BrokenBack Mountain
"Forest Service got designated campsites on the allotments. Them
camps can be a couple a miles from where we pasture the sheep. Bad predator
loss, nobody near lookin after em at night. What I want, camp tender
in the main camp where the Forest Service says, but the HERDER" -- pointing
at Jack with a chop of his hand -- "pitch a pup tent on the q.t. with
the sheep, out a sight, and he's goin a SLEEP there. Eat supper, breakfast
in camp, but SLEEP WITH THE SHEEP, hunderd percent, NO FIRE, don't leave
NO SIGN. Roll up that tent every mornin case Forest Service snoops around.
Got the dogs, your .30-.30, sleep there. Last summer had goddamn near
twenty-five percent loss. I don't want that again. YOU," he said to
Ennis, taking in the ragged hair, the big nicked hands, the jeans torn,
button-gaping shirt, "Fridays twelve noon be down at the bridge with
your next week list and mules. Somebody with supplies'll be there in
a pickup." He didn't ask if Ennis had a watch but took a cheap round
ticker on a braided cord from a box on a high shelf, wound and set it,
tossed it to him as if he weren't worth the reach. "TOMORROW MORNIN
we'll truck you up the jump-off." Pair of deuces going nowhere.
They found a bar and drank beer through the afternoon, Jack telling
Ennis about a lightning storm on the mountain the year before that killed
forty-two sheep, the peculiar stink of them and the way they bloated,
the need for plenty of whiskey up there. He had shot an eagle, he said,
turned his head to show the tail feather in his hatband. At first glance
Jack seemed fair enough with his curly hair and quick laugh, but for
a small man he carried some weight in the haunch and his smile disclosed
buckteeth, not pronounced enough to let him eat popcorn out of the neck
of a jug, but noticeable. He was infatuated with the rodeo life and
fastened his belt with a minor bull-riding buckle, but his boots were
worn to the quick, holed beyond repair and he was crazy to be somewhere,
anywhere else than Lightning Flat.
Ennis, high-arched nose and narrow face, was scruffy and a little
cave-chested, balanced a small torso on long, caliper legs, possessed
a muscular and supple body made for the horse and for fighting. His
reflexes were uncommonly quick and he was farsighted enough to dislike
reading anything except Hamley's saddle catalog.
The sheep trucks and horse trailers unloaded at the trailhead and
a bandy-legged Basque showed Ennis how to pack the mules, two packs
and a riding load on each animal ring-lashed with double diamonds and
secured with half hitches, telling him, "Don't never order soup. Them
boxes a soup are real bad to pack." Three puppies belonging to one of
the blue heelers went in a pack basket, the runt inside Jack's coat,
for he loved a little dog. Ennis picked out a big chestnut called Cigar
Butt to ride, Jack a bay mare who turned out to have a low startle point.
The string of spare horses included a mouse-colored grullo whose looks
Ennis liked. Ennis and Jack, the dogs, horses and mules, a thousand
ewes and their lambs flowed up the trail like dirty water through the
timber and out above the tree line into the great flowery Meadows and
the coursing, endless wind.
They got the big tent up on the Forest Service's platform, the kitchen
and grub boxes secured. Both slept in camp that first night, Jack already
*****ing about Joe Aguirre's sleep-with-the-sheep-and-no-fire order,
though he saddled the bay mare in the dark morning without saying much.
Dawn came glassy orange, stained from below by a gelatinous band of
pale green. The sooty bulk of the mountain paled slowly until it was
the same color as the smoke from Ennis's breakfast fire. The cold air
sweetened, banded pebbles and crumbs of soil cast sudden pencil-long
shadows and the rearing lodgepole pines below them massed in slabs of
somber malachite.
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