by Lauran Paine
Shanley folded the paper carefully and pocketed it. “Part of it,” he said. “The rest I got on the Soldier’s Bounty Act.”
“Well, well,” Muller said, then lapsed into momentary and thoughtful silence. After a while he gestured toward Shan’s horse. “Tie him up and come in for a spell. Maybe you ain’t eaten yet. By the way … what’s your name?”
“Shan … Ryan Shanley.” He tied the horse to a stud ring in a bare tree and struck his mittened hands together.
“I’m Otto Muller. Let’s get by the stove.”
They entered the house. Mrs. Muller was as broad as her husband. Her features were heavy and impassive except for the eyes and mouth that showed a force and patience adding up to wisdom. She acknowledged Shanley’s presence with a smile, set another place at the table without speaking, and herded both men close to the stove. Otto Muller hung his coat over the back of a chair and motioned for Shan to sit.
The house was like the people, Shanley thought, square, sturdy, unimaginative, built for durability, for great strength. Its furnishings were the same; everything was functional. When they ate the noon meal, the food was heavy and nourishing, and after the meal was over Muller went to an under-stair closet dark as a tomb and brought back a crockery jug that he set resoundingly upon the table.
“Two glasses, Mama.”
She brought them, thick and heavy, of cloudy, imperfect glass. Muller sat down and pushed the jug toward Shanley. “Better’n firewood,” he said, eyes twinkling.
They drank and talked. Muller had been in Wyoming seven years. His long-dead father had emigrated from Silesia in 1838. Otto and his wife had never had any children. He said it in solemn tone and his wife did not look up from where she was slicing cabbage and listening. Then Muller brightened, seemed to turn away from his own past and peer at Shan.
“I thought soldiers liked girls and towns … there ain’t much like that around here.”
Shan smiled. He was warm and full and beginning to feel drowsy. “Not towns,” he said, and Muller laughed in understanding. “I don’t care if I never see another town.” He sipped the whiskey. “This is good. You make it?”
“I buy it from an Indian trader. Well, what’re you going to do with all that land?”
“Go to ranching, I expect.”
Muller’s eyebrows went up a little. “Soldier-rancher? You know anything about it, about cattle, horses, haying, ranch work?”
“I’ll learn,” Shan said.
“It’s hard work.”
Shan shrugged carelessly.
Mrs. Muller spoke then. “There’s nothing to live in out there.”
Shan stood up. His mouth curved upward. “I’ve lived like a hog for four years, expect I can stand it for another year or so.”
Otto Muller also arose. “I’ll help you put up a cabin,” he said. His eyes were watering a little and there was splotchy dark color in his face. He gestured more than usual as he spoke. “You got plenty timber up there. We’ll make a cabin and maybe a barn.”
Shan protested. “You’ve got your own chores. Besides, what’m I to you? Just a soldier rode in is all.”
“Hah! This is winter. Nothing much to do in winter, feed a little, drink a little to keep warm, chop wood, trap maybe. You ride up there, take a long look around, then come back. Supper’ll be ready.”
When Shan rode away from the Muller place, the sun was slipping off into the West. He saw the faces watching from a window and waved. He felt good. He also felt drunk. Good people. He didn’t laugh at the two-story house now. Fine people for neighbors. Otto’d said something about some other folks living farther out, beyond his land, but he’d only half heard. Anyway, Otto hadn’t said very much about them, only that they lived beyond. It didn’t matter.
He rode in as nearly a northerly line as he could and found the witness tree. After that it was his—whichever way he rode, east, north, or back southward, it was his—and in its nakedness, its gray dismalness, it was Shanley’s empire. He rode at random across it until the sun sank with surprising swiftness, the cold closed down with its weighted and bitter silence, then he dismounted, beat his hands together, and looked out from a little knoll. He was aware of the booming silence, the inert and brooding distances that surrounded him.
