by Lia Conklin
When he left her that evening, he left her to lie upon the hard, canvas-covered earth, hammering out another song. This song too, though carved from tragedy and misfortune and not yet recognizable or beautiful, was all her own.
Chapter 11
This time the dogs were actually excited to see her, remembering her from the previous week. The man swaggering towards her seemed less so. Amelia wondered if he would even remember what he had told her. Deciding that action spoke more than words, at least to this man, she took advantage of a large rock along the path and sitting upon it took out her guitar. She had already started strumming the first few chords when the man approached.
As I walked out in the streets of Laredo,
As I walked out in Laredo one day,
I spied a young cowboy wrapped all in white linen,
Wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay.
“Not my favorite,” he said when she had finished. “I like El Paso better.” She began to strum the intro.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he said waving her off. “I get it. You’ll be wantin’ that job as ranch hand. Go up to the house. The missus will get you acquainted with the place. After you’ve eaten,” he shook his head a bit after a quick once-over of her thin body, “I’ll have Russ get ya started. I don’t manage the work much anymore. Leaving that to younger, lighter bones.”
“Thank you,” was all Amelia had time for as the man, who she soon learned was Jack Stanton, turned away from her and headed towards the house.
The missus was anything but the missus Amelia had imagined for Jack Stanton. An elegant, lean woman, her slightly grayed hair cut in a wispy modern fashion, welcomed her warmly as she stepped through the door.
“So, you’re the young lady who walked five miles through the mountains to be turned away by my cranky, curmudgeon of a husband. And you came back to try again!” she said, as she hustled Amelia into the house, stripping her of backpack and guitar all the while continuing to speak. “I could see this time you were ready for battle! Couldn’t catch the sound of it from here, but from the fact my husband stood listening for so long, I’d say you’re a pretty good songstress! Good for you.” By now Amelia was in the dining room. “I had to resist the temptation last time to run out and welcome you in! Jacky would have been furious—not that I don’t know how to handle him, —but I’d just as soon avoid the fury when possible. I’ve had five children, all of them boys and none of them married. I think you can understand why a young lady on this property would be so welcomed!”
Immediately at ease with this woman, Amelia laughed.
“I’m not quite ready to get married,” she said with a grin, sitting down on the chair that had been pulled out for her, “though I’m sure your sons would make great husbands.”
The woman’s momentary puzzlement was soon replaced by a laugh.
“Oh no! I only mention that they are not married because I have no daughters-in-law yet, so no female company.” She paused. “That still sounds like I’m marrying you off! Anyway, only one of my sons still lives here, and he’s not exactly what I’d call marriage material! The others all prefer city life to this. I like the city in small doses: a little shopping, a good haircut,” she said tossing her wispy locks. “But this,” she exclaimed spreading her arms wide, “lets me breathe.”
By this time, a bowl of salad and a heaping plate of lasagna lay in front of Amelia. Breadsticks followed and a bottle of wine.
“Are you twenty-one?” she asked, uncorking the bottle and beginning to pour it into the two awaiting glasses.
“Yes,” Amelia answered. “Just turned twenty-one a month ago.”
“Not that that really matters anyway,” Mrs. Stanton laughed, placing a half-filled glass of red wine by her plate. “I already ate,” she said, sitting next to Amelia at the table, “but haven’t had my taste of wine for the day. Most people prefer it in the evening, but I prefer it just about any time! In small doses, of course. Just like the city!”
Amelia had had hardly enough time to take in her surroundings before this whirlwind of a woman had whisked her into the dining room. What she had seen had dispelled any unpleasant ideas of the place that Jack Stanton had invoked. It was a large house. The living room she had glimpsed had two different sitting areas, each with its own fireplace. And now this dining room, cramped as it was, fit a heavy, wooden table that sat at least fourteen. The walls held several large rustically framed prints of cowboy and Indian scenes that she later learned were prints of Frederic Remington’s work. There was also a curio cabinet that housed what appeared to be Indian artifacts, animal bones, and fossils. The “missus” followed Amelia’s eyes to the curio.
