High Rider

by Bill Gallaher

  It was full dark when he saw the kerosene lantern in the window of his cabin, a beacon, as if Mildred knew he would come and she wanted to guide him home. When he swung the door open and stepped into the warmth of his sanctuary, encrusted in snow and exhausted, Mildred and the children froze in what they were doing. They stared at him, slack-jawed; Nettie began to cry.

  “My God, John,” said Mildred. “You look like a ghost!”

  •

  The medicine helped her, or at least she said it did, after what John had gone through to bring it to her. But she had few words to offer him as comfort after the storm subsided four days later and he rode out to discover dead cattle in the coulees. He was in for an even greater disappointment when he left with fellow cattlemen on the spring roundup, which for him now began in Medicine Hat, because the Red Deer, South Saskatchewan, and Bow Rivers boxed in most of the area’s cattle.

  It was his first time in the town that sat in the South Saskatchewan River valley. It was a divisional point for the Canadian Pacific Railway, which accounted for its existence and rapid growth. With a handful of other cattlemen, he liveried his horse and went to check in at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. After a sixty-mile ride, he was tired and looking forward to a bath and a good night’s sleep before the roundup began in earnest the next morning. At the desk, he said, “John Ware. I have a reservation.”

  The clerk, a thin-faced young man who reminded John of Harold Wootton, gave him a withering look. “I’m sorry. Coloureds aren’t allowed here.”

  John was flabbergasted. The thought that someone would deny him service because of his skin colour had never crossed his mind during the entire journey to Medicine Hat. In fact, he thought he was done with that sort of nonsense in Alberta forever, at least on the southern range where everybody seemed to know him. Everybody, apparently, except the bigot on the other side of the desk. He felt the old anger rising in his chest; he wanted to haul the pompous ass across the desk and poke his eyes out so that colour would never concern him again. But he held himself back and said through clenched teeth, “You’re gonna be a whole lot sorrier, young fella, if you don’t find a way to give me a room.”

  “If that’s a threat, I can send for the police and have them deal with it.”

  Before John could reply, another cattleman stepped around him. “Either you let Mr. Ware have a room or you’re going to lose a lot of business. Now that might not bother you, but I expect your boss wouldn’t like it a bit. So if you still have objections, you’d best run and fetch him, or you’re gonna have trouble like you’ve never seen trouble before.”

  Damn you! John thought. I don’t need you buttin’ in. I can fight my own battles! But on the heels of that thought was another, that this was only a single battle in what was bound to be a long war before it was over, if it ever was. And since no one ever wins a war alone, he let it go and enjoyed the spectacle of the clerk, red-faced now, looking nervously at the stolid-faced men behind John. Clearing his throat, the young man turned the ledger. “That won’t be necessary, sir. Sign here, Mr. Ware.”

  That was how the roundup started; it ended with John having lost more than a hundred head to that vicious storm. He was devastated. The odds seemed to be stacking up against him again, and he was depressed when he arrived home. Thank goodness for Mildred and the children. They were his lifeline to all that was right with the world.

  When he told Mildred how he had been greeted in Medicine Hat and how much it had bothered him, she said, “You’ve come too far and earned too much respect to let something like that eat at you, John. A man who tries to hold you down is really only holding himself down. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”

  That summer he made a trip to Calgary, and set aside time to visit Duffy’s and Adam Newby’s graves in High River. Like the town, the cemetery had grown bigger with each passing year, and he knew more people buried there than he cared to. It made him ponder his own mortality, and he balked at the idea of his lifeless body mouldering beneath the ground, although it wasn’t so much the fact of death as the loss of life that bothered him. It had taken him a long time to build a good one and he was in no hurry to lose it.

  In town, he learned why Adam had taken his life. John had missed the note in Adam’s cabin that told of how he had been part of a patrol that, in a fit of anger, had murdered two Boer families: two men, two women, and three children. They had then burned their houses down. He was ashamed of the depth of his immorality and depravity. He had gone to war to fight for a righteous cause, only to discover that he was not the man he thought he was, that he was capable of committing horrific deeds he once believed only lesser people committed. He apologized and said he could no longer live with that knowledge. He had looked for self-forgiveness but could not find it.

  •

  Mildred gave birth to another boy and they named him Arthur. She was frail afterwards and to John never seemed to regain her strength. Even so, she didn’t complain, because she had a husband who would never think of complaining himself. She carried on fulfilling her duties as she saw them, through another long winter and stiflingly hot summer. It was during the spring of 1905 that she really began to feel unwell, and it took all of her will to tell John, knowing how much he needed her on the ranch.

  “Maybe we ought to get you into Calgary to see a doctor,” he suggested.

  Mildred did not say anything for a moment, unwilling to leave her home. Reluctantly, she agreed. “I think maybe you’re right.”

  While John took Mildred to Calgary, Esther Lewis came up from Brooks to look after the children, who preferred to be at home rather than in town. At the hospital, the doctor told him not to worry, that Mildred would be well looked after. He hated to leave her but had to return to the ranch, because it would not run without either him or Mildred there.

