Powder River (11 page)

“No, that's not what I feel. I'm sorry you find yourself in this painful situation. I'd like to say I understand, though I realize only another woman can fully appreciate what you're going through. But I cannot do what you ask. I'm sorry.”

Her blue eyes sparkled with anger. “Oh, I see. It would violate your sanctimonious, self-righteous principles? Is that it?”

“Something like that, I guess. The truth is I couldn't live with myself. I already find that hard enough, I don't need to add to the weight.”

Odalie returned to the chair and sat, covering her face with her hands. At first, Dixon thought she was crying, but when she looked up at him her eyes were dry.

“I'm sorry.” She shook her head. “I shouldn't have said that. Of course, I understand your position. I guess I expected it.”

“Odalie, you don't need to apologize to me. How far along are you?”

“About ten weeks.”

He thought she was probably further along, judging by the signs he observed, but he did not share this. Instead he said, “It's still early. Pregnancies at this stage often end spontaneously, as I'm sure you know.”

Dixon wanted to comfort her somehow, to take her in his arms, but could not. There was nothing he could do to ease her burden. “You must feel very alone,” he said.

She stood and covered her fair hair with her hood. “I shouldn't have bothered you,” she said. “I've got to go, Fred Jolly is waiting for me at the Occidental. I told him I was going to Raylan's to look at fabric with Etheline. He'll be half in his cups when I get there; he won't notice when I come back empty-handed. If he does, I'll make something up.” She laughed without humor. “Fred's very loyal to my husband. He makes up in devotion what he lacks in intelligence.” She pulled on her gloves and walked to the door.

“Let me walk you to the hotel,” Dixon said.

“No, it's better you don't.”

He reached for the knob but did not open the door. “It's none of my business,” he said, “but does your husband know about your condition?”

Her pale face, surrounded by her black cloak, appeared to be suspended in the darkness. “No, nor will he.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I've heard about an Indian woman who deals in such matters. I—or rather, someone who works for me—will make inquiries.”

“Please be careful, Odalie. What you are contemplating can be dangerous. Things can go wrong.”

“Don't worry, Dr. Dixon. I wouldn't want you to distress yourself on my account.” She brushed past him, leaving a faint scent of jasmine, and descended quickly to the street, her tread light on the stairs.

The fall roundup of 1886 was a harvest of disappointment, following a summer of extreme heat and drought. It was the same throughout the Territory, on lands watered by the Powder, the Belle Fourche, the Little Missouri. The spring grass burned away, and there was very little forage, while more cattle than ever were released upon the range. One single company drove thirty-two thousand steers up from southern states and turned them loose to fend for themselves. The cattle began to starve.

The overstocking, combined with the lack of rain, turned the rich Wyoming soil into a dry powder that was fine and choking as talc. The winds were hot, blowing mostly from the south that summer, instead of from the northwest and west as usual. The cowboys tied handkerchiefs over their faces to keep the dust and dirt out of their mouths and noses, and Raylan's Dry Goods sold out of its supply of sun goggles within two weeks. There were many prairie fires. Streams that normally ran year-round dried up, and the water that remained stood in small, stagnant pools that were so alkaline the animals would not drink. The summer's only bumper crop was one of poisonous weeds, which the desperate cattle ate and died. The survivors collected in the fall roundup were ribby and exhausted.

Cowboys working the roundup were stressed and buggy, too. If an owner didn't make money, neither would his men. Billy worked for Faucett that summer, though he was often away as area ranchers sought him out to break their green horses. At first, Lord Faucett was proud of his buster and let Billy keep his earnings, but he grew less charitable as Billy's reputation grew. By the end of the summer, Faucett was demanding one-fifth of Billy's pay. Billy understood Lord Faucett didn't need the money, that it was just Faucett's way of making sure Billy did not forgot who he worked for. Billy didn't mind; he'd rather spend his time working with horses than roping a terrified, bawling calf and dragging it to the branding fire. Their screams and rolling eyes disturbed him.

He was happiest on those afternoons when, if the sun wasn't too hot, Lady Odalie would walk down to the corral from the big house and stand in the shade of her parasol watching Billy finish a green four-year-old. She didn't say much, but she didn't have to. Odalie admired Billy's skill, and he saw that in her eyes. Sometimes Billy thought she was like a wild horse herself, not fully tamed but stuck in a cage.

Nate Coday had moved to a larger ranch, the EK, where he was promptly appointed wagon boss. He and Billy saw little of each other that summer until the fall roundup when the cowboys came together in the evenings for eating, singing, and card playing. The EK's cook, Marcus Maupin, a barrel-chested Texan with a headful of wiry red hair and hands the size of hams, was generally regarded as the best cook in the Big Horn basin. His pies, cobblers, and doughnuts were the stuff of legend. On the last night of the roundup, Coday invited Billy to join the EK's grubline and Billy happily accepted. On that special night, Maupin served up his famous apple pie with walnuts and raisins, which he baked in tins carefully stacked in a Dutch oven strategically placed just off the fire. The scent of apples and cinnamon filled the crisp night air as Billy joined the line of men, waiting with bowls in hand for their hot pie served with a dipper of cream. The cowboy behind Billy bumped him hard in the back with his bowl.

