The first time I heard of the sinkhole was last winter, when Curtis and I went up to feed the cattle that were stranded behind Hobbes Butte. It was bitterly cold with heavy snowfall and weeks of gray sky. Striker, who managed the Crazy J, told us to head up to the butte and see if we couldn’t get feed up to forty head of cattle that were stranded there by the last, bad storm. Striker hadn’t wanted me to go, saying things like a woman only got in the way and slowed everything up, but in the end, there was no one else and Curtis couldn’t have gone alone.
Curtis and I left the Crazy J ranch with two tons of hay piled on the back of a one-ton pickup. I had on my hat, my sheepskin coat, and the heaviest boots I could borrow that fit me. My duffel bag was in the back and packed with everything warm I owned and a couple of extra gloves I’d found in the shed. The weather cleared just before we left. There was still snow on the ground, but Curtis said he thought the roads were passable.
Curtis drove and swore and spit the whole way there. He nosed the pickup through frozen drifts that were higher than the marker flags on the sides of the road. I stared out the foggy side window at the brittle, ice-white plains and 10-foot snow drifts and thought about moving to Arizona in the spring. Northeastern Utah is a desolate place. I’d moved out here from California when I first married and stayed even after Jake died. Curtis had been raised not more than ten miles from the ranch. He’d grown up with cattle and wind and hard winters. I knew he’d stay here forever, spitting and cursing and taking care of the cows.
By mid-day, the sky was still clear and the snow was crusty and glared beneath the low, winter sun. It wasn’t too cold inside the truck with the heater on, but frost was building up on the back window and I could see my breath.
We made it to the range cabin by late afternoon. The cabin was made from rough weathered wood and had a dull tin roof. Ranch hands used it when they had to spend the night out while they were herding or branding or mending fences. There was an old, broken-down barn barely covering a stack of wood standing out behind the cabin. We parked the truck as close as we could to the front door, but even so we had to clear two drifts and wade our way over to the cabin in snow that climbed up to my thighs.
I shoved open the door and stamped my feet, trying to get warm. As the day had gotten darker, the truck had gotten colder and my feet felt like I’d left them about twenty miles down the road. Inside the cabin, there were two flat white bunks with thin blankets, an old wood-burning stove, and a small table with two wooden chairs propped against the wall.
Curtis yelled that he’d bring in the sacks of groceries and I yelled back that I’d get a fire going. I started the stove with a small pile of wood left inside the cabin, and then made up a pot of coffee. I put away the canned goods, keeping up with Curtis as he brought them in. When he’d finished unloading the truck, he split up enough wood from the pile to keep us warm for a day or two.
It was dusk by the time we were settled in. Curtis decided it was too dark to do anything about the cattle. He said we should just be ready to start out first thing in the morning. We made up our bunks and I opened a can of stew for dinner.
Curtis paced around the inside of the cabin, waiting for the stew to heat. Finally, he sat down on his bunk and pulled out a bottle of blended whisky from his duffel bag. “Take a swallow, girl.” He held it out to me. He always called me ‘girl’. I didn’t think there was that much difference in our age, but with Curtis it was hard to tell. He was like the land; brown and hard and cracked from the sun.
I said, ”Okay, thanks” and picked up the bottle. I took a stinging mouthful, telling myself it was medicinal, while Curtis lit a cigarette. He blew out a smoke ring and when I passed him back the bottle, he took a long, hard swallow.
“Ever stayed here before?” He looked at me curiously with his creased, narrow eyes.
“I was here a few days with Stanford when they were branding.”
“Those boys leave you alone?”
“I work and they work and everybody sleeps alone at night.” Which was true, range work was exhausting.
“What’s a woman doing working as a ranch hand, anyway?”
“Same as you, Curtis. Trying to get by.”
Curtis raised one eyebrow and then nodded his head. “Well, you do a good day’s work, now and then, girl. You just need to get yourself a man.” He took another swallow from the bottle and then stared at me, waiting for an answer.
“I had a man, Curtis. He died.”
“Well, get yourself another one.” Curtis inhaled deeply and sent blue smoke spinning out across the room.
