Hard Winter Part 12

Suddenly Tommy shot me a hard look.

The crooked smile vanished from the major's face. "But you come here fancying my wife!"

Groaning, Mrs. MacDunn took a step toward the major, but Lainie saw that look in her father's eyes, a look that scared her, and she grabbed her mother's arm, pulled her back.

"William," Mr. Gow pleaded.

"Don't call me William. I should kill you right now."

He sounded sadder, older, worn out, Mr. Gow did, when he spoke again. "I am sorry if I have led you to believe . . . I . . . it is not fair to Blaire to . . ."

"Missus MacDunn, Gow. She's Missus MacDunn to you!"

Another eternity pa.s.sed.

"Mister Gow?" the black rider asked. He was ready and willing to pull his rifle, and draw blood.

Mr. Gow's head shook tiredly. "I have never desired anything from your wife except her friendship," he said, and this time he turned to look at Mrs. MacDunn. "I am sorry if I led you to believe otherwise. She is a friend. A dear friend. As you once were, William." He looked back at the major. "But I love my wife. I love my family. And I love what I have tried to carve in this wilderness for them."

He looked down at his son. "Catch up your horse, Camdan. It is time we go home. Quickly, Son."

"I have seen enough bloodshed on this frontier," Mr. Gow said when Camdan had disappeared inside the barn. "I had prayed you would have, too, after those lynchings a few years back. I detest violence. You know that. There will be no war on the Sun and Teton Rivers, Major MacDunn. At least, I shall not start it. I will find winter gra.s.s elsewhere. In Canada. If it's not too late."

He shot his arm out toward Tommy and John Henry.

"These men admitted to me their handiwork in the ruination of your fence. I have fired Kenton, have banished them from my range. Yet I trust you will show mercy, will not press charges. There is enough money in that pouch to replace your precious wire. The boy, I believe, has been hurt enough."

Camdan rode out of the barn, and Mr. Gow tipped his hat at Mrs. MacDunn. Her lips mouthed the words-"I am sorry."-and the 7-3 Connected riders loped away, disappearing over the hills, leaving behind John Henry and Tommy, whose horses took a few nervous steps, wanting to run after the other riders, wanting to get away from the Bar DD.

I felt the same way.

What happened? Nothing. Not really. Well, maybe everything.

My heart pounded against my ribs, but I could breathe again. We watched the dust fade, then John Henry, his hand still on the b.u.t.t of his revolver, turned toward Major MacDunn.

"Well?" His words were icy. "What's your play?"

The major stared at him, started to look at either his wife or daughter-I'm not sure which-but stopped.

"Get out of my sight," the major said. "If I ever find you on MacDunn range, I will hang you both. Jim Hawkins!"

I like to have toppled off the rail.

"Yes, sir?" Surprised I could even talk.

"If you want to ride off with your friends, get your war bag and saddle, and be gone."

Which was all I needed to hear. I jumped down, started for the bunkhouse to get my possibles, get out of Montana, make things right between John Henry and Tommy and me. Too stupid, too green to know any better.

"No!"

John Henry's voice stopped me. Turning around, I looked up at my two pards.

"You ain't fit to ride with John Henry Kenton," John Henry said, leaning forward in his saddle. "I ride with pards I can trust, not some back-stabbing son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h who'd steal my pard's girl."

"John Henry," I pleaded, and felt tears welling in my eyes. "Tommy, I ain't . . ."

"We left Texas, boy," John Henry said, "to get away from the wire. You forgot that. You put a pick in your hands like some miserable sodbuster, nailed the devil's rope to fence posts. And look what you did to Tommy. Your friend! I hold you responsible."

My head fell to my chest. The tears dried up, but I knew John Henry was right. Right about most things-about me forgetting, about me being responsible for Tommy's injuries. But he was dead wrong about me ever trying to steal Lainie from him. I liked her a lot, but I'd never do a pard like that. Never do anyone that way.

"Get off my land," Major MacDunn said with a quiet authority. "Both of you. And remember my warning."

