by Gary Paulsen
They made the turn easily and now it would be straight along the road for the rest of this day and the next.
John looked at his watch. It was close to four and they would stop at six for the night. Two hours would put them two or three miles and he looked ahead on the prairie as far as he thought they would get. There was a small ridge with a sinkhole full of water and he knew that was where they would spend the night, so the horses and sheep had water, because they stayed there each year when they made the drive.
“You could see all day where you were going to sleep the night.”
John had read it in one of his history books for school, a part of a journal kept by a woman crossing the plains in a wagon train in 1851, and it was true. If the country stayed flat or you were on a small rise you could see fifteen, twenty miles and that was more than the sheep could do in a day. The wagon trains didn’t manage that—barely made ten, and less if there was bad country. Sometimes it might take them a week to go a mile if it was steep or there was a river to cross.
He watched Cawley and the dogs work the sheep and let Speck and Spud have their head and walk along, pulling the wagon easily on the flat ground, and wondered what it would have been like with a wagon train.
Crazy. They had to be crazy to start with just a wooden-wheeled wagon and oxen pulling it and try to get to California.
Or the original John Barron. Coming as he did with a gun and two horses.
John looked around, stood and looked back of the wagon. It would have been the same then. Almost exactly the same except there wouldn’t have been fences or roads. And he’d have come riding, maybe right there, right … over … there, over that small rise, and sat on the horse and looked at the mountains in the distance and back over the prairie and north to nothing and south to nothing and he’d have said:
This is mine.
John shook his head. There were other people here. Some settlers, Indians who truly owned the land, even a couple of ranchers here and there and he’d just said it:
This is mine.
He was just four and a half years older than me, John thought. Flies had settled on the two horses and he used one of the reins to brush them off. Flies always followed the horses and sheep. Clouds of them. After a time you just got used to them, but they bit and bit hard, took out chunks of meat when they bit and he didn’t like the horses to feel the pain.
Four and a half years older than me and he did that. I wonder …
He shook his head. Stupid thinking. His father would snort—a whoofing sound out his nose—if he knew John was thinking that way. But the thought was there. It didn’t go away.
I wonder.
I wonder if I could do that if I were four and a half years older. Just like that. Come over that rise and look as far as I could see and say:
This is mine.
I wonder.
The time passed more quickly than John would have thought before they came to the ridge. Maybe some of the sheep remembered the drive to the mountains as well, he thought, and were anxious to stop for the night.
Or it was the water. They smelled the water from the sinkhole. The sheep hadn’t had water all day and crowded around the depression full of water.
At some time in the past the land had “sunk” into a shallow depression and a spring at the side of this bowl had fed water into it. The spring was constant year-round, seeping water, and the evaporation and water soaking into the earth kept it from getting bigger but there was a small pond, perhaps sixty feet across and not over two feet deep at the most, wet year-round.
The sheep drank eagerly, fighting to get to the water. The lambs—born three months earlier—would take a drink, run to play, fight through the herd and take another drink, wheel around to find a rock to play king of the mountain on, and turn back for another drink.
John laughed, watching them, and Cawley rode up alongside the wagon.
“You laughing at the lambs?”
John nodded, “They’re full of it.…”
“Kids, pups, and lambs—all the same. Sometimes you can watch them, lambs I mean, and they’ll be standing still, looking at you and they’ll just suddenly jump, straight up, hop like a grasshopper and kick. Just for fun. They’re better than television.…”
To the side of the sinkhole, just above where the spring seeped out, somebody—it might have been fifty years before—had put a small windmill and it pumped whenever the wind blew, filling a metal stock tank with fresh, pure water. Above the spring and the pond it didn’t get dirty and there was a small breeze driving the windmill so that fresh water whooshed out of the pipe in small, half-a-cup spurts.
They pulled the wagon just above the windmill and unhooked the horses and watered them and tied them out on picket ropes.
“Normally I’d hobble them—throw ankle ropes on ’em,” Cawley said. “But they can move around a bit when they’re hobbled and we might want them close in case it comes on to rain.” There was a sack of oats in the wagon and he gave each horse half a coffee can full, in old tin pans on the grass in front of them.
There was no wood—not for another fifty or so miles—so they used a small propane stove and heated up two large cans of beef stew, which they ate out of the cans. As soon as they’d finished, Cawley took out a battered coffeepot with no insides, dumped in a handful of loose coffee grounds, and filled it with water from the end of the pipe at the stock tank.
John shook his head and drank water and wondered if he would ever come to like coffee. Cawley and his father drank it all the time, gallons of it, boiled black and thick so the grounds sank to the bottom of the pot—or some of them did. The ones that didn’t they chewed on and ate.
They made it look so good that John kept trying it, but it always tasted bitter to him and made him jumpy.
