by Lloyd Zimpel
Harris found that none of this came as a surprise. But yet he thought that surely there was some market for these culls. Knudsen wasn’t sending them off with only a hope and prayer: he couldn’t be fool enough to expect any horse trader in the country to pay more than a nickel for these woeful goats.
“They’re canners, is my guess,” Duwayne said. “Going straight to the Ioway butchers and get made into some nice horse steaks for the foreigners. Plenty of ’em eat horse meat, you know—Frenchies, Chinamen. Hell, they’d rather have that than deer or beef.”
Duwayne pulled his horse over to let a couple of jack-spavined stragglers get by, and Harris sought to appraise the truth in what he’d said. No good reason to doubt it. He’d heard tales about Frenchmen. This herd might be headed straight for their tables. For sure, no one hereabouts would eat them. He had a vague notion that there was a law in the States about white men eating horse or dog meat, unless they were dying from starvation. Hell, then folks even ate their kids. But such a law wouldn’t hold back a Frenchman.
Still, he wondered if the top-notch animals, all the trim express horses and big freight brutes weren’t up front being coddled by the other riders, and because he and Duwayne were the youngest, they got the scrubs to tend.
BY MIDDAY THE HERD was moving forward fairly well. The animals in the rear had the easiest time, the snow having been trampled into the semblance of a rough trail. Harris’ bay followed on this threshed-over road, scattered with dung and yellow holes burned all the way to the ground beneath, here and there rimmed with red from bloody urine. Both Harris and Duwayne kept busy shooing back broncs that drifted to the side, testing their chances for escape. Later in the day, Harris caught up with Chief and complained.
“We could use another hand or two back here,” he said. “A lot of these buggers keep wanting to go home.”
“Sure enough,” said Chief. The big collar of his coat was turned up, hugging his chin like wings. Outside it hung an elk’s eye-tooth on a string. A length of old towel was tied under his chin and over his ears. “We sure oughta have more than just us. I think Cobb’s gonna hire some, if he can. I think his old man told him to.”
“Well, hell,” Harris said. “He told me he had nine guys.”
Chief looked at him to see if he was joking. “Nope,” he said, waving a mitten back toward Duwayne. “There’s just us.”
. . .
BY THE SECOND DAY, the herd was moving in fits and starts as the horses dropped back to paw the snow in hope of fodder. Sometimes, to spare his old horse, Harris walked, tramping through hillocks of flailed snow dotted with horse apples. He marked anew the scruffiness of the knee-sprung specimens just ahead. Most hardly came to his shoulder. All appeared to carry scant eating meat. He hoped to God Big John wasn’t working some slimy hoax and everybody would get cheated out of their wages, and then the law got mixed up in it. That made him uneasy. That morning he had asked Cobb if there was any doubt about selling the herd, and Cobb, who was a lot more nervous than a boss should be, had jumped on him and told him to just drive the bastards and leave the financial angles to somebody else.
Besides being boss, it turned out that Cobb was also the cook—at least, he said he’d do the cooking, but all that meant was he’d get a fire going at nightfall and haul out beans, bacon, and canned tomatoes from the sacks on the two packhorses he was trailing. Then he’d tell his tiny crew to heat up what they wanted.
Some cook, thought Harris at supper, gnawing the half-done bacon he’d heated in the pan he’d made by cutting the bottom inch off a three-pound lard can. At least they had plenty of coffee, and he made it as hot as he could stand, for the warmth in it.
Even with the promised nine men, he saw, it would have been a short crew. He judged they had more like three hundred head, not two hundred as Big John had said, spread out for a mile, with stragglers stretching it even farther. Finding feed would take up a lot of time, he realized, and unless there was no snow up ahead, the heavy going could tack a few days onto their trip. . . . He calculated how his wages would add up if they didn’t bring these nags to market before the middle of January.
Nobody broached the subject of the missing six hands with Cobb. It was as if they should have known better. They each had their job, Cobb and Duwayne now on the front flanks, Chief and Harris at the rear; trailing behind, they kept an eye out for likely ponies, hoping to spell their own tired mounts. Chief owned a lariat, with which he demonstrated a deft hand on a laggard bundle of bones, but they saw nothing they cared to ride.
