Justin Other Smith

Wild Goose

a short novel by Justin Other Smith

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Prologue

The ending of the war between the states brought a release, an end to the constraint that had kept most Americans from the vastness of the west. All that seemed to change overnight as pent-up exuberance laid its hand on America. Gold in California, the news reverberated around the world. The fabled, rich lands of Oregon were a reality and not a dream, the romantic and hard -riding, short-lived pony express, the telegraph and now the railroads.

Money spoke and the Railroad listened. Construction boomed. The railroads, during and after the war, were able to nearly double their network of mileage and in the 1870s further expanded their reach west. Between 1866 and 1873, 35,000 miles of new track was laid across the country. Hard-driving track crews from the East racing to meet their counterparts from the West. The Union Pacific, the Southern Pacific, the Central Pacific. Atcheson, Topeka and the Santa Fe. Magic names. The telegraph tracked their daily progress and the newspapers of the day reported it on a daily basis. The Iron Horse. Manifest Destiny.

Railroads became the nation’s largest non-agricultural employer. The biggest financiers, the largest banks, other industries poured their money into the railroads and those railroads, the Iron Horse, had brought a sense of prosperity to the west bringing tens of thousands of settlers, recent immigrants mostly, a tide of immigration that had begun with the War between the States.

A bowed but unbroken Lincoln handed control of his armies to a hard-drinking failed storekeeper. Ulysses Grant had seemingly ran out of options in the military but his civilian life had been worse. He failed at everything he turned his hand to but the war between the States gave him a new lease on life. His hard-headed, straight ahead, hit ‘em where it hurts approach to battle impressed Abraham Lincoln who was fed up to his eye teeth with the political posturing of his Generals. He turned control of his Army of the Potomac over to Grant’s and promised him a free hand. It had been a winning strategy for the north, keep throwing bodies at the south until they run out of ammunition. Sort of like a deadly chess game where the side with unlimited pawns wins. Northern losses were heavy. It had been an unpopular war in the northern states and it got even more unpopular as the body count had risen. Simple enough solution. More bodies. But, not ours. Draft riots in the major cities spoke volumes to the politicians. The solution. Open the immigration door. Fodder for the fuel. Immigrants were rushed from the boat to recruiting stations, uniformed, and sent off to fight and die because winning the war was essential for the north. And it worked.

But, after the war was won, the immigrants kept a’coming. Somewhere along the line, the politicians had forgot that it was easier to open the floodgates than it was to close them.

So, rather than march the immigrants directly to the recruiting stations, they were herded onto the trains. Those wonderful new trains that were going to make this country a power in the world, a coast to coast monolith. And the financiers and the railroad men and the use’ta be Generals were all going to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. Above all, wealthy.

The west, that magical place, the wide open spaces where you could travel unimpeded from Mexico to Canada. Well, relatively speaking of course. There were wild rivers to cross, various and sundry tribes of nomads that might or might not impede American progress over what they considered to be their lands but that was all part and parcel of the experience.

The west.

Buffalo by the tens of millions. Herds too large to count. Uncounted beaver. Freedom. Great herds of longhorn cattle, free for the gathering, driven north to the towns that bordered the plains, the railheads that grew wealthy shipping cattle and buffalo hides to the gluttonous eastern markets.

The west.

A vast sea of grass, an ocean of grass, from one side of the country to the other, north to south. Rolling prairie covered in grasses taller than a horse and rider in some areas, and the wind, the ever-blowing constant wind riffling the waves of grass.

The west.

But, with the flood of immigrants, something went wrong. First, we ran out of beaver. Then, we ran out of buffalo. And those damnable nomadic tribes became a problem also. They didn’t want the immigrants. But the government had promised land for the taking to those immigrants and sent them west because they really had no room for them anywhere else so the immigrants got off the trains, fought and killed the nomadic tribes, and fenced and farmed the great prairie.

They fenced the prairie.

No more could you straddle a horse and ride unimpeded from Mexico to Canada.

And they found cheaper, more effective ways of moving cattle to market.

And on September 18, 1873, the banking firm of Jay Cooke and Company closed its doors and a major economic panic swept the nation.

Depression!

Post war inflation and the rampant speculative investing, mainly in railroads, would have been difficult to maintain on their own but there was a war in Europe and the depression spread killing off thousands of jobs. One of which was the wild, unfettered life of the cowboy.

Gander Holland

The broad-shouldered young man on the dun pony looked at the winding track ahead. It was an old Indian trail, at least he supposed it was an old Indian trail. He’d been following it most of the day as he worked his way toward the prairies below. Funny, when you were on the prairie, you had the feeling that you could see forever but it was all such a sameness that it just became distance. In the mountains, most of the time, you could see only a few hundred feet but ever so ofter, once in a while, you’d turn a corner, there’d be like an opening in the world and you could see so far you felt like the whole world was just laid out in front of you, more of the distant prairie, smaller but so big. The mind can sure play tricks on you, what you see and what you think you see.

The trail led down a steepish slope to a stony ravine that would, he knew, lead to the prairie that he could see in the distance, the prairie at the foot of the mountains, the lonely prairie that stretched all the way to Texas. Where he wanted to get back to quick as he could. Texas. The land, the world he had run to as a boy.

Chapter Break

He didn’t bother to look behind him. The posse had to be more’n a mile behind and they weren’t gonna come near to catching up in this country. It’ud be a different story, he knew, once he hit prairie country, easy riding, wouldn’t be long before they’d be on his heels and they’d ride him down. Out in the open, he wouldn’t stand a chance. ‘Less he didn’t go there. But wherever the trail led, that’s where they’d go, if the sign showed that he’d gone out on the prairie, maybe they’d make a bee-line, ride like hell expecting to pick up his sign, maybe even sight him. That’s what they’d think. And what they’d do. Maybe. And, if they did, when they didn’t find him or any sign of him, they’d give up and go home. He hoped. That was the plan anyway, The only plan he had right now. At least, it was a plan.

He got off his pony, looked down the slope, knelt down and removed the Spanish spurs from his boots and stuffed them in his saddle bag. Then he picked up the reins, patted the pony on the nose and led him down the rocky path.

Alma, Colorado, hadn’t been much of a town. Too cold for a Tejano. Too damn high for starters. Just incorporated in ’73, in 1874, it boasted almost 400 souls, ‘most every one of them a miner. There were two mines, The Orphan Boy and The Sweet Home. It was damn awful cold in Alma, Hell, it was over ten and a half thousand feet. A man could get a nosebleed just thinking about it at this height. Alright for miners, supposed Gander, but sure Hell for a simple cowboy.

‘Dam’ fool’ he thought to himself. ‘Why’d I ever come up here?’

