Cotton hadn’t said three words since he and Hewey had hitched the half-broken mules in the first light of a cool dawn and had set out over the hill for the recently acquired French place. In the bed of the wagon rattled the carpentry and digging tools Cotton had judged he would need to complete restoration of the windmill and have everything ready for the raising. Also carried were heavy wrenches and grips, well ropes, block and tackle.
Windmilling was not a horseman’s type of work.
Daylight and the fresh dampness of the May morning had brought the cattle out to graze. They were gentle, a far cry from the twistified cattle Hewey was used to. They paid only momentary attention to the creaking wagon. A calf approached in curiosity, then turned tail and ran back to its mother as a wheel dropped into a hole and made everything in the wagon bed clatter in protest.
Hewey tried to bait Cotton into conversation but had only sporadic and short-lived success. He pointed to a mottley faced cow whose horns were beginning to show rough circles at their base, an indication she was moving past what might charitably be termed middle age. “I remember that old sister. She was in the bunch I brought out for your daddy from over on the Concho.”
Cotton only nodded. Hewey went on, “I remember she had a good heifer calf, kind of a roan with a white face. She still in the herd?”
Cotton made the longest speech Hewey had drawn out of him all morning. “We’ve still got her.”
“She raise a calf every year?”
Cotton nodded.
Hewey could see he was losing ground. Cotton kept his gaze on the dim trail of wheel-crushed dry grass from last year; the new green grass was attempting to heal it over. Hewey gave up awhile and studied the open, rolling country. It wasn’t the best grassland he had ever seen, by a long way, but he knew it was deceptive. Here just to the east of the Pecos River the land seemed to suffer for rain more often than not, and grass tended to be of the short varieties, not the tall, thick growth that dominated farther east in Texas or up in the Indian Nations, especially the Osage. But this was strong grass. In a hard year a cow might walk herself half to death trying to find enough to fill her belly, but what she found was well supplied with minerals and nutrients. If she never got fat, at least she stayed hardy. Back east he had seen cows starve with tall weak grass tickling their bellies.
Farming, now, was a different game of poker. They ought not to allow a plow within a hundred miles of here, he thought, unless it was passing through on a freight train with the doors sealed. He had heard it said that when a man traveled west in Texas he lost an inch of average annual rainfall for every fifty miles. If this figure was correct, he could be in the red by the time he made El Paso. It seemed to Hewey that God had already put this country to its proper use without anybody’s help. Grass was what it raised best, and it ought to be left that way. But this was not a popular time to be expressing such a sentiment. In fashionable circles it was considered nonprogressive, the outmoded defense of the old-line free-range cattlemen like C. C. Tarpley who didn’t want to give up private possession of land that rightfully belonged to all the citizens of Texas. Anyone who spoke such a sentiment was allying himself with the forces of monopoly and greed, the reformers shouted. He was setting himself against progress and the uplifting of the common man. He was to be shunned by all good Christian soldiers dedicated to God’s work.
Hewey had already seen many of God’s good common men starve off of the plow and desert the land they had broken out in His name. The dried fields would scour and blow away in the hot west wind, leaving a sore that wouldn’t heal in a hundred years.
“You oughtn’t to ever plow it,” he said, unintentionally putting his thoughts into words.
Cotton was caught off balance, his thoughts elsewhere. “Hunh?”
“The homestead law … I say it’s wrong to make a man plow out a field to hold his claim. He ought not to rip up land that God has already planted to grass and handed to him as a gift.”
Cotton’s shell seemed to crack a little. “You better not say that where Mama can hear it.”
Hewey nodded. “There’s a lot she don’t agree with me about.”
“She says leavin’ good land in grass is slothful, that the Lord wants us to cultivate it and make it blossom like the rose.”
Hewey grunted. “Lots of people talk about what the Lord wants. Wonder how many has ever asked Him?”
“You could’ve asked Him yourself if you’d gone to church with the rest of them this mornin’.”
