The Job Picks the Man

It was almost as though the curse inducing stream of sod which trickled down on the boy’s head was a sign from God, christening him in humiliating despair immediately following the fading echoes of his father’s unearthly throat rattles. He believed he’d been a pretty good nurse up until the rattle, but he hadn’t known what to do for that once it started, and how could one so young know there was nothing he could do?

Brunner Tschudi hated this sod house with all of his being; he hated the mildewy smell of it, and the moist air of it, and the sifting dirt and dust of it, and along with all of that he hated his father for bringing him to it, and now here he was, stranded alone in it. Though his father’s death had been inevitable, it was still difficult to fathom that he was actually alone. The simple acts of caring for the dying man had afforded Brunner some sense of security, even if the feeling had proven a lie. Unable to withstand the face’s pallid gaze any longer the boy stumbled towards the veiled sunlight at it’s entrance, but outside was as dreary as inside the dark sod house, what with grass in every direction, colorless grasses restlessly churning under unrelenting winds. Desperate for someone the boy climbed to the top of the earthen cabin which housed his father’s now lifeless body. From up there he circled, scanning the seemingly endless prairies in the hopes of a savior, any savior, but his disappointed eyes saw nothing but low, gray skies for as far as they could see, a sky with clouds caught up in frantic, Easterly races. East, where Brunner’s family and friends were. Oh, if only this hut was tall enough that he could step onto one of those clouds and fly away with them! Though his body had somewhat adjusted to the prairie’s biting cold, still a shiver crept up inside Brunner’s too-light jacket. Scanning his eyes ever closer in towards the cabin, and at the corral in particular, he saw his father’s horse standing three-legged, it’s back turned to the harsh wind. Ol’ McClellan was no cloud, but he could be ridden away from here, couldn’t he? But where to ride was the question? And in which direction? East, of course? There was a bit of food put by, but not much. Brunner had his father’s rifle and had been taught to use it, but their steady need to hunt had pushed what game there was far away from the isolated, sod-house cabin. With nothing here but death, Brunner knew he must leave. If only he had someplace to go?

It was a lot of situation to handle for a boy just turned twelve. He had been excited initially, when talk began around the supper table of coming to Wyoming. Of course Brunner had heard of the “cowboys” out west. Who hadn’t? And if his family went west, perhaps he could become a cowboy himself? The excitement of it filled his dreams for a great while even before Father packed up their belongings for the journey, and the excitement had continued on the trip, but like his many other dreams he never saw a cowboy once they got out here, until he had to figure that cowboys were tall tales too, just like the other stories he was told from childhood.

Brunner climbed down off of the sod-house in discouragement. Having cried plenty in the past months, he did not cry now. Instead, he stood outside the door and gazed into the dark cabin without entering. Even if he was strong enough to drag his father out, he would then have to dig a grave. Having helped to cut the sod for the house Brunner knew how difficult that would be, and without his Father’s strength to lead? So he didn’t do that. Instead, the youngster went inside and collected what was useable and edible; an extra shirt of his own and another one of Father’s, a box of ammunition for the rifle, a hunting knife, a section of rope, a frying pan and coffee pot (though there was no more coffee), some smoked antelope, two cans of beans, and lastly a framed picture of his father and mother, taken back east, before they’d left home. The boy packed it all carefully into a tow sack which he set on the dirt floor before returning one last time for a final bedside look at the suddenly grayed, barely recognizable face of his father. The face he saw was not the face he remembered, nor was it the one he wanted to remember, so Brunner turned from it, aghast. He picked up his sack then and did not look back. Outside he stooped to fasten the buffalo-hide door to its pegs. The dirt cabin his father had been so proud of building would do for his crypt, a crypt which nature would soon enough melt down around his body into a proper grave.

Brunner paused at the wagon, though. Here was a decision to make. It was far easier for him to harness ’Ol McClellan to the wagon than it was for him to throw a saddle on the big horse, but the wagon was much slower, and was limited in where it could go. As much as he hated to Brunner would have to leave it behind, but the trade-off to that was to only make camp in places that had something Brunner could climb on top of in order to throw the heavy saddle up on McClellan’s back, a stump or some such thing, and those opportunities were not always so easy to find out on the prairie, though that was not really true either, Brunner knew. The prairies only looked level, when in fact there were gullies, depressions, and sometimes even entirely hidden canyons where a whole army of Cheyenne or Arapaho could lie in waiting.

Regardless, there was a perfect stump here in the corral for Brunner’s purpose. Using it, he soon had McClellan successfully saddled and bridled, the big horse proving patient through the boy’s struggles, as always. Once satisfied with the riggings, and with no place to put the rifle, the boy took it to hand as he climbed into the saddle. A simple touch of the heel led horse and boy out through the corral gate and onto the open prairie, the boy feeling a guilty twinge at leaving the gate open behind them, the twinge enough to show that his father had raised him right. The horse, for his part in this tragedy, felt absolutely nothing at all, and passed wind to prove it.

