Hamp Bowdre listened to the auctioneer’s machine-gun voice as a dozen drouth-stricken sheep clattered out onto the scales. A chilly west wind whistled through the cracks in the plank siding of the auction barn. His corded right hand squeezed his left shoulder. Damned rheumatism—sign of another norther coming. It’d be a dry one—like the rest of them had been.
One of the ring men grabbed a ewe and peeled her lips back.
“Now, boys,” the man said enthusiastically, “most of these ewes has got good mouths. They been on hard West Texas country, but they’re bred for March lambs and worth ten dollars if they’re worth a dime.”
“Five dollars!” the bid starter shouted. The auctioneer picked it up from there. He wheedled and bluffed and let a sour-faced San Angelo trader have them for five-and-a-half.
Hamp took a tally book from his pocket and jotted a note. He was conscious of a knotty old cowpuncher beside him.
“Howdy, Hamp. They’ve sure lowered the boom on the livestock market.”
Hamp frowned at the intrusion.
Eby Gallemore prodded, “What you keepin’ books for?” Hamp drew up within himself. Eby could ask more questions than a prying old woman.
“You ain’t figgerin’ on buyin’ some sheep for yourself, are you, Hamp?” Eby laughed as if he had just told a big joke. “You’ll never own a sheep or a cow-brute as long as you live. You’re just a wore-out old ranch hand who’ll work for wages till they nail you up in a box. Like me.”
Sudden impatience lashed at Hamp. “If I was like you, Eby, I’d poke a rag in my mouth and keep it there!” He stood up stiffly and hobbled out.
Eyes narrowed against the bite of dust, he watched wind whip sand off the road and whisk it away. He clenched his fist. Dammit, if it would only rain!
Eby Gallemore’s words were still running through his mind. Wore out. Never own a sheep or a cow-brute as long as you live. Hamp’s jaw ridged under his wrinkled brown skin. They’d soon see if Hamp Bowdre was wore out.
The boss came for him by and by. Crawling into the rattly old pickup truck, Hamp could see bad news carved deep into Charlie Moore’s young face.
“It’s all over with, Hamp,” the boss finally spoke. “They’re closin’ me out.”
Hamp couldn’t say he was surprised. After four years of bare ranges, ruinous feed bills, and plummeting livestock prices, the wonder was that the bank had stayed with Charlie this long.
“I told old Prewett my lease contract is up at the end of this month—that I’d be needin’ feed money besides. But he couldn’t go, Hamp. Bank examiner’s been crawlin’ all over him about these big livestock loans he’s stuck with. Well, I flipped my lid—told him if that’s the way it stood, they’re his sheep, and his cattle.”
Moore’s chin was low, his gray eyes sick. “Prewett’s been good to me, and I oughtn’t to’ve done it, Hamp. But I did. So it’s the bank’s outfit now—soon as they get out and take count.”
Hamp didn’t say anything. He didn’t know anything that would help.
Moore said, “I’d rather pull my own teeth than tell Vera. She really loves that ranch—her and the kids.”
Hamp nodded sympathetically. The ranchman was in his mid-thirties, fully twenty years younger than Hamp. The year Moore had come home from the war he’d borrowed money to buy livestock and lease this ranch from old Whisky Sam O’Barr. The next year, he’d hired Hamp.
“Gonna hate to part with you, Hamp,” Charlie said disconsolately. “We’ve been a great team.”
Yes, Hamp thought, they sure had. Well, it wasn’t the first time drouth had done him out of a job.
As they drove over the cattle guard onto Moore’s mesquite-dotted pasture, Hamp thumbed at a windmill whose tower barely showed through the haze of dust. “We better take a look at that Lodd mill. It’s been weakenin’.”
Out of habit, Hamp first boogered two sheep away from a feed bunk and peeped under the lid to see how much cottonseed meal and salt mixture was in it. Enough for three or four days, he noted. Sheep couldn’t last long on bare range without supplemental feed. The salt was to keep them from taking too much at one time. But it took lots of water, or a sheep would dehydrate on meal and salt.
