Chapter 51

“Look at those mangy hides. Don’t touch them with your hands. Cut a piece of that blanket off and wrap your hand before you drag them over to the fire on the beaver dam,” Eli told his brothers as they looked down at the nearly starved, disease infested animals with hairless splotches of dry scaly skin exposed.

Returning from the first trip to drag the dead dogs to the fire, Isaac came back with Eli’s bloody hatchet in his hand.

“I owe you, Brother.”

“Because you are my brother, you’ll never owe me – Brother!”

During the night, they heard more of the howling, but there were only a few joining the chorus and the sounds came from far away.

The full moon rose in the east after midnight and shown bright as day, reflecting off the snow. The Bucks slept in shifts of three, trying to get some rest before the last leg of their trip home.

Eli, Isaac, and Pike were up for the last watch as daylight came quick and silent across the frozen, snow covered plains. Before the sun was above the horizon, the glare off the snow was close to unbearable.

Before packing and leaving out, they took the remaining three sticks of dynamite and set charges across the beaver dam where the logs and limbs still made a cover for the wild dogs. Timing their fuses with the first one longest, then shorter as they came nearer the camp, they were ready.

“I’ll go set fire to the fuses, y’all get packed an lets get the hell out of here,” Eli told them. He picked up one of the torches and re-lit it. Without looking back, he ran for the far side of the old beaver dam.

His five brothers couldn’t pack up for watching him as he lit a fuse then ran to the next one. They were laughing and clapping their mittens together as he lit the last one and raced right into the midst of them. He was blowing steam with each breath, but he was laughing too when the first charge exploded.

Then with a series of three explosions coming in a matter of seconds, the charges chased across the beaver dam to the last one, right where Isaac had fallen through the night before. This one seemed to take longer, then it blew the last of the logs from the pile.

With temperatures never rising above freezing over the past two weeks, the icy crust on top of the deep snow was even thicker and harder to break through than before. The mules were having a hard time at first, breaking a path through the deep, crusted snow. They soon took to the task, stepping high and plodding on into midday when Pike yelled out.

“There’s the Barkley’s place!”

William, Ben, and George Barkley were in the barn feeding their horses, and throwing down hay for the cattle that milled around the back of the barn. They heard the shout and sounds of the mules breaking the crust on the frozen snow and looked out to see the Young Bucks.

The Barkley brothers took the Bucks in the house to get them warm and feed them after putting their horses and mules in the barn to feed and water them.

They stayed for close to two hours, warming by the fire and telling of their hunt. When they saddled up to leave again, they left two deer hanging in the barn for the Barkley’s.

“Eli, if y’all cut across that ridge where you see our tracks, you can follow that long draw all the way down to Crow Ridge without any deep snow. We’ve been down there twice in the past week just to check on your folks and feed the cows along the way,” William told them as they prepared to pull out.

“Thanks, William and thanks for feeding us and letting us warm up. How’s all the cattle been making it in this cold weather, with snow this deep?” Eli said.

“We’ve been out each day since the snow storm started and we’ve fed all the cattle at the hay barns, and up and down the line from the oil wells to the loading pens. Looks like we haven’t lost any so far. We’ve taken a few of the older momma cows and their small calves up to the big barn. They looked like they were getting weak. We had to build a few fires under the windmill pumps in the mornings, but they’re going good too.”

“We’ll feed the cattle up and down the pipeline starting tomorrow morning, William. We’ll see y’all in a few days I reckon.”

“Thanks for the deer meat, Eli. Our wives will start on them before the day is over,” George told them.

The sun was brighter than ever as they started out again. They had to pull their scarves up over their faces, with the flaps of their fur-lined caps nearly covering their eyes, just to keep the glare out.

The arrival of the six Young Bucks at Crow Ridge was met with the whole family coming out the back door to welcome them home. The women quickly returned to the warm house, as the Crow girls and the men entered the barn with the Bucks.

As soon as Little Eli stepped to the dirt floor of the barn, Kit was on him.

She was so happy to see him, she was crying as she hugged and kissed him in front of the others.

Isaac received the same welcome from Ruby, as she too hugged and kissed him, welcoming him home.

Next came the boys’ dads as they welcomed their sons home from their long hunt.

“From the looks of the way those travois are loaded, you men had some fair luck up there,” Eli told them as his sons each gave their dads a hug and a handshake.

“We sure did, Dad. We hunted in that small valley you told us about and the place was overrun with deer,” Micah told him as they took the saddles off their horses.

When the girls had returned to the house to get out of the cold, the men helped the Bucks hang their deer in the barn, then helped them take the travois and packsaddles off their mules.

“What in tarnation do you men have in this packsaddle? It must weigh three hundred pounds,” Duncan said as he and Moses lifted the rig from one mule.