I heard John Henry's words. "Oh, I'll remember them, MacDunn, but you remember this. You look long and hard at what you did to Tommy. You study his face. Because the ball has just started."

Hoofs sounded. Footsteps walked away. I stood there several minutes, not knowing what to do, felt a presence before me, and knew it was Lainie. I looked up into her tear-filled eyes.

"I'm sorry, Jim," she said.

"Ain't your fault," I told her.

Beyond her, I saw that elk-skin pouch, still in the dirt, where the major had left it.

Oh, I reckon the major later got that money. Don't think he left it for Busted-Tooth Melvin to steal. Don't know for sure, though, because snow covered the ground by evening.

Ain't what you figured, is it, boy? Certainly, it ain't the way they'd make it happen in one of those moving-picture deals they show down in Helena. No big shoot-out. Hardly a gun even c.o.c.ked. No cowboys lying dead in the dust.

No heroes, either.

There was no range war, not between the MacDunns and the Gows. We went back to cowboying, not preparing to kill people.

I think about that. Have thought about it often. How things changed. I think about how blind we were. All of us. We didn't notice, didn't pay attention to all the signs, didn't think about what was happening all around us. We was all too concerned about barbed wire, and a dead bull, and winter gra.s.s, and Mrs. MacDunn. And Lainie. We kept considering what we'd wind up doing, or how we'd act, who'd live and who'd die, when that first trigger got pulled.

n.o.body, not me, not John Henry, not Major MacDunn or Mr. Gow or Gene Hardee or Bitterroot Abbott saw what was happening. Not a one of us thought about why a grizzly would come out of its range hunting horses to eat, or why its coat growed so thick. Or why Angus bulls started sporting hair like you'd find on a buffalo. Or why those black bulls started acting so unpredictable, certainly not the calm beasts they was supposed to be. Or why geese flew south long before normal. Why the other birds vanished. Or why a cottonwood tree's bark got so thick. Why the wind blew so cold. Why our horses also grew winter coats so early.

Why beavers worked harder than even beavers was supposed to work. Or why muskrats took to making their homes on the creeks twice as big as they usually did.

Oh, there was a war coming, sure enough. Only it come from another direction. And it would have every last one of us, from the Bar DD to the 7-3 Connected, from the Judith Basin to Miles City, across all of Montana and the Dakotas and Wyoming and beyond. . . .

Have every one of us fighting to hold on.

Fighting to stay alive.

Chapter Twenty.

In the early dusk, they cross the shallow waters at a bend in the Sun River, letting their horses pick their paths over smooth, slippery stones, then push through the brush toward the caon's high wall. It's here that Jim Hawkins and his grandson make camp, using driftwood on the river's edge to build a fire, warming themselves against spring's chill.

"It's near abouts," Henry Lancaster hears his grandfather say. "It's got to be around here. If I can find the place. . . ."

Without another word, Jim Hawkins pulls a lengthy piece of twisted wood from the fire and, using it as a torch, makes his way through the brush, holding the blaze close to the caon's limestone walls. Quietly Henry follows.

His grandfather looks intently at the wall, bringing the torch closer, then moving along, finally reaching an overhang, and ducking inside the natural shelter. His boots brush back weeds and stones, revealing nothing, and, sighing, he lifts the torch toward the ceiling.

"See those?" Jim Hawkins asks Henry.

"Yes, sir."

Small hand prints dot the limestone wall, like wallpaper patterns, the color of dried blood. Some are smeared, others so clear, Henry can picture someone pressing his hand against the stone.

"Who made them?" the boy asks, then chances a guess. "You?"

"No," Jim Hawkins answers. "Some Indians. Don't know how long ago. Before I got to Montana. Before I was even born. Maybe even before my pa was born. Who knows?"

Henry thinks he sees other drawings on the wall, figures of some kind, perhaps drawings of Indians holding shields, maybe a spear. It's hard to tell in the fading light. He wonders what they mean.

For a few minutes, Jim Hawkins kicks around in the natural shelter, lowering the flame, searching the rubble, finding nothing.

