“She thinks he’s her mother,” Pony told them, and so now the boys called him Mother Roon. Roon didn’t seem to mind the teasing. He took his job very seriously, and the little calf grew stronger by the day. When it became obvious that she would live, Caleb posed the question to Roon one evening at the supper table. “What are you going to call her? She needs a name.”
Roon thought about it for a while, his dark eyes somber. “Absa,” he said.
Pony nodded her approval. “That’s a good name.” She looked at Caleb. “It is the name for the Crow Indians,” she said. “Absaroka. Absa. Children of the raven.”
In her spare time, Pony drew up plans for corrals of solid seven-foot high fencing and an alley of sheet metal welded to heavy iron pipe down which the buffalo would be herded into the chute itself. From the chute—also of steel tubing—there were several gates opening into separate corrals for sorting and isolating the animals. She showed Caleb the plans and explained how the structure would work. Then she, Caleb and Guthrie met with a contractor. The corrals would be finished just in time for Pony to inspect them before returning to her teaching job on the reservation in September.
It was only July, and already Caleb was dreading her departure. He had come to enjoy her company far more than he deemed wise, and had tried to squelch the feelings that stirred in him whenever she was near, but to no avail.
“Well, boss,” Badger said, interrupting Caleb’s evening meditation as he joined him on the cabin porch. “You look like you’re trying to solve all the world’s problems. Gettin’ anywhere?”
Caleb grinned. “Nope.”
“Look at ’em,” the old man said, nodding his head toward the boys sprawled on the grass near the edge of the creek. The calf was curled up beside Roon, a golden ball of fur with a white cast on one leg. Pony was on her feet, open book in one hand and long stick in the other, pacing slowly back and forth, reading aloud from some lesson plan and using the long stick to emphasize certain points. He couldn’t hear her voice over the sound of the creek but it resonated in his mind with all its soft feminine modulations—the gentleness and the strength and the beauty of it.
“Ramalda sent me down to fetch all of you for supper.”
“The Livingston Roundup starts tomorrow.”
Badger nodded. “They’re having a parade in the afternoon. The rodeo starts at eight, and I expect there’ll be fireworks, too.”
Caleb rubbed his chin, watching Pony pace back and forth, wondering what she was reading to them and wishing he was close enough to hear. “Think the boys might like to go?”
“Yepper.” Badger turned and started back to the ranch house, but he paused for a moment at the corner of the cabin. “If I were you,” he said, “I’d invite that pretty little schoolmarm, too.”
July 4
Dear Jessie,
I’m sitting here in the living room at the ranch. It’s hotter than Hades outside and the horses are standing in the shade of the trees along the creek. Ramalda is napping. Her snores are apt to blast the shingles off the roof. McCutcheon has taken Pony and the boys to Livingston to see the parade, and later, the rodeo and fireworks. They won’t be home till late. Roon has charged me with taking care of Absa. She’s behaving pretty well and she’s eating for me, but I’m not Roon and she sure knows it. Doc Cooper says the cast can come off her leg next week, and then I don’t know what will happen. The best thing would be to see if we can find her mother, but a lot of time has passed and she might not take the calf back. Anyway, her milk will have dried up, more than likely. So we’ll probably have to keep Absa here at the ranch until she’s weaned on to grass, and even then, nobody knows if she’ll be able to return to the herd. Right now she’s sleeping at my feet just like a big dog. Ramalda would skin me alive if she caught her in here but I hope we’ll be gone before she wakes up.
Guthrie paused from his painstaking hunt-and-peck typing and glanced out the window again. Storm clouds were building over the mountains. They needed rain, but he hoped the fireworks wouldn’t get rained out.
Speaking of dogs, Blue’s lying right at my feet. She’s like a second mother to Absa, but Absa doesn’t like it much when Blue tries to herd her around. Blue’s definitely pregnant. McCutcheon says he wants a girl pup. Doc Cooper wants a male. I know you said you wanted to keep two, so now I guess it’s up to Blue to make sure we can fill all them orders.
