A Season of Fire and Ice

by Lloyd Zimpel

  Krupp has taken to grand gesticulation here, like a Baptist minister, vast gestures including all the country-side.

  —and when he has got a nice little flame going, he takes himself off down to Schwantz’s store and puts a hole in the old man’s door. What can a man say about that? Maybe he was shooting at old Schwantz, more likely at that drunk redhead kid and his big mouth; maybe at nothing, who knows? It was cowardly, for all that no blood was shed. But you, Gerhardt, you lost all that hay, and how you gonna get it back? It has got to come from somewhere, and there aint many places where it can. So, Gerhardt, you being the burned-out one, which way you gonna look?

  I wave at him to stop. Krupp, say I, I take your point. And I am grateful that nowhere in that burst of eloquence does he inject any names; for the name of Harris is there to be said. Pfeiffer has named him, as has Beidermann: the law and the victim—between them a name is thrown, smeared, into the world.

  Krupp, say I, it is getting cold and we have work to do, both of us. You are, I know, by nature, generous, as are all our neighbors, surely. I would propose that I would not be out of place in your company; and yet there are calculations to be made . . . and we shall see.

  So be it, Gerhardt, says Krupp, and tucks his pipe into his shirt pocket with its dottle-stained bottom half; and hollers to his kin at the rope-swing, taking turns with the twins, to get his hind-end onto that mule quick, as they have a two-hour ride and a mess of calves to feed before the old dog barks. . . . Now, this last sounds more like the Krupp we know; not the one trying to balance loads of hay on the head of a pin.

  They are well gone when Otto says: They aint getting that hay.

  It is not they, say I; it is he; and we shall see.

  No, it is they, says Otto; Krupp and Schneider and Willis and Laverene—which is one little bastard can make trouble all the way to Yankton—that gang is against us, Pa; you know it too. Hell, hay will never be enough—it will be oats and corn and come spring, you gonna give him our seed too? He aint the only one got bad luck. If he cannot handle a little trouble here, let him run back East to his folks, like all those others.

  Yes, Otto, say I, you have got some fine contrarian spunk in you, but facts are facts. Our Beidermann came out of Canada, and to run to his folks, why, he would go north, not east. And as for his folks, my feeling is he has few. Right from the beginning, he has been a solitary man.

  Well, then, says our stubborn oldest son, let him take up with that Jenssen woman—they been so thick. Hell, he put up half her hay, after he run off that drunk tramp she hired who harnessed her team crosswise and damn near crippled the mare. Let her help him feed his stock. He sure done enough for her. . . .

  IT IS AFTER SUPPER and the boys go off to pick their teeth on the porch, where Ma will soon bring them sugar cookies. Otto, staying put, mutters his opinions still: after all, he has rights that he knows are his, nor would I gainsay him here. Around us, at one of their lesser chores, the twins clear the supper table, and listen for a word favoring their hero and mentor—having heard slurs and vilification enough—for all that it is he who maligns the name of their blood brother, and with what probity? To be sure, with his needling, teasing, and nudging, Harris is less than the perfect brother, but that is the way of boys.

  The two tag along as I take my nightly visit to the little house. Free of the older boys talking over them, they scurry beside me through the weeds that flank the well-worn path; they are near as tall as I am now, and squeaky voiced.

  Says one: We could do it, Pa, the two of us. Load up whatever you say—that old bunch of stuff from the bog, we can take that. We can haul it over there ourselves, with Prince and Maude.

  Says the other, with a look over his shoulder: He might shoot Otto, but he will not shoot us.

  My hand is on the wooden latch and I say: You boys get out of here. I have some figuring to do before anybody does anything.

  Through the closed door I hear them mutter as they scuff down the path . . . That old hay aint worth nothing anyway . . . and back to the house, disappointed.

  . . .

  THEY SLEEP NOW, I trust, the disappointed little ones. Who else dares sleep I venture not to say; Otto, perhaps, in respite from his anger and disgust; but sleep comes hard to those baffled and soured by disappointment, and worry; which I make trivial by setting these words so easily on this page when they should be chiseled upon alabaster slabs of a weight to match the heaviness they lay upon our souls.

