Hope on the Plains

by Linda Byler

  Voss in die velt?

  The cows!

  They had not seen them because they were looking for black objects. Here they were, backed into a snowdrift and, by all appearances, alive and well.

  As Hannah continued to flail and scream, chunks of snowdrift continued to break away, black legs carrying the snow until it broke into pieces and slid down the animals’ sides, revealing the thick, black hair on their backs covered with powdered snow—like salt on burnt toast.

  Manny yelled, twisted in his saddle and pointed. Hannah continued her wild pounding and arm swinging, until her feet stung with returning circulation.

  She stopped and heard Manny’s voice, saw his outstretched arm.

  “What?” He didn’t hear her question, and Hannah saw nothing. Quickly she mounted her horse, looked in the direction he was pointing.

  “There they are! Manny! Manny!”

  Cold and almost hysterical at the sight of the emerging cows, Hannah came undone, crying and laughing intermittently. There was no one to see, no one to hear, except Manny and the crazy old snow-covered cows that ran mooing and bawling over the frozen ground, frightened by the sound of Hannah’s screams.

  She rode up to Manny. “How many?” she yelled.

  “They’re all here,” he yelled back.

  “The bull?”

  “Yep, every one of them. That old one, the mean cow, she looks to be calving soon. In a month or two—maybe before that.”

  “Should we keep her in the barn?”

  “What would we feed her? We have barely enough hay for the horses.”

  Hannah nodded.

  Supper that evening was a cozy affair. Sarah was in good spirits and some of Hannah’s anxiety had lessened, now that they knew the cows had survived the storm and would likely continue to survive in the coming months. Manny was tall and manly, pleased with his ability to lead Hannah, finding the cows while she mostly cried and floundered around.

  He wouldn’t always be the follower, which was new knowledge that caused him to hold his head high and his shoulders wide. Hannah wasn’t as mighty as she wanted him to believe.

  Sarah had put the agate roaster filled with navy beans and tomatoes, cane syrup and salt pork, in the oven hours ago, filling the house with a mouth-watering aroma. She roasted potatoes, and fried slabs of beef, sliced thin and salted and peppered to perfection. She had made warm cracker pudding with canned milk and she had thickened canned peaches, a treat in the middle of winter.

  Lemuel Short stayed all that week. Not that Hannah was interested in having him stay that long. He simply had nowhere else to go and no means of transportation.

  “What’s the harm in it?” Sarah questioned in a whisper, washing dishes with Hannah in the afterglow of their warm and wondrous meal.

  “He’s bold and old and his eyes look like raisins,” Hannah hissed back to her mother, wiping a plate with a corner of the tea towel she was holding.

  “It’s all right,” Sarah said softly.

  Lemuel must have heard, opening the subject of his leaving less than an hour later. “I must be on my way,” he stated simply.

  “But how will you go?” Sarah asked.

  “On foot. The way I always go,” he answered.

  “You can’t. It’s too cold. The closest neighbor is miles away. I’m not sure that Sylvia Klasserman would appreciate visitors at all. She’s pretty meticulous.”

  Lemuel Short chuckled. “Nothing wrong with that. My Mae, she was no housekeeper. The house was crawling with flies over unwashed dishes. Never swept the floor. Baby rabbits, ducklings, chickens ate the crumbs from our table. Wandered in and out of the house like children. They were her children. She took better care of them chickens than her own babies.”

  His soft voice rolled to a stop, turning into a sigh of regret tinged with remembrance colored in shame. “It was not good. Seems now I could have done more. Mae wasn’t happy. She didn’t care.”

  Hannah thought of Doris Rocher and felt an intense longing to see her. She wondered how she was surviving the winter. She hadn’t realized the winter storms would isolate them quite like this.

  Were there any happy women in the West? Surely not, now that hard times had come in what history would call the Great Depression. Things weren’t so good in the big cities back East, either. Her grandfather had spoken of businessmen committing suicide in New York City, wealthy men who lost their fortunes overnight, and folks migrating to California to the fertile valleys for work picking fruits and vegetables. It was hard luck for countless people.

