Thank you for reading.

vi

After so long without it, watching the sun rise over the mountains almost made me weep with ineffable emotion. I couldn't believe I'd lived without seeing it. The view of the Atlantic Ocean and the sound of the waves as they slapped the shore was either exciting or soothing depending on the weather and winds, but nothing could match the blazing beauty of a western sunrise and its promise of a new day. Even though it may sound pretentious or affected, my heart sang with pure happiness. I think that was the last time I felt pure and clean and one with the natural world.

Riding a little over an hour in the crisp air, I found I became a little light-headed; I wasn't acclimated to the heights but I finally reached Ross'. He had made little headway on the basic square living space and I pulled my horse up to the front porch, calling out to him. "Ross! Hey, Ross! Skinny! Where the hell are you?" I dismounted and my horse stepped off a few feet and took to cropping the nearby grass. "Hey, Ross! You around?"

I looked about at the property. A small, poorly constructed barn was to the far side of the house and I heard some horses inside. A buckboard sat under an overhang and a few yards from that was a bunkhouse. I walked over and knocked, then opened the bunkhouse door and stepped in. Obviously, a few hands were working for Ross as the place looked lived in, a stack of well-used cards on the round table, a pot-bellied stove sitting in one corner, a coffee pot on top, and two sets of unmade bunks. There were some playbills of flimsily-dressed women, singers or dancers or whatever they did other than just expose delectable flesh, nailed to the bunk posts. I smiled at those; lonely men dream of having women like that, of running their hands and mouths over the dimpled buttocks and round breasts. But then, I suppose even married men entertained such dreams as well because even they can still be desperately lonely. I walked back out and looked around, deciding to ride to the lower regions of the property when I heard a noise. I quickly looked to my right and Ross, slightly stooped over, was exiting the mine and holding an extinguished lantern. He saw me and grinned in pure delight.

"Adam! You sonovabitch! When did you get back? Good to see you, boy!" He quickly hurried to me and we locked hands and then, hugged each other, clapping the other on the back.

"Yesterday."

"Well, c'mon in. I have a pot of coffee on the stove."

"I'll take you up on it. Oh, and I came bearing gifts—robbed Hop Sing's larder." Ross laughed and I untied my saddlebags. "I also wondered how the house was coming along."

Ross ducked his head, a little embarrassed. "It's just about the same as when you left, I'm sorry to say. I collected stones and stacked them there like you suggested." He pointed to a large pile of stones, perfect for a fireplace or to add interest to a wall. "After each winter I'd go see what had been pushed to the top. And I collected bricks from a few abandoned properties and…Adam, you'd be surprised what people leave behind when they move on. I even got a milk cow that way. She was just lowing in the pasture so I milked her right then and there, just let it spill on the ground since she was so miserable. I tether her out each morning so she can graze but I've had fresh milk every day.

"I also brought back some pieces of furniture—a bed and a big leather chair, pots and pans. Rode two days before I found them at an abandoned farm house. That's where I found the buckboard and got a shovel and a pitchfork there as well. Later, at another place I found a cupboard and a desk and so I built some shelves for the dishes and spoons and all they left. Of course, I had to rid the drawers of any mice, spiders and such and after washing things down, I had to cleanse them with sweet grass and sage bundles but it doesn't look too bad inside now."

"Sage and sweetgrass?" I vaguely remembered Ross mentioning sweet grass before. The sweat lodge….

"I had to clear out the bad spirits, what caused the people to leave. I didn't want to bring any of them into the house so I burned the sweetgrass and sage bundles around the furniture and all outside, wished them gone. I would've liked to add some tobacco to the bundles but I would've had to buy it. Anyway, I got rid of it all."

Ross opened the front door and stopped before going in, his hand on the door latch. "I know that wood from your family's mill was supposed to be for the house but, well, I needed a barn for my horse and the hands' and then…"

"Yeah, I saw you have a bunkhouse."

"I had three men workin' for me, helping manage the herd, the branding and all. But they up and left two days ago. Said they saw something outside the bunkhouse windows at night, trying to get in, scratching and growling and such, and it had glittering eyes like a demon from hell, but I told 'em it was probably a bear. You know how bears are—if they smell food or whatnot, they want in. But they took off anyway and left most everything of theirs behind; said they didn't wanna be weighed down because 'it' might trail them. You ever heard anything that crazy?" He shook his head. "But at least we finished spring branding. Last count, I had 238 head of cattle and pretty soon, a bull I bought is gonna be mountin' those heifers and making me a rich man with even more calves born! Now, c'mon. Let's go have some coffee."

We sat inside on the wooden chairs around a cheap table Ross probably bought from Gillis' years ago. They were made from unstained pine and of no style—purely utilitarian. I saw the bed set up in one corner. It seemed a well-made one with elegantly turned bedposts that was more than likely lugged overland from back east in a covered wagon. A large chair with a few cracks in the leather sat next to the small fireplace; the house looked like a comfortable place for one man. Ross stood in the little kitchen, stoking the fire in the stove, and talked about raising cattle, how he was learning slowly but quickly after a few head died mainly from accidents. But one, he said, was taken down by wolves. "They left only the empty skin behind. Ate all the innards. Just ripped the steer apart."

