Buffalo flats, p.1
Buffalo Flats, page 1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
The Sit, 1890
Potatoes
Land Office
The Dance
Church
Dominion Day
Midwifery
The Wedding
Brother Sempel
Blizzard
Endless Winter, 1891
Chinook
May Day
Philemon’s Baby
Flood
The Barn
Sempels
Coby
Grippe
The Sit
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Margaret Ferguson Books
Copyright © 2023 by Martine Leavitt
All rights reserved
HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Printed and bound in February 2022 at Maple Press, York, PA, USA.
www.holidayhouse.com
First Edition
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Leavitt, Martine, 1953- author.
Title: Buffalo flats / by Martine Leavitt.
Description: First edition. | New York City : Margaret Ferguson Books, Holiday House, 2023. | Audience: Ages 12 and up | Audience: Grades 10-12. | Summary: “The coming of age story of Rebecca Leavitt as she searches for her identity in the Northwest Territories of Canada”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022016975 | ISBN 9780823443420 (hardcover) Subjects: CYAC: Identity—Fiction. | Northwest Territories—History—19th century—Fiction. | Christian life—Fiction. LCGFT: Christian fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PZ7.B3217 Bu 2023 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016975
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4342-0 (hardcover)
In honor of Thomas Rowell Leavitt 1834–1891
To his credit, he built well—not so much his crude pioneer log cabins,
but his family traditions of togetherness and integrity.
—Dr. Clark T. Leavitt
The Sit, 1890
Rebecca had heard her father and others call this land God’s country often enough that she wasn’t as surprised as she might have been to come upon him, one warm spring evening, sitting on the tor overlooking Buffalo Flats. He was dressed in his work clothes, but you knew God when you saw him. A sparrow swooped over him as if everything were usual. An insect lighted on him and flew away, as if it hadn’t just landed on God.
He saw her and smiled and said, “Rebecca.”
She sat beside him on a large, flat rock and gazed with him at the Rocky Mountains, twenty miles to the west, sweeping straight up out of the prairie. The sun perched on the peak of Black Bear Mountain, burning like a candle, its light filling the valley like honey, golding up every solid thing: cows, cabins, barns, fields. The land looked less lonesome this way, but Rebecca loved it in all its ways—its winds and weathers, its rocky bones jutting out of the earth in places, the long-limbed prairie that stretched one’s soul out of shape to see its distances.
“Buffalo Flats,” Rebecca said, gesturing to the valley before them. She wondered briefly who had named the valley, and what God thought of the names people made up for his creations.
“And where are the buffalo?” he asked gently.
She didn’t feel as if she were expected to answer—she supposed all questions were rhetorical with God. He would know that the buffalo had been killed off before her people arrived. But there had been a note of sadness in his voice.
Perhaps it might provide some comfort if she drew his attention to her father’s caramel-colored cows grazing on the flats.
“Father’s cows,” she said, pointing.
He nodded with interest. It occurred to her that he would know cows, having made them in the first place. And she guessed these pilgrim cows weren’t much comfort if you wanted buffalo.
Or perhaps God thought, as she did, that the land—the mountains, the prairie—was unspeakably beautiful, even without buffalo.
“Good job, sir,” she said meekly.
The peaks of the Rocky Mountains seemed to look down on her like venerable ancestors in the deepening light, stern and mildly disapproving, reminding her to watch her manners.
The book of Hebrews said it was a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God, but she thought sitting beside him on a rock was a comfortable thing. It might have been a long time or a short time that they sat quiet together, the sun sinking behind the peaks, the sky becoming a stained-glass window.
Rebecca recalled her mother’s admonition not to be long on her wander. She hesitated, and then decided it would go harder on her to displease Mother than to dismiss herself from the company of deity. So she said, “Guess I’ll go home now.”
She stood.
“Guess I will, too,” he said, but it was so kindly said, it might have been, “I wish it could be longer.”
She had gone only a few steps down the slope when the mountains snuffed out the sun and filled the flats below with shadow. A wolf howled from the timber, and the pups yipped in answer.
She turned back. What had she done? Anyone with any sense would have asked a thousand questions, and others, who had no sense at all, would instead introduce God to her father’s cows.
But he was gone, and it would be full dark soon.
At the bottom of the tor she untied Tiny from the lone tree and rode slowly toward home, the taste of honey light still in her throat.
Now that she’d had a sit with God, Rebecca supposed she would be expected to love not just the mountains, but love the people, too. That was all he ever really wanted from his children, wasn’t it? She figured she might be able to Love the World, or at least the general idea of it, if she didn’t have to love people in the particular. Did she have to love the Cochrane cowboys who’d wanted to run her people off when they first arrived? What about their neighbors, the Sempels, who repulsed all Mother’s efforts to be neighborly? And people were always unhappily surprising her by being just like her—scared sometimes, selfish sometimes, tired and lazy and thoughtless and uncertain.
