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Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

The Turning of Seasons

Springs are always haphazard in these parts. It is bright and sunny one day and then the next twenty centimetres of sleet falls. The next day the sun is out again and you can almost imagine it is summer. Nothing happens for days and then all at once everywhere you look it is green and trees are filled with leaves. 

That’s life, in a way. Long stretches of stillness, followed by a frenzy of activity that sputters out seemingly as soon as it begins.  

He had mixed feelings about spring in truth. Haphazard even. It was the end of winter of course, which was always welcome. But some years winter seemed to drag on through spring and they had more snow in April than in January. The trees had tried to bloom and then had to retreat with the temperatures dropping below freezing. Now they were trying again, green slowly unfurling.  

Misery too. The air was full of pollen; he could almost taste it. Nothing and then all at once, everywhere. There was no escaping it. Keep the windows closed and don’t go out and it made no difference. It found its way in. His eyes itched, his throat scratched and soon enough he was sniffling and sneezing. Then he was applying all the remedies: neti pots and antihistamines, eye drops and constant showers, staying indoors and changing his clothes as soon he came back from being out. For you couldn’t just live your life in your house all the time. 

He tried to those few weeks when everyone else was glorying in spring (The sunshine! The green!). All to hold the pollen at bay as best he could. There was no stopping it. Like the changing of the seasons it would come, celebrated by most. He treated it like most people treated winter: an unwelcome guest, barely tolerated, counting the days till it was gone. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Further Notes on the Drylands

The summer’s fires still burned through the depths of winter, hidden from sight beneath the black scars on the land where they had previously raged. They slumbered now, patiently waiting for the inevitable turning of the seasons. The winter had not been cold enough, nor had there been enough snow, to douse the flames. And when spring came and the days began to lengthen and warm, the fires would be ready to rise from the dark earth and begin to feed again. 

It hardly felt like winter, except for two weeks of such bitter cold that everyone was left feeling as though they had been transported to some far polar clime. There were as many days above freezing as below it seemed. When it snowed warmth soon followed, returning the hills to a barren state. Even in the valleys they could see the brown grass poking up through the thin patches of white. The snow did not melt so much as evaporate, the ground still frozen far below so that the water could not penetrate.  

Rivers, which had dwindled to trickles over the summer and fall, continued to shrink until it seemed the flow might cease entirely. Reservoirs and lakes were low, exposing the pipes where water was pumped out to the surrounding communities. Everywhere they looked bare, silted and creviced land was exposed. They felt exposed too; the world they thought they lived in had gone away and what came next was unclear.  

In centuries past it was said there were droughts in these parts that lasted for decades. 40 years of drylands. The last hundred or so had been wet ones by comparison, though not without dry years intermixed. The usual way of things had been a few years of dry, followed by a few years of wet, balancing everything out. Water had not exactly been plentiful, but there had been more than enough for growing communities, expanding irrigation and oil drilling. Now it was clear there would not be enough for things to go on as usual.  

Politicians spoke of crisis, of not watering lawns or taking shorter showers, to ensure there would be enough water this year for farmers irrigating, communities to drink and oil companies to drill. A crisis suggested this was a temporary moment, from which there would be a return to normality. But if the aberration had been the last century, with its lack of decade spanning drought, then it was a crisis so much as a return to an old equilibrium, hurried on by a warming climate. No one wanted to acknowledge that possibility, for it mean the end of life as it had been in these parts.  

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Harvest Moon

Harvest moon at the Harvest Dance, shining bright in a clear sky as darkness comes across the land. A cool evening after a warm day, the surest sign of autumn. Everyone gathers at the community hall, parking in the empty field behind it. There’s not much else left of main street anymore. The church was shuttered and torn down, leaving only the foundation. The same with the general store and gas station down by the highway and the elevators that stood by the railway tracks at the other end of street. The post office too has been closed, the building donated to the local museum in town. Now people get their mail from boxes set in front of the hall. 

Town is what this once was, but it has been a long time since anyone thought of it that way. Only the community hall, the hotel bar and a few houses remain. The community is all those who live in the surrounding area and they are the ones coming in to the dance. Volunteers bringing turkeys and mashed potatoes and squash and carrots and jello salads and pie. Everyone pays their ten dollars and they line up for dinner and eat at the long tables set out across the whole hall. The talk is of the weather and the harvest, recently completed for all those in attendance. They compare yields and discuss prices, shaking their heads at those who are still out combining. Equipment troubles and nothing but bad luck. 

