Lost Ecstasy/Chapter 39
TOM had taken up his life again as best he could. On the day Kay left him he had driven furiously out of town, but at the top of the hill he stopped the car and got out.
The train was already disappearing in the far distance. He stood gazing after it, his hands clenched, his eyes hard and hopeless.
She was gone.
It had grown very cold. The wind swept across the plains, rattled the top of the old Ford, penetrated his none too heavy clothing. His bad foot ached, the brim of his broad hat flapped in his hand. He had taken it off when the train went out of sight.
He was still stunned. He looked around him. This was the place he had come to last summer through the dust and heat, to mourn! To crave, like a drunkard liquor, for the open country; to be alone and to look, off and off, to where behind some distant butte the sky kept rendezvous with the earth. And now he had the answer to his prayer; he could watch the sunrise on a frosty morning, and see the moisture rise like smoke from the backs of his warming cattle; he could follow the narrow twisting trail, if he liked, over the edge of the world and beyond. He had had his answer, all right, and what was it worth to him?
She was gone.
He went back to the Reservation, lit the fire and the lamps, limped about automatically preparing his supper, but a curious thing had happened to him. He tried to see Kay in the little house, but he could only see Clare. She had spoiled the house, as she had spoiled his life. He tried to visualize Kay in her low chair by the lamp, and he saw Clare.
"You can go out and sleep in the barn if you want to. But who'd believe it?"
Not Kay. Kay was gone. She had left him. Never again would he come home to the lamps lighted and Kay God! What had he done to deserve it?
He returned to the Newcomb job the next day. Bend, straighten, pitch. Bend, straighten, pitch. The machine roared and shook, the belt writhed, his foot swelled, his arms and back ached. But the labor was good for him; at least he could sleep.
He was silent and morose with the men. When the threshing was over he took his pay check and limped out, to get into the car without so much as a "So long." He went back to the ranch house, unlocked the door and went in, stared around him and went out again.
After that he entered the house as little as possible.
He settled down, in a way. Winter had come. There was no snow as yet, but it was already very cold. The enmity of the Indians and their refusal to sell him hay, the poor condition of the range and his responsibility to Tulloss, added to his real heartache as to Kay, sent him about in a state of savage loneliness.
He took to carrying a rifle with him, on the pretext to himself of killing coyotes and wolves. But it is as well that he did not meet Little Dog at that time. In his brooding anger his hatred had settled on the Indian; by a sort of twisted reasoning he blamed Kay's defection on his lameness. "If he had been a whole man she would never have gone."
He was liable to violent and explosive angers, too. One day, coming over the top of a rise, he saw a gray wolf running, and found a cow down and dying. He shot at the wolf and wounded it, and in a frenzy passion he finished the job with his bare hands. He was ashamed of it when he had ceased to see red, and he carried a badly mangled finger for a long time.
Later on, however, with every intention of a long winter to come, he buckled down to work. Day by day he picked up his "poor" stuff and brought it slowly in for feeding. Along with the other outfits he planned for the preservation of winter pastures, not to be grazed over until it was needed later on. Owing to the scarcity of grass the cattle ranged far; forty acres was hardly enough for a cow now, and later it might need more. He covered incalculable distances in the saddle, to go back at night to an untidy house which was cold beyond his power to warm it. The water would be frozen in the kitchen pail, the remnants of his last meal still on the table, his bed unmade. Finally he nailed heavy papers over the windows, and at least kept out the wind. It made it dark and gloomy, but as he seldom entered it in daylight it did not matter.
He hardly ever went to Judson. George and Sally had asked no questions after the first.
"Wife's gone East, I understand?"
Tom knew how news traveled up and down the railroad. He nodded.
"Her mother's sick."
"Well, I'm sorry to hear that. What you needin' today?"
Once he saw Bill. A freight had pulled in for water, and from the cupola of the caboose he saw Bill waving. He limped over and climbed in. It might have been the same car in which he and Bill had gone to Chicago; the same worn black leather berths, the same stove and tin coffee pot in the center; the same desk for the conductor with its oil lamp, its green order slips, its calendar, time-tables and box of pipe tobacco; the same fuses and torpedoes in their places on the wall. But Bill was constrained.
"Hear you've got quite a herd of your own now."
"You can call it that! Still like this job?"
"S'all right. I get to hankering now and then for a horse—you know how it is—but it's not so bad."
The engineer whistled to call in the other brakeman, the train jerked.
"Well, I'm off. So long, Bill."
"So long, Tom."
That was all. Tom turned and waited until the train pulled out. Bill was up in his chair in the cupola again, leaning out and grinning.
"Remember the night you threw the Swede off?"
"Sure do!"
The train moved on, and Tom was left on the platform, staring after it. Then he drew himself up. There had been pity in that last look of Bill's.
