Black Wind Pass

by Rusty Davis

  He looked at his wife, still in bed, before he left. She never felt the wonder of the land, even though she had been bred to it. Too bad. Then again, she was a woman. A woman’s job was to have children. Jones was getting impatient about that. They had been married two years and Lucinda had not yet given birth. He would not live forever, and he wanted to be sure he had a son who was old enough to inherit his empire before he died. He had spoken to her about it, as delicately as a plain-speaking man could do, and she had gotten into some female state of nerves and tears over it. The problem was very simple to him: If his wife could not perform her function, he would divorce her and find another wife. He had told her this in his usual brusque manner. Wives, like cowhands, needed to be told when they were not pulling their weight. After first resorting to the female ploy of tears—something he found insufferable—she assured him she would have a child soon. She was a woman, after all, and women were supposed to know. Since that ultimatum was delivered, she had been more agreeable and less likely to argue, confirming in his mind that a strong hand was required, whether it was leading a household or guiding a ranch into an empire.

  Jones saddled Fergus, a massive white stallion that cost Jones more than his hands earned in a month. The horse could ride all day through any weather. His stature and status made Jones feel every inch a king. There was none like him on the range. He sat the horse as the wild wind blew, a precursor to the arrival of the rain. He could see forks of lightning striking across the valley. The thunder rolled and swelled—louder than the guns at Petersburg and majestic in its own way.

  Something raw and elemental was awakened in Jones by the storms. The wild, unconquerable weather of Wyoming was all that was left to test his mettle and challenge his spirit. The storm that could break him had never been brewed. He sat the horse and watched as the gray line of rain advanced upon Double J, meeting Jones and then pounding upon him as if daring him to break. He threw back his head, shook the rain off his hat, and rode out to check on the horses.

  To the west, streak after streak of lightning crackled from the black sky to the gray-tinged ground. He rode that way. Where the greatest danger was, there he should be. As he passed a wooded area along the rough pastureland the Lewis women had failed to use properly, one jagged line of lightning streaked to within ten yards of him, snapping down half of a tree in seconds. Jones felt a surge of energy as though it had passed through his bones. As the limbs and trunk fell, a shape darted from where it had been standing, under cover.

  The stallion!

  For more than a year, a black stallion that was faster than any other animal in the valley had lived with a herd of mares and other wild horses along the intersection of the old Bar C and the Double J. He was the only horse that could leave every rider behind—including Jones. Jones had tried at various times to trap him and catch him. The horse was as clever as he was powerful, and always eluded Jones. Now, the horse was only a few yards away from Jones, running with fear-induced frenzy. This was his chance!

  His own stock forgotten, Jones gave chase. Fergus started to gain. Then the stallion leaped the rain-swollen creek with ease. Jones followed, splashing through it as if the rising, muddy water was not there. Another bolt sent the stallion back over the creek. Back and forth they went. Jones felt his confidence grow. The animal was wild and untamed, but it was in fear of the storm. Jackson Jones feared nothing and no one. He had his rope coiled and ready. Soon, even an animal as magnificent as the stallion would have to tire.

  Sparks flew from the rock ahead as another bolt struck. Jones could barely believe what he saw. The stallion turned back the way he had run, pivoting in an impossibly fast turn, passing Jones and leaving the rancher to rein in his mount and gallop hard to make up the ground.

  “No!”

  Jones saw the animal stagger. It almost fell. It could not die! He had to have the stallion! He spurred his own mount to gallop faster. So intent was he on reaching the animal he failed to see the rider at the edge of the trees. Then the lightning flashed brightly and he saw the rope against the horse’s neck.

  Jones was angered at first. His men should know that this horse was his business. He, Jackson Jones, should be the one to catch this animal. Then he decided, as he approached the snorting, angry horse, that his riders must have wanted to help. There is, he thought, something to be said for loyalty—even in a cowhand who should have been somewhere else doing what he had been ordered to do.

