Eighty Miles to Go Eight

You ever drive eighty miles to get eight miles up the road? Folks did, on account of that ferry back there behind you, and the man who ran it would have cursed you for mentioning it. That was Bill Menor, out of Ohio, the first homesteader across the Snake under these mountains. When the river came up too wild he wouldn't risk the crossing, and you went on upstream to the Moran toll bridge and all the way down the other bank. Eighty miles to go eight. An Eastern lady once asked this lifelong bachelor what he raised out here. "Hell and kids," he told her, "and plenty of both." His brother Holiday moved in with him, and that held until they quarreled over a neighbor. Holiday didn't go far. He took land straight across the water, put the Snake between them, and for two years neither one spoke a word to the other. But each man kept an eye on that far bank, checking that his brother was all right. It took a Christmas to end it. Both got asked to dinner at the Bar B C Ranch, neither one told about the other, and each had a stiff whiskey put in his hand. They shook across the table. Then they went back to shaking fists across the river, which suited them better. Bill sold out in nineteen eighteen and found he couldn't leave. Noon and six he'd turn up and pace a floor that wasn't his anymore, swearing because dinner wasn't on. Years on, Evelyn Dornan, who'd boarded at the old place, found the pair of them in a little hospital in San Diego. Bill was flat on his back, cursing the bed and talking about Jackson Hole. Holiday's mind was slipping. Within a year of each other, both were gone. A kind nurse had pinned a rough oil painting of the Tetons at the foot of Bill's bed. I don't know what she had in mind. I know what I see. An old man with his eyes on the other shore, the way he kept them for two years without a word, making sure all was well over there.