The Jump-Off Creek

by Molly Gloss

  He remembered suddenly the time he had quit the Rocking Horse Ranch. He hadn’t thought about that in a while. The boss had had a fine wife, she was a big strong Swede with masses of faded blond hair plaited down her back like a girl, and a laugh that was low like a man’s but quicker and easier. She and the boss had five or six children. Tim had been maybe twenty years old then, and he had thought she was on her way toward getting old. She might have been thirty, or thirty-five. Both years he was there, she had the hands up to the house for a Christmas supper. He had never worked any place before that where the hands ever ate sitting down with the boss and his family. Afterward, in the parlor, they had all stood around with cups of hot applejack and she had brought out for each of them some thing she’d made and wrapped up in tissue paper—it was peanut brittle candy one year, and the other time a little round hazelnut cake soaked in brandy. She liked to talk, and she managed to talk with each one of them about some personal thing so they would know they hadn’t escaped her notice. She asked Tim about the stubborn, bigheaded dun horse he was riding at that time. And about a bone he had broken in his little finger. Whenever she would laugh, he would catch the boss looking at her tenderly over his cup of applejack. The third year as it came around to Christmas, Tim had quit the outfit. There weren’t any damned jobs to be found at that time of year and he had come near starving to death before spring. He hadn’t known why he’d quit, when he was twenty. But after a few years, he began to know.

  Once when he had been pretty drunk he had asked a whore to marry him. And when he had been about thirty, he had ridden a couple of times over to Choteau, Montana, to see a seventeen-year-old girl who soon after had married a logger and moved down somewhere near Missoula. He was forty-one now. He thought, Suit yourself, as he sat looking after Lydia Sanderson’s narrow back. But there wasn’t any great bitterness in it, just a vinegary, helpless discontent.

  23

  9 June (Sunday) Rode the long way to see Evelyn Walker today, we had a poor short visit, her husband’s hired man sick in the barn and she must go back and forth to care for him, and help her husband with the work, the man being too Sick for it. Weather has been hot, if I were Home I would long since have taken the stove down, setting it outside under tarp roof so to cook w/o heating the house red hot. But we are so High up here, nights and mornings are still frosty Cold and I do enjoy the stove then & quilts besides. I am sure Mrs Walker is right about the corn, it would sit & sulk, as indeed the pumpkins are doing which I put in in spite of her good advise. The gray Mule which I named Bill has never put on wt as I hoped, instead got thinner & now has a cough & eats little. I have tried every Remedy and fear the worst. I keep him from Rollin as much as can be. I could not stand long against the Loss of both. Mr Whiteaker has come and cut a score of poles from straight young Pinewood and tho I dislike his Purpose I am glad enough to have them. I have promised myself & the patient Goats I will have a shed & good stout fence before the Weather turns. I know I will be at that work the whole Summer as I am a poor logger and must go a ways to find good trees since A has cut all the ones along the near flat and the ridges are too steep to log. I believe I may use Mr Whiteaker’s poles before that, in walling up the Little House, the hole being well dug now & the Seat I have cut out and been planing & sanding in the evenings as the Daylight has stayed longer. I have had Mr Whiteaker’s offer of Marriage. I believe the only clear thing I felt on the occasion was Fear, as I have been long getting my Independence and am much afraid of losing it through some Need or Circumstance. If, as I feel, the proposal was forced by Loneliness, I am very sorry on that account. Only I shall not submit to the Tyrant myself, having by long denial learned the value of Self Rule.

  24

  There were a few old cows and three horses standing in long shadows on the grass, and a few brown birds on the brown water of the pond. From the fence line above the house she could see neither Mr. Whiteaker nor the Indian, Mr. Odell.

  She liked the way their house sat at the foot of the long sloping park, with the little lake in front of it and the steep wooded ridge standing high behind. The house was dark, unkempt, but she admired the cold-cellar and the site and the post and rail fence going around most of the big meadow, and the steep-roofed shed where stove wood was stacked up in long ricks, and tools and saddles had a place to hang out of the weather. There was not a prosperous aspect about any of it, but it looked well established and was soundly built. She set a high value on those things.