There had been a thought, of course. Something about mining for a change. Picking up some of that easy money, he guessed. Trouble was, he hadn’t been able to find anything easy about mining. Hardest work he’d ever tried. He didn’t know how those men did it. Most of them seemed to be Welsh and born to the mines. Little men, dark. And angry. Ever’ damn one of them. Glaring all the time. Gander didn’t know if they were angry about being here in Alma, on top of this damn mountain or if they was maybe angry about being Welsh, part of their national character. They all had little clay pipes stuck firmly between their teeth. And they were all belligerent little buggers who wouldn’t step aside for a cowboy, didn’t matter that the cowboy was a head taller. Well, a red head taller, a red- headed, freckled young man who’s visage reflected his Scandanavian background. A round peg in a square hole in the mining town of Alma, Colorado where he was about to freeze to death. The miners walked wherever they went. Gander mounted his horse to cross the street. The miners wore small-brimmed caps that kept their heads warm. Gander wore a broadbrimmed Mexican-styled sombrero to ward off the effects of the west Texas sun. And seemed like Gander could only understand about every third word that came out of the miners mouths, wasn’ t any of them ‘ha-blayed’ Texican. And the durn fools slept in shifts. You couldn’t get a room, oh no, you rented a bed. For eight hours at a time.

And there wasn’t that many saloons in Alma, not like the cowtowns Gander had been. When the cowboys hit the saloons, they whooped and yelled, shouted and sang out, usuallly a fight or two and drink ’til they passed out and get up and drink some more. Not Gander. His Trail Boss said he’d kick his ass if he did such a damn fool thing and Gander believed him.

These Welshmen didn’t shout or whoop it up. They just got quieter and glared more until one of them would start to sing. Always a sad song. And always a bunch of them would join in and, credit where credit is due, seemed like all the little buggers could sing.

Gander asked the barman, “What happens in the wintertime when the mines close and there are more miners than beds?”

The bartender leaughed in his face, ‘“You’re dumber than a block of stone, cowboy. Ain’t no winter in the mines. Ain’t no seasons underground. No winter nor summer neither.”

Only thing Gander could think to say was, “no wonder them Welshmen is mad all the time.”

The bartender laughing so hard it seemed he could barely get his words out, “You keeping an eye on that horse of yours, cowboy? You better hope those Chinee don’t get him, he’ll be on the menu quicker than spit.” He leaned back and roared with laughter. Gander grinned but it was a tight grin, more of a grimace. The bartender looked at him and laughed even louder. Gander turned on his heel and left the saloon. He mounted the dun and walked him down the street toward the livery where he’d been mucking out the stalls in exchange for sleeping in the hayloft and feed for the dun. Ain’t no town for a cowboy, he thought.

What there was in Alma, was a bank, a brand-spankin’ new bank, raw timber, unpainted yet, and no real money in it yet, no cages for the tellers. Gander wasn’t even sure they actually had a safe, a real working safe anyway. Didn’t matter, Gander didn’t want to rob a bank. Friends of his had walked out of a saloon in Kansas, robbed the bank and got shot down in the street for their trouble. Citizens got real upset when their banks were robbed. And if you didn’t get shot down on the spot, which was a real likely thing to happen in any town ‘cause everyone seemed to tote a gun, if you made it to your horse and got out of town and if you could outrun a posse long enough, they’d put a price on your head where ever’body and their brother would shoot first and ask questions later. Gander didn’t know why people kept trying to rob banks, didn’t seem like a good idea at all. People didn’t like bank robbers. They’d hunt them down, hang them, take potshots at the bodies, then bring them back to their town and put the dead bodies on display. Anyhow, most of the money in the town, pretty much any town, passed through the general stores or the half-dozen saloons.

Gander had seen what happens when you try to rob a saloon. There are drunk people in saloons, drunk people with guns, and some dumb sumbitch ‘ud be sure to start shooting and Gander didn’t want to get shot. He didn’t even want to get shot at let alone go so far as to think that he might actually get shot, or shoot someone. He grimaced. That wasn’t good either. Didn’t want to do that. A body gets hanged for that kind of stuff. No, he didn’t want anyone to get hurt, especially himself. He just wanted to get his hands on a little money. He wished he hadn’t spent all that trail driving money now. Should have saved a little of it. Still, as Mama had always said, when that milk is spilled, it don’t matter who lapped it up, you or the cat, it was still gone.

Gander knew it had to be the store. He had to rob the store. And he didn’t need much. Not all the money that was sure to be in the store anyway. Just a little. The storekeeper would get mad but the customers would just shrug it off. Probably. At least, not care enough to make a posse that would hunt him down. Twenty, thirty bucks would get him back to Texas. Get him out of this damn high country, anyway. Hard to breathe up here, and cold. At night, anyway, even in the summertime. And it was only fall. He had to get out of here before the first snow. He couldn’t imagine being snowed in here. Worse even than Michigan and he hadn’t thought anyplace could be worse than northern Michigan. . Didn’t know how the miners did it, he thought, how in hell do they breathe at this altitude. Wish I was in San Antone, he thought as he loosened the gun in his belt, and walked into the store.

It had been surprisingly easy. The storekeep had his head down, counting greenbacks into a wooden box. Gander put the revolver to his head, cocked it and the storekeep froze.

“Ain’t no need of anyone getting hurt” said Gander, reaching out to take a handful of greenbacks, stuffing them in his shirt. There was a jar of hard candy at hand and he grabbed a handful.

“Always liked me some hard candy” he said. “I’m leaving now. Don’t look and I’ve no reason to shoot you.”

He walked to the door, looked out, put the gun in his belt and walked to his horse and climbed aboard. He popped a piece of candy in his mouth, thought ‘don ’t be a damn fool’ and spurred the dun. They were at a dead run down the middle of the street when the shotgun went off behind him.

“Damn!” thought Gander, “that storekeep sure did take it personal.”

There were two roads at the edge of town and Gander took the one that he knew was gonna lead him out of these God awful mountains. He had slowed the dun to a mile-eating lope and dug another piece of candy out of his shirt pocket. He didn’t know how much money he had taken and didn’t care. It would be enough.

He stayed on the road long as he dared, finally found what looked like an old Indian trail that would lead him out of the mountains and headed downhill.

Chapter Break

Orvis Holland had run away from his Michigan home at fourteen years old back in ’70.

Somehow, he’d made his way to Texas, determined to be a cowboy. He’d gotten the name Gander from a one time saddle pal who called him Michigander and he wasn’t sure how Holland had got changed to Hollis. One of the many ranches he’d worked for he supposed, a spelling mistake. At fourteen he got on with a trail herd and gone up the old Chisholm trail to Kansas. He was a trail driver since, an old hand now, good at his job. And didn’t really want to do anything else. He’d survived stampedes, storms, and a few scrapes along the way. He was better with his fists than he was with the old pistol in the saddle holster. It was a war era Navy Colt, converted somewhere along the line to cartridges. He’d got the pistol when he helped to track some rustlers, his reward being the gun and belt from one of the rustlers after the hanging. Some of the boys seemed to enjoy the hanging. Not Gander. The men he helped hang hadn’t been much older than himself. And they’d been scared. That part had been bad enough. Gander hadn’t known what was coming next, what came when you put a rope around a man’s neck and let him strangle, kicking and struggling, face turn ing purple, pissing and shitting himself. Gander didn’t think he’d ever forget the smell of it. He didn’t want to do it again, that’s for sure.