“I don’t want to.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Suit yourself. Sometimes it’s best to stay alone. It’s easier.”
That was the closest Curtis had ever come to saying anything personal to me. I didn’t spend a lot of time alone with him, so it’s not like we talked every day, but he was a closed man and quiet. There were stories that he’d had a young wife who’d run off.
Curtis leaned back in his chair, balancing it against the wall behind him. He turned to stare out the window and then said, “You know, girl, there’s nothing out here that a man would ever want and some things he’d best never see.”
I smiled and pulled my chair closer to the stove and sat down. I knew Curtis well enough to know that there was always a story, especially when there was whiskey and food.
“Indians won’t come up here to the Butte,” he continued.
“Why not?” I turned around in my chair for a second and stirred at the stew that was starting to bubble.
“It’s haunted.” He stopped and stared out the window in silence.
While I waited for him to start talking again, I stuck the spoon in my mouth to lick it off and burnt my tongue. My eyes watered and I swore under my breath.
“Ever hear of the sinkhole?” Curtis narrowed his eyes and stared across the room at me, holding the bottle out in front of him.
“Nope.” I reached out took a swallow before passing it back.
Curtis snorted. “How long you been here, now?”
“Four years.”
“And you never heard of the sinkhole?”
“Nope.” I was getting hot from sitting so close to the stove, so I pulled off my jacket and tossed it over on my bunk. Curtis watched me, waiting until I’d finished before he started on his story again.
“It must have happened over a hundred years ago, I guess, when the government was still driving the Indians out west, driving them off their own soft dirt and on to the hard plains. Damned government sent whole tribes out, just told them to start walking. Ever know any Indians?”
I nodded and said, “A few.” One of my best friends was Mary Walking Coyote.
“John Blackbird is the best damned horse man I’ve ever seen. I used to hunt rabbit with him,” Curtis said as he eyed the hot stew with interest.
I pulled the pan off the stove and dished it up. Curtis took his bowl and carefully blew on the first hot spoonful before he put it into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully and then said, “Must have been Cheyenne, maybe Shoshone, who were sent through here, right past the Butte, and it was in the dead of winter. I don’t know how long they’d been walking by the time they got here, maybe months, and there was no food. Their chief had long since died, and they were being led by a medicine man, a crazy medicine man named Half Pony.
“They were near dead and the kids were all starving when Half Pony decided there was nothing left for them to do but die unless he did something.” Curtis stared down at the steam rising up from the stew. He stirred the stew with his spoon a few times and then blew on it before he continued.
“There’s a big, wide hole in the ground just east of Hobbes Butte. It’s like something slammed down and then disappeared. That’s where Half Pony took what was left of his tribe.”
Curtis took another hot bite of his stew then wiped off his lips with the back of his hand and nodded at me as he said, “Girl, he led them all right down into that wide empty hole and told them to just sit there. Then he did something, something that made the ground and the air in the sinkhole start to get colder and colder until it froze those Indians quick as lightning. Froze them solid for the whole winter, damned if he didn’t.” Curtis whacked at the table with his hand.
“When spring came, when the snow was gone, damned if those Indians didn’t unfreeze and walk right out of that sinkhole, good as new. There was fresh water and spring game to hunt. They rested and ate their fill until they were strong again and then they set back off for where ever it was they was going. Half Pony wasn’t with them, though. It seems that whatever he did, whatever the magic was, it took his spirit in trade. What was left of Half Pony stayed with the sinkhole.”
Curtis scraped at the bottom of his bowl, licking the spoon clean before he said, “That sinkhole never gets warm, even in the summer. In the winter, at the bottom, it’s colder than the North Pole. There’ve even been government men up messing around, digging holes in the ground, trying to figure it out. The Indians stay away. They think Half Pony’s still there, like a ghost.”
I pushed what was left of my stew around with my spoon and scooped up the last mouthful, shaking my head at Curtis. “You believe that story, Curtis?”
“Sometimes you can hear him.”
“Who?”
“Half Pony. You can hear him beating on his drum and shaking that rattle of his.”
