This Calder Range (33 page)

When the herd came into sight, Benteen rode out to meet the point riders and direct the Longhorns downriver. Lorna supposed that he considered she was adequately chaperoned with Mary, Rusty, and Woolie in camp. She liked Bull Giles—as a friend—and wished Benteen could understand that.

She noticed the water barrel was low and unhooked the wooden pail from the side of the chuck wagon. “Mary,” she called to her friend. “I'm going down to the river to get some water.” She followed the custom of always letting someone know where she was going when she left camp.

The grass grew tall and thick under the trees by the river. Her long skirts swished noisily through it as Lorna made her way to the small sand bar jutting out from the bank. She had to hold them out of the way when she bent down to dip the pail into the clear running river. A school of small fish darted like quicksilver out of the shallows into deeper water.

She let the bucket sink below the surface, automatically filling with water. When she raised it, cold water sloshed over the sides, splashing on her skirt. There was a warning crunch of footsteps on the gravel bar behind her. Lorna turned sharply, spilling more water.

“I didn't mean to startle you,” Bull Giles apologized.

“I didn't hear you, that's all.” She shrugged aside the brief moment of alarm.

With typical boldness, his glance wandered over her dress and the thick, concealing folds of its long skirt. Lorna knew he was remembering the way she had looked in pants.

“I like the dress, but I was more aware that you were a woman in those pants,” he stated with utter frankness.

“They were a necessity. The cattle spooked at my long skirt,” Lorna explained because it seemed necessary that he understand she didn't flaunt convention without reason.

“Let me carry that bucket. It's too heavy for you,” he insisted, and reached to take it out of her hand.

Lorna surrendered it to him, not because she wasn't strong enough to carry it. She had hauled a lot of water during those long months on the trail. But it was the gesture of a gentleman, and she liked the way he treated her like a lady.

“Do you think you're going to like it out here?” he asked. “It's going to take a lot of hard work.”

“I know that.” She walked to the bank and accepted the steadying support of his hand on her arm to climb up the slippery grass.

“It's gonna be lonely for a pretty thing like you,” Bull stated.

His remark was an instant reminder of the woman in the sod house. Her chin was pushed forward in a silent determination that this country wouldn't do that to her.

“I'll probably be too busy to notice that, Mr. Giles,” Lorna insisted. “As you said, it's going to take a lot of hard work.”

“But a woman like you shouldn't have to work. You should be living in a fine house with a maid to do the work for you,” he declared. “You're too delicate to be dirtying your hands.”

She arched her neck to laugh from her throat. “I assure you, Mr. Giles, that I am neither delicate nor weak. I can ride as well as most men, and can shoot straighter than some. A woman likes to be challenged, Mr. Giles, not pampered. I would have thought you knew that.”

“Then maybe I should let you carry the bucket.” He smiled.

“It's a little late,” Lorna mocked him. “We're almost there.”

They were only a few yards from the chuck wagon and the water barrel secured to the side. Bull carried the bucket over and emptied it into the barrel.

“Thanks for carrying the water, Mr. Giles.” Lorna continued to smile.

He folded his arm across his waist to make a mock bow. “My pleasure, Mrs. Calder.”

There was no need to hold the Longhorns in a loose bunch at night. This range was going to be their new home. Benteen and the drovers pulled back when the
herd reached the river to let them drink and scatter as they willed.

The remuda of horses was a different situation. Benteen had Yates throw up a rope corral to hold them. Tomorrow he'd choose the ones he wanted to keep for range work. The rest he would take to Deadwood to sell when they made their trip for winter supplies.

His mind was busy with the many things that had to be done when he rode into camp, but the sound of Lorna's laughter caught his attention. His jaw hardened when he saw her walking from the river with Bull Giles. The bucket Giles carried explained what the pair had been doing. Benteen wasn't fooled by the surface innocence. He was a man, so he knew how Bull Giles's mind worked. Without being told, Benteen knew Giles had seen Lorna go to the river for water and followed her. Cold irritation darkened his eyes because Lorna couldn't see the way Giles was easing his way into her confidence, inviting her to trust him. She didn't regard his flattering attention as a threat, but Benteen did.

