Ute Peak Country

by Lauran Paine

  Chapter Five

  They came across two buck deer a mile from the cabin, killed both, boned out the meat, and made shoulder packs of the hides. With this burden they returned to the cabin, arriving there with the last soft glow of dying day over everything.

  Beverly was there to greet them, her eyes shining and her smile wide. She helped them hang the meat from the rounded back-roof beams to cool out. Neither Frank nor Jack mentioned the meeting with Denver Holt. They had almost forgotten about it themselves in fact. But Jack did say they meant to take her crevice mining with them two days later.

  It was good to be back. It was always good to return with plenty of meat. They sat by the fireside after supper and talked. Frank had packed in enough shag tobacco to last both men a year, so they puffed their pipes, and when Beverly asked Miggs about the father she’d never known, he sat there relaxed, gazing mistily into the fire, spinning great tales of Jedediah Shafter. Frank McCoy, over where dancing shadows alternately darkened and brightened his thin, raffish face, looked solemn everywhere but in the eyes, as he listened to Miggs carefully creating an image of Beverly’s father for the girl that Frank strongly suspected was stretching the truth about as far as it could be stretched.

  Later, when the two men went outside for a last look at the horses, he said to Miggs: “You handled that right well, Jack.”

  And Miggs, knowing what McCoy was referring to, said back: “What’d you expect a man to do … tell her the truth? Young folks got to believe their kin are a sight better’n most of them ever were. Particularly that pretty little lady in there.” Jack leaned upon a peeled log, gazing up where the horses were dimly visible under a smoothly worn old moon. “It’s sort of like religion,” he mused. “When folks attribute virtue to something they powerfully admire, Frank, they just naturally try to copy that hero, and they become better people for the trying, although the object they worship maybe wasn’t really very virtuous at all. You understand?”

  “I understand you do a heap of thinking up in here by yourself all winter,” retorted McCoy, not understanding at all. “Come on, let’s get back. It’s colder’n a witch’s kiss out here.”

  They returned to the cabin. Beverly was already abed. She’d left the lamp turned low. This mellow, orange light softened every axe mark otherwise visible on the log walls; it gentled the crudity of the cabin and left only that feeling of pleasant warmth, of security that such uplands log houses possess.

  Miggs and McCoy turned in. Frank dropped off with no more ritual than one rattling big sigh, but Jackson Miggs lay in his blankets for a long time, wondering how he’d bring up the question of staying on to the girl. He thought, too, of the things in his heart, but he was a patient, wise man. One learned to be patient and philosophical when one spent months cabin-bound in a world of endless hush and frigid whiteness.

  He’d find a way and the place, somehow, to speak to her. This was only the second week she’d been in the Ute Peak country. There was a lot of time yet.

  He fell asleep feeling wistful, feeling poignant, and feeling good inside. He had quite forgotten Denver Holt and Holt’s big herd of Durham cattle.

  In fact, only after they were down in the southern reaches, crevice mining, two days later, their camp established beside a clear-water pool where sunlight hammered golden sheets over the water, did he have occasion to remember Holt at all.

  They had taught Beverly how to walk up the creeks with her hunting knife and a little buckskin bag, find fissures in the rocks where wintertime freshets had deposited silt in the cracks, and carefully, using the edge of her knife, uncover little gold deposits. She had been as thrilled and excited as Jack had thought she would be the first time she found a gold pocket all by herself. Watching her, he thought she must have been an unusually lively little girl, because now, as a big girl, she laughed and sparkled even when she fell once and cut her hand upon sharp creekside stones.

  They stayed at this camp for four days, going out separately each morning with their knives and little bags, crevice mining. On the fifth day, deciding they’d explored all the byways within a goodly radius of their present site, they decided around the campfire that the next morning, they’d strike camp and move on westward where Frank and Jack knew of other creeks worth mining.

  But before daylight of the fifth day, Jack rolled out, pulled on his boots, took his rifle, and slipped out of camp without waking the others. He followed his sensitive nose a mile southward, as far as a juniper top out, and hunkered up there, awaiting first light to see whether or not his nose had played him false.

