Ride a Westward Wind

By Marc Haws

This is a fun-read western, but it is not pulp fiction. It’s a classic human conflict in a western setting, with serious philosophical issues. Think of “The Ox-Bow Incident,” the classic novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, but as readable as a Louis L’Amour western.

A young man finds himself an outsider among the rough hands of a western ranch in Idaho during the Great Depression. An impassable rift between the kid and the cowboys happens on a scorching hot day in August, when men’s tempers are boiling. The kid’s working partner that day is violently killed when he impulsively and violently confronts a vagrant believed to be trespassing across the ranch. Critical events during the seconds leading to the cowboy’s violent death are not clear. Unable to save his friend, the kid rides for help and a posse forms. The kid believes the cowboy’s provocation led to his own death. But the ranch hands in the posse are convinced the tramp caused the death, so they insist on hanging him.

Serious issues beset the kid and the ranch during the three difficult days after the death. The personal conflicts will be man-making for the young cowboy. The question is whether the posse will reflect and deal with its conflicts in a civilized way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665521154

Marc Haws

Marc Haws is an Idaho rancher, with a unique background. As a young man, he earned a doctoral degree in modern language and literature from a major university, then earned his law degree from another major university. He had a courtroom career of more than forty years as a prosecutor at the state and federal levels, while he has also taught as an adjunct professor at various colleges. Family, horses, writing, and argument are his passions. He has also raised seven kids. These unusual credentials uniquely qualify him to write about the conflicts of a young man growing into manhood on a ranch, and the legal and moral conflicts of a rough posse of cowboys wanting to hang a man.

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2021 Marc Haws. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/05/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2116-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2114-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-2115-4 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

The greatest human attribute is the will to change …

to quest, to forgive, and to become.

Through tough challenges, a kid can become a man.

With grudging reflection, the rough-hands of a ranch

posse can change their minds about a hanging.

But change only comes through conflict.

And the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.¹

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I t was a hot

hazy morning in August, when Willie Boy died. The sky was a huge magnifying glass, intensifying the sun. The air was still. The land was baking. It would be a scorcher. I could actually smell the heat.

That morning—August 17th—Willie Boy and I were riding colts for the XA Ranch on the Overland Trail, which used to be the Oregon Trail, back in the old days. It ran next to the Union Pacific rail line, side-by-side, right through the ranch. Riding green-broke horses was our job at the time. Willie Boy was pounding his sharp-rowel spurs into a big yellow mustang to get him to turn, and the young bronc gave him back what he deserved. The yellow gelding hunched his back to buck, and Willie Boy should have been paying attention, but he wasn’t. The half-breed was trying to turn the horse to look at something … far down the rails.

I squinted to see what Willie Boy was looking at. A lone figure seemed to be walking on the tracks. He was so far away that he was only a shimmering speck where the tracks merged in the distance. My eyes couldn’t focus the heat mirage where the rails disappeared.

Damn hobos! Willie Boy yelled, just as the dun-colored mustang leaped up, came down, and gave a big jump sideways. Willie Boy got bucked. His hat went off, and he landed hard on the baked clay of the roadway. He was lucky he didn’t hit his head on the crushed gravel or iron rails. Even his long black pony-tail wouldn’t have saved him from a cracked skull. But, luckily, he landed on his shoulders—not his head. He landed with his big brown fist still gripping a rein. With Willie Boy down, the yellow gelding tried to bolt. But Willie Boy leaped up—maniac mad, his forehead vein bulging—and started fighting with the colt. The mustang pulled back, wide-eyed. Willie Boy was big enough—with the help of the bit—to pull the horse around. And around they went, kicking up a dust cloud.

I sat deep in a bear-trap K—C saddle. My paint horse and I were watching Willie Boy fight with his colt. I considered how well-matched they were for each other. But I also kept my mind on my paint gelding. I was always ready for him to do like the dun. I had ridden the tobiano enough to know to be on my guard. He wasn’t hard, like the mustang. But he spooked easily. So, I watched Willie Boy wrestling with his dun.

