English Creek - Ivan Doig

by Ivan Doig

  "Sanford’s on top of things, too," Stanley reported. “Hasn’t lost any, and his lambs are looking just real good." Plain as anything, then, there was one sore thumb up here on the Busbys’ allotment and it went by the name of Canada Dan.

  Stanley extended the thought aloud. “Looks like Dan’s asking for a ticket to town."

  This I didn’t follow. In all the range ritual I knew, and even in the perpetual wrestle between Dode Withrow and Pat Hoy, the herder always was angling to provoke a reason for quitting, not to be fired. Being fired from any job was a taint, a never-sought smudge. True, Canada Dan was a prime example that even God gets careless, but—

  The puzzle pursued me on into the cabin. As Stanley stepped to the stove to try rev the fire a little, I asked: "What, are you saying Canada Dan wants to get himself canned?"

  “Looks like. It can happen that way. A man’ll get into a situation and do what he can to make it worse so he’ll get chucked out of it. My own guess is, Dan’s feeling thirsty and is scared of this timber as well, but he don’t want to admit either one to himself. Easier to lay blame onto somebody else." Stanley paused. "Question is whether to try disappoint him out of the idea or just go ahead and can him." Another season of thought. Then: "I will say that Canada Dan is not such a helluva human being that I want to put up with a whole summer of his guff."

  This was a starchier Stanley than I had yet seen. This one you could imagine giving Canada Dan the reaming out he so richly deserved.

  The flash of backbone didn’t last long, though. "But I guess he’s the Busby boys’ decision, not mine."

  Naturally the day was too far gone for us to ride home to English Creek, so I embarked on the chores of wood and water again, at least salving myself with the prospect that tomorrow I would be relieved of Stanley. We would rise in the morning—and I intended it would be an early rise indeed—and ride down out of here and I would resume my summer at the English Creek ranger station and Stanley would sashay on past to the Busby brothers’ ranch and that would be that. When I stumped in with the water pail, that unlaced left boot of mine all but flapping in the breeze, I saw Stanley study the situation.

  "Too bad we can’t sliceup Bubbles for bootlaces," he offered.

  "That’d help," I answered shortly.

  "I never like to tell anybody how to wear his boots. But if it was me, now . . ."

  I waited while Stanley paused to speculate out the cabin window to where dusk was beginning to deepen the gray of the cliff of Roman Reef. But I wasn’t in any mood for very damn much waiting.

  "You were telling me all about boots," I prompted kind of sarcastically.

  "Yeah. Well. If it was me now, I’d take that one shoestring you got there, and cut it in half, and lace up each boot with a piece as far as it’ll go. Ought to keep them from slopping off your feet, anyhow."

  Worth a try. Anything was. I went ahead and did the halving, and the boots then laced firm as far as my insteps. The high tops pooched out like funnels, but at least now I could get around without one boot always threatening to leave me.

  One chore remained. I reached around and pulled my shirt up out of the back of my pants. The remainder of the tail of it I jackknifed off. Stanley’s hand didn’t look quite so hideous this time when I rewrapped it; in the high dry air of the Two, cuts heal faster than can be believed. But this paw of Stanley’s still was no prizewinner.

  "Well," Stanley announced now, “you got me nursed. Seems like the next thing ought to be a call on the doctor." And almost before he was through saying it, last night’s bottle reappeared over the table, its neck tilted into Stanley’s cup.

  Before Stanley got too deep into his oil of joy, there was one more vital point I wanted tended to. Diplomatically I began, “Suppose maybe we ought to give some thought—"

  "—to supper," Stanley finished for me as he dippered a little water into his prescription. "I had something when I got back from Sanford’s camp. But you go ahead."

  I at least knew by now I could be my own chef if I had to, and I stepped over to the packs to get started.

  There a harsh new light dawned on me. Now that we had tended the camps the packs were empty of groceries, which meant that we, or at least I, because so far I had no evidence that Stanley ever required food—were at the mercy of whatever was on hand in Stanley’s own small supply pack. Apprehensively I dug around in there, but all that I came up with that showed any promise was an aging loaf of bread and some Velveeta cheese. So I made myself a bunch of sandwiches out of those and mentally chalked up one more charge against my father.

