Shortgrass Song

by Mike Blakely

  “Me and Caleb was up tendin’ the ditches, colonel. I don’t know when things are gonna break.”

  “Well, why won’t you come by my office every afternoon to see if I need anything done?”

  “Because if you don’t need anything done, I’ve wasted a ride to town.”

  Ab stomped his peg leg ineffectually on the burlap carpeting. “Once was the time, Buster, when I’d holler and you’d come running. What’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothin’, colonel. You’re just more spread out now. Used to be all the work you needed done was right here on your farm. Now you’ve got that town and those ditches and they’re spread over miles.”

  Ab hissed and turned toward the door. “Tell Amelia I won’t be able to make her dinner tonight. I’ve got books to go over.”

  Caleb drew a breath. He wanted to thank the old man for giving the boardinghouse job to Tess. But he let his father get out of the cabin before he could bring himself to speak.

  “He’s been like that ever since he built that town,” Buster said. “You ain’t never seen him so ornery in your life.”

  “Hell, that’s the way he shows his joy,” Caleb said. “He likes that town.”

  Buster chuckled. “I guess you’re right. Come on, we’d better pick up and get over to the big house.”

  They carried their instruments together in the twilight, past the grove of pines on Buster’s timber-culture claim, under the cottonwoods around Ab’s cabin, and up the lane toward the mansion Pete had built for his bride. “I can’t figure Amelia,” the drifter said as they walked. “She never did like Sam Dugan, and here she is throwin’ him a farewell dinner.”

  “She ain’t as particular as she used to be since she took to workin’ them horses,” Buster said. “A while back Dan come in all bloody from castratin’, and she didn’t even turn her lip up when she seen him.”

  The other guests had gathered at the mansion by the time the musicians arrived. The cowboys looked out of place sitting in the parlor drinking coffee, but they seemed at ease.

  “Sam,” Caleb said as he sat on the sofa. “You never did show much good sense. Here you are, finally manager of this ranch, and you’re gonna up and leave us.”

  Sam shrugged. “Well, when them homesteaders took over the park, the colonel told me I could pick one man to help me run the place and fire the rest. I just couldn’t do it. I’ve about had a bellyful of punchin’ cows, anyhow. Dan and String are gonna stay and run the outfit. I’m goin’ to New York to sell my book.”

  Amelia and Gloria brought in a silver serving set and refilled the coffee cups.

  “You finally get that thing writ?” Caleb said. “What’s it called?”

  “‘Thom Moses, Colored Hero of the West,’” Sam said.

  “Buster says it reads pretty good, but he don’t hardly like the way I changed up his fight with Indians back in ’64.”

  “With the wolf-getter gun?” Caleb asked, dredging up the recollections as if he had only read them in a book himself.

  The author nodded. “I had Thorn Moses shoot one brave and stab three others with the spike he built to stick that wolf-getter gun in the ground. Buster said that was just too much killin’.”

  Ab’s Chinese cook had been listening quietly in a cushioned armchair. “Next book you write, you call it ‘Lee Fong, Chinaman Outlaw,’” he said.

  “Lee Fong,” Dan Brooks said, “nobody’d have you as an in-law, much less an outlaw.”

  Piggin’ String McCoy laughed so hard that he spilled the coffee he was blowing in his saucer.

  “Why must you always saucer your coffee?” Amelia said, running for a towel.

  “To cool it off,” String said. “What else is a saucer for?”

  “To rest the cup on, of course,” she shouted from the kitchen.

  “I thought that’s what the coffee table was for,” String said, leaving a ring on the hardwood. “Speakin’ of outlaws”—he paused and drew back as Amelia worked furiously with the towel—“that Miss Wiley at the boardin’ house in town told us about you killin’ off a couple of bad ones in the territory.”

  Caleb nodded vacantly. He didn’t feel like going into that again. “Had some help from Long Fingers,” he said. “That reminds me. The chief says he’s comin’ up in the spring, if the agents will give him a pass.”

  “How old is he?” Dan asked.

  “I don’t know. He still sits a horse straight. Tough old stob.”

