The man named Dunbar came to the town of Westlock, Wyoming, on a snowy November day. I was loading groceries into the wagon to take back to the ranch, and I first saw him when he was about three-quarters of a mile away, on the road that led from the north and became the main street in town. As I went back and forth from the store to the wagon, the rider came closer and became more visible. He was riding a blue roan and leading a buckskin packhorse, both dusted in snow as he was. The horses’ footfalls made but the faintest muffled sound on the carpeted ground, and with the snow swirling around them and the powder rising from their hooves, one had the illusion that the horses were not connected to the earth in the usual way but came roiling, with their master, out of the maw of the frozen North.
The rider drew up next to the wagon as I hefted a fifty-pound sack of beans into the bed. The air was cold—about ten degrees, I thought—and the thin, dry snow gathered on his black hat, his dark mustache, his brown canvas surtout, and his dark brown chaps, as well as on his saddle and on the canvas packs on the buckskin horse. Reaching up with a gloved hand, he brushed the snow from his mustache.
“Good afternoon,” he said.
“And the same to you.”
His dark eyes took me in. “Can you tell me where the Paradise Valley Ranch is?”
“Yes, I can. It’s about ten miles southwest of here.”
He blew a puff of breath through his mustache. “Might be a bit late in the day for me to find it at that distance.”
“Could be,” I said, “but the foreman’s right inside here. What do you need?”
“I heard they might have work.”
“You’d have to ask him.”
“Of course.” He studied me. “I would almost guess that you work there, too.”
“Good guess. I’m the cook. But maybe you figured that as well.” I pointed with my thumb. “The foreman’s name is George Clubb. He’s the fellow with blond, wavy hair, warming his hands at the stove.”
The newcomer smiled. “And your name, if I might be so bold?”
“Cyrus Fleming,” I said.
“J.R. Dunbar.” He swung down from the saddle, passed the lead rope from one hand to another, and held out his hand to shake. “Thanks for telling me what you know. Some people aren’t that helpful.”
I suppressed a smile. “I didn’t tell you much.” At the beginning, at least, I had prided myself on not telling him any more than he asked.
He gave me a look that expressed confidence and humor together. “You told me more than you had to, and more than you said outright.”
I wondered what I had told him without saying—that George Clubb didn’t mind letting someone else do the work? That the Paradise Valley Ranch was not a good place to work? That the ranch did not keep hired hands for long, and that was why a stranger might find work in November? I imagined that all of those truths were inherent in what I did and did not say to Dunbar.
I said, “I’ll be happy to tell you more, by saying even less.”
“You’re doing well,” he said. He tied his horses and went into the store.
I found out soon enough that Dunbar was not shy about asking questions, at least of me. As we were bringing in firewood the next day, he began with a statement.
“The big boss seems to keep to himself.”
“The owner? I suppose he does. He leaves quite a bit to his foreman.”
“His name is Wardell, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is. Prentice Wardell.”
“How long has he been here?”
“Four or five years.”
“Did he name this ranch?”
“Yes, he did. The ranch and the valley both, though the ranch had previous owners.”
Dunbar cast a glance toward the ranch house. “And what about the two girls he has working for him?”
He caught me off guard for a moment. Common bunkhouse hands did not ask about the girls, and I did not volunteer comments. But I had seen them—two sisters who swept in silence. In summer it seemed as if they spent all of their days with a broom and a dustpan, sweeping the ranch house, the veranda, the steps, and the stone walkway. Now in the cold part of the year, they swept the dust of winter inside and the dust of snow outside.
“They’re sisters,” I said. “Lucy is about thirteen, and Ophelia is about fifteen.”
“I could guess that much. Where do they come from?”
As I pictured the girls with their dusky complexions and straight, dull black hair, I wanted to say, as I had thought, that I imagined them as having materialized out of the dust. But I said, “According to the boss, he found them in New Mexico Territory. He picked them up off the street in Albuquerque, where they were abandoned, and he and his wife took them in.”
