Showdown at Buffalo Jump

by Gary D. Svee

  He pulled a cigar from a case in his coat and held it toward Catherine, awaiting her approval.

  She nodded again, thinking the smell of a good cigar might be preferable to the dirty, dusty, baking air in the coach. He touched a match to the end of the stogie and sent a puff of smoke into the coach.

  “Name’s Phillips, Aloysius Phillips. Banker,” he said, punctuating the statement with another puff of smoke, “part owner and president of the Prairie Rose Bank.”

  “President,” he continued, with his self-satisfaction obvious in his tone, “of the Prairie Rose Commercial Club, too,” he added, nodding for emphasis.

  “It was me named Prairie Rose. Just like a flower unfolding on the prairie, I says. Prairie Rose it’s got to be, I says, and they all saw how right I was. Smart men, they are in Prairie Rose.”

  Catherine decided to trip the strutting popinjay.

  “Since, sir,” she said, peering at him as though he were something she had found smeared on her shoe, “you are a businessman, perhaps you know of my fiancé, Maxwell Bass.”

  “By jingo, I knew it was you,” Phillips retorted, slapping his knee. “Gents, I’d like you to meet Max Bass’s mail-order bride. Came here all the way from Ireland, by way of Boston. Pretty little thing, isn’t she though? Looks like Max snagged himself a keeper.”

  Catherine froze. She pretended that Phillips was not in the coach, that he had not spoken to her. But pallor spread across her face like snow sifting across a Montana pasture. That was burned away by a pink stain hot as a brand. Catherine O’Dowd, the daughter of an Irish peasant family, had been caught pretending to be something she wasn’t, pretending that a letter from a man in Montana had enough magic in it to make a maid into a lady.

  She had been discovered for what she was. A woman with so few prospects that she chased a promise all the way from Boston to Prairie Rose, Montana. No lady that. Just Catherine O’Dowd: peasant, maid.

  Phillips was grinning. He knew he had smeared her soul with dirt. He reveled in that. Speak uppity to him, would she, this shanty-Irish, mail-order bride?

  “Must not have been enough men in Boston,” Phillips continued. “Or maybe there were too many?”

  The banker blew a puff of smoke at Catherine, and for a moment, it obscured the sneer on his face, but only for a moment.

  “Get my point?” he asked staring her full in the eyes.

  And Catherine turned her face blindly to the window so the other passengers would not see the tear that coursed through the layer of dust on her face, leaving a streak of mud.

  The driver banged on the roof of the coach with the butt of his whip. “Prairie Rose, five minutes,” he said, his voice disappearing behind the veil of dust the whip had dislodged from the ceiling.

  Prairie Rose, Catherine thought, a blossom opening on the prairie. She tried very hard to conceal her tears from the other passengers, and they tried very hard to pretend they hadn’t heard Phillips baiting her, hadn’t seen her cry.

  The remainder of the trip was in silence except for the creaking of leather, squeaking of wheels, drumming of hooves and the occasional pop of the driver’s whip. The heat of Catherine’s anger dried her tears, and she sat stony faced, waiting for the end of her journey.

  “Whoa, you sonsabitches!” shouted the driver.

  The stage lurched to a stop in a cloud of invective, the same way it had run. Even as he climbed off the seat, the driver continued his monologue. “Can’t make these sway-backed, pea-brained, gas-passing horse’s move, and once you get ’em moving, you can’t get ’em to stop. Spend half their time fightin’ each other and the other half fightin’ me.”

  Then louder, to the horse tender who had come with a fresh team, “Take good care of ’em, Billy. It was a good run.”

  An uneasy patter of laughter ran through the coach at the driver’s words. The passengers rose stiffly and patted dust from their clothes. Last to leave the coach were Catherine and Phillips.

  “Mr. Phillips,” Catherine said. “I don’t want you to leave with the wrong impression.”

  Phillips smirked. The tone in Catherine’s voice was diffident, much more to the banker’s liking. He settled in his seat, awaiting the apology due him.

  “I just want you to know that nothing I said to you was meant to convey my true feelings about what a pompous ass you are. Get my point?”

