Showdown at Buffalo Jump

by Gary D. Svee

  There was a cabinet against the wall that held Max’s dishes, four mismatched plates, three coffee mugs, an odd assortment of forks, table knives, and spoons, and worn-out sheets he apparently used for tablecloths.

  The settings were rough, but no rougher than the table on which they were put, or the two chairs—one new and obviously for Catherine—that were drawn up to it.

  By the time she had arranged the table with the kerosene lamp in the middle, the steak and potatoes were done, and then, as though by cue, Max stepped through the dugout’s blanket door. He fussed about, washing his face in a panful of cold water carried from the creek, then slicked down his hair and waited for Catherine to call him to the table.

  When she did, he sat down and reached for the steak in one single motion.

  “Mr. Bass!” Catherine snapped.

  Max jerked to a stop. He sat awkwardly, not knowing what he had done wrong, but knowing Catherine wouldn’t hesitate to tell him.

  “Mr. Bass,” Catherine repeated, her voice taking on a superior air, “it is not proper to attack your food without first giving thanks.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Max said, reaching again for the steak.

  “Mr. Bass, it is not I you thank, but the Lord for His bounty.”

  “Thank you, Lord,” Max said, spearing a hunk of steak with his fork, and drawing it back to his plate.

  Catherine’s face was livid. “I can see now why you choose to live in a hole in the ground. Your manners are not suited for the company of humankind.”

  Max mumbled, “Sorry, ma’am” around a mouthful of potatoes. The effect was something less than he might have hoped.

  Catherine bowed her head in prayer and crossed herself, then reached for the plate of steak and potatoes.

  After he had finished eating, Max settled back in his chair to drink his coffee and pick his teeth with a splinter of wood broken off a piece of kindling. “Bunkhouse, ma’am.”

  And when Catherine looked up with a puzzled expression on her face, Max continued. “My manners are suitable for a bunkhouse. You grab in a grub shack or you don’t get.”

  There was a touch of challenge to Max’s voice, and when Catherine finished her dinner, he leaned across the table and looked directly into her eyes.

  “I’m glad to see that you’re a good Catholic. I was counting on that,” and when Catherine’s face took on an even more quizzical expression, he continued. “You were probably thinking that you would go back into town tomorrow and get the priest to annul the marriage and then skedaddle back to Boston?”

  Catherine nodded.

  “Well, the priest isn’t in Prairie Rose, and he won’t be back for another three months. There isn’t another priest for a hundred miles, and none of them would give you an annulment unless they talked to me first. So you’re married to me, Mrs. Catherine O’Dowd Bass, whether you like it or not.”

  Catherine drew back her fist to give Max another lesson in Irish ladies’ rights, but something in his eyes, his voice, made her hesitate.

  “The straight of it,” Max continued, “is that you’re not leaving tomorrow, or the day after that, or the next week, either.”

  Catherine’s anger boiled over. “I will leave this den of yours tomorrow whether you allow me to or not!”

  “No!” Max’s deep voice cut into Catherine’s speech like the butcher knife had cut into the deer’s hind quarter before dinner. “No! You will leave when I see fit, and that will be a long time coming, longer still if you don’t shut your mouth and listen.”

  Then there was silence, both glowering at each other across the table.

  Max began in a low, very controlled voice. “I told you in my letters that I was a rancher and a coal miner. In a sense that is true. I have land and I have coal. The coal you are burning in the stove now was shoveled out of an outcropping on my land just south of here. Sometimes people take a load and give me fifty cents or a dollar. And I’ve got about thirty head of cattle scattered around the place.”

  When Catherine started to protest, Max waved her to silence. “I know! That isn’t what I told you. I told you I had a big ranch and a coal mine that was selling coal to the railroad. Well, I haven’t got that yet, but I will.”

  Max raised an eyebrow, waiting for Catherine to challenge him, but she didn’t, so he continued. “You wouldn’t have come if I had told you the truth. I wouldn’t want a wife who would have. I need a woman who aims higher than I am right now.”

