Under his buckskin gloves, Al’s fingers were hurting with cold. “Damn it to hell, Amos,” Al said. “It’s coldern a well digger’s ass out here. I’m goin’ over to the pickup and have me some more of that coffee.”
“Hell, we ain’t got time,” Amos said. “We gotta touch this thing off.”
He stepped back sharply as Al dropped a stick of dynamite on the frozen ground. “You be careful,” Amos warned. “All these people sleepin’ here underground, you want to wake ’em up?”
In the distance, a whole line of cars proceeded to turn off the main road into the cemetery.
Al stuck a shiny metal cap on a piece of long black fuse, crimped it with his teeth, poked a hole in the dynamite with a sharp stick, inserted the cap, then stuck it as a detonator into the explosives packed beneath the rock. He split the other end of the fuse with his pocketknife to expose the black powder and make it easier to light.
“Lookit all them people,” Amos said. “Maybe we ought to motion ’em to move back. I never seen so many people. Either these Modocs like the guy that’s bein’ planted or they hate him and want to make damn sure he’s underground!” Amos pulled out a hip flask he had been hiding under his coat, took a big swig, and handed it to Al. “Here, brother, you take some of this now. It’ll warm you up quicker than gettin? laid.? The music from their pickup radio seemed a little subdued by now, as though the battery were on its last legs. Al lit the fuse, and as the sparks flew out over the frozen earth, a pall of white smoke spread out like a deadly gas. The two men scrambled to get behind the vehicle for safety.
As the charge went off, the lead car of the funeral procession slammed to a stop. Traveling far and wide under the frozen ground, the dynamite shook the earth; the whole cemetery seemed to leap into the air in a cloud of white smoke.
“Well, look at that, would you?” Amos hollered above the din. “We just blew up the whole damn graveyard! We better get out of here, Albert. Pretty soon those Modocs are goin’ to start collectin’ some Pit River scalps.”
A large coffin fell out of the air, narrowly missing the pickup, and spilled its contents over the ground.
“Hey, Amos!” Al exclaimed. “Damn if that ain’t old One-eyed Alice. I used to spark that woman. Damn if she don’t look better now than she did then!”
The two men jumped into Al’s pickup to make their getaway, but the radio had been too long a-playing. The starter clicked once and stopped. The battery was dead. Abandoning the truck, they ran for their lives and lit out for the ranch afoot, twenty snowy miles away.
Their last peek at the graveyard showed total destruction. Trees uprooted, coffins standing on end, bones, skulls, headstones, and plastic flowers all in one great jumble together. It was the Fourth of July before Al dared to go to town again.
Chapter Nine
THAT SUMMER, ROSE WAS CHOSEN QUEEN of a big Oregon rodeo, and the newspapers had a lot to say about how well she rode a horse and how smart she was in school. She had beaten out several other girls for the rodeo honor, and I knew there were some hard feelings, especially among parents of some of the horsey white girls. For the Indian community, her winning was a source of great pride. They tried their best to make Rose’s victory their victory, and offered to loan her fancy beaded riding outfits that would not have been out of place in museums of Indian art.
Rose, of course, would have none of the fancy stuff. She rode in faded Levi’s, with a cotton shirt she had made herself, and when she galloped past the rodeo stands, the wind pressed the thin material against her slender young body and brought a gasp from the crowd. It was less a tribute to femininity than a triumph of grace. She rode like the desert wind in the sage.
The Indians had some fancy horseflesh on the Klamath and Warm Springs reservations, and Rose could have taken her pick of queenly mounts, but she stuck to her old paint horse and made that half-mustang pony seem elegant.
I was proud of her, of course, proud of what she had been able to do for herself, proud that of all those hundreds of people in the crowds I was maybe her best friend. That evening at the rodeo dance, she was thronged by admirers, but she left them all to find me in the crowd and pull me out to dance with her. That started a few unwarranted rumors, I’m sure.
Over her shoulder, as we danced, I kept getting angry stares from some of her uncles as well as boyfriends, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d lost some Indian friends valuable to me and from now on maybe I’d better watch my back. There were still those Indian people around who clung to the old language and considered other races trash. For being rodeo queen Rose had been given a small scholarship to further her education. She had asked me to dance for one simple reason, to say good-bye.
