Buffalo Summer

McCutcheon pushed his plate away and set back in his chair. All eyes at the table were on him, awaiting his response. He picked up his coffee and took a swallow. Set the mug down gently. “Okay,” he said, nodding slowly, his blue eyes calmly speculative. “So where do we get these buffalo?”

“There are auctions,” she said. “Usually these are held late in the year. You can also buy directly from other ranches. You could talk to Pete and see if he will sell you some more. But first you need to get your fences fixed, or the buffalo will just push them down and wander off.”

McCutcheon nodded again and glanced at Guthrie. “We’ll make an early start in the morning. Everyone had better get a good night’s sleep,” he said, standing abruptly. “That was a good meal, Ramalda. Muchas gracias.” He lifted his hat off the wall peg and walked out of the kitchen without looking back, the screen door slamming behind him.

Pony watched him go and felt a sudden twist of anxiety at her brashness. The words she had spoken were true, but they had hurt the way the truth sometimes did. He was no doubt standing on the porch thinking about how he could politely ask her and the boys to leave, because this much she already knew about Caleb McCutcheon; he might be a rich man, but he had a good and honest heart.

CALEB WALKED OUT into the twilight, grateful for the chill air that cooled his flaming face. The words she’d spoken had stung, but she was absolutely correct. If he wanted to make a real difference, it had to be in a real way. He couldn’t rely on his inexhaustible bank account, because that wouldn’t help this land or the people who lived upon it.

He walked to the porch rail and leaned over, elbows braced, gazing at the last shreds of color in the sky. The cow dog, Blue, rose from her nap and crossed the porch to sit beside him companionably. He let one hand drop to stroke the top of her head and shortly afterward heard two sets of boots come onto the porch behind him. Guthrie and Badger walked up to the porch rail and stood—one on each side of him—staring out at the June evening.

For a while they were quiet, and then Guthrie made a strange choking noise and turned away, limping a few steps to put some distance between them. His head was ducked and his shoulders rounded over. Caleb stared at his back for a moment, wondering if Guthrie was all right or if the pain he had lived with for the past eight months had suddenly overwhelmed him. Just as he was about to voice his concern, the young man straightened, drew a deep breath, wiped his forearm across his eyes and turned to face him.

“You’re laughing,” Caleb accused. He shot a suspicious glance at Badger, but the old man was stuffing a wad of chewing tobacco into his mouth. “Damn!” he said, beginning to get angry. “The both of you think I’m a fool, don’t you? A rich fool, just like she does.”

Guthrie shook his head but he was still fighting down the laughter. “Nossir,” he said. “God’s truth, we don’t. Nobody in this whole valley feels that way about you. But the look on your face while she was talkin’ to you…” He ducked away again in another paroxysm of laughter, and Caleb watched him. He couldn’t remember ever seeing Guthrie Sloane laugh before. He swung around to face Badger, but the cowboy’s expression was neutral.

“Yepper.” Badger nodded, working the tobacco into position with his tongue. “It took millions of years for man to evolve from monkeys, but a woman can make a monkey out of a man in seconds.” He pondered for moment before adding, “Now I ask you, is that the least little bit fair?”

The anger drained out of Caleb as quickly as it had come, and he slumped in defeat, resting his forearms on the porch railing. “All right, then, have your laugh. But just remember, we’re in this buffalo fiasco together.” He gazed toward the pole barn, watched the horses walking about in the corral, and felt his tension slowly ebb. “Tomorrow the work begins, but tomorrow’s still half a day away. I’m heading to the cabin for a nightcap, and you’re welcome to join me.” He started down the porch steps, and the two men fell in behind, trailed by the cow dog. Halfway to the cabin he paused and looked back up at the ranch house. “Did any of those boys say one word during supper?” he said.

“Nossir,” Guthrie said. “Nary a one.” He stood beside him, wearing a puzzled frown. “It’s like they were just sitting there, waiting for something to happen.”

“Yeah,” Caleb said. “But what?”

WHEN THE KITCHEN was tidied and the dishes washed, dried and put away, Pony walked into the living room looking for the boys, but they were nowhere to be found. Ramalda had retreated to her bedroom after banking the cookstove and lighting the oil lamps, and Pony allowed herself the luxury of enjoying the peaceful room in silence. It was a comfortable space, not too big, with the fireplace as its focal point. Above the mantel hung an old gilt-framed oil painting of a herd of longhorn cattle being driven across an arid plain, with a wall of mountains shimmering in the heat-baked distance. She knew little of art but recognized and admired the quality of the work.