"Ain't nothing here," he says. "h.e.l.l, there was nothing here then, neither." He looks back at the hand prints. "Except those."

"When?" the boy asks. "When?"

Jim Hawkins doesn't answer. He steps out, begins moving back to camp. The flame on the torch is dying.

Again his grandson follows.

When they reach camp, Hawkins tosses the stick in the center of the pit, squats by the fire, holds his gloved hands out to warm them. A coffee pot rests on a flat stone, the smell of the strong brew reminding Henry of how long it has been since he has eaten. The horses snort. The river ripples. An owl hoots. Henry Lancaster kneels beside his grandfather.

"I guess I owe you the rest of the story," Jim Hawkins says. "Ain't given you much lately, just some bits and pieces, way things I remember them. But you deserve an ending. And all of it. Lainie knows most of it, but not everything."

The flames illuminate Jim Hawkins's weathered face. His eyes don't seem to blink. He wets his lips, lowers his hands, finally sits back.

Henry watches, waiting, unsure.

"Kissin-ey-oo-way'-o," his grandfather begins in a whisper. "The wind blows cold."

Winter, 1886-87 Winter in Montana seldom begins before the First of January, and extreme cold scarcely ever lasts more than two or three days at a time. . . . Still, for Montana's flocks and herds, much depends on the coming winter.

-Great Falls Tribune, December 18, 1886

Chapter Twenty-One.

Iawoke in the bunkhouse, shivering underneath my blankets. Just the sound of the wind turned my blood cold. The bunkhouse seemed to be creaking, moaning. Felt like another gust would send the entire log building sailing all the way to eternity.

November 16, 1886.

First thing I saw was Old Man Woodruff x-ing off the date on the calendar tacked up next to a tintype of some girl-n.o.body remembered who she was or who stuck the picture on the wall-near the stove.

The door swung open, and the wind blasted us, as Old Man Woodruff directed some prime cuss words toward Ish Fishtorn. How hard was the wind whipping? Well, it took both Ish and Frank Raleigh to get that door shut.

"Is it snowing?" I asked sleepily.

"Too cold to snow," Ish answered.

That brutal wind would cut you deep, freeze the marrow in your bones. Felt that way, anyhow. The temperature dropped to two degrees below zero, and gray clouds blocked out the sun. Most times, it might get cold in Montana, but if the sky remains clear, the sun feels warm. Twenty degrees didn't always feel so miserable when the sun showed itself. But two below zero, with the wind tearing across the hills at better than fifty miles an hour, well, there was no sun, no heat, just relentless cold.

Too cold to snow?

Not hardly.

The blizzard struck the next morning. November 17. Made me almost forget about the killing storm that struck Texas some ten months earlier.

Reluctantly I dragged myself from beneath the covers again to the smell of coffee and bacon, and the roaring, unrelenting wind. Once I found my boots, I realized it had to be well past dawn. Wasn't n.o.body in the bunkhouse except Busted-Tooth Melvin, a still-snoring Walter Butler, me, and an ice-covered cowhand who stood by the stove stamping snow off his boots. They'd let me and Walter sleep in, seemed like, and that riled me. I expected to do a day's work for a day's pay, like everybody else, had been doing that since I came to this country, and I didn't like being treated like some green pea. Oh, them boys meant well, still thinking of me and Walter as kids, but I'd show them. So would Walter. I hollered at him to get up, that daylight was fading.

Fading? It felt like the sun kept moving farther and farther away. Looked like early dawn or dusk, even at high noon, the next two days.

As I went to pour my first cup of coffee, I eyed the man who'd just come in from the storm. Slowly he revealed himself to me as he unwrapped a long woolen scarf that he had looped over his hat, pulling the brim down over his ears. His beard was crusted white, his nose red. Gene Hardee swore again while shedding his coat.

"Hope you got a gallon of coffee, Woody," Hardee said. "'Cause I aim to drink it all. It ain't frozen, is it, Jim?"

I filled his cup.

"How long has it been snowing?" I asked.

"Since September, feels like. Ain't like those dustings we've had. Ain't like anything you've ever seen."