Some go home after the potluck, while those that remain put away half the tables and chairs, folding them up underneath the stage The band starts up and the bar at the back gets busy. Two dollars a drink. There are a few dancers but most mill about around the dance floor, sipping drinks or continuing their conversation. In the kitchen the volunteers disburse the leftovers and clean the pots and roasting pans and run the dishwasher.  

As the evening goes on, the crowd gets younger. Kids from high school disappear outside to their trucks where they’ve got a bottle hidden. They saunter back inside, faces flush, convinced of their cleverness, while the adults eye them skeptically. More people arrive from outlying communities. The Altario boys, back from university, appear, taking advantage of the lower age limit to cross the border and drink. This draws the ire of some of the local youths who squint across the hall at these interlopers. 

The evening goes on for awhile with country standards, hard stares and too much whiskey, until one of the locals gets it into his head to take a run at a smirking Altario boy. He sprints across the dance floor, landing an off-balance punch. A halfhearted melee follows, the combatants basically hoping someone will intercede to break things up. Some of the older farmers do, reaching in and pulling people apart, grumbling about the goddamn kids. The local and his friends are deemed responsible and tossed out into the night. 

It’s too early to go home so they wander across the road to the hotel bar, a dismal old place that smells of mildew and stale beer. They order beers and are halfway through them when someone else from the dance arrives, looks them over and says to the bartender: You know those kids aren’t eighteen. Off into the night they go again, crossing the road to the truck with the bottle. After a couple unsteadying drinks they decide to return to the dance. Not quite an hour has passed and bygones may now be bygones. 

They slip in one at a time without incident, all except the one who started the fight. He is turned around at the door and sent back into the night. He returns to the truck with the bottle, though it’s locked so he can’t get at it, figuring everyone else will be back in a minute, especially once they realize he hasn’t made it in. No one returns though and it starts getting cold and his ride home is inside, having apparently decided he’s better off forgetting about him. A few older folks leave the dance and shake their heads at him without comment as they get in their trucks.  

He contemplates trying the bar again, but he’s sobered up enough by now to know that’s a poor idea. Instead, he starts walking, heading north on main street to the highway, which he scampers across into a stubble field. As soon as he is off main street and its two feeble street lights, the darkness is almost total. Only the moon, bright above is there to guide him. He walks along the edge of the field to where the road going north is and starts following it, staying in the safety of the stubble. It’s only five kilometres to home, so it shouldn’t take him much more than an hour. 

Even with the full moon, the going is tough, the ground uneven, and though he is much more sober than he was he still has trouble keeping his feet. His eyes adjust as he goes, the darkness changing around him. The sky, once just a moon and a vast blackness speckled by a few bright stars is now full of light, thousands of stars visible. He stands teetering atop a rise, looking up in awe at the vastness of it all, beyond his comprehension, and is filled with indescribable emotion that is bigger than himself somehow. More than he can contain.  It is a long while before he notices the yard light from home is visible ahead in the darkness and starts toward it.  

Now Available: The Adventures of Holly Amos

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THE ADVENTURES OF HOLLY AMOS

A WESTERN

CLINT WESTGARD

Holly Amos is on the run from a payroll heist gone south. With Morris Danforth at her side, trouble has always been what she’s been searching for. But lately Morris has been more trouble than he’s worth, and Holly is thinking it’s time for a change. But with the law after them, things are about to take a turn for the worse.

Clive Hestin is the lawman on her trail. He is a Northwest Mounted Police constable, banished to a lawless frontier town for refusing to look the other way on the crimes of his fellow officers. Now he has to track down Holly and Morris or risk being drummed out of the force forever. Nothing will stop him from seeing justice done. Nothing except, perhaps, Holly Amos.

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Excerpt: The Adventures of Holly Amos

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In advance of the publication of The Adventures of Holly Amos on October 26, here is a short excerpt:

1—Morris and Holly

They hit the payroll, catching them in a crossfire as they came into Horseshoe Canyon on their way to pay the miners at the Atlas Coal Mine in Wayne. There were only two guns protecting it, and Morris Danforth and Holly Amos picked one off each from their perches high across the canyon. Clean shots both, right through the chest. The gunfire reverberated around the canyon, sounding almost as though it were coming up behind them.

