Shortgrass Song Page 18

  Caleb dropped the log he had lifted and stared at his brother in disbelief. He couldn’t imagine any proper girl wanting to marry the likes of Matthew. He had to admit his brother was a good-looking cuss, but he had the charm of a wounded bobcat. “Who would want to marry you?” he said.

  “Her name’s Amelia Dubois. Her father’s one of them that owns the Denver and Rio Grande. They just built them the biggest house in Colorado Springs, a mile from where the new depot’s gonna go.”

  Caleb continued to stare up at Matthew with his mouth open.

  “I’m bringing her out to meet the family next Saturday. I hope you’ll put some pants on. She doesn’t know I got a brother that wears overalls.”

  “You don’t think she’s really gonna marry you, do you?”

  Matthew took an old rope from a saddle string. “Soak this hemp in the creek for me. It’s gone limp.” He tossed the coil on Caleb. “A couple of hours in the water ought to stiffen it up. I have to find those yearlings up in the Pinery and herd ’em down to the pens. I’ll need that rope this evenin’ for brandin’, so bring it back to the house when you come in for supper.” His horse lurched forward between his spurs. “You better build that shack to last five years,” he shouted as he rode away. “I aim to prove up!”

  “Soak your own damn rope,” Caleb muttered, kicking the lariat aside.

  He envied Matthew so much that he almost hated him. His brother could saddle any horse on the place, anytime he chose, and ride wherever he wished. It rankled him almost to tears to see Matthew riding around shooting his pistol and whirling his loop. The only time Caleb got to ride was when Matthew and his father were away, and then he had barely the time to practice any roping. He was just as much of a Holcomb as Pete or Matthew. When would his father give him the same rights?

  Pete always told him to be patient, and someday he would drive the cattle to market with the cowboys. But now the railroad had laid tracks past Holcomb Ranch, and his father had him and Buster building a depot where he could load cattle and ship them to market. Pete was wrong. He wasn’t going to get to drive any cattle on the trail. It was already too late for that.

  “Wait till you’re twenty-one,” Pete would say. “Then you’ll be old enough to file on land, and Papa will have to let you do what you want with it. You’ll be part owner of this spread then.”

  But Caleb was almost out of patience. He knew boys younger than he who could rope and throw cattle better than he could on his best day, and it caused him no small amount of humiliation. He kicked the rotten log at his feet, found the only solid place on it, and stubbed his toe through the thin leather of his boot.

  He cussed and hobbled around for a while, then pulled a harmonica out of his pocket. He sat down on the rotten log and started to play. It was the only thing he could do that Matthew and Pete couldn’t, and it was all that kept him from going crazy sometimes. He never went anywhere without an instrument within his reach. He could play Javier’s Mexican songs on the guitar and even sang all the words, though he didn’t know the meaning of half of them. He could play banjo, mandolin, and fiddle almost as well as Buster. He favored the fiddle more than anything.

  “A man won’t never go hungry if he can play a fiddle,” Buster had told him.

  Caleb had even taken to making up words that rhymed, though he hadn’t mentioned it to anybody. As he sat on the log, he played the tune to “Sweet Betsy from Pike” on the harmonica, but he wasn’t thinking of the words that usually went along with the tune. He was thinking of the lines he had made up himself. He couldn’t say how or why the words had first come to him, but he knew that not even Buster could make up his own words to songs. The thought had occurred to him once or twice that the words may have come from God, or heaven, or maybe even his dead mother, but he wasn’t sure he believed in such things.

  The harmonica went back in his pocket and he hoisted another rotten log into place as he sang the two verses he had made up to the tune of “Sweet Betsy from Pike:”

  Raised within sight of the high mountaintops,

  He grew up ’round plow horses, cattle, and crops.

  With one older brother he carried his load.

  They tended the fields and the ranges they rode.

  Hardworkin’ farm boys and ranchers by trade,

  They lived with the fortune the family had made.

  But the farm boy forever looked over the hills

  And dreamed of the mountains’ adventures and thrills.

