Chapter 1

I’d been out riding the hills checking that the line shack was ready for the coming winter. Riding out in the wild was soul enriching. The soon to be changing colors of the country made my life better. Even at my young age. I had people who cared for me. The Quincannon’s. The men I worked with even though much older than me. Darlene, my girl. She was the storekeepers daughter and the girl I was thinking I’d marry.

I’d not seen the building while it was being worked on but the other riders had told me it was like a fort. The line shack was built into the side of a hill. When the snows came, I was told the most of it would come from the backside of the hill so getting snowed in was not probable. The biggest risk was a drift having blown over the hill and extending like a ledge in front of the shack and having the overhanging snow fall in front of the door.

The builders even built a stable into the hillside and connected it to the shack with a tunnel. The built the tunnel with solid, thick, logs and then covered it with soil from the shacks excavation. Come heavy snow, the stock could be cared for without putting the hands in danger by having them leave the shack to care for the horses. The snow would be melted as a water source for the residents of the shack and the stock.

One reason for the new shack was the loss of a couple of hands last winter when one walked to the outhouse and the other to care for the horses. Both were lost in a blizzard. Both were found frozen body feet from the front door. They’d gotten lost in whiteouts.

The shack was strong built with its walls being made of logs at least eight inches thick and packed tight with stuff the boss called concrete. He said that when it hardened it would be stronger and last longer than adobe. It certainly looked like it.

The boss had the concrete stuff packed between every log in the walls and even the roof. The boss said it was going to be as strong as a rock cave. It was going to need to be. The wet snows we got up here would be four to six feet deep on the roof, and that was a lot of weight. I was inside checking the stock of blankets and snow shoes when Lefty Wright rode up. He tied up his horse at the hitching post near the water trough and walked in the door.

“Hey Logan! The boss says that you need to get back to the ranch, pronto,” he said with a strange smile.

That was me. Logan Michael O’Dell, 16 yrs old and a $40 a month cowhand.

“What’s going on?” I asked, knowing it was the better part of a day’s ride getting here.

“Didn’t say. Just told me to come and get you and I was to finish what you were doing while you went back and stay until you got back.”

“OK,” I said. “Let me show you what I’ve done and what I had planned to do, then I’ll be on my way.”

After giving him the lay of the land, I went through the tunnel to the stable and saddled up one of the three horses in there. I led it outside through the big double doors and mounted up and rode to the shack’s front door.

“He didn’t give you any idea of what was going on huh Lefty?” I asked him.

“Nope. The boss just told me to hurry you up.”

I put my heels to the chestnut gelding and we took off for the main ranch. The Circle Q spread was all rolling hills with lines of trees. We’d strung flat wire between the trees breaking the grazing land into sections. We’d move the cattle from section to section so the grass wouldn’t get over grazed in any single section. It was beautiful country, especially coming on to Fall when the trees all lit up like fire.

I’d been with the outfit for over a year and a half having started just before my fifteenth birthday. I left home after my folks had died in a wild fire that started after a lightning strike and ran like it was in a race to burn as much dried grass as it could. We’d been in a drought for about three months and everything was dry. Before my folks could get out of the house, the fire engulfed it and our barn. The fire spread so fast that it burned my folks and all our livestock but the horse I was riding while checking the fence line. I watched the whole thing from a hilltop.

Riding back after the fire passed, it took some coaxing to get my horse to ride over the black ground. The folks were burnt together in each other’s arms so I buried them that way since I couldn’t pry them apart. It took the better part of the day to dig the grave and then cover it over. I carved a sign with their names and the date of the fire into a blackened board and stuck it deep in the ground.

The next morning, I got up on the horse and headed out for green grass and water. I shot an antelope the following morning and that kept me fed for a few days. I rode northwest figuring to get away from the hot summer days and the dry grass that would burn wild with a single lightning strike. That brought me to the northwestern edge of Kansas Territory and the Circle Q ranch.

I rode up to the ranch house and knocked on the door. The person that answered was Mrs. Waltraut Quincannon, a substantially built German woman. Her husband was Ian Quincannon, an equally huge man with a thick Irish accent and a laugh that could shake the bark off an oak. I introduced myself, explained my situation and was hired on as a $20 a month hand. As the youngest hand on the ranch, I started off mucking horse stalls which made me stink, wrapping hay stacks which made me itch, and doing the general shit jobs which made me resilient.

Mrs. Quincannon always looked out for me and made sure I wasn’t being unduly worked. One day she’d sent me a glass of lemonade when I was digging post holes. The other hands made fun of me but were never cruel and I never made a show of drinking the lemonade while others drank water or worked. I think that was the day I felt truly at home. Over the next year and a half I worked myself up to being a $40 a month hand and I could manage most every job needed on the spread.

Riding back to the ranch I was taking in the beauty of the country and was thinking about that little blonde girl I’d met at the church social about four months ago. It was her first social coming as a young woman instead of a girl. This time she was not sitting with the young girls, giggling and making fun of the way the clumsy boys and young cowboys danced. This time she sat with the single women and was accorded the courtesies that placement entitled her.

Her name was Darlene Jones and her parents owned the general store in the town a few hours west of the ranch. Tonight, she was sitting with the single ladies of the church and couldn’t have gotten my attention any more if she’d been a screaming Indian war party. She’d just begun to show her womanly features and I could tell that she was going to be built like her mother.

Her mother was wide hipped and the rumors were that if not for an accident her husband had with a fall that had him straddle a log, she would have had many more babies after Darlene. It was already a sort of a joke that if needs be, Mrs. Jones could nurse everyone in their town. Darlene’s breasts were well started on their way to equal status.

Between songs, Mrs. Quincannon brought Darlene over to me and introduced us after she saw how much I was staring at the girl. We talked and did a couple of line dances. I got her a glass of punch and we sat and talked. That led us to be closer and whenever I had the time over the next few months, I’d ride over to her town and see her. We were becoming so close, I was thinking of finding a way to ask her to marry me.

When I rode up to the bunkhouse I tied up the horse and went to find Mr. Quincannon. He was in the pasture beyond the stables watching his best stallion with one of the mares. I walked up to him and waited for him to notice me.

“What do you need, O’Dell? I thought you were out at the line shack.”

“I was but Lefty rode out and told me the boss wanted to see me right away. So here I am.”

He was about to say something when Mrs. Quincannon called in her German-accented voice from the stable door.

“Ian, I called for him. Come here Logan.”

I looked at Mr. Quincannon and he smiled and said, “The Boss calls!”

“Yes sir.”

We laughed and shook hands before I went to Mrs. Quincannon. She didn’t have her usual smile.