“Then” he wondered, not even realizing he spoke aloud, “what the hell am I doing hanging around here? ‘Cause if that posse catches up with me they’ll sure enough hang me.”

As he neared the end of the rocky defile, he could see tufts of yellowing shortgrass growing haphazardly among the rocks and he turned away, staying with the rocks, heading southwest.

Chapter Break

The posse had made it to the edge of the prairie and, as rational men everywhere, stopped to discuss their next move. Some were in favor of striking out across the plains, finding the trail and riding the man down.

“Hold on” said some of the other, also rational men, “supposing he just headed back up into the rocks figuring we’d take off helter skelter across the prairie here just because it’s easier riding.”

“Let’s have some coffee and think about this” said the Sheriff who, frankly, much preferred sitting behind his desk. They dismounted, built a fire and made coffee and thought about it. And eventually, as men do, they came to a united agreement. They’d return to Alma. After all, no one had got shot, it was only the storekeepers money and it wasn’t even than much. He’d probably just jack the price on a few things and make it up by the next payday.

So, having finished their coffee and unwilling to spend the night, they turned their horses and back to Alma they went.

But Gander, like all fugitives, didn’t know that and, like all fugitives everywhere, he kept looking behind him just in case.

It’s a funny thing about guilty people. They all have this compulsion to look over their shoulders. They expect someone, some day, will point them out and shout, “He’s the one that robbed that store in Alma.”

Chapter Break

The southern Rockies were lower but still high country for a Tejano. He sat the dun on a mountain peak and stared at the vista spread before him. Peak after peak, mostly gold and brown but streaked here and there with green. One valley after another, he thought. And not even a trace of another human being. Not a trace of smoke, the air so clear he felt like he could darn near see all the way to Mexico. And Mexico lay to the south, he knew that, and he knew he was riding ever southward. He knew that too.

Even for the Michigan boy that he’d been, Gander figured he was a man full growed now. He’d been to see the tiger. That’s what his boss man had called the saloons and gambling halls of the cattle towns. The tiger. And he pointed out more, the dark underbelly and what happened to those that didn’t keep their wits about them.

Chapter Break

Life as a cowboy was darn near ever’thing that Gander had thought it was going to be. Physically demanding with long periods of nothing much and then moments of stomach-churning excitement. The first Indians that he’d met had waylaid them and appeared almost out of thin air. The Trail Boss warned everyone to “Be ready but don’t make a damn move unless I do.” Then he talked with the Indians. And talked. And then he gave over a hundred head of stock to them. Gander helped cut them out and the Indians, Comanches he was to learn, drove them away.

“Cheap at half the price” stated the Boss.

“Tell you the truth, Boss” said Gander, “They didn’t look all that tough. Dirty bunch, only saw a handful of guns.”

“Ain’t what you see with the damn Comanch” said the Boss. “Get them cattle moving.”

After that, almost every encounter with Indians went about the same. Gander couldn’t tell a Comanche from any other Indian and said so.

“Tell you the truth, Son” said the Boss, “I have a lot of trouble doing that also. But don’t call ‘em Comanch, at least not to their faces. I don’t know what it means but I think maybe it ain’t good.”

Now what Gander didn’t know about the wild west, even after all his experience, would have filled several books. The Comanche ruled over a large area, ranging from the high plains of Kansas and Colorado, encompassing the territories of Arizona and New Mexico and more of Texas than anyone else. And though they could be extremely vicious just for the hell of it, and Godawful mean to those they enslaved, they didn’t believe in getting any of their warriors killed or wounded when they could get what they wanted through threats and intimidation.

Given the opportunity, however, they murdered indiscriminately and wantonly and as more and more Americans moved into Texas, the Comanches felt the need to make their claimed territories more secure. And it backfired on them. In 1874, the United States went to war against the plains Indians. The Red River War was of relatively short duration, about a year. Plains Indians were tribal, with internecine hatreds rampant. And the land known as Comancheria began to unravel. The Comanche, incensed by the wanton slaughter of the great buffalo herds, attacked a group of hunters and suffered a huge defeat at a place called Papago Wells when they were confronted by buffalo hunters and ranchers and then later that same year, after the tribe had retired to their fortress-like winter quarters in Palo Duro Canyon, the United States Army, buttressed by ranchers and buffalo hunters, managed a surprise attack that ended Comanche rule almost overnight.

The Comancheria, the Apacheria, the Sioux, the Nez Perce, the Blackfeet. Like dominos, the tribes fell before the sheer gunpower of encroaching immigration.

And although Gander kept a wary eye out for Indians on his lonely trek through the mountains, the only Indians that might have been there were in hiding themselves and not looking to confront anyone.

Chapter Break

Coloradans raved about Denver being a mile-high city and this was similar country around here. Gander figured it was about the same height as Denver but half that of Alma. He was making progress. Always looking to go downhill, he followed first one stream, then another, the fall days warmer as he travelled down the mountainside. He’d never seen country quite like this, all yellow and gold, Aspen leaves fluttering in the smallest breeze, quiet valleys full of deer and elk and curious bears, and the animals for the most part didn’t seem to be afraid of him at all. Some of them stared at him but generally they ignored him. He’d heard, of course, about the Grizzlies of the Rocky Mountains and he gave them a wide berth. They certainly weren’t afraid of him, standing and staring as he rode past. Someone, somewhere, had told him that the grizzly bear was as bad as humans, killing just for the fun of killing. The dun tended to get skittery everytime they got close and that made Gander nervous.

He knew that to the north was the Platte. He’d crossed that river before he’d ever wandered up to Alma. And he knew that to the south, somewhere, was the Arkansas and one called the Picketwire. He’d driven cattle across those rivers. And ‘way south of the Arkansa, a few more rivers, some dry country and Texas. “When I get back to Texas” mused Gander to the dun,”I ain’t ever leaving again.” He looked at the sky, “cept maybe old Mexico.” he said to the dun, “ kind’a like to go there.”

Gander wasn’t lost. He just didn’t know where he was. Somewhere in the Rockies, ‘but wondered which mountain range.’ Someone had told him that the Rocky Mountains wudn’t just a mountain range but a whole durn collection of mountain ranges. There was the Sawtooth ‘way up north and the Animas ‘way down south. Gander figured he was somewhere in between, he just didn’t know where. He remembered reading somewhere that Daniel Boone had claimed he’d never been lost, only confused for a couple weeks now and then. He was pretty sure he’d lost the posse days ago but he didn’t want to take any chances. He was loving the country and the climate. Warm days, cool nights, a little more frost every morning as the days grew shorter and the nights longer, but he was moving south all the time. Well, south with sort of a westward cant to it, he supposed. And no people. No people at all. Just a big old country with nobody in it.

“Except me.” His thoughts tended to wander more than usual. Sometimes, he’d stop for no reason other than to look at the view. No reason to hurry, make it easier on the dun. And the horse didn’t seem to mind stopping. And with no trail boss and no trail schedule, warm days, cool nights, plenty of small game, Gander just sort’a wandered his way south.