“Adopted, or just used as inexpensive domestic help?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never asked. All I know is what I’ve heard.” After I pause, I added, “Are you interested in them?”
Dunbar put one last piece of firewood in the crook of his arm, smiled, and said, “All things human are of interest to me.”
“Or, as the philosopher says, ‘Nothing human is foreign to me.’ ”
“I think that might be the way I first heard it. But time, and the company of cattle, dulls the memory.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “An hour from now, I won’t remember we had this conversation.”
George Clubb, Dunbar, and I were drinking coffee at midmorning. The two had done the morning chores of pitching hay to the horses and breaking ice on the troughs, and now they sat without saying much to each other. Rather than try to make conversation, I kept my own counsel as well.
A cold draft of air swept into the bunkhouse as the boss stepped inside. He closed the door behind him and paused, as if he needed to take stock of the room. He was wearing a fox-fur cap, a long coat made of coyote pelts, and a pair of padded leather gloves. He clapped his hands together, took off his gloves, and walked over to stand next to the foreman’s chair.
“George, you need to bring in more hay. We’re bound to get more snow at any time, and we can’t afford to run out.”
George nodded. “I was thinkin’ the same thing.”
The boss drew himself up to his full height. He was taller than average, and I had formed the impression that he liked to lean and loom over his men. Now he turned to Dunbar and said, “I’d just as soon you didn’t talk to my working girls anymore.”
Dunbar regarded him with a calm expression.
The boss waited a few seconds, and getting no answer, he said, “What business did you have talking to them, anyway?”
Dunbar’s dark eyes held steady. “I had the impression I had seen those girls somewhere before.”
The boss’s eyes tightened for a second. “I’d be surprised if you did. At any rate, you can leave them alone.” Turning back to the foreman, he said, “Bring in about three wagonloads. Go to the farthest haystack first.”
George gave a look of displeasure but said, “Sure.”
I knew that the summer crew had put up half a dozen haystacks at various places, each stack with a fence around it. The farthest one out was quite a ways from the ranch.
The boss continued. “I don’t think you’ll have time for more than one load per day, and you’ll want to carry a lunch.” He shifted in position to speak to me. “Cy, make them up something to carry with them.”
I pushed my chair from the table. “I’ll do that.”
As I rose, I heard the boss say, “What did you say your name was?”
Dunbar said, “This bein’ the first time I’ve spoken with you, I didn’t say. Not to you, at least. But as I told Mr. Clubb, my name is Dunbar.”
“Do you always give smart answers?”
“No.”
“Well, do what George tells you.” The boss nodded to his foreman, and putting on his gloves, he walked back out into the cold morning.
The boss came to the bunkhouse before sunrise the next day while the men were finishing breakfast. They had not gone out to do the chores yet, and they still had to unload the hay they had brought in at dusk, so I wondered why the boss appeared so early. In the cold part of the year, he did not venture out in the gray of morning.
Dressed again in his raiments of fox and coyote, he loomed over the table with the hanging lamp casting his face in shadow. He stood in a position that allowed him to face the foreman while he gave his shoulder to Dunbar.
“George,” he said, “I’ve decided we’ll put this first load up in the hay mow.”
George stopped with his fork a couple of inches up from the plate. “We haven’t done that before. Are you sure we even have the right equipment?”
“Of course we do. Everything came with the ranch. There’s an old set of tongs out where the field tools are. Everything else is in the harness room.”
“Do you know how to do it?”
“It’ll take all four of us. Two teams of horses—one on the wagon, one on the hoist. We have one man with each team, one man on the load, and one man up in the loft.”
“I’d think you’d want to have two men in the loft.”
“I thought you’d never done this before.”
“I haven’t.”
The boss took a calm breath as he pressed his gloved hands together, interlocking his fingers.
George spoke again. “Why do you want to go to all the bother, anyway?”
“I told you yesterday. I want to get in a good stock of hay.”
