Buffalo Summer

“It’s the only way of life they know.”

“How many buffalo do you figure we can run on fifteen thousand acres?”

Guthrie’s gaze swept over the valley. He shook his head. “That’s a question for your buffalo girl,” he said. “In the meantime, we have ten cows and a bull to find, and five thousand acres to search. We’d best get at it.”

PONY TURNED her old truck down the ranch road with a premonition of impending doom. Her hands gripped the steering wheel far more tightly than necessary. Jimmy and Roon shared the bench seat beside her. Roon sat pressed against the passenger door, staring broodily out the side window. Jimmy squeezed against him, trying to avoid the stick shift. Jimmy was the youngest at eleven. The other three boys rode in the back of the truck. Dan was fifteen, Martin and Joe were both fourteen. None of them was smiling, but all of them were clean and presentable, and all had agreed—albeit grudgingly—to be on their best behavior.

Pony knew from past experience that their perception of what constituted best behavior was the reason why she was gripping the steering wheel so tightly. By the time she pulled up in front of the ranch house, her hands were so badly cramped that she had to sit for a moment rubbing them together. “Okay,” she said to Jimmy and Roon. “Now remember. Best behavior!”

They both stared at her. Nodded. Roon wrenched his door open and dropped to the ground. Jimmy followed. The boys in back jumped out. Pony was the last to climb from the truck. She stood in the yard, looking up at the ranch house and then down toward the barn and corrals. The place was quiet. Peaceful. She could hear the flutelike song of a meadowlark and the distant bawl of a cow. The wind was moderate, warm and out of the south. The sky was a wide blue dome overhead, providing a vivid backdrop to the snowcapped peaks of the Beartooth Mountains. She drew in a lungful of sweet air and exhaled slowly, willing the tension from her body.

The house door opened and an enormous figure emerged, carrying a broom. It was Ramalda, the Mexican woman who had shut the door in Pony’s face, and she looked as grim as ever. “Good morning,” Pony said. “I’ve come to see Mr. McCutcheon. We’re reporting for work.”

Ramalda held the broom as if she wished it were a rifle. She scowled fiercely at the boys, who stood in a group, seeking safety in each other’s short midday shadow. “Work?” she said as if she had never heard the word before. She threw her head back and laughed. It was neither a long laugh nor a friendly one. She lowered her head and scowled at them again. “Come. Entra.” She turned and squeezed her body through the kitchen door, letting the screen bang shut behind her.

“Get your things,” Pony said to the boys. She lifted her own small satchel out of the truck bed and climbed the porch steps. The last place in the world she wanted to be was inside that ranch house with that woman, but she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, pulled open the screen door and stepped inside.

The room she found herself in transported her into another time. There was almost no hint of modern life among the simple furnishings and wall cupboards, the huge wood-fired cookstove, the hand pump at the big slate sink, the oil lamps—some in their wall gimbals, others set on the table. Even the gas stove was an antique, a cream enamel with green and gold piping and the words White Star scrolled ornately across the oven door. It was a beautiful kitchen, and in spite of her initial trepidation, Pony felt instantly at home.

Ramalda was standing by the sink with her hands on her hips, watching them with great suspicion. “You’re hungry,” she accused.

Pony shook her head. “If you could just show us where to put our things, we can get right to work.”

She was afraid Ramalda would laugh at them again, but instead she turned and walked out of the kitchen and into a back hallway that ran the length of the rambling ranch house and exited at the far end of the porch. Pony and the boys followed. Off the hallway were several doors. She pushed the first one open. “This is my room,” she said, and before they could glimpse inside, she pulled the door shut again with a sharp bang. “My room,” she repeated. She led them to the next door and opened it, turning to Pony. “Your room.” Pony stepped inside, followed closely by all five boys. It was a small room, perhaps ten by sixteen feet, papered in an antique rose print of pinks and greens, with a double bed, a bureau, a chair and a mirror hung above the dresser. A braided rug fit neatly between the bed and the bureau, and a narrow door opened onto a little closet. Pony set her satchel on the chair and smiled.

“It’s very nice,” she said, and the boys all nodded in solemn agreement.

Ramalda led them down the hall and opened yet another door. This room was a third again the size of Pony’s and had two sets of bunk beds on opposite walls and a twin bed set beneath the single window. The boys looked around at the plain whitewashed walls hung with old cowboy prints, the well-worn desk and chair, the one tall bureau, the small closet. A braided rug similar to the one in Pony’s room graced the floor between the sets of bunk beds. The boys laid their duffels down on the bunks, each choosing by order of rank. Roon, Pony noticed, though not the oldest, chose first, and he picked the bed beneath the window. Dan and Martin took the top bunks, Jimmy and Joe got the bottom.