This was the coldest country Harris had ever been in. A man might think he’d seen colder, coming from so far north, but he hadn’t. Nights, trying to sleep, all the furthest parts of him turned tingling or numb, as if about to fall off. When he managed to doze, he’d start up in alarm, feeling his toes like stones. He had two good army blankets and Voight’s fine buffalo robe. Substantial as these were, they didn’t go far enough in cold like this; and even though Harris knew this to be true, it didn’t prevent him from making a grave mistake.
It happened near a little iced-over gully Chief said was called Biscuit Creek. Here they came upon a pair of mixed-bloods—brothers, they claimed—traveling on mules out of Nebraska to Bismarck, where they said their father owned a saloon. A shifty pair who inspired no confidence at all, Harris feared that Cobb might offer them jobs. But Cobb had no such intention: he had his crew; and when he turned his back and rode off, they looked to the other boys, hoping for some advantage out of this encounter. They had a jug, produced with a bit of show worthy of its value, and allowed both Harris and Duwayne a sample direct from the jug’s frigid lip.
Chief watched these goings-on without pleasure, and waved them off in disgust when the smarmiest of the two suggested he might wish to swap that elk’s tooth for this jug of fine rye whiskey. The penniless Duwayne, when they looked at him, only shrugged unhappily.
But Harris nudged his horse in closer. “Hold on,” he said, feeling an uplift in his spirits, a sense of something pleasant ready to happen, that he hadn’t known for months.
He showed them what he had to offer, and of course only the buffalo robe would do. But Harris, for all his desire to close the deal, balked; the robe really wasn’t his, he said, at the same time thinking—well, if they insisted. . . .
They settled for one of his woolen blankets, the best one, un-frayed, without holes. Harris lashed the jug handle to his saddle horn; he felt easier for having it, and the damned blowing snow seemed less bothersome.
THE REST OF THAT DAY, they followed the creek—which soon took a slight bend and became a frozen river, bearing south toward Severance, scalloped drifts along the bank. The wind-swept ice was easier going for the horses, although many stepped awkwardly, slipping from the snow balls packed into their hooves. In most places, the ice was a yard thick, but there were honeycombed stretches too, and rubber ice, and then a thin spot claimed a few ponies on the side of the herd away from Harris. He heard Duwayne yelling like a madman, but didn’t see them go, or even the break in the ice. He moved closer to his own bank, though, his heart beating as fast as when he’d turned his back on Beidermann’s barn.
All week the wind hadn’t stopped once. It might calm a little after dark, but whipped up again during the day. That afternoon it picked up suddenly. In ten minutes it was no longer a fierce, bucketing blast from the west, but had boiled into a murderous, screaming gale tearing out of the northwest full of snow—horizontal streaks of snow, the wind too violent to let the flakes fall.
Not long before, Harris had been thinking that cold though it was, they’d been lucky with weather. Now he couldn’t see the horse’s ass in front of him, and he soon grew uneasily aware that for all the wind and snow so far, only now was he about to get the feel of them joined in a way to guarantee his and all mankind’s misery. He pulled his hood tight and kept a firm hand on the bay’s left rein, to keep him from swinging his tail square to the storm.
Under all this weather, Cobb di
dn’t wait until dark before he pulled the herd away from the river and onto a long plateau slanting off a ridge, which the wind had cleared enough for the animals to get at a little frozen bunch grass.
With Chief’s help, Harris found the only half-protected spot to be seen in the roiling snow. It was a little stand of stunted cedars, shoulder-high, but with gnarled branches making a partial low roof, under which they threw their bedrolls. Fifty feet away, hardly a shadow through the snow, Duwayne scooped a trench in the snow alongside a downed cottonwood trunk, well out of the wind.
Harris was hacking the ice out of the bay’s hooves with his knife when Cobb emerged carrying their supper food. With difficulty they got a small fire started under the cedars and quickly ate. As Cobb and Duwayne left to ride the first night shift—Harris and Chief to take the second—Cobb called back. “Watch yourself,” he said. He had been distracted all the while they hunkered over the fire eating, peering first in one direction and then another into the screen of snow. “A guy can get lost in this stuff.”
Chief called after him, “I know that, Boss. You tell your horses that.”
