English Creek - Ivan Doig

by Ivan Doig

  Canada Dan meanwhile had rolled himself a cigarette and was filling the wagon with blue smoke while Stanley worked himself toward the halfway point of his slab of mutton. "Staying the night, ain’t you?" the herder said more as observation than question. "You can set up the tepee, regular goddamn canvas hotel. It only leaks a little where it’s ripped in that one corner. Been meaning to sew the sumbitch up."

  "Well, actually, no," said Stanley.

  This perked me up more than anything had in hours. Maybe there existed some fingernail of hope for Stanley after all. "We got all that pack gear to keep dry, so we’ll just go on over to that line cabin down on the school section. Fact is"—Stanley here took the chance to shove away his still-mutton-laden plate and climb onto his feet as if night was stampeding toward him—"we better be getting ourselves over there if we’re gonna beat dark. You ready, Jick ?"

  Was I.

  * * *

  The line cabin stood just outside the eastern boundary of the Two forest, partway back down the mountain. We rode more than an hour to get there, the weather steadily heavier and grimmer all around us, and Stanley fairly grim himself, I guess from the mix of alcohol and mutton sludging around beneath his belt. Once when I glanced back to be sure I still had him I happened to see him make an awkward lob into the trees, that exaggerated high-armed way when you throw with your wrong hand. So he had finally run out of bottle, and at least I could look forward to an unpickled companion from here on. I hoped he wasn’t the kind who came down with the DTs as he dried out. Our route angled us down in such a back and forth way that Roman Reef steadily stood above us now on one side, now on our other. A half-mile-high stockade of gray-brown stone, claiming all the sky to the west. Even with Stanley and thunderclouds on my mind I made room in there to appreciate the might of Roman Reef. Of the peaks and buttresses of the Two generally, for as far as I’m concerned, Montana without its mountain ranges would just be Nebraska stretched north.

  At last, ahead of us showed up an orphan outcropping, a formation like a crown of rock but about as big as a railroad roundhouse. Below it ran the boundary fence, and just outside the fence the line cabin. About time, too, because we were getting some first spits of rain, and thunder was telling of lightning not all that far off. The whole way from Canada Dan’s sheepwagon Stanley had said never a word nor even glanced ahead any farther than his horse’s ears. Didn’t even stir now as we reached the boundary fence of barbwire. In a hurry to get us into the cabin before the weather cut loose I hopped off Pony to open the gate.

  My hand was just almost to the top wire hoop when there came a

  terrific yell:

  "GOD AMIGHTY, GET AWAY FROM THAT !"

  I jumped back as if flung, looking crazily around to see what had roused Stanley like this.

  "Go find a club and knock the gatewire off with that," he instructed. “You happen to be touching that wire and lightning hits that fence, I’ll have fried Jick for supper."

  So I humored him, went off and found a sizable dead limb of jackpine and tapped the hoop up off the top of the gate stick with it and then used it to fling the gate to one side the way you might flip a big snake. The hell of it was, I knew Stanley was out-and-out right. A time, lightning hit Ed Yan Bebber’s fence up the South Fork road from the English Creek ranger station and the whole top wire melted for about fifty yards in either direction, dropping off in little chunks as if it’d been minced up by fencing pliers. I knew as well as anything not to touch a wire fence in a storm. why then had I damn near done it? All I can say in my own defense is that you just try going around with Stanley Meixell on your mind as much as he had been on mine since mid-morning and see if you don’t do one or another thing dumb.

  I was resigned by now to what was in store for me at the cabin, so started in on it right away, the unpacking of the mare and Bubbles. Already I had size, my father’s long bones the example to mine, and could do the respected packer’s trick of reaching all the way across the horse’s back to lift those off-side packs from where I was standing, instead of trotting back and forth around the horse all the time. I did the mare and then carefully began uncargoing Bubbles, Stanley hanging on to the halter and matter-of-factly promising Bubbles he would yank his goddamn spotty head off if the horse gave me any trouble. Then as I swung the last pack over and off, a hefty lift I managed to do without bumping the pack saddle and giving Bubbles an excuse for excitement, Stanley pronounced: “Oh, to be young and diddling twice a day again."