“We’ve collected some artifacts through the years, including a few arrow heads, as well as some buffalo bones, some of which show evidence of scraping. There are even a few eagle feathers—the Golden Eagle feathers are the ones displayed. It’s illegal to keep bald eagle feathers, though I couldn’t just leave them where I found them, so they’re kept inside the cabinet if you ever want to look. How’s the lasagna?”
“Great!” Amelia exclaimed, and it really was, in spite of the fact that anything she had been served would have been better than the food she had eaten over the past two weeks…or was it thirteen years?
Over the next few minutes and bites of lasagna, Amelia learned a lot about “the missus.” Her name was Pamela, not Pam, since she wanted to retain something of her civilized Seattle upbringing. John Stanton was actually her second husband, her first having left her in Billings with a two-year-old son. After two years struggling on her own, she met Jack. They were married a year later and she’d lived here ever since. She had four more sons, one of whom had died two years ago while bull riding in Billings.
“Nothing romantic, not like the movie Eight Seconds,” she said. “The bull simply went down on him coming out of the chute. Anyway, romance isn’t anything to cling to when your heart is ripped away. I hope you never have to understand that,” she said glancing at Amelia and quickly looking away.
Jack appeared at the door, a grimace on his face as he took in the scene of his wife and Amelia chatting at the table.
“What’s she still doing in here, Pam? She’s supposed to be out with Russ taking care of things. Don’t you go ruining the hired help. I brought her here to work, not to sip wine and reminisce about better days.”
“Reminiscing about worse days, Jack. Worse days. It kind of takes your mind off the time,” she responded sadly. Amelia saw his eyes soften. He couldn’t argue with that. Time meant nothing when death had once visited.
“Either way,” he finally said, “it’s time for her to help out Russ. Lord knows he needs a helpin’.
“Thank you for the wonderful meal, Pamela,” Amelia said, endowing her name with all the dignity she could muster. As Pamela beamed, it became clear to Amelia that no one ever called her as such.
Chapter 12
Once in the stable, Russ came over to greet her. He was a thin, young man, perhaps even frail, his blond hair swept in a silken wave across his forehead. Even with his piercing blue eyes, something kept Amelia from finding him handsome. When he shook her hand with a graceful flourish, she thought that maybe she understood what it was and why his mother said he was not marriage material, at least not before the Supreme Court ruling.
Although gentle from his girth to his gate, he was anything but weak or lazy. Amelia followed him around that afternoon as he went from shoveling manure to bedding down stalls, from feeding an orphaned calf to chaining its dead mother to his ATV and rolling her into the manure pit. He brought out oats for the horses and took time to brush down six of them before he motioned to Amelia that it was time for supper.
“The cows just started calving two weeks ago. We’ll go out after dinner to see if any have calved or are having trouble.” Russ began scrubbing his hands at the stable sink and handed her the lava soap. “The next few weeks will be pretty hectic as we prepare for our first round of guests. We’re
a working dude ranch, you could say. We have a few cattle drives for guests at the beginning and end of the summer and some ranch weeks in between. We’ll be going out to bring some horses in so we can tame them down from this winter to be ready for the first cattle drive in June. We also have to get the guest rooms and bunkhouses cleaned up and ready for the guests and staff.” He dried his hands and offered Amelia the towel. He continued to look at her as he said, “I’m glad Dad hired you on. Up until last year, he used to help me out. Last year I nearly killed myself doing almost everything on my own. I told him I needed help this year. He said one man was good enough for the job.” Russ laughed as if to himself. “Then he looked me over and said, ‘Yeah, I better hire someone on.’ He’s probably pretty proud of himself now, thinking between the two of us he’s got one man for the job!”
Amelia wasn’t sure whether to smile or comfort him. She decided to do both, placing a hand on his shoulder, she smiled up at him.
“Well, if he’s right and it takes just one man for this job, we’re going to have an awful lot of free time on our hands!”