“What you think you're doing, chief?”

Billy turned to see a man of about his height but heavier, with sloped, powerful-looking shoulders and a bald, bullet-shaped head. “You don't ride with us, you don't get none of coosie's pie. The EK don't serve Injuns.” He glared at Billy with bloodshot, protruding eyes and yanked on Billy's grizzly claw necklace, but the leather cord held fast.

“Shut up, Ringo.” This came from Nate, eating his pie on an oilcloth beside the fire. “Billy's here because I asked him.” Nate called to the cook in a loud voice. “Marcus, serve my friend, Billy Sun, a piece of pie and make sure it's bigger than Ringo's.”

Billy stepped forward and held out his bowl, conscious of Ringo's heavy breathing behind him. The cook gave him a thick slab and poured a dipper of thick, yellow cream over it. Billy took his bowl to sit cross-legged on the ground beside Nate, who handed him an opened can of condensed milk to lighten his coffee. Billy forgot about Ringo until his bowl was empty. When he looked up, he saw the cowboy glaring at him from across the fire. Ringo's greasy head shone in the firelight like a polished knob.

“Some people around here have forgot what you red niggers did to our people when we first come out here,” he said. “Nate, I guess you're one of them, but me, I ain't. You Injuns killed my kin, and it weren't that long ago.” The men sitting around the fire fell quiet, so the only sounds were the pop of the fire and the bawling of cattle.

“Ringo, I am your wagon boss and I am telling you to shut your gob hole,” Nate said. “Anyhow, Billy's people were Crow. They never did harm to you or your kin.”

Ringo kept his eyes on Billy. “Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, it don't matter.” His top lip curled back in a smile that showed yellow teeth and blood-red gums. “Injuns are all the same. They all smell the same, too.” He threw back his head and made a show of sniffing the air. “You boys smell that? Phew, it's enough to make a man puke.”

“That's just your breath blowing back in your face, Ringo,” one of the cowboys said.

“I don't want to fight you,” Billy said, putting down his bowl, “but I will if I have to.”

“Haw haw!” Ringo laughed, looking around the campfire. “Did you all hear that? Chief, here, is ready to fight me.” He turned to Billy. “You're a tough one, aren't you, chief? A real hard case.”

“No. I said I would if I had to.”

“Leave him alone why don't you, Ringo?” one of the cowboys said. “He's not bothering anybody.” Others murmured their agreement.

“It's sad, that's what it is,” Ringo said, getting to his feet, “and a good thing the old-timers aren't here to see it. Hell, has everybody forgot what them stinking redskins did to Fetterman and his boys, not far from this very place?” He looked at the circle of faces in the firelight and, when no one responded, shook his head and stormed off, muttering to himself.

“I'm sorry for that ugly galoot,” Nate said. “I didn't know his feelings—it never came up before—but it doesn't matter. Nobody cares what Albertus Ringo thinks anyhow.”

Billy nodded. Albertus Ringo. It was a hard name to forget.

* * *

Four inches of snow fell on the first day of November, but the sun stayed warm and it melted fast as it fell. Usually there'd been a sticking snow by this time of year, and some of the townfolk started to hope the Territory might be spared the hard, punishing winter old-timers prophesied. But then the storms started coming, one after another, heavy snowfalls accompanied by a bone-breaking cold. Hurricane winds blew day after day, from sunup to sundown, for fifty-four days. Fences and outbuildings were leveled; haystacks disappeared. Stages were unable to pass through snowdrifts six feet high and had to turn back. Trains were blown from the tracks or frozen in place.

The rivers and streams froze solid and cattle were driven mad by thirst. The cattle herds drifted toward the larger rivers, where they would always find air holes no matter how thick the ice, but while the leaders drank the followers closed in from behind, pushing the animals into the rapidly flowing water where they were swept away to drown under the ice. In a desperate attempt to escape the snow and wind, cattle by the thousands wandered onto the railroad tracks where snowplows had cleared a pathway, delaying trains for hours and sometimes driving passengers from their cars to drive the animals from the tracks. Starving cattle invaded towns, eating garbage when they could find it, tarpaper from the sides of buildings, straw and grain from the manure of horses. People complained of being unable to sleep at night because of the moans of the invading herds. Many animals died in the streets or in yards.

Cowboys tried to save their employers' suffering cattle, but it was futile as trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. They worked to keep the animals out of the valleys and draws, where the snow was deepest and they would die. Instead they drove them up into the hills, where occasionally the wind would expose a green patch of grass, or around to the south side of a mountain where they might find shelter from the scouring wind.

