Gib

Prologue

The first cold front of autumn passed through the Yellowstone country last night and yesterday’s rain turned to snow on the Absaroka Mountains. But the morning is breaking clear as early light brightens Aspen groves splashed with yellow and pokes its fingers into a forest of black pines.

Near a borderline of the trees a bull moose stands belly-deep in a beaver pond. His hump is more than six feet from the bottom of the pond and the palms of his enormous antlers are bone white in the morning light. A brain only the size of a fist clicks inside the skull of this living fossil.

The bull is grazing on the bottom of the beaver pond in the early morning light. Frost is thick on grasses bent from its weight at the edges of the brightening water. Pink light glistens on the rime and the snowy peaks of the mountains are reflected in the pond.

A beaver slaps its tail against the surface of its little lake and the moose lifts its wet face. Water cascades from the majestic rack of horns and aquatic plants hang from its mouth. The large nostrils open and small eyes blink to clear his sight, because the bull knows it’s wise to heed the beaver’s alarm signal.

The rank smell of death wafts to the moose and a startled snort balloons mist around the shovels of his antlers. A ridge of black guard hairs erects along his neck and hump. Adrenaline floods his muscles when his eyes pick out an enormous silverback grizzly bear standing erect in the willows only yards away.

The cold night had crept deep into the grizzly’s spine, and stiffened his damaged hip. He was making his way to the pond for a drink but the weariness leaves him as he stares at the bull in the water. He is flooded with rage because the big animal is shaking his antlers and taking menacing steps!

The bear dives into the pond and waves hurry to the bases of the fringing willows. Frost falls from them when the waves surge against the bank. A howl breaks from the bear’s chest as he lunges through the water and the bull comes to meet him. The thud at the collision of their bodies hangs in the air and a flock of frightened birds scatter from the trees.

Both are shaken by the impact. The bear feels himself thrown into the air then water closes over his head. He feels a moment’s panic but quickly rights himself then bounds toward the bank of the pond. He shakes the water from his eyes and coughs to clear his lungs then feels a surge of excitement because he sees the moose was staggered by their collision. He roars and the bull lowers its massive shovels then charges a few tentative steps as he blasts the surface of the pond with snorts.

The bear needs better footing because the bottom of the pond is soft where he is standing. The upstream part of the pond has a gravel bar so he quickly circles toward it. The moose spins to follow the enemy with its antlers. Then he decides to make a tactical retreat, but it is a mistake because it means backing into deeper water.

When the bear feels gravel under his feet he digs his claws into the firm footing and begins a swooping charge. He sees the bull drop its head to meet his assault head-on but the bull blinds himself with the defensive stance.

After their impact, the charging griz slips his left arm under the moose’s right antler and thrusts his right forearm against the top of its left shovel. Then he powers the moose onto its side and its head is driven deep under the dark water. He feels the moose’s face roll up under his chest and he lays his nine hundred pounds down on the head.

He feels the bull’s frantic efforts to get its hooves into the pond’s bottom then feels them dig into the goo and slip. This animal is the strongest he has ever tested and he knows he cannot let it gain its feet. For the first time in his life the bear feels the limit of his strength. Muscle spasms cramp his shoulders so the silverback relaxes the grip on the right antler and it allows the moose’s head to swivel upwards.

When he sees the moose’s broad muzzle breaks the surface the bear drives his gaping mouth down to jam it into his jaws. Then he bites through the muzzle and feels the delicate nose bones crunch between his teeth. The crunching sound runs up his jaws to fill his ears and the silverback feels the animal stiffen in shock. Air from the moose’s lungs shoots out the sides of the bear’s mouth, the bull’s legs stiffens, and the strain of their exertions shakes them both.

When he runs out of breath, the bear looses his bite then throws his head out of the water and draws in a vast draft of air. He gasps, groans, and relaxes his aching jaws.

