They were hired to go up to the summer range and watch over Mr. Flaver’s herd of shorthorn cattle for the season and then bring them down to the valley before the snow fell.
“You boys think you can handle that?” Mr. Flaver asked over whiskey at the Two Queens there in Askin.
“We’ve been watching over cattle a lot,” Frank said. “Rode all the trails before them Kansas grangers put the kibosh to the herds and starting putting up bob wire.”
“You boys in the war too?”
“Was, ain’t no more,” Jesse said. “I reckon you heard that, though.”
“I reckon I did, seeing’s how it’s been over ten years. What you boys been doing in the meantime?”
“Knocking around, mostly,” Frank said.
“Knocking around,” Mr. Flaver said, as if he didn’t see that as much of an accomplishment. But he needed two men to ride up into high country and take over from the two that was there. Or, make that one. Blevins had come down two days ago asking for his pay.
“I’m sick,” he said.
“Sick of what?” Mr. Flaver asked.
“Sick of them goddamn stinking cattle and sick of that one-eyed son of a bitch Morrisey. He can’t cook worth a damn and I sure can’t neither, nor will I. So let me collect what I’m owed for the past month and good luck to you.”
“Well, that is a hell of a piece of news,” Mr. Flaver said, getting out his checkbook and scratching a month’s pay on it with a nib pen he dipped into ink; then he tore it out of the book, handed it over, and said, “I sure hope you ain’t lookin’ for no work ’round Askin no more, ’cause nobody’s gone hire a quitter.”
“That’s fine, they ain’t, ’cause I’m quittin’ this country and headed for the gold strikes up in Colorado. Georgette Mims is going with me.”
“You mean that crib whore works out behind Winegrove’s lumberyard?”
“I reckon you met her, then?”
“I reckon I heard of her. She’s diddled ever’thing that walks or talks, you included, must be.”
“Well, she’s officially out of the whore business. We’re going to get married.”
“Sounds like you two will make the perfect couple. Don’t let that door hit you in the pockets.”
So that was it and Mr. Flaver needed a hand to hire to go on up to the summer meadow and help out Morrisey, the leftover man. He ran into Frank and Jesse there in the saloon and judged they looked like hands the way they were dressed in faded blue shirts with large kerchiefs draped around their necks, dungarees rolled halfway up the shafts of the worn boots, and those Stetsons that had seen better days notched back off their white foreheads and weathered faces.
They were as lean and hard as fence posts but stood relaxed with one foot resting on the rail and elbows propped on the bar slavering over a nice cold beer and a shot of good whiskey before them.
Jesse smoked a cigarette and Frank stared up at a mounted buffalo head over the bar and muttered, “Big son of a bitch, ain’t it?”
Frank looked, and said, “Yeah. Wonder who got that and where they got it at. Ain’t seen a buffalo anywhere in Texas no longer or nowhere else for that matter I know of.”
“Me either,” Jesse said, lifting his beer and swallowing half down, then swiping his long sable mustaches with thumb and forefinger to get the beer foam out. “I knew an old boy in the war claimed he hunted buffalo with Custer in Kansas. Said that son of a bitch missed and shot his own horse out from under him, and this was in Kiowa country, I do believe.”
“Jesus, he was that bad a shot, huh?”
“I reckon. Must have surprised the shit out of that buffalo.”
“His horse too, I reckon,” said Jesse.
They both laughed at that.
They were just getting around to that other thing cowboys talk about, women, when Mr. Flaver approached them.
“Stand you boys a drink?”
“I won’t stop you,” Jesse said.
“I won’t neither,” said Frank.
Mr. Flaver circled a forefinger in the air and the barman brought over a bottle.
“Whyn’t we walk this over to a table,” Mr. Flaver said.
“Sounds like a capital idea,” Frank said and the three took the bottle and found an empty table and propped themselves into chairs. Flaver poured, then they drank, then he refilled each of their glasses.
“I was wondering if either of you is looking for a job maybe?”
Frank looked at Jesse and Jesse looked back. Frank usually did most of the talking because Jesse didn’t care much for discussing business of any kind. He’d talk you to death if it was talking horses, dogs he’d owned, which was the best of the cattle trails he and Frank had ridden—Jesse was partial to the Goodnight-Loving while Frank thought the Sedalia-Baxter Springs was the better, but that was only because he met a strawberry blonde chippie who’d taken his virginity in Baxter Springs, and a man’s first time is something not easily forgot or let go of.
But neither Frank nor Jesse missed too much about trailing them damn mossy horns that would hook, or stampede, in the middle of the night, and you go racing after them on the deck of a hurricane pony praying to the Lord it don’t step in some damn gopher hole and pitch you headlong just to be stamped into ground meat by those hooves.
A cattle drive was, in fact, how Frank and Jesse first met, going up the Western trail.
Frank and Jesse had both fought in the War Between the States: Frank for the Union, and Jesse for the Confederacy. But once the war was over, they put it away because a man just can’t keep fighting a war forever is the way they both looked at it and that’s what struck a chord of friendship between them. They were just young men who were lucky enough to survive getting shot or bayoneted and came home with all their limbs attached.
