A River of Horns

by Peter Grant

  A few months later their only other child, a daughter, had married an English merchant she’d met in New Orleans on one of his trading trips. They had returned to England three years ago. Pinkerton’s office in London had tried to trace her, but had learned that the family had traveled to India, two years before. The office could not locate an address for them. Routine inquiries would be made through commercial channels, but due to the vast size and complexity of the Indian sub-continent, and Pinkerton’s lack of offices or agents in that country, this would take a long time, and success could not be guaranteed. If Mr. Ames wished, a special agent would be sent, but this would involve much greater expense, probably to the tune of thousands of dollars. The agency awaited his instructions.

  That night, after supper, Walt handed the letter to Colleen. She read it through, then looked up. “What are you going to do, darling?”

  “I’ve a mind to tell ’em to go ahead with their routine inquiries, but not to send a special agent. We don’t have the money to spare for that right now. I’m more concerned that the Major’s remains have been stored at the ranch since we got back. It don’t seem respectful, somehow. I’d like to bury him properly. We can exhume his coffin later, if need be, to send to his sister, if we ever find her.”

  She nodded firmly. “I agree. You were talking about setting up a family burial plot at the ranch, and transferring your first wife’s remains to it. Will you bury the Major there, too?”

  “I reckon so. I figure we owe him that. We could make a bigger graveyard, too, for use by the families who live at the Rafter A. We can fence off a corner of it for our family plot.”

  Colleen smiled. “Let’s do that. I’ll ask the priest at St. Ignatius Church, here in town, whether someone can come out and bless the graves. As a matter of fact…” she fell silent for a moment, then went on, “Why don’t we build a small chapel near the ranch buildings? It can be used by visiting priests and pastors of every church. I’m sure the families, at least, would like to have somewhere they can use for services, even if they lead their own.”

  “I don’t mind. Jaime can pick the site, and the hands can build it using poles an’ adobe bricks. We could use it as a schoolhouse during the week – there’s got to be seven or eight kids out there by now, in the hands’ families, who need schooling. As for the graveyard, how about up on the shoulder of the hill above the ranch? You can look out from there and see the Wet Mountain Valley stretching away to the northeast, and Blanca Peak to the southwest, and all our horses in the fields below. It’s a lovely, peaceful place.”

  “I haven’t climbed up there yet. Is it easy to reach?”

  “It’s not too difficult, unless it’s rainin’. When it’s wet, the grass gets slippery. We can have Jaime cut a path up to it, o’ course.”

  “Then let’s do that. An undertaker can make new coffins for Rose and the Major. We can bury them at the same time. I’ll arrange for a Requiem Mass for them both to be held here.”

  Walt smiled. “Rose was a Baptist, so I don’t know whether she’d hold with incense an’ holy water an’ all the rest o’ your Catholic rituals; but I don’t suppose they’ll do her any harm.”

  Colleen looked at him quizzically. “I know you believe in God, but you’ve never said exactly what church you belong to.”

  “I guess I don’t belong to any church in particular. My father was Methodist, while mom was a Quaker. They kinda muddled along together, and took us kids to the Methodist church in town every month or two, so if I had to choose, I’d say Methodist out o’ habit. I figured out most of what I believe durin’ the Civil War. Gettin’ shot at sure helps a man to pray, I’m here to tell you!” She laughed.

  “Trouble was, every chaplain had a different version of what was right, an’ you had to believe their way, or be damned,” he went on. “That held no water with me. I can’t see God tellin’ someone, ‘Well, you lived a good life, but because you weren’t this or that or t’other, you can’t come in to Heaven’. That makes no sense. I stopped goin’ to church over that, and it put me off forever from anyone tellin’ me I’ve got to believe somethin’, whether I want to or not.”

  “Is that why you don’t want to become a Catholic?”

  “Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”

  She smiled ruefully. “I suppose I can understand that; and I’ll never try to force the issue, because I know that would make you something you aren’t.”

