Hewey and the boys worked with the freighters until dusk, loading the itchy, dusty feed until they were exhausted, and until they knew it was time to get home and do up the chores before dark. The teamsters camped where they were so they could resume loading the rest of the feed at daylight. By the time the sun was up, Hewey and the boys gathered the sale yearlings he had been putting into the milk-cow pasture. They tried to push them through the wire gate nearest the field. The cattle warily eyed the opening and rushed past it, refusing to go through.
Tommy suggested, “Maybe they realize they’re leavin’ home.”
“They don’t realize nothin’,” Hewey replied. “They’re just actin’ like cattle.” He rode up to the gate and pulled it shut, then casually dropped it to leave only a narrow opening. He rode Biscuit back to where the boys waited, holding the cattle in check. “Let’s ride off a little, boys, and give them air.”
They retreated fifty yards and watched. Presently a couple of the more curious yearlings worked their way cautiously to the gate, sniffing at it, looking around in suspicion. One of them lifted its tail and half ran, half pitched through the opening. The second did the same, and the others followed suit.
Hewey said, “All it takes to be a good cowboy is to be a little smarter than the cow-brute. Let them think they’re sneakin’ out and you can put them anyplace.”
By the time the yearlings reached the field, the teamsters were finished loading the wagons. The cattle hungrily scattered through the fresh stubble, enjoying a luxury to which they would never be able to become accustomed in this part of the country. Tommy looked toward Hewey with concern about the cattle scattering. Hewey said, “Let them fill up. It’s a long ways to Midland.”
The feed was stacked high on the wagons. Hewey entertained some fears that it might be top heavy enough to tip over in a little visitation of bad luck, but he had to trust Hannigan’s judgment. The big man had probably followed mules far enough to make five or six trips around the world if all his traveling could have been put together in one straight line. Hewey rode up to Blue and shook his hand.
“Blue, I wisht I could tell you how I appreciate this.”
“And I wisht you’d learn when to shut up.” Blue looked across the newly cut field at the scattered yearlings. “You’re goin’ to follow us with them cattle, ain’t you? It’s bad enough lookin’ a set of mules in the rear.”
“Every man to his own brand of whisky. We’ll follow you.”
Hannigan climbed up onto his wooden seat and uncoiled a long blacksnake whip. He circled it once over his head, then popped it behind him and again in front of him. The mules leaned into the collars and started Hannigan’s pair of wagons into a slow, protesting movement. He hadn’t touched any of them with the whip, but they knew from past experience that he could. He could not only lift the hair from any mule of his choice but could pick the spot where the snake would strike.
Not all the mules took up their fair share of the load immediately. Blue had all the vocabulary considered vital to a Texas mule skinner, augmented by extra verbiage learned along the Mexican border. That language, and a little judicious application of the whip, soon had every mule toting fair. In a few minutes the wagons were lined out in tandem pairs, Blue Hannigan in the lead.
Hewey and his nephews slowly and patiently coaxed the yearlings out of the stubble and back onto the kind of pastureland they were used to. They followed in the wake of the wagons, Hewey riding point awhile to set the pace.
More than once he turned in the saddle to look behind him. He half expected to see that marshal trailing him. But in all probability the lawman was not going to feel like sitting in a saddle—or anything else—for three or four days.
He dropped back with the boys. “When you’ve got grandchildren, you can tell them you made one of the last great trail drives north. You don’t have to tell them you was followin’ a shirttail set of spotted yearlin’s and a string of freight wagons loaded with bundle-feed.”
Tommy squared himself in the saddle, pleased by the concept. Cotton didn’t seem overly impressed.
They watered the cattle at the windmill which bore Hewey’s name. He climbed most of the way to the top, surveying their back trail and looking across country toward Alvin Lawdermilk’s. He saw no one.
Even if the officer did show up and carry Hewey away now, it wouldn’t ruin things for Walter and Eve. Blue Hannigan would handle the sale of the feed, and he would take it upon himself to look over the boys’ shoulders to be sure they weren’t cheated in selling the yearlings. From here on, if Cotton and Tommy had to, they could handle the situation without Hewey. He had met his responsibilities.
The thought started him humming to himself. He climbed down the wooden ladder and dropped the last long step to the ground, resolving to waste no more of his energy worrying about the marshal and the New Prosperity jail. Those were problems for another day. He glanced up once more at the mill tower. “Damn,” he muttered, “but I wisht that thing was painted.”
