The Price of Bullets

THE PRICE OF BULLETS / Linda M. Hasselstrom I was fourteen that summer, a typical tangle of teen hormones, growing muscles and deep thoughts. Adulthood seemed so close I could almost taste its fine sweet tang, inhale its musky scents, and run my fingers through its hair. Living on the ranch, I was a mixture: more adult than some of the kids my age in what I knew about work, but way behind in knowing how to deal with people. But work was what we did most anyway. I learned to drive by driving around the pastures, and had a seminar on brakes just before my birthday that summer. My father and I'd been on our way to check the cattle in the summer pasture, and somehow my foot couldn't find the brake pedal at a gate. He sat utterly still and made no sound while I panicked. I forgot all about turning off the ignition and stomped on the gas pedal instead. The wire gate sang and stretched as the pickup nosed through it. The top wire popped like a rifle shot and ricochetted off the windshield with an ear-splitting whine before I got the truck stopped. My father didn't say a word, and he hadn't ducked when the wire hit the windshield. He simply got out of the truck, untangled the wire from the front bumper, and pulled it out of the gate. He went to the back of the truck, took out the wire stretcher, a little coil of new wire, and the fencing tools. "I'll be back when I finish checking the cows," he said, and got in and drove away. I stood staring after the pickup until it disappeared over a low rise a mile off. Its speed never slackened. When the sound of the motor died away, I was alone on the wide prairie—and suddenly afraid. I had no excuse for the fear. I'd ridden my horse alone through these pastures for five years by that time. But I turned in a circle, staring as if I'd landed on a distant planet. To my right I could see the faint blue line of the Black Hills. Ten miles away, in the foothills, lay a highway, and the ranch house where my mother was washing clothes, unaware that my father had abandoned me. On my left the fence crossed a plowed field and disappeared in the jagged pink peaks of the Badlands, sixty miles away. In front of me, where my father had gone, the prairie stretched empty The Missouri Review · 7 for more miles than I knew. No one would come; no one would help me. The summer pasture was eight miles away, and even if the cattle were all right, my father wouldn't be back for at least two hours. If he ran into trouble, he might be gone longer. Suddenly my mouth was dry and my eyes were wet, and I thought, naturally enough, of water. He hadn't left the water jug. But I remembered the dipper hanging from a windmill a half-mile to the east, and relaxed a little. At least I wouldn't die of thirst. With a sigh that was wasted on the meadowlark perched on a nearby post, I turned to the gate. "Tore hell out of that gate," I said, to hear the sound of my voice. I was learning to swear, but I couldn't do it around my folks. When my father came back two hours later, the gate stood as tight and strong as it had ever been. By that time the sweat had dried on my face. I'd allowed myself a drink when the job was done, and washed the dust and tears off at the tank. I leaned against the gate post, chewing nonchalantly on a piece of grass, proud of myself. The gate was tight, and I hadn't been more scared than I could handle. When I got older, I realized he never told me I'd done a good job, no matter how I struggled or how hard the job had been. When I got older still...