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ii

Ross and I were thrown together and I'm sure it was my father's intent for me to craft Ross into a good ranch hand; anything to conserve use of experienced ranch hands who had no time or patience to "train" a tenderfoot. Many a young ranch hand had quit in tears or been badly injured due to their inexperience and my father always regretted it, but such was the way things went; a boy had to become a man quickly out here with no mollycoddling. I also think my father was judging how I handled being in charge of another person; his plans were for me to take over the ranch one day and it weighed on me as I wasn't certain it was what I wanted; there were so many other opportunities. But I never had to give Ross orders as he was eager and often preempted me by starting in repairing fencing or digging a much-needed well for a yet-to-be-built line shack. Ross' being on his own for so long had actually given him an advantage over me. I had always been "supervised" by my father who wanted to control my every move but Ross hadn't had to answer to anyone but himself for a few years now and he made decisions regarding where he went and what he did. And he wanted to stay planted right here. For me, that was good.

As I told you, I already had friends when Ross showed up—the Bonner brothers and Carl Reagan who relished dubious "fun" such as stealing jugs of "moon" from locals who brewed their own, stealing eggs from hen houses and splattering them against the school, church and any other building and sometimes the unfortunate person who ran out and tried to stop them. They also made every effort to lose their virginity but only the eldest Bonner brother had, or said he had, supposedly some girl in Carson City, but he wouldn't elaborate no matter how much Carl provoked him. But I couldn't sit down with any of them and talk about what I really wanted in life, about my hopes and dreams of the future, or about how you knew when you were in love; they wouldn't have taken me seriously anyway and just made their usual crude jokes about cutting some young heifer out of the herd to "love." "Leastways," Carl had once said, "once you move on to a real girl, the heifer'll still be useful for milkin'!" Then, one night, I found out Ross had done just what I wanted to know about. I don't remember what brought up the subject but I urged him to tell me and listened while he reluctantly spoke about it; even my father wouldn't tell me about sleeping with a woman for the first time. When I'd asked him last year, he just cleared his throat and turned red saying I was too young to even consider such things and to banish those thoughts from my mind—as if that was even possible. I never asked him again.

"Was it what you expected?" I asked Ross, reclining on my saddle. We were spending another night out on one of the furthest stretches of the Ponderosa; there wasn't even a line shack. I think my father was determined to make me as miserable as possible for as long as possible.

Ross paused, his head resting on his saddle, looking up at the night sky. It was a waning moon and the stars outshone the silver sliver. "It was in Abilene and we'd just finished a drive and a couple of hands dragged me to a saloon for my first beer, said I was a damn good cowhand but now it was time I became a full man. I hated the beer but I hated the brothel more. They bought me a woman-$2.00 a throw. Hell, I was scared. I mean she knew what she was doing and I was just a stupid kid. I didn't know what to expect; I mean she kinda acted like, well, I knew it was her job but…she practically yawned while I'm there tryin' my best and fumblin' and practically beggin' for her help." I chuckled at that. "But afterwards, I realized I'd brought shame down on myself, on her and on all my ancestors. The joining of the male and female, that's sacred and shouldn't be for, well, just relief. Hell, I can do that for myself!" We both laughed at that. Then silence fell and Ross turned his head to look at me and I knew he was revealing his innermost feelings. "That whore, she didn't understand when I told her I…when I told her I'd havta cleanse myself; she thought I was thinkin' she had clap or the pox but I meant my to cleanse my spirit. And when I explained, she told me I was loco and to get the hell out before she tossed my skinny ass outta the window." He looked back up at the sky. "I should've waited for the right time and the right person. My mother, all the ones who came before me, I brought shame to them by what I did and that made me ashamed. So, I knew what I had to do. I built a lodge for a purification, dug the fire pit, collected the stones, picked the plants I needed along with some tobacco, and set my totems to watch, to protect me, and over the next two days, I cleansed myself by sweating out the evil and praying to the ancient ones who set my people on the earth. The raven came to me in my visions, spoke to me, and told me my truth. I walked out reborn; that old Ross Marquette was dead. I know, Adam, one day I'll meet the woman and complete our two-spirit soul. She'll understand I have to stay true to the beliefs of my people. And now, she'll really be my first woman."

I guessed Ross was talking about what I'd heard called a sweat lodge. The Bannocks gathered every so often to "purify" themselves and one time, the nearby Bannock tribe had been decimated by vigilante homesteaders while the men were in the sweat lodge without their weapons. I had never given it much thought beyond that, and I didn't know what to say to Ross but he must have considered the conversation over because he pulled his blanket up, turned on his side and went to sleep. I had new respect for him then. All I ever thought about was having a woman for the first time, about what it would be like and so did my friends; hell, it was practically all we talked about and every girl we knew, granted there weren't many females available, was considered a possibility. And when we'd see the whores hanging over the balcony at the cat houses, calling down to us saying if we were old enough to shave, we were grown enough for them, we'd talk about how one day we'd buy us a woman, maybe two or three at one time! And as Ross slept and I lay awake, I thought, had it been Carl telling the story, he would have bragged about the whore falling in love with him, how he broke her heart, how she cried for him and begged him to stay but she just wasn't pretty enough for him. And I'd know Carl was lying because Carl always lied. But Ross spoke from his soul and after a while, I learned to speak the same way, at least I tried to. Before tht year was over, I felt I knew Ross as well as I did the inside of my own head. I understood his glances, the sudden raising of his brows or the suppressed grin, and enjoyed his laugh that welled-up and poured out. And I would laugh as well; I was happy to finally have a friend I could trust and enjoy without my father chewing my ass out over keeping bad company.