  He took notice of the considerable impact of this on me. “ ’Scuse my French, Jick. It’s just a saying us old coots have."

  Nonetheless it echoed around in me as I lugged the packs through the cabin door and stashed them in a corner.

  By now thunder was applauding lightning below us as well as above and the rain was arriving in earnest, my last couple of trips outside considerably damp. Stanley meanwhile was left-handedly trying to inspire a fire in the rickety stove.

  The accumulated chill in the cabin had us both shivering as we lit a kerosene lantern and waited for the stove to produce some result. "Feels in here like it’s gonna frost," I muttered.

  "Yeah," Stanley agreed. “About six inches deep."

  That delivered me a thought I didn’t particularly want. "What, ah, what if this turns to snow?" I could see myself blizzarded in here for a week with this reprobate.

  "Aw, I don’t imagine it will. Lightning like this, it’s probably just a thunderstorm." Stanley contemplated the rain spatting onto the cabin window and evidently was reminded that his pronouncement came close to being good news. "Still," he amended, “you never know."

  * * *

  The cabin was not much of a layout. Simply a roofed-over bin of lodgepole logs, maybe fifteen feet long and ten wide and with a single window beside the door at the south end. But at least it’d be drier than outside. Outside in fact was showing every sign of anticipating a nightlong bath. The face of the Rocky Mountains gets more weather than any other place I know of and a person just has to abide by that fact.

  I considered the small stash of wood behind the stove, mostly kindling, and headed back out for enough armfuls for the night and morning. Off along the tree line I found plenty of squaw wood, which already looked soused from the rain but luckily snapped okay when I tromped it in half over a log.

  With that provisioning done and a bucket of water lugged from a seep of spring about seventy yards out along the slope, I declared myself in for the evening and shed my wet slicker. Stanley through all this stayed half propped, half sitting on an end of the little plank table. Casual as a man waiting for eternity.

  His stillness set me to wondering. Wondering just how much whiskey was in him. After all, he’d been like a mummy on the ride from Canada Dan’s camp, too.

  And so before too awful long I angled across the room, as if exercising the saddle hours out of my legs, for a closer peek at him. At first I wasn’t enlightened by what I saw. The crowfoot lines at the corners of Stanley’s eyes were showing deep and sharp, as if he was squinched up to study closely at something, and he seemed washed out, whitish, across that part of his face, too. Like any Montana kid I had seen my share of swacked-up people, yet Stanley didn’t really look liquored. No, he looked more like—

  So now things had reached the point where I had lost out even on my father’s scattershot version of cooking, and was going to have to invent my own. I held another considerable mental Conversation with U.S. forest ranger Varick McCaskill about that, meanwhile fighting the stove to get any real heat from it. At last I managed to warm a can of provisions I dug out of one of the packs of groceries for the herders, and exploring further I came up with bread and some promising sandwich material.

  An imminent meal is my notion of a snug fortune. I was even humming the Pancho and Sancho and Suzy tune when, ready to dine, I sat myself down across the table from Stanley.

  He looked a little quizzical, then drew in a deep sniff. Then queried:

  "Is that menu of y
ours what I think it is ?"

  "Huh? Just pork and beans, and an onion sandwich. Why?"

  "Never mind."

  Canada Dan’s cooking must have stuck with me more than I was aware, though, as I didn’t even think to open any canned fruit for dessert.

  Meanwhile the weather was growing steadily more rambunctious. Along those mountainsides thunder can roll and roll, and constant claps were arriving to us now like beer barrels tumbling down stairs. Now, an electrical storm is not something I am fond of. And here along the east face of the Rockies, any of these big rock thrusts, such as that crown outcropping up the slope from the cabin, notoriously can draw down lightning bolts. In fact, the more I pondered that outcropping, the less comfortable I became with the fact that it neighbored us.

  In my head I always counted the miles to how far away the lightning had hit—something I still find myself doing—so when the next bolt winked, somewhere out the south window, I began the formula: One, a-mile-from-here-to-there.

  Two, a-mile-from-hereto-there.