Russ chuckled gratefully.
“Let’s go to dinner,” he said, patting the hand that still lay on his shoulder. “No matter what Dad says, can’t ever leave this place ’cause no one cooks like Mom!”
Chapter 13
The next few weeks were a blur of activity, and either Jack Stanton was right to believe they were ill-suited for the task, or he miscalculated the manpower needed. Either way, Amelia’s repertoire of Marty Robbins grew rusty as she worked from dawn to far past dusk. Her hands soon resembled again the hands of her past, but this time the work was satisfying.
There was little that resembled routine since the cows’ birthing refused to follow a schedule. Amelia made frequent ATV trips out into the mountains to bring in each mother and new calf or to come frantically back for Russ’s help in birthing a breach. The calves they brought in were penned with their mothers; the mothers fed on hay while the calves suckled. The cows and their newborns that had drifted far into the mountains would be brought in on the cattle drives. Some would be lost to failed births and coyote kills, so it was vital that the ones within their reach were saved.
The guestrooms and bunkhouses were cleaned and thoroughly supplied with fresh linens and accessories by the time the rest of the summer staff arrived two days before the guests. There was the middle-aged woman, Loni, to help with the food and the thirtyish Mexican-American, Raymundo, to help along the trail. The four of them worked together on last-minute preparations: preparing the horses, tack, and provisions, and tending to the new calves and the late-birthing mothers.
Finally, it was time for the first group of guests to arrive. The Stanton’s rented a shuttle once a week to transport the guests to and from the airport. Once at the trailhead, they mounted ATVs that brought them beneath the arch of “Weiland” ranch. Amelia remembered her first trip from Billings to the ranch and felt sure the guests would have been disappointed to know they had not gotten the authentic Western experience. Maybe she’d suggest to Jack Stanton that her Crow friends provide the transportation.
This first group of tourists showed Amelia another reason why Russ stayed on at the ranch. It was apparent from the moment they stepped up to board the shuttle that Russ was in good company. Out of curiosity, several groups later, Amelia got the courage to ask Raymundo why so many of their clientele were from the LGBTQ community.
“My first year at the ranch three years ago, some queer from California came on the cattle drive. Turns out he was the editor of some homo magazine. He got Russ a good deal on advertising, and now nearly a third of the guests are queer. Lucky thing too, because we were light on tourists. Now we’re just light in the loafers!” Amelia was almost sorry she had asked. At least Raymundo, having this laugh at their expense, was respectful to their faces.
The first cattle drive was fun. The tourists were eager and boisterous. They were up for anything and complained about little. Russ catered to the gay clientele, while Raymundo and Amelia tended more to the others. They enjoyed the casual pace and the occasional gallop. They “oohed” and “aahed” from the backs of the trail horses as they perched at the edge of steep drops with breathtaking landscapes. They gulped down the meals Loni prepared over an open fire from the provisions she hauled in a small wagon hitched to her horse. They listened attentively, sung uproariously, and applauded gregariously as Amelia revived her country repertoire, including some Mexican music as well, not entirely out of context. Raymundo, having up to this point refused to speak Spanish with Amelia, sung along when caught off guard. They groaned good-naturedly and rubbed their buttocks—or someone else’s—before they bedded down for the evening under the stars or within the supplied tents. The summer was off to a good start.
Russ warned her that the cattle drives seldom went that well. But Amelia was little prepared for Bull. They all were.
Chapter 14
Amelia and Raymundo, along with the dogs, greeted the second group of guests as they road up to the ranch house aboard the ATVs. Russ was in the lead as usual, but this time a young woman clung to his waist. As he dismounted and approached her, Amelia shot him a questioning glance. He nodded toward a large bulldozer of a man extracting himself from one of the ATVs.
“Wanted to ride alone,” Russ shrugged. “And he,” he smirked, cocking his head in the direction of a young man sporting a tea-green polo shirt, “wanted to ride with his partner. So here I am with her.” This time he nodded towards the young woman who upon removing her helmet tossed her red curls and walked towards him.