Guthrie glanced down at Blue, who lay curled up against Absa. She twitched a little in her sleep and he reached down and trailed his fingers over her head.
I think McCutcheon is happy with how things are going. The buffalo are doing real well, we had seven calves born this spring, and we’re planning to buy more cows and bulls at auction this fall, maybe in South Dakota. Pony is helping a lot with the groundwork, showing us how to turn this place into a working buffalo ranch. I already told you how she feels about making the ranch pay for itself and we feel the same way. So that’s what we’re going to try to do. This will help the boys to learn something useful. They aren’t really interested in tearing down fences, that’s for sure, but Badger’s been teaching them about the horses and they really like that, and anything to do with the buffalo they think is okay.
They also like anything to do with baseball, ever since McCutcheon started teaching them what that game’s all about. The way they’re going at it, the next Babe Ruth’ll be a full-blood.
Speaking of McCutcheon, he’s gone and bought himself a Chevy Suburban. It’s huge. Wait till you see it, Jess. Dark hunter green, same color as Steven’s Jeep. Picture this. On the doors, in gilt lettering, “Bow and Arrow, Katy Junction, Montana.” And between the ranch name and the address is the symbol of the Bow and Arrow brand. The doors look really sharp, but like I told him, it’s still just a Chevy. He says Ford doesn’t make an SUV that can carry so many people. I guess he’s forgetting that in a couple months he’s gonna be losing all his summer help…or maybe he knows something I don’t?
Guthrie paused to flex his fingers and gaze out at the sultry afternoon. He wondered how McCutcheon was making out. Chaperoning five teenage boys was no picnic. There was no telling what kind of trouble they could get into….
PONY COULDN’T REMEMBER ever experiencing a day as fine as this one. From the moment she had awakened, there had been a kind of magic about it. The dawn had been pink and gold with promise, the air buoyant with the sweet spicy smell of the wild roses blooming along the creek, and the boys had been buzzing with the anticipation of an afternoon and evening at a rodeo. Caleb opened his wallet before they left the ranch and gave each boy a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill, a gesture of such unexpected generosity that they all stared at him, speechless.
“You boys’ve earned it. Just don’t spend it all in one place. Now climb aboard.”
But when they headed for his pickup and began climbing into the back, he gave a short, sharp whistle and held up his hands in a time-out gesture. Then he pointed down toward his cabin. “Got a surprise for you,” he said. “We’re going to town in style today, and every single one of you will be wearing a seat belt.”
While they set out to discover what the surprise was, Pony thanked him. “Giving them the money wasn’t necessary,” she added. “They’ve probably eaten ten times that amount already, and the summer is young. Besides, the fence work is going pretty slowly.”
He slipped his wallet back into his hip pocket and then reached out and took her hands, turning them over in his own and studying the calluses and cuts. “The fence work is hard on you. I don’t like to see that.”
“My hands are fine,” she said, pulling them away and hiding them behind her while her heart raced at his touch.
“We’re going to rent one of those fence rollers for the barbed wire, and Guthrie can oversee those boys. I’d rather put you to work at the computer. Can you keyboard?”
She nodded. “Of course, but…”
“Good. There’s a ton of information to input and Guthrie’s hopeless. He’s worse than I am
when it comes to that kind of stuff.”
“But…”
He shook his head. “No arguments. Today we aren’t even going to discuss ranch work. Today is strictly pleasure. Come on. I want you to see this rig I just bought. I traded my useless Mercedes for it and I made a good trade, if I do say so myself.”
Pony was as dazzled as the boys were by the fancy new Suburban. She ran her hands over the soft leather seats and admired the high-tech gadgets. It was the first time in her life she’d ever ridden in a brand-new vehicle.
By midafternoon they arrived in town, just in time to find a parking space and see the parade. The boys watched the parade politely, which Pony recognized as extraordinary behavior for a bunch of kids trying to act tough. They kept their hands shoved in their pockets, wore dark shades and cowboy hats, and she knew that those crisp hundred-dollar bills were tightly clutched in sweaty palms and that they were itching to go spend them on carnival rides and games and junk food.