  When I’d finished, it still was only twilight, and Stanley just had applied the bottle and dipper to the cup for a second time. Oh, it looked like another exquisite evening ahead, all right. A regular night at the opera.

  Right then, though, a major idea came to me.

  I cleared my throat to make way for the words of it. Then: "I believe maybe I’ll have me one, too."

  Stanley had put his cup down on the table but was resting his good hand over the top of it as if there was a chance it might hop away.

  "One what?"

  "One of those—doctor visits. A swig."

  This drew me a considerable look from Stanley. He let go of his cup and scratched an ear. "Just how old’re you ?"

  "Fifteen," I maintained, borrowing the next few months.

  Stanley did some more considering, but by now I was figuring out that if he didn’t say no right off the bat, chances were he wouldn’t get around to saying it at all. At last: “Got to wet your wick sometime, I guess. Can’t see how a swallow or two can hurt you." He transferred the bottle to a place on the table nearer me.

  Copying his style of pouring, I tilted the cup somewhat at the same time I was tipping the bottle. Just before I thought Stanley might open his mouth to say something I ended the flow. Then went over to the water bucket and dippered in a splash or so the way he had. It is just remarkable how something you weren’t aware of knowing can pop to your aid at the right moment. From times I had been in the Medicine Lodge saloon with my father, I was able to offer now in natural salute to Stanley:

  "Here’s how !"

  "How," Stanley recited back automatically.

  Evidently I swigged somewhat deeper than I intended. Or should have gone a little heavier on the splash of water. Or something. By the time I set my cup down on the board table, I was blinking hard. While I was at this, Stanley meanwhile had got up to shove wood into the stove.

  "So what do you think?" he inquired. "Will it ever replace water ?"

  I didn’t know about that, but the elixir of Doctor Hall did draw a person’s attention.

  Stanley reseated himself and was gandering around the room again. "Who’s our landlord, do you know?"

  "Huh ?"

  "This cabin. Who’s got this school section now?"

  "Oh. The Double W."

  "Jesus H. Christ." Accompanying this from Stanley was the strongest look he had yet given me. When scrutiny told him I was offering an innocent’s truth, he let out: "Is there a blade of grass anywhere those sonuvabitches won’t try to get their hands on?"

  "I dunno. Did you have some run-in with the Double W too ?"

  “A run-in." Stanley considered the weight of the words. “You might call it that, I guess. I had the particular pleasure once of telling old Warren Williamson, Wendell’s daddy, that that big belly of his was a tombstone for his dead ass. ’Scuse my French again. And some other stuff got said." Stanley sipped and reflected. "What did you mean, ‘too’?"

  "My brother Alec, he’s riding for the Double W."

  "The hell you say." Stanley waited for me to go on, and when I didn’t he provided: "I wouldn’t wish that onto nobody. But just how does it constitute a run-in?"

  "My folks," I elaborated. “They’re plenty piss—uh, peed off over it."

  "Family feathers in a fluff. The old, old story." Stanley tipped a sip again, and I followed. Inspiration in a cup must have been the encouragemen
t my tongue was seeking, for before long I heard myself asking: “You haven’t been in the Two country the last while, have you ?"

  "Naw."

  “Where you been ?"

  "Oh, just a lot of places." Stanley seemed to review them on the cabin wall. "Down in Colorado for a while. Talk about dry. Half that state was blowing around chasing after the other half. A little time in both Dakotas. Worked in the wheat harvest there, insofar as there was any wheat after the drouth and the grasshoppers. And Wyoming. I was an association rider in that Cody country a summer or two. Then Montana here again for a while, over in the Big Hole Basin. A couple of haying seasons there." He considered, summed: "Around."

  Which moved him to another drag from his cup.

  I had one from mine, too. “What’re you doing back up in this country ?"

  "Like I say, by now I been everyplace else, and they’re no better. Came back to the everloving Two to take up a career in tending camp, as you can plainly see. They advertise in those big newspapers for one-handed raggedy-ass camptenders, don’t you know. You bet they do."