“Tell you truth” Gander said to the dun, “It’s a long way ‘cross that lonesome prairie. Someone told me it’s two thousand miles from Canada to Texas.” The dun looked around at the sound of the voice, went back to cropping grass.

“You didn’t know that, did you? Two thousand miles is a long damn way. And they say it’s five hundred miles across. That’s an awful lot of empty.”

He gathered the reins, tapped the dun with his boot heels and moved off at a walk.

“I wonder where the Indians are” he mused to the dun. “I ain’t seen nor heard nobody. I guess we’re just lucky.”

“Course,” he went on to the dun, “If we was to just stop around here someplace… A body could do worse” he mused .

“No one here to bother us….we could build a little cabin beside one of these creeks. Fish, hunt, be a pretty good life. You could have your own stall, your own corral. No one to answer to.”

No bosses. No girls. No red whisky. Not sure how girls and red whisky fit in but there sure as hell wasn’t any of either one around here.

“You know, if there was a girl here.” He’d stood in line with some of his friend at a house in Ellsworth. The girl was a couple years older than him, dark hair and eyes. She didn’t waste any time. Wasn’t near as much fun as he’d been led to believe it was going to be but on his way out he’d given his friends a big grin and a thumbs up. He took some teasing over it, fretted a bit but didn’t let anyone know and for a couple weeks, he checked his pecker. He didn’t know just what it was that he was checking for but nothing unusual happened and after awhile, he gave up on checking. Didn’t know but what the boys was just pulling his leg anyway.

He patted the dun on the neck, “ Probably best we get our sorry butts back to Texas,” he supposed. He thought again of that long ride on that empty prairie and that winter was coming on and that getting caught out in the middle of nowhere by a norther could get a body killed before he could find shelter and that he’d never ridden that kind of distance alone.

“Course” he said to the dun, “We could maybe try Santa Fe. I hear it’s on the way. Sort’a maybe. Boys talked a lot about them Spanish girls there.”

“Long way, horse,” he sighed as they followed the stream downhill. “No matter how we go, it’s a long, damn way.”

He’d been winding downhill, following the stream. As he came through a small cut, he found himself staring at small almost hidden waterfall. The creek fell over some boulders and about twelve feet below was a pond. As pretty a sight, Gander thought, as he’d ever seen. And on the far side, an oak tree, top-blasted, gnarled and twisted. Hadn’t been seeing any oak, not at these elevations anyhow. He searched for a path down, leading the dun through the brush. It was a hanging valley, a small one. From the top of the little falls he’d been able to see almost the whole little area. Couldn’t have been much more than ten acres or so and so different from all the rest . Felt different too. A good feeling. Gander set up camp under the twisted oak, stripped the dun and let him roll. He had a fire going, fish on a spit and fell asleep moments after eating. When he awoke, there was a half moon glinting on the pond, the coals from the fire glowing red in the night. He snugged into his blanket and stared at the glowing coals. Felt like home in Michigan when he’d been a little boy, when his Momma was alive.

He stayed in the little valley for a week, more or less. He found that he’d been losing track of the days, wasn’t quite sure how much time had passed but that anxious feeling began to build in his guts and the little valley seemed to get ever smaller with each day. The nights worked some kind of magic on Gander, he stared into the fire and it felt almost like time just stopped but in the daylight, he knew it was time to move on, that winter would find this place too.

Chapter Break

The homes were almost hidden in the trees at the foot of the hill and he’d come a hair of riding past them altogether when the dun wanted a drink and he’d stopped, drank, bathed his face and looked up to see the houses.

“I be damned.” he breathed. He was actually excited to see the little settlement out here in the middle of nowhere.

“I like you, little pony” he said to the uninterested dun, “but talking to you ain’t quite the same as talking with a real person. Maybe a girl. Wonder if they’s a girl, he mused. Maybe more’n one. Gotta be, he thought. Those are houses. With curtains. Men alone don’ t put up curtains.

“ Ought to ride on by” he mused. “Settlement out here. Posse’would’a known about it for sure ’n come calling. Probably rode right around me, been and gone days ago.”

He thought about it for a moment. ‘Gander, you dumbass.’ He’d been wandering the mountains for weeks. No one looking for him anymore. He’d ridden a couple posses himself, no way they’d stay that long for a man that robbed a storekeep. It wasn’t that important. He wasn’t that important. Still, he didn’t want to take any chances, he should probably ought’a ride on by.

But he didn’t. Because there was a girl. Two of them, looked like sisters. Almost like twins. They both had waist length dark hair and dark eyes and they were pretty.

And they were staring at him.

Two girls. Young girls. Staring at him.

It wasn’t as though his mind had suddenly gone empty, rather it was like everything he had ever known came crashing into his brain at the same time clamoring for attention. He was transfixed. Rooted to the spot where he stood.

Both these girls had the black hair, the flashing eyes of the Senoritas of San Antone but there wasn’t anything Mexican about them. No velvety brown skin, no flirty eyes, no giggling behind fans. No damn fans at all, that Gander could see. Just two girls. Two beautiful girls looking at him. Two girls that the longer he looked, the prettier they got. The dun nosed at him, again, pushing him to take a step, a second step.

The young man shook his head, a great fugue seemed to have settled upon him.

“You could’a said something” he spoke to the horse, “you could’a told me.” as he climbed wearily into the saddle and eased the pony toward the houses at a walk.

Chapter Break

“Ain’t it always the way?” queried Gander of the dun. “No matter what kind of trouble you got looking at you, it just gets worse when a girl gets in the picture with you..”

As he neared the house, really a cabin, or cabins actually, since there were two of them connected by a breezeway, he stopped the dun, sat quietly studying the structure. Two cabins, it looked like, joined together by the breezeway, with an upstairs obviously added later. Whoever these people we re, they had built to stay. He allowed his gaze to drift upward, toward the girls that had been framed in the window, leaned back in his saddle and stared.

Only one girl now. He shook his head, looked again. One girl. Gander was sure he’d seen two. Maybe it was one of them mirage things he’d heard about. She didn’t look like a mirage. Long black hair, dark eyes staring at him, surely nothing bashful about her. Gander found himself beginning to feel uncomfortable.

“This ain’t a bar girl” he said to the dun. ‘You mind how you go now” he said as he nosed the dun forward.

When he got close enough, he saw she was just a girl, a young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. Looked like the girls that he had gone to school with those many long years ago.

She spoke first, a young, schoolgirl voice, “You’re a cowboy!”

“Uh, yes.” said Gander. “I am.”

“A cowboy!” she stated again. “A real cowboy. From Texas?”

“Uh, yes,” said Gander, “from Texas.”

“I’ve met some Colorado boys that said they were cowboys from Texas but they were really just farm boys from Indiana.” said the girl.

“How’d you know Indiana?”

“Been there.” she shrugged.

“You from Indiana ?” queried Gander.

A look of surprise flitted across her face, a hand went to her mouth.

“Kentucky!” she said.

“Well, they kind of bump up against each other.” said Gander. “I’m from Michigan myself and I went through Kentucky and Indiana on my way west.”

“I’m not supposed to tell” said the girl. “Sometimes, I forget. We’re supposed to say we’re from Kentucky.”

