Alamosa, Colorado, 1965.
The early spring breeze was cool blowing down from the mountains, and the workmen tearing down the old bunkhouse on the Branson ranch were gratefull for the cool weather. Laboring away with crowbars, they were prying up the old worn floor boards, making way for the new bunk house for the ranch's crew of single men who lived at the spread during the summer season.
Suddenly, one of them stopped, and peered into the shadowed depths under the floor board he'd just pried up. Going down on one knee, he reached in and lifted out a small object. Two other workmen gathered round him and they looked as well.
"Hey boss, You want to take a gander at this?" yelled the worker who found the item.
Steve Branson, great grandson of the founder of the double B ranch walked over. In his early 20's, he had just come back from an Eastern college where he had majored in buisness. He was handed a rusty pocket knife by the worker who found it.
"Looks real old, boss. You collect stuff from the old days, don't ya"
Steve took the old pocket knife and examined it. He was well known to collect all sorts of things from the early days of the double B ranch, and had a small museum in the ranch house den. It was an old premium stockman pattern, with brown stag handles, rusted lightly. He tried to open one of the blades, but it was too bound by the light coating of rust. Even though sheltered by the floor, the changes in temprature and humidity had done some damage to the old knife.
"Must have belonged to one of the cowboys who lived here a long time back. Maybe grandad would know something about it." he said.
Steve walked up to the main house and made his way to the back, where his grandfather lived. The old man was getting ready to go out for a meeting with his card playing buddies, and was standing in front of a mirror trimming the snow white moustache. Well up in his 70's, Alvin Branson was almost as strait and lean as in his youth. A lifetime of ranch work had kept him fit, but now he left the running of the spread to his son and grandson.
"Grandad, this old knife was found in the floor of the bunk house, you think it can be cleaned up to go in the den?"
He handed the rusty knife to the old man, and was alarmed by the reaction. Alvin took the knife and stared in amazment for a moment, and his hands shook and he got a little pale. He groped for the chair in back of him and Steve helped the old man sit down.
"Where did you say you found this knife?" Alvin asked in a horse voice.
Under the floor of the old bunk house. Grandad, are you okay? Whats wrong?"
"Get me a drink, boy." Alvin pointed at the square bottle on the chest of drawers.
Steve poured his gradfather a drink , and the old man took it and swallowed it in one gulp.
"Grandad, what is it?"
"I know this knife. That is I knew the man who carried it when I was knee high to a three day old calf. He taught me to whittle with this knife, and he promised it too me if anything happened to him. He was one of the Major's oldest hands right from the begining of the Double B. "
Steve sat down oposite his grandad.
"You want to talk about it grandad?
The old man looked at his grandson, and slowly he told the story.
Alamosa, Colorado, 1915.
The 11 o'clock train puffed into the station right on time, and a young man in a well cut suit stepped down to the platform. Not more than 21 years of age, Alvin Branson had come home from school, ready to start running the ranch that had been started by his family in 1869. He picked up his bag and had started to walk to the end of the platform, when he was met by an old cowboy. Tall and lanky, called Slim by all who knew him, he had been like a second father to the young man, now home again. Warm greetings and a hard handshake and they were out by the front of the station. A new Ford touring car sat ready. Alvin looked in amazement at the car, then the old cowboy.
"Slim, you driving automobiles now?"
"Well, I've rid every critter with 4 legs that could be saddled, 4 wheels ain't so hard. Kind of like a buckboard with no horses. I figured the car may be better, you probably forgot most everything about a horse you been so long back east."
"Uh huh. I'll show you how much I forgot soon's we get home. "
The ride to the ranch seemed shorter than Alvin recalled, and the Tin Lizzy bounced along at a steady 20 miles per hour. Riding along, Alvin glanced more than a few times at the white haired cowpoke driving. The thought came to Alvin, that Slim had turned old in the time he had been gone. The old cowboy seemed thinner, more gaunt. Must be 75 or more by now, Alvin thought.
That night a big dinner was held to welcome Alvin back home for good. Whiskey and cigars on the back porch, and talk till the stars were bright in the sky and the moon rising. His parents wanted to hear all about the east, and Alvins mother asked about what young ladies he had been seeing. A few times durring the evening Alvin noticed Slim rubbing his left arm like he was in some kind of discomfort. When asked about it, all he'd say was "getting old ain't for the faint of heart, with aches and such". Alvin asked his father about the new building going up, and was told that a new bunk house was being built out of adobe brick, with a real wood floor. The old building from the early days had already been torn down. Slim was whittling on a piece of pine, and Alvin notice the stag handle stockman in his knarled hands.
