by Ashna Graves
Around noon, they rested on top of the ridge where two fences came together, trapping the cows. Settled against a large rock in the shade of a juniper, they could see Billie Creek Canyon spread out before them, with a stretch of Dry River Valley visible to the south.
“Is this all Forest Service land up here?” Neva was wondering about the fences.
“You have a few private bits here and there. I own part of the upper bowl and a few acres right down on the creek, but mostly I have to lease for the grazing. Look at a map sometime. It’s like a patchwork quilt, with BLM and Forest Service and private property mixed together all which-a-way.”
“Skipper Dooley told me he saw you go into a mining tunnel on that day we met on the road, or so he guessed.”
“He guessed right.”
“I’ve walked all over the basin and haven’t found any tunnel entrance. Is it possible to see roughly where it is from here?”
Darla pointed to the opposite side of the canyon where turkey vultures often circled in an updraft. Today there were three, floating lazily in big loops. “See where that middle buzzard is right now? Run your eye straight down to the big rock you can just see the top of, there by that snag with what looks like a nest stuck on the side. Below the rock is the old Calypso Mine, the deepest mine around here, or used to be. It caved in years ago about thirty feet back, which is a good thing because there were pits in there you couldn’t see until you were right on them. It didn’t smell so bad then. Now it smells worse than pack rat, like a herd of cows went in there and died. I only went in about ten feet. I wouldn’t bother to look at it if I was you.”
“I’m too claustrophobic anyway. I just wanted to know where it is. Did you think a cow might have gone in there?”
“I went in for old time’s sake. My cousin that died a few years back from leukemia used to go in there with me. He liked this country better than anywhere, same as me.” After reflecting for a moment, Darla said, “Some folks thought your uncle went into a tunnel and fell in a pit, but he knew the rock around here like you know your own face. Anyway, that mine was already caved in and the only other big tunnel on Billie Creek runs under the Barlow Mine.”
“Did you know about that one before the accident?”
“Everybody knew it. Reese was real careful working in there until they actually found the old mine and knew where it was safe to drive the equipment without falling through. I hate to say it about the dead, but Roy was real careless or real stupid or both.”
Neva was only half listening. Looking through the binoculars, she tried to find the entrance to the old mine across the way but the hillside looked like the usual expanse of sagebrush, rock, mountain mahogany, and scattered junipers. At least now she had a better sense of where to search next time she was on that side of the canyon. Turning her glasses toward the south, she studied the hills on the far side of the Dry River Valley. About a third of the way down from the top of a ridge she saw a faint line, like the trace of an old road.
She pointed it out to Darla, who said with almost possessive pride, “Not a road, a ditch, the Eldorado Ditch. They built it in the 1860s to bring water down for mining in the dry months. Talk about range wars. You had the miners and ranchers out to kill each other. The miners took all the water from every creek the ditch crossed, or tried to. The ranchers had to fight for their water. Right across there, where you’re looking, they floated dynamite down and blew the ditch wide open. The miners patched it and set up groups to patrol every night. The crazy thing is, I heard the ditch cost a hundred and sixty thousand dollars to build even with Chinese labor, and they never made a cent on it. It was shut down inside of two years, I don’t know exactly why.”
After a silence, Darla said as though answering Neva’s unspoken questions, “When I was a kid I was bored. I wanted more than anything to get out of this place and really live. You wouldn’t know this, I guess, but I was queen of the Pendleton Rodeo, and the next year I got the Miss Oregon title, oh whoopee. I tried the modeling bit, but I was hungry all the time because you can’t eat, so then I did some itty bitty parts on TV, and life was okay, good enough anyway. I still thought I was pretty hot stuff, but then my Gran died. That was fifteen years ago. I came home the next day. That’s a day late, in case I’m not making myself clear. At least I did one thing right. I made them bury her on the ranch. They wanted to put her in Elkhorn with Granddad, but I wasn’t letting those weirdos get hold of Gran. We put her in the ground ourselves, our own ground, with our own hands.”
