The following day, as a small group of neighbors and friends gathered at the hilltop gravesite, their eyes were irresistibly drawn from the October greening of the wild grasses at their feet up through the rolling, oak-spotted foothills of the Once Wide Valley, up farther into the juniper and pine of the rising mountain slopes, and on to the distant horizon formed by the rugged granite crest of the high Sierra Nevada. Seeing their spirits captured by this breathtaking expanse, Logan chose to open the service with a discernment of Pinky’s.

“Open space,” Logan said. “It’s a good thing.” Then he waved his hand across the sprawling terrain as Pinky would have, and added, “Just because it’s open don’t mean it’s empty.”

When the minister’s customary and heartfelt service came to a close, Logan turned back toward the mountains and quietly said, “Wait.”

Everyone at the service had watched Logan grow from a boy into a man, tall, with a powerful build, rugged good looks and the unusual common sense of a much older man. Perhaps it was Logan’s strong presence, or perhaps it was the solemnity of the moment, or perhaps the spirit of the place itself, but no one moved.

In the tranquil silence Logan recited lines from a legend of the ancient peoples who had once lived in the surrounding mountains and valleys.

“Our people came to this place with a wandering spirit leading them upstream, uphill and into the pockets formed by stone and tree and water, came with the spirit of the migratory clouds, curious of the secrets horizons hold, came with honor for the land alive beneath their feet. So favored were our people that the valley swallowed them up. And since that time our people have been of the land as the spark is of the flint.”

With a nod toward the polished pine casket draped with a wreath of wild rose and pine boughs, Logan repeated, “of the land as the spark is of the flint,” then added, “That was…that is, Pinky Wollerman.”

After the mourners left, Logan silently read the inscription engraved on the slab of grey granite stone.

Those who knew Pinky as a survivor of the Depression and the Dust Bowl and as a hardened foothill cattle rancher were puzzled by his choice of such a poignant poem. Perhaps, they thought, it recalled the days of love with his now-estranged wife.

Logan knew otherwise.

In the evening Logan walked beyond the barn to be with the land, under the stars. The legend from which he had spoken at Pinky’s service haunted him. It was old, as old as the coming together of the tribe, the gathering of the favored ones. It was a story passed down by Logan’s great-grandmother, whose people inhabited the Valley of the Once Wide Creek for centuries before the Europeans arrived.

It was handwritten on yellowed and wrinkled paper and salvaged from a sagging trunk of moldering papers, and Logan knew there had been tinkering as well as translation, but whether fiction or legend, it stirred a set of memories he hadn’t known he had, which, oddly enough, left him feeling comfortably at home anywhere in the valley.

“It took a hundred years to turn them into a memory,” Pinky had said. “A hundred years seems like a long time, but it’s a knife edge on the thousands of years they were here. Most were killed outright by force or disease, some were pushed onto lesser lands or ‘integrated’ to live as white people. But there were others, Logan. Forgotten. Those who stayed on the land and died for lack of a place. Don’t underestimate the lack of a place, Logan. The land holds a people’s history, their sense of time, their ideas about God, reason for living. Change the face of the land, they get sick. Body and soul. Whole peoples can die off. It’s a damned shame, Logan, but it happened here. This land has ghosts.”

Logan stared into the darkness, overwhelmed by the eons of life upon the land. Did the spirit of the ancient ones still wander here? He surveyed the weathered and worn barn. Over 100 years had passed since his great-great-grandfather Cyrus Wilson had settled the ranch and built the barn, and though periodically renovated, it showed hard use and age. How long could it last? He envisioned the long-lived cedar studs and oak beams meeting their match in ten thousand storms and dozens of quakes and finally giving way to splintering and rot. After a few hundred years of nature’s abuse the only thing left would be the stone perimeter foundation nearly hidden in the grass of a distant summer and in the duff of many trees yet to live and die in the time to come.

The foundation blocks were naturally formed stones that Cyrus Wilson hauled into place with two yoked oxen, a strong back, and a conviction he was taming the land and building something to last. Logan knew it could not. Like all such efforts, in any place, in any time, the ranch would someday be buried within the ancient and relentless land.

Beyond the plateau he followed an incline thinly covered by wind-scoured snow past several barren lakes and dropped into a valley once used as a place for trading goods and relatives between the Paiutes and the Yokuts.

When Cyrus entered the abandoned valley, he saw a place of stark beauty, dimpled with tall pines and stunted aspens standing in segregated islands stranded between avalanche runs. White granite peaks gave the place its high and craggy horizon, a saw-toothed silhouette against a sky of such deep blue as to hint of an infinite darkness holding purchase on all that lay beyond. It was a place of eccentric weather where, even in summer, a clear-sky sun could, in less time than it took to remove a too-warm coat, fold itself behind a gentle shower, then as quickly shift to blowing snow and winter cold. In the midst of awe he paused, wondered if this was where he was to meet up with the spirit of Shagoopah, and then wondered why such nonsense crossed his mind.

