The Jump-Off Creek (2 page)

He didn't come all the way back. From a little distance, holding the bay's head up, he called out to her. “From here, I guess you'd be quicker following the Buck's Creek on down to where it runs into the North Fork. From there it's plain, and a short way to the Jump-Off.”

She stood looking at him, not speaking, just hunching her shoulders to pull her hands up inside her coat sleeves so she looked like a cat that was mad, or a humpback.
Suit yourself
, he thought. But in a bit he gestured with one hand toward the creek that ran downhill across the burnt clearing. “There's no trail to speak of beside most of the Buck's. We just follow the ridge as
best we can. I'm running these cows down that way. If you wanted, you could follow us up.”

Then finally she bent her head, looking at her boots or maybe nodding. She was solemn, no stiff little edge of smile showing this time. He didn't say more. He touched his hat again and turned back to the cows. In a while, from the shadow under the edge of the trees, he looked back. At a deliberate distance the woman followed, sitting up straight-backed and unsmiling on her mule, and trailing behind her that tomfoolish little string of goats, and the skinny mule.

The cows found their separate ways through the trees, not hurrying. Tim let them go pretty nearly as they would, so long as they kept to the ridge or the sidehill above the line of the creek. It had been raining most of the week and every little crease in the ridge carried water in a brown spurt. The cows waded the rills or skirted around the gullies, depending on their humor. Tim rode hunched and heavy, watching the dog. Once or twice he looked back toward the woman, not coming all the way around, just twisting neck to peer briefly at her from below the edge of his hat. She let the mule choose a way without following his bay horse exactly. She looked solemn, her big mouth flat. Inside the mouse-colored coat she was stiff as a larch pole.

He had come up this way early in the day, with the horse worming sideways on the sloppy grass crossing the treeless shoulder of the Dutchman's Ridge. Now when he got up there the whole side of the ridge was gone in a great brown chute. The cows came up to the edge of the slide and stood about dully in the rain. Tim sat on his horse behind them, staring at the slide, while the dog waited for him to make up his mind.

When the woman's mule brought her slowly out of the trees, he said, without looking toward her, “We ought to go down, I guess.” But then, ducking his chin, he did look at her. “You might want to walk down, ma'am, or let me lead that mule. He's liable to slip in this wet.”

She looked down the steep side of the hill to the creek, and
then brought her eyes around to him, making that crabbed face, drawing her mouth in and letting it out. He couldn't tell if it was for him or for that steep trail. “He's very steady, Mr. Whiteaker.” She said it in a sure way, speaking his name carefully as if it were two words—White, Acre.

He hunched his shoulders. In a bit he said, “Suit yourself, ma'am.”

She set her mouth and then jigged the mule straight downhill, not waiting at all, just taking a tighter hold of the leads and going down. She stood in the stirrups so her weight was out over the saddle-mule's hindquarters, and the mule picked a careful path, swaggering low on his haunches, bracing stiff forelegs in a mincing jolty gait. The goats didn't mind going down, but the gray mule rolled its eyes white and hung back at the taut end of its lead, sliding down awkwardly on its bunch-muscled butt. Tim sat where he was and watched them. When she rode the mule into the creek in a last rattling slide of rock and mud, he heard her little whoop, but he couldn't tell whether it was scare or jubilation.

Stubbornly, he took his own advice. He started the cows, the horse, the yellow dog scrambling down sloppily ahead of him, following the muddy slide mark of the woman's gray mule, and he came down slowly on foot, stepping carefully in his high-heeled boots, skidding, braced on his hands the last little way when his feet went out from under him. She sat at the bottom of the gully among the jumble of animals, waiting. There was some pink in her face.

He stood at the edge of the creek, not looking toward her, while he pushed his hair back up under his hat with the heel of one dirty hand. Then he gave the dog the word, took hold of the bay's reins and started off afoot, finding a rough way along the creekbank with the windfalls spanning the narrow gully like jackstraws. After a while he slid a look back after the woman. She followed him, leading the mule, walking, with that solemn look she had. She watched where she stepped. The edge of her dank skirt flapped around her boots.