But the drowning moose gives a shudder and digs a hind hoof into the pond’s bottom. Holding his face above the water, the bear shifts his weight back down. The hump on his shoulders bulge, and the muscles stand out in relief. Sunlight shoots off the silver hairs on his massive back and it looks as if he has been electrified.

The surface of the pond slowly stills back to a mirror. Reflections of the snow-capped mountains, the willows and the pines reappear in it. A squirrel chatters maniacally in a nearby tree. Another joins his frantic voice and they scamper to shelter, causing pine needles to rain down to the forest floor.

The bear moves releases an arm, pulls a leg loose, and rests for a moment. He stands, sneezes and shakes his head, making a rainbow of mist around his huge head. Then he wades slowly to the bank, and moves through the willows until he emerges into the sun. He steps over a dead log and limps toward the trees, the scar tissue of the ancient bullet wound flaring.

He reaches the edge of the tree line, pauses in the shade, then turns back into the morning sun and lies down. He stretches out his paws and puts his massive face between them then blinks, groans, and blinks again. A sigh of exhaustion escapes the great bear, and he closes his eyes to doze.

The griz that men remember as Ephraim will need to rest for the long walk ahead, that was interrupted by the challenge of the dead bull. Then he will continue the trek back into the territory of the man who handed him his only defeat. Long ago, when he was young and strong.

Chapter 1

When the first white men came to the mountains of northwest Wyoming they met a tribe of Indians who told stories of an enormous black bird that had spanned the skies in the first days of the people. Not a raven, they told the strangers, it was bigger. Not an eagle it was much, much bigger than an eagle. They called it the absarokee and the trappers had pinned the name Absorkees on the tribe, then used it to name their home mountain range as well. Later the name of the tribe would become the insulting Crow Indians but the mountains kept the original name. Only the native people remembered the great bird for what it had really been, when the arrogant white man arrived to devastate their culture.

Jack Scott is thinking about the story as he drives west, below Carter Mountain on the way home to his ranch. The mountain is the largest single feature of the Absaroka mountain range and this morning it is magnificent in the morning sun. The south fork of the fast flowing Shoshone River has carved it from the ancient Absaroka volcanic plateau, and its sheer face rises almost two thousand feet above the rubble hills at its base. Jack, and his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather have worked their famous Hoodoo family ranch  for over a hundred years.

I wonder what the absaroka really was? he asks himself for perhaps the thousandth time.

It’s plausible that it was a species of condor native to the area when the glaciers were retreating. Back then the American continent had a population of animals that would shame the plains of modern Africa. A scavenger of that size would have had a natural niche, especially during the slaughter that followed the arrival of peoples who had been subsisting in an ice environment for hundreds of generations. Personally, he liked the idea of a fossil-age relic astounding those first humans with his enormity.

But not all whites had been insensible to cultural myths. They had chosen to give the name hoodoos to the resistant volcanic rock pillars common to the Absaroka country. Jack’s great-grandfather had chosen to name his ranch after those stone sentinels because he was a disenfranchised veteran of the Civil War. He was also a Southerner from Arkansas who knew the legends of the African Americans, where voodoos rose from the dead and hoodoos waited to snatch unwary folks. Jack had passed those Southern legends on to his son and seen the goose flesh rise on  JC’s thin arms, the same reaction he’d had when he was wide-eyed kid sitting by a campfire under a hoodoo skyline.

Jack slows down when he sees the flag up on the ranch mailbox. As he sorts through the bundle of mail he comes to something that gives him a lump in his throat. It is a postcard with a picture of a gaudy neon casino on it and ELKO! is gashed in subscript across the bottom of the card. He turns it over quickly and sees it is addressed to Anisa Scott and JC and the text reads: Herd you was looking for me. Do not wory I am doing all rite - Gib

Jack’s name has been left off and the omission causes him an instant headache. He drives toward the ranch house and the truck rattles over the rocky road as Jack’s memory goes back almost three years.

