Showdown at Buffalo Jump

by Gary D. Svee

  Phillips was below, waist-deep in the muddy water of the spring, painfully pulling shovelful after shovelful of muck off the bottom of the spring, and depositing it on the bank.

  “Have to give him credit,” Max whispered. “He works awful hard for easy money.”

  Catherine grinned, and the two stepped back from the rim.

  “Best that we let him finish,” Max said. “Otherwise, he’ll always wonder if we didn’t scare him off before he tapped the mother lode. Something I want to show you, anyway.”

  Max led Catherine toward the western shoulder of the rim, moving slowly in deference to her loose boots.

  Eons before, the point of the rim—a half-acre in size—had dropped away from the main slab of sandstone. Wind, water, heat and frost had widened the gap, smoothing the walls. And over the intervening years, creatures had picked their way up a rough trail on one wall of the gap, their hooves and pads and heels wearing the trail deeper.

  Max took Catherine’s hand and led her down the trail, into a chasm sixty feet deep, fifteen to twenty feet wide and only dimly lit by the fall sun.

  Max pulled Catherine deeper into a chasm over a rough floor of shattered sandstone. Suddenly, he stopped and pointed up, and Catherine gasped. There, on the walls above her head, were pictographs, paintings by peoples long dead. There were pictures of men hunting bison, herds spilling over cliffs to their deaths, and strange creatures that looked like turtles. Max explained the figures represented men with large shields. Higher on the walls were pictures of warriors and long-necked horses.

  Catherine walked captivated through the chasm, stopping now and then to trace fainter figures with her fingers, to wonder at the stories of long-dead people told with crude paints on stone.

  “Who were they?” she whispered as though she were standing in a church.

  Max shrugged. “Indians.”

  “How did they reach that high?”

  “Stood on the backs of their horses.” Max replied, pointing to a figure of a man standing on his horse, reaching above his head, colors spraying from his fingers.

  They spent more than an hour in the chasm, until Catherine’s mind was too filled with wonder to continue.

  “What kind of people do you suppose they were?”

  Max shrugged again. “Like us, I guess.” He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Probably wanted to leave their mark on the land. Leave something to show they’d been here.

  “Most of us would like that. Man can spend a lifetime out here and be gone with no more notice than someone blowing out a lamp. Most of us would like to leave something behind.”

  Catherine touched Max’s sleeve. “Is that why you advertised for a wife?”

  “Could be,” Max sighed. “Could be that’s the way it started, but that’s not the reason I want you to stay. I … I …,” Max choked, and then hissed, “Damn me for a stiff-necked fool!” He wiped his brow with his sleeve. “We’d best get back. Just time to eat before he finishes the spring.”

  “Well look at this.” Max jerked back from the rim, motioning for Catherine to join him.

  The banker had joined Milburn at the spring, and the two men appeared to be arguing, bits and pieces of their dispute carried to Max and Catherine on vagrant winds.

  Just as Catherine sat down, the banker launched a round-house swing at his cousin. Milburn, stiff still, tottered backward to escape the blow and fell full-length into the spring. The banker jumped after him, and the two scuffled, hampered in the battle by the resistance of the water and each man’s deep desire not to be hurt.

  “No honor among thieves,” Max said. “Banker didn’t figure he could trust his hireling and had to come looking. Makes it a lot easier for us. Let’s go talk to our spies.”

  Milburn was covered to his armpits with the soft blue mud that lines the bottom of prairie springs, his face mottled red with sunburn where rivulets of sweat had washed away the soot. His lips were cracked and black with dried blood, and when he saw Max and Catherine riding up, he held his bloodied palms out, as though in supplication.

  The banker, having spent less time bare-headed under the prairie sun, fared better. Blue with mud and fatter than Milburn, Aloysius appeared to be nothing so much as a primeval slug.

  “Max,” the banker said hastily when he saw he had been found out. “Glad you came along. Caught this scoundrel digging on your land, and tried to stop him.” This slug was a fast thinker.

