The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage

Author:Thomas Savage
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Psychological, Fiction, Westerns, Thriller, Classics, Literary
ISBN: 9781473523012
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2016-02-04T00:00:00+00:00

9

Mild were the days, the sun moving ever north; few calves froze before they could get to their feet and nurse; few were born crooked that year, spines frozen into the letter S or hoofs so turned they walked on the sides of them; that spring few calves were born dead — slim pickings for the magpies who bright-eyed watched each birth with heads cocked to one side. Slim pickings, too, for the gaunt coyotes who prowled the fringe of the willows that blushed with spring.

The snow began retreating above the timberline, bluebells grew out of their velvet foliage among the sagebrush, small birds skimmed the ground searching out nesting places. Now branding began — three thousand calves. Phil had castrated fifteen hundred head, marveling that this knife he held in his hands, the castrating edge worn down from a hundred keenings, had desexed fifteen thousand bull calves. And there had been a knife before that and one before that. As the last calf struggled to its feet and loped, shocked and spraddle-legged with pain, to join the herd, Phil looked across at the sun that sank fast in the west; there was so much bawling in the corral a man couldn’t hear himself think, so much dust a man choked. Who wouldn’t be tired after a week of branding? He wiped the little blood off the blade on his pants leg and then snapped the blade back in. Somehow he nicked his thumb, and a little blood began to flow. He reached around to his pocket for his bandanna.

Son of a bitch! he said. Castrate fifteen hundred head and then nick your thumb when you’re finished! But he healed easily, and he grinned. ‘Well, Fatso, I guess we’re finished.’ And got to his feet and kicked dirt over the dying fire.

George finished coiling up his rope and walked over and tied it to the pommel of his saddle. ‘Guess you’re right,’ he said. Outside the corral the dogs lay with their noses between their paws, resting but watching, no longer interested in testicles. Two young cowboys who had wrestled calves shrugged their sweaty bodies back into their blue chambray shirts.

‘Yup,’ Phil said. ‘Finished.’

On the day that Peter came to the ranch from Herndon, the men were trailing cattle to the forest, cows and calves whose new brands were already beginning to peel; the fresh leaves of the sagebrush, bruised by the hoofs of the trailing cattle, gave off a heavy odor. Ahead, the mountains were vast and cool.

Much of the flat across which they now trailed cattle had been taken up by dryland farmers, and rusty barbed wire fences blocked the original trail to the mountains; here and there the herd had to zigzag to get around; the fact always angered Phil. The drylanders were foreigners, for the most part, Finns and Swedes and such, and he had not much use for foreigners, and none at all for farmers. The shacks of log or clapboard covered with tar paper,

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