Falling From Horses

by Molly Gloss

  In a country without fences, it was hard to know where your cattle were. The most you could hope was an intelligent guess. In general, the cattle ranged within an hour or so of water or salt, so in March and April Henry hauled salt up to the reserve and left it on certain hillsides and ridge points, and after the spring roundup he dropped off cows and calves near the salt and near springs where ponds had formed. Then in the fall, searching a different part of the allotment every day, they worked inward toward one of those salt blocks or ponds, collecting the cattle they found in that area. They brought them down in pairs and small bunches, counting as they went, and when they had enough to handle, took them to whatever place had been agreed upon that day, where they could be held or corralled for a few hours until everybody had come in. Then they drove that morning’s gather—a couple of dozen pairs on an average day—down to the fenced pastures at the home place, where the herd grew bigger day by day.

  When they sat down in their dusty clothes to eat Mrs. Stanich’s dinner, they hardly spoke except to ask for a plate to be passed. Afterward they saddled fresh horses and headed out again to comb for cows around another salt cairn.

  Fall roundup was twelve or fifteen sleep-starved, backbreaking days.

  The Echol place had always had water flowing in the creek, water in the wetlands at the lower end of the property, and half a dozen springs that never failed, but in the thirties a string of dry years hit everywhere in the West. The Frazers had more water than many of their neighbors: a couple of springs that kept trickling, and water in the upper reaches of the creek, enough to keep the livestock watered and the kitchen faucet running. So they gave away what they felt they could spare, to ranchers down on the arid flats who were trying to save well water for their cattle and to nearby homesteaders whose springs had dried up. All through the dry summers of 1934 and 1935, neighbors came and went, driving up the canyon with a team and wagon or a motor truck and hauling back water in buckets to keep their kitchen garden going and maybe wash clothes every other week. But late in the summer of 1936, with no rain to speak of since March, the wetlands below the house shrunk until they were mostly mud beds. Echol Creek in places became a necklace of still puddles. That year the cows ran out of grass in July and began shedding pounds, so Henry and Martha started the fall roundup in early August, a good month sooner than usual.

  Sandy Gantz, the youngest of Arlo’s boys, was helping them that year, and Bud’s friend Dean Dickerson had come over from Hart to help out. He wasn’t much of a hand—Henry was afraid he would make more work for them all—but the boy was eager to prove himself a cowboy, and Bud had spent so much time at the Dickerson house over the last couple of years that Henry felt obliged to let him try.

  Every morning Sandy, who was twenty that year, came into the yard on a motorbike with his saddle tied onto the back of the seat, and then they all sat down to eat. Bud and Dean and Mary Claudine had been up since three, cooking biscuits and sausage gravy, stewed prunes, bacon, pancakes.

  Even in August the early mornings had a bite of frost, so when they rode out around four-thirty they were bundled in coats and scarves they would shed when the heat built up later in the day. There had been fires in the valley all through that summer—the grass had dried up so early in the season it took no more than a cigarette butt tossed out along the highway or a horseshoe striking a spark against a rock to get hundreds of acres burning black. The night sky was a starless smudge, and the air smelled faintly of ash and charcoal. The only sound was leather squeaking and bits jingling and the horses sometimes huffing breath.

  On the fourth day of roundup that year, they were still working the highest part of the allotment, sweeping the ridges and ravines around Shoestring Canyon, a rocky place about eight miles long, with mountains rising steeply above the canyon bed. Two side canyons fed into it, Crow Canyon from the east and Lost Sheep Canyon from the southwest, and the gathering place was at the outlet of Crow Canyon, where there were some old corrals. They planned to be working cows down the side hills into Crow in the morning, and Lost Sheep in the afternoon.

  It was six o’clock when they got up to the corrals, the sky overhead lightening to pearl gray but the sun not yet risen high enough to clear the eastern ridge. This was country so rough and wild that even Henry had sometimes wandered around up there without knowing for sure where he was, so he wanted them working in pairs: Sandy and Martha together, and Dean with Bud, who was charged with keeping his friend out of trouble, though nobody said so. Henry, who had been rounding up cattle for more years than any of them, would get along with just the dog, Quinn. He told Mary Claudine, “I want you to wait right here and help run in the cows as they come down to the canyon bottom.”