  “I had him cold,” Jones blustered as he rode up. The storm was slacking. It was almost as spent as the winded animals. Jones did not recognize the rider at first. “Here, I can take him back to the house.”

  “What makes you think he’s your horse?” A slack-jawed Jackson Jones beheld the drenched, diminutive form of Rebecca Lewis, broad grin splitting the mud covering her face. “This is our land here, Mr. Jones! You’re more than a mile from your land. Gave us a chase, didn’t he?”

  Jones was silent, open-mouthed. A woman had captured his stallion? Impossible! And to boot, it was one of the Lewis women whom he held in such contempt. He was more shocked at that than to find he had lost track of his bearings, so intent had he been upon the chase.

  Reb was enjoying herself. She had been riding to check on the horses when the storm rolled through. She had seen Jones cross onto her land but didn’t know why, so she followed, galloping through the mud to keep pace with the chase. At the end, the stallion, focused on running away from the lightning and Jones, had galloped away from Jones and straight toward her. The animal was almost past her before she saw her opportunity. She caught up to the stallion almost before he knew she was there. It was no effort to drop the lasso over the animal’s neck and snare him.

  Still grinning, she rode closer to Jones, keeping tight grip on the rope that the stallion was trying to pull out of her hands. “Know you been chasin’ him a long time, Mr. Jones. We don’t have a bronc buster to tame him, so he’s all yours.” She tied the rope tight on the pommel of the dumbfounded man’s saddle as he watched, seemingly unable to comprehend what had happened. “Better hang on, Mr. Jones, or he’s gonna drag you to Denver!” The exhilaration of the storm and the chase were in her, and she was radiating joy. Her laugh was like a bell amid the thunder. She loved the battle with nature that was part of Wyoming life. She loved to win!

  “Miss Lewis, I . . . I do not know what to say. Thank you,” he said gruffly. The concept that this small woman could capture a horse he could not was so at variance with his view of the world that no words could emerge from his stupefaction. He knew range manners required something. The stallion was trying to escape and Jones would not suffer the indignity of the horse escaping in front of the girl. The stallion needed to be in the corral Jones had built for him. “This is not the time or place, but if I may call upon you and your Aunt Jess at a time in the near future, perhaps we can talk about the range limits and allow you to continue to operate your ranch.” The stallion tugged again. Jones hauled in the rope. He needed to get back to the corral with the animal before the rope broke. “I shall call upon you later.” He jerked the rope and turned the head of his horse back toward the Double J.

  Rebecca Lewis watched the struggling figure and the pulling horse ride away with glee. She didn’t care whether Jackson Jones ever acknowledged how his stallion was captured or ever remembered a promise made in humiliation and anxiety. People always said things they didn’t mean. She had caught the fabled stallion of Buffalo Horn Valley, by herself and in the teeth of a storm. She looked up. Patches of blue were appearing. Sun was poking out to the west. There was work and chores. But for a moment she smelled the clean smells of the land and enjoyed her triumph. The King of the Range learned there was somebody better! She whooped because it was too much to keep inside, then rode back to the ranch house. Wait until Aunt Jess and Carrick heard this.

  The Lewis family, such as it was, was celebrating, with such that they had. Reb’s days of joy were never as many as Jessie wanted them to be—some days she won
dered if the price of their choices had been too high. Tonight, the girl was about as happy as Jessie had ever seen her. Catching a stallion Jackson Jones wanted made the achievement much larger than it would have been otherwise. Carrick barely mentioned the stampede he and Randy had endured. He reported the one dead steer to Jess, since it would be meals for a while and leather in the winter, but he was happy to let Reb have her day as the center of attention. The girl deserved it. She chattered all through supper, and never seemed to notice that everyone else did the cleaning-up chores. In time, it was dark and time for folks with animals that needed tending to get to bed.

  “I will see you in a minute, young lady,” Jess said with mock severity as she headed off the main room to their bedroom.

  “Yes, Aunt Jess,” said Reb, suddenly feeling awkward at the silence and being alone with Carrick. They were standing a few inches apart.