“I don’t have to go to church to hunt for Him. I see Him around me every day, everywhere I look.”
Cotton studied his uncle with a growing interest. “That sounds like pantheism, like the preacher is always warnin’ us about.”
“Is that somethin’ like the Catholics?”
“Must be pretty bad, because the preacher is sure down on it.”
“Only religion I ever had was the same as yours. I was ducked for a Baptist. But the water didn’t soak very deep. I taken up my old and willful ways again pretty soon.”
“Some churchgoin’ might be good for you, then.”
“I always liked God better when I found Him outdoors. He always seemed too big to fit into a little-bitty cramped-up church house.”
Cotton fell silent again. Hewey changed the subject, talking about things he understood far better than religion, but he seemed unable to draw Cotton far out of that protective shell. He tried to make it appear he was watching the country, while his eyes kept cutting back to Cotton. At length he said, “We used to understand each other pretty good.”
“I’ve got a little older, Uncle Hewey.”
“So have I.”
“On you it don’t ever seem to make any difference.”
Hewey felt a cutting edge in Cotton’s voice, a reproach he could not understand. “Button, if I’ve said somethin’ that hurt you…”
The boy shrugged and turned his attention back to the bronc mules. “It’s been a long time. You probably forgot what you said as soon as you were done sayin’ it. There’s no use pokin’ over dead ashes.”
Hewey rubbed his left hand over a knocked-down knuckle on his right hand, relic of a bad day of bronc stomping that had netted him no more than a dollar at best. “Button, I never said a cross word to you in all your life. I’ve never raised my voice at you.”
“And never lied to me?”
Hewey kept rubbing the hand. It didn’t pain him, but somehow he wished it did, as if pain might in some way compensate for whatever hurt he had caused his nephew. “I’ve never lied to you. Well, never anything serious. Oh, I might’ve stretched the truth a time or two, tellin’ you stories, but never anything to hurt you or lead you wrong. I’ve never meant you anything but good.”
“You made me a promise once, but I expect you turned right around and forgot it. You sure as hell never kept it.”
It jarred Hewey a little, hearing Cotton use a word like hell. Sure, Hewey used it himself, but he was thirty-eight years old. Times were changing, it looked like. “I reckon I’m guilty, since you say so. But I sure don’t remember any promise I never kept.”
“You knew how bad I wanted to see a real automobile. You promised me you was goin’ to take me someplace where they had them, and you was even goin’ to fix it up to get me a ride in one. Then one mornin’ I woke up and you had left.”
Hewey didn’t remember. “Any time I ever made you a promise, button, I intended to keep it. But sometimes things come up…”
“Things always come up with you.”
He didn’t see any gain in telling Cotton of the sharp scolding Eve had given him about his bad influence on the boys. So far as he knew, even Walter had never learned about that. “I didn’t go to hurt you.”
“You told me you had seen a bunch of automobiles in Midland. After you left and didn’t take me yourself, I made up my mind to go anyway. Went over there with Blue Hannigan’s wagons. There wasn’t an automobile in that town, Uncle Hewey. Not one. Folks said they hardly ever saw one come through.”
Hewey frowned. “I don’t know why you’re so dead set on seein’ one of them devil-cars. I’ve seen a many of them, and there ain’t nothin’ to them. They smell like a sick skunk. They cause folks so much grief that I don’t see how they can hold out much longer. Soon as the last one has run off into a ditch, that’ll be the end of the automobile. You ain’t really missed very much.”
“You’re wrong, Uncle Hewey. They ain’t hardly gotten started yet. Pretty soon you’ll be seein’ people drive a hundred or a hundred and fifty miles in a single day. Show me the horse that can do that.”
“There ain’t any real call for it. I never been in a place I hated so much that I had to get a hundred miles from it in one day.”
“You ever ridden in an automobile?”
Hewey hadn’t. Another time he might have made up a story, but he sensed that this was a time for being truthful. Anyway, his experience was too limited to feed his imagination much. The noise and the smoke had always discouraged him from getting very close to one when its motor was running. He had always been sure it was going to explode any minute.