The trip took three days … three days in which Hewey knew once more the joy of being on the move, of riding free, of good camaraderie, of being without a heavy burden of worry and guilt. His old humor came back to him. For three days he regaled Tommy with outrageous stories of places he had been, great jackpots he had gotten into and out of, stories of the wide-open country of blessed memory when there were no barbed-wire fences and improved roads, no poverty farms checkerboarding the broad seas of prairie grass like smallpox scars on the face of a beautiful woman.
Tommy listened with enthusiasm if not with total belief. Sometimes Hewey wished the boy had been born earlier so he could have seen all these things for himself rather than have to share them vicariously with an uncle whose selective memory helped him recall the smiling times and pass over the dark as if they had never been.
Cotton listened with easy tolerance but without Tommy’s occasional open awe.
Slowly, as Hewey watched these two boys, it came to him how different they truly were. Cotton talked of the future as a time of automobiles and great machines and fantastic inventions waiting to burst forth upon the world. Hewey shuddered. He tried, but he could picture no place in such a world for him. The wonders that made the future look golden to Cotton made it bleak and terrifying to Hewey.
Tommy showed no anxiety about those mysterious times which lay ahead; yet, he still had a lively interest in the times already gone. Hewey suspected that Tommy would probably make his life right here in this country of his youth. If Walter and Eve could weather the rough years and save what they had acquired, Tommy would be the one to carry it forward, to build on it and keep the Calloway name alive on this land. He had the adaptability, Hewey thought, to accommodate to the changes the Cottons would bring upon him, but he would always have roots deeply implanted in the traditions of the past. He would be one of those men blessed with the ability to save what was good of his heritage without slipping hopelessly behind the pace of his own times. In his way, Tommy would never grow so old that he would not somehow need his Uncle Hewey, even when Hewey was no more than a distant memory.
But Cotton had already outgrown him. Cotton needed and wanted little from what had gone by. His gaze was fixed on the future. To him the past was a ladder already climbed, to be left behind without regret, without nostalgia.
Sadness came over Hewey along with this gradual realization. Cotton already had all he would ever need from Hewey—a searching mind, a lively interest in things unseen. This, and the Calloway name, was all they really shared anymore. Hewey had his memories of a closeness that once had been; he would have to settle for that. He would have to let go of Cotton as Cotton had already let go of him. He felt a strong need to pull up beside Cotton and hug him once before he was gone forever.
But he did not do it, for Cotton would not understand. It was too late to say good-bye, for the boy was already gone. In his place was a man—a man for whom time started—not ended—with the year Aught Six.
* * *
Hewey swung the little herd away from the wagons as they approached Midland from the south. No one needed to know—until the feed was sold and the money in hand—that any connection existed between Hewey Calloway and Blue Hannigan. Blue waved as he started his wagons up the grade that led across the Texas & Pacific Railroad tracks, and into the town that looked like a forest of wooden-towered windmills.
Hewey hunted around for a likely looking patch of good green grass on which no other cattle seemed to have any immediate claim. He found one a little way east up the tracks and back far enough that a passing train would not throw the yearlings into a panic. They had never seen anything bigger than a freight wagon or heard anything, man or machine, with a voice louder than Blue Hannigan’s. Hewey told the boys to stay and loose-herd the cattle, letting them graze while he went into town and scouted the market.
Midland was a moderately bustling railroad and cow town, a supply center not only for the outlying ranches but for a dozen or more small and speculative towns which lay back off of the railroad and which had only a tenuous claim on existence. Many of their names had been penciled onto maps for easy erasure in case they lost that claim. Some already had; more still would. This was a time of quick land promotions, quick disappointments, of boom today and bust tomorrow.
Hewey spotted a black automobile parked among a dozen farm wagons and knew Cotton would enjoy his stay here. Damn contraptions, seemed like a man ran into one of them everywhere he turned anymore. Next thing, people would want to ride to the outhouse in an automobile to save walking from the back door.
He visited two saloons and invested in two shots of whisky while he plied the denizens about the cattle market. For about a dollar’s expenditure on liquor of uncertain quality he learned what he could logically expect to get for the yearlings. He then visited two local butcher shops and set up a time for the butchers to ride out and bid him for what they needed—not both at the same time, of course. He knew they would want only the fleshier of the cattle, usually heifers. For the rest he visited a cattle trader whose occupation it was to ride around the country picking up small numbers of cattle from farmers and little ranch operators, putting them together until he had a boxcar load or two. Then he shipped them to the Fort Worth market and hoped he could sell the whole lot for more money than he had invested in them. Usually he managed to do so, or he would long since have gone back to working for wages. Hewey set it up for him to come out to the herd after the butchers had finished and gone.