  “Thanks, honey. I just hope the good Lord understands me. That’s the important thing.” He put his arm around her. “I’ve talked to him a lot more since I met you. If he gave me you to be my wife, I must’ve been doin’ something right.”

  She glanced sidelong at him. “Or maybe he was punishing me!”

  They hugged each other, laughing.

  Walt arranged with an undertaker to exhume Rose’s body from the cemetery in Pueblo, and provide two new caskets, one for her and the other for Major d’Assaily’s remains. “You’ll want to weight his casket with sandbags,” the mortician said in brisk, businesslike tones. “After all, you said there are only bones left, after several years in the ground with no coffin to protect the body. It won’t feel right to the pallbearers.”

  While the arrangements were being made, the priest at St. Ignatius Church offered a Requiem Mass for both the deceased. Walt attended the service with Colleen, plus a few other mourners from his ranch staff and Ames Transport who’d known Rose, or knew of the Major’s importance to them. The Jesuit pastor agreed to contact the visiting priest who celebrated Mass at Rosita, further up the Wet Mountain Valley, once every few weeks. He would travel to the ranch to bless the graves as soon as he could make time to do so, and would discuss with Jaime the possibility of holding Mass at the ranch chapel at regular intervals.

  Walt loaded both caskets onto a buckboard, and covered them with a tarpaulin to protect them against wind and weather. He and Colleen rode out to the Rafter A, accompanied by a few others. He’d bought a small plot of ground halfway between Pueblo and the ranch, and built a way station on it, dividing the sixty-mile journey into two segments of thirty miles each. The horses were put into the corral and barn behind the building, while the couple running the way station cooked supper for everybody. Walt and Colleen shared their own private two-room suite, with a crib for the baby, while the others had the use of two dormitories, one for men and one for women and children.

  “Hank and Ellen look after this place very well,” Colleen observed as they got into bed that night. “He limps badly. Is he another of your injured workers that you kept on the payroll?”

  “Yeah, he is. I try to find jobs for those who’re still able to do lighter work. They earn less than a normal wage, o’ course, but they get room an’ board, too. Hank’s done a good job here, with his boy to help him, and Ellen cooks well enough that no-one complains about the food. I pay her, too, o’ course, and let them rent beds to travelers passin’ by, not just our ranch hands: so between the two of ’em, they prob’ly make more than Hank used to earn as a teamster.”

  She smiled. “You’re really an old softy at heart, despite the hard-bitten businessman image you project. There’s lots of people who wouldn’t do nearly as much to help an injured worker.”

  Walt shrugged. “I’ve seen too much o’ that. I can’t help everybody, but I’ll do my best for those who’ve helped me get where I am today.”

  “And others, too. You’ve hired a dozen of Bishop Machebeuf’s orphans already.”

  “They need a start in life, just like I did. I got mine through killin’ people, I’m sorry to say. I guess helpin’ the orphans is one way to help make up for that.”

  “Killing people?” She sat up in bed, astonished.

  “Yeah.” He described his encounter, just after the War, with a group of bushwhackers who were ambushing returning Confederate soldiers. “They’d robbed others, includin’ a Yankee sutler, before I turned the tables on ’em. Their stolen gold helped me make a fresh start out West. I reckon I�
�d do the same again, if I had to – I never saw the sense in lettin’ anyone take a free shot at me! – but killin’ that woman never sat easy on my conscience, even though she shot me first. This is one way to make amends for that.”

  “So that’s where the scar on the back of your neck came from!” She reached out and ran her fingers across it gently. Walt shivered as he felt her touch. “I’m glad she wasn’t a better shot, or you wouldn’t have lived long enough to marry me. There’s so much I still don’t know about your past – and I don’t even know what questions to ask, to get it out of you!”

  He grinned. “Let’s leave it that I’m real glad I met you, sweetheart. The past is over an’ done. We’ve got a future to build together.”