They’d both taken up droving for the time being. It was an adventure—kinda like the war, only not so terrible.
And besides, they got to do it from the back of a horse and they both admired and appreciated that species of animal a great deal.
“The onliest thing can match a good horse for beauty is a woman,” Frank often opined around the fire or in a saloon.
“Except if the woman is ugly like some I seen,” Jesse offered.
“Listen to me, old son,” Frank would as likely say. “You turn out all the lights and they’re as beautiful as you like them to be.”
“True enough.”
“A woman and a horse has a lot in common,” Frank would say.
“And you can ride both.”
“True too.”
“And you can talk sweet to ’em and they’ll listen.”
“Well, you can’t marry ’em.”
“I know a feller who tried—up in Liberal, Kansas, once. Rode straight into the justice of the peace’s office and said he loved his horse so much he wanted to marry it, official.”
“Do tell.”
“That justice got down and looked and said, ‘Well, you can’t marry this damn horse, it’s a gelding.’ ”
Frank chuckled at that, but another hand sitting around the fire that night listening—a dull boy who’d once been kicked in the head by a cow he was milking—leaned in and said, “A geldin’, why gol-dern. Dint he think a mare would be better?”
They all laughed so hard coffee ran out of their noses.
“So, what is it you’re hirin’ for?” Jesse asked the man wearing a sugarloaf hat. He looked like he had money but he talked simple.
“Need me a man to go up to the high pastures and help my other man watch a herd of cattle I got up there, then bring ’em down end of autumn, before it snows and traps ’em up there. Either you boys interested?”
“What’s it pay?” Frank said.
“What’s a feller expect to do, just watch over ’em?” Jesse asked.
“Who’s your other man you got up there now?”
“How come just one?”
“One what?” the man said.
“One man up there now, seeing’s you’re needing another’n?”
So Mr. Flaver explained about the hand that quit and the one who didn’t and poured them another shot. He liked these boys. They seemed just dumb enough to babysit cows.
“I don’t know,” Frank said. “Me and Jesse here is saddle pards. Been together now . . . how long’s it been, Jesse?”
“Almost seven years.”
“Why hell, you’re practically married sounds like,” Mr. Flaver said, attempting humor. Jesse and Frank looked at him without smiling.
“Some might think that an insult, mister,” Frank said.
“Oh, I didn’t mean nothing by it, was just trying to . . .”
“No, sir,” Jesse said. “We work as a team, me and Frank does. You ever rope and heel a cow, Mr. Flaver?”
“Sure, plenty of times when I was your age. Grew up ranching. My daddy was a rancher who had to fight the Comanche and the Apaches and Tonks, too.”
That kind of impressed Frank and Jesse, but they didn’t know why. Maybe it was the good liquor they were nipping sitting there with a man wearing a sugarloaf hat.
“I don’t knows as I could afford to keep three men up there,” Mr. Flaver said, rubbing the knob of his chin.
“Well, then,” Frank said. “I reckon we thank ye kindly for this fine whiskey and the job offer, but here’s the deal: Jesse and me weren’t exactly looking for jobs. We were just passing through. Thinking of going on down to ol’ Mexico and find us a couple of plump señoritas till winter passes.”
“Why, winter is still a time off,” said Mr. Flaver. “It’s a long time to lay around and do nothing.”
“True enough,” Jesse said. “But we won’t exactly be doing nothing, will we, Frank?”
Frank waggled his head.
“Not if’n we find them señoritas, we won’t.”
Jesse reached for the bottle, two thirds empty now, and Mr. Flaver watched him with eyes that were miserly now that it looked like he wasn’t going to hire either one of these rounders. Lots of the men of Askin had fled for the gold strikes in Colorado and California, so help was hard to come by, least anybody who could be trusted to watch cattle and bring ’em down before winter took hold.
“All right then,” Mr. Flaver said, “you boys are holding all the cards and I got spit. Sign a contract to stay and bring my beeves down and don’t lose too many in the doing and I’ll pay you one hundred sound dollars each when you get back here.”
“Hundred and fifty,” Frank said.
“Why don’t I just sign over my place and wed you my daughter in the doing?” Mr. Flaver said sarcastically. “I look rich to you?”
“You don’t look none too poor,” Jesse said. “Does he to you, Frank?”
“Not wearing that fancy hat, he don’t.”
“One twenty-five and that’s as high as I’ll go. I’d as soon let them cattle freeze for the outcome of my profit will be the same I pay you two waddies three hundred dollars just to sit up there and eat beans and cornbread and laze around.”
Frank looked at Jesse and Jesse nodded slow.
“Looks like you hired two rootin’-tootin’ sons-a-bitches,” Frank said with a grin. Now how ’bout we celebrate with another bottle.”
“And we’ll need a small advance,” Jesse said.
“For what?”