  Catherine couldn’t hold the bile down anymore. “Finally you make sense. You wouldn’t want a wife who could accept you as you are. Well, I can’t. So if you will please harness the mare, you and I will be shut of one another.”

  Max retorted through gritted teeth. “You made it wonderfully clear what you think of me, but for once it is best that you bite that rattlesnake you call a tongue and listen.”

  They glared at each other, and then Max continued. “This is ‘next year’ country. Next year, there’ll be rain. Next year, we’ll have an open winter. Next year, the price of beef will be up. It’s always been like that. I came in here with one of the first Texas herds as a kid, and I know that.”

  “The problem is that most folks sit around waiting for next year to make things better. I’ve been working on next year for the past twenty years.”

  “I was a cowhand. Most work all month for nothing more than a hangover. I figured out early on that that’s not very smart. So I’ve been putting my money away for more than twenty years—poker winnings, too. Just a little here and a little there. But I’ve got money for next year.”

  “When they opened this land up for home-steading, I said good-bye to the Bar X and rode down here and scouted out this section. It’s got water—that’s the most precious thing out here—and coal that just pokes out of the ground. Now that ain’t worth much yet, but it will be.”

  “I’m getting things in place for next year. I’ve got the money, and I’ve got the land. But none of that means much if you’re alone, if you haven’t got a home. So I needed you—and lumber for a picket fence and chickens. I never had a home, so maybe I’m not doing this the way I should, but I’m willing to work at it until I get it right.”

  And when Catherine said nothing, Max continued. “Ma’am, I’ve spent most of my life on this prairie. I know this land. I know it isn’t any more fit for farming than I am. If we get about four dry years in a row, this country will be nothing but dust and busted mortgages.”

  “I can pick up fifty, sixty sections then. It will be a while before the land heals—they’ve torn her up so. But she will heal, and then I’ll be the rancher I was telling you about in those letters.”

  “Those are grand plans, Mr. Bass, but when the others go broke, you will, too. You will be in the parade leaving this place. All I’m doing is beating you to it. I’ll be wanting a ride to Prairie Rose tomorrow—early.”

  “Two things,” Max said, an edge creeping into his voice. “One, I’ve got money, a little over five thousand dollars. Never told anybody but you about that. Second thing is that you aren’t leaving tomorrow morning. You aren’t leaving until the priest comes back in three months, and only then if I say so.

  “You ask anybody around here, ma’am. I’m one to soft break a horse, but I break ’em. Never had a horse I couldn’t handle.”

  “A horse!” Catherine hissed. “You are comparing me to a horse! Mr. Bass, I didn’t know the true meaning of son of a bitch until I met you. There is only one way to handle someone of your caliber and that is with something of this caliber.”

  The next moment Max was looking down the barrel of his .44-40 Colt. Damn! He had spent months working on every detail of his plan, but he hadn’t counted on her looking into his trunk, finding his pistol, and turning it on him. Who the hell would ever think a woman—a woman from Boston—would get the jump on him like that?

  The old pistol’s bore looked big as a silver dollar, and it was unwaveringly trained on the bridge of Max’s nose. Max was worki
ng very hard to appear calm. Was it loaded? He had put it away so long ago, he couldn’t remember, and held low the way it was in the shadow under the table, Max couldn’t look into the cylinder for the glint of lead. Damn!

  Max’s mind was racing, trying to find some solution to this mess, but it was coming up empty. “Ma’am, I didn’t tell you the whole story. If you will just hold on for a minute …” The hammer went back with an ugly click. Damn! That Colt had a hair trigger. Just bumping it against the table would touch it off. Max’s back straightened, and he braced himself for the bullet.

  “Ma’am,” Max said, the strain poking through his voice. “One of the reasons that I … uh … lied to you is that I wanted a woman with spirit. I wanted a woman who knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go after it.…”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Max jerked at the sound of Catherine’s voice as though it were the tread of the hangman on his gallows.

