The City of Lovely Brothers (5 page)

Julia had had trouble sleeping since Calhoun had starting spending the night with the herd. When he came into their room with his shirt soaked in blood, she screamed.

"Cut your caterwauling and get some hot water and bandages," Calhoun said. "Can't you see I'm walking? Must mean I'm alive. Damn thing mauled me. Better wake up Darcie, too."

Darcie said he would need stitches. Two of the cuts were very deep, maybe even close to the bone.

"Then get your needle and thread and sew me up after Julia's done washing it and poured on the iodine.

'Course it hit the shoulder bone, but it ain't that deep on my arm."

Caliban had heard Julia's scream and all the running around that followed, and had come out to watch. "Bear maul you, Calhoun?"

"What's it look like?"

"You hurt bad?"

"Yeah, I'm hurt bad, but it ain't fatal."

Two days later he was out with the herd, his right arm in a sling.

As titular head of the family, Calvin looked on the ranch as his personal kingdom. The ranch was five thousand acres bigger than when his father owned it, five thousand acres he considered his property, since he had paid for it himself with Darcie's money. Now he was negotiating to buy up the Johnson ranch, a small twenty-thousand acre spread whose borders ran about half a dozen miles along the north and northeast sides of the brothers'

property line. It would increase their holdings by almost a sixth. It was unusual for one ranch to border another. Most ranches lay a dozen miles or more apart from each other.

The Johnsons were not cut out for ranch work and had pretty much made a mess of it. They were up to their ears in debt. Calvin might have been able to get it dirt cheap if any of what they owed had been owed to him, but they had never borrowed from either him or his father, and they were holding out for more than he was willing to pay.

He needed those acres. The Caldwell herd had

nearly tripled in size, and in addition to the grazing land, he could have used their winter barns to shelter the cattle they did not drive to market at the end of summer. He had pigs, too, and four chicken coops instead of his father's one. Even with the additional five thousand acres, the ranch felt smaller than it had when Caliban was born. Thirty people lived there, and more people living there meant more buildings for them to live in. Instead of a half-dozen seasonal workers, they now employed fifteen year-round ranch hands, four of them with wives, and Calvin had built two bungalows to house them and added another storey onto the bunkhouse. He didn't mind his workers getting married so long as their wives were willing to pitch in.

Somebody had to cook and clean and wash dishes and do laundry for those fifteen ranch hands, and he was not about to pay a man to do those chores. It wasn't fit work for Darcie and Julia, either, since their husbands owned what was becoming the most prosperous ranch in the territory.

With all those people living on the ranch, the homestead looked almost like a small village.

Men thought themselves lucky to work for Calvin.

He fancied himself a God-fearing man and gave them Sundays off, except for two men who stayed in the pasture land to watch over the cattle on a rotating basis, which meant three times all spring and summer, and it hardly involved any work since all the animals did was graze. At most, they would have to remind the stupid animals where the water hole was, or herd them to a sheltered spot if there was a storm, or drive off an occasional wolf or the coyotes 5that came by more frequently. Except during the trail drive they mostly worked only twelve-or fourteen-hour days.

Calvin had even given them a cat named Mustard to keep down the mice in the bunkhouse. It liked to sleep on Sal's bed. The ranch hands used to say Calvin treated them like family.

He may have treated his workers better than other ranch owners, but he certainly did not consider them family. If one of them did something that displeased him, he fired him on the spot. He never socialized with them.

Also, as the years passed and he had to spend more of his time managing the ranch, Calvin did less and less of the kind of work they did, so he saw less of them and even had trouble remembering their names. With Calhoun it was different. Calhoun continued to work side by side with his cowhands well into his sixties, and he enjoyed spending a couple of hours at the bunkhouse in the evening to chew the fat with them and play cards and listen to their stories.

* * * *

Out of nowhere, Calvin got the idea into his head that thirty people ought to have their own church, and he started making plans to build one. Calhoun was against the idea. "This ain't no city," he said. "It's a ranch, and it oughtta stay a ranch. Next thing you know, you're gonna wanna put up a saloon and an op'ry house and a post office and I don't know what else. Wouldn't surprise me if you started playing sheriff, neither!"