Sonuva bitch! Willie Boy yelled. It was his favorite slur. Who could know the lineage of a mustang, but—at least figuratively—the yellow beast deserved the slur. Actually, it was intended as a compliment, I think, coming from Willie Boy. He liked a rank horse. After playing tug-of-war, Willie Boy changed his approach and soothed the pony. … Soooo, now … soo, there … until he could get close to put his toe in the stirrup. I knew his cooing was as insincere as Come here … come in … whispered in the dark by a girl I used to know. So, I also knew what was going to happen when Willie Boy got a seat in the leather. And I was right. The mixed-breed jabbed both rowels into the gelding’s flank—not to ride him, but daring him to buck. And the gelding took the dare. He hunched up, ducked his head, and shot up—spring-loaded. He was grunting and growling as he lashed out with both hind feet, then sun-fished, and finally he tried frog-walking. But the colt couldn’t unseat Willie Boy, and he finally wore down. I couldn’t understand why horse or horseman wanted to work out so much hot energy on a blistering day. But they were both sweated up.

Then Willie Boy turned his attention again to the place where the speck of a man had disappeared into the converging tracks.

The morning sun was baking the sagelands. It gave me a premonition of impending heat storm. It was only mid-morning, yet I saw winds coming up the Snake River canyon to meet the shimmering heat on the rim. They spawned twisting brown funnels. I watched two dust-devils fight on the distant prairie and die, falling off the rim of the canyon. I looked around for cattle, but I couldn’t see any. They also must have had a brute sense of doom. They had scattered to find shelter, shading-up on the cool sides of rock outcrops, or pawing out cool beds in the sand of dry creek beds under cottonwood trees or railroad trestles, or lying under tall sagebrush or creek willows.

Willie Boy must have spotted the tramp again, because he turned his mustang hard in that direction. He put his horse forward at a walk, then urged him into a canter. I still sat there, cursing the heat. I could feel sweat trickling down from my armpits. My paint horse would have been just as content as I was to stand idle. But he was afraid to be left alone. He started fighting with me, wanting to follow the yellow mustang.

Blast it! Just let him be! I yelled in aggravation at Willie Boy.

But he was either out of range or, more likely, headstrong. Willie Boy had a lethal strain of obstinacy. He wasn’t going to listen to me. He was intent on chasing off the ‘bo. It was a dangerous game the XA ranch hands played. Seeing hoodlums on the tracks that ran through the ranch, they would give chase as if it was a fox hunt. Down the Trail, up the ballast, over the UP tracks, headlong down some creek bank, up the other side, dodging through sagebrush, and leaping gullies. They would whip their horses to catch a tramp, only pulling back hard on the reins at a barb-wire fence or a drop-off into a ravine. The scamps ran for their lives, more afraid of the cowboys than the railroad bulls. In terror, the vagrants would leap down into chasms, or climb down trestles, or leap across cattle-guards, or dive under barb-wire fencing—anywhere a horse couldn’t follow. A few times I heard the XA cowboys in the bunk cabins laughing and bragging about shooting into the air, or popping up the dirt, just to watch the bums flee. I noticed how they never brayed about their vaunted deeds when the straw bosses were around. The wild west days were over, but the boys in the remote area of the XA Ranch still carried iron on the hip or long guns in the saddle boot.

Blast it, Willie Boy! Give it up! Let him alone! I yelled.

He was like a kid poking at something in the brush, not knowing if it was something dangerous to be left alone. Willie Boy ought to just back off. But he wasn’t going to hear it from me. He kept his horse at a lope, so I gave in and let the paint have the bit. With free rein, my gelding lit out like he thought he was running from the devil.

By mid-afternoon, a wind bomb was going to explode over the high desert. Hot brown dust would tower above the buttes. It would roll toward us like a mighty cloud of war. The sky would churn in dark umber. Heavy winds would blow grit, tear up brush and grass, rip branches off trees, and scream through barb-wire fences. There would be no rain in the storm, not even a sprinkle to settle dust or cool the air, let alone quench thirst.