  “What’s he comin’ up here for?” String said.

  “Buster’s been invitin’ him for years.”

  “What?” Gloria said, wheeling on Buster as she carried a coffeepot among the guests. “You ain’t gonna have no wild Indian stay with us!”

  Sam tried to laugh and swallow at the same time. He sprayed coffee all over Dan and started coughing. He reached for the makings of a cigarette, as he always did when the fits of hacking came on him.

  “Oh, woman,” Buster said. “He ain’t a wild Indian. Is he Caleb?”

  Amelia went back to work with the towel.

  “He ain’t no wilder than Piggin’ String.”

  “That’s wild enough,” String drawled. “Gloria don’t ’llow me in her house neither.”

  The laughter of the cowboys rose and fell, and a shrill cry came from the stairway.

  “That’s Little Pete,” Amelia said to Gloria. “I’ll get him.” She took the front of her skirt in hand as she sprinted up the stairs.

  Sam licked the cigarette paper and rolled it around the tobacco.

  “Looks like you’re about to meet your nephew,” Buster said.

  “About time,” Caleb replied. “It’s a good thing you and Gloria had a boy, too, Buster. That way him and Pete can grow up playin’ together.”

  “It sure is a good thing,” Gloria said. “I couldn’t stand to see no daughter of mine pushin’ them plows.”

  “I wouldn’t make a girl plow,” Buster said.

  “I don’t know…”

  Buster rolled his eyes at the men.

  Amelia entered with her baby and put Little Pete in Caleb’s arms. “Meet your uncle Caleb,” she said, cooing to Little Pete. “Yours is sleeping like an angel, Gloria.”

  Caleb blushed and held the baby awkwardly in his arms. He put the stub of his left index finger in the baby’s hand. “Good firm grip,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s for holdin’ onto broncs or makin’ chords on a banjo.”

  “He could learn both, if someone would stay around long enough to teach him,” Amelia said. She looked curtly at Caleb, ignoring the sudden silence around her.

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  “How did you learn about these things?” Buster asked. He was holding the walnut box of a telephone against the wall of his Cincinnati house so Caleb could nail it in place.

  “I’ve seen ’em used on some of those great big ranches down in Texas,” he mumbled, gripping his nails with one side of his mouth. He was growing his mustache long again, and the little iron spikes looked like straight, square whiskers jutting from his lip. “They use ’em there so they won’t have to send line riders out with messages all the time.”

  “What give you the idea I needed one?”

  “That day the old man busted into your cabin and tore into you about not bein’ handy all the time. I figured if we ran a few telephones between here and his office in town, he could put you to work about twenty-four hours a day.”

  Buster grunted. “That’s probably just what’ll happen, too. How come you didn’t order more wire? You got to have a lot of wire to go between the boxes.”

  “Already got it strung,” Caleb said.

  “Where?”

  With the palm of his hand he wiped the glaze of moisture from the inside of the cold windowpane and pointed at the nearest corner post of Buster’s cow pasture. “Right there. Top strand.”

  “You’re gonna hook it up to bobwire?”

  “That’s the way they do it in Texas. The corner of your pasture connects with the ol
d man’s south pasture. His south pasture runs right by his cabin and Amelia’s house one way and dang near all the way to town the other way. No need to string new wire when we already got it runnin’ all over the park.”

  “And that works?” Buster asked.

  “Except when it rains,” Caleb said, pounding in the last nail.

  Gloria came in from Amelia’s mansion to fix Buster’s dinner. “What are you two doin’ to my house?” she asked with no slight concern.

  “Puttin’ in a telephone,” Buster said.

  “Telephone? Are we gonna be able to talk to the folks in town?”

  Buster nodded. “We’re gonna hook it straight to Colonel Ab’s office.”

  “Not that town! I was talkin’ about the Springs. Ain’t you gonna hook it up to Colorado Springs?”

  “Woman, you don’t know anybody with a telephone in Colorado Springs anyhow.”

  “If I had a telephone that would go there, I might get to know some of them! Why did you put it there by the front door? Why didn’t you put it in the kitchen where I could use it?”

