A B Guthrie Jr Read online

  These Thousand Hills

  A B Guthrie Jr

  1956 to TheodoreMorrison

  NO MAN of our day can write about the West of the 1880's without reading about it. If he is very lucky, as I have been, he may remember vestiges of that vanished period and he may have friends among the few aged old-timers who will help fill him in.

  For me there was Teddy Blue Abbott, whose life story as taken down by Helen Huntington Smith is one of the very best of the cowpuncher chronicles; there was Con Price, who wrote two wonderfully humorous and right stories about Montana; there was Charlie Russell, the artist, sculptor and storyteller, and there was also James Willard Schultz, the white Indian of still older experience. There were these and other old-timers, living and dead, published and unpublished, from whom I have borrowed again and again. I am immensely indebted to them, as I am to the Montana State Historical Society, whose staff members have been ever helpful.

  A B Guthrie Jr.

  PART ONE

  1

  THESE THREE old men would sit and smoke and let a word fall and pause to hear the echoes of it as if they owned all time to speak their little pieces in.

  Lat Evans shifted his seat on the ground, finding patience in the thought that their talk didn't matter now, and looked off to where dusk was putting a dull shine on the river. It was good and lonely water once, the Umatilla was, before people had begun coming in to spoil it, bringing plows to rip up pastures and cattle to graze ranges already overgrazed and sheep to make affairs still worse. That was the trouble with all Oregon, here and elsewhere even more -too many people, too much stock, too many homestead claims, and so wild life was disappearing and cows were poor in flesh and price, and streams ran tame and clouded. Some cattle ranchers talked of spaying all their she stuff.

  "We came to Oregon in 'forty-five, and none of us was ever sorry for it." Pa spoke as if he'd never said the same before, as if by saying it again he held tighter to a thought he didn't want to lose. He sat on a block of wood like the other two men, an elbow resting on his cocked knee, the upheld hand fixed to his pipe.

  It came to Lat, looking at him, that he might be seeing him for the first time now that he himself was about to say goodbye. Here, under the burden of leave-taking, Pa was all concern and sadness and unsaid love, and it was these that counted, not the fits of sternness, not the hard and sudden angers that no one could explain and no son aged twenty keep on living with. It was a wrench to watch him, to feel the slow eyes turned between the bits of talk and see them drop before the fact. Pa's face was lined and old, though at fifty-odd he wasn't really old. It was struggle, it was struggles of some kind or another that made him look that way. It was the hard times of the last ten years. He would have done better, maybe, if he hadn't tried his hand at ranching, if he had stayed on the Willamette, a grower of fruits and berries and small grains, on land that he and Grandpa staked in those first years. But the Lord knew best. That was what he said. Always the Lord knew best. The Rock. The Salvation. Ma said so, too.

  Lat turned to Grandpa and then to Colly on his left. wondering if, as in the case of Pa, he'd ever really noticed them before. In the growing dark Grandpa's beard shone white as a duck's tail. The eyes that were just pockets of shadow in this light would be misty or vacant, as they often were now, though people still called him Senator and listened to him out of old respect. Colly was a couple of bones in an old shirt and worn pants. He couldn't clamp on to his pipe, not having teeth that matched, and so kept a finger curled around the stem. He looked too scrawny to hunt the hills for gold.

  Pa sucked on his pipe and took it from his mouth and sighed. "It's so far from anything."

  Colly asked, "Like what?"

  "Like any kind of order. Like civilization."

  A grin made a crooked half-moon out of Colly's mouth. "Oregon wasn't so goddam civilized when you whoaed up."

  Lat felt Pa stiffen at the curse. Few but Colly would have dared it. He felt himself stiffen on account of Pa. In that discomfort they were silent.

  Sunday school. Church. Prayer meeting. Bible reading. Grace. No working on the Sabbath, except what couldn't be avoided. No play. No card playing, ever. No dancing and no drinking. The Lord was a jealous Lord. And Pa was a jealous father, a jealous lord himself, who, like the Lord, had kind and sunny moments made dearer by comparison.

  You couldn't figure Pa. You couldn't know what made him stormy one time and peaceable the next. You couldn't tell ahead what little things might set him off. Ma said he was always sorry afterwards, that never a night did he go to sleep without apologizing if he had been unreasonable. So you loved him and you kind of hated him, and you had to get away.