The next room they were shown was the bathroom. It was small, basic, no bathtub, just a shower. Clean, Pony noticed. The entire place was spanking clean. The Mexican woman might not care to host a passel of Crow Indians, but she was a good housekeeper.

Ramalda led them back to the kitchen. “You eat now,” she said gruffly, motioning for them to sit. Pony stood for a moment in indecision, wondering if their hunger was that obvious, and then nodded to the boys, who immediately dropped into five chairs. Pony slowly followed suit. Ramalda then served them a meal that could have fed Pony and the boys for a week. It began with a thick spicy stew of lamb, onions, beans and chili peppers ladled into deep colorful Mexican bowls and set before them with big bone-handled soupspoons on the side. A platter of fresh soft tortillas, still warm, was plunked down in the middle of the table, along with a brimming pitcher of cold milk and six tall glasses. The savory aroma of the stew overcame the awkwardness of the moment. They glanced respectfully at the strange old woman who stood by the stove and watched them eat with a fixed scowl on her face.

Breathless with the joy of having full stomachs, they pushed back from the table with dazed expressions. Every bit of the delicious stew was gone, every tender tortilla devoured, the pitcher of milk empty. Ramalda nodded grimly, went to the oven and drew forth a pan of beef ribs done to a tender turn and dripping with sauce. She used a spatula to push them all onto a serving platter and slid the dish into the center of the table, refilled the pitcher with more cold milk, then stood back and waited.

They stared around the table at each other, and then at the ribs. Even Roon was smiling as they dug into them with rapturous abandon, wearing the sauce shamelessly on their chins and laughing, finally, when there was nothing left but a stack of gnawed bones.

“WE’VE MISSED the noon meal, I guess,” Caleb said as they let their horses pick a careful descent down the steep draw. “Ramalda was going to make barbecued ribs.”

Guthrie was ahead of him. “Don’t worry. She’ll save some for you.” He glanced back, grinning beneath his hat brim. “She likes watching you get fat.”

Caleb didn’t presume to tell Billy how to get down the steep slope. He gave the gelding free rein and shamelessly clutched the saddle horn to keep from tumbling over the horse’s shoulders. “That’s no lie,” he said. “I was in a whole lot better shape when I first came here than I am now.”

“Winter,” Guthrie called back. “All those long dark days with nothing to do but eat what Ramalda cooks, and she’s a damn fine cook. Thinks if a person ain’t always hungry they must be sick. But don’t worry, you’ll burn it off. From now till the snow flies you can eat whatever you want and you’ll still lose weight.”

The slope bottomed out, and Guthrie drew rein, leaning over his horse’s shoulder and studying something on the ground. “That’s fresh,” he said. “Them buff are here somewhere close by.” He straightened and sat for a moment, contemplating. “Wind’s out of the south. We ought to be able to work up this draw and maybe catch sight of them, but if they catch a whiff of us, they’ll be on the far side of tomorrow in the blink of an eye. Ride quiet and follow me.”

Caleb did just that, and in less than an hour they had ridden up onto a knoll that overlooked a high, pretty meadow shaped like a basin lying amongst the lower flanks of three rugged snow-clad mountains. “That’s Piney Creek,” Guthrie said, raising his arm and pointing toward a dark ribbon that snaked through the meadow. “The old line camp is in that big clump of fir.”

Caleb had seen the camp once. “Joe Nash flew me in here last fall,” he said. “He said it was the prettiest place in all of Montana, but it wasn’t quite so pretty on that particular afternoon.” He looked at Guthrie. “That was the day we brought you down off the mountain more dead than alive.”

Guthrie glanced sidelong at him and then faced forward again. A muscle in his jaw corded. He pulled his hat brim down a little lower. “Well, that’s all in the past, and right now we’re hunting for your buffalo.” He shifted in his saddle. “As a matter of fact, I think I’m lookin’ right at one.”

Caleb leaned forward. “Where?”

“See that little black dot way down there, followed by a dash? Down near the creek? That black dot is a buff, sure as I’m sitting here. That dash is three or four others, following along behind. I bet the entire bunch is hiding in that brush along the creek.”

“How close do you think we can get?”

“If the wind holds, pretty close. Close enough to count ’em, anyhow. You game?”

“Hell yes, I’m game. What are we waiting for?”