Neva regarded Darla with surprise and admiration, but before she could tell about her mother’s ashes, the rancher continued in a more cheerful tone despite the gloomy prediction, “You know what? The way it’s going with the price of beef and the cost of ranching, there won’t be any cowboys left in a few years except the rodeo variety. At least Gran didn’t live to see that. That’s one good thing. If she was still alive, she’d probably tell me to go organic.”
“That’s what Tillie Briggs said, though I think she mentioned vegetables.”
“It’s where the money is now, boutique beef, they call it. Well, I have been blabbing on. I don’t often get to talk to women, not my age anyway, and especially not anybody that actually likes it out here. You ready to ride?”
Neva let out a silent inward groan and her leg muscles screamed as she got back into the saddle, but once she was settled and they were moving again, she loved it all—the bawling cows, the little mare moving under her with eager confidence, the view stretching forever. Then Darla headed the small herd steeply downhill, and the cows disappeared into a storm of churned dust. Without warning, Barbry Allen’s head was way below her rear and Neva was flung forward, barely saving herself from being thrown to the ground by gripping the mane. She could just make out Darla off to the right. Instead of sitting upright on the saddle, the rancher was leaning back with her stirrups up by the horse’s shoulders and her head on his rump. Struggling against gravity and the lurch of the horse, Neva managed to get her own head uphill and her feet downhill. Barbry Allen continued to stumble as though drunk and her hooves clattered against loose rocks, while Neva clutched the saddle blanket, her knuckles digging into hot, hairy belly. Darla had been doing this all her life—surely, she wouldn’t risk horses or riders for the sake of a shortcut?
The ground leveled, the cows stopped bawling, the dust cleared. Neva sat up and met the rancher’s eyes, which appeared amused for the first time. She said, “Sorry about that, but it’s good to give the horses a little challenge now and then. Keeps them on their toes.”
Chapter Fifteen
Neva was so stiff and sore that evening that she didn’t try to do anything except sit on the porch reading the mining book she had bought in town. It said nothing about Billie Creek in particular, which was disappointing, though it gave a good account of the general territory stretching from La Grande along the Oregon/Idaho border to the southeast corner of the state. There was plenty of information about Elkhorn, which had been “named for the nearby Elkhorn Mountains. Nobody realized this little upstart village would become the financial center of a vast mining district.” Elkhorn was incorporated in 1874; by 1879 the population was 1,193, which included only 143 women.
“Among the hotels was the famous Grand, one of the finest in the West, with seventy steam-heated rooms and a hydraulic elevator. Harvey Crisp, who claimed he hadn’t taken a drink of water in thirty years, operated the brewery. He also ran the opera house next door.”
Neva read until dark, holding the book close until she could no longer see the print. Putting it aside at last, she stood up and groaned aloud. Her leg muscles burned and the insides of her thighs were red and raw, but it had been a great day, worth twice the pain. Darla hadn’t talked much once they left the ridge, and had begged off staying for dinner with the excuse that she had to feed the stock, but still Neva felt that she’d made a little progress in getting to know the rancher.
A wind started up as she brushed her teeth, and by th
e time she fell asleep the tarpaper was flapping violently on the roof. When she woke up sometime later, however, it was to absolute silence, as though there was no such thing as wind on this earth. Stiff and aching, she rearranged herself carefully in the bed and was floating into unconsciousness again when she heard a shuffle and thump. Next came a soft scraping of wood against wood.
The sound was close, on the porch. It came again, a drawn-out rasping such as chairs make when pushed back from the table.
Someone or something was out there.
Had she latched the screen door? Easing onto her side, she tried to see the latch but it was too dark to make out.