  It wasn't just this last case that had done it, though it stood big in mind. It was the sum of things. It was the grim and unaccountable commandments of the years, it was the losses of temper, the dark angers; inside yourself it was the overhanging feeling of uneasiness around him, of uneasiness and even fear, which, being fear, you had to fight against, which you had to deny sometimes by going against his rules. Like slipping to that dance two weeks ago and drinking whiskey and coming home to find Pa up and ready for a rampage.

  "Disgraceful!" Pa had ended up in that flat voice that made the stomach sick. "No excuse at all! Get to bed! I'll talk to you in the morning when you're not under the influence."

  It wasn't whiskey that answered. He hadn't had enough of that. It was all the sores coming to one head at last. "No, you won't! I'm leaving here, and you can't hold me."

  There was that moment of will against scared will. Pa's spaced words broke it. "The next thing you know!" He turned and marched upstairs but halted at the landing and turned back, his face as bleak as stone. "Go then! But remember, the next thing you know!" He went on up.

  The next thing you know? Temptation. Weakness. Transgression. Sin. Sins. The dark and secret sins that lowered even Pa's voice and haltered the words of warning he had tried before to give.

  Sin or no sin, it was time to light out, right now, but for a moment he had waited, hearing upstairs the rumble and under-breath of conversation and then Ma's tread on the steps.

  She came down in her wrapper, seeming smaller than he knew her, around her face and eyes such lines of burden as to squeeze the heart. It struck him before she reached his arms that she was always burdened, all her brave and smiling life, burdened by Pa, by the crazy moods of Pa, burdened by anxiety, by the steady need to soothe and talk sense to him and keep the household happy as she could.

  She pressed her head against his chest and said, "Please, son," and he broke out, "I don't know why you put up with him!"

  Her voice was a little cry. "No! No! You don't know what you're saying. He loves us. That's what you have to understand. Above everything he loves us, and we love him."

  "Just the same-"

  She didn't let him finish. "It's all right for you to go. He knows so, too. It's best maybe, we think, now you're almost twenty-one. But don't leave home mad! Don't break away! We couldn't live here after all we've stood for, all the things we thought were right. We couldn't look people in the face. He loves you. Try to understand." The words came on a rush of breath.

  "If he'll be reasonable," he said, but she was crying now, and he blinked against his own tears and felt his will and anger melt almost to nothing. "I have to go, though."

  "Yes," she said and pressed him close. "Son. Son."

  Here, seated on the ground, listening to idle talk, he felt himself wrenched again. He shook that other time out of his head. "I'm not sorry we came to Oregon," he told the men for lack of something better.

  "Sorry?" Grandpa chuckled. "You wasn't even born yet." He kept on chuckling, finding some humor there that the others missed.

  Grandpa Evans had been a man
to remember before time played its slow trick on his wits. Grandma Evans, too, though she was dead and dim in memory. No one had much to say about Ma's parents, McBee by name. They'd quit the trail to Oregon in 'forty-five and traipsed off to California and there apparently been lost; but Ma couldn't be what she was if they hadn't been people to remember, too.

  When no one was talking Lat could hear the little whine of the mosquitoes that pestered him and Pa. The others didn't seem to mind. He imagined Grandpa was too old and leathery and Colly too dried up to draw a bite. A light blossomed inside the house and sent a beam out the window, blinding him to the twilight shine of the river.

  "For all that Lat's going, we got things nice here," Pa said, not in the tone of argument. He hadn't argued since Ma had talked to him nor had he mentioned that one night, but had accepted with good grace and offered help and, helping, joshed around. "Neighbors are good people. God­fearing people, most of them. And our Indians here in Oregon aren't anything to worry much about, not since Chief Joseph's been shipped off."

  "Brownie," Grandpa said to Pa, "you mind the time the Sioux treed you on Independence Rock, and you just seventeen years old?"

  Pa paused to say, "I do so," as if here was a subject he'd never be allowed to forget. Then he went on. "Times can't be bad forever. Every road has a turn. We got things to be thankful for."