It was a quiet camp and that made John think about what was happening with Tink and his father. Normally they would joke with each other—Cawley and his father were always teasing him or ragging at Tink about something—and now with just Cawley it was quiet. They set about getting ready for the night with almost no conversation.
There was a nylon tarp tied to the side of the wagon and they pulled it out to make a lean-to, pinning it to the ground with rocks.
Underneath they spread two foam pads and their sleeping bags. It had been a hot day but the nights became cold and the bags would be welcome.
When the beds were down Cawley brought a braided horsehair rope from his saddle and spread it around the bed area.
“For snakes,” he said. “Keeps them out of your bag.”
John had heard of it of course. Rattlesnakes were supposed not to crawl over horsehair and he knew many cowboys who believed in it.
But he’d been to an exhibit in Cheyenne once where they had a pit of snakes and they had a horsehair rope in the pit and the rattlers crawled all over it.
Besides, if he saw one snake a year it was unusual. There just weren’t that many and with all the sheep and the dogs he didn’t think they’d be running to get in his bag with him. But he didn’t say anything.
With the beds ready John took down the same large pan they’d used to water the dogs and filled it with dry dog food and set it by the tailgate. The dogs would come in to sleep and eat as they wished, then head out to watch the sheep again.
Cawley rummaged around in the back of the wagon—it was so full, he had to crawl on his stomach up on top of the load—and came out with a small kerosene lantern.
He lit the lantern and hung it from a nail beneath the wagon box. It cast a yellow light out about ten feet and they crawled into their sleeping bags still in silence.
Cawley filled his lip with snuff, spit once to the side, and lay back. John had wadded his jacket into a pillow and had a metal button in his cheek. He wiggled it around, settled back and closed his eyes.
“You got any questions?” Cawley asked.
“About what?”
“About what to do with the sheep when you get up to the high country.
You seem a little fussed up about it and I thought you might have some questions.”
John rolled onto his back. Cawley had blown the lantern out and there was no moon so it was pitch-dark. A million, he thought—I must have a million of them. And that was the trouble. There were so many he didn’t know where to start, what to ask.
“No,” he said, finally, “I can’t think of one.”
“Well that’s good then,” Cawley said, spitting again. “Your pa wanted me to teach you some of this on the way and if you know it all it makes my job easier.”
John didn’t say anything.
“That was slick, how you tipped your hat to that girl at the highway crossing.”
Cawley, John thought, never missed a thing. He felt his cheeks burn in the dark, was glad Cawley couldn’t see them.
“She appreciate it?”
John had to laugh, remembering. “No. I don’t think so. She just drove off.”
“Well, that happens, don’t it?”
“Yes, I guess it does.”
“Is your heart broke?”
“No.”
“Good night.”
“Good night.” John closed his eyes and tried to sleep but his thoughts mixed so that he thought of the girl in the car and his father and Tink and his great-grandfather all at once until, finally, they all swirled together and he slept.
Chapter Eight
THE SHEEP did not want to leave the water in the morning. The dogs and Cawley would get the front end moving and the rest of the herd would just stand and watch them leave and the ones that started would try to circle around the dogs and get back.
John sat on the wagon seat and watched for a time, then unhooked Speck and saddled her and helped by riding back and forth across the rear of the herd yelling and popping a piece of rope he’d taken from the wagon until they were moving.
It was slow at first, and the dogs had to work overtime to get the herd moving and keep them moving. They ran back and forth over the herd, yipping in high, excited barks and biting, pushing, always pushing. At one point John laughed when he looked around and saw Peg standing on the back of a large ewe spitting bits of wool out of her mouth.
At last they were moving and through that day there were no highway crossings to plague them so that things ran smoothly. Speck and Spud had long before figured out what was happening and John didn’t have to steer or even talk to them. They walked down the middle of the small, rutted road that led west toward the mountains and John leaned back in the seat and enjoyed the ride. Twice he caught himself dozing, the warm sun pushing him down into the seat, and after they had moved the herd past a small side road—a driveway into a pasture—Cawley came back. He tied the red to the tailgate of the wagon and climbed up beside John.
“I thought of some things,” he said.
“What things?”
“About the sheep and the dogs. Things you might want to know.”
John sat up. Cawley filled his lip with snuff and spit. “The problem is that I’m going to have to turn around and head back as soon as we get there. There’s the ranch to take care of while your pa is with Tink. So I won’t be able to stay with you and get you started. You’re going to be on your own just about twenty minutes after we get there.”
John nodded. “I figured that.”
“So we can talk while we ride. Look, looky there.…” He pointed to where a rebellious ewe had gone off the road and about thirty sheep followed her, lambs jumping and leaping over the older sheep. Jenny and Pete peeled off from the right side of the herd and turned the small band and headed them back into the main body.
“Ain’t it fun—just to watch them work?”
John nodded.
“They got something,” Cawley said. “With the sheep I mean. They got something in their heads and the sheep understand it and know they know about sheep. I’ve puzzled on it some but I guess it must go way back.”