Thus it was that before the day was done he had split the little herd three ways and had the money in hand for all of it. As the trader and a kid helper started drifting the yearlings toward holding pens on the tracks, Hewey made sure the roll of greenbacks was safely stowed in the bottom of his deepest pocket.
“Boys,” he said expansively to his nephews, “I’ll set you both up to an ice cream.”
As he expected, the sight of the automobile meant more to Cotton than all the ice cream in town. Hewey watched him, reading the wanting in his nephew’s face. It was all Cotton could do to keep from lifting the hood and getting in where the motor was. It would be futile to try to make a farmer or a cowboy of Cotton. He knew how, but his heart was not in it; it never would be.
Tommy saw all he needed in two minutes, and he was ready for the ice cream. “If he doesn’t come on, Uncle Hewey, we ought to go without him.”
Hewey shook his head. “Let him be. Your brother knows what’s important to him.”
When Cotton finally did come along, he told them more than Hewey really cared to know about the automobile, who had built it, how it operated and what service could be expected of it.
Cotton said wistfully, “It’d be fun if that feller had a breakdown right here in the street. I’ll bet I could fix it.”
Hewey smiled. “I’m glad you don’t have ambitions to be a doctor. You’d be wantin’ me to fall down sick so you could poke at me with a pocketknife.”
He found an ice-cream parlor and left the nephews there for safekeeping. He mounted Biscuit and rode to the Springer wagon yard, which Blue Hannigan customarily frequented when he put in at Midland. Blue was turning his mules loose in a pen which Springer had assigned to him or which, more likely, Blue had simply claimed by being there first. Blue’s wagons were empty. So were the wagons of the other freighters. Hewey grinned. It was a relief to see the wagons shed of their loads.
Blue forked hay into wooden racks while a swamper spread oats into the long open troughs beneath. He finally laid down the fork and walked to where Hewey leaned patiently against the fence.
“Any trouble?” Hewey asked.
Hannigan laughed. “They asked me where the feed come from. I just said, ‘South of town.’ They didn’t ask how far south, and I didn’t say. They acted real glad to get it.” He reached into his pocket and brought forth a leather wallet. Inside was a sheaf of bills greener than a barnful of alfalfa hay. “They offered to pay with a bank draft, but I told them they was dealin’ with a man who couldn’t read nothin’ but the numbers on a greenback.”
Hewey riffled the bills and tried to add them in his head. He feared the first time that he had made an error. A recount showed he had more money than he could rightfully have expected from the ranchers who normally bought from Walter. “Blue, you sure you didn’t get some of your own money mixed up in this?”
Blue shook his head emphatically. “I been known to make a mistake or two with a mule, but I never make a mistake with my money.”
Fat Gervin was paying more for feed here at Midland than he had contracted to sell it for to the ranchers down south. Damn, Hewey thought, but he’s God-awful anxious to freeze us out.
The other teamsters finished their feeding and began to gather round. Hewey’s spirits soared as he stuck the roll into his pocket to keep company with that which he had received for the cattle. He said to the teamsters, “I—me and Walter, that is—we owe you-all somethin’ for makin’ that haul. I’d sure like to pay you.”
Blue made an exaggerated gesture of putting one hand behind his ear, as if deaf. “I don’t hear a word you say, Hewey.”
Hewey’s throat seemed to swell shut. None of these men had any intention of taking money. They had done it for friendship, a commodity beyond price. He cleared his throat but couldn’t speak. He tried again. “I reckon I’ve eaten too much dust. A drink of good whisky might be just the cure. I’d be tickled to set you fellers up to a round.”
Blue Hannigan grinned. “Funny how my hearin’ has all of a sudden come back to me.”
With all that new wealth in his pockets Hewey felt able to give the boys a dollar apiece to spend any way they saw fit. He turned them loose to seek their own entertainment. He figured if two boys couldn’t have a night’s fun on a dollar per head, they weren’t trying very hard. The only requirement he made was that they show up at the wagonyard by sunup, because that was when he planned to start south. Eve would probably raise hell when she found out, but she couldn’t keep the boys under her thumb forever.
As it turned out, both were in their bedrolls asleep long before Hewey got through drinking a pint or two with Blue and the other freighters at the wagonyard.