“I’m going away this fall,” she said. “I’ve always dreamed of being a nurse, and with my scholarship money and with what I’ve been able to save by working, I’m going to nursing school in San Francisco.”
I was stunned, of course. Down deep I knew I should be delighted by her plans rather than depressed by my loss of her friendship. “I think it’s great,” I told her and concentrated on dancing with her for what might be the last time.
“And what about you?” she asked, looking up at me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “There’s the ranch, of course, and I’d like to rodeo some. And then there’s the war. I could maybe get an agricultural deferment, but it doesn’t seem right that other guys are out there dying. I suppose I’ve already made up my mind to go into the service, but I’m afraid to face my uncle.”
We danced another couple of rounds in silence. She wasn’t her usual self, and I suspected it had nothing to do with being rodeo queen.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “This ought to be a great time for you, but you don’t seem very happy.”
“I guess I’m scared.” she said, dancing away from the other couples so no one heard. “I’m having a bad time with my people. I guess they’re jealous of me, afraid I’ll succeed and leave the Res.” Her face showed sudden anger. “They sit around the reservation on their asses, blaming the whites for all their troubles, afraid one of us will succeed and show the world it can be done. My brothers drink and give me hell when I won’t drink with them. I guess I’m a social creature. It hurts like hell when my friends and relatives give me the silent treatment.”
I was puzzled by her outburst, feeling somehow that I had to defend my Indian friends. “Some Indians here have done pretty well,” I said. “Look at Orrie Summers, Mamie Farnsworth, and Dally Givons, for instance. They are all respected livestock people.”
“You look at them,” she said sadly. “Every one of them came from somewhere else and left their Indian baggage behind.”
“Then that’s what you have to do,” I said. “Go to nursing school and to hell with your family.”
Rose looked a little brighter for a moment, then the old fears returned. “I’m scared,” she said. “Scared San Francisco isn’t far enough away for them to leave me alone.”
One of her uncles cut in on us then and herded Rose away. I saw her a few times after that, but always in the distance. I often asked some of my Indian friends about her, but they had a frozen-faced way of giving me a nonanswer. I knew that I wasn’t going to help Rose by butting into her life. She was wise enough to know what she had to do, and she would have to do it alone.
Chapter Ten
MY ONLY SOURCE OF NEWS AT YAMSI during the winter of 1943–44 was an old battery-operated Philco radio, which, in a way that seemed to me to be miraculous, brought in news over the mountain passes which were buried in ten feet of snow. But by February the battery had gone dead, and for all I knew the war could be lost or won on the part of America. I began to harbor a real guilt that I hadn’t yet contributed and that, locked in behind my mountains, I was probably the safest man in America.
Now and then I would get a V-Mail from North Africa or Italy from a favorite BarY cowboy, Tommy Jackson, and I’d feel a twinge of guilt that I wasn’t doing my part. At nig
ht, I lay in my bed running through endless dialogues with my uncle telling him that I had decided to enlist. Always I envisioned the old man coming up with one big question: “Who the hell is going to take care of the ranch?” Snowmelt came, and when my uncle returned from California, he started right in regaling me with his troubles, and I ended up afraid to tell him. He’d lost cattle to rustlers that winter, and due to the war there wasn’t much left in the way of law enforcement to help him.
Gas rationing had limited my ability to patrol, but the next morning I rode BK Heavy seventeen miles to the Calimus Field to check some yearlings, then rode on west crosscountry, searching for Joe Perry’s cabin to try to get the old man to come work at Yamsi. I needed someone to keep the fires burning when I was off with the cattle.
I was approaching a meadow called Long Prairie when I noticed a flour sack, neatly tied with baling twine, shoved under a fallen log in the forest. In that sack was the hide of a BarY steer freshly butchered by rustlers.
Rustling was a penitentiary offense in that country, and in any given year there was often a convict up in the Oregon State Pen doing time for stealing my uncle’s cattle. We generally knew just which of the locals were stealing BarYs, but making a case was difficult. Underneath his solemn exterior, Buck had a kind heart, and sometimes he was his own judge and jury. If the man butchered a BarY to feed his hungry kids, my uncle was likely to look the other way. After a fashion, he was living the Cree Indian cannibalism case all over.
