by Hazel Rumney
“Not yet, but there’s always a chance,” Frank said sarcastically, his meaning obvious.
“They’s rustlers come ’round sometimes and me and Bob had to run them off with gunplay. I think Bob might’ve nicked one on account we found a blood trail.”
Neither of them said a thing but rode off on toward the grazing ground and set up the tent when they got there, then set out front and smoked and looked on at the grazing herd of shorthorns, what some called baldies.
“Tell the truth,” Jesse said as they smoked, “I’d just as soon live out here than in that stinking cabin with that old coot.”
“You say that now but if it comes bad rain and wind and lightning, you might wished you was back in that cabin, stink or not.”
They flipped a coin to see who would ride out and check on the herd just to satisfy their duties. Frank lost the toss.
“I’ll be back in the mornin’ and we’ll swap turns,” he said.
And thus it was and thus the first month of their work began.
Mr. Flaver came up with more supplies at the first of the next month and didn’t say too much, glad that the men had stuck and threw his bedroll down on the spare cot and went straight to sleep.
He’d brought more coffee and another demijohn of whiskey as well as other necessaries.
And thus it went until near the end of September, at the end of which, they planned on bringing down the herd because the weather had turned cold and the skies threatening.
“We’ll be shed of this place soon,” Jesse said as they huddled in their coats against a stiff wind howling up through the valley, stiff enough to threaten to collapse the tent.
“I am ready to say so long to this place and go find us another, hopefully more interesting.”
“One with young whores, too, I hope,” Frank said. “Not like that granny down in Askin.”
So they got started on a conversation about whores they’d known and which was best and which worse and in what towns they’d known them.
“You reckon she is yet alive?” Jesse asked.
“I reckon she could be. That old gal had some grist to her. Why, you thinking of going to see her again we get down?”
“Hell, no.”
Frank laughed, said, “Pass on that bottle.” And: “Goddamn, it’s cold, ain’t it?”
All night the wind hammered the sides of the tent, the canvas popping so loud they could barely sleep for it and the cold. In the morning, they awoke to a foot of snow on the ground and more falling fast.
“You best get out here,” Frank called to Jesse, who had been having ragged dreams about old whores.
Jesse climbed out and stood looking at the wonderland.
“Well this is a hell of a note,” he said.
“We waited too long.”
“Hell, no. Let’s ride back to the cabin and get that old bastard and have him help us round up that herd and get them down.”
They couldn’t even see half the herd for the whiteness and maybe some of them had climbed up into the tree line.
The old man was snoring and they shook him from his blankets.
“Get up!” Frank ordered.
“What? What is it?”
“It’s snowing and it don’t look like it’s going to quit neither. We got to get Flaver’s cows down.”
The old man rose stiffly and went to the door in his long handles and looked out. Scratching his rear, said, “You ain’t lying.”
“Get dressed.”
“Fer what?”
“Round up the herd.”
He cackled, and said, “Shit, I ain’t going out in that.”
“We do it now or we don’t get ’em down,” Jesse said.
“Not my concern.”
Frank grabbed him up, and said. “You damn well better make it yours.”
Morrisey grabbed at Frank’s wrist with his hand, which was more like a claw with long uncut horny fingernails.
“No, sir. I done quit. I’m staying put.”
“What do you mean, you quit? How’d you quit?”
“I just quit, is all. Can’t a man just quit something? That’s what I did. Quit.”
Frank released his grip on the old man’s throat and turned to Jesse.
“I guess it’s up to us to get that herd down.”
Jesse glared venomous at the old bastard.
“You tell Mr. Flaver you quit?”
“I will, come the spring when I go down.”
They turned and went out and mounted their horses, their saddles already covered with three inches of snow. With the heavy wind-driven snow, it was hard to see even as far at the outhouse.
“I don’t see how we’re going to accomplish anything in this,” Jesse said.
“We got to try.”
“We could get lost easily.”
Frank didn’t answer but turned his horse back to the camp with Jesse following.
The storm’s fury increased, seeming to double in intensity, and they barely found their way back to the tent.
“They’s no way we can go on till it slacks up, Frank.”
Frank solemnly agreed. They dismounted, removed their saddles, ground-reined the horses, and climbed inside the tent, grateful to be in out of the raw cold wind.
“Damn it to hell,” Frank said inside his blankets. “Damn it all to hell.”
All day and night the storm raged and finally buckled the tent with wind and snow buildup and they had to burrow their way out during some night hour, shivering and cussing their fate.
In the outer darkness, the sky was red and the world below was glowing white, and it seemed like they were standing in a beautiful nightmare of something they didn’t want to be part of.
The horses were gone. They’d broken free and fled. But for all its fury, the storm had then abated and left the world in silence but for Frank and Jesse’s cussing. There was only one thing to be done—trudge back to the cabin in snow to their knees.
By the time they arrived, they were nearly frozen and could feel neither feet nor fingers. They barged in through the door and stood as close to the wood burner as possible.
