A Little Fact - A Little Fiction

Tumbleweed Joe was not the man’s real name. His Pappy baptised him Jeremiah Ashton the Second, having no better gift to give his son than his own name. His Mother called him Jeremiah II.

Jeremiah Ashton the First was a preacher and a firm believer in the power of the Lord. Jeremiah loved the Lord almost as much as he loved the sound of his own voice booming out from the pulpit, especially when he could drag out a moral tale from among his family stories. Jeremiah was the sort of preacher, not above stopping folk who were not otherwise occupied, to tell them his favourite stories, especially the stories that started with the pronoun ‘I’. He particularly liked relating the stories he picked up when he himself was a boy, along the Oregon Trail.

Caid Ashton and his little family, Emily and Jeremiah, then a mere eleven years of age, were among those hardy folk who survived the Oregon Trail on the great migration during the winter of 1843. There was nothing romantic about the Oregon Trail, it was mud, mud and more mud until the mud turned to snow and the trail turned to ice. But then again, there were some curious things that happened along the way. Things that young Jeremiah saw first hand, that would become the stories, that he would tell to his son, over and again, until Jeremiah II knew every word that his pappy was about to say.

Jeremiah II especially knew the story of the cow.

It was all a big mistake, or so his pappy said. Their wagon was not much more than a hand cart. A hand cart seemed the very thing on the dirt roads out of Philly, but it soon became a masterful chore once they left the smell and the smoke of the city behind. Caid and Emily Ashton had a son and Emily was sore afraid she would conceive another on the journey, so she had insisted they took a cow. If needs be, the cow could pull the cart and, if she were to be delivered of a baby along the way, the cow would be a good source of milk for the infant. Caid was initially reluctant to spend his hard saved dollars on a cow but three weeks into the trail and he was mighty glad he had.

Emily named the cow Annabel for no good reason, and Annabel became one of the family as the long weeks turned into even longer months on the road. Annabel pulled the cart on odd days and Caid pulled the cart on even days. Emily rode in the cart on odd days and she walked on even days. The young Jeremiah walked every day, mostly holding the lead rope that hung permanently around Annabel’s neck.

Their wagon train was passing through Sioux country on an even day in late October when Jeremiah tripped on a loose rock and let go the rope. He sat nursing his sore foot while Annabel chewed at the few remaining weeds left along the trail. Jeremiah nursed his foot and Annabel chewed weeds until her nose caught the scent of fresher grass over the hill.

Cows can move quite quickly when they want to and boys with sore feet are often at a disadvantage, such that the boy Jeremiah was unable to catch the wandering cow. In fact, he was only just in time to see Annabel’s skinny rump making for a line of wigwams, the Sioux camp that the whole wagon train had gone out of their way to avoid.

It so happened, that while Jeremiah feared the Lord, he feared his father more. So when he caught up with the wagons he elaborated just the tiniest bit, about Annabel’s departure.

"I wrested with the rope pappy, I surely did and she dragged me near on half a mile. That’s how I hurt my foot.”

It also happened that the wagon train camped that night on the road passing Fort Laramie where Lieutenant Grattan and his men were on duty, bored out of their skulls after weeks of inactivity and gambling their wages on the turn of a card. They did what soldiers do. They loaded up their holsters and rode off to the Sioux encampment.

The winter months had been a hard time for all the tribes along the trail and the gift of a wandering cow had proved too much temptation for the Sioux, so they ate it.

When Lt. Grattan arrived there was nothing left but a spare rib and a pair of singed horns.

The Chief of the Sioux tribe was keen to make amends and offered an Indian pony in exchange for the cow, but Grattan would have none of it.

“Shoot to kill, Sergeant.”

his order rang out loud and clear, and so they did.

The Sioux held their fire, hoping the soldiers would go away but they didn’t. Lt. Grattan took their attitude for insolence and personally shot the Sioux Chief, clean between the eyes.

This time, the Sioux fought back, killing Lieutenant Grattan on the spot, plus Sergeant Watson, Corporal Wallace and 21 soldiers, leaving but three to tell the tale. The seeds were sown that day for the Great Sioux wars and years of hostility ensued, all because of Annabel.

Jeremiah’s foot soon healed and the cowless Ashton family continued on their way over the Rocky Mountain passes and down the to the lush green west coastal plains. History never recorded the fact of it being the Ashton family who’s cow did the wandering. Few people on the wagon train cared at the time but Jeremiah knew, and he never forgot the day his stumble started the Sioux wars. When his father died, his guilt and the fear of the Lord, took him on the road to preach the word of God and his preaching took him to a cattle town where a young cattle man had died that day as a direct result of not getting out of the way of a stampeding herd, due to an excess of whisky, in the man, not the cattle.

