The wind blew straight off the frozen prairie and rattled
the ill–fitting window panes in his hut. Sam opened
one eye. Five am. Don't ask him how he knew. It wasn't the
owl hoot, or the coyote yip, or the creek ice splitting, or
even the cattle coughing that gave it away because these
noises were constant throughout the night. He just knew it
was time to get up.
He rolled out from under the warmth of an old
moth–eaten wolf pelt and, without bothering to light
his paraffin lamp, pulled on jeans and a
stiff–with–wear plaid work–shirt. He
laced up scruffy, ancient leather boots before finishing it
all off with a green wool jacket.
I'll block those holes with creek mud, he thought as the
wind whistled through the gaps in the raw–wood plank
walls. He put his shoulder to the door. Oil for that
too––maybe Josh Pike had some in the barn.
He'd hardly put his left foot outside when snow seeped
through a hole in the boot sole. Standing on one leg, he
broke the ice in his ceramic sink, splashed the small
amount of water pooled there on his face and drank a
handful.
Six hours of shoveling hay and muck, he thought as his
boots rang on the iced–up alkali path leading to the
main yard. A Canadian goose hooted a teasing honk. Laugh
all you want, birdie, Sam stuffed his hands in his pockets
and hunched his shoulders. At least I'm not up to my butt
in freezing water. Just my left foot. His hair blown
horizontal, he bent into the biting wind and squinted
through stinging hail as three yellow cow dogs rushed up
the path, their tails whirling, breath white and freezing
on their whiskers.
"Can't find a darn cow dog when I want one," he'd heard
Josh Pike complain the previous day.
"That's because they're always with the boy," Mrs. Pike
responded. "Sam."
"But I feed 'em."
"Animals love Sam because he has such a kind face, and
everyone knows amber eyes make the animals feel lucky."
"Never heard such a load of horse poop in all my life,"
Josh Pike muttered, his eyes skimming his land.
The Pike place had pretensions to be a ranch, but Sam
didn't think it quite made it. Divided into three sections:
a creek, steep terrain and some disordered pastures lying
in a flood plain, the property bordered the much larger Raw
Pines ranch next door. Josh Pike told Sam he'd worked the
land for twenty years but, as far as Sam could see, with
little to show for it except the old man's love for the
place which was as rigid as the winter weather: driving
stinging snowstorms that stank of rusty nails. And a wind
that could blow a calf over.
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