  Their arrival at the Rafter A the following afternoon was greeted with warm, happy smiles from the former workers at Colleen’s father’s estancia, all of whom had come to Colorado with her to help Walt’s breeding program by teaching his existing hands all that Don Thomas had taught them. They had formed a tight-knit ranch community together, which pleased Walt very much. An impromptu fiesta soon developed, with all the families coming together to help the cooks in the central kitchen produce a variety of tasty foods. A group of ranch hands with guitars, castanets and a tambourine struck up in a corner, and soon couples were dancing. The single men clapped along in time, eager to cut in and share the fun after the husbands had had their turn.

  While the preparations were under way, Jaime showed Walt and Colleen the already half-built adobe chapel he’d sited a little above and beyond the ranch buildings. “It will be used as a schoolhouse, too, as you said, patrón. The carpenter is already making the tables. For services, they will be stacked at the back. Now, if we can just find a teacher who would like to live out in the country, on a ranch…”

  Walt laughed. “I’ll see what I can do. You’ve done real well, Jaime. I like this.”

  “Thank you, patrón. When will you start to build your house out here?”

  “That’ll have to wait a year or two. We’ll use the little apartment until then.”

  Jaime gave a sly grin. “Then you had better not have too many more children too soon, or you will outgrow it and have nowhere else to go!”

  Walt gave him a mock-severe look. “Now, Jaime, where’s the fun in that?”

  The ranch manager laughed, while Colleen blushed and swatted at Walt. “Men!”

  The following morning, accompanied by almost half the ranch hands, they took the buckboard up the hill to the graveyard. Jaime had cut a switchback trail leading to it, and laid it out carefully using a less sloping part of the hillside, with corral-style fencing enclosing it, and a smaller enclosure within it for the family.

  Two graves had been dug in the family enclosure. Rose’s would be on the right of Walt’s eventual resting place, at Colleen’s insistence. “She was your first wife, after all,” she’d pointed out. “She deserves the place of honor. I’ll be satisfied with your left side.” Major d’Assaily would also be buried in the family enclosure, albeit to one side, because they both agreed he’d been the prime mover in their meeting and marrying. He was therefore honorary family, as far as they were concerned.

  They gathered around as some of the ranch hands lowered the coffins into their graves. Walt read the ninetieth Psalm, and Colleen followed with the twenty-third. When the Scripture readings were done, Walt looked around at those attending.

  “Rose was buried accordin’ to Methodist rites back in ’72, and Major d’Assaily’s had a Requiem Mass said for him. We don’t have a priest or pastor here to hold a service right now, but one will come to bless the graves as soon as he can make it. Meanwhile, I guess all of us here can pray for them both. I’m sure gonna need God’s grace myself – I guess all of us will – so we can ask it for them, too.”

  They watched as four ranch hands filled in the graves, laid a border around them with rocks brought up the hill for the purpose, and planted the gravestones. Walt had brought Rose’s original gravestone from Pueblo, and had one made for Major d’Assaily, giving his rank, date of birth, and presumed date of death, based on his diary account and the testimony of the peasant who’d found him, just before he died of his wounds.

  “Will you have a gravestone prepared for us, dear, the way Papa did for himself and Mama?” Colleen asked.

  “Not yet. I reckon that’s temptin’ fate. I’d rather do that when it’s needed, or, if I die first, leave it to you to choose one you like.”

  “All right. When the time comes, though, please make matching gravestones for all three of us; Rose, you and I. After all, I didn’t take you away from her – I took you on from her. She helped to make you who you are, and the man I fell in love with. She’s part of us, too.”

  Walt hugged her gently. “Thanks for sayin’ that, darling. I feel the same.”

  They stayed at the Rafter A for a week, giving Walt the chance to go over the ranch’s books, while Colleen spent time with Jaime discussing the breeding program and making plans for the next few months. Her late father’s breeding herd had already been through two breeding cycles, as had the rest of the horses Walt had bought in Mexico. Well over two hundred foals and yearlings were gallivanting around the paddocks and pastures, enjoying all the fun of being young. They were a delight to the eye.

