by Gary D. Svee
And now the guilt of that drove him from the table. He paused at the door. “Edna figured out about what your size would be from your picture, and I bought some ranch clothes for you. They’re in the top two drawers of that dresser over there. You should put them on before we go up the hill.”
Catherine didn’t bother to look up.
“How long, Mr. Bass?”
“Ma’am?”
“I served three years to pay for my ticket to America. How long must I serve to pay you back for my ticket to Montana?”
“Ma’am, it ain’t like that at all. I … I’ll be back as soon as I harness the team.”
Max stepped out of the dugout, carrying a wag-onload of guilt on his shoulders. He felt as though he had just sobered up from a three-day drunk, and one of his friends had just filled him in on all the sordid details. He didn’t feel that he was a bad man, but somehow he had become a villain. He wanted nothing more from life than most men did: a livelihood, a home, and a family. He had done nothing more than was necessary to acquire those things. Was that so terrible?
The horses nickered as Max approached the corral. He filled a bucket with rolled oats, and the Percherons trotted over to him. While the horses were eating, Max draped the harness over their backs, collars over their necks. Then he slipped the bits between their teeth and walked the horses up the hill and backed them to the wagon.
Max took great pleasure in these two giant horses. A simple clucking sound would set more than a ton of muscle leaning into the harness. Little could resist that power. Stumps, rocks, and the breast of the earth yielded to that pure, honest strength. In return, they asked nothing but oats in a box, a soft voice, and an occasional slap on the shoulder.
Max turned the wagon in a wide sweep, letting the horses get the feel of the harness, and then he drove the team and wagon off the hill toward the creek ford at the bottom. He left the horses waiting there, muscles of a strong right arm tied to Max’s will by harness and reins and habit.
One after another Max carried the boxes of chickens to the lean-to where he had wintered that first year. They would be safe there until he and Catherine returned from the ridge with posts to build a chicken yard. Not likely a coyote or wolf would come in broad daylight, and no way a skunk could breach the lean-to and chicken wire, too.
Next came an axe and saw from the tack shed and a promise to pick up the Winchester, even though there wasn’t much chance of seeing wolves, much less of getting a shot. Wolves could pick the silhouette of a man out of a jumble of juniper and pine a mile away.
Max walked to the dugout, calling out before entering so as not to surprise Catherine. But when he stepped inside, she was already dressed. She stood beside the dresser in denim pants and a shapeless shirt and heavy shoes.
“Is this suitable?” Catherine asked quietly. “Is this how servant people dress in Montana?”
“Ma’am, I don’t want a servant. I want a wife.”
“You may force me to be your servant, Mr. Bass, but you will never force me to be your wife.”
They stood quietly then, neither looking at the other. Finally, Max said, “Let’s go,” and Catherine followed him to the door. He paused there long enough to take the rifle from a box near a pile of firewood.
“I never leave it loaded,” he said, and then wished he hadn’t, but Catherine didn’t seem to notice.
They walked downstream to the wagon. Catherine refused Max’s arm and climbed in. The two set off in surly silence. The air was relatively cool, the sun not yet in full control of the day. Light attacked the prairie from the flank, leaving long shadows stretching off toward the west and north. The shadows gave definition to rocks and trees and bushes that would be hidden later in the day.
Catherine had seen the prairie flattened by the brightness of the sun. Now she was seeing the land in better light, sculpted into gentle shapes by heat, rain, and cold. There was beauty on each side, subtle beauty in pastel shades and sweeping curves. Here and there, yucca pointed sharp spines menacingly into the air, warning all creatures to stay clear of its seed pods or suffer the consequences. Tall juniper stood like exclamation points on a page of understatement, and everywhere bunch grass yielded to the passing wagon as the sea yields to a ship.
They followed the gentle contour of the creek until Max clucked the team up the steep lower reaches of a ridge that stretched away to the top of the butte. The ridge top was narrow and the sides were steep, and Catherine reluctantly, and silently, admitted Max’s expertise with team and wagon.
The redolent scent of sage below was complemented as they neared the top with the clean, sweet smell of the pine trees. Bull pine lined the upper reaches of each coulee, leading from the sandstone rimrocks above to the prairie below. It was beside one of these stands that Max pulled the wagon to a halt. He climbed down and shook his head when Catherine tried to follow.
“Won’t take long. I’ll just drop two or three. I can trim them and cut them into posts and have them stacked by the wagon in a few minutes. Got something above that I want to show you.”
Max walked through the stand, picking small, dead, and ailing pine. He notched the trees uphill toward the wagon and then cut through the other side, watching with satisfaction as they fell just where he planned.
The trees were small—didn’t need much of a post to hold in chickens and hold up chicken wire—and Max’s Swede saw ate through them in big bites. He left some of the trees almost full length. These would be poles to line the pen top and sides.
Max carried the posts three at a time up the hill and then returned for the poles, dragging them to the untidy pile beside the wagon.
“Ought to do it,” he said, wiping imaginary sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve in an old habit. “Now, let me show you something.”
