Black Wind Pass Read online

“Buffalo Horn Creek flows all summer, mostly,” she told Carrick as though he was talking about the land and not who owned it. “It’s the most reliable water on the range. It goes a bit through Lazy F and some through Double J but the prime grazing is here, the old Bar C land from the old days. Each ranch wants to buy me out now, or push me out, and they are each trying to push each other around as well. Even though, after all that has happened, we don’t have that much range land left, we have the best access to the creek. Francis tries to be charming on some days; on others he isn’t very nice at all. He is the most baffling man I ever met. He has come by almost every week, and Reb is usually waiting for him. I think she enjoys scaring off the poor man. Double J offered more money; they can afford to, being so large. People like the Crowleys threaten our riders constantly. That’s why most of them quit.”

  The words “old Bar C” struck a nerve. Carrick decided to wait and see. For all he knew, the girl had more rifles in the house and was watching him. But Carrick knew how big Bar C had been when he left. The valley could hold a dozen ranches the size it had been. “Don’t you have lots of open range out here?”

  Jessie laughed sourly. “In Wyoming, open range goes to the one who is the strongest. Double J pretty well pushed my men from the big old north pasture and Lazy F moved in some from the south after that when some of our riders left us, so we didn’t really have much land left for grazing. What we have is prime, as I said, but there’s not as much as we need to be a big ranch and give them the run for their money Reb wants. Of course, having a crew would help, but we lost most of them after the incident in town. One of the Double J men got drunk and shot my foreman. My crew fired back and, by the time we were done, I lost three men dead. Five more were wounded. Double J lost about the same, but they had the money to hire more hands. Gunslingers more than cowboys they were.

  “It was Reb and I and a handful of riders until they figured Double J was going to come out on top. They left. Now it’s Reb and I, one good hand who has been loyal, and a few broken-down old riders who ride for us because they had nowhere else to go. They can’t do much but they try. The young men come and go. Sometimes they come for Rebecca; those leave quickly. Sometimes they are looking for a place to start over. Then they move on.

  “We get a few horses to auction and sell a few head of cattle to the railroad, but it’s barely gonna keep us alive. If I had a head for business, I’d have sold out. I hate to give in to either of them. The land has special meaning to Reb. She knows every rock and bush, and every inch of it is something worth fighting for, to her. Reb will never want to sell it. As you have seen, my niece is a woman of very strong convictions.” Her smile blunted the meaning of the words. “It doesn’t help that they keep coming after us. Next thing you know, those Crowley boys from Double J will come up with their own threats.”

  “Don’t think so.” The finality in his voice made her brow furrow.

  “Why not?”

  “Two of ’em are dead and the other got his head busted.”

  “When?” She almost shouted. “I hadn’t heard. Now, wait. They rode by here the other day, talking about how the barn might burn in the next storm and saying things that are threats only you can never get them for it. How do you know?” As with all who knew range gossip’s exaggerations, Jess Lewis was not going to be taken in by foolish chatter, especially from an unsettling newcomer who could hardly know the latest news.

  “I did it.”

  There was a very long silence. He could hear the wind in the oaks. Jess Lewis was looking at him closely, as if she could see blood on him. He stared back, not the least ashamed. He was aware the door opened again. The younger woman must have been listening.

  “What is it, Aunt Jess?” she said, approaching.

  “Your friend says he killed a couple Crowleys.”

  “Nice if somebody did something around here.” Intense eyes turned on him. “And you are not my friend but did you really or are you telling tall cowboy stories?”

  “Killed ’em.” He described the dead ones and told how it happened. Women were funny. Killin’ sometimes made sense and sometimes not. He wanted them to know he didn’t have much choice.

  The women exchanged glances. “Jeff Crowley had his eye on Reb,” Jessie said. “Not just his eye. He also said some things a man shouldn’t say.”

  “He ain’t ever gonna do ’em,” Carrick replied.

  “Oh!” Jessie exclaimed. “The bread is burning.” She rushed inside.

