So Far from Spring. Peggy Simson Curry

      “Good God! This is a big ranch. It costs to have a ranch like this. And I’m not burnin’ to set the world afire like you always was, kiddo. A man lives and learns it don’t pay to go broke. And I want to tell you something: you’ll be lucky if you get a job in this country now. Spring work’s started, and ranchers ain’t hirin’ extra men until hayin’ season. Thirty dollars a month, that’s what you’ll get—if I can talk Monte into letting you stick around.”

      “Thirty dollars a month!” Kelsey stared at him. “I did better at the harbor!”

      “What’d you expect, kiddo—a foreman’s job to start?”

      The door banged again, and a boy walked in, a thick-shouldered boy who might have been sixteen or seventeen. Although his face was young and smooth, his pale brown eyes looked older, as though a lot of living lay behind them. His hair was thick and straight and yellow-brown.

      “Long Dalton,” Tommy said, introducing Kelsey as his cousin from Scotland. “If you want to know anything about horses—or women—ask him.”

      Long Dalton grinned. “Glad to see you, buddy.”

      Hilder began setting the table, tossing plates and silver on it in a haphazard manner. “Jake here tonight?” he asked.

      “Hasn’t come in yet,” Dalt said. “He was ridin’ the upper pasture where we got the two-year-old heifers. The early calves oughta be starting to drop.”

      “If he’s found a heifer havin’ trouble,” Tommy said, “he might not be in until midnight. Jake won’t leave a cow havin’ her first calf until he’s sure everything’s hunky-dory.”

      “I didn’t see anythin’ showin’ yet when I was along the ditch today,” Dalt said. “And the water’s comin’ through fine. Guess we’re done shovelin’ snowdrifts for this spring.”

      Then Kelsey remembered the little man he’d met on the prairie and said, “I saw Jediah Walsh. He’s off to the town. Said he’d be back soon.”

      “Fat chance! He’ll be on a three-day drunk over town. Hell, he ain’t been out of the hills since last fall. One of us better go up to the lake tomorrow and check the headgate to be sure everything’s all right.”

      “Jediah’s a great guy,” Dalt said. “Finest fella I ever did know. I heard two preachers talk in my life so far, and Jediah’s got more to say about religion and all sorts of other things. Jediah’s words make sense—even to a cussed kid like me.”

      “Well,” Kelsey said, smiling, “he’s really got a strong smell to him.”

      The men laughed. Dalt said, “That’s beaver castor smell. He baits his traps with stuff made outta the castors. He’ll get aired off good by the Fourth of July, and then he won’t smell no different from the rest of us.”

      “Set up to the table,” Hilder said. “Food don’t taste so greasy when it’s hot.”

      “Jake’s the best cow foreman in the Park,” Dalt said, dragging a chair to the table. He glanced at Kelsey. “Jake takes care of all Monte Maguire’s cattle, and Monte’s got three ranches. There’s this one, the North Fork Ranch across the hogback, and the home place over on the Platte River.”

      Three ranches, Kelsey thought wonderingly, remembering that Tommy had said a place like the Red Hill cost a lot of money. He reached for one of Hilder’s soggy biscuits. “What kind of man is Monte Maguire?” he asked.

      The men looked at one another. There was a silence, and then Tommy said, “You’ll find out.”

      Late that night Kelsey took the kerosene lamp and went upstairs to the small bedroom Tommy had told him was his. It was a narrow, stall-like place; the hay-filled bunk was covered with soiled blankets and a stained tarpaulin; an overturned wooden box served as a table; and rows of spikes shone along the walls. Hay, old magazines, crushed cigarette butts, and a few crumpled handkerchiefs littered the floor.

      Kelsey set the lamp carefully on the low box, went to the one small window, and opened it. The air inside was very stale, and the blankets on the bed smelled of men and sweat. He took the blankets to the window and aired them, shaking them carefully, and then remade the bed. After that he opened his suitcase, feeling a need to see and to touch the few belongings that were part of home. He folded and unfolded the heavy sweater Taraleean had knitted for him before he left Scotland, and he took out his father’s old Bible, a small one John Cameron had always carried in his pocket. Kelsey held it tenderly in his hands, stroking the worn leather. He found a shirt Prim had given him. In the pocket was a postcard she’d once sent him from Edinburgh while she was on a trip. He peered in the dim light to read the brief, neatly written message: “Be home in a fortnight—your loving lass, Prim.” For a long time he sat with the postcard in his hand, staring at the log walls of the bedroom with a sense of unreality. At last he closed the suitcase, undressed, blew out the lamp, and got into bed.

      The bunk was very hard; his sore heels burned like fire, and his legs kept twitching. His mind began to work feverishly with thoughts of the past and the future. He figured again the amount of money he owed Big Mina and tried to guess what would happen to him if Monte Maguire didn’t let him stay on at the Red Hill Ranch. And when he thought of his meeting with Tommy a sense of distress filled him; although Tommy had been pleasant at the supper table and during the rest of the evening, there had been something lacking. It’s like there’s no warmth left in him, Kelsey thought. Had this strange, cold country changed his cousin from the easy, big-hearted lad Kelsey had known around the harbor? Or had he never really known Tommy well enough in those early years to understand what kind of person he was?

      Kelsey’s eyelids closed. He dropped into deep sleep and began to dream of the day his father died, the day he had been a lad of thirteen, walking down the village street with his mother. Taraleean had a little basket over her arm; she’d fried a fresh fish and baked scones for her husband’s lunch. They came into the shop and saw his father slumped forward in the old chair, his chin resting on his chest. Taraleean put down the basket and tiptoed forward, bending over John Cameron to cover his eyes with her hands and whisper, “Who is it?” It was so quiet then, and Kelsey heard her voice change as she said, “John—John!” And the sound of her sorrow began, drifting out to the quiet harbor street. The women of the village came running, their long full skirts fluttering like frightened birds. They pushed past him, saying, “Oh, dear God! It is the sound the Irish mothers make when their sons have been drowned at the sea! Taraleean has lost her man!”

      Kelsey wakened, shaking, and felt the strange bed under him. And he thought that grief was a thing a man was never free of, for it came back from some far place in the mind to live again when least expected. He lay in the darkness, remembering the night he had sat with family and friends by the casket of his father in the front parlor at home. All that night his sisters had combed their black hair, weeping and using the new tortoise-shell combs an uncle had given them. And toward morning he had cried to his mother, “Make the lassies leave their hair be!”

      Then Taraleean had put her arms around him and said, “Steady, lad. You must be strong. Who is to help me run the shop if I can’t count on you?”

      He turned over in bed, punching the lumpy pillow that smelled even more rank than the blankets, and he longed for his room in Taraleean’s house, the big clean room with the fireplace in the corner. I mustn’t think on it, he told himself. That’s all past. He heard a cow bawl on the Red Hill meadow. Cattle, that was what he must put his mind on. And the cow foreman, the man Jake. Jake could tell him what he must know.

      CHAPTER III

      Kelsey wakened early. He stretched his aching legs and tried to go back to sleep. Finally he got up, dressed, and went down to the kitchen. There was no one around; the fire hadn’t been started in the coal range. From one of the main-floor bedrooms came the sound of Tommy’s snoring. Kelsey found an