Shortgrass Song Read online

  “Ab, shoot him if he won’t go.”

  “I won’t go till I kill that big buck nigger,” Dutch said.

  “Oh! I’ll shoot you myself for saying such a thing!” She tried to pull the revolver away from her husband.

  “Calm down, Ella. He’s crazy as a coot.”

  Buster heard the half-animal squall again and saw Snake Woman pass in front of his pistol sights. She wielded the ax overhead and brought it down on Dutch’s shoulder. The mountain man dropped his knife, roared like a bear, knocked Snake Woman against the wagon with his left fist, and staggered back to the brink of the creek bank.

  Buster moved in closer, protecting Snake Woman with his pistol. He could see the glisten of blood running down the gingham shirt.

  “Give me that!” Ella demanded. She pulled at Ab’s Colt, but he wouldn’t let her have it. “Give me your pistol,” she said, running to Buster. She wrenched the weapon from Buster’s hand, pointed it, closed her eyes, and blew away a respectable chunk of the creek bank. “Fiddlesticks! Buster, where’s your powder?”

  Cheyenne Dutch leapt silently over the bank and ran for the trees across the creek, stooping for his beaver hat on the run. Ab went to the edge and watched him to make sure he wasn’t trying to double back. He saw the weird gait of the wounded trader running apelike up the bald hill along the Arapaho Trail.

  Snake Woman shook Buffalo Head by the elbow and made him watch her hand signs.

  “What’s she trying to say?” Ella asked.

  “I don’t know. Somethin’ about a sign from the spirits. I guess she caught some crazy from that ol’ Cheyenne Dutch.”

  * * *

  At dawn Ab took his guns and went to see how many cattle had wandered off during the night. He found the two spotted Nez Perce horses hobbled and grazing with his herd. Across the white blanket on the rump of the gelding were six letters scrawled in the dried blood of Cheyenne Dutch: Pardon. The white flank of the mare bore its own grisly message: CRAZY.

  NINE

  Matthew claimed the gelding called Pard, and Pete took Crazy, the mare. They mounted every morning to round up the cattle and drive them to fresh grass before they came back to work on the cabin. Riding the spotted horses through the morning dew changed their dreary cow work to inspired excitement. Matthew took to chasing the cows when his father wasn’t watching. The docile Missouri cows—the survivors that hadn’t been eaten by mountain lions or wolves—had become rangy and wild since living on the plains. They now made for a lively chase.

  Caleb asked his mother if he could ride old Soupy and go along with his brothers.

  “When you’re up to it, honey,” she said.

  He didn’t tamper with his good fortune by pestering her. After all, when Pete and Matthew were gone, he had both puppies to himself. And when his brothers were around, he still had the mandolin to play. He had mastered G and C and was learning the third key, the key of D, the one that would make the mandolin his. In the evenings he and Buster sat out beside the milk wagon and played “Camptown Races” together—Buster on the guitar, patiently waiting for Caleb to find his chords.

  The monotony of the one song lulled Snake Woman into trances as she stared at the stars, looking for signs. In everything she saw, she looked for signs. In the creek, the mountains, the plains. In the corn, the cattle, the birds. She watched Buffalo Head more than anything else. The second sign had come through him. The spirits had made him a warrior and protector who counted coup on her enemies. She didn’t know exactly what it meant yet, but she expected the gods to work more signs through him.

  All day Snake Woman kept regular watches on the black man, but Buster didn’t realize it, absorbed as he was with notching the logs for the cabin. He made them fit together wonderfully, each notch cupping the log beneath it like a palm around a wrist.

  The rectangular cabin would have three rooms—sleeping quarters for the boys at one end, the parents at the other, and a middle room for eating, cooking, and listening to fiddle music. No arrangements were made for the farmhands. Buster would move into the dugout, and Snake Woman would get to keep her wagon. In time, they would get their own houses.

  Timber by timber the log walls climbed. The gables started to take shape at the two ends of the house. Buster sawed off the ends of the gable logs at an angle to match the slope of the roof that would rest on top of them. Purlins spanned the gables. For these lengthwise members, Ab used logs just as stout as the ones he had built the walls with. He wanted a roof able to handle heavy snows.

