Showdown at Buffalo Jump

by Gary D. Svee

  So he busied himself the first morning with chores, cleaning the barn and the chicken pen, but by mid afternoon he had to admit that he was just wasting his time, avoiding going to the dugout while Catherine was there.

  The chill of the rain seeped into Max, and finally he retreated to the dugout. The fire in the stove was welcome, but that was the only warmth in the room. Max and Catherine studiously avoided each other, speaking only when forced to by some accident of proximity.

  Catherine spent the afternoon polishing the flatware as though it were silver and not the cheap metal it was. When she began to sweep the floor for the second time that afternoon, Max fled the dugout, preferring the honesty of the rain, returning only for dinner. After dinner, he rose and tucked his bedroll under his arm.

  “Nice that you have a barn now,” Catherine said.

  “Yes, it is,” Max replied, stepping through the door into the steady drizzle. Never had he seen rain like this on the prairie. It reminded him of the story of Noah, and of the petrified seashells and fish he had found in rock outcroppings. Max couldn’t help wondering if the time had come for another change, that the sea that had once lain the prairie was coming back, and that he ought to be building a raft. He shook that thought away, but it came back to him several times as he stood in his wet coat, watching the rain turn the land into a stranger.

  But there was relief on the second day.

  Max discovered a damp spot in the dugout wall. It wasn’t serious yet, but it could be. He showed the spot to Catherine and told her about the support he intended to build like a wall through the middle of the dugout.

  Maybe the wall was the silver lining to the clouds that hung like a veil over the land outside. The wall would be necessary this winter when the cold drove him out of the barn and back into the dugout. He couldn’t tell Catherine about his plan of course. She still harbored some hope that Max would free her when the priest came in November. It would be easier to hold her if she believed that he might let her go.

  Max worked slowly and carefully, savoring the job because it kept his mind and hands partly occupied, but still he finished early. It was Catherine’s turn that day to leave the dugout, to stand in the rain and contemplate her foolishness because she couldn’t tolerate sitting in silence across the table from Max.

  When she returned to the dugout, Max was sitting with his back to the stove. He glanced up as she stepped through the door, her hair hanging in strings and her face streaked cold and white.

  “Edna says rainwater is good for washing a woman’s hair,” Max said.

  “Are you suggesting that my hair is dirty?”

  “No, ma’am. It’s just that there’s a lot of rainwater out there now. Most of the time there isn’t.”

  Catherine eyed him suspiciously. “You’re right. There is precious little bounty in this country. It would be sinful not to accept what there is.”

  “I left some buckets out by the corral. There’s probably enough by now.”

  “Thank you. If you would get them for me, I’ll get the soap and towels ready.”

  Catherine heated the water on the stove, putting a wash basin, towels, and soap on the table. When the water was warm, she filled the basin and left the remainder on the stove.

  Max watched her as she washed her hair—the soap sudsing more freely in the soft rainwater than in the heavily mineralized water of the creek—enjoying the intimacy of the moment as some women enjoy watching a man shave. After Catherine had rinsed her hair and wound towels around it, she sat down at the table.

  “I’d like you to teach me poker,” she said.

  “Poker? That’s not a lady’s game, ma’am. Maybe we could play Old Maid or something like that.”

  The moment the words were out of his mouth, Max flinched. He hadn’t meant anything by the reference to Old Maid, but he expected to pay for the fact, if not the intent, of his words.

  Catherine’s eyes narrowed, but she said only, “Poker! If you can play the game, I certainly can.”

  First Max laid out the rules: high card, pair, two pair, three of a kind, straight, flush, full house, four of a kind, straight flush, and royal flush.

  Then he gave Catherine a handful of wooden matches, took a handful himself, and they began to play. The game went slowly at first, Catherine interrupting the play with questions. Max won steadily, his pile of matchsticks growing while Catherine’s shrank. But Catherine was a fast learner, and once she was comfortable with the rules, Max began teaching her the finer points of the game.