  Then Catherine rammed her hat pin into the banker’s leg. Phillips gasped, and Catherine leaned over until her nose was two inches from his. Her eyes, green as the sea on a sunny day, were lit with sparks.

  “You move and I’ll stick this pin into the bone. The doctor will have to remove it then, and I’ll tell the town I was trying to protect myself from your advances. I don’t think that would do your reputation much good, do you?”

  Phillips shook his head, drops of sweat falling from the tip of his nose, little puffs of dust marking their arrival on his protruding vest.

  “You should be kinder to ladies, Mr. Phillips. Don’t you agree?”

  Phillips nodded, eyes rolling back in his head as though he were about to faint.

  “Speak to me again as you did today, Mr. Phillips, and I’ll give the barbershop quartet in town a man who can sing high C.”

  By now sweat was running off the banker’s face in rivulets, and his collar was smeared with mud.

  “You may go now, Mr. Phillips,” Catherine said, withdrawing the pin. He fled the coach, bent over, hand on his leg where Catherine had made her point.

  Catherine stepped to the door, blinded for a moment by the harsh light of midday. As her eyes grew accustomed to the light, she realized that no man resembling the photograph she carried was waiting. Catherine had studied the photograph many times, seeking clues to the man who hid beneath. It was an open, honest face, the kind that people instinctively trust. There was determination, too, going to stubbornness along the line of the jaw, and a stiffness in the way he sat. Catherine could only guess whether that was because of an innate formality or simply because he wasn’t accustomed to having his picture taken.

  But how could the open, honest man in the picture leave his fiancée at the stage?

  Catherine took two deep breaths, fighting desperately to control the panic she felt rising in her. Had it all been some cruel hoax? Had she been lured out to the prairies of eastern Montana by some false promise?

  “Catherine? Catherine O’Dowd?”

  Catherine’s attention was pulled to a woman waiting on the boardwalk in front of the stage office. She was much older than Catherine, though perhaps not in years. Her face was brown and rough from too much sun, and her hands calloused and scarred from too much work. Still, she fairly glowed with excitement, and Catherine instinctively liked her.

  “Name’s Edna Lenington. Neighbor to Max … uh, Maxwell, I mean, Mr. Bass. He asked me to meet you so you could tidy up a bit before you two get together. That is before you two get married. I mean …” Chagrin spread over Edna’s face. “Sorry, it’s just that there isn’t much that happens around here, and when it does, it’s mostly bad. Something nice is … well, just so nice.”

  Catherine smiled. “You can’t be any more excited than I am,” she said.

  Edna sent Catherine’s bags ahead with two children and then motioned for Catherine to follow. “Few things you’ll have to get used to out here,” she said, stepping up the walk briskly. “The first is that there aren’t many priests. Come around three or four times a year for weddings and baptisms and such. No one in town to take confessions, so you have to try a little harder to play it straight. Not that I think you wouldn’t anyway. I mean … I didn’t mean anything by that.”

  She stopped to take a breath and then opened up again. “Why, listen to me rattle on. I don’t know what’s got into me. I’ve been talking a blue streak since I met you, and I haven’t let you get in a word. How was the trip?”

  “It was just fine.”

  Those four words apparently salved Edna’s conscience, and she continued
, “I imagined that it would be. Zeb, me, and a half dozen kids came out in an immigrant car. Now, that’s not near so fancy as traveling coach the way you did. I saw your tickets, you know. Max showed them to me. First class all the way, I says. Nothing but first class for my bride, he says.”

  “Oh, now I remember what it was that I was going to tell you. Father Tim has to leave this afternoon. Funeral up on Dead Sioux Creek. He has to go soon, so you and Max won’t really have any break-in time to get to know each other. You’ll have to be married today. In about thirty-five minutes.”

  Catherine stopped short on the boardwalk, but Edna continued several steps, talking to herself before she noticed she was alone.

  “My word,” she said. “Where did she go? Oh, there you are.…”

  “We are to be wed this afternoon?”

  “You are if you want a priest to do it.”

  “I do,” Catherine said, resuming her walk. “I want everything to be nice and legal.”

