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W hen my old man said he’d hired her, I said, “A girl? ”

A girl, when it wasn’t that long ago women couldn’t

work on this ranch even as cooks, because the wran-

glers got shot over them too much. They got shot even over the

ugly cooks. Even over the old ones.

I said, “A girl? ”

“She’s from Pennsylvania, ” my old man said. “She’ll be good

at this.”

“She’s from what? ”

When my brother Crosby found out, he said, “Time for me

to find new work when a girl starts doing mine.”

My old man looked at him. “I heard you haven’t come over

Dutch Oven Pass once this season you haven’t been asleep on

your horse or reading a goddamn book. Maybe it’s time for you

to find new work anyhow.”

He told us that she showed up somehow from Pennsylvania

in the sorriest piece of shit car he’d ever seen in his life. She

asked him for five minutes to ask for a job, but it didn’t take that

long. She flexed her arm for him to feel, but he didn’t feel it. He

liked her, he said, right away. He trusted his eye for that, he said, after all these years.

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“You’ll like her, too, ” he said. “She’s sexy like a horse is sexy.

Nice and big. Strong.”

“Eighty-five of your own horses to feed, and you still think

horse is sexy, ” I said, and my brother Crosby said, “I think we

got enough of that kind of sexy around here already.”

She was Martha Knox, nineteen years old and tall as me,

thick-legged but not fat, with cowboy boots that anyone could

see were new that week, the cheapest in the store and the first

pair she’d ever owned. She had a big chin that worked only

because her forehead and nose worked, too, and she had the

kind of teeth that take over a face even when the mouth is

closed. She had, most of all, a dark brown braid that hung down

the center of her back, thick as a girl’s arm.

I danced with Martha Knox one night early in the season. It

was a day off to go down the mountain, get drunk, make phone

calls, do laundry, fight. Martha Knox was no dancer. She didn’t

want to dance with me. She let me know this by saying a few

times that she wasn’t going to dance with me, and then, when

she finally agreed, she wouldn’t let go of her cigarette. She held

it in one hand and let that hand fall and not be available. So I

kept my beer bottle in one hand, to balance her out, and we held

each other with one arm each. She was no dancer and she didn’t

want to dance with me, but we found a good slow sway anyway,

each of us with an arm hanging down, like a rodeo cowboy’s

right arm, like the right arm of a bull rider, not reaching for

anything. She wouldn’t look anywhere but over my left shoul-

der, like that part of her that was a good dancer with me was

some part she had not ever met and didn’t feel like being intro-

duced to.

My old man also said this about Martha Knox: “She’s not

beautiful, but I think she knows how to sell it.”

Well, it’s true that I wanted to hold her braid. I always had

wanted to from first seeing it and mostly I wanted to in that

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dance, but I didn’t reach for it and I didn’t set down my beer

bottle. Martha Knox wasn’t selling anything.

We didn’t dance again that night or again at all, because it

was a long season and my old man worked all of us too hard.

There were no more full days off for dancing or fighting. And

when we would sometimes get an afternoon off in the middle

of a hard week, we would all go to the bunkhouse and sleep;

fast, dead tired sleep, in our own bunks, in our own boots, like

firemen or soldiers.

Martha Knox asked me about rodeo. “Crosby says it’s a good

way to get made dead, ” she said.

“It’s the best way I know.”

We were facing each other across the short pine fire, just us,

drinking. In the tent behind Martha Knox were five hunters

from Chicago, asleep or tired, mad at me for not being able to

make them good enough shots to kill any of the elk we’d seen

that week. In the tent behind me were the cook stoves and the

food and two foam pads with a sleeping bag for each of us. She

slept under horse blankets to be warmer, and we both slept on

the jeans we’d be wearing the next day, to keep them from

freezing. It was the middle of October, the last hunt of the

season, and ice hung in long needles off the muzzles of the

horses every morning when we saddled.

“Are you drunk? ” I asked her.

“I’ll tell you something, ” she said. “That’s a pretty damn good

question.”

She was looking at her hands. They were clean, with all the

expected cuts and burns, but they were clean hands.

“You rode rodeo, right? ” she asked.

“One time too many, ” I said.

