The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning Read Free Page A

that.”
    “What would a cowboy do?”
    “He’d leave ’em in his pocket, take ’em out when he wanted one, then put ’em back.”
    This had to be the most ridiculous cowboy rule I’d ever heard, and I’d heard a lot of them. I glanced at Ward’s roughout leather boots and his jeans, bunched at the ankle. Jake’s dad used to stand before the mirror making sure his pant legs bunched exactly like that. He’d explained that a cowboy wore his pants long so they wouldn’t appear too short when he straddled a horse. He had a whole list. Cowboys didn’t wear sunglasses or feathers on their hats. They wouldn’t wear a buckle like Ward’s unless they’d won it. They wouldn’t be caught dead in shorts. They called women “ladies,” and to him, he said, that’s what I would always be. I’d learned the hard way how false such chivalry was.
    Ward was tall and formidable looking, but his belly bulgedsomewhat over his fancy buckle. I was eager to work my way farther down the Little Beaver to see what other water awaited my discovery. But standing opposite me beneath the cottonwood tree, he gave no more sign of leaving than did his dog, which lay curled at his feet, snapping at flies. Finally, he broke the silence, nodding toward the bays. “That mare’ll get here soon. She knows there’s oats in the deal.”
    “My dad said a horse’ll sell its soul for a bag of oats.”
    Ward laughed. “They will, too.”
    “Look at how the heat makes their legs waver,” I said, “like a mirage.”
    “Isn’t that somethin’? I can see how the Spaniards confused the buffalo with trees.”
    “Pedro de Castañeda!” I said.
    Ward nodded. “You a history buff too?”
    “I’ve been reading all I can get my hands on that might mention historical springs, for an essay I’m working on about the Ogallala Aquifer and irrigation on the Great Plains. I read Castañeda’s journals just last week. From a distance, they could see the sky through the legs of the buffalo and thought they were pine trees.” Admittedly, Ward had a nice smile. Slightly crooked, its startling whiteness was set off by a dark face.
    Castañeda had been one of Coronado’s men. They’d come north searching for the Seven Golden Cities of Cibola, which of course didn’t exist. They wound up in what, three hundred years later, would become Kansas. I said, “Can you imagine the Spaniards trying to figure this place out?”
    Ward shook his head and continued to smile appreciatively at me. Was he also remarking the coincidences in our meeting? A meadowlark sang from a fence post, its intricate notes running up and down the scale. “It amazed me to find this water,” I said.
    He drew a quick breath. “I know just what you mean. I’ve got two sections of grass on the Smoky Hill River. Water changes everything.”
    “You live on the Smoky?” The Smoky Valley was a paradise of unfarmed hills sloping down into cottonwood groves along the river. As a kid I’d dreamed of marrying Roy Rogers and owning a SmokyValley ranch with him. I said, “One of my father’s old sheep buddies lives there. He told me that the ponds are mostly gone.”
    “The river still runs on my place,” Ward said, “but it’s no bigger than a crick now.”
    “If I’d come out here looking for springs twenty, even ten years ago, I probably would have found water closer to home.”
    “Prob-a-
blee
,” Ward said. “Water always runs downhill.” He was referring to the way the plains slanted downward from the Rockies. Irrigation pumping had naturally dried out the westernmost springs first. “And it is a shame,” he added. “I always considered myself lucky I didn’t have to farm anything, or dig one of those expensive wells.”
    The horses had nibbled their way to the pickup and were stretching their necks over the bed, trying to reach a bucket that sat there. “Let me give you a ride to your car. I can load these nags up in no time.”
    “No thanks. It’s not far.”
    “If