  The cumbersome timbers could only be lifted to the gables by use of the gin pole, which naturally reminded Buster of a mast on a great ship. A mast of that height, he thought, could hoist enough canvas to move a Conestoga freight wagon across the plains in a fair wind. The gin pole was planted in the ground in the middle of the cabin and would be removed before the floor went in. Long guy ropes, extending to the four points of the compass, and staked to the plains, held it erect like shrouds on a sailing vessel.

  When a log had to be moved to the roof, ramps made of timbers were leaned against the walls so the new member could slide up them to its place, lifted by a rope which ran through a pulley on the top of the gin pole. The oxen pulled on the rope under Ella’s guidance. In this way the logs continued to mount until finally the ridge log came to rest on the peaks of the gables. After Buster rounded the notches in it, he rolled it into place, finally giving the shell of logs its backbone.

  He untied the rope that had lifted the ridge log into place and let it dangle. “We won’t be needin’ those oxen for these logs no more,” he shouted to Ella. “Shingles and floorboards is about all we got left to fix.”

  “And doors,” Ella said, leaving the cattle yoked at the end of the lift rope. “And windows. God knows where we’ll get glass.”

  Ab and Buster swung down from the purlins.

  “Getting that gin pole out’s going to be a chore,” Ab said. “Hadn’t thought about it till now.”

  Matthew and Pete joined the men at the base of the gin pole and looked up at it, boxed in now by roof timbers. It towered right past the ridge log Buster had just dropped into place. If someone were to cut the guy ropes and let the gin pole fall, it would take out half the rafters and maybe one of the walls. It would have to be removed with caution.

  Ella stepped into the doorframe. “All you have to do is climb up there and chop the top off of it,” she said. “Then it will be short enough for us to lean over and slide out through the door.”

  “What’s going to happen to that piece we chop off, though?” Ab asked. “It’ll fall down in here and break something. Or hurt somebody.”

  “We’ll have to build us a big tripod that’ll straddle the house,” Buster suggested, “and tie the top of the gin pole to that so it won’t fall when we chop it off. Then we can lower it easy.”

  “That will work,” Ella said.

  Caleb jumped into the doorway with the mandolin. “I’m ready!”

  “Ready for what, honey?” his mother said.

  “To play ‘doo-dah day’ in all three keys. Want to hear ’em?”

  “You bet we do,” Buster said.

  “No, we don’t,” Matthew argued. “We heard it a million times already.”

  “Yeah,” Pete said. “Can’t you teach him another song, Mr. Thompson?”

  “Let him play three more doo-dahs. I’ll teach him a whole mess of songs after he wins his mandolin.”

  Caleb’s audience sat on the floor joists, with their feet on the shortgrass plains, and listened as he stood at one end of the cabin to play. First he played flawlessly in the key of G. In C, he attained near perfection. Being the least familiar with the key of D, Caleb worried about it the most. The A chord gave his short fingers fits. But he took a deep breath and launched the rendition that would make the mandolin his.

  From the cornfield, Snake Woman was listening to the strange music of Buffalo Head and the white people. She liked to look across the plains at the gin pole and the
guy ropes holding it up. It reminded her a little of lodge poles waiting to be covered with buffalo skins. But this time something was different about the angles of the ropes. One of them reached out too far across the plains, toward the creek. It was the one the oxen were tied to. They had wandered too far from the house of logs, and their rope was pulling against the top of the gin pole. She heard the white people clapping as the music ended.

  Suddenly, Caleb saw a road of happiness ahead of him. They were applauding for him. Even Matthew. They were looking up at him and smiling. It was music. They liked him.

  “It’s yours now,” Buster said. “You earned it.”

  Caleb yelled for joy and jumped into the doorframe with his mandolin. “Thanks, Buster! I mean, Mr. Thompson.” He sprang out of the doorway and landed between the ramp logs used to slide timbers to the roof, dancing and singing “oh, doo-dah day,” waving his new mandolin over his head.

  Buster laughed at the boy until he heard the timbers creaking and the ropes popping with tension. For a moment he thought he was on a sailing ship. When he looked up at the gin pole, he saw that the knot on the end of the hoist rope had traveled all the way up to the pulley. The rope was stretched tight to the west. The oxen were walking toward the creek, pulling the gin pole down. As it leaned toward the oxen, the gin pole pushed the ridge log out of its notches and off the gables, and it thundered down the slope of the roof on Caleb’s side of the cabin.

