saddlebag dispatches
O
N THURSDAY NIGHTS, SOME of the boys from around the Powder River Basin get together at the Occidental Saloon to play bluegrass. They wedge in next to the back bar, a banjo, a guitar or two, and someone hammering away at the yellowed keys of the venerable upright piano, with the occasional fiddle or mandolin thrown in. When the boys first started the sessions, it was for their own amusement and that of the Occidental’s regulars, ranchers, town merchants and their wives. Word spread, though, and tourists began to show up, and then the sculptors and poets who’d begun to populate Buffalo as the start of what they called an artists’ community. The boys usually began with some gospel numbers, “Amazing Grace” and such, in deference to the old folks who arrived early and occupied the closest tables so they could hear. Later, when the old-timers drifted away to their beds, the band would pick up the pace. Some folks even danced in the tiny space between the tables, the band, and the bar, the waitresses dodging the fast-stepping couples as the music reverberated off the pressed-tin ceiling.
Will Burrell had been a regular at the Occidental for the Thursday nights of the past year. Will ranched nineteen hundred acres of cattle land in the Bighorn foothills. His high-school sweetheart wife, Ellie, died five years ago and there were those who thought Will might not survive her passing. He’d hunkered down on the ranch, with just the cattle for company, for four years. Then one Thursday night he’d shown up at the Occidental, in his town boots, white shirt and straw Stetson Rincon, his best jeans anchored for safety by a large-buckled belt and red suspenders. Some of the old folks remembered that he and Ellie had been quite the dancers in their youth. Will proved that he hadn’t lost his touch, gliding through the Two-Step and the Cotton-Eyed Joe. Once he began coming, Will never missed a Thursday night. He danced with anyone who would join him. At first, that meant Ellie’s contemporaries, sturdy ranch wives who whispered among themselves that they were just glad he’d decided not to lay down and die. Soon others saw that he danced with a grace that belied his fifty-five years and his partners became more varied—the younger wives in town, tourist la-
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