Chapter 2

Sarah knew she was in some kind of trouble. She didn’t know why she was in that trouble. Something had happened that didn’t match up with her experience. What should have happened was that, when she found the trespassers on her father’s land, they should have tucked their tails between their legs and hastened to get their nasty little grass killers back where they belonged. Wherever that was.

Sarah’s attitude towards sheep, and the men who raised them, was the product of her father’s attitude towards the same subjects. Jonas had been prepared to dislike sheep from the beginning. Actually, he was prepared to dislike any animal that ate what his cattle ate, including cattle belonging to other ranchers. Wyoming was a fine place to raise cattle, as long as you were the only one doing it.

When more and more people began to filter into the land, the resources soon became stressed, and that stressed Jonas.

All it had taken was coming upon a sheep trail just once. He had smelled it first, and then came upon the mass of tracks that went from side to side as far as he could see from his horse. This flock of sheep had left a broad bare swath, weedless, grassless, flowerless, in their wake. Where sheep grazed they destroyed. That was what Jonas had against them.

He didn’t know that the flock he had seen the results of were badly trailed, allowed to move much too slowly and thus over-feed. He didn’t know that, if sheep were moved properly, as nomadic people had done for thousands of years, their passage would be almost invisible in a few weeks time. He didn’t know ... and he didn’t care to learn. The solution was simple to him. He was there first. Take the damn sheep back to Oregon, where they came from.

Some of the other ranchers had been talking of proclaiming a “Dead Line” along the Green River. They wanted to post signs that said in no uncertain terms that any sheep that crossed the line was dead as soon as a cattleman saw it. Some of the hotter heads suggested that there wouldn’t be much difference in shooting sheep, or the men who herded them.

Jonas was, despite his rough exterior and almost surly countenance, a thoughtful man. He was fully aware that a herd of sheep could easily contain five thousand animals. You could bankrupt yourself buying ammunition if you actually planned on shooting sheep. Even if you did, you were left with having to clean up the carcasses. On the other hand, if there were dead sheep lying around, maybe the wolves would leave the calves alone. He didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. So far, the nearest sheep farmer, a man by the name of Brad Rocklin, hadn’t caused him any problems. There were no sheep on his land, to his knowledge, and as long as it stayed that way, things were fine.

The only problem was that, like a lot of cattlemen in the late 1800s, Jonas Collins viewed a lot of land as “his” that many other people, including the United States Government, defined as public land, or open range. And, to those people, Jonas didn’t have any right to keep anyone off of that land.

Brad Rocklin was one of those people.

Brad Rocklin was currently treating sheep that had been brought in for one ailment or another by Charley Kemp and Buster, the alpha male sheep dog of Brad’s operation. Every so often the whole flock was run back to the ranch house and weak animals were culled out. Sometimes they were treated and re-inserted into the flock. Sometimes they became supper. It all depended on what was wrong with them.

Buster had a sixth sense about which sheep were in less than perfect condition and when Charley worked him to find those sheep Buster went about it with single minded concentration.

First he’d just range through the flock. It looked for all the world like he was just running back and forth as the sheep opened corridors for him. In that situation the sheep seemed to know they weren’t being herded, and didn’t shy away from the dog like they usually did. That’s how dogs herded sheep ... by making them shy away in the direction the dog wanted them to go. The dog took his cues from the shepherd. A well trained dog only had to see the shepherd walk off in some direction, perhaps with a whistle or yell of a command, but not always, and the sheep would appear to follow as the dog went to work.

It was actually a combination of things that moved a flock of sheep. There was a dominant ewe in the flock, the matriarch, and most sheep followed wherever she led. She, too, was trained to follow the shepherd, based on cues and commands. What the dog did was take care of the beasts that didn’t follow the ewe.

But when Buster was “evaluating” the flock, it was almost as if he was counting how many of the animals would need to be culled out of the flock. Once he had done that, with little nips and the clacking of teeth, he picked out those animals he wanted and moved them through the flock toward Charley. Once there, the number two bitch, one of Buster’s offspring named Lisa, was being trained to keep the chosen sheep bunched up. She did that by running in circles around them, which she loved. She had taken to it naturally, watching her mother work. Her two brothers weren’t quite as smart. At least not yet. They were penned up when the flock was home, so that Charley could work on firming up Lisa’s training without having to pay attention to their antics.