The last thing Blue said before Hewey left him was, “I’ve got a load of freight to take north off of the railroad. You wouldn’t guess in a month what it is.”
Hewey didn’t try.
Blue said, “It’s gasoline, to power them horseless carriages. Seems like just about every little town has got at least one or two of them stinkin’ things anymore.” He laughed. “Funny, ain’t it? People say them glorified spit-cans is goin’ to replace the horse, but without the horse or mule to haul gasoline to them, they can’t run a lick. The more of them things they get, the more horses and mules this country is goin’ to need. You ought to take up freightin’, Hewey, while you can still get in on the ground floor. There ain’t nothin’ goin’ to take the place of a good stout freight wagon.”
* * *
Hewey and Cotton and Tommy set out south before good daylight. A trip that had taken three days with the wagons and the cattle could be done in one day by men a-horseback, moving in a good steady trot. Biscuit was by instinct a pacesetter, not a follower. The boys’ horses had no choice but to keep up.
Hewey intended to reach Upton City while the bank was open because he itched to get this money out of his pockets and the note paid. He pushed hard. He sent the boys home when he was close enough and took out across country to short-cut the wagon road’s meanderings. By midafternoon he rode into the lower end of Upton City’s dirt street.
He didn’t think much of it when barber Orville Mulkey waved at him and then set out following him up the street. But in a minute he looked back and saw half a dozen or more men walking along beside the barber. Somebody saw him coming and shouted into the Dutchman’s saloon. Hewey saw five men come out, one of them Schneider. They stood watching as he rode by, then fell in with the procession. Pierson Phelps left his store and joined the parade.
Hewey looked back uncertainly, suddenly nervous.
Ahead of him, at the courthouse, big Sheriff Wes Wheeler walked down the steps and strode casually out to meet him, nodding a silent greeting. Hewey reined up, glanced back, then looked at the sheriff. “Wes, if I’m in trouble…”
Wheeler was not much given to smiling. He said, “If you are, Hewey, looks like you’ll have a flock of reliable witnesses.”
These men were friends, or at least acquaintances. He saw no hostility anywhere and knew no reason there should be, unless that New Prosperity marshal had been spreading lies about him. Nervously he wiped a sleeve across his mouth, waiting for somebody to say something. Nobody did. He tugged the reins gently and set Biscuit into a walk, crossing the street to the front of the little stone bank. The front door, set crossways on a blunted corner, was still open. He was in time. Hewey looked once more at the crowd who had followed him afoot. There had to be sixteen or eighteen of them now, not counting Wes Wheeler. Wes was big enough for two men, all by himself. Hewey licked dry lips and said uncertainly, “Howdy, fellers.” All he got was grins and silence. He swung out of the saddle, wrapped the reins around a hitching post and stepped up into the bank.
His gaze fastened immediately upon Fat Gervin, sitting at a rolltop desk behind the stockade-like fence through which the sheep and the goats were customarily separated before they ever reached him for an audience.
The look in Fat’s florid face was of sullen dismay.
“I come to see you, Fat,” Hewey announced.
Fat said nothing. He only stared.
Hewey said, “You got a note here against my brother Walter. I come to settle up with you.”
Fat still said nothing. A young man who had been hired out of a Fort Worth mercantile company as a bank clerk pulled a file drawer from a heavy oak cabinet and rummaged through the papers. He withdrew one and laid it in front of Fat. “This is the one, Mr. Gervin.”
Fat flared, resenting his mixing in, then stared down at the paper. Hewey pulled the rolls of greenbacks out of his pocket and laid them on Fat’s desk, flaunting them a little. He picked them up one at a time and counted out the bills. He knew to the penny what Walter owed. He had lain awake nights adding it up in his mind. When he finished counting the feed and cattle money, and that which he had earned from Alvin Lawdermilk, he said, “I got authority to draw on Walter’s account for what else is due. You tally it up and write the draft, Fat.”
Face a deep red, Gervin dipped a pen into an inkwell and wrote out a check. He turned it slowly and shoved it roughly toward Hewey. Hewey took the pen from Fat’s stubby fingers, made a long flourish and signed his name.
“Now, I’ll thank you for a receipt. In handwritin’.”
A delighted clamor arose among the crowd, and several clapped their hands. Fat Gervin seemed to shrink, to draw inward, shutting all of them out.
A thin, bent-shouldered old man pushed through the festive onlookers with some anxiety and a little profanity. C. C. Tarpley demanded, “What’s goin’ on here? We had a bank robbery?”
