By Eric Wieman
The hike-in was rowdy. It was six benches from the valley floor, 2500 feet straight up a narrow, boulder-choked drainage to the spot where Nick and Joe had marked the bull. The cold, steady rain had continued since dawn with hunter and guide scrambling over waist-high deadfall, pushing through black muddy springs where the rut had been scraped, pissed, and fought over the last 10 days. It took the two bandy, half-bearded men four hours from where they left the horses by the Lower Crossing, and when they reached the spot where they had seen the bull that morning, the storm churned for two more hours. They ate lunch in the downpour under their ponchos and bivouacked at the base of a small rockslide. Rain, then hail, then rain, followed by silence as the weather broke; there was no movement in the trees. Finally, the breeze moved down through the valley as they stood to leave. The guide ripped a single bugle born of anger and exhaustion. The bull answered just above them, and they collapsed into the dirt.
They shot him at 25 yards. The bull moved softly through the deadfall loop, picking its way down from the meadow. Joe chirped once on a cow call. It stopped just above their bench. And then it was all over. The .280 didn’t have time to expand as Nick’s shot creased its lungs. After a short run over some wind-blown lodgepoles, the young bull toppled over. They started a brush fire and butchered the 6×7 where he had fallen in the ryegrass: a tall, thin rack, but not significant at the base. Three young wranglers arrived an hour later, all mounted on half-draft pintos. Their black cattle dogs scurried in the trees as they doused the fire and packed the quarters on the horses. The clouds cleared out, and the valley opened up beneath them. Then, they hiked down to the Lower Crossing and met two more wranglers clearing the trail from the storm. They situated the rack and quarters on two huge white mules. Joe collected their horses in the meadow and crossed the river as the violet tower of clouds gathered again at sundown. The fair western sun faded from the valley, and the snow moved in.
At first, the outfit could follow their headlamps as they filed through the skeleton pines in the burn scar. The 6×7 rack and quartered meat pitched and lurched in time with the backs of the mules as the string crossed the broken black and gold granite boulder field above the valley floor. But the snow blew heavily, and the seven riders soon disappeared from each other’s sight. As dusk waned, the driving snow blinded them as it flared in the beams above their eyes. They switched their headlamps off and continued in darkness. The drifts piled so deep that the sound of their horses’ hooves disappeared. And still, they rode on for two hours in the blowing emptiness filled with nothing but the riders’ motion. As the blizzard died, the moon appeared above the plateau about a mile from camp. They each looked back at the rider behind them, surprised to find themselves alive.
Reaching the opening of the field across from camp, they passed six wood stoves with crooked chimneys towering in another large burn. Across the frozen meadow, in front of a row of glowing tents, a massive bonfire with rippling flames spit red embers into the sky. Two young wranglers rode out to greet them with whoops and shouts, took their horses, and hung the meat and rack from a cross pole south of the corrals. The group retreated to peel their layers in the tents, thawed for a few minutes, and gathered for dinner. Dinner was lamb stew, and then they finished the cobbler from the skillet. After cleanup, the two men bundled into their parkas and gloves and left the tent. They stood for a few minutes with their backs to the campfire, looking out across the meadow, blank with the driven snow. The flames shifted and flashed in the night as the logs crumbled into the bed of coals. Shadows of their hooded camouflage silhouettes danced across the white expanse.
Nick pointed to the wood stoves in the burn they’d passed on their way in, the chimneys poking up like a little refinery. “Whatever happened with that outfit? Who was in charge?”
Joe’s gravelly voice answered, almost in a growl, “Who is always in charge? Money.” He crossed his arms and walked a step further into the meadow.
Nick followed and continued, “One of the wranglers told me it was a church at some point.”
Joe cleared his throat and spat into the snow. “Churches need money, too, especially the Black Creek Church. It had a huge loan. They took supplies out on credit for years before they lost their license. That’s how their outfit’s church started.”
“Not sure I follow.” Nick’s brow furrowed into a crease.
“Well…” Joe scratched his filthy brown sweat-soaked beard, sprouting with grey hairs and flaked with blood. He studied the expanse of the October sky. “You join the Church and pay a tithe. Then, the church helps you find your elk. It’s harder for the law to prosecute a church.”
Nick bobbed his head softly. “I see. The spirit must be strong in this valley.”
“You don’t need the Good Lord to find a medium bull here,” Joe said, “but you will need a good outfit to get it out.”
“How did they get shut down?” Nick asked.
Joe’s blue eyes narrowed in the moonlight like chips of flint. “They tended to infringe on some private land, frequently at night.”
“Sounds a little reckless,” whispered Nick.
Joe’s face twisted, hardening him further. “Well, that’s true enough, but they all burned to death anyway, so it’s a little late for that insight. Well, not the outfitters or clients, just the livestock. When the fire came, they left the livestock hobbled in the corral to write off the loss. That’s as small and petty as a human can be.” He paused, looking toward the burn. “Sometimes, I think you can still smell the mules. Their mules didn’t smell great alive, but they certainly smelled worse when they burned. Panniers and tents are all gone. Stoves and pipes stuck straight up in the meadow when the rangers came in later. Just like they are now, the heat welded them together. That was ’89. All this has come back to Lodgepole and Aspen Grove. Whitebark never did.”
Nick lifted his narrow chin toward the distant stove pipes. “Did anything from camp make it out?”
“I rented them one dog because he was good at scaring off a lion that had killed two horses the previous year.” Joe kneaded the back of his neck. “They paid $300 cash up front, plus the dog knew how to get home and would check in with me on his own.”
“Which one?” Nick’s voice softened again.
Joe’s gaze drifted to the camp. “It was a red one—half Catahoula.”
“Fredo?” Nick’s face brightened.
“No, this was a long time ago. It was his granddaddy, Wayno,” Joe answered. “What a dog.”
“I like Fredo,” Nick murmured.
A smile flashed across Joe’s windstripped face. “I do, too, but Wayno was better.” He cleared his throat again, and his voice grew stronger. “Fredo can work stock, but Wayno could work and find stock himself. Goddamn horses up the creek in that drainage spring past the Upper Crossing. He would flush them out on his own. You had to ride the creek up there to the spring to push them down, but you didn’t have to get into that soft stuff. Also, Wayno could hunt. Grouse, pheasants, whatever. I once went to the eastern part of the state and met these guys with some beagles running rabbits and foxes. Wayno took them up like he’d been doing it his whole life. I didn’t think a half-breed would run rabbits.”
Nick nodded. “You’re right. You don’t see that a lot.”
“Never have,” Joe sighed. “Wayno was one of a kind.”
They stood silently gazing up at the massif, stacked with white reefs to the plateau, the black sky, and the envious moon.
Nick stepped away from the fire and looked at the cross pole in the meadow, where the rack and quarters hung starkly against the empty white plain. He returned to the fire and stared down into the two-foot pile of orange coals. “Did you give us any odds on shooting that bull this morning?”
Joe’s eyes remained fixed on the meadow as he rewound the sequence. “Well, that approach was dicey enough, especially in the conditions; I’ve done it once before, and your left glove holds the reins, as Gus used to say. But the squall made that bull hold up tight and gave us cover to get up close for a doorbell shot; that’s what you pray for. That’s the church,” Joe said, crossing himself.