He sees brace the screen door open as he heaves his duffel onto the porch. He remembers vividly the pain he felt when he realized that Gib was leaving, really leaving. But that’s the way that tough old man does things: Get ’er over with and no looking back, no going back. No compromise.

The feeling of abandonment comes back, fresh as ever, when he reaches the same crest in the road over which Gib’s truck had disappeared. If he topped the river bluff and found the ranch burned to the ground it would have been little different than the leaving. An enormous part of the family’s lives and emotional landscape was gone, as if Carter Mountain itself was missing.

Lord, God, Jack whispers, If not for us, please come back for my family.  The lump in his chest fills his throat.

Jack thought he had come to terms with the loss of the man who had raised him since he was a small boy, until the previous winter. He remembers walking down the street with his son, who was wearing a winter coat Jack had just bought him. The coat was too big, and he realized JC had not had the nerve to tell him. The boy was walking with his head down, the cold wind blowing his hair around. He was miserable, and Jack realized the boy had looked that way much of the time since Gib had left. And Jack recognized his own emotional state was being reflected by his son’s despair.

This boy needs a full time father, Jack thought. Memories of his own boyhood had washed over him and the emotion inspired him to stop on the windy street and hug the boy. He had known exactly how JC felt — fatherhood is no part-time deal.

Jack’s painful reverie ends. We’ve come a ways since then, he thinks. But it’s a fact that without Gib the ranch is in pretty tough shape.

But we’ve still got a shot, he says aloud and glances down at the truck seat to make sure the envelope the legal papers are still there.

After crossing the river bridge Jack drives down the ranch lane. He sees his son and their dogs running up to road to greet him, and the weight of his worries eases. On this old ranch, among the cottonwoods next to the South Fork of the Shoshone River, he is home, he is loved, and that’s as good as it gets.

* * *

Three hundred miles to the south, in the town of Evanston, Maggie Scott is entering the front door of the Wyoming State Hospital. It is the home of the human flotsam and jetsam which had found no other place to lodge itself. Maggie is Jack’s sister, and a medical doctor. As she enters the building she thinks that the name of the place is as homely and unpretentious as the state itself. Just call it for what it is: The Wyoming State Hospital.

Pale fluorescent lighting on the ceilings smears the tops of the high walls. The entrance hallway is ill lit, and the institutional green walls and black-and-white checkerboard tiles swallow the light. Maggie places her briefcase on a Dutch door’s gouged shelf.

Hello, she says to the secretary, a woman with silver-shot dark hair and half-glasses who is working at a computer. She looks up and quickly notes the other woman’s expensive purse and suit. She stands and sticks out her hand, a ready smile on her face as she approaches.

You must be Doctor Scott. Congratulations on getting the position. I was rooting for you, personally. I’m Patty Potter, Doctor Hillyard’s secretary. Maggie steps back as Patty opens the door.

Doctor H is busy at the moment. He said to make you feel at home, so I thought I’d show you your office. Unfortunately, the carpet was late getting laid, the paint is still drying, and they’re not going to be able to hang the drapes until tomorrow. But it’s going to look grand when they’re done.

They turn down another, better lighted, corridor. A door at the end stands open, exhaling the smell of fresh paint. They step through the door and stop in the middle of the room.

Isn’t this nice?

Yes, it is. I like it very much.

Make yourself comfortable. I’ve got to get back to the phone, but I’ll be back in a minute or two, the doctor shouldn’t be too much longer.

Fine. Thank you.

Maggie looks around the room and does a mental inventory of her art print collection, trying to come up with some things that would be comfortable here. Puzzled, she takes another look at the paint scheme, that is a light beige with pale lemon trim. Odd choice, she thinks, though the unusual combination appeals.

Then it strikes her. The state university’s colors are autumn brown and gold and the painter has chosen a version of it. She smiles, because there is something endearing about the muted sentiment. Again, the lack of sophistication and pretension strikes a positive note. It is good to be home again. She steps to the office window and looks out across the drive and the lawns.