Hewey blew on the receipt, trying to rush the drying of the ink. “Same thing, C. C., only just the opposite. I’ve headed off a robbery by a bank. I paid off Walter’s note.”
C. C. stared at him in momentary disbelief until a look at Fat’s sullen face disabused him of doubt. C. C.’s disappointment was keen and painful, but he made a gallant effort at covering it up. Nobody could accuse C. C. Tarpley of being a sore loser; well, not a very sore loser.
“That’s fine, Hewey. To tell the truth, I never thought you could do it.”
“I know. In fact, I remember a little pledge you made.” He shifted his gaze to Fat, who remembered it very well also. Hewey said, “I intended to hold you to it, Fat, but I’m a generous feller at heart. I’ll let you off because I don’t want to take my britches down in front of a crowd like this.”
The bystanders laughed. Somehow they all seemed to know about C. C’s pledge.
C. C. regarded his son-in-law without any fondness. In his face was a look that said he wouldn’t care if Hewey demanded full payment. He said, “I know what Fat done to you about your yearlin’s and your feed. I would have to figure you found a buyer anyway for the cattle. But what in the hell did you do with all that feed?”
“I found buyers for that too.”
“Who?”
Hewey let his grin break wide open, warm and bright. “You and Fat.”
The old man’s face reddened as realization soaked in. “For how much?”
Hewey told him.
C. C. Tarpley’s anger built slowly, like water coming to boil in a chuck-wagon coffeepot. Finally it would hold no longer. Making angry noises deep in his throat, he ripped off his dusty old felt hat. He began to beat Fat about the head and shoulders with it, while Fat cringed and tried to cover his face with his arms.
Hewey lost interest in banking affairs. He sought out Schneider. “Dutch, I’m goin’ to set up one round of drinks for this bunch. After that, I’m savin’ my money.”
* * *
Hewey had ambivalent feelings about the Lawdermilk place. Spring Renfro had been much on his mind, and he itched to see her. But she wouldn’t be the only person waiting for him there. He dreaded facing that marshal from New Prosperity, whose prickly-pear wounds, if not yet healed, should at least have reached a point of toleration.
Somebody must have seen him coming, for when he rode up to the ranch house, Spring, the Lawdermilks, Old Lady Faversham and Julio all stood on the porch waiting for him. The old lady was on her cane. Spring ran down the steps to meet him at the gate. She was no longer shy about showing her feelings in front of people. She threw her arms around him. Hewey hadn’t realized a small-built woman could be so strong. She kissed him and didn’t seem to care whether Old Lady Faversham watched or not.
“Did everything go all right, Hewey?”
“Like a brand-new Ingersoll watch. You ought to’ve seen Fat Gervin’s face when I paid him off.”
“I wish I could have been there. Have you told Eve and Walter?”
“No.” The joy left him. “I’ll have to let you go tell them for me. I came to give myself up to that marshal. You-all get all the stickers out of him?”
She smiled. “That was a private matter between him and Alvin and Julio. I think they left a few where they thought they would do the most good.”
“They won’t do me any good. Where’s he at?”
Alvin came down from the porch. His voice held a promise of laughter. “He’s halfway back to New Prosperity, I imagine. He decided they needed him at home more than he needed you.”
Hewey turned, not quite believing. “What did you do to him?”
Alvin held up his hands. He was the personification of purity and innocence. “Not a thing. Never laid a hand on him except to pull pear thorns. But I had Wes Wheeler come out and explain a few things to him about law in our part of the country. Like when he made you pull the steeples out of my fence. That was willful destruction of private property. Then there was the matter of my plow horse that he made you ride. Horse theft, pure and simple. I had Wes explain to him how narrow-minded we are about such as that.
“Then I just happened to mention to him that if he would drop his charges against you, I’d try my best to talk Wes into tearin’ up the charges I had sworn out against him. He got to actin’ kind of homesick, all of a sudden.”
If Preacher Averill had been there, Hewey would gladly have made a contribution to the church. He squeezed Alvin’s hand so hard that the old horseman flinched. “Alvin, I’ll owe you as long as I live.”
Alvin shook his head. Wistfully he studied Hewey’s face. “You done proud for yourself.” He looked at Spring, then back to Hewey. “I liked the old Hewey an awful lot, and I hate to lose him. But I reckon I’ll get used to the new Hewey by and by. He’s a pretty good old boy himself.”
