Читать книгу Buffalo Summer - Nadia Nichols - Страница 8

“SHE HAS FIVE BOYS,” McCutcheon said, pulling the mug of coffee that Bernie Portis had just topped off closer to him and studying the whorls of steam rising from the strong black brew. It was midmorning of the following day and the Longhorn Cafe, the only eating establishment in Katy Junction, was enjoying a brief lull between breakfast and lunch.

“Five?” Bernie paused, coffeepot in hand. Her friendly face split into a smile. “She’s been a busy gal. How old is she?”

“Not old enough. At least, she didn’t look like the mother of five kids.” Too young and too beautiful, he thought.

“How old?”

McCutcheon lifted his shoulders. “Hard to say. Late twenties. Early thirties, maybe.”

“Okay, so she started young. Say, eighteen years old. First baby. Second baby at twenty. Third at twenty-two. But how much work are you expecting to get out of a bunch of little kids? And who’s going to wipe their noses and change their diapers while their mother is out herding buffalo? Ramalda?” Bernie gave him a teasing smile before making a run through the tiny restaurant, refilling customers’ coffee cups and pausing to chat briefly here and there. She was Guthrie Sloane’s big sister, and a sweeter, more generous soul did not exist west of the Rockies nor east of them, either.

McCutcheon took a sip of his coffee and frowned. He hadn’t thought to ask Pony how old her children were. He had a sudden vision of a three-year-old boy in the saddle, reins in his teeth, horse running flat out, twirling a lariat better than a washed-up baseball player by the name of Caleb McCutcheon could. It wasn’t Caleb’s fault that Badger and Charlie hadn’t taught him how to throw a rope yet. They kept promising, and then one day slid into the next, one week followed another, and he was no closer to being a cowboy than he’d been the day he’d bought the ranch.

Ramalda had already threatened to quit. “Indians!” she had muttered when he told her, as if the word itself were a bitter poison in her mouth. Her venom had surprised Caleb, but not Badger, who’d been sharing the table the way he and Charlie almost always did nowadays, at suppertime. Or any other time for that matter. The two old cowboys had sort of come with the ranch. “Now, Ramalda,” Badger said, smoothing his white mustache. “When I first laid eyes on you, I thought to myself, that there’s an Apache woman, sure as shootin’. How do you know you ain’t part Injun yourself? And what gave you such a sour take on things, anyhow? I thought you liked little ’uns.”

Ramalda had turned her broad back to them with a string of heated Spanish that neither he nor Badger could make heads or tails of, banging pots and pans about and letting her feelings be known in no uncertain terms. “Six Indians here?” she exploded, brandishing a frying pan in one fat fist. “I queeet!”

“Whoa!” Caleb said, alarmed at the thought of losing such a phenomenal cook and housekeeper. “They’re Steven Young Bear’s nephews. They’re his sister’s children. You like Steven.”

Ramalda turned and slammed the frying pan down on the woodstove, cut a big chunk of lean salt pork into it and turned again, wielding the knife as if she intended to use it on Caleb. “Six Indians here, I queeet,” she repeated emphatically.

“Well, it’s too late. I’ve already hired them,” Caleb said. “But I’d sure hate to lose you, Ramalda. I can’t imagine coming into this kitchen and not having you cussing me out in Spanish or feeding me those delicious meals. Look at me. I’m getting fat.” He glanced down and felt a twinge of alarm at the truth of his words. “I guess maybe it would be better for my waist if you left, but I’d sure hate it. I hope you stay. You’re important to this place. We need you here, and Jessie’s coming home soon. It would be awful if you weren’t here for her wedding to Guthrie.”

Jessie. That name had been enough to melt Ramalda’s stern visage. She turned back to the stove to stir the sizzling pork with the point of her knife and never said another word about quitting. Maybe she remembered that Jessie was part Indian, too; that Jessie’s father had been a half-breed, and that the history of the Bow and Arrow had been linked with Native Americans since the very beginning.

Or maybe she’d really quit when Pony and her five boys came in three weeks. “You’re looking mighty pensive,” Bernie said, sliding a piece of apple pie in front of him. “Thinking about what having five kids stampeding around the place will be like?”

