Stands a Calder Man (5 page)

At first his father's reaction was one of impatience for his apparent ignorance of the bill's ramifications, but it changed quickly, a speculative gleam appearing in his eye.

“That's what you think, huh?” he challenged, something close to approval touching his mouth. “Well, you're wrong.” His father appeared to mentally shake away any lingering tiredness, energy suddenly returning to him. “Unsaddle your horse, Webb. You're going to attend that meeting with me. Nothing is ever secure—least of all, the Triple C.”

Webb started to reject the idea that it was important for him to be at the meeting. Before he could say anything, his father read it in his expression.

“That's an order, Webb,” he stated. “I'm not asking you.”

There was a testing of wills before Webb turned and hooked the stirrup over the saddlehorn to loosen the cinch. The black gelding twisted its nose around to snort at him to make up his mind.

The telegraph in Miles City was kept busy that week transmitting messages back and forth from the nation's capital to arrange a date for the meeting that all parties could keep. When a train from the East pulled into the depot ten days later, Webb and his father were on hand to meet it. Asa Morgan, having arrived from Helena the day before, was with them.

As soon as the private railroad car was separated from the others and pushed onto a siding, they converged on it, crossing the cinder-bed tracks to swing onto the rear platform. A uniformed black man admitted them into the private car, bowing with servile respect.

The interior walls were paneled with oak, and a thick gold and green rug covered the floor. It was ten years, maybe more, since Webb had seen the large, muscled hulk of a man seated in the overstuffed leather chair, but he recognized Bull Giles immediately. One leg was stretched out in front of him and a cane rested against the side of the chair. A second, heavyset man was standing by the window, no doubt having observed their approach to the train. Turning, he stepped forward to greet them as they filed into the car. His ruddy face was wreathed in a welcoming smile.

“Benteen, good to see you again.” He vigorously shook his father's hand, then turned his shrewd glance on Webb. He doubted if the man was in his thirties yet, but there was an age-old look of political cunning behind the good-natured facade. The old-young man with the portly build was a back-scratcher with an itch of his own. “You must be a Calder, too,” he guessed as he firmly clasped Webb's hand.

“This is my son, Webb.” His father completed the
introduction. “Frank Bulfert, the senator's aide.” Then he included the third member of the Montana party. “And I'm sure you remember Asa Morgan, with the cattlemen's lobby.”

“Of course I do. How are you, Asa?” Frank Bulfert greeted him with a kind of back-slapping gusto.

Benteen turned his glance on the brutish-faced man in the chair, who hadn't appeared to age since the last time he'd seen him. Theirs was a longtime acquaintance, dating back to his Texas days and those early years in Montana. Benteen didn't regard Bull Giles as a rival anymore, but neither did he call him friend, yet he trusted Bull Giles as he trusted few men. The man had saved his life once, crippling his knee as a result. It was something Benteen had never forgotten.

Despite an appearance that suggested all brawn, Bull Giles was shrewdly intelligent. During the long years he'd spent in Washington as companion and associate to Lady Elaine Dunshill, he had enlarged upon her connections in political circles and exercised considerable influence behind the scenes.

“Hello, Bull.” There was a glint of respect as Benteen greeted him. “Don't bother to get up.” He motioned him to stay in the chair. “How's the leg?”

“Stiff, but I've still got it,” Bull Giles replied with a twisting smile. “How's Lorna?”

“Fine.” He nodded briefly.

Then Bull turned his head to look at Webb. “It's been a long time, Webb. I'd forgotten how long it had been until you walked through that door to remind me. You're not a fresh-faced boy anymore.”

“No, sir.” Webb leaned down to shake the man's hand, stirring vague memories of his childhood, of the way he used to trail after this bear of a man.

Frank Bulfert's voice broke into their exchange. “Everybody, make yourselves comfortable. Percy”—he addressed the black servant—“pour these gentlemen a drink.”

There was a lull in the conversation as they settled into the chairs grouped around the brass-appointed
heating stove. After the servant, Percy, had passed around the drinks, Frank Bulfert opened a box of cigars and offered them around. Smoke from the aromatic tobacco collected in the air above the select group.

An unwilling participant, Webb was impatient for the talk to get around to the purpose of the meeting, but he seemed to be the only one. He took a sip of imported whiskey and wished he'd kept silent ten days ago. He'd be back at the ranch instead of here in this private car, involved in a meeting that he didn't think was necessary.

“The senator asked me to be sure to extend his regards to you, Benteen.” Frank Bulfert leaned back in the cowhide chair and hitched the waistband of his suit pants higher around his middle. “My instructions are to lend you any assistance I can. The senator knows the value of your support.” After this formal assurance was made, his serious expression took on a wry amusement. “I've heard stories about the way you ranchers get out the votes in this part of the country. It's been reported that sometimes your cowboys vote twice to make sure the right candidate is elected.”

“They've been known to get too enthusiastic in their support,” Benteen admitted with a faint smile.

“Seems to me you have men who follow orders,” Frank Bulfert concluded.

“They're loyal to the brand” was the only reply to that. “What about this new Homestead Bill?”

“I'm afraid you're not going to like what I have to say,” the aide warned and closely watched Benteen's reaction. “It's getting strong support from several quarters.”

“The railroads being the most vigorous?” Benteen sought confirmation of his own opinion.

“Certainly they are looking at the substantial benefits to be derived from increased freight and passenger usage to bring new settlers out west. And I'm sure they are hoping to sell off their extensive landholdings. Yes.” Frank nodded. “They have a vested interest in the passage of this bill.”