They found the mill pumping a weak stream about the size of a pencil. “Drouth’s droppin’ the water table,” Hamp observed. “The well needs to be deepened fifteen, twenty feet.”
Moore shrugged. “That’s Sam O’Barr’s worry now—and the bank’s.”
Hamp cast a worried glance at Charlie. He’d never heard that grudging tone from the boss before. He walked over and looked in the concrete storage tank. Half empty. Sheep were drinking up the water faster than it was coming out of the ground.
A cloud of dust boiled toward them on the two-rut road. An oil-field pump truck with a big water tank on back pulled up beside the windmill. A college-age kid in oil-stained work clothes stepped out from behind the wheel and eyed the two ranchmen warily. “Truck’s heatin’. Needs some water in the radiator.”
Suspicion began working in Hamp. That concrete tank ought not to’ve been so low on water. Casually he edged over to the truck and put his hand on the front of it. Warm, but not hot. Anyway, a big twenty-gallon can of drinking water was strapped on the side.
“You’re from that drillin’ outfit over across the fence, ain’t you?” he queried. The youngster nodded.
“You-all have got a contract to take what water you need from Old Man Longley’s wells. But it’s a far piece over to Longley’s, and it’s just a mile over here. Ain’t that right?”
The youngster looked as if he’d been caught sport roping another man’s calves.
Hamp shook a stubby finger at him. “Now you hop in that truck and git! You ain’t gonna steal another load of water here just because you’re too triflin’ lazy to go git it where you’re supposed to.”
Hamp watched until the truck was gone. “Two more truckloads would drain that tank. And we’d have a bunch of salt-poisoned sheep.”
“The bank’s sheep,” Moore said.
Hamp eyed him sharply. Charlie acted as if he wouldn’t care.
At the ranch Charlie drove the pickup into the shed. “Would you feed the stock for me, Hamp? I’ve got to talk to Vera.”
Hamp forked some hegari bundles across the fence to a half-dozen saddle horses and a couple of potbellied dogie calves. Charlie’s cowboy sons, Mackey and Jim, had finished milking the Jersey cow and were feeding their lambs. Hamp leaned against the fence and watched them with a glow of satisfaction. It was almost as if they were his own boys.
“Hey, Hamp, looky here at old Hungry,” called ten-year-old Jim, proudly petting a thick-bodied Rambouillet lamb. “County agent was out today. He said you did a good job of doctorin’. Old Hungry’s gonna win that San Angelo show.”
Hamp nodded, but he didn’t grin with Jim. Chances were they wouldn’t be making the San Angelo show now. He hobbled off to the frame bunkshack that served him as a home. It was bare except for an old dresser and a cot, and a table in the corner. But it was all Hamp needed—all he wanted. He pulled the light cord and sat down at the table.
He tore a sheet off of a writing tablet and began scrawling figures. One thousand sheep at five-and-a-half—five thousand five hundred dollars. Fifteen sections of land at forty-five cents per acre lease—four thousand three hundred twenty.
He had done it so many times lately that he had all the figures in his head. But it brought him satisfaction to mark them down on paper.
Old. Wore out. Never own a sheep or a cow-brute as long as you live.
He grinned without knowing it. They wouldn’t say that again.
He wondered how Eby Gallemore’s eyes would pop if Hamp showed him a savings account book adding up to more than twenty-three thousand dollars.
Hamp Bowdre still had sixty cents out of every dollar he’d ever made. While Gallemore and his kind had drunk up their wages, or spent them on women, or pooped them off around the rodeos, Hamp Bowdre had been living like a monk, saving against a time when he could be his own boss.
He’d had many chances these last few years, but Hamp was a cautious man. He’d seen this boom-and-bust business before. Wait till the bust. Wait till everybody else wants to sell.
Well, they wanted to sell now. Four years of drouth and demoralized markets had done that.
It was going to rain this spring. Hamp had been through drouths before, and somehow he knew. It would rain, and the livestock business would start a slow but steady upward climb.