Caleb picked up his fork and grinned. “I’m thinking about all the work we’ll get done this summer,” he said, feeling another twinge at this half-truth and recalling Badger’s troubling prophecy. “One good boy can do the work of half a man,” the old cowboy had said when Caleb told him about the new hires. “But two boys? Put two boys together and they’re worthless. Five, you say? Hell, boss, I don’t even want to think about it.”

Five boys. Caleb forked a piece of apple pie into his mouth and savored the blend of tart apples and spices and tender crust. Five boys…and one very intimidating young woman, Oo-je-ne… He shook his head and gave up. Pony. Strange name, but a whole lot easier to say. Put all of them together with a herd of buffalo rampaging across the ranch… Caleb laid his fork down and pushed the plate away, overwhelmed with a sudden surge of anxiety.

In three weeks the summer would begin, and quite suddenly he was dreading it.

PONY WASN’T SURE how the boys would take the news that she had hired out their services for the summer. She was especially leery of Roon, the latest of the five to have taken refuge in her little shack on the edge of the Big Horn foothills. Roon was an introvert with so much anger and confusion bottled up that Pony sometimes feared he would explode. She had taught him in her third-grade class. He had been like the others then, a normal nine-year-old on the brink of discovering the universe. Now he was thirteen and the world was his enemy. Four years had passed. What had happened? She had not pried. When he’d shown up one cold snowy night on her doorstep, she’d stood aside and let him in. He had been there since December, a quiet brooding presence who listened to the lessons she gave the others but did not participate.

One of the rules of her household was that any child she took in had to learn the lessons she taught and eventually take the GED. It was a fair trade. Since she had been living on the reservation in the capacity of teacher and unofficial foster parent, she had launched four young people into far more promising futures than they might have had the opportunity to explore otherwise. Two of them had gone on to college, a major triumph for her. The other two had taken mining jobs off the reservation, and she still had contact with all of them on a regular basis.

So what of Roon? How would she ever reach him, turn him around, make him obey the rules she laid down? She had threatened repeatedly to throw him out, but in the end she never did. Where would he go? His own parents had left the reservation. They had leased their land allotment to a white farmer and gone to Canada, to live on a Cree reservation where the wife had blood relatives. They had taken the younger children with them. Roon had stayed with Pony, and she did not have the heart to displace him.

But would he work willingly for Caleb McCutcheon? That, and so much more, remained to be seen. She would tell the boys about the job, and if they didn’t want to go to the ranch, they could return to their own families for the summer. That was fair.

But the boys were not at Nana’s place. “They took your uncle’s old truck,” Nana said, sitting in her rocker and smoking one of her acrid-smelling hand-rolled cigarettes. “Went back home.”

“But none of them can drive. None of them even have licenses!”

Nana shook her head, her deeply wrinkled face impassive. “They went home.”

Pony drove the five miles to her little house much too fast, but the tribal police were not on patrol. She spied no wrecked vehicles along the way, and was relieved to see Ernie’s truck parked safely in her yard. She ran up the steps and burst into the kitchen. The boys, four of them, were crowded around the table, eating peanut butter sandwiches and drinking cans of soda.

“Where’s Roon?” she said.

“In the back room,” Jimmy replied, mouth full of sandwich. “Nana gave him a book to read.”

“Who took Ernie’s truck? Who drove here?”

“Dan did,” Jimmy said. “Nana said we had to leave.”

Pony looked at Dan. “Why?”

Dan’s dark eyes dropped and he lifted his shoulders. Pony looked at Joe. “Why did she tell you to leave?”

“We took her tobacco,” he said. “We told her we’d replace it.”

“Yes, you will,” Pony said grimly. “Right now. Let’s go.”

“We already smoked what we took,” Martin said, staring at her ruefully through his thick glasses. “It’s gone. But we’ll get her more. Don’t worry.”

“How? By stealing it from someone else? You promised me you wouldn’t smoke, but I never thought I would have to make you promise not to steal.” Pony sat down and dropped her head in her hands. There was a long moment of quiet around the table. She raised her head and studied each boy in turn. “Right now I think I should open the door and ask you all to leave. Right now I feel as if all of you have betrayed me.” She drew a deep steadying breath. “Right now I am very angry, so I am going to take Ernie’s truck back to Nana’s and then walk home. That will give me some time to think about things.”

She stood up from the table and left her little house and the silence of the four boys that filled it.

