A great many things to write about have come up in the last year and, as a result, the children's story, THE HOMESTEAD BENEATH STRONGHOLD TABLE, was put on hold. There has been a quiet clambering for more installments so, after a hiatus of nearly a year, the Monthly Musing for April is 1 NEW INSTALLMENT of the story. To refresh your memory check out these archive links.

Installment 1
Installment 2
Installment 3
Installment 4


Installment Five

Molly knew that Grandmother Iron Cloud would not want her to cry, but she couldn't help it. She felt so alone. Her father was leaving them for the winter and now, Grandmother Iron Cloud was dead. For most of the morning she lay on her bed and sobbed. Momma went about her morning chores but finally sat on the bed and stroked Molly's hair. Molly rolled to face her mother. "But momma," she said. "I am so sad."

"I know" Momma said.

"What will we do?"

"We will go on," Momma said.

"I just want to hide."

"But you can't. When someone dies," she whispered, "you have to go on with your life. You family needs you."

Suddenly Molly thought of Jack and Papa Robert. "Where are they." She sat up in bed.

"They are down by the river," Mamma said. "Digging a grave."

"No," Molly said. She was on her feet. "No, not a grave. Not for Grandmother Iron Cloud." She moved to the door. "Not a hole in the ground."

Momma was on her feet and following after Molly as she bolted from the door. "Molly. Sweetheart." But she was already gone, running as fast as she could toward where Jack and Papa Robert worked with their shovels.

She did not see bundle laying on the ground until she was only a few feet from the gaping hole. It was Grandmother Iron Cloud's body wrapped tight in the very blanket they had used to collect the buffalo berries. She looked at the bundle but she did not let the sight of it stop her from speaking. "She doesn't want to be buried in the ground,"

Papa Robert had been shoveling the dirt away from the grave as Jack, standing to his waist in the hole, pitched the earth up to him. They could see that Molly was upset and they stopped their digging. Neither knew what to say and so they were glad to see Mamma came running up behind Molly. "She doesn't want to be buried," Molly said again. The tears were gone and now her little jaw jutted out in defiance. Momma put a hand on her shoulder to calm her but Molly shook it away. "No," she said.

Momma's words came gently. "Now honey, Grandmother Iron Cloud has to be buried. We have to put her soul to rest."

"Her soul doesn't want to rest," Molly said. "It wants to fly to Stronghold Table. She showed me what to do."

Everyone stood silently waiting. Molly knew how funny it might sound but she said it anyway. "She wants us to put her in a tree."

Momma tried to stroke her back but again, Molly shook the hand away. "You're upset," Momma said.

"She showed me the tree," Molly said and looked hard, first at her mother then at her father.

"She's talking crazy," Papa Robert said.

"She doesn't know what she's saying," Mamma said.

Jack had crawled out of the hole and stood looked at his sister. "No," he said slowly. "I think she means it."

It took a half hour for Molly to explain herself and another half hour to convince Papa Robert to go alone with what she wanted. But by early afternoon the whole Ryan family was halfway up the long flat valley that led to the gnarled cotton wood beneath Strong Hold Table. Papa Robert led the old horse, Shamrock, and tied to his back was the bundled blanket that held Grandmother Iron Cloud.

When they crossed the huge prairie dog town, hundreds of the little rodents stood on the edge of their burrows to watch them pass. They stood on their hind legs, threw their heads back, and barked. Only when they finally came to the cottonwood did the prairie dog chorus stop. The humans and the horse stood around the ancient cottonwood and Papa Robert wondered how they would get Grandmother Iron Cloud up into the tree.

In the end, Jack climbed the tree with one end of a rope in his teeth and Papa Robert stood on Shamrock's back. Momma and Molly stood to the side and looked on. Momma kept shaking her head and talking about a "proper" burial but Molly was smiling. She told the men to tie the ropes tight and she looked up to the top of Stronghold Table. An eagle circled so high above that Molly had to squint her eyes to see it, but she knew it was watching. She knew that Grandmother Iron Cloud would be carried to the top of Stronghold where the people and the buffalo lived together.

On the way home the family talked about what it would be like when Papa Robert went to Deadwood to work. Papa Robert did most of the talking because Momma, Molly, and Jack were too worried to say much. "On one hand," he said, "it might be a blessing that Grandmother Iron Cloud passed on." It was almost as if Papa Robert was talking to himself. "Don't mean to be insensitive," he said. "But it's one less mouth to feed and food sure might get short."

Momma nodded her head in agreement but both Jack and Molly were thinking that it was Grandmother Iron Cloud who knew best how to find food in the Cheyenne River bottom. They were thinking that she was the one they had been depending upon and that now it would be even more difficult if the snows came early and got deep.