"My God Slim, you've had that same knife since I was a kid. Taught me to make my first napkin ring with it. I'd have thought you'd have got a new one by now."
The old cowboy held the knife out in his callused palm and looked at it. A bit worn looking, but still in good working shape.
"Nope. Kind of like an old friend by now. Be a strange feeling to have to get used to the feel of another knife at this stage of my life." he replied. "Tell ya what, pup. If something happens and I go over to the other side of the mountain, I want you to have it and the rest of my outfit. "
All on the porch knew of the close relationship twixt the old cowboy and Alvin. Slim had been like a second father to Alvin when Alvin had been a boy, teaching him to ride his first horse, how to shoot on Slim's Smith and Wesson American, and to whittle. Alvins first cut finger was from Slim's stockman. Alvin was touched by Slim's statement.
Early the next morning at daybreak, Slim was up and about. A lifetime of rising with the sun had not dulled in his elderly years. He walked out to the new construction and looked at things with a critical eye. He rubbed at the tingling in his left arm, and looked over what had been done the day before. Slim was a stickler for neat workmanship, and he cursed under his breath as he saw some feathery splinters of wood sticking up from the newcut lumber that had been nailed down. Half the floor was in, and Slim took out his pocket knife to trim off the long splinters sticking up from a nailed down plank where the work had stopped the night before.
"How are you supposed to stain and varnish floorboards if you cut them so rough and don't rasp 'em smooth before you put them down." he muttered to himself. Bent over, he used the sheepsfoot blade to smooth off the raw cut end over the joists, and had just closed his knife and was straightening up when the pain hit him. Sudden white hot, and down his left arm and around his chest. With a grunt of agony, he fell to the half done floor, the knife falling from his grasp, and bouncing out of sight down between the exposed floor joists where the new flooring had not been put down yet.
It hurt like nothing he had ever felt before, and as he rolled over on his back, left arm drawn up tight to his chest, he knew with a sudden crystal clear insight, it was his time. He rolled over on his side to see the mountains once more. Silver Mountain and Bennet Peak looked over the valley like big twin sentinals on guard.
His vision swam and blurred as he looked at Silver mountain to the west, and thought of the big couger he'd shot up there that had almost killed him. Then a figure stepped into the doorway. It was blury, but he thought he knew the short stocky outline. When the figure spoke, he recognized the thick German accent.
"It's time for you to come, ja? Da boy's have saved a place for you. You come with us now, hein?"
For almost 40 years, till he passed away, Gustav Heinrich Wasserman had been the cook, doctor, barber, and fatherly advisor to the cowhands of the Double B. Not mention the best friend Slim ever had.
''Gusty, tell...the boys..."
They found him a little while later, still staring at the distant mountains with a slight smile on his face.
"He was the last of the wooly boys from the old days." said Alvins father.
They laid him to rest in the family cemetery on a little hill overlooking the ranch. People from town came out to pay last respects to the well known cowboy from Alamosa's frontier days. Later, Alvin and his father went through Slim's outfit. They admired how well kept the old Smith and Wesson revolver and Winchester carbine were. There was no sign of the stag handle knife. Alvin was mystified.
"He had it in his hand the other night on the porch. Where can it be, dad? What could have happened to it?
Many times in his life, Alvin would wonder what had become of the premium stockman with the stag handles. But years pass by down the tunnel of time.
Alamosa, Colorado, 1965.
The old man stopped talking, and all was silent in the bedroom.
"Talkin's dry work boy. Pour me another short one." said Alvin.
Steve got a short round for his grandfather, and the old man sipped it this time, lost in thought. His grandson laid his hand on the old mans shoulder briefly, then quietly left his grandad to his thoughts.
The old man sat for a bit, holding the long lost knife in his hand, recalling memories. Then he looked at the old pocket knife.
"Slim would have a fit if he saw you in this shape. There's work to be done."
Alvin went out to the workshop in back of the house. Taking a small can of oil, he worked it into the joints well. Using a pair of pliers with tape on the jaws, he got the blades opened, and worked away. Oil, a soft scrap of rag, a little stiff brush. Soon the rag was brown with rubbed off rust, and he got a clean rag. More oil and carefull care. Slowly the hours passed, and still the old man worked on the knife. At one point he went back to the house, and poked around in the medicine cabinet. Coming back out to the workshop, he had a bottle of mineral oil in his hand.
