Buffalo Summer

The smallest boy said, “I like the dun.”

“That’s a good horse. His name’s Gunner.”

“I’m Jimmy,” the boy said, standing taller. “This is Roon, Dan, Martin and Joe.”

“I’m Caleb McCutcheon,” he said, shaking each boy’s hand in turn, “and this is my ranch manager, Guthrie Sloane. You boys will answer to him as long as you’re riding for the Bow and Arrow.” He hesitated. “Is your mother around?”

“Mother?” Five blank expressions met his gaze.

“Pony.”

“She’s down near the creek,” Jimmy said. “She wanted to see what grew along the banks.”

Caleb glanced at Guthrie. “Why don’t you introduce the boys to the horses? We’ve got a couple hours to kill before supper. I’ll find Pony and then give everyone a brief tour of the ranch.”

He touched his heels to Billy’s flanks and headed toward the creek, half dreading the encounter with the dark-eyed young woman. Ever since the moment they’d first met he’d been more than a little intimidated by her.

“She’s a lot like Jessie,” he told Billy Budd, and the gelding flicked his ears at the sound of his voice. “And I have to tell you, old boy, she kind of scares me.”

He almost hoped he wouldn’t find her, but he came to the bank of the creek and spotted her almost immediately. She was standing in the shade of a gnarly old cottonwood, holding a bunch of wildflowers she’d picked, dressed in jeans and a red-and-black plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled back. Her thick, shiny black hair was plaited in a braid that hung over her shoulder.

“We would have gone to work right away,” she said when he approached, regarding him with those dark, direct eyes. “But there was no one here to tell us what to do.”

Caleb reined Billy in and swung out of the saddle to stand beside her. “Those five boys can’t all be yours,” he said.

“Mine?” For a moment her eyes were puzzled, and then she shook her head. “No. At least, not in the way you mean. I am not their biological mother.” Her slender shoulders rose and fell around a helpless shrug. “It’s more like they’ve adopted me. I’m sorry. I should have explained that beforehand. You must have been expecting—”

“Babes in swaddling clothes,” he admitted. “But those boys are big enough to do a man’s work, and I’ll be glad to pay them a working wage.”

“They are big enough to work,” Pony agreed, “but they will work for room and board, as we agreed, and if you can get that out of them you’ll be doing well.”

He recalled Badger’s prophecy with a twinge of unease. “What does that mean?”

“That means they are teenage boys.”

“I don’t have any kids of my own,” Caleb admitted. “The closest I ever came to parenting was playing uncle to a bunch of my ex-wife’s nieces and nephews for an hour or two at time, once or twice a year.”

Pony smiled. “Mr. McCutcheon, you are about to get a whole lot closer than that. But if the day comes when you think you’ve had enough of us, you must tell me. They are good boys, but they can try the patience of a saint.”

“Can they ride?”

She nodded. “They have been on horseback and I’ve been teaching them all I know about buffalo.”

“We’ll be doing a lot of fence work. That’s hard going.”

She nodded again. “It will be good for them.” She gazed out across the creek to where the rolling grassland reached out toward the timbered mountain slopes. “They need a place like this to show them what life can be like. They’re disillusioned and discouraged. They dropped out of school, got into trouble. Not big stuff, or serious, but their parents couldn’t or wouldn’t deal with them anymore.” She shook her head. “They don’t know where they belong, or what the future holds for them.”

Caleb gripped the reins in his hands as anxiety tightened his stomach muscles. He was sailing onto an uncharted ocean and he wondered how deep and dangerous the waters were. “What does the future hold for them?”

She shook her head again, staring straight at him with a frankness that was disarming. “I don’t know. When they come to me for help I tell them that I will feed them and give them a place to live, but in turn they have to study for and pass the GED. And then I tutor them so they can do this.”

“You do that on your own time and at your own expense?”

She shrugged. “It seems the least I can do after what my brother did for me. Steven put me through school, through college. He gave me a life I never would have had otherwise. What I do for these boys is not nearly as much as what he did for me.”

“But he’s your brother.”

“Those boys are my tribal kin. There is a bond there, Mr. McCutcheon. We are family. We take care of each other.”

He saw the fierce pride shining in her dark eyes and felt a surge of admiration. She was so slender, so small, and yet her spirit encompassed an entire tribe. “Five boys must eat a lot.”

“Steven sends me money every month. I don’t make very much teaching and he knows that. I never asked him for the money. He just sends it.”

Caleb nodded. Steven Young Bear was as bighearted as his sister. Their sacrifices made him feel small. He dropped his eyes and studied the ground at his feet. The creek rushed past and a surge of wind rustled through the cottonwood. Her nearness was strangely unsettling. He was acutely aware that she was watching him, and he felt as tongue-tied as a teenage boy. He glanced up. “Have you eaten?”

“Yes, thank you.” Her expression spoke volumes. “Your housekeeper fed us.”

“Ribs?”

“Very delicious beef ribs, and an excellent lamb stew.”

He nodded again. “Well, I guess I’ll grab a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich then, before giving you a tour of the ranch.”

Pony’s smile was shy. “Ramalda saved some ribs for you. She said that you had a big hunger all the time, like a—” She stopped abruptly and glanced down at the wildflowers she held, her expression softening. “This is a place that my grandmother would have liked. Already I have found seven of the sacred healing plants she made her medicines with.”

“Seven? How many did she use?”

“As many as she needed.”

Caleb paused, running the strip of rein through his hands. “What did Ramalda tell you my hunger was like?” he asked, curious.

“Like a cow in a feedlot,” Pony replied, the smile reaching her eyes before she lowered them.

They walked back up the hill toward the ranch house side by side, in awkward silence.

PONY DID NOT GO on the tour of the ranch with Caleb McCutcheon. She watched the boys pile into the back of the pickup truck, Jimmy sharing the front seat with the rancher, and felt a pang of regret that she had offered to help Ramalda with supper. The woman had readily accepted her offer, which was why Pony was standing on the porch and watching the others drive off in a billow of dust, thinking that if she had gone she would have ridden in the cab with him. She would have been sitting where Jimmy was, and they would have had a chance to talk more.

She could have asked McCutcheon about the job. About his buffalo herd. About the land.

But what she really wanted to ask him was why he had no wife. A man like Caleb McCutcheon should not be traveling through his days all alone. He had once been married and had spoken of his ex-wife’s nieces and nephews.

She felt a flush of embarrassment at wondering about something that was none of her business. She was here to do a job, and that was all. Her interest must therefore stay with the buffalo herd. She was here for one brief summer to earn money to buy school supplies in the fall. She was not here to speculate on Caleb McCutcheon’s past.

And she most definitely would not want him speculating about hers.

FACED WITH THE TASK of entertaining five boys for two hours, Caleb was beginning to count his blessings that his life had been so uncomplicated. He gripped the steering wheel and glanced sidelong at the youngest boy, Jimmy, with a curt nod. “You heard what I said. You open a gate, you shut it behind you. Those are the rules out here in cattle country. Now go on and shut the gate.”

“If we’re going to be ripping all these fences out and running buffalo through here anyway,” the one called Martin said from the truck’s open bed, “why bother closing the gates?”