The weather was warm but beautiful. Rains had come at decent intervals all spring so that the grass was good. Tommy’s excitement was contagious. It was a bad thing, Hewey thought, that most boys weren’t turned loose on their own anymore like they used to be. Some boys these days didn’t leave home until they were fifteen or sixteen. They should not be so deprived of the many wonders the world held for them.
It was always less monotonous moving a band of horses than driving a cow herd. Horses moved faster. Of all the broncs Hewey had broken in this string, he had given the most cussing to a long-tailed bay that showed by looks and temperament a goodly drop of mustang in its veins. But now that bay had established itself as the leader. Its sharp teeth and ready hoofs defended the front position when another horse moved up as if to challenge its lead. The bay seemed to know where it was going and to look forward to being the first to get there.
When Tommy wasn’t singing, he was asking questions.
“How big is San Angelo?”
“Last time I heard it was five or six thousand people.”
“That many? That must be near as big as Chicago. I’ll bet it’s a mile and a half across.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“You reckon they got an ice-cream parlor? A real ice-cream parlor?”
“I believe I remember seein’ one, but I never was in it. It was a few doors up from the Arc Light Saloon.”
“You’ve been in the saloon though, I suppose?”
“Had to go in there to see a feller.”
Cotton hadn’t said much, but he had done a lot of quiet thinking. “I hope you’re right about them havin’ some automobiles.”
“I wisht I knew what gets you buttons all so muzzy over automobiles.”
Cotton smiled. “You keep sayin’ they’re just a passin’ fad. I’d like to see one before they’re all gone.”
“They ain’t much to see. When the new wears off and everybody goes back to sensible transportation, I’ll bet the price of good horses and mules will go up by fifty or seventy-five dollars a head.”
They cut across country until they struck the head of the Middle Concho. Once they made the river, all they had to do was follow, because it would ultimately lead them to town. The three Conchos—Middle, North and South—all converged at San Angelo and formed one Main Concho River. It flowed on east to contribute its clear waters to the red-muddy run of the Colorado a little way beyond the Indians’ painted rocks.
It seemed to Hewey there wasn’t a foot of this region that he hadn’t ridden over at some time or other. Seeing it again was like meeting an old friend after a long separation. He had ridden from the Mexican border to Canada, and he was hard put to say which was his favorite part of the country. Usually it was the place where he was now, or the place he was on his way to.
He found himself singing along with Tommy, though he couldn’t carry a tune in an oaken bucket. It was nice to go home, but it was good also to be out moving again, not knowing, really, where he was going once he got the horses delivered, free to make up his mind at any time and to change it just as suddenly in the middle of the road without pausing for consultation with anybody.
The horses suddenly stopped and bunched up along an unexpected fence. The barbed wire was shiny and new. The horses tentatively moved down it a little way, then up, uncertain which way they were expected to go. Tommy rode out to one side, Cotton to the other, to keep them from taking any wrong notions. When the horses had quieted and seemed disposed to graze the good grass awhile, Hewey rode down closer to the river. He found no gate, but he found a drop-gap where the barbed wire was tied to the posts with slick wire rather than fastened down securely with steeples. This was a substitute for a gate. He untied the wires from several posts and signaled to Cotton to help him push them down to ground level. This opened a pathway for the broncs to pass over. When they were all on the other side, Hewey tied the wires back in their proper places.
“Seems like it ain’t been more than a year or two since I was along this very same way. There wasn’t no fence here then.”
“It’s sure here now.” Cotton looked at the big cedar posts, more permanent than the mesquite posts he was used to at home. “Looks like they mean for it to stay.”
Hewey grumbled, “Every time you turn around anymore you run into a new fence. Seems like somebody is bound and determined to turn this whole world into one big barbed-wire jail.”
“We came a long ways before we ran into this one.”
“Used to not run into any. Used to ride a thousand miles and never open a gate unless it was to somebody’s yard or his tater and turnip patch.”
Not far ahead somewhere lay a set of old wooden corrals he remembered from years past. They were near the river and would be a good place to hold the horses while they camped for the night. Dusk was closing as he saw a pinpoint of firelight ahead. Disappointment touched him. If someone was already there and using the pens, he and the boys would have to go on a few miles farther to a ranch house he knew about. He hadn’t brought hobbles or bridles and picket line because for him this was to be a one-way trip, and there was no handy way of getting them home. They would be too bulky for Cotton and Tommy to carry. Yet they were worth too much to leave or give away. Even Alvin Lawdermilk wasn’t that generous.
Nearing the pens, he saw to his relief that they stood empty. The campfire was down by the river, where a man had a horse staked on a long rope to graze beneath a towering stand of big native pecan trees.
“We’ll water them first,” he told the boys, “then we’ll pen them.”
They hazed the horses down to the river and let them spread out to drink. Hewey gave them all the time they wanted. He saw the man at the fire saddle his blue roan horse and ride up to the pens to throw the gate open. It was less than a hundred yards, and it took him longer to saddle up than it would have taken to walk the distance. That told Hewey he was a cowboy, not some town dweller casually passing through.
He saw something familiar in the way the man sat on his roan as Hewey and Cotton and Tommy pushed the freshly broken broncs up to the pens. When the rider moved in to help them, Hewey knew.
“Well, I’ll swun!” he exclaimed. “Snort Yarnell, you gotch-eared old mule!” Snort did have a little wilt in the upper edge of his left ear. Depending upon when he told the story, and to whom, it had been acquired either from a horse or from a saloon fight.
“Howdy, Hewey Calloway. What you doin’ in God’s country?”
“Tryin’ to get across before God sees me.”
Snort Yarnell was a legend over Texas and half of New Mexico. When people talked of great cowmen they spoke of Charles Goodnight and Shanghai Pierce. When they talked of cow-country bankers they might bring up the names of George W. Littlefield or Charles Schreiner. But when the conversation turned to bronc stompers and wild, reckless cowboys who knew not fear nor hesitation, they were likely to speak of men like Booger Red Privett and Snort Yarnell. Snort, it was often said, could ride more broncs, heel more calves and drink more whisky—separately or intermixed—than anybody who had ever trailed Longhorn cattle out of the South Texas brush. He was always the envy of other cowboys, and occasionally the dread of county sheriffs, city constables and lone bartenders who had big breakable mirrors.