I walked over to the corner where a bow leaned against the wall and a roughly made quiver was hooked by its strap over a post of the footboard. I pulled out one of the arrows and noticed that the arrowhead looked like one of the obsidian arrowheads Ross had collected on our travels about Ponderosa property.

"I made those," he said. I turned and he was smiling. "Took me a long time to figure out how to get the bow just so," he said nodding at it. "And I tried all types of wood until I settled on ash. It seemed to have enough spring to it but making those arrows! Lemme tell you, Adam, it takes me a whole evening just to make one, from skinning the bark to attaching the arrow head and then the feathers…buzzard feathers seem to work best. But that bow, damned if that wasn't the hardest." He walked over and picked it up and showed me. "See, you have to get the wood carved and shaped just fine. And it had to be thickest here, in the middle." He placed his hand in the middle. Then he chuckled. "I guess I'm boring you with all this but I wanted to find out how to do this just like the Lakota before me. They passed down the skills but someone had to be first, right? Had to figure it out on his own?"

I took the bow from him. The bowstring was of some plant fiber and hooked at one end but hanging loose from the other. I pulled it up, pushed down on the bow, placing it between my feet, and it still took some effort to hook it into the notch. "And you learned this all on your own?" I turned and aimed as if I was going to bring down a plains buffalo.

"No. The ghost of an ancient Sioux chief came to me and passed on the secrets."

I swiveled and looked at him. The corners of Ross' lips twitched. I laughed and so did he and reaching for the bow, he said, "This is the fourth one and I still don't have it right, but it'll do."

"You do any hunting with it?" I asked, handing it over.

"Some. Seems more 'just' to hunt that way. Gives the animals a fair chance—not like with a rifle."

"You any good at it? Hunting that way?"

"To be honest, sometimes I think I'd do better just throwin' the arrow." We laughed and he placed the end of the bow on the floor, and pressing it down, unhooked the bowstring. He looked up as he placed it back against the wall. "Don't want the string to stretch out. Now let's have some of that food."

I unpacked the biscuits from one side and Ross produced a jar of strawberry jam from the kitchen cabinet. From my other saddlebag, I slid out the side of bacon and the wrapped roast beef.

"From our own smokehouse," I said as I put the slab of smoked bacon on the table beside the roast beef. "And I believe this was slated for Hoss' lunch."

"I wondered why you smelled like a cooked cow," Ross said laughing. "I thank you for the bounty."

"Aren't we supposed to thank God for that?" I asked, splitting open another biscuit.

"Oh, I gave up on church and the white man's god a few years ago." I cleared my throat and Ross suddenly looked embarrassed as if he had forgotten who I was. "No offense, Adam. I didn't mean to…."

"No offense taken," I said, grinning.

"I still go every so often, mainly to see Dell. She has this thing about the devil being on the prowl around her house and going to preaching makes her feel better. You may not know, but her parents died a while ago. She's basically alone now, that is, except for me."

"Yeah, my father told me. Sounds pretty damn horrible the way it happened." I took a bite out of the jam-filled biscuit. "Dell make this?" I asked.

"Yeah. She's always canning food for me. Tells me I need fattening-up. But I eat plenty. There are some feral hogs rooting around here and I killed one a month ago. Me and the hands ate mighty well for over a month on that one hog."

"Maybe you and Dell can both come have supper at the Ponderosa soon. After services."

"Yeah, we'd like that. Just don't you have her over alone," Ross said, pointing one long, thin finger at me. He was smiling but I felt he was serious.

"What were you doing in the mine?" I asked, changing the subject. "You shoring it up?"

"Oh," he said, slicing off a hunk of roast beef to slip in his biscuit along with the jam. "I was just checking out that vein of silver. I wasn't going to do any mining, you know, but if I can manage to chip out some chunks and get it assayed and sold, I can use the money to finish the house and buy more cattle and land. Dell has ideas of how she wants the house—flowery wall paper, fancy drapes and all that. I told her we could work on the house together, you know, buy fancy stuff over time once we're married. Anyway, I'm hoping I can make that mine pay off."

"Yeah, I guess you can do that, but first you'll need new bracing; that old stuff's rotted. There was a model I was studying…"

"Adam, some things are done by feeling things out, like the way I made the bow and the arrows, not by studying about them. The veining starts just a few feet inside the mine. I figure I can put in some rough bracing and using a star and hammer, break loose some ore."

"Or you could just dynamite the whole thing and pick the ore out of the rubble."

"No, never!" Realizing he'd overreacted, Ross apologized. "I'm sorry, Adam, but I couldn't do that. It'd desecrate the drawings, the icons on the rock face. I couldn't break their magic."

"Magic? What the hell are you talking about, boy?" I smiled but I felt that prickling up the back of my neck.