That had happened the day before, and Buster had culled out thirty four animals. Brad and Charley were now evaluating each one, having sent his two hands and best dog, Queen, who was also Buster’s mate, out to graze the rest of the flock. Brad had told them exactly where to take the flock, a piece of open range that had good grass. As usual he told Buford not to leave them in any one place too long, but to keep them moving so they didn’t overgraze the land.

There was plenty of land for the twenty-five hundred sheep Brad ran in his flock, as long as they kept moving. Soon it would be time to run the flock up into the mountains where the high meadows, lush with grass watered by melting snows from above, would feed them until late fall. While they were up there, he’d process the wool that had been shorn off the sheep when winter was over. That was still piled high in a barn.

Brad was cleaning an infected hoof when his son, Bobby, wandered up and stood watching. Bobby was a good boy, but he didn’t have sheep in his blood. He did whatever his father asked of him, but Brad knew Bobby would never take over the business when his father was too old to do the work. Brad himself had gotten into sheep by accident, back in Oregon, when he needed a job and that was the only one he could find. Well, there had been the owner’s daughter too. The first time he’d seen Amanda she had taken his breath away. A short girl, only fifteen at the time, with long strawberry colored hair and a temper to go with it, she had been upbraiding a cowboy who had ridden too close to her and bumped her with his horse. Dressed in jeans and a man’s shirt, the girl had reached out and slapped the horse on the butt, making it jump and sidestep. The cowboy had almost fallen off, and two of his friends had laughed at him. He’d wheeled the horse, aiming to go back and teach the upstart girl some manners, but had found Brad suddenly standing between him and the girl. When the cowboy persisted, riding toward Brad as if to walk over him, Brad had taken the bridle of the horse in hand and, in a trick taught to him by an Indian friend, had caused the horse to dip his head and roll onto his side, trapping the cowboy’s leg underneath.

Luckily, the sheriff had seen the whole incident from the porch of the jail, and arrived in time to stop anyone from shooting Brad. Amanda had given him a kiss as a reward and invited him to dinner at her house. He got a good dinner, a job, and another kiss in the process.

Amanda’s father was the owner of almost thirty thousand sheep in the Oregon territory, and he had a hundred men working for him.

He had no use for Brad, particularly when he saw how his daughter looked at the man. But Amanda was stronger than her father and when they got married, Brad was suddenly the owner of five hundred sheep. He had almost screwed that up, except Amanda saved him there too. It was Amanda who found the right dogs, and taught him everything he hadn’t yet learned about sheep, and urged him to leave Oregon and establish a ranch in Wyoming, where they would be closer to the markets for both meat and wool. The United States Army had a voracious appetite for both, and being so much closer to Army points of delivery gave them an advantage over their western brothers. For one thing they could just trail the sheep to market, rather than having to pay rail fees. For another, cartage for wool was less expensive since there were no mountains involved.

“Dad?” Brad’s reminiscences were interrupted by Bobby.

“What?” asked Brad, wrapping up the hoof he’d just put salve on.

“My chores are done.” said Bobby.

“Well find something else to do,” said Brad, looking at a deep scratch on a lamb’s hindquarters, trying to figure out what had caused it.

“Everything’s done,” said Bobby.

Charley snorted. He was Brad’s foreman, and had been with him since he and Amanda had gotten married. Amanda had marched up to him one day and informed him that he now worked for her, instead of her father. Charley had grinned, packed up the few things he owned, and followed Amanda off the farm where she’d just stolen him. He was just a lead hand then. Amanda had made him “Foreman”, but he took a cut in pay. He was Amanda’s uncle.

The only time Charley listened to her, or more correctly deferred to her after that, was when they were in public, and non-family members were around. Their relationship was tumultuous and loving at the same time. Amanda would tell him what she wanted done and he’d tell her what he was going to do. More often than not, those two things differed, sometimes significantly. Amanda stomped her foot and made dire threats, all of which rolled off Charley’s back like water off a duck. He just grinned insolently as she railed, and then went off and did what he knew was best.

The fact that Amanda, who thought she knew everything about sheep ranching, was smart enough to know when she’d made a mistake, kept things more or less peaceful. She was smart enough to know when Charley called the shots correctly, even though she had never once admitted she had been wrong. Charley snorted because he knew there was never a time on a ranch when “everything” had been done.