“Okay!” said Gander.

“It’s supposed to be a secret” she went on, “you won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“None of my business” said Gander. “Out here in the west, people ain’t supposed to ask you where you’re from. Or what your real name is either. If you don’t want to say, that’s supposed to be your own damn…uh, darn business.”

“Really?” breathed the girl.

“That’s what they told me when I come out here.” said Gander.

“You’re from Michigan, I thought you were from Texas” said the girl.

“I am from Texas now. I used to be from Michigan but I’m a Texican now for sure.”

“I never heard of Texicans before.”

“Well, you’re looking at one now. Texas, well Texas been a state since before I was even born but before that, it was part of Mexico but the white people who lived there didn’t want to be Mexian, so they called themselves Texican. Real Texans, and I’m one, ain’t really Americans and we damn sure ain’t Mexicans. We’re, by God, sure enough Texicans.”

The girl stared at him. Gander got nervous. He took off his hat.

“You have red hair” said the girl.

“Yes” replied Gander.

“And a red beard.”

Gander fingered his beard. He’d forgot that he hadn’t shaved in weeks and was surprised that he had a beard covering his face.

“Yeah, I guess” he said.

“What’s your name?” asked the girl.

“They call me Gander.”

“Gander? Like in goose? Is that really your name?”

“It is now.”

“What was it before?”

“Orvis” replied Gander, “Orvis Holland.”

“Orvie is a nice name. Can I call you Orvis?”

“Uh, I guess” said Gander, “What’s your name?”

“Hattie.”

“And what place is this?”

“Git Well Springs.” replied Hattie.

Chapter Break

Lucas and Thomas Calderoot were cousins. They sharecropped neighboring farms in southern Indiana belonging to a third, older and far more successful cousin, John Jacob, J.J. Calderoot, founder and owner of Calderoot General Store in Columbus, Indiana. J.J. had used the profits from his store to buy farms in the surrounding area as the thirst for free land ‘out west’ had taken hold among some of his more itchy footed neighbors. J.J. Calderoot was now one of the wealthiest men in southern Indiana, owner of Calderoot Farms, Inc. and beginning to develop an interest in politics. And politics was a big deal at that time. After the Civil War, Democrats and Republicans were pretty evenly matched and every election was a regular slugfest with bonfires in the streets of New York and Chicago and in the small towns and villages across the nation. Tempers flared and there were riots in the streets. Most men voted the way their fathers before them had voted with the fainthearted keeping their opinions to themselves and generally avoiding the polling booths on election day. J.J. was, first and foremost, a businessman, an honest, God-fearing and responsible Republican businessman. And he was ambitious.

Indiana was considered a ’swing’ state in national politics which meant that if you could do well in Indianapolis, you just might have a shot at some real national power. A friend and business acquaintance, Schuyler Colfax, had used his connections so well that he was vice President under ‘Useless’ Grant. Of course, Schuyler only called the President ‘Useless’, and, with a wink, in the company of those he considered to be confidantes. J.J. was proud of the fact that Schuyler spoke to him so openly. He didn’t mind informing his own little circle that he had the ear of the vice President of the United States. And his investments, particularly his investments in railroads were going so well because of it. So he moved his presence north to Indianapolis. His cousins, Lucas and Thomas were expected to work harder and show due deference to their benefactor. And do it for just a little less because they were family.

And when J.J. informed them that he was moving to Indianapolis to give a little more time and attention to his political ambitions, the cousins had dutifully congratulated him but now they were told they had to report to J.J.’s second in command, a nephew of his wife.

J.J. just naturally assumed that because he, himself, was interested in politics that everyone else was also. He had failed to notice that his cousins didn’t really talk about politics, didn’t really participate in the myriad of political rallies around the area, and didn’t vote.

The cousins, who had much smaller ambitions in life, were hard workers and they were used to finishing one job before starting another one . That’s a lesson that you learn early in life if you’re a farmer and the cousins had grown up as farmers. Close all their lives, they had grown closer as adults. Attended the same school, all the way through the sixth grade. Sunday mornings at the same church. Married sisters , Lillian and Mary, that were neighbors And each had a daughter, Hattie and Mattie.

The cousins were tall and lean, black hair and calloused hands, faces weathered and darkened by the sun. The sisters they wed were on the spare side, with dark hair and eyes. Farm boys and girls, early to bed and early to rise and marriage hadn’t changed their lives much. Chores before breakfast, work until noon. Half an hour rest after dinner and work until suppertime. Early to bed and early to rise, the life of a farmer.

J.J. had approached them both before the marriages and offered them the positions as sharecroppers. And they had accepted without thinking much about it because they were farmers. And they worked. Every day. Seven days a week although Sundays were considered a day of rest and they only did basic chores on Sundays. Farm jobs are everyday jobs, fire up the stove, feed and milk the cows before breakfast, turn out the chickens while the farm wife makes breakfast. Every day. And the jobs get done. Which is what they’d been doing all their lives.

But J.J. had made them think.

As children, they hadn’t had to think. They just did the work, the parents did the thinking but now they were the parents and J.J. began to gall them and they talked about it. In the evenings, they sat on the porch and smoked and talked. Mostly about the weather, the crops, the animals, the everyday life of the farmer. But they also talked about ’The West’… they talked about the west because people they knew had packed up and gone west. A new land. Free for the taking.

They hadn’t made any plans to do anything about their situation. They were farmers and they worked the land but J.J. tended to be a little high and mighty. And he couldn’t seem to let them forget that he was the one who owned the land. He was the one who pulled the strings. And there just wasn’t anything bashful about J.J. Calderoot.

The cousins didn’t really discuss it with Lillian and Mary. Not at first. But lots of people were moving west. Especially people like the cousins Calderoot, sharecroppers. People who were told that if you went west, you could own land just for the taking. You staked it out, you worked it, and the government would give you title to it. Your own land. Free for the taking.

Hattie and Mattie, like their parents, were lean and spare, dark hair and eyes, taught to be seen and not heard, don’t speak until you’re spoken to, keep your head down and do what you’re told to do. Life’s lessons to be lived, same as their parents.

But the times were a-changing and when the boys mentioned the idea to the wives, they found the same underlying discontent with their lot in Indiana.

Free land in the west.

First, it was an idea. Like a rumor. But the rumor didn’t die out, didn’t go away. Like a distant drumbeat that gets nearer, louder, more insistent. Not to be ignored.

Free land in the west.

Chapter Break

Back during that damnable war, President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act. Before that, the government would auction public land in such large lots that ordinary people couldn’t afford to buy. This act was a basic shift towards the average citizen.

Citizens like the Calderoot cousins.

All you needed was ten dollars and you could claim a homestead of 160 acres. Ten dollars and put up a house and working the land for five years. This meant that the Calderoot cousins could claim 320 acres side by side. 320 acres.

And all you had to do was basically what they’d been doing all their lives except now they could do it for themselves and not for their damned cousin.

And they had the money. Of course, they owed it to J.J. but they had the cash.

