The dun and the gray.”
He did not remember where he had heard the song, or if he had heard it all the way through, but this much stayed with him.
After he had finished his mending job and put the needle back in his hatband, he folded the canvas and took it to the gear tent. As he bent over the stack of folded manties, he heard the sound of horse hooves on hard dirt. Drawing his pistol, he went to the tent flap and looked out.
A gray-bearded man, older than Roe or Selby and heavier than either of them, was poking along on a sorrel that Fielding recognized as one from the livery stable in town. He holstered his gun and stepped out into the open.
“Good morning,” he said. “Come on in.”
The older man rode a little farther, stopped the horse, and with some effort pushed up and over and then lowered himself to the ground. “Top of the mornin’ to you,” he said.
“Anything I can help you with?” Fielding asked.
“They told me in town you might need a hand.”
Fielding noted the man’s sagging build and stained suspenders. “I might. How are you around horses?”
The man’s left eye squinted at the outer corner, and muscles on his cheekbone twitched. “Been around ’em all my life.”
“Well, that’s good. If someone sent you here, then you know what kind of work I do. I’m about to take a load of supplies up into the mountains for a line camp. You know these outfits run cattle up there on summer range.”
“Oh, I know all about that. Good for the cattle. They get more shade, more water, better grass. Not so many bugs. Oh, yeah, I’ve been around.”
“What kind of work have you been doin’?”
The man spit to the side. “Plowin’ firebreaks for the railroad.”
“Is that all done with?”
“No, but if I’m goin’ to walk from here to Montana, back n’ forth a quarter of a mile at a time, I’d rather do it without a mule fartin’ in my face.”
“Well, horses aren’t much different. You might not have to walk so much on this job, but there’s a lot more to it than sittin’ in the saddle.”
“Oh, you tell me. I was puttin’ in fourteen hours a day in the saddle before you were born. Worked hard all my life. I’ve graded miles of road all by myself, built bridges since I was fifteen.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Fielding. “What’s your name, by the way?”
“Nate. Last name of Freyer. Nate’s good enough.”
“Fryer, huh? Last time I had one named Baker.”
“Two cooks. Ha-ha!” The man opened his mouth and showed a row of yellow teeth.
“Well, Nate, I’ll tell you what. I could use the help, and the company as well. But once we get out there, you pretty much have to stick with it. I expect to be gone for eight to ten days.”
“Ah, hell, that don’t faze me none. When we was cuttin’ logs, we’d be out for a hundred, hundred and twenty days.”
“That’s fine. What say we give it a try right away, see if things’ll work out?”
“Sure.”
“How about if you take that brown horse out of the corral and tie him up? You can brush him down, and I’ll give you the saddle and blankets. Once you saddle him and get the bridle on, you can take a couple of turns on him.”
Nate’s left eye twitched, and his right eye opened wide. “He’s not a bronc, is he?”
“Oh, no. This is the one I start my wranglers out on.”
As Fielding stood by and watched, the older man went to work. He seemed plenty familiar with the routine, and he talked a streak as he went through the tasks. The railroads were going to be the death of the free country, he said. They seemed like a blessing, made it possible to ship cattle to Omaha. But they cut up the country, and they brought out people who could never make it when things were tough. Brought out doors and windows and ice and pianos, so that men who didn’t want to work could sing in whorehouses. Brought out machinery to harvest grain, crush rocks. Mill your own lumber to build more towns. And the engines, they scared everything they didn’t kill on the tracks. No tellin’ how many times horses had spooked, then cut themselves on barbwire and bled to death. “That’s another thing they bring, barbwire.”
“They sure do,” said Fielding.
“That’s why I wanta go to the far-look country.”
“There’s no rails where we’ll be goin’, that’s for sure.”
“That’s the kind of country I like. You either pack it in, or it don’t git there.”
“Uh-huh. Can you get three fingers in?”
“You bet.” Nate put three fingers between the cinch and the horse’s body.
“Here’s the bridle, then.”
The horse would not open its mouth for the bit, so Fielding put on the bridle. He worked the bit into the mouth and drew the headstall over and behind the ears. After straightening the bridle, he handed the reins to the older man and said, “Let’s lead him out a ways, to be clear of everything, and check the cinch again.”
Nate led the horse into the broad sunlight and stopped. He seemed to be stalling, as he pulled and picked at the cinches, shook the saddle horn, turned the stirrup this way and that, and led the horse forward a couple more paces. He draped the reins with quite a bit of slack and then had to try a couple of times to get his foot in the stirrup. With a whoosh of breath he grabbed the saddle front and back and began to pull himself up. When he had his weight over the saddle, he moved his right hand from the cantle to the horn, and with continued labor he swung his leg over and settled onto the saddle.
Before he could catch the right stirrup, the brown horse started bucking. It pushed higher with the front quarters than the rear, and it did not seem as if it was trying to throw the rider as much as it was just being uncooperative.
Nate pulled the slack in his reins and hollered, “Whoa! Whoa!”
The horse continued raising its front feet, and Nate pulled back on the reins, so that the horse began to stumble backward as it rose in front. Just before it fell onto its left hip, the older man jumped free and staggered back. Fielding caught him. The reins had pulled out of Nate’s hand, so the brown horse fought its way back onto its feet. Fielding moved fast, jumped in front of it, and was able to grab the reins.
“Son of a bitch,” said the older man. “Does he do that every time?”
“Not that I’ve seen. And that’s the one the wrangler usually rides.”
The eye twitched. “Well, I don’t know how much I want to ride him.”
“I don’t know. We could put you on another one. But like I said, it’s a long ways out there and back.”
The man raised his chin and looked over the length of the brown horse, then turned to glance at the livery stable horse. “I’m not married to any of this,” he said.
“It’s not the best work for everyone,” Fielding offered.
“I don’t think it is for me.” Nate pulled up the waist of his trousers. “How often do you go through help?”
“Not countin’ you, I had three others since I started this season in May.”
“Well, good luck with number four when you find him.”
“Thanks. It probably won’t be on this trip. I’m supposed to pull out tomorrow.”
As Nate and the livery horse rode away out of sight, Fielding pursed his lips. He was no worse off than he had been an hour earlier. He was still on his own.
Fielding rested the horses on a level spot halfway up the switchbacks. The first part of this trip was the hardest, but none of it was easy. The trail ahead, as he remembered it, ran through the bottom of one rock-wall canyon and along the side of another canyon where there was no passage for horses or men in the bottom. On some of the high stretches, there wasn’t room to turn around a horse, and the mountainside fell away into dizzying space.