Snort sported a full gold tooth in the middle of his broad grin, installed by some show-off dentist during one of Snort’s rare moments of temporary prosperity. Standing next to it like a kid brother was a gold cap filling out a tooth that had been only half broken off. Snort’s nose was nearly flat and a little askew, a mark of the bad moments that inevitably arose to one in the bronc-stomper trade.
He said, “Hewey, I know you don’t own them horses legal, so where’d you steal them at?”
Hewey explained that he was delivering them to San Angelo for Alvin Lawdermilk.
“Now, ain’t that a stroke of good luck for you? I’m headin’ for Angelo myself. Goin’ to slip up on the boys’ blind side and win the money at the big steer ropin’.”
Hewey’s pulse quickened. “I never heard about no ropin’.”
“Day after tomorrow. You ought to get in on it. I’m figurin’ on takin’ first place, naturally, but you’re welcome to second prize.”
Hewey shut one eye and narrowed the other. “The day I couldn’t beat you with a rope was the day I was laid up with my right arm broke.”
Snort turned to Cotton and Tommy. “You’re Walter’s boys, ain’t you?” He didn’t wait for the answer. “Your Uncle Hewey is a notorious liar, but in spite of all that he’s the second-best cowboy in this whole neck of the woods, me bein’ number one. Your old daddy was no slouch in his own time. I’d of ranked him number three before he taken himself to the plow.”
The boys stood slack-jawed. They had seen Snort Yarnell before, but he was ever a wonder to them.
Hewey shut the gate on the broncs and tied it securely. He wouldn’t have trusted that mustang bay not to open it. He would have liked to have brought some corn or oats for the broncs, but he had let them graze enough through the day to carry them through. “Let’s stake our horses and let them at the grass,” he told the boys. “Snort, what you got down yonder that we can graze?”
“Three cold biscuits and a can full of coffee. I was hopin’ some pilgrim like you would happen along and take pity. Don’t tell me you ain’t got nothin’.”
Hewey let his disappointment show. “Some jerked beef, which is the next thing to nothin’. Half a slab of bacon. We’ll have to cook that.”
“I can wait. If you need more firewood, there’s aplenty down yonder. All you have to do is go fetch it.”
The best that could be said for the supper was that it was filling. Hewey didn’t eat much; he left most of his for the boys, because he could remember how painful hunger had been to him when he was that age. Nowadays it was no stranger to him; he took it in stride. He made up the difference with black coffee, boiled strong enough and thick enough to pass for blackstrap molasses.
Snort did the major part of the talking. Tommy hung on every word, his eyes wide and credulous. Snort didn’t have to embellish much. In his case even the truth strained belief. After telling about having his leg crushed in a horse fall, he pulled up his pants leg for proof. The scarred and crooked leg was an awesome thing to behold. “Them San Antonio doctors said it had taken an infection and there wasn’t nothin’ I could do but let them saw it off if I wanted to live. But I told them the Good Lord had sent me into this world on two good legs and I wasn’t goin’ to shortchange Him when I turned them back in. I had some friends take me out to a little adobe house on Salado Creek. I packed this old leg in horse manure and wrapped it up tight with gunny sacks. I smelt like I was three weeks dead, and I lost most of my friends for a while. But when I left that place I left there walkin’.”
Cotton said, “They’ve made a lot of progress. I’ll bet nowadays they could do you a lot better job.”
“A wore-out one-eyed horse drops better medicine on the ground behind him than most of them quack doctors have got up their sleeves.” Snort slapped the leg smartly. “You couldn’t ask for nothin’ sounder than that.”
After Hewey sent the boys to their blankets, he sat up awhile with Snort. Mostly they hunched in thoughtful silence, smoking, thinking. Spring Renfro kept coming to Hewey’s mind, unbidden. He tried to shut her out by dwelling on other times, other people. At length he said, “I heard you was with old Grady Welch when he got killed.”
Snort’s face saddened as he stared into the remnant of the fire. “I was there when he taken his last breath on this earth. I cried like a baby.”
Hewey nodded, for he could understand that.
Snort said, “Every time we lose one like him, a little flavor goes out of life. There ain’t many of us left.”
“Horse stepped on him, Walter said.”
“Big black horse, it was. Sixteen hands high, four stockin’ feet. I never did trust a horse with four stockin’ feet.”
“Tough way to die.”
Snort shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know but what it’s the way old Grady would’ve wanted to go, though. Beats hell out of livin’ till you get so old you can’t ride anymore. Or gettin’ bad hurt. Most ranches don’t feel responsible for you if you get crippled for life, workin’ for them. They’ll thank you for your help, give you a little foldin’ money and send you to town to fend for yourself. If you’re damn lucky you might get a job cookin’ for a wagon. If you’re lucky but not that lucky you might get a job washin’ out spittoons in some saloon. If you’re not lucky atall you’ll wind up beggin’ for handouts on a street corner and tellin’ everybody how great a cowpuncher you was before you fell on hard times. I’ve seen all three. I’d druther it’d happen to me like it happened to Grady, when my time comes.”
Hewey frowned deeply, staring into the fire, remembering grand old times with Grady and Snort, and with others who had gone on. “When we get to town we’ll have a drink to old Grady.”
Snort looked up, struck by the appropriateness of the idea. It was, in its own way, almost a form of prayer. “We’ll do that, Hewey. We’ll sure as hell do that.”
* * *
They delivered the horses to Nasworthy’s stables across from the huge courthouse. There buyer Norton Bates waited with a couple of Mexican cowboys to pick them up. Bates rode with Hewey to the First National Bank, a block east. It was a brand-new structure with four magnificent white columns and a stone eagle perched on top.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” Bates said, “but they spent twenty-five thousand dollars puttin’ up that buildin’.”
Hewey whistled. A man could buy a good-sized ranch for that kind of money. They could have lost C. C.’s Upton City bank in a corner of this one and not found it for a week.
Bates drew a draft and arranged for the bank to mail it directly to the Upton City bank for Alvin’s account. Hewey knew nothing about the handling of such big financial transactions. His twenty or twenty-five or thirty dollars a month had always been paid in cold cash.
“I owe you boys a drink,” Bates said when the business was done. “The Arc Light Saloon is down yonder a ways.” He pointed south.
Hewey knew full well where the Arc Light was. “These younguns here are a mite underage. They been wantin’ to visit a real ice-cream parlor. Reckon you could point the way to one of those?”