  Colly quit sucking on his pipe. "All a man could want," he said and let the words hang there. Again there was the silence and the mosquito hum and, overhead, the whistle of a wing. Out somewhere in the shadows, Tip, the half-hound, was snuffing through the grass. The stars were beginning to come out. One blinked east like a signal fire.

  "Those Sioux were bad medicine," Grandpa said. "How many was there, Brownie?" He scratched his head. "I swear, my mind's not as long as a minute."

  "Let's talk about Lat and the trip now."

  "Lat?" Grandpa answered. "Why, Lat was named after Albert Gallatin, and Albert Gallatin was Treasurer under President Jefferson and President Madison and Commissioner to England after the War of 1812, and he did a lot for Oregon. Smart enough for them Britishers, you bet. Hadn't been for him, might not be any Oregon. I mind it like yesterday."

  Colly looked at Pa and then at Grandpa, and Lat thought he saw a little twist at the edge of the broken mouth. "And now you got Oregon, which is all a man could ask. An' I bet there was people thought you was crazy leavin' Missouri back there in 'forty-five."

  For a little while nobody answered, each one maybe wondering, like Lat himself, just what it was that Colly meant. Then Grandpa shrugged as if to get his mind away from Gallatin. "It was a movin' time," he said and stopped and said again, "A movin' time."

  "For you." Colly spoke more to Pa than to Grandpa.

  Grandpa went on. "We was young then, and so was the country. A man likes to grow up with the country. And when he gets growed up, he likes the country growed up, too." The old voice stopped, letting the old mind think on the words. "Or maybe he does or maybe he don't. Some ways one way, some ways t'other. But it was a movin' time."

  Colly said, "For you," again, but Grandpa had sunk into himself, thinking of those young days on the trail or maybe thinking of nothing at all.

  Pa picked up the talk with Colly. "It beats all. Once we couldn't get west fast enough, nor far enough. What'd we want with places like Nebraska or Wyoming, not to make mention of Montana that's worse yet to hear tell it?"

  Colly gave Lat his broken smile, saying by it that they knew things Pa didn't see.

  Pa sighed. "We been such a close family," he said in the way of someone talking to himself. "The Lord saw fit to take our first two young'ns, and then Lat came, late, and I guess we overdone it. He's past twenty." His voice trailed off.

  Lat put his hand out and laid it on Pa's knee. "Pa, you take on so, like we'd never see each other."

  Pa sighed and didn't answer, but it was as if the current of his love ran strong and clear, unmuddied by his bile. Ma was right. The love had always been there, often clouded over, sometimes shining out, but always there. Remember, for one instance, how Pa smiled when someone said his son took after him. For that matter, love from each to each, seen at this time and prized as not before. A person had to be himself at last, but it was a proud, supporting thing to know his father was a man, a poor man maybe but so solid in his ways, so upright in the sight of men that men looked up to him. A person had to be himself, but it was hard to go.

  Colly said, "Lat'll do all right."

  "That don't worry me," Pa answered. "He's bound to."

  Grandpa was snoozing on his block, snoozing the light, frail sleep of age that was close to sleep itself. His head would bob, and he would straighten, half awake, and look to find out where he was and then begin to sag again.

  "She's cold as the nose on a froze dog." Colly changed the subject as he turned to Lat. "Not like here, and you can bet your boots on that."

  "I don't mind cold."

  "And when you think it can't get any colder or stay cold as it is without puttin' hell out of business, then maybe a warm wind, a chinook, starts puffin' from the mountains, and glory be!" Colly broke off for a minute. "Might be something in that for a cattleman."

  "What?"

  "Closer the bone the sweeter the meat, that's all. Put your brain to it," Colly said, and Lat knew he was grinning to himself and wouldn't give a better answer. He might have put more questions even so, but there was the sound of a horse's hoofs out in the front and then the barking of the dog, the whine of the yard gate, the jingle of spurs. A figure grew out of the dark.

  Lat got up. "It's you, isn't it, Mr. Butler?"

  "Right, suh." Mr. Butler gave good evening to the others. He was a big man but not fat, seeming even bigger in the dark than Lat remembered him by day, a man big and businesslike for all his soft-voiced slur. He wore a wider hat than people did in Oregon. The blacker shadow on his hip would be a gun. "If you all will pahdon me for interruptin'," he said and turned to Lat, "we'll staht at foah in the mawnin'."