With this in mind, Rebecca couldn’t help being astonished all over again that God had allowed himself to be seen by her. She couldn’t remember doing anything deserving that day, or any day in her life for that matter. She loved Mother and tried to help, but she usually felt it a sacrifice, which canceled out any credit to goodness she could have hoped for. She was, she had to admit, at times unlovely of temper, and thought a dozen unkind thoughts a day. At this very moment she could think a dozen unkind thoughts about her brother Ammon alone.
On the good side, she was fair and could see the other side of a thing. And also—well, she supposed that was all the goodness she could honestly lay claim to. She could scrub the house top to bottom, and milk a kicky cow, and quilt some, but she would rather ride her horse than do her chores, rather daydream in the hayloft than pay attention in church. She suspected she had been born more naturally wicked than others, and a lifetime of humble reflection would never make her as good as Mother and her best friend, LaRue Fletcher, already were. Considering everything, being as good as she needed to be was an appalling prospect, given her natural inclinations.
But what else could she do? It was time to reform.
Rebecca had come to her parents a daughter after six sons. Three of her brothers lived with her: Gideon, Zach, and Ammon. Another brother, William, born first, had died as a child. Two other brothers, Jared and Samuel, had chosen to stay in Utah and had families of their own.
The way Ammon told it, when Rebecca came along, she was an afterthought, a shrug, after the straight-shouldered pride of all that male offspring, a concession to God that they must take the bad with the good. But their beloved mother bent over that bit of flesh as if it were her own heart lying in the cradle, and the boys had to go along with it. When the baby girl was a year old and clearly going to live, Mother began insisting the brothers remember its name: Rebecca. Mother said it hadn’t gone quite like that, but Rebecca tended to believe Ammon.
Her family’s house was on the shore by Lee Creek, the barn behind the house on a rise. The house was made of logs hauled from the timber and sawn and dovetailed by hand. Father hadn’t used a single nail in the building of it. It seemed more beautiful than ever to Rebecca this evening as she rode up, lamplight glowing through the sugar-sacking curtains.
She put Tiny in the barn, walked to the house, and opened the door. In her everyday voice she said, as if her heart hadn’t landed on God, “I’m home.”
The family was seated at the table already. Father glanced at her from under his bushy gray eyebrows, and she knew he was unhappy that she hadn’t been home to help Mother with dinner.
“Late as usual,” said Ammon, pushing a bowl of mashed potatoes in her direction.
Father resumed talking to his sons, as always about land and livestock and weather and their prospects as settlers. Her father and brothers got their homesteads by paying the government ten dollars and promising to prove up—building a house and working the land—in three years’ time. In another year, if they could hang on, the land would be theirs. Her brothers had only rudimentary log houses on their land, which butted up against Father’s, and they would continue to live at home until they got married, which couldn’t happen soon enough in Rebecca’s opinion.
“Wolves are fat and cheeky from last winter’s die-out,” Gideon said, for the wolves had started up their choir again. He meant that the wolves had eaten well over the winter on the carcasses of cattle that hadn’t survived the cold. Now the wolves wanted the live ones.
“Lots of new pups, and mama wolves needing to feed them,” Zach said, “and our new calves look tasty. I heard the Cochrane Ranche imported wolfhounds to deal with them.”
“So they did,” Father said, “and the wolves dealt with the dogs most egregiously.”
Rebecca thought the wild animals deserved their dinner as much as people did, but she glanced at Mother and decided not to say so. Mother expressed few opinions, whereas Rebecca had an abundance of them and rarely hesitated to bless others with them. Now she decided she would emulate her mother in all womanly virtues, and say only the most ladylike things or nothing at all.
“I don’t suppose wolves will stop us,” Zach said with his mouth half full. “It’s the Cochrane Ranche and all their rich Eastern investors—how are we supposed to compete at the stock auction?” Eastern investors made it so Cochrane could sell his beef at lower rates than any of the other ranchers.
Father and her brothers ate in silence a few minutes, pondering, she knew, the problems that plagued them—how to keep their homesteads going, how to get through the long winter, how to get their cattle through. Pilgrim cows were not designed for the privations of the North-West Territories. In winter, they were driven by blizzards over the banks of coulees and into drifts, and splayed themselves on ice glares. In summer they were tormented by heat and flies, and broke their legs in gopher holes. They died birthing their calves as if they were delicate ladies. There was nothing buffalo about them, for they were bred to be fat and spindly-legged and tame.
It seemed a fool’s dream sometimes, but to fail would mean Father and her brothers would have to return to work in the coal mines in Utah. It would be the end of their dream to have their own land, to make their living aboveground.
“We will complain less and be more grateful for the opportunity we have,” Father said. “My father in England would never have dreamed of such land and such dominion for his son and my sons.”
