"We had a good day hunting didn't we, my friend?" You could see the blue and white Crazy Mountain range as a back drop. Weathered log jack fence framed the scene. We sat around Tom McClain's wood stove in his woodworking shed out behind his barn, at the edge of a rolling Rocky Mountain stream with a green and white cascade of water. Damp hay permeated the air and smelled like a warm summer morning. "If you don't mind falling down a gully lined with burrs. Having your dog try to hump me then getting lost. You call this a good day hunting?"

Axe, one of Tom's gun dogs licked his tired paws by the stove heat. The dog deserved this warm spot after running all over the desert steppe through miles of sagebrush. Dodging Prickly-pear and hunting intensively all day. Tom and my wet boots steamed beside the cast iron wood stove. "Gettin' out's good for you, boy," I said to the dog. I rubbed the smooth backs of four mixed gray colored Hungarian Partridge laid out like a painting on the planks of the pine table. Axe sniffed the fresh killed bird wings with his hair covered, fuzz faced muzzle. Several large purple and black horse flies crashed and snapped against the inside of the shop window. The flies sounded like a distant sawmill. Tom handed me a cold beer. I sat back in one of his shop built rocking chairs. After two beers Tom and I turned philosophical. I said: "What's so special about a day out in the fields? That initial excitement before the hunt, like this morning, dog excited, I could just smell exotic outdoor smells, wet sage." "Who knows? Always looking for some thing," Tom added. I leaned back and said: "Like something we can never locate" We found birds today, rather your dog did. Wasn't that enough?" I asked, thinking those shots at fast flying birds exciting, I haven't felt so good about something since Jan died. I don't think I missed that girl as much today. Is this the way to get over losing your wife of twenty years?" "You better get used to the excitement, pilgrim. This was just the first day of a week of bird hunting days."

I began thinking what it would be like to sell the house back East. Move out to this wide open western place, so different than New York. I could start a fresh era. Jan aspired to make me happy until the cows came home. She'd wanted to move somewhere different herself. Seekers. People on the move. Why were some people content to stay in one place their whole lives, while others moved about restlessly? Maybe I'm getting to old for the surprises one would have to endure moving across country. Maybe I wouldn't find work. Sure would be many days of hunting and fishing. Can't go hunting and fishing for trout in New York City.

Next morning, Tom, his dog Axe and I worked some tall grass and sage along the fields and steppe country of the Daisy Dean Creek. A sight to see, Tom's dog working the area methodically, knowing his business by being born to it like no other thing mattered. Intense. Serious. You could learn something from that kind of discipline. Just then, the dog went stiff with a point. The dog studied the lay out. Looked back at his master with a quick glance to get their secret signal as to what Tom wanted. Sometimes, Tom would nod his head a little and the dog would work the scent on a stalk, other times he'd have the dog stand. Axe was standing on this point, like a statue of himself. We walked in a few steps. I don't care how many times I may find myself at the second before game birds explode from cover, my heart will always beat too fast. Axe started quivering in anticipation of the taste of Hungarian partridge. The next second eight birds thundered up out of the brush. Tom and I each shot one bird. The smell of gunpowder and wet sagebrush filled the cool mountain air. Ears ringing. Axe located then retrieved his master's bird first. Don't ask me how the dog knew the difference, but he did, got it right every time. The dog found my bird. Axe too dignified, too serious to want a pat on the head. Axe forever enthusiastic, at present, after the day's next quest.



Bars In Montana

          Best while you have it use your breath,
          There is no drinking after death.

                    John Fletcher

The friendliest places he had ever run across in his forty-six years of living on the face of this earth were the bars of Montana. Gratifying and refreshing, like a water hole after crossing a hot western desert in an over heated Pontiac. Not that he had crossed deserts while destitute. He may have been destitute while snow bound during the worst blizzard to hit the Central section of Montana in twenty years. He made it to the small town bar, the most important, reliable institution in this mountain valley, after being snowbound in his cabin for four days...yes, four days is a life time without modern amenities...in this-day-and-age...the bar a beacon in the night, happy, smiling faces there in...you overlooked the slot machines that looked like thousand dollar a night hookers lining the wall, the gray dust covered animal mounts hanging up by the ceiling, you wouldn't admit each stuffed animal seemed to be staring at you, he noticed the cold beers in the cooler behind the slab of three inch thick cottonwood polished bar, anticipated the cooling liquid sliding down his parched throat.