The rugged ground to the west of the valley—having been churned since the creation by earthquakes, and graded, raked and distributed by several glacial periods and by the persistent rains and snows—gave birth many miles downslope to a spreading and gentle foothill area that held the Valley of the Once Wide Creek, which was where Cyrus ended his journey. He was struck by the pastoral beauty of this solitary watershed valley, and his roan, for his own animal reasons, picked a place to stop and survey the valley where the two sat in pleasant appreciation for quite some time. And it was there a spirit, primitive and gentle, welcomed Cyrus. As he took the valley in through his eyes and ears and skin, he sensed a giant presence—silent but for a whisper—like the steady searching of wind through a thousand acres of tall grass. He was not sure if it was flowing out across the valley before him, or moving across a landscape within, but it infused him with a sense of welcome, as if he were engulfed in ancient hospitality. The presence of God came to mind, but he never had held such a belief. Being unaccustomed to such a nonsensical feeling, he willed it out of his recollection. Even in his old age, as he passed the stories of his mountain crossing to his grandchildren, he never once mentioned the oddness of that day, though it was what some part of him had searched for during the whole of his crossing.

The Once Wide clan of the Gawia Yokuts had lived for centuries in the valley where Cyrus settled. Their ancestors, according to oral history, found the valley rich, unoccupied and awaiting their pleasure, as it had been since the time of the creation. The Gawia and other Yokuts were mostly killed or chased off by the government-sponsored and vigilante Indian wars, so when Cyrus arrived in the valley, it seemed full with possibility and expanse, and he could not believe his good fortune and opportunity to find such a place so fertile and yet unoccupied. He stopped there and fashioned the wild space into a ranch, and in the process developed an intense sense of ownership, followed by its scion, the naturalized tyranny of inheritance.

Cyrus also left behind legendary stories and an image to match. The two surviving photographs showed an imposing man, tall, wide shouldered, lean and muscular, dressed in the iconic blue jeans and Stetson hat of the Old West cattle rancher, perhaps good-looking underneath the heavy weathering of a life lived outside in all seasons.

Some stories had Cyrus, wielding a six-shooter and a .44 Henry lever action rifle, bravely fighting off any number of scoundrels who would have taken the land. And he killed some of them, which was necessary, the stories said, to keep the ranch.

But the numerous scoundrels Cyrus was supposed to have shot amounted to one boy, and that was by pure accident.

A small band of Indians had settled in the mountains on the high side of the ranch. Cyrus rode to their camp to make sure their stay was temporary. They ran when they saw him, and Cyrus decided to shoot into the branches over their heads just to make a point. In their haste one of them stepped on a dead limb that broke with a loud crack, and another kicked a rock that rolled and smacked into other rocks. The noise and movement skittered Cyrus’ normally staid horse, and Cyrus pulled the shot and hit one of the fleeing band.

Cyrus had seen no sign of weapons; nevertheless, he rode cautiously up the hillside. He followed a trail of blood into a stand of scrub oak and found the man sprawled on the ground, his back propped against a boulder to face his attacker. Cyrus was surprised to see that he was little more than a boy, maybe in his teens. He wore threadbare jeans and a red, long sleeved canvas shirt, both equally soiled, and carried a wool blanket, rolled and wrapped tight with a frayed rope that looped over his shoulder. As soon as he saw the gore at the boy’s midsection, Cyrus knew the wound was fatal. As he approached the boy, Cyrus heard a rock roll on the hill above and saw the others, still running, as they crossed over the ridge. All were smaller than this one, and Cyrus wondered how old they were.

Cyrus turned to the boy, and sickened by what he had done, pointed to the kid’s midsection. “I did not mean this,” he said. He didn’t know if the kid spoke English, but he didn’t look able to talk, so Cyrus said no more. He lifted the strap of his canteen from the saddle horn and offered the kid a drink. The kid shook his head, so Cyrus sat on his heel a few feet away and waited. The kid was strong and took the better part of an hour to die. During that hour Cyrus could think of nothing except that he’d killed a kid who had done him no harm, and the realization started to pick raw spots on his mind and heart. He’d wanted to kill at times, out of anger, but he hadn’t. And he realized he had never anticipated what he might feel like after the anger and after the killing.

The kid made no fuss. He sat motionless and stared at Cyrus with no sign of malice. Then he died. Cyrus had worked on through broken arms and ribs, and one winter, through frost-bitten toes. He had put up with all variety of painful ailments in his gut—one that nearly killed him. But he knew he fell short of this kid’s grit.