  Reb followed and stopped. “Coffee should be ready any minute so you might as well come in and drink it.” Her expression was unreadable. “I didn’t make it for the horse,” she added. Her tone remained defiant, challenging. She went in.

  Carrick was in no rush. The land held memories of wonder. The house was a different story. It was already plain that whatever homecoming he thought he might receive after ten years was not happening. Mulling over who these women could be related to from his family—he could not picture them selling this land to strangers, given how much the land meant to his uncle and family—and wondering where all of his own relations had gone, he put Beast in the barn, took off the saddle, and made sure the horse had fresh hay. Then a thought struck. He walked away from the buildings to where a few trees stood near a black wrought iron fence that stood askew. It was then that he saw what he should have expected.

  Stone markers told the tale. Samuel and Virginia and their son Morris. Died 1862. Morris had been barely one year old when he left. Poor boy—gone before he ever knew he was here. Carrick had never seen him. Uncle Joshua and Aunt Pauline were there as well; it had been their land. So were Bert and Andrew, their children. All four of them had died in 1862 as well. His family was now nothing more than a row of stones that were in front of the ones from his grandfathers and grandmothers. Nine long years ago. All gone. Like the family had never existed. He wondered if any of them had ever read the letters that were such a labor for him to scribble in pencil by the light of a campfire. Somebody could have found a way to write to him. Then again, if something happened to wipe out a family, there were probably other things to do than write letters to somebody away in the Civil War. Back then, there were no Olivers or Joneses with big ranches and bigger ambitions. No Lewis women talking about the “old” Bar C. Bar C was the king because the Carrick family worked the hardest as all the ranches shared the vast open range that was so endless nobody cared much about legal boundaries. Back then, there were no Eastern markets or railroad to offer the temptation to get rich by pushing out everyone else. Ranchers were rivals, but they were friends. Guess all that was gone. The land did not look much different, but everything on it had changed; he was a stranger on his home range.

  He drew his gun and spun around at the noise behind him. The young woman gasped, dropping the tin cup and its coffee on the grass, already starting to burn in late June. She started to get angry, then checked her rage when she saw the lines of emotion etched upon his face. She looked over his shoulder. Comprehension dawned.

  “Carrick, you said you were?” Her eyes went from the stones to the man. She swallowed hard. She seemed uncharacteristically unsure of herself. “That’s the same as them, isn’t it? Was this your home you were coming back to?”

  “My kin. My uncle’s ranch back then. My father, his brother, was a carpenter and handyman. We lived in a little shack over there, by that big old oak. Gone now, like all of them. I left in ’61 because I was afraid to miss out on all that excitement in the war. Biggest worry I had the day I left was that I’d be home quick because the war would be over so soon. Never knew goodbye would be forever.”

  “I’m sorry. We keep the graves as neat as we can. Don’t seem right not to. I guess that’s why the name sounded familiar; I couldn’t quite recall. Guess it’s good I didn’t shoot you. Anyhow, my ma’s there, too. So is my uncle, Aunt Jess’s husband.” He had noticed the small stones in the back he could not read from the edge of the plot.

  “How’d my family die? Indi
ans? Nobody wrote back, but I never knew if my letters even got through. I never knew they were gone until right now.”

  “Don’t think so. I’d have heard about that. Aunt Jess would know. She moved out here when I was a girl. I think she knew the family. She already lived here when we moved from Tennessee. We moved out here in 1862. I was twelve years old. Your kin were already gone. Guess I never thought this was somebody else’s home, even with the graves and all. I think it might have been sickness because Aunt Jess told me they had to burn a lot of things. The house and this range: I always thought of it as mine.”

  There was, again, a strong emphasis on the last word.

  He took a minute. He knew he was as likely to see stones as family, but there was still sort of a hope for a scene like in some stage play or some story book. Even with all that happened in those years before he left, there was still a sense of loss. There should have been someone. With all that family he left behind, one of them should have survived. It wasn’t fair. So many things he always wanted to tell them: the charge at Shiloh; riding for Sherman. Now, it would never matter to anyone. He always lived by himself; now he knew he was truly alone in the world.

