“What’s the matter there, Tom? Can’t get your chest open?” Dalton asked.
He had told the others what he did, and all gathered around to see how Tom was going to react. Would he get angry, and start cursing everyone? Or would he be meek about it?
Tom looked more closely at the lid, and saw that it had been nailed shut by six nails, two in front and two on either side. “That’s odd. It seems to have been nailed shut.”
The others laughed out loud.
“Nailed shut, is it? Well, I wonder who did that?” Dalton asked.
“Oh, I expect it was a mistake of some sort,” Tom said. “I don’t really think anyone would nail the lid shut on my chest as a matter of intent.”
“Do you think that?” Dalton asked, and again, everyone laughed at the joke they were playing on the tenderfoot.
“All right, fellas, you’ve had your fun,” Mo said. “Wait a minute, Tom, I’ll get a claw hammer and pull the nails for you so you can get the lid open.”
“Thank you, Mo,” Tom said. “I don’t need the claw hammer to get the lid open.”
“What are you talking about? Of course you do. How else are you going to open the lid if you don’t pull the nails out first?”
“Oh, it won’t be difficult. I’ll just open it like this.” Reaching down with both hands, Tom used one hand to steady the bottom of the chest and the other to grab the front of the lid. He pulled up. With a terrible screeching noise as the nails lost their purchase, the lid came up. Reaching into the footlocker, Tom removed a pair of socks. “Ahh. That’s what I was looking for.”
“Good God in heaven,” someone said reverently. “Did you see that?”
“Dalton, I don’t think you ought to be messin’ any more with this one. He’s as strong as an ox.”
“Did you get a count?” Smoke asked Pearlie.
Pearlie held up the string and counted the knots. There were fourteen knots. “I make it fourteen hundred in the south pasture.”
“I’ve got another eleven hundred,” Cal added.
“And I’ve got just over fifteen hundred,” Smoke said.
“Wow, that’s better than four thousand head,” Pearlie said. “We’ve got almost as many back as we had before the big freeze and die-up.”
The big die-up Pearlie was talking about happened in January three years earlier when there had been a huge seventy-two hour blizzard. After the blizzard, the sun melted the top few inches of snow into slush, which was frozen into solid ice by minus thirty-degree temperatures the following day. Throughout the West, tens of thousands of cattle were found huddled against fences, some partially through and hanging on the wire, many frozen to death. The legs of many cows that survived were so badly frozen that, when they moved, the skin cracked open and their hooves dropped off. Hundreds of young steers wandered aimlessly around on bloody stumps, while their tails froze as if they were icicles to be easily broken off.
Humans died that year too—men who froze to death while searching for cattle; women and children in houses where there was no wood to burn and blankets could not hold back the sub-zero temperatures. The only creatures to survive and thrive that winter were the wolves who feasted upon the carcasses of tens of thousands of dead cattle.
Sugarloaf Ranch had survived, but nearly all the cattle on the ranch had died. Then Smoke heard from his friend, Falcon MacCallister. Falcon’s cousin, Duff MacCallister, recently arrived from Scotland, was running a new breed of cattle—Black Angus.
He had been spared the great die-up disaster because his ranch was located in the Chugwater Valley of Wyoming, shielded against the worst of winter’s blast by mesas and mountain ranges. His ranch, Sky Meadow, had no fences to prevent the cattle from moving to the shelter of those natural barriers. The Black Angus breed of cattle Duff MacCallister was raising was better equipped to withstand the cold weather than were the Longhorns.
Smoke had gone to Sky Meadow to meet with Duff, and after his visit, agreed to buy one thousand head of Black Angus cattle. That one thousand head had grown into a herd of nearly four thousand in the last three and a half years, and it had been a very good move for Smoke. Whereas the market price for Longhorn had fallen so low Smoke’s neighbors, who were still raising that breed, were doing well to break even on their investment, the market price for Black Angus, which produced a superior grade of beef, was very high.
“You men take care of things here,” Smoke said. “Sally is coming back today, and I’m going to meet her at the train station.”
“I’ll go get her,” Cal volunteered.
Pearlie chuckled. “I’m sure you would, Cal. We’ve got calves to brand and you’ll do anything to get out of a little work.”
“It’s not that,” Cal said. “I was just volunteering, is all.”
“Thanks anyway,” Smoke said. “But she’s been back East for almost a month and I’m sort of anxious to see her again.”
When Smoke reached the train depot in Big Rock, he checked the arrival and departure blackboard to see if the train was on time. There was no arrival time listed, so he went inside to talk to the ticket agent. He was huddled in a nervous conversation with Sheriff Monte Carson.
“Hello, Monte, good evening, Hodge,” Smoke said, greeting the two men. “How are you doing?”
“Smoke, I’m glad you are here,” Sheriff Carson said. “We’ve got a problem with the train.”
“What kind of problem? Sally is on that train.”
“Yes, I know she is. We think the train is being robbed.”
