by Mark Lisac
They walked through a small meadow onto a table of land. The approach to most of the hills was sloped. Here the drop was abrupt and steep.
“You should see this around late June or early July,” she said. “This meadow is covered with wildflowers.”
At the rim they looked out over the prairie stretching into the far distance. The horizon merged with a haze that blended into sky. Asher said, “It would probably take at least half an hour to drive as far as you can see here. Maybe longer.”
The land below was mostly pasture, broken here and there into rectangles converted to crop production.
“You forget what this is like, living in the city,” Asher said. “There you can’t look one block down the street without seeing a lot of activity. Here, there are probably people moving around down in those fields, but it all looks perfectly still.”
“It’s as big as the mountains,” she said.
He thought some more. “Do you know the old pictures you sometimes see of houses on the prairie back in the early days? Nearly always a house sitting there, maybe a person or a handful of people in front of it, surrounded by bare land or a good wheat field?”
“Yes.”
“The houses always stand out. They look big even if they weren’t. Maybe it’s the same way with people. The first people out here may have looked bigger than they were. Some of them would have made their mark anywhere. But out here, they were magnified. They dominated the land because there was hardly anyone or anything else around.”
“I guess that could be,” she said. “If you were here almost alone, it could have been scary but you were someone. You changed the land and you changed the way the handful of other people around you lived together. Even the coyotes had to pay attention to you.” She looked at him. “We should get you settled in at the motel and go on to the cabin, I guess. Fred and Olivia will have dinner soon. I think Fred wanted to talk to you about something, too.”
Asher took a last look at the landscape rolling out toward the west and drank in the sight and smell of the meadow and surrounding trees on the way back to the car.
They stopped at the motel, small and largely built of wood as he had expected. The Jensens’ cabin was about five minutes away, a cedar A-frame at the end of a driveway winding into a stand of lodgepole pines.
They all said hello and settled into an easy chatter. Asher watched Olivia Jensen’s sure handling of the cooking implements and plates. He was amused and unaccountably grateful for the sight once again of Fred Jensen virtually skipping across the kitchen to fetch a serving spoon or the coffee. He would probably still be skipping after he turned eighty.
Afterward, the women washed the dishes. They said there wasn’t room for two helpers. Jensen asked Asher if he’d like to go for a little stroll. Outside the cabin, he said he had run across some information that Asher might be interested in hearing.
“You remember those initials you found on Apson’s papers? The CP that seemed to cover so many possible names that it wasn’t worth trying to trace unless the initials matched a name that cropped up elsewhere?”
“Yes.”
“You said the initials were in a circle. We thought that was just Apson highlighting them, or doodling as he racked his brains to come up with a name. It finally occurred to me — what if it was a brand, the Circle CP? I asked a couple of the older ranchers who come up here sometimes to use the lake. One of them remembered there was a Circle CP on the other side of the hills. Across the provincial border, which would have made it even less likely to trace. The brand is discontinued, too. I found out the operation has gone all modern, or as modern as things get in that part of the world, turned into the Cypress Creek Land and Cattle Company, with a new brand. But the ranch is still partly owned by the original family and there’s supposed to be an old fellow still living on it. That’s all I know. It could be nothing more than a coincidence. Just thought you might be interested.”
Asher had been looking at Jensen hard. He gazed up at the pines and inhaled the woody turpentine smell. He had intended to spend a few days walking and driving around, exploring the hills. He thought he could take a day to explore some of the territory on the other side as well.
“That’s down in the grasslands, right?” he said. “Near where they have the national park?”
“I take it the ranch is pretty much next to the park.”
“I’ve always liked prairie country. That would be about as real a look at prairie as it gets. Maybe I should take the chance to go for a hike there.”
39
HE SET OUT ON THE HIGHWAY GOING SOUTH THROUGH THE hills, then cut east on a little used secondary highway, driving through early morning showers. The scattered clouds were moving fast. The climate was cooler and wetter up here than in the surrounding countryside.
The blacktop lasted until he reached the provincial border near the eastern edge of the hills. The road surface abruptly turned to dirt. Jensen had warned him to be careful here. If he found himself on a dirt road, he should realize the dirt largely consisted of an inordinately slippery clay. It would hold a car in dry weather but turned into a slick gumbo when any moisture was added to it. Asher was convinced after half a minute. The car slid even at very low speed. A passing shower or two had been enough to make the surface uncannily slick even though no puddles had formed and the road did not look particularly wet. He turned around before descending a hill, worried more about getting back up than about sliding into the ditch, although that was a possibility as well.