The shadows grew long in the afternoon, and Alvin's white hair hung down on his forhead as he rubbed and polished. At one point he used 0000 steel wool with almost caressing strokes on the rusty steel. Silver polish was used on the bolsters. Hours passed, but the old man was not really there. Part of him was far in the past, with cherished memories brought back by the old knife. He smelled the rank sulfer smell of black powder when Slim taught him to shoot the Smith and Wesson revolver. The wind in the aspens as they rode the mountain trails. The sting of whiskey on his cut finger when Slim was teaching him to carve a fish hook from bone or wood.
The slanting rays of the setting sun came in the workshop windows, and Steve poked his head in the door.
"Grandad, we're about to have supper now. Mom and dad want you to eat. "
Slowly the old man looked up. He was tired, and had worked all day on the old knife. He felt good.
"Okay, pup. I'm comming. But for now come over here and tell me what you think."
Steve went over to see what had once been a rusty old knife. He stared in open astonishment at what his grandad had done. Red rusty blades were now dark grey, slightly pitted black in some places, but not too bad. Being sheltered under the floor, it had been spared the worst of damage. A bright ribbon of sharpened edge ran down each blade. The dry chalky looking stag was now a golden lustrous patina. German silver bolsters shone with a yellowish silver hue. It did not look like the same knife.
"Gra...grandad...how?" Steve sputtered.
"Lots of work, pup. Lots of work." the old man said.
Much later, after supper they were sitting in the living room, and Alvin was looking down at the old knife in his hand.
"Grandad, didn't Slim tell you stories of the old days? "
"Yes, I pestered him every night about tales of the first days out here. I've told you some of them when you were a small pup. "
"But not all?" Steve asked.
"There may be some I didn't get to." Alvin looked at his grandson. "Why, you want me to tell you a story?"
"Yeah grandad, I do. I want to hear all about the old days! You know I'm making a collection of stuff for the case in the den."
The old man was silent for a spell. Then he spoke quietly.
"Well, there was this time Slim told me about. 40, 50 head was run off in the night by rustlers. Well, the Major tells all the boys to mount up, and they go froggin it after them..."
The early spring breeze was cool blowing down from the mountains, and the workmen tearing down the old bunkhouse on the Branson ranch were gratefull for the cool weather. Laboring away with crowbars, they were prying up the old worn floor boards, making way for the new bunk house for the ranch's crew of single men who lived at the spread during the summer season.
Suddenly, one of them stopped, and peered into the shadowed depths under the floor board he'd just pried up. Going down on one knee, he reached in and lifted out a small object. Two other workmen gathered round him and they looked as well.
"Hey boss, You want to take a gander at this?" yelled the worker who found the item.
Steve Branson, great grandson of the founder of the double B ranch walked over. In his early 20's, he had just come back from an Eastern college where he had majored in buisness. He was handed a rusty pocket knife by the worker who found it.
"Looks real old, boss. You collect stuff from the old days, don't ya"
Steve took the old pocket knife and examined it. He was well known to collect all sorts of things from the early days of the double B ranch, and had a small museum in the ranch house den. It was an old premium stockman pattern, with brown stag handles, rusted lightly. He tried to open one of the blades, but it was too bound by the light coating of rust. Even though sheltered by the floor, the changes in temprature and humidity had done some damage to the old knife.
"Must have belonged to one of the cowboys who lived here a long time back. Maybe grandad would know something about it." he said.
Steve walked up to the main house and made his way to the back, where his grandfather lived. The old man was getting ready to go out for a meeting with his card playing buddies, and was standing in front of a mirror trimming the snow white moustache. Well up in his 70's, Alvin Branson was almost as strait and lean as in his youth. A lifetime of ranch work had kept him fit, but now he left the running of the spread to his son and grandson.
"Grandad, this old knife was found in the floor of the bunk house, you think it can be cleaned up to go in the den?"
He handed the rusty knife to the old man, and was alarmed by the reaction. Alvin took the knife and stared in amazment for a moment, and his hands shook and he got a little pale. He groped for the chair in back of him and Steve helped the old man sit down.
"Where did you say you found this knife?" Alvin asked in a horse voice.
Under the floor of the old bunk house. Grandad, are you okay? Whats wrong?"
"Get me a drink, boy." Alvin pointed at the square bottle on the chest of drawers.