Bates opined that ice cream was dangerous because it froze the stomach. But if the boys were bound and determined to risk their lives, he would pay for a spread. Afterward he took Hewey and Snort to the saloon, where the goods had the opposite effect, warming all the way to the toes. There Hewey found a lot of cowboys in town either to watch or to participate in the roping. By the time all the howdying and shaking was done, his arm was almost too tired to lift a rope.
The boys were waiting outside, both excited. “Uncle Hewey,” Cotton exclaimed, “we’ve seen us an automobile.”
Tommy pointed. “It’s just around that corner yonder.”
Hewey wasn’t all that interested. He was itching to go and get his name into the pot for the roping. But he decided to smile over an automobile and act as if he liked it, though telling a lie was a mortal sin.
To him it looked like every other automobile he had ever seen in his travels, mostly just a glorified buggy with rubber tires, and without a horse. Down beneath the bed was an ugly-looking engine, leaking oil. Over the dashboard was a long shaft with a wheel on it that he knew was the mechanism for guiding the brainless contraption. All in all, he didn’t see much there to detain a man for more than a minute or two.
Cotton walked around the automobile, learnedly pointing out all its features, telling what each was for and what part it played in making the monster lumber down the road and scare good horses half to death. Cotton seemed to know a lot, never to have laid eyes on one of these before.
Snort Yarnell seemed impressed by Cotton’s knowledge, though he understood no more of it than Hewey did.
Cotton was leaning over the seat, pointing to some doodad and thingamajig on the dash when a tall man with a derby hat, a new suit and a waxed mustache stepped out of a nearby barber shop. He reeked of bay rum. “Boy,” he shouted, “you get your grimy hands away from that automobile!” He came striding purposefully down the plank sidewalk.
Cotton drew back as if he had been shot.
The man pointed a finger at him. “Don’t you know the meaning of private property, kid? Don’t you know that’s an expensive piece of machinery? Be damned if I’ll let some ignorant farm boy hoodoo it.”
Cotton reddened.
Hewey moved between his nephew and the angry-eyed dude. “The button didn’t mean no harm. And he may be a farm boy, but he’s noways ignorant.”
The well-dressed gent gave Hewey a hard stare that silently put him in a class no more than one notch above a yellow mongrel dog. There were a lot of people who didn’t realize what a good cowboy was worth. “Every generation ought to make a little improvement over the one before it.”
This time Cotton stepped between Hewey and the man. “Uncle Hewey, I’ve seen the automobile now. Let’s get away from here.”
Hewey had never been a fist fighter and had customarily gone well out of his way to avoid a fight when he could. In this case he was disposed toward making an exception.
Cotton caught him by the arm. “Let’s go, Uncle Hewey.”
Snort had put a fresh chew of tobacco in his mouth after the drink. Now he needed to spit. He deposited a brown blob on the rear tire. It began to stretch and run and drip. The dude made a strong comment about Snort’s ancestry and stepped quickly to wipe away what he could with his white handkerchief. Snort said, “Hewey, we better go see about that ropin’.”
Hewey nodded but looked back as he walked away. “I hope he’s forced to trade that thing for a mean Missouri mule. And I hope that mule kicks him so hard it melts the wax out of his mustache.”
Snort tried none too subtly to change the subject. “I had a mustache one time. Kept it two or three years. You remember it, Hewey? Finally got rid of it. Kept burnin’ it off smokin’ my cigarettes short.”
After he had put up his five dollars, Hewey ran a finger down the handwritten list of entrants and glanced quickly at Snort. “They got Clay McGonagill and Joe Gardner here, the champions of the whole world. And Fred Baker and Jim Barron and Bob Mims. All the good ones, just about, except Ellison Carroll. You ever rope against these fellers before?”
“Nope. But that gives us the advantage, don’t you see? They don’t know what they’re up against.”
Hewey and Snort and the boys went to the Trimble Grocery and splurged a dollar and a half on luxuries such as cheese and crackers, sardines and canned peaches. These they carried down to the bank of the Concho River. They squatted in the dense shade of the big native pecan trees, where Hewey opened the cans by slashing a big X in the tops with his Barlow knife. They fed sumptuously. Done, Hewey rubbed his stomach. “Them bankers in Kansas City don’t have it a tittle or a jot better than this.”
Tommy enthusiastically agreed. “If I ever get rich, I’ll do this every day.”
The fairgrounds lay in a big open flat east of town. The arena was almost the size of a horse trap; Hewey guessed it at ten acres, its far end reaching all the way to the steep bank of the Main Concho on the south. At the north end was a small grandstand and the holding pens where sixty or seventy long-legged, long-horned Mexico steers pulled hay out of wooden racks as if it were free, trampling half of it underfoot. Wagons and buggies lined up along the arena fence on either side. The roping was supposed to begin at two o’clock.
Snort strayed off to visit with old friends and to bask in the glory of his reputation. Hewey rode Biscuit leisurely through the crowd, looking for people he knew, studying the ropers and their mounts. He gave special but quiet attention to big Clay McGonagill, freshly back from a triumphant tour of South America with some other noted ropers like Joe Gardner. Hewey sort of liked McGonagill’s big bay horse, which had an apple branded on the shoulder, but not enough to propose a trade for Biscuit.
Once his breath came short as he saw a woman in the crowd. She looked for all the world like Spring Renfro. He couldn’t imagine what Spring would be doing here. He eased Biscuit up closer and saw that he was mistaken. She didn’t look like Spring at all. The woman stared at him, disturbed by his uninvited attention. Hewey turned away, perplexed by his error. He had no idea why Spring should remain so strong on his mind.
Cotton shouted, “Uncle Hewey, yonder comes that automobile.”
Hewey reined Biscuit around and saw the same red vehicle, driven by the slicked-up dude. Sitting with him in the front were two young and handsome women dressed like Christmas packages. Hewey doubted that they were his sisters. The driver tooted his horn and almost caused a runaway. A man with a woman and three kids in a hack had to saw desperately on the reins to keep his team from taking the bits in their teeth and leaving there. Horses snorted and scattered as the dude pushed the automobile through the crowd to seek a place beside the arena fence.
Someone shouted, “Be slow with that noise. You’ll hurt somebody.”
For answer the dude tooted the horn again. One of the girls laughed.
If some husky fellow would go over there and take the curl out of that mustache, he would be the most popular man at the fairgrounds, Hewey thought. He was not seeking honors, however.
