Buffalo Summer

“Because I said so.” Caleb turned to look through the open rear slider and lasered the boy with a steely glance. “And my word is the law around here.”

There was a soft snicker at his words. Roon? Dan? But Jimmy was already moving, jumping out of the passenger seat to close the gate behind them. Caleb was taking them up to the holding pens where the annual branding was done. He’d had no idea what to do when Ramalda had accepted Pony’s offer to help with supper preparations, leaving Caleb to the task of supervising the boys. Guthrie was nowhere to be found.

Caleb carefully guided the pickup around the worst of the ruts and rocks that made the road a challenge at the best of times and pretty near impossible in mud season. He pulled to a stop at the series of corrals and chutes that stood on one side of a big wide-open meadow high above the ranch. Caleb climbed out of the cab and followed the boys to the nearest corral, where he hooked one arm over the top rail. He gazed at the weathered wood posts and rails, and in spite of his ranching ignorance knew that this arrangement would never hold a two-thousand-pound bull buffalo that went by the name of Goliath.

“This is where they used to work on the cattle in the spring. The branding, castrating, vaccinating, deworming, ear notching,” he said. “We’ll probably use this area for the buffalo, too, once we strengthen the fences. This high valley is a natural place to do the work, because once we’re done we can turn them out and they’ll already be at summer pasture. You can see how the land lies, and where the good graze is. That pass between those mountains to the east of us leads to more high meadows just like this. Good grass and water. Once in a while a few head will stray over Dead Woman Pass, way up on the shoulder of Montana Mountain, but for the most part they stick around on this side of the range. They have all they need right here.”

He glanced around at the circle of faces, looking for some response, some flicker of interest. Nothing. “You boys won’t be working with cattle because there aren’t many left. All the Herefords and short-horns were sold off a year ago. There aren’t many longhorns, maybe twenty head, all told. Sometimes a whole summer’ll go by and you won’t catch sight of a single one, or so my ranch manager says. They’re as wild as deer, and just as wily.”

“Why keep them?” Jimmy said. “Why not eat them or sell them off?”

Caleb plucked a stem of grass and chewed on it for a moment. “Well, I’m told that their meat is tougher than hell. But they’re here because Jessie Weaver wanted them to stay on the land, and I agreed to that.”

“Who’s Jessie?”

“You’ll meet her in a few months, maybe. She’s away for the summer, finishing up her veterinary degree, but she grew up here. The Bow and Arrow was in her family for generations, up until this past October when she sold it to me. She’s marrying Guthrie Sloane, my ranch manager, this September—”

“You call it the Bow and Arrow,” the one called Roon interrupted, “but it says Weaver on the ranch sign.”

Caleb threw the grass stem to the ground. “The name Weaver was carved into that cedar plank over a hundred years ago because a hundred years ago you wouldn’t hang a sign that said Bow and Arrow, not when you were a half-breed ranch owner and your neighbors were all old Indian fighters.”

“What about now?”

“Things are a little different now, and before the summer’s over there’ll be a new sign that tells it like it is.”

The sun was setting, the shadows were long and blue, and a golden wash of color swept over the meadow. The sky to the east was a deepening violet and to the west the mountain peaks snagged at salmon-pink clouds. Already there was a chill in the air as the cold sank back down into the valleys from the higher climbs. “Well, boys,” Caleb said. “It’s getting late and it’s a slow crawl back to the ranch. Get back aboard and we’ll haul on home and see what Ramalda and Pony are cooking up for supper.”

“Supper?” Jimmy said, brightening. “You mean we get to eat again?”

“Three square meals a day. That’s the deal. You work, you eat.”

Jimmy climbed into the cab beside him while the others piled into the open bed. “Well then, I’m for working,” he said as Caleb put the truck in gear. “I’m for working real hard. Hold on up there, Mr. McCutcheon, and let me get that gate for you.”

BADGER SAT on the porch bench, his shoulders slouched against the wall, his worn, scuffed boots stretched out in front of him, legs crossed at the ankles. His hat was pulled down almost over his eyes and he was sleeping, or he thought he was. In his dreams he was young again, riding a pale horse called Moon across the lower pasture down near the creek and the old homestead cabin. He caught a whiff of wood smoke from the cabin’s big stone chimney and he could see Jessie’s father standing on the porch, pulling on his pipe and studying something across the creek. Badger drew old Moon in and shaded his eyes against the westering sun, following his boss’s gaze.

By God, it was a buffalo silhouetted against the fiery Rocky Mountain sunset. A big honest-to-God bull buffalo! “Well, what do you know about that?” he said to Moon. “There ain’t been a buff on this land for a century or better.”