Fall had ushered in a cold storm and, in the high mountains to the east of the ranch, summer’s bald granite peaks were draped with white capes of snow. The storm had blown through, but Cyrus could still see a few dark clouds trying to hang onto the jagged southern peaks as the northwest wind insistently pushed them over and through the high passes of the Sierra crest. The western sky was clear, but with the wind the late afternoon sun failed to warm, and Cyrus pulled his oiled canvas coat closed.

Most of the local Indians who survived disease and starvation and the ’56 Indian War had ended up on the Tule River Farm down by Porterville, but it was the custom of some to spend the summers in the cool of the high country and move back down to the lowland oak-covered foothills barely ahead of the snows of winter. Jesse Stills, one of the younger hired hands, had found the small band of the Gawia River Yokuts encamped above Homer’s Nose Summit. “Living by the old ways,” he said. Apparently the early storm had taken them by surprise, so they scampered down to escape the cold and had landed on Cyrus’ place.

Stills, a somewhat excitable boy, had arrived at the Stone Corrals with his horse in a lather and his eyes big. He had seen the Indians, he said, “camped smack in the middle of the ranch, where the Sycamore Spring runs into Alder Creek.” Jesse had looked around at the other ranch hands and added, “They looked like a pack of wet dogs left outside in a hard rain.”

Cyrus had noticed the smirk and heard the scorn in the young man’s voice. Cyrus was a man with no use for bravado, which he thought was often a cover for cowardice. Cyrus asked Jesse why he hadn’t chased them off, and Jesse had looked back up the valley where he’d come upon the little band and answered that he hadn’t known how Cyrus would have wanted the situation handled. Then, after a considerable silence in the conversation with Cyrus staring at the boy and the boy studying the backdrop of the hills, Jesse cautiously offered to go back up and do the job. Cyrus had waited another uncomfortable minute before he said he’d handle it himself, and he continued to watch the humiliated boy while the color returned to his face.

Watching the Indian boy die, Cyrus wished he’d sent Jesse. Though it could have turned out much worse.

Occasionally a justification for the murder would try to surface in Cyrus’ mind. The problem with the Indians was they had no respect for property rights. He had heard of other ranches nearly taken over when they allowed trespassers to hang around. Like the big rancher up north who lost nearly 100 acres of his best grazing land along the Sacramento River to gold field hobos because they squatted on his land, and he hadn’t kicked them off quick enough. But Cyrus’ heart would not let him get by with blaming the boy’s death on his refusal to abide by the rule of ownership, for it was a rule that had gained allegiance only after the tribal owners had been chased from the land.

After the kid’s body went slack and his eyes took on that glazed look that Cyrus knew meant that whatever it was about living things that made them alive had left him, Cyrus took in several deep breaths to settle his gorge. He went over in his mind what had happened, and went over it again and again, unable to accept the final outcome. Late in the afternoon his knees started to pain him, and he realized he was still kneeling beside the boy. As he stood, he felt the cold that had crept into his body nearly as deeply as it had the corpse.

The only thing left to do was to bury the boy. Cyrus owed him that, though the sum of this debt could never be repaid.

It did not occur to Cyrus what a task it would be without a pick and shovel to bury someone in ground that was full of small stones in a landscape nearly devoid of rocks big enough to cover and protect a body but small enough to carry. Nor did it occur to him not to do it.

He gouged a shallow trough in the ground with a broken tree limb and by dark had collected enough rocks to barely cover the body. He did not notice his bloodied fingers and bruised hands. He did notice a small rat making dashes toward the body, and he shooed it away, then collected a pile of pebbles, spread the saddle blanket over the rocks of the grave, pulled his bedroll around his shoulders, and sat on a rough boulder where he could fend off the surprisingly insistent night creatures. He did not sleep that night.

At first light, Cyrus went in search of more rocks, carrying some for nearly a quarter of a mile. By noon a substantial mound of earth and rocks covered the boy’s body, and though knowing it would never be enough, Cyrus stopped. He stood by the rock rubble tomb, silently asked forgiveness, and gave over the body to the earth, then was surprised to hear his stomach growl, acknowledging the insistence of life.

Cyrus saddled his horse and picked a path down the hillside.

On the way he worried about preparing the ranch for winter, but it was not enough to shunt aside the ever-present remorse. He felt odd inside his chest and belly and heard a voice cussing him: “Goddamn you, Cyrus Wilson.”

“You’re a killer,” the voice accused.

It was his own voice, but there was no one to hear but the ground squirrels, a scrub jay and his horse. “Damn it!” he yelled. The exclamation caused his horse to break into a run, and Cyrus reined him in. A horse running through rough country with squirrel holes could break a leg, and he sure as hell did not want to shoot another living thing.

Cyrus moved his rant inside. It would not do for others to hear the disturbance of his soul.