Presently Snort was back. “Hewey, how much money you got?”
As little stock as Hewey placed in money, Snort cared even less. Hewey had most of the pay from Alvin, but caution made him reply in the most general terms. “Some.”
“Let me have it. I’ll double or triple it for you. There’s a damn fool over yonder got more money than sense. He’s givin’ odds.”
Hewey kept his hands in his pockets. “The competition is fierce.”
“Competition is like sugar sprinkled on cobbler pie. Where’s your faith?”
“Faith is one thing. Charity is somethin’ else.”
“It’s that fool yonder who’s bein’ charitable. Come on, let me have what you’ve got.”
Snort Yarnell was a hard man to refuse. Against his judgment Hewey dug out most of what he had. He was careful to retain a little wad of paper in his pocket, hoping it didn’t show. He had no idea how much it was, or how much he handed over. Snort disappeared again.
Cotton stared at Hewey in exasperation. “Uncle Hewey, you’ve ridden broncs, doctored wormy cattle, done God knows what all to earn that money.”
He had that much of his mother in him and couldn’t help it, Hewey thought charitably. “Easy come, easy go.”
Cotton shook his head over lost causes and turned to watch Tommy, who was making a tentative and cautious acquaintanceship with some town boys of about his own age. Hewey kept an eye on the youngsters for a minute. Sometimes town boys were prone to hooraw country boys shamelessly. But there seemed no harm in these.
Hewey turned his attention to the roping. His name was two thirds of the way down the list, which gave him time to see how most of the others performed before he had to go out and give his due.
The roper who was “up” held his horse in readiness beside a narrow wooden chute into which cowboys had put a single spotted steer. Fifty feet out from the chute gate was the score line, drawn with white powdered chalk. As the gate opened, another rider chased the steer out toward the line. When the steer crossed the chalk mark, a judge dropped a red flag and gave the roper his signal to start. By this time the steer was gaining speed and distance. The roper might require sixty to a hundred yards of running room to catch up with him and make his throw.
Snort was up just before Hewey. He spurred out, swinging a loop big enough to catch a boxcar. As the loop sailed, its size diminished. When it fitted over the steer’s horns there weren’t more than a couple of inches to spare. But success was what counted. He spurred past the steer, flipped the rope over the animal’s rump and rode off hard at an angle. The steer was jerked into a sudden hundred and eighty-degree turn that lifted it off its feet and thumped it down soundly on its side. Instantly Snort was on the ground with tie rope in his hand. He gathered and wrapped three feet while the steer was still too stunned to kick much. He threw up his hands to stop the timekeepers’ watches. Snort swaggered to his roan horse and remounted, waiting to hear the time and get his rope back. The crowd cheered.
The time: thirty-eight and three fifths seconds. That put him in the lead for the first go-round.
Snort rode toward Hewey, those gold teeth shining. “You better whip up if you want to take second.”
It had been a long time since Biscuit had been in a steer-roping contest. He remembered enough to be nervous. So did Hewey. The flagman stood poised at the end of the chalk score line, the flag up. The gate was opened. A paint steer with a horn span of more than three feet entered the arena in a long trot. The whip-up man put it into a good run across the line. The red flag dropped. Hewey touched spurs to Biscuit, but he didn’t really need to. Biscuit remembered. He leaped out and after the steer in a dead run. Hewey had his loop built and ready. It was a big Blocker, after the style of the trail-driving Ab Blocker, but not as big as Snort’s. He gave it a few swings, judged he was positioned right and flung it over the steer’s horns. He jerked up the slack, sent it across the thin rump and rode away. He felt a jarring impact at the end of the rope. He caught a glimpse of four legs in the air, then a small cloud of dust. He was on the ground and running as Biscuit kept charging ahead, dragging the steer to keep it from gaining its feet. Hewey made a quick tie, threw up his hands and lost his balance. He fell backward, landing hard. He heard the dude honk his horn two or three times. Hewey got up and dusted himself off, his face warming. His embarrassment was more than offset by the far-off announcement of his time: thirty-eight seconds flat.
Grinning, he sought out Snort with his eyes. Second, hell. That’s the best time yet.
He rode out of the arena expecting to accept the congratulations of the two boys with becoming modesty. But they hadn’t seen his performance. Tommy was out past the crowd with several boys, testing his prowess with a slingshot. Another automobile had arrived, this one green. Cotton was down there on the arena fence inspecting it.
Hewey remembered the applause and reflected glumly over the fact that it always seemed easier to impress strangers than one’s own family.
Snort said, “I hope you appreciate me lettin’ you get your confidence.”
Hewey would have more confidence if he still held his lead after McGonagill and Gardner had performed. As each man roped, he held his breath. They were good, but they came in just shy of his and Snort’s times. McGonagill scored thirty-nine seconds, Gardner thirty-nine and two.
The second go-round started immediately. Warmed up now, many of the ropers bettered their original times. Snort went out and finished in thirty-eight one. He came back laughing. “You better draw her down fine, Hewey.”
Hewey drew down fine and came back with thirty-eight flat.
The girls who sat in the red automobile cheered and clapped their hands for him as he rode by, to the annoyance of the dude. Hewey made a little show of tipping his hat to the ladies.
Again he looked around to see if the boys had witnessed his moment of triumph. Tommy was out of sight. Cotton was on his knees, studying the running gear beneath the green automobile.
Thank God for pretty women, Hewey thought wryly.
He felt the tension building in him as McGonagill roped, then Gardner. Gardner trimmed Hewey’s time a little and came out fastest for the second go-round. Hewey scratched the figures in the dirt with his finger, did a little arithmetic and found to his satisfaction that he still led for the average. If he could do that well on three more steers, he might still carry away the silver watch he had seen down at the saloon.
He didn’t know what he would do with it if he won it. He wasn’t in the habit of carrying a pocket watch because if it ever stopped he might be three months getting the correct time to reset it. He lived by the sun.
Hewey and Snort seesawed through the next two go-rounds, not taking the best time in either but staying close enough to be in strong contention. Snort did his third steer up a little faster than Hewey, which brought him back laughing loudly enough to hurt Hewey’s ears a little. Hewey topped him by almost a full second on the fourth.