“Bulls? ”

“Broncs.”

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“Is that why you get called Buck? ”

“I get called Buck because I stabbed myself in the leg with

my buck knife when I was a kid.”

“Ever get nailed in rodeo? ”

“I got on this bronc one night and knew right away, right in

the chute, that it wasn’t going to have me. It wanted me gone

and dead for trying. Never was so scared on a horse as on that

son of a bitch.”

“You think it knew? ”

“Knew? How could it know? ”

“Crosby says the first job of a horse is to figure out who’s

riding it and who’s in charge.”

“That’s my old man’s line. He says it to scare dudes. If horses

were that smart, they’d be riding us.”

“That’s Crosby’s line.”

“No.” I took another drink. “That’s my old man’s line, too.”

“So you got thrown.”

“But my wrist got caught in the rigging and I got dragged

around the ring three times under the son of a bitch’s belly.

Crowd loved it. Horse loved it. Put me in the hospital almost a

year.”

“Give me that? ” She reached for the bottle. “I want to ride

broncs, ” she said. “I want to ride rodeo.”

“That’s what I meant to do, ” I said. “I meant to talk you into

it with that story.”

“Was your dad mad? ”

I didn’t answer that. I stood up and walked over to the tree

where all the pack gear was hung up in the branches, like food

hung away from bears. I unzipped my fly and said, “Shield your

eyes, Martha Knox, I’m about to unleash the biggest thing in

the Wyoming Rockies.”

She didn’t say anything while I pissed, but when I got back to

the fire she said, “That’s Crosby’s line.”

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I found a can of tobacco in my pocket. “No, it’s not, ” I said.

“That’s my old man’s line, too.”

I tapped the can against my leg to pack the chew, then took

some. It was my last can of tobacco, almost empty.

“My old man bought that bronc, ” I said. “He found the

owner and gave him twice what the bastard was worth. Then he

took it out back of the cook shack, shot it in the head, and

buried it in the compost pile.”

“You’re kidding me, ” Martha Knox said.

“Don’t bring it up with him.”

“Hell no. No way.”

“He came to see me every day in the hospital. We never even

talked because he was so goddamn beat. He just smoked. He’d

flick the cigarette butts over my head and they’d land in the

toilet and hiss out. I was in a neck brace for a bunch of months

and I couldn’t even turn my head and see him. So damn bored.

Just about the only thing I lived for was seeing those butts go

flying over my face to the toilet.”

“That’s bored, ” Martha Knox said.

“My brother Crosby showed up sometimes, too, with pic-

tures of girls.”

“Sure.”

“Well, that was okay to look at, too.”

“Sure. Everyone had a butt for you to look at.”

She drank. I took the bottle, passed it back, and she drank

more. There was snow around us. There’d been hail on the day

we rode in and snow almost every night. In the afternoons big

patches of it would melt off in the meadow and leave small

white piles like laundry, and the horses would walk through

these. The grass was almost gone, and the horses had started

leaving at night, looking for better food. We hung cowbells

around their necks, and these rang flat and loud while they

grazed. It was a good noise. I was used to it, and I only noticed

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it when it was gone. That quiet of no bells meant no horses, and

it could wake me up in the middle of the night. We’d have to go

out after the horses then, but I knew where they usually went,

and we’d head that way. Martha Knox was figuring them out,

too, and she didn’t complain about having to get dressed in the

middle of the night in the cold and go listen for bells in the

dark. She liked it. She was getting it.

“You know something about your brother Crosby? ” Martha

Knox asked. “He really thinks he knows his way around a girl.”

I didn’t say anything, and she went on. “Now how can that

be, Buck, when there aren’t any girls around? ”

“Crosby knows girls, ” I said. “He lived in towns.”

“What towns? Casper? Cheyenne? ”

“Denver. Crosby lived in Denver.”

“Okay, Denver.”

“Well, there’s a girl or two in Denver.”

“Sure.” She yawned.

“So he could have learned his way around girls in Denver.”

“I see that, Buck.”

“Girls love Crosby.”

“I bet.”

“They do. Me and Crosby are going down to Florida one of

these winters and wreck every marriage we can. There’s a lot of

rich women down there. A lot of rich, bored women.”