With the strays back in Jenny and Pete settled once more into the positions they had held, although Jenny now and then would stop and stand on her hind legs and look to the rear of the herd to make certain all the sheep were coming.
“Like that—she was never taught that. They were never taught nothing, really. Just born into them. And the other dogs don’t do that, stand like that and check the rear.” He laughed. “They would, you know, if she didn’t. But they figure since she’s doing it they don’t have to so they don’t. They figure on it, figure on it and work it out.”
“Like when they look at you,” John said.
Cawley nodded. “That’s it, exactly.”
Sometimes the dogs—usually one dog at a time—would come and sit down in front of a person and look into his eyes for a full half a minute, just look and be thinking of something, trying to see something. The first time it happened it spooked John. But after a time he thought they might just be saying hi, or that they loved him. It was a soft look. And he always reached out and petted them and saw that Cawley and Tink and his father did the same. And then the dog would walk away and sit or lie down and maybe a half hour or an hour later he would come back and do the same thing.
“They know things,” Cawley said again, shaking his head. “They know more things than there are to know under the sun.…”
The two rode in silence for a little time and John thought on how he didn’t really know anything about Cawley at all. Not where he came from nor if he’d ever been married nor how he’d lived before he came to work at the ranch or if he had just been there mostly forever and then he thought he didn’t know any of that about Tink, either. He could ask, he knew, but the words didn’t come and he thought that was like his father, to not talk, not ask. And maybe like the old man.
“You got to take care of them,” Cawley said suddenly, his voice startling John. “They’re smart but they’re dumb too. They’ll do too much for you because of how they feel about you. Dogs don’t think of the end, only the beginning. So you’ve got to take care of them.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, like food and water. If you don’t water them and feed them they’ll keep going and keep going and then just drop. You’ve got to keep them supplied all the time.”
“Like horses.”
“Same as.” Cawley nodded. “Same as. Except horses won’t go past a point unless you drive ’em, which of course ain’t right. But dogs will. They’ll keep on going until it kills them, even if you ain’t pushing them. So you get up in that camp, you keep a pan of food and water by the wagon. They’ll drink out of a stream, too, but you keep water handy for them all the same.”
John nodded and they went back to silence.
The land changed rapidly now. Even at the slow pace the sheep moved. They were climbing—Speck and Spud had to pull harder on the wagon and their breathing picked up as they worked—and the country was altered as if a line had been drawn and they had crossed the line.
Instead of flat prairie they were in the low, rolling hills that led into the mountains and where there had been no trees—not just few, but no trees—there were now scrub pines and aspens showing, standing in small patches. The road had dwindled as well while he and Cawley were talking. For a time the day before and earlier in the morning they had been on gravel roads but they had narrowed and finally disappeared into twin shallow ruts the horses followed.
The fences were gone as well and the dogs worked frantically to keep the sheep in one herd and moving. Without fences to hold them along the road they kept trying to spread out and they would sometimes actually run from the main herd and try to hide in the small stands of short trees.
The dogs kept bringing them back, circling out and driving them back into the herd and John was once more amazed at their endurance. During the hot part of the afternoon, when the horses slowed and the sun seemed to crush everything into the ground, the dogs worked tirelessly, their tongues hanging down half a foot, slobbering while they ran, running back to the wagon to get water out of a pan John would put on the groun
d for them and then back to the herd.
Cawley left the wagon to help, running the big red back and forth across the rear of the herd to try to give the dogs a break and between the four dogs and Cawley they kept the herd moving.
John felt frustrated. On the two drives he’d done he was on a horse, helping push them, and to sit on a wagon and watch Cawley grated on him. But he did it quietly and finally, toward evening, they came into a clearing where they usually spent the second night and Cawley called the dogs in and they let the herd spread.
They set up a rough camp, again heating cans of food on a stove and eating out of the cans. Cawley said nothing until they were done eating and he had brewed coffee, then he leaned back and belched.
“We’ll make the meadow tomorrow.”
Which is what somebody said every year but John nodded. “By noon.”
“Is it me or are they getting more stubborn?” Cawley said. “The sheep, I mean.”
“They seemed rough to push today—I wouldn’t know, though, sitting on my butt on the wagon all day.”
Cawley nodded. “I figured that would twist your tail a bit. But it’s your wagon, ain’t it? You’re going to live in it so you take care of it.”
Cawley lay back and was asleep instantly, his breath coming low and raspy, but John sat awake with his feet down in his bag for over an hour thinking on what Cawley had said.
He was going to live in the wagon.
For three months.
Alone.
Well. There were the dogs. And the sheep. And the mountains.
Before he went to sleep the last thought in his head was strangely about the girl in the car again. She had looked right at him, into his eyes, when he’d tipped his hat—just straight, blue eyes.
