Hard Winter Page 10

  Wire had to hurt. . . .

  Well, the posts was sharpened, pointed at one end. Like spears. So Walter and Tommy would swing a pick, dig some with these post-hole diggers, or crowbars, shovels. Get the post started. Then Tommy would climb back on the wagon, and start swinging a sixteen-pound cast-iron post maul, just start hammering that fence post deep into that hard ground. He’d have to sink a post two or three feet deep.

  They was working ahead of us, a pretty far piece, and we’d come behind, stringing wire. Every so often, they’d drop another couple of reels of wire for us, then move on down with the wagon eight to ten feet, hammer in another post. You ever swung a sixteen-pound maul, boy? Work up a sweat, you will. Get to where your muscles scream in pain. But, being headstrong, Tommy wouldn’t let nobody else do it. I volunteered often enough, but he said he didn’t want to touch no barbed wire. Sounded like John Henry when he said it.

  That’s what we was doing.

  * * * * *

  It wasn’t Walter Butler’s fault. He was green at this kind of thing. Wasn’t nobody’s fault. Just an accident. I didn’t see it. Busy stretching wire and holding it so Camdan could secure it to the post we was on.

  Way down the fence line, Tommy dropped two reels of wire to the ground, and he and Walter started a post. Then Tommy climbed back on top of the wagon bed, lifted that maul, Walter holding the post steady. Problem is, Walter plumb forgot to set the brake on the wagon, and when Tommy swung that maul, and it hit the top of the post, the mules jumped. Can’t explain it. We’d been at it all day, all week, and those mules had been hearing that sound all that time. Wouldn’t figure them to be so skittish. Maybe something else frightened them. Don’t rightly know for certain. But the wagon lurched, just a few feet, before the mules stopped, and Tommy, exhausted, off balance from swinging the heavy maul, fell. He flung the maul away, didn’t want it to come down on him, and fell hard. Fell right on the open spool of barbed wire.

  Then I heard the worst screams I ever heard.

  * * * * *

  Me and Camdan come running, found Tommy writhing on the ground, yelling. The blood. Blood just gushing.

  “My eye!” he yelled. “I can’t see!”

  Walter just stood there, mouth open, frozen in some kind of panic.

  Tommy’s face had hit the reel of wire. I guess he’d pushed himself up, turning his head, ripping his ear, then fell again, using his hands to break his fall, tearing gashes in both palms.

  I pried his hands off his face, pressed my own to stanch the blood.

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

  His face was a mess. Might have cracked his cheek bone from hitting so hard.

  Walter started—“I didn’t mean. . . .”—before he collapsed on his knees, retching.

  “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

  Strange. Here’s the thing. All these years, all the times I’ve remembered—never wanted to, mind you, but couldn’t forget—that incident, pieced it together. All the times, I thought it was Tommy yelling: “Oh, my God.” But now I recollect. Now I hear that voice.

  It was me.

  I turned, saw Camdan, face whiter than a sun-bleached bone.

  “Camdan!” I barked. “Fetch Gene Hardee or Ish.” Both had gone to the other side of Castle Reef, directing the fencing operation there. “Tell him what happened. Tell him we need help! Now! Now! You got to go now!”

  Next I ordered Walter to loosen his bandanna, hand it to me.

  When he did, I wadded it up, pressed it against the worst cuts. Used my own bandanna to wrap around Tommy’s head. Hoofs sounded. That was Camdan riding off. I looked down that unfinished fence line, looked up at Castle Reef, and over at the Sawtooths. Never felt so far away, so hopeless.

  “Walter, I need you to help me,” I said. Surprisingly calm. Then to Tommy: “Tommy, we’re going to get you to the line shack. You’ll be all right.”

  “How bad is it?” he cried. “I can’t see.”

  Ripped off my left shirt sleeve, used it to wrap his cut hands.

  “You got blood in your eyes,” I told him. “That’s all. You’re no worser than I was when I stepped on that cactus in Texas.”

  It was, of course, a lie.

  * * * * *

  His left eye was gone, and that wire had laid him to the cheek bone, mangled his ear, both hands. Bad hurt, he was, but Tommy was alive.

  Problem was, he didn’t want to be.