  Where is Harris, then? In the blink of an eye he is gone; how can that be? And why Harris—the fifth son—and not Otto, Cornelius, Henry, August, the twins? Why has not one or two or all of them gone amiss, if it is in the world for that to happen to any one of them. It can worry a man forever. . . . Yes, of them all, then which one? He is the one marked; and indeed, it is myself and Wilhemina, the two of us, who put that mark on him. . . . Old Doc Yost, in his last year, growling out of the corner of his mouth as he wiped his hands: Well, he got a splotch up here under his chin; birthmark is what it is; nothing important; we see them like that from time to time.

  INTER-LEAF

  ONE OF THE BOYS tending the loose cattle with a freighter that came through Zimmerman in mid-December was telling the pair of idlers warming their feet in the livery barn that if it was work they wanted, Big John Knudsen was hiring down at Quail Lake. Harris was helping old Voight bring in a load of last year’s prairie hay, and overheard.

  “He’s got hisself a big bunch of hosses,” said the boy, a little redheaded Irish kid. “Homely buggers, I’ll tell you. He’s feeding ’em rotten spuds out there on the ice.”

  To get these nags to auction, said the kid, Big John wanted hands. The loungers looked the other way, but Harris figured this might be his chance to get moving.

  For two months he had holed up working at Voight’s Big Hoss Livery, the Voight who owned it being old Jim Voight’s mother, who looked to be a hundred and two, and ordered her bachelor son around like a rented mule. She was softer with Harris, though, calling him “m’boy,” and put him up for found and two bits handed him here and there, and saw to it that he had an extra wool army blanket when he moved into the helper’s stall afront of the horses’ stalls. It was comfortable enough and he didn’t have to share it with two big snoring brothers: a good cot, a wash-stand, a clean basin and slop bucket, and even a bar of soap in an old sardine can with nail holes in the bottom. But no lamps allowed amidst all that hay, so when the sun went down, Harris took a stroll down the road to the Sand Hill Saloon and sat around with an old boy or two listening to the wild stories spun at the bar; once or twice, he’d had cash enough to buy a shot to keep his standing.

  The horses at Quail Lake set him to figuring. He didn’t want to vex old Voight by mentioning beforehand that he had a chance at a better job; so he quietly packed up his stuff, including a nice buffalo robe that someone had apparently forgotten under the cot: nobody had said he couldn’t have it, so he rolled it as tightly as he could and jammed it under the gear in back of his horse’s saddle, putting nearly a camel’s hump onto the animal.

  The old bay had had a few good weeks, hardly ridden and standing in clean straw out of the weather, stuffing himself with the timothy that it was Harris’ job to dig out of the high snow-covered stacks that stood on the acre or so of land behind the stables. He did a good day’s work; he didn’t figure anybody was shortchanged by his leaving so soon.

  It wasn’t quite light, the frigid sky more black than not, when he had all his gear laced up, ready to leave. From the house next door, where he lived with his mother, old Voight came out to unlock the stable for business. He seemed unsurprised to find Harris standing there with a packed horse.

  “Up early,” he said.

  Harris mumbled awkwardly: some stuff had come up . . . hadn’t been time. Much obliged to Voight for the job and all . . .

  Jim Voight looked him up and down. “Shit, you going off with John Knudsen and them hosses, ain’t you?

  Harris shrugge
d.

  “Well, you a grown boy,” said Voight. “Gonna do what the hell you please. Me, I did dumb things too, when I was your age. Just remember that you working for Big John Knudsen.”

  People like to call him Big Yawn, said Voight, and it was a familiar name hereabouts, last heard two, three years ago when he went bust on two sections of mortgaged land near Buford. What the drought didn’t get of his wheat, people said, the cutworms got of his corn. People thought he had disappeared east to his wife’s folks, but here he was, turned up again like a bad penny, running some gypsy horse-trading operation out on Quail Lake.

  “Ask yourself this,” said Voight. “Where’d he get all them hosses? And you can bet there’s a sheriff or two in this end of the country who’d like to know the answer to that too. Just make sure, m’boy, that you don’t end up getting handed your own ass.”