One of the neighbors made a game of it, and when he would pass Buck on the street he would slap him on the back and exclaim, “Come on over to eat with us sometime, Buck. The old lady will cook up some of your beef !”
Buck owned some of the best Hereford bulls in the country, and sometimes another neighbor, Jim, would stop him on the street and say, “Couple of years ago I stole two of your bulls. I’m done with ’em now and don’t want to feed
’em over the winter. What do you want me to do?”
Buck would send us over a-horseback to get the bulls, and it was sort of understood that Jim would help himself to another couple the next spring. In fact he used my uncle’s bulls so long, his cattle began to look like BarYs.
I was pretty angry about finding the butchered BarY steer, however, and determined to find out who had butchered it. I had just ridden a mile or two down to the road along Long Prairie when Jim’s son, Albert, came riding by a-horseback.
“Albert,” I said by way of greeting, “who cooks with
Pillsbury’s Best flour in this country?”
“Why, Dad cooks with Pillsbury’s Best,” Albert said. “Who bales hay with New Holland twine?” I asked. “Why, Dad bales hay with New Holland twine!” Albert
paused a minute thoughtfully. “My gawd!” he said. “Do you suppose Dad butchered that BarY steer?”
I’d ridden with Albert since I was a kid, and he was a favorite friend. Now I could just grin and ride off on my way, shaking my head. I suppose that sack with the steer hide is there to this day.
Joe Perry (actually his name was spelled Parais, but everyone knew him as Perry) was out in front of his cabin, feeding birds, when I rode up. Joe was a little bit flighty, and I never could tell whether he’d meet me with a rifle or a smile. A Louisiana Cajun, he’d done time in Leavenworth, where, it was rumored, he’d killed a guard. He’d ended up on the reservation, living in a small cabin on Long Prairie and generally staying out of trouble. His main difficulty, as I saw it, was that he was a great storyteller and everyone liked him. Certain women, perhaps sensing the magnetic force of his ready availability, wouldn’t let him alone.
I rode old Heavy through his gate, and as I got off my horse, Joe made about three tours around him, spitting out tobacco juice onto the bitterbrush as he inspected the animal. “Reminds me of a horse I had when I first come to
Klamath,” Joe said. “Man, could he trot!”
BK Heavy wasn’t too comfortable to be inspected by a man packing a rifle, but after a loud snort or two which scared the chickadees off the bird feeder, the horse settled down, grabbed a mouthful of bitterbrush, and commenced to chew while Joe sat down on a stump.
“One winter day,” Joe said, “one winter day I was ridin’ thet ol’ hoss down Long Prairie Road when Frank Summers come along in his pickup and stopped.
“ ‘Joe,’ he says. ‘It must be coldern hell out there. Git off yore hoss and climb in this cab and get warm. You can roll down the window a little and lead that old pony by the reins.’ “We had gone along like that about a mile and had dropped the level of Frank’s whiskey bottle ’bout three inches when Frank said, ‘You know, from the looks of thet old hoss
of yourn I bet he could really trot.’
“I says, ‘Yessir, headin’ down the road fer home, he can really fly.’ We had another drink of whiskey, Frank an’ me, and got to timin’ the old hoss on the speedometer. Frank got to goin’ faster an’ faster an’ thet old horse got to fairly flyin’. I looked out the window an’ says to Frank, ‘I think maybe you ought to slow down a little, pardner. Why, thet ol’ hoss’s feet ain’t touched the ground in a mile an’ ’is head is stretched out six feet long!’”
Joe might not have been too enthused about helping me on the ranch, but by the time I got back to Yamsi there was smoke coming out of the bunkhouse chimney and a big greasy pot of porcupine meat stewing on the stove.
“Reminds me of when I first come to this country,” Joe said, stirring the pot. “I eat a lot of porcupine ’cause they is easy to catch in the woods.”
Joe put another log into the stove, and we both had a fit of coughing as a sudden backdraft filled the room with a layer of smoke.
“How did you happen to end up in this country, Joe?” I asked, hoping for a story.
