Ranch Legacy

By Earle Kirkbride

It's the early 1970s in Northern Wyoming ranch country ... not exactly an accommodating atmosphere for a gay man.

 

But that's exactly the situation third-generation rancher Jim Gustafsson faces as he fears the end

• Language: English
• Publisher: PathBinder Publishing LLC
• Release date: Mar 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781955088374

Earle Kirkbride

Earle Kirkbride was born on a dairy farm in upstate New York in the 1920s and started his education in a one-room country schoolhouse. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy just before his 18th birthday, and after discharge, earned a chemistry degree from St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. After exploring several occupational fields, his professional life was linked for decades to the U.S. Navy, first as a technical writer at the Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake, California. He eventually became head of the Technical Information Division and was the first Director of Navy Technical Information at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. When he retired in 1985, he was presented the Navy Civilian Service Award.After retirement, Earle traveled extensively and indulged his interest in cowboy life. He volunteered for assignments with the U.S. Forest Service and was able to play cowboy in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Utah. During this time, he wrote ranch-related magazine articles and a nonfiction book about his late wife's experiences in Japan as the first American woman to be part of a team auditing the assets of the Bank of Japan immediately after World War II. Ranch Legacy is Earle's first novel, and it reflects his love for the people and places of the American West.

Book preview

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RANCH

LEGACY

EARLE KIRKBRIDE

COLUMBUS,

INDIANA

Published by PathBinder Publishing

P.O. Box 2611

Columbus, IN 47202

www.PathBinderPublishing.com

Copyright © 2022 by Earle Kirkbride

All rights reserved

Substantive Editor: J.K. Kelley

Editor: Doug Showalter

Covers designer: Paul J. Hoffman

Front cover photo: iStock

Back cover photo: Pexels

First published in 2022

Manufactured in the United States

ISBN: 978-1-955088-37-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022905107

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

These stories and their characters are all fictional; any resemblance to actual events or individuals is purely coincidental.

Acknowledgments

Ranch Legacy began its path to publication long ago. My heartfelt thanks go to several people who had pivotal roles in making my early story ideas into an edited manuscript and then into the book you have today:

Terry Jones, my first Forest Service supervisor who worked with rangers and had considerable knowledge about average sizes of ranches, operations, and herd types.

Randy Russell, a Forest Service supervisor experienced in ranch operations.

Bob Mayer, a friend who was born on an eastern Montana ranch and who commented on early story versions for accuracy.

Bonnie Shelton, who did extensive editing of an early version of the story.

Maggi Kirkbride, a niece and editor who asked many questions and often acted as my agent and personal representative.

J.K. Kelley, my editor whose revisions and polishing were a perfect match for bringing this story to life.

Introduction

I always wanted to be a cowboy. But the work I chose, or rather stumbled into, was nothing like riding the range. It was riding herd on technical writers, editors, photographers, and librarians at a federal government research laboratory in Washington, D.C.

When my wife died unexpectedly at the age of 59, I figured life was too short to spend it surrounded by congestion and concrete, and I sought greener pastures. I moved to a small town in Florida, bought a horse, and rode the flatlands that stretched west from the Atlantic Ocean.

But the real West always held a fascination for me. One day I came across an article that promoted volunteerism with the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Park Service. I applied and was accepted for the job of range rider for the Forest Service in Red Lodge, Montana. Whoopee and yeehaw!

Being surrounded by the rugged mountains and pristine valleys of this country’s glorious Northwest soothed my soul in the way nothing else had ever done. During these summer sojourns, I rode horses, dealt with ranchers, lived in bunkhouses, and became familiar with the people and places that are distinctly American.

These people and places are the subject of this, my first novel. I have attempted to describe not only the routine, grueling grind of being a cowhand, but also the cooperation and camaraderie that can exist in ranching communities.

My growing awareness of LGBTQ+ issues led me to conjecture how those of differing sexual preferences might have fared in that traditionally conservative cowboy culture. The result is Ranch Legacy, a fictional foray into lives imagined to capture your imagination.

— Earle Kirkbride

Contents

Chapter 1: Newcomer to the Ranch

Chapter 2: Teamwork

Chapter 3: Starting the Roundup

Chapter 4: Drive to the Allotment

Chapter 5: Stock Sale and an Emergency

Chapter 6: Filling in for Jim

Chapter 7: Replacing a Water Tank

Chapter 8: A Mishap

Chapter 9: An Indiscretion

Chapter 10: Post-indiscretion

Chapter 11: Stuck in the Muck

Chapter 12: Cathy Makes a Move

Chapter 13: Making Hay

Chapter 14: Cathy Reveals a Secret

Chapter 15: Boxing is Broached

Chapter 16: Setting Up a Gym

Chapter 17: Getting Away

Chapter 18: Typical Attitudes

Chapter 19: Slow Progress

Chapter 20: A Lesson in Judging Men

Chapter 21: Rustlers

Chapter 22: Ranch Rodeo

Chapter 23: Fences

Chapter 24: The Cattle Drive

Chapter 25: Selling the Calves

Chapter 26: The Accident

Chapter 27: Hardships and Healing Times

Chapter 28: A New Arrival

Chapter 29: Looking to the Future

About the Author

Chapter 1 Newcomer to the Ranch

Late February 1973

Damn, I love this place.