And they had all the equipment. It all belonged to J.J. but they had it. And after all, they’d been the ones that used it, not J.J. One of them possession being nine tenths of the law things they’d been told about. No matter, they had the necessaries to go west.

Free land in the west. 360 acres of their own.

Chapter Break

Sometime in the first week after J.J.’s departure, the cousins loaded the farm wagons with their families, the farm tools and furnishings they deemed necessary, hitched the farm mules to the wagons and set out for the free land in the far west.

As they drove westward, the cousins discussed what Cousin J.J. would do once he found out. They were limited as to how fast they could go. J.J. wouldn’t be. He’d have the law on them. But, the die was cast.

The nephew would notify J.J. and J.J. would notify the law. The law would send out notice and since J.J. would probably offer some kind of reward, somewhere along the way, someone would turn them in and they’d be dragged back to Indiana to face the consequence of their action.

An unexpected advantage came their way when the nephew, fearful of his position, dragged his feet about reporting the defection which gave the cousins an unexpected head start. They were somewhere in Missouri the first time their identity came up. They asked a farmer if they could camp for a couple nights on his property.

“Where you boys from?” queried the farmer, suspiciously.

“We’re the Root brothers out of Kentucky.” stated Lucas, “I’m Efhron ’n this’s my brother, Zephron.”

“I’m from Kentucky” said the Missouri farmer. “From Pikeville.”

“Been there.” said the newly christened Zephron.

“We’re from the Knobs.” said Efhron.

“You boys related to them Hatfields or McCoys” queried the farmer.

“Ever’one is related to ever’one else in Kentucky” laughed Ephron.

“I’ve heard that.” agreed the farmer.

“Besides,” said Ephron, “we ain’t got nothing to do with that feuding. Ain’t none of our bidness.”

“Nothing to do with us,” stated Zephron.

“We’re goin’ west, mebbe California. Find us some gold.” said Ephron.

Zephron nodded in agreement.

“Gold would be nice.” said the farmer. ‘Take no truck with feuds, myself,” he added. “You’re welcome to camp here awhile…s’long as you clean up ‘fore you leave.” And with that, he walked away.

“Where’d you come up with them names?” asked Thomas, after the farmer left.

“I dunno” replied Lucas, “they just came out.”

So the cousins Calderoot from Indiana became the brothers, Efron ’n Zephron Root from the rocky slopes of eastern Kentucky. Traveling with their wives, Lillian and Mary and their daughters, Hattie and Mattie. Part of the great westward trek.

The most familiar covered wagon crossing the plains and mountains to the promised land of the west was a "prairie schooner" and the Root’s were encouraged to get rid of the wagons and mules that had brought them to the edge of the great plains. They got a good price for the mules, far more than they paid for the oxen that replaced them. They got less for the wagons they sold in order to buy the two prairie schooners they needed to cross the plains. The schooners had cloth tops for protection from sun and rain, hail and wind, and they could be closed off entirely by drawstrings on each end. The big wheels rolled easily over the bumps and hole of the rough trails, and wide rims kept the wagons from sinking into the soft ground. The wagon's 10 - by 3 1/2 foot body could carry a large load but they were advised to keep it ‘light as possible. Walking, not riding. Herding the oxen west rather than driving them. The lighter the wagon, the less likely to bog down in muddy stream-banks or prairie sloughs. There wasn’t much room, and mostly the Roots lived outside, rigging leanto’s when weather made them necessary.

And sometimes they were necessary. The Roots learned early that wagons roll pretty easy over dry prairie but when it rains, the prairie is a quagmire and if you try to move, you’ll sink Best to stay put, hunker down and wait. When the storm passes, the prairie dries out quickly.

It was a long walk and after a few weeks, everyone in the family had become pretty darn proficient at droving the oxen. They tried for twenty miles a day. Rarely did it but they tried. Walking west behind the oxen. From Kansas City to Hays, across the wide nothing to Bent’s Fort and on to Trinidad in Colorado territory, good weather and bad, the days passed as they climbed higher in the mountains. And the nights got cooler and their campfires bigger.

Git Well Springs

Trinidad was pretty much a Mexican town, a jumping off point for the Santa Fe Trail. And it was a pretty good sized town, lots of immigrants. A town of a thousand or more, and proud of itself as almost eny Trinidadian was only too happy to tell. They camped outside town, figuring to rest their animals while they replenished supplies, mended harness and caught up with the world. Coal had been found nearby and Trinidad was booming. All the talk was about the railroad coming and statehood. Property values were sure to rise and land was changing hands time and again. They were told they had got there at just the right time and they should stay. But the Roots insisted they were just passing through, headed for California. Then, they were told that winter was coming and that the winters in the mountains brought snow and a lot of it and that Raton Pass would like as not close up with the first snowfall and that was gonna happen pretty soon. Almost everyone they spoke with told them they should find themselves a place to winter.

And the mountain man showed up at their campsite, introduced himself as Just Plain John.

Just plain John had come west to the mountains years before, he explained, when he was just a boy. Came with a group of trappers, all gone now. John wasn’t too clear on how old he was and he didn’t remember a last name. He said he knew he had a Mother, that he dreamed about her but that he was never able to see her face in his dreams and he wasn’t sure how he knew he was dreaming about his Mother, but he just knew.

He told how he camped at that same Spring just about every winter for years but he didn’t mind sharing with the Roots. He called it his Git Well Spring, said the place had healing powers.

That night, around the campfire, Just Plain John regaled them with stories of his life as a Mountain Man and that long ago he had found a place in the mountains only a week or so from Trinidad, maybe a little longer with the oxen. A hanging valley, he said, with several springs, protected from the really heavy storms.Told how there was game year round and that he’d never seen an Indian there. Told them he was going there to die this year and that he’d like to share the place with someone who’d bury him after he was dead.

He also told them that the Rockies was to the north of them and that they had set up homesteading in the San Juan Mountains. Ephron and Zephron allowed as how one mountain range was pretty much the same as another and couldn’t tell that it made any difference. Anyway, the old man seemed a likable source of information and as he shared the game he hunted and joined in to help with the building of their home, he became part and parcel of the family and since they were building anyhow, they built him a small cabin on his favored camp site.

Then it was they headed for the foothills seeking a sheltered lee. And that’s how the Root brothers found themselves encamped in a hanging valley in what they were told was the San Juan Mountains debating the best way to cross over come Spring. They set up camp, wagons squared around a rocked firepit. Built some leanto’s and laid in firewood. A lot of firewood. People at Trinidad had told them, ‘When you think you got enough, lay in a lot more. There’s going to be a lot of snow and it’s going to be cold.”

In the meantime, the Autumn weather provided warmish days and cool nights. And there was an abundance of game so the cousins explored the surrounding area.

“Ain’t a bad little valley” mused Ephron, one evening as they sat smoking after supper. “I climbed the hill at the waterfall. Ain’t real easy, lot of shale, but you can get up and down there. Nice spring at the top, creek runs straight at the beginning then twists ’n turns. Don’t see a lot of evidence of much flooding at the lower end.”

“We could do worse” said Zephron.