THE SECOND WEEK in June came faster than it should have, and Caleb glanced at the calendar on his way out the kitchen door. He paused, coffee cup in hand, to look at the scrawl that was written on this date. “Five boys/Pony” was a memo that he had made, but in another hand was written, “Day I quit!!!” The word quit was underlined strongly three times. He glanced to where Ramalda stood at the kitchen sink, washing the breakfast dishes. The brightly colored bandanna she always wore covered most of her white hair, but a few strands lay on her shoulders. A wave of affection warmed him, and he shook his head with a faint grin and pushed through the door, stepping onto the porch where his ranch manager waited patiently. He looked for the little cow dog who was never very far from Guthrie Sloane.

“Where’s Blue?”

“Left her to home. Figured you’d be wantin’ to ride after the buffalo.”

“You figured right. There are ten old cows and one huge bull out there, and we have no idea where they are. It would be nice to be able to tell my buffalo expert that they’re still on the home range, but for all I know they’re halfway to Canada.” The sun wasn’t up quite yet but the horses were saddled and tied to the hitch rail. “If the last you saw of them was over on Silver Creek, maybe we should start there.”

“I saw signs of them this past week near the head-waters of the Piney.”

“That high up?”

“Yessir.”

Caleb drained the last of his cup and set it on the porch rail. “Let’s ride.”

Guthrie’s halting footsteps followed Caleb’s down the porch steps. Caleb unwrapped Billy Budd’s rein from the rail and stepped into the saddle, wishing the old gelding’s legs were a little shorter or that his own legs were more flexible. It was a hard thing to look graceful while hauling his six-foot frame into the saddle. Still, he couldn’t complain. Guthrie was still so crippled up that he had to use the porch steps to mount his horse. That had to burn deep down inside, because Guthrie Sloane had been one of the best horsemen in Park County before that mare had fallen on him last October.

The ranch manager was a hard man to read. He didn’t say much, didn’t reveal himself in long-winded conversations the way some people did. He was quiet and competent and he worked damn hard. Caleb liked him very much and counted himself very fortunate to have the skilled cowboy in his employ.

“Steven’s sister is coming today,” he said, nudging Billy into a walk and giving him a loose rein.

“The boys, too?” Guthrie said, falling in beside him.

“As far as I know. I didn’t dare broach the subject at breakfast. Didn’t want to get Ramalda too upset.”

“She cleaned the bedrooms yesterday.”

Caleb’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”

“I saw her bring out the rugs and hang ’em over the porch rail to air. Then she disappeared down the back hall carrying a whole bunch of clean bed linens, muttering away to herself.”

“I’ll be damned. Maybe she isn’t going to quit after all.”

“If Ramalda leaves, she knows Jessie’d never forgive her.”

“No, I guess she wouldn’t,” Caleb agreed. “Speaking of Jessie, when’s she coming home? Classes must be over for her.”

“Yessir, they are. She’s way ahead of where she thought she’d be, and the school has advanced her into senior-year studies.”

“Does that mean she’s going to be graduating sooner than you thought?”

“Yessir. She’s apprenticing with that horse doctor down in Arizona again to finish her credits.”

“She’s down there now?”

“Yessir. She’s there for the summer.”

“Huh. Too bad she couldn’t come home for a little visit, but at least you got to see her at spring break. And she’ll be back in September. I assume she’s planning to be here for her own wedding.”

“Oh, probably,” Guthrie said with a faint grin, smoothing his horse’s mane with one gloved hand. “She said she might.”

They rode up along the creek to the place where a smaller tributary fed into it, then threaded through groves of Engelmann spruce and across high meadows of greening grass spangled with wildflowers. They caught sight of some cattle but no buffalo. After an hour they stopped to rest their horses on a high knoll from which they could survey the valley. The wind pushed tall, bunched-up clouds across the vast expanse of blue sky. “I’m buying the leases back,” Caleb said, leaning his forearm on the saddle horn. “The ones Jessie’s father had to sell. Ten thousand acres of leased land, most of it belonging to the Bureau of Land Management. That gives the whole ranch a footprint of fifteen thousand acres. Enough room to run us some buffalo.”

“Damn,” Guthrie said. “That’s good news.”

“I didn’t want to tell Jessie until it was a done deal.”

“She’ll be real glad to hear about it.”

“I paid too much for them, but the ranchers who sold them needed the money.”

“Ranchers always need money,” Guthrie said, smoothing his horses mane with one gloved hand.