Jim Gustafsson, a graying, sixty-something rancher with weathered good looks, gazed out at the snow-capped Big Horn Mountains bordering the family spread west of Sheridan, Wyoming. A sweat-stained Stetson shielded his eyes from the dawn sunlight.

Yep, I love this place, he said aloud this time, though the only living creature near enough to hear him did not understand much English. Buster, a German/Australian shepherd mix with intelligent eyes, rested his side against Jim’s leg while also surveying the land. He had the dignity of a working dog confident in his place and role, loved but not coddled, and his company always wanted. Looks like you do too, Buster.

We got through another winter. In this part of the world, that’s no small thing.

Indeed not. February was a hard month in north central Wyoming. Overnight freezes were the norm nine months a year.

Jim took a moment to survey the Arrowhead Ranch, the land his family had owned and managed for generations. Last year he had yielded to the necessity of a new barn roof. The family had expanded the house a little with each Gustafsson generation. It now included a comfortable living room, three bedrooms, an office, two bathrooms, and a large eat-in kitchen. An adjacent stove-heated bunkhouse could sleep eight on comfortable cots. Two sturdy corrals served as holding areas for cattle.

I couldn’t be luckier than to be here. Well, excepting if Mary was still with me, and Johnnie was still around.

His wife of many years, Mary, had passed away four years before. His brother Johnnie had died in World War II. Jim had always expected Mary to survive him, as wives seemed to do. Were it not for their children Howard and Cathy, Jim did not like to dwell on what he might have done during his time of grief. The war in Vietnam was over, finally, but the times were turbulent and uncertain. Men had come home half crazy. A world Jim had understood—one where men wore short hair and worked too hard to run around taking drugs and chanting slogans—made less and less sense to him every year.

Lots hadn’t come home at all, like Johnnie.

Wonder what Johnnie would have made of the country he died to protect. Given this Nixon bullshit, maybe not much.

Jim’s boots crunched on the frosty patches of grass between the ranch house and the barn. He was glad he was wearing his father’s lined Carhartt chore coat—ragged but still warm. A slight odor of fresh manure wafted from the nearby corral, joined by a hint of sagebrush carried on the breeze.

Jim kept one old gelding in the close corral at night so he could ride out to the pasture after other horses, which he wouldn’t be doing this morning. Looking back toward the house, he could see the frost sparkling on the roof in the early sunlight, and he saw the lights go on in the kitchen.

That always used to be Mary. I never realized how much she did until she got cancer. When we did well, reckon it was her doing more than mine. We did it together, kept it going for the kids and just out of pride.

Sunrise had always been her favorite time of the day.

And right about now, she’d tell me I’d done enough lollygagging, that I better get to work.

Shrugging, Jim headed toward the barn to get grain and hay for the gelding. After checking the trough, he headed for the house. His son Howard had asked to have a talk this morning at breakfast, and Jim was by no means sure he was going to like it. Or handle it right.

If he handled it badly, it could cost him his only son.

Jim could not forget the angry words they had exchanged when he finally recognized that Howard was what Jim had always called a queer, the politest word the old rancher knew for a homosexual man. While Jim had never felt any hostility toward men who chose to do whatever it is they did with other men, he’d never had to confront the subject up close and personal. Howard had informed him that the proper term was gay, which didn’t make much sense either, but Jim had stopped saying queers and started saying gays or homosexuals.

It had taken Jim several months to process the truth about Howard’s sexuality. He wondered how Mary would have dealt with it. He remembered her saying that Howard was his own kind of man, so perhaps she was aware of his inclination, but they never talked about it.

The first kerfuffle between Howard and Jim had been so acrimonious that Howard had left the ranch for a couple of months. It had taken a lot of soul-searching before Jim finally called Howard and asked him to come home. When Howard arrived, they had several heart-to-heart conversations that cleared the air at least partway. It was then that Howard confided that he had a partner to whom he had been faithful since leaving college, though they hadn’t seen each other since Howard had come home to help with Mary’s illness. According to Howard, they’d stopped writing for a while, then started up again. The man’s name was David, and he hailed from Texas. He had finished his degree at UC-Davis and liked the idea of living on a ranch.