He said, “Midland ain’t that much of a town anyway. One of these days I’ll take you with me and we’ll make us a trip to some big place like San Angelo, or maybe even Fort Worth. I’ll bet you’ll see lots of automobiles there. I might even take you for a ride in one.”
Cotton’s eyes narrowed again. “Maybe you ought to save back your promises for Tommy. He’s still young enough to believe anything.”
Hewey frowned, studying his nephew. He had never noticed before how much Cotton looked like his mother.
* * *
The windmill appeared almost ready to raise. The tail section lay on the ground, as yet unattached, but the big cypress wheel was mounted to the thirty-foot wooden tower. The top was propped up off of the ground by a rough but strong sawhorse fashioned from heavy mesquite limbs. The wheel and the tail had originally been red, but many pieces had been replaced by new lumber painstakingly sawed and trimmed to fit.
Hewey said, “We ought to paint it before we raise it up.”
“It’s cypress. It’ll stand the weather.”
“But it looks bad, some painted, some raw that-away. Looks like a farmer outfit.”
“That’s what this is.”
Hewey would never have admitted it. “A windmill stands way up there, and people can see it from a long ways off. A man ought to want to dress it up, same as he dresses himself up to go to church.”
“This is a long ways from church.”
“Not from mine.” He looked across the horizon and pointed to a distant tower. “Even old C. C. takes pride in the looks of his windmills. You’ll notice they’re painted, every one.”
“C. C. Tarpley’s got money in the bank. In fact, he’s got the bank. All we have down there is a big note comin’ due early in the fall. I reckon the folks’ll buy paint when they’ve burned the note.”
Cotton jumped down and began unhitching the team so they could not spook and run off with the loaded wagon. Hewey tried to help him but found Cotton aggressively self-sufficient. He began unloading the tools from the wagon instead. He said, “I’ll help you with that tail section, and we’ll have this thing fixed up before you know it.”
“I can get it,” Cotton said. “I had figured on comin’ by myself anyway.” Perhaps he saw the disappointment Hewey tried not to show. “I reckon you can dig the holes for a pair of brace posts that we’ll need to keep the tower from slippin’ when we commence to raise it. I’ve already staked the places.”
Digging holes had never been Hewey’s favorite part of the cowboy trade, but neither was windmilling in general. He liked windmills for drinking cool water from, not for greasing or repairing. But he guessed digging holes was better than being shut out altogether. He dragged the posthole diggers from the splintered bed of the wagon. He grimaced, gripping the slick handles. It was not his habit to carry gloves. He knew he would work blisters on his hands before the morning was out.
Well, it probably wasn’t any worse than forking hay to cows in the Sangre de Cristos snow. At least here he wouldn’t take a chill.
The hole had been drilled by a professional windmill man, and the big steel casing extended above the level of the ground. Centered within the casing and standing a little higher was a three-inch pipe through which the strokes of the wheel high above would draw the water. A set of heavy wooden blocks or collars rested on top of the outer casing and tightly gripped the smaller inside pipe to keep it from slipping down to the bottom of the hole. The tower, when raised, would be centered above the pipe. Hewey took it for granted that Cotton hadn’t overlooked a thing. It was in his nature to be thorough about mechanical devices.
The well seemed to be in a slight depression. Hewey remarked, “It would’ve been handier to’ve had it drilled on higher ground. You could’ve gotten better gravity flow to your tank without raisin’ the pipe so high.”
Cotton frowned. “Daddy let Julio Valdez witch the well. He said this is where the water was. Said it would be sweet water. So this is where Daddy had the hole drilled.”
“I take it you don’t believe in water witchin’.”
“I’ve read everything I can find about science. I’ve never seen anything that said a man could walk around with a forked stick in his hand and tell you what’s fifty feet under the ground.”
“You did get water.”
“I don’t know if it’s sweet.”