  It hadn’t. When the steely brightness widened, lightened, turned the downcountry eerily visible below where he sat cross-legged, waiting, he saw the distinct, far blur of moving cattle. It had been the scent of those animals that had roused him two hours earlier.

  He sat there until, off in the faraway east, pale pink and milky yellow came on ahead of a nearly rising sun, giving back to the land the dimensional depth and solid substance that had been robbed by the nighttime.

  The herd showed best where brush and trees backgrounded it, because these were Hereford-cross cattle, nearly all of them with dark red hides but with totally white or partially white faces. He knew these critters. It was late May now. A mite earlier than usual for Hyatt Tolman to be driving into the uplands, but those were unmistakably his animals.

  Jack returned to camp. Bev had breakfast cooking. Frank was putting their packs back up into a tree so foraging varmints wouldn’t find them while the three were out mining.

  From back a little way among the gloomy trees, Miggs halted to lean upon his rifle and watch the girl. She worked at the breakfast fire, head down, every now and then jutting her underlip to blow upward at a coil of heavy black hair that swung low across her forehead. She had taken to the ways of camping like a duck takes to water. He told himself that it was in her naturally to do this, for whatever anyone had ever said about her father, one thing a man could say truthfully about him was that Jed Shafter was one of the best mountaineers ever put upon this earth.

  He stepped out into full view, saw McCoy’s and the girl’s eyes rise to him, and said: “Tolman’s coming. Just been down to see his cattle pushing up the trail.”

  McCoy finished securing the ropes where he’d jerked their packs up out of ground reach, went over, and eased down where Miggs had seated himself across from Beverly. When she had filled their tin cups with coffee and passed them over, she affectionately smiled at Jack.

  Frank leaned over to whisper. “You’d best head Tolman off and tell him about that Holt outfit. I doubt if he’ll want his heifers bred to those Durham bulls. He told us last summer he was trying to breed up into this white-faced breed and not back into the shorthorn line.”

  Jack nodded. “We’ll take care of that. He won’t be up here at the rate he’s traveling now for another three hours.”

  Beverly saw them talking low, back and forth, but wisely let this go past. She gave them their plates, blew that shiny black curl upward, and said to Miggs: “Frank thinks I have forty dollars’ worth of flake gold.” She dropped her head a little to one side, twinkled a quick, girlish smile at Jack, and added: “This is the first money I ever had of my own. I think, when we go back, I’ll buy you a new black hat at Laramie, and myself a long, flowing white dress.”

  Jack’s hand grew still midway to his mouth. When she went back …?

  “Hey,” protested McCoy, his thin, lined face creasing with mock indignation. “What about me? I brought you up here, remember.”

  “I’ll never forget that,” she said, her warm smile softening toward McCoy. “It’s everything you said it was, and more, Frank. I could stay up in here forever. I never felt so good in my life, nor …” She broke off, narrowed her liquid dark eyes at McCoy, got a knowing, wise look, and said: “I’ll buy you a case of Old Crow whiskey, Frank, and a brand-new red wool shirt.”

  Frank w
as placated, but Jack said nothing and finished eating, after which the three of them went to the pool to scrub their utensils. There, Jack said: “Bev, the winters here are lonely and bitter cold. You wouldn’t like it then.”

  “Winter’s cold everywhere,” she replied. “At least up in here, the snow would be clean and the stillness good. In Laramie the snow is dirty … and so are the noises.”

  That was all either of them said on that subject. Beverly took her knife, her little poke, and went up where she’d located a promising crevice the evening before. She shot Jack and Frank a quick warm smile, leaving them standing together by the dying campfire. As they watched her sturdy, small figure head up into the shadowy places, McCoy said: “Jack, it’s a good thing there’s only us two old gaffers to see her dressed in those tight doeskin pants and chalk-tanned Ute squaw blouse, for I swear she’s just about the most likely looking female a man could ever lay eyes on.”

