The Ballad of Cattle and Clay

Remember, the wind listens. This fact is often forgotten and should be considered when telling tales on the prairie, where there is nothing to stop the breeze from whisking words away from lips – and once the wind has a tale held fast, there is no telling where it will end up.
But folk are forgetful, which is why, in one hastily constructed saloon, no more than a hut on the road between the mountains and several cattle baron’s domains, a foolish homesteader slurred that his daughter could craft clay into cattle. As is the way of these things, that loose-lipped, hot-cheeked, braggadocious statement made its way from the card players in the saloon, through the loosely joined slats of the wall, onto the high prairie breeze, and into the ear of James “Hard-Hand” McGee, the richest cattle baron in the new territory of Colorado. A man with enough beef to feed the whole east coast in one go, but, as so often is the case, a man who was always looking for more.
And that is how Myrna Lamb found herself snatched from her father’s homestead in the bright daylight of afternoon, slung over a cowboy’s saddle, and unceremoniously dumped in an empty barn at the edge of McGee’s lands. Deaf to her shouts of protest, the cowboy told her that if she hadn’t filled that barn with beef by the first light, she and her pa were done for. He paused for a moment, and then shook his head and slammed the heavy wood doors shut, leaving her with still air, dust, and a deepening sense of panic.
At this point, it is worth mentioning that Myrna did not know how to craft clay into cattle.
Perhaps given a year and some quick-lime she could reverse the process, but among the many gifts she’d been blessed with, breathing life into the inanimate was not to be found. The cowboy was very definite about the cattle-less consequences of the following morning, so, what was to be done?
She could run, but McGee owned the land for hundreds of miles around, and it was coming on winter in the Rockies, so running without hope of shelter was only extending her life by inches. And despite her fury at her father for getting them into this mess, she didn’t wish death on the drunk old homesteader.
She paced the edge of the barn. The sun was setting, and the single lamp they’d allowed her simply deepened the shadows in the barn’s far corners. It smelled of damp straw and dust, and she couldn’t even hear the vast herds of cattle that McGee treasured. No chance of rustling some of his own herd then and praying he couldn’t tell the difference. She rubbed her arms against the growing chill and picked up her pacing.
“Seems you’re in a spot of trouble, Miss,” a voice rasped from one of the darkened corners.
Myrna stopped, still as the startled deer, skin prickling on the back of her neck. She’d checked every inch of the barn when they’d thrown her in here, and she’d been alone. Turning, she curled her fingers into fists, and faced where the voice came from.
A man, whip thin and all sharp angles unfolded himself from the weathered wall on which he lent. Myrna took a step back, and then three more as he advanced towards her across the barn floor. His duster brushed aside remnants of straw on the ground, and she heard the faint clink of spurs against the dirt floor.
“You- If you touch me, I’ll hit you,” she stammered. The man stopped and looked at her with his head cocked to one side.
“Touch you? Oh Miss, that you’d be thinkin’ I was that kind of gentleman. I ain’t here to offer you harm, I’m here to help.”
Myrna snorted.
“Very kind of you sir, but there ain’t any help you can give me unless you have about 30 steers outside them doors. I’ve been told to fill this barn with cattle by morning, to turn the clay into cattle they said. And as I can’t, I’m waitin’ my death here.”
The man spread his hands in front of him and smiled expansively.
“What luck. For as it happens, I can turn clay into cattle.”
Myrna stared at him, then propped her hands on her hips.
“You’re fooling.”
“I ain’t.”
She thrust out her chin at him, “Prove it.”
Still with that smile on his face, the man bent to the ground, not taking his eyes off her, and scooped up a handful of the red clay dirt. He straightened and pressed it into a ball in the palms of his hands, raised it to his lips, whispered something, then let it fall to the ground. And as that ball of clay touched the floor, it sprung up into a rust colored steer, blinking sleepily in the flickering lantern light.
Myrna swallowed, and then managed, “Oh.”
“Quite so,” said the thin man, his smile never wavering.
“Well, can you do more?” she asked. The man nodded, and, after considering her a moment, added,
“There will be a price for all of them though. What makes it worth my effort, Miss?” He leaned forward, balancing on the balls of his feet in anticipation.
Myrna looked at the steer, and then at the rest of the barn. From what she’d heard of McGee, one new steer wouldn’t satisfy him, even if she did seem to conjure it from mid air. But what could she give this man? She felt his stare and the glint of his expectant teeth, and knew she’d best decide quickly. Silently, she reached up to her neck to unclasp the chain of a blue turquoise pendant, and held it out to the thin, grasping man, her eyes averted from the triumphant gleam in his.