  But it seemed an odd place without her around, and despite Esther’s presence, he mostly felt lost. She had the gift of the gab, Esther, and it was pretty much non-stop from the moment John walked in the door. She recounted every small detail of what the children had done, and when that ran out, there were her dreams, which she felt a need to reveal and analyze. He loved her dearly, but listening to her tired him out more than the ranch work did.

  On a windy prairie evening a few days later, she was telling John about a vivid dream she’d had of the Royal Hotel in Calgary catching on fire and burning to the ground. She was trying to figure out what it meant when she glanced out the window and saw a horse and rider approaching.

  “Looks as if we have company,” she said.

  People stopped by on regular basis, so John thought nothing of it. It might even prove to be a welcome break from Esther. He went out to greet their visitor and did not recognize him.

  “Mr. John Ware?”

  John nodded. “Yes. And you are?”

  “Telegram, sir.”

  He handed John an envelope and left. John took it inside for Esther to read. He figured it was from the hospital in Calgary, letting him know that it was time to pick Mildred up. Esther took only a moment to read it and looked as if she might faint.

  “God save us,” she breathed.

  “What is it?” John asked, alarmed.

  “Our Mildred is gone.”

  According to the doctor, pneumonia and typhoid were the thieves that had conspired to steal her life. That John would outlive her was such an impossible notion that he had never entertained it. He was, after all, nearly thirty years her senior. But his love, his life was gone, taken by a god he was coming to understand less and less with each passing year. He felt as if someone had placed a stick of dynamite beneath his heart and blown it clear out of his chest, leaving nothing but a monstrous, gaping hole.

  Funeral services were held in Calgary, and John wept to see her lying in her casket. She had not even celebrated her thirty-third birthday. He stood next to her coffin for a long time, willing it to be someone else in there. Her face was so gaunt that she bore only a faint resemblance to the woman he had kn
own and loved. He wanted someone to tell him that a grievous error had been committed and that Mildred was waiting for him at the hospital. But no one came with that good news.

  •

  John could not tend to the ranch and to the children, so the Lewises took the little ones in. Esther said that with Nettie’s help, she could look after them, but Nettie wanted to be with her father. At twelve years of age she was, in her own mind, quite capable of performing the chores that had been her mother’s; after all, she had been helping for more than a year. She insisted on going with him to the ranch. John bent in front of her and cupped her face gently. “I know you can do the chores, Nettie, but Grandma needs you here. Your momma’ll rest a whole lot easier knowin’ that you’re helpin’ out with your brothers and sisters. We wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t real important.” He gathered her into his arms, nearly overwhelmed with the memory of another twelve-year-old child who had offered more than any child should ever have to. “Your Aunt Nettie would’ve been awful proud if she’d lived to know you.”

  John returned to the ranch, but without Mildred and the children, it had lost much of its meaning. He occupied the space that had once been a bedroom, dining room, and living room for the entire family, and it felt as empty as the prairie outside. He was not sleeping well either, and that did not help. It now baffled him how bachelor men survived being alone, without the love of a wife, without the sound of children. How had he survived? He did not know, only that he was lucky to have found Mildred, to have gone to the I.G. Baker store on the same day as Dan Lewis.

  As the summer passed, he grew tired of being alone. With fall lurking around the corner, he rode into Brooks to visit the children and to ask Bobby if he wanted to return to the ranch with him for a while. “You want to learn the cowboy trade from your poppa?”

  Bobby didn’t need to answer. John could tell by the light in his eyes before he said yes that he meant it.

  Bobby was only eleven and had more of his mother’s qualities than John’s; he would never be as big and sturdy, but he was a quick study and determined, and in that was very much like his father. He already knew how to take care of a horse and to ride, but not how to work with cattle.

  John began the lessons there. He cut Bobby a shorter rope and showed him how to use it, just as Emmett Cole had taught him so many years ago. Bobby was smoother with it than John had ever been, and unlike John, who had practised because he felt a need to be better than everyone else, Bobby practised because he loved throwing the rope. John was showing him how to use a branding iron on a fence board when an order came from a meat packer in Calgary for twelve of John’s prime beeves. It was the perfect opportunity for another lesson.

  The pair rode out to the herd the next day, father and son, to gather the animals and drive them to the stockyard in Brooks. “This’ll be your first cattle drive, boy. You’ll find that them beeves’ll wanna go in every direction but the one you want ’em to go. So it’ll be your job to keep ’em in line.”

  “That should be easy, Pa, if there’s only twelve. You said that you used to drive thousands.”

  “Yep and that’s the truth of it. But the first herd I ever drove that I owned was only nine little mavericks. It don’t matter much how big a herd is, though. It’s full of cattle and there ain’t one that’s been born that don’t have a contrary streak somewhere in it. Nine, twelve, or a thousand, it don’t mean a thing. They’ll keep you on your toes. Besides, you gotta start somewhere, and startin’ small don’t hurt none.”