  He did seem a trifle sensitive on this topic. Well, there was always some other, such as the matter of who he had been before he became a wandering comet. "Are you from around here originally?"

  "Not hardly. Not a Two Mediciner by birth." He glanced at me. "Like you are. No, I——"

  Stanley Meixell originated in Missouri, on a farm east of St. Joe in Daviess County. As he told it, the summer he turned thirteen he encountered the down-row of corn: that tumbled line of cornstalks knocked over by the harvest wagon as it straddled its way through the field. Custom was that the youngest of the crew always had to be the picker of the down-row, and Stanley was the last of five Meixell boys. Ahead of him stretched a green gauntlet of down-row summers. Except that by the end of the first sweltering day of stooping and ferreting into the tangle of downed stalks for ears of corn, Stanley came to his decision about further Missouri life. "Within the week I was headed out to the Kansas high plains." If you’re like me you think of Kansas as one eternal wheatfield, but actually western Kansas then was cattle country. Dodge City was out there, after all.

  Four or five years of ranch jobs out there in jayhawk country ensued for Stanley. "I can tell you a little story on that, Jick. This once we were dehorning a bunch of Texas steers. There was this one ornery sonuvabitch of a buckskin steer we never could get corraled with the others. After enough of trying, the foreman said he’d pay five dollars to anybody who’d bring that sonuvabitching steer in. Well, don’t you know, another snotnose kid and me decided we’d just be the ones. Off we rode, and we come onto him about three miles away from the corral, all by hisself, and he wasn’t about to be driven. Well, then we figured we’d just rope him and drag him in. We got to thinking, though—three miles is quite a drag, ain’t it? So instead we each loosed out our lariat, about ten feet of it, and took turns to get out in front of him and pop him across the nose with that rope. When we done that he’d make a hell of a big run at us and we’d dodge ahead out of his way, and he choused us back toward the corral that way. We finally got him up within about a quarter of a mile of the dehorning. Then each of us roped an end and tied him down and went on into the ranch and hitched up a stoneboat and loaded him on and boated him in in high old style. The foreman was waiting for us with five silver dollars in his hand."

  Cowboying in the high old style. Alec, I thought to myself, you’re the one who ought to be hearing this.

  As happens, something came along to dislodge Stanley from that cowboying life. It was a long bunkhouse winter, weather just bad enough to keep him cooped on the ranch. "I’d go give the cows a jag of hay two times a day and otherwise all there was to do was sit around and do hairwork." Each time Stanley was in the barn he would pluck strands from the horses’ tails, then back he went beside the bunkhouse stove to braid horsehair quirts and bridles “and eventually even a whole damn lasso." By the end of that hairwork winter the tails of the horses had thinned drastically, and so had Stanley’s patience with Kansas.

  All this life history of Stanley’s I found amazingly interesting. I suppose that part of my father was duplicated in me, the fascination about pawing over old times.

  While Stanley was storying, my cup had drained itself without my really noticing. Thus when he stopped to tip another round into his, I followed suit. The whiskey was weaving a little bit of wooze around me, so I was particularly pleased that I was able to dredge back yet another Medicine Lodge toast. I offered it heartily:

  "Here’s lead in your pencil!"

  That one made Stanley eye me sharply for a moment, but he said. only as he had the first time, "How," and tipped his cup.

  "Well, that’s Missouri and Kansas accounted for," I chirped in encouragement. "How was it you got up here to Montana?"

  "On the seventeenth of March of 1898, to be real exact," Stanley boarded the first train of his life. From someone he had heard about Montana and a go-ahead new town called Kalispell, which is over on the west side of the Rockies, about straight across from there in the cabin where Stanley was telling me all this. Two days and two nights on that train. "The shoebox full of fried chicken one of those Kansas girls fixed for me didn’t quite last the trip through."

  In Kalispell then, "you could hear hammers going all over town."