The last go-round was usually the wildest in any roping. Those men who trailed would bust a buckle trying to catch up. All they had to lose was their necks, so they took long chances and fast loops. Some missed altogether, some caught just one horn. One let his horse get off stride just as he hit the end of the rope. The horse went down and rolled over him. The crowd jumped to its feet. But the cowboy got up with nothing worse than a slight limp and a shredded shirt.
Hewey was beginning to feel the pressure building on him when he saw a familiar figure striding through the crowd, and heard a familiar voice call his name. It was Walter. Hewey’s chin dropped in surprise. He put the shock behind him and rode over to shake hands.
Walter said, “You’re a hard man to catch up with once you hit the trail. But I heard there was a ropin’, and I figured I’d find you. How you standin’?”
“Pretty good, up to now. What you doin’ here? Ain’t the weeds growin’ up out at the place?”
“Eve didn’t trust the boys to get home by theirselves, and not to get in trouble. She sent me to fetch them, and to maybe talk you into comin’ back too.”
“Mad, wasn’t she?”
Walter rubbed his jaw. “I’m not sure mad is the word. But it’ll do till I think of a stronger one.”
“You ain’t goin’ to try to talk me into goin’ back, are you?”
Walter thought about it. “You’re of age, Hewey. You’ve got a right to make up your own mind and live by your own lights.”
“Damn few people seem to think so.”
Snort Yarnell’s time came. He took a fresh chew of tobacco and rode up into place. He was the picture of supreme confidence, sitting straight and proud, shoulders reared back, gold teeth agleam.
He spurred after the steer, swung his loop and completely missed.
It was a big surprise to both Snort and his blue roan horse. The horse slowed, confident Snort had made a catch; he almost always did. By the time Snort built a second loop and finally caught his steer, he was way out of the money. But defeat rolled off of his shoulders like water from a duck. He came back grinning as broadly as if he had won. “Did you notice the shape of that loop, Hewey? I do believe it was as pretty a one as I ever throwed.”
“But kind of empty, don’t you think?”
Hewey sensed when he spurred out after his own steer that everything was perfect. The steer was just right. Biscuit was just right. The loop felt like prize money when it left his hand. It fitted over the horns as if it had been measured and trimmed. He laid the rope over those red and white hindquarters and rode off. The steer flipped over and flopped down as if it were trained and on his payroll. Hewey jumped down to finalize his victory …
… and tripped over his spurs.
He went down hard on his face and belly. He pushed up just in time to see the steer before Biscuit dragged it right over him. His face was pressed down into the arena, and he came up spitting dirt. His eyes burned from the sting of sand, and his ears burned from the laughter of the crowd. He got to his feet, looking around desperately for Biscuit and the steer. He saw them far down the arena, still going. Hewey spat some more dirt, hollered at Biscuit to “Haww!” and went chasing ignominiously after them. He heard the honking of an automobile horn over and over and over again. The dude was taking his revenge.
He managed to make his tie, just to keep the record straight. But he didn’t hear his time and didn’t much give a damn.
The dude and one of the girls laughed at him as he rode by. The other girl looked guardedly sympathetic.
Snort and Walter were waiting for him. Snort said, “You’ll never get anywhere, Hewey, tryin’ to put both feet into one boot.”
Walter didn’t say anything.
The two boys were there. They had finally watched Hewey, one time. Cotton took a cue from his father, but Tommy said, “Uncle Hewey, that was awful.”
When all the times were tallied up, McGonagill finished first in the average, Gardner second.
Hewey shrugged. “Well, I reckon I got a little coffee-drinkin’ money comin’ to me for the first go-round, anyway. Aside from that, I’m purt near broke.”
Snort said, “You-all wait for me,” and disappeared into the departing crowd. In a little he was back. He counted out a considerable handful of bills to Hewey and shoved the rest of the roll into his own pocket.
Hewey’s mouth dropped open. “What’s that for? We lost the ropin’.”
“But not the bet. You didn’t think I’d bet our hard-earned money on us, did you? I put it on Clay McGonagill and Joe Gardner against the field.” He swung back onto his roan horse. “Let’s go to town. We’ll get them boys a ice cream and us somethin’ stronger.”
The traffic strung out in a long, dusty line of wagons, buggies, hacks and horsemen, as well as numerous bicycles and a goodly number of people afoot. From behind came the insistent honking of a horn. Hewey looked over his shoulder and saw the dude impatiently making his way through the crowd in that ugly red automobile. He wasn’t having any trouble clearing the horses; they were snorting and faunching to get out of the monster’s path. As the automobile came up close behind Cotton and Tommy, the dude tooted that horn again.
Tommy’s horse squealed and broke into pitching. Surprised, Tommy grabbed too late for the horn, sailed up into the air and came down on his belly. Walter jumped to the ground to see about him.
The dude honked again and went around without stopping. The crowd was shouting ugly threats but doing nothing about it.
Snort and Hewey looked each other in the eyes. Hewey saw the intention in Snort’s face and concurred with a nod. Both unfastened their horn strings and shook loops into their ropes. Snort shouted, “I’ll rope the head of the goddamn thing, Hewey. You come in there and heel it!”
Spurring the roan horse, swinging the loop, Snort gave chase. One of the girls glanced back, saw him and gasped. The dude looked over his shoulder, recognized Snort’s intention and began trying for more speed. But the wagon road was rough and bouncy.
“Damn you, cowboy, don’t you dare!” he shouted as Snort came up abreast of the vehicle. The roan was rolling its eyes and snorting in fear, but Snort kept spurring. In the final analysis, the horse feared Snort more than it feared the automobile.
Snort threw that great boxcar loop and landed a catch around the dashboard, one carbide lamp and a front wheel. He jerked up the slack and took a dally around his saddle horn. “Now heel it, Hewey!”
Hewey spurred Biscuit in, cast a quick loop over one of the rear wheels and rode south. Snort rode north.
The dude shouted and shook his fist. The girls grabbed hold of the seat and screamed.
As the two cowboys hit the ends of their ropes, they jerked the automobile half around and ran it into the ditch. The dude was thrown out over the dashboard.
Snort shouted, “We got it roped, but how do we hog-tie an automobile?”
The dude was stunned only for a moment. He got to his feet, eyes blazing and looking for somebody to fight. Hewey was closest. He came running, his fists knotted. Hewey dismounted and stepped away from Biscuit. As the dude swung on him, Hewey ducked under and took a solid hold. He wrestled the man to the ground. Snort, still on horseback, pitched Hewey his tie rope. “Since we can’t tie up an automobile, maybe we can tie up an automobile jockey.”