  The one older brother his song mentioned was Pete, of course. He knew it wasn’t right to have denied Matthew in the lyrics, but including him would have ruined the song. He sang it a dozen times as he continued to lay up the crumbling timbers. Sometimes he sang it silently to himself when other people were around. It gave him the truest sense of accomplishment he had ever felt. No one would ever be able to take those lines away from him. They could take his horses and pocketknives and musical instruments if they wanted to, but they could never take those verses.

  The only thing wrong with the song was that it didn’t have its own tune. He knew he would have to make one up someday, but he had decided to wait to see if the tune would come to him naturally, out of the clouds, or up from the earth, as the words had.

  He walked to the creek and threw Matthew’s rope in the water to stiffen it. When he got back to the fake cabin, he saw Pete riding out of the mountains and into Monument Park behind five head of steers.

  “Have you seen Buster today?” he asked, leaving the cattle to graze.

  “Not since this mornin’,” Caleb said. “Why?”

  “He told me he got you and him a dance to play at next Saturday. A big one.”

  “What kind of dance?”

  “They’re almost finished laying the tracks into Colorado Springs, and they’re going to throw a shindig for the workers. The railroad won’t allow any liquor, but they said a dance would be all right.”

  “They usually throw a little more in the hat when they have some whiskey,” Caleb lamented.

  “So what? You and Buster would do it for free if they asked you to.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  Pete hitched his knee over his saddle horn and pushed his hat back on his forehead. “I want to talk to you about something,” he said.

  Caleb lifted a log overhead and rolled it into position on top of the wall. “What?”

  “What would you say if I … Well, if I turned preacher?”

  “Preacher?” He spit a chunk of spongy black bark out of his mouth.

  Pete nodded.

  “Where do you have to go to turn preacher?”

  “You don’t have to go anywhere. I figured I could just get a Bible and have a Sunday school on the ranch.”

  Caleb shrugged. “Well, I’d say go ahead and turn preacher, then, if that’s all there is to it. What gave you the idea to do it in the first place?”

  “A kind of a voice told me to.”

  “A voice?” He squinted at his brother. “What did it say?”

  “It wasn’t the kind of voice that used words, exactly,” Pete said, glancing off toward the mountains, avoiding Caleb’s eyes.

  “Well, what did it sound like?”

  “It wasn’t the kind of voice you can hear, either. At least not with your ears. I was ridin’ up over the Arapaho Trail, on that bald hill across the creek from the cabin, when it came to me. This voice, well, just told me to turn preacher. That’s the only way I know to explain it.”

  Caleb scratched his head under the sweatband of his hat. “Maybe it was Mama’s voice,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Pete said. “Or one of those saints Javier’s always talkin’ about. Anyway, I was wonderin’ if you’d loan me the money to buy a Bible. I gave all my pay to Matthew.”

  Caleb grinned. “You gonna let me practice some ropin’ on Five Spot?”

  All the Holcombs rode Nez Perce horses. Javier had found a couple of spotted studs in Denver and bought them to breed with Crazy, the brood mare.
Five Spot was one of the best fillies Holcomb Ranch had turned out yet. She was becoming one of the finest cow horses in the territory.

  “Is anybody around?” Pete asked.

  “Matthew was here a while ago, but he went huntin’ yearlings in the Pinery. I’ll climb up on these logs and look around if you want me to.”

  “Don’t do that—they’re liable to fall in on you. Just get on.” He vacated the saddle for his brother.

  “You can take whatever money you need out of the hat next Saturday night at the dance,” Caleb said as he put his foot in the stirrup.

  “Thanks.”

  “You know what Matthew said? He said he was gonna get married.” He felt the power of the horse under him, like a great living engine.

  “I know. I gave him the money to buy the ring in Denver. That’s why I need to borrow from you for my Bible. She’s a rich gal down in Colorado Springs. He says her daddy is gonna get him a good-paying job at the Denver and Rio Grande depot so he can live in town.”

  Caleb coughed his indignation. He couldn’t imagine such a thing. It riled him more than ever to think Matthew would give up ranching when he wasn’t even allowed to get started in it.

  “You know what that means,” Pete said.

  “What?”