“Well, it’s gone be at least three months up there in those mountains with nothing but our hand. So me and Frank would like to get in one last poke before we go, assuming you’ll want us to leave tomorrow?”
Mr. Flaver could not but shake his head. But on the other hand, he had been young once himself and knew what it was like. Now, he had a young wife, about half his age, and as much as he liked diddling, she about wore him to a nubbin after the first year by wanting it almost every night. She didn’t seem to understand that men’s plumbing was different than a woman’s and that the older a man got, the more the old faucet got creaky. He envied those boys their youth. He’d have given everything to be one of them again.
He pulled out his wallet and slapped twenty dollars on the table.
Jesse and Frank looked at it, then at each other, then at Mr. Flaver.
“That sure won’t buy much in the flesh department,” Frank said.
“Puncher, in this town that will buy you all the pussy there is twice around. We got but one crib whore left on account of the preachers and married women prodding the town marshal to run them off. Between them and these waddies running off to the gold fields and needing the company and somebody to cook and clean and wash their clothes, the flesh pot has gotten mighty slim. And if you don’t hurry, even she might be gone. You’ll have to take turns, of course, but she’s a good ol’ gal and will do right by you. Name’s Alice Shadetree and you’ll locate her just east of the town limits living in a Sibley tent some soldier gave her in trade. Can’t miss it. Have fun and come ’round to the café seven sharp in the morning and I’ll meet you there.”
“This other man you got up there,” Jesse said. “What’s he gone be doing if me and Frank go to tend the cattle?”
“He’s a cook and all-around hand. Do whatever you ask him to. Real nice fellow. Just got one arm, but a worker nonetheless. Sort of felt sorry for him. He’s my wife’s uncle. Charlie Morrisey’s his name.”
“He does the cooking and cleaning around camp?” Frank said.
Mr. Flaver nodded.
“You boys stumbled across a real sweet deal, damned if you didn’t. See you first light then.”
Mr. Flaver watched them mount their horses tied off at the hitch post—a dun and a bay with double rig saddles, Winchesters in the boots. They rode easy, confident, talking to each other. He figured they were discussing who’d get first crack at Alice Shadetree. And he wasn’t lying about her sexual skills or appetite. For a fifty-year-old, she screwed like her back had no bone.
Then he smiled and headed home, already thinking that with all that talk and remembering his youth, he might just take a bath, then haul Minerva up to the bedroom. It had been two months and she’d been after him and after him. Well, tonight she wouldn’t have to.
He’d be after her.
The next morning, Mr. Flaver was out front of the café sitting high in the saddle, a fancy English thing, and holding the lead rope of a big jack mule loaded with supplies.
He could see Frank and Jesse’d been drawn and quartered by Alice Shadetree by their tired looks when they rode up.
“See you boys had a good go-round or two with Alice,” he said gleefully.
Frank grunted. Jesse did the same.
“You didn’t mention she was somebody’s grandma,” Jesse said.
“Maybe great-grandma,” Frank said.
“Well, did you or didn’t you. My money is on you did.”
“It ain’t nobody’s business,” Frank said. “Let’s get going.”
They rode behind Mr. Flaver with heads that felt like rocks and feeling a might uncomfortable in the saddle after their adventure with Alice Shadetree. They couldn’t hardly stand to think about it, but that is all they did. That and the whiskey they consumed. But they had to admit, too, that despite Alice being long in the tooth, she had an amazing body and an amazing way of using it, so after one or two bottles of ol’ blabbermouth, they didn’t much care her age or looks in the throes of passion. In addition to which she played a concertina and danced for them and wore red pantaloons in the doing.
Up all night and had to force themselves to go and meet Mr. Flaver when they’d much preferred sleep.
“What’d you think of that lady?” Jesse said quietly to Frank as they rode along, ever climbing into the higher elevation of the mountains that lay directly ahead.
“How do you mean, what did I think of her?” Frank said.
“I mean what’d you think of her?”
“Well, hell, I don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I have to spell it out to you?”
“I reckon maybe that would help.”
“I mean, did you feel bad diddling her seeing as how old she was?”
“No, not overly much, not after I got some liquor in me and she stopped dancing around and playing that damn squeeze box and turned out the lights.”
Jesse stayed silent.
“Why, what’d you think of her?”
“Same, I reckon.”
They both rode along silent for a time, then Frank said after he rolled a shuck and started to smoke it, “I admit it was kinda strange all three of us in the bed together. I never done nothing like that before.”
“You ain’t?”
“No. You have?”
“No.”
“Bullshit. I know you did by the way you said you didn’t.”
“You couldn’t hardly calm her down, could you?”
Frank shook his head, the cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth. They got into the trees and could smell the vanilla, the smell of the pines, and the cooler air was welcome from what it was down in Askin.
“It was damn near a rodeo,” he said, “and here I thought when she first answered the door there wasn’t no way she could . . . would. Hell, you know.”
“There you go again asking me to read your mind when all it is, is but a single page scribbled with nonsense. Would what?”