The wind began to pound against the small windowpane, making it rattle. I stared over at Curtis.
“You trying to scare me?”
“Hell no, girl. I’m just telling you so you’ll know.”
The stew was gone and the fire was burning down. I was close to being asleep in my chair when Curtis sat up straight and said, “Pretty good magic that Half Pony had, don’t you think?” I nodded my head and pushed myself over to my bunk and flopped down. I was too tired to undress.
The next morning after we both had coffee, we dressed as warm as we could and headed out in the pickup toward Hobbes Butte. Curtis was worried about the weather. There was a bank of heavy clouds growing on the western horizon and he said it was a sure sign of snow. We had a thermos of coffee with us and every time we opened it, the steam fogged up the windows.
The road to the Butte was so drifted over that the only way we knew we were still on it was by the black flag markers to each side. Finally, we rounded a corner and saw a good forty head of cattle about a quarter mile in front of us, snuggled up against the north side of the Butte. Curtis said it was time to unload and that the damn cattle could walk the rest of the way to the hay. He stopped the truck dead in the middle of the road.
“Where’s the sinkhole?” I wiped the frost off the side window and stared out.
“Right past that rise.” Curtis pointed to a shallow rise not far from the truck. There was no way to see what was behind it.
I pulled on my gloves and opened the door. The wind had picked up and was blowing the cold, loose snow in a steady stream across the hard, crusted snow. I pulled my hat down tight and pushed my collar up. Curtis and I climbed up on the back of the pick-up and started throwing off the heavy, frozen bales.
I can work as well as a man. I’m tall and strong-boned and have worked horses and cattle since I was sixteen. But that day out on Hobbes Butte was the hardest work I’d ever done. The bales were heavy and frozen solid with ice. Just getting them off the truck was almost impossible. The wind was bitter enough to cut right through my coat. Even by the time I’d built up a sweat, the cold froze my feet and made the side of my face go numb.
Curtis kept swearing and working alongside of me, glancing up at the sky every now and then to check on the changing weather. When the sky faded to a vague, gray color that matched the ground, the snow began to fall.
“Let’s call it done, girl!” Curtis yelled at me. I nodded my head and jumped down off the truck, wincing as my numb feet jarred against the crust of snow. I fumbled with the door handle and climbed into the cab. When Curtis climbed in from the other side, I could see that the hair under the front of his hat and his eyebrows were frozen a hard, icy white.
As soon as we’d been in the truck and breathing for a minute, the windows fogged up and frosted all the way around. “Damn.” Curtis pulled off his gloves and stared down at his bright red hands. “They don’t pay a man enough to do this. If there weren’t some yearlings in that herd, I’d never come up here.”
I pulled off my own gloves and tried to feel my fingers. They were red with some patches of gray right at the tips. I carefully opened the thermos and poured what was left of the coffee into two cups. We drank it in silence, listening to the wind pick up and start to howl around the truck.
Curtis rubbed at a patch of frost on the window and stared out and then reached inside his coat for a cigarette. He lit it, letting it dangle from his lips, still staring out the window. “We got to get out of here,” was all he finally said.
He bent over and turned the key in the ignition while he stamped on the gas pedal. Nothing happened. The engine didn’t even cough. The wind buffeted the truck hard enough to make it rock back and forth.
Curtis let out a stream of words that were close to invention and then pushed open the door. “Try starting her up. I’ll check the terminals on the battery,” he yelled at me over the howl of the wind. So, I sat in the truck, the pedal pressed to the floor and flipping the ignition on and off while Curtis leaned in under the hood. He made me stay in there while he worked outside under the steady stream of that freezing wind.
I was worried about the truck, about Curtis, and about getting back to the cabin. “Curtis!” I finally yelled at him as loud as I could at the same time the truck started up. It was slow and sluggish at first, but built to a roaring rumble. Exhaust poured out behind us of the tail pipe and Curtis jumped in beside me, almost sitting on me and not even waiting for me to move over to my side of the seat. “Hold on, girl.”