They heeled their horses and set off at a slow jog. The distance to be covered was over a mile. Guthrie reined his horse to a walk when they got within a quarter mile, and Caleb did the same. The afternoon was a fine one, with a steady breeze and the warm June sun to gentle it. Caleb wished he’d brought his field book along because he was seeing birds and flowers he’d never seen before. The vitality and diversity of the land continually astounded and humbled him. He wondered if he would ever truly be connected to it the way he really wanted to be.

Sometimes he felt he was so close…

“Whoa,” Guthrie said, his voice low, and they stopped side by side, stirrup to stirrup. “That big old cow there. See her?”

Caleb tried to follow Guthrie’s point but he could see nothing yet. No buffalo. He shook his head.

“She’s watching us, standing in that bunch of chokecherry down in that brushy draw. Hold now. Hold…”

They sat very still and the horses were motionless as if they knew that any small movement would betray them. There was a sudden explosion in the thicket and before Caleb’s dazzled eyes a huge buffalo cow burst from the draw, tail held high, and made off at a dead run. She climbed a knoll at a speed that seemed impossible for such an ungainly-looking beast and yet she was pure grace and incredible power as she fled their presence and sought the safety of the rest of the herd.

“What’s that?” Caleb said, his breath catching in his throat. “Look, beside her. What is that!” He watched the little blond ball that bounced at the cow’s flank as she raced up the knoll.

Guthrie’s reply was an affirmation of something Caleb already knew. “That’s a baby buff, boss,” he said. “That cute little critter is one of your first baby buffs.”

THE EUPHORIA of the afternoon stayed with Caleb on the long ride home. The buffalo were all there. Not only were they all there, but the ten cows had made seven calves. Not bad at all, considering he’d bought all ten without having them certified pregnant. Seven out of ten wasn’t bad, and maybe they weren’t done calving, either. Caleb was feeling pretty good about things.

“Lord, they were something, weren’t they?” he said for the umpteenth time as they jogged home.

“Yessir,” Guthrie said.

Hard to tell what Guthrie really thought about it all. Did he really think the buffalo were a good thing? Or was he too much of a cattleman to ever change his ways? “They scare me a little, I won’t lie,” Caleb said. “But they’re the true natives of this land. They belong here.”

“Yessir.”

“I think this ranch will be a better place for having them.”

“Me, too,” Guthrie said.

Caleb drew rein so abruptly that Billy snorted in protest. Guthrie was slower to follow suit, easing his horse to a walk and pivoting it around to face him. He gave Caleb a questioning look.

“Do you mean that?” Caleb said.

“You forget that I grew up here with Jessie,” Guthrie replied. “I’ve been working on this ranch since I was thirteen years old, and she’s been wanting this to happen for a long time. Ripping down the cross fences and bringing back the buffalo. Giving the land back to itself and letting it heal the wounds we’ve made in it over the years.”

“But what about you? How do you feel about it?”

Guthrie studied him for a moment then shifted his gaze to the distant mountains. “All my life has been about beef cows and alfalfa hay,” he admitted. “Worrying about the weather and the cows. Worrying about the graze and the cows. Worrying about makin’ hay and makin’ money and losin’ all of it when the cattle prices just dropped and dropped. I’m just like all them other ranchers. I think in beef cow. But when I look at them buffalo I feel like someone’s taken me by the scruff of the neck and given me a good shake, and I catch myself thinkin’, what the hell took us so long to get smart?”

The two men regarded each other for a long silent moment. Caleb nodded. “I want to make this work.”

“So do I,” Guthrie said.

“Good.” He nudged Billy with his heels and walked him up beside Guthrie’s horse. “You really think Ramalda saved any of those ribs?”

Guthrie grinned. “Dunno. How much do you suppose five hungry boys can eat?”

“I think they could eat a whole buffalo.”

“Let’s just hope they don’t, or we might be out of business by summer’s end.”

CHAPTER THREE

CALEB WAS RENDERED speechless at the size of the boys. He’d been expecting a spread of five-to twelve-year-olds. He’d been expecting to have to smooth Ramalda’s feathers when she realized she’d be babysitting in addition to her other duties at the ranch, but he’d been way off base. These weren’t little kids. He sat in the saddle, gazing at the five young men who stared silently back at him, lined up along the corral fence just outside the pole barn. They’d been sitting on the top rail when he and Guthrie had ridden in, studying the horses inside the corral, and had jumped down at their arrival, lining up as if for inspection. Pony was nowhere to be seen.

“Well,” he finally managed to say. “I see you made it here all right. Did Ramalda feed you?”

All five nodded.

“Good. Did she show you where you’d be bunking?”

Another somber nod of five heads.

“You picking out your horses, are you?”

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?”

“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.