Ruminate Magazine: Faith in Literature and Art

The following is an excerpt from "Thieves' Weather."

 

Clifton Clark on his way home from the OK Liquor Corral with two new bottles of brandy took the pasture road instead of going round by the blacktop. A bright night in new November and he drove south into a cloud encamped in the big open country, as though God had pitched a tent to be his neighbor for the night. The first snow melted on the windshield and the hood of the pickup and the hides of the Hereford cattle around him, but more snow came and it didn’t all melt. It sifted down and covered the country and all the country lay cuddled under snow and wet weather. Thieves’ weather.
     Taking a turn out of his regular path, Clifton Clark jockeyed his pickup truck over soft slopes and winter grass and stopped on a boulder-crusted nob. He shut off the headlights and cut the engine. The changed terrain of the season made everything unfamiliar so that he had to wait for the moon to break cover like a startled hare flitting between clouds to see where he was. The snow gathered on the windshield and the wiper blades. He got out and walked forward to the lichen-covered rocks jutting out of the hillside. He listened. He stood on the tracks of jackrabbits and looked down on a creek feeding south toward the south fork of the Grand River, but there was nothing to see. There was nothing to hear but the wet sag of snow descending. But he knew. He had a feeling. He drove east and then south into the coulee, looking for the Texas crossing he knew was there. He crossed the creek with its frozen shine of meltwater from that week’s warmth. A half-mile south he stopped again and shut off the engine and rolled down his window to listen. He got out to listen more closely. He heard unmistakably the sound of a four-wheeler.

      He got in the pickup and drove back the way he’d come across the coulee and up the other side and east two miles on the pasture road to come to the Karlson ranch. Horseman Karlson came out and Clifton said, “I hope you got your long johns on. It’s a long ride to the south corral.” 

     “I got business at the south corral?” 

     “Somebody does. Been moving your cattle that direction. I been watching for it like you asked me to.” 

     “That would be Tasker, I guess.” 

     “Your dad did always notice that he was fond of working this kind of weather,” Clifton said. “Bright moon, but the snow coming thick and fast. Kind of weather rustlers pray for.” 

     “You saw him moving cattle?” 

     “Heard him. A four-wheeler going and stock cows a-bellering. Can’t say I saw him. But you will if you ride over south and west of Pryor’s Coulee. Keep an eye peeled after you cross No-Name-for-It Creek and top the bluffs.” 

     “And him keeping an eye out for me, too, most like.” 

     “He won’t look for you to come out of the pasture. He’ll be watching the road.” 

     “You’re pretty sure he ain’t dangerous?” 

     “Pretty sure. Not a hundred percent. I’d still take along a rifle if I was you.” 

     “You fixing to ride along?” 

     “How bout I take my pickup up along that west fenceline and sit there and watch. Show my headlights a little if I have to.” 

     “How bout you just ride along. I’d like that better.” 

     Clifton shrugged, noncommittal. 

     Horseman went inside and came out wearing a sheepskin coat. He went to the barn and returned leading two horses, saddled, a big gray gelding and a big bay mare. Stepping into the saddle of the mare, he tugged the gelding over alongside the open window of the pickup where Clifton Clark sat listening to radio station KFLN out of Baker, Montana. Clifton had a brown paper bag beside him and there was the smell of something fruity in the air. 

     “Well,” Horseman said. “You up to it?” 

     “I’ve been lifting up my courage. What do you got for a gun?” Clifton said. 

     “Dad’s old Mauser. The 8-millimeter.

     “Huh. Big slow bullet like that, the man could probably see it coming and outrun it on that little machine of his.” 

     “I’d just as soon talk to him as shoot him anyway.” 

     Clifton shut off the radio and got out, nobbing his sheepskin coat closed. He mounted the gelding and they rode. 

     “Your dad didn’t want to shoot him, either,” Clifton said. “He didn’t bear him no malice. I’d say he found a good deal of entertainment value in those goings-on. Sitting up there on Pryor Hill with the field glasses if there was any light to see by. 

He says to me one time, ‘Take a look, Clifton, there’s a man that works hard to get ahead. Tramping around the middle of the night in the snow and he’s got to be east of the Missouri River and outside the brand inspection area by sunrise. An absolute 

textbook capitalist if it wasn’t for his hazy conception of private property.’ Like he plumb admired him. That was about the time Tasker’s wife took sick the first time.” 

     “What was it you said killed her? Cancer?” 

     “I believe so. Something in the female line. Your dad took to hazing a few head down south so Tasker  would nab them. Tricky kind of charity work, because that’s when your brother was in high school and he and his buddies were running off with stock, too. They were loading them out of the west and south corrals, Tasker was stealing them out of the south. Sometimes we almost ran into scheduling problems.” 

     “Dad knew all about that, did he?” 

     “He knew. Sigurd said he figured he’d just about have to hire Tasker as foreman just to stop his own son from stealing him blind, only he thought Tasker wouldn’t do it. Too humiliating to work for the man you’d been robbing.” 

     The cold had a smell, it made a sound. The snowflakes drifted down the size of quarters and filled the air and made a soft rustle of moving in the winter grass like a hen settling onto her nest. Winter returning like a native to nest and breed its brood 

of young weather to affright the country. 

     “I don’t know why my dad should want to look out for Tasker,” Horseman said. 

     “They were roommates once. That might have had something to do with it.” 

     “Roommates? I never heard that.” 

     “It wasn’t for very long. Your Grandpa Magnus kicked Sigurd off the place once, did you know about that? Right after the war. He was plenty mad about something. Sigurd needed a place to stay till it blew over. "

     “Mad about what?” 

