Way Down on the High Lonely (9 page)

It was basically a square. The walls were made of big, dark logs with white mortar in between. The kitchen occupied a narrow rectangle on the north side of the house. The table was set by a big window that looked out to the mountains on the east. Three other windows gave a view to the north, to the horse corral and the barns. Closets and a stairwell made up the south wall of the kitchen. On the other side was a large living room that made up the rest of the first floor.

The living room was terrific. A stone fireplace took up most of its north wall. A big sofa stretched along the south wall, and two big easy chairs on either side, by the fireplace, created a conversation area. There was a big, dark blue Indian rug on the floor and a large glass coffee table in the center.

The east wall was a beauty, being mostly a huge picture window that afforded a wonderful view of the Mills ranch. Beyond the porch that wrapped around the east and south sides of the house was a small lawn that had been laboriously nurtured and carved out of the surrounding sagebrush. Beyond the lawn the land sloped gently for hundreds of yards down to what appeared to be a creek bed, judging by the thin scattering of pines along its side. The land rose again on the other side of the creek, particularly on a big spur that ran down from one of the bigger Toiyabe peaks.

The mountains were a revelation from this perspective. What had looked from a distance like a solid mass was actually a series of separate peaks joined by saddles along the top. Each peak had a spur that ran down onto the flat, forming a wedge where the mountain met the sagebrush plain. Parts of the mountain were thickly wooded, other sections looked barren and rocky, still others were abloom in enormous fields of wildflowers. Clouds were beginning to wrap around the mountain peaks, obscuring the summits and softening the sharp lines of cliffs and ravines carved in the western face of the mountain.

It was a view, Neal thought, that seemed to build in evocative layers—the homey porch, the struggling lawn, cattle grazing out on the plain, and the dramatic mountains in the background.

“Pretty, isn’t it,” Peggy said as she came back in.

“Pretty doesn’t begin to say it.”

She stood beside him and looked out the window. “Sometimes,” she said, “I just pull up a chair and sit. How’s your head?”

Better than it’s been in a long time, lady, just looking out this window, being here. “It’s okay.”

“Sounds like you ran into some bad luck.”

“I feel like it ran into me.”

She gazed out the window for a few more seconds, as if she were thinking about saying something and wondering whether she should.

“What would you like to know, Mrs. Mills?” Neal asked.

“I’m not much for small talk, Neal. I’m the mother of an impressionable teenage girl and I need to know who’s in my house. So, is there anything about you I should know?”

Where to begin, where to begin … “I’ve had some troubles.”

“Drug troubles?”

“No.” Well, not
my
drug troubles, anyway.

“Troubles with the law?” Peggy asked.

“No.”

Neal felt her eyes like laser beams, looking right through him.

“So you’re just trying to find yourself?”

No. I’m just trying to find Cody McCall. “Something like that,” Neal answered.

She looked at him for another moment and said, “Well, there are worse places to find yourself.”

Steve came back in the door.

“How’s Eleanor?” Peggy asked.

“Even nastier than usual. She’s got too much milk for that calf and her udders are real swollen. You’d bawl, too.”

“So are you going to Hansen’s?”

“I guess so,” Steve sighed. “Actually, it’s okay. I wouldn’t mind getting another calf.”

“I’ll get some boots on,” Peggy said.

“No,” Steve said. He turned to Neal. “You want to play cowboy with me?”

The turnoff to Hansen’s place was about two miles farther south down the road. The big white clapboard house was set about a half mile east of the road. It had a two-story central section with two one-floor wings coming at forty-five-degree angles on either side.

The ranch had none of the casual, loose charm of the American West but an almost obsessive air of efficiency and order. White fences bordered the long driveway. The clapboard house gleamed with a recent coat of white paint and shiny red shutters. Two large barns were painted orthodox red, as were several equipment sheds, a garage, and a big bunkhouse that was set several hundred yards east of the house. A large lawn, green from fertilizers and neatly trimmed, was protected from the road by a perimeter of crushed limestone. A heard of holstein cattle, uniformly black and white, grazed in a rectangular pasture. A smaller herd of light brown Swiss Charolais patrolled the next enclosure.