“Okay, boys,” Caleb said after the parade had passed. “Martin, you have a watch. So does Joe. Let’s pick a place and a time to meet.”
Pony felt a lurch of apprehension but she kept quiet. “What time does the rodeo start?” Jimmy said.
“It said eight o’clock in the newspaper.” Caleb tapped the face of his wristwatch. “That gives us nearly four hours to kill, but in two hours we’ll meet at the Ferris wheel. I want to take you someplace for supper. Someplace that serves buffalo steaks and burgers.” He glanced among them. “So stick together, stay out of trouble, have a bunch of fun and we’ll meet at 6:00 p.m.”
They didn’t hesitate more than a fraction of a heartbeat before vanishing into the crowd, and Pony looked up at him with a troubled frown. “That may have been a mistake,” she said.
He grinned and took her hand as if he’d been wanting to do so for hours. “Maybe, and Lord knows I’ve made my share of them. But those boys need to kick up their heels, and how else could I get you all to myself for a few hours?”
She lowered her eyes, breathless and disoriented by both his words and his touch. She could think of no response and he waited for none. He tucked her hand beneath his arm and they began to walk. Three steps—just three—and Pony knew this was right where she wanted to be, walking beside this tall, quiet, good-hearted man. All of her strictly traditional convictions paled in his presence, and she became increasingly aware of an emotion she rarely felt. Happiness.
“So what do you think?” he said after they had been walking for a while, neither of them noticing or caring where they had been or where they were going.
“About what?”
“About how it’s been so far. The summer. The boys. The buffalo.”
“Good,” she said. “It’s been good.” She wanted to tell him so much more, but she couldn’t find the words to express what was in her heart.
“What about Roon?” he said.
“He’s doing okay.” She glanced up at him and then quickly away, startled by the intensity of his blue eyes. “He’s lucky to have the job he has. It has helped him to deal with his brother’s death.”
“Roon’s good with the animals. He saved that little buffalo calf. He didn’t give her the option of dying.”
“Absa will die,” she said, feeling him check his stride at her words. “But in her own time. Roon somehow knows this, the way the young rarely do. Perhaps it is because he has come so close to death himself.”
Caleb stopped. He took both her hands in his and his expression was so solemn that she felt an ominous pressure build beneath her lungs. “I lost a brother, too,” he said. “In a car crash, the same way Roon did. My only sibling.” Caleb’s warm, strong hands tightened on hers. “He was in a car full of drunk teenagers. The passenger window was down and he was sitting on the edge of the door, half out of the car, banging on the roof and howling a challenge to the moon. The car ran up onto the sidewalk and flipped, and he was pinned underneath it. My uncle was a cop, one of the first at the scene. He held my brother while he died. So if you think Roon is okay, I can only tell you that it took me thirty years to be okay again, and I still lie awake some nights thinking about how different my life might have been if my brother had lived.”
Pony stared up at him. “You think Roon is still in danger.”
“I think Roon’s worth saving, and I’m trying to figure out how to do it.”
She nodded. “Me, too.”
“One summer isn’t enough.”
She stared. “It is a beginning,” she said.
“And a beginning is good, but there has to be a middle, too, and it should lead to a good ending.”
“Roon’s doing okay,” she said quietly.
“Roon shouldn’t have to deal with the kind of issues he’s dealing with!” Caleb burst out. “If there’s just one time in a person’s life that ought to be smooth sailing, it’s the teenage years, because even when everything’s perfect, being an adolescent in this day and age is pretty damn tough.”
She gazed up at him, marveling at his compassion. “All we can do is be there for him.”
“But what about a year from now? Ten years from now? Where will you and I be then? Where will Roon be? How can you help someone when they aren’t even around?”
She squeezed his hands. “You’ll be around, and as long as you stay where you are, he will know where to find you. He can come to you if he needs to, and you won’t turn him away. You’re that kind of person.”