And that is what it looked like might happen. On the day Papa Robert left for Deadwood it snowed. It wasn't heavy and it wasn't cold but it was a sign that the winter could be another bad one. Momma, Molly, and Jack stood around Shamrock with the small flakes melting on their faces as Papa tied the last of his gear to the saddle. The ride to Deadwood would be over a hundred miles and, even if the weather was good would take him most of a week. He left everything he could for his family. He left the rifle for Jack and took only the clothes on his back and the pistol. Their were a few of Grandmother Iron Cloud's dried turnips and some jerky in a saddle bag. He had a few dollars in his pocket. The family would have no use for money. He even left is warm sheep's skin coat for Jack. "You'll need this," he said, "when you go out deer hunting."

They both knew that there had not been a deer on the Cheyenne River for months and that it was more likely that jack would be hunting jackrabbits or even prairie dogs. The thought was not too appetizing and everyone tired to focus their thoughts on the day that Papa Robert would come riding home with his pockets full of money from his work. It would be at the end of winter with Spring beginning to warm the air. But for now it was cold. The snow fell lightly on Papa Robert's hat brim as he knelt to hug Molly and as he wrapped his wife up in his big arms. "Everything is going to be fine," he whispered into both of their ears. But when he put his arm around Jack's shoulder he walked him away from the house with Shamrock trailing behind.

"It all depends on you son." They stopped and faced each other before Papa Robert swung up onto Shamrock. "I'll be working in that damned mine up in the Black Hills but my mind will be here with you. Be smart," he said. "and be careful."

Then he was on Shamrock's back and heading off toward the Hills. By the time crossed the river they were out of sight in the snow but for a long time Jack stood watching after them.

Papa Robert did not look back. In fact, he did not turn in the saddle even once for that entire day. He angled north and rode until he came to Spring Creek. Then he found the game trail that followed the creek and stirred Shamrock to the West.

It had stopped snowing by the time he made camp for the night but he built a small lean-to out of tree branches anyway. He tied Shamrock close to the little fire where he could get to some grass and crawled back into his shelter with a couple turnips to chew on. He wasn't sure that what he was doing was the right thing. These were hard times: too dry to grow crops, the country still in a recession and a new war getting ready to begin in Europe. Many people were moving to live with relatives but the Ryan family had no where to go. They wanted to make a go of their homestead but they needed money to get by. Papa Robert was the best one to make that money but he hated leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves. He swallowed the last turnip and looked out into the night around his little camp. The wind had come up and the snow was beginning to blow. Shamrock was hunched up with his rear end to the wind. There would be another two days of this before Papa Robert got to Deadwood. He shook his head and closed his eyes. There really was no good answer for what a man should do.

---

by Gervase Hittle

Sometimes I just don't believe it. I mean the things we seem to accomplish and mostly within the time we have, which is never enough, to accomplish them in. During the last two to three months the landscape here has literally changed.

The ranch has expanded into some contiguous land, requiring new fences, new animal watering systems for the new pastures, clean up of an old ranch headquarters, complete with remodeling the old house, removal of old, unused and broken farm implements and lots of scrap metal, etc. Like I said the landscape has changed--and is still changing a little.

Here's what I really like about being on this ranch--it's the vision that is the foundation for Wild Idea Buffalo, that was the foundation for the Broken Heart Ranch and now for Broken Heart Buffalo Leather and Sustainable Harvest Alliance. That vision requires my old friend to put his money where his heart is. So, for example, consider the concern and love and respect for wildlife and for prairie restoration and buffalo ranching at its finest (read minimally confined, grass fed, free range buffalo) and consider the new system by which to water the buffalo within previously arid and newly fenced pastures and add to that a way to fill two small, but life-giving playas with water. It is only seasonal water but vital to wildlife and vital to an understanding of the differences between a rancher who extracts all he can from the land and only returns minimally to it and a rancher who returns the maximum to the land and MANAGES to eke out something from it, a rancher who sees and believes and acts in such a way that the land and ALL its occupants thrive and grow together because they are together.

So this Cheyenne River Ranch becomes, as it has always been for us, a thinking, planning, balancing act, an evolving from a small ranch outside of Edgemont, SD to The Broken Heart and on to the present location where you can now see a hydrant out in a field with a hose running into a small playa so that it might just stimulate a pair of ducks to raise some offspring. Who else would do a thing like that?

To many eyes around here such a thing as that is a sure sign of folly, madness with no method; but for those of us who share this vision, there is no madness, only the folly of those who choose not to see the wisdom.

I am here reminded of the scene in Shakespeare's HAMLET in which Hamlet and Gertrude, his mother, meet in here chambers. He attempts to show her the truth about his father's murder, but she refuses--perhaps because of her stake here, in that she has married her husband's murderer. She has the opportunity to see the very real ghost of her former husband, and chooses not to see. She favors her immediate and present situation over the wisdom and truth of her son's vision. But, oh, the cost to her.