“Bob Hansen is a model rancher,” Steve explained to Neal as the old pickup rumbled up Hansen’s drive, “and I mean that sincerely. He scratched this place out of the rabbit bush and he gets the most out of every inch. Now, Bob doesn’t have what you’d call a scintillating sense of humor, and he isn’t the kind of guy you’d sit and have a beer with, but he’s a hell of a cattle man and a fine neighbor. When I got my leg broke, Bob or Jory or one of the hands was over my place every day feeding the cattle and chopping the ice out of the creek.”

Steve gave the horn a beep before pulling into the crushed rock parking circle outside the garage where two green tractors were parked side by side, as shiny and bright as if they had just come out of the John Deere showroom. A minute later a short, middle-aged man dressed in a light khaki shirt over khaki slacks and a big gray Stetson hat came out of the barn. He had the gait of a bantam rooster. His short blond hair was carefully combed and his blue eyes highlighted a handsome face. He looked like the second lead in a forties movie, the guy who gets the money but loses the girl.

“Hello, Steve,” he said.

“Bob. This is Neal Carey.” Steve said.

Bob took off the canvas glove and offered his hand. “Nice to meet you. What can I do you for, Steve?”

“Got a calf you can sell me? I got a cow giving too much milk.”

“Well … I don’t have anything really good I can spare.”

“Don’t need anything really good.”

“Well … then I got a mixed-breed Angus and Charolais heifer I could let you have, might be good for some table beef down the road.

“She’ll do.”

“Come take a look at her.”

He led them to a corral behind the barn where a few cows and calves were lazily swatting at flies with their tails. Hansen pointed at a long-legged calf the color of mud.

“That’s the one,” said Hansen.

“How’d she happen?” Steve asked.

“Ohhh, back up in the mountains during spring pasture, I suppose,” Hansen said with an edge of irritation. “The two hands I had up there weren’t too careful about keeping the herds separated. You know cowboys these days, they know it’s a cow and that’s about all they know or want to know. Half of them move on after the first payday.”

Say, Mr. Hansen, Neal thought, you wouldn’t have a cowboy named Harley McCall working for you, would you?

“How much will you take for her?” Steve asked.

“Hardly worth me feeding her—she’ll never do much. A hundred?”

“Sounds fair.”

Steve opened his wallet and handed Hansen two fifties.

“Thank you,” Hansen said. “I do appreciate it.”

“How’s the bull business these days?”

“Terrible. Federal government’s going to put me out of business. They make all these regulations that mean I have to buy new equipment, but then the bank won’t give me the loan to buy it.”

Steve Mills took his cap off, shook his head, and then put the cap back on. “That’s ridiculous, Bob. Bill Bradshaw knows that you’re one of the best ranchers in Nevada.”

“Bill don’t own the bank anymore. It got bought by some California outfit.”

Steve shook his head again. “Things change, don’t they?”

“Too much. Had some government inspector from Reno out here snooping around my dairy, saying it’s a health hazard. Saying my milk’s ‘unsafe.’

Neal heard the indignation in the man’s voice.

“Shit,” said Steve.

“Of course,” Hansen continued, his voice starting to rise, “with the price you get for milk these days—and I mean the price I get, not the middlemen—I might as well go out of business, maybe just sit around and drink whiskey.”

“Hey,” Steve asked, “would you mind giving Neal here a tour of your place? He’s from New York City. It’d be an education for him. While you’re doing that, I’ll wrestle this calf here into my truck.”

“Oh, a man from New York wouldn’t be interested in my operation.”

Actually, Mr. Hansen, this man from New York would be very interested in looking around your operation. Neal said, “I’d like to see it if you feel like showing it to me.”

Hansen shook his head a little but looked pleased nevertheless. “Well, come on.”

When he stepped into the livestock barn Neal wished that Joe Graham were there with him. Graham would have loved it—the long narrow building was immaculate. The floors had been scrubbed and disinfected, the stanchions shone from metal polish, the equipment glistened.

“This is really something,” Neal said. And he meant it—anyone could see the dedication and hard work that went into Hansen’s operation.

“Thank you. Care to see the rest?”

“Yes, please.”