Billy left Faucett's employ to pass the winter with Nate Coday and Jack Reshaw on Reshaw's Red Fork ranch. Their job was less difficult than the cowboys working for larger outfits, but it was a struggle nonetheless, and Reshaw worried that even with his friends' help—Billy and Nate worked for no pay but a roof over their heads and food in their bellies—he would lose most of his herd. In the evenings, they retreated to the house, a three-room cabin made of logs of hewn pine. It had an earthen floor and, in the main room, a round-bodied, cast iron stove that had a surface to cook on and threw good heat, more than a fireplace. Billy worried that the stove would get too hot and start a fire, roasting them in their sleep. He solved this by hammering flat a bunch of food cans and covering the walls nearest the stove in tin.

All in all, Jack Reshaw's cabin was a good place to be that winter, sparsely furnished but comfortable, with a table and three chairs, a washstand, mirror, and a rough plank counter along the back wall. A bucket served as a sink. Above were rows of shelves lined with bags of flour, sugar, coffee, and tins of canned milk, vegetables, and fruits. The two back rooms had bed frames built into the walls at the corners, each tautly laced with ropes and covered with tick mattresses. Billy stuffed his with blue-green needles of Douglas fir that filled the room with a sweet, fresh fragrance. The scent reminded Billy of his childhood in the Crow mountain village when his mother would make him a tea of crushed fir needles whenever his stomach hurt.

In late January, they were blessed with a two-day thaw. The warm sun melted the top layer of snow, forming pools of water that the grateful cows drank greedily. The three men celebrated the thaw with a bottle of whiskey, hoping the worst of winter had broken but knowing in their hearts it had not. Indeed, they were punished for their short respite, for it was followed by a brutal freeze with temperatures plunging to forty below zero. The wind was constant and merciless. Billy, warm in his bed, heard the storm bearing down during the night, howling, screaming, and bringing death. He pitied the living things caught in its teeth, and knew that soon he and Sugarfoot would be out among them, trying to save Jack's brainless beeves. The animals turned their tails to the wind and let it push them wherever it wanted. Too often it drove them into a fence where they piled up, one on top of the other, and died; sometimes it forced them down into the gullies or railroad cuts where the snow was deepest and they froze to death. Horses were smarter; they understood it might be necessary to head into the wind to reach a better place. They could break through ice with their hooves to get water. Billy didn't know whether cows were stupid or just lazy, but, whatever the reason, they needed a man's help to survive.

“You awake?” Nate spoke from his bed across the room. Billy, who was entertaining impure thoughts of Odalie Faucett, and not for the first time, feigned sleep, so he could finish the sweet show playing out in his head. But Nate felt like talking.

“You ever think about giving this up?” he said. “You ever think about finding some other way to make a dollar?”

In fact, Billy had already decided this would be his last year of working cattle. “I'm done with this,” he said. “Horses, that's what I'm good at. No more cowpunching for me. What about you? You thinking about ditching Jack and going to work in town for Tom Raylan, like he asked you? That don't sound like much.”

“Hell, no! That Raylan's a scoundrel, a unhung thief. No, I like cowboying but I want a place of my own. Jack wants me to go shares in the Lazy L and B, and I thought about it, but no, I've got to have my own brand, my own herd, my own place. That's what I want, and I will have it.”

“The WSGA won't let you, Nate,” Billy said. “Not you, or Jack, neither. Faucett and Dudley and them, they let him get this far, but they'll put the kibosh on it soon enough. Jack's twisting their tail, and they won't have it. When I was in town last week, I heard Frank Canton's been saying Jack stole the steers we're running, says he's been slapping the Lazy L and B mark on mavericks, blotching other brands, you name it. Canton's getting folks stirred up. It's dangerous for Jack—me and you, too. But I'm not telling you what you don't know.”

A blast of icy pellets struck the window, rattling the glass in its wooden frame. “Canton,” Nate said with contempt, “Faucett's favorite ass-kisser. He's made a full-time job outta that.” There was a moment of quiet, then Nate said, “I don't know why you stick around, Billy. Me and Jack, we go back a long way. We're like kin. But you don't need this. You could go. I'd get out if I was you.”

Billy had not told Nate about a letter he'd had from Nelson Story in the fall.
“I can't find a man with half your skill for busting ponies,”
Story wrote
. “I'll give fifty a month if you will come back.”
But even if he hadn't promised Jack his help through the winter, Billy would not have taken Story up on his offer. He was in Powder River country to stay, he would never give up on his dream to make his way in Absaroka, the land of his forefathers.

“I'll stick it out,” Billy said, “through the winter leastways. I told Jack he'll have to find someone else in the spring, when the new horses come in.”

The banshee scream of the wind rose an octave. Soon it would be light enough to ride. Jack was already up. They heard him get out of bed with a groan, then shuffle from his room to throw wood on the coals still glowing in the stove's firebox.