Thomas Mcguane: Gallatin Canyon

The old feller had several peculiarities to him, most of which I’ve forgot. He was one of the few fellers I ever seen who would actually jump up and down on his hat if he got mad enough. You can imagine what his hat looked like. One time he did it cause I let the swather get away from me on a hill and bent it all to hell. Another time a Mormon tried to run down his breeding program to get a better deal on some replacement heifers, and I’ll be damned if the old sumbitch didn’t throw that hat down and jump on it, until the Mormon got back into his Buick and eased on down the road without another word. One time when we was drivin ring shanks into corral poles I hit my thumb and tried jumpin on my hat, but the old sumbitch gave me such a odd look I never tried it again.

The old lady died sittin down, went in there and there she was, sittin down, and she was dead. After the first wave of grief, the old sumbitch and me fretted about rigor mortis and not being able to move her in that seated position, which would almost require rollin her. So we stretched her onto the couch and called the mortician, and he called the coroner and for some reason the coroner called the ambulance, which caused the old sumbitch to state, “It don’t do you no never mind to tell nobody nothin.” Course, he was right.

Once the funeral was behind us, I moved out of the LeisureLife once and for all, partly for comfort and partly cause the old sumbitch falled apart after his sister passed, which I never suspected during the actual event. But once she’s gone, he says he’s all that’s left of his family and he’s alone in life, and about then he notices me and tells me to get my stuff out of the LeisureLife and move in with him.

We rode through the cattle pretty near ever day, year-round, and he come to trust me enough to show how his breedin program went, with culls and breedbacks and outcrosses and replacements, and he took me to bull sales and showed me what to expect in a bull and which ones was correct and which was sorry. One day we’s looking at a pen of yearlin bulls on this outfit near Luther, and he can’t make up his mind and says he wishes his sister was with him and starts snufflin and says she had an eye on her wouldn’t quit. So I stepped up and picked three bulls out of that pen and he quit snufflin and said damn if I didn’t have an eye on me too. That was the beginnin of our partnership.

One whole year I was the cook, and one whole year he was the cook, and back and forth like that but never at the same time. Whoever was cook would change when the other feller got sick of his recipes, and ever once in a while a new recipe would come in the AgriNews, like that corn chowder with the sliced hot dogs. I even tried a pie one time, but it just made him lonesome for days gone by, so we forgot about desserts, which was probably good for our health as most sweets call for gobbin in the white sugar.

The sister had never let him have a dog cause she had a cat, and she thought a dog would get the cat and, as she said, if the dog got the cat she’d get the dog. It wasn’t much of a cat, anyhow, but it lasted a long time, outlived the old lady by several moons. After it passed on, we took it out to the burn barrel, and the first thing the old sumbitch said was, “We’re gettin a dog.” It took him that long to realize his sister was gone.

Tony was a border collie we got as a pup from a couple in Miles City that raised them, and they was seven generation of cow dogs just wanted to eat and work stock. You could cup your hands and hold Tony when we got him, but he grew up in one summer and went to work and we taught him down, here, come by, way to me, and hold em, all in one year or less, cause Tony’d just stay on his belly and study you with his eyes until he knew exactly what you wanted. Tony helped us gather, mother up pairs, and separate bulls, and he lived in the house for many a good year and kept us entertained with all his tricks.

Finally, Tony got old and died. We didn’t take it so good, especially the old sumbitch, who said he couldn’t foresee enough summers for another dog. Plus that was the year he couldn’t get on a horse no more and he wasn’t about to work no stock dog afoot. There was still plenty to do, and most of it fell to me. After all, this was a goddam ranch.

The time come to tell him what I done to go to jail, which was rob that little store at Absarokee and shoot the proprietor, though he didn’t die. I had no idea why I did such a thing, then or now. I led the crew on the prison ranch for a number of years and turned out many a good hand. They wasn’t nearabout to let me loose till there was a replacement good as me who’d stay awhile. So I trained up a murderer from Columbia Falls; could rope, break horses, keep vaccine records, fence, and irrigate. Once the warden seen how good he was, they paroled me out and turned it all over to the new man, who they said was never getting out. Said he was heinous. The old sumbitch could give a shit less when I told him my story. I could of told him all the years before, when he first hired me, for all he cared. He was a big believer in what he saw with his own eyes.

I don’t think I ever had the touch with customers the old sumbitch did. They’d come from all over lookin for horned Herefords and talkin hybrid vigor, which I may or may not have believed. They’d ask what we had and I’d point to the corrals and say, “Go look for yourself.” Some would insist on seein the old sumbitch and I’d tell them he was in bed, which was nearly the only place you could find him, once he’d begun to fail. Then the state got wind of his condition and took him to town. I went to see him there right regular, but it just upset him. He couldn’t figure out who I was and got frustrated because he knew I was somebody he was supposed to know. And then he failed even worse. They said it was just better if I didn’t come around.

The neighbors claimed I’d let the weeds grow and was personally responsible for the spread of spurge, Dalmatian toadflax, and knapweed. They got the authorities involved, and it was pretty clear I was the weed they had in mind. If they could get the court to appoint one of their relatives ranch custodian they’d have all that grass for free till the old sumbitch was in a pine box. The authorities came in all sizes and shapes, but when they got through they let me take one saddle horse, one saddle, the clothes on my back, my hat, and my slicker. I rode that horse clear to the sale yard, where they tried to put him in the loose horses — cause of his age, not cause he was a bronc. I told em I was too set in my ways to start feedin Frenchmen and rode off toward Idaho. There’s always an opening for a cowboy, even a old sumbitch like me, if he can halfway make a hand.

The drum major lived a short distance from our house and could sometimes be seen sitting pensively on his porch wear-ing his shako, a tall cylinder of white fake fur, the strap across his chin, folding the Free Press for his paper route. I was reluctant to so much as wave to him, since this was a time when my greatest concern — originating I don’t know where — was that I was a hopeless coward. Although we saw each other every day at school, any greeting I sent his way fell on deaf ears, and I had long since given up getting any sort of response at all, a situation said to have begun when he scored 156 on the school-administered IQ test. I had the route for the News, so it was unremarkable that we didn’t speak.

When one Thanksgiving he single-handedly captured an AWOL sailor and escorted him to the brig at the nearby base, I began to study him in the hope he held the key to escaping my cowardice.

I delivered papers in the evening and, as the year grew late, was often overtaken on my bicycle by darkness and by fear. I flung my rolled papers toward porches and stoops and onto lawns, and I was sometimes pursued by dogs, once taken down in an explosion of snow and bicycle wheels by a wolfish Irish setter. I had a recurrent fantasy of a muscular ostrich pursuing me in the dark and pecking down through my skull into my brain, another of several fears stemming from my single childhood trip to the zoo.