The Pastures of Beyond (10 page)

We moved in three hundred brood cows from the Hoyt

Ranch north of us, and fed them that winter by team and wagon, which meant handling lots of hay by pitchfork, seven days a week, but Al never complained. He turned out to be one of the best men with a team of horses I ever saw.

The big man was a Pit River Indian from northern California, and we were surrounded by a reservation which was mainly Klamaths and Modocs, with a scattering of Paiutes and Yahooskin Snakes. When a local Indian died, the relatives were in the habit of locating Al and his brother, Amos, giving them a fifth of whiskey to dig the grave.

Al hadn't touched a drop of liquor since the day I hired him, but one day, when we were both starting to get cabin fever pretty bad, he came to me and said, “They're havin' a big Modoc funeral tomorror over to Beatty an' they want me an' my brother, Amos, to dig the grave. Okay?”

“Nokay!” I snapped. “I've heard tell about you and Amos. You'll start partying, and it will be a week before you get back. There's no way I can feed all these cattle by myself.”

“Well, maybe I should quit this goddam outfit then,” Al said, his feelings hurt. Pretty soon I heard his pickup truck start, roar skidding and sliding out of a snowdrift, and go popping up the road toward town.

They partied all night, Al and Amos, and things got pretty drunk, but the next morning, give them credit, they were out there at dawn in the cold at the Beatty Cemetery in Al's old truck, getting ready to dig the grave for a two o'clock funeral.

But they had forgotten one important thing: despite the blanket of snow, the ground was frozen hard and deep. Two hours later all they had was a hole down in the ground only a small rabbit could have used.

“Amos,” Al said. “I think we better take off for Klamath Falls and get some dynamite. I know the old sheriff in there pretty damn good. Hell, he'll give us a permit for a whole pickup load of the stuff. How much money you got on you?” They went to town and came back with the explosives. “Amos, we better hurry,” Al said, getting out of the truck. “Those people goin' to be comin' out from Beatty soon, an' we better have this hole ready for that pine box.”

But it was cold, and first they had to sit in Al's old truck listening to some country-western music while they warmed their fingers and raided Al's battered old thermos for coffee. Gingerly, they stuffed the rabbit hole with all the dynamite it would hold, and hooked the pickup to a big snow-covered rock with a chain. The rock tore the bumper half off before it decided to move. They skidded it to the gravesite and slid it on top of the hole.

“That rock ought to hold down the charge,” Amos said as he unhooked the chain.

“Looks pretty good to me, Amos,” Al said. “I think we can touch her off now and build our hole. What kind of whiskey you s'pose they'll give us anyway?”

“Hey, look at that, would you?” Amos said, squinting down the road toward town. “I can see them comin' already. Cripes, I didn't know there was that many cars on the reservation.”

Under his buckskin gloves, Al's fingers were hurting with cold. “Damn it to hell, Amos,” Al said. “It's coldern a well digger's ass out here. I'm goin' over to the pickup and have me some more of that coffee.”

“Hell, we ain't got time,” Amos said. “We gotta touch this thing off.”

He stepped back sharply as Al dropped a stick of dynamite on the frozen ground. “You be careful,” Amos warned. “All these people sleepin' here underground, you want to wake 'em up?”

In the distance, a whole line of cars proceeded to turn off the main road into the cemetery.

Al stuck a shiny metal cap on a piece of long black fuse, crimped it with his teeth, poked a hole in the dynamite with a sharp stick, inserted the cap, then stuck it as a detonator into the explosives packed beneath the rock. He split the other end of the fuse with his pocketknife to expose the black powder and make it easier to light.

“Lookit all them people,” Amos said. “Maybe we ought to motion 'em to move back. I never seen so many people. Either these Modocs like the guy that's bein' planted or they hate him and want to make damn sure he's underground!” Amos pulled out a hip flask he had been hiding under his coat, took a big swig, and handed it to Al. “Here, brother, you take some of this now. It'll warm you up quicker than gettin? laid.? The music from their pickup radio seemed a little subdued by now, as though the battery were on its last legs. Al lit the fuse, and as the sparks flew out over the frozen earth, a pall of white smoke spread out like a deadly gas. The two men scrambled to get behind the vehicle for safety.