"Everything is magic, Adam. The water comes to us through magic, the grass grows, the sun shines—all of it's magic. Even love is magic."

"Hate to break it to you, but it's all science and biology. Just like dogs and wolves, we may as well go piss on every tree to mark our territory to keep other men away and then jump on the nearest woman. And like any stallion worth his weight in oats, I think men can smell which woman wants it. It's just simple chemistry and biology."

"Adam, forget your education for a minute and just think about it. Let the land speak to you and tell you what it can give. Listen to the water as it flows past, the wind whispering to you. Just sit and hear all the creatures in the wild speak to you, all the creatures, earthly or not, who are waiting to appear to you just like the right woman is waiting for you to meet her." He sat perfectly still with his eyes closed. "Just listen, Adam."

I sat still and did my damnedest to hear something, anything, but there was nothing. Suddenly, I could've sworn I heard someone call my name—not loudly, barely audible, but it was my name. And then my horse whinnied and I heard it run off.

"God dammit!" I swore shoving back my chair. "There goes my horse."

Ross laughed and then stood up. "Sit down and finish your coffee. I'll get him back."

"Oh, you think so? Just how? He's probably halfway to the barn by now."

"I'll send the wind to tell him to return. Or maybe a crow."

I scoffed but sat back down to finish my coffee and within ten minutes, Ross and Scout came walking back to the cabin.

~ 0 ~

I was quickly full by then but Ross still ate like a starved man.

"Where the hell do you put it?" I asked. Ross just grinned and continued to eat so I looked about. "When do you plan on adding to this?"

Ross swallowed and told me he found out he wasn't much of a builder; he and the men who'd worked for him had built the barn and bunkhouse from the irregular planks, but the walls weren't quite straight and the barn roof leaked in a heavy rain and groaned under the winter snows. He'd done his best to make more shingles from the trees on the property but found it more difficult than he'd thought.

"Not up to Hoyle, huh?"

"What?" Ross asked, looking confused.

"It just means not up to standards. You can't bring a bride home to this," I said looking about.

Ross sighed. "I know. But I used all that wood your Pa gave me and then had to buy the stove for the bunkhouse…and there's salt licks and oats and hay for the horses and alfalfa for the cow…I never knew it'd cost this much to run a few head of cattle or just to live."

"You're not thinking of throwing…" I was about to use another well-worn phrase that might stump Ross as well so I said instead, "giving up?"

"No, no, I just…damn, Adam, I want to marry Dell so bad. She wants us to live in her parents' house until ours is finished here, but it's so far from this place and besides, I want to give her a home—our home. Isn't that what any man's supposed to do?"

We sat in silence. I tried to decide if he was asking for help and I didn't want to insult him by offering. Ah, the embarrassment of riches! I suddenly felt my education was a hindrance now that I was home and maybe it was. I was young and brash and felt I had the answer to everyone's problems but my gut told me tht it may not be appreciated. Hell, I found through the years I didn't even have the answer to my own problems. But what kind of friend would I be if I allowed Ross to flounder about with no direction? So, I chanced it.

"Maybe I can help you—if you want it."

Ross looked at me. "Adam, I can't keep taking. I have to pay my own way."

"Good, because I'm not giving you anything. What I can do is help you find buyers for your herd, that is, if your steer are any good. There are some small buyers who don't want to buy more than 20 or 30 head. The big ranchers like my father and such, they don't want to break up their herds and sell piecemeal, so those small customers are out for them.

"And as for this place, let's build a bedroom and a better kitchen and then you can bring Delphine home. You still have the plans, don't you?"

Ross grinned again and his genuine pleasure made me happy to be his friend. "Yeah, I've got them in a drawer."

"Well, I might as well put my father's investment in me to good use. I'll look over them and update them and if the walls and room hold up, my education was worth it." We both laughed at that.

"I'd appreciate it, Adam, but I don't want to take you away from the Ponderosa."

"Don't worry about that. I told my father I'd be gone a while. How about we go out and take a look at the herd? They can't be too far."

Ross stopped smiling. "I don't want…Adam, did your pa buy that land next to me, that acreage at the eastern edge of my property?"

"Yeah, he did. But it's open range. He's not going to fence it for a long while. You can water your herd, graze them as much as you want. And after, work out water rights. If you keep using the property, well, they law says you have a right to continue doing it and my father has to allow it. He knows that, Ross. Think of it as a wedding gift."

Ross considered, then nodded. "Well, let me clean up and pack some food. We'll probably be out overnight finding the cattle."

I went out to check on my horse and considered. I hoped the land wasn't going to be a burr under Ross' saddle. Border disputes, water rights, and the intermingling of cattle were the biggest issues between ranchers and I didn't want Ross to resent me and my family's money and power. And the intermingling of cattle had its own issues. Ross had a fine bull, going by what my father had said. What if he mounted a Ponderosa heifer? But then, how would we even know any more than a man knows for certain a child is his. Life is just a crapshoot anyway.