“I thought at first it was somebody’s mama and the daughter was inside. So when we found out that she was her, I thought was we to go ahead with it, we’d kill her first try and it scared me some, I do admit.”
“You mean when you went to do it to her?”
“Yes. You?”
“Maybe, somewhat. That’s why I let you go first. Figured she died, I wouldn’t have to bother.”
“I bet you was surprised when she didn’t.”
“I bet you was too. Figured anybody’d kill her off diddling her, it would’ve been you.”
“Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. I mean not to kill her, but just in the course of action, you know.”
They stopped for lunch by a gurgling stream and drank of its water and it was cold and sweet. They ate cheese and liverwurst sandwiches with slices of onions.
“My Minerva made these,” Mr. Flaver said. “She knows I like a good liverwurst sandwich, but says it makes my breath bad.”
Jesse and Frank sniffed them but were too hungry to not eat and they proved to taste better than they smelled, but soon as they devoured them, they lay back in the grass with their hats over their faces and fell fast asleep, exhausted and wishing now they hadn’t agreed to the job. For jobs, as they’d come to learn, required commitment to another and they weren’t the committing kind, so much having been ruined on the subject from being in the war and often under command of fools.
They had often discussed getting their own spread and being their own bosses, but that required money for a down payment and the only way that could happen was to work for someone and save their earnings.
Robbing banks and stages and trains was an option, but the very idea of getting locked up in a jail or prison put them off such notions. Once, while discussing this, Jesse said, “What do you suppose them fellows that get locked up for a long time do for the lack of female companionship?”
“You don’t want to know,” Frank answered.
“Oh.” Suddenly it dawned on Jesse.
Then there was the aspect of possibly getting shot by lawmen or irate townsmen, or worse, bespectacled bank clerks. No, they agreed they weren’t ready for the owlhoot trail.
Seemed like they’d hardly closed their eyes before Mr. Flaver shook them awake, saying, “We best get going. We’re lucky we’ll make the pasture before dark. Some of this trail is tricky in the dark. Once saw a man ride his cayuse right of the edge a little farther up. I guess he had a hell of a ride for about five, six seconds before the rocks ended his nonsense.”
He tapped heels into his horse’s flank and tugged the lead rope on the pack mule.
“Wonder if we did the right thing taking this job?” Jesse uttered so that Mr. Flaver couldn’t hear them.
Frank just shrugged his shoulders, letting his horse follow along as he fished out his makings and rolled himself a shuck.
“It is kinda pretty up here,” he said after exhaling twin streams of smoke through his nostrils.
They rode along the rest of the day at a slow steady climb, and as the sun sank low beyond the trees, they came out of the forest into a valley of grass like a green bowl full of grazing cattle.
Off in the near distance stood an old log and chink cabin with a stone chimney and shake roof and a cottonwood corral. A lean-to for horses butted on one end of the cabin. There stood an old gray mule the color of unwashed linen watching them approach. It whickered at their horses and the pack mule whickered back.
“Must be old lovers,” Jesse said, ever the wit.
“Must be,” Frank agreed.
“Air up here’s a might thin, ain’t it?”
“You just ain’t used to air ain’t in a saloon or cathouse is all.”
“I reckon.”
As they rode up to the cabin, an older man with hair white and scattered as a pullet’s feathers stepped out of the cabin door, a thumb hooked in one gallus, raising it over his shoulder while the other hung loose. He had a long face with muttonchops that were just shy of a beard, and a squint eye. The way he stood, he looked like a mis-struck nail.
“That’s my other man, Charlie Morrisey, the one I’d have preferred to quit if one was going to. But, of course, God would not be so kind.”
“Hidey,” Morrisey said as they rode up. “I guess you know Bob done quit.”
“I know,” Mr. Flaver said, arching his back from the ride.
The hand looked Frank and Jesse over as they dismounted, looked them over with his only eye.
“Who’re these fellas?” he asked Mr. Flaver.
“They’ll be here the summer, help bring the herd down come fall.”
“Where’s that leave me, Mr. Flaver?”
“You’ll do the cooking and cleaning and whatever else these boys need you to do.”
“Well, now, yes, sir, Mr. Flaver. I half thought you was going to let me go.”
“Normally, I only keep two men for the herd, but I’ll make an exception this time. You help these men unpack the mule, and get settled in.”
They set about unloading supplies and putting them in the cabin with everybody taking notice of the demijohn of whiskey that was packed. And, among the packed supplies, was a fair-sized two-man tent.
Mr. Flaver walked out a ways and looked off toward his grazing herd, took off his hat, and swiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve. It pleased him to look at his holdings.
When they’d finished the unloading and turned the animals out into the corral, Mr. Flaver had Morrisey cook up some grub. He would stay the night, then head back down in the morning, he said.
The grub was hellacious—some sort of stew—but the biscuits were very good, and afterwards, Morrisey fished for a compliment on his cooking but got none.
Mr. Flaver took one of the two chairs outside and set on it, letting the nightshade come down around him, and Morrisey set with him on the other chair.