  “It means I can move up to take his place as foreman, and you can have my spot as straw boss.”

  “No, it means Papa will probably just hire some other fellow who’s old enough to file on some land for him.”

  “Not this time. I mean to stand up to him.” Pete had seen Caleb looking toward the mountains a lot lately and knew he was dreaming of leaving. But he liked having his brothers around—both of them, though they were very different souls—and he had made it his personal duty to make Caleb feel a part of the ranch. “It’s time you had your chance in the cow business, and I mean to see that you get it,” he promised.

  Caleb untied the coil of rope from Pete’s saddle and swung a loop into it. “You mean it?” he said.

  “They can hang me if I don’t. When Matthew gets married, you’re gonna sit a cow horse. You’ll make top hand on this outfit yet. Now, shake that loop a little wider and see if you can’t rope that bald-faced yearling out of that bunch.”

  Caleb kicked Five Spot’s ribs and started his loop whirling. He was hoping Matthew really would get married now. He saw his oldest brother wearing suits, getting paunchy, and going bald. He saw himself growing mustaches and roping wild steers. He didn’t understand this thing about turning preacher, but Pete had the dangdest way of restoring his hopes. If not for Pete, he probably would have left home a long time ago.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Sawing lumber didn’t compare to cutting cattle from a herd, but it beat building the homestead shacks, and Caleb enjoyed seeing the depot take shape by his own hand. Over the years, Buster had acquired two crosscut saws, two ripsaws, two claw hammers, two plumb bobs—two of almost every tool, so Caleb could work beside him with his own equipment. The boy was becoming a first-rate carpenter.

  Ab had ordered Buster to build a set of loading pens at the railroad. Buster had talked him into putting up a depot with a loading dock beside the pens so they could handle farm machinery, crops, and anything else that might come or go by rail. Ab had given his permission but had insisted on a simple, functional depot without any superfluous flourishes.

  Buster and Caleb, however, indulged in all the fancy mitering and finish work they thought they could get away with. They carved out letters to spell Holcomb and nailed them above the depot door. They even put a widow’s walk on top so they could watch for the smoke of the locomotives when the trains started running. The depot lacked only a few coats of paint and an inclined loading chute for the Texas longhorns Ab was running on his ranch.

  Ab had bought five hundred heifers and cows, some already bred, from Oliver Loving after the war. Loving and Charles Goodnight had herded the longhorns all the way from Texas. The Texas beeves thrived on the free grass in Monument Park. They also killed almost every one of the old oxen and shorthorns Ab had brought from Missouri, not to mention Buster’s milk cow. The Texas cattle carried a sickness known as Texas fever that would kill almost any bovine but a longhorn. It gave Ab yet another good reason to despise Texans.

  Trail herds occasionally came up the Monument, along what had become known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail. Ab hated to see their herds linger on the free grass, and he hurried them along in every way he could. The hated Texas drovers did keep Ab supplied with cowhands, however. He had little trouble hiring them away from the trail herds when he needed them. He didn’t like them because they were Texans, but he didn’t mind using them to homestead the creek for him, knowing he could buy them out and fire them as soon as they proved up.

  And actually he seldom had to buy any of the boys out. He had established a store on the ranch and given all the hands credit. The boys could buy grub, ropes, tack, and clothing through the ranch store. By the time each man proved up on his homestead after five years, he was usually so deep in debt to the store that he owed the land to his employer. Ab figured the Texans deserved what he dealt them for what they had done to his leg at Pigeon’s Ranch, even though none of his cowboys had taken part personally in the fighting there.

  Javier didn’t like the Texans much either. They were good cowboys, but they took all the beauty out of the work. They were “hard and fast” men who tied the ends of their short ropes to their saddle horns, instead of taking dallies the way Javier did. They threw a variety of loops, but few of them cared for the flourishes Javier made with his noose. To his great sorrow, even Matthew and Pete had gone over to the Texas style of roping.

  About noon, Ab rode old Pard to the depot to check on the carpenters’ progress. His wooden leg clacked around on the hardwood floors for a few minutes, then he shouted, “Buster, you and Caleb better go get cleaned up. Matthew’s bringing that little gal to supper this evening, and I guess we ought to try looking civilized.”

