Thunder galloped toward the fence, then sailed over it as gracefully as a leaping deer. Coming down on the other side Tom saw a ditch about twenty yards beyond the fence, and Thunder took that as well. Horse and rider went through their paces, jumping, making sudden turns, running at a full gallop, then stopping on a dime. After a few minutes he brought Thunder back, returning the same way he left, over the ditch, then over the fence. He slowed him down to a trot once he was back inside the compound, and the horse was at a walk by the time he rode up to dismount in front of a shocked Big Ben, Clay, and Dusty. Rebecca was smiling broadly.
Tom patted Thunder on his neck, then dismounted and handed the reins back to Clay. “He is a very fine horse,” Tom said. “Whoever rides him is quite lucky.”
“He’s yours to ride any time you want him,” Big Ben said. “That is, provided you are willing to come work for me.”
“I would be very proud to work for you, Mr. Conyers.”
“Come with me, Tom, is it?” Clay invited. “I’ll get you set up in the bunkhouse and introduce you to the others.”
“Tom?” Rebecca called out to him.
Tom looked back toward her.
“I’m glad you are here.”
“Thank you, Miss Conyers. I’m glad to be here.”
Tom ate his first supper in the cookhouse that evening. Mo introduced him to all the others.
“Where is Mr. Ramsey?” Tom asked. “Does he eat somewhere else?”
“Mr. Ramsey?” Mo asked. Then he smiled. “Oh, you mean Clay. Clay is the foreman of the ranch, but there don’t any of us call him Mr. Ramsey. We just call him Clay ’cause that’s what he wants us to call him.”
“Clay is married,” one of the other cowboys said. “He lives in that first cabin you see over there, the only one with a front porch.”
“He married a Mexican girl,” another said.
“Don’t talk about her like that,” Mo said. “Maria is as American as you are. Emanuel Bustamante fought with Sam Houston at San Jacinto.”
“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” the cowboy said. “I think Senor Bustamante is as fine a man as I’ve ever met, and Mrs. Ramsey is a very good woman. I was just sayin’ that she is Mexican is all.”
“I assume that none of you are married,” Tom said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be eating here in the dining hall.”
“Ha! The dining hall. That’s sure a fancy name for the cookhouse.”
“I don’t mean any disrespect for Clay,” Mo said. “But it don’t make a whole lot of sense for a cowboy to be married. First of all, there don’t none of us make enough money to support a family. And second, when we make the long cattle drives, we’re gone for near three months at a time.”
“And Dodge City is too fun of a town to be in if you are married, if you get my meanin’,” one of the other cowboys said, and the others shared a ribald laugh.
A couple of cowboys decided to razz the tenderfoot that first night. Tom had been given a chest for his belongings, and while Tom and the rest of the cowboys were having supper, Dalton and one of the cowboys slipped back into the bunkhouse and nailed the lid shut on his chest.
When Tom and the others returned, Tom tried to open the lid to his footlocker, but he was unable to get it open.
“What’s the matter there, Tom? Can’t get your chest open?” Dalton asked.
By now Dalton 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 every-one? Or would he be meek about it?
Tom looked more closely at the lid then, and saw that it had been nailed shut by six nails, two in front and two on either side.
“That’s odd,” he said. “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 that anyone would nail the lid shut on my chest as a matter of intent.”
“Whoo, 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,” Tom said. Reaching down with both hands, he used one hand to steady the bottom of the chest and the other to grab the front of the lid. He pulled up on the lid then and, 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,” he said. “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.”
Sugarloaf Ranch, Big Rock, Colorado, May 1
“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,” he said.
“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-out.”
The big die-out Pearlie was talking about happened three years earlier when there had been a huge 72-hour blizzard. After the blizzard, the sun melted the top few inches of snow into slush, which the following day was frozen into solid ice by minus thirty-degree temperatures. Throughout the West, tens of thousands of cattle were found huddled against fences, many frozen to death, partly through and hanging on the wires. The legs of many of the cows that survived were so badly frozen that, when they moved, the skin cracked open and their hoofs dropped off. Hundreds of young steers were wandering 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 not enough blankets to hold back the sub-zero temperatures. The only creatures to survive, and not only survive but 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.
Duff MacCallister had been spared the great die-out 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. Also his ranch, Sky Meadow, had no fences to prevent the cattle from moving to the shelter of these natural barriers, and the breed of cattle Duff MacCallister was raising, Black Angus, were better equipped to withstand the cold weather than were the Longhorns.
Smoke went 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 four years, and it had been a very good move for Smoke. Whereas the market price for Longhorn had fallen so low that 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 most superior grade of beef, was very high.