HARRIS HUNKERED UNDER the cedar boughs, numb and dismayed. He had tied his horse in close, hoping to get its bulk between him and at least the worst of the storm; but the miserable animal had backed itself into the blowing snow and was little help. But he had the buffalo robe and the one blanket; and he had the jug, and the knowledge that it was at hand buoyed him. With some difficulty, he got the robe worked up behind him, against the buffeting wind, then struggled to tuck his wool blanket around his lower half, but in the effort hauled in considerable snow under the blanket. This, he could see, would be as miserable a night as God could wish upon him.
But he had his jug, and the first pull always warmed; he knew that from his slim experience; but how many more you had to take to get you feeling better, he wasn’t sure. He tried a few: they were a great help.
A sluggish notion that someone was kicking his boots brought him halfway back to sensibility. It was Duwayne, trying to get his relief rider onto his feet.
Chief, half out of sight, yelled, “C’mon, Harold, let’s go; whole bunch of sunshine up ahead.”
With difficulty, Harris flopped himself out of his snow-crusted wraps. When he was free, on his knees in the snow, he fumbled to find the jug. It was like ice against his lips, but turned gloriously warm going down; and as he savored this he made sure the cork was tight.
But when he got himself ready for duty, he couldn’t see a yard in any direction. “Where’s them damn horses?” he yelled, and Chief, nearly invisible himself, hollered back, “They’re out there somewheres, by God. I doubt a man could miss the bastards, if you know how to follow turds.”
Then he disappeared.
Harris felt more than cold, and needed three tries to heave himself onto his old bay, who sagged under him as if this was the last straw, but managed to straighten out as his rider secured the jug on the horn, after a satisfying pull.
Now, where was the herd? Where was Chief? Where the hell was anything? And how did you get a horse moving through the fucking snow that was up to his eyebrows? The old bay pushed along not too badly, figured Harris, taking a good slug from his jug, and it crossed his mind that neither the unhappy critter nor his benumbed rider had any idea where the hell they were. If there were horses out there, Harris didn’t see them; and it crossed his mind, as he worked the cork out of the jug one more time, that they might have gone off in some other direction. There sure as hell was no sign of the bastards hereabouts. Shit, he told himself, this ain’t gonna work. . . .
But whatever sharp whiskey scent came off Harris’ jug from his frequent uncorking of it didn’t bother the old bay’s instincts: his cold nose picked up something good up ahead, and that’s the way he went, although with difficulty; and soon Harris was encouraged to catch a glimpse of Chief, like a shadow seen through a screen door, but all in white. Then he disappeared again.
Harris untangled the jug’s tie from the saddlehorn and had a warming nip as he stared into the swirling whiteness; he knew that however perky he felt, his pony was worn way down, and the snow was only getting deeper. Soon the old nag took a few flailing steps backward and stopped dead, belly-deep, shooting out his breath like a blacksmith’s bellows. Harris knew what was called for here, and he considered it as the snow plastered itself to him top to bottom: he needed to get off his ass and plow a trail up front for the weary beast; and as he figured the degree of nastiness in such an undertaking, he went to the jug again.
This ain’t working at all, he thought. No horses, no crew, snow up to your neck, and cold enough to freeze a fella’s dinger off. Shit.
He crawled off his horse, waist-deep in snow on what seemed to be the downslope of a gentle draw; and before he took this easier way, he floundered about in front of his horse to see if the snow revealed any trace of the herd’s path. Finding none, he grabbed firm hold of the bay’s bridle strap—if the damn nag couldn’t carry him above the snow, he’d drag him through it.
They had threshed downslope for only a few minutes when Harris found himself stumbling through low growths of willow and alder—perhaps a creek bed was buried near.
He had his arm bent before his face when he stumbled smack into a wall of creek-side brush. It rose above his head and was mostly thick-growing, but he found a spot where he could burrow in so that the branches, twigs, really, hindered the snow from blasting full force upon him. Onto what he hoped was a firm growth of willow and not a piece of reed, he tied the old gelding, and dragged his robe and blanket and jug into his little hole; and having managed to work the robe and blanket, now full of snow, around him, he reclined, shivering from head to toe, and took full measure from his jug. . . . And again . . .