  Perhaps here on the prairie, what was considered hardship back East was only normal, resulting in an easy slide through lean years. But then, not everyone had a grandfather with money laid by and no mortgage on his farm. Already, young men from Pennsylvania were moving to Ohio and Indiana. Would they move even farther west?

  Nope. Didn’t have to, as far as Hannah was concerned. Certainly not the dashing Jeremiah Riehl. Didn’t he think he was quite the fellow, though? Going around kissing girls like it meant nothing. He ought to be ashamed of himself, considering everything. He probably told a dozen girls in Lancaster County the exact same thing. She conjured a picture of Jerry marching along blowing a brass horn and a gaggle of silly girls following him like goslings.

  How could Manny accuse her of wanting Jerry? Hadn’t he heard her biting words of refusal? She had meant it too. Just a trick of one’s mind, thinking about the Great Depression, followed by young men moving west, followed by thoughts of Jerry. Just the way a person’s thoughts flowed along, as uncontrollable as a river. It wasn’t that she’d tried to think of him.

  Actually, if she ever did decide to get married, she’d pick someone who wasn’t handsome. Someone who was much too humble and kind to go around thinking he could win her over. Look at Clay. He was every bit as conceited as Jerry. Nothing humble about him either.

  Take Lemuel Short, this rail-thin, wizened little man who drowned his sorrows in whiskey. He likely kissed Mae, wooed her, lured her to the West, without a humble thought in his head. Look where it had gotten him. He should have stayed humble and asked a girl who was common-looking, with eyes like raisins, just like him. With a large nose maybe, or stick-thin figure.

  He hadn’t said, though, what Mae looked like. Later that evening, she asked him and then regretted it instantly.

  Poor Lemuel’s voice shook, his small eyes seeming to take on a life of their own, lids fluttering like a trapped butterfly, working furiously to keep back the tears.

  “She was like a fairy princess. Hair like spun gold and eyes so blue the sky was only a reflection. Lips like a rose.”

  His deep sighs were like the roaring of a bull to Hannah. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears and leave the room. Simple, doddering old man. Quite his own fault.

  There, she had love figured out again. Best to stay away from it if you weren’t humble. If you thought too much of yourself, you were bound to be attracted to the same kind of man. Handsome. Good looking. Swaggering and thinking himself a real winner.

  That’s where most girls went wrong. For the thousandth time, she knew she wasn’t like most girls. She wondered how Jerry figured, saying that he wanted to bring horses to the West. Didn’t he know horses wouldn’t always be in demand?

  Look at all the automobiles and tractors popping up like thistles. Not to mention electricity, railroads, and about every modern new thing you could think of. The only thing was, there would always have to be cows, rodeos, show horses, and the need for a good farrier. He could probably make a go of it. Word got around surprisingly fast out here on the plains, especially if you had a telephone.

  Jerry had some outstanding horses in that barn in Lancaster. Her hands went to her cheeks, hiding the flush that gave away her thoughts. That day still rattled her as helplessly as it ever had.

  Enough now!

  She was not going to make the same mistake Lemuel Short had made. What kind of a name was Lemuel Short anyway? Honestly. She shrugged
her shoulders, worried the hangnail on the side of her thumb with her teeth, and watched from beneath hooded eyes the little man seated there on the couch with Eli on one side, Mary on the other leaning against him. Baby Abby sat on his lap. He held the Little Golden Book of Hansel and Gretel high so that everyone could see, reading in a good, steady voice punctuated with sighs and squeaks and harrumphs until they were so involved in the story they were oblivious to everything around them.

  The children with no father, the father with no children, both supplying what the other longed for. Sarah stood by the kitchen table, the balding, stoop-shouldered man dressed in her dead husband’s clothes, a bewildering, mysterious sight that she could not begin to unravel.

  CHAPTER 7

  The high, undulating cry of wolves removed Hannah from her curtain of sleep. Her bedroom was cold, but the sound sent a frigid chill up her spine. Her open mouth was dry and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, her breath coming in short, quick gasps. Her heartbeat accelerated at the sound of their howls.

  They had come, then. She pictured them, high-backed, long-legged, bony, the ragged hair along their backs like the teeth of a saw, bad-tempered, their driving hunger propelling them toward the rich smell of cows.

