Chapter Forty - Alternate Route Ahead
I fixed a couple of cups of coffee the way I liked it, pouring it into a small thermos, and tossed it in the jeep, then set out to go do the work on the artesian well. It didn't take me long to load up the tools I'd need, so before long I was driving in the jeep, travelling the trail to the upper end of the lake at the top end of the ranch. As I drove along, I was thinking back about how the place must have looked when Grampa Bender had first seen it. He'd told me about how much it had changed, and I had a good imagination. I suppose, in my mind's eye, I was travelling back in time as I drove. At any rate I was thinking of Grampa Bender and the tales he had told me.
Back in 1907, Grampa Bender, his dad, two brothers, and their wives had moved to what was later to become the Province of Alberta from Montana. Everyone else had planned on farming, but not Grampa Bender. William Tobias Bender wanted a ranch. So while his father and brothers filed on homesteads on the edge of the flatland, he saddled his horse and loaded a packhorse with gear. He set out to explore the rougher and drier country above their stakes, warning them that he planned on being gone for at least a week or two.
His family's homesteads were on a previously surveyed road allowance line across the bottom edge of a steep sided valley, near the confluence of two small creeks. Most of the land where they'd filed was" flat, but well drained, and had great potential as mixed farms. They'd filed there because, backing them was some far rougher land. Steeply broken, hilly land, less suitable for farming, but an area which had the potential to be good for grazing stock, if they could somehow find a way to get the rights to use it. Since he was more interested in ranching than farming, that was the area Grampa Bender wanted to check out.
Even in early June, one of the two creeks was almost dry, so it was obviously fed by spring runoff from the sloping area around and above it. However, the other creek showed promise, it was still trickling along, so he followed that upstream. After about ten miles, he came to a cliff and found that the waters of the creek cascaded down from above in a steep sided ravine. That was so steep and rocky that it was almost impossible to climb, particularly since he was leading one horse and riding another. Most of that day had been spent in trying to find a way up that cliff that was horse friendly. Although the vertical distance between the upper and lower areas wasn't that great, that drop-off was darn steep and although the cliff was only made up of sandstone and slate, it was rock. He'd had to trace a route on foot before he could lead his horses up, one at a time.
When Toby Bender saw that upper valley though, he fell in love with the place. Naturally fenced in by cliffs on all sides and relatively flat bottomed, that upper valley was a 'natural' ranch, where, with only a little bit of work, stock would be able to graze freely. Even though it had been early June at the time, there had been some water in the creek, and it had never been further from the edge of the steep, surrounding cliffs than easy grazing distance for cattle.
Toby thought he was in heaven; this place was perfect, well, almost perfect. Water might be a problem, actually it appeared that the creek didn't run year around. It seemed, from the evidence of spring runoffs, that it was dependent on drainage from the slopes of the foothills and mountains to the west of the valley. That lack of a year-round water supply might put an end to his dreams of a ranch. He certainly didn't have the money to build any flood control dams, even if they would back up enough water for a year round supply.
However, as he investigated further, he noticed a stand of willows and marshy ground near one of the farthest cliffs of the upper valley. In amongst the willows he found sound ground seepage that drained into a little lake. After some searching, he found a few meagre springs that were, seeping out of a sandstone layer, which was sandwiched between two layers of shale. Scratching around with his small camp shovel, he found he could increase the flow slightly. He instantly had thoughts of opening them up and increasing the flow from those springs. But, knowing that he'd need better tools to do anything more, he decided to check out the valley before he tried to do anything to them.
It had taken him two days to trace the creek back to the lake at the foot of the escarpment, which later became the upper boundary of the ranch lease, but he'd warned his folks he might be gone a week or more. Time wasn't a worry, and the more he saw of the valley, the more he liked it and the more he wanted to live the rest of his life there. For one thing, Grampa Bender was a relatively shy man who liked to be away from people and he loved the valley because it was so secluded. However, that thought lead to worries about the problem of access. He had to have some better means of getting anything in or out, rather than that steep path up the cliff at the bottom of the upper valley. The obvious place to look for a possible trail in or out of the valley would be one of the water eroded ravines that cut their way down through the surrounding cliffs. Luckily for him there was one less than a mile from the upper edge of the valley that had a manageable grade, in fact he could see that a trail or even a road wide enough for a wagon could easily be cut there.