Dismounting, he watched the pair separate. In grim silence he unsaddled his horse and turned it out with the rest of the string. He walked with the trailhands to the fire for the habitual cup of coffee and avoided any contact with Lorna. If her head could be turned by another man, then he didn't want her. But he was gritting his teeth when he told himself that.

Around the fire that night, Barnie Moore was the focus of attention. He was questioned about how much it rained and when, did the rivers flood and how bad?

“I'll tell you one thing.” A cigarette dangled precariously from his lower lip. “When this ground is wet, it's like gumbo. You walk from here to the river and yore feet get so gobbed up with mud, they're three or four times their regular size. It dries as hard as a rock, an' ya need a hammer an' a chisel to get it off yore boots.”

And they wanted to know about the winter. How
cold it was and how much it snowed. When did it start and how long did it last? What sections of the range drifted free of snow? What about the blizzards, and what were the cattle's chances of weathering them?

“Ya might get yourself some of those Westerns,” Barnie advised Benteen. “They got Shorthorn and Devon blood, but they're used to this northern weather. An' they got enough wild in 'em to fight for their young. They ain't like that blooded stock we seen comin' into Texas that turn tail and run from a coyote an' leave their calf to be his dinner.”

There was a brief discussion about the relative merits of different breeds. Benteen listened with interest to all of them. He needed to expand the size of his herd, but he also needed quickly maturing beef to take to market. Barnie's suggestion of buying stock that had originated in the Northwest instead of relying solely on the Longhorns seemed to make sense.

“Barnie, you've had a chance to look over the range good,” Ely spoke up, asserting himself in his quiet way. “Where's some good land for Mary and me to file on?”

“I can show you a couple areas,” Barnie said. “But I think the best piece is north of here, right on the edge of the foothills. It's got a good flowin' river runnin' through it. If you want, we can ride over that way tomorrow and I'll show it to you.”

“That'd be fine.” Ely nodded.

“What about the wolves?” Shorty asked. “I heard they was bad.”

“Those yellow-eyed devils are cunning.” Barnie turned his head, shaking it slightly.

Rusty added another dry limb to the fire, sending up sparks to mingle with the starscape overhead. Lorna was listening intently to the conversation among the cowboys, taking more interest since she had started working with the cattle on the drive. Someone had rolled a fallen tree trunk up to the fire, and she was sitting on it, with her skirts tucked around her legs to keep out the night's chill. She didn't notice when Bull
Giles paused by the fire to refill his coffeecup as so many of the other cowboys had done before him. Nor did she pay any attention when he drifted over to the log where she was sitting.

“I imagine you're getting bored with all this cattle talk,” he murmured unexpectedly to her, and Lorna turned her head, discovering he was standing behind her.

When he crouched down, the shadows gathered him in. Lorna remembered the luncheon they had shared in Dodge City and the fun he'd made of the cattle talk going on around them. At the time, the subject hadn't been important to her. But her attitude had changed in the last half of the trail drive.

“I'm a rancher's wife,” she reminded Bull. “Cattle are just as much my future as they are Benteen's. I'm not bored by all this talk. A wife should know something about her husband's business so she can discuss it intelligently with him.”

“You don't mind if a cow comes first?” he asked skeptically.

“A cow may be a female, but I'm certainly not going to be jealous of one.” A smile played with her mouth, because she remembered the time when she had resented the priority the animal received from Benteen.

From the edge of the camp, a steer snorted and lowed a curious sound. When Lorna turned to look, she recognized the brindle-colored steer that had always walked at the front of the herd. The light from the fire gleamed on the width of its horns.

“Would you look at that?” Shorty declared. “It's Captain.”

“He's probably come to find out why nobody's ridden out for night guard,” Zeke guessed.

“Yeah, probably got used to the company of humans an' now he's wonderin' where his friends are,” Jessie suggested.