Cyrus made it to the main trail running down Once Wide Creek by mid-afternoon. With more confident footing, he gave the sorrel his head and let him find his own way downstream, even letting him break into a trot when he felt like it.

The early fall storm had caught him by surprise as well as the Indians, and it was now going to be a race with the weather to get the hay at the lower end of the ranch cut, dried and stacked in the barn. And there were 50 head of cattle needing to be rounded up and brought down. On a cattle ranch if it wasn’t one damned thing, it was another. This was his ranch, so it was always up to him to make sure what needed done was done. The more he thought about the ranch, the less he thought about the boy.

The trail looped up away from the creek and over a grassy knoll where Cyrus could see the home place in the distance. He slowed the gelding to a walk, noticing the details of the homestead—the ranch house and bunkhouse, the windmill and barn, and the stacked black stone of the corrals—flattening in dark relief as dusk began to settle into the valley. In the distance he could see the three hired hands pause in their evening chores to watch his approach. Cyrus snorted. He seldom laughed, but seeing the boys still at their chores this late in a long day reminded him of his reputation for working his hired hands hard, and any other day might have brought out a smile. Word from a neighbor was that Joseph, a wiry young man from Kansas and the best worker of the three, told a story at a church meeting that everyone working for Cyrus J. Wilson was given a lantern the day they hired on so they would never have an excuse to stop work only because it got dark.

As Cyrus came through the gate, still a good distance from the men, he saw they were still watching him and slowly gathering at the corral, and he felt his jaw clench. He knew they must be wondering what had happened, but it was none of their damned business. There was work to be done, and if they were still standing around when he got to the corral, he was going to put his boot up somebody’s backside. Even as he felt this anger, he knew it was fueled by the killing, but he couldn’t help the whelming of it. He loosed the reins and kicked the big gelding in the flanks, guiding him in a full gallop straight for the knot of idle men. The gelding wasn’t much to look at, but Cyrus was a big man and had chosen a big horse, weighing in at upwards of 1,000 pounds. Coming straight at you, head down, nostrils flared, stretched out in a full run, that gelding could be damned scary.

As the men scattered, Cyrus pulled the blowing horse to a stop. “This!” He paused and stabbed a finger downward. “Is a working ranch!” His voice was forceful, but he wasn’t yelling, and he put a strong emphasis on the word “working.”

“You girls want to stand around gawking…” The excited mount whirled in a circle, and Cyrus reined him in. “…there’s a street corner.” He jabbed his hand, fingers extended and tight together, pointing into the western twilight. “Down in the town.”

Satisfied that everyone had gotten back to work, he took his own advice and headed the gelding for the barn to water, feed and brush him. He had worked him hard over the past few days, so Cyrus thought he might leave him in the stables for a day’s rest and try out the new mare tomorrow. Getting the boys back to work and caring for the horse somehow helped his insides. But only a little.

Mentioning the town had reminded Cyrus of something he had to do before next fall. Ruth had moved down to Visalia with their boy a year ago last winter. Cyrus often thought that he shouldn’t have married Ruth. She was the prettiest woman he had ever seen, but anyone could see she wasn’t strong enough for ranch life. Her kind of beauty was like a weak fire—promising with flame, but without near enough heat for the hard nights. No matter—he missed her company sometimes. But whether Ruth came along or not, he wanted the boy back on the ranch before he turned 5. Most of the ranchers had three or four boys, a missus and a few girls to help out. Cyrus only had Adam, and, given Ruth’s feeble condition, he wasn’t likely to have any more. And the kid had a lot to learn. More than how to work a ranch, and more than how to run a ranch. What the kid needed to learn was what it took to own a ranch and keep it. That was a much bigger undertaking, and Cyrus figured he couldn’t start too early in the kid’s life exposing him to the right kinds of lessons. Lessons that Cyrus wanted to last for all the generations to come.

Cyrus picked up an armload of firewood on his way up to the little white house he’d built for Ruth, reminded yet again that the house was not close enough to the barn. But Ruth had wanted it there, on the gentle slope of a grass-covered hill with a view of Once Wide Creek meandering westward through the widening valley. So that’s where it was, and would be, for longer than he expected to live. And now she was down in the town.

Walking carefully through the growing darkness, Cyrus looked up toward the new moon and wished to God that none of little Adam’s lessons in ownership would involve killing. Startled, Cyrus wondered if he had said that out loud and looked back over his shoulder, relaxing as he saw a lantern light up in the bunkhouse and the forms of all three boys through the south window. No need to let them know he’d ever asked for anything—not even from God.

Three days after Cyrus killed the boy, he was in a sad state. He couldn’t sleep more than an hour at a time and hadn’t been able to keep anything in his stomach but boiled potatoes. He couldn’t let the hired hands see him this way, so he told Joseph to let Jesse and the Swede know he was going up to the high country to round up the steers scattered by the storm.