  Time to set that aside. Death was part of life. The war taught that. Hang all if he was going to cry in front of a girl that had wanted to shoot him a few minutes ago. Reb touched his arm lightly. He almost jumped with surprise. Her face looked softer.

  Her deep brown eyes were large. A man could lose himself looking into them, he thought. “I’m sorry. I’m sure it hurts to find out everyone you loved is gone. I know I can’t imagine what it would feel like to lose Aunt Jess. I lost all the rest and I can’t ever lose her. Let’s go ask Aunt Jess what happened; she’ll know for sure.”

  “So you are indeed Joshua Carrick’s nephew,” Jessie Lewis remarked when Carrick’s cup had been re-filled with strong cowboy coffee. “I thought when you rode up there was a resemblance, even though it’s been a long time since I’ve heard that name on this range. He always said you’d be back. Think he called you too stubborn to get killed. There was a fever that passed through in the spring of 1862. Took them all in only three or four days. My husband, too. He and I came west in 1860 because we knew the war was coming and we wanted to be as far from it as we could get. We moved around a bit trying to find the right place. He came to ride for Josh in late ’61. You were already gone. I never knew why the fever spared me. I stayed on to run the place. Someone had to. My brother Pete, Reb’s pa, got killed at Shiloh. Reb and Libby, my sister-in-law, came out here after that. Libby died in ’64. She was sickly. She never liked it out here; she never recovered from Pete’s death. It’s been me and Reb now these seven years. Reb turned into about the best rider west of the Mississippi. She can shoot better than about any man, too, even if she is a little too anxious to give everyone a live demonstration of that. We showed the boys women can run a ranch.” She paused. “At least we did for a while.”

  For a minute Carrick thought she was going to cry. He wondered why. He was the one who just found out his entire family was dead and he didn’t really have a home any more. She looked up at him, trying to be brave, though something was clearly eating at her heart. “I guess everything ends. Some dreams are too good to come true.” There was a pause as her eyes searched his impassive face.

  Apparently he gave nothing away, because she spoke again. “If you are a Carrick, the way that I remember things when they all died, I guess I need to ask you: What did you come back for? And I guess what matters most to Reb and me: What are you gonna do?”

  His face showed his bafflement.

  “Out here, Carrick, in ’62 there weren’t lawyers and papers. Josh maybe had fifty dollars in gold and silver. He had this ranch. He was the last to die. He told me it was my home as long as I liked. I stayed because I had no place else to go, and this range, this place, they had meaning for me. Josh never sold it to me or nothing like that. No papers. I told the hands Josh left it to me and they accepted it because the ranch needed someone to run it. So did everyone else. Don’t think there was ever anyone asked a question except whether we were going to change the brand. I didn’t because somebody wanted money for that and I wasn’t going to waste it. What I mean to say is that I don’t have a paper that says I own this. I guess the law would say it’s yours by blood. I knew there was a Carrick in the war so the first few years I sort of figured this day would come, but when the war ended and nobody showed up, I figured it was gonna be Reb’s and mine forever.” She was fighting tears, blinking rapidly. Her hand tapped the table repeatedly to contain her emotions. “Guess that’s never going to be.”

  “Aunt Jess! This belongs to us! You can’t . . . give it away. Not to him!” Reb’s outrage was building fast as Carrick put up a hand to stop the coming explosion.

  “Your sweat, your range,” Carrick said, slowly and clearly, looking Jess in the eyes to be sure she believed him. “Jess, Reb, last thing I’m going to do is tell you two ladies that you have to pack up and leave your home. Not now, not ever. It’s yours. I came back here because there wasn’t no place better to go. Not lookin’ for nothin’. Not expectin’ nothin’. Wouldn’t be expectin’ anything even if they were alive. World moved on fast after the war; some of us moved a mite slower. Home’s where you go when there’s no place else that matters, and nobody anywhere cares what you do and you’re in a spot like that Prodigal Son fella in the Bible. I can see everything here is different from the way it was when I left. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m not taking your land away from you and Reb. You want something on a piece of paper, I’ll sign it without readin’ it. I’ll sign a blank page. Don’t matter now. It’s yours. Got that?”