Max climbed into the wagon, slapped the reins across the horses’ backs, and drove the team up the ridge and out on the flat top of the butte. He climbed down, walked around to Catherine’s side of the wagon, and offered her his hand. This time she took it, stepping gracefully down from the wagon seat.
Vegetation was sparse there, soil clinging to the rock only in patches. But wherever there was soil, there was grass and brush. Here and there, trees wedged their roots into cracks in the rock, their stunted size and twisted trunks testaments to their will to live even in that hostile environment.
Walking was easy across that huge, flat rock, and a moment later Max and Catherine were standing at the edge of a cliff on the north side of the butte’s narrow waist.
Catherine looked down. The rim fell perhaps eighty feet to hard-edged rocks below. Suddenly, she felt as though the earth’s axis had tipped, and she teetered on the brink. She stood there swaying, until Max took her arm, steadying her.
“Okay?”
“Yes, I don’t know what happened.”
“Lot farther looking down than it is looking up.”
Catherine said softly, “I know that perhaps better than anyone,” but Max didn’t seem to hear her.
“First thing I did when I came here was to work on those springs and dam up some of those coulees. Then I got the neighbors to chip in, and I built fences while they worked on their homes. Cattle need water nearby, otherwise they walk off weight going from the grass to the water.”
“Those first years have paid off. I’m going into winter with fat stock and good grass. Some of the neighbors are already short, and they’ve got no hay. They stocked too heavy, and didn’t pay attention. They’re all grazed off close up to water and no way to get to the grass farther out.”
“I’ll get through the winter, and they might not. Might be that I can pick up some cattle cheap this winter. Maybe some proven homesteads next spring.”
“You seem terribly pleased at the prospect of your neighbors’ misfortune.”
“I know how to live on this land. Some don’t.”
“Some don’t want to.”
The muscles of Max’s jaw tightened. “No market for winter beef
,” he continued through clenched teeth as they walked toward the southern edge of the rim. “If I don’t buy their cattle, the owners will butcher them. But they can’t butcher their whole herd, so some drift against a fence, and the wind cuts the life out of them.
“Or they maybe starve down weak, and coyotes get at them. I came up on a bunch of coyotes eating a steer one time. They were having so much fun they didn’t even hear me. They had already opened his belly, and two or three were playing tug of war with his guts. One coyote had his head right inside that steer’s belly. I don’t know what he was chewing on in there, but it was good enough that he didn’t even know it when those other coyotes scattered.”
“I walked up on that animal same as I would a ranch dog. He heard me just as I got there, and jerked his head out—all bloody, it was. I had him then. He was growling and snapping, but I was so mad I held him by the nape of the neck, and I hoisted him into the air and cut his throat, slow and easy.”
“It ain’t a kind thing to die like that steer did alone on the prairie. No kind thing at all.”
Max stopped a moment to take off his hat and wipe his dry forehead with his shirtsleeve. He didn’t look at Catherine. Instead his eyes were fixed on something in the distance.
“You try to tell some rancher next winter that he will have to watch his cattle die because you don’t want to take unfair advantage of him by giving him money for something that ain’t worth spit froze to death. Tell him that while he watches the herd he nursed from calves die, and he can’t do nothing to save them. You tell him that, miss high and mighty Boston lady, and see how much he’s impressed with your neighborliness.”
Catherine sagged from the force of Max’s words. “I’m sorry.”
“You ought to be sorry. Never knew anybody who could learn anything with his mouth open, and near as I can tell, you haven’t shut it since you came here.”
Catherine’s temper flashed.
“Mr. Bass, I am sorry I falsely accused you. You have so many real offenses against you, there is no need to imagine any. And anytime you get tired of me, please feel free to send me back.”
“Madam, trains don’t go where you came from.”
Catherine’s eyes narrowed, and her hands knotted into little fists. “Oooooh,” Catherine said, poking both fists into the sky, “Lord, give me strength.”
Max stepped back.
“No, Mr. Bass, I wasn’t going to hit you,” she said, the anger turning to exasperation in Catherine’s voice. “Go ahead and show me what you want to show me. This place is unbearable.”
They walked together to the edge of the rim on the southern side of the butte. They were standing at the base of a shallow U cut back into the sandstone rim, arms stretching south as though to embrace the winter sun.
“See down there, the green? That’s a spring. That’s where the real ranch is going to be. It faces south and has protection from the wind on the other three sides. It’s got water. After I work over that spring, there’ll be plenty of water for the house and stock, too.”
It was a magnificent homesite. Sandstone cliffs overlooked the little valley. A lifetime would be well spent watching light and shadow play across the face of those rocks. Giant boulders, shaken from the rim by cataclysmic forces or the final drop of centuries of rain and ice, lay imbedded in the valley below. A small stand of trees hugged the rim on the northeast corner, and brush, turning red and yellow in the heat, competed with grass for the water near the spring.
“Why didn’t you dig your hole here, Mr. Bass?”
“Soil’s too sandy.”
“Certainly a nice place for a hole.”
Max stared at her for a moment and then sighed. “Neighbors coming day after tomorrow to raise a barn. Wedding present. Give you a chance to get to know some of them.”
“I have no desire to meet anyone who holds you in such high esteem as to build a barn for you, and it will be a cold day in hell before I allow anyone to see me in that snake pit you call home.”