A tall man is leaning with his back against one of the big shade trees. He wears a western-cut suit and a soft, white Stetson. The man appears to be waiting for someone inside, not having been able to summon the nerve to enter the institution and face whom, or what, is inside.

Maggie moves closer to the glass, to examine the man’s wind burned face. There is something very familiar about the stance, and the attitude. He has a thumb hooked in his pants pocket and the other hand at his mouth as he draws on a cigarette. She watches the thick hand come down, then its thumb nicks the filter to scatter the ashes, and the familiar gesture freezes her. Suddenly, the room is full of the smell of bay rum, cigarette breath, and a workingman’s body odor that is the essence of Gib.

Emotion roils inside her. Memories push themselves out of neglected corners and she imagines wind on her face, sun on her head, the smell of sagebrush crushed beneath horses’ hooves.

When she opens her eyes the man is gone. She takes a deep breath and the smell of fresh paint brings her back to the hospital office.

Doctor Hillyard is ready to see you now. The secretary is standing in the door. When Maggie starts toward her, Patty points, Your eye makeup is running, Doctor. Wait here while I get you some tissues.

Startled, Maggie touches one cheek and then the other. Her face is wet with tears.

* * *

Gib poises his pickup on the battered edge of a large arroyo and eases the transmission into its grandma gear. The old Jimmy pickup growls slowly down into the dry watercourse then up the other side. It rolls to a stop and the man shifts from the compound gear into low and starts down a track scratched along the foot of a Nevada mountain range known mostly to government bureaucrats, deer hunters, and cow men. It is only 8 o’clock in the morning but the temperature is already working its way rapidly up through the nineties.

Them two pups had better have everything ready to go, he mutters as he upshifts and glances in the rear view mirror at the boil of dust rising behind him. It is roundup time and men from the widely scattered ranches will be showing up in two days for the fall gathering of cows that have summered on the mountains’ sides.

He is hauling the last of the groceries to the cow camp where the cowboys will leave to gather the loose cattle into bunches and then drive them into one large herd for sorting and shipping.

In the springtime the area ranchers push their cows onto their government leases and, because there are no fences and cows are herd animals they inevitably mingle. Autumn time means they have to be sorted out and each rancher takes charge of his wandering properties. In a perfect world each of the cows will have a calf by her side. But this is not a perfect world so it’s time for the hard realities of hard lives to be toted up, chewed on, and swallowed.

But it is a neighborly time of year too, and one of the few when most everyone can be found in the same place. It is a time for hard work, rough play, yarning, drinking for the drinkers, and singing for the singers. And a perfect time for everybody to cuss about the government, and everyone else trying to grub out the cow culture these men and women represent.

This roundup is one of two going on in the long valley, an area of almost three hundred square miles. Gib is repping it and, by God, it is going to be the quickest and most efficient of them all, even if it kills him doing it.

And it just might, he says aloud. His back is bothering him again and both his hernias are tingling from the rough, two hundred-mile rides to town and back for supplies.

Gib is looking down the barrel of his seventieth year, though he doesn’t look it when he is on horseback and has his hat on. But once he is back down on the ground his crooked ankles and swaled knees help give his age away. Then he moves with the stilted movements of a sand hill crane.

Where the hell’s that beer? he growls to himself, and rummages through the plunder on the truck seat. He finally comes up with a warm can of Coors. Steering the truck with his forearms, he holds it out the open window and pulls the tab. A plume of hot liquid sprays the truck’s door and dash, as well as the man’s gnarled hands and weathered face.

Dammit!

He shakes his wet hand and wipes it on his Wranglers then pushes back his hat and wipes at his sticky face. He tilts his head back and pours the half can of hot bubbles down his throat. The beer has been skunked by the heat and the taste lies somewhere between paint thinner and Perrier. He grimaces.

Boy, does that taste good, he says, ironically. But he is thankful because the