Caleb nodded. “I guess. I know they think what I’m trying to do here is nuts, but how much crazier is it than what they’re doing—fighting a losing battle trying to raise enough cattle to make land payments when cattle prices keep falling?”

“It’s the only way of life they know.”

“How many buffalo do you figure we can run on fifteen thousand acres?”

Guthrie’s gaze swept over the valley. He shook his head. “That’s a question for your buffalo girl,” he said. “In the meantime, we have ten cows and a bull to find, and five thousand acres to search. We’d best get at it.”

PONY TURNED her old truck down the ranch road with a premonition of impending doom. Her hands gripped the steering wheel far more tightly than necessary. Jimmy and Roon shared the bench seat beside her. Roon sat pressed against the passenger door, staring broodily out the side window. Jimmy squeezed against him, trying to avoid the stick shift. Jimmy was the youngest at eleven. The other three boys rode in the back of the truck. Dan was fifteen, Martin and Joe were both fourteen. None of them was smiling, but all of them were clean and presentable, and all had agreed—albeit grudgingly—to be on their best behavior.

Pony knew from past experience that their perception of what constituted best behavior was the reason why she was gripping the steering wheel so tightly. By the time she pulled up in front of the ranch house, her hands were so badly cramped that she had to sit for a moment rubbing them together. “Okay,” she said to Jimmy and Roon. “Now remember. Best behavior!”

They both stared at her. Nodded. Roon wrenched his door open and dropped to the ground. Jimmy followed. The boys in back jumped out. Pony was the last to climb from the truck. She stood in the yard, looking up at the ranch house and then down toward the barn and corrals. The place was quiet. Peaceful. She could hear the flutelike song of a meadowlark and the distant bawl of a cow. The wind was moderate, warm and out of the south. The sky was a wide blue dome overhead, providing a vivid backdrop to the snowcapped peaks of the Beartooth Mountains. She drew in a lungful of sweet air and exhaled slowly, willing the tension from her body.

The house door opened and an enormous figure emerged, carrying a broom. It was Ramalda, the Mexican woman who had shut the door in Pony’s face, and she looked as grim as ever. “Good morning,” Pony said. “I’ve come to see Mr. McCutcheon. We’re reporting for work.”

Ramalda held the broom as if she wished it were a rifle. She scowled fiercely at the boys, who stood in a group, seeking safety in each other’s short midday shadow. “Work?” she said as if she had never heard the word before. She threw her head back and laughed. It was neither a long laugh nor a friendly one. She lowered her head and scowled at them again. “Come. Entra.” She turned and squeezed her body through the kitchen door, letting the screen bang shut behind her.

“Get your things,” Pony said to the boys. She lifted her own small satchel out of the truck bed and climbed the porch steps. The last place in the world she wanted to be was inside that ranch house with that woman, but she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, pulled open the screen door and stepped inside.

The room she found herself in transported her into another time. There was almost no hint of modern life among the simple furnishings and wall cupboards, the huge wood-fired cookstove, the hand pump at the big slate sink, the oil lamps—some in their wall gimbals, others set on the table. Even the gas stove was an antique, a cream enamel with green and gold piping and the words White Star scrolled ornately across the oven door. It was a beautiful kitchen, and in spite of her initial trepidation, Pony felt instantly at home.

Ramalda was standing by the sink with her hands on her hips, watching them with great suspicion. “You’re hungry,” she accused.

Pony shook her head. “If you could just show us where to put our things, we can get right to work.”

She was afraid Ramalda would laugh at them again, but instead she turned and walked out of the kitchen and into a back hallway that ran the length of the rambling ranch house and exited at the far end of the porch. Pony and the boys followed. Off the hallway were several doors. She pushed the first one open. “This is my room,” she said, and before they could glimpse inside, she pulled the door shut again with a sharp bang. “My room,” she repeated. She led them to the next door and opened it, turning to Pony. “Your room.” Pony stepped inside, followed closely by all five boys. It was a small room, perhaps ten by sixteen feet, papered in an antique rose print of pinks and greens, with a double bed, a bureau, a chair and a mirror hung above the dresser. A braided rug fit neatly between the bed and the bureau, and a narrow door opened onto a little closet. Pony set her satchel on the chair and smiled.

“It’s very nice,” she said, and the boys all nodded in solemn agreement.