  It was more than she could bear lying there helplessly, a mere dot on the endless white expanse that was their home, their acquired portion of prairie, their homestead. For a fleeting instant, she grasped a vision of herself sleeping soundly in the winter wonderland that was Lancaster County, a job secured in some little dry-goods store, unaware of the appalling dangers of the West. She regretted the move—almost.

  She jumped out of bed and made her way along the hall, startled at the soft voice from the couch asking, “You heard?”

  Too frightened to speak properly, she nodded. Lemuel Short sat up, quilts wrapped securely around his legs, her father’s nightshirt sliding to the side, exposing the veins on his thin neck. The candle in her hand flickered.

  “If I was younger, I’d ride out with a lantern,” he stated.

  “Should we?” Hannah asked, like a child.

  “If you have good horses. Be foolish to try it on middling ones.” Pete and Goat were definitely middling.

  “Will they be able to defend themselves?” she asked in a quivering voice.

  “If you have a bull and one ornery cow with horns, they’ll give it a good shot. What worries me is how hungry the wolves are.”

  Hannah nodded. She sat in the chair facing him and set the candle on the oak table, twisting her hands in her lap, her eyes large and dark.

  “Should I wake Manny?” she asked.

  “I’d let him sleep. You can’t ride out if your horses are middling.”

  “I can’t go back to bed, either.”

  “You don’t have to.” Sarah appeared, a heavy flannel wrapper secured about her waist, her hair loosened, worry lines creasing her delicate mouth like parentheses. “Surely it is the worst sound a rancher could hear at night.” Her words were soft, gravelly with sleep, but devoid of Hannah’s panicky tones. “You won’t ride out?” she asked.

  “Lemuel thinks I shouldn’t with the horses we have.”

  “A wise choice, Hannah. I couldn’t bear to see you and Manny ride out.” Sarah shuddered, a small involuntary movement, then seemed to shrink in on herself.

  Lemuel threw aside the quilts, drew his trousers up over his flannel long johns, hitched up the nightshirt and scratched his stomach. Hannah hurried out to the kitchen, where her mother was putting the kettle on, lighting the kerosene lamp—automatic movements she made many times without thinking.

  Lemuel followed, sat down at the table, coughing into his red handkerchief, apologizing, begging their pardon.

  The long drawn-out wail sounded again, mournful, primal calls of hunger and loneliness. Hannah’s eyes showed the terror she felt, the despair following on its heels. “Could they attack a year-old heifer, bring her down successfully, do you think?”

  Lemuel watched the flame in the lamp, his wrinkled face like unironed linen, etched and crisscrossed with blue and red veins, his raisin eyes glittering like wet river pebbles.

  “I’ll just tell you that if the cows are smart, they’ll stick tight, and the bull and the mean cow should be able to protect them. If they spread out, face the pack separately, you’ll lose some.”

  “We can’t afford to lose any!” Hannah burst out.

  “Sometimes life on the range teaches you what you can afford and what you can’t,” Lemuel stated. “It’s not always up to us. Nature throws us some punches, you know. You gotta go with it.”

  Real appreciation shone in Sarah’s eyes while Hannah resisted his easy speech. No wonder he didn’t make it and took to the bottle. You had to fight for everything you got. You had to be smart and cunning, no matter what Lemuel said.

  They rode out in the crisp, biting morning, the sun on the snow blinding them as they set off. Hannah’s teeth chattered from fear, the dreaded unknown, the pit of her stomach like a stone. She didn’t feel the cold, only the specter of possible death before her.

  Manny was grim but composed, riding Goat like a true knight, his face toward the sun, courageous. They rode into deep snow, the force of the horses’ churning legs sending it spraying, instantly slowing them down. Out to windswept high places, and they could increase their speed.

  Their eyes searched the snowing plains, longing to see the familiar salt-and-pepper cows sprinkled with frosty snow. There was nothing. They rode to the east for miles, turned north in a sweeping arc, the horses’ breath coming in short, white puffs. A thin dark line appeared below Pete’s bridle, the sweat staining the light brown hairs of his face.