"People oughtta have a place to pray," Calvin argued. "The men who work for us need to be reminded we're God-fearing folks."

"What's wrong with the church in town?"

"Too far away. Takes us almost three hours to get there in the wagon."

"So what if it does? You won't let us do no work on Sunday anyways. And what're we gonna use it for the rest o' the week? Bring in women and hold dances? The hands would like that."

"I've had enough of your blasphemy, Calhoun."

"Calhoun's right," Darcie said. "It'd cost less to build more wagons so everybody could go to church. Do you mean to pay for a full-time preacher, too?"

"If it comes to that, that money'd be better spent bringing in a schoolteacher for my boys," Calhoun said.

"This family's gonna be plenty rich from the look o' things, and we oughtta give 'em a proper education."

"At least you ain't denying I'm getting this place to prosper." "I agree with Calhoun," Darcie said, "and I think Caliban should sit in on the lessons."

"Caliban? What's he need lessons for? He can read, and he knows his sums. He's old enough to work the ranch.

If Calhoun wants his kids educated, why don't
he
pay for it?"

"And Betsy and Tilda? Or don't you think girls need an education too?" Darcie sounded offended.

"I'll give it some thought," Calvin said. "If we're gonna do it, winter's plenty soon enough to start."

"We can advertise in Miles City for one," Julia said.

"There's plenty o' women there who'd be happy to find work. Ain't I right, Darcie?"

"Where's she gonna sleep? In the bunkhouse?"

Calhoun joked.

"If Darcie has another girl, she can have that room you been saving for if it's a boy," Caleb pointed out.

Calvin snorted. As far as he was concerned, it had just better be a boy. "If we get one, we can put up a little one-room house for 'er somewhere," he said. "It wouldn't take us that long."

"Then you better get started building it now,"

Darcie said, "since I got this feeling it's gonna be a boy this time."

"It can wait till the end o' summer," Calvin said. "The baby'll sleep in our room for a couple o' months anyways."

They all knew they would have a schoolteacher,

because Darcie wanted it.

* * * *

Caleb was happy enough just doing his work and

having a good time, and Caliban was too young to think about such things, but the way Calvin acted sometimes, making decisions for the rest of them, hiring and firing, saying how many head they were going to buy this year and how many acres they would plant and who was responsible for what, as if he owned the ranch when it belonged to all of them, had begun to eat at Calhoun. And he loved the ranch, loved it more than Calvin, who saw it as a source of wealth. Only Calhoun was a true rancher at heart. Calvin was more of a businessman. Caleb was a pair of arms, and Caliban was just a kid, so for the time being Calhoun was pretty much alone in standing up to his oldest brother.

He was sure that one day he would have an ally in Caliban. He had taken the boy under his wing and set out to teach him what it meant to work a ranch. He had taught him to ride and to rope and how to care for a horse, to 6check its hooves for stones and its back for saddle sores.

The kid loved the open spaces and endless sky as much as he did, and he loved the smell of the grass and the feel of the wind in his hair when they galloped across the prairie together. Caliban would make a good rancher. Fortunately for Calhoun, until then, at least some of the time, he had Darcie on his side. She did not interfere often when it came to running the ranch, but when she did, she almost always had her way.

The summer started off well. They had just the right amount of rain and sunshine, and the grazing was good.

The Johnsons agreed to sell for the price Calvin had offered if he would also buy their herd at market value and let them live in the house until September.

"But the land and the cattle're mine soon's you get your money, right?" He would have to borrow to pay for the herd, but he would recoup the loss when he sold it in fall. The family would be strapped for cash for a couple of months, but at least he had enough to pay his workers. "I won't be able to take on your ranch hands," he added.

"Your horses neither."

Although he had as good as closed the deal, for a change he asked for Calhoun's advice, knowing that he would approve. He would have approved if the Johnsons had asked for twice as much.

Calhoun, however, was not content merely to

second his brother's wishes. "I wanna go and inspect that herd before we commit ourselves to anything," he said.