He drove hunched over the wheel and wiping at the windshield to keep it clear as he steered the truck through the heavy drifts. I don’t know how he did it, but he got us down from the Butte. When the truck finally slid into a hard, ice-packed drift about fifty feet away from the cabin, we had to get out and walk, but we’d made it.
As soon as we got inside the cabin, I started rumpling newspaper and breaking up splits for the fire. I didn’t take off my coat or gloves until the fire was going and the ice on me had started to drip into puddles on the floor.
It took Curtis a long time to get off his boots. I had to help him pull and once they were off it was easy to see that his feet were badly frostbitten. They were bright red and swollen and there were patches of gray on his toes. Mine weren’t much better, but my boots were easier to get off. After he pulled his boots off, he just lay back on his bunk.
I made up coffee and started heating a can of soup. Curtis was mostly quiet and he hadn’t moved once by the time the soup started to boil.
“Curtis?” I started dishing out the soup but he didn’t answer me. I guessed that he was asleep and I didn’t feel like waking him until I thought I heard something over the howl of the wind, some faint sound. I looked over at Curtis. I couldn’t see his face. It was turned to the wall.
“Did you hear something, Curtis?” When he didn’t answer me, I walked over to his bunk and was ready to shake his shoulder until I saw his face. It was gray and there was a low, rumbling noise coming from his chest. “Curtis!” I yelled as I shook him.
The wind picked up and pounded against the loose cabin boards. I thought I heard something that sounded like a rattle, something that made my skin crawl and I shook Curtis harder. “Did you hear that?” I grabbed hold of his hand, trying to sit him up on the bunk.
The soup still steamed on the table. I stared down at Curtis, wondering what to do. His breath was shallow and uneven and everywhere I touched him, he felt cold. There was no way I could get him back to the ranch that night, or even in the morning.
I sat down on the bunk next to him and then leaned down, hugging him against me and trying to keep him warm. I heard something outside the window, something faint and far away like the sound of a drum.
“Curtis, damn you, wake up!” I shook him and then held him against me again. His cheek was rough and as cold as ice.
“Curtis.” I put my head down on his chest, while I held him, trying to squeeze back tears. I didn’t know what to do for him. The wind jangled behind me at the window. For a moment, I imagined pulling Curtis out to the truck and somehow driving him to the sinkhole. I imagined leading him across the hard snow to a clearing where the moon shone full and the air sparkled and shimmered with frozen crystals that hung in the air. The edges of the sinkhole shone as if they’d been polished and the cold that poured up from the lip was a heavy, deep cold that burned whatever it touched.
Then it wasn’t Curtis I held in my arms, it was Jake, with Jake’s leg all bloody and him cursing and trying to kick out at the chain saw that had cut him so miserably. I tried to make the bleeding stop. I tied off his leg with his belt and we both pressed against the big bloody tear as hard as we could.
Jake had laughed at both us out there in the field, with the tree half down and the branches and his blood all around us and the horses going crazy in the next field.
I left him there. I had to while I ran back to the house to call for someone to come and help. By the time I ran back out to him with my arms full of dishtowels and potholders, grabbing anything I could think of to help stop the blood, he was dead. The last thing he’d said to me as I ran back toward the house was, “Better run fast, Missy, ’cause I don’t know if I can wait.” It seemed he couldn’t.
Curtis brought me back to my senses with a cough. I stared down at him, wishing that just staring and caring could help, could work some magic. I thought about what Curtis had said about the sinkhole, and saw it again for just a minute, saw how it lit up, so cold that it was almost like fire.
It was an interesting idea, freezing people until spring thaw. I thought about Half Pony and the sinkhole and then I started pulling off my clothes.
I pulled Curtis out of his frozen coat and pants and shirt and threw them on a chair. Then I grabbed a blanket off my bed to cover him with while I built up the fire, using as much wood as I could stuff into the little stove. When the stove started to throw out heat, I pulled the rest of Curtis’s clothes off. He was a cowboy, with a cowboy’s pale white skin that was in serious contrast to his deeply tanned hands, neck, and face. His body was younger than his face and full of long, wiry muscles. It had more than its share of deep cuts and dark bruises and old scars. I flipped the blanket back over him while I pushed the bunk as close as I could to the stove. Then I stripped down to my underwear, hopping from foot to foot while I pulled off my wet jeans.