It was soon afterwards that Kay's letter arrived. He took it quietly, put it in his pocket and left town. Only when he was well out on the frozen road did he dare to open it and read it. It was like a blow between the eyes. She still believed he had been unfaithful to her, after all he had told her! "Maybe all men are unfaithful to their wives, or at least disloyal And I did love you so dreadfully, Tom." Did. Did! Well, that was clear enough anyhow. She had cared for him, but now she was through.
He took to brooding over that phrase, in the saddle, in his untidy house. More than once he got out paper and ink and set himself to answer it. He would sit there, his elbows squared, the pen held in his cold and roughened hands, trying to think how to put all his seething thoughts into words. But he could not do it. What could he say that would bring her back? Why should she come back to this, anyhow? Or to him?
Once he roused in the icy dawn, to find that he had slept all night by the table, his head on the paper. He wakened stiff with the cold.
He worked on doggedly, but the heart had gone out of him. Fortunately he had little leisure in which to think; the struggle for existence for himself and his herd absorbed him utterly. He was never rested, he was always cold. Out on the range in the piercing wind it was nothing unusual to find his rope, his saddle blanket and his latigo frozen stiff. Luckily the snows were not heavy until the first of the year. His dry stock, wintering outside in "breaks" or broken places, followed the ridges blown bare of snow, and somehow managed to subsist. His "poor" cows and his calves he fed, going short on provisions for himself to buy oil-cake.
When, on the range, he met other cowboys muffled to the ears, he heard similar tales of woe, but with this difference: they could go back to the line camps and be fed. When they needed oil-cake they could get it, even if grudgingly, from the owners. But Tom had no such resource. He was determined not to go to Tulloss for money, and not to touch what Kay had left in the bank. He would make good or starve.
There came times when Kay almost faded from his mind. She became an intolerable memory, associated with days of warmth and sunshine and hope. He did not know it was Christmas eve until he met a lonely line rider on the range. The day was dark, with a fine hard snow driving in his face. He was almost on the other man before he saw him.
"Hell of a Christmas eve, isn't it?"
"Didn't know it was Christmas eve."
They passed and were lost in the storm. Tom rode on, his head bent, letting the horse choose the way. So this was Christmas eve! A long time ago, years and eons ago, he and Kay had sat on a little porch in the sunshine and had planned for Christmas.
"I'm going to get some turkeys, so we can have one on Christmas. Isn't Christmas without turkey."
"I'll have to look it up in the cook book!"
"Shucks! I'll show you how to fix it. You've married a cook, Mrs. McNair, if I do say it."
He got home that night and took off his boots. He had made a bootjack now, so he could do it alone. Then, for some reason he could not explain, he hunted around and found a candle and put it in the window. He had seen a Mexican puncher do that once, a long time ago, on Christmas eve.
"What you doin' that for, Mex?"
"Maybe somebody outside and want to come in," said Mex, mysteriously.
So he lighted his candle and sat looking at it, and after a while he slept in his chair. . . .
So far there had been little snow. The temperature fell as low as twenty-six degrees below zero once or twice, and Tom carried an ice axe on his saddle to cut water holes in the frozen creeks; it required strength and skill, for to cut where the water would flow over the ice might mean a steer down with a broken leg. But soon after the first of the year the snaw began to come down in earnest. Tom wakened one morning to find the mountains glittering white, like snowy giants over which had been carelessly flung a robe of gray. And this gray was the pine trees, now strangely the color of sage. The ranch buildings seemed flattened out, familiar rocks had lost their contours, and with every breath of the icy wind the cottonwoods by the creek sent down soft snowfalls of their own.
He rode into a line camp that day, to hear that Gus, the Swede from the L. D., was still on his homestead and likely to be snowed in. Tom had no particular liking for Gus, but the law of the frontier was still the law of the back country; no man to be passed by in trouble. The next day he packed some of his small supply of food on an extra horse and rode the eight miles to Gus's cabin, near the foot of the mountains.
The snow was still falling, the road no road but only a track, and that deeply covered. But by watching his landmarks he found the place, and was only just in time. As he opened the gate he saw that the snow around the cabin was not broken, except for a few dog tracks, and that no smoke was arising from the chimney. He concluded that Gus had gone, and might have turned back, had he not heard the dog barking inside. Then he opened the door.
There was some daylight outside, but the one room was dark. There was no fire, but a heavy sickening stench hung over everything. There was no sound when he first opened the door; then a small black and white shepherd dog came crawling to him, and Gus's deeply accented and familiar voice spoke from one of the built-in bunks.
"Come in, stranger," it said. "You're yust in time."
Piled in the bunk on top of him was a heterogeneous collection of wearing apparel, a saddle blanket, and a coyote skin, badly cured and odorous, and above these coverings his gaunt unshaven face was lifted.