Maybe he could get this place, he was thinking. Now that Charlie Moore was dropping out, it was possible. Talk around town was that hard-drinking Sam O’Barr had spent all his money and was getting desperate. Since that wildcat oil bunch had drilled two dry holes on his ranch, the oil-lease money had petered out. Only the land lease was left. Charlie had been paying sixty cents an acre—too high the way things had turned out.
I’ll offer Sam forty-five cents, Hamp thought. He’ll snuff and stomp, but bare and dry as the place is, he won’t find anybody else to take it. Maybe someday I’ll even find me a rich partner.…
The two boys came to the shack to call Hamp for supper. A tear rolled down Jim’s freckled cheek. Mackey, a year older, was gravely quiet.
“Hamp,” Jim burst out, “what am I gonna do with old Hungry? Daddy says we’re fixin’ to move to town.”
Hamp patted the boy on the head. Sure tough on the kids.
Tough on Vera too. With dancing blue eyes, and a little on the plump side, she was usually quick to laugh, but there was no fun in her tonight.
Hamp ate the cobbler pie she had baked especially for him, but he couldn’t enjoy it. Vera had always been as concerned about him as if he belonged to her family. She had often made him regret he’d never married.
Hamp thought he’d probably hire him a Mexican couple if he got this place. But he was going to miss the Moores.
The next morning Charlie Moore was sick. Moody and sleepless, he had taken a long walk in the night air. Now he was fighting off the flu.
Banker Prewett was out shortly after noon the second day and found him sitting up in the living room. “Mind if I look the sheep over?” he asked.
“Have at it,” Charlie answered, a little curtly. “They’re your sheep.”
Hamp frowned. He’d never seen Charlie act this way before, and he didn’t like it. He’d thought better of Charlie.
The wind buffeted the pickup around as Hamp slowly drove the banker over the bare, dusty pastures. Prewett was studiously silent during most of the ride. “I hate to do this,” he said finally. “Charlie Moore’s a good man, Hamp. I’d like to’ve helped him.”
Hamp nodded. He’d thought about lending Charlie enough money to pull him through. But it would take Charlie years to pay it back, and Hamp was getting too old to wait. If he was to get a place for himself, it had to be soon.
Hamp said suddenly, “Mr. Prewett, would the bank take five-and-a-half a head for these sheep—the whole outfit?”
Surprised, Prewett straightened. “It might. Who’s interested?”
“I am.” Briefly Hamp explained his idea. Prewett nodded in silent admiration. Hamp had it figured out to a T.
Their last stop was the Lodd mill. Hamp knew something was wrong—the sheep were all gathered around it.
“She’s gone dry,” he exclaimed.
The mill had stopped pumping. Sheep nuzzled vainly at the dried mud in the trough. The concrete tank was drained.
Hamp’s face flushed red as he saw where the truck had backed up to the tank. Water had sloshed out over the side, and the heavy tires had left deep prints in the dried mud.
Anger clenched Hamp’s knotty fists as he walked out through the bleating sheep, the blowing sand gritty in his eyes, nose, and ears. He knew it would take days to get anything out of the drilling company.
But these ewes were already drawing up. They had been without water a day or two—and with all that salt in them. They had to be taken somewhere today or they’d begin losing some unborn lambs.
Hamp made good time in getting back to the house. The banker stood by while Hamp told Charlie what had happened.
Pale, sitting weakly in his chair, Charlie frowned, looking out the north window. “It’d be hard to drive them in this norther, mighty hard. It’d be blowin’ up a storm by the time anybody could get to that well a-horseback.”
The banker spoke up, “Like you said, Charlie, they’re the bank’s sheep. I wouldn’t ask you to ride out in the face of that storm. We’ll just write off those lambs.”
Charlie kept frowning. Suddenly he stood up and headed for the coat rack. “Catch up the horses, Hamp,” he said. “The quicker we start, the quicker we get those sheep to water.”
Vera grabbed Charlie’s arm. “Charlie, you’re sick. You can’t.…”
But Charlie was pulling on his coat. Watching him, Hamp felt a glow begin inside him. He forgot he’d ever been disappointed in Charlie Moore.
