Free Showdown at Buffalo Jump by Gary D. Svee

cold. There was beauty on each side, subtle beauty in pastel shades and sweeping curves. Here and there, yucca pointed sharp spines menacingly into the air, warning all creatures to stay clear of its seed pods or suffer the consequences. Tall juniper stood like exclamation points on a page of understatement, and everywhere bunch grass yielded to the passing wagon as the sea yields to a ship.
    They followed the gentle contour of the creek until Max clucked the team up the steep lower reaches of a ridge that stretched away to the top of the butte. The ridge top was narrow and the sides were steep, and Catherine reluctantly, and silently, admitted Max’s expertise with team and wagon.
    The redolent scent of sage below was complemented as they neared the top with the clean, sweet smell of the pine trees. Bull pine lined the upper reaches of each coulee, leading from the sandstone rimrocks above to the prairie below. It was beside one of these stands that Max pulled the wagon to a halt. He climbed down and shook his head when Catherine tried to follow.
    â€œWon’t take long. I’ll just drop two or three. I can trim them and cut them into posts and have them stacked by the wagon in a few minutes. Got something above that I want to show you.”
    Max walked through the stand, picking small, dead, and ailing pine. He notched the trees uphill toward the wagon and then cut through the other side, watching with satisfaction as they fell just where he planned.
    The trees were small—didn’t need much of a post to hold in chickens and hold up chicken wire—and Max’s Swede saw ate through them in big bites. He left some of the trees almost full length. These would be poles to line the pen top and sides.
    Max carried the posts three at a time up the hill and then returned for the poles, dragging them to the untidy pile beside the wagon.
    â€œOught to do it,” he said, wiping imaginary sweat from his forehead with his shirtsleeve in an old habit. “Now, let me show you something.”
    Max climbed into the wagon, slapped the reins across the horses’ backs, and drove the team up the ridge and out on the flat top of the butte. He climbed down, walked around to Catherine’s side of the wagon, and offered her his hand. This time she took it, stepping gracefully down from the wagon seat.
    Vegetation was sparse there, soil clinging to the rock only in patches. But wherever there was soil, there was grass and brush. Here and there, trees wedged their roots into cracks in the rock, their stunted size and twisted trunks testaments to their will to live even in that hostile environment.
    Walking was easy across that huge, flat rock, and a moment later Max and Catherine were standing at the edge of a cliff on the north side of the butte’s narrow waist.
    Catherine looked down. The rim fell perhaps eighty feet to hard-edged rocks below. Suddenly, she felt as though the earth’s axis had tipped, and she teetered on the brink. She stood there swaying, until Max took her arm, steadying her.
    â€œOkay?”
    â€œYes, I don’t know what happened.”
    â€œLot farther looking down than it is looking up.”
    Catherine said softly, “I know that perhaps better than anyone,” but Max didn’t seem to hear her.
    â€œFirst thing I did when I came here was to work on those springs and dam up some of those coulees. Then I got the neighbors to chip in, and I built fences while they worked on their homes. Cattle need water nearby, otherwise they walk off weight going from the grass to the water.”
    â€œThose first years have paid off. I’m going into winter with fat stock and good grass. Some of the neighbors are already short, and they’ve got no hay. They stocked too heavy, and didn’t pay attention. They’re all grazed off close up to water and no way to get to the grass farther out.”
    â€œI’ll get through the winter, and they might not. Might