The grieving widow was ripe for consoling and Jeremiah was ripe for the burying of a cattle man and the telling of a cow story.

Folks do say as how Jeremiah the Second was conceived that very night, or maybe mighty soon after.

Jeremiah II grew up on the ranch quickly learning that his father was more inclined to rail against the evils of whisky than mend the rails that kept the cows on the ranch. His mother liked nothing better than to put on her Sunday bonnet and sit alongside her preacher husband and applaud his sermons, which left Jeremiah II to grow up on his own, which he did admirably well.

From the day he took his first steps, Jeremiah II was destined to be fit and healthy, strong as an ox and silent as a lamb, on account of having no one special to talk to while he rode the range looking after the family cattle. He learned what little schooling he needed from his father. He could read and write, so long as all he was asked to read was the Lord’s Prayer and all he was asked to write was his father’s name.

As to whether it was his Grand Pappy Caid or Grandma Emily who laid the wanderlust into the blood of young Jeremiah, who can say? But as he grew up, so did he long for the dust under his feet and, come the day of his sixteenth birthday, while his pappy was telling the story of the wandering cow once again from the pulpit of the church, and praying for forgiveness, Jeremiah II stowed a chunk of bread in an old sack and hit the road.

The year was 1881; an odd way to write numbers thought Jeremiah II, but then a good year to start a new life, preferably one without cows.

In 1882, Jeremiah II was still walking south, and a whole lot east. He was smart enough to realise that he needed food and boots. Both cost money and he needed to work for money. There was always work to be had, but in spite of his wishes, all of it was to do with cows. At sixteen, going on seventeen, there was nothing about cows that he didn’t know. He did roping, branding and whacking them round the ears if they got out of line.

"Why Sir, I'd even do milking if needs be, though by rights, milking's woman’s work."

The winter of ’82 was the fiercest he could recall so he decided to hole up till the weather broke and he looked for an outfit big enough to keep him in beans through the snow months. Bar-T ranch on the west edge of Wyoming took him in, gave him a horse and a new name, on account of him having drifted in on the chill west wind along with a whole load of tumbleweed. The hands reckoned as how Tumbleweed Joe was a tumbleweed drifter, so Tumbleweed Joe he became. After due consideration, Jeremiah II decided he preferred Tumbleweed Joe to his given name and so it stuck.

Tumbleweed Joe had no love, nor fear of animals. Horses were not animals to Joe, they were tools required to do the job. Joe had virtually been born on a horse, but in all his life he had never owned one. Bar –T gave him a horse, to own and care for. They gave him a saddle too, an old one, left by a cowboy who had fallen on a drive and broke a leg. The cowboy had moved on, no one knew or cared where.

Tumbleweed Joe knew he couldn’t work the herd without a horse and the horse they gave him was in lieu of wages but, it was his horse and for the first month he bedded down with the big Bay mare each night until the two were good as joined at the hip. She would follow him round if he was walking and when he was on her back she knew exactly what he wanted of her without a word passing between them. The merest twitch of his leg on her flank told her all she needed to know.

When he was out nights, riding fences, he would snatch an hour’s sleep using his saddle as a pillow and the Bay as source of body heat against the cold. Each morning he would check her hoofs for stones and she would lift each leg in turn to let him do it. Never once did she kick him like so many other horses had in the past.

Late December of ’82, Tumbleweed Joe was riding the range bringing in stray cows that had pushed over the fences, driven by hunger to find a single blade of grass not buried by the ice and snow that covered the world. Tumbleweed knew what it was like to be hungry, he had been out three days and his last meal of cold beans had been twenty four hours since. Snow drifted in the wind. The sky closed in on him and he pulled a muffler round his neck to warm the air in his throat as he breathed it in. His nose told him that there was a blizzard coming and the Bay pulled her head down as her way of telling him it was time to turn round and head for the comparative shelter of the barn.

Wind whistled across the ridge ahead blowing the snow apart for an instant and in that instant Tumbleweed saw smoke, hanging as if frozen in the air. No one lived out here except the Indians. Since the great wars, the Sioux tribes wandered to and fro across the plains, denied access to their homelands in the north, they survived by scavenging.