  The dogs, when they saw her, came trotting out stiff-legged. They never barked. She stayed up on the mule and rode down silently past them, around the edge of the water into the yard. Mr. Odell was under the eave of the shed, hammering nails into a shoe of a brown horse. She hallooed but he never heard her over the tapping of the hammer. Then finally he saw her. He started a little and straightened up and came out a couple of steps into the yard to wait while she rode in.

  “Hello, Mr. Odell. I called out but you didn’t hear it.”

  “How are you, Mrs. Sanderson.” He took off his gloves, dusting them lightly against his pants leg. His face was wide, all mouth and thick eyebrows, and a heavy forelock of dark brown hair. He had a sweet, rare smile he let out long and slowly: she had liked him as soon as seeing it. He stood unsmiling behind the brown horse, holding on to the gloves with both hands.

  “I told Mr. Whiteaker I would get the stitches out for you,” she said, not smiling herself.

  She saw by his face, he was surprised. “Tim could probably pick them out all right.”

  “Well,” she said. “I am here now.”

  She had been in an agony of dread, watching the house obliquely for Mr. Whiteaker, but as Mr. Odell reached to take the hamper she handed down, he said, “Tim, you know, is over at Meacham.”

  She shook her head.

  “There is a logging camp has set up over there. We heard they were short a cook. He went over to see about it.” He made a vague gesture with the hand not holding the hamper. “I guess we could use the cash. If he gets on there, he can quit in a couple of months when we get busy again.”

  She said, “Yes,” unnecessarily, as she followed him across the yard.

  The house inside was hot and dim, smelling faintly of yeast. The top of the table was wiped clean, the board floor had lately been swept.

  “Will you just sit on the bench, Mr. Odell?”

  He sat on the low bench obediently. She took out the fine scissors, and the tweezers. “Do you want this shirt off, ma’am?” He was watching the scissors with evident anxiety.

  “Yes please, Mr. Odell.”

  He turned his back to her modestly and pulled the shirt over his head and sat hunched on the bench with his elbows resting on his knees. She began slowly to pick the stitches out of the yellow-painted flesh. She felt him holding still, breathing carefully through his mouth.

  “You look a great deal better today than when I saw you last, Mr. Odell.” She had in mind, in an indefinite way, keeping his attention from the scissors.

  “I’m getting along,” he said after a while. “I can get up on the saddle, so I don’t complain. I guess it wouldn’t do me any good.” If he was letting out his wide slow smile, she could not see it from standing at his back.

  In a moment she said pointlessly, “You have got all the calves branded by now.”

  “Yes, ma’am. That’s done, unless we’ve missed a few. Rounding up cows in this country is like working a Chinese puzzle. You’re never finished with it.”

  She began to smile, without happiness. “I will have to get used to that. Where I lived, we would walk out to the field and chide them in with a stick.”

  He nodded in a stiff way, holding still. “I guess I’ve done some of that. When I was a kid, I worked a couple of years in Clatsop County, it’s nothing but dairies over there and flat as a plate.”

  She had given up, on account of Mr. Odell, several large fancies having to do with the Wild Indians of the West. Now several smaller ones came undone all at
once. She had seen, through the window glass of the train in the towns she had come through, a few Indian men and women standing in queues, solitary Indian men sitting on curbstones or walking up a street. Mr. Odell was her only great experience of them.

  “Oh, Mr. Odell, I’m afraid I am hard put to imagine you pailing cows.”

  He may have smiled. He made a low wordless sound of amusement. “It was a long time ago, ma’am.” Then he said, as if it bore on the matter, “I never saw a cow dog before I was twenty-five, I guess.”

  Through the door he had left standing open, she looked for the two dogs. They had gone to lie in the shade of the shed, disregarding her, now that they had watched over her approach of the house. She said, “I have never heard you or Mr. Whiteaker call the dogs by name.”

  He lifted his head in surprise. “Is that right?” He twisted his head around stiffly, looking for the dogs. “The yellow one is Tag. The ugly brindle is named Hangdog.” He seemed to think about it and then he said, “I had horses I named and ones I didn’t, but dogs always need a name, I guess.”