“I come here through California an’ was tryin’ to catch a freight from Sacramento to Chiloquin. Well, I got on a freight goin’ north all right, but by the time we passed Chiloquin, we were goin’ a hunnert miles an hour, an’ I ended up in Portland. Well, I caught a train headin’ south an’ when we passed through Chiloquin, dam’ ef we warn’t goin’ a hunnert miles an hour again an’ I ended back in Sacramento.
“Finally,” Joe said, “I got tired of travelin’. Here I was goin’ south again from Portland, an’ we hit Klamath Marsh goin’ a hunnert miles an hour. Well, I jumped off thet train and landed in pummy dust right up to my chin!
“Hadn’t been in Chiloquin long when I married the biggest lady on the reservation, but she died.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, aware I was about to be had. “What happened?”
“You might say she died of bad eyesight,” Joe said. “She was wadin’ in the Williamson River one day without no clothes an’ she looked down at her reflection in that clear water, thought she saw a canoe, stepped in it, an’ drowned.”
I was about to leave the bunkhouse, afraid I would have to eat some porcupine, when Joe spotted a photograph someone had tacked to the bunkhouse wall. “I know thet woman in thet picture,” Joe said. “I was drinkin’ one night in Chiloquin when she come up to me an’ sez, ‘Joe. My old man an’ I need a ride out to Sprague River. You live out thet way. How ’bout you give us a ride?’”
Sprague River was only a few miles out of his way, so Joe agreed. They had a few drinks for the road, and Joe loaded the woman and her husband into his pickup. It was winter and below zero, but the ice on the windshield soon melted from body heat. The lady took up most of the front seat, with Joe and her husband crowded up against opposite doors.
“We passed my bottle around a few times,” Joe said. “When I looked over at her husband, he had passed out. I said to that woman, ‘Now that was an unmannerly thing for him to do,’ so I pulled over to the borrow pit, reached across her lap, opened the door, and let him fall out into the snow.
“We were goin’ by the Lone Pine turnoff and the lady said, ‘Joe, I’ve never seen your cabin. I want to see where you live.’
“Well, we stopped at the cabin an�
�� had a few more drinks. I left her sitting on the edge of my bed and went to put another log on the stove. When I came back, she had passed out cold.
“I thought, Now that was an unmannerly thing for her to do, so I went out to my shed, got a big bucket of green paint, lifted up her dress, and painted her green.”
Joe had agreed to come out to the ranch for a few days and help me, but he said he had to be back in a couple of weeks to go to court. He had put out some seed for his chickadees and some apples for the porcupine that lived in a pine tree beside his cabin, loaded some venison and a bedroll into his pickup, and had been ready to go. Even then I was surprised that he actually made it to the ranch without changing his mind.
“It’s none of my business, Joe,” I said as we ate supper at the ranch, “but what’s that court date all about?”
“Oh, I just killed a guy,” Joe said. “I was bangin’ on this old lady in my bed when someone started poundin’ on my door. It kind of scared me an’ I thought, Now that’s an unmannerly thing to do! So I took my old rifle and shot through the door, and there was no more of that noise. When I went out later, there was the lady’s husband layin’ there dead with a bullet hole in him. Hell, it was all an accident. I was just tryin’ to scare him away.”
The chickadees around the ranch seemed to like Joe, for they called to him from the pines, and one flew down and sat on his arm. I rode down through the ranch a-horseback, knowing that Joe was a man of his word. He would stay at the ranch until his court date and be ready and willing to help.
We got along fine, Joe and I, but you can bet I watched myself so as not to do an unmannerly thing.
Chapter Eleven
WITH WORLD WAR II IN FULL SWING, and not much gasoline available, I spent more and more time a-horseback. Occasionally the employment office in Klamath Falls would send out a warm body in response to my pleas for help, but no one seemed to stay very long. Most of them came out from town bleary-eyed and smelling of cheap wine, seeking a place to dry out and reform, but after a week or two there was no holding them back from their thirst, and some of them simply disappeared, hiking the thirty miles to Chiloquin rather than face me.
The Pastures of Beyond: An Old Cowboy Looks Back at the Old West Page 8