Jesse and Frank went for a walk, saying they’d like to get the lay of things but really just to talk about their situation.
“I don’t know about you,” Jesse said. “But that old boy seems like something escaped from a madhouse or something the way he watches everything out of that eye.”
“Let’s not judge too quick,” Frank said. “After all, we’re stuck with him for at least two months. It ain’t that long, then we’ll run these beeves down and collect our wages and be on our way.”
“Well, least we got a little whiskey and tobacco and a deck of playing cards to keep us from getting bored.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Mr. Flaver spent the night and was gone in the morning, leaving the three men to watch over things.
“Usually the other man rides out and camps, overlooking the herd,” One-eye said, a nickname they’d already tagged him with.
“And the other’n?” Jesse said.
“Stays here, cooks, brings you’ns out grub.”
“We’ll that sounds fine with us,” Jesse said. “Don’t it, Frank?”
“I reckon.”
“That’s what the tent’s for, you’ns to live in.”
“Why is it us has to live in a tent when there is a roof and walls here. Why ain’t it you?”
One-eye shrugged, said, “I’m the senior man is why.”
Frank said, “To hell with it, Jesse and me will go. Fix us up some grub to last us a day or two till you bring us more. And we’ll take half that whiskey too.”
So it was agreed that Frank and Jesse would ride out to watch over the herd from wolves and possible rustlers.
They were saddling up when Morrisey came out, and said, “You boys ever shoot anybody?”
“Not yet, but there’s always a chance,” Frank said sarcastically, his meaning obvious.
“They’s rustlers come ’round sometimes and me and Bob had to run them off with gunplay. I think Bob might’ve nicked one on account we found a blood trail.”
Neither of them said a thing but rode off on toward the grazing ground and set up the tent when they got there, then set out front and smoked and looked on at the grazing herd of shorthorns, what some called baldies.
“Tell the truth,” Jesse said as they smoked, “I’d just as soon live out here than in that stinking cabin with that old coot.”
“You say that now but if it comes bad rain and wind and lightning, you might wished you was back in that cabin, stink or not.”
They flipped a coin to see who would ride out and check on the herd just to satisfy their duties. Frank lost the toss.
“I’ll be back in the mornin’ and we’ll swap turns,” he said.
And thus it was and thus the first month of their work began.
Mr. Flaver came up with more supplies at the first of the next month and didn’t say too much, glad that the men had stuck and threw his bedroll down on the spare cot and went straight to sleep.
He’d brought more coffee and another demijohn of whiskey as well as other necessaries.
And thus it went until near the end of September, at the end of which, they planned on bringing down the herd because the weather had turned cold and the skies threatening.
“We’ll be shed of this place soon,” Jesse said as they huddled in their coats against a stiff wind howling up through the valley, stiff enough to threaten to collapse the tent.
“I am ready to say so long to this place and go find us another, hopefully more interesting.”
“One with young whores, too, I hope,” Frank said. “Not like that granny down in Askin.”
So they got started on a conversation about whores they’d known and which was best and which worse and in what towns they’d known them.
“You reckon she is yet alive?” Jesse asked.
“I reckon she could be. That old gal had some grist to her. Why, you thinking of going to see her again we get down?”
“Hell, no.”
Frank laughed, said, “Pass on that bottle.” And: “Goddamn, it’s cold, ain’t it?”
All night the wind hammered the sides of the tent, the canvas popping so loud they could barely sleep for it and the cold. In the morning, they awoke to a foot of snow on the ground and more falling fast.
“You best get out here,” Frank called to Jesse, who had been having ragged dreams about old whores.
Jesse climbed out and stood looking at the wonderland.
“Well this is a hell of a note,” he said.
“We waited too long.”
“Hell, no. Let’s ride back to the cabin and get that old bastard and have him help us round up that herd and get them down.”
They couldn’t even see half the herd for the whiteness and maybe some of them had climbed up into the tree line.
The old man was snoring and they shook him from his blankets.
“Get up!” Frank ordered.
“What? What is it?”
“It’s snowing and it don’t look like it’s going to quit neither. We got to get Flaver’s cows down.”
The old man rose stiffly and went to the door in his long handles and looked out. Scratching his rear, said, “You ain’t lying.”
“Get dressed.”
“Fer what?”
“Round up the herd.”
He cackled, and said, “Shit, I ain’t going out in that.”
“We do it now or we don’t get ’em down,” Jesse said.
“Not my concern.”
Frank grabbed him up, and said. “You damn well better make it yours.”
Morrisey grabbed at Frank’s wrist with his hand, which was more like a claw with long uncut horny fingernails.
“No, sir. I done quit. I’m staying put.”
“What do you mean, you quit? How’d you quit?”
“I just quit, is all. Can’t a man just quit something? That’s what I did. Quit.”
Frank released his grip on the old man’s throat and turned to Jesse.
“I guess it’s up to us to get that herd down.”
Jesse glared venomous at the old bastard.