Hewey got the little loop over both of the man’s hands and then over one foot. He trussed him the way he had been tying steers.
In a sudden flush of showmanship he stepped back and threw up his hands in the manner the ropers used to stop the timekeepers. A goodly crowd had gathered around. Most of them clapped their hands and cheered.
Clay McGonagill rode forward and leaned down to shake Hewey’s hand. “Friend, if you’d done that in the arena, you’d be carryin’ that silver watch.”
One of the girls sat big-eyed in the car, saying over and over, “My goodness.” The other climbed down and untied the dude. Snort rode the blue roan over to her. “Pretty miss, I’d be much obliged if you’d throw me my strang.”
Some of the crowd rescued Hewey’s and Snort’s ropes from the automobile. The driver rubbed his hands where the rope had burned him, and the fight was still in him. But the crowd was laughing him down. He climbed back into the automobile and sat there baking in the heat of his anger. He looked at nobody and spoke to no one.
Snort showed those gold teeth. “I do believe he’s sulled on us.”
Hewey looked back to be sure Tommy was all right. He was. The laughing, cheering crowd then swept him and Snort along toward town, rejoicing.
Snort declared, “I’ll bet you we made history here today, Hewey, old pardner. I’ll bet me and you are the first cowboys to ever head and heel an automobile!”
All the way to town they were congratulated and back-slapped by well-wishing strangers who now considered them friends. Snort looked behind him to see if the automobile was coming. It still sat in the ditch.
“I read in a paper a while back where some damn fools are a-fixin’ to try to drive an automobile all the way from New York to California.”
“Hope they ain’t in a hurry,” Hewey said.
“Hope they don’t run into no ropers along the way.”
* * *
Cotton and Tommy found new friends among the town boys, who wanted to show them how good the night fishing was in the Concho River. Coming out of a dry country where it was hard to find even a water dog, Walter’s boys were receptive to the notion. It was just as well, because Hewey knew he would have been a poor chaperon. Boys that age needed a lot of leaving-alone, anyway.
As they started to leave with the other boys, Tommy admonished, “You watch out now, Uncle Hewey, and don’t you get drunk.”
“Button,” Hewey assured him, “I ain’t ever been drunk in my whole life.”
He could have gotten roaring drunk without spending a dime, had he wanted to. Snort was well on the way. Friends and strangers kept crowding around them in the Arc Light, trying to buy drinks for the men who had roped and thrown the wild devil-car.
Walter sat at the table with Hewey and Snort, but he drank very little. He grimaced each time he lifted the glass to his lips. “Whisky must’ve come a long way downhill. Seems to me like it used to taste better than this.”
Hewey thought perhaps a residue of something had been left in Walter’s glass. He took a sip from it. “Nothin’ wrong with the whisky.”
“It’s me, then. I’ve lost my taste for it. One drink is fine. The second drink ain’t worth a bucket of cold pee.”
“I’m sorry, little brother.”
“It’s just as well. If I didn’t have anything in life that I liked better than whisky, then I’d really have somethin’ to worry about.” Restlessly he looked around him at the growing crowd, noisily bustling about the tables, clustering at the bar. He listened to the clink of glasses, the jingling of silver coin, the roaring of boisterous laughter as someone told a joke that would not have stood the daylight. His frown deepened.
Hewey asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothin’. Just kickin’ myself for the time I’ve wasted the last few years, worryin’ about missin’ all this.”
Hewey looked at the people. “Everybody seems to be havin’ a good time.”
“Maybe they got nothin’ better at home.”
“You tryin’ to lecture me? This is a poor place to be holdin’ church.”
“I promised I wouldn’t argue with you, and I won’t. But I’ll have to admit that I don’t understand. There was a feelin’ between you and Spring Renfro. Anybody could see it. Wasn’t it strong enough?”
Hewey poured himself a fresh shot of whisky, but he didn’t drink it. He stared into it. This wasn’t a thing he wanted to talk about, especially not here. But he supposed everybody was making so much noise that no one except Walter would hear him. “It was strong.” He remembered a feeling of guilt because of its strength. “It scared me, I reckon.”
“Scared you? That’s not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to lift you up and make you happy.”
Hewey turned the glass in his fingers. He looked around to see if anyone was listening. Nobody could have heard him. Walter would be lucky to. “I had feelin’s about her that wasn’t right and proper. She’s a lady, Walter. She’s got a right to decency and respect. But when I was around her I’d sometimes get to thinkin’ things…” He turned up his hands. “I know about women; I ain’t no schoolboy. I been upstairs with a many of them wheeligo girls, and no blush ever touched my cheek. Spring ain’t that kind of a woman, but sometimes she gave me the same feelin’ I’d get from them wheeligo girls. She deserves a lot better than that.”
“It’s a natural feelin’. Everybody gets it. It’s nothin’ to be ashamed of.”
“Well, I am. And if I was to marry her I’d have to face up to it. Sure, I know everybody does it. If they didn’t, this old earth would get short of people in a hurry. But, Walter, I couldn’t see me doin’ it, not with her. How could I, the first time? How could I look her in the eye afterward and not want to crawl off under a rock and hide?”
Walter’s eyes softened. A smile seemed about to break, but he restrained it. “Hewey, you’re worryin’ about a ladder when there ain’t even a wall. Believe me, when the time comes it’ll be the most natural thing in the world. There won’t be any guilt. It’ll be the opposite, if anything. It’ll be like you went to church.”
Hewey couldn’t visualize any resemblance.
Walter said, “There won’t be any shame in it for her, and there won’t be for you either. You think there was any shame in it for me and Eve? No sir, it’s a natural thing, a part of life. It’s part of bein’ human, for the woman as well as for the man.”
He finished what was left of his drink and showed no pleasure in it. “You’ll never know what I’m talkin’ about till it happens to you. Then you’ll wonder why you waited for thirty-eight years.”
“Thirty-six,” Hewey said. It was thirty-eight.
Walter shrugged. “Whichever, you’ve wasted too much time already.” He pushed to his feet. “I’m goin’ down by the river where me and the boys made camp. I’ve had about all of this wild pleasure that I can stand.” He gripped Hewey’s shoulder, then nodded at Snort.
