From Here to There (26 page)

 "We are defensive though," Emile said, leaning forward, his voice intense. "Outsiders come here, buy up the land, move into the valleys and hills and they don't understand our ways, share our values. They don’t understand the problems we face with say wolf or grizzly predations. They want us gone is the honest truth and leave this place for vacation homes and the wolves and grizzlies.”

“I have read about the conflicts,” Phillip agreed, “and see how it seems confrontive.”

“It causes a lot of trouble when newcomers or worse outsiders expect to change everything to meet what their goals or what they left behind. If they didn’t like how this was, why’d they bother to come?"

“Everybody came sometime,” Phillip argued.

“Outsiders cause us a lot of grief.”

"Outsiders. That's a good word for the way you people treat anybody who wasn't born on your land."

 "Oh my, I'm sorry I ever brought any of this up," Nancy said.

 Phillip made his own tone conciliatory. "I'll concede the evils of the big cities with high taxes, crime, pollution, and overcrowding, but how about if we keep this discussion to the thing I really don't understand. What is the philosophy that you folks see as being Western, that separates a Westerner from what you would call an outsider?" He had no desire to get into an argument with Emile. On the other hand, fighting with Wes might have a certain appeal. His eyes narrowed as he looked toward Wes, who had settled next to Helene on the gingham covered sofa. What were that guy's intentions?

 Emile subsided back, as Nancy, who had moved to sit on the arm of his chair, began soothingly kneading his shoulder muscle.

 There was a silence "A lot of the ways around here have changed, even since I was a kid," Amos said finally. "There was a time when a man was judged by what he did not just what he owned. There wasn't so much concern with how much money you had, but more how you did your work, what your word was worth. You know, even now with some of the old timers, a handshake is as good or better than a paper contract would be somewhere else. In fact, with a lot of men, you never get a signed contract. A man's word, that's everything. Know what I mean?"

 "Maybe. I deal with people a lot on the look in their eye," Phillip said thoughtfully. "It doesn't always work out though when you don't have the expectations written down. People remember their promises differently."

 Amos grinned. "Well, that's true out here too, but if a man's worked the winter at your side, you've watched his kids grow up, seen how he keeps his stock, how he maintains his fences, you get a feeling for him and the kind of fella he is. A man who can do does. A man who can't brags.”

Phillip smiled. “That’s pretty much true anywhere.”

 "Well we do come out here from other places, heck, if we count our families, all of us came from someplace else, but there's different kind of men, not so much matters about where they come from, but more what they're like inside. There's those that come, buy up land, fill it with cattle, overgraze their places 'til there isn't a blade of grass left, then go belly up. They're sucking it dry and pretty soon somebody else's got what's left. The city folks look at it and don’t know it was another city folk who done it.

“Some see these ranches as just investments. They don’t work it at all and take land out of production. They don’t care about the schools, the socials, none of it. Another kind of fella, he sees the land and the people here as a responsibility, a way to feed his family and other folks. He takes care of it, like it's in trust or something. Looks after his neighbors. He's the kind of man we say it'll do to ride the river with."

 Amos chuckled. "It ain't the hat so much. It's what's under that hat. We got a saying out here--the bigger the hat, the littler the outfit. I think though you're not so much asking what makes the West what it is, but more what is we're tryin' so hard to hold onto that we feel threatened by newcomers?" He waited for an answer.

 Phillip nodded. "It is something of what I see."

Emile answered.  "Some of it's a feeling of self-sufficiency in the community, a caring for each other. A man takes care of himself but also helps out those around him. There’s knowing you can leave your door unlocked and if your neighbor comes by the only thing he'll be going into your house for is to leave you a pie or loaf of bread his wife baked."

 "It sounds Edenic," Phillip said, remembering the neighborhood he'd grown up in. If you left your door unlocked there, you'd find the place destroyed and emptied out when you got home; and if you were lucky, the burglar was gone and was not waiting to beat you to a pulp.

 "I suppose it is and a lot of it's already gone,” Emile agreed. “When I was a kid, everybody used to get together at the county grange on Saturday nights for pot lucks and at each other's barns for dances. Us kids would watch them as they’d dance all night and the worst thing that would happen might be a couple of hotheads fighting over some pretty little thing down behind the barn.”

Amos chuckled. “Yep, when the boys'd get through trying to knock each other's heads in, they'd shake hands. If a man's barn or house burned, the whole valley'd show up to put up a new one. You saw a fellow driving his rig down the road, and you not only knew who he was but who his people were. Nowadays, I don't hardly know half the people three miles from me, let alone all the way into town."

 "You can't blame that totally on city people who moved in though," Phillip said. "Change happens. Nobody can hold onto anything forever." He ought to know the truth of that. He'd never lived in any home longer than a year, and father figures had changed with the seasons—sometimes twice in a season.

 "We can damn well try," Emile retorted argumentatively.

 Amos shook his head. "No, he's right. We can't hold onto what was, and we probably do glamorize the old West too much, make more out of it than it was, like it really was John Wayne running things back then."