***

The sun rose, blazing and golden, and when McGee’s ranch hands hauled open the barn doors for him to survey the girl he’d had kidnapped for want of a rumor the day before, there she was, standing in a room full of shifting, rust colored steers, and refusing to meet his faded blue eyes.
Perhaps Myrna thought McGee would let her go after that night. But folk like him can never get enough once they have the taste of riches in their greedy maw. And after taking her back to the ranch house, talking at her over a breakfast of toast, beans, and bacon, cajoling her for secrets that she could not divest even if she’d wished to, Myrna found herself in a new, bigger barn with orders that if this one too wasn’t filled with steers by morning, he’d throw her to the pigs just as if the first barn was never filled.

***

As far as barns went, Myrna thought, she’d preferred the old one. This one was newer built and smelled of fresh cut pine, tar, and wood stain to hold off the weather. But it was nearly twice the size of the barn the previous night, and she was mighty fearful of what she would have to give up to fill its empty expanse.
That is, if the thin man even showed up. Perhaps he was tied to that one barn. Or maybe he’d moved on since last night, taking his secrets with him. She sat down on an overturned bucket and placed her head in her hands.
“Seems you accumulate problems, Miss.”
Her head snapped up. There he was, standing on the barn floor just a few feet in front of her. She glanced down and saw that there were still spurs on his boots, yet she hadn’t heard him enter at all. When she raised her eyes to his face, she caught a glimpse of blue turquoise around his neck.
“I couldn’t tell McGee about you, he’d have killed me right there if he realized I couldn’t make any more cows,” she said, standing up so that he wouldn’t tower over her. “I thought he might let me go… but he only wants more.”
“Ah shame, greed’s a sin, God witness it,” the thin man said, the smile never once flickering off his face. Myrna glanced at the ceiling, half expecting a bolt of divine retribution–it seeming impossible that this man might talk of God and remain on his own two feet. His grin widened when she looked back at him, and she wondered if he could read her thoughts as well. She sighed.
“Now this here’s a mighty big barn.” The thin man stuck his hands into his pockets and looked around him with admiration. “Must be a big price to fill such a big barn, don’t you think, Miss?”
Myrna crossed her arms, and the thin man took a step closer.
“What will you pay me to fill this barn for you?” he asked her softly. The thin man stood so close to her she could smell him. Fresh pine air from the mountains, the dusty odor of old flannel, the earthy smell of well-used leather, and wood smoke.
“You wouldn’t consider helping me out of the goodness of your heart?” She asked
“Pro Bono? A man has to make his way in this world, Miss, but if you would like to lean on McGee’s charity tomorrow morning, be my guest.” Myrna grimaced.
Slowly, she shrugged off the thick wool coat her father bought for her last year before the snow set in. She’d embroidered birds and trees around the cuffs and hems, and dyed the white wool a deep forest green that had made her smile to see it hung up beside the homestead door. She folded the coat over one arm and offered it to the thin man, who took it gladly and laid it reverently on the floor behind him. When he turned back to her, he chucked her under the chin and said, “Now, let us begin.”

***

The next morning, McGee was not surprised when he found the Lamb girl standing heavy-eyed in the middle of a herd of rust brown cattle, but he was delighted. He led her from the barn like a queen, and sat her before him on his horse as he rode back to the ranch house. There again he fed her and pressed her to tell him her secrets. Once again she refused, but McGee bit down his anger and reached across the table to grab her hands in his rough, calloused ones.
“Miss Lamb, if you will not teach me your art, I must have the artist.”
Myrna flinched away from him, but he held her hands tighter and pulled her towards him.
“This night I will lock you in a third barn. If, like these last two, I return to find it filled with cattle, I will take you to my breast and make you mistress of myself and my ranch. With you, and what I already possess, we will become the richest couple west of the Mississippi.” His eyes gleamed, and his hands tightened on hers. Then, he sobered, and said, “But if I return to find that barn empty, Miss Lamb, I will take you up to the highest peak in the Rockies, and watch you tumble down its slope.”
Myrna raised her eye’s to meet his pale blue ones. McGee was older than her father, and his breath stank of stale coffee.