Joseph knew he wasn’t to question Cyrus, but he looked sideways at him as he nodded assent, hoping for an explanation, which did not come. Cyrus was not in the habit of explaining himself, and Joseph had grown to accept that sometimes Cyrus’ reasoning would become clear later on, and sometimes he would simply never know.

Joseph also knew there was a good deal of serious work wanting to be done in the vicinity of the home place, and knew it must be weighing heavy on Cyrus’ mind, so Joseph told Cyrus he’d make sure the hay got put up while Cyrus was gone.

Cyrus seemed a little surprised and thanked Joseph, which set Joseph to worrying because that was two things he’d never seen on his boss’ face: surprise and gratitude. What the hell, he wondered, had happened up country with the Indians?

Cyrus saddled the sorrel gelding. He was a strong horse and smart on the trail and experienced with both Cyrus and cattle. Cyrus didn’t know for sure how long he was going to be out. Long enough to get himself together, however long that took. He packed a cast iron skillet, an oiled canvas tarp, two wool blankets, an unopened red netting sack of Idaho spuds, two big onions with mildew spots and questionable durability, and a sorely worried chunk of salt pork he filched from the bunk house while the boys were out. There was an unbothered slab of the same in the spring house if anyone cared enough to look.

It would have been normal for Cyrus to tie on the brown leather saddle scabbard containing his .44 Henry, but the heft of it caused a vivid memory of the boy to flash through his mind and make his stomach roll.

The last thing he packed represented what was high in his mind. It was a black leather-bound King James Bible that belonged to Ruth. As terrible as it was, killing the kid was an accident, and he didn’t think he’d be held accountable for it, but he wanted to look for some comfort in that little book. Hell, he thought, they killed whole nations back in the old days. The good book said that God Himself had done that. But for Cyrus it wasn’t about a nation of people; it was about the one kid he had killed, and he wasn’t God.

Cyrus knew he would have to return with the stranded cattle in tow, but he also knew he had something else that needed to be done, so he headed toward the spot where the ribbon of water from the Sycamore Spring joined with Alder Creek a half-mile above the Once Wide Creek. There was a patch of ground there with a lot of blood on it, and asleep or awake, it was what he had to look across to see anything else.

The day Cyrus left the stone holding corrals near his ranch house was a day that changed both his heart and his heritage. He left in the early afternoon so he would be in that place he wanted to be when it was time to set up camp. As he approached the place, the sun had set and the air was still, that moment between the rise of the day’s warmth up the slope and the sinking of evening’s cool, gently settling down toward the valley. Cyrus reined in the sorrel gelding a little before the bend in the trail that opened out onto the place he couldn’t get out of his mind. He asked once more for either forgiveness or comfort. Both requests felt honest, he just didn’t know how to address his plea. Was he talking to the boy, as though he might hear? God, as though there was one? Or was he dealing with his own conscience?

While Cyrus was in his reverie, the sorrel took his head, picked his way carefully along the stony trail and delivered Cyrus to his destination. When he came to himself and his vision focused, the sorrel had stopped.

Standing in the trail before him was a small girl, perhaps 5 or 6 years old, wearing a midnight blue skirt and light blue denim jacket, both soiled to the point their colors nearly blended. Her black hair was long, straight, and held a smattering of twigs and leaves. She had a smear of dirt on her left cheek and scowled at Cyrus through her dark eyebrows. Cyrus quickly scanned the area around them, but seeing no one, and noticing the sorrel’s ears and eyes were focused fully on the girl, decided she was alone. He asked anyway, but she said nothing, did not move, and continued to scowl. Perhaps she did not speak English.

The sorrel extended his head and nuzzled the girl’s cheek. She giggled and slapped his nose gently. The sorrel bobbed his head up and down, and then looked back at Cyrus.

“Well, all right,” he said, dismounted, and sat on a rock beside the girl.

“Do you speak English?” he asked again, but slower and louder, enunciating each word. The scowl returned and again she did not speak.

The horse turned sideways in the trail and the girl’s nostrils flared and she pointed her chin toward the saddle bag. Cyrus followed her eyes and saw the top of the red netting of the bag of potatoes sticking out and became aware of the onion smell.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

Again she did not respond

Cyrus led the sorrel to the creek and removed the saddle and bridle to let him graze. He collected wood and fried a potato with some onion. The girl watched intently and, still standing, hastily ate all of it when offered.

“Would you like more?” he asked.

The girl nodded yes. Cyrus reached for a potato, then paused and looked at the girl, knowing now she did speak English but wondering how much. Her scowl was gone, but she was far from smiling.