As the charge went off, the lead car of the funeral procession slammed to a stop. Traveling far and wide under the frozen ground, the dynamite shook the earth; the whole cemetery seemed to leap into the air in a cloud of white smoke.

“Well, look at that, would you?” Amos hollered above the din. “We just blew up the whole damn graveyard! We better get out of here, Albert. Pretty soon those Modocs are goin' to start collectin' some Pit River scalps.”

A large coffin fell out of the air, narrowly missing the pickup, and spilled its contents over the ground.

“Hey, Amos!” Al exclaimed. “Damn if that ain't old One-eyed Alice. I used to spark that woman. Damn if she don't look better now than she did then!”

The two men jumped into Al's pickup to make their getaway, but the radio had been too long a-playing. The starter clicked once and stopped. The battery was dead. Abandoning the truck, they ran for their lives and lit out for the ranch afoot, twenty snowy miles away.

Their last peek at the graveyard showed total destruction. Trees uprooted, coffins standing on end, bones, skulls, headstones, and plastic flowers all in one great jumble together. It was the Fourth of July before Al dared to go to town again.

Chapter Nine

T
HAT SUMMER, ROSE WAS CHOSEN QUEEN
of a big Oregon rodeo, and the newspapers had a lot to say about how well she rode a horse and how smart she was in school. She had beaten out several other girls for the rodeo honor, and I knew there were some hard feelings, especially among parents of some of the horsey white girls. For the Indian community, her winning was a source of great pride. They tried their best to make Rose's victory their victory, and offered to loan her fancy beaded riding outfits that would not have been out of place in museums of Indian art.

Rose, of course, would have none of the fancy stuff. She rode in faded Levi's, with a cotton shirt she had made herself, and when she galloped past the rodeo stands, the wind pressed the thin material against her slender young body and brought a gasp from the crowd. It was less a tribute to femininity than a triumph of grace. She rode like the desert wind in the sage.

The Indians had some fancy horseflesh on the Klamath and Warm Springs reservations, and Rose could have taken her pick of queenly mounts, but she stuck to her old paint horse and made that half-mustang pony seem elegant.

I was proud of her, of course, proud of what she had been able to do for herself, proud that of all those hundreds of people in the crowds I was maybe her best friend. That evening at the rodeo dance, she was thronged by admirers, but she left them all to find me in the crowd and pull me out to dance with her. That started a few unwarranted rumors, I'm sure.

Over her shoulder, as we danced, I kept getting angry stares from some of her uncles as well as boyfriends, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd lost some Indian friends valuable to me and from now on maybe I'd better watch my back. There were still those Indian people around who clung to the old language and considered other races trash. For being rodeo queen Rose had been given a small scholarship to further her education. She had asked me to dance for one simple reason, to say good-bye.

“I'm going away this fall,” she said. “I've always dreamed of being a nurse, and with my scholarship money and with what I've been able to save by working, I'm going to nursing school in San Francisco.”

I was stunned, of course. Down deep I knew I should be delighted by her plans rather than depressed by my loss of her friendship. “I think it's great,” I told her and concentrated on dancing with her for what might be the last time.

“And what about you?” she asked, looking up at me.

“I don't know,” I admitted. “There's the ranch, of course, and I'd like to rodeo some. And then there's the war. I could maybe get an agricultural deferment, but it doesn't seem right that other guys are out there dying. I suppose I've already made up my mind to go into the service, but I'm afraid to face my uncle.”

We danced another couple of rounds in silence. She wasn't her usual self, and I suspected it had nothing to do with being rodeo queen
.

“What's wrong?” I asked. “This ought to be a great time for you, but you don't seem very happy.”

“I guess I'm scared.” she said, dancing away from the other couples so no one heard. “I'm having a bad time with my people. I guess they're jealous of me, afraid I'll succeed and leave the Res.” Her face showed sudden anger. “They sit around the reservation on their asses, blaming the whites for all their troubles, afraid one of us will succeed and show the world it can be done. My brothers drink and give me hell when I won't drink with them. I guess I'm a social creature. It hurts like hell when my friends and relatives give me the silent treatment.”