Hewey had never read much about science. He was satisfied that the world by Aught Six had already progressed about as far as it needed to go. People had already invented just about everything that the public could afford to buy. To him, water witching was a science. He had never had the gift himself, but he had watched other people do it, and he had seen the end of a forked peach switch turn downward as surely as if some unseen hand had forced it.
He supposed if Cotton had read it in a book he would believe it.
Hewey kicked one of the stakes aside and vigorously attacked the ground with the diggers. After a few inches the ground seemed to counterattack. Presently he looked at the palms and saw small red spots rising. These would turn to blisters by and by and probably break open. “My hands never was made to fit the handles of these idiot sticks,” he said, motioning toward the diggers.
Cotton glanced up from a heavy bolt he was tightening. “I had figured on diggin’ the holes myself. Go sit in the shade if you’ve a mind to.”
There was no shade, unless Hewey were to get under the wagon. Once this had been a cattle-watering place for a few years, the tank would probably become surrounded by a growth of mesquite trees, sprouting from the manure. But as of yet the nearby prairie was innocent of plants taller than a broomweed.
“I wasn’t complainin’, just makin’ conversation.” He went back to the digging and didn’t stop again until he saw that Cotton needed help lifting the tail section into place. He held it firmly while Cotton bolted it. He welcomed the respite even for a bit of heavy lifting. He studied the intricate combination of wood and machinery that made up the mill’s wheel section. It was fourteen feet in diameter. “You must’ve had to rebuild the bigger part of this. Did you do it all by yourself?”
Cotton nodded. “It got damaged pretty bad when the wind blew the tower over. Old Armbruster didn’t have it anchored good. Otherwise Daddy couldn’t have bought it in the first place. There’s not much to it when you know how. Just a couple of days’ work with the forge and the anvil, and a saw.”
Hewey couldn’t have done it. He would bet Walter couldn’t either. Well, everybody to his own way of getting a backache. Hewey’s was horses.
By the time he finished the second hole his hands burned from two blisters that had sprouted and broken against the wooden handles. He said nothing because sympathy would not help against the fire, and he reasoned that he would get none from Cotton anyway. He glanced up toward the sun. “Don’t you reckon it’s time we started thinkin’ about fixin’ us a bite to eat?”
Several paces beyond the windmill was a shallow fire pit that Cotton had used on other days. Hewey gathered up dry mesquite that Cotton or the well driller had brought here, and some scrap pieces of kindling left over from the windmill-repairing. He placed them in the pit and built a small fire. While the wood was working its way toward a strong red glow, he poured a generous measure of ground coffee into a fire-blackened bucket and then filled the bucket nearly to the top with water out of a wooden keg in the wagon bed.
“Hell of a note,” he remarked. “Got us a brand-new well and we haul drinkin’ water from the house.”
He stirred no response from Cotton. Hewey poked the burning wood into shape, then set the bucket on top of it. He knew a watched pot would never boil, but he watched it anyway to be sure the burning sticks did not collapse and tip the bucket over.
Other than mumbling quietly to himself when something didn’t seem to fit or a nut didn’t want to take hold of a thread, Cotton had said little all morning. Hewey had started three or four times to tell him of adventures, but Cotton betrayed no interest. Several good stories were stillborn. Hewey would have to save them for Tommy, he supposed, if he could remember them.
When he thought the coffee had boiled long enough he used a forked stick to lift the bucket by its bail and set it back from the fire. From the wagon he fetched a cotton sack Eve had partially filled with cold biscuits and strips of bacon fried at breakfast.
“Chuck!” Hewey called. “It ain’t much, but it’ll hold till the chicken.”
Cotton’s hands were hopelessly greasy from handling the working parts of the mill. He rubbed all he could onto an old gunny sack while Hewey poured coffee into two bent and tarnished tin cups. Cotton’s hands were still black.
Hewey shrugged. “A little honest dirt ain’t goin’ to ruin a man’s digestion. I reckon I’ve eaten a ton of it, one time and another.”
