The Second Hundred Years Ch. 06

The fall drive was the biggest as the whole herd would be brought down from the high pastures. They had over 300 head of cattle to bring back; it had been a very good season for calves. They also had the largest group of 'dudes' so far. Eagle's Nest had ten people visiting and reliving the old West.

Two days after bringing the herd home, Eagle's Nest shipped 100 head of cattle to market. Between the profit from the cattle and the profit from the 'dudes', the ranch was in better shape financially than it had been for many years. They received $78,000 for the cattle and took in just over $67,000 from the guests at the ranch.

The big drive was over and Jerry went back to his home. One week after shipping, William and Tom had ridden out to inspect the fences along the southern border of the ranch. Alyssa and Helen had gone to Josh's place for a visit, leaving Jim and Lewis at the ranch house.

Lewis had fixed lunch for them and went out to call Jim who was at the barn. Jim had said something about taking a ride after lunch. Lewis saw Jim's horse, Joshua, saddled and standing just outside of the barn door. That's strange; did Joshua get away from Jim? Lewis asked silently. He stepped off the porch and walked toward the barn. As Lewis got closer he saw Jim lying crumpled inside the doorway.

Joshua didn't move more than a step or two as Lewis rushed to Jim's side. The big horse was trained to ground tie; his master had put him there and by God he wasn't moving. Lewis knelt and examined Jim before rolling him onto his back.

Jim's eyes fluttered and opened. Lewis started to pick him up but Jim ordered, "Take the saddle off Joshua and put him in his stall." Lewis started to object but Jim interrupted. "Take care of my horse first son."

Lewis quickly did what Jim asked. Then he picked Jim up in his arms, struggled to his feet, and carried him to the house. Jim was burning up with fever as Lewis laid him on his bed and called Charley Samuels.

Dotty answered the phone. "Jim's collapsed Dotty," Lewis almost yelled. "He's running a high fever. Can Charley come over right away?"

"He's at Cole's Corner, I'll call him," Dotty promised. "In the mean time I'm on my way. Wet some towels and cool him down."

Lewis heard a car drive up as he was putting a third towel on Jim's forehead. Dotty rushed into Jim's bedroom, felt his cheek, and took charge.

"Get his clothes off and put wet towels all over him," she ordered. "We've got to get that fever down before he goes into convulsions." Following Dotty's orders, Lewis stripped Jim and began to try and cool him down.

"How'd you get here so fast?" Lewis asked her.

"I drove my Jeep cross country; it would have taken too long following the road," Dotty replied. "Although I don't think the Jeep is going much of anywhere until I get it fixed." Lewis gave her a questioning look and she added, "I think I tore something off underneath. It was making a loud noise when I got here."

They continued to watch Jim, changing the towels to keep them cool. It was about 45 minutes before Charley arrived. He went into his doctor mode and examined Jim.

"Good move Honey," he said to Dotty. "That's about all we can do right now."

Lewis heard another car slide to a stop outside. He went to the door to see who was there. Alyssa supported by Helen and her father slowly came into the house. Lewis immediately went to her.

"What's wrong?" He asked with concern and fear.

Helen smiled and answered. "It's okay Lewis. Alyssa felt it was time for the baby and insisted on coming home."

"Our son is going to be born at Eagle's Nest," Alyssa vowed. "It's his birthright."

"The baby might be a girl," Lewis said to Alyssa. "We didn't want to know the sex."

"It's a boy Lewis. I know it's a boy."

"I tried to get her to stay at my place," Josh said. "But she told us either we bring her home or she'd drive herself."

Helen and Lewis got Alyssa into the ground floor bedroom at the back of the house. Dotty came into the room as they helped her onto the bed.

"Lewis go boil some water please," Dotty asked. Lewis left, Dotty smiled at Alyssa and said, "We really don't need the water but it will keep him busy. We don't need Lewis underfoot right now."

Charley checked with Dotty and saw that she had everything under control with Alyssa. He went back to Jim's room. He rechecked his blood pressure, timed his pulse and listened to Jim's breathing. William stood by the bed and watched Charley with a worried frown on his face. Lewis didn't know what to do. He would look into Jim's room for a couple of minutes then go to Alyssa for a while and then go back to the kitchen to see if the water was boiling.

Charley started an IV and stepped out of the room, motioning for William to follow him. Lewis joined them.

"What's wrong with him Charley?" William asked.

"Short of a complete blood work up and a lot of tests, I can't say for sure," Charley replied. "But I've got an idea. This is going to sound strange, but then again Jim even being here is strange." He saw the expectant look on William and Lewis's faces.

"You know we thought that the smoke from that rock put Jim into a suspended animation right?" William and Lewis nodded.

"But...." William started.

Charley interrupted him. "When I came back from California and saw Jim, I thought he looked like he'd aged five years in the six months I was gone. It's only been a few days since I saw him the last time and he looks at least five more years older; he has more gray in his hair and several more wrinkles on his face. I think whatever effect that smoke had on Jim has worn off."