  Milburn hissed. “Cousin, I’m not going to …”

  “Stop it!” Max’s voice cut through the words like a cleaver. “I know why you’re both here, and you’d best understand a couple of things before you go.

  “First, there is no money except for the four dollars I deliberately dropped in the spring. I figured it was worth that to get it cleaned out.”

  “Second, if I catch either of you on this place again, the next hole you dig will be the one you spend eternity in.”

  Max stepped off his horse and stomped toward the two, grabbing the retreating banker by the folds of fat on his throat.

  “First thing you’re going to do when you get back to Prairie Rose,” he growled, “is tell those storekeepers that my credit is fine; that it was all just a joke.”

  Max’s voice shook with rage. “And don’t ever tell stories about my wife again!”

  The banker shrank from the fire in Max’s eyes, and Max gripped the skin on Aloysius’s neck even tighter.

  “This is big country out here,” he whispered, menace poking from his words like rocks from a stream. “A man could take a drink in a bar and pass out and disappear, and nobody would think much about it.

  “Do you know what I’m telling you?”

  The banker, eyes big as dollars, tried to speak, but the best he could manage was “Uhhh-huhh.”

  “Now git!”

  15

  The sun was leaving the prairie, lingering longer some days than others, but there was no question of its intent.

  Days were shorter: chores done and breakfast eaten in darkness. To step outside was to step into a raw wind—omen of winds to come—whispering its dominion over the prairie. Now it is my turn, it moaned soft as a lover; defy me if you dare, it screeched.

  On those rare, warm days that grace Montana in the fall, Catherine found herself leaving the dugout and sitting in the wagon or swinging over the creek bottom carpeted in gold by the cottonwood.

  There was a stillness, a sense of expectancy in the air, of impending change, and Catherine awaited November fourteenth and the arrival of Father Tim, her life in cusp.

  The air crackled still as Max and Catherine came together, but not from rancor. They were more likely to laugh now than to quarrel.

  Still when they might have pulled together, they pulled apart. November fourteenth loomed like a rock wall that sends a creek cascading down two sides of a mountain, one fork to the east and the other to the west.

  Max and Catherine were pulling the roots that tied them together, so that when the parting came the pain would not be so great, but neither would admit that.

  They talked, more than either had ever talked before to anyone, each sharing dreams and hopes, and they rushed together in the morning and lingered at night. But they also pulled back, leaving long, awkward silences whenever the talk touched chords too deep.

  They had made one trip to Prairie Rose to fill their larder, and perhaps to assure themselves that life existed beyond the barbwire borders of the homestead.

  Thomsen had come to see them one night. He had a part-time bartender he trusted, and he could slip away for a day without fidgeting to get back. They played cards and told stories and laughed. Mostly, they laughed.

  The first snow had brought bitter cold. Wind kissed by ice fields to the north stung their faces numb. But like most fall storms in Montana, this one lasted only a week or so and then the snow melted, and the grass was carrying the cattle, fat into the winter.

  They spent their days preparing for the cold. Max took Catherine
to the coal outcropping in the southwest corner of the homestead and pried enough fuel from it with his pick to last the winter. They met several neighbors there with the same intent—and promises to pay Max later, or to drop a “little something” off at the Bass homestead around Christmas.

  Max butchered a two-year-old steer and dropped a doe when she edged into his wheat field early one morning to nibble at the green winter wheat.

  That meat, the potatoes in the restored root cellar and the hogs Zeb had promised to butcher, would take them into the winter in good shape.

  Them.

  Max couldn’t—wouldn’t—think about winter or spring or summer or next fall without Catherine. He knew that she intended to leave. He knew, too, that he wouldn’t resist, but he couldn’t bring himself to think about life without her.

  Max had spent most of his life alone. Orphaned, he had come from Texas as a roustabout for a cattle drive. He couldn’t remember his mother or his father, his only family being ranches where he had worked and friends he had picked up along the way.

  Max had always prided himself on his self-reliance, but he had deep holes in his life that he yearned to fill with family. That was the root of his plot to capture Catherine, and now she intended to go and he would be alone again. He dreaded that.