The two men leading the packhorses tried to flee, but they shot the horses out from under them. If the Atlas Coal men survived their falls, Holly and Morris did not see. They were too busy scrambling to their own mounts to catch up with the fleeing payroll. That they did, intercepting the stampeding horses before they could scamper up the narrow and winding trail that led from the canyon to the plains above.

When they had calmed the panicked animals, they left the canyon behind, heading up into the hills to the north, where they had a camp set up. There were no trees there, just wild prairie, but the hills hid them well enough from anyone passing through on the way to Wayne. The road was little traveled, except by the Atlas Coal Company men, and it would be a day or two—if they were lucky—before anyone chanced upon the ambushed payroll. Time enough for them to rest and be gone from here.

Holly saw to the animals, taking them to a nearby slough for water and putting them in hobbles so they could rest and eat. Morris paid no mind to the animals or to her. He was in a frenzy of delight as he counted out the well-creased bills and coins—over two hundred fifty dollars’ worth.

“If we get a good price on the packhorses, we should have nearly three hundred when it’s all said and done. No more worries for a while, Holly dear.”

He let out a whoop and pulled her in for a kiss. “No more worries, Morris honey,” Holly said, as she slipped away from his grasp.

Holly set about to making some dinner for them both, opening tins of beans and divvying up the pemmican they had. They had the beans cold, not wanting to risk a fire, and washed them down with what remained of the rotgut they had exchanged with the Indians by Fort Macleod for the pemmican and some rancid buffalo meat. Morris had spent the following week muttering about that, promising to return south and find those bastards and see that they got theirs.

Holly had learned long ago not to say anything when Morris got some damned foolish idea in his head, for it would turn his ire toward her. Just as when he drained the bottle of whiskey and found himself in an amorous mood, she knew enough not to point out that they needed to be going and putting some distance between them and the dead Atlas Coal men.

Morris was trouble when he drank. He was trouble all around. She had known that from the first. It was why she had left home to go with him. Continue reading →

Now Available: On The Far Horizon

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ON THE FAR HORIZON

WESTERN, CRIME, THRILLER

CLINT WESTGARD

Cattle rustlers on the run, caught between a storm and someone bent on revenge. Cowboys pursued by the law and their own demons through a long night. A dive bar in the middle of nowhere hosts five criminals for a deal that goes terribly wrong.

These and other stories explore the lives of those who populate the west. Homesteaders with mysterious pasts they’d prefer to keep hidden. Women wronged by the men they love and caught up in events beyond their control. There are killers, thieves, cops on the make, and people just trying to get through their days with their eyes On The Far Horizon.

All of these characters, and many others, meet in this pulse-pounding collection that will keep you at edge of your seat.

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Now Available: The Dane

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THE DANE

WESTERN

CLINT WESTGARD

Nels Sletkolem is having a red letter day. The Dane has just sold his cattle and has a bumper crop ready to harvest. This year is shaping up to be his best yet since he came to Sunnynook to homestead.

But as he brags of his success to anyone who will listen in the Sunnynook Hotel, someone from his past is lurking. They will be coming to see the Dane’s debts are paid.

And they will only accept payment in blood.

The story of when a past best left forgotten comes to call.

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Excerpt: The Dane

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In advance of the publication of The Dane on June 22, here is a short excerpt:

Nels bellied up to the bar, pushing past two young bucks. He shouted to Harold for a beer, slapping his hand on the table. “Goddamn Harry. Goddamn.”

“You’re hot as a poker,” Harold said, grinning as he filled a mug with lager. He handed it across the counter to Nels. “What’s got you fired up anyway?”

“Today is a red letter day, my friend. My wallet is full and I am going to drink my fill. That I guarantee.” He spoke with the faintest of Nordic accents, that the few Swedes in the area found unplaceable. They had never met a Dane from Slesvig, as he was quick to say.

“Good for you, Nels,” Harry said, reaching across to give him a slap on the shoulder.

Nels nodded his thanks and took a long pull on his beer, wiping the suds from his mustache. He was well known in Sunnynook, but then everyone was. It was a homesteaders town of about a couple hundred, bigger than most of the others in the area because it was on the railway and had a station house and an elevator. Farmers from thirty miles or more would bring their grain and cattle here to ship and sell.

