Culling the Deadwood
Part 1
Fall 1874: The Black Hills
The trick, he thought, was in the direction. As long as he could look east and see stumps, open space, and downed trees, he could find it in himself to add to the sight with one more felled tree, one more yard gained.
Looking to the west, at the expanse below the ridge stretching thick and black all the way to the darkening sky…that sight made Al want to turn tail and head back to cobblestone streets and brick buildings, until the thought of arrest warrants sweetened the current view.
He wiped the sweat-soaked black hair out of his eyes and turned his back on all that still waited. The coming labor would be upon them soon enough. Focus on the task at hand, that was the key, he thought. Cuttin' throats or cuttin' trees, man just had to keep his mind on the job, not get spooked by what still waited up ahead.
"Dan! We fell one more, clean the scrub to that stump over there, and call it a day. Sound good?"
The long-haired mountain man growled low in his throat. Sound good to never set sight on a goddamn fuckin' tree again, he thought to himself. "Yeah, I think I got about one more fuckin' cut in me."
"You tiring on me, Dan? Gonna let an old man best you on the fuckin' field of battle?"
Al's appearance belied his taunting tone. His hands, wrapped with flannel, were covered in weeping new blisters even as the old ones callused over. His shoulders and back throbbed like hell, underused muscles protesting mightily. He kept hoping each morning would bring improvement, although sleep had been getting less comfortable night by night. There were times every part of his body felt like an aching tooth, dull constant pain with the occasional flash of sharp. He noticed, though, that he was lasting a little longer each day.
Could have been worse, he thought. Climate and weather, along with the scars of past wildfire, had cut a wide swathe through the forest. A lot of the tall pines filling the gulch were just deadwood, dry and brittle, ready to fall after a couple of well-placed hatchet cuts and a few ax swings. The further they worked their way into the gulch, the easier it was to see how much progress they had made, if they looked right.
Dan could hear Al's breathing getting more ragged. He felt bad now about complaining. Boss didn't chatter about unnecessary shit like age, but he figured he was at least a good ten, fifteen years younger than Al. Dan was sick to death of the repetitious cutting, chopping , and felling, clearing out and starting over, but his body didn't seem to mind as much as Al's did.
Reminds me of the good parts of home,he thought. His bear-like body meant plenty of power went into each swing of his ax arm, each jerking haul of a trunk. He still kept flannel wrapped around his hands, but he could tell the already thick skin was building leathery calluses against the ax handle.
Not that Al lacked in strength. Their run-ins with the heathen dirt-worshipers were proof of that. For a man not particularly large, he could put his wiry strength together with his fighting skills and bring down a savage in a one-on-one, as long as he was close enough to wield his knife.
He'd never cleared a back forty acres, though, of buried rock and centuries of underground root, sun-up to sun-down. Dan had run from that shit as soon as he was old enough to throw in with road robbers, but the working, the fighting the land, had formed him into the man he was, as much as he had formed scrub land into rows of corn and beans.
"This ain't no fuckin' contest. Let's just get the fucker down and hauled."
90 minutes later, axes freshly sharpened, they felled and hauled the last tree of the day. Dan gathered the axes and hatchets, setting to honing their blades to knife-blade sharpness again. Al got coffee going over the campfire, cutting slices off a haunch of deer killed and cooked the day before. Rough-ground meal, mixed with spring water and fat from the deer, was thrown into a black iron pan, cooking up to a semblance of a hoe-cake. The two men ate in silence, and thought of better meals.
.
.
They saw white men every now and then, hard-looking folk not looking to make friends, wanting their own patch of land cleared enough for a tent and a fire. Most congregated closer to the streams, barely scraping out enough space for a bedroll and room to tie a mule. They came and went. Some stayed in the Black Hills forever, felled themselves by heathens, or greedy whites, or their own stupidity.
Then there were the white men in blue and brass, talking of treaties and heathen ownership and rights. Men of integrity, it seemed, immune to the rumors of gold in the steams and ridges, just waiting to make a man rich beyond imagining. A small detachment of General Crook's men kept them on their toes, illegal squatters fading into the standing trees when the sound of horses and military men filled the air. The whites they found were chased out of Sioux land, Army guns at their backs.
Al had started coming back from trips to the nearest trading post hauling bottles of liquor with more basic provisions. Here and there, white men had started making their way to the clearing, paying in coin or yellow dust for a shot from a grimy glass. A couple would wield an ax for a drink, the excitement of standing in an icy stream looking for gold glimmers having worn thin.
The day General Crook came through a final time, he and his men scattered their campsite and gave them minutes to gather their gear at gunpoint and head back to more legal territory. Al figured by then, he and Dan had cleared enough land for a fair number of miner's tent sites. There was room as well for a couple of large tents offering liquor, pussy, and a few games of chance. The General could chase them back to Cheyenne, or Kingdom Come for that matter, but he couldn't put the trees back up, or make the gold go away.
Dan finished tying his gear to his mount that day, hiding the smile on his weary mug. He thought he'd started smelling snow the past two nights, and was ready to call it a season. The buckskin pouch of gold flakes and a nugget or two rubbed his skin under his shirt. Three days before the first big snow, he and Al rode back into Cheyenne, all hardened muscle, hunger, and plans.