She knew July was in love with her and was irritated that he was so awkward about it. He was as innocent as Bob, but she didn't feel moved to patience, in July's case. She would save her patience for his son, who slept at her breast, whimpering now and then. Soon she got up with the baby and went to her room, leaving July sitting silently in a chair while the drunken minister snored on the floor.
Once upstairs she called Sally. Sally had not cried much. When she came into Clara's room she looked drawn. Almost immediately she began to sob. Clara put the baby down and held her daughter.
'Oh, I'm so bad,' Sally said, when she could talk. 'I wanted Daddy to die. I didn't like it that he just lay up there with his eyes open. It was like he was a spook. Only now I wish he hadn't died.'
'Hush,' Clara said. 'You ain't bad. I wanted him to die too.'
'And now you wish he hadn't, Ma?' Sally asked.
'I wish he had been more careful around horses, is what I wish,' Clara said.
93.
AS THE HERD and the Hat Creek outfit slowly rode into Montana out of the barren Wyoming plain, it seemed to all of them that they were leaving behind not only heat and drought, but ugliness and danger too. Instead of being chalky and covered with tough sage, the rolling plains were covered with tall grass and a sprinkling of yellow flowers. The roll of the plains got longer; the heat shimmers they had looked through all summer gave way to cool air, crisp in the mornings and cold at night. They rode for days beside the Bighorn Mountains, whose peaks were sometimes hidden in cloud.
The coolness of the air seemed to improve the men's eyesight-they fell to speculating about how many miles they could see. The plains stretched north before them. They saw plenty of game, mainly deer and antelope. Once they saw a large herd of elk, and twice small groups of buffalo. They saw no more bears, but bears were seldom far from their thoughts.
The cowboys had lived for months under the great bowl of the sky, and yet the Montana skies seemed deeper than the skies of Texas or Nebraska. Their depth and blueness robbed even the sun of its harsh force-it seemed smaller, in the vastness, and the whole sky no longer turned white at noon as it had in the lower plains. Always, somewhere to the north, there was a swath of blueness, with white clouds floating in it like petals in a pond.
Call had scarcely spoken since the death of Deets, but the beauty of the high prairies, the abundance of game, the coolness of the mornings finally raised his spirits. It was plain that Jake Spoon, who had been wrong about most things, had been right about Montana. It was a cattleman's paradise, and they were the only cattlemen in it. The grassy plains seemed limitless, stretching north. It was strange that they had seen no Indians, though. Often he mentioned this to Augustus.
'Custer didn't see them either,' Augustus pointed out. 'Not till he was caught. Now that we're here, do you plan to stop, or will we just keep going north till we get into the polar bears?'
'I plan to stop, but not yet,' Call said. 'We ain't crossed the Yellowstone. I like the thought of having the first ranch north of the Yellowstone.'
'But you ain't a rancher,' Augustus said.
'I guess I am now.'
'No, you're a fighter,' Augustus said. 'We should have left these damn cows down in Texas. You used them as an excuse to come up here, when you ain't interested in them and didn't need an excuse anyway. I think we oughta just give them to the Indians when the Indians show up.'
'Give the Indians three thousand cattle?' Call said, amazed at the notions his friend had. 'Why do that?'
'Because then we'd be shut of them,' Augustus said. 'We could follow our noses, for a change, instead of following their asses. Ain't you bored?'
'I don't think like you do,' Call said. 'They're ours. We got 'em. I don't plan on giving them to anybody.'
'I miss Texas and I miss whiskey,' Augustus said. 'Now here we are in Montana and there's no telling what will become of us.'
'Miles City's up here somewhere,' Call said. 'You can buy whiskey.'
'Yes, but I'll have to drink it indoors,' Augustus complained. 'It's cool up here.'
As if to confirm his remark, the very next day an early storm blew out of the Bighorns. An icy wind came up and snow fell in the night. The men on night herd wrapped blankets around themselves to keep warm. A thin snow covered the plains in the morning, to the amazement of everyone. The Spettle boy was so astonished to wake and see it that he refused to come out of his blankets at first, afraid of what might happen. He lay wide-eyed, looking at the whiteness. Only when he saw the other hands tramping in it without ill effect did he get up.
Newt had been curious about snow all the way north, but he had lost his jacket somewhere in Kansas, and now that snow had actually fallen he felt too cold to enjoy it. All he wanted was to be warm again. He had taken his boots off when he lay down to sleep, and the snow had melted on his feet, getting his socks wet. His boots were a tight fit, and it was almost impossible to get them on over wet socks. He went over to the fire barefoot, hoping to dry his socks, but so many of the cowboys were huddled around the fire that he couldn't get a place at first.
Pea Eye had scooped up a handful of snow and was eating it. The Rainey boys had made snowballs, but all the cowboys were stiff and cold and looked threatening, so the Raineys merely threw the snowballs at one another.
'This snow tastes like hail, except that it's soft,' Pea Eye observed.
The sun came out just then and shone so brightly on the white plains that some of the men had to shield their eyes. Newt finally got a place by the fire, but by then the Captain was anxious to move on and he didn't get to dry his socks. He tried to pull his boots on but had no luck until Po Campo noticed his difficulty and came over with a little flour, which he sprinkled in the boots.
'This will help,' he said, and he was right, though getting the boots on still wasn't easy.
The sun soon melted the thin snow, and for the next week the days were hot again. Po Campo walked all day behind the wagon, followed by the pigs, who bored through the tall grass like moles-a sight that amused the cowboys, although Augustus worried that the pigs might stray off.
'We ought to let them ride in the wagon,' he suggested to Call.
'I don't see why.'
'Well, they've made history,' Augustus pointed out.
'When?' Call asked. 'I didn't notice.'
'Why, they're the first pigs to walk all the way from Texas to Montana,' Augustus said. 'That's quite a feat for a pig.'
'What will it get them?' Call inquired. 'Eaten by a bear if they ain't careful, or eaten by us if they are. They've had a long walk for nothing.'
'Yes, and the same's likely true for us,' Augustus said, irritated that his friend wasn't more appreciative of pigs.
With Deets dead, Augustus and Call alternated the scouting duties. One day Augustus asked Newt to ride along with him, much to Newt's surprise. In the morning they saw a grizzly, but the bear was far upwind and didn't scent them. It was a beautiful day-no clouds in the sky. Augustus rode with his big rifle propped across the saddle-he was in the highest of spirits. They rode ahead of the herd some fifteen miles or more, and yet when they stopped to look back they could still see the cattle, tiny black dots in the middle of the plain, with the southern horizon still far behind them.
'I never thought to see so far,' Newt said.
'Ain't it something,' Augustus said with a grin. 'This is rare country, this Montana. We're a lucky bunch. There ain't nothing better than this-though you don't have to tell your pa I said it.'
Newt had decided it must be one of Mr. Gus's many jokes, making out that the Captain was his pa.
'I like to keep Woodrow feeling that he's caused a peck of trouble,' Augustus said. 'I don't want him to get sassy. But I wouldn't have missed coming up here. I can't think of nothing better than riding a fine horse into a new country. It's exactly what I was meant for, and Woodrow too.'
'Do you think we'll see Indians?' Newt asked.
'You bet,' Augustus said. 'We might all get killed this afternoon, for all I know. That's the wild for you-it's got its