To make a long story short, Grampa Bender brought back a pick, a shovel and a few sticks of dynamite and opened up one of those springs to increase the flow of water. After that, he filed on his homestead and negotiated a lease with the government for the whole valley, all the way down to the homesteads that his family had filed. Needless to say, the respect level he now received from his family was a lot higher than it previously had been. They were especially appreciative after the level of the creek rose, even though there had been no recent rains.
The original lease agreement that he and the family worked out was a direct result of a large herd of cattle that had been driven into the area from south of the border. A rancher had driven four hundred cattle in from Montana, but didn't have an approved range for them yet. Grampa Bender and his family had the temporary range that could be used to pasture them for a short time, but they had no cattle. A deal was soon struck, and while the rancher sought out an area to establish his ranch, his cowboys and Grampa Bender's brothers agreed to keep the herd in the lower valley. Part of the charge for pasturage was in cash, but another part was in cattle. Suddenly the Bender clan had a source of income and it was all due to Grampa Bender's foresight.
Knowing that winter was going to be rough, the first thing Grampa Bender did after he had filed on the homestead and lease was to help his father and brothers to build soddys. Now a soddy is made by taking the sods plowed out of the field and stacking them like oversized bricks to make walls. Built right, they could be warm and cozy. However, soddys got a bad reputation over the years, because they were often thrown up quickly and poorly, making them drafty and cold. As well, wood was hard to come by on the flat prairie and glass was relatively rare. Since it was hard to build windows into a soddy, they were often dark and dingy inside. Because of that, more than anything else, Grampa Bender didn't like soddys, but he was skilled with woodworking tools. On top of that, he had no problem finding and felling timber. Since he couldn't talk his family out of building soddys, he convinced each of them to at least build a timber framework, then build their sod walls around that. By doing that, they were able to mount proper doors and windows.
While they were building the soddys, Grampa Bender had been buying, selling and trading things he owned, for things he needed. When he'd come from Montana, he'd owned a heavy duty wagon, a team of horses, two well-broken saddle horses and three half-broken broncs. The wagon had been half full of various western gear and paraphernalia he'd collected in his short lifetime. Now that he had different needs, he traded away most of his cattle-driving gear, a rifle and two revolvers, two saddles and three of the horses. He even traded off the heavily built 'trail wagon' to a man who ran a cartage business. However before all three of the soddys were finished, he ended up with a lighter wagon, a plow, a pot bellied stove, a bed and a mattress, a mare in foal, six Hereford cattle, a Shorthorn bull calf, a pregnant sow, as well as five hens and a rooster. That wasn't mentioning a lot of hand tools and dried food that he either had owned previously, had traded for, or bought in a nearby town.
Once his father and each of his brothers had a place for their family to live, he convinced his two brothers to help him move his menagerie up to his new ranch. They not only agreed, but insisted that they wanted to give him a hand for a week or two, so that he could get established for the winter as well. Once they got the wagon load of goods and the animals down the grade in the big coulee that Grampa Bender had found and they saw the upper valley, they understood why he wanted to settle there.
Over the next two weeks, with his brothers' help, Grampa Bender built a tiny, one room cabin, a lean-to pole barn, a couple of temporary sheds and several short fences, mostly those were built as pens to keep in the pig and chickens. He was used to living alone, but after his brothers left, he found out just how lonely and isolated his new ranch was. So he worked from early morning until late night, but he also headed out to visit his family every few weeks and he made trips out to the tiny town that had been established just a few miles away from them.
He also explored the valley, closing off and fencing the cuts that water had worn in the cliffs in order to prevent his stock from wandering away. Not far up one of those coulees he found a small seam of coal. He opened it up, then hauled several wagon loads back to his cabin, building another log-walled lean-to in order to store it out of the weather. However, most of that first summer and fall were spent in making sure he could care for his stock during the winter.