“They’d have to be pretty bored, ” Martha Knox said, and

laughed. “They’d have to be bored to goddamn tears.”

“You don’t like my brother Crosby? ”

“I love your brother Crosby. Why wouldn’t I like Crosby? I

think Crosby’s the greatest.”

“Good for you.”

“But he thinks he knows his way around a girl, and that’s a

pain in the ass.”

“Girls love Crosby.”

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“I showed him a picture of my sister one time. He told me

she looked like she’d been on the wrong side of a lot of bad dick.

What kind of a thing to say is that? ”

“You have a sister? ”

“Agnes. She works in Missoula.”

“On a ranch? ”

“Not on a ranch, no. She’s a stripper, actually. She hates it

because it’s a college town. She says college boys don’t tip, no

matter what you stick in their faces.”

“Did you ever fool around with my brother Crosby? ” I asked.

“Hey, Buck, ” she said. “Don’t be shy. Ask whatever’s on your

mind.”

“Oh, shit. Never mind.”

“You know what they called me in high school? Fort Knox.

You know why? Because I wouldn’t let anyone in my pants.”

“Why not? ”

“Why not? ” Martha Knox poked at the fire with a twig, then

threw the twig in. She moved the coffee pot away from the

flames and tapped the side of it with a spoon to settle the

grounds that were boiling. “Why not? Because I didn’t think it

was a very good idea.”

“That’s a hell of a nickname.”

“Buck’s a better one.”

“Taken, ” I said.

Martha Knox got up and went into the tent, and when she

came out she had an armful of wood. I asked, “What are you

doing? ”

“The fire is almost dead.”

“So let it die. It’s late.”

She didn’t answer me.

“I have to get up at three-thirty tomorrow morning, ” I said.

“So good night.”

“And so do you have to get up.”

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Martha Knox put a stick on the fire and sat down. “Buck, ”

she said, “don’t be a baby.” She took a long drink and she sang,

“Mama, don’t let your cowboys grow up to be babies...”

“That’s a Crosby line, ” I said.

“Let me ask you something, Buck. When we’re done up here,

let me go hunting with you and Crosby.”

“I don’t think my old man would be crazy about that.”

“I didn’t ask to go hunting with your old man.”

“He won’t like it.”

“Why? ”

“You ever even shoot a gun? ”

“Sure. When I was a little kid my parents sent me out to

Montana to stay with my dad’s uncle for the summer. I called

my folks after a few weeks and said, ‘Uncle Earl set up a coffee

can on a log and let me shoot at it and I hit the goddamn thing

six times.’ They made me come home early. Didn’t like the

sound of that.”

“Doesn’t sound like your old man’s going to be too crazy

about it either, then.”

“We do not not have to worry about my father, ” she said.

“Not anymore.”

“That so? ”

She took her hat off and set it on her leg. It was an old hat.

It belonged once to my cousin Rich. My old man gave it to Martha Knox. He steamed a new shape into it over a coffee pot

one morning, put a neat crease in the top. The hat fit her. It

suited her.

“Now listen, Buck, ” she said. “This is a good story, and

you’ll like it. My dad grew Christmas trees. Not a lot of them.

He grew exactly fifty Christmas trees and he grew them for

ten years. In our front yard. Trimmed them all the time with

kitchen scissors, so they were pretty, but only about this tall.”

Martha Knox held her hand about three feet off the ground.

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“Problem is we lived in the country, ” she went on. “Every-

body had woods in their back yards. Nobody ever bought a

Christmas tree in that place. So this wasn’t a good business idea,

fifty perfect trees. No big money there. But that’s what he did,

and my mom worked.” She took her hat off her leg and put it

back on. “Anyway. He opened up for business last December

and nobody showed up and he thought that was pretty damn

weird, because they were such nice trees. He went out drinking.

Me and my sister, we cut down maybe twenty of the fuckers.

Threw them in the station wagon. Drove an hour to the high-

way, started flagging down cars and giving trees away. Anyone

who stops gets a free tree. It was like... Well, hell. It was like Christmas.”

Martha Knox found a cigarette in her coat pocket and lit it.