He talked it over with Zephron and then they talked it over with the wives. It was, they all decided, as good a place as they were likely to find if they kept going west. For darn sure, it wasn’t California ’n there wasn’t going to be any raw gold to pick up from the ground but neither one of the cousins had really expected to pick up gold nuggets that were just laying around. They’d both been mule-kicked before.

They didn’t waste a lot of time making up their minds. If this is where we’re going to settle, let us make some hay while the sun is still shining so they put stakes in to mark where they wanted their homes, one on each side of the spring. And they began to haul stones to build foundations. They cut trees and hauled them back to cure and they began to dig basements for each home.

The fall lingered on and the women put in a winter garden and put the girls to work at that. Nothing lazy about the Root family, especially since it looked like they had found their home.

Chapter Break

The Golden West. Cowboys and Indians. Texas Longhorns and the Old Chisholm Trail. Fence free from Mexico to Canada. This celebrated, some might say over-celebrated age of the old west lasted about twenty years, from the 1860’s to the 1880’s. It began, you might say, with the cattle rich, money poor ranchers in Texas who, in desperation to find a market for their beef, began driving huge herds of cattle from Texas to the railheads of Kansas where they could be sold to cattle buyers who would then transport them to the slaughter yards of Chicago. A simple enough solution. Drive your cattle to market. Except the market was a thousand miles away and it took a heap of driving to get mostly wild cattle over that distance. And a lot of manpower. Drovers were needed. Young men who could live in the saddle for two to three months at a time, surviving on beans and beef, sleeping under the stars, and often dying out on that lone prairie. The cowboy. The cowboy, knight-errant of the Golden West.

Orvis ‘Gander’ Holland had an uncle who augmented his income by trapping the small animals on and around his farm in northern Michigan. The uncle taught Orvis the how to’s and the what not to do’s about trapping and skinning the smaller critters that lived in the northern woods. The romance of trapping for beaver in the Rocky Mountains, Orvis got for his own self in the penny magazines that he read to pass the time in the long and cold Michigan winters. Or a cowboy. Orvis thought he’d really like to be a cowboy. It was all in the books. Big hat, boots ’n spurs, ropes and horses and chousing a herd of longhorns to market. He’d never even heard the word ‘chousing’ before but he figured it out. Riding and shooting and chousing longhorns.

And so it was, when Orvis was Twelve years old, he packed his gear and walked away one dark night from the farm in northern Michigan, dreaming of being a cowboy, living an exciting life on horseback or maybe a mountain man, trapping the Rocky Mountains. Dream-seeking.

Most of the runaways made it west and became the cowboys they dreamed of being. Orvis Holland made it to Texas, acquired the name Gander, short for Mighigander, and became one of those cowboys helping to drive the massive herds up the Chisholm Trail, young men, whooping and shooting, hurrahing the towns of Dodge, Ellsworth and others. Just like in the penny novels. Ellsworth had been something else. Seven hundred cowboys with time on their hands and money in their jeans. 1874! At sixteen years old, Gander considered himself an old hand. He bought some fancy boots from the Big Boot Company and paid more for them than anything he’d ever bought in his whole life. They’d trailed the herd there sometime around the end of June, he thought, and by mid-July he was about to run out of money. Trail boss grabbed him, told him that stupid was a bad way to grow up. Took him and a couple of the other boys, got them on the train. Gander liked Trail Boss, didn’t quite know why Trail Boss seemed to like him but the truth was pretty simple. Gander was a bit of a rarity among the young buck cowboys. He could read and write and do numbers. Back to Texas for another herd. And back to Ellsworth. Get there early in June. Trail boss said first at the pot gets the choice cuts. Last drive Gander made, Trail boss got himself killed in a stampede and after Gander collected his pay for the drive, he wandered north. Good summer grass but cold winters and the ranchers were hard men, demanding. Gander heard about a trail supposed to run from Wyoming to Mexico. It ran more or less along the crest and was called the Owlhoot Trail because it was favored by outlaws traveling back and forth from the riches of the north to the safety of the southern climes.

Chapter Break

The cowboy life was a great life while it lasted, young and careless and free to do pretty much anything they felt like doing. That life lasted only a few years and by the time most of the drovers, those who survived, reached their late teens and early twenties, cowboy jobs were getting hard to come by. In many cases, after the cattle rush of the seventies was over, these young men, still boys in many ways, used and tossed away by the distant owners, became rustlers of the cattle on the ranches where they had worked, or they robbed banks and trains. Often they just wandered, riding the grubline, they called it. Temporary jobs, anything to survive. One day a bandit, next day, maybe a lawman. Henry Plummer, Sherrif and outlaw leader of a band called The Innocents had been hanged back in ’64.

Struggling to survive, in or outside the law, survival came first for the boy riders of the ranges, most of them runaways and like young mustangs forced out of the herd, they tended to band together. Outside the herd, outside the law. But, the outlaw life was hard. And short. And once you’ve seen someone hanged, you tend to want to avoid being the hangee.

This was Orvis ‘Gander’ Holland when he rode the dun into the Root brothers little settlement of

Git Well Spring…

But the Roots had picked a good location and some of the people passing through knew it and settled close by.

Git well spring wasn’t a town or even close to one but it was a ranch. The Roots called it Welllspring Ranch.

Chapter Break

Gander was digging. Well, mostly he was picking, then shoveling. Rocky ground. He was used to rocky ground. Michigan was rocky. He kept the larger pieces of rock off to the side to be used in the foundation that he was going to build around this hole in the ground. Gander was digging a necessary.

When there ain’t but\ two or three men, a necessary ain’t so necessary, but the little settlement was home now to four men and four women and when Efphron, or maybe Zephron, Gander still didn’t have who is who straight, but one of them suggested that Ganders usefulness could begin with the construction of a necessary, Gander agreed immediately and together they looked to choose a site.

Now, the site of a necessary needs to be close to the cabins and it needs to be downhill from the water source, so the two men walked and talked while searching. After choosing a site, Gander gatherer tools while Efphron, for indeed it was Efphron, began staking for he knew well the importance of a good necessary.

Just Plain John was sleeping in the sun. Gander had been spending a lot of his evening listening to the garrulous old man, the tales of his youth in the mountains. Gander didn’t know how much of it was true and frankly didn’t care. The old man had convinced him that riding south across the great plains all on his lonesome was a bad idea and to try it in the face of the coming winter would be suicidal. He knew Efphron and Zephron wanted to know his decision and he thought that now would be as good a time as any.

Gander saw one of the girls, he couldn’t tell at this distance which one, but one of them was hurrying toward the main house.

Picking at the rocks was hard work but Gander kept swinging. He knew about work, had learned it on that farm in Michigan. Now, while he preferred to do his work from the back of a horse, he also knew that sometimes you just had to get down and dirty and standing and staring wouldn’t get any job done.

The girl, the younger one, Gander was sure, came to stand beside Ephron, talking to him. Ephron scratched at his beard, and walked over to Gander as the girl headed back toward the house.

“Just Plain John’s dead.” he stated flatly. “We need to know if you’re staying on for the winter.”