One of the things he had done was to return to the spring that he had opened up, to check how that was doing. To his surprise, a fair amount of sand had built up around the outlet, in fact, enough had built up that it actually slowed the flow of water. He spent most of the next week expanding the hole as much as he could, often working waist deep in the cold water. Finally he lost his temper when he found that the water was actually forcing its way through a tiny slit between two layers of shale. He made a trip to town to buy some more dynamite. When he returned and set off the blast, he was astounded at the results. The water now came out of the hole so forcefully that it welled up a few inches above the pool that soon formed. In fact it was flowing so strongly that the flow carried most of the rocks and rubble from his blast right out of the hole. Now he didn't have a normal spring; he had an artesian well. However, every year from then on, someone had to go clear the sand out of the well, either that or the water flow gradually slowed.
That was the job I had set for myself that day.
As I dug out nearly half a ton of wet sand from the pool around the artesian well, I carefully tried to steer my thoughts away from the problem of having two young women available to me. Instead I tried to think about the ranch and what needed to be done during the upcoming days, prior to the time when I had to rush off to Calgary to begin my studies. Of course, trying not to think about the girls made it impossible for me to do anything else.
Resigning myself to the fact that they were the prime worry in my mind, I decided to review my thoughts about each of them. The first thought that came to mind was the fact that I couldn't see what either of them wanted to do with me. I was younger than they were, I was ... wait a moment, they said that our ages didn't matter. Okay, trying to look at things from their view, what else was a negative for either of their involvement with me? Over the last few hours, I had just heard them sing my praises, so at the moment my mind was blank toward negative thoughts they had about me.
Instead of thinking along those lines, I began to think about the negative points of their characters. Carissa could be quite pushy and so could Sandy, but I was just as stubborn as they were pushy. Carissa even said I could almost always convince her to see things my way in the long run. In fact she claimed that I dominated her and most other people, but she seemed to like that particular character quirk.
Actually, my mind wandered off at that point, thinking that I was going to have to talk to my folks about that domination thing. I wondered if they thought I was as forceful as Carissa did. I knew they often respected my opinions, and I knew that both Will and Beth listened to what I said. Heck, even Tom and George respected my views. Maybe Carissa was right, maybe I did have a dominant personality, but if I did, I didn't think I took advantage of people. After a few minutes thought about the subject, I sighed and shook my head. I'd worry about that later.
Right now I had two young women who were going to be coming back from town soon and would be expecting me to have an opinion on whether or not I wanted to be involved with both of them. Somehow I had to make up my mind about what I was going to say to them.
My next thought was spoken aloud, "Dammit, I'm too young to be thinking of things like multiple marriages and crap of that sort."
Looking around somewhat sheepishly at having started talking to myself, I went back to thinking quietly about the problem at hand as I worked. First off, I wasn't ready to settle down and stop looking at other women. Sure having Carissa live with me for the summer had been wonderful, but did I want to be involved with her for the rest of my life? Having sex and work with Carissa had been great. Even our bad times, when we were both blaming ourselves over Corinna's suicide attempt hadn't been that bad because of our support for each other, but was she someone I wanted to be with forever? Especially now that she'd told me she'd like to have sex with women too?
Was the idea of Carissa having sex with another woman a big thing to me? In other words, would I regard her having sex with a woman as cheating on me? What about if I was able to have sex with the other woman too? Wouldn't we both be cheating on each other?
Whoa, I was getting carried away, just asking myself questions, or was I? Maybe I should think of all the questions I wanted answers to first?
What about Sandy, what did she think about the idea of having sex with Carissa? Heck, what did she think about having sex with me or with both of us? In fact, what did I really feel about having sex with both Sandy and Carissa? On top of that, what would my family and my other friends think, if and when they found out? What would the neighbours say if they knew I was living with two women and did I really care? Carissa had bad mouthed the Bible, but what about religion? What did I really believe?
About then I realized that I had to stop and take the time to think things through one at a time. It was time to let the water in the deep pool around the artesian well settle a bit anyway, so I took out the thermos of coffee I'd brought along and leaned back against a tree. Sipping on a cup of coffee, I thought about what I was faced with and made up my mind that first of all that I should really decide who I was, what I wanted, where I was planning to go and what I was planning to do.
