Showdown at Buffalo Jump (3 page)

“Oh, now I remember what it was that I was going to tell you. Father Tim has to leave this afternoon. Funeral up on Dead Sioux Creek. He has to go soon, so you and Max won't really have any break-in time to get to know each other. You'll have to be married today. In about thirty-five minutes.”

Catherine stopped short on the boardwalk, but Edna continued several steps, talking to herself before she noticed she was alone.

“My word,” she said. “Where did she go? Oh, there you are.…”

“We are to be wed this afternoon?”

“You are if you want a priest to do it.”

“I do,” Catherine said, resuming her walk. “I want everything to be nice and legal.”

3

The first beer went down in a gulp, the second, too. Max had lingered a bit over the third, or was it the fourth, he couldn't remember. Now he was toying with his fifth or maybe sixth? No, it couldn't have been that many. Zeb couldn't stand more than about four mugs of beer without getting tipsy.

Max looked at his drinking companion. Zeb was sitting motionless on his stool, staring woodenly at the mirror behind the bar. Must have been more than four.

Then Max felt someone tugging at his sleeve. It was the Lenington's oldest boy, Hanford, or maybe next in line, Robert. All the Lenington children looked so much alike and were so close in age, it was difficult for Max to tell them apart.

“You better come now, Mr. Bass,” Hanford or Robert said. “Miss O'Dowd is ready to see you. You have about fifteen minutes, Mama said, and then Miss O'Dowd has to get dressed for the wedding.

Max went cold-stone sober with panic. He couldn't go through with this. He had lured this woman, this stranger, to Prairie Rose with lies, representing himself to be something he wasn't. What chance did this marriage have? He was set in his ways and didn't know anything about women. There could only be trouble. Better that he just slip out the door and disappear.

But in the end he didn't. He took a deep breath and steeled himself for the task ahead just as he had always done. Come blizzards or heat or drought or prairie fires or fiancées, Max had always done what needed doing. And now that he was his own man, plotting the course of his life, he would not shrink from his duty. If a man did only the pleasant tasks God granted him, precious little would ever be done.

Max put his beer mug on the bar, and with the air of a man saying good-bye to what had been to make way for what would be, he slid off the stool to his feet.

Robert or Hanford was still trying to talk his father into leaving his perch, but he was having no luck.

Max reached out to pull Zeb off the stool.

“No, wait!” the Lenington boy said, taking Max's arm. “Dad,” he said shaking the elder Lenington by the shoulders. “Ma is in the barn after your bottle. Little Zeb told her where it is, and she's after it.”

Zeb's transformation to consciousness was not nearly so marked as Max's, but the boy's ploy got him on his feet, nevertheless.

“Edna, you stay away from that barn!” he yelled at the top of his voice. Zeb slowly realized where he was and what he had done. He was too drunk to be embarrassed, so he turned to the seated patrons and bowed as though he were a Shakespearean actor taking a curtain call. Then he staggered toward the door, flanked by his son and Max.

The sunshine outside seemed to drive a spike through Max's eyes and into his brain—the ache so severe his vision fluttered with it. Then the heat hit him and he stumbled, almost falling to the board walk.

Zeb was standing bolt upright, clinging to one of the hitching posts, his face bearing a look of complete bewilderment. Then he dropped to his knees and vomited over the edge of the walk, his belly emptying itself in gushes like water spewing from a rain pipe. As he struggled to his feet, a blush of pink spread across the pallor of his face.

Max thought Zeb might live if they could get him out of the heat, get him up to the Patchucks' where the priest and the rest of the Leningtons and this stranger from Boston were waiting.

It was the longest walk Max had ever made, longer even than that time on the Big Dry when that spooky son of a bitching bay pitched him off a rim edge into a nest of boulders below. Bone sticking through his leg it was. Through his pants, too. But he dragged himself the twelve miles back to the ranch. He had no choice. It was either that or die alone on the prairie. Nothing scared Max so much as the thought of lying wide-eyed in dead disbelief until some magpie came and picked holes in his skull where his eyes had been. So Max had crawled the twelve miles, sucking every breath and holding it like a talisman, dragging one dead leg behind him. He would walk to the Patchucks' half-drunk through this god-awful heat for the same reason:
He didn't want to die alone on the prairie
.