  “When will you start training them, Jaime?” Walt asked, grinning at the antics of a young foal that was kicking and curvetting its way around its mother as she watched it tolerantly.

  “Already at a year old we start putting a little weight on their backs, and training them to accept the hackamore, patrón. At eighteen months old we begin using saddle and bridle, but without a rider at first, to accustom them to the burden. We also harness them to small, empty carts, to get them used to pulling light weights at the end of a lunge rein. At about two and a half years old, we start riding them, slowly and gently. By three years of age they will be accustomed to riders, well trained, and strong enough to bear an adult.”

  “Slow and steady, eh? I like the sound of that.”

  “Si, patrón. They are too good to hurry their training. Let them gain maturity first, without rushing them.”

  “We’ll plan to start selling them at three years old, then. Colleen and I will have to figure out how to spread the word about them.”

  That night, he told her about his conversation with Jaime. She approved wholeheartedly. “That’s what Papa always used to say. Don’t start them working too hard, too young. Give them a chance to grow up, in mind as well as body, and they’ll be better horses for it.”

  “Yeah. I’ll be glad when they’re ready for the market, because the Rafter A is costin’ us the best part o’ two thousand a month to keep goin’. The sooner it can support itself, the better. It looks like the first batch o’ horses will be ready for sale soon after Tyler gets the ranch set up.”

  “I wonder how he’s doing? He must be well on his way by now, with all his cattle and all his hands.”

  Their eyes turned towards the south wall of their bedroom, as if they were straining to see through it, across the hundreds of miles that separated them from their friend and partner.

  “I guess they’re all workin’ hard,” Walt said reflectively.

  9

  June 1875

  Tyler and his floating outfit were riding in company with the fourth of the five herds heading northward. They’d joined up with them that morning, partly to check on their progress, partly to resupply with food from the freight wagons.

  “I gotta admit, I thought all these new canned foods were a load o’ horse puckey,” Tyler’s cook had reluctantly admitted just that morning. “I was wrong. They make meals a lot more tasty, once you learn how to use ’em. It just sticks in my craw to have to admit that, after fourteen years o’ cookin’ in the Army and on trail drives, I still got a lot to learn!”

  Tyler had laughed softly. “Big o’ you to say that,” he acknowledged. “I’m glad you’re takin’ the time an’ trouble to lea
rn. Your food was never bad, but it’s a whole lot better now than it was before.”

  “So you reckon I got a chance to take on as ranch cook at the new place?”

  “Job’s yours iffen you want it. You and I go back a long way together. Besides, I reckon the cooks Walt hired can probably find places anywhere they please.”

  “Mebbe you should hire one of them too. That way we can alternate, and you’ll get to taste someone else’s food now an’ then.”

  “We’ll see. I’ll for sure need a chuckwagon on the ranch, if it’s gonna be as big a spread as I hope. I’ll have a floatin’ outfit spendin’ nights away from the bunkhouse. There may be room for two or three cooks. Perhaps we’ll hire a couple of the assistants. By then they’ll know enough to move up.”

  As the afternoon drew on, ugly, angry thunderheads began to brew in the sky, soaring higher as they watched. The bright sunlight faded fast as the clouds turned gray and heavy, lightning flickering among their crowns.

  Lee Jarvis, trail boss of this herd, rode up to Tyler, shaking his head. “Don’t like the look o’ this one lil bit. We got a big thunderstorm comin’. The cattle are already sensin’ it, and they’re gettin’ spooked. I reckon I’m gonna set camp a couple miles clear o’ the herd tonight, just in case, and double the night herd riders.”

  “Good idea. Draw on the floating outfit for that, too. We’ll help.”

  “I’ll be glad of it. Thanks.”

  As they made camp, without having to be told, the teamsters pulled all the wagons, including Tyler’s chuckwagon, into a defensive circle, as if expecting an attack by Indians. The teams were watered at a nearby stream, then led inside the circle, which was roped closed behind them. The wagons could not move without them, so they had to be prevented from stampeding, no matter how wild the weather might become.