Howard had been evasive about David’s family, but had dropped enough hints for Jim to figure out that his family was religious. It wasn’t difficult to guess how they’d taken the news about him being ... gay.

From the time Howard was a baby, Jim had hoped his son would have children to carry on the family tradition and keep the ranch all in one piece. That would make four generations of Gustafssons on this ranch that Jim had come to think of as hallowed ground. That Howard’s younger sister Cathy, now married but without children, might be the one to perpetuate the legacy did not really cross Jim’s mind. Her husband John, a sullen and semi-employable sort, had no appreciation for hard work or history.

Well, it looks like Howard’s not going to be a father any time soon, unless there’s a medical miracle. I have no idea what I’m going to do about that.

What I always done, I reckon. Keep working and hope for the best. Love my son, try and understand this gay business, and see what happens.

Why the hell would a man want to do sexual stuff with other men? And I always thought of gay guys as half female. Howard doesn’t act like a girl. First glance, you’d never guess. He’s as good a ranch hand as any man his age.

The two had worked well together in recent weeks, with the gay discussion coming up now and then. In response to one blunt question, Howard had told his father that being gay wasn’t a choice; it was something he’d known when he was seven, before he understood what it meant. Jim had found that comforting on some level. If his son had always been gay, then the idea of someone converting him to homosexuality was impossible, and he and Mary hadn’t failed somehow. It’d just happened, like a snowstorm or picking up a nail in a tire. Dad, think about it. I love this ranch and this country. Being gay is not accepted here for the most part. Who would actively choose to be gay, and to always have to put up with people’s crap about it? No one!

He’d had a point. But there was more to come.

While Jim had been grateful to Howard for coming back home, and had told him so, Howard had picked that moment to drop the boyfriend bomb. This is the only life I’ve known, Dad, Howard had said, but I’m not going to be able to continue this way. I want my partner here, too. I’ve missed him, we’ve reconnected, and we’re meant to be together. The discussion had continued in various forms throughout the winter, and Jim had begun to sense that Howard might be close to leaving again. This time it might be for good.

Which means I better pick my words real carefully.

Morning, son, Jim called as he opened the door to the mudroom that led into the kitchen. Given the substances in which ranchers walked, on most ranches anyone wearing boots past the mudroom would bring the women of the house out in outraged protest. Jim hung up his chore coat and swapped his snowy boots for slippers, relishing the warmth of the stove and the smell of bacon.

Flapjacks going on the griddle, Howard replied as the batter sizzled onto the hot surface. The orange juice was already poured, the scrambled eggs were a little wet, as Jim liked them, and the two soon dug into breakfast.

Stock okay? asked Howard.

Doing fine. The hay and oats should hold out until time comes to move them to our allotment.

Need anything from town? ‘Town’ meant Tongue, Wyoming, maybe ten miles away. Thirty-five miles beyond lay ‘the city,’ Sheridan, the county seat and home of the region’s only TV station.

Might as well get some oil for the tractor. Be changing that come early spring. Probably time to change out the pan gasket, so you might ask if they have one, or can get one in.

Gasket and six quarts of oil, got it, said Howard in a tone that told Jim something was coming.

Then let’s get out front of it. Son, something’s on your mind.

Howard set his fork down. Dad, you know how much I love this ranch, and you, and this country. But I have another love, too, and his name is David Swanson.

I know. You miss him.

And I’m tired of missing him. I don’t want to have to make a choice between him or you and the Arrowhead.

You want him to come live here? Jim tried not to sound incredulous, and figured he’d succeeded.

I’m not asking you to accept somebody that will just be in the way, Howard continued. David did lots of ranch work in Texas, and he grew up doing the same kind of chores that we do every day.

I remember you telling me they didn’t take it real well about him being gay.

If you mean calling him a sodomite and disowning him, yeah, I’d call that not taking it real well. And it’s true we kind of drifted apart after I came back when Mom was sick. But he just got his degree in animal husbandry, and we’ve been talking. We miss each other something awful.

Jim sighed, quietly, gave it a few moments. All right, let’s talk about David. You told me you met him in pre-vet?

Howard’s eyes lit up. We hit it off right away. Remember how you felt when you met Mom, and knew that you wanted to be with her? That’s how we feel about each other. He’s a smart, kind, hard-working guy who will pull his own weight around here. But the key is, will you accept him?

They locked eyes in a long silence, until Jim looked away to pour them each some more coffee. He pushed his chair away from the table, looked down at the floor, and quickly ran over in his mind all their previous conversations on this topic.

So that’s it. Accept this David, doing whatever with my son under my roof, or my son will probably be gone. Might not get him back this time.

That isn’t much of a damn choice. I wonder if Howard realizes he’s got me treed here.

Nope. He’s never been the kind to play games about what’s important. If he was, he wouldn’t have quit school to come back here and help.