“Three wagonloads will fit where we always put it, on the ground floor.”
“For God’s sake, man, do you have to argue with me at every turn? I say we’re going to put the hay in the loft, and that’s what we’re going to do. So as soon as you get your grub in your bellies, get out there and feed the horses. Then get the tools together, and grease the track that the pulley runs on. By the time you’re ready, the horses’ll be fed, and we can get to work.”
He turned and walked away, without having taken off his gloves. A draft of cold air rolled in as he closed the door behind him.
George had resumed eating. With fried potato in his mouth, he said, “Seems like a lot of trouble to me. Have either of you done it this way before?”
I said, “Back on the farm, when I was growing up. The winters were wetter there, so we tried to keep as much of the hay inside as we could.”
“Build a good stack, and it sheds water.” He turned to Dunbar. “How about you?”
“I have some familiarity with it. But people do things differently from one place to another. We’ll see how Mr. Wardell does it.”
As I walked out into the ranch yard after putting the kitchen in order, a cold wind was moving the dust around above the frozen surface of the earth. The sky was gray and cheerless, and not much sound carried on the air. At the peak of the barn, George Clubb stood in the open doorway to the loft while Dunbar seemed to hang from the gable by one hand. On closer observation, I saw that he had one foot in a loop of rope hanging from the pulley as he held his left hand on the steel track that ran overhead. On his right hand he wore a gray wool mitten with which he was smearing dark grease onto the track. George held the can of grease with one hand and the door post with the other. When Dunbar needed another gob, he reached over while George leaned out with the can.
The boss’s voice sounded in back of me. “Don’t fall down and break your neck.”
I assumed he was talking to George, as he avoided Dunbar. Besides, I didn’t think he would have minded if Dunbar did fall and break his neck. He might even have wished for it.
George called back, “We’re almost done with this part.”
I turned to acknowledge the boss. He was wearing a knit wool cap, a coarse wool overcoat, and wool gloves—all in drab tones of gray. He reminded me of a painting I had seen of Russian soldiers trying not to freeze to death during the Napoleonic war. I thought he might be overdressed—not because of his fondness for matching outfits but because I had learned not to wear my warmest clothes in the early part of the cold season. Even in the dead of winter, one had to remember that the weather could always get colder.
“Cy,” he said, “I’m going to have you hold the reins on the wagon horses. You don’t have to do much. Just sit on the seat and keep ’em in place.”
“You don’t want me to pull them forward each time you raise a load?”
“No need to.”
“My father always did. In case the load spills. If it lands on the wagon, it can spook the horses.”
“No need to. We’re not going to drop anything.”
I wondered if he or someone else was going to stand in the wagon, but I didn’t ask. I would see soon enough. I followed him to the barn and stood outside as the men finished the task above. Dunbar tossed the mitten into the loft and held onto the rope with both hands. I saw now that the rope was doubled. With another rope attached to the pulley, George tugged and disappeared, moving Dunbar into the loft like a quarter of beef or a block of ice.
At ground level, I stood by as Dunbar wiped his hands on a cloth. Neither of us spoke. I watched Dunbar in an absentminded way as the boss and George talked in an undertone a few yards away.
As Dunbar finished wiping his hands, I noticed something I had not seen before. In the palm of his right hand, he had a dark spot that looked as if he had been burned there. He did not seem to make an attempt either to hide it or to show it. Rather, he waved his hand as people do after washing and drying their hands.
The moment passed, and George spoke as he walked toward us. “Cy, you’ll work the wagon. I think you already know that. The boss will be in charge of the other team, and I’ll be in the loft.” Then, as if he, too, would prefer to avoid Dunbar, he turned partway and said, “You’ll work the load. Make sure you get a good grab each time, and stay out of the way.”