  She said, “Yes. I believe that’s true.” Then, slowly, “My husband had a hound he kept for hunting but that dog was only a nuisance around livestock.”

  He nodded. “Well, a dog’s got to have the temper for it, and then the schooling.” He did not ask at all about Lars.

  She said, after a short silence, “I have thought of getting a dog myself. There, I am finished with you, Mr. Odell. And I don’t see that I have got you bleeding again anywhere.”

  He pulled up his shoulders gingerly and sat up straight. “Thank you, ma’am.” He stood and put his shirt on before he turned around toward her. “Herman Rooney has a place over on the Five Points. He raises good dogs. Both our dogs came from him.” He began to smile slowly. “We had one we’d bought over on the plateau, all he knew about was sheep.”

  She smiled also, looking down. “If I make up my mind that way, I will get the directions from you, and see Mr. Rooney.”

  “All right.” He looked past her vaguely. “Sit down, ma’am. I’ll make up some coffee.”

  “No. Thank you, Mr. Odell. I believe I’d better go on.” She gestured toward the hamper he had set down on the floor beside the platform rocker. “I have brought just a little milk for you, as I had it to spare.”

  He nodded. “We’ve been appreciating your milk, ma’am. Tim makes a pretty good bread pudding when he’s got the milk for it.”

  She did not look up from putting away the scissors and the tweezers in her handbag. “Yes.”

  “I’m putting bread in here for you,” he said, crouching over the hamper getting the milk out. “Tim got it made before he left home this morning.”

  She thought of saying something against it. But finally she said, “That’s very kind, Mr. Odell.”

  He walked out with her, carrying the hamper. She coiled up the string handles of her purse, and looked down deliberately at that.

  “Mr. Whiteaker is offended with me, I imagine,” she said suddenly. She gave him a short, flushed look.

  He turned his face toward her in slow confusion. “I don’t know, ma’am.”

  Then she was miserably embarrassed. She looked toward the sidehill, making a little involuntary sound like a chucking. Mr. Odell continued to walk beside her silently. She could not tell if he watched her. She climbed up on the mule while he stood holding the hamper. When he handed it up to her, she became aware that her mouth was drawn up rigidly. She let it go out flat again.

  “Well, Mr. Odell, I’m glad you are mending well.” She looked straight at him, smiling slightly. There was still a great deal of heat in her face.

  “Thanks to you, ma’am.”

  She shook her head without otherwise answering. “Well, good-by, Mr. Odell.”

  “So long, ma’am.”

  She started the mule back up the slope. She kept from looking back until she stood letting down the rails. He had walked out in the yard to watch her go. She lifted her hand, and he raised his also.

  Coming back to the Jump-Off Creek, the trail folded on itself and back again, going over the ridge between Chimney Creek and the North Fork. The way had been a misery in other weather, the trail deep cut with runnels, slick with mud, but it was dry now, hardened in the contour it had taken from the last rain. The mule found steady footing at one edge or the other of the dried-out rills. From the top there was a splendid view east and south to the horizon, the ranks of mountains dark and hunch-shouldered, the steep shadowed gorges parting them. She counted ridges, guessing out where the Jump-Off Creek cut its gully. But from here there were no marks of human society, the trees owned the world.

  When she had been fifteen, sixteen, before the hope had worn away, she had used to imagine proposals of marriage, had composed elaborate replies, yes or no, depending on the imagined asker. She couldn’t remember, now, any of those unspoken conversations. It had been a long time ago, or had happened to someone else.

  25

  When Tim showed up, Blue stayed where he was in the shed, sitting on a sawhorse, whittling at the piece of alderwood he was shaping to a rifle stock. He worked at it slowly, peeling off long thin curls of yellow wood with his pocketknife.

  “You’re working in the dark,” Tim said, coming up to stand at the front of the three-walled shed. Probably there was an hour of daylight left if you were up on the ridges or over on the flat land west of the Blues. But the sun had gone behind the rise of the hills, so it was dusky and cool in the bottoms. Under the cover of the shed it was shadowy.