He heard a scrub jay off to his left scolding an intruder and wondered if he and the girl were the focus of his displeasure, or if perhaps they were not alone. “Are you with others?” he asked. She shook her head no. Cyrus wondered if she had been with those he saw running away after he’d shot the boy. She didn’t seem to recognize him if she was. But what explanation could there be for her to be here alone?

Cyrus sat, looking into her eyes, so dark brown they looked black in the evening light. He listened to the breathing of his horse and the clatter of dry leaves rising and falling as the first gust of night wind passed among the trees. He heard the gentle splash of the creek a few feet away where the high country water was taking its time getting over a log on its early fall journey down in to the valley. He felt the wind move the hair on the back of his hand, felt his pulse in his temples, felt the ache in his lower back from too much riding, and the pressure of the emptiness that had filled his gut for the past three days. He heard and felt everything around him and within him, but the only thing he saw was the life in the girl’s eyes.

When the girl had eaten another potato, Cyrus offered her his saddle blanket as bedding. The girl turned and ran a few feet into the trees where she retrieved a wool blanket and a bandana. She pulled a piece of dried meat from the bandana and offered it to him.

The following morning, as the sun lightened the undersides of high clouds, Cyrus decided it was time to take care of the business he had come for. He retrieved the Bible from his saddle bags, pointed across the hillside toward the grave, then walked slowly toward it. After a few steps he looked back. The girl stood by their morning fire watching him walk away. She glanced at the horse, now tethered to a picket, and perhaps, he thought, decided he was not leaving for good. He didn’t hear her following, but when he arrived at the grave, she was right behind him. He stopped, looked up to the sky, and then knelt. She walked past him to where she could see his face. She looked puzzled. Either she did not know about the boy or had not been with his small band. Either way, he felt relief. He wasn’t sure he had the words to explain what had happened even if she spoke excellent English.

Cyrus knew little about a funeral service for someone of the Christian faith and was totally lost for how to proceed with the boy. Then he decided the service was as much for himself as for the boy and opened the Bible at random and read aloud. He did this three times. The reading took an hour. He had no idea if anything he read meant anything to God. It didn’t to him. But when he was through, he felt as though an obligation had been fulfilled.

The Indian girl sat on a boulder on the hillside above him, and did not interrupt. Did she understand and respect something of the religious rite he had performed? More likely she was showing a child’s patience with yet another thing adults did that she did not understand.

It caught him by surprise when he blurted out, “I’m not a killer. Not by nature. And I’ve had more than enough of it for this lifetime.” He turned and made sure he had caught her eye. “So, if you are with your family or others, I’ll not hurt them. You can call them in.”

The scowl returned for a moment, and then she cocked her head to the side, looked puzzled, and shrugged. Cyrus also shrugged and headed back to their camp.

At noon he saddled the horse, and to his surprise she grabbed the mane, mounted with surprising agility and rode away. He was starting to wonder if he’d met a horse thief when he heard the hoofbeats returning. She dismounted and let Cyrus climb in the saddle, and then, again without stirrups, hopped onto a nearby log, grabbed the cantle, and vaulted over the croup, settling in behind him. Cyrus was impressed. And he decided she was older than 6.

“I can’t keep calling you Girl, so what’s your name?” When there was no response, he put his hand to his chest and said, “Call me Cyrus.” Slapping his chest again, he said, “Cyrus.”

She responded immediately with something that sounded to Cyrus as We Ah Mah, but after trying it out a couple of times, Cyrus said, “How about Wilma?”

The girl scowled, but she was behind him and he couldn’t see, so that was what he called her.

Cyrus stayed near their camp for another day to see if anyone came for her, and when no one did, figured he’d best get back to finding the strays. He would check back when they were finished to see if anyone had come by, thinking he was a good enough tracker to follow them if they did. So he pointed to the high country and said simply, “Stranded cattle.” She looked to the mountains, nodded, and off they went with Cyrus still wondering exactly how much the girl understood.

Cyrus had carried a serious load of guilt into the mountains with him. Now, riding into the upcountry and smelling the pine forests, he felt glad to be alive. It was early fall, but something about the day reminded him of spring. The events of the past few days were so strange he hardly recognized himself, and he wondered if perhaps he had died and was working his way through some form of an afterlife. He knew he was not in heaven because he was on a cattle ranch, but his path on this day seemed a long way from the hell he’d experienced since killing the boy.

Together they found the cattle. Cyrus thought himself to be a decent tracker, but Wilma saw signs that he missed, and when she did, admonished him with a shake of her head. And when he ran the gelding to head off a particularly feisty yearling intending to go its own way, she had whooped. It was a joyful sound, and one he believed she could not have made without smiling, though he couldn’t make it out. But he smiled, for he also enjoyed moving swiftly on horseback through a beautiful landscape.