* * *
Julio saddled Spring’s paint horse for her so she could ride to Walter’s and Eve’s with Hewey. Hewey turned and waved at the family as he rode away. Alvin and Old Lady Faversham looked sad. But Cora was smiling, and so was Julio, a romantic to the end.
Spring suggested, “I don’t suppose you’d want to make a little circle by the Barcroft place on the way?”
Hewey hunched a little, finding no joy in the thought.
“Tomorrow, maybe. Right now I’m anxious to turn this receipt over to Walter and Eve.”
She gave him a worried glance but said nothing.
The sun was going down as they approached the Calloway house. Hewey could feel how tired Biscuit was; the steps were labored and slow, for it had been a long, long day. It was seldom that he ever pushed a horse so hard.
As at the Lawdermilk place, they had evidently been seen. Everyone stood in front of the house, waiting for them. Walter leaned on his crutches, his face expectant. Eve was trying to smile confidently, but Hewey had disappointed her many times before; the anxiety showed in her eyes.
Hewey stepped down from a grateful horse which was almost trembling from fatigue. He turned to help Spring to the ground. He stood with his left arm around her while he fished in his shirt pocket for the signed receipt. He brought it out, extended it toward Eve and grinned broadly.
Hands shaking, she unfolded it, glanced at it, handed it to Walter and threw her arms around Hewey’s neck. She hugged him as tightly as Spring had done at the Lawdermilks’, but for much different reason. She stood back, her eyes brimming with tears. Her voice broke when she tried to speak. She got it under control.
“Hewey Calloway, there’ve been times I’ve said hard things to you in anger, and most of them were justified. But right now I take back every word. Every word.”
Then the four of them were standing with their arms around each other. The two boys stood off to the side, watching, smiling, Tommy turning sheepishly to wipe his sleeve across his eyes.
Walter’s voice cracked. “Hewey, I wisht I knew how…”
Hewey said, “You got a lot to thank them boys for. Without them, it wouldn’t of got done.”
Walter nodded. “The boys know how I feel … how me and Eve both feel.” He crumpled the receipt. “We still got a hard row ahead of us, but we’ve taken the roughest of it. We’re goin’ to make it from here on.”
“Damn right you’ll make it.”
Eve wiped her eyes and turned toward the door. “Let’s get into the house. We’ll have supper directly.”
Hewey started toward the horses, but Eve caught his arm. “The boys can turn the horses loose. You come on in this house.”
Hewey poured coffee for Spring and himself. Spring put sugar in hers, but Hewey liked his coffee the way he liked his whisky, straight. He stood at the window, looking out toward the barn.
Eve couldn’t get through thanking him. She put her arms around him again. “Hewey Calloway, you just don’t know…” She leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “If there’s ever anything me and Walter can do for you, anything you ever need…”
Hewey shook his head. “You don’t owe me a thing. I owed you, and I done what I could to pay. I don’t want a thing.” His gaze fell upon Cotton, pulling the saddle off of Biscuit. He watched thoughtfully. “I take it back, Eve. There is somethin’.”
“Anything we’ve got, it’s yours.”
He looked at her. “You may not like the price.”
“We’ll pay it.”
He pointed his chin at the window and looked back at the boy by the barn. “Let Cotton go.”
Eve drew a sharp breath. “Hewey, I couldn’t do that.”
“You’ll have to, sooner or later. Do it now, while he knows what he wants and has a real chance to go and get it. Eve, it’s been six years since we came into the new century. We still belong to the old one, me and you and Walter. We always will. But there’s a different road in front of Cotton. One day he’ll pick up and follow it whether you let him go or not. Let him go now, with no hard feelin’s to pain him when he looks back.”
Eve turned to Walter. She began to sob. Hewey couldn’t look at her; he kept gazing out the window.
He heard Walter say, “Hewey’s right. Cotton’s come to his time.”
Eve fished in her apron pocket but didn’t find what she was looking for. Spring gave her a handkerchief. Eve used it, then wadded it in her hands. “It’s a scary world out yonder that you’re askin’ me to send him off into. I don’t understand half of what I hear or read about it.”
“Us three, we never will. We was born too soon. But Cotton’ll make himself a place in it. We don’t have to understand it; all we have to know is that he’ll be all right.”
Eve didn’t answer. She hadn’t made up her mind to it yet, but she would. Tomorrow … the next day … one day soon, she would. She turned to the stove, to busy her hands and perhaps thereby busy her mind on something else.
From behind, Spring put her arms around Hewey and laid her head against his back. She said softly, “Thank you, Hewey, for Cotton.”