It would have surprised Curtis to see my bra. It was shell pink and had see-through lace and wide, satin straps. I peeled off my bra and underpants and climbed underneath the blanket with Curtis. When I pulled him up against me, he was as cold as a stone.
We lay together like that all night. I rubbed him until my arms burned and I got up four times to stoke up the fire. By morning, I’d used up all the wood that Curtis had said should last us through the next three days, but the room was bearable. Sometime during the night, Curtis got warm.
At daybreak, I threw all the covers over on him while I stood up from the bed, shivering and naked in the morning light. My clothes were still wet and cold and so I grabbed up a sheet and wrapped it around me, then pushed my jeans and jacket closer to the stove. With that done, I stared out the window. The wind had died. From what I could see, it looked like a cold, clear day.
I put on coffee and listened to Curtis snore. It wasn’t a deep, wheezing sound anymore, just a normal, loud snore. When the coffee was ready, I leaned over and shook his shoulder.
“Curtis?” He rolled away from me, which I took to be a good sign. “Curtis, you want coffee?”
“Hell, yes.” It was his voice, deeper, but his voice.
It wasn’t until he sat up that he noticed he was naked and that all I had on was a sheet. “What in the blazes am I doing without any clothes, girl?” He glanced down under the sheet and then added, “And no underwear, neither.”
I shrugged my shoulders and held out a cup of coffee. “Needed to get you warm, Curtis,” was all I finally said.
“Did I miss out on much?” He stared nervously at me over the top of his coffee cup.
“Depends.”
He was quiet for a moment, drinking his coffee and staring out the window. “Am I right in thinking that you…?” He glanced up at me and left the rest unsaid. I nodded. Then he said, “I don’t know many men that would have climbed into bed with a goat like me.”
“I don’t know many women that would have done it, either, Curtis,” I laughed, and poured myself another cup.
“You know what I mean.” Curtis snaked an arm out from under the covers and grabbed his underwear off the floor where I’d dropped it.
We spent the better part of the morning staying warm and getting dry, then dressed. Curtis still couldn’t get his boots on. His feet were swollen and the toes looked gray. I heated another can of stew.
“I think we better try and get out of here while the weather holds.” Curtis glanced out the window and licked his spoon. “Think you can drive?”
“No.”
“I can’t.” Curtis held up his feet. “I can’t drive with these. I don’t even know if I can walk.”
I thought about it and then said, “I can drive.”
He leaned hard against me all the way out to the truck. We’d wrapped blankets around his feet to protect them and try and keep them warm.
“What made you think of it, girl, warming me like that,” he asked as I turned the key in the ignition and fired up the truck.
I waited until the engine had warmed up for a minute before I answered. “Half Pony.”
“What do you mean, Half Pony?” Curtis pulled a wrinkled cigarette out from his shirt pocket and let it dangle from his lips before he lit it.
“From the sinkhole.”
“Hell, that’s just a story, girl.”
“Well, I figured if he could freeze people, I could warm them up.”
Curtis didn’t say anything. He just smoked his cigarette and blew smoke rings at the window while I put the truck in gear and nosed us slowly up the road.
Once we were out on the main highway and clear of most of the drifts, Curtis said, “Ever think you might want to get a steak or beer or something?”
“Nope.”
He raised his eyebrows and turned to stare at me. “Why not?”
“My daddy told me never to mix work and pleasure.” I kept my eyes on the road.
“That so?” Curtis grinned under his hat.
–
Lynn K. Thorsen’s short fiction has appeared in several small literary magazines. She has a published collection of short fiction collection, “The Friends of Miss Emily Martine”, and is working on her second. Her career in marketing high-end technology began with using a short story as an example of her technical writing. She has been an epee fencer, as well as an avid skier.
© 2023, Lynn K. Thorsen
Halfway Down the Stairs 