“Now, ” she said. “We drive home. There’s my dad. He pushes

Agnes down and hauls off and punches me in the face.”

“He ever hit you before? ” I asked, and she shook her head.

“And he never will again, either.”

She looked at me, cool and even. I looked at her smoking her

cigarette two thousand miles from home, and I thought about

her shooting the goddamn coffee can six times, and we were

quiet for a long time before I said, “You didn’t kill him, did

you? ”

She didn’t look away and she didn’t answer fast, but she said,

“Yeah. I killed him.”

“Jesus Christ, ” I said finally. “Jesus son-of-a-bitching Christ.”

Martha Knox handed the bottle to me, but I didn’t take it.

She came over beside me and sat down. She put her hand on

my leg.

“Jesus Christ, ” I said again. “Jesus son-of-a-bitching Christ.”

She sighed. “Buck, ” she said. “Honey.” She patted my leg and

then she nudged me. “You are the most gullible man I know on

this planet.”

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“Fuck you.”

“I shot my dad and buried him in the compost pile. Don’t tell

anyone, okay? ”

“Fuck you, Martha Knox.”

She got up and sat down on the other side of the fire again.

“It was a great night, though. Lying in the driveway on my back

with a bloody nose. I knew I was out of there.”

She handed me the bottle again, and this time I drank. We

did not talk for a long time, but we finished off the bottle, and

when the fire got low, Martha Knox put more wood on it. I had

my feet so close to the flames that the soles of my boots started

to smoke, so I moved back, but not much. In October up there

it isn’t easy to be warm and I would not pull away from that kind

of heat too fast.

There were bells from the meadow of horses moving but not

leaving, grazing bells ringing, good bells. I could have named

every horse out there and guessed who every horse was stand-

ing next to because of the way they liked to pair, and I could

have told how each horse rode and how its mother and father

rode, too. There were elk out there, still, but they were moving

lower, like the horses wanted to move, for better food. Bighorn

sheep and bear and moose were out there, too, all of them

moving down, and I was listening for all of them. This night

was clear. No clouds, except the fast clouds of our own breath,

gone by the next breath, and it was bright from an almost

finished moon.

“Listen, ” I said, “I was thinking of going for a ride.”

“Now? ” Martha Knox asked, and I nodded, but she had

already known that I meant now, yes, now. Before she’d even

asked, she was already looking at me and weighing things,

mostly the big rule of my old man, which was this: no joy-

riding during work, not ever. No play-riding, no night-riding,

no dare-riding, no dumb-riding, no risk-riding, not ever, not,

most of all, during hunting camp. Before she’d even asked,

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“Now? ” she’d thought of that, and she’d thought also that we

were tired and drunk. There were hunters asleep in the tent

behind her, and she thought of that, too. And I had also thought

of all that.

“Okay, ” she said.

“Listen, ” I said, and I leaned in closer to the fire which was

between us. “I was thinking of going up Washakee Pass to-

night.”

I watched her. I knew she’d never been out that far, but she

knew what it was, because Washakee was the only way for miles

in any direction to get over the Continental Divide and into the

middle of the Rockies. My brother Crosby called it the Spine.

It was narrow and iced, and it pushed thirteen thousand feet,

but it went over and in, and Martha Knox had not ever gone

that far.

“Okay, ” she said. “Let’s go.”

“Well, listen. I was thinking of not stopping there.”

She didn’t stop looking at me, and she didn’t change her

expression, which was the expression of a good hunter watching

for a good shot coming. Then I told her.

“We take a pack horse each and whatever food and gear fits

on them. I ride Stetson, you ride Jake, and we don’t come back.”

“I’ll ride Handy.”

“Not that spotted-ass cocksucker.”

“I’ll ride Handy, ” she said again, and I had forgotten that she

had talked my old man into selling her that crazy horse.

“Okay. But he’s all wrong for this.”

“What about the hunters? ”

“They’ll be fine, if they don’t freak out.”

“They’ll freak out.”

“They’ll be fine.”

“Talk about a bunch of pilgrims, Buck, ” she said. “These guys

have never even been in a back yard.”