The cows went around a few snags but then came up against one with no way around, and they stood along it and faced the dog contrarily. Tim had to lift the calves over and then prod the cows to clamber over after them, throwing his arms out jerkily, whistling shrill through his teeth. When they had got over, he looked back at the woman once, cautiously. But he didn't wait for her. She might have been glad enough for it, bunching up her big skirt in her hands, showing black muddy stockings when she swung her boots over.

The high place named Bear's Camp Mountain was a long turned-back ridge, not much more than that, with a lot of narrow brushy folds running down from it, good places to hide if you were a cow. Going up there, Blue spooked a bunch of horses and ran with them a way until he saw they were Carroll Oberfield's, then he pulled up and whistled back the dog and rode on up the grassy shoulder of the mountain. In the gray dampness there wasn't much sound, just the squeak of leather, the soft placing of the horse's feet. The dog trotted silently, mouth shut, coat full out against the chill. Blue wriggled his feet sometimes in the thin worn boots. His toes were damp, cold.

Sometimes they cut sign, day-old pies or muddy slurred prints, but there wasn't anything clear enough, fresh enough to follow. They crosshatched the mountain, working slowly down to the spring.

He nooned at the spring, squatting on his haunches behind a tiny blaze, smoking a cigarette while a can of corn heated. He held the cigarette with his left hand, letting the right one rest
against his doubled-up leg. His collarbone ached. The dog lay flat on his belly near him, watching him while he smoked and then while he ate, and coming in quick for the leftovers when he stood to scuff out the coals. Blue, waiting for the dog, shrugged his shoulders to try to loosen the bunched-up muscles at the base of his neck.

There was a little warning, a racketing noise like a breaking of limbs, and then a big steer cleared the rise in front of him, eyeing whitely down the steepness of its face and then pivoting to go along the backbone, running loplegged, clumsy. Blue was reaching for the bridle of his horse when the rifle reported through the sodden trees and the steer missed a step and went over, shoulder first, skidding up a comber of mud and pine needles. Before the steer had stopped good, a man burst through the trees along his backtrail, riding hard-trot on a little buckskin horse, holding a carbine high in his right hand. He was looking after the steer but he must have seen Blue there from an edge of his eye. His face jerked, showing pale twist of surprise and alarm. He yanked the buckskin around, slobbering, clanking the bit, and as he jabbed his spurs to send the horse back out of sight, Blue was grabbing at the roan, kicking past the dog to vault for his saddle. The dog made an offended, yowling sound, but by then Blue had booted the roan and was sailing the muddy water of the spring. The horse took the far slope in half a dozen grunting jumps. They cleared the steer's carcass at the top of the ridge and started down through the trees after the buckskin. It wasn't steep. He felt the roan's off front leg skip cadence, that was all, then the flash of trees in a high wheeling spin.

The rain came very meekly out of a low oyster-colored sky. For a while he lay where he was, in the rain, waiting for his breath. The dog came and smelled him and touched the back of his hand with his wet nose and then squatted to wait.

All right
, he thought.
Get up.

He took hold of his right shoulder with his left hand and rolled up to a sit. He began to sweat softly beneath the dampness of his clothes. When he had sat a while, he brought his legs under and came to a wobbly stand. He was still holding on to his shoulder. He'd broken the collarbone twice before. But under the squeeze of his hand, there was a bright ache, no scrape of bone, nothing grinding. Maybe it was okay this time, or would be. In a moment, blood dribbled from one of his eyebrows and ran down his cheek. He touched his face timidly, found a sticky wound above one eye.
Shit.

He turned his head carefully, looking along the scarred slope where the roan, spilling, had raked a long gouge through the duff. The horse was waiting, standing patient, watching him. He limped down through the scrub to where the horse stood. “Jay,” he said, stroking the velvet muzzle once in apology. Then he squatted and ran his palm over the horse, each muddy leg in turn, then the ribs and chest, the shoulders. The roan's wet shag fell out in hanks in his hand.

Above him on the ridge, the dead steer lay in a skid of wet leaves. Blue stood resting his forehead against the horse's neck. He thought of letting the steer lay up there, letting the coyotes have it. Then he grunted sourly and went up the ridge, knelt in the wet and unfolded his knife.

Shit.
“Shit,” he said, and the dog, hearing aggravation, turned his eyes away under raised-up, anxious brows.