Ramalda led them down the hall and opened yet another door. This room was a third again the size of Pony’s and had two sets of bunk beds on opposite walls and a twin bed set beneath the single window. The boys looked around at the plain whitewashed walls hung with old cowboy prints, the well-worn desk and chair, the one tall bureau, the small closet. A braided rug similar to the one in Pony’s room graced the floor between the sets of bunk beds. The boys laid their duffels down on the bunks, each choosing by order of rank. Roon, Pony noticed, though not the oldest, chose first, and he picked the bed beneath the window. Dan and Martin took the top bunks, Jimmy and Joe got the bottom.

The next room they were shown was the bathroom. It was small, basic, no bathtub, just a shower. Clean, Pony noticed. The entire place was spanking clean. The Mexican woman might not care to host a passel of Crow Indians, but she was a good housekeeper.

Ramalda led them back to the kitchen. “You eat now,” she said gruffly, motioning for them to sit. Pony stood for a moment in indecision, wondering if their hunger was that obvious, and then nodded to the boys, who immediately dropped into five chairs. Pony slowly followed suit. Ramalda then served them a meal that could have fed Pony and the boys for a week. It began with a thick spicy stew of lamb, onions, beans and chili peppers ladled into deep colorful Mexican bowls and set before them with big bone-handled soupspoons on the side. A platter of fresh soft tortillas, still warm, was plunked down in the middle of the table, along with a brimming pitcher of cold milk and six tall glasses. The savory aroma of the stew overcame the awkwardness of the moment. They glanced respectfully at the strange old woman who stood by the stove and watched them eat with a fixed scowl on her face.

Breathless with the joy of having full stomachs, they pushed back from the table with dazed expressions. Every bit of the delicious stew was gone, every tender tortilla devoured, the pitcher of milk empty. Ramalda nodded grimly, went to the oven and drew forth a pan of beef ribs done to a tender turn and dripping with sauce. She used a spatula to push them all onto a serving platter and slid the dish into the center of the table, refilled the pitcher with more cold milk, then stood back and waited.

They stared around the table at each other, and then at the ribs. Even Roon was smiling as they dug into them with rapturous abandon, wearing the sauce shamelessly on their chins and laughing, finally, when there was nothing left but a stack of gnawed bones.

“WE’VE MISSED the noon meal, I guess,” Caleb said as they let their horses pick a careful descent down the steep draw. “Ramalda was going to make barbecued ribs.”

Guthrie was ahead of him. “Don’t worry. She’ll save some for you.” He glanced back, grinning beneath his hat brim. “She likes watching you get fat.”

Caleb didn’t presume to tell Billy how to get down the steep slope. He gave the gelding free rein and shamelessly clutched the saddle horn to keep from tumbling over the horse’s shoulders. “That’s no lie,” he said. “I was in a whole lot better shape when I first came here than I am now.”

“Winter,” Guthrie called back. “All those long dark days with nothing to do but eat what Ramalda cooks, and she’s a damn fine cook. Thinks if a person ain’t always hungry they must be sick. But don’t worry, you’ll burn it off. From now till the snow flies you can eat whatever you want and you’ll still lose weight.”

The slope bottomed out, and Guthrie drew rein, leaning over his horse’s shoulder and studying something on the ground. “That’s fresh,” he said. “Them buff are here somewhere close by.” He straightened and sat for a moment, contemplating. “Wind’s out of the south. We ought to be able to work up this draw and maybe catch sight of them, but if they catch a whiff of us, they’ll be on the far side of tomorrow in the blink of an eye. Ride quiet and follow me.”

Caleb did just that, and in less than an hour they had ridden up onto a knoll that overlooked a high, pretty meadow shaped like a basin lying amongst the lower flanks of three rugged snow-clad mountains. “That’s Piney Creek,” Guthrie said, raising his arm and pointing toward a dark ribbon that snaked through the meadow. “The old line camp is in that big clump of fir.”

Caleb had seen the camp once. “Joe Nash flew me in here last fall,” he said. “He said it was the prettiest place in all of Montana, but it wasn’t quite so pretty on that particular afternoon.” He looked at Guthrie. “That was the day we brought you down off the mountain more dead than alive.”

Guthrie glanced sidelong at him and then faced forward again. A muscle in his jaw corded. He pulled his hat brim down a little lower. “Well, that’s all in the past, and right now we’re hunting for your buffalo.” He shifted in his saddle. “As a matter of fact, I think I’m lookin’ right at one.”