  Ella shrieked with horror, leapt through the doorframe. She thought that if she pushed Caleb away, the log might still roll over him from behind. She had to grab him and throw him back toward the cabin so the rumbling shaft of timber would pass over his head.

  Caleb lost his grip on his mandolin when his mother flung him at the cabin. He landed against the wall on the seat of his pants. He saw the shadow pass overhead. His mother was looking at him. His mandolin was on the ground behind her.

  The timber rolled down from the house of logs, hit Ella in the stomach, slammed her against the ground, bounced over her head, and stopped in a swirl of dust.

  Buster ran for the oxen. The gin pole had fallen against the highest purlin spanning the gables. If the beasts took the slack out of the rope again, they would pull the purlin from its notches, too, and send it rolling down on Ella behind the ridge log. He cut the rope from the yoke as soon as he reached the oxen, and they continued to walk toward the creek to drink.

  Caleb saw his father kneeling over his mother. Beyond them, he saw his mandolin lying flat and splintered against the ground where the log had crushed it. He wasn’t sure what had happened. He didn’t know if his mother had taken the mandolin away from him on purpose or not. He had seen the log hit her but didn’t know if she was as badly broken as his little instrument. He got up and looked at his mother first. Her mouth was open and her eyes were darting. His father was speaking her name. Then he looked at his mandolin. Only the strings were good. Not even Buster could fix the broken wood. He dropped to his knees on the splinters, looked back at his mother, and began to cry.

  Ab held his wife’s face in his hands. He was afraid to touch her anywhere else. Her head trembled, her eyes searched and batted. Suddenly she took a breath in, then coughed a spray of blood on Ab’s shirt. He looked up at Buster. “Take the boys,” he said. “Get some water or something.”

  Ella could see only light and shadows, but she felt her husband beside her. She also felt something moving inside, something very wrong. There was no pain, but the strange motion in her body prevented her from sitting up. She could only breathe in gasps. “Caleb,” she said.

  “He’s fine, Ella. You pulled him back. He’s just fine.”

  Ella’s hand clutched his elbow. “Don’t you let him die,” she said. “You had better not let him die, Ab.” She took in another shallow rush of air.

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise.”

  “I promise I won’t, Ella. I’ll take care of him. Now you lie still.”

  Something inside her chest was growing, taking away the room for her air. She wanted to tell Ab to make sure Caleb learned some new songs, but she didn’t have the breath for it. The light faded and the shadows spread. She was so happy to be lying on the warm plains. She would have hated dying in that cold hole in the ground.

  TEN

  The moon rose just before dawn. It looked like an acorn resting against its crown—a silver cap under a dark round hull. From the east porch of his cabin, Ab watched it rise as he drank his coffee and planned his suicide.

  Buster had finished the cabin. Buster had harvested the corn and truck crops and hauled them to Denver to trade. Buster had planted the winter wheat and killed the game that got them through the cold months. Ab had sat around the cabin and stared at Ella’s grave and wondered how he would kill himself.

  He had always assumed he would die first. He didn’t know what to do without her. She had taken care of everything for him for so long—raised the boys almost all by herself. True, Ab had taught them what he knew about farming, but she had brought them up in every other way. She had kept Caleb alive for six years. Ab knew now what a burden it was to worry about Caleb. He saw a frail little boy when he looked at his youngest son. He had come to know why Ella never let him ride a horse, or go out hunting, or have a pocketknife.

  He couldn’t sleep at night for worrying about what might happen to Caleb. In Ab’s nightmares, Caleb drowned himself in the creek, stabbed himself falling from the dugout roof, or stood under the ridge log as it rolled down from the gables. Ab had always carried out Ella’s living wishes, and he intended to honor her dying demand as well. As long as he lived, he had to look after Caleb. The responsibility would hang over him for a lifetime. Every little rasping cough he heard coming from the other end of the cabin at night reminded him of the promise he had made to his dying wife. He felt her presence everywhere he went. He had to make sure he died before Caleb, and the sooner the better. It was just a question of how to make it look like an accident so he wouldn’t bring dishonor to his sons.