  Harris murmured that he wouldn’t, and as he pulled himself onto his encumbered horse, Grandma Voight came from her house, waving to him. “Harold,” she said—it was what he’d told them he was called—“wait a bit.” She handed up to him a paper-wrapped package the size of a couple of sandwiches. “Here’s some eats, Harold, and God bless you.” It was as if she’d had this ready hours ago, knowing.

  Harris fumbled the package; he could scarcely whisper his thanks; and he could not kick the old bay out of there fast enough; and he hoped to God she hadn’t seen the buffalo robe jammed under his gear.

  WITH SO MUCH FRESH SNOW, the old bay was knee-deep nearly all the way, out of town, down the road and over the bluff into the lake basin, dead tired when Harris pulled him up in the late afternoon and looked over what was spread before him.

  That kid on the bull train was right—Knudsen had himself a bunch of horses. In the snow-covered landscape, they were massed everywhere. Bands of a few dozen longhaired nags huddled here and there in the draws and on the lee side of the low hills, where the snow was less deep. Some stood unmoving, their heads hanging, and others pawed the snow to get at what little frozen grass they could find: the dirty spots they had already worked over covered the slopes down to the lake like scabs. Several grubby men on horseback who looked to have been recruited from the ice-cutters or the coots who trapped muskrats at the lake plodded along the outskirts of the loose animals to keep them from scattering. The really ornery-looking broncs, he saw, were in makeshift wire-and-rope corrals along the road where it ran past the lake.

  It was a while before Harris took in the whole sight. How in hell, in the dead of winter, could Knudsen afford to feed all these critters? He had to be better off than anyone gave him credit for.

  He found Big John in his headquarters, a ten-by-ten sod hut at the south end of the lake. In person, he belied his name, being a medium-sized man. He wore small eyeglasses which glinted in the light of his kerosene lantern, and he peered at Harris in a shrewd way as they shook hands and Harris offered his name: “Harold,” and said he’d heard there might be a job here.

  “Yup, you got it right,” Big John said; he was indeed hiring a few top-notch boys to accompany these fine animals out of Dakota over to the Iowa border, where, through privileged knowledge passed on by his Kansas City partners, he had been apprised of a prime market for quality horseflesh. Everybody was wanting good horses these days, Knudsen explained; did Harold know that? The army was buying, the freight companies were buying, the express lines were buying; and by God, even sight-seers from the East—Englishmen from England, for example—were buying up the best horses for their Western tours and excursions. The Goddamned nobility were coming out to shoot buffalo and prairie chickens and were hollering for horses. How were they gonna take their expensive tours without horses? They were crying for horses back there. Just yesterday Knudsen had gotten a wire message from New York—Ship more horses. It was, he trusted Harold would see, a cinch sellers’ market all the way. A blind man could make money! A man who didn’t know a horse’s head from its ass could make money. Harold didn’t know how lucky he was to get in on this extraordinary venture.

  Having presented Harris with these facts, Knudsen drew a sober face. “By God,” he said, “don’t I wish I could make this trip with you boys? Nothing I like more than riding a good horse across that prairie. Buffalo, antelope, rabbit, chicken—you can shoot enough meat in an hour to feed an army.” Four hundred miles of cold and snow and storms? Hell, he said, he couldn’t count the times he’d done that as a young man, no older than Harold was today.

  He shook his head sadly. “But I ain’t the man I was, and I admit it. Nope, them glory days is gone for Big John. Goddamn back give out on me, wouldn’t you know? A man like myself, too.”

  Well, there was one bright spot in all this—the way his biggest boy, Cobb, had come along. A hell of a youngster. If anybody could fill Big John’s shoes when it came to horses, it was that fine lad, Cobb. Maybe Harold was acquainted with him; they weren’t that far apart in years?

  Harris shook his head.

  He’d hired eight men, Knudsen announced. Harold would be number nine. And now that he was signing on—he was, wasn’t he?—they’d leave at four o’clock tomorrow morning. The pay, Knudsen had to admit, was damned generous—a dollar a day and plenty to eat. Harold would surely recognize that was above prevailing rates. Cash money paid no later than the day following their delivery of the horses at Dakota City.