  3

  The first beer went down in a gulp, the second, too. Max had lingered a bit over the third, or was it the fourth, he couldn’t remember. Now he was toying with his fifth or maybe sixth? No, it couldn’t have been that many. Zeb couldn’t stand more than about four mugs of beer without getting tipsy.

  Max looked at his drinking companion. Zeb was sitting motionless on his stool, staring woodenly at the mirror behind the bar. Must have been more than four.

  Then Max felt someone tugging at his sleeve. It was the Lenington’s oldest boy, Hanford, or maybe next in line, Robert. All the Lenington children looked so much alike and were so close in age, it was difficult for Max to tell them apart.

  “You better come now, Mr. Bass,” Hanford or Robert said. “Miss O’Dowd is ready to see you. You have about fifteen minutes, Mama said, and then Miss O’Dowd has to get dressed for the wedding.

  Max went cold-stone sober with panic. He couldn’t go through with this. He had lured this woman, this stranger, to Prairie Rose with lies, representing himself to be something he wasn’t. What chance did this marriage have? He was set in his ways and didn’t know anything about women. There could only be trouble. Better that he just slip out the door and disappear.

  But in the end he didn’t. He took a deep breath and steeled himself for the task ahead just as he had always done. Come blizzards or heat or drought or prairie fires or fiancées, Max had always done what needed doing. And now that he was his own man, plotting the course of his life, he would not shrink from his duty. If a man did only the pleasant tasks God granted him, precious little would ever be done.

  Max put his beer mug on the bar, and with the air of a man saying good-bye to what had been to make way for what would be, he slid off the stool to his feet.

  Robert or Hanford was still trying to talk his father into leaving his perch, but he was having no luck.

  Max reached out to pull Zeb off the stool.

  “No, wait!” the Lenington boy said, taking Max’s arm. “Dad,” he said shaking the elder Lenington by the shoulders. “Ma is in the barn after your bottle. Little Zeb told her where it is, and she’s after it.”

  Zeb’s transformation to consciousness was not nearly so marked as Max’s, but the boy’s ploy got him on his feet, nevertheless.

  “Edna, you stay away from that barn!” he yelled at the top of his voice. Zeb slowly realized where he was and what he had done. He was too drunk to be embarrassed, so he turned to the seated patrons and bowed as though he were a Shakespearean actor taking a curtain call. Then he staggered toward the door, flanked by his son and Max.

  The sunshine outside seemed to drive a spike through Max’s eyes and into his brain—the ache so severe his vision fluttered with it. Then the heat hit him and he stumbled, almost falling to the board walk.

  Zeb was standing bolt upright, clinging to one of the hitching posts, his face bearing a look of complete bewilderment. Then he dropped to his knees and vomited over the edge of the walk, his belly emptying itself in gushes like water spewing from a rain pipe. As he struggled to his feet, a blush of pink spread across the pallor of his face.

  Max thought Zeb might live if they could get him out of the heat, get him up to the Patchucks’ where the priest and the rest of the Leningtons and this stranger from Boston were waiting.

  It was the longest walk Max had ever made, longer even than that time on the Big Dry when that spooky son of a bitching bay pitched him off a rim edge into a nest of boulders below. Bone sticking through his leg it was. Through his pants, too. But he dragged himself the twelve miles back to the ranch. He had no choice. It was either that or die alone on the prairie. Nothing scared Max so much as the thought of lying wide-eyed in dead disbelief until some magpie came and picked holes in his skull where his eyes had been. So Max had crawled the twelve miles, sucking every breath and holding it like a talisman, dragging one dead leg behind him. He would walk to the Patchucks’ half-drunk through this god-awful heat for the same reason: He didn’t want to die alone on the prairie.

  The sidewalk, the buildings, the horizon spun together into a viscous collage that Max waded through as though he were chest deep in a vat of honey. After what seemed to be hours, the trio was standing in front of the Patchucks’, Max reaching toward the door to knock, to set his destiny in motion. But just before his knuckles touched wood, the door opened and Edna peered out, consternation plain on her face.

  “Come in! Come in! She won’t be ready for a few minutes, and that will give me time to pump some coffee into you.”