The scraping came again, like a chair being dragged across the weathered floorboards—the chair she had placed on the porch to serve as a table for her coffee and books. Full of sudden, superstitious dread, Neva watched the square of starry sky that showed through the top of the screen door, expecting it to be blotted out by a dark human form. No form appeared. The scraping ceased and quiet returned, but she could not possibly sleep without knowing what was out there.
The night air was cool on her hand and arm as she reached for the flashlight that sat on the bedside table. She rarely used the flashlight, preferring to light a lamp or rely on the stars, but now the cold metal cylinder was reassuring in her hand. Easing back the covers, she placed her left foot on the floor with care, and was swinging her right leg off the bed when something thumped against the outside wall. Another thump. And then came a low whimper and a puppyish whine.
Neva sagged back onto the bed, wanting to laugh but unable to summon the breath after the adrenaline rush. Reese’s dog had found her. He must have crawled under the chair and dragged it along on trying to get out. When she felt steady enough to get up, she crossed the room and aimed the flashlight beam downward through the screen, onto a dark mound of short, curly hair pressed against the base of the door. A tail thumped once.
***
In the morning, the dog sat on the back step regarding Neva with steady eyes, as though to say, “Well, I got myself here and the rest is up to you.” A mixed dingo breed like most of the ranch dogs, she had a skinny, shifty look but also a certain dignity. Dogs out here were bred for work and didn’t tend to bark or get excited unless they were chasing cows. Even Tony Briggs’ dogs hadn’t barked at her.
“What’s your name, pooch?”
A slight cock of the head.
“You scared me ridiculously. I’ll call you Juju for now.”
Juju calmly cleaned out a dish of tuna and crumbled bannock, drank half a graniteware basin of water, then settled in the shade at the end of the porch to sleep while Neva drank coffee.
When she headed up the creek after splitting the day’s wood, Juju was at her heels and trotted in that position without straying until they approached the spot where Neva had found Lance’s hat and knife. She had come here on purpose, to see how Juju would react, but still she was surprised by the little dog’s intensity. With her nose to the ground, Juju ran back and forth whining, stopping to dig, then rushing on. Rocks and sand flew out behind her, but she unearthed nothing apart from more rocks, and at last sprawled with an exhausted whimper at Neva’s side.
The exposed rocks, pale below the surface layer of sand and earth, looked hard and barren. Today was Roy DeRoos’ funeral. He would be lowered into the stony, indifferent ground, never to come out again. Neva’s chest squeezed as though in a brace and she broke out in a fine sweat.
“Let’s go, pup,” she cried, and strode up the road swinging her arms and breathing deeply. Soon she angled downward along a game trail that led to the creek. Turning upstream, she found a small pool, and knelt to study the colored gravel that lay under clear water. According to the gold mining book, certain early peoples believed that metals grew in the ground like plants and changed color as they ripened. Before her lay a multitude of tiny half-ripened mineral fruits, green, blue, jet, white, rose, and yellow, forever glossy under the polishing lens of the water. She sank her hands into the feathery cold current and scooped up water and pebbles together.
“They’re much nicer than gold,” she said, offering the mineral fruits to the dog.
Juju lowered her muzzle to the proffered water and drank with lady-like care.
***
After a simple dinner of rice and hot mango pickle, Neva shut Juju in the cabin, carried a blanket to the pond, and settled at the end opposite the dam with a large comfortable pine root for a backrest. She had tried several times to get up early to be at the pond before daylight, but had failed to talk herself out of bed. Twilight might or might not be as good for catching a glimpse of elusive wildlife, but it was a lot easier than getting up before dawn.
Frogs began a slow chorus around the edge of the glossy, opaque water. A noisy clattering on the slope to the east of the pond turned out to be five elk, the first she had seen on Billie Creek. They lined up to drink, then rattled away downstream like a herd of clumsy domestic cows. With a satisfied sense of being in the right place at the right time, Neva settled deeper into her nest and let her head rest against the trunk so that she could look slightly upward with ease. She was expecting bats, and they soon appeared as live shadows darting overhead.
