Eunice Boeve

Crossed Trails

Chapter One

Joshua Ryder turned the collar on his brown canvas coat up over his long, dark curly hair and tugged his gray Stetson hat down firmer on his head as a sharp wind rose out of the north, ruffling the horses’ manes and setting the leaves in a nearby aspen grove aflutter. Although the sun, just over the edge of the distant snowcapped mountains, promised a warm day, mornings in this Montana high country carried the chill of overnight well into the first hours of daylight. By the middle of this July day, it would be too warm for his coat and probably his vest as well.
On the high flat-topped ridge overlooking the Webber ranch, he pulled Shadow to a stop and leaned forward in the saddle, giving slack to the reins, so the buckskin gelding could graze on the sparse growth with Top, the bay gelding he used as a pack horse to carry his meager belongings.
He felt a deep sense of satisfaction and some pride as he surveyed the ranch buildings below. Backed by the river its banks thick with willow and cottonwood, it was a picturesque setting, and just as pleasing to his eyes were the longhorns grazing on the grass-covered valley floor and the sloping hillsides. They’d brought the herd up from Texas last fall to stock the Webber brothers’ ranch and many now had calves at their side. In a way he’d like to be around for the fall roundup and the branding, but there was no real need for him to stay. They had finished the cabin and the corrals just as the snow began to fly last fall, and this spring, they’d build the bunkhouse and the hay barn. With the building done, Ben and Joe had enough men that they’d not be caught short-handed without him.
When he told them he was leaving, Joe, the silent brother, had simply nodded, but Ben said, “Well, Josh, I suppose you’re aiming to head back to Texas.”
Shortly after they arrived with the herd last September, two of the men, Richards and Boone, had eyed the frost-coated grass the next morning and the fresh snow on the mountains and had drawn their pay.
“It ain’t goin’ to be long for you fellas is butt-deep in snow with a cold wind whistling up your shirttails,” Glen Richards said.
Josh wasn’t sure how the rest of the men felt about going back to Texas. He only knew he wasn’t ever going back. So far none of them had talked about leaving, except during the worst of the winter. They’d grumbled some then.
One day, out breaking up ice in the creek for the stock to drink, Stub Willet had joked about writing his name in the snow, figuring if he was to haul out his writing instrument and let loose, he’d end up with a yellow icicle hanging off the end of it.
Tom Licken allowed as how his name-writing-thing-of-a-bob was so shriveled up with the cold, he doubted if he’d be able to find the dang thing come spring. He also bet that even Hell would freeze over if it ever came to Montana.
Josh had grinned hearing them grumble and gripe. He wasn’t too crazy about the snow and cold either, but what struck him each time was how he’d miss the easy give and take, the bantering common among these men and the hands he’d worked along side when he’d ridden for Mrs. Rawlins’ Lazy R. It was times like those that he doubted his notion of a self-imposed exile.
“I’ll head on west for a ways, first. See that new park they call the Yellowstone.”
Ben had snorted. “Sure puzzlin’ to me why the government’d make a park out of some chunk of land just ‘cause it’s got waterfalls and steaming hot pools. Who the hell’s gonna go there just to see waterfalls and steaming hot pools?”
“Me for one,” Josh had told him, grinning.
A horse’s shrill whinny rose up from the ranch below and his horses lifted their heads and whickered, ears pricked forward. Josh could see one of the hands in the corral working with a black horse. He was too far away to be sure, but he thought the man looked like Jeb Callahan.
Jeb called him “Teach” and got the men to teasing him about always having his nose in a book. They were uneducated men when it came to books, but experts in handling horses and cattle and in reading tracks. He had taken a liking to poetry and once mentioned having memorized a poem. He never mentioned it again. If he’d said he was planning to rope the moon, they’d have understood that a whole lot better.
He grinned to himself and straightened in the saddle. Gathering the reins, he urged Shadow up into the timbered hills. Top, on his lead rope, followed close behind.