Caleb shook his head in frustration. “It isn’t enough. Roon needs more than that. So do the other boys. It isn’t enough to show them a world that maybe they might like to try living in, and then send them back to a world where they still haven’t found their place. A world that offers them an heroic past, but an uncertain future.”
“So what would you do, Mr. McCutcheon?” Pony asked. “Keep them prisoners on your ranch? They have a history, a culture you can’t begin to understand.”
“I know that,” he said quietly. “And I’m not trying to change it or take it away from them.” He tore his eyes away from hers and stared into the distance for a long moment. His intense gaze took her breath away when it latched back on to her. “Hell, I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I want to help, but I don’t want you to think I’m patronizing you, because I’m not. I envy you your history and your culture. I didn’t have anything like that. But I had a wonderful mother, and sometimes I think a wonderful mother can make up for just about anything.”
“Steven told me you grew up poor.”
“My mother raised the two of us by herself. She waitressed at a greasy spoon, worked at a laundry, took in mending. She made sure we had everything we needed. She came to all my baseball games when I was a kid. Never missed one. When the baseball scholarship offers started coming in from the colleges, she somehow managed to scrape together the funds needed to get me to the interviews.”
“She wounds wonderful.”
Caleb nodded. “She was. She told me I could do anything I wanted to do, be anything I wanted to be. She told me that so often that I eventually began to believe it. I signed a contract with the White Sox before I graduated college. My mother invested every penny I gave her. I didn’t realize that until she died. She made me a rich man.”
Pony smiled. “She made you much more than rich. You have a good and honest heart, Caleb McCutcheon, and a good and honest heart is worth more than all the money in the world.”
He shook his head. “It’s money that makes things happen. It was money that bought me the Bow and Arrow, not my good heart. It was money that let me buy those buffalo, and that allowed me to hire you to advise me. Not my good and honest heart.”
She regarded him thoughtfully. “I believe you have it backward, Mr. McCutcheon. Without a good and honest heart, all the money you have made would have been for nothing, squandered on foolish things. It would have made no difference at all to anyone except to you. But now…”
Now, she thought, looking up at him, now her own life w
as changed. Now her path was changed. As the thought took hold, Pony was no longer sure about what made the sun rise in the east or why the sky was blue. She felt like a child full of fear and wonder, gazing upon this man who was opening the door to a room that she had previously believed to be forbidden, but one that she wanted desperately to enter.
“Now?” he prompted, his grip tightening.
“But now…” she began again, and at that very moment she heard someone call her name. She turned her head, instantly alert. One of the boys in trouble? She heard the voice again and felt her body tense. Could it be…? Materializing out of the Fourth of July crowd came an all-too-familiar figure. He walked toward them, lean and graceful, that big silver rodeo buckle sparkling in the afternoon sunlight.
Pete Two Shirts.
“Pony,” he said as he spotted her, and she felt the very best part of the day slipping through her fingers as McCutcheon’s hands released hers.
“Pete,” McCutcheon said with a nod of greeting, accepting the offered handshake. “You must be here for the rodeo.”
Pete returned the nod. “Wouldn’t miss it. I won my first big chunk of money at this rodeo, and that was a few years back.” He looked at Pony. “How’s Roon doing?”
“He’s doing all right. He’s here with the other boys.”
“What about that buffalo calf?”
“She’s fine. Roon named her Absa. He takes care of her.”
Pete nodded again. His dark eyes glanced between Caleb and Pony. “Are you staying for the rodeo?”
“Sure,” Caleb said. “I’ve never seen one before. What are you competing in?”
“Bronc and bull riding tonight. Already drew my horse. A real snuffy mustang colt out of Colorado called Twister. First season on the circuit and no one’s ever ridden him to the mark.”
“Maybe you’ll be the first,” Caleb said.
“I’m sure going to try,” Pete said. “You should check out the team-penning demonstration,” he said. “It’s not an official event this year but they’re thinking of making it one. They’re holding it at 7:00 p.m., just before the start of the rodeo. The boys would like it. It’s fun to watch.” He nodded to them both and then moved on in that catlike saunter of his.
Buffalo Summer Page 12