He would make a ranch here—become a rancher. He laughed out loud. The horse turned and looked at him. A rancher! From a slum-corner orphanage in New York’s grime and soot to the army. From four years of soldiering to the Land of Tall Grass—Otto said the Indians called it that, Land of Tall Grass. This endlessness, stillness, loneliness. It bore in on him, worked its way into his soul, into his spirit—his loneliness. That big girl, that Sarahlee Gordon. Not loneliness. A man’s mother would have looked like that when she was young and ripe. A man’s mother would look like that old woman down South when she got old. Like Otto Muller’s wife in the midyears. Femaleness, comforting, something warm and smotheringly fragrant. Femaleness—and shame. The longer he thought and stood there, the more vividly could he picture Sarahlee. Big, voluptuous, strong, white flesh, lips parted a little, giving, straining to give. Rubbing his hands in the coach. Rubbing his chest, his shoulders, and his back while his head lay upon her shoulder.
A big vein at the side of his throat pulsed. He’d had boyhood dreams of a mother like that, of an abundantly female woman. Later, in the army, he’d even seen women like that—and different, too, but still women. He hungered and craved and felt ashamed. With Wyoming under his feet, in his eyes, in his nostrils, sharp and tangy and ice-cold, two square miles of it he could have a big girl—in the Land of Tall Grass such a thing could be.
He turned his head with the swelling in his neck and the great pound of his heart like thunder. He’d build the cabin near those trees; there’d be shade there and shelter. Where that fanned-out clearing was he’d put the barn, the big, big barn to match his dreams. He’d get cattle, horses, a wagon, some tools, he’d build and let the pulse of this earth seep in deep—and he’d get the girl.
He stood there until the horse moved, shifted its weight, then he turned toward it, mounted, and started back for the road. He was exhilarated. It wasn’t Muller’s whiskey either; the cold had sucked that artificial heat out of him hours before. There was a meaning to existence, something beyond day-to-day living, eating, drinking, swearing, living in mud, and sleeping. Sleeping … He writhed in the saddle.
The road was empty; shadows lay, sharp and stark-edged, along it. Dusk was curtaining the world with unexpected suddenness. He didn’t heed it. There were fumes in his head, fragrant scents intermixed, Sarahlee and the cold, dark smell of frozen earth.
Otto, returning toward the house from milking, stopped and watched him approach. There was the steaming bucket in his fist and a thoughtful pensiveness in his small, candid eyes. When he called out, the words carried with brittle distinctness over a thousand yards.
“Put the horse in the barn an’ fork him some hay. Supper’ll be ready the time y’get in.”
Shan unsaddled, unbridled, tied the horse, and loaded his cribbed manger. The odors of other animals were rich around him. Nostalgic, too, although he’d never been around animals much. He stood in the doorway a moment, watching an early moon come up, white with an illuminating rind of ice, chaste-looking, as lonely as God. The air hurt his nose, was bitterly cold inside him. Other nights, in warmer climates, he’d seen that big moon all silver-sad. Here its coldness made it different; more aloof, less personal, less concerned with the doings of man. He liked it better this way. Big, round, firm, aloof—you couldn’t reach up and touch it. Like the girl, like Sarahlee Gordon. He moved away from the barn.
At the house Mrs. Muller smiled at his blue lips, red cheeks, and wet eyes. She had a joke inside her at his expense.
“Cold?”
Shan grinned. His teeth were large and even, big and strong like the rest of him. “Cold all right,” he
told her, shedding his hat and greatcoat. “A clean cold, I don’t mind it.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Otto said from the table. His grizzled hair was brushed flat, his face shiny from scrubbing. “In the winter here you spend most of your time keeping warm, doing what’s got to be done and waiting for summer.” He used both hands expansively to wave Shan to a chair at the table. “In the summer you got no time for thinking or planning … just working … so in the winter you plan and try to keep warm.”
From the crackling stove his wife said: “You saw a lot of the war?”