That afternoon would be my first dust blizzard. We had been suffering through the Dog Days of August, which are the most trying time of the year in ranch country. Calves, separated and weaned from mama cows, bawled hoarsely and incessantly. Water stagnated, growing moss in soupy brown pools. Grasses and cottonwoods wilted in suffering gray. Puncture vines, tumbleweeds and Russian thistle sprang up out of the ground and invaded the land. Plagues of flies mercilessly pestered everything that lived. Yellow jackets stung aggressively. Angry rattlesnakes didn’t warn any more, they just struck. Prairie fires and forest fires seemed to ignite spontaneously, obscuring the sun with smoke. Dry storms sand-blasted the land with grit. It was unrelenting heat that caused this doom. And it brought out the worst in everything—horses, saddles, men and cattle, and anything made of wood, leather, flesh, or metal.

It was my first summer in ranch country and I noticed that, with the heat, volcanic tempers erupted among the ranch hands. Willie Boy’s vein-popping temper that morning would have bad consequences for him. And for me.

The dreaded premonition I felt that morning was not just about a furnace of hot wind and dust. Something else was churning inside of me. I couldn’t define it. It was an unsettled feeling from several months of being an outsider on the fringe of a bunch of rough cowhands. Maybe like the feeling a colt gets when the wranglers cut it out from the mustang band to be broke hard. That’s what I sensed was coming. Isolation, hard lessons, and change. I felt an impending storm of human events building up that would change my life. Before the clouds of dust and grit blew in that afternoon, a dark storm of man-conflicts would have already started blowing, following the death of the young impetuous cowboy. The circumstances of Willie Boy’s death would rupture any grudging tolerance I had attained with the cowhands on the XA Ranch. My conflict with the ranch hands—hell, my conflict with myself—would really blow up with Willie Boy’s impulsiveness and violent death.

It was August 17, 1932, the day Willie Boy died. The poor kid died hard and bloody. But I—a mere by-rider and his pard that day—I was the one who would become the focus of the story. He suffered a tragic death. And I would somehow be blamed that it wasn’t immediately revenged. The circumstances were ambiguous. I was there at the time of his death, but I couldn’t prove events the way the cowboys wanted the story to be. So they got the facts wrong, then raged for retribution. Somebody had to pay for Willie Boy’s death. They demanded it. In just three hot days in August, when I was eighteen, things got so twisted up that I—not Willie Boy—became the protagonist of the story he started.

Sun, wind, and trouble ... they would make a long and difficult day for me. A fatal day for Willie Boy. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

As I said, Willie Boy and I were pards that day. It’s a western term. A pard’s the guy you ride with. Cowhands usually become pards because they choose to ride together. If there’s a job to be done, they finagle the boss to assign them together. They go to town and whoop, and drink, and lust, and dust things up … daring trouble to start. And when trouble starts, pards fight back-to-back. If one’s down, the other stands over his buddy, puts up his fists and dares death. They share hard jobs, each toting his end of the load. They chum worse than herd-bound mares. They’re more than brothers. They share views, hardships, language, personality, humor … and smirking dislike of the boss or the cook. But Willie Boy and I were not pards by choice or disposition. We were assigned to work together, and that was only for a couple of months just before he died. But still, I guess, in a way we were pards.

Willie Boy was a big kid. Huge, actually. I was eighteen, born in Ohio, raised in Arizona. He was just a couple of years older than me, born in Idaho. In fact, he was born and raised right there on the XA Ranch, like the fatted calf. Being ranch bred, he was far ahead of me in cowboy ways. Willie Boy also had a huge voice to go with his big mouth. I never saw his mouth closed … eating, working, laughing or yakking. But Willie Boy was noisy in a happy rambunctious way, which almost made it ok. Sometimes, though, he was annoying as hell, and I had to get separation. When he got angry, a vein would pop out on his forehead, and that’s when I steered clear. He was a big talker, but not like a barroom boaster, the kind you hate their guts.