“Well” said Gander, “John had convinced me that staying over was the smart thing to do. I was gonna build a lean-to against his snug but I reckon I won’ t need it now.” He looked down at the hole he had begun, “Do you want me to go dig a grave for him?

“No” replied Ephron, “you stick with the necessary.”

It was hard work but Gander stuck with it. All day, as the others went about their chores, Gander dug. When he wasn ’t digging, he chose and stacked stones for the foundation. The Root brothers came and looked, nodded and walked away. The third day they brought a load of clean logs. Gander dug and piled rocks. It took a week but he finally climbed out of the hole for the last time. He had been working on the foundation piecemeal but now he set to work in earnest and the next morning when he walked out of the cabin that he still thought of as belonging to Just Plain John, he saw the brothers busy erecting the framework. That evening it was ready for use.

Just Plain John’s packs didn’t contain much of interest to Gander. The .50 Cal Sharps rifle was too large for his liking but he knew it was a weapon favored by hide hunters everywhere. Trouble is, the darn buffalo are about gone and when they’re finished, the hunters will go also and then what will the rifle be worth?

And the Root brothers hadn’t been satisfied with just finding a good spot to plant Just Plain John. They decided that they needed a real cemetery. And if they was going to have a cemetery, they might just as well have a Chapel to go with it. And since it didn’t take the brothers long to decide on anything, they had marked the spot where the Chapel was to stand and on the hill behind was to be their cemetery and Just Plain John was the first burial.

It was decided that Gander was to inherit the .50 Cal and it wasn’t long before he discovered a use for it. As a matter of fact, a need for it.

As the weather grew colder, the animals began to move down off the mountain. The first bears to show up were smaller brown or honey bears and the .30 cal was adequate but the first Grizzly that Gander seen decide that he might not want to make him angry by shooting him with a little old .30 cal.

He went back to the settlement, dragged out the Sharps and began to clean it. “Biggest damn bear I ever saw” he told Ephron. “Must have been ten foot tall” he told Zephron. “If I get him, you’ll have fat to burn. And skinned out…” He ran out of words as his fingers worked on the Sharps. “Biggest damn bear I ever saw.”

The Grizzly hadn’t been afraid in the least and Gander had an easy time killing him but that was the only Grizzly that he saw that year. He found out that generally speaking, when it comes to Grizzlies, they’re just too damn mean to have more than one to a range. The Sharps, however, made it easier for him to kill other, smaller bears, at greater distances. The Root larder was full and there were a lot of bear skins drying by the time of the first snow.

Chapter Break

The first year, far as the Root’s knew, they’d had no neighbors but by the following year had seen the smoke of a neighboring fire and the ensuing years had brought more. In the beginning, the callers had been cautious, curious, didn’t stay long. After a couple years, there must have been half a dozen settlers and they began to visit back and forth. They’d come with food and spend the day, often camping overnight. Religious people, Sundays were their day of rest, the day for calling on neighbors and when the Roots built their Chapel, it quickly became a place of worship for all.

One Sunday brought a circuit-riding preacher who blessed the Chapel and the cemetery and Sundays after that, weather permitting, the neighbors came. They set up some rough wooden benches in front of the Chapel and sang the songs they had sang in their churches where they had come from. When the circuit Preacher showed up, he’d preach a sermon and afterward they’d all have food and conversation. During the week, both girls paid a lot of attention to Gander but on Sundays, they have visitors paying attention to them and Gander felt a twinge of jealousy.

With the jealousy came a new sense of awareness. Hattie, the oldest at fourteen, was expected to marry soon. And Gander realized, he was the one they were expecting to end up as part of the family. Not just a hanger-on but an actual part of the family. Live and work and stay right there. Do all the stuff he’d been doing and more. “He could do worse than Hattie” he mused. Their own cabin. A bed. Children. Still, the thoughts of Old Mexico would wander through his mind now and then. And that canyon he’d heard about. And the Pacific Ocean. His thoughts could get to wandering a lot, especially when he was off by himself hunting. And he found himself missing the trail drives, the cattle and the dust and the other cowboys.

The valley continued to have nice weather but the days were getting shorter, the long shadows coming earlier in the day. And game was getting scarce, going to ground for the winter. It was twilight already and it would be full dark by the time he got home. Gander wondered when he’d began to think of the little cabin as home.7 They’d had a few snows, and the temperature would drop below freezing at night. The bearskins felt good then, but most days brought a little sun and the Root brothers axes rang every day and every day they hauled more and more logs from the surrounding hills. It didn’t take a lot of brainpower for Gander to see that the Roots vision had changed, had grown. They were putting a lot of stakes in the surrounding ground, talking, planning. They didn’t stop talking when Gander was around but they didn’t really include him, didn’t ask his advice about anything. And they didn’t seem to ask him to do stuff anymore, they just sort of told him what they expected and he was supposed to do it. Like he was almost part of the family. Almost.

The circuit preacher had been coming more and more often and when the brothers offered to help build him a cabin, more permanent quarters, he took them up on it without a lot of discussion.

Gander went hunting almost every day but game was getting more and more scarce as winter set in. The snow came more frequently now, stayed on the ground longer. The days were colder and shorter. Gander had strung a guide rope from his cabin to the barn just in case. Efphron asked about it so Gander explained when he was a boy in Michigan and you had to take care of the animals blizzard or not. He realized that it had been a long time since he’d given a thought to the farm in Michigan and what it meant to be a farm boy. Every day, day after day, no matter the weather. Animals had to be fed and cared for. Stalls had to be mucked out. Same old stuff, day after day. It had been a long, hot summer day in Michigan and he’d been thinking of the coming winter, of the cold and the snow and he went to his room, put his extra shirt and pants into a pillowcase and walked away from all that. He didn’t have a plan, just an idea. Texas.

“Makes sense” nodded Ephron. “Hang one for us.”

“Why” grinned Gander, “don’t mind if I do.” He watched Ephron walk away. “Don’t mind at all.” he said.

It had been a longstanding habit of Ganders to walk down to the corrals in the evening, bring the dun a treat and talk to him before heading up to bed down in the little cabin built for Just Plain John.

“You know, dun, I’ve been wondering if you and me ever got to Canada or did we just come close” he looked

up at the night sky. Millions and millions of stars, far as the eye could see.

“Y’know, Dun” he mused softly, “I hear off to the west is a river they call the Colorado that runs all the way to Mexico and the Pacific Ocean. They do say,” he went on as he pulled the cinch tight and began to tie on his bedroll, “that on the way it runs through the biggest damn canyon in the whole world.”

He mounted the dun and moved off at a walk, “I wonder if that’s true.”

Wild Goose

a short novel by Justin Other Smith

Prologue

But, after the war was won, the immigrants kept a’coming. Somewhere along the line, the politicians had forgot that it was easier to open the floodgates than it was to close them.

The west.

They fenced the prairie.

No more could you straddle a horse and ride unimpeded from Mexico to Canada.

And they found cheaper, more effective ways of moving cattle to market.

And on September 18, 1873, the banking firm of Jay Cooke and Company closed its doors and a major economic panic swept the nation.

Depression!

Gander Holland