A couch and two overstuffed chairs flanked the fireplace, and there were bookshelves on either side, filled with hardcover books. She withdrew a few to thumb through the pages. A book by Einstein about the theory of relativity. A very old copy of Stewart Edward White’s The Forest. Her eye caught another title and she drew the book from its spot. Hanta Yo, by Ruth Beebe Hill. This volume was well-worn and her hands caressed it as if she had found an old friend after a long absence. She had read this book as a young girl, read it again as an adolescent, read it one more time in college. It had taken her on a mystical journey down the red road, and she had absorbed more each time she’d traveled it.

The room had a pleasing smell, a mingling of cedar, saddle leather and winter apples, though she could find no evidence of any such things. The floor was sheathed in wide boards and covered over with a large handwoven rug of Navajo design. There were several periodicals scattered on a scuffed plank coffee table in front of the sofa—cattlemen’s journals and such. And over on the wall, beneath a window, was a desk with a large computer workstation. The computer seemed glaringly out of place in this room. Pony replaced the book and walked down the hallway that led to the bedrooms, tapping lightly on the boys’ door.

Nothing.

She peeked into her own room. Empty. She walked through the kitchen and out onto the porch, standing in the darkness and wondering where they were. Her eyes came to rest on the dark bulk of the pole barn, and she descended the porch steps and walked toward it. She could hear the horses moving about in the corral as she drew near and the murmur of low voices from inside the barn. She opened one half of the big door just wide enough to peek inside, and stared, unnoticed, at the sight of five boys and one flashlight crowded around a big western stock saddle draped over a stall partition.

“No, stupid,” she heard Jimmy say as the flashlight beam shifted. “That’s called the horn. This part back here is the cantle.”

“Then what’s this thing called?” Martin said, and Jimmy’s head bent over the little paperback guidebook he carried—the one Pony had given him a week ago.

“That’s the cinch. It goes around the horse’s belly and holds the saddle on.”

Pony quietly closed the barn door and stood for a moment beneath the bright spangle of stars. She smiled with relief at what she had just witnessed. It was going to be okay. If Caleb McCutcheon didn’t send them packing tomorrow, everything would be all right. And in the event that he allowed them to stay, she had some studying of her own to do before blowing out the lamp. In her little bag she had packed the notebook that Pete Two Shirts had given her, filled with his unruly, nearly illegible scrawl. It contained all his notes about the buffalo—everything he had come to know from his years of working with the tribal bison herd.

Pete had given her the notebook shortly after finding out she’d gotten the job. He’d come to the school again—it was a safe place to see her, a neutral place—and he’d waited until the children had gone home before walking into the classroom and laying the book on her desk. “Thought you might need this,” he said. “In case you’ve forgotten what you learned that summer.”

The blood had left her head with a rush, and for a moment, looking up at him from the relative security of her chair, she felt as if she might faint. “I will never forget,” she said. “I only wish I could.”

His eyes had held hers in a steely grip that she couldn’t break. “Don’t let the past haunt you, Pony. Don’t let it destroy your life.”

He was right. She knew he was right. But she couldn’t change what had happened by pretending that it hadn’t. She would have to live with the guilt for the rest of her life.

Now Pony climbed the ranch-house steps, arms wrapped tightly around her waist, and stood for a moment in the vast, almost-palpable silence of the night. She suddenly felt alone and lonely, overwhelmed and scared. Sometimes those dark memories became too powerful to push back and she felt as if she were drowning in all the mistakes she’d made.

Sometimes, she wished she’d died that summer.

CALEB MCCUTCHEON WAS NOT a night owl, but at one o’clock in the morning he was still reading by lamplight, studying the history of the Crow Indian tribe. He was reading a book called Parading Through History by Frederick E. Hoxie, because he felt compelled to learn more about Pony and her boys. He found the book fascinating enough to make a pot of coffee at midnight, turn up the lamp wick and draw an old wool blanket over his lap to thwart the night chill. At 1:00 a.m. he paused to listen to the wild and eerie song of a group of coyotes yipping in the foothills and wondered where the old bull buffalo was, glancing at the window and hoping he wouldn’t see the reflection of the great beast looking back at him.

He didn’t. He got up, poured himself another cup of coffee and returned to the comfortable chair, the warm blanket and the book. It was 2:00 a.m. before he finally blew out the lamp and went to bed, and a short three hours later he was rolling out from under the warm blankets with a reluctant moan, boiling up a fresh pot of coffee, drinking his first cup on the porch, bare toes curled over the edge of the weathered porch boards, and shivering in the quiet, mist-shrouded dawn.