  “Some people play their opponents, watching for little signs that will give away a good hand or a bluff. For example, you lean up in your chair when you have a good hand and lean back when you don’t.”

  “Trouble is that good poker players will set you up. They’ll tug at their ear, and you’ll bet all your chips because every time in the past that meant they were bluffing. Only this time they won’t be, and you’ve lost your stake.”

  “The smart thing is to play the odds. There are only so many cards in the deck, so you can figure out what your chances are of getting the card you need, or the chances of the other guy having what he wants you to think he has.”

  “Now let’s say that you have a four-card flush in hearts and there are three other hearts showing on the table. That means there’re only six hearts left. You’re playing against me, so you know what your four cards are and three of mine. That means there are forty-five cards left.”

  “You have six chances in forty-five or two in fifteen, or about one in eight of getting the card you need. Only makes sense to take a chance like that if the pot is at least eight times the bet, and if the flush you’re betting on is likely to beat the other guy’s hand.”

  “When you got that figured out, and your money’s on the table, then you sit back to see if he leans forward or back.”

  Max’s grin coaxed no smile from Catherine. Instead, he saw conjecture on her face. “I’m surprised at your skill in mathematics,” she said.

  “Never learned any mathematics, ma’am. Just poker.”

  The game continued until long after dark, Catherine scratching at a piece of paper beside her, and Max helping her through each hand.

  But for the past half hour, Max had given Catherine her head, leaving the play completely to her. She had been losing steadily.

  Now, on the table in front of her, lay two pair, queens and sevens, and she had been betting steadily as each card was shown.

  Max had filled a flush with the last card.

  “Up to you,” he said.

  Catherine leaned over the table. “I’ll wager all my matchsticks against yours.”

  Max grinned and shoved his pile into the pot. “Gave yourself away,” he said. “I knew you were bluffing when you leaned forward, just trying to make me believe you had more than what was showing.”

  Max reached for the pot, but Catherine shook her head. “That’s what I thought you’d think.”

  She turned over her last card. Full house. The pot was hers.

  “I’ll be damned,” Max said.

  “Probably,” Catherine said.

  “Play tomorrow?”

  “Why? I already have all the matches.”

  A perplexed expression spread across Max’s face, and Catherine laughed, the sound pealing through the room like a Christmas carol played on bells.

  “Might as well,” she said, a smile still lighting her face. “Not much else to do in this rain.”

  Max was almost giddy as he walked back to the barn that night. He crawled into his blankets in the loft, warmed by the animals below, and listened to the rain drumming against the roof for a long time before drifting off to sleep. For the first time in a week, he didn’t dream of the mare tangled in the barbwire.

  Catherine lay awake, too. She had enjoyed the game, much to her surprise, but she was thinking not of poker, but of escape.

  Catherine had run from the snake on pure impulse. It wasn’t until she reached the top of the hill and
the prairie beyond that she had thought of her run as an attempt to escape Max and the hole in the ground and Montana.

  Her mind played with the possibilities. She could seek out the priest for special dispensation. Or she could simply flee the country. Go where no one knew who she was.

  She needed money and some way to reach the stage in Prairie Rose before Max caught her.…

  The week settled into a routine built around the game.

  Max would wake in the morning before daylight and rush through his chores, feeding and brushing the animals and cleaning their stalls. Then he would stand in the barn, eyes on the eastern horizon, waiting for the sun to rise like a live ember from the sea.

  The earth had drunk its fill, and now the rain was splashing off its teeth and running down its face, collecting in wrinkles and creases.

  Pishkin Creek was gnawing its way through the creek bottom, seeking bones hidden there centuries before. One never knew what bones would turn up when the creek ran high.

  And thoughts of that and Catherine—mostly Catherine—would crowd Max’s mind until the sun touched a prairie washed clean of color. Max would walk to the dugout, then, water dripping down his neck and mud sticking to his boots. His knock at the door would be greeted by Catherine’s voice and the sound of sizzling sidepork.