“And your daughter, Father. Someday I will have some opportunity and dominion of my own. I have found a quarter section of land I would like.”
Father and her brothers stopped eating and stared at her.
“Women don’t have dominion, Rebecca,” Zach said. “They are part of what a man has dominion over.”
“Don’t you say that, Zach,” she said in a rush. “I am going to have my own land, and I’m going to have dominion like nobody’s business.”
Her determination to say only ladylike things had lasted all of a minute, but if her father and brothers had homesteads, why shouldn’t she?
“Which land is this, daughter?” Father said in a measured tone.
“The quarter section between our land and Coby’s.”
“That?” Ammon said. “Why would anyone want that land? It’s mostly rocks and wind—even the gophers don’t want to live there.”
“Well I do, and I will.”
Father shook his head. “Single women can’t homestead, Rebecca.” His voice was patient. “The law says so. You will have your own land by way of your husband when you marry.”
“I will go to the land office and make inquiries,” Rebecca said.
This almost constituted back talk, which was forbidden. But Mother saved the day.
“I believe I will have enough butter and eggs to sell in town in a couple of days,” she said. “I shall come with you.”
All heads turned to Mother.
“I am sure your father is right,” she said, “but I’d like to hear what the land agent says about it. Your aunt Durden’s sister-in-law homesteads in Montana—perhaps things have changed.”
Rebecca was suddenly full. Blissfully full. Here was further proof that her mother was only a little lower than the angels.
Father shook his head at his plate, as if the gravy had betrayed him in some way, and said, “It’s a waste of your time, Eliza, but go if you must.”
After a short silence, Ammon steered the conversation back to the discussion they were having before Rebecca had interrupted. “Will we make it, Father?”
Ammon asked this—Ammon who never asked a question to which he didn’t already know the answer. Ammon in all meekness was asking Father if they were going to make it. Furthermore, Father was pondering his question, as if there were no immediate and obvious answer.
“Of course we will make it!” Rebecca said. “Shame for asking, Ammon—of course we will!”
Father rested his elbows on the table and folded his hands together over his plate. “You are full of proclamations tonight, daughter. What is the source of it?”
“Because,” she said.
Father seemed to consider this, and then nodded solemnly. “Always the best reason.”
“The best,” said Ammon.
“Because,” she said, somewhat less boldly. “Because...I saw God.”
Gideon choked on his food. Zach snorted. Ammon stared.
In her heart she knew that the two bore no relation, but, after all, she had seen God, and shouldn’t that lend a little weight to her pronouncements?
Father looked at Rebecca the way he did when one of his cows got the bloat. He stroked his beard, his beard which he had always had. It occurred to Rebecca for the first time that she had never in her life seen her father’s entire face.
Ammon grinned wildly.
“And where did you see him, sister?” he asked.
“He was on the big rock up on the tor, looking over the flats to the mountains,” Rebecca said, knowing how it must sound. She lowered her eyes. “It was a pretty sunset.”
“Rebecca,” Mother said, “these things are not to be trifled with.”
“I’m not trifling,” Rebecca said, contradicting her mother, and, for the moment, not caring.
“And what would God want by appearing to you?” Ammon asked. “Did he call you to repentance?”
“I think—I think it was an accident. Perhaps he forgot to make himself invisible.”
“Forgot, eh?” Ammon said. “Let’s hope he doesn’t forget to make the sun come up tomorrow.”
Her brothers laughed.
“Tell me,” Gideon said to her, “he didn’t give you a stone tablet with writing on it, did he?”
Father said, “The impertinence of seeing God at his leisure. I believe you have been afflicted with too much imagination, Rebecca, and too much time to cultivate it.”
That meant he would find more work for her to do.
“The prophets saw God,” Mother said quietly.
“I think, Eliza,” Father said, “that we shall not compare our daughter to a prophet. Tomorrow, Rebecca, you will help me put in the potato field.”
“Consider the state of your soul,” Ammon intoned in a deep voice, and Gideon and Zach shoved food in their mouths so they wouldn’t laugh again.
After evening chores and family prayer, Rebecca sat on her bed and considered the state of her soul.
She was sure her mother never had an impatient thought, for she’d never seen her anything but gentle and kind, except to the odd prairie chicken. It was well-known Mother could do better with her 12-gauge shotgun than any man when a prairie chicken was needed for supper. Also Mother was a midwife, and any time of day or night, in any weather, she would go to birth a baby and stay after to help. She would clean the house, cook and carry water, and milk the cows. She did other nursing, as well, and laid out the dead, and tithed her garden and her bread to the needy, the afflicted, and the bachelor, specifically Coby Webster who lived alone, which Mother saw as a great pity. Rebecca thought it impossible for an ordinary young woman like herself to live in the shadow of such goodness.
