By Phil Roberts, 9 May 2022
We walked that warm summer afternoon, along the rough trail leading to the top of the Hat Creek Breaks with our dog Pal leading the way to ward off the rattlesnakes or anything else that may threaten us. Steve was 15 months older than me—not only was he my older brother but best friend, both the case until his death almost 70 years later. I was about five or six years old. It would have been easy to ride our tired old horse Betty, but that would have required getting some help from our dad who, at the time, was working with the irrigation pipe in the alfalfa field he had proudly prepared next to Sage Creek—another victory over his father’s stubborn insistence that nothing ought to change. “It worked fine before the war,” he’d insist. When dad went about doing it anyway, he’d say, “Well, I always said we ought to put up hay for the winter.” Dad would smile and shrug.
Ruth, Mom’s sister, had driven out to the ranch to pick Mom up. The sisters (Ruth, Mom, and Phyllis) planned to spend the evening trying out some new songs—they were in constant demand to sing for funerals. She’d be back, but late. She needn’t tell us that soon, Dad would be back from the east pasture and he’d feed us supper—probably, bacon and pancakes, or his specialty, “pigs in a blanket.” We didn’t say we were walking to the top of the breaks to see the sunset. They might worry. Besides, we’ll be back before they get home.
The 2 or 3-mile trail started level close to the ranch yard, but within a mile or two, it began to rise with a series of steep curves and switchbacks. Clumps of sagebrush and sunflowers, in season, bordered this stretch of trail. The chalk-white rocks harbored lots of snakes, or so we imagined, staying well clear of the increasingly more frequent swirled rocks.
It wasn’t the first time we’d set out exploring, but it was usually out to the barn, the native-stone chicken house, or the abandoned cabin below the house that we called for no reason “the pig house.” We’d even walked to the top earlier one day, assuring us that we could be back down before sunset. But it wasn’t going to happen today. It was already after 5 o’clock and supper. “Don’t go too far,” Mom advised as we set off for another adventure and she left for town with Ruth.
As usual, Pal knew where we were going and set off racing, stopping momentarily when his long collie snout picked up an odor of interest, but still staying 30 or so feet ahead. Steve took long strides and, sometimes, stopped to rest while I tried to catch up. He was always my leader—telling me about what my next year’s schoolteacher liked (from his experience the year before) or how to navigate the increasingly challenging class work, how the principal always recognized him and how I could use that to my advantage. (Years later, even though I was in Marine Corps boot camp and he had previously been in Army Basic, he’d describe what the drill instructor looked for in a model soldier (he was one; me, not so much, even after taking his advice).
We came to the hilly part of the trail and his long strides started losing their efficiency to my short, steady goat-like steps. Betty always balked when the trail began rising; we’d turn around after a curve or two. But we didn’t have her today so it was full-speed ahead to the top, past the ever-thicker scrub cedar and small pine, denuded of limbs and needles to the west from where the wind always seemed to blow and leaning down to the east—the downhill side.
As we climbed, the sun seemed to be less bright as it started dropping in the west.
“If we hurry, we can watch the sunset,” Steve urged, neither of us considering how dark it would get a short time later.
We were both getting tired by the time we came to the final steep ascent to the top.
We knew we wouldn’t miss it because the barbed wire fence just beyond the top marked the boundary line of our property and the Fields place. Somewhere, probably just beyond the four strands of wire, was the county road, just below the top and just next to the ruts, deeply carved into the sandstone by the wheels of hundreds of stagecoaches and wagons that snaked north to Hat Creek Station, bound for Deadwood and gold.
Just as we reached the top, we saw the most glorious sunset that I’ve ever seen, even to this day. The fiery reds and radiant oranges seemed to take over the entire sky. We stood there in awe—even Pal seemed entranced by the scene. A riot of reds and oranges of every shade.
We admired the scene for what seemed like an eternity, even though it couldn’t have been more than 15 minutes. Amidst the “wows” from both of us, Steve suddenly realized the trip back down might have to be navigated in the waning light and fast-approaching twilight.
I started to shiver. It was just that the wind got colder, I told myself, but I was thinking of what Grandad told us a long time ago about coyotes stalking anything alive in the hills. Just as I was about to cry out, Steve appeared in the twilight. “Are you scared?” he asked. “No,” I said tentatively as I continued to shake. “Well, it doesn’t matter. We’re going home together—you, me, and Pal.”
By then, it was very dark, not even the moon coming up yet. “Come along,” Steve whispered, “I’ll lead the way and you grab ahold of the hair on top of Pal’s neck (he was a mutt—part border collie, part brown Labrador retriever, and part of everything else). The three of us had been together since the beginning. Neither Steve nor me ever knew life without Pal. He was the essence of loyalty—utterly devoted to us. He had killed rattlers with his teeth to protect us, lying under the porch for days one summer while he recovered from a nasty bite from one as he held it in his mouth and battered it against a rock. But he survived, only to be even more protective against all snakes. We loved him; he loved us. (To this day, some 65 years after his death, I measure true friendship based on the mutual love and trust I had with Pal. Unconditional love).
Another quick glance to the west and the dying sunset. And another look east down in the dark valley at the one tiny flickering light in the window of the ranchhouse. “Ready to go?” Steve whispered. I nodded. He said quietly, “Don’t worry, we’ll be going together. You, me, and Pal. We’re all going home.”
Pal “went home” long ago; Steve, just last week. I desperately miss them both—my two best friends. I said it as the last shovelful of dirt covered the Pal’s box in the hole Grandad dug west of the house next to the big white pine. I thought of those words again in the Lusk Cemetery yesterday. “Don’t worry. We’ll all be together. I’m going home, too”