  Max lurched inside, and Edna guided him to a chair, leaving her son to find a chair for his father. Inside the home out of the heat, Max’s mind began to clear again, adrenaline chasing alcohol from his body.

  “Edna, I would dearly love a cup of coffee.”

  “Not yet. I’ll get you some water and you rinse your face. Run a comb through your hair and straighten that collar, too. You are about to meet your wife, Max. Best get yourself straightened out.”

  “You’re right, Edna,” Max said so softly she heard only a murmur. “I’d best get myself straightened out.”

  “It’s time, Max. She’s in the parlor.”

  Edna’s voice sent a chill down Max’s spine. As the adrenaline surged through his body, he was acutely aware of the sounds, smells, and tension that circulated through the Patchuck home.

  He rose, his legs shaky at first, shakier still as he marched into the parlor to the beat of his heart booming in his chest. As he stepped through the entryway, his eye was drawn in the dim light to a lamp on one end of the couch. And there, in that golden globe of light, was Catherine O’Dowd. Catherine was perhaps the most beautiful creature Max had ever seen. She rose from the couch with a grace that Max thought God had reserved for creatures of the wild: the deer, the antelope, the fox, and the wolf. Her smile, set as it was in a face underlined by a gentle, yet strong chin, held promise. Green eyes so deep a man could step into them were set wide in the face, framed by high cheekbones.

  It was difficult to fathom Catherine’s figure beneath the dress of the day. A more discerning eye than Max’s might have noticed that she was a bit sturdy, more the wild rose that paints Montana creek banks pink in the spring than a pampered houseplant.

  But to Max, struck dumb in the parlor, Catherine O’Dowd was without fault.

  Catherine had raced through her toilet at the Patchuck house, the preparation stilling the anxiety she felt. When all was done, she had arranged herself in the darkened parlor to her best advantage, the yellow light of the kerosene lamp softening the lines of exhaustion on her face. She meant to remain seated when Max entered the room, to greet him as the ladies of the house in Boston greeted their guests, but that affectation was lost in her need to see this man she was about to marry.

  Maxwell Bass was of more than average height, perhaps a little under six feet. His face, baked by summer suns and scoured by winter winds unfolded like a topographical map of Montana. The rugged ridges of his eyebrows, nose, and chin dom
inated the face as the Beartooths, Missions, Crazies, and Spanish Peaks dominate Montana. The spaces between were wrinkled here and there with laugh lines and folds marking the perplexed expression he adopted when considering whether cattle should be moved or the man across the poker table from him had one pair or two.

  “How do you do, Mr. Bass?” she said. “I am Catherine O’Dowd.”

  Max had spent hours considering what he would say when he met his wife. Then he practiced those words, speaking into an empty prairie wind until he could recite the speech in his sleep, and he often did, the sound of his voice awakening him.

  But now, when he needed those words worse than he had needed anything in his life, he could not pull them from his memory. He stood mute and desperate, thankful when “Howdy, ma’am” tumbled from his mouth.

  Max couldn’t remember the last time he had blushed, but he blushed now, the heat spreading across his face. Knowing that his face was red made him blush even more.

  Finally Max spoke, and when he did, it all came out in a rush. “Ma’am, I don’t know what you expected, but I don’t likely measure up. To speak in my defense, you should know that I’m a hard worker, none harder. Anyone around here can tell you that. And I’m out here because I want to be, not because there’s no place else for me to go. That’s the edge I’ve got.”

  Max paused, his eyes searching her face.

  “Ma’am, it ain’t going to be easy. I want you to know that. And if you don’t like what you see, you don’t have to go through with this. I’ll buy you a ticket back to Boston right now if you want.”

  It was Catherine’s turn now to probe Max’s face. Then she spoke. “I believe I’ll stay.”

  Max’s grin left the kerosene lamp pale by comparison.

  “But one thing, Mr. Bass,” she said firmly. “Don’t say ‘ain’t.’”

  Max nodded.

  The marriage ceremony went by in a blur; Max remembered the words in bits and pieces. “Dearly beloved … the union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy … for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity … therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God … for richer and poorer … to love and to cherish. This is my solemn vow.”