I felt a sense of dread building as George and Dunbar brought out the horses and hitched the first pair to the wagon. I did not think that the boss and his foreman had conspired to dump a load of hay on Dunbar, but I knew something could go wrong. George was not familiar with the process, and I was not convinced that the boss knew much about it, either. Dunbar had suggested that he knew something, but the boss wasn’t going to put him in charge. Neither was he going to put me, an old gray-haired man with ruddy cheeks and a round girth, even though I had more experience with the work than at least two of the others.
Before long, I discovered how much the boss did not know about raising the hay. He wanted to use the second team of horses in front of the barn in order to lift the load. Dunbar looked on and said nothing, but I had to speak up.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but I’ve never seen anyone haul the hay up that way. You’re supposed to run the rope up to the trolley and out the back of the barn. Then when you get the load to the height where you want it, you hit the trip and pull the load into the barn where you stack it. Then the man running the forks pulls everything back so he can grab another load.”
The boss said, “You mean the tongs.”
“I learned to call them the forks, but that’s a small matter.”
George spoke to Dunbar. “What do you know?”
“I learned to call them forks, too. And, yes, you have to pull it from the other end. Furthermore, I didn’t see a trolley in the harness room or when I was up there. You’re going to have to find one somewhere, or none of this is going to work.”
“Then what’s the pulley for?”
Dunbar shrugged. “For hoisting things up there, I suppose. Smaller things. But not for any systematic method of moving hay up into the loft.”
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“No one asked.” Dunbar put on his coat, a buckskin-colored canvas work coat, and took a pair of yellowish leather gloves from the pocket. He put on the gloves and assumed an air of waiting.
The boss pulled off his wool cap and slammed it on the ground. “By God, I don’t like the way the two of you just waited to make a fool of me.”
The boss picked up his cap and stomped away. What thoughts went through Dunbar’s mind as he watched, I do not know. As for myself, it occurred to me that the boss would have a much harder time dropping a load of hay on someone from the other side of the barn.
The hay loft went unoccupied, then, and the three wagonloads fit in the ground-floor area as George Clubb had said they would. The boss kept his distance, and once the hay was in, George absented himself by going to town.
Dunbar lingered over coffee and a serving of apple pie I had made. When a feeling of there being only two of us in the bunkhouse set in, he said, “I sometimes wonder about the boss’s wife.”
“Mrs. Wardell?” I asked.
“Yes. I wonder if they’ve had children of their own, or if she has taken any kind of interest in the two working girls.”
“I’ve never heard of their having children,” I said, “though they might be old enough to have children who have grown up and gone out on their own.”
“You say they’ve been here four or five years?”
“About that. I’ve been here for two years, so I don’t know for sure.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mrs. Wardell? I believe it’s Nancy.”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“She doesn’t go out much. Even in two years, I’ve seen her but a few times. Thinking back to your earlier question, or comment at least, I don’t know that she has any maternal interest in the girls. She doesn’t turn them out with their hair braided or in cute outfits. They’re always rather plain-looking.”
Dunbar gave a mild shrug. “It’s hard to know about other people.”
“They do live out of the way. And even here, they keep to themselves.”
“Have you ever talked to those girls?”
“No, I haven’t. I’m sure they know how, though they’ve always seemed silent. Even at a distance, I haven’t seen them talk.”
“Oh, yes,” said Dunbar. “They can talk. He hasn’t cut their tongues out, like the king in the story.”
“I don’t remember his name,” I said, “but the girl’s name is Philomela. She becomes a nightingale in one version of the story and a swallow in another. And she has a sister as well.”
“That’s the story I was thinking of. The nightingale.”
The wind was blowing as it can only blow in November—cold and bleak and relentless, day and night, whining at the eaves of the bunkhouse and driving bits of dead grass through the air. I was humming a song to myself and thinking that it was no day to be working outside except for the most pressing chores. Yet the boss had George Clubb and Dunbar working behind the barn, on the windward side. At a little after eleven in the morning, the foreman barged into the bunkhouse and told me they needed my help.
