Wyoming Wildfire (39 page)

“Folks out here think barns are a waste of good wood,” said Ned. “Especially when they don’t keep stock up over the winter.”

The biggest thing we got is the chicken coop,” Balaam said, adding his voice to the knell of doom.

“No, it’s not,” Sibyl announced suddenly. “We’ve got this bunkhouse, and it’s big enough for all the livestock.”

“You can’t put cows in here!” exclaimed Balaam, scandalized. “The boys will never stand for it.”

“We won’t tell them” said Sibyl, thinking rapidly.

“You won’t have to. They’ll know it the minute they put a foot through the doorway.”

“That doesn’t matter. I can build another bunkhouse, but there’s not another herd like this in the world. I want every last animal in here as soon as you can get them on their feet. I’ll see to the fire. Now get started.” Sibyl knew she need to raise the temperature at least to freezing, but the bunkhouse was huge and just as cold inside as it was outside. She threw more coals into the stove.

If finding a place to house the herd was difficult, getting them moved into it proved to be nearly impossible. Six animals were down and only the most vigorous punishment forced them to their feet. Ned put a rope around each and dragged and pushed the near-dead beasts out into the cutting wind. The cows fought to return to the shelter of the shed, and it took all the men’s strength to get them to the bunkhouse.

“They seem determined to stay out there and die,” Ned said, panting for breath. “Let’s hope they don’t lie down and die in here.” Sibyl wondered how she was going keep them moving while Ned and Balaam went back for the others, but the new surroundings, protection from the wind, and the heat beginning to come from the stove were enough stimulus to keep the cows from lying down again.

During the next hour, the men worked themselves to near exhaustion, dragging the unwilling heifers into the teeth of the storm and across the short distance to the safety of the bunkhouse. “Don’t stop” Sibyl encouraged them. “Remember they’re all expecting calves. You’re really saving two.”

“I can’t move,” Balaam said, sinking to his knees before the stove after bringing the last heifer. “Not even if the devil was after me.”

“Once you get the bull, you can sleep as long as you want.”

“No, he can’t,” Ned corrected her. “There’s still the calves to be brought back and food and water hauled in here. No point in saving them from freezing just to let them starve to death.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Sibyl said as Balaam groaned loudly. “Can’t we leave the calves in the house?”

“We can’t feed them as well as their mothers can, and with the heat from their bodies, this bunkhouse will soon be hot enough to make you sweat. Well probably have to open one of the windows.” It seem an incredible idea at first, but the temperature in the bunkhouse was rising quickly, and already Sibyl had discarded some the scarves that had been wrapped tightly about her head.

Balaam went back with Ned to get the bull, complaining all the way that they were driving him to his grave. But when fifteen minutes had passed and there was no sign of them, Sibyl wrapped up again and went to see what was wrong.

For a moment she thought she would have to turn back or lose her way in the swirling, blinding snow. But she caught sight of the shed before panic could overcome her common sense and found Ned and Balaam struggling to make the bull rise. He had lain down to die and had no intention of getting to his feet again.

“We’ve got to get him up,” she said imperatively. “Get a pole and put it under him. We’ll lift him to his feet.”

“We tried that,” Ned said, nearing exhaustion.

“Then try it again. Balaam and I will pull.” Ned inserted the pole under the bull, but every time he tried to raise him, the animal simply rolled the other way.

“Balaam, get on the other side.” But even though they were able to raise one end of the bull off the ground, Sibyl was too weak to pull the enormous beast to his feet.

“Use a pitchfork,” she ordered, just as Rachel, worried by the long absence with no word, rounded the corner of the shed. Rachel took in the situation quickly, pulled a pitchfork out of a hay bale, and jabbed carefully at the bull’s tough hide. He didn’t move.