I was puzzled by her outburst, feeling somehow that I had to defend my Indian friends. “Some Indians here have done pretty well,” I said. “Look at Orrie Summers, Mamie Farnsworth, and Dally Givons, for instance. They are all respected livestock people.”

“You look at them,” she said sadly. “Every one of them came from somewhere else and left their Indian baggage behind.”

“Then that's what you have to do,” I said. “Go to nursing school and to hell with your family.”

Rose looked a little brighter for a moment, then the old fears returned. “I'm scared,” she said. “Scared San Francisco isn't far enough away for them to leave me alone.”

One of her uncles cut in on us then and herded Rose away. I saw her a few times after that, but always in the distance. I often asked some of my Indian friends about her, but they had a frozen-faced way of giving me a nonanswer. I knew that I wasn't going to help Rose by butting into her life. She was wise enough to know what she had to do, and she would have to do it alone.

Chapter Ten

M
Y ONLY SOURCE OF NEWS AT
Y
AMSI
during the winter of 1943–44 was an old battery-operated Philco radio, which, in a way that seemed to me to be miraculous, brought in news over the mountain passes which were buried in ten feet of snow. But by February the battery had gone dead, and for all I knew the war could be lost or won on the part of America. I began to harbor a real guilt that I hadn't yet contributed and that, locked in behind my mountains, I was probably the safest man in America.

Now and then I would get a V-Mail from North Africa or Italy from a favorite BarY cowboy, Tommy Jackson, and I'd feel a twinge of guilt that I wasn't doing my part. At night, I lay in my bed running through endless dialogues with my uncle telling him that I had decided to enlist. Always I envisioned the old man coming up with one big question: “Who the hell is going to take care of the ranch?” Snowmelt came, and when my uncle returned from California, he started right in regaling me with his troubles, and I ended up afraid to tell him. He'd lost cattle to rustlers that winter, and due to the war there wasn't much left in the way of law enforcement to help him.

Gas rationing had limited my ability to patrol, but the next morning I rode BK Heavy seventeen miles to the Calimus Field to check some yearlings, then rode on west crosscountry, searching for Joe Perry's cabin to try to get the old man to come work at Yamsi. I needed someone to keep the fires burning when I was off with the cattle.

I was approaching a meadow called Long Prairie when I noticed a flour sack, neatly tied with baling twine, shoved under a fallen log in the forest. In that sack was the hide of a BarY steer freshly butchered by rustlers.

Rustling was a penitentiary offense in that country, and in any given year there was often a convict up in the Oregon State Pen doing time for stealing my uncle's cattle. We generally knew just which of the locals were stealing BarYs, but making a case was difficult. Underneath his solemn exterior, Buck had a kind heart, and sometimes he was his own judge and jury. If the man butchered a BarY to feed his hungry kids, my uncle was likely to look the other way. After a fashion, he was living the Cree Indian cannibalism case all over.

One of the neighbors made a game of it, and when he would pass Buck on the street he would slap him on the back and exclaim, “Come on over to eat with us sometime, Buck. The old lady will cook up some of your beef !”

Buck owned some of the best Hereford bulls in the country, and sometimes another neighbor, Jim, would stop him on the street and say, “Couple of years ago I stole two of your bulls. I'm done with 'em now and don't want to feed

'em over the winter. What do you want me to do?”

Buck would send us over a-horseback to get the bulls, and it was sort of understood that Jim would help himself to another couple the next spring. In fact he used my uncle's bulls so long, his cattle began to look like BarYs.

I was pretty angry about finding the butchered BarY steer, however, and determined to find out who had butchered it. I had just ridden a mile or two down to the road along Long Prairie when Jim's son, Albert, came riding by a-horseback.

“Albert,” I said by way of greeting, “who cooks with

Pillsbury's Best flour in this country?”

“Why, Dad cooks with Pillsbury's Best,” Albert said. “Who bales hay with New Holland twine?” I asked. “Why, Dad bales hay with New Holland twine!” Albert