  "That's fine."

  "Got my business tidied up. Just wanted to tell you."

  "I'll be ready. This is my father, and Mr. Collins there, and my grandfather."

  Grandpa had woke up. He put out his hand. Mr. Butler shook with him and the others.

  "Set, won't you?" Pa said, getting up so Mr. Butler could have his seat. "We been talking things over. Lat, he's never been on a drive before, you know."

  "Thankin' you, but foah comes early." Mr. Butler spread his hand toward Lat. "He'll make out."

  "If you want a rider, put him on a bronc," Colly said.

  Lat told Colly, to hush him, "They'll all be good riders."

  "He's fair, all right," Pa had to put in. "Can't keep him off of horses. Never could."

  "That's good." Mr. Butler spoke as if he'd have to see. "I reckon we can accommodate him. We have some broncs at Boise with the cattle. Thing now is to reach theah."

  "Two hundred miles or more," Pa said. "You'll set out right away, I mean from Boise?"

  "I'm hopin' so. The boys should have the cows all gathe'ed and road-branded."

  Grandpa stirred himself to say, "Watch them British at Fort Boise."

  "There's no British there now, Pa, nor no fort, either. You're thinkin' on another time," Pa answered.

  "Oh," Grandpa said. He might have been ashamed. "Yes. I s'pose so."

  Mr. Butler looked at Lat. "I'll be waitin' theah in town."

  "All right."

  "Plenty room for you here," Pa said. "Why don't you take the night with us?"

  "I'm right thankful, but my plundah's all in Pendleton. I'll say good night." Before he turned and made off to the jingle of his spurs he bobbed his head at Lat. "In the mawnin', then."

  Over east, the signal star still blinked.

  2

  THEY WERE five days on the trail before they swam the Snake and half a morning more before they reached the trail herd gathered outside Boise City, five days of long and steady going, backw
ards along the road that Pa and Grandpa had helped grind out so long before -from Pendleton up into the Blues and down into the hole of the Grande Ronde and on through Baker City and to the river breaks.

  Mr. Butler had been waiting in the lifting dark, his saddle horse saddled and his pack horse packed, when Lat rode into Pendleton with his own gear lashed on board a mule that Mr. Butler had provided when they had made their deal. "Mawnin', theah," he said and mounted and shook himself before heading out. "Cows and conscience is two things that don't allow for sleep." His eyes swept over Lat's outfit.

  The gear was little enough but still enough. It consisted of a blanket roll, some underwear, a change of pants and shirt, socks, red bandannas, a reefer for the chill of mountain nights. These, along with a razor, a comb, a chunk of soap and two towels, Lat had loaded on the mule, after wrapping in the middle the Colt revolver that Pa had surprised him with and Ma had pleaded with him not to wear because accidents would happen.

  "Why, Mother, a man needs a gun," Pa had said and winked at Lat as if to say they both knew the gun would come out once Ma was lost to sight.

  Outside the pack, tied behind his saddle, he had a yellow slicker and an old suit coat and, strapped below the horn, a sea-grass lariat. These were all except the clothes he wore ­the pants of California cloth, the blue wool shirt, the scuffed­up chaps that might become too hot before the day was done, the spurs, the open vest, the too small, too soft hat of belly gray. The list ticked through his mind while Mr. Butler looked.

  Mr. Butler nodded and heeled his horse, and they creaked into motion, away from the sleeping settlement, along a road left pocked and rutted by the travel which had followed the heavy flood of spring. Nowhere was any sound except the squeak of leather and the scratch of packs and nowhere any light except the shineless coming-on of day.

  Up the long climb to the Blues the thought kept dodging in that he didn't look the cowpuncher, not with his worn-out piece of saddle and his little hat and old, cheap boots. He should have strapped the Colt around him, though people mainly didn't carry arms in Oregon. But it had been hard enough to say goodbye without saying no to Ma, hard enough to listen to Pa's reading of Psalm Twenty-Three and Ma's little prayer last night. It had been hard enough, at the extra-early breakfast she was bound to fix, to see her anxious eyes above the mouth she made to smile, to listen to the little jokes Pa cracked to cover up.