That was what Nels had been doing as well, selling his cattle, to somebody down near Hanna. For a hell of price, as he kept thinking to himself, while he slapped the counter of the bar in rhythm to a song that only he could hear in his head. If harvest went off half as well as the cattle, well he’d be looking at his first great year here in the five since he’d settled.

He was a latecomer, compared to most everyone else. Most of the families had been settled here fifteen or twenty years. They’d built up their lands—or in the case of a good many, failed and buggered off somewhere else—and turned their sod shacks into sturdy houses. Nels was still working on that.

He was only one man himself, so he only needed one room, as he always said. And the cold of the Canadian prairie wasn’t so bad. No worse than his winters in Denmark. The damp there got into you worse, he told everyone. Went right to the bone and you couldn’t get it out, no matter what you did.

Not that he wouldn’t mind one of those catalog houses, ordered up and the plans and pieces sent in on the train. And if this year went like he thought it might…well, hell, he might be building next summer.

He finished off the last of his beer and waved at Harold for another, just as Wally Lindback tapped him on the shoulder. Nels turned to look him over and shook his hand. “What are you doing here, boy? Aren’t you too young to be in a place like this?”

“Dad would kill me if he found out,” Wally said, with an agreeable shrug.

Nels laughed. “I’ll spot you a beer.”

“Thanks,” Wally said. “Saves me asking. You seem flush tonight.”

“Been a hell of day, Wally. Hell of a day. Sold the cattle. Got a fine, fine price, I don’t mind telling you.”

“That’s great. And you got that crop coming too.”

“Still have ta get it off,” Nels said, though his grin said he thought that would be no problem. He waved the bartender over and ordered a beer for Wally and another for himself.

“Dad’s still broken up about his,” Wally said, a shadow passing across his face.

Nels frowned. “Yeah, that’s a hell of thing. That’s farming though. And he’s not the only one. Hail took a lot of good crops this year. Not mine for once though, not mine.”

Harold brought the two beer over and Nels passed one on to Wally, peeling off some bills to pay the tab. He raised his glass and Wally followed suit.

“Yeah,” Wally said, taking a sip of his beer while he looked past Nels at the others in the bar. “I wouldn’t maybe go telling everybody about your good fortune. They’re liable to get jealous.”

“Oh folks here are good,” Nels said, unconcerned. “Most are good farmers like your dad. They understand that some years will be good, some bad. You learn to roll with what life gives you. Can’t do otherwise.”

“Yeah,” Wally said, taking another drink. “Yeah.” But he did not appear to believe it.

The Dane is now available for preorder:
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Now Available: Drifting

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DRIFTING

A THRILLER

CLINT WESTGARD

The rodeo is over and Dane and Colton are on the run.

They flee down back country roads in the dead of night with the law in hot pursuit. All over a woman lost and a dream beginning to sour.

Neither the past nor the law can be escaped though, as they will both soon discover. And the consequences will be fatal.

A story of two modern day cowboys gone astray on a long night.

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Excerpt: Drifting

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In advance of the publication of Drifting on April 20, here is a short excerpt:

The Bull-a-Rama was over; the stock already loaded into trailers and on their way back to the Hertel Brothers Ranch, while the tented area behind the stands was in the process of being cleared out for the dance. Dane finished the beer he was drinking, crushing the can underneath his boot heel and throwing it away, while waving at the other cowboys who were gathered behind the corrals drinking and waiting for the dance to start. He headed off across the rodeo grounds, around the stands and towards the RV Park filled with trucks and campers.

“Hey babe,” he said when he found her trailer, tucked in with several others around a small stand of trees. She squinted at him without responding as he plopped himself down on the picnic table beside the trailer.

“You reek,” she said, “How many you had so far?”

“Emma,” he said.

“You gotta drive to Maple Creek tonight.”

He shook his head and took out his can of Copenhagen. “Nah,” he said, “We’re going first thing tomorrow. Colton thinks he’s got a line on some girl.”

Emma rolled her eyes. “You both better not get too out of hand then. You’re gonna have to get up pretty early to make it for the draw.”