Ok, so I’ll just say this. Willie Boy was half-Indian. I think in some native cultures—probably his—a man sings his own praise, recounts his own big deeds, shows the coup he has taken or whatever. It’s ok to make yourself look strong and heroic. And Willie Boy had a big strain of Indian talk in him. He could ride, though, Willie Boy could. A helluva rider. Pity the horses that disobeyed when Willie Boy was aboard with his big-rowel Californio spurs. They’d get it hard in the gut. And if they fought back, then the battle was on, and Willie Boy was hard to buck off a horse. He was wide in the chest, round in the gut, and short in the legs. You’d think he’d be top-heavy and off-balance on a horse. But he wasn’t. He was smooth and natural. And it took a big horse to carry him. He didn’t ride the small ones, the ponies.

Willie Boy and I were assigned on the wrangler’s crew together … Wrangler Miles. I was as green as the horses we rode but I was learning fast, and so were they. And Willie Boy taught me a lot. But as to pards, we never considered ourselves pards. I never really had a pard, not on the XA Ranch. And if Willie Boy had a choice of someone to chum with, it was that blond kid, Miles G. Now he was a rogue. Miles G.—not Wrangler Miles. Similar names, different guys. Way different. Wrangler Miles was one of the straw bosses. Miles G. was a braying young jackass. He and Willie Boy were a duet. Miles G. was a boaster who billed himself as a scrapper, but I never saw anything he could base it on.

Anyway, by mid-August of 1932, the year I got to Idaho, Willie Boy and I were riding together. The land was burning up. Rain hadn’t fallen on the prairie since the first of June, seventy-seven days ago to be exact. I know, because each day the cowboys would gather ‘round and watch Cook draw another charcoal line in the running account he was charting on the box of the chuck wagon. Well, they didn’t gather ‘round just to watch him count. Nobody needed to tell them how long they had suffered through heat and drought. But Cook would add the tally just before he began dolloping out their breakfast. That’s why they paid attention. Seventy-seven times he had added a line to the ledger. There were fifteen tallies, with two ticks to start the sixteenth. They were easy to count. Watching Cook add a tick had become a morning ritual.

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But it was a cold day in March, 1932, when I stepped off the train in Idaho. Because I was sort of banished or exiled here, I was not thrilled about it. In fact, my first impression of the Gem State was a raw season in a scrawny land. But it was just the first of a hundred seasons I have now spent in Idaho. As I write this, I credit many miles, many troubles, and many seasons for making me into the kind of man—top-hand and range boss—that I wanted to be then. But the biggest change I ever experienced came hard during those three, hot days in August, 1932. I relive them vividly.

Since that March day when I arrived here in Idaho, I’ve never lived anywhere else. Idaho has etched itself into my skin and my soul. Going on three decades now, my wrinkles have been chiseled by wind, and sun, and all the troubles that accumulate with rough work and aging in a primitive land. Joining the XA Ranch was my start in ranching. Since then, I have studied books and led men. I have worked stock in the high desert where the 44th parallel intersects the 117th vertical, where six rivers come together, a land of prairies and mesas cut by arroyos and canyons, the land rising up in rimrocks and buttes, to foothills and mountain fronts, of cottonwoods, junipers, aspens and pines, of clump grass, sagebrush, bitterbrush, buckbrush, and tumbleweed, of siltstone, cobblestone, granite and volcanic basalt, all painted from a wild palette of cobalt, ochre, sage, yellow, crimson, and purple, under skies that can be painfully clear or doomsday opaque—but are always big—and where clouds are the emotions of the land, and each season’s a mood.

On that March day, as my boots stepped down in Idaho, there were only two weeks left of winter. A weak sun was getting pushed around by clouds. Stinging cold was riding on a stiff breeze. Bare tree branches were trembling, though they were alive with swelling leaf buds.

But seasons change fast, here. Three weeks later, April brought land-lush and warm sunshine. Wild irises edged the overflowing brown stream banks in yellow. Warm winds bent the tall veridian sheaves of Indian grass. Streams scrubbed their sandbars and shingle beaches. Rain washed away dust and winterkill. But I was still adjusting to it when spring vanished, and the heat began. And it never let up for the next five months.