The smoke smelled of cedar. Badger filled his lungs with the sweet fragrance and watched the buffalo. He folded his hands across his stomach, adjusted his rump on the bench, eased his shoulders against the rounded logs of the cabin’s west wall, and then opened his eyes a little wider, wondering with a little jolt what had happened to Moon and Jessie’s father. Badger realized he was napping on Caleb McCutcheon’s cabin porch. The dream had left him, but the buffalo was still there, standing across the creek from the log cabin, watching with an almost haughty and proprietary grandeur. Badger sat up. He swallowed and rubbed his hand over his eyes, removed his battered hat and ran his fingers through his thin white hair.

“Damn,” he said, clearing his throat. He reached into his vest pocket for a foil packet of tobacco and stuffed a big wad of it in his mouth, working it around to his left cheek. “I may be gettin’ old and senile,” he muttered to himself, “but that there’s a buffalo I’m lookin’ at, sure as shootin’. What’s the old bull doing way down here?”

He heard the approach of a pickup truck behind the cabin and the slam of the cab’s door. Caleb McCutcheon rounded the corner of the cabin and headed for the porch steps carrying a paper bag. He grinned when he spotted Badger sitting there. “You hiding out?” he said, climbing the steps.

“Yep,” Badger said. “That ranch house up yonder is way too crowded for an old coot like me. But look’ it over there and feast your eyes on that!” He nodded toward the big buffalo. McCutcheon swung on heel and froze, staring in disbelief.

“By God, a hundred more yards and that bastard’ll be on my porch!”

“He won’t cross that creek.”

“Oh? Well, I’d like to believe that, but he’s crossed the Silver and east branch of the Snowy all in less than a week, and just this morning he was way the hell up on the mountain hanging with the rest of them. He’s covered a good five miles since then. This little ribbon of water isn’t going to slow him down. What do you suppose he wants?”

Badger levered himself off the bench and walked over to the corner of the porch railing, leaned his hip into it, and spat over the edge. “Maybe he’s tired of hangin’ around all them sexy buffalo cows,” he said, wiping his chin.

“Well, if that’s the case, I bought myself a bum bull. He’s supposed to be romancing those cows in another month or so.” Caleb McCutcheon shook his head with a disgusted sigh. “To hell with him. After spending the past few hours trying to entertain five boys, right now I’m more interested in having a drink. I just drove all the way to town to pick this bottle up and hide out here on my porch for a little while before going up for supper. Care to join me?”

“Be my pleasure,” Badger said.

A few moments later they were ensconced side to shoulder on the wall bench, watching the buffalo. The daylight waned as they sipped smooth scotch whiskey and enjoyed the silence of the early-summer evening. McCutcheon was halfway through his drink and relaxing more by the moment. “Were they all up there at the ranch house?” he said.

“Well, I counted five boys and one little woman. Guthrie was there, too, lookin’ mighty peaked, but just before I snuck off I seen that Ramalda was pouring a big slug of her medicinal brandy into his coffee. Now, boss, I got to warn you, just in case you don’t know,” Badger said, his gravelly voice ominous. “She speaks Spanish.”

“Pony?”

Badger nodded, taking another sip. “Yep. She and Ramalda were chattering away like two jaybirds in that kitchen. Laughin’ and everything!”

“Ramalda was laughing?”

“Yep.” Badger looked grim. He took another sip. “Laughin’.”

“What about the boys?”

“Them boys is downright determined not to show anything of themselves.”

“Mmm.” Caleb raised his glass, gazing at the darkening bulk of the big bull standing broadside to them across the creek. “I’ve been thinking about those kids. There isn’t really anything for them to do here, once the working day is done. I mean, when supper is over, what then? It seems to me they’re going to need something.”

“Like what?”

“Like maybe a television.”

Badger snorted. “That jabber box was the ruination of this nation’s youth, and if them boys put in a hard day’s work like you seem to think they will, all they’ll be needin’ after supper is a mattress to flop onto and about eight hours of solid shut-eye.”

“But they could watch things if we had a television.”

“What kind of things? The news? You ever seen anything good on the news?”

“Movies, then.”

“Them movies they show are pure violence! Trust me. Those kids don’t need to be learnin’ that stuff.”

Caleb took another sip of whiskey. “There are a lot of good movies out there that aren’t mindless or violent. I could buy a few and they could watch them once in a while, for a special treat.”

“Just what the hell would you power that useless thing with?”

“The same setup we use for the water pump in the bathroom and the computer we enter all the ranch data into,” McCutcheon said. “Guthrie rigged it up. Same as he did in his own cabin. Two seventy-five-watt solar panels, four six-volt batteries, a cheap inverter. It works great and it would easily power one of those TV/VCR combos for a couple hours a week.”

Badger shook his head. “Maybe, but a movie ain’t gonna make ’em happy if they don’t want to be here.”

The buffalo shook his head suddenly, and Caleb leaned forward, his keen eyes narrowing. “True. But I want this thing to work. I want them to like it here.” He watched as the bull took two steps and then lowered his massive head to graze. “I want them to stay,” he said with conviction.