Caleb leaned forward. “Where?”

“See that little black dot way down there, followed by a dash? Down near the creek? That black dot is a buff, sure as I’m sitting here. That dash is three or four others, following along behind. I bet the entire bunch is hiding in that brush along the creek.”

“How close do you think we can get?”

“If the wind holds, pretty close. Close enough to count ’em, anyhow. You game?”

“Hell yes, I’m game. What are we waiting for?”

They heeled their horses and set off at a slow jog. The distance to be covered was over a mile. Guthrie reined his horse to a walk when they got within a quarter mile, and Caleb did the same. The afternoon was a fine one, with a steady breeze and the warm June sun to gentle it. Caleb wished he’d brought his field book along because he was seeing birds and flowers he’d never seen before. The vitality and diversity of the land continually astounded and humbled him. He wondered if he would ever truly be connected to it the way he really wanted to be.

Sometimes he felt he was so close…

“Whoa,” Guthrie said, his voice low, and they stopped side by side, stirrup to stirrup. “That big old cow there. See her?”

Caleb tried to follow Guthrie’s point but he could see nothing yet. No buffalo. He shook his head.

“She’s watching us, standing in that bunch of chokecherry down in that brushy draw. Hold now. Hold…”

They sat very still and the horses were motionless as if they knew that any small movement would betray them. There was a sudden explosion in the thicket and before Caleb’s dazzled eyes a huge buffalo cow burst from the draw, tail held high, and made off at a dead run. She climbed a knoll at a speed that seemed impossible for such an ungainly-looking beast and yet she was pure grace and incredible power as she fled their presence and sought the safety of the rest of the herd.

“What’s that?” Caleb said, his breath catching in his throat. “Look, beside her. What is that!” He watched the little blond ball that bounced at the cow’s flank as she raced up the knoll.

Guthrie’s reply was an affirmation of something Caleb already knew. “That’s a baby buff, boss,” he said. “That cute little critter is one of your first baby buffs.”

THE EUPHORIA of the afternoon stayed with Caleb on the long ride home. The buffalo were all there. Not only were they all there, but the ten cows had made seven calves. Not bad at all, considering he’d bought all ten without having them certified pregnant. Seven out of ten wasn’t bad, and maybe they weren’t done calving, either. Caleb was feeling pretty good about things.

“Lord, they were something, weren’t they?” he said for the umpteenth time as they jogged home.

“Yessir,” Guthrie said.

Hard to tell what Guthrie really thought about it all. Did he really think the buffalo were a good thing? Or was he too much of a cattleman to ever change his ways? “They scare me a little, I won’t lie,” Caleb said. “But they’re the true natives of this land. They belong here.”

“Yessir.”

“I think this ranch will be a better place for having them.”

“Me, too,” Guthrie said.

Caleb drew rein so abruptly that Billy snorted in protest. Guthrie was slower to follow suit, easing his horse to a walk and pivoting it around to face him. He gave Caleb a questioning look.

“Do you mean that?” Caleb said.

“You forget that I grew up here with Jessie,” Guthrie replied. “I’ve been working on this ranch since I was thirteen years old, and she’s been wanting this to happen for a long time. Ripping down the cross fences and bringing back the buffalo. Giving the land back to itself and letting it heal the wounds we’ve made in it over the years.”

“But what about you? How do you feel about it?”

Guthrie studied him for a moment then shifted his gaze to the distant mountains. “All my life has been about beef cows and alfalfa hay,” he admitted. “Worrying about the weather and the cows. Worrying about the graze and the cows. Worrying about makin’ hay and makin’ money and losin’ all of it when the cattle prices just dropped and dropped. I’m just like all them other ranchers. I think in beef cow. But when I look at them buffalo I feel like someone’s taken me by the scruff of the neck and given me a good shake, and I catch myself thinkin’, what the hell took us so long to get smart?”

The two men regarded each other for a long silent moment. Caleb nodded. “I want to make this work.”

“So do I,” Guthrie said.

“Good.” He nudged Billy with his heels and walked him up beside Guthrie’s horse. “You really think Ramalda saved any of those ribs?”

Guthrie grinned. “Dunno. How much do you suppose five hungry boys can eat?”

“I think they could eat a whole buffalo.”

“Let’s just hope they don’t, or we might be out of business by summer’s end.”