  “I can see,” Blue said. He kept whittling. Tim stood just under the eave, watching him. He hadn’t unsaddled his horse yet. He stood holding it slackly by the reins.

  “Are you cooking, then?” Blue asked him.

  Tim nodded. “Their second cook bucked off a horse and broke his hip. They been without one since the middle of the week.” He watched Blue a little more. “They shut down on Sundays. I guess I can come up here on Saturday night and then go back down on Sunday night.”

  Blue glanced toward him, surprised. “It’s a long ride.”

  Tim shrugged. “I can leave there as soon as the last dinner shift is fed. I don’t have to do the cleaning up. They’ve got a couple of monkeys.”

  Blue looked at him. Then he looked down at the rifle stock. He turned the wood and felt along it with his fingertips in the poor light. When Tim made a movement to lead the horse off, he said, “The woman from the Jump-Off Creek came over here and picked the thread out of my back.”

  Tim turned and looked back at him. In the dimness, standing at the edge of the shed, his face was featureless, black. “I guess you were on the Jump-Off Creek the other day,” Blue said.

  Tim kept standing where he was. He didn’t say anything. After a long silence, he said, as if he were answering something, “I cut her a few pine poles.”

  Blue kept waiting, but Tim didn’t say anything else. Whatever had gone on between him and Mrs. Sanderson, he didn’t mean to tell anybody about it. The bay horse shifted its weight, backing up a step, impatient, and Tim took a step back too, getting away from Blue maybe, and the sound burst out loud, the hard metal echoes wowing off the trees. For a long-seeming moment they didn’t move, any of them, as if they had to wait out a sudden little suspension, then the horse’s head flung up, startled, eyes rolling white, and Blue came jerkily off the sawhorse, skidding his chin in the wood chips getting flat down on the ground at the back of the shed. He heard Tim flopping down behind the woodpile, knocking loose a little slide of stove wood. Neither of them said anything. They listened to the sound the bay horse made, thrashing his head weakly against the dirt.

  In a while Blue said, low, “You got the Miller with you?” One or the other of them sometimes took a gun when they were out working, in case they had a chance to shoot something for meat. Lately, Tim had been carrying his about every day.

  “The horse is laying on top of it,” Tim said.

  So they waited. There were ropy
streams of blood squirting out from the nostrils of the bay horse. He made only a low noise, wet, strangling. There wasn’t any other sound, except the livestock grunting and shifting nervously. The dogs stood in the yard, wide-legged, poised, looking for something to go after. Blue watched them from where he lay flat at the rear of the shed, waiting. His back began to be sore, from the dive off the sawhorse. The air got slowly cold and brittle, all the day’s heat seeming to go straight up into the clear, colorless sky. Blue had on a thin shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He had sweated in it all day. Finally, warily, he got up on his forearms and rolled the sleeves down over gooseflesh, staring out against the failing light.

  “He’s gone,” Tim said after a while. “That was all he meant to do, kill the goddamned horse.” He said it roughly, in a sullen voice. Then he stood up.

  Blue started to say something but Tim was already standing by then, looking big and bare in front of the shed. Nobody shot him.

  “Shit,” Tim said, standing there.

  Blue stood slowly. His back hurt. He found his pocketknife where he’d dropped it. He folded it up and put it in his pants pocket. He put the alderwood stock piece leaning up against the wall with the hand tools. Tim was pulling his gun out from under the dead horse. When he had it, he walked across the field to the edge of the trees. Blue didn’t go. He walked out with a rope and got the dun mare and brought her back to where the bay had fallen dead in front of the shed.

  She didn’t like the blood smell. He had to go in the house and get some castor oil and smear it up her nose and then she stood still while he rigged a breast collar and a trace and tied up to the bay to drag the carcass away from the yard. The dun was small, stocky. She strained, pulling the big bay. Blue coaxed her. In the cold darkness the blood on the grass looked black, smoking. Behind the shed he let the fence down, got the dun to drag the horse through. Tim came and stood behind him, watching.