He found the northbound gravel road he had passed earlier and began the detour that would keep him on better surfaces. The road ran straight and gradually worked down out of the hills into rolling ranch country. He reached an intersection where the gravel was replaced by old asphalt, broken in spots but easily usable. First he parked on the shoulder and got out to stretch his legs and take in the land. A hawk perched on a fencepost across the intersection screeched at him. He began walking toward it, trying to determine whether it was a common redtail or another variety, despite knowing he probably would be unable to identify it definitively either way. The hawk became agitated, screeching more steadily, and quickly took off. Asher felt like an interloper. He walked back to his car and resumed the drive.
On the other side of the border, he found another secondary highway running south. It ran through pasture and occasional fields of dead-looking crops, strangely spindly and deeper brown than the grain fields he had driven through to get to the hills. He remembered reading that farmers around here had started growing field peas, and that they used desiccants to force the plants to ripen uniformly.
A provincial highway, not paved much better than the secondary road, took him east again, past old fences and occasional metal grain bins. Once he passed a small wooden grain elevator that had been jacked up from its original location beside a rail line and trucked to a farm to provide grain storage. He passed villages, all of which seemed to have signs at their borders celebrating local boys who had made it to the NHL. He remembered playing with kids like them in university. A handful of cars were parked in the villages but he did not see people. There were more grain bins here than people.
At the edge of the national park he found the park office. Checking the main map and asking advice from the ranger on duty, he located the site of the old CP Ranch, still operating but now under a corporate name.
A winding road led to it on the other side of the park. He saw the place could also be reached by a hiking trail across a narrow arm of the grasslands and he thought he would try that instead.
The office was just outside the village of Callaghan. He picked up two bottles of water and drove to a fenced-in dirt parking area at the head of the hiking trail. The sun
shone brilliantly. The sky was cloudless here and he was glad he had thought to put a hat in the car before leaving.
He set out on the trail without waiting. It was barely visible. It meandered through speargrass and prairie wool and some blue grama. There had been one tree, back at the parking lot. The rest was brittle grass, the original untouched prairie. A display back at the park office had told him the grasses on the surface were just the visible parts of plants that extended metres into the ground.
It looked like a harsh and quiet land, but up close there were signs of stubborn life. He noted the occasional circular spiderweb in the grasses. Off over the ridge to the west, he knew there was a prairie dog colony. Small birds chirped steadily on the ground and hawks hovered high above. Walking up a shallow ridge, he stepped on small, brittle rocks. He remembered something else from the park guide and noted chips of gypsum glinting in the sunlight. Across the ridge he found himself in grass again. Grasshoppers buzzed steadily. There must be hundreds of them, he thought, buzzing endlessly and loudly.
Just ahead up the trail and off to the right side he noticed two mostly black birds acting agitated and squawking steadily. He kept walking toward them and then heard a different sound that instantly froze him in his tracks — a dry, electric buzz, louder than the grasshopper noise, more insistent and aggressive, and tuned to an instinct he had not known he possessed.
He knew it was a rattlesnake even before he saw it. He looked at what he thought was the approximate source of the sound and found it. It was a fat brown snake with soft diamond patterns, coiled several steps off the left side of the trail. No wonder the birds were agitated. They may even have had a nest nearby.
It was looking at him. He watched it, full of curiosity. He was not worried, because the snake was not coming at him, but he decided it was not a good idea to move either. After about a minute of mutual staring, the snake turned and slowly glided into a brushy section of grass, as if to say, “I feel like heading toward some shade for a while, but you didn’t scare me away. And if I’d stayed, I’d expect you to walk around me, not through.”
Asher felt for the second time that morning that he was entering a territory where he did not belong. He was tolerated as a guest, but this was not his land and it seemed to have watchers guarding everywhere.
He started walking again after losing sight of the rattler and crossed another shallow ridge. This time he saw a road, stacks of circular hay bales, a corral, a barn, and a sprawling house with a big, roofed porch. He walked down to the house and found an old man sitting in a chair.
“Morning,” the man said. “Long walk with the sun getting high, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is, but a beautiful one.”
“Are you the fellow who phoned yesterday?”
“Yes I am. Harry Asher.”
“Epworth Palmer.”
He got up to shake hands and asked if Asher would like a drink of water. Asher thanked him and said he had brought some with him. He looked at the old man’s wisps of hair and the suspenders holding up his pants around his thickened midsection. He was still able to see the lean, sturdy younger man who had stood up to several decades of work with machinery and with cattle in weather that was generally either hot and windy or irrationally cold.
They talked about what had brought Asher here. He learned that Palmer was the grandson of Charles Palmer, who had started the ranch and registered the original brand. Epworth’s son was off picking up some supplies in Cypress Creek. His son’s wife was off visiting in town. A hired man was out with the cattle. Palmer suggested they go inside where it would be cooler. He sat in a rocker and Asher sat on a couch covered in cracked brown leather. Palmer pointed out the old prints of cowboy paintings on the wall opposite the wall with the pictures of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“Charlie Russell,” he said. “He was the best. Frederic Remington made some good paintings, but Charlie Russell was the one who really showed the old ranch life the way it was. My dad was around not long after those years and favoured Russell.”