The sidewalk, the buildings, the horizon spun together into a viscous collage that Max waded through as though he were chest deep in a vat of honey. After what seemed to be hours, the trio was standing in front of the Patchucks', Max reaching toward the door to knock, to set his destiny in motion. But just before his knuckles touched wood, the door opened and Edna peered out, consternation plain on her face.

“Come in! Come in! She won't be ready for a few minutes, and that will give me time to pump some coffee into you.”

Max lurched inside, and Edna guided him to a chair, leaving her son to find a chair for his father. Inside the home out of the heat, Max's mind began to clear again, adrenaline chasing alcohol from his body.

“Edna, I would dearly love a cup of coffee.”

“Not yet. I'll get you some water and you rinse your face. Run a comb through your hair and straighten that collar, too. You are about to meet your wife, Max. Best get yourself straightened out.”

“You're right, Edna,” Max said so softly she heard only a murmur. “I'd best get myself straightened out.”

“It's time, Max. She's in the parlor.”

Edna's voice sent a chill down Max's spine. As the adrenaline surged through his body, he was acutely aware of the sounds, smells, and tension that circulated through the Patchuck home.

He rose, his legs shaky at first, shakier still as he marched into the parlor to the beat of his heart booming in his chest. As he stepped through the entryway, his eye was drawn in the dim light to a lamp on one end of the couch. And there, in that golden globe of light, was Catherine O'Dowd. Catherine was perhaps the most beautiful creature Max had ever seen. She rose from the couch with a grace that Max thought God had reserved for creatures of the wild: the deer, the antelope, the fox, and the wolf. Her smile, set as it was in a face underlined by a gentle, yet strong chin, held promise. Green eyes so deep a man could step into them were set wide in the face, framed by high cheekbones.

It was difficult to fathom Catherine's figure beneath the dress of the day. A more discerning eye than Max's might have noticed that she was a bit sturdy, more the wild rose that paints Montana creek banks pink in the spring than a pampered houseplant.

But to Max, struck dumb in the parlor, Catherine O'Dowd was without fault.

Catherine had raced through her toilet at the Patchuck house, the preparation stilling the anxiety she felt. When all was done, she had arranged herself in the darkened parlor to her best advantage, the yellow light of the kerosene lamp softening the lines of exhaustion on her face. She meant to remain seated when Max entered the room, to greet him as the ladies of the house in Boston greeted their guests, but that affectation was lost in her need to see this man she was about to marry.

Maxwell Bass was of more than average height, perhaps a little under six feet. His face, baked by summer suns and scoured by winter winds unfolded like a topographical map of Montana. The rugged ridges of his eyebrows, nose, and chin dominated the face as the Beartooths, Missions, Crazies, and Spanish Peaks dominate Montana. The spaces between were wrinkled here and there with laugh lines and folds marking the perplexed expression he adopted when considering whether cattle should be moved or the man across the poker table from him had one pair or two.

“How do you do, Mr. Bass?” she said. “I am Catherine O'Dowd.”

Max had spent hours considering what he would say when he met his wife. Then he practiced those words, speaking into an empty prairie wind until he could recite the speech in his sleep, and he often did, the sound of his voice awakening him.

But now, when he needed those words worse than he had needed anything in his life, he could not pull them from his memory. He stood mute and desperate, thankful when “Howdy, ma'am” tumbled from his mouth.

Max couldn't remember the last time he had blushed, but he blushed now, the heat spreading across his face. Knowing that his face was red made him blush even more.

Finally Max spoke, and when he did, it all came out in a rush. “Ma'am, I don't know what you expected, but I don't likely measure up. To speak in my defense, you should know that I'm a hard worker, none harder. Anyone around here can tell you that. And I'm out here because I want to be, not because there's no place else for me to go. That's the edge I've got.”

