Free Buffalo Girls by Larry McMurtry

one you could crouch by without cooking yourself. Bartle’s preference was for a fire that roared and spit and crackled. He piled on three or four logs and soon all were watching the fire warily from a safe distance. Now and then it spat a spark into Potato Creek Johnny’s beard.
    â€œNow I can’t get close enough to thaw my feet out without setting myself on fire,” Calamity said, annoyed. Jim underdid the fire, Bartle overdid it; the same went for everything else the two men attempted.

    â€œThis is a free country,” Bartle said, well aware that his fire met with disapproval in some quarters. “Every one of you is free to build his own fire.”
    â€œYou didn’t build your own fire, you took mine,” Jim pointed out.
    â€œI wish I was still asleep,” Johnny said. “I get nervous when people argue this early in the morning. Usually when I wake up there’s nobody within thirty miles and I avoid the nervousness.”
    â€œWho’s arguing? We ain’t pulled our knives,” Bartle said. “If you’re so delicate, what are you doing out here with grizzlies like us:
    â€œI didn’t know you was here till yesterday,” Johnny explained. On the whole he was rather regretting his visits to the Owl Creek Mountains. Prospecting was better pursued alone.
    Taken as individuals, he liked everyone in the group—but that was taking them individually: taken as a group, the matter was less simple. Jim and Bartle were known to be of uncertain temper; as for Calamity, few tempers in the west were as notoriously uncertain as hers. In a time of need there was no stauncher friend—it was in more relaxed times, when nothing particular was needed, that Calamity was apt to flare—and when she flared, the safety of the far horizon seemed a long way away.
    Of the group around the fire, only No Ears was really easy to get along with. He said little, expected less, was a brilliant tracker, and a very decent weather prophet. Johnny fervently hoped that his prophecy of fair weather would come true, and that he could escape from the mountains before another blizzard struck. A winter with Jim, Bartle, and Calamity would put quite a weight on his nerves.
    Calamity had felt sad in her sleep—every three or four nights, it seemed, she would awake to find herself crying. Some nights she had hardly wanted to doze off for fear of feeling sad in her sleep. Deep sleep wouldn’t come, or a good dream either. Sometimes she felt so heavy inside that it was difficult even to roll over and seek a more comfortable position.

    After such a night, the day was seldom any better: she woke without enthusiasm, or vigor, or purpose, unable to think of a thing to do that she hadn’t done a hundred times, or might really enjoy doing.
    â€œThe dumps,” she said aloud. “I guess I’ve just got the dumps.”
    No Ears didn’t change expression—he seldom did—but the three white men all looked at her warily.
    â€œNobody’s gonna appreciate it if you throw a fit, Calamity,” Bartle said. “The snow’s too deep—you’d catch us without a chase.”
    â€œWhy would I want to catch you?” Calamity asked. “You can go stick your damn head in a hole for all I care.”
    There was a long, uneasy silence; then Cody came bounding into camp, a grouse in his mouth. He came to Calamity and, after she had petted him and talked to him a bit, gave her the grouse.
    â€œThis dog’s a harder worker than any of us,” Calamity said. “He’s already brought in meat, and what have the rest of us done?”
    She looked at Bartle, Jim, and Johnny, all three of whom still wore wary expressions; they looked melancholy and tired. No Ears, by far the oldest man there, was the only one of the group who looked cheerful—and he was an old Indian who had outlived his time and almost all of his people. Nevertheless he