For one thing, I was only sixteen years old and there was no way I was ready to settle down in a marriage. There were too many things I wanted to do before I settled down to spend my life with anyone and started a family. As I thought about the situation, I realized that Carissa and I hadn't made any pronouncement of being mutually exclusive in any way either. That should answer my first question about cheating if Carissa had sex with anyone else, but did it? In actual fact, we'd been living together, almost like a man and wife, so in a way, we'd come to feel we were a couple. I'd actually enjoyed that very much. The sex was great, but the mutual support during the day and the cuddles that happened every night we slept together was even more satisfying. I felt that both of us had gained a lot from each other and if anything, I knew that I owed Carissa a huge debt for her commitment to making my life so comfortable for the last few months.
Now it seemed Carissa wanted to branch out and expand her horizons. She wanted to explore her bisexual feelings and she was actually inviting me to play along. In several ways, that alone was a huge wow factor for me. I'd never realized that Carissa had any desires to be with women, but then, she admitted that she'd hidden them from everyone she could. The fact that she was comfortable enough with our mutual situation that she would trust me with that knowledge was quite a compliment, but I wondered if it changed my feelings toward her? The fact that she had desires for people of the same sex didn't really bother me, but I didn't know why. It wasn't that I had any desires toward any guys, but somehow, for some strange reason, it seemed different for a woman to feel that way, at least to me.
I paused and shook my head after wondering why I felt that sex between two women wasn't the same as sex between a woman and another man. However, I decided that I'd have to think about that idea another time because that wasn't a question which would take a short time to resolve. I already had enough personal questions on my mind and I needed to focus on the problems that I might be facing in my present situation, rather than going off into a philosophical fugue.
As I swallowed another drink of coffee, my mind wandered to Sandy and her statement that she had an aunt who was married to a man with umpteen wives. That pretty well established where she stood about having sex with me, even if I was involved with Carissa. However, it still begged the question of what she thought about the idea of having sex with Carissa. That was a question only Sandy could answer.
Of course thinking of Sandy telling us that her mother had been raised as a Mormon brought up the question of religious beliefs. Exactly what was my personal feeling about the church and its attitude toward adultery, because that's exactly what I was thinking about. Of course, since none of us were married, it really wasn't adultery, not legally. But heck, even though I wasn't a regular participant in the church and its religious rites, I knew that any sex outside of marriage was considered adultery, at least in the church that my family sometimes attended.
That was the thing, we seldom went to church, because the church had been so weak in its support of Mom and Dad when they'd first gotten together. To be honest, the preacher at Dad's regular church at the time had refused to marry them, saying that Dad needed to mourn Mama Kate for a decent period first. After that response, you can imagine Dad's reaction. Right then, Dad was worried about a pregnant woman that he had grown to love, a young son that needed care, and a farm that demanded attention. He certainly didn't need some pompous little prick telling him that he needed to grieve for Mama Kate either. I'm surprised that Dad didn't hit the dolt. Instead of smacking him, Dad quietly turned his back on the preacher, walked out of the church and never entered that building again.
Aunt Alice was nowhere near as nice. First off, she arranged for a wedding ceremony somewhere else. However, the Sunday following the wedding ceremony, she arranged for all of the Bender family, except Mom and Dad, to attend the services. During the preacher's sermon, which was nothing more than a rant about adultery, she and the whole family stood up and filed out of the church. Most of the rest of the congregation followed them. Since the Bender family had helped build the church, then had paid for over half of the pews, the statement was clear and effective. When everyone heard about the reason for our family's action, community support followed our lead. Inside of a year, the church went bankrupt and was sold to a more moderate congregation. The family occasionally attended services there, but they no longer gave the amount of support that they previously had.
With that sort of situation in my family's history, it isn't too surprising that I'd learned early in life to look on organized religion with a somewhat jaundiced eye. In fact with my background, I certainly wasn't strong on churches or preachers. I certainly didn't feel that I needed an interpreter to read the Bible and tell me what my view on what any single passage in it should be. That situation was far too prone to personal bias. I'd seen two different churches, and even two different preachers who belonged to the same church, take diametrically opposite views on a passage from the bible. As Carissa had pointed out, the bible was filled with ambiguities and different people read the various passages to mean totally different things.