Once, after snacking on jerky in a meadow surrounded by aspen, Cyrus noticed Wilma staring at the Sierra skyline. He asked if her people were there. She shook her head and went to fetch the horse. Cyrus wondered if he ever would know how or why she was where she was. Maybe, if she stayed, she would someday remember, or learn enough English words to explain.

Unclear about what brought the two of them together, and uncertain for how long, each accepted their fate, collected the wayward cattle, and herded them back to the stone corrals. Cyrus wondered what life she had led that made her content to ride horseback 10 hours each day, eat only potatoes and onions, and herd cantankerous cattle.

A little girl couldn’t live with the boys in the bunkhouse, so Cyrus set up a place for her in the barn until he could build something more suitable. His definition of suitable wasn’t much more than a lean-to shack on the side of the barn. By the time he had it built, he had found a widow woman from down in Exeter to come up and be a momma to the girl. Sarah was her name, and she knew how to live on a ranch and how to raise kids, and she turned the lean-to into a respectable living space. Sarah and Wilma made themselves a part of the ranch, gardening and helping with cattle, as well as some sorely needed but seldom noticed housecleaning.

In October, soon after a storm, when the high mountains wore their first white winter coat, Ruth died while having their second baby. The baby died, too.

Cyrus buried Ruth on a hill above the ranch with a grand view of the Once Wide Valley. But he didn’t feel like he had time for grief. Cyrus moved Adam to the ranch, and Sarah now had two kids to raise. Then Cyrus dove into his work and didn’t let up for four years. The hired hands had trouble keeping up. He fired them when they didn’t.

Joseph lasted. The others didn’t. Joseph looked a little peaked by the end of the fourth year. But he knew he was born to work cattle, so he stayed with it.

In the winter of ’69, Sarah died of a nasty infection from a snake bite.

Adam, 11, and Wilma, somewhere in her teens, were on their own, because Cyrus never allowed another woman to live on the ranch.

Wilma went to high school in Visalia and then to San Francisco for nurse’s training, and Adam, who stayed on the ranch with Cyrus, lost track of her. He remembered her as having long, straight, black hair, dark brown eyes, a muted, but biting sense of humor, and a softness she seemed only to show when it was just the two of them. At times he felt uncomfortable with how attractive he remembered her to be.

The year Adam turned 30, Wilma came back to the ranch for a visit. Two months later, Adam visited Wilma in San Francisco. They returned to the ranch married and over the following five years had three healthy kids—Bradford, Lawrence and Sally. Cyrus died in 1890, attended lovingly by Adam and Wilma.

In 1920, Bradford, son of Adam, grandson of Cyrus, had a boy and named him Charles. In the following five years Bradford and Charlene had two more children, David and Julie. Charlie was quite large for his age, so everyone called him “Buck.”

When Buck was 6, his Aunt Sally brushed his straight black hair out of his blue eyes and told him stories of what she had been told and what she believed must have been left out. Stories about how his great-grandfather Cyrus fought to keep his ranch, even killed a few interlopers when he had to. She thought they were good stories. So did Buck, who, in the way of children, counted them as true.

Bradford turned out to be a no-account, given to heavy drink and gambling. Sally figured if the youngster had to look past his own daddy to have someone to look up to, it might as well be someone similar to the now legendary cattle rancher, Cyrus J. Wilson. It was through these slanted biographical stories of his great-grandfather that Buck learned what it meant to be tough. And he learned one lesson well: Do what you need to do to keep the land. Kill if you have to, like Cyrus had to. But keep the land.

Buck was 16 when his father did the unthinkable. Bradford got drunk on a Saturday night, and in a game of pinochle lost a third of the ranch land.

Although Buck would never say it to anyone because he thought it far too strange, he firmly believed that his father’s unthinkable act was in some way linked to his horribly gruesome death.

On a Saturday night during a two-day drinking binge, Bradford Cyrus Wilson was chasing a losing streak in a poker game and ran out of cash. His competitor, Dalford Hobson, known around the Orange Blossom Bar and Pool Hall as Dally, was a skinny dry goods sales clerk with a face that reminded Bradford of a weasel. Bradford considered the man to be a ne’er-do-well with little ambition, limited intelligence, and a body unlikely to last through half a hard day of real work. Bradford had played pinochle and poker with Dally nearly every Friday night of the previous two months and knew Dally was prone to streaks of winning followed by streaks of bad luck, whining and foul language. The man was a poor loser, but he was a certain loser, and the best strategy was to keep playing until Dally’s bad luck took over. It irked Bradford to ask his opponent for credit from the pile of cash on the table that he knew was mostly his own. But the bank was closed, and there were no friends there that night who could or would lend him money. And the thought of the look on Dally’s peaked face when he raked it all back in egged Bradford on, so he asked for a temporary loan. And he thought Dally a fool when he gave it to him.