  He went up to the widow’s walk before leaving and looked back toward the ranch. He could see the ridge log of his cabin from there. The graded bed of the Denver and Rio Grande snaked across the free-grass country to the north, ribbed with crossties and double-spined with steel rails. Somewhere out of sight to the south, the crews were still laying tracks at the rate of a mile a day.

  Ab’s ranching and farming interests had enjoyed moderate growth since the end of the war, but he knew the railroad would make him even more prosperous. He had sold cattle from Pueblo to Denver, and beyond. The gold mines, the Indian agencies, and the railroad construction crews had provided a steady market; the U.S. Army forts preferred to buy their beef from a former Union hero rather than a bunch of beaten Confederates up from Texas. Whatever surplus Ab had that he couldn’t sell in Colorado, he had Javier, Matthew, Pete, and the hired hands herd to the cow towns in Kansas. But with the Denver and Rio Grande building right past Holcomb Ranch, he would no longer have to drive cattle across the plains. He could simply load them at the depot and be done with them.

  The Denver and Rio Grande had its critics, but Ab was not one of them. He had confidence in the little locomotives that would run on the narrow-gauge tracks. He didn’t know squat about railroading, but he knew of William Jackson Palmer, founder of the D & RG. Palmer was a former Union general and resident of Pennsylvania, a man of religion and an advocate of temperance. Ab was proud to have a station on General Palmer’s road.

  The railroad would probably bring more homesteaders to the Front Range, but Ab had found ways of keeping the nesters out of Monument Park. His cowboys had already proved up or filed on enough quarter sections to reach six miles up the creek. Many of them were due to prove up within the year, with a little help from witnesses who would bend the truth for them at the land office and swear that the cowboys had lived on and cultivated their homesteads for the duration. As he found reasons to fire those who proved up, and hired new men to take their places, Ab would gain control of more creek f
rontage, until he owned the whole of Monument Creek above his cabin.

  It was a slow process, but Ab thought he could keep directing the homesteaders elsewhere until he tied up all the land along the Monument. He had taken on the title of Absalom Holcomb, Land Locator, and found it astounding that homesteaders would actually pay him to steer them clear of the best farming land along Monument Creek. As one of the earliest settlers in the region, and an erstwhile farmer, he was supposed to know all the best farm sites. He guided the settlers to farmsteads on Camp, Bear, and Cheyenne creeks, and even along the Monument, downstream of his ranch. But he kept them away from Monument Park above his cabin.

  After Ab climbed down from the widow’s walk and rode back to the ranch, Buster and Caleb loaded their carpentry tools into the buckboard and followed. The drive back to the cabin led them over a regular mat of browning grass. It had been a good year for rain, and all the old buffalo wallows were brimming with water. Hand-cut hay stood in stacks as high as houses. The rye and fall wheat were going to produce bumper harvests, and the corn cribs were jammed with full-kerneled cobs.

  Ab claimed the climate was getting “more seasonable” as more settlers established farms. He believed the crops themselves caused the rain that sustained them. But Buster was silently cautious in his optimism. Old Chief Long Fingers had told him of the great circles of the plains and mountains. Circles of time, life, weather. He thought it possible that the year of 1871 had simply passed through the wettest curve of the rain circle.

  “Come over to my house after you wash up,” Buster said as Caleb jumped out of the wagon, “and we’ll tune everything up for tonight.”

  “All right,” Caleb said. He went into the cabin, got his best pair of pants and his newest shirt, and walked up to the irrigation flume to bathe. He opened the sluice gate enough to let the water run about a foot deep. He stripped and leapt into the flow, bracing himself against the cold, gripping the sides of the flume so he wouldn’t slip along the bottom and get splinters in his butt. The irrigation ditches ran near enough to the cabin to fill a washtub, but he preferred to bathe in the gushing water of the flume, where he could lie back and let the current do all the work. When he finished his bath, he closed the sluice gate and sat in the flume until the sun dried him. Then he got dressed.