  “What did you think you were doing,” she sneered, “buying a horse? Do you think that you had the right to shop for a wife, looking for just the right pedigree to share your den?”

  “Ma’am, it wasn’t like that. Now you aren’t going to use that pistol. I know you aren’t the kind of person to pull the trigger. But somebody could be hurt by accident, and I know you wouldn’t like that to happen. So maybe you better give it to me, and I’ll put it away for you.”

  Max reached for the pistol, and Catherine pulled the trigger.… CLICK!

  The click cut off sound and thought and movement, almost as though the pistol had fired, and when Max realized that he wasn’t dead, his breath escaped in one long sigh.

  “See, it wasn’t even loaded,” he squeaked. “Uh, just so you don’t think I’m trying to pull anything funny, maybe I’d better sleep outside tonight. I’ll bed down with the chickens so the coyotes won’t bother them.”

  Max gathered his bedroll in one swoop of his arms and carried it outside. He stopped there, taking deep breaths of the cool night air. A shiver passed over him, and it had nothing to do with the chill moving across the land. He looked up at the stars that calmed him most nights, his problems and aspirations insignificant when measured against heaven’s depth and breadth and beauty. But he saw no peace there tonight, only emptiness.

  She actually had pulled the trigger. Catherine O’Dowd Bass pointed a pistol at her husband on their wedding night and pulled the trigger. What the hell had he gotten himself into? Max would spend the remainder of the night pondering that question.

  6

  Max awoke with a noseful of chicken. He had bedded next to the wagon, and it fairly reeked with the foul odor. But it wasn’t the chickens that had awakened him.

  Something in the night had poked into his consciousness, so he lay still, measuring his breath to the natural cadence of a sleeping man. Ever so slowly he opened his eyes. It was always best to know which way to jump before you made a move.

  He glimpsed a flicker of movement just at the lip of the slope leading down to Pishkin Creek. Coyote. Must be a coyote after the chickens. No! The two shadowy figures outlined against the horizon were wolves, big prairie wolves. Two at least, maybe others. Strange they would venture so close this time of year. Max watched them for a full two minutes, and they watched him, each unsure of the intentions of the other. Then Max raised his arm, and they disappeared without a sound as though they were nothing more than an early morning dream.

  It was early, the stars winking out against a gray sky, but there was little chance of more sleep with all the thoughts bumping around in his head. Max rolled back the bedroll and stood, shivering a little in the early morning chill. He stepped a little away from the wagon to relieve himself. He didn’t want any telltale puddle: no telling what that woman would say about that.

  Probably wasn’t proper to pee near a wagonload of chickens. Probably a book somewhere that said that proper people don’t do that, and no doubt she had read it. She wouldn’t hesitate to tell him about her opinion of men who didn’t go by the book, either. She was a woman who spoke her mind, no matter how much it stung.

  Everything Max did was wrong—by her standards, anyway. He lived in a den, and ate like a hog. The more Max thought about it, the more it grated on his nerves. What made that woman so high and mighty? She was a mail-order bride, not a princess.

  And then, as the sun cracked the eastern horizon, Catherine’s voice floated up to him from the dugout.

  “Mr. Bass!”

  The voice seemed out of place. Except for an occasional visitor, an occasional trip to town, Max had spent the last three years alone, the sound of a woman’s voice scarce as summer rain.

  Max walked over to the edge of the hill and looked down. Catherine was below, fully dressed and standing by the dugout door. At least she was no slugabed.

  “Mr. Bass, where is the … uh, facility?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “The toilet.”

  Max’s face lit up. “Just a minute. I should have shown it to you last night, but I wanted you to see it in daylight. Just built it. Had you in mind when I did.”

  “How nice.”

  Max continued his running monologue as he led Catherine downstream toward the corral.

  “Put it in an arm of the coulee, just before we get to the corral. Close enough to the dugout, but not too close. I built her solid. You’ll appreciate that when a blizzard blows through here.”

  Max slowed as he neared the corral. The trail from there to the outhouse was faint, not yet worn through the grass that carpeted the coulee bottom.