Eve said the blessing at the supper table, and it was such a long one Hewey was afraid the food would get cold; she had a lot to thank the Lord for, and he couldn’t think of a thing she overlooked. The last little while the realization had begun to come upon him with some force that he hadn’t eaten anything all day. It was an experience not unknown to a drifting man, but one to be avoided whenever possible. He was into his second helping of red frijole beans and cornbread when he heard a commotion outside. It sounded like a bunch of horses, running.
He pushed his chair back and went to the window.
“I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed.
“You probably will be,” Eve scolded, “usin’ language like that. What’s the matter out there?”
Hewey pointed his chin, smiling. “Look who’s comin’.” He walked quickly out into the yard and hurried toward the corral.
From the west, like phantoms out of the dusk, came a remuda of horses in a hard trot, heading for a gate someone had loped ahead and opened for them. Snort Yarnell swung back into the saddle and pulled off to one side to give them room. The horses raised a gray cloud of dust as they rushed through the opening. Hewey climbed over the fence and grasped the wooden gate, pushing it shut as Snort rode his blue roan in behind the string of young horses.
“I’ll swun, Snort,” Hewey exclaimed, “you’re like a bad penny. Where’d you come from this time?”
“From the KCs. Like I told you, I went out there to pick up a string of horses to take back over onto the Concho. I wonder if Walter would mind me keepin’ them in the corral here tonight?” He knew very well that Walter would let him; few people would turn away a stranger, much less an old friend.
“Unsaddle and come up to the house,” Hewey said. “We’re in the middle of supper. There’s a-plenty.”
Snort’s gold teeth gleamed. “I been countin’ on that.”
The rewards of the day had been so great that even Eve had a nice welcome for Snort. Spring stood back away from him a little, eying him with reserve, even a touch of fear. Tommy kept wanting to bring things from the stove for Snort, and when Snort had more spread in front of him than he was likely to be able to eat, Tommy said, “I’ll go out and feed your horses, Snort.”
“Not too much, boy,” Snort cautioned, pointing a fork at him. “These is wild ranch horses, and they’re like wild ranchmen, used to doin’ for theirselves. We don’t want to be spoilin’ them none.”
The kitchen fell silent except for the clinking of Snort’s utensils on his plate, and the loud slurping noise he made over his coffee. He could put away a fearsome amount of food when he set himself to it. But finally he pushed his chair away from the table and rocked back on its two hind legs. He belched. He glanced from Hewey to Spring. “This good lady got the knot tied on you yet, Hewey?”
Spring looked at the floor. Hewey said, “Not yet.”
“Well, when are you-all goin’ to commit the deed?”
Hewey rubbed his hands together, suddenly self-conscious. “I don’t know. We ain’t really talked about that.”
“You in any great rush, Hewey?”
“Rush?”
“I was thinkin’ if you-all wasn’t in any real big hurry, you might like to go off on a little trip with me. Last bachelor trip, you might say.”
Hewey’s interest began to pick up. “Trip? Where to?”
“To Mexico. Old Mexico. I got a job lined up down there with an American outfit, soon’s I get these horses delivered. They said if I found any more good cowboys that wanted a job, just to bring them along. Got a winter’s work, at least. Maybe on into next year too.”
Hewey’s pulse began to pound at the thought of it. Mexico.
Snort leaned over the table, his voice eager. “It ain’t just on that penny-ante border, Hewey. It’s way down yonder, way down deep. Beautiful country. Not spoiled like this country’s gettin’ to be, but big and wild and wide open. It’s like Texas was before they commenced puttin’ fences across it and cuttin’ it up for farmin’. It’s like goin’ back to when we was young. I think me and you ought to see that just one more time, while there’s a little of it left.”
Hewey was still rubbing his hands together. He felt a hand gently touch his arm. He saw Spring staring at him, her eyes pinched with pain.
Eve cleared her throat. “Mr. Yarnell, I believe Tommy is havin’ some trouble down at the pens. I believe some of your horses are tryin’ to get out.”
Snort jumped to his feet and hurried out the door.
Eve said severely, “Hewey, don’t you listen to him. It’s the devil that’s brought him here.”
Defensively Hewey said, “I wasn’t listenin’. I mean, I was listenin’, but I wasn’t really studyin’ on goin’.”
Spring reached up and put her fingers under his chin, turning him to face her. He saw tears in her eyes. Quietly she said, “You would like to go, wouldn’t you?”