They had come up gradually on the ridge. There was a line of pines along the creek but finally they could look across the tips
of them, and when they came out of the timber Lydia saw the trail ahead of Mr. Whiteaker was a little rocky line chased on the steep treeless face of the slope.

Mr. Whiteaker waited, as he had only done the one other time, above the mud slide, judging the steep downhill. He looped one of his legs around the saddle horn and massaged the knee carefully, sliding his hand up under the edge of the stiff oilskin. He did not look back toward her. He watched the dog persuading the cows single file ahead of him along the narrow track in the bluff. She watched the dog herself. Until seeing this one, she had not ever seen a dog do a true job of work, only Lars's foolish retriever bringing up a dead barn swallow or a hatchling quail from the stubble of the barley field, carrying the bird clamped between his jaws and then letting it down happily in the yard. Mr. Whiteaker's dog was big-headed, mud yellow, ugly. There was a hitch in his gait, an old or a false limp. But she liked to watch his steady, inconspicuous effort, keeping the cows together and headed right.

When the mule had brought her up to him, Mr. Whiteaker dropped his leg down in a stiff way and toed the stirrup. He sat hunched under his oilskin, looking off vaguely into the trees behind her. “Some people get a dread of high places,” he said in a low voice. He had a gesture, ducking his chin like a horse trying to get loose of the rein, and he did that now. She could not tell, yet, whether it was a habit of discomfort or of temper. “I knew a cowboy once who wouldn't ride a horse that stood more than fifteen hands. He said he started to sweat if he got any higher than that.”

She made a thin, brief smile for his sake, and pinched the collar of Lars's coat tight with one hand. She had been up on the roof of her dad's barn without misgiving, that was about her only experience with highness. She would not say that, if she could keep from it.

He ducked his chin again, shifted his weight. “If you think you
would want both hands, ma'am, I'll hang onto your string for you.” He said it in a low way, glancing aside: she saw in his face that he was wary of her.

She had not ever found just the right manner for these occasions. She smiled carefully, looking past him along the narrow notch of the trail. “I have never had any fear of highness myself, Mr. Whiteaker,” she said.

His shoulders moved slightly inside his dirty corduroy coat. “All right then,” he said. He turned and nudged the bay down the little notch, and the mule went behind him without pressing.

Away from the trees, the wind drove the rain ahead of it. Lydia pulled her hat down on her ears, hunched her shoulders inside the collar edge of the coat. She looked down once toward the distant pencil stroke of the creek and after that kept her eyes on a place just in front of the mule's stride, watching the puddles that riffled cold and brown in the wind.

“Okay, ma'am?” Mr. Whiteaker had hipped around on the saddle to look back at her. His shout sounded reedy, thin. She nodded once and smiled in a bare way and he turned frontward again, settling his shoulders against the wind and the rain. Ahead of him the cattle went along quick, anxious, pussyfooting. They had, maybe, a dread of high places. She held her mouth and looked fixedly past them, where the trail went steeply down across the face of the ridge and finally under the trees.

The mule jerked his head suddenly, but it was Mr. Whiteaker who shouted, whatever word or name it was blown thin on the weather. She looked and saw him put one hand on the neck of the bay horse, and the bay wallowing under him as if his touch had done that. Her heart pitched too: she heard or felt the little sideslip of gravel. He yelled again, maybe at the horse, and the bay shoved ahead, bunching his big hindquarters in a grunting lunge. The edge of the trail slumped under him, but he was already down the notch, jumping ahead in a jolty high
canter, when the rocks scrambled loose down the long bluff. The mule flung up his head, backsquatting as though he wanted to sit. Lydia put her hand flat on his jerking neck and held him steady. Three or four feet were gone out of the trail. The broken edge was stubbled, rocky. She looked at it.

Mr. Whiteaker called something to her, she could not hear what it was, and he swung down to loosen the cinch on his horse. She saw him stand holding on to the saddle a moment before he let go and worked the buckles. The bay stood for him restlessly, rolling the bit, huffing air. There was a shallow cut along the shank of the horse's off rear leg. Mr. Whiteaker wet his neckerchief in the rill along the notch and daubed away the gritty mud and blood. She sat stiffly on the mule, in the gusty rain, and watched him.