  Miggs began covering the campfire coals with the edge of one boot. After a while he said: “Frank, I’ll be eternally damned if I can figure out how an old devil like Jed Shafter ever got himself a daughter as pretty and sweet as that little lady is.”

  McCoy smiled. “Why, Jackson, I heard you with my own ears explaining about how fine a feller her paw was just the other night.”

  Miggs looked over toward the gloomy canyon where Beverly had gone, looked back, and said: “Come on … let’s go find Tolman.”

  They took their rifles, headed leisurely southward as far as that top out where Miggs had squatted earlier, and there halted to consider the sea of dark red backs below where Tolman’s cattle were beginning to push upward along the game trails, streaming steadily northward. The older animals among that herd, bulls and cows, knew through some dim but persevering instinct where they were going. The younger animals, mostly heifers, contentedly climbed along behind the older animals. If a few strayed, it made no difference. They had all the summer—up until the first frost in September—to find the others.

  “Only three riders,” said Frank, pointing far back where the calving cows, the footsore critters, and the oxen-paced big bulls trudged along. “Odd. Usually Tolman brings five, six men up with him.”

  Miggs, having already noticed this, had a plausible but incorrect explanation. “Hyatt isn’t with those three, so I’d guess he’s maybe off on a side trail somewhere with a rider or two. Maybe bringing on some cutbacks.”

  This satisfied McCoy. They stood up there, watching that big herd push on up toward them, breaking right and left around the granite precipice they stood upon.

  “There’s Fred Brian,” said Miggs as the three riders converged and a broad-shouldered man in a black wool shirt to match his broad black hat gestured for the other two horsemen to break up—one to trail northward to the right of the cliff, the other cowboy to trail off to the left.

  “He must still be Hyatt’s range boss,” mused Frank. “You know, I got the impression last summer when he visited the cabin that he wanted to strike out on his own.”

  Miggs nodded. Evidently he’d also gotten this impression, for he said: “They all do sometime or another. If they’re any good, they do.”

  “Brian’s a good cowman.”

  “Yeah. He’s got more savvy at twenty-seven than you and I had, Frank. Otherwise, we’d have amounted to something other than a pair of old leftovers from another era.”

  “Wait a minute,” protested McCoy. “You got more money cached in these mountains than Hyatt Tolman’s got in the Pagosa bank, I’ll bet.”

  “And you?” asked Miggs, with a smile. “What’ve you got, Frank, besides your health?”

  “Hell’s bells, that’s enough isn’t it? Tolman’s got more money’n I’ve got, sure, but last summer he didn’t look so good, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t. Come on. Fred’s heading up this way.”

  Chapter Six

  Fred Brian had been Hyatt Tolman’s range boss since he’d been twenty-three years old. He was a powerful man just under six feet tall, with a smooth, handsome, and suntanned face. He was a man other men instantly cottoned to, and down in Pagosa it hadn’t always been men who’d found his company pleasant and welcome.

  As he rode leisurely along now, making for the steepening rise into the upland meadow country below Ute Peak, he trailed two packhorses fully loaded and kept his experienced eyes upon the herd ahead, the stragglers near the tag end of that herd, and his two riders.

  He did not anticipate meeting anyone for another five or six miles, so when Jackson Miggs and stringy Frank McCoy stepped forth beside the trail, Brian was surprised. He called a greeting to those two, grinned, and at once dismounted to pass over into forest shade and stand there hipshot, looking from one of the older men to the other.

  “You’re looking fit,” he said by way of greeting to Miggs. “And, Frank, you’re about like always … sort of leaned down and tucked-up looking.”

  McCoy smiled. He and Miggs shook hands with this powerful, confident younger man with that gun tied to his right leg and that thick auburn hair visible where he’d thumbed back his hat.

  “Where’s Hyatt?” Jackson Miggs asked, throwing a look back southward. “He’s usually the first one up the trail.”

  Instead of replying immediately, Fred Brian fished a soiled, limp envelope from his pocket and pushed it out to Miggs. “For you,” he said, and added nothing to those two words.