  He would slip out of his boots and slip up to the table, cradling a cup of coffee in his hands, water dripping from his face. He would sit there in silence, eyes following Catherine as she bustled about the stove, and always Catherine would feel his eyes, the heat of them bringing a deeper flush to her face.

  They would eat in silence, and Max would offer to do the dishes and Catherine would refuse. When she had dried her hands, she would take her chair at the table, and Max would deal a hand of five-card stud.

  They didn’t talk much as they played, developing a kind of sign language over the days that made speech unnecessary. Occasionally, as one was dealing the cards, the other would pour a cup of coffee from the blue enamel pot on the stove or slip on a jacket for a hurried and wet trip to the outhouse.

  And on the sixth day, Catherine pushed back from the table, a winner. “Mr. Bass, if you can win five thousand dollars playing poker, I can win ten thousand dollars.”

  Max laughed. “Doesn’t work that way. The game’s entirely different when you’re playing for real money.”

  And then realization and hurt touched Max’s eyes. “Is that why you wanted to play?”

  Catherine replied in a subdued voice, “Partly.”

  Max sighed. “I sure as hell can’t complain about your sense of honesty. You never hesitate to tell the truth.”

  He waited a moment to put his thoughts in order. “No, I didn’t win all my money in poker, but I won most of it. Stay sober and play the odds, and you win most of the time. I win … most of the time.”

  Max rose and walked toward the door, picking his coat off the makeshift coat tree on the way. He stopped in the doorway, silhouetted by sunlight spilling into the dugout and then stepped through the door and was gone. The light outside was so bright, his eyes watered. The sun had come back in force. The heat and humidity more evocative of the tropics than Montana, and Max half expected to see dinosaurs growing from bones laid down in the mud-rock eons before. He walked up the hill, slipping in the mud, stopping at the wagon to survey this new land where the rain comes for a week at a time.

  The air was incredibly clear, the rain having scrubbed the sky clean of the smoke from wildfires that flare and die in the fall. The land was darker, too, in stark contrast to the sandstone rim that defined the ridge to the north. To the west, the tilled field lay like a raw wound, but Max could almost feel the healing winter wheat growing deep within the soil.

  Too bad Catherine wasn’t outside to see it, but it served her right if she didn’t. The horses nickered their welcome as Max opened the door to the barn.

  11

  Max rode at a lope, back straight, ignoring the tears the wind stole from his eyes.

  The road, wet gumbo baked dry by the sun, shined hard as a china plate. But even now, if Max were to dismount and scuff hard with his boot heels, he would find rain-saturated soil an inch below the surface. Montana’s thirst for water was sated for perhaps the first time in a hundred years.

  The past three days had dragged. Catherine had come from the dugout tentative as a ground squirrel testing the air before leaving its burrow. Max had seen her sitting in the wagon, drinking in the sunshine through the pores of her body to warm the chill deep within her.

  They hadn’t argued. There were no shouts or flaring tempers. They spoke when necessary, but only then, and Max felt as though a coyote had gnawed a hole in his belly. And today, when he thought he could tolerate no more, it grew worse.

  Catherine had walked in as he was rummaging through her dresser. Temper flared across her face, giving way to incredulity as he turned to face her, and she realized what he was holding.

  “What are you doing with my shoes?”

  “Have to go to town. I’m taking your shoes with me.”

  “In a pig’s eye.”

  “The ones you’re wearing, too.”

  “You’ll have to take them from me.”

  “I’ll do it if I have to, but that won’t be pleasant for either one of us.”

  Catherine sighed and sat down at the table to remove her shoes. “You would enjoy that, Mr. Bass. I think you enjoy playing the bully, subjecting me to these indignities. I think you enjoy going through a woman’s personal things.”

  Max slapped her. He hadn’t meant to. He didn’t even know what he was doing until it was done. He stood in disbelief, his hand stinging from the blow, watching tears spill from Catherine’s eyes as she sank to the floor in a heap.

  Catherine looked up at him, and the hurt he saw was more devastating than her anger had ever been.