“Go see what your mamma needs done,” said Brad, peering at the lamb’s injury.

“She sent me down here,” said Bobby heavily. “Said I was under foot.”

Charley snorted again, but didn’t say anything. He knew Bobby’s heart wasn’t in sheep ranching too. He was the only one, however, who knew that what Bobby really wanted to do was be a mountain man, trapping furs and hunting big game. Bobby had confided in him around a campfire one night, while they were tending the flock. He thought it was a ridiculous idea, but didn’t try to talk Bobby out of it, exactly. Charley had a wild streak in him too though, and knew how the boy felt. Instead, he set about teaching the boy what he’d have to know to be a successful mountain man, thinking that, when he found out how hard it was, and how much knowledge would be required, and how dangerous it was, the boy would change his mind.

That hadn’t happened yet, to Charley’s surprise. Every task he’d set the boy had been attacked with vigor, and completed successfully. Bobby was an ace shot with a Sharps buffalo rifle, or Winchester. He could track with the best of them, and he understood predators as well or better than Charley did. More than once he’d taken on bear or wolf and ended up the victor.

But Charley didn’t mention any of this to his niece or her husband. He knew what Amanda would say if she found out the kinds of things Charley had been teaching her fair-haired boy, and he knew Brad couldn’t keep a secret from Amanda to save his soul.

He didn’t know what he was going to do if the boy didn’t tire of his dream soon. In the meantime, he just didn’t mention Bobby’s dream to either of Bobby’s parents, and made sure that Bobby knew not to as well.

“Clean the stalls,” said Brad.

“Did that already,” said Bobby.

“Fence around your mother’s garden needs work,” said Brad.

“Did that too,” said Bobby.

“How about the tack? Did you oil it?” asked Brad, looking up at his son.

“Yep. Finished that yesterday,” said Bobby smugly.

“All of it?” asked Brad.

“All of it,” said Bobby firmly.

“Find a tool that’s rusty and put some lanolin on it.” suggested Brad.

“Dad, I did that last week,” said Bobby, a whine beginning to creep into his voice.

“Well find something to do, dammit.” Brad’s voice began to rise.

“Can’t I go out with the flock or something?” asked Bobby.

“You know I don’t like you hanging around Buford,” said his father, slathering a medicine on the lamb’s injury. Amanda made the stuff from plants she knew about. Brad had no idea what was in it, but it worked well.

“You know you can’t trust him to move the flock like he’s supposed to either,” said Bobby. “I can ride out and make sure he’s not overgrazing. Didn’t you say there’s been some trouble with the cowmen about that?”

“Yes,” said Brad firmly. “I did say that, and you should know that if there’s trouble with some cowboys, that’s the last place you need to be.”

“Okay” said Bobby. “How about I take a wagon up to the high pastures and restock the shack up there?”

Charley snorted again. Now he understood. Bobby was trying to get up into the mountains, where he could have all kinds of excuses to do all kinds of things that had nothing whatsoever to do with pasturing sheep. The high meadows were up above the heat of the plains, with trees and wildlife and plenty of water from snowmelt.

“You know I already stocked that camp,” said his father.

“I could check on it then ... to make sure nobody’s messed with it.” suggested Bobby.

“Who’d mess with it?” asked Brad. “Nobody even knows we go up there. The cowboys won’t take their steers up there because they walk off too much weight getting up the mountain.”

“Maybe a drifter has set himself up in our camp,” said Bobby, reaching for any reason to go.

“And if he has?” asked Brad, looking at his son. “What exactly would you do about that? Run him off? How? All you’d do is get yourself hurt and then your mother would make my life miserable.”

“Come on Dad, there has to be something I can do,” complained Bobby.

Brad didn’t want to argue any more. He was getting hot under the collar and he didn’t like being that way either. “Okay, ride out to the flock and tell Buford to start moving them up toward the high meadows. It’s a week early, so tell him to take his time, and weave them back and forth between here and the foothills. How’s that?”

“That will only take me a few hours.” complained Bobby.

“Well, you could always oil tools you’ve already oiled, or clean stalls you’ve already cleaned. I bet you two ewes and a good dog there are weeds in your mamma’s garden.”