The old man was sitting on the side of his bunk as if expecting them.
“Tried to tell you boys,” he said. Rising, he went and prepared a coffee pot he’d earlier melted snow in, tossed in some Arbuckle, and set it on one of the stove’s plates to cook.
“You’ns hungry?”
They simply shivered and warmed their hands until they could feel their fingers and their feet by removing their boots and wet socks and holding their feet against the stove’s heat.
The old man shrugged when they didn’t say anything and set about cutting pieces of a smoked ham and opening a can of beans. He prepared three plates and placed them on the small table, which had just two chairs.
“There it is, when you’re ready,” he said and laid down in his cot again and covered up with blankets and went to sleep.
A short time later Frank and Jesse, exhausted by the trek from tent to cabin, flipped for the leftover cot. Jesse won and laid down and was stone asleep in minutes. Frank took the floor and followed suit.
Morning came too fast and hard. Both of them awakened to the sense they were crawling out of a grave.
When they checked, the snow was halfway up the side of the cabin and they had difficulty pushing the door open.
“Son of a bitch,” Frank said.
“It’s the way of the mountains,” the old man said from his perch at the table. He was nursing a cup of coffee laced with near the last of the whiskey.
“We’re screwed royally,” Jesse said.
“True enough,” the old man agreed. “Might as well set and eat you something and get some of that coffee.”
As much as they hated to admit it, the old man was right. There wasn’t a damn thing they could do. They’d become trapped.
The days went by with little change. Sometimes it snowed and added to what was on the earth, and some days it was sunny and blind
ingly bright. They worked hard to shovel a path to the privy. A small comfort to be sure.
“Wonder where it is our horses got off to?” Jesse said.
“Let’s hope they found refuge,” Frank said. “I hate to think of Nel getting froze to death. She was a real good horse.”
“I know it,” Jesse said.
All the while, the old man listened and shuffled about the cabin and tinkered with a clock that didn’t work and they asked him what he cared about time and he said he didn’t, that it was just something to do. They played stud poker for matchsticks and the old man won almost every hand and cackled like a laying hen.
They took turns watching out the window at the ever-falling snow, which alternated with sunshine and the purest blue sky, and off in the distance, they could see the dark line of trees but that was all. Just white and blue and blackness became the color of their collective world.
Soon enough they grew short on food and the stockpile of chopped wood for the stove that lay outside the cabin grew dangerously low. The old man produced a pair of snowshoes from under his cot.
“One of you is any good, you can put these on your feet and set forth to see if you can kill somethin’ to eat.”
Frank and Jesse were weary of the entrapment, knowing they wouldn’t be freed from their log and chink jail until spring.
They talked it over outside the cabin, bundled in coats with scarves tied around their ears. They were sick of the smell of the old man, his watching them and cackling, his loud snores.
The fresh air, even frozen, smelled good and they breathed it in deeply.
“Tell you what,” Jesse said. “I ever get off this mountain, I’m going back to Texas where it don’t ever snow—that part.”
“I’m of a mind to go with you,” Frank said.
“I do believe that old man is becoming crazy.”
“Crazier, you mean.”
“Well, you’re the better shot,” Jessie said. “You take the rifle and hunt us something.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The old man and Jesse watched Frank trudge off across the snow, rifle in hand, walking awkwardly with the snowshoes until he disappeared over a ridge; then they went back into the house.
“Poker?” the old man said.
“Why not.”
They played for hours on end until the light began to dim and Jesse stood away from the table, not for the first time, and went to the door and looked out into the gloaming and sure enough he saw a figure darkly coming toward the house.
“He’s carrying something,” he said over his shoulder.
The old man came forth and stood in the doorway, and said, “I don’t see nothin’, my eye ain’t that good. I hope it’s more’n beans.”
“Beans?”
The old man hocked and spat into the snow that, on the wind side, reached near to the roof. Every passing day, Jesse was more sure the old man was losing what little mind he had. Beans.
Jesse waited until Frank reached the pathway they’d shoveled, then dropped what was in his hand.
“I hope you can cook a badger better’n you can a beefsteak, Morrisey,” he said.
The old man nodded, spat again, went in and got his butcher knife, and came out again while Frank took off his snowshoes and entered the house and set in front of the stove’s fire.
He was shivering and his hands were blue. Jesse poured him a cup of Arbuckle, weakened some because they were running low on coffee like everything else, and handed it to him.
“You got any whiskey you can add to this?”
“The old man drank the last drop while I was out in the privy; otherwise, I’d have you some.”
“That badger was the only living thing I seen and I must have hiked five miles, ten to and fro. It’s like nothing’s living no more, all this snow set in.”
“Well a badger beats a raw potato, that’s for sure.”
“You think he can make it eatable?” Frank said glancing over his shoulder at the door.
“I don’t know. How good can a body cook a tasty badger?”
“Damned if I have any idea.”