“You’ll have to help me with this one over here too, it weighs at least that much,” Joe said as he tried to lift a packsaddle from another mule.

The six Bucks grinned at one another, knowing this was going to be fun, telling them about the gold coins and money they’d discovered while hunting.

Ezra and Isaac both nudged Little Eli as they looked at him to tell their dads all about their outlaw booty they’d discovered.

“Well, when the full force of the blizzard set in up there, we lucked up and found a cave in a rock bluff not far from the Arkansas and moved our camp in there. We found some human bones and three skulls and it looked like two had been shot in the head. We started poking around and found some paper money and gold coins that had been in there for what we figured, a lot of years,” he told them as the men looked at them, then one another and grinned.

“I know you counted it, how much did you find, gold and paper money all told?” Duncan asked as he grinned proudly at Isaac.

Isaac looked at Little Eli. He just grinned and nodded back at Isaac to answer his dad.

“We counted the gold coins pretty close and just counted the bundles of paper money after we counted the bills in one. Near as we could figure, we found a total of three hundred and sixty eight thousand dollars!” Isaac told his dad.

“Whoooooeeee. Hottt Damnnn ... That’s a lot of money!” Duncan yelled and grabbed Isaac in another hug.

“What are you men gonna do with all that money? I know you’ve already thought of a hundred things you could buy,” Eli said, looking at Little Eli with a grin.

“Well, we sort of wanted to give it to you and Jon David to put back so we could buy some ranch land for each of us to have when we get old enough.”

“Eli ... I’m proud of all you men. More proud all the time, and now you’ve gone on a hunt by yourselves and killed food for the family and you’ve even found yourselves some outlaw loot and already planning to save it to buy land with. You men are men in my book,” Eli told him as he grabbed his four sons.

“You men know that would mean each of you could buy around forty thousand acres with that kind of money. Do y’all really want a ranch with that many acres?”

“We talked about it and I told them I’d like to have about that much, maybe a little more to raise cattle and breed horses. I’d like to do like y’all are doing here on Crow Ridge and raise all our own hay, corn, and oats for feed too.”

“Then we’ll let Jon David handle all this money. I’ll tell Jefferson and Howard to be on the lookout for a big spread for each of you as they travel.”

“We know it may be hard to do, but we’d like our ranches to be close together ... even joining, if we can.”

“There’s still a lot of land out there to be bought when the government buys back the Indian lands and sells it off. We’ll find you something. I reckon y’all want to be off on your own, is that what you’re saying?”

“We’d kind of like that. Y’all have taught us how to be independent, work, hunt, use any gun we have. We’ve learned a lot about cattle with y’all and the Barkley brothers teaching us.”

“Then I’ll make sure all of you get what you want. I’m ready for my Bucks to be grown and have me some more grand babies.”

“We’re ready too Dad, we just have a few more years to go.”

“It’ll pass before you know it, too. Don’t let me push you too fast and don’t y’all hurry your life away either. I know you’ll be some fine young men, and after this hunt, we all know you’ll always be on the lookout for the means to get what you want in this world. Didn’t no one give it to me and the other men. they won’t give it to you either. Just don’t let this discovery be known to anyone outside the families.”

“We won’t and thanks, Dad.”

“Y’all go on in the house and spend some time with your mommas and sisters, they’ve missed y’all like we have.

The next day in the barn the men and their sons walked out to the barn to get out of the house for a while. The temperatures were still cold, but with the warm sunshine, the snow was melting more each day.

They wanted to hear the details of the deer hunt. Each of the men knew the Bucks had just skimmed over the most of the story. Now, they wanted to hear it all.

They laughed and grinned with pride at one another as their sons told their stories about the hunt, and about finding skeletons in the cave with the buried gold and money. They listened to each of them tell the story about killing their first big buck and how they were excited just to be out there together.

When the Bucks told them of making travois for the mules so they could haul their deer and supplies back on, they thought the story was about to wind down.

“How deep was the snow when you started back across the open plains?” Duncan asked.

This was the time to tell their dad’s about the encounter with the huge pack of wild dogs.

As soon as they told about seeing the first small pack, the men stopped smiling and sat in silence as they told about killing two packs of dogs that had came out in the open to look them over.

From there, the story grew until they each told parts, telling the men what the others did, never telling what they, themselves had done during the ordeal with the feral dogs.

“You men did the right thing by staying where you had firewood,” Moses told them. “You’d have been in real trouble out there in the open with mules and horses too tired to run and the snow belly deep to them,” he finished.

“Moses is right. We’re all proud of you men. Each time you handle yourselves like men when you’re faced with danger, you prove again how much you’ve learned and how much all of you are growing up. We’re all proud of you Bucks,” Duncan told them.