  “You can use it here,” Buster said.

  “Next time you go messin’ with my house, you better ask me first.” She stormed through the parlor and into the kitchen.

  Caleb grimaced and Buster rolled his eyes.

  After dinner they drilled a hole in the parlor wall, despite Gloria’s protestations. They ran two smooth telephone wires through the hole. One of them went along the side of the house and into the ground. The other ran out from under the porch roof and across the yard to the fence surrounding Buster’s cow pasture.

  Standing in the dirty slush of week-old snow, they attached a tall pole to a fence post to suspend the telephone wire high above Buster’s front yard, over the heads of riders and wagon drivers. They ran the smooth wire down the high pole and connected it to the top strand of barbed wire on Buster’s fence.

  Buster looked down the fence line toward Ab’s south pasture and saw that the barbed wire circuit wasn’t continuous. “I guess we got to run a high wire over the gate, too,” he said.

  “I thought you didn’t know nothin’ about a telephone.”

  “Common sense,” he said, shrugging.

  “The most uncommonest kind of sense there is, ain’t it? The world’s shy on it, but you sure got your share.”

  They lashed a tall pole on either side of the gate, held tightly in place with twisted wire. They spliced a length of wire to the top strand on the fence, ran it over the tops of the tall poles, and spliced it again to the top barbed wire on the other side of the gate. Now the gate could be opened and wagons could pass underneath without breaking the circuit.

  They hitched Buster’s farm wagon and loaded a spool of wire, some poles, a few fence-working tools, and three other telephone boxes. They drove to the corner of Buster’s pasture where it joined with Ab’s big south pasture, inspecting the barbed telephone wire along the way for breaks. At the corner, they spliced the top strand of Buster’s fence to the top strand of Ab’s.

  They traced the top strand of barbed wire around the perimeter of the big pasture and back toward the Holcomb Ranch headquarters. They encountered two barbed wire gaps and a gate and had to install more tall poles and splice more wires over the passages. Toward late afternoon they came to a corner where three fence lines met. One led toward Ab’s log cabin. Another led past Amelia’s mansion.

  “Whose telephone are you gonna put in next?” Buster said.

  “Well, I don’t know. What’s Gloria fixin’ for Amelia’s supper tonight?”

  “Duck.”

  “Duck? You sure?”

  “I shot ’em myself.”

  “Does Gloria cook a good duck?”

  “Oh, she cooks ’em mighty good. She bastes that duck in butter and drippin’s, then she stuffs it and serves it with ’taters, brown gravy, and greens.”

  “And biscuits?”

  “No, Miss Amelia likes white bread.”

  “Doggone it, I guess I’ll put in Amelia’s telephone next, then.”

  They inspected the top strand of wire from the corner post to Amelia’s horse stalls, where they would have to set several poles in the ground along a line running from the stalls to the mansion.

  “Where are we goin’ with the wire?” Buster asked, grabbing the posthole diggers.

  “I don’t know. I better go ask Amelia where she wants her telephone.”

  Gloria answered the door when he knocked. Before Caleb could get a word out, she said, “Miss Amelia said to hang it on the kitchen wall. She said there ain’t nothin’ ruder than somebody talkin’ on a telephone in the parlor when they have real-live guests sittin’ in the room with them, or when somebody’s trying to read the paper under the light. Captain Dubois had him a telephone in his parlor, and Miss Amelia made him move it to the kitchen.”

  “Wherever she wants it is fine with me,” Caleb said.

  “She told me to ask you if you want to stay for supper tonight.”

  “Why, yes, I would. I’d never pass up a chance to eat your cookin’, Gloria.”

  She smirked. “I guess I better stuff another duck then.” She turned into the mansion, closing the door in Caleb’s face.

  Gloria made Buster drive her home after the poles had been set and the telephone wires strung into the kitchen. The roast-duck dinner was on the table, so Caleb put aside the varnished walnut box with the polished black mouthpiece jutting from it like a blunderbuss. Holcomb Ranch’s dawn of electric communications would have to wait until after supper.