“But it isn't only the railroads that want it,” Bull Giles inserted. “You have to understand the situation in the East. The cities are filling with immigrants. The West has always been a safety valve to siphon these so-called dregs of other nations out of populated areas and prevent any social or political unrest. The slums are overcrowded; there's complaints about cheap wages in factories and talk of unions and strikes for better working conditions. So all the big businesses are behind this bill to keep order by sending as many as they can to the frontier.”

Benteen grimly expelled a heavy breath, recognizing he was opposing a formidable group. “But this isn't Kansas. They'll starve out here the same way they're starving in the cities.”

“Do you think any of the big companies care?” Bull scoffed. “If they die, it makes room for more.” He paused briefly. “The big-money men in the East aren't interested in settling the West. They just want to get rid of a lot of poor, unwanted immigrants. They don't give a damn where they go. The Indians were forced onto reservations on the poorest lands. If the immigrants wind up on the same, no one in the East is going to give a damn.”

“So far,” Asa Morgan spoke up, adding more gloom to the subject, “that new dryland method of farming has shown some impressive results. It's difficult to argue against the kind of success they've been having with it.”

“Successful now, yes,” Benteen agreed. “With their method, they can raise a crop with only fifteen inches of rainfall a year. What happens if there's successive dry years with less than that, like what happened twenty years ago?”

“Twenty years ago isn't today.” Frank Bulfert dismissed that argument.

“It sounds like sour grapes coming from a cattleman.” Bull eased his stiff leg into a less cramped position. “You big ranchers are highly unpopular. Public opinion is against you. Most of the Europeans
coming into the country look on ranchers as feudal lords. They came here to escape that system of large, single landholders. There you sit on a million-plus acres. They want to bust it up so everybody can have a chunk of it. They come to America filled with dreams about owning their own land.”

“In other words, you are saying that we don't have a chance of defeating this bill,” Benteen challenged.

“We can keep it in committee for a while,” Frank Bulfert said. “But it's bound to pass once it gets out of there. It's what the majority wants.”

There was a brief lull as everyone waited for Benteen to respond. He stared into his whiskey glass, idly swirling the liquor around the sides.

“They want it because they see it as a way of taking the land out of the hands of the rancher and putting it with a bunch of immigrants,” he stated finally. “But what if they become convinced that the bill won't accomplish that objective?”

“How?” Frank Bulfert drew his head back to study Benteen with a curious but skeptical eye.

There was another short pause as Benteen glanced at his son. “Webb thinks the new bill would let cattlemen get free title to more land. What do you think would happen, Bull, if certain factions heard that stockmen were in favor of this proposal to enlarge the Homestead Act?”

The burly man chuckled under his breath. “I think they'd come to the same conclusion Webb did. They'd be afraid they weren't breaking up the big beef trusts and worried that it would make them more secure instead.” He turned to the senator's aide. “Benteen's found their weakness.”

Frank nodded. “That just might be the tactic that will work.” He glanced at Asa, who also nodded his agreement. “It will take some fancy footwork.”

Later, after the meeting broke up in the early-evening hours, Webb and Benteen headed back to the
hotel to clean up for dinner. They walked most of the distance in silence. “Did you learn anything?”

The challenging question drew Webb's glance to his father. “What was I supposed to learn?”

“That you came up with the right answer for the wrong reason. You didn't think the proposal all the way through. You have to see how a thing can work against you as well as for you.”

“After listening to Giles and Mr. Bulfert, I think it will be defeated,” Webb concluded.

“It isn't as simple as that,” Benteen stated. “This is just the first skirmish. The railroads still want more people out here, and the eastern cities have thousands they'd like to ship out. All we're going to accomplish right now is postponing what appears to be the inevitable.” He lifted his gaze to scan the reddening sunset. “Those damn farmers will come—like a horde of grasshoppers; only, instead of grass, their plows will be chewing up sod.”

There was a prophetic sound to his words that licked coldly down his spine. It didn't sound possible.

Two and a half years later, on February 19, 1909, Congress responded to the public cry for more free land and passed the Enlarged Homestead Act. Claims could be filed on 320 acres of land, providing it was nonirrigable, unreserved, and unappropriated, and contained no marketable timber. That description fit almost twenty-six million acres of Montana land.

Wild flowers covered the long stretches of the broken plains, wide sweeps of yellow, red, and white dancing over the low, irregular hills. The black gelding cantered through a thick mass of them growing out of the tangle of tightly matted grass. A plume of dark smoke lay against the blue sky far in the distance. Webb saw it and traced it to the locomotive bearing down on the tiny collection of buildings that made up the settlement of Blue Moon.

It was officially a town now, with a general store to supply the local ranchers, a saloon to wet the throats of the cowboys, a blacksmith shop to repair their wagons, and a church to forgive them their sins. Since the railroad had laid tracks through it, they had a freight depot and regular mail delivery.

Off to the left, a horse-drawn buckboard rattled over the rutted track across the plains that served as a road. There were supplies to be picked up and some freight due at the depot that necessitated the trip into town. Neither would be done with any amount of haste, so there would be plenty of time to catch up on local happenings and trade information.

The shrill, lonely whistle of the train punctured the quiet of the starkly masculine landscape as it let off steam and signaled its imminent arrival at the small town. The black gelding shied beneath Webb, spooking at the sound, then settling back into its rocking gait.