“If they’re smart, they’ll hike out tomorrow as soon as they

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figure we’re gone. The trail’s marked like a goddamn freeway.

They’ll be fine. The soonest they’ll get to the ranch is tomorrow

night, late. The soonest the forest service could come after us is

the next day. If we ride straight, we could be ninety miles south

by then.”

“Tell me you’re dead serious, ” Martha Knox said. “Because

I’ll do this.”

“I figure four or five days until we get to the Uinta range, and

if they don’t catch us before then, they’ll never catch us.”

“Okay. Let’s do this.”

“Then we head south. And we’ll have to, because of winter.

There’s no reason in the world we shouldn’t be in Mexico in a

few months.”

“Let’s do it.”

“Jesus Christ. I’ve got it all figured out. Jesus son-of-a-

bitching Christ. We’ll steal cattle and sheep and sell them at all

those puny mountain outfits where nobody ever asks any ques-

tions.”

“Buck, ” she said.

“And we’ll ride into all those puny foothill towns in Utah and

Wyoming and we’ll hold up their banks. On horseback.”

“Buck, ” she said again.

“It must be a hundred years since anyone held up a bank on

goddamn horseback. They won’t know how to deal with us.

They’ll be chasing us in cars, and there we go, over the guard-

rails, back up the mountains with all that cash. Gone.”

“Buck, ” she said, and I still didn’t answer, but this time I

stopped talking.

“Buck, ” she said. “You’re just full of shit, aren’t you? ”

“I figure we can last four or five months before we finally get

gunned down.”

“You’re just full of shit. You’re not going anywhere.”

“You think I wouldn’t do something like that? ”

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“I don’t even want to talk about it.”

“You think I wouldn’t do that? ”

“You want to take off with some horses and see if we get

made dead out there? Fine, I’m all for that. But don’t waste my

time with this outlaw bullshit.”

“Come on, ” I said. “Come on, Martha Knox.”

“You’re just limited. Limited.”

“You wouldn’t just take off like that anyway.”

She looked at me like she was going to say something mean

and mad, but instead she got up and poured the coffee over

what was left of the fire to put it out.

“Come on, Martha Knox, ” I said.

She sat down again, but I couldn’t see her well in the new

dark, over the wet ash.

“Don’t waste my time like that again, ” she said.

“Come on. You can’t just take off like that.”

“The hell I can’t.”

“You would’ve just stolen my old man’s horses? ”

“Handy is my goddamn horse.”

“Come on, Martha Knox, ” I said, but she stood up and went

into the tent behind me. Then the tent was lit from inside, the

way it was on mornings before the sun was up, when she would

make day packs for the hunt, and from the meadow where I was

starting to saddle I would see the tent glowing, but barely,

because it was just one lantern she used.

I waited, and she came out of the tent with that lantern. She

also had a bridle, taken from the hook by the cook stoves where

we hung all the bridles, so that the bits would not be frozen

with dew, so the bits would not be ice in the horses’ mouths in

the mornings. She walked past me toward the meadow. She

walked fast like always, and, like always, she walked like a boy.

I went after her. I stumbled on a loose rock, and I caught her

arm. “You’re not taking off by yourself, ” I said.

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“Yes, I am. I’m going to Mexico. In the middle of the night.

Just me and this bridle.”

Then she said, “I’m kidding, Buck, ” even though I hadn’t

answered her.

I held her arm and we walked. The ground was rough, wet in

some parts and in other parts covered with thin snow. We

tripped ourselves up on rocks and fell into each other but didn’t

fall over, and the lantern helped some. We followed bells until

we were with the horses. Martha Knox set the lantern on a

stump. We looked at the horses and they looked at us. Some of

them moved away, moved sideways or back from us. But Stet-

son came over to me. I put my hand out and he sniffed at it and

set his chin on it. He moved off and bent to graze again, and the

bell around his neck rang like that move had been important,

but the bells rang always, and it was nothing.

Martha Knox was in the horses, saying the things we always

say to horses, saying, “Hey, there, steady now, easy buddy, ” like

the words get understood, when really it’s only the voice that

matters, and the words could be any words.