     “Don’t know. They were hollering at each other in Norwegian. Even your grandma couldn’t make it out, she never learned Norwegian worth a dime. They patched it up afterward.” 

     Horseman swept the hat off his head and licked a snowflake off the brim. Tilting his face to the sky he let the flakes fall down on him trying to catch them on his tongue. 

     “My dad used to say they tasted like cotton candy,” he said, replacing his hat. 

     “Do they?” 

     “Not no more. But I believe they did when I was a little boy and he first told it to me.” 

     They crossed the No-Name, stepping out of the saddle to lead the horses across the ice that creaked underfoot. They moved up the other bank and rode across the floodplain and up into the bluffs. There was more light now. The moon played hide-and-seek with 

clouds the shape of haystacks and big bales of wool. They stayed off the ridges. 

     They heard him before they saw him. The four-wheeler made a thrumming. They heard cattle moving along a fenceline. Then they saw their shapes, the red backs of cattle and the white faces, through the sift and waft of snow. 

     “Looks to me like he don’t need help. The man’s had practice,” Clifton Clark said. 

     “They’re not in the corral yet. I believe I’d like somebody to pitch in and lend a hand if I was all alone working my cattle.” 

     “They are your cattle,” Clifton said. “Which is why he’s got so good at working alone and why I don’t believe he wants the help.” 

     But Horseman rode down whistling and yipping and brought up one flank where the four-wheeler had been doubling back to keep the gaggle of cattle moving. Clifton Clark sat watching and saw the four-wheeler stop and the rider turn his head, craning to watch too. The thrum of that engine sounded at first like contemplated flight, and then like resignation. 

     Clifton fell in beside Horseman to bring up the rear, pushing the cattle south along the fence and leaving the four-wheeler to keep them from darting west into the open country. In the corner where the southbound fence bumped another headed west, they came upon the green steel corral. They bunched them in and Horseman got down to swing shut the gate.

     Tasker, sitting on the four-wheeler beside them, killed the engine and took out a pack of Winstons. He lit one and dropped the match in the snow. He watched Horseman looping the chain round the gate and gatepost of the corral and making it fast. 

     “There’s some good stuff ready to sell, all right,” Horseman said. “Dad always said you had a good eye for livestock.” 

     “I’ve had my eye on these ones a good while,” Tasker said dryly, looking at his cigarette. 

     “Going to Sioux Falls with this bunch?” 

     He shrugged. “Somewheres back there. Maybe Aberdeen. I always figure I get a little better price east of the river.” 

     “And not have to pay that 60 cents a head brand inspection fee,” Clifton said. “A damned nuisance for an honest man.” 

     “I did never like that thing,” Tasker said. And looked at Horseman and said, “You figure I should do something else with this lot” 

     “No, Sioux Falls is fine. They got a sale on Wednesday. That’s tomorrow. Shoot, that’s today. You’ll have to drive fast to get there. Got any animals of your own you want to take along?” 

     “You know I just haven’t been selling a lot of my own.”

     “Might as well load up these, then. How many you got room for?” 

     “There’s half a dozen will fit in there easy enough, skinny as these ones are. You ought to be feeding already if you’re going to try to raise heifers on range. Your family always waits too long to put heifers on feed. Damn foolish. It’ll cost you in your calf crop. Just look at the ribs. You ain’t got a clue about body condition scores. I’ll tell you what, there’s times I felt bad taking them cause folks had to think they were mine.”

     “Well, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. I’m thinking of making some changes around the place. Little by little. If I can find a man with know-how about cows, I mean. Come see me after you get back from the Sioux Falls Stockyards.” 

     Gid Tasker nodded. He turned on the lights of his four-wheeler so that the headlamps shone through the green steel bars on the drizzle-faced Herefords. He bared his forearm and reached his watch forward into the headlight to read the time.

     “Coming up on half-past midnight. Best get at it,” he said. 

     They went inside the corral, Gid Tasker with a short whip in his hand, Horseman with his coiled rope. They left Clifton Clark to tend the gate, swung a quarter open to let out the ones they didn’t want to sell. In the end they kept five head and ran 

them into the trailer and shut the gate and bolted it. Horseman and Gideon Tasker lifted the four-wheeler in the back of Tasker’s pickup, in front of the gooseneck trailer hitch. 

     Then Tasker said, “If it’s a job you got for me, I don’t want it.” He was slashing the snow with the whip. 

     “What’s that?” 

     “I got second thoughts. About what you said you wanted to talk to me about. If you’re fixing to offer me a job I ain’t interested, I ain’t looking for one. I got plenty of stuff to keep me busy.” 

     “Shame to have to work nights, though,” Clifton said. 

     “Just run me in if you want, I’ll plead to it. I got nothing against you. Fox and goose and hound dog, that’s just how things are. You just go see the Harding County state’s attorney and get your papers filed. I’ll plead to it.” 

     He went and got in the cab of the pickup and slammed the door and sat there inside. Horseman went round and opened the passenger side door and looked in on him. He said, “I wasn’t planning to go to law about it.” 

     “You do what you want. Go if you want, don’t if you don’t want. But don’t blame me if you’re still missing cattle. And don’t think you’re going to get me to work for you.” 

 

 

 

 

 

Leif Nikunen writes about the prairie from his home in South Dakota. Some of his favorite writers include Gyula Krudy, Cormac McCarthy, Olafur Johann Sigurdsson, and Martin A. Hansen. His fiction was most recently published in The King’s English and Dark Sky Magazine.