Bull Giles rode out at dawn the next morning. Immediately after breakfast, the men began work on the ranch buildings. It was a hive of noisy activity with axes felling the cottonwood trees along the river and horses dragging the unhewn logs to the building sites, where more cowboys worked spading up the sod to make dirt floors. It was organized chaos. And the brindle steer, Captain, stood on the knoll overlooking the scene as if he was supervising it all.

Within two weeks the primitive buildings were standing. The green logs were chinked with moss and mud, and the roofs consisted of branches covered with dirt. Zeke Taylor was the closest to being the carpenter in the group of cowboys, so he had built the bunks, chairs, and tables. They were as rough and crude as the buildings that housed them.

Half of the men left when Ely and Mary pulled out to take up their claim on the land Barnie had showed them to the north. Their cabin and barn would be up in an equally short time. Lorna didn't mind seeing them leave, because they would be neighbors even if they were thirty miles apart.

The covered wagon was partially dismantled to be converted for ranch use. Lorna took the white canvas top and hung it in the cabin to make a cloth wall partitioning off the sleeping area from the rest of the one room structure. As she set her personal possessions around their new home, she refused to compare its crudeness to the sod house of the farmer's wife in Kansas.

In September Lorna realized she was definitely pregnant, even though she'd experienced no morning sickness and felt in the best of health. When she told Benteen the stork would be visiting them in the spring, he promptly informed her, with considerable pride, that it was going to be a boy.

A week later, Benteen left with the wagon and thirty head of horses. Rusty, Jessie Trumbo, and Bob Vernon stayed behind, as did Lorna. Benteen didn't want to risk anything happening to her or their unborn baby by being jolted around on the wagon seat, completely ignoring the rough, nearly five-month-long journey she had just endured. So Lorna stayed home while he purchased their winter supplies, filed their homestead claim with the land office, and sold the extra horses. In addition to the supplies, he brought back yard goods so Lorna could make a few additions to their limited wardrobes and three hundred head of the so-called Western cattle. Texas horses were in demand by the northern ranches and brought top prices.

When he returned, he sent Jessie Trumbo, Rusty, Shorty Niles, and Vince Garvey back to Texas to gather another herd of wild stock to drive north in the spring. The brindle steer trotted after the chuck wagon, too anxious to get back on the trail. They took him along to lead the next herd north.

Barnie's adjoining claim served as an outlying camp from which he worked, checking on the cattle in his area.

The first winter was cold and blustery, with subzero temperatures common and days of heavy snowfall, with the first flakes falling in early October. It wasn't a severe winter by Montana standards. At Christmastime Mary and Ely came for a holiday dinner. Ely read the Bethlehem story from the Bible, then Woolie played Christmas carols on his harmonica and they all sang.

When Lorna's time drew near the first of April, Mary came to stay at the cabin and serve as midwife. Despite all the frightening stories Lorna had heard about
childbirth in the wilds, she had an easy time of it. Benteen held their newborn son, Webb Matthew Calder, that first day of his life, and on the next, Benteen rode off with the rest of the men to start the spring roundup.

Bridle chains clanked as the small group of riders approached the collection of crude buildings forming the ranch's headquarters on an early May afternoon. They sat loosely in the saddle, swaying slightly with the rhythm of their trotting horses. The stirrups were long, so there was hardly any bend in the knee.

Haggard lines were drawn across Benteen's bronzed features from the brutally long days of the roundup, but his eyes remained keen and restless. Both winter losses and calving losses had been minimal, less than he had expected.

When he saw Lorna standing in front of the cabin holding the baby in her arms and waving eagerly to him, the sight revived his acute hungers. Her hair gleamed rich brown in the sunlight, and her parted lips were even and red against her smooth complexion. It warmed him like a fire in the night or a spring flower pushing its way through the crust of melting snow. It was something in her eyes or her lips or the turn of her body that churned the depths of his emotions. The heat of something rash and timeless burned him, the kind of thing that would make a man kill if he had to.