  * * * * *

  Nearest doctor was in Helena or Great Falls, so they were no help. Ish Fishtorn stitched Tommy up with horsehair, after we’d shaved his hair around the cuts, me and Gene Hardee holding Tommy down. None of us had any John Barleycorn to dull the pain. Nothing we could do for the eye. Once we got him stitched, patched up as best as we could do in a line camp, we unloaded one of the wagons of barbed wire, and hauled Tommy in the back all the way to the Bar DD headquarters. Then, it was Lainie and Mrs. MacDunn who were crying so terribly, Lainie most of all.

  Tommy wouldn’t see her. Rather, he didn’t want her to see him.

  “I’m a monster,” he told me. “A hideous monster. Cyclops.”

  “No, you ain’t,” I said.

  He told me to go to hell.

  * * * * *

  Went like that for a week, Tommy brooding, Lainie crying. Infection set in, and Major MacDunn had to cut off the remnants of Tommy’s right ear. It’s a miracle the rest of his wounds didn’t bring him down with gangrene.

  * * * * *

  The first snow fell a week after the major had removed Tommy’s ear. That’s when I first noticed how peculiar Gray Boy looked. I was staring at him, when Major MacDunn came up to me, angry and mean. He whirled me around, demanded to know why I hadn’t fed his two Aberdeen Angus bulls. I told him I had. He cussed me for a liar, grabbed my collar, dragged me all the way to the bulls’ corral. Pressed me against the rails, then let go. I guess he could see the remnants of the hay I’d forked over.

  “They have eaten it,” he whispered. “All of it.”

  Never seen those bulls that hungry, and maybe he started to notice the same thing about those Angus as I had just noticed about Gray Boy.

  Winter coats were coming on, earlier than usual, heavier. Something else struck me, and that was how silent the ranch had become. No birds. Least not so many of them. Even the ones that stayed north all winter had turned south.

  * * * * *

  “Jim?”

  I jumped off the chair, spilling my coffee, and ran to Tommy’s bunk. He sat propped up against the wall, his head still wrapped up like a mummy, face below the bandages pale, his one good eye red-rimmed.

  “Yeah, Tommy.”

  “I want you to do me a favor.”

  “Anything. You want me to fetch you a book to read?”

  “I want you to write a letter.

  I didn’t know how to answer.

  “Tell John Henry what happened.”

  He held up his bandaged hands. “I can’t very well write with these.”

  “But John Henry can’t read.”

  “Someone will read it to him. Tell him everything.”

  “Lainie,” I tried, “would write a whole lot better than me. I could ask. . . .”

  “NO!”

  * * * * *

  I gave it to Mrs. MacDunn, because I didn’t know how one went about posting a letter, especially at the Bar DD. Smiling sweet but sad, she said she’d take care of it. I told her I’d pay whatever it cost, and she just nodded, and I left her.

  Started back for the bunkhouse, but Lainie stopped me.

  “How is Tommy?” she asked.

  “He’s mending. Some.”

  “Why doesn’t he let me help him?” Her lips started trembling. I wanted to be long gone before she started bawling.

  “You got to give Tommy some time, Lainie. He’s prideful.

  Shames him to be hurt and . . .”

  “It’s my father’s fault! He and . . .”

  �
�It ain’t nobody’s fault. Just an accident. Could have happened to any one of us.”

  “But . . . it . . . happened to Tommy. . . .”

  She started sobbing something awful. I couldn’t leave her like that, so I come up to her, pulled her to me. Let her cry on my shoulder, all the while telling her that Tommy would be fine.

  That was another lie.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Shortly thereafter, Major MacDunn sent me back to string wire at Castle Reef. Oh, he had learned from his mistake, wasn’t about to let a bunch of boys do that work by themselves, so he made sure a grown-up supervised us. Sure, I hated leaving Tommy behind at the bunkhouse, but there just wasn’t anything else I could do for Tommy. He had to mend himself. Thought about him, though, with every mile of wire I stapled to a post.

  Thought of John Henry, too. Thought of Judas.

  Felt like Judas.

  Bitterroot Abbott bossed us. Hadn’t met him before, and the thing I noticed about Abbott was the fact that he didn’t do no work, just watched. Slim fellow, he was, with bright blue eyes, rode a high-stepping dun horse, and kept a Winchester carbine across his lap. Bald on the top of his head, with hair that once looked to be blond before turning gray. Kept to himself mostly, cleaning a Smith & Wesson revolver, smoking his Bull Durham, and sipping from a flask till he’d emptied it. Had no use for a bunch of teenagers.