Steve poured his gradfather a drink , and the old man took it and swallowed it in one gulp.
"Grandad, what is it?"
"I know this knife. That is I knew the man who carried it when I was knee high to a three day old calf. He taught me to whittle with this knife, and he promised it too me if anything happened to him. He was one of the Major's oldest hands right from the begining of the Double B. "
Steve sat down oposite his grandad.
"You want to talk about it grandad?
The old man looked at his grandson, and slowly he told the story.
Alamosa, Colorado, 1915.
The 11 o'clock train puffed into the station right on time, and a young man in a well cut suit stepped down to the platform. Not more than 21 years of age, Alvin Branson had come home from school, ready to start running the ranch that had been started by his family in 1869. He picked up his bag and had started to walk to the end of the platform, when he was met by an old cowboy. Tall and lanky, called Slim by all who knew him, he had been like a second father to the young man, now home again. Warm greetings and a hard handshake and they were out by the front of the station. A new Ford touring car sat ready. Alvin looked in amazement at the car, then the old cowboy.
"Slim, you driving automobiles now?"
"Well, I've rid every critter with 4 legs that could be saddled, 4 wheels ain't so hard. Kind of like a buckboard with no horses. I figured the car may be better, you probably forgot most everything about a horse you been so long back east."
"Uh huh. I'll show you how much I forgot soon's we get home. "
The ride to the ranch seemed shorter than Alvin recalled, and the Tin Lizzy bounced along at a steady 20 miles per hour. Riding along, Alvin glanced more than a few times at the white haired cowpoke driving. The thought came to Alvin, that Slim had turned old in the time he had been gone. The old cowboy seemed thinner, more gaunt. Must be 75 or more by now, Alvin thought.
That night a big dinner was held to welcome Alvin back home for good. Whiskey and cigars on the back porch, and talk till the stars were bright in the sky and the moon rising. His parents wanted to hear all about the east, and Alvins mother asked about what young ladies he had been seeing. A few times durring the evening Alvin noticed Slim rubbing his left arm like he was in some kind of discomfort. When asked about it, all he'd say was "getting old ain't for the faint of heart, with aches and such". Alvin asked his father about the new building going up, and was told that a new bunk house was being built out of adobe brick, with a real wood floor. The old building from the early days had already been torn down. Slim was whittling on a piece of pine, and Alvin notice the stag handle stockman in his knarled hands.
"My God Slim, you've had that same knife since I was a kid. Taught me to make my first napkin ring with it. I'd have thought you'd have got a new one by now."
The old cowboy held the knife out in his callused palm and looked at it. A bit worn looking, but still in good working shape.
"Nope. Kind of like an old friend by now. Be a strange feeling to have to get used to the feel of another knife at this stage of my life." he replied. "Tell ya what, pup. If something happens and I go over to the other side of the mountain, I want you to have it and the rest of my outfit. "
All on the porch knew of the close relationship twixt the old cowboy and Alvin. Slim had been like a second father to Alvin when Alvin had been a boy, teaching him to ride his first horse, how to shoot on Slim's Smith and Wesson American, and to whittle. Alvins first cut finger was from Slim's stockman. Alvin was touched by Slim's statement.
Early the next morning at daybreak, Slim was up and about. A lifetime of rising with the sun had not dulled in his elderly years. He walked out to the new construction and looked at things with a critical eye. He rubbed at the tingling in his left arm, and looked over what had been done the day before. Slim was a stickler for neat workmanship, and he cursed under his breath as he saw some feathery splinters of wood sticking up from the newcut lumber that had been nailed down. Half the floor was in, and Slim took out his pocket knife to trim off the long splinters sticking up from a nailed down plank where the work had stopped the night before.
"How are you supposed to stain and varnish floorboards if you cut them so rough and don't rasp 'em smooth before you put them down." he muttered to himself. Bent over, he used the sheepsfoot blade to smooth off the raw cut end over the joists, and had just closed his knife and was straightening up when the pain hit him. Sudden white hot, and down his left arm and around his chest. With a grunt of agony, he fell to the half done floor, the knife falling from his grasp, and bouncing out of sight down between the exposed floor joists where the new flooring had not been put down yet.
It hurt like nothing he had ever felt before, and as he rolled over on his back, left arm drawn up tight to his chest, he knew with a sudden crystal clear insight, it was his time. He rolled over on his side to see the mountains once more. Silver Mountain and Bennet Peak looked over the valley like big twin sentinals on guard.