  “Are you going to stay?”

  “Jessie, ma’am, don’t rightly know right now. I don’t know at all. All of this—my family gone like that—is something I can’t explain real well. I think I knew but I didn’t want to know. It’s like when a shell goes off near and you feel empty and floating and you’re alive but you don’t really feel anything yet and you don’t know what’s comin’ because it’s too soon for the pain to set in.” He got up. The house felt confining. He needed to get outside.

  “If you don’t mind, since I guess I should ask your permission, I think maybe I’ll take Beast and ride a bit. Been a while since I seen the land. You think, maybe, when you live out here that the land is ground and rocks and trees. You look at it every day, but you don’t see it. Then you see it in your mind when there’s flies around the dead or the guns are booming or all you want is some blizzard to turn the whole world clean, white, and silent. Been waitin’ a while to see it. Nothin’ like this range anywhere. Guess I need to be alone a while.” He set down the drained cup, face averted to avoid letting anyone see what he knew were the beginnings of tears. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  “Stop back for dinner,” said Reb in a conciliatory tone, something like a smile trying to make itself seen as she came around the table and impulsively touched his arm. “I’ll make biscuits. I make good biscuits.”

  Carrick’s head nodded as though he was having a conversation with someone other than her. There was that fool thing with his eyes getting wet again. In the silence, he eventually focused on her expectant face. Being there for dinner seemed to matter to her. “I will do that, Miss Reb. Thank you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The rugged beauty of the land filled him as he rode. He’d seen the ocean; seen New Orleans when he was in the hospital; seen the Texas plains where the wind never stopped and the cattle never ended. Nothing held a candle to this Wyoming wild prairie. Each hill was a memory. Their stories were once his. Hawks glided above him in the serenity that preceded their descent to kill. Groups of horses, as wild as the wind, grazed by the edge of the clumps of trees. Somewhere bears were sleeping the drowsy hours of daylight away; he recalled the time he woke some up wondering if they wanted to play. The wind ruffled Beast’s mane. The horse seemed to like it. Wild Wyoming wind. Carrick dism
ounted and led the gray to some grass. Beast grazed.

  It was peaceful, if not silent. Crows were complaining about something in the distance, but that was hardly unusual. They were only silent when there was danger near. The wind moaned a bit as it whipped through branches overhead. Carrick looked and felt and smelled. So long away had he been that it was foreign; so long had he lived there that the more he inhaled of the land, the more he felt himself becoming whole once again. He set the black, flat-crowned hat on a rock and let the sun sink into him, remembering to look for snakes that might also like to sun themselves on the rock. The Wyoming wind blew upon him. For a time, he drifted with it. He almost thought he could hear the hawks way up as they flapped before soaring. He was certain he could smell the mix of rocks and brush and dust that carried in the wind. The smell of the land. The smell of home.

  He’d ridden it all as a kid. They had gone up as far as the Powder River country once, when the army and the Indians were more or less not at war with each other. Uncle Joshua had taken him past the canyons carved for the wind and rain; where there were more shades of red and brown in the layers of rock than in the colors artists used to make paintings. There was a waterfall a few miles north that sprang from a straight rock wall twenty feet high. He tried to climb it once as a kid and got about ten feet off the ground before giving up. He wondered now if it was a stream or a trickle. The mountains way to the west were something he never tired of seeing as a kid. Every day he’d go to Cougar Rock and look, to see the first day when snow would crown the tops of the mountains. He could never understand how it could be blazing hot on the ranch and the snow would be falling way up there, but that was Wyoming. It was a place that let a boy grow strong; it was a place where a boy needed to grow strong.

  Nothing much better than being a boy on a ranch. The chores seemed to take forever, but they didn’t. He recalled their faces. Dead faces. After ten years of killing and death, it didn’t feel the way he thought it would to know they were gone. There was frustration that he would never get answers, and a hollow feeling that everything of the past he knew was so far long gone it didn’t even matter anymore. He never did really cry. Too much death; too many things happened at the end. He drifted to a time and a place that were never going to appear again anywhere outside of his head.