Showdown at Buffalo Jump (11 page)

A moment later Edna settled beside Catherine. They sat quietly for a moment, enjoying the shade and the sounds of the creek and the children's laughter.

Catherine had been watching one child about four—too old for his mother's skirts and too young for the rough and tumble play of the older children—hanging about the periphery of the mob that swirled around the creek bottom like a flock of drably colored birds.

The boy was dressed as most of the children were, in cast-off clothes from older children, patched and pinned, held together more from habit than anything. He was easy to pick out from the crowd, and not simply because his hair shown like a shock of wheat in the sinking summer sun. The boy wasn't part of the play, but he seemed determined to do each of the things the others did, to prove to himself, at least, that he was
capable
of playing with others, given the chance.

And more than once the boy's determination had caused Catherine to catch her breath. There was a rock wall on the other side of the creek, thick and slick with summer moss. The older children, amid shrieks and dares, had edged each in turn out on a narrow ledge on that wall, grasping for handholds and footholds that would take them across without falling into the creek below.

The creek ran deep and swift under the ledge, and most of the prairie children didn't know how to swim, never having been around a large enough accumulation of water at any one time to learn. So crossing the ledge was dangerous for the older children, and much more so for the towhead.

But after the other children had passed their test of courage and agility and gone on to other things, the little boy crept out on the ledge. Catherine held her breath as he inched along to the point where the ledge had broken long ago, leaving a thirty-inch gap. He stopped there as the other children had, gauging whether he could step that far while hanging from the only handhold available above him.

And then he stepped. His foot missed the other side by inches, and instantly he was hanging by one hand over the water below, feet scrambling for purchase.

Catherine was too shocked to move, to speak. She sat helplessly, watching the drama played out on that tiny stage. Still he scrambled, his arm stretched tight and thin. It was then that Catherine realized the boy wasn't trying to find his way back to the ledge where he had been standing. He was trying to inch across.

Just as Catherine's lips were forming No! the boy found footing and made his way to the other side. Through it all, only Catherine watched. Everyone else was busy with work that needed doing, saying words that needed saying.

And then Edna took Catherine's attention away from the little boy. “Thought Max would have been over by now to pick up the horses.”

“Horses?”

Edna clapped a hand over her mouth. “Lordy, I'm sorry. I guess he wanted to surprise you, and now I've let the cat out of the bag. Honest, I didn't mean to. You won't tell him, will you?”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Lenington …”

“Edna, call me Edna.”

“Edna … I don't know what you are talking about.”

Edna hesitated, and then continued. “Not long after we came—Max had already been here more than a year—Max disappeared early one spring. Didn't tell anyone where he was going or how long he would be gone.”

“Came back about a month and a half later, riding the most beautiful horse I'd ever seen. Kind of gray, he is, and white across the rump with spots. Max calls him an appie, picked him up someplace out in Idaho.”

“Anyway, right after you agreed to come out here, Max disappeared again, only this time not so long. Guess he had the herd spotted by then, and back he comes with a three-year-old filly, maybe prettier than the stud.”

“I swear those horses are smarter than most folks, seem almost able to read your mind sometimes. Max says he's going to build a herd of the best horses in Montana.”

“What does that have to do with me?” Catherine asked, a quizzical expression on her face.

It was Edna's turn to look perplexed. “Everything Max does affects you, and the mare is to be yours. Max has already bred it to the stud. Should foal next spring.”

“The mare is mine?”

“That's what Max said.”

Catherines jaw jutted into the conversation. “Then, who the hell does he think he is to breed my horse without permission?”

“Well, I don't know,” Edna said, taken aback by the drift in the conversation. “I guess you'll have to talk to Max about that.”

“No! Max will have to talk to
me
about that.”

Edna was in a quandary. She respected Max more than most men, and she had helped him bring Catherine to Montana. She wouldn't intentionally embarrass him or endanger the union for the world.

Still, gossip was as scarce as people on the plains of eastern Montana. It was passed about with such enthusiasm that it often made two or three rounds—with a few additions and deletions here and there—before it wore out. Edna sensed a bit of real gossip here, and she was torn between her loyalty to Max and her need to dig it out for future reference. Edna was still pondering that dilemma when Catherine poked into Edna's thoughts.

“Whatever in the world are those children doing?”

The children were gathered two deep in a circle on the creek bottom, boys reaching in with sticks, bedeviling some creature in the center.

At first, Catherine thought it was a child's game, with the person “it” in the middle, but the circle was too rigid and there was too little movement inside. And then the game changed. The little towheaded boy broke through the ring and edged into the circle, leading with his right leg, stamping it ahead of him. The children shrieked and hands flew to their faces. A moment later, the boy ran from the circle. Then the children goaded him on, and he entered the circle again,
thump, thump, thump
, and run.

Catherine turned to Edna, who was already rising, distraught.

“Little Zeb, get that boy away,” she shouted. She ran toward the children. Catherine followed, embarrassed because she didn't know why she was running or where, because she didn't know whether it was ladylike to run.

Edna reached the towheaded boy just as he started into the circle again,
thump, thump
… Edna caught him by the shirt collar and jerked him backward. He struggled there a moment like a fish on a line, but Edna had already turned her attention to the other children.

“I'm ashamed of you!” she said. “You know better!”

“He wanted to, Ma.”

But Edna cut through that argument as conclusively as the axe cut short the lives of chickens the day before.

“You wanted to jump off our house to see if you could fly, remember that? What do you suppose would have happened if I had let you do that?”

“I'm sorry, Ma.”

“You should be. Little Joey doesn't have anyone to watch him, and you all egged him on to do this. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!”

Then, snatching a stick from one of the children, she shouted, “Now, all of you kids git!”

