Ten Mile Valley

by Wayne D. Overholser

  Ruth’s good dinner took his mind off his troubled thoughts. Fried chicken, gravy, potatoes, carrots, and biscuits, and for dessert a three-layer cake with some kind of custard filling that was, as his father used to say “lickin’ good.”

  He ate until he was ashamed of himself. He sat back at last, looking at Ruth and shaking his head as she offered him a third helping of cake. “I just can’t hold any more,” he said. “I do most of the cooking whether Bronco’s home or not, but it sure doesn’t taste like this.”

  “She’s the best dog-goned cook in the valley,” Jackson bragged. “She’s got a lot of accomplishments, come to think of it. She’s a good hand with cattle …”

  “Pa,” Ruth said angrily. “You hush up.”

  Jackson spread his hands and laughed again. “All right, but I’m not one to hide your light under a basket.”

  A strained silence followed, Ruth’s face going scarlet. Finally Mark said: “It was an awful good dinner. Trouble with my cooking is that it gets monotonous. It’s beans and sage hen, or beans and antelope, or beans and venison.”

  Laughing, Ruth asked: “Can’t you make biscuits?”

  “Sure. When we get short of ammunition, I throw the biscuits at the sage hens. They’re better than rocks.”

  “And for variety you have sage hen and beans, antelope and beans, and venison and beans,” Ruth said.

  “That’s right,” Mark agreed, and they all laughed.

  Jackson rose. “Let’s go out on the front porch and sit.”

  Mark followed Jackson through the front room. The furniture was comfortable and adequate: a lamp with a dark red shade on a claw-footed oak table, a bookcase filled with books, a haircloth-covered sofa, and a cane-seated rocker. The floor was of planks, many of them warped, but Ruth had hidden much of the roughness of the floor with rag rugs. The log walls were covered with white cheesecloth, and on this she had pinned pictures and poems, which she had cut from magazines.

  The familiar lump was in Mark’s throat again as he sat down beside Jackson on the front porch. Ruth had a way of doing much with little. The result was that this log house had a homey feeling Mark had not felt anywhere since he had left the Willamette Valley. Bronco Curtis could build his fine house next summer, Mark thought, but it would never have the homey atmosphere this place did.

  Jackson filled his pipe, nodding at the valley below him, which ran so far to the south that the sky seemed to bend down to touch the land. Shadow Mountain, the one tall peak that could be seen from the Jackson porch, had a scarf of new snow.

  It would not be long until there was snow in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, too, Mark thought, and then it would be in the valley. Many winters in the Willamette Valley there was no snow at all, and Mark wondered how it would be here and if he could stand the cold.

  “Folks asked why I picked this spot,” Jackson said, “when I could have settled down there in the valley where the grass is better and you can get three times as much wild hay to an acre. I’m not very practical, Mark. People have always called me a dreamer, and I’m afraid they’re right. The truth is I like it up here where I can look at the valley.” He laughed, and added: “You know, a man can always see the sun longer when he lives on a mountain than if he lives in the valley.”

  He tamped tobacco into the bowl of his pipe, then lit it and pulled hard on it. With the pipe stem between his teeth, he went on: “I’m not practical, you see, or I wouldn’t have spent days hunting Orry Andrews’s grave. I always have work to do, and Ruth’s mad at me because I haven’t been doing it.”

  He puffed for a moment, his eyes on the valley, then he said: “There are times, as I ride through the hills, when I feel that all the wisdom of God and man is pressing upon me, yet I am not capable of tapping it. But I do believe that every man must have a philosophy to live by. Mine is the notion that man will find his fate from his hopes, but most of us look to our fears, which stop us. I suppose that none of us will ever understand the plan of which we are a part, and that is a great tragedy.”

  He took the pipe out of his mouth and frowned at the ash in the bowl. “I must apologize to you, my young friend. Ruth warned me not to bore you with my talk.” He struck a match and lit his pipe again. “How old are you, Mark?”

  “Nineteen. I had a birthday last month.”