  Three . . . The boom reached us then; the bolt had struck just more than two miles off. That could be worse, and likely would be. Meanwhile rain was raking the cabin. We could hear it drum against the west wall as well as on the board roof.

  "Sounds like we got a dewy night ahead of us," Stanley offered. He looked a little perkier now, for whatever reason. Myself, I was beginning to droop, the day catching up with me. I did some more thunder-counting whenever I happened to glimpse a crackle of light out the window, but came up with pretty much the same mileage each time and so began to lose attention toward that. Putting this day out of its misery seemed a better and better idea.

  The cabin didn’t have any beds as such, just a cobbled-together double bunk arrangement with planks where you’d like a mattress to be. But anyplace to be prostrate looked welcome, and I got up from the table to untie my bedroll from behind my saddle and spread it onto the upper planks.

  The sky split white outside the cabin. That crack of thunder I honestly felt as much as heard. A jolt through the air, as if a quake had leapt upward out of the earth.

  I believe my hair was swept straight on end, from that blast of noise and light. I know I had trouble getting air into my body, past the blockade where my heart was trying to climb out my throat.

  Stanley, though, didn’t show any particular ruffle at all. “The quick hand of God, my ma used to say."

  "Yeah, well," I informed him when I found the breath for it, "I’d just as soon it grabbed around someplace else."

  I stood waiting for the next cataclysm, although what really was on my mind was the saying that you’ll never hear the lightning bolt that hits you. The rain rattled constantly loud now.

  At last there came a big crackling sound quite a way off, and while I knew nature is not that regular I told myself the lightning portion of the storm had moved beyond us—or if it hadn’t, I might as well be dead in bed as anywhere else—and I announced to Stanley, "I’m turning in."

  “What, already?"

  "Yeah, already," a word which for some reason annoyed me as much as anything had all day.

  Leaning over to unlace my forester boots, a high-topped old pair of my father’s I had grown into, I fully felt how much the day had fagged me. The laces were a downright chore. But once my boots and socks were off I indulged in a promising yawn, pulled out what was left of my shirttail, and swung myself into the upper bunk.

  "Guess I’m more foresighted than I knew," I heard Stanley go on, “to bring Doctor Hall along for company."

  "Who?" I asked, my eyes open again at this. Gros Ventre’s physician was Doc Spence, and I knew he was nowhere near our vicinity. Stanley lanked himself up and casually went over to the packs.

  "Doctor Hall," he repeated as he brought out his good hand from a pack, a brown bottle of whiskey in it. "Doctor Al K. Hall."

  * * *

  The weather of the night I suppose continued in commotion. But at that age I could have slept through a piano tuners’ convention. Came morning, I was up and around while Stanley still lay flopped in the lower bunk.

  First thing, I made a beeline to the window. No snow. Not only was I saved from being wintered in with Stanley, but Roman Reef and all the peaks south beyond it stood in sun, as if the little square of window had been made into a summer picture of the Alps. It still floors me, how the mountains are not the same any two days in a row. As if hundreds of copies of those mountains exist and each dawn brings in a fresh one, of new color, new prominence of some feature over the others, a different wrapping of cloud or rinse of sun for this day’s version.

  I lit a fire and went out to check on the horses and brought in a pail of fresh water, and even then Stanley hadn’t budged, just was breathing like he’d decided on hibernation. The bottle which had nursed him into that condition, I noticed, was down by about a third.

  Telling myself Stanley could starve to death in bed for all I cared, I fashioned breakfast for myself, heating up a can of peas and more or less toasting some slices of bread by holding them over the open stove on a fork.

  Eventually Stanley did join the day. As he worked at getting his boots on I gave him some secret scrutiny. I couldn’t see, though, that he assayed much better or worse than the night before. Maybe he just looked that way, sort of absent-mindedly pained, all the time. I offered to heat up some breakfast peas for him but he said no, thanks anyway.

  At last Stanley seemed ready for camptending again, and I figured it was time to broach what was heaviest on my mind. The calendar of our continued companionship.

  "How long’s this going to take, do you think?"