  When they sat down, Amelia asked Caleb to say the blessing. He turned red and felt a hot flush but said he would try. It was just Amelia there, after all.

  “Heavenly Father,” he began, “we thank you for these wild ducks and this garden truck and all. Not to mention store-bought things like salt and pepper and coffee.” His tongue got mired for a moment, but he recovered. “And for the good friends and family to share it with, and the memory of them that can’t be with us. In Christ’s name we pray, amen.”

  Amelia smiled, her eyes glittering beautifully. “That was very nice,” she said.

  “Well, it ain’t as good as Pete used to pray.” He grabbed a fancy china bowl full of mashed potatoes. “I’m sure glad you asked me to supper tonight. This roast duck beats the likes of what I’ve been feeding on—poke salad and peckerwood eggs mostly.”

  She threw back the corner of a napkin wrapped around a loaf of well buttered bread. “Well, you look gaunt. You probably haven’t eaten a decent meal in months.”

  “The last one I had was down in Long Fingers’s village,” he said, taking a slice of steaming bread. “Big victory celebration. They made the chief’s favorite dishes.”

  “What would that be?”

  “Roast dog and unborn calf!” He grew wide-eyed and grinned at Amelia.

  She paused with her fork before her lips but choked back her protestations and ate. “Caleb,” she said, sipping her tea. “I’ve been thinking of selling our cattle to make more pasture available to the horses. The Appaloosas are getting very popular among the people in town Would you be available next summer to round the cattle up and market them for me?”

  “Hadn’t thought that far ahead,” Caleb replied. He forked a load of roast duck into his mouth.

  “I wouldn’t ask, but I can’t do it myself, you know. And I thought … if you were going to be here…”

  Caleb grunted. His eyes shifted as his jaws performed some unusual mastications.

  “Caleb?”

  In a moment he put his fingers to his lips and removed a small lead pellet from the end of his tongue. He dropped it onto the floral china with a clink. “Buster’s eyes must be goin’ bad. He used to shoot ’em clean in the head every time.”

  * * *

  After supper, Caleb insisted on hooking up the telephone as Amelia soaked dishes for Gloria to wash the next day.

  “Now, see this wire?” he said, explaining the contraption. “That run
s out there to the top strand of the fence and all the way over to Buster’s Cincinnati house, and it’s hooked up to his telephone. Now, listen, don’t ever hold onto that top wire. Don’t grab aholt of it if you’re crawlin’ through the fence or somethin’, because if somebody just happens to crank on this handle, it’ll send a jolt through you like lightning.”

  Amelia frowned over her shoulder. “Is it dangerous?”

  “Well, it won’t kill you or anything, but it won’t tickle either.” He hooked up the battery and the ground wire, made a final splice, and closed the hinged front of the telephone box.

  “May I try it?” she asked, drying her hands on a dish towel.

  “I don’t see why not.” He stepped back to let her send the maiden signal.

  Amelia angled the blunderbuss upward and turned the magneto handle as if grinding a coffee mill for an army.

  “Whoa!” Caleb said. “You’re liable to spook Gloria up the chimney like that.”

  “Hello?” she said. “Buster?”

  Caleb could hear the tinny strains of the Thompson household rattling from the earpiece.

  “I woke the baby,” Amelia said, making a pained face at Caleb.

  “Oh, Lord, you’re gonna catch it now.”

  “Let me speak to her, Buster.… Gloria?” She pulled the earpiece away from her chestnut tresses and grimaced. “Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t know. The dishes?” She swept her eyes across the ceiling. “No, I’m soaking them. Yes. In the morning. Very well. Good night.” She hung the earpiece on its spring-loaded cradle.

  “She’s about got you trained, Amelia.” He noticed a strange look on her face.

  “I just made the first telephone connection in Monument Park. Perhaps I should have thought of something more profound to say.”

  He shrugged. “Well, soakin’ the dishes ain’t just rat shot.”

  Amelia smiled at him and shook her head. “Pete always said you had the most picturesque ways of expressing yourself. He envied you for that.”

  Caleb felt his astonishment pull at his face. “Envied me?”