  For the next few years Stanley grew up with the community. He worked sawmill jobs, driving a sawdust cart, sawfiling, foremanning a lumber piling crew. “Went out on some jobs with the U.S. Geological Survey, for a while there." A winter, he worked as a teamster hauling lumber from Lake Blaine into Kalispell. Another spell, he even was a river pig, during one of the log drives on the north fork of the Flathead River. "It was a world of timber over there then. I tell you something, though, Jick. People kind of got spoiled by it. Take those fires—December of my first year in Kalispell. They burned along the whole damn mountains from Big Fork to Bad Rock Canyon and even farther north than that. Everybody went out on the hills east of town at night to see the fire. Running wild on the mountains, that way. Green kid I was, I asked why somebody didn’t do something about it.

  ‘That’s public domain,’ I got told. ‘Belongs to the government, not nobody around here.’ Damn it to hell, though, when I saw that forest being burned up it just never seemed right to me." Stanley here took stiff encouragement from his cup, as if quenching the distaste for forest fire.

  "Damn fire anyhow," I seconded with a slurp of my own. "But what got you across the mountains, here to the Two?"

  Stanley gave me quite a glance, I guess to estimate the state of my health under Dr. Al K. Hall’s ministration. I felt first-rate, and blinked Stanley an earnest response that was meant to say so.

  "Better go a little slow on how often you visit that cup," he advised. Then: “The Two Medicine country. Why did I ever kiss her hello. Good question. One of the best."

  What ensued is somewhat difficult to reconstruct. The bald truth, I may as well say, is that as Stanley waxed forth, my sobriety waned. But even if I had stayed sharp-eared as a deacon, the headful of the past which Stanley now provided me simply was too much to keep straight. Tale upon tale of the Two country; memories of how the range looked some certain year; people who passed away before I was born; English Creek, Noon Creek, Gros Ventre, the reservation; names of horses, habits of sheepherders and cowboys, appreciations of certain saloons and bartenders. I was accustomed to a broth of history from my father and Toussaint Rennie, some single topic at a time, but Stanley’s version was a brimming mulligan stew. “I can tell you a time, Jick, I was riding along in here under the Reef and met an old Scotch sheepherder on his horse. White-bearded geezer, hadn’t had a haircut since Christmas. ‘Lad !’ he calls out to me. ‘Can ye tell me the elevation here where we are?’ Not offhand, I say to him, why does he want to know? ‘Ye see, I was right here when those surveyors of that Theological Survey come through years ago, and they told me the elevation, but I forgot. I’m pretty sure the number had a s
even in it, though." The forest fires of 1910, which darkened daytime for weeks on end: Stanley helped combat the stubborn one in the Two mountains west of where Swift Dam now stood. The flu epidemic during the world war: he remembered death outrunning the hearse capacity, two and three coffins at a time in the back of a truck headed for the Gros Ventre town cemetery. The legendary winter of ’19: "We really caught hell, that time. Particularly those ’steaders in Scotch Heaven. Poor snowed—in bastards." The banks going under in the early twenties, the tide of homesteaders reversing itself. "Another time I can tell. In honor of Canada Dan, you might say. Must of been the summer of ’16, I was up in Browning when one of those big sheep outfits out in Washington shipped in five thousand ewes and lambs. Gonna graze them there on the north end of the Two. Those sheep came hungry from eighteen hours on the stock cars, and they hit the flats out there and got onto deathcamas and lupine. Started dying by the hundreds. We got hold of all the pinanginated potash and sulfate of aluminum there was in the drugstore at Browning, and sent guys to fetch all of it there was in Cut Bank and Valier and Gros Ventre too, and we started in mixing the stuff in washtubs and dosing those sheep. Most of the ones we dosed pulled through okay, but it was too late for about a thousand of them others. All there was to do was drag in the carcasses and set them afire with brush. We burned dead sheep all night on that prairie."

  Those sheep pyres I believe were the story that made me check out of Stanley’s companionship for the evening. At least, I seem to remember counseling myself not to think about deceased sheep in combination with the social juice I’d been imbibing, by now three cups’ worth. Stanley on the other hand had hardly even sipped during this tale-telling spell.

  "I’ve about had a day," I announced. The bunk bed was noticeably more distant than it’d been the night before, but I managed to trek to it.

  "Adios till the rooster crows," Stanley’s voice followed me.

  "Or till the crow roosts," I imparted to myself, or maybe to a more general audience, for at the time it seemed to me an exceptionally clever comment.