Snort acknowledged the benediction with a salute of his glass, which he promptly emptied. When Walter was gone, Snort said, “You know what he’s tryin’ to do to you, Hewey? He’s tryin’ to get you to fit into the same tight little mold as everybody else. But me and you, we broke the mold that made us. We’re free men. There ain’t many of our kind left in this world.”
“Walter was free once. Givin’ it up don’t seem to’ve killed him.”
“Because they’ve changed him. They’ve cut him. A steer don’t realize what he’s missed, but he’s missed it just the same. You ain’t no steer, Hewey. Don’t be lettin’ all them people make a steer of you. Show them you’re a bull, and damn proud of it.”
Hewey poured a drink and downed it all at once. “We showed them today. We showed them we was bull enough to head and heel an automobile.”
Snort poured Hewey another drink. “Damn betcha we did.” He lifted his glass in toast. “Here’s to the best automobile ropers that ever straddled leather.”
Hewey drank to that.
Snort leaned across the table, anticipation bright in his eyes. “What do you need with a skinny old-maid schoolteacher, anyway? Somebody to tie you down and put a ring in your nose, and what do you get out of it? A life sentence to hard labor is all.” He pointed his thumb back over his shoulder. “I know where we can find us a couple of the prettiest gals a man ever slid under a sheet with. Not skinny, either. Plump. Somethin’ you can really get ahold of. Not coldblooded like some schoolteacher, but hot like Mexican peppers. They don’t ask you where you been or where you’re goin’. They don’t tie no strings on you or cry when you leave. But they’ll be somethin’ to remember on them long nights you’re layin’ out alone in some cold camp. What you say we go over yonder and get us a couple of them gals? We got it comin’ to us for the work we done here today.”
Hewey shook his head. “I don’t know, Snort. I ain’t sure I’m ready.”
“You got that schoolteacher on your mind. You ever see a schoolteacher erase a blackboard? One good sweep of her hand and it’s all gone. Well, erase her. We’ll find you a pretty gal down yonder, and that’s the last you’ll ever worry about that schoolteacher.”
Hewey still didn’t move.
Snort said, “You don’t have to really do nothin’ if you ain’t got the notion. Let’s just go down there and look. Won’t hurt nothin’ to just look.”
The whisky burned Hewey’s stomach, and his eyes were blurry. He was not yet so drunk that he didn’t realize he wouldn’t stop at just looking. They always looked good, those wheeligo girls, and they smelled good. When a man got close enough, they felt good. Once he ever went that far he wouldn’t stop. He never had.
Snort was up on wobbly feet, trying to talk a couple more cowboys into taking a walk with them down West Concho Avenue. Before he could help himself, Hewey was out in the street with them. They were hustling him along in the cool night, singing an outrageous song in three keys. Hewey hoped to hell those two boys of Walter’s had gone to bed by now and weren’t still up prowling around where they might see him.
It was a two-story house a block or two down from the Landon Hotel. Hewey’s vision was none too clear; he couldn’t tell much about the place. The electric lights hurt his eyes. He had never been around the damn things enough to get used to them. San Angelo had set up a power plant in the nineties. Some people nowadays even had a light bulb hanging in their cowsheds.
A player piano was twanging away unattended over on one flower-papered wall. Hewey thought it was badly in need of a tuner’s services, but maybe it was just his ears. Some couples were dancing. Among them was the dude.
They saw each other at about the same time. Snort saw him too. He made loud and public mention of the fact that this was the jelly bean whose automobile he and Hewey had brought to its knees. The dude’s face reddened, and he showed some momentary disposition to fight. The girl he danced with told him the house had strict rules against violence, and they had a bouncer as big as one of the Twin Mountains to enforce the regulation. He would keep things peaceful around here if he had to kill half the cowboys in San Angelo.
Hewey saw the bouncer standing in a corner. He was tall enough that he had to duck to come through the door, and he stood two ax handles broad. Hewey could understand why the dude quickly quieted down.
It occurred to him that the girl the dude danced with was one of the two who had been with him in the automobile. She was doing a lot of whispering in the man’s ear. Presently the two of them disappeared down a hallway. Hewey felt confident that when the dude came back he would be in a better humor.
A hand gently touched his shoulder, and he tried to turn his head. That proved difficult. He finally brought his eyes into focus on a pretty face he remembered seeing before. “How’s the great car roper?” she asked, grinning. He thought she had the brightest-looking teeth he had ever seen. Maybe that was from the electric lights.
His tongue was thick. He thought he had a good answer, but he couldn’t bring it out. He mumbled something which even he didn’t understand. This was the second girl who had been with the dude, the one who had had gumption enough to get out of the automobile and untie him. The fact that the dude now had gone down the hall with the one who just sat and whimpered told him something, he thought, about the man.
“Old Foxy has had that comin’ to him,” she said.
“Foxy?”
“Fox is his name. Us ladies just call him Foxy. He’s got a right smart of money but damn little else.” She smiled again. “I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about you. What’s your name?”
For a minute he thought he had forgotten it. He had to try twice before he got it said.
She tried it slowly. “Hewey. My, that’s a sweet name.”
He never had thought of it in that light before. It occurred to him that, yes, it was a sweet name.
Her hand kept moving slowly along his back until her arm was around his shoulder. “I don’t believe I ever knew but one other man named Hewey. That one liked to dance. I’ll bet you like to dance too.”
“Sure do,” he said, though in reality he had always had two left feet. Shortly he was with her in the center of the parlor floor. The player piano was still off key but trying hard, as was Hewey. His feet weighed fifty pounds apiece.
She said, “What you need, cowboy, is a drink.”
He vaguely remembered already having one or two, but her arms and her soft, warm body rubbing tantalizingly against him persuaded him that whatever she thought he needed, he needed. He took that drink, and soon another. She was whispering things in his ear that sounded very nice, though he never quite understood the words. That damn piano.
First thing he knew, she had her arm around his waist, and his around hers. They were stumbling up the stairs together. They were both laughing, and he was pinching her where it seemed nature had intended for her to be pinched by making it so irresistible. She led him to a door, opened it and helped him into a small room. He saw a brass bed and a bureau, and a washstand with a china bowl and a pink-flowered pitcher. The place had a strong aroma of perfume. Over the bed was an embroidered and framed motto: “God Bless Our Home.” He thought the sentiment was nice.