  Mary Claudine gave Henry a glance of wounded outrage. She was ten that year, old enough in her view to be riding for cattle on her own, and she was waiting every day for her dad to say so. It was hours of boredom, hanging around the corrals until the first cows were brought down, and it was her opinion that her brother’s friend knew less about the work than she did—that it should have been Dean made to sit at the bottom and wait. She sent a beseeching look to her mother, but Martha merely shook her head. Don’t argue with your dad. It was Martha’s own opinion that Mary Claudine could chase cows better than Dean, but she knew Henry had made up his mind to let the boy play at being a cowboy.

  They talked about how to split up the terrain, and then they rode up Crow Canyon and scattered up the side hills out of sight, leaving Mary Claudine alone with a long time to wait. She was riding Goldy that morning, a chestnut mare with one floppy ear. Goldy was too tall for her to climb on without a stump or rock or some other high place to mount from; earlier that week she’d had to stay in the saddle all morning. But at Crow Canyon she had the corrals to climb on, and she was too cold and bored to sit on the horse for long. There was sunlight at the top of the ridge, so she slipped off the horse, took out the book she had carried in the saddlebag with her jar of coffee, and hiked up the steep side of the ridge.

  Mary Claudine, like her mother, had a great love of books and reading. She had learned to read at four, and by six had worked her way through several of the books that were her mother’s favorites—Black Beauty, Call of the Wild, A Dog of Flanders. She had begun The Dark Frigate at the start of roundup. When she reached the top of the ridge, she sat on the ground in the warming sunlight, opened the book, and found where she’d left off reading.

  She didn’t have any way to measure the passage of time. Every so often she looked up at the sun in the great bare sky, then went back to reading about the Rose of Devon taken over by pirates, and the orphaned Philip forced to join their crew. But she wanted to be ready when the first cows came down to the canyon floor, and when she began to worry that she had spent too much time with the frigate, she hiked back down the steep hill and climbed onto Goldy. She forgot to piddle before getting back on the horse, and before long she desperately needed to. She dithered, not wanting any of the others to show up while she was squatting by a rock with her bottom hanging out of her overalls. But finally she got down and crouched a short way off and relieved herself on the dirt, then boosted herself onto Goldy again, in such a hurry that she was on the horse before she finished doing up her shoulder buttons.

  She hadn’t needed to rush—the waiting went on. The sun broke over the ridge finally and warmed the bottom of the canyon. When she grew hungry she drank from her jar of milky coffee. It seemed to her that the sun hung overhead without moving. She began to ride Goldy a hundred yards up the narrow canyon and back again, just to keep them both from falling asleep in the sunlight. And she sang to herself, one of the songs she’d heard Gene Autry sing the last time she had gone with Bud to the movies in Burns.

  She had been counting on the bawling of cows to warn her when somebody was coming down, but Bud rode in unannounced from the outlet of Crow Canyon and caught her unprepared—she was singing loudly and pretending to strum a guitar. She was mortified, but Bud didn’t even notice
. He was riding Tony that day, and he came on at a slow walk, with Dean behind him on Pumpkin. It took Mary Claudine a minute to realize that Bud had Pumpkin on a lead and that Dean, pale as milk, was hunched in the saddle, seeming to hug himself.

  She called out, “What happened? Did he fall off?”

  It was Dean who answered her. “I didn’t fall off. A damn cow butted the damn horse and he went over on me. I busted my arm.”

  Mary Claudine knew he wouldn’t have used swearwords if her parents had been there; he might not even have said “busted.” And he sounded proud of himself. She hadn’t ever broken a bone—she was the only one of her family who hadn’t. She sometimes took this as proof of her superior horsemanship and sometimes as evidence that she hadn’t yet proven herself. She gave Dean a look that was partly envy, but then, just to let him know where he stood, she said righteously, “I hope you didn’t get Pumpkin hurt.”

