WINTER on Wind River can be long and dreary. Reb Santee found it so. There was no more riding to the Cameron ranch to spend a careless afternoon in the delightful company of Ronda; no more touring the Basin for the first diversion that came to hand. Late in November a cold snap set in that kept the three men in the dugout for a week. The direst consequences of the coming spring could not make Reb grateful for this dragging isolation.
“Yo’re worse’n a trapped cougar,” Doc growled at him, nursing a villainous-smelling pipe by the fire. “Why don’t yuh settle down, or else git out an’ ride it off.”
“I’ll do that,” Reb flashed at him, with a challenging grin. “I’ll go over an’ find out from Cameron when they start ridin’ the line.” Before the Wild Bunch left, he had said that his offer to participate in the winter round-up was a whim; he probably would not go through with it. Now he embraced the prospect with eagerness.
“Go ’head,” Lantry flung back. “This place can’t be no worse with you gone than it is with yuh in it.” His lips essayed a sour smile as he said it, but his eyes were implacable.
Wrapping himself against the bitter weather, glad to get on the move at any cost, Reb rode away on a steaming pony. At the Cameron ranch he learned that the line camps to the south had been established, the riding already begun.
“We thought yuh decided to let it slide, or we would’ve let yuh know,” said Jube.
Reb told him no, he was anxious for something to do. He’d ride out now, he thought, and join the boys. Cameron made it plain that it struck him as being a fine idea. He was just leaving himself.
“Plenty men out there now,” he said; “but some of ’em have to git home occasional. They c’n shore use yuh, Santee.”
In his company Reb rode south with the wind at his back, feeling better than he had felt for days. It was good to have to care for the cattle lurking in draws or pawing down through the snow for grass. He’d been away from all this for some time now; this was like coming home. It served to strengthen the sense of security he had built up, like a wall, between himself and the shadow that threatened him from the future.
At Wolf Flat the line riders welcomed him with grateful warmth. Not only were they glad for his sunny company, but it was clear that his willingness to help, although he had no investment in the Basin stock, meant something to them. No one drew extra pay for this work, though it did keep some of the punchers off the grub line. Reb would draw no time at all.
He was not the only one, however. He found Billy Farragoh taking his place among the others. They teamed up without ado, and the strenuous days which followed saw them much together on the frozen range and in camp.
But there was a lot more to it than pleasant companionship. The winter had begun in violence; it promised, and displayed, a further severity. There were days when one heavy snow after another swooped and whistled about the riders, when the mercury dropped into a bottomless well, and it was all they could do in the few hours they dared remain in the saddle at a time to keep the cattle from drifting south to scatter for miles along the lower Wind River valley.
Reb stood it with the stoicism of the seasoned veteran. Billy endured without complaint, his limbs numb and his skin turned blue. Once he frosted his face so dangerously it had to be rubbed with snow. Another time he disappeared, and Santee rode in search of him for more than an hour, fear gnawing at his heart, before he found young Farragoh afoot and leading a lamed horse, though he was not even sure where he was. It was a close call for Billy. Still he persisted. Reb could not withhold a growing admiration for the boy’s qualities. The bond of friendship between them tightened; for Billy, by this time, accorded the other a whole-souled devotion it would have taken a harder man than Reb to resist.
December dragged out toward its end. Santee rode back to the ranch on Ghost Creek but once during that time, and then only to pick up some extra clothes he had left behind. Gloomy and Doc were hibernating like bears. The latter pounced on Reb as if he had brooded long, awaiting this chance.
“Yo’re a fool, Santee!” he exploded. “Whut in hell do yuh expect to git out of this, anyhow?”
Reb overlooked the venom in his tone. “Trouble with you, Doc,” he retorted deliberately, “yo’re so used to somethin’ for nothin’, yuh think yo’re gettin’ gypped if yuh have to work at all.”
Lantry snorted intolerantly. He went on arguing sourly until Reb was glad to escape from the dugout once more. “There he goes!” Doc raged, when the puncher had ridden away. “He can’t wait to see the last of us.... More I see of him, the better I think o’ you, Gloomy.”
“It all boils down t’ what kind o’ fool a feller’d rather be,” Jepson responded, with a long face. “This here’s no place t’ spend a winter. We’ll regret it, one way or ’nother. Like as not they’ll bring Reb home froze stiff as a poker, one O’ these days.”