"Yeah," Calvin said, "I was gonna tell you to do that."

"And I ain't gonna have it mixing with ours. The 6boundary fences stay just where they are till next year. D'ya think we oughtta double brand 'em?"

"Branding a calf's one thing; roping and branding I don't know how many head o' full-grown steer's another.

We got the papers to prove we bought 'em."

"So you done it already. I kinda thought so."

"I ain't done nothing final. I meant we're gonna have

'em. Now you tell me, who's gonna graze 'em for us if you want 'em kept separate?"

"Why, the Johnsons' hands, o' course."

"Can't afford 'em, not after we buy the herd. How many of our men will it take?"

"Depends on how many head there are, but two oughtta do it, with Caleb in charge o' them."

"Well, two plus Caleb we can spare. You go see, and tell me if it'll be enough."

When the papers had been signed and the sale

finalized, Calvin sent Caleb to comb every square foot of the property to find the best grazing and a couple of good spots for the animals to shelter in case of a storm.

"And you," he said, turning to Caliban, "I want you to ride the perimeter and make sure the fencing's in good repair. They got rail fences, which ain't much good, but it'll hafta do for now. Pace it off so we can figure out how much barbed wire we're gonna need later." Thanks to Calhoun, Caliban was well on his way to becoming a cowboy —Calvin acknowledged that his

brother had made a good job of that— but the kid wasn't one yet. Sure, he could to rope and bring down a calf, and he had branded a few while someone held them down for him, and he had been saddling horses or hitching them to a wagon since he was eight. He could drive the wagon and ride a horse like an expert, too, but he had yet to break in a horse. Most important, the spring roundup had been his first, so Calvin was hesitant to trust the boy's judgment when it came to scoping out their new property. The boy knew how to mend a fence, though, and he was good with figures, although his formal education had stopped at age five. He could probably calculate the materials they would need better than Caleb.

* * * *

Caliban brought a notebook with him to write down where the bad breaks were and how much lumber they would need to fix them, and to make sketches of the damage. On the whole, the fences were in fair shape, though not up to Caldwell Ranch standards. While he was sitting loose in the saddle, bent over to one side to work on a sketch of a top rail that had broken off at one end and got 6wedged between the lower rail and the post, his horse moved a few paces forward, and he slipped a bit more to the side. "Whoa, girl!" he said absently, without changing position.

But the horse had startled a rattlesnake, and it lunged at her. She reared up, and Caliban fell off onto the broken fence. His leg caught between the two rails and twisted awkwardly, so when he hit the ground he fractured his right hip. He landed less than two yards from the snake.

It would have bitten him if his horse hadn't trampled it with her hooves.

Caliban was moaning and only half conscious. The horse sniffed at him and nudged his leg with her muzzle.

He screamed and passed out. The mare walked off a few paces to get him to follow her; then she came back and stayed with him.

* * * *

Caleb got back to the house at suppertime. "Land looks good," he said.

"Where's Caliban?" Darcie asked.

"Ain't he here yet? I thought he'd 'a finished hours ago. Well, maybe he's waiting for me by the property line.

He'll figure it out and come home by himself. Getting dark 6already. Better be soon, though, or he'll get a cold supper."

Darcie put some stew aside for him. Two hours later Caliban still had not returned. "I think you better go looking for him," Darcie said. "I'll ring for the hands so's you can form a search party."

"We won't need that many," Calvin said. "Shouldn't be hard to find him if he done like he was s'posed to and stayed close them fences. Me, Calhoun and Caleb'll be more'n enough."

"You might not see 'im in the dark."

"Our horses'll spot 'im. Besides, his ain't come back.

She's prob'ly with 'im."

Caleb found him. Caliban was still unconscious.

Caleb yelled, but the others were too far off to hear him. He could have galloped around the perimeter, but he did not want to leave his brother. Caliban had been his roommate for almost eight years, and despite the difference in their ages, they shared secrets and he turned to Caliban when he wanted to confide in someone. Caliban was the person in the family he loved most.