***

This barn was even finer than the previous. Parts of the floor were even covered in smooth, planed wood, and there was a small iron-frame bed sanctioned off from the main building by a hastily hung curtain. A small kindness, Myrna supposed, for the woman who might hereafter be McGee’s wife.
She closed her eyes and felt the heaviness droop upon her shoulders. Riches or no, she did not wish to marry McGee. She did not wish to become yet another prize, and in his grasping hands she knew that she would eventually shatter. Yet, still, she did not want to die. And added to that, if she were to die, she did not want to do so under a pale gaze with only the care being for the profit that might be lost with her blood.
“Well, Miss? What have you to give me tonight?” came the familiar sound of the thin man’s voice behind her.
She was not surprised that she hadn’t heard his entrance. After all she’d seen, that was the least strange thing about him. The silence stretched between them as she considered her answer.
There wasn’t much left she had to give. He had her necklace, her coat. Could she give him the boots off her feet? Her dress? She shivered. The idea of McGee coming into the barn the next morning and finding her in her petticoats was… not to be thought of. Her eyes fell to the packed clay floor, and a tendril of breeze whispered an idea in her ear.
Myrna held her breath as the suggestion took shape, and lifted her eyes from the floor to meet the silent, grinning man. This, this could work.
“I-It would have to be a pretty big thing to justify filling this barn with cattle.”
“Yes, indeed it would, Miss.”
“Traditionally, I think, I’m supposed to give you my newborn.” Her hands were shaking, she buried them in her skirts and plunged on. “But that would be a bit of a rum bargain for you sir, as I don’t plan to marry, and if I did, I don’t reckon I’d want any children.”
Still, he continued silent. Myrna swallowed and continued, “Would it be enough, would you turn the clay in this place into cattle, if I went with you?”
Still, silence.
Her heart jumped in her throat in a desperate sort of dance. She knew once she uttered those words, there was no calling them back.
There was no smile on the thin man’s face as he regarded her. He cocked his head from side to side, like a giant bird, as if to get a full view of her, and then he asked,
“That is a great gift to give, even in exchange for such a prize. Are you sure this is what you want, Miss?”
Another laugh, almost a sob, tore itself from Myrna’s throat.
“There is nothing else to want. If I were to stay here, I’d be forced to give myself to McGee. Night and night again he would demand more from me, whether I were in a barn or in his bed, and I cannot sanction that!
“If I stay here I will die by his hand now, or I will die a thousand deaths by it as the years move on. Do not mistake me, I do not give myself to you joyfully, but I will take whatever lies beyond in your hands to the creature who took me from my home on the baseless boast of my father.” She paused, and drew in a ragged breath.
“This is not, by far, my first choice, but at least it is my choice.”
The thin man continued to watch her as she wiped angry tears from her cheeks. Then, seemingly, he made up his mind because he nodded sharply, took one step towards her, and cupped her face in a long fingered hand, tipping it up to face his.
“I will accept your offer, as you give it knowingly. I cannot promise you happiness, because who among us can? But I can promise that in the morning, our bargain will be complete and we will be far away from this place.”
Myrna nodded, and met the thin man’s eyes. The smile was back on his face, but it was quizzical, watching her as if she was a new and alien species whose responses were yet unknown.
“One last thing though,” he said. “Your entire self outweighs a whole herd of cattle, I believe, so I owe you something more in return.”
And the whip-thin man leaned down and whispered something in Myrna’s ear. A single word. Her eyes widened, and she looked into his face.
“Really?”
The thin man shrugged.
“You must have something to call me by. Now, dry those tears, we have much to do before the morning.”

***

The sun rose, as it always does, on that third day. McGee himself had been awake far before the first rosy fingers grasped the horizon, his faded eyes fixed on his biggest barn in anticipation. At the first light, he led his ranch hands to the doors and hauled them open himself.
The heat of 100 head of cattle billowed out of the fine barn in rising steam. McGee laughed and opened his arms wide as if to embrace them all, his eyes narrowed to find the girl who would be the greatest asset to his future.
But look as he might among the churning cattle, he could not find her. The bed in the corner was unslept in, the wash basin in the corner untouched. As he and his hands searched every corner, the only trace they could find were two sets of boot prints. One large and spurred, and one small and patent print, standing toe to toe in the middle of the cattle-churned clay.

***

Zoe Polando Ryder is an award winning animated filmmaker, and sometimes comic artist based out of the gloomy forests of the greater Seattle area. You can connect with her on social media @zoepolando or view her other work at https://www.zoepolandoart.com/