Four days later not much had changed as horse and boy continued their crooked ramblings. Non-raining rainclouds still raced across leaden skies, and dingy grasses still rustled quietly below them. The difference was that Brunner was hungry now, hungry and scared rather than hungry and sad. The beans and antelope were gone. He had the rifle, but he saw no game. The only signs of life he observed drifted high above him, black specks sprinkled on the gray sky circling, watching, and waiting. Where he stopped was not a particularly good spot for camping, but Brunner knew little of such things. There was a rocky copse, and that was good enough for him. It was the sort of place he needed, one where he could climb up to unsaddle or saddle Ol’ McClellan as occasion demanded, so he did so, unsaddling the weary horse before sitting himself down upon the same rock he’d just used for a ladder, finding it a satisfactory place to contemplate what to do next. With nothing here to break the wind he soon found himself shivering, nor was there water here for himself or for the horse. In fact, there was nothing here at all to attract a man, other than a ready supply of campfire fuel. Brunner wished he wasn’t here. He looked again to the sky, to its racing clouds, but his wishes brought him nothing, so he commenced to collecting the nearby fuel, taking care to reach for the dried buffalo patties, only.

Once collected the fuel pile was entirely too large for a boy alone out on the flat prairie, but it‘s blaze comforted him in the night. And having used neither reflectors nor windbreaks, the fire made by the pile was available to be seen or otherwise detected for quite a ways out on the wide-open flatlands. So naturally it was.

Brunner was awakened in the night with a start, and with a stomp. She looked quite lovely to him in the dying firelight, and the first thought she inspired from the hungry boy was quite naturally to find the rifle and shoot her, but he was not man enough yet to do it. She was too young and pretty for that anyways, and he was too lonely, so he named her instead, an unoriginal name for a cow… Betsy.

She was not really a cow though, Betsy wasn’t. Not yet. She was more obviously a calf, and a young one at that, which explained her curiousness at walking so brazenly right up to his campfire. But cow or not, she was someone besides Ol’ McClellan for him to talk to, so Brunner welcomed her into camp, finding some rope in his sack to picket her next to the horse with before falling back asleep.

When next he woke it was to the same gray clouds in the same gray sky, but that was not all. There was the neighing of a horse, one too far away to be McClellan, as McClellan was picketed in close, so Brunner sat up for a look-see. Fifty feet from camp sat a rider on a pony looking inward towards the camp the same as Brunner looked out, rider and pony producing the classic silhouette of a western hero stark against a rising sun. A cowboy! A real one. The first such that Brunner had ever seen!

A bit ashamed of his poor situation, Brunner did not immediately call out, but waited, studying the cowboy even as he was being studied. The rider’s pony was small, much smaller than Ol’ McClellan, and the cowboy himself appeared barely older than Brunner was, though his lazy self-assurance presented a more worldly attitude. The rider sported the classic, wide-brimmed “cowboy” hat along with a calico shirt whose bright colors made Brunner deliciously envious of its high style. Below the shirt canvas jeans were tucked smartly into sharp-toed, lace up cattle boots which were in turn stuffed into large, wooden stirrups, but what mostly caught Brunner’s attention was the empty, over-sized holster on the young man’s belt and the handgun which filled up his outstretched hand, a hand which happened to be pointed directly at Brunner.

”Whacha doin’ with that there critter?” The cowboy called out. “It’s our’n.”

Brunner stood up to answer. On a whim, he raised his hands, showing the rider that he was unarmed. “I ain’t doin’ nothin’ with her. She just wandered in.”

Seeing that his “rustler” was just a boy alone, the cowboy holstered his pistol. “Looks a mite suspicious, you havin’ her tied up and all.” The cowboy let loose a black stream of tobacco after that.

Brunner only shrugged. “I figgered she was somebody’s, but I didn’t know whose?”

The cowboy clucked his little pony on into Brunner’s camp without an invite, quickly assessing the pitifulness of it as he came. “What are y‘all doin’ out here all alone like this? You wanted somewhere’s?”

”I reckon not.”

”Not even a bedroll, huh? I think y’all had best come along with me. Wilber’ll have questions for you. He likes to know about ever‘ thang.”

”Wilber?”

”Wilber Kate, foreman of the Five Star.” The cowboy did not have to add “you big dummy” to the end of his sentence, as it was implied by his uppity tone. “Now saddle up, Soddy. I ain’t got all day.”

Brunner did as he was told, packing his gear into his sack, and then guiding McClellan up to the big rock he would use to get him saddled. “Can I bring my rifle?”

”I reckon, but don’t point it my way.”

Once aboard Brunner kicked McClellan forward. “Say? How’d you know I was a Soddy?”

”Hell! You must be. This whole camp smells like dirt, and it’s ground into you, too.”

Looking down at himself, Brunner did not argue. He reckoned it was so.

”You hungry?”

Brunner’s stomach growled at the question. “Uh huh.”

”There’s coffee and beans at chuck. I’ll see you get some.” The cowboy freed the calf of her rope and used it to slap her back the way they had come. Without a signal the pony began herding “Betsy” in the correct direction, forcing McClellan into a trot to keep up.

”How far is it?” Brunner asked.

”Couple miles.”

”Sheesh. How’d you ever find us?”

”Saw the calf’s tracks leading this way firstly, then I smelled your fire.”

They rode in silence for awhile. Brunner saw the dust first, off in the cold distance, then the bobbing shadow of a great herd beneath it. Excited, he rode closer to the cowboy, and stretched himself taller in the saddle to see. “Say? Did you really smell sod-dirt back there in my camp?”

”Yep.”

”How’d you do that?”

”Grew up a Soddy myself. I know the smell, Pardner.” With that the cowboy kicked spurs to his pony, leaving young Brunner hard pressed to keep up.