  “Never does a lick of work,” I complained to Walter Butler one night when Bitterroot went off to answer Nature’s call. “Gene Hardee and Ish Fishtorn, now those boys’ll work right alongside us. They don’t fancy it. I mean, stringing wire ain’t a fit job for a cowboy, but Gene and Ish, they do their share of the work. But not that bald-headed gent.”

  “He works,” Walter said softly.

  “I ain’t seen it,” I said.

  Walter snorted, and sat up. “He rode with Major MacDunn with the Montana Stranglers,” he said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t get cross of Bitterroot Abbott. He’s killed fifteen men.”

  “You mean he’s a gunman? Like Wild Bill?”

  “No,” Walter said. Sounded kind of old for his age, like he knew a lot more than I did about those kinds of things. “He’s nothing like Bill Hickok was.”

  “Well, what’s he doing here for?”

  “Working.” Walter Butler threw his blanket over him, and rolled over.

  Working? My stomach got all twisted. Major MacDunn had hired himself a gunman.

  * * * * *

  Tommy rode up one afternoon, must have been the last of October, maybe early November. Cold, it was. I remember Bitterroot Abbott laughing at my blanket. Thin, old woolly piece of moth holes that had served me well most nights down in Texas. “That hen skin won’t protect you from Kissin-ey-oo-way’-o.”

  I asked him: “Protect me from what?”

  “Kissin-ey-oo-way’-o. It’s Cree. Lived with them up north for three years when I was a young buck. Kissin-ey-oo-way’-o.”

  “What’s it mean?” I asked.

  “Well, you can’t really put it in English. More like you have to feel it, and I’ve felt it. It means, more or less, that the wind blows cold. You’ll feel it, boy, especially if that’s all you have for your sougans.”

  “I feel it already,” I told him.

  “Hawkins,” he said with a wry chuckle, “it ain’t even cold yet.”

  That was the most I’d ever talked to Bitterroot Abbott. He sounded almost human then, made me forget that he was nothing more than a man-killer, but I pretty much forgot about our little talk because Walter Butler ran to the campfire screaming that Tommy was coming, Tommy was coming. Sure enough, he was.

  Wearing a new heavy coat with the sheepskin collar pulled up high, and his hat down low, Tommy swung down off Midnight Beauty. He looked a mess, but it did my heart a world of wonder to see him again. Tossed down his war bag, then untied a package he had secured behind his cantle, and threw it to me.

  “Present,” he said, “from Blaire MacDunn. And Lainie.”

  The bandages were gone, and he had a big black leather patch over his missing eye. He wore a yellow silk bandanna kind of like a pirate. At least it reminded me of how I pictured some of Long John Silver’s black-hearts from Treasure Island. It was wrapped around his head, like a lady’s bonnet, hiding the missing ear, though he couldn’t hide the scars, bruises, and scabs below his missing eye.

  Still, he was Tommy, my pard. Only I couldn’t think of anything to say to him.

  “What brings you here?” Walter Butler asked.

  “I earn my keep,” he said, looking past our camp at the line of wire fence we’d already put up.

  * * * * *

  What was the package? Oh, just a coat. Not a Mackinaw, and nothing as fancy as Tommy’s sheepskin rig. A heavy canvas coat with a wool blanket lining. Nice to know the MacDunns thought of me. I thought about how cheap Mr. Gow was, figured he would have bought me a coat, too, but take it out of my wages.

  * * * * *

  When we started work next morning, I was pretty much all thumbs. Nerves took hold of Walter Butler, too. We just couldn’t help it, what with Tommy back with us, just a few miles from where the terrible accident had happened. Tommy, he noticed it right off, turned angrily from a post he was setting, and just glared at us.

  Didn’t say a word, just stared with that blazing eye of his. Stared us down. I mumbled something to Walter, and started pulling wire from the reel.

  * * * * *

  Got to do some exploring, which suited me a sight better than building a barbed wire fence. I rode up into the mountains once, I recollect, picking up wood to use for our fires.

