Another Man's Moccasins

They were both handsome old bachelors; I figured that they hadn’t married because they were too tightfisted to consider a wife. To hear Lucian tell it, their father, Sean Dunnigan, had been like that as well, except that back in the dirty thirties he had had no choice but to marry Eileen if he wanted to eat—he was that broke. Hence Den and James.

Eileen had been known to play her violin from the porch of the ranch house, a lone and plying sound that had echoed from the canyon. She’d never grown used to the isolation of the place, had grown senile on the ranch, and had died in the late seventies, rapidly followed by Sean, who had evidently grown used to the music of the only woman he’d known.

The brothers were good hands and tough old boys, tough enough to outlast all their neighbors, and they had slowly bought up the surrounding land and the water and mineral rights until the Dunnigans pretty much owned the Beaver Creek Draw.

James was the eldest and had inherited the ranch, even though he’d been kicked in the head by a cantankerous mare when he was a teenager and wasn’t “quite right,” as the locals had put it.

Den had known that James would inherit, had been pissed off at this rule of succession, but had accepted his lot and consequently taken a job in corrections up in Deer Lodge, Montana. He had even been engaged to a woman, but when the engagement entered its second decade she took exception. Den had returned at his father’s request when it became clear that James could not run the ranch by himself and that Sean had gotten too old to be much of a help.

My professional interaction with the Dunnigans was mostly with Den. There had been an incident where he had almost killed another rancher with a shovel in an altercation over water rights and another where he’d broken a bottle off on the bar in town and threatened to perform an amateur tracheotomy on a rodeo cowboy, but other than that, we’d been limited to the instances when Den would call in a lost James. He did this on a periodic basis. A couple of years earlier, during hunting season and an early snow, we’d responded, along with the highway patrol and the county search and rescue, only to find James seated at the Hole in the Wall Bar, adamant that he had phoned his mother and explained that he was safe and spending the night in town.

The problem was that his mother had been dead for a quarter of a century.

I rolled across the cattle guard and parked beside a turquoise and white ’76 Ford Highboy; the motor was running, but nobody was in it. The ranch house was simple, sided horizontally with a low-slung roof, and there was a metal shop nearby that was four times the size of the house.

By the time I got to the sidewalk, Den was coming out the front door. His eyes widened beyond his usual squint and then settled into a general dissatisfaction at seeing me. He had on a clean, white straw hat, hard like plastic, with a black, braided horsehair band, and was dressed in a freshly pressed shirt and creased jeans that cut the air as he walked. There was a red and white cotton bandana at his neck, and he’d even polished his boots. “I guess I need to turn off my goddamned truck.”

I stopped at the single step leading into the house. “Sorry, Den, but I need to speak with you and James.”

He stood there for another moment looking at me and then hobbled past on bowlegs, which approached a full circle, to the parking area where he reached into the side window of the old Ford and shut off the motor. A rifle rack cradling a beaten .30-30 Winchester showed through the rear window.

Den came back down the poured concrete walk, and I could smell the beer on his breath as he scuffled past. I followed him into the house without a word or invitation.

The tawny light of early evening was spreading across the Powder River landscape, and it settled a comfortable glow inside the kitchen. James was seated at a Formica table with a shot glass and a bottle of Bryer’s Blackberry Brandy, which I assumed was dinner. There was an empty bottle of Busch with more than a few bottle caps pinched together and scattered across the table where I assumed Den must have been sitting before my arrival. The walls were paneled in knotty pine, and all the appliances were what they had called golden harvest in the fifties. I was sure that nothing in the kitchen had been changed since their mother had died.

The heat was oppressive, even with the industrial-type box fan that was propped in one of the windows. The older of the two brothers stood when I entered, wiping his palms on his jeans and sticking out his hand. He seemed embarrassed that I’d found him drinking in his own home. “Hello, Walt. Would you like some coffee? Mother makes it in the morning for us.”

I withheld comment. "No, thanks. Mind if I sit down, James?” He pulled out a chair for me and glanced at his brother, who stood by the door with his arms folded and his hat still on. “I suppose you know why I’m here?”