D. Kirts Lewis

They were honest men sitting tall in the saddle high up on my ridge so I wasn’t fearful of them as I had been of many. There’s a fine line between honor and contempt but even at a distance you can get a good feel for a man by the way he sits a saddle and any jury would have agreed with me, they were honest men.

Papa never took to me having much to do with the ranching end of life. He always thought a good education and learning the gentle ways would afford me comfort, but comfort wasn’t what I was after, and one of those men up there on that ridge would bring him around to my way of thinking.

We owned a small ranch not more that a two day ride around the outside, and just enough profit to make a bi-monthly trip to town for a few necessities such as flour, salt and baking soda, and if we had a mild winter and most of the calves lived to tell about it, we afforded ourselves a little sugar and cocoa for an occasional treat. Mama liked to spoil us and Papa loved chocolate.

Now long before those honest men ever showed up on that ridge we had some problems. Papa always kept two men on, even during the worst of winters, just so he knew he’d have help when the winter lost its grip and spring started making mud and calves. Most men stayed a year or two then signed on to some larger outfit and we never saw them again unless they happened to hit the mercantile the same day we did and being we were only there a half-dozen times a year, that wasn’t likely.

Papa had a way of picking the good ones — the ones he knew would respect his family and follow his lead without question. He’d teach them the ways of ranching knowing full well what he was teaching would open up a whole different world to them and they’d be gone but he didn’t mind. I think he liked teaching. He liked knowing he could help somebody on to a better life just like he wanted a better life for me.

I was fourteen when Papa’s choice of men fell slack. Mama had passed in the winter and so had the baby boy she had tried so hard to deliver. I look back now and I wonder how Papa ever made it through such a tragedy being a man so deep in the love of family. I put his picture to my chest and cry when I think of that strong and loving man and I hope that, just maybe, it was the love he had for me that kept him going as long as he did. I don’t mean to sound selfish with his love but I needed just a little more than Mama ever did. I wasn’t his blood.

I was five when Papa married my Mama and it took a while for me to warm up to this stranger that was sleeping in my mama’s room. He bought me penny candy one time in town and he fashioned a doll out of corn shucks but I still wasn’t too sure about his place in my life. It wasn’t until I came down with a bad case of the measles that I decided that this man would have a place in my heart. When Mama tired from cooling me and trying to comfort me, this man took over. He was gentle and never left my side, and I recall him reading to me while I drifted in and out of sleep. When I was coming around to life again, he picked me up from my cot and carried me out to watch the sun set and that next morning he cooked me pancakes with blueberry jam. He’d only been in the house a few weeks but he knew what would bring a smile to my face. I stepped around him a few times after but only to tease him and make him chase me. He was my papa now and forever and he didn’t seem to care whose blood was running through my veins.

Mama was just seventeen when she met a man by the name of Bloomfield Harris. Everybody called him Bloom for short but I don’t think it had anything to do with flowers. Bloom had one thing on his mind and it sure wasn’t what was best for Mama. Bloom wanted the ranch that everybody knew Mama was soon to inherit. Now like I already said, it wasn’t a big ranch but a man could hide a few head of stolen cattle or horses then turn around and sell them without working up a sweat, and that’s exactly what Bloom intended to do when he bedded my Mama and made sure I was going to be the glue that held her to him. When Bloom stole a few head of horses from the wrong rancher and ended up stretching rope, Mama and I were on our own for a while. Now that rancher knew Mama didn’t know about Bloom’s activities so he took it upon himself to help her out and found a few good trusting men to bring our ranch back to profit. Papa was one of those men.

Hank Stocker took the lead and before we knew it those men were herding honest cattle to the stockyard and bringing home honest money for Mama to use as she saw fit. I never paid these men much mind because I was usually helping Mama with the milking or playing in the loft with a few friends I conjured up when it took more than one of me to play a game, but I started to notice Mama’s demeanor when Hank was within shouting distance of the house. She’d reach up and tighten the ribbon that held her curly hair in place and smooth her worn dress of wrinkles as best she could. She started smiling more when he was nearby and once she offered him a piece of cornbread long after breakfast was cleared from that table. I thought maybe Hank Stocker had told her a funny story and she would recall it from time to time when she heard his voice, but knowing what I know now, I’m pretty sure Mama was falling in love.

Hank was cautious in his dealing with Mama and was never in her company unless me or one of the other men was within sight, but he smiled a good bit for a man with a hard job. I watched Mama and Hank smile and talk in the company of others from that spring until well into fall and never once did I say much more than howdy to him and he allowed me the distance. That distance was narrowed to just a table or a wall between us when Mama put on that new dress and said I do and for a time I didn’t much care for the arrangement. Now I didn’t pitch a fit or pack my kit for a quick getaway — I just stopped saying howdy altogether. I spoke to Mama in a whisper and did my chores and spent my free time held up in that loft with my conjured up friends and wondered who this man really was, and then I got the measles and Hank Stocker became my papa.

That spring after Mama and the baby passed, Papa hired two men. I didn’t care for either of them but Papa had never been wrong before. Silky had a sly look about him and I wondered if that was his real name or what he had come to be called because he soon proved to be smooth as silk about cheating a man out of his money. Silky smelled bad and always had tobacco dripping out of his mouth which he’d occasionally spit on the ground not worried the least about where it landed. Chas didn’t seem to mind Silky’s smell or the fact that sometimes that tobacco spit found its way to his own boot toe. They made a perfect pair — Silk and Slime is what I took to calling them but Papa made sure I didn’t say it to their faces.