“You oughtn’t to pay any attention to Snort Yarnell,” Hewey said. “It’s always a beautiful country if he’s never been there. He’s fiddlefooted, just like I used to be.”
“Used to be?” She tried hard to smile, but she couldn’t bring it out. “Hewey, I can see it in your eyes. I saw it at the Barcroft place. I saw it when Snort was by here the last time, but I tried to tell myself I was wrong. I tried to tell myself you’d changed. You haven’t changed. You never will.”
He wanted to say something to convince her she was wrong, but no words presented themselves. Nothing came, because he knew she was right. “Spring…”
She touched her fingers against his lips to stop him from trying to speak, to argue. “There was never anything false about you, Hewey. I loved you for being just what you were. You were happy, and I felt happy just being around you. But lately I’ve watched you trying very hard to be something else, somebody else. You’ve been miserable, and I’ve hurt for you. If I marry you, you can’t stay the same as you’ve always been. You’ll have to change, for me. And when you change, you won’t be Hewey anymore.
“Some things we just can’t have, because if we try to hold them they die. There’s no way I can have you without changing you. So go ahead, Hewey, go with Snort. I know it’s what you really want to do, deep in your heart. Go on then … go on to Mexico.”
Hewey took her hand and gripped it tightly in both of his own. “I do love you, Spring. You know that.”
Nodding, she whispered, “I know. But I know that you love freedom even more.”
“Spring, are you sure you won’t regret this?”
“Certainly I’ll regret it. I’ll regret it a thousand times. But I’ll always know I was right.”
Eve protested, “Spring, you don’t know what you’re sayin’. Let him go down there and you’ll never see him again. We may none of us ever see him again. Like as not he’ll wind up dead someplace under an outlawed horse.”
Tears welled up in Spring’s eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “Alvin knew all along. He said Hewey is a free spirit, like an eagle. I can’t bring myself to put an eagle in a cage.”
* * *
At daylight Snort Yarnell opened the gate and strung the horses out eastward, into the pink glow that came just ahead of the sun. He shouted and slapped his coiled rope against his leg and put them into a long mile-eating trot. He looked back once for Hewey, then went ahead.
Hewey stood halfway between the house and the barn, leather reins in his hand, Biscuit waiting saddled and patient behind him. The family stood lined up to see him away. Spring Renfro waited alone, a little to one side.
Hewey extended his hand, and Walter leaned forward on his crutches to take it. “Walter, you’re goin’ to make it. You and Tommy, you’ll build yourselves a place here better’n anything old C. C. ever had.”
“It’s always part yours, Hewey.”
Hewey shook his head. “A piece of land is for those who’ll root down on it. You know me.” He moved to Eve. She couldn’t talk. She put her arms around him and said, that way, all there was to say.
He moved down to Cotton. “Boy, you really think them automobiles are goin’ to put us old cowboys out of business?”
Cotton swallowed, his voice thin. “In time, Uncle Hewey. In time.”
Hewey gripped his nephew’s shoulder. “Well, you go out there and give them all you’ve got. But just remember—me and old Biscuit, we ain’t goin’ to lay down easy.”
Tears had cut a trail down Tommy’s face. He put his arms around Hewey’s neck and hugged hard. “You’ll be back, won’t you, Uncle Hewey? You ain’t goin’ to let some old bronc kill you?”
“Button, I ain’t never been killed in my life.”
He turned finally to Spring. He saw her through a haze, because his eyes were burning. He tried to speak to her, but his throat had swollen suddenly. He put his arms around her and pulled her against him, and he felt the warm strength of her arms against his shoulders. She said nothing either.
From the distance he heard Snort Yarnell holler at him. Reluctantly he let Spring go and stepped back. She lowered her head, trying to hide her eyes. Gently he put his fingers under her chin and raised her head a little. He winked at her, though doing so squeezed out a tear that tickled as it ran down his cheek. He gave her a half-smile and got one from her in return.
He turned quickly. The gal-leg spur tinkled as he shoved his boot into the stirrup and swung up into the snakeskin-covered saddle. Biscuit was rested and rearing to go. Hewey touched him very lightly with the spurs, and Biscuit set out in a trot to catch the horses.
Hewey turned once, reined up and waved his hat. Then he rode on.
The sun broke over the prairie in a sudden red blaze. The family all pulled together, arms around each other, Spring standing to one side, still alone. They watched as Hewey seemed to ride into the fire, sitting straight-shouldered and proud on Biscuit’s back. And finally he was gone, melted into the relentless glow of a new day.