  And his home was not even a mile down the hill,

  But he stayed for a promise he had to fulfill.

  He camped there that evenin’, and he camps there each year

  To tell his wild stories for his brother to hear.

  And now every year when the drifter rides west,

  He carries a package of seeds in his vest.

  And he stops on the hill, throws ’em all ’round the tomb

  And each spring a new wildflower memorial blooms.

  And then he rides into the West,

  Up to the Rockies, away from the plains,

  From the land he loves best,

  Where he can never remain.

  The drifter found Bull Bannon alone that night and told him he couldn’t go east with the show.

  “Not you, too, Catgut,” the showman cried, throwing his hands into the air. “Seagrass was just in here to tell me the same damn thing. Said he didn’t want to miss the cattle drive from Texas. Says there might not be many more of them. I hope you have a better reason.”

  “I believe I do,” Caleb said. “I have to marry the mother of my children and take her home so’s I can run my pa’s ranch.”

  Bannon shook his head. “You boys are fools for the cow business.” He tried to change the young man’s mind, but he could tell it was no use. He was going to have to find another tent-show fiddler. Oh, but there would never be another like Catgut Caleb Holcomb.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  Sam Dugan didn’t understand the principles of delegation. As manager of the Holcomb Ranch, he could have taken up a life of easy riding, making the rounds on the spread, looking after his subordinates. But Sam still roped, branded, castrated, and earmarked with the cowboys on the bottom of the payroll.

  He even did fence work, a job so demeaning that Sam couldn’t bear to force it on anybody else. He did almost all of the fence riding on his own, and lately there had been plenty of it to keep him busy.

  The sentiment against fences on public land had been growing. Holcomb Ranch, as one of the most flagrant fence outfits on the Front Range, was a constant target for retaliation.

  Ab didn’t own most of the land he fenced. The only plots he held exclusive title to flanked Monument Creek. The rest of the range he claimed was public land. But since he owned the nearest water, Ab figured no one else could use the grass.

  His argument had held up before Pete had ordered several wells drilled on the divide to the east of Monument Creek. A windmill at each well pumped just enough water to keep a trough full. The troughs allowed the cattle to better use the grass up on the divides. They didn’t have to walk all the way down to Monument Creek to get water between feeds. They didn’t walk off as much weight.

  But because the windmills were on public land, some nesters thought anyone’s cattle should be able to use the water they pumped. They didn’t see how Ab had the right to fence the range in for his own personal use. Maybe he owned the windmills, but he didn’t own the land or the well water.

  So occasionally some small-time farmer would buy a few head of cattle, cut the Holcomb fence, and let his herd graze the public lands and drink from the wells Pete had drilled. Ab took a dim view of such practice. Any stray cow that showed up on his ranch would be drawn mysteriously into the mountains, and perhaps never found.

  Most of the old nesters feared and respected Colonel Holcomb, even if they did disagree with him on the fencing issue. Only the newcomers attempted to break his monopoly of Monument Park, and none of them had the resources to fight long.

  In his own mind Ab knew he was right in claiming everything inside his fences. It was not just a matter of legal ownership, private or public land. He was first in Monument Park. He had fought Indians and defended Colorado against the Confederates. He had beaten droughts and plagues. He had worked hard and buried loved ones. He knew what was rightfully his.

  Sam Dugan, as ranch manager and head fence fixer, knew as well as anybody how powerful the antifencing sentiment had grown. He was not at all surprised one morning in midsummer to see all five strands of the south fence curled back like whiskers where once they had met between two posts.

  The thing that did surprise him was the size of the herd that had been turned into the Holcomb pasture—the biggest incursion of beeves that had taken place yet. Hooves had turned the ground to bare sand at the hole in the fence. Sam decided to hunt up the cattle and run as many of them as he could find back out through the hole before fixing the fence.

  The tracks told him that the cattle had scattered after entering the pasture, probably s
pooked on purpose by the fence cutters, to make them harder to round up. He headed for the nearest windmill, following a trail left by about a dozen beeves. A half mile from the well, he spotted a scrawny bovine taking in grass on a prairie ridge. It looked at first like a skinny heifer or a young dogie steer. Upon closer examination, however, Sam saw that the stray was actually a bull—though a pitifully flaccid excuse for a breeder.

  Colonel Holcomb wasn’t going to like this at all—a mongrel bull undercutting his imported herd sires, corrupting his Hereford and Durham bloodlines. As he topped the ridge on which the puny bull grazed, Sam came into view of the windmill. Around it stood the sorriest gathering of bulls he had ever seen dangle a set of testicles, and Sam had seen his share. The bull on the ridge seemed like a prizewinner by comparison.

  He loped northward, in search of more trespassing cattle. He found nothing but spindly legged, ridge-backed, ewe-necked bulls. Someone had set out to ruin the Holcomb pedigrees. Someone wanted war with Colonel Ab.

  Before he reached the next windmill, Sam saw a derrick towering over the plains in a new place. Riding to a high roll in the prairie for a better view, he saw a collection of wagons bearing well-drilling tools, lumber, fencing, and farm implements. Half a dozen men were at work, two of them marking off corners. In the middle of them all stood a short, stout man with his hands placed on his hips in a stance of determination, a rifle hung from one shoulder by a leather sling. Sam recognized him instantly.

  When he arrived at Ab’s cabin, his horse was frothed with more sweat than Sam had caused any mount to produce in years. He didn’t bother knocking on the door. It was almost midday, and he knew where Ab would be—sitting in his rocking chair, one legged, staring at the gravestone on the bald hill.

  “Colonel,” he said, out of breath. “You ain’t gonna believe this, but Terence Mayhall is back.”

  The rocker creaked. Ab craned his neck to look at Sam. His eyes swiveled in the slack, pale skin of his face. “What do you mean, he’s back?”

  “Looks like he’s stakin’ a new claim, up near the divide, about a mile from the Pinery. He’s got men with him. They’re drillin’ a well and buildin’ a house.”