  “Never did feel quite like this before, Carrick,” said Reb. “I can’t explain it. I won’t really try. But it’s good—real good.”

  “Good to know next time I don’t want to get soaked in a storm,” he said. “I can let you soak your head and be all happy as can be. Reb, we don’t talk much, but you know Jess is real proud of you and I . . .”

  “Well?” she asked, the first coy look on her face he had seen.

  “I um, um, was wondering,” he said, looking her in the eyes and fidgeting. “Um . . . I don’t know what you feel, but . . .”

  Muttering some exclamation of disgust he didn’t really hear, she closed the gap between them and wrapped her arms around him. Carrick wanted to tell her a thousand things that didn’t fit into words he knew, but he held on. Reb understood somehow in a way she could not explain, that the man needed her; she already knew she needed him. It seemed right, and if she waited for him it would take forever.

  They were still kissing when Jessie stepped into the front room, then retreated into the hallway. She need not have worried about interrupting them. It took several loud steps and noises from repeatedly clearing her throat before Jessie heard the shuffling of feet that told her she could go back through the front of the house again. She had wondered what would happen when Reb found someone. Now she knew.

  By the time she reached the front room of the cabin, Carrick was heading out the door—he still maintained his vigil at the shack by Black Wind Pass. He and Reb’s eyes were dancing with each other. Reb’s emotions were plain to see. After all the men and boys who brought her flowers or poems or promises, and a couple who sang poorly but with great gusto, her niece fell in love with a hard-bitten cowboy who had no prospects at all. It was, she reflected, the sort of thing to be expected from the daughter of a man who never listened a day in his life to sound advice. What God willed would be. Jessie didn’t know whether to be glad or sad. She believed there was an iron core of goodness in Carrick that had not been ruined by the war or whatever came after it, but she also knew—the hard way—that ten years was time for a lot of secrets to build up. There was no telling what they were and when they would spill across the Wyoming landscape.

  The next morning, Carrick rode south from the pass toward the Lazy F. In the past few days, he’d learned a lot more about Jackson Jones, and understood the rancher. Jones might still want to gobble up the old Bar C range to suit his ambitions, but he was pretty sure the man behind the ranch had come to respect the Lewis women. The incident with the stallion was the clincher, Carrick thought. In a way, Reb had saved the ranch. Whatever Jones did, which Carrick figured at most would give the women their place to live while Jones took as much land as he wanted, it would not end all the threats in Buffalo Horn Valley. He needed to speak with Francis Oliver.

  Unlike Jackson Jones, who was clearly drawn by everyone who knew him, Oliver was less clear-cut. A man with a smaller outfit had to bend to the winds to survive. Boldness was often rashness. It was not certain to Carrick whether Oliver was the kind of man who was by nature the shifty sort trying to maneuver his way to get what he wanted, or whether he was so pressured by Double J that it was the way he came to operate. Maybe talking would help Carrick figure it out. Jessie had been kind of nudging him in that direction. For some reason she didn’t see Oliver in the same light as Jones, but she didn’t really spell it out to Carrick. He’d half wondered when he thought over his introduction to Oliver if there was something more than land on the man’s mind, but it was also clear the man was pushing the Lewis women pretty hard. No matter. He’d learn what he could.

  Before he rode into Lazy F, he gave the place a look over. The ranch was noticeably poorer than Double J. Lots of cracked paint. Stuff was lying around. A working ranch; no female touch. One bunkhouse. No guards. That was good.

  Luck was with him, too. No one contested his slow approach to the ranch, or seemed to care when he entered in through the gate. In fact, no one seemed to be there. He followed the noise and found out why. The man who had spoken to Jessie the other day was by the corral, watching a rider breaking a new horse. Carrick waited. Francis Oliver was in his 50s, maybe. Maybe an officer in the war; nothing to go home to. The man and his crew were laughing and back-slapping as the man in the corral made progress, and shouting encouragement when he did not.