Max paused, his eyes searching her face.

“Ma'am, it ain't going to be easy. I want you to know that. And if you don't like what you see, you don't have to go through with this. I'll buy you a ticket back to Boston right now if you want.”

It was Catherine's turn now to probe Max's face. Then she spoke. “I believe I'll stay.”

Max's grin left the kerosene lamp pale by comparison.

“But one thing, Mr. Bass,” she said firmly. “Don't say ‘ain't.'”

Max nodded.

The marriage ceremony went by in a blur; Max remembered the words in bits and pieces. “Dearly beloved … the union of husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy … for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity … therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God … for richer and poorer … to love and to cherish. This is my solemn vow.”

And afterward the reception and the accordion and the drinks and knowing winks from the other men and the swirl of women's dresses flashing like patches of prairie flowers in a spring wind … and still more we-wish-you-wells; come-see-us; if-there-is-anything-we-can-do.

Max felt trapped. He wasn't good in crowds—never had been. Anything more than a bunkhouse full made him edgy. A party like this darn near rendered him unconscious.

But finally, when Max thought he had had enough socializing to last him a lifetime, the crowd began to drift toward the door—wives aware, even if their husbands weren't, that the affair had to be curbed before the whiskey robbed the men's reason.

Max spotted Miss O'Dowd—no, Mrs. Bass—across the room in a knot of chattering women. He edged over to the group, feeling awkward as always around decent women.

“Ma'am,” he said, touching the sleeve of her dress and then, realizing what he had done, jerking his hand back as though he had touched a hot stove.

“Ma'am, I think it's time for us to go.”

Catherine nodded, trying to ignore the twittering that tripped through the group.

She was as apprehensive as Max but for different reasons. She had stepped into the Patchuck home as a celebrity of sorts. Every eye was upon her as she stood before the priest. Then she had been the star of a party held in her honor.

But now she would be stepping through the door, and once she reached the other side she would be Mrs. Bass. Missus. And the course of her life from that point forward would be set by everything implicit in that.

Max was waiting for her on the porch, the apology tumbling from him as though his soul depended on it. “I hope you don't mind. I was going to hire a carriage, but I get into town so seldom, and I needed some things, and … and I didn't know if you would be going home with me.”

“Don't you have a carriage, Mr. Bass?”

“Nope, didn't have any need of one … before now.”

“No matter,” she said. “But perhaps I should change into something more appropriate for a buck-board. You could pick up the things you need and meet me back here.”

Max nodded, and the two fled from each other with a great sense of relief.

4

Max went over the list in his mind. First to the general store for one-by-fours and white-lead paint. Then to the Baldry place to pick up fifty-or-so hens and a few roosters.

The Baldrys had been surprised when Max ordered the birds. It was too early to butcher, and too close to winter to expect eggs much longer. Max didn't tell them why he needed the chickens. That was between him and Catherine, and he hadn't even told her yet.

When Max returned to the Patchucks', Catherine was sitting in a rocker on the porch. Her luggage—pitifully little for the accumulation of a lifetime—sprawled beside her.

Max pulled the mare to a stop and tipped his hat.

“I've got it all,” he said.

Catherine nodded, not realizing all he meant by that statement.

Max stepped down and offered Catherine his hand as she climbed into the wagon seat. Then he loaded her baggage next to the makeshift chicken pen, climbed aboard, and wheeled the wagon around, walking the mare down the street to Millard's.

“Back in a second,” Max said as he got down and disappeared into the bar.

The crowd at Millard's was considerably larger than it had been that afternoon. Swamper was still there, of course, and Thomsen. Jimmy Pierce's newspaper lay on the bar, but he had drifted off to one place or another. Most of the newcomers were men from the wedding. Primed punch had pointed them to Millard's more certainly than any compass.

As Max stepped through the door, Harry Jensen lifted his glass and bellowed, “I'm buying one for Max,” and that was followed by a chorus of “me, too's.”