  “Ruth’s almost eighteen. She was just a child when her mother died. She has taken care of me ever since. The exigencies of life force maturity upon youth too early in many cases, especially in a pioneer community like this.” He pulled on his pipe, eyes on the far horizon, then he asked: “How did you get involved with a man like Bronco Curtis?”

  Mark liked neither the way Jackson worded the question nor the tone in which he said it. “He’s not an evil man, Mister Jackson. You’re hinting that he is. You don’t actually know he killed Orry Andrews.”

  “Evil is a matter of interpretation, Mark,” Jackson said, ignoring what Mark had said about Andrews’s killing.

  “You don’t know he killed Andrews,” Mark insisted.

  “Ah, I know it well enough,” Jackson said, “but I can’t prove it, so I’ll drop it for the time being.”

  “My father used to say that a man was innocent until he was proved guilty in court.”

  Jackson smiled. “So your father was a dreamer, too. The world is full of them, and Bronco Curtis is included, although his dreams are different from mine and your father’s. He’s a young man in a hurry. He wants to go too far too fast. Isn’t that right?”

  Mark nodded and thought about it a moment. Then he said: “But you still haven’t proved he murdered Orry Andrews.”

  Jackson shrugged. “You saw with your own eyes his obvious intention of murdering me. You wouldn’t have put your rifle on him if you hadn’t been aware of his intention. And once he has the wealth and the power that wealth gives a man, he will be exactly like John Runyan and Dave Nolan and Matt Ardell. Like them, he will be guilty of any crime he feels he must commit to hold grass he claims but does not legally own.”

  Jackson pointed a forefinger at Mark to emphasize his point. “Fraud can be legal, you know, if you interpret the word legal loosely. For instance, the big cowmen all own vast amounts of land they have bought from the state as swamp land but that is not swamp at all.” He stopped and seemed embarrassed. “There I go again, and I didn’t intend to. Tell me how you and Curtis got together.”

  Mark didn’t want to because it would only sharpen his memory and he had tried to blunt it, but he could think of no reason not to talk that would seem plausible to Jackson, so he told him the story, and Jackson nodded from time to time as he listened closely.

  When Mark had finished, Jackson said: “I can understand why you are loyal to Curtis. It would not speak well of your character if you felt otherwise. I can only hope you will hold to your own convictions of what is right and what is wrong.” He knocked the pipe out against the heel of his boot. “The thing I wonder about is why he was so anxious to get Malone out of Prineville that day. We can only be sure of one thing. Curtis is a man who has reasons for everything he does.”

  Mark made no attempt to explain Bronco’s action. The question had not really occurred to him before, and now he could think of no answer that seemed logical. Certainly Bronco’s explanation that he didn’t want to see Red Malone hanged was a poor one, because neither Bud Ackerman nor anyone else in Prineville seemed the kind who would lead a lynch mob.

  Ruth appeared in the doorway, and Mark, glancing at the sun, jumped up. “Time I was moving.”

  “Wait till I put my riding skirt on,” Ruth said, “and I’ll ride a ways with you.”

  “I’ll saddle your mare,” Jackson said, and rose.

  Mark was waiting in front of the house with his sorrel and the pinto mare Jackson had saddled when Ruth came out of the house. Mark called—“So long!”—to Jackson, who stood by the corral gate. He helped Ruth mount, then stepped into the saddle.

  “I’ll beat you to the road,” Ruth
said, and was off in a run.

  She made good her brag, beating him by a full length, and, when they pulled down to a walk and turned east, she laughed at him, a strand of black hair that had come loose dangling against her forehead.

  “See?” she said. “I’m a better rider than you are.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “And your mare isn’t as fast as my sorrel. You just got the jump on me.”

  “Alibis, alibis,” she said, laughing. Then the smile left her face, and she added: “Pa talked your leg off, didn’t he? I don’t know what gets into him when he finds a listener. As he says, he gets intoxicated on his own verbiage.”

  “It was all right,” he said. “I enjoyed listening to him.”

  They rode in silence until they reached the summit of the range of hills, then she drew up. “I’ll have to go back.”