  Jack took the envelope, opened it, smoothed out the letter that the envelope contained, read it, and afterward lifted perplexed, troubled eyes to the younger man.

  “It’s asking a lot, I know,” murmured Brian, his gaze grave and heavy. “He thought you might do it, seeing you’ve been friends these past fifteen years or so.”

  “Do what?” asked McCoy, edging up closer, full of sudden interest, sudden curiosity. “What is it, Jack?”

  Miggs ignored McCoy to reread that letter, his brows furrowing, his eyes turning solemn and troubled. He eventually said to Brian: “I’m no cattleman, Fred.”

  “The boys and I’ll do whatever’s got to be done,” replied Hyatt Tolman’s range boss. “I brought along plenty of grub and whatnot to keep us going up in here for a while.”

  “You figure to stay all summer, Fred?”

  Brian nodded. “Those are my orders, Jack.” He kept watching Miggs.

  McCoy screwed up his face. “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Say, has something happened to Tolman?”

  “Flat on his back down at the ranch,” said Brian, still watching Jackson Miggs. “Doctor says he’ll be laid up for at least two months.”

  “What ails him?”

  Brian shrugged, shot Frank a brief look, and returned to watching Jack, waiting for Miggs to make his decision. “There’ve been three doctors in this winter, Frank, and all three got a different notion of what’s ailing him. About all they agree upon is that it’s inside him … some kind of foul-up in his inner workings. Anyway, in that letter he sent Jackson, he’s asked if maybe Jackson wouldn’t sort of ramrod for him while the cattle are up here. Like I just said … any cow work that’s got to be done, my two riders and I’ll do. All he wants is for Jackson to sort of watch over the critters because he knows the mountains better’n anyone around.” Brian paused, waited for Jack to speak, and, when Miggs did not, Brian said: “Well, how about it? He’ll pay you foreman’s wages, Jack.”

  “Fred,” said Frank, sounding disgruntled, “we’ve got hunting and crevice mining to do and …” McCoy suddenly went silent, his eyes widening. “Hey,” he said, giving Jack’s elbow a bump, “you better tell him about that Holt outfit.”

  Miggs carefully folded the letter, one of the extremely few written communications he’d received in his lifetime, placed it back into its soiled envelope, and pushed the thing into a pocket.

  “I’ll help you all I can,” he told Fred Brian. “I’d do that anyway, Fred, but not f
or money. Just for old times’ sake. I’m right sorry to hear about old Hyatt, too. The first man you send back down to Pagosa, have him tell Hyatt we’ll make out all right, the five of us.”

  “Sure,” said Brian showing obvious relief.

  “The five of us,” croaked McCoy. “Brian here, his two riders, you … and who else, Jack?”

  “You, of course,” answered Miggs, twisting to look at McCoy.

  “What about our mining and hunting?”

  “We’ll have time for those things.”

  “Sure you will,” put in Fred Brian placatingly. “Frank, whatever you’re short come fall, I’ll make up to you in cash money.”

  McCoy’s eyes craftily brightened at this. Jack saw that look and wagged his head back and forth. But he said nothing, only flagged on up the trail for Brian to follow after and began walking ahead, back toward the campsite beside the clear-water pool.

  Frank caught up with Jack when he was a hundred yards farther onward. He said: “Tolman must be pretty sick to ask you to oversee things for him.”

  “He must be,” assented Miggs, strolling along with his head down and his bushy brows knit.

  “Say, you forgot to mention to Brian about that other cow outfit up in here.”

  “I didn’t forget, Frank. It’s just that there’s plenty of time to tell him, and right now we’ve got to figure something out.”

  “Yeah, how to get in our hunting and suchlike, while stewing about Tolman’s cattle, too.”

  “No,” contradicted Miggs. “No, Fred’s capable of all that, and maybe any other summer, helping Tolman out wouldn’t be so hard. But this year’ll be different. I can see that plain as day.”

  “Different, how?”

  “Holt. You heard him, Frank, you saw him. He’s right, too, about this being free country up under Ute Peak.”