  “Mr. Bass,” she said, her voice racked with sobs, “there was a time when I thought there was kindness and gentleness hidden somewhere in you. I was wrong. You have been around beasts for so long you’ve become one. I pity you, Mr. Bass. I pity you.”

  Max walked white faced from the dugout, Catherine’s shoes under one arm. He saddled the mare, dropped the shoes into the saddlebags, and kicked the horse into a lope toward town. He felt nothing, not the easy gait of the horse, not the wind in his face, not the tears on his cheeks—nothing.

  It was dark when he reached town, and he rode down Main Street, looking neither right nor left until he reached Millard’s. Max tied the mare to a post and loosened the cinch on the saddle, thumping across the boardwalk and past the double doors, both ajar to invite the cool night air inside.

  It was a busy night, the bar lined with men and two or three of the tables filled. They all looked up as Max stepped through the door, their attention lingering longer than he thought it should. He walked to an open stool, and just before he sat down, Len Hawks yelled, “What’s the matter, Max, you look tired!”

  Hawks hooted and there was scattered laughter at his table, but the line of men at the bar appeared uncomfortable, trying hard to pretend they hadn’t heard.

  Thomsen appeared and leaned down, both massive arms braced on the bar. “What’ll you have, Max?”

  “Glass of beer,” Max said, and then quietly so only Thomsen could hear him, Max asked, “What’s up?” inclining his head toward the table.

  But Thomsen didn’t answer, turning instead to draw Max’s beer. Before he returned, the banker Phillips walked through the back door of the bar, returning from the outhouse behind the building.

  Max refused to do business with Phillips, trusting most bankers very little and Phillips not at all. Since the banker had arrived in Prairie Rose, he had been involved in some shady, if not downright dishonest, deals.

  Phillips spotted Max and strutted over. “Howdy, Max,” he said, hand on Max’s shoulder. Max stiffened. He didn’t like to be touched, least of all by Phillips.

  “Suppose you got your wheat in before the
rain?”

  Max nodded.

  Phillips grinned and said in a stage whisper, “Can’t beat experience, can you, Max?” Hawks hooted again, and Phillips joined that table.

  Thomsen returned just as Max was beginning to step off the stool. He grabbed Max’s arm. “Give me a hand out back?”

  Max nodded. There wasn’t anything in the back room, or Prairie Rose for that matter, that Thomsen couldn’t handle by himself. He wanted to talk.

  The back room was filled with boxes of whiskey and oiled sawdust for sweeping the floor and a cot Thomsen threw drunks on to sleep off their night on the town. The room was lit by a kerosene lamp hanging from the ceiling. Thomsen had bumped it with his head, and it was swinging, leaving the room distorted and oblique. Max felt himself swaying with the light. He was glad he hadn’t had anything to drink.

  “What is it?” Max asked.

  “Phillips has been in here all night,” Thomsen said, hesitating before continuing. “He’s been saying that an … uh … inexperienced girl wouldn’t have come all the way out here from Boston to marry you. He’s been saying that Catherine is very experienced.”

  Max’s face went white, and a shudder shook his body. His eyes glazed and the muscles at the hinge of his jaw knotted. He turned to go back into the bar.

  “No!” Jake grabbed his arm, and Max tugged to get free. They struggled for a moment, and then Max cocked his fist.

  “Max! It’s me!” Thomsen hissed. “Don’t do that. Just give me a minute.”

  Max shook his head. His fury had disconnected the link between mind and body. Thomsen was desperately trying to bring reason back.

  “Max, you do that, and every man jack in here will think Phillips is telling the truth.”

  Max’s fist knotted again.

  “Max! Think! You know Phillips is lying, and I know, but they don’t. If you jump out there to defend your wife’s honor, word will get around that it needed defending. I’d like to feel Phillips’s fat little neck under my hands, but …”

  “I’ll take his neck!”

  “Max, if you give a damn about Catherine, you better listen. You bull in there and put your boots to the banker, and Catherine will be the one with the bruises. Think about her for a change.”