Shan sat down. “1861 to 1865,” he said. “I saw my share of it.” He stared at Otto a moment, on the verge of saying something he never said. Otto returned the look. Something passed between them then, something masculine, and when the meal was nearly finished, Otto brought out the whiskey jug. Shan noticed Mrs. Muller accepted this as a natural thing and it pleased him. Plain people, the Mullers, honest, plain people.
Otto poured the glasses full and talked of cattle, horses, Indians, the weather, Tico, the neighbors, and the past. Words flowed from him as easily as water, as naturally as air. In the things he said and the way he said them Shan understood that Otto felt he was part of Wyoming. He also noticed both Mullers never asked personal questions, which pleased him. The army had been cruelly inquisitive, indifferently unsympathetic to orphandom, disinterested and disdainful after it had laid a man’s soul naked, contemptuous.
Later Otto stood up and only the crackling of the stove broke the hush. “You stay here,” he said to Shan, “until we get your cabin up.”
His wife smiled approval in her quiet, reserved way. “Show him the room, Otto,” she said. There was anticipatory pride in her voice, eagerness. Shan looked down at her. Otto thumped his shoulder and started away. Shan did not want to follow, didn’t want to see the room. He felt embarrassed and confused. Otto rolled as he walked, massive shoulders overburdening the rest of his body.
“Come on. In here, Shan.”
The bed was a real one, not a wall bunk. There was a rag rug, four framed pictures of people who looked stern and rigid. There was even a maple rocker, scarred from the long wagon journey but solid as stone. The whiskey mood made Shan’s eyes smart and burn. He bent, fisted one huge hand, and beat it several times into the pillow, hard.“How do you like it, Shan?”
“Like it,” he said, touching the rocker’s back, looking at the grim people on the walls. “I never lived in anything like it, Otto, I can’t. I’ve got to get back to Tico.”
Otto laughed, a rich and hearty sound. He was immensely pleased; his wife beamed palely from the doorway. “I want to tell you something,” Otto said from his flushed face. “I want to tell you Georgia and me got no family. For me that’s all right, fer her it ain’t. You understand?”
Shan didn’t. He just stood there gazing at Otto.
“Well, it don’t matter, Shan. But you got to stay here, see? We’ll do things this winter. It’ll be different than sitting around the damned stove all winter. We’ll make a cabin up there.”
“Otto, you don’t want to do that. Man, it’s cold up there.”
“Well,” Otto said, cocking his head to one side to look upward, and there was a smile in his little eyes. “Don’t you want a cabin? You want to live in a tepee like an Indian and maybe freeze to death … freeze up solid, Shan?”
“No, of course I …”
“We’ll do it, then, boy.”
“Listen, Otto, it isn’t up to you to look out for me.”
“Hah! I got a reason. I got a real good reason for offering to do this. When it’s time to mark my cattle, you’ll be beholden, see? Say, how tall are you anyway?”
“Six feet four inches.”
“Must weigh two hundred then.”
“Two-twenty.”
Otto wagged his head in admiration. “And young,” he said. “I’m getting older … slower … you could wrestle a calf down like nothing. I need a neighbor like you. Understand now?”
Shan grinned. The sting was gone from his eyes but there was a big lump in his chest and he thrust out his hand. “You’ve got one,” he said.
Chapter Three
The arrangement turned out to be a godsend for Shan. Otto had two strong teams. He had tools and wagons, but more valuable than anything else he had wise and knowing hands. He could build anything, mend, overhaul, plan as though cabins and log barns and ranching were all he’d ever known in his lifetime. Shan learned from him, but slowly. Manual labor came easily but the rest of it—the joining of logs, the notching, fitting of joints, the figuring and scheming—came very slowly and some of it he could not grasp at all, but Otto had patience. He would explain and show him, then do it himself without a cross word.
Shan ached and sweat under the heavy clothing, and cursed wildly at times, became discouraged and occasionally said they ought to quit, but Otto instilled a dogged persistence with his words and actions. Shan kept on working.