“You tell Mr. Flaver you quit?”
“I will, come the spring when I go down.”
They turned and went out and mounted their horses, their saddles already covered with three inches of snow. With the heavy wind-driven snow, it was hard to see even as far at the outhouse.
“I don’t see how we’re going to accomplish anything in this,” Jesse said.
“We got to try.”
“We could get lost easily.”
Frank didn’t answer but turned his horse back to the camp with Jesse following.
The storm’s fury increased, seeming to double in intensity, and they barely found their way back to the tent.
“They’s no way we can go on till it slacks up, Frank.”
Frank solemnly agreed. They dismounted, removed their saddles, ground-reined the horses, and climbed inside the tent, grateful to be in out of the raw cold wind.
“Damn it to hell,” Frank said inside his blankets. “Damn it all to hell.”
All day and night the storm raged and finally buckled the tent with wind and snow buildup and they had to burrow their way out during some night hour, shivering and cussing their fate.
In the outer darkness, the sky was red and the world below was glowing white, and it seemed like they were standing in a beautiful nightmare of something they didn’t want to be part of.
The horses were gone. They’d broken free and fled. But for all its fury, the storm had then abated and left the world in silence but for Frank and Jesse’s cussing. There was only one thing to be done—trudge back to the cabin in snow to their knees.
By the time they arrived, they were nearly frozen and could feel neither feet nor fingers. They barged in through the door and stood as close to the wood burner as possible.
The old man was sitting on the side of his bunk as if expecting them.
“Tried to tell you boys,” he said. Rising, he went and prepared a coffee pot he’d earlier melted snow in, tossed in some Arbuckle, and set it on one of the stove’s plates to cook.
“You’ns hungry?”
They simply shivered and warmed their hands until they could feel their fingers and their feet by removing their boots and wet socks and holding their feet against the stove’s heat.
The old man shrugged when they didn’t say anything and set about cutting pieces of a smoked ham and opening a can of beans. He prepared three plates and placed them on the small table, which had just two chairs.
“There it is, when you’re ready,” he said and laid down in his cot again and covered up with blankets and went to sleep.
A short time later Frank and Jesse, exhausted by the trek from tent to cabin, flipped for the leftover cot. Jesse won and laid down and was stone asleep in minutes. Frank took the floor and followed suit.
Morning came too fast and hard. Both of them awakened to the sense they were crawling out of a grave.
When they checked, the snow was halfway up the side of the cabin and they had difficulty pushing the door open.
“Son of a bitch,” Frank said.
“It’s the way of the mountains,” the old man said from his perch at the table. He was nursing a cup of coffee laced with near the last of the whiskey.
“We’re screwed royally,” Jesse said.
“True enough,” the old man agreed. “Might as well set and eat you something and get some of that coffee.”
As much as they hated to admit it, the old man was right. There wasn’t a damn thing they could do. They’d become trapped.
The days went by with little change. Sometimes it snowed and added to what was on the earth, and some days it was sunny and blindingly bright. They worked hard to shovel a path to the privy. A small comfort to be sure.
“Wonder where it is our horses got off to?” Jesse said.
“Let’s hope they found refuge,” Frank said. “I hate to think of Nel getting froze to death. She was a real good horse.”
“I know it,” Jesse said.
All the while, the old man listened and shuffled about the cabin and tinkered with a clock that didn’t work and they asked him what he cared about time and he said he didn’t, that it was just something to do. They played stud poker for matchsticks and the old man won almost every hand and cackled like a laying hen.
They took turns watching out the window at the ever-falling snow, which alternated with sunshine and the purest blue sky, and off in the distance, they could see the dark line of trees but that was all. Just white and blue and blackness became the color of their collective world.
Soon enough they grew short on food and the stockpile of chopped wood for the stove that lay outside the cabin grew dangerously low. The old man produced a pair of snowshoes from under his cot.
“One of you is any good, you can put these on your feet and set forth to see if you can kill somethin’ to eat.”
Frank and Jesse were weary of the entrapment, knowing they wouldn’t be freed from their log and chink jail until spring.
They talked it over outside the cabin, bundled in coats with scarves tied around their ears. They were sick of the smell of the old man, his watching them and cackling, his loud snores.
The fresh air, even frozen, smelled good and they breathed it in deeply.
“Tell you what,” Jesse said. “I ever get off this mountain, I’m going back to Texas where it don’t ever snow—that part.”
“I’m of a mind to go with you,” Frank said.
“I do believe that old man is becoming crazy.”
“Crazier, you mean.”
“Well, you’re the better shot,” Jessie said. “You take the rifle and hunt us something.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The old man and Jesse watched Frank trudge off across the snow, rifle in hand, walking awkwardly with the snowshoes until he disappeared over a ridge; then they went back into the house.
“Poker?” the old man said.
“Why not.”
They played for hours on end until the light began to dim and Jesse stood away from the table, not for the first time, and went to the door and looked out into the gloaming and sure enough he saw a figure darkly coming toward the house.