"What can we do for him?" Lewis asked.

Sighing Charley said, "Nothing. His heart rate and pulse have slowed and his breathing is becoming labored." He paused for several seconds and continued, "Jim is dying of old age at an accelerated rate right in front of us and there's nothing we can do. Nothing except make him as comfortable as we can."

The three men stared at each other for more than a minute. Neither of them knowing what to say or how to react. Charley said, "The IV should help control the fever and I can give him meds to ease his pain. But that's about all we can do."

"How long?" William finally asked. Charley just shook his head. "Don't give him pain medicine if you can keep from it. Jim wouldn't like it."

"Lewis you need to get in here," Dotty said from the bedroom doorway.

He rushed to the other bedroom expecting the worse. What he got was the best.

Alyssa was leaning against the headboard propped up by pillows. Her hair was stringy with sweat, her face was flushed and she looked tired; but she also looked triumphant. In her arms she held their baby. She motioned for Lewis to come closer.

"Come meet your son Lewis," she said. As Lewis sat on the bed beside her, she proudly added, "Told you it was a boy."

Lewis smile with tears in his eyes. "Yes you did Ally, yes you did." She handed him the boy and he held his son for the first time. He waited until he could talk and asked, "What are we gonna name him?"

Alyssa smiled and put her hand gently on the baby's head. "The name you suggested when we found out I was pregnant should work just fine. Don't you think?"

The two new parents bonded with their son. Helen and Dotty smiled, wiped the tears away, and left the room.

After several minutes Alyssa asked, "What's going on with Jim? I heard Charley and Dotty talking just before the little one was born."

Lewis explained Jim's condition and what Charley thought. "I think he's right, I think Jim is dying."

The rest of the day and that night, Jim was unconscious or hallucinating. After Alyssa went to sleep, Lewis went into Jim's room and gave William a chance to rest and relax a little.

Jim mumbled in his sleep and then said plainly and loud enough for Lewis to hear. "I'll see you soon Chante. You too Iron Buffalo. Boy do I have a lot to tell you." Then he drifted away again.

The next day Alyssa sat with Jim for about an hour. She wiped his forehead with a cool wet cloth and talked to him. Before she left she leaned over and kissed him. "Thank you Jim, I'm gonna miss you."

Charley and Dottie stayed over. Though there was nothing they could do for Jim, they couldn't leave. Everyone took turns sitting with him, just in case he woke and needed something.

It was around midnight when Jim came out of his delirium. He was alert for the first time since he'd fallen in the barn. Lewis was sleeping, slumped in an easy chair beside his bed. Jim smiled at the boy.

"There any water in this place?" He asked, waking Lewis.

Lewis was startled but quickly got him a drink. "I'll call Charley," Lewis said and headed for the door.

"No, let him sleep boy," Jim ordered. "I'm not gonna be around that much longer and he can't do nothing anyhow."

"But..."

"Don't argue with me son. I know my time is over; I can feel it in my bones." Jim took another drink of water. He smiled and said, "It's been a hell of a ride ain't it? Just sit and talk with me a spell."

Instead of sitting down, Lewis held up his hand. "Just a second, I'll be right back. Please don't leave yet." He left the room, almost at a run.

Lewis returned carrying something; Jim couldn't make out what it was. Walking over to the bed, Lewis sat next to Jim and unwrapped what he had in his arms.

"Grandfather, I want you to meet James Ambrose Randal. He's your great, great, great, grandson." He held the baby close to Jim.

Jim reached out to touch the baby's hand. James Ambrose grabbed his finger and held on. Jim was almost overcome by emotion. "You named him after me?"

Alyssa walked into the room and said, "Couldn't think of any other name that fit Grandfather. It's a proud name and he'll carry it well. Lewis and I will see to that."

"One life leaves, one life begins and life goes on," Jim said. "Chante will be pleased when I see her." He leaned back and said, "Think I'll rest for a bit."

Lewis turned and handed the baby to Alyssa. When he turned back Jim had gone to meet Chante.

William thought that Jim would like to be buried the Lakota way. He and Lewis climbed the trail and cut lodge poles. The poles came from the same stand of trees that Lewis had cut to make a stretcher to get Jim down the mountain.

At the top of the trail, just behind the tall rock butte and facing the blocked cave entrance they fixed four seven foot long poles into the ground making a sort of rectangle. Going back to the tree grove, Lewis made a stretcher using lodge poles and smaller branches woven between them. They carried it back down to the truck at the trail head. William and Lewis laid Jim's body on the stretcher and carried him up the trail to the rock butte. They placed the stretcher onto the four uprights with one of the poles at each end and tied it in place. This would be Jim's final resting place.

Jim was dressed in jeans, cowboy boots and his Stetson was laid beside him. On his wrist they'd put a woven horsehair bracelet; the hair was from the tail of his horse Joshua. Laid next to him was a flat piece of oak with the Eagle's Nest brand carved into it. The last item with Jim was a picture of William, Lewis, Alyssa, and James Ambrose. They had wrapped Jim in the buffalo robe that had hung on the wall in his bedroom.