And still Catherine didn't know what had upset Edna, not until Edna took the stick and advanced like an avenging angel toward the center of the circle.

And then Catherine knew.

There was a rattlesnake coiled there. Catherine had never seen one, but she knew this was a rattlesnake more certainly than she knew she was her mother's daughter.

Coils topped by an ugly S held its head back, ready to strike. Yellow eyes halved by black, impenetrable slits were untouched by the crush and flow of life on the creek bottom. This was a creature of death, not life, and it awaited Edna, its tail singing its own death song, anxious to kill one more time before it died.

Catherine shuddered, and Edna waded in. She wielded the rod like the angel Gabriel, the stick whistling through the air to land with a
thump
. The rattler was writhing, striking blindly at shadows and weeds and the injustice of having been born with scales and rattles and fangs.

And even after it was over; even after one of the boys had stepped out of the knot of watching children and cut the snake's head off with his pocket knife; even after another boy stepped forward and pulled the rattles, sticking them into his hatband; even after the snake's head was buried so that none of the children would step barefoot on it and inject themselves with poison; still the snake writhed out its indignation.

Catherine was fascinated. Never had she seen anything so ugly and so compelling at the same time.

“They do that till sundown, then they stop,” Edna said, a shudder running through her. “Probably another one around here, so you kids watch your step.”

The show over, the children scattered, riding a wave of laughter and excitement and release down stream to new adventure.

“I've never seen anything like that,” Catherine said, more to herself than to Edna as they walked back toward the tables.

“Better get used to them. Lots of rattlers around, but you'll get so you can pick them out pretty easy.”

“No,” Catherine replied. “The snake was awful, but that little boy Joey. He wasn't playing with the other children or the snake either. It's like he was playing with … with … death.”

Edna stopped, hands on hips, eyes surveying the tables, creek, women, and children that made up the ever-changing scene beneath the old cotton-wood.

“Could be.” And then as though she were opening an old wound, Edna continued. “Joey's mom and dad came out here just shining with hope from some central European country. Don't remember what the country was, but it sounded like they were lisping when they said it. They felt that God was holding them in the palm of His hand: first the passage to America and then the promise of free land in return for nothing but the backbreaking labor they had known all their lives.

“I used to go over and see them whenever I got to feeling sorry for myself. Their home was no better than anyone else's, but it was always filled with wildflowers and laughter. I couldn't understand much of what they said. They tried hard to speak English, but their accent was pretty bad. I loved to listen to them anyway. Watching them was like going to church—it made me feel so good.”

“And when she found out she was pregnant with Joey, she ran all the way to our place. All out of breath she was and babbling away in her native tongue and laughing and too excited to sit or stand or talk without trying to do all three at once.”

“I was so happy for her that I cried. I just sat there at the table and cried and cried and cried.”

“I saw her a couple of weeks before Joey was born. She didn't look good even then, and when Klaus came to get me that night to help out, she looked even worse.”

A tear appeared at the corner of Edna's eye and trickled down her face like a raindrop on a rock.

“Joeys mother died giving birth to him. Saddest thing I ever saw. In a way, Klaus died that night, too. He isn't finished with it yet, but he's doing his best to work himself to death so he can lie beside his Katrina.”

“And Joey is alone. He couldn't be any more alone if he'd hatched from an egg. His daddy hardly ever talks to him and doesn't give him much more than what he gives his stock—something to eat and a little room to run.”

“So maybe Joey does play with death. Death is about the only thing you can count on around here. Not enough rain or too much. Not enough sun or too much. But death is here, whenever you want it.”

Edna pulled herself back from her reflection, struggling to make light of what she had said. “Listen to me. You must think I've lost my grip. Maybe I have.”

But Catherine didn't think that. As Edna spoke, she felt herself being inundated by despair, by distance, and by loneliness and hopelessness. She felt more than ever her need to escape this terrible captivity in which she found herself.

Edna spoke again. “Men are coming down. It's time to eat.”

Max and Jake Thomsen had settled with their heavily laden plates on the soft grass beside the creek. They didn't speak at first, more concerned with the chicken and potato salad and deviled eggs and radishes than with anything they might have to say.

The barn building had gone well. For all practical purposes, it was done, just some touching up with the red lead paint and hanging doors, windows, and hardware for lifting hay into the loft remained.

All this could be done after supper, or Max could do it himself if the food and beer and impromptu game of horseshoes proved to be more of an attraction than marching back through the heat to the barn.

It wasn't until their second trip through the line, after their plates had been scraped and slipped into tubs of warm water for washing, that either man felt compelled to speak.

Thomsen was first. “Well, Max, how's married life treating you?”

“I never even imagined it would be like this,” Max said. “She can't keep her hands off me.”

Thomsen didn't share Max's wan smile. “I noticed,” he said.

“Wonder who else did?”

“Harrison. But I told him wasn't it great that you two were getting along so well, and now he doesn't know for sure what he did see.”

“Thanks, Jake.”

“No trouble. Anything serious?”

Max sighed. He wanted to talk. Thomsen knew that with the certainty of long experience. He had played father confessor to more people than most priests, and he could recognize the signs.

Each person was different, of course. Some would bluster into Millard's as though they hadn't a care in the world, then drink themselves into a stupor and weep their guts out on the polished mahogany bar. Others would whisper bits and pieces of their secrets into his ear each time he brought them a drink and nod knowingly when they caught his eye as though to affirm the veracity of the stories they told.

Thomsen could pick those who wanted to talk out of a bar full of people. He ignored the whiners, those who use alcohol as an excuse to pour their litany of woes into the ears of anyone who would listen, but he tried to provide a sympathetic ear to the ones who occasionally needed someone to talk to outside their tight circle of family and friends.