Powder River by S.K. Salzer

the room.
    â€œAs I said, it’s most impressive. I admit, I am wondering what brought you here all the way from England. The people, the country, it must seem very primitive.”
    Faucett smiled into his drink. “It does, rather. It’s ironic, I came for my health—weak lungs, you know—but in fact, the country almost killed us. By us, I mean my brother, Dick, and me. It was in seventy-eight, mid-November, and we’d been on a hunting trip. Started out from Fort Washakie. Make a long story short, we ended up crossing the Big Horns in the dead of winter. When we finally reached the headwaters of the Powder River, everything was buried in deep snow and no landmarks were recognizable. Our guides couldn’t find the pass and brother Dick was gravely ill. Well, I thought we were finished when our chief guide, Jack Hargreaves, brilliant fellow, came up with a solution. He stampeded a herd of buffalo, knowing when they started running they would instinctively make for the pass, which is exactly what they did. Not only that, they pounded the snow down, making a hard, smooth road that we followed right to a place called Trabing. Perhaps you know it?”
    Dixon nodded. Trabing was a rough ranch and way station on the Bozeman Road at the Crazy Woman Creek crossing. The spot had been notorious for Indian attacks in the 1860s, when Dixon and Rose first passed that way. He thought of her, and how she would have loved this palatial home. Rose had never had much herself, but that didn’t stop her from appreciating, without jealousy, the fine things in life.
    â€œWell,” Faucett continued, “Trabing and his clientele were astonished when we staggered in. At first, they didn’t believe our story, they thought we must be fugitives from the law or some such, but when Hargreaves and I went out the next day for poor Dick—we’d been forced to leave him behind in a deserted shack, you see—and brought him back on a travois, thin as a skeleton and barely alive, they finally believed us. We may be the only white men ever to have made that terrible journey in winter. Hargreaves believes it, and I rather suspect he’s right.”
    Dixon nodded, remembering his own, hellishly cold rescue ride from Fort Phil Kearny to Horseshoe Station in December of 1866. He and Portugee Phillips, a civilian employee of the post quartermaster, had left the night of the massacre, traveling at night and hiding in bushes and ravines during the day. The first sixty-fives miles to Fort Reno had been the worst. Many times Dixon thought the subzero temperatures would kill him if the Indians didn’t. The army had paid each man three hundred dollars for his efforts.
    â€œDid your brother recover?” he asked Faucett.
    â€œYes, matter of fact, he did. Old Dick was tougher than I thought. He chose to remain here in Wyoming when I returned to New York for the winter. When I came back in the spring, he’d already started building this place, already ordered furnishings and fittings from Chicago. That summer I bought my first herd, from a rancher on the Sweetwater. Now I have thirty-nine thousand animals, including horses, all bearing my brand. I don’t mind telling you, Dixon, my range runs from the headwaters of the Powder River south to Teapot Rock divide. That’s ninety miles north and south, and east thirty miles from the Big Horns. Soon, I’ll have two more ranches, one on Crazy Woman Creek and another on Tongue River. I’ll need a good man on each to help run my outfit, an intelligent man, one who already knows something of the cattle business. You did some work for Nelson Story up north, didn’t you, Dixon? How’d you like to come work for me?”
    Faucett gestured to Chang, who refilled their glasses. Dixon had begun to suspect Faucett was working up to such an offer, though he had no intention of accepting. Story was a good man and a friend, and Dixon had been happy in