  Manny shouted and pointed a gloved hand. A tight bundle of cows. Hannah rose up in her saddle and strained to see, her eyes squinting against the early morning sun.

  At the horses’ approach, the herd scattered and ran off in their awkward hump-backed gallop, snorting and wild-eyed. There was no evidence of a struggle, the snow around them smooth and windblown.

  There was the bull, and the mean, horned cow. Quickly Hannah counted. Only counted eleven; there should be twelve yearling cows.

  They came upon the grisly scene before they could brace themselves. Snow trampled into the consistency of cottage cheese, deep hoof marks, huge paw prints, then the awful pink color of blood mixed with snow.

  The bones protruded, a rib cage with bits of hair, meat, and gristle, the empty eyes staring and wild-eyed, horribly panicked from the ripping, clawing feet and slavering mouths that brought her down.

  Half eaten, the cloven hooves barely attached to the devoured leg portion, snow and old dried grass mingled with the remains of the yearling heifer. The struggle to save herself must have been fearsome, the cow and smaller bull trying to stave off the wolves.

  Hannah dismounted after Manny. They stood together, heads bent, unable to grasp what the wolves had accomplished.

  “I hate those big brutes. They’ll kill anything just to kill,” she yelled, angry and needing to avenge herself. She wanted to ride home, get the rifle and hunt down the bloodthirsty pack and kill them all.

  She would.

  She turned with swift, jerky movements, placed her foot in the stirrup, and flung herself astride her horse.

  “Where are you going?”

  “For the rifle. I’m going to hunt down this pack of wolves until I’ve killed every last one!”

  “You can’t do that!” Manny yelled after her, then mounted his horse and tore off after her.

  They shouted at each other the whole way home. Manny tried to talk sense, tell her the wolf pack roamed for miles on end, much farther than old Pete could manage even if she rode hard for most of the day.

  “Shut up! I don’t believe you!” Hannah shouted over her shoulder.

  In the end, it took hours of reasoning by Lemuel with Sarah’s tearful pleas and Manny’s words injected at opportune moments, until Hannah relented.

  The cows had to com
e in. They had to be brought into the corral, today. No matter that they had nothing to feed them. They’d starve out there anyway. In their weakened state, the wolves would finish off the whole herd.

  Lemuel told her the horses were spent. She could go nowhere now, likely not all week, unless they had a warm spell. The wolves would be back to finish their kill, but they would not necessarily be able to kill another one. The cows would not starve on the prairie. Better to leave them. They’d be in for water from the tank.

  Break up the ice, make sure they had access to water. In spite of giving in to Lemuel’s advice, Hannah took matters into her own hands after dinner. She saddled Pete and rode off to the Klassermans against Lemuel and Manny’s advice.

  They’d drive the herd to the Klasserman ranch. Hannah was crazy with fear, obsessed with the possibility of dead yearling carcasses dotting the prairie, a ruined mess of blood and mangled flesh, protruding bones that were an open invitation to the golden eagles and buzzards from the sky.

  She couldn’t bear to think of their ability to pay back the loan taken away by the ruthless hunger of scavengers in winter. Nature wasn’t that cruel, and God surely wasn’t, either. So that left only the devil and his unclean mischief.

  Half-frozen, she barely clung to the saddle as Pete stumbled into the Klassermans’ barnyard, exhausted from wading through deep drifts of snow.

  Red-faced Owen Klasserman lumbered through the snow wearing so many clothes he resembled a human snowman, lifting a fat, gloved finger and wagging it as he spoke.

  “You dumb voman. Vott iss wrong mitt you? Ei-ya-yi-yi-yi. You easy freeze. You kill dat horse.”

  Hannah threw herself off the saddle, her feet like blocks of ice, her knees crumpled so that she sat down hard in the snow, Pete heaving, his head hanging straight out, the way horses do when they are beyond reasonably tired.

  “Get up, Hannah. Get up!” Owen shouted, disgusted that she had had the gall to ride that old horse through the drifts. She could have become lost or disoriented, lost on the prairie, frozen to death. The plains in winter were not to be taken lightly. Owen knew this well.