  He pulled his sorrel to a stop, looking at her and thinking of the lonely days that lay ahead for him. He said: “I’ve enjoyed having somebody to talk to, and I sure did like the dinner.”

  “Pa and I were glad to have you,” she said. “It’s a lonesome country, and we don’t have many friends. Orry Andrews was the only one Pa had, and I don’t have anyone except Missus Bolton at the fort.”

  He realized she was lonely, too, and he was surprised by the discovery. He wanted to reach out and touch her; he felt a desire to kiss her, but she’d probably slap his face.

  “I’ll come and see you if Bronco doesn’t get sore about it,” he said. “I don’t want to make more trouble between him and your pa.”

  “I understand,” she said. Then she wheeled her mare and started back down the west slope, calling: “So long!”

  “So long!” he said, turning in the saddle. He watched her for a long time, then rode home, hating the dismal prospect of being alone, and knowing that even when Bronco returned, the loneliness would not be entirely dispelled.

  * * * * *

  By the time Bronco rode in two weeks later, the weather had turned cold and snow reached as far as the ridge where Mark was cutting wood. Bronco was wearing a new sheepskin and had brought one for Mark. He tossed it to Mark, saying: “You won’t freeze in that, boy, and you’re sure gonna need it before summer.”

  He was just as exuberant as he had been the time he returned from the Triangle R. He’d visited Dave Nolan’s Rocking Chair, but he hadn’t liked Nolan as well as Runyan. Too precise, too calculating, but he’d been friendly enough, and he was a good cowman. His spread was bigger, even, than Runyan’s Triangle R.

  “But the real news is that we’re fixed,” Bronco said. “Remember I told you about the big California cowman named Jacob Smith who buys at Winnemucca and ships to the coast? Well, he was there, and I had a talk with him. I got top price for our twenty-eight head. I made him a proposition after telling him we had a paradise for cows here. Drive a cow-and-calf herd north next summer and we’ll split the profits. By God, Mark, I put it over. He took me up on it, and we’ll be in business five years sooner than we expected. He even loaned me some money to get the place fixed up before summer.”

  He scratched the back of his neck, sobering. “There’s just one hitch. He wants to know how we make out this winter and how good a calf crop we get before he backs us. So we’ve got to work like hell and show him we can bring our stock through the winter no matter how tough it is.”

  Mark didn’t mention the Jacksons until after supper, when Bronco was sitting in front of the stove with his boots off, a cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, his forehead creased by his thinking and scheming.

  Mark said: “I ate Sunday dinner with the Jacksons, and they asked me to come back to see them.”

  Bronco straightened and grabbed the cigarette out of his mouth. “I thought you were going to stay away from ’em.”

  “I don’t know why I should. I like Ruth.”

  Bronco laughed shortly. “I forgot about the girl. Natural enough for you to see her, but you stay away from her lying old man. Savvy?”

  Mark nodded, and turned away. It was what he had expected, and something he had been prepared to accept. No matter how much he wanted to see Ruth, he couldn’t endanger her father, and eventually that was what he would do if he visited Ruth.

  Chapter Nine

  The winter was a mild one. The valley had not been overgrazed, and with the snow going off the ground soon after each storm, the tall bunch grass on the upper slopes of the valley was available to the cattle almost every day.

  As it turned out, the small amount of hay that Andrews had put up was ample, but it would have been a different story if the weather had been severe. Bronco admitted to Mark that their ability to bring cattle through a hard winter had not been tested, but there was nothing to be gained by telling Jacob Smith that.

  Once the winter’s supply of wood had been cut and hauled to the cabin, it fell to Mark to do the chores and the cooking. Bronco worked hard and expected hard work from Mark when he wasn’t busy in the cabin or barn. They spent most of the time through the first half of the winter building rock fences in the breaks of the south rim.

  “Andrews would have got this done if he hadn’t been so lazy,” Bronco said. “It’ll pay us, all right. Works both ways. It’ll keep our cattle on our grass, and everybody else’s off.”