When the snow grew blinding-deep and swirling with a fury, they’d putter around the Muller place, and in time Shan became accustomed to the eternal cold, the eye-hurting whiteness, the everlasting stillness that they broke with talk—man talk.
“Gordon? Yes, I recall him. Trapper, sort of. Old man with a shack on the edge of Tico.”
“I rode here on the same stage with his niece.”
Otto stopped working, leaned on a tie-stall partition, and watched Shan muck out. Beyond the glassless window lay a steaming rich mass of manure strong with ammonia scent.
“Oh,” Otto said.
Mrs. Muller clanged the triangle. They went down to the house to clean up and eat. The day was mauve with a hint of storm yet to come. Inside, the stove hissed merrily, the kitchen smelled wonderfully of spices, of meat pie, fresh bread, and something that every household smelled of but that actually had no smell at all—home, belonging, family.
The cabin grew, but slowly because, in spite of Shan’s eagerness and Otto’s wisdom, the weather was defiant. It was tantalizing to see half a cabin, picture it as it must someday be, and not be able to hasten it. Otto laughed.
“When I was your age,” he said, “I was like that … all impatience. Don’t worry, we’ll have it ready come spring.”
“I shouldn’t be living off you, Otto. I don’t feel right about it.”
“When you’re fixed up here, you’ll pay me back. You’ll see.” Otto worked all day making doors while Shan split shakes for the roof.
“Shan, you ever had trouble in your life?”
The ax in hand slowed, dropped to a halt. “Trouble? Sure, who hasn’t had trouble in their life?” The ax rose, descended, and a shake fell away.
“I mean with pretty rough men.”
“Sure, with them, too.” The ax rose above the block of pine but stayed there. “What’s on your mind, Otto?”
Otto removed his little black pipe and spat. “Something you don’t know. The Blessing place is north of you. Art and Amos Blessing, brothers. They’ve used your land for range ever since they came out here. They probably won’t like your taking it up.”
“Well,” Shan replied, “I’m not doing anything wrong.”
“No, but folks are funny. They resent newcomers. The Blessings will.”
Shan let the ax hit the block, watched the shingle fall away. “They’re tough?”
“Yes,” Otto said with finality, and returned to fitting the door. “They’ve got a reputation for being fast with their guns and even faster with their dislikes.”
Shan said nothing. They worked until the early shadows came, then climbed into the wagon and set out for home. On the way Shan said: “If they don’t know I’m here until spring, it’ll be too late.”
Otto shook his head. “That won’t matter. They’ll pay you a visit sooner or later. If you’re living here, it won’t make any difference to them, th
ey’ll try to make you fight.”
Shan gazed at his red, chapped hands. “It won’t be the first time I’ve had to fight,” he said.
“With guns, Shan, with pistols? Not hand fighting. Men up here are pretty handy with pistols. They spend a lot of the winters practicing. The Blessings do. I’ve ridden up and seen them at it.”
“I’ve used pistols,” Shan said, “but not like that.”
“That’s what I thought,” Otto said, and fell silent until they were back home, putting up the horses. “You got a pistol?” he asked abruptly.
“Well, I’ve got a Derringer, but not one of those horse pistols.”
“You’ve got to get one. A carbine, too. Even if you never have trouble with the Blessings, you’ve got to have a pistol and a carbine around the place.”
“Next time I go to town,” Shan said. “Got to get down there one of these days, too.”
But he didn’t go to Tico until the doors were hung, the windows finished, and the roof bright with big thick shakes. The cabin smelled new, clean, tangy like the forest. It was large inside, one huge room with an earthen floor Shan intended to plank over later on. It looked long and low and everlasting. There was an opening for a stovepipe, one of the things he would go to Tico to buy.
The barn wasn’t finished but it was far enough along to shelter animals, something else he meant to buy. What he could have gotten along without was a genuine bed with springs and a ticking-mattress, but he knew he’d get those, also. And a wagon, a used one of course, and, if he could eke it out, maybe a driving rig, but that was pure luxury.