Cotton broke a biscuit and folded a couple of strips of bacon inside, then closed the biscuit and mashed it down. While he ate, his gaze remained fastened to the mill. Hewey could see pride in his eyes. As Cotton was finishing the first biscuit, Hewey fixed him another with three strips of bacon. “Eat it up. You’ve done good.”
Cotton’s enthusiasm got the better of his reserve. “It’s goin’ to work just fine, Uncle Hewey. It’s goin’ to be as good as a brand-new one.”
“Better, I’ll bet. People that work in them factories, they don’t take care like the man who’s goin’ to use it. They just throw it together and slap it in the crate, and they know that’s the last they’ll see of it.”
“I’d like to work in one of those factories awhile. Not makin’ windmills, maybe, but makin’ engines, or maybe even automobiles. Somethin’ that runs and has a life of its own.”
“And be cooped up inside a buildin’ with all that smoke and all that noise? I couldn’t stay in there for thirty minutes.”
“It’s what’s comin’, Uncle Hewey.”
“I sure hope not.”
“They’re even talkin’ about buildin’ flyin’ machines. Speed is what everybody wants today.”
“In a horse, yes. A good old cow pony can give a man all the speed he ever needs. I’ve had some give me a right smart more than I wanted.”
“I don’t expect Mama and Daddy to understand. They’re livin’ in the past, and happy enough with it. But you’ve always been the restless one, Uncle Hewey. You’ve always been the one who wanted to see somethin’ new and try what other people hadn’t already done. I’d think you’d be excited over what’s happenin’ around us today.”
Hewey sipped carefully on the hot coffee. “Sure, I always liked to see new country, new people. But everywhere I went I used to feel like I could deal with whatever came up. It was me against a horse, or me against a bunch of cattle, or me against another man. I knew how to take a-hold.
“But now, lots of places, it’s different. I been to some big towns. I’ve seen them automobiles chuggin’ up and down, scarin’ hell out of the horses, leavin’ a trail of smoke that’d choke a bay mule. I’ve seen a man set down at a telephone in Fort Worth, Texas, and talk to somebody way off at the Kansas City stockyards just like he was in the next room. I’ve seen streets so strung up with wires that you couldn’t see the sky through, hardly. I don’t understand it. I can’t take a-hold of it. It scares me so bad I can’t hardly wait to saddle up and get back into the open country where you’ve got to look a man in the face to talk to him.”
“It ought to excite you, Uncle Hewey.”
“It might excite you, but it scares me.” He nodded toward the reclining Eclipse. “That windmill there, that’s as complicated a piece of machinery as ever I want to fool with.”
“The world is movin’ faster all the time. You either go on with it or you get left behind. You never was one to get left behind.”
“Because I always looked forward to the place I was goin’ to. But I don’t look forward to this world you’re talkin’ about.”
“I’m goin’ to be a part of it. I want to help build it.”
Hewey frowned. “Well, I hope you like it when you get it finished.”
He hated to get to his feet. He had finally broken Cotton out of his silence. Maybe from now on things would go a little easier between them. He flung the dregs of his coffee into the greening grass and pitched his cup into the wagon bed.
Cotton stood up and looked toward home. “We’ll have it ready for them pretty soon. They can come any time they take the notion.”
Hewey rubbed his hands; they hurt a little. The bacon grease would probably help in the long run, but its saltiness brought the fire back. “Don’t take a lot of people to raise a windmill.”
“The raisin’ is just an excuse for everybody to visit and enjoy themselves. First chance we’ve had since spring came.”
Hewey walked to the prone tower and slapped a hand against one of the six-by-six legs. “What say me and you raise this mill ourselves? When they get here they won’t have to do anything but party.”
Cotton’s mouth dropped open. “You don’t mean that.”
“It’d give them a dandy surprise.”
“It might give us one. Just us two, and a pair of bronc mules … If the least thing went wrong we’d wreck the windmill and have all this work to do over again.”