I took off my apron, put on a coat and a tight-fitting winter cap, and followed him across the yard and around the barn. There I saw where he and Dunbar had cleared a path by moving old fence posts, coils of barbed wire, scraps of iron, and twisted sheets of metal. The sheet metal was weighted down with fence posts, and I was glad not to have to move it in such a strong wind.
One object remained in the way, a rusty iron structure the use of which I did not recognize. It consisted of a thick frame about four feet high with a shaft and gear wheels mounted inside.
I tipped my head into the wind, holding onto my cap, and said, “What are we doing?”
“This thing’s in the way.”
“I can see that. You don’t expect the three of us to pick it up and move it, do you?”
“No. I want to tip it up and put a skid under it.” He pointed to a sled about five feet wide and eight feet long.
I looked up and down the pathway they were clearing. “Has the boss not given up on his idea of putting the hay into the loft?”
“He didn’t say.”
For a moment I was amused by the thought of the boss trying to save face, as it seemed to me, after having his men pile junk in the way for years. My reverie ended when George said, “Here he comes. You can ask him yourself.”
I turned to see Prentice Wardell marching into the wind, dressed, as it had seemed to me before, like a Russian soldier. His face was clouded with anger, and his eyes were hard.
“You!” he shouted at Dunbar. “Get over here!” He made a motion with his arm and pointed at the ground in front of him.
Dunbar did as he was told, carrying a six-foot iron pry bar. He held it upright like a pikestaff as he came to a stop and rested the end on the ground. He was wearing a short-billed gray wool cap instead of his usual black hat, and he looked as if he could have been a vassal to a feudal lord.
“I told you I didn’t want you talking to my hired girls.”
Dunbar’s eyes held steady as he said, “This country has laws and rights. You can’t hold somebody in bondage, and you can’t restrict other people’s freedom of speech.”
“Well, aren’t you the good citizen?”
“I might be.”
“You can do it somewhere else. I want you off my ranch. Now.”
Dunbar hefted the iron bar, and Wardell flinched. As Dunbar leaned the tool against the iron structure and turned halfway, the boss pulled an old sock out of his coat pocket. The toe of the sock swung with weight, and I could not believe the boss would try to sap Dunbar with such a paltry weapon.
I was right. He turned to the foreman and handed him the sock.
“George, here’s his pay. Give it to him when he’s packed and ready to go.”
“Can we finish with what we’re doing here?”
“I said now, and I mean it.” The boss turned and walked away.
“I guess that’s it,” said George. He hit the iron frame with the heel of his hand. “We’ll take care of this son of a bitch some other time.”
Dunbar had the blue roan saddled and the buckskin packed in less than an hour. The wind was blowing the horses’ tails in strands when he stopped at the bunkhouse door and I stepped out to say goodbye.
He was wearing his black hat and brown overcoat, and he stood in front of his horses, holding the reins and the lead rope in his left hand as he held out his right hand to shake. “So long, Cyrus.”
“It’s been good to know you,” I said. “Keep the wind at your back.”
“Can’t always.” He put his horses into position, and with the lead rope in one hand, he pulled himself aboard with the other. He tipped his head so that the wind would not carry away his hat, and he turned his horses north toward town. The wind blew their tails sideways as they trotted away, and I thought I had seen the last of Dunbar.
I was wrong.
At about ten the next morning, with the wind blowing as before, motion in the ranch yard caught my attention. I looked out the bunkhouse window to see Prentice Wardell hurrying to the barn with the two silent sisters. He had each one by the upper arm, and they showed no resistance. As the three of them disappeared into the barn, Dunbar rode into the yard.
Ah-ha, I thought. The boss has been keeping a lookout.
Dunbar had both of his horses. He rode up to the hitching rail in front of the bunkhouse and dismounted. As he tied the horses, I saw that the buckskin had a riding saddle instead of the usual packsaddle.
I opened the door and stepped out.
Dunbar said, “I thought I saw Wardell headed for the barn with the two girls.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“That might make things more difficult.” He took off his coat, hung it on the saddle horn, and settled his black hat on his head. He was wearing a gray flannel shirt and a charcoal-colored wool vest, buttoned snug. His dark-handled revolver hung in plain view.