I suppose I felt that there might be some sort of supreme being, but did I believe in God as an individual entity? At the moment I wasn't sure. I believed in ethics. I believed in the 'golden rule,' but I knew that I wasn't one of those people who could slavishly follow all the bible's precepts. I wasn't even positive that I believed in following all of the ten commandments. I mean there were times when I might break one or another of them if I felt it was warranted. For instance, if I felt someone was out to kill me, I'm not too sure that I wouldn't 'do unto others,' only I'd try my dangdest 'to do unto him' first. After all, in that situation I'd be defending myself. So, even though the situation I described was far fetched, it effectively eliminated my concrete belief in the commandment that "Thou shalt not kill." Unfortunately, beliefs are like a bucket of water. Once you've poked a hole in a bucket, the water will leak out, and with something like belief in the commandments, find a reason to circumvent one and others could easily follow. In actual fact that was why I was sitting there thinking in the first place, I was considering breaking another commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
As I thought about that and about my overall beliefs, I remembered the old newspaper clipping that Grampa Bender had framed and hung on the wall in his kitchen. I'd read it many times, in fact I thought I could probably recite it from memory. So, shovel in hand and gently lifting each scoop from the roiling water, I tried to see if I could remember the verse.
I chuckled as I recited the last words, maybe Grampa Bender and I were more alike than I had thought? Actually, I wished I could meet the guy who wrote the verse. Then I wondered if it had been Grampa Bender or one of his friends who had written it under a pen name. Maybe I'd ask him one day?
However, I was almost done the job at hand, but I still had some questions to answer, didn't I? I thought back and decided I did.
Okay, what did I really think about the idea of sleeping with both Carissa and Sandy? Well, as a horny sixteen year old, I loved the idea, but at the same time I worried about what effect it would have on my relationship with each of them. Did I want to risk losing what I had with Carissa, just to get my rocks off with another woman? Would she be jealous? Hell, would I be jealous if she and Sandy got it on without me being involved? Even more important, did I want to be involved with Sandy? She'd already proven to me that she had an extremely volatile temper and I knew that there were bound to be times when either Carissa or I would set her off. Dammit, this was one of those questions that made me think of more questions than it did answers. So I took the easy way out, I decided that these were questions that I needed to discuss with both girls.
On top of everything else, what would my family and my other friends think, when they found out? What would Carissa and Sandy's folks think? Damn, another question that I couldn't answer instantly. The only thing that I could think of was the fact that all of our mothers had seen fit to try to isolate us here with each other, so they had to expect something to happen, didn't they? I really wasn't sure what their reasoning was, but after a moment's thought about each woman, I realized that each of the three mothers probably had a reason of her own for agreeing with the idea.
I think Mom may have felt that Carissa had pressured me into becoming involved and this might have been her way to wake me up to the fact that there were 'more fish in the sea.' As well, it was possible that she was worried about me finding a place to stay in Calgary and she was opening an opportunity for me. Perhaps she was letting me live through a situation similar to what Dad had lived in for a short time, so that I would understand their relationship better? I really didn't understand her reasoning, even though I'd just thought of several plausible excuses. But then, Mom was a complicated woman, I seldom understood the reasoning behind her actions until after the dust had settled from a situation.
I think Wilma Coulter may have had a clearer reason than Mom did. She may have suspected that Carissa had a 'thing' for women. Since this was such an isolated situation, isolating the three of us here might have been her way of giving Carissa an opportunity to explore those feelings. In fact as outspoken as Carissa had become since Corinna's dive from the church tower, it was quite possible that she'd told her mom about her feelings. Perhaps? I really didn't know.
The only person whose reasons I was relatively certain about was Ann McAdam. First off, she'd been raised as a Mormon, so the idea of two women and one man was far from foreign to her eyes. Secondly, Sandy had told Carissa and me directly that her mom was relatively covetous for her daughters. She wanted them to marry into families who owned property. On top of that from what Sandy had said, she was extremely manipulative. I wouldn't be surprised to find out sometime in the future that she had convinced both Carissa and Mom into trying to isolate the three of us for some other supposed reason. In the meantime, I think she was hoping that Sandy could inveigle her way into some sort of relationship with me.
Or perhaps the three of them had just been playing a practical joke on the three of us? Naw, that idea was a little far fetched, even for me.