“He’s carrying something,” he said over his shoulder.
The old man came forth and stood in the doorway, and said, “I don’t see nothin’, my eye ain’t that good. I hope it’s more’n beans.”
“Beans?”
The old man hocked and spat into the snow that, on the wind side, reached near to the roof. Every passing day, Jesse was more sure the old man was losing what little mind he had. Beans.
Jesse waited until Frank reached the pathway they’d shoveled, then dropped what was in his hand.
“I hope you can cook a badger better’n you can a beefsteak, Morrisey,” he said.
The old man nodded, spat again, went in and got his butcher knife, and came out again while Frank took off his snowshoes and entered the house and set in front of the stove’s fire.
He was shivering and his hands were blue. Jesse poured him a cup of Arbuckle, weakened some because they were running low on coffee like everything else, and handed it to him.
“You got any whiskey you can add to this?”
“The old man drank the last drop while I was out in the privy; otherwise, I’d have you some.”
“That badger was the only living thing I seen and I must have hiked five miles, ten to and fro. It’s like nothing’s living no more, all this snow set in.”
“Well a badger beats a raw potato, that’s for sure.”
“You think he can make it eatable?” Frank said glancing over his shoulder at the door.
“I don’t know. How good can a body cook a tasty badger?”
“Damned if I have any idea.”
That night they ate a rank badger stew with the last of the winter potatoes and the last of the onions tossed in, lots of salt and pepper. They ate with trepidation at first, all but the old man, who dug in like it was a Delmonico steak, and soon enough their hunger overrode their wariness and they, too, were shoveling it down.
Later that night the cramps got them and they rushed outside to relieve their bowels and puke and straggle back inside. But the old man slept solidly, as if immune to whatever it was that had doubled Frank and Jesse into misery.
Whatever had sickened them passed within a few days but left them weak and lethargic as children. More snow fell during the night, carried by a raging wind that howled along the eaves.
The next morning, they found the old man’s mule dead in the corral, glazed over with ice, its neck and head stretched forth, its large yellow teeth bared as if it had fought the storm with all it had only to lose the battle.
“Well, least we got something to eat besides badger stew, of which we have none anyway,” the old man said without sentiment.
He spent the better part of the day butchering the animal with a hand axe and knife, tossing its parts up on the roof with the help of Frank and Jesse, in order that wolves wouldn’t come along and steal it.
And for a few weeks, as long as the mule lasted, at least they contented themselves with food. But the fuel was low and they had to start tearing down the lean-to for the boards and the corral for the wood to burn.
“I wonder if Mr. Flaver even cares about us or his goddamn cattle?” Jesse said.
“I think he’s no way of getting through with this snow,” the old man said.
They ran out of coffee, then flour to make any sort of biscuits. They sucked marrow from the bones of the mule and dreamt of things no longer available, with women being lowest on that list, for a man’s hunger overrides everything.
They began to quarrel a good deal, usually provoked by the old man’s grousing, saying if they hadn’t come and he’d gotten trapped, he’d have had plenty to tide him over, but with three mouths there wasn’t enough. Saying they’d surely all end up dead by the time spring caused the snow to melt.
They took umbrage at his accusations, and even between Frank and Jesse, they quarreled over the least little thing, for they felt hemmed in, cooped up, worse than a prison or jail.
They had little to occupy their lives but quarrel and when the last of the mule—neck flesh and bones—came to bear, their dark mood only got worse, their quarreling more until there seemed no peace.
The old man slept soundly in his cot more often than just at night. Frank and Jesse took turns sleeping in the spare cot, the other on the cold floor.
Finally, the wood from the shed and corral was burned up, so Frank and Jesse set forth to the nearest trees to see could they fell some wood. It was a hard go with Jesse using the snowshoes and Frank trudging and struggling through the near waist-deep snow.
By the time they reached the tree line, it was nearly dark but the moon was full and they could see plainly enough to pick an aspen and hacked away at it until it crashed earthward, then chopped off limbs to make a fire and lay down in their blankets beside it, exhausted and addle-brained.
Lying there with the fire between them, Jesse said, “What we gone do, Frank?”
“About what?”
“About this situation.”
“I reckon I wished I knew. Horses gone, mule et, no other food. I reckon we’ve hit near to the end of the trail, partner.”
There was silence for a time, but for the crackling of the firewood.
“I hear freezing to death isn’t so bad,” Jesse said. “They say you just lay down and go to sleep.”
“Who says? Surely not them who have done it.”
“Would you take your own life, Frank? Put a bullet in your brain, if you had to?”
“I reckon I won’t know until that time comes.”
“Well, it surely seems to be coming and soon.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder. We got to haul as much of this tree back down as we can manage.”
“Okay, then.”
Finally, they managed a few hours of fitful sleep but it did not feel like rest whatsoever. And, in the morning, they chopped the tree into manageable pieces they could get a rope around and pull.
After more hours of struggle, they reached the cabin again, dropped the wood as it was, and went with frozen limbs into the cabin.