He walked across the ranch yard, and I followed at a distance of ten paces. Fifty feet from the barn, he stopped. The doors to the loft were open, and Prentice Wardell stepped into view. Like Dunbar, he was not wearing a coat and had a pistol at his side. Next to him stood Ophelia, the older of the two sisters, with a rope around her neck. The rope led up to the pulley and back into the barn.
Dunbar spoke loud and clear into the wind. “I’ve come for the girls, Wardell.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. Take them God knows where and do God knows what with them.”
“Your righteousness is noteworthy, but you should give it up. I’m taking these girls to town.”
“You are not. If you don’t turn around and leave, I’m pushing this one off the ledge.” Wardell put his hand behind Ophelia’s back, and the girl trembled.
“The law’s going to get you one way or the other. Causing a girl’s death would not be—”
“I said leave.”
“I’m taking these girls, and the law will be coming for you. You’ve kept these girls against their will, and you’ve done things that no judge or jury will tolerate.”
Even with a small audience, the public nature of the accusation could be felt. It hung and spread in the ranch yard like a chill.
Wardell’s face was bunched in anger, and his voice pierced the air. “I hate you!” he shrieked, as he pulled his pistol and fired.
Dunbar drew his gun in a smooth motion as the bullet whistled past him and spat into the ground at my left. Raising and aiming with the hammer cocked, Dunbar fired.
Prentice Wardell dropped his pistol and pitched forward. He fell headlong, like the bad angels who were cast out of heaven in the great poem, and he landed with a thud in the dust.
The story ran through town in no time. Dunbar got the girls settled into the Eureka Hotel. Finding myself without a job or a place to stay, I took up there as well. Within a few days I was helping in the kitchen, and I heard all the gossip.
What a terrible thing it was for a man to take girls like that and use them. And his wife knew all about it, even abetted him. Now she was gone, and she had taken all the money from the bank. George Clubb was gone as well, and as far as anyone knew, he had taken up with Mrs. Wardell.
Unkindest of all was what the townspeople said about the two sisters. How could those girls stay there, the people said, unless they wanted to? They could have walked away at any time. Little Indians.
The girls themselves caught wind of the comments, of course. They had come out of their room and were working for the hotel, sweeping and cleaning as before, as they waited for someone to come for them from New Mexico Territory.
One day as I served them dinner when no one else was in the kitchen, I told them I was sorry for everything that had happened to them.
Ophelia said, “We’re through the worst of it, but we’ve heard what people say. They can’t know what it’s like. It makes no sense to someone who hasn’t lived in a situation like that. He had a strange power over us, a bond that we couldn’t dare to break. At the same time that he forced us to be loyal, he held us in fear. People say we could have left, but it seemed impossible. Too big. There was the fear of what he would do if he caught us. And there was the fear of what people would think, that they wouldn’t believe what we said, or that they would look at us as if it was our fault. As it turned out, we were right.”
“I’m sorry they’ve said all those unkind things,” I offered.
The girls looked at each other, and Ophelia said, “They just don’t know what it’s like. They don’t want to believe that we couldn’t leave on our own. Or maybe they just don’t want to think about what it was like to live that way. The only person who listened and believed us was Mr. Dunbar.”
“I believe you, too. But credit goes to him. And he has sent word to New Mexico Territory. You told him your last name, didn’t you?”
“Yes. It’s Darling.”
“How nice,” I said. “And did you come from Albuquerque?”
“No,” said Ophelia. “We lived in a small town named Polvadera. We’ll know it when we go back.”
John D. Nesbitt lives in the plains country of Wyoming, where he writes western, contemporary, mystery, and retro/noir fiction as well as nonfiction and poetry. His recent books include Dark Prairie, Death in Cantera, and Destiny at Dry Camp, frontier mysteries with Five Star.