Of course I'd left all of our fathers out of the equation. I knew that Dad and John Coulter had a lot of faith in my ability to think my way through problems. As for Sam McAdam, I was sure he had a lot of faith in my character as well. After all I'd been the guy who had refused to take his daughter's virginity when it was practically offered to him on a platter, well, at least on a steering wheel. Really though, I don't think any of them realized exactly what was going on. Each of them probably had something else on their mind at the time and never even paid any attention to the fact that Sandy had been left with us.
The only other person who had been there, and done anything, was Wil. I was still angry with him for his little 'joke' of disabling the vehicles, but I knew that since Mom had said she asked him to do it, he was only being an obedient son. I wasn't happy with Mom on that subject either, in fact I wanted to sit down with both of them in the future and explain my feelings. The idea of disabling a person's transportation when he was in an isolated situation and fifteen miles from any help was not a joking matter to me. However, that was a worry for a later time, right now I was still pondering what to do about having two pretty women who seemed to both want to go to bed with me.
The only question left was what would the neighbours say if they knew I was living with two women? Did I really care what the neighbours thought about me? The answer was definitely ambivalent. Yes, I cared, but no, their opinion didn't really matter to me all that much, not unless they got really riled and started to pelt us with rocks or something. In actual fact, there weren't that many neighbours and the closest ones tended to mind their own business.
At that point, I took a deep sigh. I had spent the whole morning working on an almost mindless sort of job, but I was finished it. At the same time I had reduced the conflicts in my own thoughts. I still had several unanswered questions, but I needed input from Carissa and Sandy to answer those. Because of those unanswered questions, I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, but I was a lot closer to a decision than I had been.
As I worked at levelling and spreading the pile of sand I'd scooped out of the well, my stomach growled, letting me know it was time to start to think about having something to eat. I quickly packed up my tools and drove back to the ranch buildings. Once I was there, I saw that Carissa and Sandy weren't back yet, so I decided to put away the tools before I made lunch, maybe we could talk things out as we ate. I spent close to half an hour putting the tools away and cleaning up the tool storage area, but then when I looked out toward the cabin, the car was back.
Good, we could have lunch and I could talk to the girls about the situation to find out their opinions on what they felt. That would help me make up my mind about what to do, so I hurried back to the cabin.
When I opened the door, there were grocery bags on the kitchen table and the counter, but the girls weren't in the main room of the cabin. Then I saw that the bedroom door was partly closed and I could hear a quiet conversation from inside the bedroom, nothing I could really understand, but things sounded normal. I decided that they were probably changing from their good clothes into something more suitable for working around the ranch. I decided that if I looked in and they were changing, I might make Sandy embarrassed, so to give her some privacy, I set out to clean up and make some lunch. I'd put away the groceries, made three sandwiches and put the coffee pot on before I realized that they'd been in the bedroom for quite a while. Then I heard sounds that were quite familiar and definitely not quiet conversation. Curiosity drew me to the bedroom door.
Okay, so they weren't just changing their clothes.
The door had been partly closed, had they wanted privacy? But at the same time, the door had been partly open, was it left that way as an invitation for me to enter? I didn't want to embarrass or disturb them by asking, but ...
Oh shit, what was I supposed to do?
Suddenly I was the one who was embarrassed. I was even feeling a tinge of jealousy. Mostly though, I was feeling aroused. My body was excited and wanted to be involved in the ongoing fun and games. At the same time my mind was screaming at me that if I walked into that room and did anything at all, there were bound to be serious consequences to that action. I knew that I hadn't made up my mind yet which way I was going to jump, and I certainly hadn't been prepared for the situation I was facing.
I admit it, I watched them for a few moments and I dithered. Part of me wanted to be the rooster in the henhouse, covering any female that arousal had made ready, another part of me wanted to act like a chicken and run to be safe, getting myself well away from the action. I knew that the longer I watched, the more likely it was that I'd step inside the door.
Somehow the thought of possible repercussions sank into my skull and I forced myself to step back, then turn away. I'll admit that I was fighting with myself, but somehow my reason won out over my desires. I managed to grab a mug of coffee and a sandwich, then went out onto the front porch to sit and think. Thought didn't come easily. The vision of the two tangled female bodies, writhing on the bed, seemed to be burned into my retinas.
My life had just grown a lot more complicated.