Hansen gave him the tour. He showed Neal the neatly laid out barns, the tool shop, the equipment shed. He took him along the different pastures that separated the breeds of cattle and explained how he rotated the grazing schedules to let the land refresh itself. He pointed out the wooded slopes above the pasture that he had left pristine so he could hunt deer for the meat locker and take firewood from the deadfall.

He took him around to the large garden—almost a farm in itself—behind the house where he grew all of the vegetables for their table.

“How many people work here?” Neal asked.

“Oh … that depends on the season and the economy. Right now only about twelve. That’s not including my boy Jory and the cook. My wife used to do the cooking, but since the cancer took her …” His voice trailed off. “We ought to get back to Steve.”

“Thanks for the tour.”

“My pleasure, young man,” Hansen answered. Then he added shyly, “Thank you for your interest.”

Steve was leaning against the truck. The calf stood trembling in the truck bed.

“Sorry you had to load her yourself,” Hansen said. “The hands are up bringing a herd in for inoculations and I think Jory’s out running around with your Shelly.”

He chuckled a little and Steve joined in, a shared joke between fathers of teenagers.

Steve said, “Youth will be served.”

“I suppose.”

“Aw, Bob, it’s just one of those homecoming king and queen things. They ain’t gonna run off and get married or nothing.”

“No, I guess not.”

“Well, you take care, Bob.”

“Yup. Nice to meet you, Neal.”

“Nice to meet you, sir.”

Bob’s head came up a little on the “sir” and he gave Neal an evaluating look before he turned around and headed back to the barn.

“Climb in the back and hold on to that calf, will you, Neal? Steve asked.

“Do you have a rope?”

“Yep. At home where I forgot it. Just get a headlock on the calf and keep it from jumping out or tumbling around.”

Neal found that the only way he could get a headlock on the calf was by kneeling on the metal bed of the truck. This wasn’t too bad until the truck got bumping down the road, bouncing Neal’s knees off the steel studs with every rut, rock, and jolt, of which there were about two thousand. Neal winced, groaned, whimpered, and finally cursed every time his kneecaps slammed into the steel, but he held on to the calf.

The calf wasn’t all that thrilled either. Bawling and trembling, she let loose a stream of urine all over both of Neal’s pant legs. Neal could feel it soaking through and sticking to his legs, but he held on to the calf until the truck took a particularly daredevil bounce and the calf squirmed out of Neal’s hold and attempted to jump over the back end. Neal sprawled on his stomach and managed to get a hold of her left rear leg.

This was a tactical error, because it left her right rear leg free. Not a calf to miss an opportunity, she hauled off and gave him a Bruce Lee to the diaphragm. Neal got a grip on the hoof implanted in his chest and managed to flip the calf over onto his lap, discovering that a baby cow weighs a lot more than the baby person he’d probably never be able to have, judging by the sudden pain in his crotch. But he held on to the calf.

He could hear Steve happily singing along to some tune on the radio about a mother not letting her babies grow up to be cowboys or something, which Neal didn’t think was very funny. But the calf must have liked it, because she let out a big sigh and relaxed in his lap. She felt so relaxed she let loose the contents of her bowels on those parts of his pant legs that she’d missed soaking with urine. Neal kind of wished that Steve had remembered that rope, but he held on to the calf, stroked her neck, and cooed soothing endearments. He hurt like crazy from the earlier beating, but he held on to the calf.

Steve stopped the truck by the back of the Mills’ house, got out, and took a look at Neal and the calf.

“She piss and shit on you?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, they’ll do that. Do you two want to snuggle some more or shall we introduce her to her new mama?”

He dropped the back gate and the calf scrambled out the back end. Steve opened a rickety wood and wire gate and shooed her into the small corral behind the barn.

Neal stepped in behind him. The sun was getting low and the sky was turning a soft salmon pink. The air was crisp and cool. Neal could see how you could fall in love with all of this and never want to leave.

“Now the fun begins,” Steve said.

“I don’t know if I can stand any more fun.”

“See, Eleanor has a calf of her own and she’s too dumb to figure out we’re trying to help her by bringing in this young interloper. So even though she needs another calf to suck on those udders, she’s going to resist. She’ll try to kick that calf, and if I know Eleanor like I do know Eleanor, she’ll try to kick it square in the head.”