  One time, me and Walter Butler come to a creek to find a muskrat, busy working on his house. Peculiar-looking animal, but he made me smile, watching him work, till he must have heard us or caught our scent, and disappeared in the woods.

  “Big house he’s building,” Walter said. “Twice as big as anything I’ve seen.”

  “Maybe his gal’s expecting triplets. Maybe he’s been a mighty busy muskrat,” I said, mighty pleased when Walter Butler blushed.

  * * * * *

  I’ve told you about Tie Camp Creek, where the hackers set up camp, cutting down wood for the railroad. We rode up to that camp one day to fetch some more fence posts, or at least prod the hackers into bringing us the supply they owed us.

  “I bet they have some whiskey at that camp,” Bitterroot Abbott said enviously.

  “You should go,” Tommy told him.

  “Can’t.” He jutted his jaw at the wire. “Somebody’s got to keep an eye on things, and I’m paid to do that.”

  “I’ll stay,” Tommy said.

  “You?” Bitterroot had to choke back his laughter.

  “I got one eye,” Tommy snapped, “so I can keep an eye on things. And you’d be better at persuading those lumberjacks to fulfill their end of the bargain. You’ve said so yourself . . . Major MacDunn paid them for two loads of fence posts. We’ve gotten only one.”

  Bitterroot chewed on that thought with his salt pork, but finally shook his head. “Should wait. Hardee or Fishtorn should be here in a day or two. Send them up there.”

  “Suit yourself,” Tommy said.

  “We might be out of posts by tomorrow,” Walter Butler said. I knew Butler’s intentions. He was sick of working with wire, and probably still felt uncomfortable working alongside Tommy. He wanted to get out of camp.

  Nobody said anything else for a spell, till I got up to throw another piece of wood on the fire.

  “All right,” Bitterroot said. “We’ll ride up there come first light. You two boys will ride with me. Might need you to drive the wagons down.”

  I guess I knew what made Bitterroot decide to go, too. He had a big thirst for whiskey. Figured why Tommy volunteered to stay, too. Since the bad accident, he kept to himself.

  * * * * *

  Up higher, that’s some country, but I tell you what. That high up, it was a lot colder than it was down on the river. Those log men h
ad also built themselves a couple of cabins, so I figured they planned to be up there in winter, too. They reminded me of the beaver pond we’d passed on the ride to Tie Camp Creek. Those lumber men were working hard, even harder than the beavers that had been stacking up piles and piles of saplings. ’Course, them beavers didn’t have all the axes and adzes and saws and contraptions that we found at that camp of hackers.

  We unsaddled our horses, rubbed them down, gave them some water and grain, and went to find the boss of the outfit, find out where our fence posts were, and why we hadn’t gotten them yet. Never heard such noise, the flying sawdust worse than dust on a cattle drive. Saws singing, axes thudding, it wasn’t nothing like a cow camp. Except for the men cussing.

  They also had this monster-looking machine, which looked and sounded like a steamboat that was about to blow its boiler, belching out steam and cinders, shaking on its sled made of logs.

  “What’s that thing?” I yelled above the racket to a choker setter—that’s what he called himself—a kid about my age, holding one end of a slack cable, with the other end attached to the drum on that noisy, steam-driven contraption.

  He looked over my shoulder, and yelled back: “Steam donkey!”

  Well, we watched him do his work, fasten that cable to a felled pine, watched that steam donkey start pulling the log, and then the kid warned us to get out of the way, and he took us to the boss’ cabin.

  “Best wait here, out of the way,” he told us. “It’s warmer inside, anyway.”

  * * * * *

  The boss hacker was a thin, mustached Irishman named Burke. He poured us all two fingers of whiskey from a jug, pushed back his bowler, and give himself a whole tumbler full of rotgut.

  “I work for Major MacDunn,” Bitterroot told him. He killed his own drink, then took Walter’s.

  “I know.”

  “Then you know you owe the major another delivery of fence posts.”

  Burke sighed. “There will be no more fence posts, I’m afraid.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “We work for the railroad.”

  “You were working for the railroad when the major and you cut this deal.”

  “Aye. But that was before Mister Pego, me boss, learned of that, ahem, side bet.” He drank thirstily, coughed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. “I’m lucky to still have me job and me hide. It cost me a month’s pay.”