  Ab never exerted his mind by making it think about more than two things at a time. In the past that had meant satisfying Ella and taking care of a farm. Now the two things he thought about most were keeping Caleb alive and killing himself—one of which would relieve him of responsibility for the other.

  The dark round hull of the moon vanished, and the silver cap became a mere chalk mark on the sky. The sun cleared the Pinery and colored the dust kicked up by the cattle. Pete and Matthew were rounding them up on the spotted horses. Ab had told them to brand whatever cattle they could catch. Buster had invented the brand—a circle in a circle, which he called the bull’s-eye brand. He had made a branding iron out of a couple of metal rings, one from a discarded saddle buckle and the other from a broken breast yoke.

  As Ab watched his sons chase the cattle, Buster stepped up on the log porch with a basket of eggs. He had brought chickens back from Denver and converted his little milk wagon into a coop. The dogs followed him, hoping he would drop an egg. Over the winter they had grown into lumbering loafers with oversize paws, tongues, and appetites.

  “Those boys caught any cows yet?” Buster asked.

  “No, they don’t know what to do with a rope. I sure can’t show them. There’s grass for a lot of cows here, but you have to know how to rope if you want to work them.”

  “Yes, sir. Maybe they’ll learn.”

  “By the time they learn all the cows will be gone.”

  Buster laughed, as if Ab were joking. “That fellow in Denver who made the saddle I brought back for Matthew said he used to work a ranch in Texas. Maybe next time I go, I’ll look him up and see if he can teach us something.”

  “Buster, don’t you ever let a Texan teach a single thing to any one of my boys. Understand?”

  Buster said he understood, but he really didn’t. He didn’t understand half of what Ab said anymore. “Where’s Caleb?” he asked.

  “Still sleeping.”

  “I’ve got
some things he can do if you’ll let me put him to work.”

  Ab remained silent.

  “Nothing hard. Just fixing up some things. He can help me fetch my tools.”

  Buster knew there was nothing wrong with Caleb. The boy tended to catch cold every now and then, and cough and sneeze a lot, but that was common with some kids. He was short of breath, too, but that was because he needed exercise. He didn’t do anything all day but sit around and play the mandolin. Buster had bought him a new one in Denver, though it wasn’t as pretty as the one the ridge log had crushed. By the time Buster got back with it, Caleb was already getting familiar with the guitar, which he had taken up after the loss of his mandolin. When he played, he sat on the porch and looked across the bald hill at the mountains, his back to his mother’s grave.

  “I think the exercise will do him good,” Buster said.

  “All right,” Ab replied. “For a while. Just look after him.”

  “Yes, sir.” Buster opened the door to the cabin. “I’ll go get him up.”

  “Buster.”

  He paused in the doorway. Ab was looking across the flower garden at Ella’s grave. The seeds she had planted had sprouted and brought forth blooms of red, yellow, orange, purple, and blue. The day’s first sunlight was just striking them. Ab sat silent on a split-log bench, looking at the flowers for a long moment. “She told me you got her those seeds,” he finally said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’d be obliged if you’d get some more.”

  It didn’t take Buster long to get Caleb out of bed and moving. Caleb looked at Ab’s boots when he left the cabin to go to work, but avoided looking him in the eyes. His father hadn’t said much to him all winter long. He thought Ab was mad at him for getting his mother killed. Matthew had told him that it was his fault; if he hadn’t been standing under the ridge log when it came thundering down from the roof, their mother would still be alive. Caleb just knew his father felt the same way.

  After Buster and Caleb went to work, Ab cut some flowers and put them on Ella’s grave and wondered how he would join her. He thought about little else. Matthew and Pete rode up and said they couldn’t catch any cows. He told them just to watch the calves and make sure no wolves got close enough to kill any. Then he went back to contemplating suicide. Snake Woman brought a bucket of water to pour on the vegetable garden. He told her to get another bucket to pour on the wildflowers. Drowning was one way, he thought, but there was no water around that was deep enough. Not even a well to fall into. A funny thought struck him. His sons would be raised by a fugitive slave and a tongueless squaw. Ella would like nothing better. He continued to imagine his death until he noticed the Indians coming down through Monument Park from the north.