  He was thinking about that one cold morning as he and Catherine took the wagon to the Leningtons’ to pick up their bacon and ham. They didn’t talk, eager to see their friends. Except for the one trip to town, they had spent the past weeks in isolation.

  The road to the Leningtons’ was little more than two threads of dirt stitching big pieces of prairie together. Rutted, it was, with the weight of wagons and horses’ hooves and broken by jutting rocks wherever the path crossed the slab of sandstone that underlay most of the region.

  Max and Catherine rode, bobbing and weaving with the jolts of the wagon, silent and alone with their thoughts.

  They smelled the Lenington place before they spotted it, riding a trail of wood smoke over the last rise to the cabin. Zeb was outside, peering into the smokehouse, gauging the depth and degree of “doneness” of the meat hanging there.

  They saw Edna’s face appear for a moment at the window, and then they caught only flashes of her, picking up around the house, making room for her visitors.

  By the time Max had pulled the wagon to a stop, Edna had opened the door. She stood there, her hands tucking strands of hair into place.

  “Come in! Come in! I was hoping you’d come today. Zeb says the ham is done to a fine turn, so you’re just in time. Come sit. I’ve got coffee on, and I know Zeb will want you to try a slice of the ham. You know how he worries about it.”

  “Come on child!” she said, taking Catherine’s arm. “No time for dawdling. Want to know everything you’ve been up to, and I’ve got some news for you, too.”

  The Lenington house was lived in, but neat by most standards—and temporarily empty. The children had disappeared in darkness that morning, waist deep in a wagonload of straw, blankets wrapped around their shoulders for warmth, bound for school. Without them, emptiness echoed through the house.

  Cups of coffee were steaming on the table, and Edna dropped a couple chunks of coal in the Majestic range, sliding a cast-iron skillet on the stove to warm before Zeb appeared.

  “Wait!” she said as Catherine and Max pulled chairs away from the table. “Zeb will want to show you his doings. Not fair to keep visitors all to myself. It’ll only take a second, and he’ll be so disappointed if you don’t come out.”

  Zeb was already on his way to the house when Max, Catherine, and Edna stepped outside. He grinned. “As long as you’re out, I might as well show you what I’ve been up to,” he said, steering them toward the smokehouse.

  Inside, slabs of bacon and hog shoulders and hams hung from the ceiling in various states of curing. In the half light through eyes stung by acrid smoke, the scene was macabre.

  “All honey cured,” Zeb said proudly. “Montana honeys lighter than what I’m used to, and it puts a special kind of flavor to the meat. So sweet, you’d think you’d died and gone to—well, that’s not up to me to say, is it?

  “Come on inside. Maybe we can talk Edna into frying up a few pieces, and you can tell me what you think. It would be better baked, understand. But don’t suppose you have time for that?”

  Zeb cast a calculating eye on the two.

  Max looked at Catherine. “Best be getting home. Got a ton of work to do before the fourteenth.”

  Max hadn’t intended to mention the fourteenth. Although the date had occupied his mind for the past three weeks, neither he nor Catherine had spoken of it, neither wanting to open that wound.

  “Fourteenth?” Edna asked. “What’s going on the fourteenth?”

  Then a grin crept on her face. “Should have known. Klaus is taking little Joey to Father Tim for baptism. I wouldn’t miss that either. Not for the world.”

  Max and Catherine looked at each other, their faces barely masking the emotion beneath.

  “We would like to see that,” Catherine said, biting her lip.

  “You’d better go,” Edna said. “Klaus has been working on something special for you. I’ve seen it. It’s a—don’t suppose it hurts to tell you … he didn’t say anything about not telling you—a cradle, all hand-carved and finished. He said he used to make cradles like that in the old country. He know something I don’t?”

  Catherine shook her head.

  “Didn’t think so. Anyhow, it’s a beautiful thing. He said you gave life to his child. Said he wanted to do something for your children—when you have children.”