  Bronco put up signs on the west, south, and east sides of the valley saying this was Cross Seven range. At the time, with so few people in the country, there was little to worry about. Triangle R was too far to the south, and there were no ranches between Ten Mile Valley and the Paiute reservation to the east. The mountains on the north furnished summer graze, but little more, so no one was likely to settle there.

  “Just looking ahead,” Bronco said. “If anybody tries to settle on our grass or shoves their cattle onto Cross Seven range, they’re going to be smelling powder smoke.” He grinned and winked. “That is, if they live long enough to smell anything.”

  Mark knew Bronco was thinking of Herb Jackson. If his Circle J stock drifted across the Paradise Hills, there would be trouble, and Bronco would welcome it. He had not forgiven Jackson for his accusation.

  Bronco made occasional trips to the fort, but he didn’t take Mark. If Bronco ever ran into Jackson, he didn’t mention it. Neither Jackson nor Ruth came to the Cross Seven during the winter, and Mark got no closer to the Circle J than the summit of the Paradise Hills. There he would sit his saddle, looking down upon the Jackson house, hoping to glimpse Ruth, but he never did.

  Christmas came and went, Mark not sure which day it was. Even if they had known, it would have been only another work day to Bronco, but it would have meant a great deal to Mark. Again the memories from his boyhood flooded his mind.

  At night he lay awake thinking of the tiny fir trees he had always picked for his father to cut in the pasture above the barn, and how they trimmed them with their homemade ornaments and the little candles that were lighted only on Christmas Eve. That was when they opened the packages, but now, thinking back, Mark did not remember many of the presents. What he did remember was the rich feeling of love and good will to all men and how his parents kissed each other as they opened their presents.

  He remembered, too, the Christmas program at the schoolhouse, and how they nearly always traveled through misty rain from their home with mud sucking at the horses’ hoofs, and how he usually recited a poem on which his mother had drilled him for days, and how his father was the Santa Claus with his red suit and white beard and the pillows under his shirt and pants to give him the big belly Santa Claus must have. There would be at least one present for each child, maybe a picture book for Mark, and an orange, the only one he’d get all year, a treasure to be cherished. Even now his mouth would water as he remembered the tangy, juicy taste.

  Several times in December he had the nightmare again, and he’d sit up in bed, sweating and tense as he screamed: “They’re dead! They’re dead!” Or he would relive the scene in Prineville when he had heard Red Malone’s voice and he was tryin
g to get the rifle out of the boot and he was screaming at Ackerman to come and get Malone. Then Bronco would shake him awake and curse him and tell him they were in bed to sleep.

  After that he would lie awake, trembling and tired, and think of the Jacksons, who would have some kind of Christmas, for they were people who would understand and appreciate this season of the year and its spirit, which Bronco would probably never know. Mark told himself he was going to marry Ruth. He’d go over and see her, and to hell with what Bronco thought. But he never went.

  Next day, working beside Bronco under the pale winter sun, he realized how childish his dreams were. He had no money. Bronco had not paid him a cent of wages, and Mark was sure it would do no good to ask. How could he, a boy with only Bronco’s promise of a great future, ask a girl to marry him? No, there was nothing to do but wait and run the risk of losing her.

  For some reason Mark felt better in January, perhaps because Christmas was behind him and he had survived the loss of it. Always there was some pressing work. The creek almost stopped flowing, but there were several deep holes above the buildings, and the ice must be kept broken.

  More corrals to be built. Gravel to be hauled to the corrals so if the spring was a wet one, the ground wouldn’t be churned into a loblolly. Hay cribs to be built. Ditches to be dug so more ground could be flooded next summer and more hay raised.

  Later in the winter there were a few heavy snows, and the cattle had to be fed. Then spring was upon them, with the snow going off the foothills and the grass beginning to show, and it was calving time.

  After that, there was no time to dream, to have nightmares, or to conjure memories from a dead past. Bronco was like a machine that was too tightly wound. “We’re not going to lose a calf,” he said over and over to Mark. “By God, we’ll show Jacob Smith what we can do.”