  “There she is, ma’am,” Max said, looking back to watch her face as she appraised his handiwork.

  The outhouse was well constructed—solid. Each joint in the siding overlapped to ensure that the building would be tight against winter winds and summer flies.

  “Got lap cedar roofing, ma’am. Don’t see much of that around here, and ma’am,” Max said, pausing for effect, “you will be the first.”

  “Why, Mr. Bass,” Catherine said. “You honor me. I don’t know if I should go in or christen it with that bottle of champagne your friend gave us.”

  She laughed then, taking some of the sting from her words, but Max’s face was already glowing with dull, red heat.

  “Where was the old outhouse?”

  “I made do.”

  Catherine’s lip curled. “I’m sure you did. Well, at least when I leave, you will be better off for my having been here. Now please give me some privacy.”

  Max walked back toward the dugout muttering to himself. That woman sorely tested a man’s patience. That outhouse was as fine a piece of handiwork as Max had ever seen, and he had seen more than his share. But was this Boston woman Catherine pleased? Of course not.

  By the time Max reached the creek crossing, his anger was at a low boil. Who was this mail-order bride to sneer at him? And worse, why was he still trying to please her? He was acting like a schoolboy, and each time he laid his pride before her, she stepped on it, smeared it with her big-city shoes. There was only so much, by gawd, that a man could take.

  When Catherine pulled back the blanket door of the dugout, Max was already inside, turning sizzling salt pork in the pan on the stove. He glanced up at her, and returned to his work, and for some reason, his inattention irked her.

  Max waved her to a chair at the table, and then cracked four eggs into the frying pan.

  “Oh,” Catherine said. “Fresh eggs. Did the chickens lay them?”

  “No, ma’am, these are skunk eggs.”

  Catherine rose to the bait like a trout chasing a caddis fly across a wild stretch of river. “Mr. Bass, your tongue is as dull as your wit.”

  Max’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “I may not be as witty as some of your Boston friends, but I know where chicken eggs come from.”

  “You, sir, are not as witty as any of my Boston friends.”

  Then, the bitterness vented like an obscene blessing, the two began eating, each raising his or her ey
es occasionally to glare at the other. Finally, Max broke the silence. “Have to build a chicken yard today, so I’ll be going over on the north side of the ridge to get some posts. Won’t take too long. I’d like you to go along,”

  “I’d like to go back to Prairie Rose.”

  “Ma’am,” Max said, his face contorted with the effort of holding his anger under control, “you are not going back to Prairie Rose until I say you are.

  “I told you once that I’ve never had a horse I couldn’t break. Well, you can’t break horses if you don’t keep them corralled. You, Mrs. Catherine O’Dowd Bass, are corralled. And you will stay that way until I decide that I can no longer tolerate your foul temper and pointed tongue.”

  When Catherine replied, it was with downcast eyes and a strangely subdued voice. “It is, then, as I feared. I am your prisoner.”

  “No, ma’am,” Max said, his anger gone like the air from a punctured balloon. “You are my wife.”

  “I see little difference.”

  Those words stung more than any she had said in anger. There was soul-withering truth in that simple statement.

  Catherine was a prisoner. Max had spent months building a trap for her, examining it from all angles so there was no way for her to wiggle free once entangled.

  And then Max baited the snare with lies, carefully chosen to attract a special prey.

  Catherine O’Dowd was special. She was ambitious, or she would have stayed in Ireland. She was bright, or she would not have so quickly assimilated the proper speech and manners of the mansion in Boston. She was pretty and would bear Max sons worthy of the empire he would build. But mostly, she was vulnerable, a woman alone in a new land without friends or family to turn to. She was perfect.

  And when she came to Prairie Rose, Max slipped the trap, a ring of gold, over her finger. She could not escape that trap. It held her as firmly as spiked jaws hold a bear. Her upbringing would not allow her to pull that ring from her finger no matter how great the pain. Catherine O’Dowd was Max’s prisoner, and he would not let her go.