  Not in a hurry, they ambled along in the warm September sun, one of those perfect fall days that the prairies rise to every so often. John loved this country, despite its ability to deal a cruel hand occasionally. He had always been able to play the cards and come away with something, and a man could be proud of that. He was proud, too, that he had come so far from a rice plantation in South Carolina—and in more ways than one. By the sheer power of his character, he had forced people to see John Ware the man, not John Ware the coloured man, although he knew that his experience in Medicine Hat told a story that was a long way from a happy conclusion. But this was as good as he’d felt in a long time, out here on his ranch, riding side by side with his oldest boy, the son he was first proud of, teaching him as a lad the things that John had not learned until he was a man. There would be good money in the sale of the beeves, and he would make sure some of it went into the boy’s pocket. No one should work for nothing unless he works for himself.

  Suddenly, Molly stumbled and lurched as she stepped in a badger hole, lost her balance, and went down, with John underneath her. He heard more than felt a tremendous crack in his neck. Molly scrambled to her feet, unhurt, but John could not move, yet he could have sworn he was trying. He saw Bobby looking down on him, terrified and confused.

  Ah, Bobby, I believe I’ve gone and broke my damned fool neck.

  The words formed in his mind but not in his mouth. There was much more that he wanted to say but a kaleidoscope of images, so vivid and clear, replaced his thoughts. The last one sent him tumbling into the dark abyss from which he had risen at birth.

  EPILOGUE

  News of John’s death reverberated across the southern range. Ranchers were in shock. John Ware dead? Impossible! He had been one of those rare human beings who seemed invincible. And even more impossible was the way he died. After he had broken hundreds of wild horses, a tame one did him in. The irony was stunning.

  His funeral service was held at the Baptist Church, Mildred’s church, where her own service had been held. Few of those attending could believe that the flower-bedecked coffin contained the body of John Ware. Speaker after speaker—anyone who cared to—arose and told stories of mythological proportions that would become part of John’s legend, and if they were not quite the truth, then, as Mark Twain said, they ought to have been. Others told stories about how John had touched their lives, about his generosity, how he always gave and asked for nothing in return. Perhaps the most heartfelt tribute came from a young horse rancher from British Columbia who had once worked with John at the Quorn. He said, “Everything I know about how to make my ranch work, and everything I know about horses, I learned from John. But the most important lesson he taught me was that the highest honour you can pay another human being is not love but respect. He showed me that through his actions as much as he did through his words. That’s how the best teachers teach, and John was one of the best.”

  Calgarians had never before witnessed a procession as long as the one that followed John’s coffin to Union Cemetery, where his family and friends laid him to rest beside Mildred. Modest to a fault, he would have been surprised had he been able to see it.

  His estate included a thousand head of cattle and many horses, and was settled by a lawyer named R.B. Bennett, who would become prime minister of Canada many years later. Nearby ranchers bought the stock. In 1958, the house near the Red Deer River was dismantled and relocated in Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park to a spot not far from its original site. It is on display for visitors to the park. The last surviving members of the Ware family were Nettie, who died in March 1989 in Vulcan, Alberta, and Arthur, who died two months later in Burnaby, British Columbia.

  With John’s passing, the old ways of the west had begun their own slide into oblivion. There was little left of the southern range that was not in use and cut into smaller parcels. It had become difficult to tell the difference between a farmer and a rancher, because in most cases they were the same. But thirty-five years after John’s unexpected departure from the home he had worked so hard to find, when the old ways had all but disappeared completely, a group of men gathered to found the John Ware Society, because they thought that both deserved to be remembered.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The “factual” parts of High Rider are based on Grant MacEwan’s John Ware’s Cattle Country. First published in 1960, it is the “definitive” work on John Ware; however, MacEwan does not provide his sources of information. Some of it may ha
ve come from older ranchers who remembered Ware, and some, possibly, from Nettie and Arthur, who were still alive when he wrote the book. That said, they were so young when their father died, it’s hard to know how much they actually knew of him and how much was hearsay. But if we can accept that MacEwan’s words are facts, then the following elements in this story are true: Ware was a slave on a plantation in South Carolina; he did confront his master over the maltreatment of his little sister and was whipped for it; he did meet up with his ex-master on the way out of town after the war, but did not seek revenge; and he did walk to Texas. (Surely he must have had adventures along the way, so the single chapter of his trek is fiction.) He learned his ranching skills from a family named Murphy, whose name I changed to Cole because there wasn’t enough information available to present them fairly. But Ware did have a wild ride toward the Brazos River. He was invited to stay in the Murphys’ house because they liked him so much, and he stayed for a decade. He rode in the horse race as described and was given the horse for his efforts. He trailed cattle north with the Murphys’ son, and while MacEwan says that Ware assumed responsibility for the herd while the rest of the crew enjoyed Dodge City, there’s room for speculation. With the limited information available to him at the time, MacEwan might have assumed that Dodge wouldn’t be a welcoming place to a black man, when, in fact, it was just the opposite. So the Dodge City chapter is pure fiction, but Holliday and the Earps were there at the time, as were Eddie Foy and the man who tried to kill him.