“The odds are with us.”
Cotton stared at him with exasperation. There was finality in his voice, the way Hewey had often heard it from Eve. “They’re right about you, Uncle Hewey.”
“How’s that?”
“They say you’ve got no more responsibility than a one-eyed jack rabbit. You won’t ever grow up; you’ll just grow old. If you live.”
Hewey shrugged. “No harm meant. Just a notion I had, was all.”
Cotton said nothing more as he worked his way around the mill, checking the bolts for tightness, fondling it as if it were a pet he had just saved from harm.
That’s always the way with me, Hewey thought darkly. Take one step forward and two backward. Almost had him there for a little bit. He took out his frustration on the posthole diggers.
He noticed a lone rider approaching, moving in a sensible slow trot, not pushing his horse. Hewey squinted, trying to identify him. Cotton only glanced, then went back to his work, evidently satisfied that this was the vanguard of the tower-raising crew.
Hewey said, “I believe that’s Wes Wheeler. He still sheriff here?”
Cotton took a fresh look. “That’s him, and he is. I didn’t know he was interested in raisin’ windmills.”
Hewey had usually been able to recognize law officers about as far as he could see them. They had an intangible manner of standing, of walking, of riding, an official presence that gave them away. Hewey instinctively always classified them as one of two types, usually on first sight: good ones and bad ones. He rarely altered his initial opinion.
Wes Wheeler was one he had always put in the good category. He didn’t go around arbitrarily telling people what to do or trying to run their lives with the excuse that it was for their own good. He recognized that his main function was to keep the peace, and he seldom raised much hell in doing it. He never bothered a man unless he was convinced that a little bothering was going to benefit the community.
Wheeler was a big man who needed a big horse. This one was a stocky dun, still shedding off the coarse winter hair. Wheeler dismounted, keeping his horse between himself and Hewey. That struck Hewey as being a little odd; he decided it was an old habit, a holdover from rougher days when a lawman occasionally needed a shield. Wheeler had cut his eyeteeth in times like that; they had left their mark on him. Wheeler came on afoot, leading the dun horse. Hewey walked out to meet him, and they shook hands firmly.
“Good to see you, Wes.”
The sheriff nodded. “Heard at church that you was back.”
“Got here last evenin’. Sorry I missed church.”
“Guess it won’t hurt you to miss it once in a while.” The sheriff spoke to Cotton, congratulating him on what appeared to be a dadjimmed good job of rebuilding the windmill. But his eyes kept shifting back to Hewey.
“Hearin’ you was back got me to thinkin’ about an odd letter I got in yesterday’s mail. You have any trouble on the way home, Hewey?”
Hewey shook his head. “Biscuit acted like he was fixin’ to come up lame, is all.”
“That ain’t the kind of trouble I mean. You didn’t by any chance have some difficulty with a city marshal back up the way?”
Hewey blinked. “Oh, that! It wasn’t no trouble, really. We just had a little difference of opinion. It was over with in a minute.”
The sheriff’s eyes turned sad. “I got a letter yesterday from the sheriff up there. I imagine he wrote to every sheriff in this part of the country.”
Hewey shook his head. “It just happened a few days ago. And you already got a letter about it? The U.S. mails are a wonder to behold.”
Wheeler said, “Seems like, by this letter, that they’re lookin’ for a cowboy by the name of Hugh Holloway.”
Hewey mused, “That marshal never did get my name right.”
“They got this Holloway charged with attempted murder.”
Cotton set down his wrench and stood listening, eyes and mouth wide open.
Hewey said, “That’s layin’ it on mighty thick. I didn’t try to murder him. I didn’t even hit him, hardly, just a little tap on the nose to keep him from pistol-whippin’ me again. It was a big nose; I couldn’t hardly miss.” He considered. “Maybe Biscuit stepped on him, too. Things was a little confused there.”