  Bud said irritably, “We wouldn’t be riding him if he was hurt.” He was in a bad mood about the way things had gone, upset that he hadn’t been able to keep his friend from getting into trouble, upset that his dad would be short-handed now and the roundup made to drag on longer than it should.

  “I’ve got to take Dean down the hill. Tell Dad and Mom I’m driving him to town in the truck.”

  “Did you find any cows? Should I go bring them down?”

  He was abreast of her by then, and as he rode past her he looked over and frowned. “We had half a dozen we brought in to the bench around Rim Springs, they might still be there. You know where that is?”

  Her excitement was bright in her face. “I’ll find them.” She jigged Goldy and trotted off.

  Bud called after her, “If they’re not there, don’t go looking for them. Just come on back.”

  She flung back over her shoulder, “Okay,” and went out of sight up the Crow Canyon trail.

  They found Mary Claudine’s horse on the third day, in among a band of wild horses at the far northern edge of the reserve. The saddle was still cinched up, the mare’s hide rubbed raw under the girth and along her back, her mouth raw from the bit. The reins were broken off short—they’d been stepped on or torn from some entanglement. It looked as if the horse had been on her own, roaming the mountain, since the first day Mary Claudine went missing. The broken jar rattling around in the saddlebag had spilt its coffee on the book she’d had with her. The pages were soaked and swollen, the illustrations almost indecipherable under a scrim of brown stains. The saddle was badly scratched, but there was no blood on it, which Martha and Henry both took as a good sign. They would find their daughter lying up with a broken leg, they felt, or limping out of the mountains on sore feet.

  But then, after the horse was found, there was no further sign.

  In the first days after the girl went missing, fifteen or twenty neighbors pitched in to help them search, but this was roundup, and most of them couldn’t go on neglecting their own places after it became clear that Mary Claudine wouldn’t easily be found. Arlo Gantz, though, was in his seventies and he had three sons who had taken over the work on his ranch. He had time on his hands and a desire to feel useful. Before sunrise day after day for weeks, Arlo drove up in his blue Oldsmobile, dragging a pale rooster tail of dust. Every day Martha was out in the yard saddling horses, and he would nod as he stepped out of the car and say a few words to her before going into the house.

  A hardened old-timer like Arlo might cry a few tears at weddings and christenings but never at a funeral, and perhaps for that reason, or some other one, he never said a word of sympathy to any of the Frazers, and he never speculated about what could have happened to Mary Claudine. Most mornings he called out, “Lucky it wasn’t cold overnight,” or, if it had been cold, “Lucky it didn’t rain,” which he meant to carry an unspoken solace. And then he went on into the house, where Bud was packing the lunches—sandwiches and doughnuts, maybe big squares of cake from pans their neighbors had brought—and he sat down with Henry at the kitchen table so the two of them could go over the map. They had started the search at Rim Springs and widened out from there, but the Ochoco Reserve was hundreds of square miles of rough land. The network of penciled crosshatchings marking off the places they had searched never seemed to be more than a small island in a great sea.

  They put in long days—ten or twelve hours on horseback. The woodland up in the reserve was mostly open, and they stayed in sight of one another but spread out to cover as much ground as they could, closing the distance only when there were windfalls or clumps of brush—places where a child could be lying out of sight and unable to call out to them. They got down and walked in the steep draws and wherever the horses couldn’t get through. Quinn was always with them, sticking close to Martha or Henry and seeming confused when they ignored the cows and calves they came across. He wasn’t any help with the search—they knew this—but when he got down low on his belly and pushed into a thicket, investigating whatever was in there, one of them would dismount and pick up a stick and feel around, just to be sure. The first time Martha found a dead animal that way—it was a calf that had been gnawed on by coyotes and buzzards—her head filled suddenly with white noise; later, when she lay down on the bed, so tired she thought she might not be able to pull off her socks before falling asleep, her mind went right to the dead animal she had poked with her stick. And then to her daughter, a wheel of images, most of them unbearable.