It was not by choice that I had left Arizona’s low-desert sahuaros and had come to Idaho’s high-desert sagebrush. I was just getting comfortable in the Valley of the Sun when I was uprooted and sent to Idaho. But I guess my story really begins before either Arizona or Idaho. It started when my Mother died. Her death was my earliest recollection. Dad said she died from the Spanish Flu. But I don’t remember anything about that or my infancy with her. Yet I kept a tender longing for maternal attention which I never expressed. Dad was a handyman, a farm hand. When Mother died, we had nothing to stake us in Ohio. We only had each other. So we travelled. I was eight or nine, by that time. He figured for us to start a new life out west. That was always our dream, out west. We briefly visited aged grandparents I think in Toledo, whom I never saw again and barely remembered. Then, after wandering a bit Dad settled us in central Arizona. He worked at a copper mine in Globe. Mining was hard on his health. He was quite often sick. And it was hard on me because I was used to going to work with him, but could not accompany him into the mine. So, in my early teens, we moved down to farm country, to Chandler, in the Valley of the Sun. Before I was sixteen, I was stout enough to work with him in the fields and to start earning my way. Within a few months, hard times hit us. The Depression flattened us like everyone else. Life was grim. Yet we were some of the fortunate few who had occasional farm jobs. But a year later, Dad died. I think it was from mining poisons he had endured. We never had much, but I was left with less. I was truly on my own then.

Strange though, I didn’t feel doubt or self-pity, as some orphans often do. On the contrary, I was a brawny young man with a lust for work and for unfettered adventure. Had I been born a half-century earlier, I’m sure I would have joined the Pony Express, which hired reckless young riders— orphans preferred. After Dad died, another event radically changed my story. I was charged with a crime in Arizona, and was banished—strange as it sounds.

The Copper State convicted me and sent me away. Exiled me. My crime was unremarkable. A girl offered me a free ride on a route I’d never taken. At least, that’s how Judge Clark characterized it when he sentenced me. And so, Idaho became my lot through a court’s decision not by my choice, exactly. I didn’t know it then, but that adversity would be my big break.

I said my crime involved a girl, but that’s the last mention of a girl in my story. Don’t expect to find any heart-candy here. In cowboy stories there’s always a girl. A pretty girl. And in most stories, if the buckaroo really wants to, he can end up with her … but he always chooses not to, he always rides off into a lonesome sunset. Well, those stories’re just fiction. Mine’s a real story. And mine didn’t happen that way. As far as I’m concerned, there’s too much girl in my story already. She was pretty. And she was easy. And I took just one free ride before I wished she’d never offered me a ticket. But then again, if I hadn’t been on that route with her I never would’ve ended up in Idaho.

I’ve hinted enough about what I had done that earned me a one-way ticket to remote Idaho. What I had actually done with the girl was not depraved. Somebody—the girl, or more likely her folks—made exaggerated allegations to get a criminal charge filed. And I was her only rider who didn’t flee. The charge brought against me—I was told—was serious. But I was an honest, even idealistic kid … too mild, too trusting, and too willing to take responsibility for my faults. I was not used to running away from trouble. I always tried to be like my Dad, and he was not a runner. It was not in our blood. I was too embarrassed to cast truthful aspersions on any girl, and too respectful of the state’s benign authority. So, I was resigned to take my lumps and lick my own wounds.

But Judge Clark was a calm old guy with the mind, experience, and even the visage of a wise man. He fit his distinguished office. I had no defender. I just let the system work, and it ground slowly against me. But Judge Clark had a bigger picture in mind for me than by-the-book legalisms.

It all started when Judge Clark asked me my name, my full name—because it was not listed on the official docket papers. I refused to say my last name.

Are you being recalcitrant, son? he asked. Then he realized I wouldn’t know what that meant so he clarified, Are you being … stubborn … disrespectful? By not giving your last name?

Oh, no sir. … No, your Honor! I assured him.

"Well then, why not cooperate? Why not give your last name? The paperwork on the charges in case number 32-F24 says State of Arizona v. Clem [Last Name Unknown. … So I am asking why you refuse to state your surname?"