The old man was sitting there in a chair with a shotgun pointed at them.
“What the hell are you about?” Frank said.
“Running low on victuals,” the old man said. “Got me to thinking what was I gone to eat, and it come to me. You two fellers are somewhat rawboned and not much fat, but I figure together you’ll get me through the winter.”
They didn’t have to say anything to each other. Frank and Jesse had been partners for too many years to not know what the other one might do in a desperate situation.
Together they rushed the old man and his scattergun boomed loud enough that a deaf man could have heard it.
The shot caught Frank in the middle and carried him off his feet and slammed him down on his back. A few of the pellets caught Jesse, but not enough to slow him down. He yanked the shotgun free from the old man and used it like a club to beat him until he no longer moved or spoke, his skull broken open like a melon hit by a sledge.
Jesse was blindly incensed and might have kept clubbing the old man had he not heard Frank moan. He dropped the shotgun and went to his partner’s aid.
The coat Frank was wearing was already soaked through with blood, and worse when Jesse opened it and saw the grievous wounds.
Jesse lifted him with unknown strength—for Frank was the larger man—and carried him to the bunk and laid him gently upon it. Their eyes met and Frank’s were asking questions Jesse had no answers for.
Jesse found a clean shirt among his things and used it as a bandage to try and stanch the blood, but almost as quickly it too became soaked.
“I’m dying . . .” Frank uttered. “Killed by a goddamn crazy man . . .”
“You ain’t dying. Stop that sort of shit. I’m gonna save you like I did a lot of them soldier boys in the war. I never told you but I was a surgeon’s assistant. Shit, I saved plenty shot worse’n you.”
“You’re . . . you’re a piss poor liar,” Frank said, struggling with the effort to speak. “Why you never was no good at cards.”
“Well, you’ll see. You’ll damn well see. Now be quiet till I can get you patched.”
Frank raised a hand and let it fall on Jessie’s arm and weakly shook his head.
“Just roll me a shuck. I’d like one more before the passing …”
Jesse rolled a shuck and lighted it, then went to put it between Frank’s lips, but his mouth was slack, his face ashen, his eyes half lidded. He was gone.
Jesse drew the blanket up over him, for he never wanted to see Frank looking like that again, then stood and went to the doorway and opened it and smoked looking out at the great white wilderness.
Maybe now it was time. It wouldn’t take much. Just place those shotgun barrels under his chin and pull the trigger. Die quick or die slow, he told himself.
Spring came and Mr. Flaver was finally able to get up to the summer range and see what happened to his hired hands, and more, to his herd. He’d worried all winter when they hadn’t come down in the fall. From his window he’d seen the snowfall up high.
He came upon Jesse sitting in a chair out front smoking a cigarette, patches of snow still clinging to the ground in places. The corral was gone and so was the shed, and so was the privy.
He dismounted and came forth but Jesse didn’t seem to acknowledge him, like he was in a spell.
Mr. Flaver couldn’t remember which one was which, their names, so he said, “Frank?”
Jesse looked up. His beard was thick. He looked gaunt and hollow-eyed and almost uncomprehending of who Mr. Flaver was.
Mr. Flaver reached into his coat and pulled out a silver flask of whiskey and held it forth. An unsteady hand took it and drank from it and lowered it.
“I reckon you boys had it pretty hard lasting out the winter up here,” Mr. Flaver said. “Where’s the others?”
Finally, Jesse stood, said, “There ain’t no others. Just me. And I’d kindly like to ride down off this mountain, you don’t mind.”
“You mean they’re dead?”
Jesse just stared at him.
“Well, what about my herd?”
“I reckon some is out there somewheres,” Jesse said. “But they ain’t my cattle and this here ain’t my job no more.”
Mr. Flaver could see that the young man had gone nearly mad by the stare and voice. He determined that Frank or Jesse or whichever one it was, was lost in the head and no point fooling with such a man.
They rode back down the trail together. Mr. Flaver wondered what the young man had done with the bodies, knowing no grave could have been dug in such frozen ground. But he did not deign to ask. When they reached Askin, he wrote a check for two hundred and fifty dollars, keeping in mind they’d both been up there all winter. The young man took the check and put it in his pocket and walked out. Mr. Flaver watched from his window as the hired man headed for the railroad station, then heard the evening flyer’s whistle signaling its arrival. He knew the train would only stop for ten, fifteen minutes before pulling out again.
He’d send some men up to find his cattle, what was left of them, and ask they search for the bodies of the two men. And when the hands returned with a few dozen of the baldies that had somehow survived, they reported finding no bodies, but did find what looked like some human bones.
Mr. Flaver shook his head at the report knowing then why the young man had the look of madness about him. Desperate men with nothing to eat, it made sense they’d only find bones.
Mr. Flaver drank a whiskey and then another and told his young wife that night he was getting out of the cow business. She asked why.
“I just am,” is all he said. “I just am.”
Bill Brooks has written more than forty historical novels and is a full-time writer these days. He lives in Florida.