His vision swam and blurred as he looked at Silver mountain to the west, and thought of the big couger he'd shot up there that had almost killed him. Then a figure stepped into the doorway. It was blury, but he thought he knew the short stocky outline. When the figure spoke, he recognized the thick German accent.
"It's time for you to come, ja? Da boy's have saved a place for you. You come with us now, hein?"
For almost 40 years, till he passed away, Gustav Heinrich Wasserman had been the cook, doctor, barber, and fatherly advisor to the cowhands of the Double B. Not mention the best friend Slim ever had.
''Gusty, tell...the boys..."
They found him a little while later, still staring at the distant mountains with a slight smile on his face.
"He was the last of the wooly boys from the old days." said Alvins father.
They laid him to rest in the family cemetery on a little hill overlooking the ranch. People from town came out to pay last respects to the well known cowboy from Alamosa's frontier days. Later, Alvin and his father went through Slim's outfit. They admired how well kept the old Smith and Wesson revolver and Winchester carbine were. There was no sign of the stag handle knife. Alvin was mystified.
"He had it in his hand the other night on the porch. Where can it be, dad? What could have happened to it?
Many times in his life, Alvin would wonder what had become of the premium stockman with the stag handles. But years pass by down the tunnel of time.
Alamosa, Colorado, 1965.
The old man stopped talking, and all was silent in the bedroom.
"Talkin's dry work boy. Pour me another short one." said Alvin.
Steve got a short round for his grandfather, and the old man sipped it this time, lost in thought. His grandson laid his hand on the old mans shoulder briefly, then quietly left his grandad to his thoughts.
The old man sat for a bit, holding the long lost knife in his hand, recalling memories. Then he looked at the old pocket knife.
"Slim would have a fit if he saw you in this shape. There's work to be done."
Alvin went out to the workshop in back of the house. Taking a small can of oil, he worked it into the joints well. Using a pair of pliers with tape on the jaws, he got the blades opened, and worked away. Oil, a soft scrap of rag, a little stiff brush. Soon the rag was brown with rubbed off rust, and he got a clean rag. More oil and carefull care. Slowly the hours passed, and still the old man worked on the knife. At one point he went back to the house, and poked around in the medicine cabinet. Coming back out to the workshop, he had a bottle of mineral oil in his hand.
The shadows grew long in the afternoon, and Alvin's white hair hung down on his forhead as he rubbed and polished. At one point he used 0000 steel wool with almost caressing strokes on the rusty steel. Silver polish was used on the bolsters. Hours passed, but the old man was not really there. Part of him was far in the past, with cherished memories brought back by the old knife. He smelled the rank sulfer smell of black powder when Slim taught him to shoot the Smith and Wesson revolver. The wind in the aspens as they rode the mountain trails. The sting of whiskey on his cut finger when Slim was teaching him to carve a fish hook from bone or wood.
The slanting rays of the setting sun came in the workshop windows, and Steve poked his head in the door.
"Grandad, we're about to have supper now. Mom and dad want you to eat. "
Slowly the old man looked up. He was tired, and had worked all day on the old knife. He felt good.
"Okay, pup. I'm comming. But for now come over here and tell me what you think."
Steve went over to see what had once been a rusty old knife. He stared in open astonishment at what his grandad had done. Red rusty blades were now dark grey, slightly pitted black in some places, but not too bad. Being sheltered under the floor, it had been spared the worst of damage. A bright ribbon of sharpened edge ran down each blade. The dry chalky looking stag was now a golden lustrous patina. German silver bolsters shone with a yellowish silver hue. It did not look like the same knife.
"Gra...grandad...how?" Steve sputtered.
"Lots of work, pup. Lots of work." the old man said.
Much later, after supper they were sitting in the living room, and Alvin was looking down at the old knife in his hand.
"Grandad, didn't Slim tell you stories of the old days? "
"Yes, I pestered him every night about tales of the first days out here. I've told you some of them when you were a small pup. "
"But not all?" Steve asked.
"There may be some I didn't get to." Alvin looked at his grandson. "Why, you want me to tell you a story?"
"Yeah grandad, I do. I want to hear all about the old days! You know I'm making a collection of stuff for the case in the den."
The old man was silent for a spell. Then he spoke quietly.
"Well, there was this time Slim told me about. 40, 50 head was run off in the night by rustlers. Well, the Major tells all the boys to mount up, and they go froggin it after them..."
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