A FAINT TRACERY OF LIGHT through the blown snow, and day began; and with it Cobb on his big mare that plowed through drifts where most animals would flounder. Duwayne followed, Chief keeping check on the tail end of the herd as the other two backtracked looking for Harris. The blasting wind sometimes kept Duwayne from catching his breath, but didn’t stop Cobb from loud complaints. He alone—no help from his hired hands—had kept the whole damned herd from getting blown away, hadn’t slept a goddamned wink. Did a man have to do everything himself? His frozen breath plastered the wolf-fur trim on his hood.
“Where the hell is Harold?” Cobb yelled.
Duwayne didn’t bother to answer.
Cobb went on, “We gotta get these critters moving on to some browse, some brush or willows or something. Some of ’em look like they’ll drop in a minute.”
Duwayne wondered that he hadn’t noticed that a week ago.
But Cobb sounded as if he knew where they were, and as the light grew through the screen of snow, east was where it was supposed to be, and Cobb indeed had them pointed in the right direction. “Where the hell is that guy?” he said again. “Go find that bastard.”
“What the hell?” said Duwayne. “I don’t know.” But he pulled his horse around and headed back down the threshed-over snow, dotted with horse apples and yellow holes rapidly filling in. He had little hope, but he thought he remembered where he had last seen Harold, and although that spot looked exactly like every six-foot-deep drift, damned if he didn’t catch sight of a little something—a small trench going down-slope; and when he pushed his horse to plow its way down, it nearly bumped into the rear end of the old bay before Duwayne saw it. Then he thought, Jesus, the old nag froze to death right on his feet, like a statue. Even when the horse moved its head a bare inch, he still wasn’t sure it was alive; But he dismounted and pushed his way to where the bay was tied and the mound of snow with a head-sized breathing hole.
To Duwayne this didn’t look right at all. “Ho, Harold,” he called. “Harold . . .?” He cocked an ear toward the hole, not certain what was down there.
Then the mound moved, and the blankets beneath it heaved, dislodging some of the snow. Duwayne heard a grunt and a groan, and as more snow fel
l aside, he saw Harris try to prop himself on an elbow, only half succeeding; knitted hat covering his face to the bridge of his nose and coat collar turned up over chin and cheeks. Out of this poked his hawkish nose, dead white. His legs kicked once or twice against the wrapped blankets and sent more snow flying; but then he abandoned hope of rising, and lay quiet, under the snow.
Duwayne swung off his pony, sinking nearly to his hips, and reached for Harris, pulling back the cap. Harris’ eyes were half open, his eyebrows thick with frost. He whispered, “G’wan.”
The empty jar lay under the snow at his side. Duwayne kicked it, but it moved hardly an inch in its frozen bed. “You dumb asshole,” he said, and picked up the top blanket and shook the snow out of it. It was hard with frozen piss, and cracked as he threw it aside. Under this, Harris was rolled in his buffalo robe, mostly frozen around him, from which his boots stuck out, with his pants leg stiff and shiny with ice. Duwayne didn’t want to think what the feet in those boots looked like. Near Harris’ head the falling snow quickly covered a brown stain of recent vomit, and the smell of alcohol in it rose sharply in the frozen air.
“Hey, Harold!” Duwayne bent down. “Can you stand up? Can you walk?” But he saw slim prospects of either. “C’mon, get up!”
For a moment, Duwayne looked down at the stupefied face, the blistering cheeks, the pearl-white nose on which the falling snow still melted. This guy was a grown man, or nearly, a year or two further down the road than Duwayne; but if this was where the wisdom of experience took a man, God help the sorry lot of them.
Duwayne leaned down and flipped the snow-stiffened robe and blanket to cover Harris. “I’m gonna get Cobb,” he said. “We gotta get you a horse. That nag of yours is shot. Gotta get your drunk ass outta here.”
COBB WOULDN’T LEAVE THE HERD, or whatever part of it he had managed to find. He was frantic about getting out of this storm in decent shape—in any shape—and already he had lost no telling how many head: enough for the old man to skin him alive. He half-listened to a part of Duwayne’s story, and then yelled, “The son of a bitch’ll just have to catch up! That’s it. We ain’t gonna wait!” His shrill voice emerged from the oval into which his hood was drawn, leaving just enough space for his mouth and nose and—if he tipped his head back—his eyes.