Only one thing I can say or do here.

I know how important this is to you, son. And you know that I’ve had some misgivings. But I want you to be happy, and David sounds like he can step right in and help. What say you invite him to come on a trial basis, and we’ll see how it’s going after six months?

It was the right answer. Howard jumped from his chair, kissed the top of his father’s head, and gave him a hug from behind. Thanks, Dad! You won’t regret this! Howard headed for the phone to give David the news.

Hope I don’t.

To Jim’s discomfort, Howard immediately got to work tearing down the wall between his bedroom and the office, moving the latter to a corner of the large living room. The start of this project prompted one of the last heated arguments that Jim and Howard would have about the subject.

Why do you need to make all these changes to the house? Jim asked, surveying the demolition. We’ve got a guest bedroom where your friend can stay.

Dad, David is more than a friend. He is my love, he is my partner. He is to me what Mom was to you. When you and Mom got married, did you bring her home to live in the guest room?

Of course not, Jim growled. I don’t see how that’s the same.

It’s as same as can be!

We were married. You know, with licenses and a pastor and such. You can’t get married!

Dad. Howard put down the pry bar he’d been using on the wall. If I could marry him, I would. I feel about David like you felt about Mom. We can’t legally marry, but we are joined in our hearts.

Jim grabbed his head with both hands, sighed in frustration. God, it’s happening in my own house! I can’t believe this! What have I got myself into?

Stop it right now!

Son’s right. If I say what I’m thinking right now, I’ll have lots of time fixing the wall to think about losing my son.

I lost Mary. I am not losing Howard, damn it.

Jim stomped down the hallway to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of strong black coffee. Howard’s words about love bounced around in Jim’s brain for the next hour or so. He tried to reconcile his love for his son with the situation his son was asking him to accept. Hearing that wall coming apart, I reckon, is making this real.

I guess I’d kind of parked this in the not-really-happening closet in my brain. Or maybe the not-really-happening file drawer. From what Howard told me, to him a ‘closet’ is what someone comes out of when he stops hiding being a queer and tells the world.

Not a queer. Gay. I have to change my damn vocabulary. And there’s one more thing I’d better do before long: surrender.

Jim Gustafsson walked back up the hall and stuck his head in the door where Howard was still working on the wall. Howard did not look up. Son, I’m sorry. This is tougher for me than I reckoned. I promise to do what I can to make this work for you guys.

Howard gave one quick nod and went back to work.

Days passed. Howard kept on with the renovations, and kept priming Jim with good stories about David. For his part, Jim tried to just listen, ask a few questions, and hold back on judgment. He did not find it easy.

Late one evening as they were sitting down to supper, they heard Buster raising hell outside. Vehicle noises and rapid horn toots followed. He’s here! Howard exclaimed as he ran outside.

Jim went to the front door where the porch light illuminated a tall, handsome man with short dark hair getting out of a beat-up Chevy truck packed high with boxes. For reasons best known to dogs, Buster was jumping up on the new arrival with the kind of eager welcome he tended to reserve for people he recognized. Howard wrapped the man in a bear hug.

And I guess this makes a whole other new chapter starting in my life, thought Jim as he stepped outside.

Howard’s eyes had brimmed over. Dad, want you to meet David.

Jim took David’s offered hand, half expecting a limp noodle handshake. It was firm and friendly, fitting with the broad shoulders and open smile. Mr. Gustafsson, it’s a real pleasure to be here, he drawled. This place is as beautiful as Howard told me.

Looks me in the eye. I guess we’re safe from him wearing dresses or some damn thing. If I didn’t know, I couldn’t guess. Welcome to the Arrowhead, David. Please call me Jim, if that’s all right with you.

Jim it is. But if I slip up now and then, I hope you’ll give me a pass. You know how it is.

Jim chuckled. I ought to. It’s how my daddy raised me, and how we raised Howard.

We’re just setting down to dinner, said Howard, glancing at the starry sky. I don’t think it’s going to be any more work unloading your stuff after we eat, and I hope you saved some appetite. I made beef stew.

I was banking on it, said David. Haven’t had beef stew in way too long.

As he held the door for Howard and David, a thought flashed through Jim’s mind. Maybe this’ll be easier than I reckoned. If Howard has to be with a man, this seems like the good kind.

He followed the younger men into the house.

While Howard dished up the stew and Jim got everyone some cold Coors, David stood behind one of the chairs. Oh, sit down, David, said Howard.

Sorry, said David, taking the chair. Was raised to wait for whoever did the cooking.

After they’d all started in on their stew—and Jim noticed that David drained maybe half of his Coors in one chug—Jim started. Howard says you just finished up pre-vet, animal husbandry, but decided not to go to vet school.

Yep, said David. "I was a hospital corpsman in the Navy,