Well, sir … I explained haltingly, remorsefully. I’ve always wanted to honor my Dad … and th’ name he gave me—you know, his name, uh … family name, or surname, or whatever. And well … now I’ve failed. I’ve been charged with a crime. I’m here in court. Since I’ve been accused of something bad, it wouldn’t be honoring him to have his name on th’ charges, see? So, I choose to stand just on my own name. Just Clem, sir.

He took off his glasses and paused … studying me quizzically. I thought I saw a glint in his eye, maybe a stir of surprised amusement, or maybe compassion. Whatever it was, it seemed to make a difference in how he considered me when it came time to resolve my case.

In these circumstances, he ordered, "the documents in this Court will continue to be captioned State of Arizona v. Clem [Last Name Unknown], case number 32-F24."

Judge Clark tried to explain the system to me, and he strongly encouraged me to exercise my rights, including trial. He told me that based on statements by the prosecutrix—I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but that’s what he called the girl—and because of my unwillingness to challenge what she said, I would be convicted. With quiet compassion he suggested I challenge the evidence at trial, so as to not spend a couple of years in prison for what I was accused of doing. But I did not know how to revise my statements—my admissions—which were honest, though vague and ambiguous. I did not know how to challenge anything. But judging by things that were brought up, I began to understand that I was probably only the most recent one who had been casually involved with her. Still, it did not change my decision. I pleaded guilty and accepted the consequences. I wanted to get it over with. I had made up my mind—for moral rather than legal reasons—to plead guilty. Any punishment, I believed, would be deserved.

Anyway, at allocution and sentencing, Judge Clark gave me a couple of alternatives. He said he could suspend judgment if I chose to enlist into the army. Or I could accept a kind of parole or exile he had in mind … to a ranch, in a distant place called Idaho. He explained—it will put distance between you and the, uh … girl.

Under either of these options, the objective seemed to be to satisfy the girl’s parents that I should not be able to violate any other young ladies like their daughter. That wasn’t what I had done, but given my choices I accepted the ranch exile option.

I think Judge Clark had taken an altruistic interest in my case.

"You certainly did not violate the will of this child," he explained.

State law—he explained further—considered the girl a child. And state law does not permit such a child to consent, no matter how close she is to being sixteen, or how seductively she might act. And a young man has no defense, no matter how recently he has turned eighteen. Given our relative ages, the old jurist seemed quite unimpressed by her allegations of a reprehensible criminal act—rape. He was not concerned about recidivism, he explained, but he was concerned about me, and helping me to get on a better course. I believed him. I think he genuinely wanted to help a not-so-bad kid who needed a guiding hand. But being the judge, he had to do something with my case. His decision gave me options that were more than fair. I chose the Idaho proposition, though I was somewhat unclear about the specific arrangements. At least it promised a job, which many young men like me did not have during the Depression.

He didn’t explain how he managed to get me hired onto the XA spread at half the pay of a regular forty-a-month hand. But I later found out he was an old friend of Jim Cook, a straw boss on the XA Ranch. I suspect he asked the XA to take on a kid who could work hard, learn fast and was worth salvaging. Anyway, he withheld judgment and sentenced me to two years of probation in Idaho.

In the railyard in Phoenix, a deputy sheriff purchased a second-class ticket for me aboard a baggage car on a Union Pacific train which would stop through Mountain Home, Idaho on its way to Portland or Seattle. The deputy who consigned me made sure I was secured to my seat with ankle cuffs. By law, I’m making you bailee of this prisoner, he instructed the black porter, so, keep th’ cuffs on him until he crosses th’ state line. He entrusted the porter with the key to my leg irons.

By the end of the first day of travel, we arrived in Winslow. Though we were still in Arizona, the porter took off the leg cuffs so I could use the latrine. When I came back, he did not replace the restraints. … Ah cain tell you ain’t th’ kinda man what’s gonna run. And I thought to myself, why would I run? I had it good. He fed me left-over chow from the dining car. I was rocking along in a warm train, traveling carefree. It was a bench seat in a baggage car, but it had windows. For me, it was adventuring. I saw beautiful western vistas. I observed interesting folks getting on or getting off at various rail stops, and tramps climbing on or off between stops. I slept. I did no work. And I had lots of time to think.

