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By Root 358 0

us a new life there. The other side of the Arizona mirror went toward north: one more mountain summer in Montana, a last high season of livestock while they were drawing fancy prices. The sheep of war. In a band of sheep—a thousand ewes, their thousand and some lambs, and their wool—you were looking at a profit of several thousand dollars, and these were dollars of 1945. Wages would never add up that fast, even if they could be found and hung onto. Would be nice here for the summer, my mother allowed herself to pine momentarily at the Morgan cookhouse near the end of that spring, trees in the yard, a lilac bush out in front. But the capable Morgans ran their ranch by themselves once lambing was over, and she recognized that by the first of June we would have to put our belongings in the Ford again. Somehow, summer had to be mined for all it was worth. So when my father began to think out loud about a sheep deal, she was ready to listen. Looks like we should be able to make quite a little money at it. The sheep deal was a masterpiece of carvery. Dad and his favorite brother, Angus, a good business head, went in together and bought the band of a thousand ewes and their new lambs from Frank Morgan, turned right around and sold them for delivery that fall. Shearing time came before that, so the wool money came to us and Angus. But the summer range to run the sheep on needed to be rented from the Morgans, at so much per head; on the other hand, Dad would ameliorate that charge with some work for the Morgans—

When everybody had taken every whittle they could out of the hypothetical profits, up we would go into the high country with the actual band of sheep.

"Looks like,'letter becoming life in the dreamchamber of the Ford, "we should be able to make quite a little money at it," my mother repeats her vote for the sheep deal, for the summer of calculated risk we are trying to get to. "Give you a chance to take life a little easy, too."

"What, easier than this?"my father indicates our immobile condition. "Just sitting here letting the tires rest?"

"I'll rest you," my mother rejoins. I can't see her smile, but her voice has it.

"This sheep deal, Berneta." This arrives serious, pledge-like, from my father. "If it ever gets to be too much for ye, we'll back down out of there."

"Don't worry, I hired out to be tough," she heads him off on that. She makes a fist and rubs a hole in the breath fog on her window to peek at the weather.

"See there, the rains letting up," my father points out. "Ivan, you're not having much to say for yourself. What do ye think, ready to build some more road?"

Back to the jacking, and trying to roof the ruts with boards, a task which I adore. Then a miracle. Bob Campbell, one of Dad's army of Scotch relatives riding the Big Belt coulees, happened along on a saddle horse and gave us a pull, and we finally did get out.

As he coils his lariat Bob Campbell tells us what we already have figured out, that any passing shadow of a cloud is enough to turn the Maudlow country into a gumbo quagmire. Then he cheerily wishes us luck and resumes his riding. Which again leaves the three of us, and the nearby homestead-haunted butte, and the horizon mountains, a bit farther from us than usual, of our past. Such home as we have is this country where my parents are trying and trying to taste the risk for each other. Married to the place.

The Rung cabin in the Bridger Mountains where Berneta, Charlie, and Ivan began their herding summer of 1945.

For the first time in half a year, Berneta's letters seem to catch their breath.

***

June 8, 15, and 19, 1945. Her glad reports begin with what neighbored our meadow cabin on the face of Hatfield Mountain, a nice stream. Where my father, getting caught up on his fishing, made its waters our supperland of rainbow trout. Almost as softly as if talking to herself, she puts to the pages the three of us starting up our spiral staircase of summer.

We aren't working very hard at present. Were out for a horseback ride this afternoon, first time I've been on a horse for ages.