  They shook hands on it, and Big John said Harold could sleep in the headquarters. Cobb would wake him in the morning. He took the lantern when he left, and in the cold dark on a bag of corn-husks, Harris fell asleep full of misgivings. But still, this venture would put him on the move, which, he figured, was wise; and when a hand poked him awake in the black of night, he was ready to go.

  Saying no more than “We’re set,” Cobb stood by as he rolled up his gear. In the dark, Harris tried to size him up. He was tall and thin, no more than a half-dozen years older than Harris, and from what Harris could see as they came out of the hut onto the snowy path, looked stooped and pale, as if he wasn’t any healthier than he had to be. Maybe bad backs ran in that family, like beaked noses did in his.

  . . .

  STEADILY THEY GOT UNDER WAY. Big John collared Cobb where the old freight road came around the lake, and pumped a loud stream of instructions at him. Cobb sat his horse silently, staring at the snow and nodding. Harris pulled the old bay over a few yards to where two riders sat their horses, half-listening to Knudsen, waiting to get moving. Harris said, “I guess you boys are in on this drive too.”

  “I guess we are,” said one. He was an Indian boy not much older than Harris who said folks generally called him Chief. The other rider, a boy of about seventeen, leaned over to shake Harris’ mittened hand. He was a broad-shouldered fellow, his face hardly visible in the pulled-up hood. His name was Duwayne. He said he was from near Zimmerman, but Harris couldn’t remember seeing him before.

  Having laid out the marching orders to Cobb, Knudsen called over to Harris and Duwayne, “Now, I want you two boys to take up the back side here. Cobb’s gonna head ’em out.” He motioned to Chief to follow him, and told them he’d ride along for a mile or two, despite the misery in his back, and get them over the toughest spots. The muskratters were chasing band after band out of the ravines and off the hillsides, and others sprang the ropes and wires of the corrals. A mass of brown and gray and earth-colored horseflesh surged around and past Harris and Duwayne, who pulled up their mounts and watched the horses merge into a herd, with Knudsen and Chief funneling them on, Harris supposed, to Cobb and the other riders hidden far ahead. As the last horses came dashing up, Harris and Duwayne fell in behind. In front of them, the horses slewed and vaulted for footing, plunging through drifts that obscured the road. Someone yelled, “Wahoo! Yippee! Git along!” It was Big John, hastening back to headquarters. The muskratters fell back, too, one scruffy old geezer saluting as the old bay lugged past; the only good-bye Harris had gotten so far.

  A MIST OF SLEET began to fall as the horizon lightened. It looked
to Harris as if they were on a slab of tableland with nothing in their way for a day or two until the river breaks. Riding in the rear, he was ten or twelve rods from Duwayne, but often they ranged close enough to talk. Chief was halfway up the herd on the south flank, with Cobb and the others too far ahead to see.

  The sleet, having wetted him enough to freeze, stopped. It grew fully light, cold and gray. The air snapped in Harris’ nostrils. The mass of horses was strung way back, a half-dozen animals wide; he couldn’t see more than ten rods down the line. With the light of day on them, the animals nearest revealed a bothersome shabbiness and a sense of ill-health. But no doubt the pride of the herd was up front.

  Duwayne angled his horse toward him across the trail of smashed and dirtied snow. “What d’ya think of these fiddle-heads?” he called. “See any you’d like to take home to the old lady?”

  “I don’t know,” said Harris. “Knudsen said he was gonna sell ’em to Englishmen for their excursions.”

  Duwayne hooted. “You bet,” he said. “Some swell in fancy britches is gonna slap his little pancake saddle on that?” He pointed to a skinny, hammer-headed gray mare, her loose belly hanging, thick winter hair sticking out at angles and scabbed with snow, and one chewed ear cocked wrong. She wasn’t much worse than her nearest companions, all sickle-hocked and roach-backed. They all seemed unusually small to Harris. Pa wouldn’t waste hay on a one of them.

  “It’s all wild range stock, bunch of pig-eyed nags,” Duwayne said. “They ain’t had nothing to eat, and their mamas and daddies was all bred wrong anyways. Hell, they been hungry all their lives. Old Knudsen couldn’t afford to feed ’em, so he has to ship ’em. Nobody who knows his business would do that in the middle of winter.”