"Sick, Gus?"
"I run an axe into my foot here sometime back, and the thing's festering."
"Festering" it certainly was. Tom, working about the cabin after examining it, wondered if he could get Gus out after all. The Swede was feverish; he had had little food for a week, and for the last day or two had been eating snow for water. He could not get to the creek. But that was not the worst of his grievance. His two horses had been stolen.
As he ate and drank the coffee Tom made he grew more garrulous. It was plain that his fever was rising. He began to ramble; Tom gathered that he knew who had taken his horses, and tried to find out, but Gus's eyes grew cunning.
"That's my business," he said shortly. "Yust keep out. I'll attend to it."
Later on he fell asleep; he tossed and muttered, but when he roused he was apparently rational enough. Tom was overwhelmingly weary. He piled wood on the fire and lay down in the bunk across, and was soon asleep.
He was roused by the creaking of boards and opened his eyes. A long knife in his hand, Gus was coming stealthily across the floor; his eyes were blazing, his face tense. Tom sat up.
"Here!" he said. "What're you doing?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" Gus bawled. "I'd have had him in a minute."
"Had who?"
"That pack rat. He was yust over your head. He's the one that's carried off most of my grub."
Grumbling, Gus went back to his bunk and to sleep, but Tom did not close his eyes again. He never knew the truth; whether there had been a pack rat above him that night or whether Gus, in a fit of delirium, and dreaming of some mysterious revenge, had meant to kill him.
The next day he got him out and sent him to the hospital at Ursula. Sometime later on Tom heard he had lost the foot; then he lost sight of him for months, until it was time for Gus to take his place in that small and unimportant drama of the back country which was Tom McNair's life.
But the snow continued to fall, and Tom's anxiety for his herd steadily increased—the drifts banked high against drift fences, it even covered the ridges, usually wind-swept and clear. On the railroad great snow-ploughs dug into the mass, flung it to right and left, and cleared the track only to have it buried again. By keeping on high ground Tom could get about, although slowly, to see his cattle snowed-in in the washes and coulees below. They had gnawed every twig and branch, had eaten the tops of the scant bushes, even the bitter sage where they could get at it. Some had made their way to the ranch, and stood outside his fences, snuffing hungrily at the hay spread in the feeding yard under the shelter sheds for his weaners, his cows and calves. They made an incessant mournful plea which almost drove him mad, but he was helpless. The snow fell, thawed, froze, fell again.
Ruin stared him in the face. Steers went down and did not rise again. He made a circuit of the line camps, to find the hay shovelers working overtime, and no feed to spare at any price; and even if he could have bought it at the railroad he could not have freighted it in.
Then, one night, he hit on something.
He went home, cooked a bit of supper and then taking a lantern went out to the barn. The horses stirred uneasily when he entered. He limped through to the corral and found two strong logs and some lumber left from his repairing of the house; he dragged them inside, found his tools and set to work. In that terrible freezing silence the sound of his hammer was like pistol shots, but in a couple of hours he had made a crude snow-plough.
He went to bed then, without taking off his clothes, and in the early morning he began again. Harness, this time. He had only two horses broken to harness, but he had no time to worry about that. He took latigos, raw leather, anything he could find, and by noon he started out. The broken team led, and after a time the other horses fell to work. He could not touch the drifts, but on the ridges he cleared a track, doubled on it, widened it. The cattle were terrified; he had later to round them up and drive them to the exposed grass, scanty as it was. But they learned before long; they even followed the plough. For the time at least they were saved.
He was completely exhausted, almost snow-blind. The rims of his eyes were swollen and excruciatingly painful, he limped badly, he had not shaved for three weeks. He went back to the house, fell on his unmade bed, and slept twenty-four hours before he moved.
When he got about again he heard terrible tales of disaster. Only the disappearance of the snow would enable the cattlemen to total their losses, but compared with theirs his own were negligible.
He was not through, of course.
Early in February came a chinook. A warm wind began to blow, the snow melted rapidly, and the cattle, inured now to the cold, began to drop all over the pastures. They would get down and be too enervated to rise, and there they would lie until they died unless they were forced to their feet again. Once again he began his battle, this time to "tail them up." It took all his strength and more agility than his bad foot permitted him. More than once a "tailed" steer, on its feet and angry, tried to hook him. Once indeed he was knocked down, but the animal was too unsteady to pursue his advantage.
But at last, miraculously, the spring came. In the tracks made by his snow-plough, in the bare spaces on the ridges, the brown grass took on a greenish hue. The nights were still cold, but at midday the sun was warm. His eyes commenced to improve. His cows began to drop their calves, awkward little creatures, pop-eyed and dazed; they lay for a time, moved, got up, and stood gazing about on legs which still shook under them.
He felt no exultation; only a vague relief.