The huge brown dust cloud was rapidly swelling out of the north. For the three horsemen, riding into it was like heading into the mouth of a gigantic howling cave. Prewett rode with Charlie and Hamp—he had been a ranch hand before he had been a banker. It took an hour or more to reach the mill. By that time Hamp’s sand-burned eyes were afire with pain.
Throwing the sheep into a bunch was a hard job. It’s the nature of sheep to drift into the wind, unless it’s too strong. Heading the ewes away from it at an angle took the hardest chousing Hamp had ever done in his life. The only way to turn them was to ride along beside them, whipping at their faces with an empty gunnysack.
The wind lifted to a new fury, the dust so thick that sometimes Hamp couldn’t see Charlie fifteen feet away. It became too much for the sheep. They wanted to stop and huddle in helpless confusion.
Desperation swelled and grew in Hamp. He dismounted, and leading his horse, went to shoving against them, slapping at them with his bare hands. Hope flagging, he pulled over beside Charlie and shouted, “It’s no use. Let’s let them go.”
Charlie was walking too, bent painfully, stumbling over his own feet. But doggedly he shook his head. “No! We’ll fight them a little longer.”
Hamp pulled back and went to shoving again, shouting until the voice finally left him. But somehow they were getting the job done. They had the sheep angled toward the house. And they were keeping them moving.
They finally struck a net-wire fence, and it was easier after that. Through one gate, then another, dragging one ewe so the others would follow.
It was dark when they shoved the last ewe through the gate at the headquarters, and the sheep bunched up around the two long water troughs in the holding corral. Hamp saw that Charlie was smiling. Then Charlie’s legs buckled.
In the house, Vera had a pot of coffee on the stove, hot and waiting. Wearily Hamp and Prewett sat with steaming cups in their hands, watching Vera go back and forth to and from the room where they had put Charlie. The kids sat quietly with their lessons, but they weren’t studying much. Hamp coughed from deep in his throat. Vera hovered over him worriedly, telling him she’d better put some medicine down him or he would be sick like Charlie.
“I’ll be okay,” Hamp told her hoarsely, his throat raw. “I’m just give out, and got a chestful of dust. It’s the same with Charlie. He’ll cough it out.”
She forced a smile. “Maybe, Hamp, maybe. The point is, he just doesn’t care now. Losing this ranch and all…”
The idea had come to Hamp somewhere in that long drive, and it had grown with every step he had taken back toward the house. He’d need a good partner—and right here he could get a partner who had something better than money. Charlie had been sick. He hadn’t had to go out there in the face of a duster, to save sheep that didn’t belong to him anymore. But he had gone.
“Looky here, Vera,” Hamp said, “you-all don’t have to lose this place. You could take on a partner.”
Her blue eyes widened. “A partner?”
“Me.” He explained to her about the money he had saved, about the plan he’d had to take over the ranch when they left. “With the money I’ve got, we can pay Mr. Prewett here enough to satisfy the examiner. We can feed these sheep till it rains in the spring. And leave it to me to whittle Sam O’Barr down on the lease; I can be mean when I have to.
“It’ll take the range a long time to recover, but the sheep that’re still on the place now can be a foundation for us to start with. We can let the flock grow back as the range does.”
Excitement bubbled within him. “What do you think, Vera? Reckon Charlie would take me on as a partner, fifty-fifty?”
The two kids were grinning. Vera’s round face was all mixed up, her eyes laughing and crying at the same time. “He will, Hamp,” she said. “I know he will.”
Hamp walked out onto the front porch where the wall sheltered him from the wind. Prewett followed him. Hamp rolled a brown-paper cigarette while the banker stuffed his pipe. The wind howled as if there was nothing between there and the North Pole but a barbed-wire fence.
Well, let it blow. Pretty soon it would be spring, and things would change.
In the darkness he could sense the banker smiling at him.
Defensively Hamp said, “I always have wanted a place of my own. And I used to wish I had me a family. Well, sir, I’ve got that too. What better could a wore-out old ranch hand ask, for just twenty-three thousand dollars?”