“Show him you mean business,” shouted Sibyl. Rachel looked uncertain, but she took aim, closed her eyes, and stabbed the tines deep into the still-sensitive flesh of the lethargic bull. With a bellow of pain, the enraged animal lurched to his feet. The men dropped their poles and, taking hold of the rope, pulled him relentlessly out into the snow. Sibyl followed with the pitchfork, giving him a sharp reminder every time he tried to lie down or turn back to the shed.

“At last,” Sibyl said with a smile of satisfaction when the bunkhouse door had been closed behind him.

“Now we have to feed them.”

“Let them get warm first,” Sibyl suggested, thinking that Balaam was not looking very well at all. They won’t starve in the next few hours, and if you drop dead, there won’t be anybody to take care of them.” Ned started to raise an objection, but the blue color around Balaam’s mouth changed his mind.

“Rachel will fix some lunch. It’ll be time enough to worry about the calves after you’ve eaten.”

“Where have you been?” demanded a thoroughly frightened Emma. “I was sure you were all dead, and that old woman just staring at me like she couldn’t talk.”

“We’ve been moving the herd to the bunkhouse.”

“The bunkhouse! Lord, the men will kill you, if Burch doesn’t murder you first for filling his house with those dratted calves.”

“I don’t have anywhere else to put them,” Sibyl said, hoping Emma would go away. But Emma had been left with her own company all day and was not about to give up even such an unsatisfactory companion as Sibyl.

“You might have thought of my feelings.”

“If it comes to that, they’re much more important to me than you are.”

“I never expected anybody, especially a fancy lady from Virginia, to put up with crude animals inside the house.”

“I think those calves are darling,” said Sibyl with a wicked glint in her eyes. “It’s you I find crude.”

Emma looked as if she were about to attack Sibyl, but Rachel’s cold gray eyes changed her mind, and she took refuge in wounded vanity.

“I’m not surprised you’re always fighting with Burch” she said spitefully. “No man could get along with you for very long.”

“Did he tell you that?” Sibyl asked, suddenly shaking with rage.

“Well, not in so many words,” temporized Emma. “But you can tell when a man isn’t comfortable around a woman, and poor Burch was positively frantic every time he was around you.”

“The day has yet to dawn that’ll find Mr. Randall frantic,” commented Rachel with a dour expression. “From what I hear tell, the closest he ever came to being excited was when he came upon two elk with sixteen-point racks, and they ran off in opposite directions. He was so bothered over which to shoot first, he nearly missed ’em both.”

Emma’s rage at being ranked below a pair of elk was so comical Sibyl felt her anger ebb quickly.

“We’ll soon have the house back in order, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to take care of yourself.”

Ned and Balaam came up to the house, but Sibyl didn’t call them to the table until she was satisfied that Balaam was looking better. His unusual silence and meekness before Ned’s jibes worried her, but before the meal was over he began to rally, and Sibyl saw the old devilish light come back into his eyes.

The calves, reunited with their mothers, soon made themselves at home. The older stock, recovered quickly with the heat, became restless for food and water. It was not a problem to haul the hay from the shed, but the water was frozen solid and snow had to be melted in buckets on the stove. Sibyl tried to push the bull away when he decided he was too thirsty to wait, but he was much too powerful and thrust her aside. When he shoved his nose into the bucket, the folds of loose skin on his neck came into contact with the hot metal of the stove. The smell of burning hair and scorched flesh filled Sibyl’s nostrils. With a resentful bellow, the bull backed away and stood shaking his head, trying to rid himself of the pain.

“You’re the dumbest, laziest, most stubborn beast I’ve ever known,” Sibyl told him angrily. “You stood in snow up to your belly and you didn’t have sense enough to eat some of it. Now you can’t wait to stick your nose in a pot of boiling water.” She dumped more snow into the bucket. “I’ve got to melt enough for everybody, so you’re going to have to wait your turn.”

“You’d better be careful talking to the cows, miss,” Balaam warned. “It’ll make you crazy as Ned.”

Over the next five days, the four of them spent most of their waking hours with the herd. It seemed that it took all of one person’s time just to keep enough snow melted for drinking water.