“Ma’am, I’ve weathered storms that froze cattle standing straight up, and I’ve never seen anything as cold as this place has been the past couple of days.”
“Maybe hell has frozen over, Mr. Bass. This certainly is as close as I ever want to come.”
Max sighed again.
“I have to go to town today to order the lumber. You’re welcome to go along.”
“You want me to be seen in public dressed like this?”
“I’m going dressed like this,” Max said.
Catherine’s lip curled.
“Stop at the dugout. I’ll change.”
The ride to town was silent save for the creak and rattle of the wagon and the clapping of the horses’ hooves against the prairie hardpan.
Catherine’s mind was racing. She might escape, but how? She had no money, her savings spent in Boston because she knew she was marrying a rich Montana rancher and wouldn’t need the few coins in her cloth bag. But now she desperately needed money, enough for a ticket to somewhere else, someplace Max wouldn’t find her.
These same thoughts were bumping through Max’s mind, but reversed as by a mirror. Catherine might—probably would—run, but only if he turned his back. Her pride was too fragile to bump it against the eyes and wagging tongues of the people of Prairie Rose.
So on they rode in silence, each plotting against the other.
Max pulled the mare up to the hitching post outside Cole’s General Store and climbed down, stepping to the other side of the wagon to give Catherine his hand. “Might as well come in.”
“I thought I would go over to the dry goods store.”
“There’ll be time for that later.”
They went in together. The store smelled of leather, vegetables, tin, spices, floor oil, tobacco, horses, and a blend of other odors too exotic or intertwined to recognize.
A tobacco rope, woven of half-inch strands of leaf, hung by the door, and a long glass-front counter ranged the length of the building. Shelves lined the walls floor-to-ceiling, and stepladders offered access to their shadowed depths. Goods hung on ropes spun down from the high tin-clad ceiling like spider webs to trap customers with their wares, and the aisle wended its way through a maze of saddles, farm gear, sacks of potatoes, and whatever else needed immediate space.
Catherine had never seen a store like it. She wandered, drawn finally to a shelf full of hats. Pastel green and beautiful it was, and capped with a bouquet of silk flowers.
Mrs. Cole, two axe handles high and one wide, appeared behind the counter. “It’s the green one, isn’t it?”
Catherine was startled by the woman’s intrusion.
“No, I mean yes, but I don’t need a hat.”
“Thought so. The green will bring out the color of your eyes. You must try it on.”
“No, I …”
Mrs. Cole bustled around the end of the counter, and reached almost full length to place the hat on Catherine. She stepped back, head cocked, surveying her handiwork, then leaned into Catherine again, tipping the hat just a bit over one eye.
“Thought so,” she said. “That hat’s been here for a year now, and there hasn’t been one lady to come in but doesn’t try it on. Just wasn’t right for any of them, but on you it looks like a crown. Matches your dress, too. You could wear it home.”
“But I …”
“Here, the mirror.”
Even in the pale light, Catherine knew Mrs. Cole was right. The hat drew attention to her eyes, to the color of her skin. And then in the mirror, Catherine noticed that Max was watching her, the same look on his face as that first day when he saw her swinging beside the creek. Catherine blushed.
“Put the hat on the ticket with the lumber,” Max said without taking his eyes from Catherine. George Cole, who had interrupted taking Max’s order to watch the affair, smiled, and then fidgeted.
“Uh … there’s something that we have to talk about, Max.”
Max turned his attention to the storekeeper.
Max bristled. “You can’t give me credit?”
Cole shook his head.
“You owe me money for this year’s wheat, don’t you?”
Cole nodded.
“Then what the hell do you mean you can’t give me credit?”
Cole sucked in a long breath. “The fact is Max, that the banker told me not to. If I give you credit, I lose mine. I need bank money to operate. Sorry, but that’s the way it is.”
Max glowered for a moment and then softened. “Sorry, George, should have known it wasn’t you. Give Miss Catherine that hat, and make arrangements to deliver the lumber day after tomorrow—Thomsen said he would get some men together to haul it out—and I’ll go get the banker his cash money.”
Max strode stiff-legged to the door. Credit is a public rating of a man’s honesty and dependability. Word might spread that Max Bass was no longer considered good for his debts, and that realization stung. He was thinking about that, and not Catherine, as he left the store.
Catherine counted to thirty and then walked over to the storefront window. Max was just stepping through the door into Millard’s. Catherine turned to Mrs. Cole.
“The hat is lovely. I’ll take it. If Mr. Bass returns before I do, perhaps you could tell him that I just stepped out for a moment.”
Mrs. Cole nodded. “I knew you were right for that hat,” she said. “As soon as you stepped through the door. I knew it.”
Catherine tugged open the heavy door and sneaked across the boardwalk and into the street. She caught herself then, took a deep breath, and marched the remaining way to the Prairie Rose Bank like a queen about to review her troops.
A bell rang above the door as she entered the bank, and Phillips looked up and blanched. It was that crazy woman with the hat pin, and she was descending upon him again.
“I would like to see you in your office, Mr. Phelps.”