“It’ll simplify things fer me if they do,” said Lantry with sudden fierceness.
Christmas, in the main camp to the south, was a disappointing affair, if there was anyone to care. One day a puncher rode in to declare that the holiday had slipped by them unnoticed. Another claimed it had not; that Christmas fell on the following day. All had an opinion. No one was sure. They celebrated anyway, with extra liquor, juicy, fried steaks—though these were no novelty—and beat biscuit; and the days slipped by. For Reb, even that was more pretentious than many a Christmas he had spent in the past.
There was no argument about New Year’s, for something came up to banish it from their minds. One day a brace of the boys were taken down with heavy colds. Jube Cameron would not hear of their standing their trick in the saddle. The others doubled up and the day was got through cheerfully, if not easily.
“We’ll make out,” Reb said in answer to the sufferers’ expressions of disgust at their condition.
The next day three more had colds, and the first two were worse. They lay in their bunks sick and wan-looking, burning with fever one minute, shivering the next.
“It’s the grippe,” Jube Cameron announced soberly. He looked out of the cabin window. Snow whipped past in a smother, the sky was heavy. A penetrating chill seeped through the chinks of the logs. “Be tough if we have to stand a siege of that out here. I’ll ride to Washakie Point for medicine if they ain’t no better by mornin’.”
But the next day, Cameron himself was down, and two more with him. Billy Farragoh was one of them. Reb Santee was as yet untouched, but he began to see the situation in a serious light.
“I’ll ride to the Point myself,” he told Jube. “You better stay in—yuh can look after the others till I get back, anyway.”
The storm had slacked off during the night. It was colder, with a bitter wind. Reb got an early start. It was all he could manage to make the blue roan buck the wind and the drifts. Because it was easier, he followed the ridges which led toward Ghost Creek. Once there, he stopped at the dugout.
“Now what?” Doc Lantry demanded, as he stepped in.
Reb described the situation at the line camp. “Nobody’s said a word, but we c’d shore use you an’ Gloomy till we pull through, Doc,” he concluded.
“No sir!” Lantry refused flatly, before Gloomy could speak. “An’ what’s more, Santee, if yo’re carryin’ them germs yuh can keep right on goin!’” He presented a front of unfeeling opposition that made it useless to argue.
Reb reached the store at Washakie Point shortly after noon. Mrs. Farragoh, bulwarked cozily within, was surprised to see him. In a few words he explained why he had come. Billy’s mother gave him such simple remedies as she had on hand. Anxious as she was about her son, she made no special plea for his care.
“It’s a shame it’s so fur down there. I dunno’s I c’d git the wagon through,” she said thoughtfully. “But if yuh think I ought, I’ll make the attempt an’ take care of them boys.”
“No, no,” Reb protested. “I’ll make out all right. Reckon yuh don’t know I’m a doctor.”
“You!” Mrs. Farragoh snorted derisively, her man’s eyes raking him from under bushy brows. “You’ll be down with the grippe yoreself, after this ride.” But she was pleased with him, too.
Promising to return with news in a week’s time, Reb rode away. At the camp he found Jube Cameron feverish in his bunk. The other cowmen complained of sore throats. Reb made them all as comfortable as he could and dosed them up. Only Cameron appeared to discern the gravity of their position.
“Yuh better stay ’way from us as much as yuh can, Santee,” he croaked. “If you come down with it, we will be in a pickle.”
Reb laughed at him. “The Injuns fed me onions when I was a kid,” he declared. “I never catch a cold.”
He did not, though he spent all the time he could spare astride a pony. It was useless for him to attempt single-handed to stem the southward drift of the cattle, but he did what he could. Noone spoke Doc Lantry’s name to him, nor did he ever mention the aid Doc had refused. Time dragged by, and the sick were no better. Regularly he made his trips to Washakie Point.
“Doctor Santee,” he would announce himself to Mrs. Farragoh, “with a report on my patients. Yuh got any more medicine for me?”
It was at these times that he got really acquainted with Billy’s mother, talking of a great many things while he warmed himself at the wood stove or put his legs under her amply-supplied table. The ingeniousness in his puckered blue eyes, the readiness of his humor, warmed her to him. She began to share something of the admiration her son and Ronda Cameron bore him.
“Shore, that boy of yores’ll be on his feet before any one of the others,” he reassured her more than once. “Billy’s thin, but he’s made of rawhide; he’s got guts. I like him.”
