Showdown at Buffalo Jump by Gary D. Svee

out of bed. We came out here to get some work done, not to sit here getting splinters in our behinds.”
    Max grinned a little despite himself. Jake and a couple of others from town had arrived early with the lumber he had ordered.
    When he glanced back at Catherine, she was rigid by the stove. “Don’t you bring them in here,” she said, her voice brittle as shore ice in winter.
    â€œThey’ve been in here before.”
    â€œNot with me.”
    â€œNo, not with you.” But then neither have I, Max thought, except for a few moments around the table in strained silence or in heated battle. “They’ll be expecting breakfast.”
    â€œWe don’t always get what we expect.”
    â€œWe sure as hell don’t.”
    Catherine’s eyes sliced into Max’s. “Mr. Bass, that language is probably acceptable to your friends. It is not acceptable to me.”
    â€œIf you find something that is acceptable to you, I would be obliged if you would let me know. I’d rope it off and sell tickets to it as the eighth wonder of the world.”
    Catherine looked at Max out of the corner of her eye. “Sometimes you surprise me, Mr. Bass. Somewhere behind that plate of bone you call a forehead, there lurks a light, a dim, dim light, but a light nonetheless.”
    Max sighed. “These are my friends. Please be nice to them. It is just one day, and then they will be gone.”
    â€œYou do, then, allow some people to leave this … palace of yours?”
    Max’s voice edged sideways through gritted teeth. “Damn it, woman, don’t you ever stop?”
    â€œIf I trouble you, please feel free to send me on my way.”
    â€œI don’t want to talk about that now.”
    â€œI do. I want your friends to know what kind of a man you really are. Do you think, then, that they would come to this place and build a barn in your honor?”
    â€œWhose part do you think they will take?” Max spat. “They were all standing there at the Patchucks’ when you promised to take me for better or worse. You want them to know what an easy liar you are?”
    Catherine gasped. In a flash, she was standing by Max’s chair, her fork—the only weapon she had—describing a vicious arc toward his face.
    Max caught Catherine’s wrist, and the two were still struggling as Jake Thomsen poked his head through the door.
    â€œMax, you still in bed?” Jake’s grin faded as he saw the two. “Sorry,” he said, ducking out the door.
    Catherine’s voice was like a late fall wind keening through the naked limbs of cottonwoods, reaching in supplication toward an unpromising sky.
    â€œMr. Thomsen, you said you would help if I needed it. I need it. Please take me to Prairie Rose. Please take me away from this, please … please.”
    Thomsen pretended he hadn’t heard her, trying to carry the smile he had taken to the dugout back to the wagon, but it was too heavy a burden.
    Max stumbled for the door, taking a deep breath before plunging through. He appeared outside as though surfacing from the depths of a pool, gasping for air. Max tried to grin, but the effort twisted his face into a macabre mask.
    â€œMiss Catherine is frying chicken. You boys will have to wait on your breakfast,” he said, his voice little more than a croak.
    And Catherine stood at the stove watching the frying chicken through a veil of tears, as though from behind a rain-streaked window. She would escape this place. One way or another, she would escape.

8
    Max and Edna Lenington stood silent, unmoving as though by some magic they were taking root, becoming the second and third parts of a cottonwood grove on the creek bottom.
    It was full light now, and most of the men were laying the barn’s foundation downstream where a flat, bare slab of sandstone overlooked Max’s natural corral. The foundation was taking shape, a rough rectangle built of