“Now I understand why they’re so fat,” said Sibyl one afternoon, sinking down in exhaustion. “Even when faced with extinction, all they can think about is eating. I doubt there’s enough grass in Wyoming to feed them.” The pile of hay was falling rapidly, but Ned assured her that they had enough to last through this storm and several more.

“Buying that hay was the smartest thing anybody around here’s done since old Mr. Cameron grabbed this land right out from under the Sioux,” Balaam informed her gruffly. Sibyl was too tired to show her pleasure, but she wondered if Burch would feel the same way.

A break in the storm came at the end of the seventh day, but it was only temporary, and in the early evening, the storm blew up with continued violence, routing any hope Sibyl had of being able to return to a normal existence.

There was one advantage: She was rarely forced to endure Emma’s company. Not even boredom could cause Emma to hazard going out into the storm, and whenever Sibyl was in the house, Emma was so thankful to have someone to talk to that she managed to put aside her feelings of dislike.

“I don’t understand why you have to spend all your time outside when you’ve got hired hands to tend those cows for you,” Emma said fretfully. “Anybody would think you
liked
living among cows.”

“There are a lot of things I don’t like having to do, but they have to be done nevertheless,” Sibyl said, glaring at Emma with clear meaning.

“You don’t have to include me in that,” Emma said resentfully. “You’re not here often enough to know whether I’m alive or dead. Some way to treat a guest. I thought you Virginians were supposed to be so proud of your hospitality.”

“We don’t like being imposed upon any more than anybody else” Sibyl answered sharply. Emma flounced out of the room at that but returned in less than half an hour.

“Do those men of yours know when this snow is going to stop. It seems like Tve been imprisoned here for weeks.”

“You ought to know as much as they do. You grew up out here.”

“Storms don’t matter in Cheyenne.”

“I imagine your brother won’t be able to come for you right away, even after it clears up, so you might as well make yourself comfortable.”

“Oh, my God,” she moaned, I think I shall go mad,” and she staggered off to the parlor to attack the piano.

“Sounds like she intends to break it up for kindling,” Rachel said after several minutes of fitful banging that bore no relation to any tune Sibyl could remember. “Maybe you should tell her we already have a supply laid in.”

“I doubt she’d hear me,” replied Sibyl with a grin.

At last, on the twelfth day, the fury of the storm broke; the wind died down to a mere breeze, and the temperatures rose abruptly to only ten degrees below freezing.

They’re getting restless,” Ned said of the herd. “It’s time to let them out.”

“Shouldn’t we keep them up one more day?”

“We can take them back if we have to. They know the bunkhouse now and it wouldn’t be so hard to drive them in again, but they need to get out. The bull is liable to trample one of the calves before long.”

So a little after noon, Sibyl watched as Ned and Balaam freed the herd from its confinement for the first time in ten days. The calves seemed to have forgotten that any world existed outside the bunkhouse, but the older animals remembered their freedom and Sibyl thought they were going to take the door frame off in their haste to get out into the cold, crisp air.

“Just look at that arrogant, sassy brute. He’s not the least bit grateful for what we did,” Sibyl said as the bull rolled in the snow and cavorted about like a yearling. “He’s just like Burch.”

The thought of Burch brought back her pain, and she felt all the pleasure in her triumph slip away. Now that the storm was over and the dark sky clearing, there was no reason to put off her departure any longer. Sibyl’s spirits plummeted, and it was almost impossible not to cry. She had come to Wyoming seeking something she really didn’t expect to find. Had she not found it, she could have convinced herself it didn’t exist.

But she
had
found it, and it was an agony to be forced to give him up altogether. “But not to Emma!” The unintentional words sounded like the last request of a condemned soul.

“What did you say, miss?” Ned asked, preoccupied with the herd.

“Nothing. I was just thinking out loud. How soon do you think we can get through to Laramie?”

“So you still hold to that plan, do you?” he asked, but he had not really expected her to change her mind.