  “Well, you seen what we got into yesterday with Canada Dan. Herders have always got their own quantities of trouble." Stanley could be seen to be calculating, either the trouble capacities of our next two sheepherders or the extent of my impatience. "I suppose we better figure it’ll take most of a day apiece for this pair, too."

  Two more days of messing with herders, then the big part of another day to ride back to English Creek. It loomed before me like a career.

  "What about if we split up?" I suggested as if I was naturally businesslike. “Each tend one herder’s camp today?"

  Stanley considered some more. You would have thought he was doing it in Latin, the time it took him. But finally: "I don’t see offhand why that wouldn’t work. You know this piece of country pretty good. Take along the windchester," meaning his rifle. "If any bear starts eating on me he’ll pretty soon give up on account of gristle." Stanley pondered some more to see whether anything further was going to visit his mind, but nothing did. "So, yeah. We got it to do, might as well get at it. Which yayhoo do you want, Gufferson or Sanford Hebner?"

  I thought on that. Sanford was in his second or third summer in these mountains. Maybe he had entirely outgrown the high-country whimwhams of the sort Canada Dan was showing, and maybe he hadn’t. Andy Gustafson on the other hand was a long-timer in the Two country and probably had been given the range between Canada Dan and Sanford for the reason that he was savvy enough not to let the bands of sheep get mixed. I was more than ready to be around somebody with savvy, for a change.

  "I’ll take Andy."

  "Okey-doke. I guess you know where he is, in west of here, about under the middle of Roman Reef. Let’s go see sheepherders."

  Outside in the wet morning I discovered the possible drawback to my choice, which was that Andy Gustafson’s camp supplies were in the pack rig that went on Bubbles. That bothered me some, but when I pictured Stanley and his hamburgered hand trying to cope with Bubbles for a day, I figured it fell to me to handle the knothead anyway. At least in my father’s universe matters fell that way. So I worked the packs onto the black mare for Stanley—she was so tame she all but sang encouragement while the load was going on her—and then faced the spotty-nosed nemesis. But Bubbles seemed not particularly more snorty and treacherous than usual, and with Stanley taking a left-handed death grip on the halter again and a
ddressing a steady stream of threats into the horse’s ear and with me staying well clear of hooves while getting the packsacks roped on, we had Bubbles loaded in surprisingly good time.

  “See you back here for beans," Stanley said, and as he reined toward Sanford’s camp Pony and I headed west up the mountain, Bubbles grudgingly behind us.

  * * *

  I suppose now hardly anybody knows that horseback way of life on a trail. I have always thought that horseback is the ideal way to see country, if you just didn’t have to deal with the damn horse, and one thing to be said for Pony was that she was so gentle and steady you could almost forget she was down there. As for the trail itself; even in the situation I was in, this scene was one to store away. Pointed west as I was the horizon of the Rockies extended wider than any vision. To take in the total of peaks I had to move my head as far as I could to either side. It never could be said that this country of the Two didn’t offer enough elbow room. For that matter, shinbone and cranium and all other kind, too. Try as you might to be casual about a ride up from English Creek into these mountains, you were doing something sizable. Climbing from the front porch of the planet into its attic, so to speak.

  Before long I could look back out onto the plains and see the blue dab of Lake Frances, and the water tower of Valier on its east shore—what would that be, thirty miles away, thirty-five? About half as far off was the bulge of trees which marked where the town of Gros Ventre sat in the long procession of English Creek’s bankside cottonwoods and willows. Gros Ventre: pronounced Grove-on, in that front-end way that town names of French origin get handled in Montana, making Choteau Show-toh and Havre Haw-er and Wibaux Wee-boh. Nothing entertained residents of Gros Ventre more than hearing some tourist or other outlander pop out with Gross Ventree. My father, though, figured that the joke was also on the town: "Not a whole hell of a lot of them know that Gros Ventre’s the French for Big Belly." Of course, where all this started is that Gros Ventre is the name of an Indian tribe, although not what might be called a local one. The Gros Ventres originally, before reservation days, were up in the Milk River country near the Canadian line. Why a place down here picked up that tribe’s name I didn’t really know. Toussaint Rennie was the one who knew A to Why about the Two country. Sometime I would have to ask him this name question.