It's been two months since Jim left us, Lewis thought one evening at supper.

Two months of mourning and sadness with little laughter. Young James Ambrose brought smiles to his parent's faces and to William too, but the happy, full of life discussions around the supper table were gone. Reacting to something the baby had done, Tom, Helen, and the Randals smiled but their smiles very quickly disappeared.

"Jim wouldn't like this," Lewis said surprising everyone. "He wouldn't like us sitting around moping about him." Lewis looked at his family and friends challenging them to disagree. "Jim always said you took what life threw at you and beat it at its own game."

Helen sniffed and dabbed at the tears that came into her eyes. Alyssa put her hand on Lewis's shoulder, knowing that he maybe more than anyone, he was hurting.

Lewis laughed. "He always said don't worry about what you can't change. Just go on and get the job done the best you could and the hell with the rest."

Tom chuckled, remembering the times he'd spent with Jim working the cattle. Helen gave Lewis a small smile and William laughed out loud.

"You know my unit sergeant in the Guard said the same thing, different words, but the same meaning," Lewis told them. "He was a grizzled old bear with twenty years in the Marines and another ten in the Guard. When we'd start complaining and bitching about the heat, or the lack of beer, the lack of female companionship or anything else that we couldn't change he'd say, "Soldier, shut up and soldier". That's what Jim was saying too."

That evening they stopped mourning and just remembered the good times. They frequently told funny stories about Jim's reaction to modern technology. Lewis talked about Jim's fascination with the truck and the ATVs but that his first love was the horses. They laughed at Jim's yelling into the phone in spite of being told that he could talk in a normal voice. William remembered how Jim would watch the TV but still called it a damn babble box. All of these stories made everyone feel better as they remembered the good times. The atmosphere at the ranch improved and soon everyone was laughing and joking again.

There were several changes in the lives of the people close to the Randals over the next few months. Doc Charley Samuels and his wife Dotty decided that a life of retirement leisure wasn't for them. They made a deal with Ted Cole, the owner of Cole's Corner, to build a small cabin on his property. When the construction was finished, the Samuels opened a medical clinic for the people living in the area.

"It's what I've done my whole adult life," Charley told William one day. "I don't want sit around telling myself how good I used to be. Dotty and I want to continue helping people as long as we're able to."

Charley and Dotty helped everyone that came to them. The ones that could pay them did, but they never turned away anyone that needed help. Sometimes they received money for their work and sometimes they got sides of beef, or chickens, or hams; whatever their patients paid it was fine with them.

Roy and Shirley Campbell became fixtures at Eagle's Nest. They would come out once or twice a month and spend the weekend being cowhands. Roy became a good source of word of mouth advertising for the ranch; he told all his friends in Prescott and back east about Eagle's Nest and the cattle drives. Several people followed his advice on finding out what the real West was all about.

Jerry Pace, who Lewis had hired to replace Alyssa on that one drive, decided he wanted to be a rancher. He was going to college in Prescott for book learning, as he called it, about ranching. Jerry would come out to Josh's place or to Eagle's Nest almost every weekend. He said working on the ranches taught him what real life ranching was about.

Tom and Helen did a great job, both with the day to day operation of the ranch and with the guests. Lewis, William, and Alyssa gave them 5 per cent of the business.

"You two have been working hard," William told them. "But you always work a little harder for yourself."

It was late October and just over a year since Jim had died. The fall roundup was over and Eagle's Nest had shipped its cattle to Phoenix. Lewis, Alyssa, and William rode to the trail head leading up the mountain to the high rock butte and the fallen cave. Lewis had James Ambrose in a backpack carrier and rode Joshua. They were going to visit Jim's resting place.

James Ambrose was now a year old and the family resemblance to his parents was plain. He had the same piercing green eyes as his mother and the dark, almost black hair of his father. James inherited his complexion from his great grandfather, William. But his most startling feature at this young age was the streak of white hair over one ear; just like his father's.

Slowly and carefully they climbed the trail to the rock butte. William built a small fire, raised his arms toward the sky, and chanted a Lakota death song. The song completed, they each said a prayer according to their own beliefs. This was Alyssa's first visit to the burial site and she looked around with interest.

"Is that the cave over there?" She asked pointing to the collapsed entrance. Lewis nodded. "Why put Jim up here?"

William smiled and replied, "The Lakota believe that life is a circle so this place sort of completes the circle for Jim. His old life ended here and then his new life with us began here; Now that life will end here. And Jim believed he would join Chante when he was done with this life."

He stopped for about a minute and looked up at Jim's resting place. "Besides he can watch the eagle's nest from here," William added and pointed to several eagles soaring over the rock butte. "It just seemed the logical place."

Lewis had moved little James around in front of him. As they turned to leave, James turned his head and stared.

"What are you looking at Jim?" Lewis asked his son.

James Ambrose lifted his small hand and pointed at the cave.

The End.