Bradford subsequently asked Dally for credit for more hands than he had planned, and it was given to him each time he asked. And then the weasel-faced clerk proposed that Bradford put up a few acres of the ranch to cover the debt incurred. Bradford not only agreed, but when he lost those acres, he suggested throwing in a few more to keep the game going for a couple more hands. His offer was accepted. He lost those hands. With the desperate optimism of a drunk, Bradford firmly believed his luck absolutely had to change, so he raised the stakes, offered more land on the table, and demanded they play one last hand. Dally said, “Remember the Alamo, huh?” He bought Bradford yet another drink and agreed to one last hand. Bradford should have been surprised at how knowledgeable this dry goods clerk was of the landmarks that defined the acreage included in each of the agreements that were drawn up in writing for each advance of credit. He should have been suspicious of the careful inclusion of mineral and water rights. But his eyes were on winning, and he did not notice. And he should have noticed that each successive agreement included more and more valuable land. But Bradford had so little respect for the clerk that he did not consider the possibility there might be a design at work.

When the dust settled that night, Bradford had lost 8,320 acres—nearly one third of the ranch, and as would be talked about for years to come, exactly 13 square miles. Bradford didn’t appreciate fully how disastrous the loss was until a couple of days had passed, and he sobered up and got past his hangover. Then his family helped him to realize the lost parcel was the heart of the ranch. It stretched from the center of his formerly 40-square-mile ranch up into the low mountain meadows, it had half of the farmable land, a long stretch of access to the creek, and a workable balance of summer and winter pasture.

But the worst of the loss came in the following days while Bradford was in the process of arranging loans from his bank and his neighbors and his family so he could buy the parcel back. Dally sold it.

Not wanting to sell the unlucky 13 square miles as one parcel, Dally split it into a 320-acre parcel and an 8,000-acre parcel, and found two cash buyers before Bradford knew what was happening. Both buyers had plans for the land and rebuffed Bradford’s offers to buy their newly acquired land at a profit. Both said the land was more important to them than the money, a sentiment the now sober Bradford understood.

Bradford, normally a boisterous man, became morose, seldom spoke and never smiled. People who only knew of him found something to laugh about in Bradford’s bad luck and sullen disposition. People who knew him well were worried and found there was no consoling him. Though only 16, Buck recognized the magnitude of the loss, knew he would live with the aftereffects of his father’s poor judgment for a very long time, and had no inclination to offer consolation.

Six months after the sale and three months after Bradford had given up hope of buying the land back, as he was tilling one of his remaining fields in preparation to plant field corn, Bradford had a fatal accident. The local papers either referred to it as a “farming accident” or more precisely as a “tractor accident.” Of course, everyone knew these to be the euphemisms for “he fell off his tractor and was run over by two 10-foot-wide sets of steel discs secured a foot apart and effectively designed for the first set to slice into the top half foot of hard soil and turn it over one way and then the second set to slice it again and turn it back the other way.” It was no surprise to anyone that the funeral service did not include an open casket viewing.

By the time he was 16, Buck was as big as any full-grown man in the county. He was intelligent and as driven as a badger, and he took over the management and, when his schooling allowed, the operation of the ranch.

When Aunt Sally asked him what he wanted for his 17th birthday Buck replied, “The piece of the valley Dad lost in the card game.”

Sally said, “Well, son, that might be a little difficult to arrange.”

“I’ll get it,” was all he said.

That was the year Dalford Hobson was believed to have left town. Dally’s banker, curious why he hadn’t seen one of his best-heeled customers in the bank for some months, asked around about Dally but was met mostly with unconcerned shrugs. The old cowboy on the corner gave it some thought and remembered he had seen Dally in the back room of the Orange Blossom Bar playing poker on a weekend, Saturday maybe, and late in the night, midnight maybe, he drew a decent hand, full house maybe, and broke even for the night. Cowboy said Dally collected his chips, and sauntered out the back door. Consistent with his sullen nature, Dally said nothing to anyone when he left. Honoring Dally’s privacy, or perhaps finding it forgettable that Dally was not around, his banker waited three years before mentioning to the police chief that Dally’s sizeable bank account had not been touched during that time. The chief, not knowing where to start on such a problem that might not be a problem and if it was, was an old problem, suggested they wait to see if he might call for it in the future.

Young Roland had a few things going against him. As his growth did not keep up with the other kids, some called him Runt. And, since his father absented himself as soon as he found out about the pregnancy, some called him Dogie, which had a similar meaning but was less harsh sounding than Bastard. But, perhaps fortunately, it was his pale complexion that reddened even in the faint winter sun that gave him the nickname that stuck: Pinky.