Page 69 of Silver Lining
In silence they brushed snow off their shoulders and shrugged on their dusters, then Louise took the reins and Max vaulted onto the back of the sled. Squinting, trying to peer through the thickening snow, she drove the sled out onto the range behind the barn and sheds. She drove slowly so Max could fork hay without falling off.
What surprised her was how scattered the cattle were. She had assumed they would bunch up against the weather. Instead, there were a few beeves here and a few beeves there. None of them were smart enough to walk up to the haystacks and pull off a bite. No, someone like her had to take their meal to them. And they weren't all that easy to spot as snow blanketed their backs and ice rimmed their nostrils.
They were easy to mistake for bushes until they shifted weight.
On their second trip out to the range, they stopped at the stock ponds so Max could knock ice away from the edges and keep the access clear. Louise waited with the team, willing her arms to stop twitching and pretending she wasn't cold to the bone.
After a third bout of pitching hay onto the sled, her long johns were soaked and so was her shirt. Her shoulders and back ached like she'd taken a beating. This time when she gripped the reins and led the team into the storm, the cold found a way inside the duster and formed a thin layer of ice on her wet shirt.
Her teeth chattered during the fifth and sixth drives out to the range, and each time it took longer to load the sled. Louise heard cussing from the back, but she didn't turn around. She muttered a few curses herself.
She didn't know why Max worried about the herd being small this year. It seemed to her there were millions of cows out here in the snow, all hungry and unable to feed themselves, and all of them too dumb to stay close to the barn where a person might hope to easily locate their butts.
When they finally finished, the morning was gone and it was nearly noon . She helped Max unhitch the team then left him to rub down the horses. Lowering her head against the falling snow, she returned to the house and carried in enough wood to fill the stove's firebox.
When Max came in the door and fell onto a kitchen chair with a low sound, she stood stripped down to her long johns, hunched over the warmth of the stove examining the blisters bubbling up on her palms.
"Well, you know what they say. It's not work that kills, but worry." She stared at the blisters. "I was getting soft."
"Who says that?"
"Whoever makes up proverbs. There's always a proverb to make a person feel better about whatever."
"I don't know who I'm madder at. Howard Houser or Shorty Smith." He closed his eyes and stretched his neck against his hand. "Don't go to any trouble over dinner. I'm too tired to eat. Let's just have whatever's left over from breakfast."
"If you can find the energy to slice the ham and bread, I'll stir up some fresh gravy. Lord a'mighty, I'm glad we're finished with that!"
"Darlin', you do know that we have to feed them again before it gets dark."
She groaned, and the string of cuss words that spun out of her mouth would have done a mule skinner proud. But Max was too tired to object to her cussing and she was too tuckered out to object to his calling her darlin'.
After they finished eating in their long johns, they sat in silence, hands cradled around their coffee cups, sober faces turned to the snowy window.
It was going to be a long, hard winter.
*
On sunny days, Louise asked in a hopeful voice whether they still had to feed the cattle, as if Max might announce that beeves didn't get hungry when the sun shone. Like it or not, the snow pack was here to stay until the spring melt, and that meant the cattle couldn't graze, and that meant he and Louise had to feed them. Twice a day. Every day.
Blurred by exhaustion, the days blended into weeks and the sole purpose of life became feeding.
Feeding the horses, the chickens, the cattle, themselves. There wasn't time or energy for much of anything else. He and Louise rolled out of bed and were dressed before dawn; they dropped back in bed shortly after a hurried supper, so fatigued they didn't often try to read but fell asleep within minutes.
Each of them performed only the most necessary chores. The barn didn't get mucked out daily as it had when Shorty was foreman. The only fence lines Max rode were those nearest the house and barn. He chopped enough wood to keep the firebox blazing but couldn't find time to stack logs or chop kindling for tomorrow.
Louise kept them fed and washed what clothing they needed on a piecemeal basis. Housework fell by the wayside except for one item. Every day when she returned from driving the sled, she polished her silver spoon.
On the positive side, Livvy understood they had no spare time for family dinners. For that, Max was grateful and imagined everyone else was, too. But he did make a point of riding up to the main house once a week to check on his mother and make sure her foreman and hands were taking care of business.
Ordinarily Wally would have kept an eye on things, but Wally was riding into town every day to his job at Howard Houser's bank.
Twice Max had seen Philadelphia , but they hadn't spoken. Both times she'd been sitting in the parlor, hands folded in her lap, facing the foyer when he walked in the door. And each time they had stared at each other and he had remembered her running into his arms when he returned from Piney Creek.
Today when he stepped into the foyer and glanced toward the parlor, she wasn't there. Relief or disappointment, he couldn't be sure which, tightened his jaw as he hung up his coat and hat, then went through the house to the kitchen where Livvy waited with coffee and biscuits.
"Eat something," she ordered, sitting at the kitchen table across from him. "I know you miss your dinner when you come over here."
"Just coffee. I had a bite with your hands down at the bunkhouse." Every time he came to the main house, he caught himself listening for footsteps overhead. And sniffing the air for traces of rose petals.