What he liked most about the Montana landscape was the scale of the land, versus that earth sized sky, the sky in Montana the only thing able to tame the landscape you needed a man-sized object to scale down the overpowering countryside, also the pervasive weather of this region and the local tavern fit this need, where hot food, strong drink and female companionship erased the brutal realities of the harsh environment. The juke box played "First There Is A Mountain" by the Allman Brother's Band, a fifteen-foot long, four-inch thick plank of cottonwood received you, held this man up, after his ordeal with the inclement weather.

He sat at the bar minding his own business having a drink when a man walked in the establishment with a large black bear on a six foot chain. No small bear this. The bear waddled up to the plank of cottonwood, mounted a stool. The man in charge of this beast nonchalantly seated himself and ordered two beers. The waitress fed the bear with a cookie in her mouth. He seemed shy. That is the bear did. He just sipped his beer, astounded. A bear is a bear and not expected to act like a human. He noticed the course hair covering the bear's hulking body. He hoped those three inch claws, that grasped the cold beer, wouldn't slash him.

Accidentally Dave and his friend Mike, an old time rancher in this valley, walked into the tavern on ladies night. All the single women wanted Mike, they knew his ranch worth millions. Dave felt like a pimp or a real estate agent. The same guy that brought the bear to the bar now arrived with two young timber wolves on leashes. Dave hoped the leashes were of strong material. Betty the bartender attended to Dave and Mike and took their food orders. "Did you know I used to be an actress in Hollywood? On the set of a western I met this guy. I loved Montana. Said to hell with the movie business and settled in this valley twenty years ago. The guy turned out to be a drunk. Now dead. Know any older single men, Dave? I mean I'm still a good strong women. Don't you think?" She managed to get all that in before their food order went to the cook.

Dave and Mike rolled out of Splitrock, Montana in Mike's robin blue fifteen year old T-Bird one late winter night headed for Tularosa, New Mexico. Traveling light made it forty-five minutes down the road before Mike wanted to stop. We parked the old roadster and entered The New Globe Bar in Christopher, Montana. Checked shirts, cowboy boots, weather and hand rolled cigarette faces greeted us beneath a bold display of western game animal stuffed trophies. Dave's eyes followed the pressed tin pattern in the ceiling, he looked at a full size wolf mount up on top of the back bar's cabinetry. The bartender was a leather skinned left over from some fifties western TV program. Dave inspected a stuffed, by a taxidermist, white Mountain Lion encased in a glass box. Mike was talking with some old stockman about the low cattle prices.

On that same trip and further up the road Dave and Mike stopped at another bar where Mike said he knew the owner of. The bar was the sole operating establishment in an authentic Montana ghost town. The town had died not because the gold had run out, the town died and everybody had left, except this bartender Mike knew who owned the whole town, because the state of Montana had not conceded to give the town an exit off four lane I-80. They could see the traffic from the decrepit parking lot. The sun was setting behind a row of black looking deserted buildings. Dave read a for sale sign on the tavern's window that advertised the whole town for sale for forty-five thousand dollars. Mike and Dave sat at the bar for two hours and not another soul entered. Dave thought it was kind of spooky like an old TV episode of Night Gallery.

He strolled into the Owl Bar in Livingston, Montana and felt secure seeing those old moldy book covers of writers that used to hang around the town. He liked to sit by himself in the red booths that lined one side of the small intimate bar. He wrote a lot of bad short stories sitting in this same booth drinking six or seven beers every night. One of the local floozies, who didn't know him well, might have believed he was a famous writer himself until she found out how silly his stories were. Realized he was a nobody. That didn't stop him. He went right on wasting paper, dreaming of the big sale figuring some day some agent was going to walk in and discover him. His stories were about people who farted in elevators or were run over by construction vehicles. He didn't care and he loved the Owl Bar. The smell of old cigarettes and stale urine. He sometimes would fantasize about a famous Hollywood actress walking in and sitting down with him. The fantasy would involve long scenarios of being a slave to her on her Montana ranch that had three trout streams running through it. He had become well known for hanging out in this bar so much people were talking about him like some kind of institution. He did like the Owl and felt he had to keep up an appearance. One day he wrote a story about a piano falling on a man as the character walked down a street. He left the Owl after writing this story and seconds later a piano rolled through a wall in a third story studio above the Owl, landing directly on him and crushing him to death. The bar took up a collection and had a fake book cover printed with his picture on the cover and stapled it to the wall along side the real book covers.