As it cooled the pond water released a ripe, fruity scent into the twilight, mixing with the earthy smell of sun-baked ground giving up the day’s heat. Night was a good time in the canyon. She would make sure to take better advantage of it from now on, particularly when real heat struck in August. It would make sense to get up at daybreak, nap in the afternoon like the wild creatures, and be out and about again at night. On clear nights the stars were bright enough to light her way even when there was no moon.
A stone rattled, and then another. She dropped her gaze from bats and early stars to scan the dim shape of the dam at the other end of the pond, expecting to see elk or bear. Instead, she discovered an upright silhouette that was unmistakably human.
The silhouette moved to the left, then right, and then stood still for so long that Neva blinked hard, suddenly certain that it was an illusion. When it moved again at last, it went to the far left end of the dam where the creek flowed out of the pond and there were no trees between the figure and the last traces of daylight in the sky.
Gene Holland.
She had seen him only once, when she stopped to introduce herself but was too sleepy to talk. Even so she was certain. The buzz cut hair, the slight build, the glint of reflected light that must mean glasses.
What would bring Gene Holland to the pond at this hour, on foot?
Though she had studied the Sufferin’ Smith mine through binoculars from up on Billie Mountain, she had never seen Holland actively mining like the Barlow crew. The mine covered several acres on top of one of the lower ridges that bounded the canyon, an extremely barren stretch even for this territory. There were two trommels, earth movers of various types, and heaps of pipes, barrels, and what appeared to be defunct machinery and parts of machines scattered everywhere. She had never seen a sign of activity, or of Gene himself, though his pickup was sometimes parked at the top of the road that zigzagged up the ridge from the creek.
What did Gene Holland do all day? What was he doing here now?
She took a breath to call out to him, but hesitated. If she gave herself away, she’d never know whether he intended to visit the cabin to make his presence known. On the other hand, if he disappeared into the night she would be left puzzled and uneasy about where he might have gone and why he had come to her pond so late, without a word.
As she tried to reason out what to do, he began walking around the shoreline in her direction. She lost sight of him against the dark bank but she could hear his progress. The absence of stealth in his movements, and the probability that he would walk right to her, settled the question.
“Gene,” she called, getting to her feet and gathering the blanket around her shoulders like a shawl. “It’s Neva. I’m over here.”
“What? Neva? Good lord.�
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“Here,” she called again. “I’m coming.”
When they were about fifteen feet apart, he said, “I can’t see you. How about I wait where I am and you find me?”
“Here I am.”
“I didn’t expect to see you here at this time of night,” he said.
“I live here.”
“Well, of course. I meant at the pond.”
“What are you doing here is more the question? I didn’t hear a car.”
“Sorry to take you by surprise, but it never occurred to me you’d be sitting out here in the dark. I walked up the creek, checking my water line.”
“What water line?”
“The pipe that runs down the creek. You must have seen it. I take water from this pond to fill my own little pond.”
“You’ve got to be kidding, Gene. Even I know water doesn’t run uphill.”
“But it’s not uphill from here to the mine. Think of how the road climbs. It’s all gravity flow.”
“Did it spring a leak?”
“I don’t wait for a noticeable leak to check it. If a joint goes, we could lose thousands of gallons before anybody knows it. We can’t afford that out here. Without the ponds we’d all run out of water by late June most years.”
He leaned forward as though to look closely into her face even though there was not enough light to show more than general shapes. He said, “Sorry to have to mention the funeral, but I saw the sheriff there and he said to tell you he was thinking of dropping up in the morning for a chat. He seemed concerned about you, about finding Roy, I guess, the shock of it. They did okay on the service but every time I go to one of those things I swear they aren’t getting hold of me when the end comes. At least it gives me a fresh motive to stay alive.”
“I thought of going,” Neva said as they started up the path to the cabin. “But I didn’t know him, really, and I just couldn’t face it.”