Asher once more explained briefly that he was interested in learning anything he could about Mary Simmons and what had happened to her and perhaps a son, if Palmer happened to know anything about them.
“Sure,” the old man said. “People around here knew her and her father. Her mother too, although she died fairly young. Some of you folks over on the other side seem awfully interested in her. I guess here she was just a neighbour. You never think about your neighbours being anyone special. As far as how things ended up with her and Tom Farber, that was their business. No reason to tell the whole world. I guess you want to know the whole story, or as much as I know.”
Asher said he did and there was no hurry. Palmer wasn’t short of breath and didn’t seem to be labouring, but he spoke in shorter bursts than Asher was used to and looked like he might tire easily. For now, he seemed happy to have company.
“First thing, her name was really Simonson. Her father was John Simonson. They lived on a place just up the road. It was folded into our property long ago. No Simonsons left now for a long time.
“That’s the way it seems to be in this country. Things get built on the wrecks of dreams. The first ranchers followed the Indians. Then the wheat farmers followed the ranchers. Someone always tries to find a way to live out here. Maybe because it isn’t ‘out here’ to them, it’s home.
“Old John worked hard but he didn’t have as much land as dad. Not as good land either. He was prone to a little jealousy. He and his wife Alice headed off to your side of the hills at one point. Don’t know exactly where. I guess they believed the stories about the promised land over there. Started a small cattle auction business but went bust after three years. Then they came back and lived on the ranch again. They survived but never were able to build it up.
“Alice died when Mary was just… oh, in her early teens, I suppose. John sent Mary off to a high school in Cypress Creek and then to a secretarial school for a year. She came back. But she was ambitious and wanted more, just like her father.
“They’d come into contact with the Farber family when they were trying to run that auction business. Somehow or other, Mary got a job with Farber when he got to be high and mighty. Maybe he liked her, too. She was always lively and popular. Not especially good-looking, but the kind of girl who could make you think she was good-looking. I always liked her myself. I had some hopes because she liked me. But you could tell she was always out to make something of herself.
“Well, off she went. Simonson stayed here complaining that he could be going just as well as dad if he’d had better land or a little more capital. Then we heard that Mary was doing well and was calling herself Simmons. I never did know for sure why. She was ambitious, like I said. Maybe she thought it sounded grander. Anyway, she was Mary Simmons and making a success. Next thing you know, she was back and not happy. It wasn’t long before we all figured out why. She was carrying a child and there was no father in sight.
“I was a bit of a dreamer in those days. I guess I had ideas that maybe I could marry her. Raise the child as my own and then have more with her. She was fun to be around when she wasn’t thinking about how to get more money or better clothes. Was a hard worker when she had to be. I didn’t have much notion of what it took to raise even one child.
“But she wasn’t much interested in me. Then when she was well along, a visitor came by. We didn’t see him. She told me a little about it later. Old Simonson knew a little about it as well, although they didn’t want him around when they had their talk.
“This was Tom Farber himself. He was nearly as famous around here by then as he as in your part of the country. She said he was the father. Well, I wasn’t sure at first I believed that. She
was given to big ideas. But why else would he come here? And Old Simonson swore it was true.
“Then she told me the rest of it. Memory’s a tricky thing. Especially when you’re going back as far as I am now. But I remember this clear as day. She was crying all the time she was telling me this. I knew then I’d never be marrying her. It was Farber’s child. That other fellow, Manchester, the one they ended up calling the Parson, he broke it up. He talked Farber into giving Mary up and sending her back home. There was some kind of arrangement about helping her out with money — don’t know what it was.
“I took it there might even have been some talk first about finding a way for her not to have the baby. There was some doctor who had learned his trade down in the States and occasionally performed confidential services. Seems the Parson was willing to compromise on his scruples. She would never have had anything to do with that, though.
“Manchester said it would be death for Farber’s career to admit he had fathered a child out of wedlock. It wouldn’t even do to get married after the fact and accept the child as his own.
“She said Farber was torn up about that. She said he was ready to give everything up and go back to his family farm with her. He told her she was all he wanted in life. But Manchester said it was more than Farber’s career. He was the one man who could save the province. Everyone was depending on him. And it was even more than that. He had a Christian duty to set a good moral example. He had been on the radio with Manchester talking not only about politics but about what God wanted. They were going to save everyone not only by giving the people better lives, but by showing they could live according to the way God intended. He couldn’t betray the whole province by throwing all that aside.
“So Manchester talked him into betraying Mary instead. Just sending her back home.
“She was suspicious that Manchester had been acting out of jealousy too. She’d been starting to think that he had wanted her for himself despite being engaged. I don’t know about that, although enough boys had been interested in her that she could probably read the signs.