She found Handy and I watched her bridle him. I watched

him let her bridle him, and the spots over his back and rump in

the almost dark were ugly, like accidental spots, like mistakes. I

went over and she was talking to Handy and buckling the bridle

by his ear.

I said, “You know my old man got this horse from its owner

for a hundred dollars, the guy hated it so bad.”

“Handy’s the best. Look at those pretty legs.”

“My old man says they should’ve named him Handful.”

“Should’ve named him Handsome, ” she said, and I laughed,

but I laughed too loud, and Handy jerked his head back.

“Easy there, ” she told him. “Steady now; easy boy.”

“You know why Indians rode appaloosas into battle? ” I asked.

“Yes. I do.”

“So they’d be good and pissed off when they got there.”

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Martha Knox said, “You want to take a guess how many

times I’ve heard that joke this summer? ”

“I hate an appaloosa. I hate them all.”

She stood next to Handy and ran her palm down his spine.

She took the reins and a bunch of mane and pushed herself

up on him, fast, just like I’d taught her in June. He danced back

a few steps, but she reined him, she touched his neck, she

stopped him.

“You coming or not? ” she asked.

“You couldn’t pay me enough to ride that spotted-ass cock-

sucker.”

“Get up here.”

“He won’t take two bareback.”

“He’ll take two. Get up here.”

“Steady boy, ” I said, and got myself up on him, behind

Martha Knox. He danced sideways before I was settled, but this

time she let him dance and then she kicked him and he was in a

loose trot already while I was reaching around her waist with

both arms, reaching for handfuls of mane. She let him trot and

then he slowed and walked. She let him walk where he wanted

to, and he circled the lantern twice and lazy. He sniffed at a

mare, who moved fast from him. He walked to a tree and stood

under it, still.

“Hell of a ride, ” I said.

She kicked him, not a nudging kick this time, but a serious

one, and he took off from the kick and in two more kicks was

running wide open. We were too drunk for it, and it was too

dark for it, and there were too many things in that meadow for

a horse to trip over, but we were running wide open. His bell

and hooves were loud, and they were a surprise to the other

horses, who scattered behind us. I heard a few of them follow

us, belled and fast.

Martha Knox had reins, but she wasn’t using them, and my

hat was gone, and so was hers, blown off. Handy might have

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stumbled or he might have kicked funny the way horses who

love to run sometimes kick, or we might have been settled

wrong, but we fell. With my arms still around her, we went over

together, so who could say who fell first, or whose fault? That

meadow was the best place for horses on long trips, but by this

hunt it was spent. The next spring it would be different, with

new grass wet from runoff, but that night it was packed dirt

and frozen, and we hit it hard. We took the same fall, both of us.

We took the fall in our hips and our shoulders. I knew I wasn’t

hurt and guessed she wasn’t, but before I could ask, she was

laughing.

“Oh, man, ” she said. “Goddamn.”

I pulled my arm out from under her and rolled off my hip

onto my back, and she rolled onto her back, too. We were far

from any lantern, but the moon was big and lit. I turned my

head to see Martha Knox’s face by my face. Her hat was gone,

and she was rubbing her arm, but she wasn’t looking anywhere

but right up at the sky, the kind of sky we don’t see too much of,

because of trees or bad weather, or because we sleep or stare at

fires instead.

Handy came back — first his bell, then his huge face over our

faces, hot and close. He smelled at us like we were plants or

maybe something he would want.

“You’re a good horse, Handy, ” Martha Knox said, not with

the voice we always use for horses, but with her normal voice,

and she meant it. I didn’t think she wanted me to kiss her,

although it was true that I wanted to kiss her then. She looked

great. On that frozen dead ground, she looked as good and

important as new grass or berries.

“You’re a good horse, ” she told Handy again, and she

sounded very sure of that. He smelled her again, carefully.

I looked up, too, at the sky, and the stars were no stars I hadn’t

seen before, but they seemed closer and unfamiliar. I watched

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long enough to see one of them drop above us, long and low.

That’s common to see in a good sky out here. This one star,

though, left a slow thin arc, like a cigarette still burning flung

over our heads. If Martha Knox saw this, it was only as she was

reaching up already with one hand for her horse’s reins, and it

wasn’t something she mentioned.

✦