“This is bomb!” she exclaimed, fixing Russ with a radiant smile of berry lips and gleaming teeth. “So much land!” she exclaimed, her arms swooping wide to follow her feet in a grand pirouette. “Just bomb! But I couldn’t live this far from civilization. How do you do it? You must get so lonely out here.” The gentle smoothing of his lapel with her ornately manicured hand triggered Russ’s dormant sense of humor.
“Well,” he said with a flip of his wrist, “You got that right girl! That’s why we got to get ya’ll,” he flipped his head towards the young men who stood nearby, “to come by and see us!”
The woman retracted her elegant hand and coy smile instantly. She mumbled something about how glad she was to have come while backing away and scanning the crowd. She smiled suddenly again, her gleaming teeth lighting upon Raymundo. She was at his lapel in an instant and stuck there throughout the week.
Through stifled laughter, Amelia managed to throw a pouty smile in Russ’s direction. He feigned a gasp and turned away haughtily. He walked away chuckling to himself.
The bulldozer man, however, turned out to be the perfect antidote for laughter. “What kind of outfit is this?” he said gesticulating wildly at his surroundings. “When do we get to eat around here? You send us on a ride through hell, and then you sit around chitchatting while we all die of hunger?”
“Mr. Goldfield, just bear with us, please,” Russ responded. “The grub will be served at high noon, which,” he added, glancing at his watch, “is in fifteen minutes.” Russ now turned to address the entire group. “We’ll show you to your quarters now. Then when you hear the dinner bell in fifteen minutes, just head over to the mess hall over there,” he said, pointing to the large rectangular building to their right.
The bulldozer man mumbled and grumbled to himself as he and the rest of the guests followed Russ to the bunkhouse. His bad attitude didn’t keep Amelia from smiling, though, as she noticed an extra sway to Russ’s walk. Nothing like a gay cowboy dressed in traditional duds, speaking of grub, quarters, and mess halls, to give an authentic feel to the Wild West.
There was little to sway or smile about over the next few days as the crew realized that the bulldozer man, aka “Bull,” had only begun to make waves across a terrain that had not received significant amounts of precipitation in years. The crew established a secret flash flood warning whistle within the first five minutes of the followin
g day’s cattle drive to deal with the constant crises Bull managed to create. Somehow under Bull’s direction, horses scattered, hearts fluttered, and somewhere in the mountains boulders rolled.
Within the first five minutes of the drive, Bull broke formation to complain of a too-small saddle and a gassy horse. The horses behind him stopped, confused, and the ones he rode up alongside of skittered off the trail. What the crew already knew and what the guests came to understand was that once a rider broke formation, the trail horses, used to a certain order, became startled and confused, and the peaceful cadence the riders were enjoying became a stressful derailment.
The group would soon get used to such derailments, but the first one had everyone unsettled. Amelia would have happily explained to Bull that all saddles ever made would be too small for his large pompous ass, and that he’d be gassy too if a bulldozer was straddling him.
Russ handled it more diplomatically, however, apologizing for the saddle that unfortunately was the largest saddle they owned and explaining that it was quite natural, however unpleasant, for horses to pass gas, especially when carrying weight. He assured him that all cowboys had withstood such unpleasantries and welcomed him to the fraternity. He then politely gestured toward the derailment and asked that Bull please not break formation in the future as the horses were not accustomed to such breaks in routine. He, himself, would ride back to check with him periodically to make sure everything was fine.
Thus, the flash flood warning came to be, and, true to his word, Russ returned to Bull’s side to deal with his complaints the moment the low whistle reached his ears. Unfortunately, a warning is only as good as its forewarning, and Bull’s disruptive intentions often defied detection. On one particular occasion, Bull rode past the carnage to where Russ, who had reined in his horse, sat looking back at him, the brim of his cowboy hat hiding most of his disgust. This time it was the young man in front of him who didn’t make the mark.