  “I’m making a quilt for the cradle. Hope you like it. Can’t wait for you to see it. I’ll show you the material.”

  Edna disappeared into her bedroom, emerging a moment later with two stacks of fabric pieces, one light blue and the other pink. “Thought I’d do it in two colors. Can’t miss that way.”

  Max and Catherine avoided each other’s eyes. Max stared out the window at the mare and wagon as though it were the first time he had seen them.

  “Don’t know why I chatter so. It just seems so … quiet,” Edna’s voice dribbled away.

  Neither Max nor Catherine stepped in to fill the temporary void in the conversation, and Edna stood so fast she almost upset her chair. She jumped to the stove, slicing meat from a ham lying on a carving board. A moment later the meat was sizzling.

  “I’ve got some eggs. I could fry up a few for you.” Catherine and Max shook their heads, and Edna busied herself at the stove, paying more attention to the ham than necessary. Zeb watched her, his head cocked to one side.

  The ham was delicious, done to a fine turn as Edna had said, but Catherine just picked at the meat.

  “I swear,” Edna said softly. “You look like you’ve lost your best friend. Anything I can do?”

  “Just the wind,” Catherine said. “It sounds so lonesome.”

  “It does at that,” Edna said, almost in a whisper.

  “Child, the prairie is a big empty, and we try to fill it with our lives, our laughter, our children and good men like Zeb and Max. But it’s so big … and we’re so small.”

  Silence stretched then. Black coffee in chipped porcelain cups mesmerized the two couples.

  Edna finally charged into the silence.

  “Look at me,” she said, “sitting around here moping when I’ve got news to tell.”

  She smiled, but her face twisted with the effort.

  “Well, it seems that after the banker Phillips was found cavorting in the nude, the bank directors decided they needed to check the books.”

  “Found out the banker was in the till up to his elbows. At least they think it was him. They couldn’t prove it was, and he couldn’t prove it wasn’t, so they told him to skedaddle.”

  “Before he left, the banker got into his cups at Millard’s and made a speech. Said he was the victim of the monied interests. Said that he was too anxious to help the little man to
suit the other owners of the bank. Said that he intended to do something about the travesty of justice perpetrated by those out-of-state money men who aim to suck dry the blood of Montanans.”

  “Right there, the banker pledged that he would run for high office in this state to uphold the interests of the little man as has always been his intent.”

  “That man can talk. I heard that the men in the bar were cheering by the time he hightailed it out of Prairie Rose.”

  “Cheers,” Catherine said, lifting her cup, and the four burst into nervous laughter.

  “And I’ve saved the best for last,” Edna said, reaching into a porcelain cookie jar behind her. “The Halls stopped by yesterday, or was it the day before?” she asked, looking at Zeb.

  “Well, doesn’t make any difference. They had stopped in at the Coles, and this letter was waiting for you,” she said, handing it to Catherine.

  Catherine took the letter as though she were receiving the sacrament. She pressed it to her face, believing it emitted the faint scent of heather.

  “It’s from my mother,” she said.

  “Well, open it, child. It’s not often that anyone around here gets a letter from Ireland.”

  Catherine smiled at Edna. “Later, maybe. I don’t get many letters. My mother doesn’t have much time to write.” She hesitated, then, her eyes on her coffee cup. “That’s not true. My mother can’t write. Father O’Malley writes them for her.”

  “It’s nice he’s there to do that,” Edna said, taking Catherine’s hand. “Not nearly enough priests in this country yet for all the good works that need doing.” Then, she grinned around the table. “I swear. This sure turned out to be a somber bunch. Must be the fall wind.”

  They all agreed: It was the fall wind.

  Wagon loaded, ham and bacon wrapped in an old sheet, Max and Catherine headed home. They rode in silence, Catherine fingering the letter. Max handed her his pocketknife, and she cut it open.

  The letter was bad news.

  Catherine’s older sister, Mary, and her husband had been evicted from the little farm where his family had lived “since the blood of St. Ruth dyed the shamrocks of Aughrim.”