  They didn’t noon up but ate lunch in the saddle. They went back to the house after dark and heated the soup or stew Mrs. Stanich or one of the other neighbors had brought by and left on the porch in a dishpan. Arlo often went on to his own place to eat supper with his wife, but every so often he stayed to eat with the Frazers, and while the supper was warming he stripped his shirt off and sat on the front porch rubbing Absorbine into his shoulders and arms, the pungent smell of it overtaking whatever was heating on the stove. Arlo didn’t have an ounce of fat on him, and you could still see the lean muscle in his upper arms and back, though age had loosened the skin from his bones so it hung in slack folds around his nipples and above his elbows.

  Some of the neighbors who had helped out with the early search tried to finish the Frazers’ fall roundup, or as much as they had time for. But they got around to it late, and a good many of the ravines and canyons in the allotment were lightly combed or not combed at all. Anyway, by then a lot of cows and calves had moved off the range, looking for feed, drifting north or west, away from the Echol ranch. The Gantz boys weaned the calves, but they didn’t know how many of the heifers Henry wanted sold. All over the country the drought had driven ranchers to sell off more stock than usual, earlier than usual, and this had pushed down the prices. But if you held back, hoping for a better return in the spring, you might not have enough hay to see the herd through the winter. When Chuck Gantz, Arlo’s oldest son, took Henry aside and tried to talk to him about shaping up the herd for market, Henry said, “Do whatever’s easiest,” and walked off. So they made a rough cut, turning back onto pasture just about half the heifers and driving the rest to the sale lot, along with a few of the long yearlings and old bulls. It wasn’t a big payday, and fall sales were their income for the year.

  Arlo Gantz had heard of children lost in the mountains and never found, or the bones stumbled on by accident a year later, two years, ten. By the end of September it was clear to him that Mary Claudine was such a child—that she wouldn’t be found, or anyway not by one of them—and it was his opinion that Henry needed to get back to the business of running his ranch. This was something he couldn’t say to the man except roundabout. What he finally said was just “I think it’s best if I get back to my own place, Henry. We been at this a while and I been letting a lot of things slide.”

  Henry knew what the old man was getting at, but it didn’t make any difference to him. He shook Arlo’s hand and thanked him for helping, but then he and Martha and Bud went on doggedly looking for Mary Claudine right into October. Of course by then they were looking for
her body, her bones, although none of them said so.

  One afternoon when Henry rode down into the yard, Mr. Dickerson’s big gray Cadillac was parked next to the barn under a heavy blanket of dust. Dean and his father were waiting on the porch. Henry lifted a hand briefly in greeting, but he rode on across the yard to the pasture fence and unsaddled the horse there and turned him out, then he caught up another horse and saddled him.

  By the time Henry finished this business with the horses and walked to the house, Mr. Dickerson had changed his mind about what he had planned to say. He had not seen any of the Frazers since the whole thing started, and though he had pictured them grief-stricken, distraught—he had prepared himself for that—Henry seemed to him only drawn down with exhaustion. His face was deeply burnt, his cheeks and lips cracked into deep, scabbed-over furrows that had bled and healed and broken open to heal again. But there wasn’t a trace of the sorrow that Mr. Dickerson had been expecting. He had thought he might speak to Henry about his son’s broken arm, even apologize for the small part this had played in what happened, but when they shook hands he only said a few words about how sorry he was “for what happened to your daughter.”

  Henry nodded but didn’t reply. He glanced briefly at Dean, who had been looking down at the ground while his dad spoke.

  It wasn’t how Mr. Dickerson had imagined things would go. Not for the first time, he wondered if Henry blamed Dean for getting hurt. He wondered if Henry understood how much pain the boy had been in, and how hard it had been for Dean to carry on his life with his good arm in a plaster cast.

  “Well, you know it’s the boys’ last year in high school,” he said. “And school has already started up.” He smiled regretfully, as if this might be something Henry had overlooked. “So we came to see if maybe we could bring Bud back with us to Hart.”