  Some men led from above through a combination of power and fear. That was Jones. Oliver led by getting dirty with the rest of his men, working right beside them, and pushing them forward with him. That was clear to see. Something made the man turn. He started when he saw Carrick. He spoke to one of his men and then moved to meet Carrick, who dismounted and tossed Beast’s reins over a hitching rail.

  “Can’t say you’re welcome here,” said Oliver, “but I’ll give a man the chance to explain himself before he gets thrown off my ranch.”

  “Name’s Carrick.”

  “Bar C. Josh Carrick. Either a great man or the first of the cattle kings or nothing more than a lucky rancher who got to the land first, depending upon who tells the tale. Now it makes sense you bein’ all fired up the other day. I know that was Bar C’s place before Jess and her firebrand there moved in. War’s been over a long, long time, friend. Where you been?”

  “Texas. Other places. My business.”

  “Whatever business it was, son, you got no right walkin’ back into Buffalo Horn Valley and pokin’ your nose in a man’s affairs.”

  “It was my family’s land. Thought you knew that.”

  “Who is talkin’ about land, son?” The baffled expression on Carrick’s face made Oliver guffaw. “I been trying for an everlivin’ month of Sundays to ask Jessie Lewis to marry me, you fool. That woman is everything a man could dream of, and she’s so busy with all her work she never lets a man get her attention. Why does she think I been over there so much askin’ and askin’ and askin’ again?”

  “Don’t think she knows you been thinkin’ of anything but land.”

  “How can she not know it? I been offering to protect her from Double J by combining the ranches. If that ain’t marriage, what is?”

  “The flowers; the ones that grow down by the creek. There was a bunch of ’em by the trail. That’s what you threw away the other day when you came a’courtin’ Jess Lewis with guns and riders.”

  “A man gets desperate at my age, son. And there you were all flint and tinder and that niece of hers that would rather shoot a body than eat. What’s a man to do? Every time I come near the place that Reb’s got a rifle in her hands and she can shoot. Not a fence on her land without holes in it from her practicing. Girl’s like a grass fire in May. Don’t snicker. Wrote this here poem for Jess. Never got to give it to her. See?”

  He reached into his jacket and pulled a piece of paper with florid, bold writing upon it. Carrick started to read the words closely but Oliver pulled it back and jammed it in his coat pocket. The humor of the situation touched Carrick. “I knew somethin’ was goin’ on but I didn’t know what. Never thought about marriage.” Now he had to laugh.

  “Laugh at the old man, son, but if Double J keeps creepin’ down,
it’s gonna be all over for those two before long. Maybe I don’t know pretty words and I don’t have a pretty face because I been riding the range too long, but I bet if I can get some time to talk with Jessie, she can make up her own mind.”

  Carrick thought about it. Ramsay and Bad Weather distrusted Oliver, but the story could be true. Bad Weather characterized Lazy F as mostly making sure Double J didn’t get what it wanted more than pushing out the Lewis women. He’d take a chance. Maybe Jessie understood all this and that’s why she didn’t feel threatened? If Jessie Lewis, who probably knew all the range gossip better than he did and knew the man to boot, wanted Oliver as a husband that was her life and none of his affair.

  “Do this,” he told Oliver. “Come by the next day or so maybe afternoon some time. I’ll ask Reb to show me something out on the range; get us out of the house for a short time. Best I can do. Jessie don’t want to get married there’s nothin’ I can do about it. And if I regret doin’ this because you say or do somethin’ that upsets Jessie, we won’t be talkin’ next time I see you.”

  “ ’Course she wants to get married. All women want that! What else do they ever want?” Oliver said. “I never got me a chance to tell her . . . well, you know, Carrick . . . that I love her! Hard to talk that way when there’s someone with a gun six feet away with an itchy finger listenin’ for some word she don’t like.”

  Carrick could understand that! “Oliver, I’ll do my part to help you.”

  “This isn’t some trick to get Bar C back for yourself is it? Texas is a long way to come for nothin’.” Suspicion as a response to friendship was nothing more than plain common sense. Carrick wasn’t offended.