“Only five thirty,” he said. “Besides, don’t you want to spend a night with your man?”

She squinted at him again, but sat on the knee he offered and put her arms around his neck.

“Only if you behave,” she said, kissing him quickly and then standing up to go into the trailer.

“When have I ever not?”

“Every time,” she called from inside the trailer and he smiled and went off to find Colton.

The dance started a little after nine, the deejay putting on a steady rotation of country music with brief digressions into AC/DC and Led Zeppelin among others. The tent, which roughly formed the dance floor, was open at all sides so that people could come and go. It had been set up in the event of rain, but there was not a cloud in the sky as the sun began its descent, ribbons of red and gold streaking the western horizon. The bar was at the opposite end of the tent from the deejay’s setup and in the first hour of the dance it was surrounded by a milling crowd while the rest of dance floor area was more or less empty. As drinks were finished the center of gravity of the place began to shift away from the bar, with couples pairing off and heading out to two-step. Even those not dancing turned their attention to those who were, nodding their heads to the rhythm as they sipped their drinks.

Dane lost track of Emma when he ducked out of the dance to smoke a joint with a few of the other cowboys. This was after he had nearly started something with Gord Steckley, another guy on the circuit who had been talking with her at the edge of the dance floor. She had stormed away while his buddies had grabbed him and taken him away to cool off and get high. She was still gone when he returned, but he didn’t worry about it and went and got himself another beer. Likely she was just going to the bathroom or complaining to some of her girlfriends about him. It was a beer or two later before he realized that she had not returned and bleary thought took hold in his mind that he should go after her, though he knew he was in no state to calm any waters.

It was after eleven by then and the darkness away from the dance was near absolute with only the dim stars and moon above and the blinking lights of the nearby town offering any guidance. How the hell had people gotten around before electricity, he wondered to himself as he stumbled his way through the RV park by feel and hazy memory. He managed to avoid nearly every obstacle, but for a bush growing on the side of the trail that he wandered into, and found Emma’s trailer.

“Emma, you there,” he called out as he came to the door. He waited a moment for her to answer. When none came he swore under his breath and heaved a sigh before pulling open the door and climbing within. For a moment he was too occupied with finding the light switch to listen, but after he failed in that endeavor he stopped his fumbling and in the moment that he was standing still in the darkness he heard it. There was a man’s whisper and a woman’s soft laughter and then the rhythmic sound of their weight against the mattress.

He did not stay to hear any more, the door crashing shut behind him as he fled from the trailer, going headlong into the iron fire pit at the center of the campsite. It sent him sprawling to the ground, but he sprung back to his feet almost as soon as he had fallen, not even pausing to see if he was hurt. No sound followed in his wake, but he still kept turning back to see if Emma was rushing after him to stop his flight. No one was there but for he and the shadows.

Returning to the dance he found Colton and pulled him aside. His friend looked at him curiously an odd smile on his face. Dane’s own face felt hot, as though all the turbulent feeling within him was erupting on his cheeks and forehead. For a moment he was worried that he would start to cry, but the emotion turned to anger in an instant and he grabbed Colton by the shoulder.

“Come on,” he said, “We’re going to Rimbey.”

“What the hell man? Tonight?”

“Fuck yes.”

Colton studied him a moment attempting to judge the level of his seriousness. At last he shook his head, “Come on man. I’m having a good time here. Let’s just stick around till morning.”

Dane felt the flush growing deeper on his face. “No, I’m going now.”

“What the hell happened?” Dane didn’t answer and Colton shook his head. “How much you had to drink? Neither of us is good to drive.”

“I’m good,” Dane said, not even convincing himself. “Look, I’m going right now. You can come or you can try to catch a ride with someone else tomorrow. It’s my truck.”

Colton considered this a moment, a wave of thoughts illuminating his face. At last he relented and they left the dance, Colton taking their last tickets to get some beer, which he smuggled out in his jacket. Dane was already at the truck, the engine idling. Dane took the beer Colton passed him, draining half of it in a single pull and then set it in the cup holder. He gripped the steering wheel tight but made no move to shift it into gear, a pensive look crossing his face. Colton was staring at him, a concerned look on his face, but he did not notice. At last, a decision made, he reached out and put the truck into gear and pulled out of the rodeo ground and onto the road.

Drifting is now available for preorder:
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