He stopped for a moment and then, as though thinking aloud, mused, "It's a funny thing about the Western way of thinking. On the one hand, it's a man helping another man by choice, but on the other hand, it's a man being independent, doing for himself. I think that's what we don't want to lose the most... independence."

 "You don't think people from the city can be independent?" Phillip asked, knowing what the answer would be.

 "City folks want somebody else to do everything for them," Wes said. "Get the government into every part of life. Raise taxes, ask for services. They want to butt into everybody else's business and tell them how to run it. You get a man from the city out here and the first thing you know he wants sidewalks, street lights and expects you to help pay for them."

 Waiting until the laughter died down, Amos quipped, "Well now, I don't want you to think this business of Western independence goes too far with us. You go taking away our electricity, and we'll be squealing like stuck pigs."

 The sound of a truck driving up to the ranch was not an unwelcome diversion for Phillip--a convenient excuse to stop cleaning out the horse stalls. Since Amos had just driven off for town, he half expected to see the old man had forgotten something. Instead it was Wes Carlson's truck that came to a stop, horse trailer on behind.

 "I was hoping you'd be here," Wes said, stepping from his truck.

 "Any special reason?"

 "I thought maybe we could have a little chat."

 "About?"

 "Nothing much. How you handling a horse these days?"

 "You talking about riding or currying?" Phillip asked wryly.

 "Riding."

 "I'm no top rider if that's what you're asking, but I can stay on."

 "How about us going for a ride then? There's a couple of things I wanted to talk about and maybe show you. That's why I brought my horse."

“Involving Amos’s land?”

“I have lived here pretty near all my life. I know all the land. You were curious about that hot spring. I thought I’d show it to you.”

 Phillip stared at him a moment, then shrugging, headed back into the barn to saddle the gelding, Sunshine. By the time he rode out of the barn, Wes was on his horse. Phillip wondered if his intent was to show him up on horsemanship, if so, it shouldn't be hard.

 Looking toward the porch, Phillip saw Helene standing there. "Where are you two headed?" she asked, shielding her eyes against the low lying sun. Hobo stood at her side, showing no interest in running out to join the men.

 "We won’t be long," Phillip said. He had no idea what Wes wanted to talk about; and even if he had, he wasn't sure he'd have shared the information with Helene. "Wes had something he wanted to show me." He watched as Helene nodded, then disappeared back in the house

 They rode in silence up the lane, turning onto the rutted road that headed up the hill. "You and Helene are getting a divorce, right?" Wes asked after a few moments.

 “So this isn’t about the spring?” Phillip shrugged. "She and I haven't talked about it recently."

 "How long you planning on staying up here?"

 "Is it any of your business?"

 "It might be."

 "But more likely it isn't. If you think you're going to get any information about Helene from me, I can save you some time. We can turn around right now. Ask her."

 Wes chuckled. "No, I don't have that in mind. Just I'm concerned about Amos and this place. I wouldn't like to see you building up his hopes that you were going to stay and then you taking off."

 "That's seems more like Amos's problem than yours."

 "Maybe, but I see you doing the same thing to Helene. You're not acting much like a man who wants a divorce."

 "I wasn't the one who wanted one," Phillip retorted, striking a match and cupping his hands to protect the flame from the wind as he lit his cigarette. His comfort on a horse was growing.

 "I kind of figured that. So you followed her out here." It wasn't a question.

 "More or less. What's all this to you, Carlson?"

 "Well, I'll tell you, Drummond. I got the idea that Helene was free and available, and I liked that idea."

 "A man can be wrong."

 "Could be," Wes said with a smile.

 They rode a little farther in silence. The sun was weak in the sky and the air briskly cold. In the distance Phillip could see clouds gathering against the hills.

 "You ever ride a roping horse?" Wes asked abruptly.

 "No." Phillip eyed Wes skeptically, wondering what he was driving at now. Didn't Western men ever directly say anything?

 "Roping's a good thing to know. You know how to do it?"

 Phillip snorted. "Now what do you think?"

 Wes pulled his rope from the side of his saddle. "Not much to it," he said, loosening the loop, widening it and playing out a little of the rope. "You wrap one end around the saddle horn. Shake out the loop and let fly." Almost before Phillip realized what was happening, the loop had flown out and settled around his shoulders.

 "What the hell!" he grunted as it tightened, pinning his arms to his side at waist level. "Is this some kind of game?"

 "Maybe so," Wes said, stopping his horse abruptly. The action pulled Phillip from his own still moving horse and landed him winded on the dirt road, his cigarette knocked from his lips. He tried to struggle to his feet, to pull the lariat from his arms, but as Wes stepped from the saddle, his horse backed up, neatly pulling Phillip off balance again.

 Wes ran to him and almost before Phillip realized what was happening, had wrapped a piece of rawhide around one wrist, pulled the other to it and bound his wrists tightly in front of him.