But it wasn't only work Ross and I shared. When we were out on the property, we'd hunt if we had the chance and often had fresh meat for our supper, saving the jerky for another time. Ross taught me how to fish by standing in the water and catching a slippery trout with my bare hands. And if the fishing was bad, we'd swim or jump from an overhanging tree or rock into the deep water. And often, as we'd be working, we'd overturn an arrow head made of either glassy obsidian or some other stone that had been chipped into razor-like sharpness. Ross carried an old, scarred leather tobacco pouch that had been his father's and he'd drop the arrowheads inside. Oftentimes, while were working in the heat of that summer, Ross and I'd take off our shirts and because he was so rail-thin, I started calling him "Skinny"; he didn't mind, actually seemed to like the familiarity a nickname suggested. But even being so thin each rib stood out and his collar bone protruded, Ross could work as long and hard, even harder than I could. I'd have to stop him and call it a day or I swear he'd work into the night. And so, the year went by happier and far more enjoyably than I had expected.

As for the land up on the mountain, my father and Ross made a deal for 25 square acres including any mineral rights.

"I'm not planning on any mining," Ross told him while I idled, sitting on my horse, waiting to head out. "I just wanna own some land, raise some cattle. I even have my brand picked out."

"Oh…really?" My father smiled as he would at a clever child.

"Yessir. See…" Ross crouched down and with his finger drew his brand in the dirt, a capital M with little angled lines at the bottom of the two legs. "The walking M. I saw something like it up in Montana once, a walking H." He stood up, grinning, and wiped off his hand. "I been planning on it a long time."

"Well, I see. There're no structures on the property, no house or such, and it's not good for farming…"

"I'm not a farmer, Mr. Cartwright, but there's enough grassland up there that I can run a small herd. You set a price and I'll pay it. Buy a few acres at a time, that is if it's okay with you?"

What if I have to fire you?" my father asked. "How would you pay me then?" Ross' face dropped and I almost spoke up. But my father quickly smiled and said he was sure it would all work out. "I bought it for $1.35 an acre ten years ago and I'm willing to let it go at…how does $2.35 an acre sound?"

Ross grinned that smile of his and his whole body reflected how happy he was the way a dog's tail does. "Sounds just right to me, Mr. Cartwright."

The shook hands and my father said he'd have the papers drawn up to bar a sale to anyone else for the next 6 years. And that was all Ross talked about that whole afternoon. He asked me question after question about starting a ranch and water rights and finding the water to digging a well, and I answered as best I could but I had little enthusiasm. I was going to be an architect and the only interest I had in buying any land would be to put a house of my own design on it.

But Ross did ask me specifically about the papers, the contract and the legal language and that, I felt confident about answering. "Adam, I know he's your father but he wouldn't try to cheat me any, would he? I mean, could I just sign the papers and trust he's doin' me right?"

I replied that Ross shouldn't trust anyone and not sign anything without reading it first but I also knew the gist of what he was asking. "I tell you what, once my Pa draws up the contract, tell him you'd like to have them for a day or two to read before you sign."

"But what if he changes his mind then, decides not to sell me the land and sells it to someone else, thinkin' I don't trust him?"

"First, nobody else wants it and second, any honest businessman should allow someone time to read a contract before signing. And as much as I think my father is a conniving sonovabitch, he's an honest one."

"But, Adam, I won't understand any of it no matter how long I take to read it."

"I'll read it. That is if you trust me?" I almost laughed at the confused look on Ross' face as I had just told him not to trust anyone, but once he saw me smile, he broke into a wide grin and thanked me.

I liked Ross' company; we laughed at the same things and he was an interesting spirit. I use that term because although he wasn't a religious man, he saw what lay under the physical world, the "soul", for lack of a better term, of a horse or a dog, wolf, deer, squirrel—any beast or creature. One freezing night when he and I took our turn watching the herd, apparently, one of my father's grand ideas for toughening me up, Ross, his rifle across his knees while sitting close by the fire, looked up at the constellations and related his mother's stories about the "Star People," the creatures from the heavens who were the ancestors of the Lakota and who occasionally returned to offer advice or to take "Earth" children back with them. Initially, I was tempted to make a joke of these far-fetched stories as I was weary, cold, sleepy, angry with the duty and my father, but as Ross went on about Coyote and the Corn Maiden, I realized he was sincere and the look in his eyes as he gazed into the darkness was soul-chilling; I couldn't mock him or the stories. The wolves howled at the moon by some unspoken natural order and the dizzying movement of the world as it spun in the emptiness of space filled me with awe; by the next morning, I was almost convinced the stories about heavenly, ancestral creatures were true.

So, before my year of "probation" was up, Ross received my father's permission to use our mill's scrap lumber, miscut planks or ones with knot holes to build his house on the first two square acres he owned. We also rode into town on a Friday afternoon and with our pooled money which Ross insisted he'd pay back, we bought some window panes; I planned on showing him how to set windows in my absence. So, with my help and in our spare time, Ross and I built him a one room house. I say "house" because the way I planned it, the house would be the main room of the eventual larger house. I showed him how, with a stairwell, a second floor could be added and where the kitchen could be removed by a short hallway far enough from the main house in case of fire. I told him to start collecting river rocks or stones for chimneys and bricks from abandoned farm houses for the eventual parlor fireplace. Ross was amazed at how I quickly drew up plans, not with the finesse I later learned at university, but mathematically accurate and structurally sound ones.

When fall rolled around again, I was all set to go east to school, eager for my father to give approval and my mind was aimed at leaving for college; I saw nothing standing in my way. Except for the matter of Dell.