So that first day, the train climbed slowly from cactus to pine country. Northern Arizona was truly March cold, not like the Valley of the Sun. As we were approaching the Winslow yard, I had a spectacular view of the setting sun blazing orange on the pine hills. But soon, the sun set and the landscape darkened. From faint lighting inside the car, I saw—instead—my own face darkly reflected in the window. I studied my features with some curiosity, as though noticing them for the first time. My curly chestnut hair was too thick. I couldn’t keep a hat on it. My eyes were direct and alert, but relaxed. Without showing much, they were always taking in everything around me. Soft stubble from my last shave, three days ago, barely showed. I was no longer tan, since I had spent the last two months in confinement. I was strangely critical of the chin—it seemed a bit too strong for my personality. Or perhaps my character had not toughened up enough to match my chin. The mouth was well-defined but expressionless, making me seem a bit withdrawn. My features, over all, were those of a candid, self-effacing, almost kind but guarded young man.

My face was plain enough to see, though difficult to decipher. But how could I describe who was inside that face? I had no window to mirror my inner man. Given my circumstances, I should have seen self-doubt, insecurity and anxiety. But I didn’t feel that way. I did not know what awaited me in Idaho, but I would face it once I got there.

I could not have described my character at that time, but I think I felt kind of … self-originated or self-made. I’m not sure how to say it. Probably it’s common for orphans to feel that way. I had only a vague mental image of my Mother’s face after she died. My Dad was medium-size, sinewy, calm, humble and hard-working. He was a good man. A rock of a man. Recollections of his wholesomeness still guided me. Dad never dropped me off for someone else to take care of. When I was young, he took me with him everywhere—even to work, no matter what kind of work it was. I believe he must have been exposed to education because he was always reading with me and putting books in my hands. The one invariable routine we had was reading at night before sleeping. Even if we were out in the fields and we had to work on into the night—irrigating, chopping cotton, bucking hay bales, clearing sagebrush or whatever—before it got dark, we would read aloud. It was a routine we truly looked forward to all day. He would spend money on a book even if we had to skip a meal to afford it. Dad had skills—like welding, and mechanics. He was a tinkering, hands-on engineer. He was good at making stuff. But he also loved the soil, and he fell back on farm work when times got really tough, three years ago. I remembered with awe the calm self-assurance he had expressed on that dark October day when the Great Depression hit. When the world fell into utter panic. And the Great Draught came in tandem. The Man-made world crashed, and the God-made earth forsook us. No skills mattered then. There were no jobs. Yet Dad was resourceful. He found rough work for us, clearing sagebrush and cactus, hired by a forward-looking company that knew the desert would blossom as the rose when God and society righted things. It was work so hard that few men would do it at the wage offered. But even in the darkest times when he was out of work, Dad would say, All’s gonna be ok. He was a simple man. He was no philosopher. That phrase was the compendium of his wisdom.

That’s who Dad was. But who was I? I could no longer measure myself to him. He was gone. He was an inspiring influence, but now just a memory. I was on my own to become what I would be. Whatever I became, I would have to be self-made. Yet a youth is never truly self-made, I suppose. When strong men are all around him influencing him for better or for worse, he becomes what they are. And I was fortunate to find myself among good men after Dad died.

As I rode the train, I reflected often on the difference between men like my Dad and the scores of men I saw living on the streets, in the shadowy train yards and grain elevators, under water towers and rail trestles, and in the smudge of hobo camps, all shiftless and hopeless. I figured the main difference was attitude. Dad always had work and purpose. Hobos always had idleness and grime. The crash and the drought had been a double blow under which everything collapsed. The dust storms pushed caravans of migrants westward on Route 66 or any other route that would get them to California. People were always heading for somewhere else, but California always seemed to be the Promised Land. The whole country seemed desperately idle. There was no money to hire, there was no money to spend. Hopelessness was everywhere. Families took shelter—hell,