Now Silk and Slime didn’t much like it but as Papa struggled with the death of Mama and the baby, I took over dealing out some of the chores. They’d cuss me when they thought I couldn’t hear and they’d go out of their way to do a chore ass backwards when it was a lot less trouble to do it right and be done with it. By fall that year, Papa started seeing what was going on around him and wasn’t much liking it. He fired those two men just before roundup and we came close to paying for it two-fold over. Those two men came back on us and stole most of the young stock and pushed those yearlings up the river and sold them right out from under us. It’s hard to prove whose beef is whose when it’s never had a hot iron put against its side but I saw this coming.

As soon as Silk and Slime packed their gear and headed south, I got Papa mounted and we took that two day ride and when we’d come up on a yearling that didn’t have a brand we notched his hoof and ear then make a little drawing showing our marks. We did this on thirty head and had thirty different pictures. Now most would wonder why not just heat iron and put our mark on their sides: We weren’t as much worried about losing the cattle as we were about losing track of those two men.

Papa, being in a better state of mind, stayed back and hired two more hands while I took the train north. I was sitting on the far side of that auction when one of our cows came up for bid. With pictures in hand I got that auctioneer’s attention and showed him my artwork and he compared it to the beef he was offering up for sale and sent word to the sheriff. I spent the better part of the day searching those stock pens before I had all but one of our cows identified and pulled off the block and reregistered and that young deputy was right there beside me the whole time. He seemed to like my little pictures and kept the two that showed a likeness of Silk and Slime and before I collected fair money from the auction for that beef, Silk and Slime were having their first county bought meal. My last stop before boarding the train was the jail house so I could thank that young deputy for his help, and he gave me a soft hug, and wished me a safe journey.

Papa was more than proud of me when I rode into the yard two days later with hard cash for our troubles but he still had a mind to send me east for schooling and I had to figure out a plan to put his plan on hold and hopefully take it apart altogether. That all fell into place that next spring, but not the way I had hoped.

Papa’s new hands, Davis and Reese, were the best we’d had in a while and branding was done in short order. They took their orders from Papa or me and didn’t seem to mind my age. We had a good start on a new barn before the snow started drifting and enough stores in the house to see us through whatever winter decided to throw at us. I took my turn on the range with Papa at my side just as the winter was giving up its hold and he thought I did pretty well considering the weather and the change in the menu. I took this bit of praise and turned it on him convincing him that I could just as easily ride alongside Davis or Reese and get a better feel for how things really worked out there without him stoking the fire and pulling my bedroll tight around me when the cold wind tried to cut through. A few miles from the yard, he gave in.

Reese drew the short straw and had me by his side the next time out. He never complained and he helped me with a few things Papa never thought I needed to know — things like making sure the spot you picked was free of snakes and stickers before you squatted down and how to spit so no matter how windy it might be you didn’t end up getting that dust right back all mixed up with slobber.

I watched the first birth on the range that spring and helped when Reese had to turn a calf. He handed me his pistol when I told him it was something I needed to learn and I put that cow out of her misery while he hefted that newborn calf up and put her across his saddle for easy transport. We were a mile out and just over a little ridge when the smell of smoke caught my attention. I turned to Reese and he nodded. I high-tailed it toward the house and got there just in time to see Davis carry my father clear of the flames and lay him on the ground by the well.

It seems the stove pipe had fallen and caught fire on the lace curtains Mama had loved so much. Papa must have tried to save the house but couldn’t save himself. Most of his clothes were missing and his skin looked like a pig on a spit just before the party gets underway. He was holding Mama’s picture when I dropped down beside him and took his hand. He turned my hand over and looked at the calluses I’d earned doing honest work and I think he tried to smile. He couldn’t speak but just as the pain subsided and he lost grip on my hand and latched hold of God’s, I could see what he was trying to say by the look in his eyes. He was a proud man that still wanted the best for a child that wasn’t his blood but had a big piece of his heart. He had given me the go ahead to decide for myself and now I just had to figure a way to make him see I’d made the right decision.

Our little ranch made the news that month and the death of my papa spread throughout the county. I had cards and letters from people I never laid eyes on before but they knew my papa and they knew that anyone that had him in their life for even a short while would suffer the loss. One of these letters came from that young deputy I met up north. I guess he and Papa had crossed paths a time or two but neither one of them thought it was something I didn’t already know. I wrote him back and told him the state of the ranch and what I planned on doing with my life and he wrote me again saying he’d rather ranch then deputy and asked if I needed any hands. I wrote him and told him that Reese and Davis would be leaving in the fall and that I needed a few men to help me through the winter and on into spring.

The same morning Davis and Reese packed their kits and with well wishes and hardy hugs bid their goodbyes and headed south to better weather that young deputy, along with three strong men, was making his way to my ranch. With a big pot of stew on the stove, a cast iron full of cornbread in the oven, I was enjoying yet another sunset from my new-built front porch when I looked up and saw those riders on my ridge. A few cards and letters and my brief encounter with that young deputy had me wondering if my fifteen years of age was enough to make him smile. I reached up and pulled my ribbon tight to hold my curls in place, smoothed the front of my shirt and made sure my britches were on straight and watched those men on my ridge. Those men paused briefly as the sun put on a show of fire behind them and I thought of my papa. I wouldn’t take that train east but I would have an education just the same. I knew from the written words and soft hug from that deputy that I would learn the love between a man and woman and with my deputy’s help I would make this spread the best little two day around ranch in the territory.