That night they ate a rank badger stew with the last of the winter potatoes and the last of the onions tossed in, lots of salt and pepper. They ate with trepidation at first, all but the old man, who dug in like it was a Delmonico steak, and soon enough their hunger overrode their wariness and they, too, were shoveling it down.
Later that night the cramps got them and they rushed outside to relieve their bowels and puke and straggle back inside. But the old man slept solidly, as if immune to whatever it was that had doubled Frank and Jesse into misery.
Whatever had sickened them passed within a few days but left them weak and lethargic as children. More snow fell during the night, carried by a raging wind that howled along the eaves.
The next morning, they found the old man’s mule dead in the corral, glazed over with ice, its neck and head stretched forth, its large yellow teeth bared as if it had fought the storm with all it had only to lose the battle.
“Well, least we got something to eat besides badger stew, of which we have none anyway,” the old man said without sentiment.
He spent the better part of the day butchering the animal with a hand axe and knife, tossing its parts up on the roof with the help of Frank and Jesse, in order that wolves wouldn’t come along and steal it.
And for a few weeks, as long as the mule lasted, at least they contented themselves with food. But the fuel was low and they had to start tearing down the lean-to for the boards and the corral for the wood to burn.
“I wonder if Mr. Flaver even cares about us or his goddamn cattle?” Jesse said.
“I think he’s no way of getting through with this snow,” the old man said.
They ran out of coffee, then flour to make any sort of biscuits. They sucked marrow from the bones of the mule and dreamt of things no longer available, with women being lowest on that list, for a man’s hunger overrides everything.
They began to quarrel a good deal, usually provoked by the old man’s grousing, saying if they hadn’t come and he’d gotten trapped, he’d have had plenty to tide him over, but with three mouths there wasn’t enough. Saying they’d surely all end up dead by the time spring caused the snow to melt.
They took umbrage at his accusations, and even between Frank and Jesse, they quarreled over the least little thing, for they felt hemmed in, cooped up, worse than a prison or jail.
They had little to occupy their lives but quarrel and when the last of the mule—neck flesh and bones—came to bear, their dark mood only got worse, their quarreling more until there seemed no peace.
The old man slept soundly in his cot more often than just at night. Frank and Jesse took turns sleeping in the spare cot, the other on the cold floor.
Finally, the wood from the shed and corral was burned up, so Frank and Jesse set forth to the nearest trees to see could they fell some wood. It was a hard go with Jesse using the snowshoes and Frank trudging and struggling through the near waist-deep snow.
By the time they reached the tree line, it was nearly dark but the moon was full and they could see plainly enough to pick an aspen and hacked away at it until it crashed earthward, then chopped off limbs to make a fire and lay down in their blankets beside it, exhausted and addle-brained.
Lying there with the fire between them, Jesse said, “What we gone do, Frank?”
“About what?”
“About this situation.”
“I reckon I wished I knew. Horses gone, mule et, no other food. I reckon we’ve hit near to the end of the trail, partner.”
There was silence for a time, but for the crackling of the firewood.
“I hear freezing to death isn’t so bad,” Jesse said. “They say you just lay down and go to sleep.”
“Who says? Surely not them who have done it.”
“Would you take your own life, Frank? Put a bullet in your brain, if you had to?”
“I reckon
I won’t know until that time comes.”
“Well, it surely seems to be coming and soon.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder. We got to haul as much of this tree back down as we can manage.”
“Okay, then.”
Finally, they managed a few hours of fitful sleep but it did not feel like rest whatsoever. And, in the morning, they chopped the tree into manageable pieces they could get a rope around and pull.
After more hours of struggle, they reached the cabin again, dropped the wood as it was, and went with frozen limbs into the cabin.
The old man was sitting there in a chair with a shotgun pointed at them.
“What the hell are you about?” Frank said.
“Running low on victuals,” the old man said. “Got me to thinking what was I gone to eat, and it come to me. You two fellers are somewhat rawboned and not much fat, but I figure together you’ll get me through the winter.”
They didn’t have to say anything to each other. Frank and Jesse had been partners for too many years to not know what the other one might do in a desperate situation.
Together they rushed the old man and his scattergun boomed loud enough that a deaf man could have heard it.
The shot caught Frank in the middle and carried him off his feet and slammed him down on his back. A few of the pellets caught Jesse, but not enough to slow him down. He yanked the shotgun free from the old man and used it like a club to beat him until he no longer moved or spoke, his skull broken open like a melon hit by a sledge.
Jesse was blindly incensed and might have kept clubbing the old man had he not heard Frank moan. He dropped the shotgun and went to his partner’s aid.
The coat Frank was wearing was already soaked through with blood, and worse when Jesse opened it and saw the grievous wounds.
Jesse lifted him with unknown strength—for Frank was the larger man—and carried him to the bunk and laid him gently upon it. Their eyes met and Frank’s were asking questions Jesse had no answers for.
Jesse found a clean shirt among his things and used it as a bandage to try and stanch the blood, but almost as quickly it too became soaked.
“I’m dying . . .” Frank uttered. “Killed by a goddamn crazy man . . .”