To make conversation, she often grumbled at the dearth of business in this season. Reb always listened with attention, agreeing that it was hard; Billy’s legal education wasn’t coming any closer this way. But what drew Mrs. Farragoh closer to him than anything else was what he did about it.
February turned off milder and less tempestuous; a few of the trails stayed open; and one day Reb showed up at the store when a dozen Shoshone Indians had dropped in to hang around. He looked them over, noting the tightness of their pockets and joshing with them a little. It was not until he transacted his business with Mrs. Farragoh, however, that he made his play.
Wandering about the store under the watchful eyes of the Shoshones, he picked up one of a pile of small round mirrors from the shelf. He examined it attentively. Before he did so he palmed a silver dollar, and to the astonished red men it looked as if in the midst of his investigations he rubbed the dollar off the back of the mirror. He pocketed the dollar and, his face a study, shook the mirror and rubbed another dollar from it.
“This is good,” he said interestedly, looking up at the proprietor. “I’ll take this. How much is it?”
Without cracking a smile, Mrs. Farragoh told him it was a dollar. He apparently rubbed another dollar off the mirror, and handed it over. “I’m ahead of the game already,” he told her. “Much obliged.” He turned away, intent on his purchase.
A few minutes later he made ready to leave, but not before he had seen the Indians eagerly digging up dollars to exchange for the miraculous mirrors.
“You scamp, you!” Mrs. Farragoh laughed at him, when he came in a week later. “I sold ten o’ them mirrors, what with that foolishness of yores!” She gave him back his dollar. “Them bucks was inclined to kick when they found they couldn’t rub off no silver from ’em, but they hesitated when I offered, real pleasant, to trade back; an’ the upshot was, they hung on to ’em.... What’ll you be doin’ next?”
Reb grinned, passing it off as he usually did such things.
“Yeah, the boys seem to be pullin’ out of it okay,” he said, in answer to her questions concerning the influenza sufferers. “All but Jube Cameron, anyway. It’s settled on his chest, an’ I’m afraid he’s bad.... Billy’ll be gettin’ ready to ride in a few days,” he added.
Thus reassured, Mrs. Farragoh stuck to the matter in hand. “What about Jube?” she demanded. “Some-thin’ll have to be done fer him.... I better git out there, after all. A little hot goose grease—”
“I been thinkin’ of drivin’ him in to Lander,” Reb confessed. “Reckon I could get through now.” His tone said that he was not quite so sure, but it was no part of his plan to think overlong about it.
Mrs. Farragoh looked at him seriously. “Bad as that, is he?” She immediately made her plans to allow him the use of her own wagon, a flat-bed with extra stout wheels.
Reb drove south that afternoon behind a pair of mules. “You’ll find ’em tougher,” Mrs. Farragoh had said of them. “They’ll stand a longer haul. Yuh can’t take no chances with Jube, no matter how yuh look at it yoreself.”
Arriving at camp, he went at once to the cabin. “How is he now?” he asked in a lowered voice.
Billy Farragoh was around once more. He shook his head. “Not so good, Reb. He was out of his head for a while today.”
Santee turned to the rancher’s bunk. “What do yuh say, Cameron? I’ll drive yuh to Lander to a doctor if you’ll take the chance. I got a flatbed wagon out here, an’ we’ll wrap yuh up good.” There was real solicitude in his manner; gratitude in the faces of the other men in the cabin, coughing and weakened as they were. They were well aware it might mean Cameron’s life. Reb was the only one among them fit to go.
“Mebbe yuh ought to,” whispered Jube hoarsely. “I don’t git no better here ...”
Reb soon had the wagon ready, piled with blankets. There were a couple of shovels stowed under the seat, and extra harness. He carried Cameron out, bundled heavily, and deposited him in the back. They started off at once. Once settled, Jube said nothing, flushed and breathing stertorously; but his eyes sought the northern horizon even oftener than Reb’s did.
It was getting along toward evening. The temperature had risen during the day; the air was muggy, with a hint of fog in the draws. Behind them, the sky darkened to the north, instead of in the east as was its usual wont. The fading light over the whitened range was lowering and sullen. The circumstances carried every promise of snow before morning. And to the fore, beyond snowy trails and many a barren flat across which the storm would boom, Lander was sixty miles away.
“Get-up, boys,” Reb spoke to the mules. He pulled up his collar around his ears and settled to the long, hard drive.