The sheriff walked over to the remnants of the fire and looked in the coffee bucket. He was disappointed to find it empty.
Hewey said, “We got the makin’s. We’ll fix you another pot.”
The sheriff shook his head. “I reckon you better tell me all about it, Hewey.”
Hewey told him what little there was, about the marshal shouting at him for riding down a residential street, and about him trying to hit Hewey up beside the head with a six-shooter that must have weighed thirty-seven pounds.
Wheeler frowned. “Letter says you taken the gun away from him, and that you ought to be considered armed and dangerous.”
Hewey shrugged. “If they ever clean out the water trough down there by the railroad tracks they’ll find that pistol. I throwed it away the first chance I got. I always figured one way to never need a gun was to never carry one around.”
The sheriff’s eyes were half closed, but he was a long way from being asleep. “You sure you’ve told me everything, Hewey?”
Hewey nodded. “It didn’t amount to nothin’, hardly.”
Wheeler critically studied the mark on Hewey’s jaw. “He done that to you just for ridin’ on the wrong street?”
“He seemed like he was a little overwrought.”
Wheeler said tightly, “The man was probably descended from a long line of bachelors.”
Cotton ventured closer to the two men. Incredulously he demanded, “Uncle Hewey, you mean all he asked you to do was to go over and ride on another street?”
“He didn’t ask me to. He told me I had to. There’s a difference.”
“If he’d asked you to, would you have done it?”
“Sure. I always try to get along with people.”
Cotton shook his head. “I don’t understand that at all.”
Hewey wasn’t sure how to explain it; it seemed so natural that no explanation ought to be necessary. “I’m a free-born American. I even been to war. I’d be a taxpayer, and proud to say it, if I owned anything to pay taxes on. I’ve got a right to ride down any street anywhere in this country that anybody else can. Somebody tells me I got to get off, and I do it, pretty soon I won’t have that right anymore.”
Cotton wasn’t satisfied. Hewey didn’t know how to satisfy him.
Wes Wheeler saw Hewey’s chagrin. He looked at Cotton. “Son, I’m a peace officer. It’s my job to enforce the law. I’m not allowed to make the law; that’s for somebody else to do. If I go to makin’ it, I can make it anything I want it to be. First thing you know I’ll use it to help me and my friends. I’ll use it to hurt people I don’t like. If that ever happens, I’m dangerous. That marshal up yonder, he was goin’ beyond his rightful authority. That makes him dangerous. You let people like that get away with it, pretty soon they’ll take you over.”
Hewey couldn’t tell if the message had gotten across to Cotton. But the boy asked, “Mr. Wheeler, you goin’ to turn Uncle Hewey over to them?”
The sheriff’s mouth twisted. “Letter said they’re huntin’ for somebody named Hugh Holloway. I don’t know any Hugh Holloway. It ain’t my fault they got a marshal who can’t remember names.” He looked at Hewey. “You better hope some other sheriff don’t figure out that they want Hewey Calloway, and tell them where to hunt.”
“I always tried to get along good with the law.”
“If you ever go north again, you might better take a broad roundance on New Prosperity. Not because you have to, but because you want to.”
“I didn’t lose nothin’ there.”
“If they ever come lookin’ for you and have the name right, I don’t know what I can do to help you.”
“You’ve already helped me, Wes. I appreciate you tellin’ me.”
Wheeler climbed back into his saddle. Hewey said, “They’re fixin’ to have a big chicken supper over at the house this evenin’. I know Eve and Walter would consider you mighty welcome.”
“Can’t stay, Hewey. Might be a good idea if you got your visitin’ done and left pretty soon yourself. Just in case.”
He waved, and he was gone.
Cotton said, “Just change streets, that’s all you’d of had to do. Just ride over one block.”
Hewey didn’t know how to explain to him that a man could lose a lot of manhood in a single block. He didn’t try. “Your mother wouldn’t understand about this. I hope you don’t feel like you’ve got to tell her.”
“No, she wouldn’t. And I won’t.”