The Bay lifted her head, her nose caught the scent of warmth and she pulled towards the smoke which Tumbleweed could no longer see as the blizzard gathered strength, wrapping its winter arms around him.

Deep snow slowed the progress of the big mare but she kicked her way through the drifts herding the six strays they had rounded up and keeping the little group together. Tumbleweed lengthened his stirrups, stretching his legs to ease the cold in his knees. The Bay did the work she was trained to do.

The Bay drove the cows towards the crest of the ridge and one by one they slithered down the lee side seeking shelter from the wind but also heading towards the five Sioux wigwams. One of the cows cried out in pain, her back leg was twisted in the slide and she walked on the other three, dragging the broken leg at a crazy angle. Tumbleweed watched the cow, sometimes the dumb things righted themselves and sometimes they just lay down and died. Either way, didn't make no difference now. One cow more or less was expendable; his job was to get the others back to the herd.

The sick cow cried again and the pain in its voice carried across the frozen air like the howl of a hungry wolf. Tumbleweed knew then this one was going to lay down any time now. He had a revolver in his belt and a pouch full of bullets in his coat pocket. He never carried a loaded gun when he was riding, too many riders shot themselves that way. Guns were for settling arguments and stopping the pain of sick animals. He checked the options; he had no arguments with no one and the damned cow was going to die anyhow. He could shoot the poor beast and put it out of it’s misery but if he took off his gloves to load the gun, his fingers would surely freeze. Heck, it was only one cow. His best option was to turn round and brave the wind back to the ranch.

But the Bay didn’t want to turn the five remaining cows. She let them head towards the Sioux camp, all the time staying ahead of the advancing snow line, resisting Tumbleweed’s pull on her reins.

Suddenly the wind gathered strength and the blizzard closed in on him so that everything was white, every direction was white, up was white, down was white. Tumbleweed’s ears cracked with the frost and the moist air in his nostrils froze so that he had to rub his nose on the back of his glove just to breath. He lost all sense of direction, left or right, forwards or back, everything was white. The Bay stopped in her tracks and whinnied.

If you asked him afterwards, Tumbleweed would have said he heard the Bay talking to another horse, but at the time, his mind was as numb with cold as his body. So numb that everything stopped.

§§§§§

Reason came to him later. Reason came back to him after the warmth of the fire thawed his blood and it flowed again around his aching veins. He knew he was lying on a dry dirt floor. Warm liquid dribbled over his cracked lips and a soft warm cloth lay over his eyes, softening the frozen ice that bound his eyelashes together. The scent of wood-smoke filled his nose and his mind told him he must be inside a Sioux wigwam. Gradually, as his senses returned, he heard the familiar rounded vowel sounds of Indian voices, including one speaking occasional, broken English words.

Tumbleweed shook his head intending to dislodge the cloth over his eyes but as he did so he felt a soft hand move the cloth across his forehead revealing the inside of the wigwam, still blurred to his frozen eyes.

A female voice spoke to him,

“Your horse brought you to us. She is a Sioux horse. She is safe with our horses but you cannot go anywhere now, not until the snow stops.”

Tumbleweed looked upwards into the point of the wigwam and tried to turn his head, but soft hands held him still.

“You must rest, your body is frozen, it will take some time to thaw and it will not be good to move too soon. You are safe here.”

Tumbleweed had no option; his limbs would not obey his mind, the mind that was filled with questions.

"How did I get here?"

"How long have I been here?"

He tried to form the words but his voice seized and bundles of unsaid sounds tore at the lining of his throat, yet still he needed to know the answers.

The soft hand came back to his brow.

“Rest cowboy, you will be healed soon, then your horse will take you home, she is a Sioux horse.”

Tumbleweed slept. He had not wanted to, his body decided for him. A voice in his head told him he was safe, he could sleep and he did, for several hours until consciousness slowly came back to him. He knew he was awake when his nose smelt the unmistakable aroma of roast beef. His ears caught the sound of sap-spitting pine branches, as each log burned on an open fire. He opened his eyes to clear vision and he allowed them to roam around the smokey interior of the wigwam.

He turned his head towards the fire to see a circle of Sioux Indians laughing and talking animatedly between chewing on mouthfuls of hot roast beef, cut from a haunch that turned slowly on an iron spit above the fire.

His limbs felt heavy and he was obliged to lie still, listening to the story being told by the elder of the tribe.

“Many moons ago, there was a cow . . . .

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 20.07.2010

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