She sat him down on the edge of the bed and put her arms around him. He turned his head to kiss her but made the mistake of looking up toward that bare, glowing light bulb. He realized he shouldn’t have tilted his head so far, but he was somehow hypnotized by the blazing filament. The light seemed to start circling around and around over him like some fiery bird of prey about to swoop down and grab him. His head became heavy. He sank back onto the bed. All of a sudden the light seemed to go out, and he was falling backward, falling, falling …
He awoke slowly, dreaming that twelve spans of Missouri mules were running over his head, and when they finished the freight wagon behind them got him too. He became conscious of daylight through the drawn paper shade that covered a window. He found his hand, which weighed seventy-five pounds, and then his hand found his head. It came to him gradually that he was lying in a bed. He blinked. Slowly his vision began to clear. He saw dimly the outline of a woman sitting in a straight chair, slowly brushing her long hair. His first thought was that she was Spring Renfro, and he tried to understand what she was would be doing in his bedroom. It came to him in a minute that he had no bedroom. He managed to clear his eyes a little more and see for certain that this was not Spring.
The girl continued brushing her long brown hair and watching him dispassionately. She said, “I do believe, old boy, that you’ll live after all.”
Hewey rubbed his head. “Damn, I hope not.”
He blinked again, trying to remember where he was and how he got here. The smell of the perfume helped bring it all back. The memory slowly seeped through his brain. With the memory came shame, drawing over him like a shroud. What would Walter’s boys think? What would Spring Renfro think?
They ought to pass a law to keep anybody under forty from drinking.
He hadn’t intended for anything like this to happen. Only three or four days gone from Spring Renfro, and now he lay in an upstairs bedroom of a Concho Avenue parlor house.
Eve had been right in everything she had called him.
As he studied the girl with clearer eyes, he decided she looked ten years older. He rubbed his hand down his side and found that he was barefoot from heel to forelock. “What happened to my clothes?”
“You took them off,” she said evenly. “You did pretty good, up to that point.”
“I don’t remember a thing that happened.”
“There ain’t nothin’ to remember.” She seemed to be laughing at him a little. “Quick as you laid down, you was gone to China, or someplace. You sure wasn’t here.”
He blinked, hope beginning to flare. “You mean I didn’t…”
“I mean you couldn’t. You went out faster than an electric light.” Her brow knitted into a frown. “I hope you ain’t figurin’ to ask me for your money back. I was here all night, even if you wasn’t.”
Never in his life had Hewey been so glad not to get his money’s worth. “Honey, you keep it. In fact, I’ll be glad to give you five dollars more.”
Her frown was gone. She suggested, “It’s still early. I got nothin’ particular to do right now.”
“But I have. If you’ll get me my underwear and my britches…”
He swung his feet over the side of the bed and almost fell off. She caught him and cradled his aching head against her breasts. “Honey, you’re in too much of a hurry.”
Reluctantly he pulled himself away. He knew if he stayed any longer he would become attached to the place and not leave until bankruptcy strained his welcome. He got his underwear on, then his hat, his britches, his shirt and finally his boots. He said, “I reckon my pardner, old Snort Yarnell, is in the house somewhere.”
She nodded. “He taken a shine to Flo.”
“Well, when you see him, tell him Hewey Calloway has decided to go back to school.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about, but Snort would understand.
She kissed him one more time and patted his cheek. “You come back, honey, anytime you take the notion.”
He fumbled his way down the stairs, the girl following a few steps behind him, showing a concern that wasn’t all bought and paid for. The early morning sunlight hit him like a sledgehammer when he stepped through the door. He had to cover his eyes with his hands for a minute.
She asked, “You goin’ to make it, hon?”
“If I can live through the next ten minutes.” He hitched up his pants, pulled down his hat, straightened his shoulders and staggered out into the street. It took him a minute to get his bearings. He looked up toward the big Landon Hotel and remembered the red-light district had always been to the west of it. The hotel itself was impeccably clean and moral, a place where preachers could stay and feel at home. But if they took a constitutional, they were usually advised to walk east, not west.
Walter and the boys should be more or less south, somewhere down on the riverbank. He headed in that direction, trying to get his feet under better control. Presently he spotted the camp. Rather, he spotted Biscuit tethered on a long stake rope, and with him Walter’s and the boys’ horses. A lot of other horses and other camps lay beyond. Many people had come to watch the roping but could not afford or did not choose to spend the price of a hotel room or even a little space at a wagonyard.
He heard voices and looked back. Far behind him he saw four men. At the distance and in the condition of his eyes he could not make out who they were. He knew no reason it should make a difference. Trudging down toward camp, he smelled coffee on the fire or on some other. At the moment coffee seemed vastly superior to whisky.
Tommy shouted, “Yonder comes Uncle Hewey.” Walter, hunched over the fire, turned and glanced at his brother but made no move. Tommy came running. “Where you been, Uncle Hewey? We thought you’d come down here last night and camp with us.”
Hewey avoided meeting his nephew’s gaze. “I ran into a friend.”
“You must have friends everywhere.”
“I try to.”
Walter beckoned. “We found a woman who had some eggs to sell. You look like you could find a place for a few.”
Hewey’s stomach roiled. He wasn’t sure eggs would find hospitality in there, but they stood as good a chance as anything. He was about to reply in the affirmative when a rough voice shouted:
“Yonder he is. Now get the son of a bitch!”
He turned. Three of the biggest men he had ever seen advanced down the riverbank toward him. Their eyes were purposeful and cold. Behind them, hands on his hips, stood the dude who owned the red automobile. He was disheveled, unshaven, a far cry from the handsome picture of yesterday. He, like Hewey, evidently had put in a bad night.
Hewey backed away a few steps, holding up both hands. “Fellers, I don’t know what he’s been tellin’ you about me, but it’s all lies.”
He knew immediately that truth was of little interest to them. One he recognized now as the bouncer from the parlor house. He looked as if he could wrestle a bull to the ground.
“Fellers,” Hewey argued, still backing, “there ain’t no use in us goin’ through all this. I’ll gladly give up before we start.”
The bouncer said, “It ain’t nothin’ personal, cowboy. Mr. Fox yonder, he paid us to stomp hell out of you, is all.”
Hewey was almost to the edge of the river. If he backed any farther he would take a bath he had not planned on. “Tell him I’ve already repented of my willful ways.”
“Talkin’ won’t fix things. He wants to see some blood spilt. You can just stand there and take it, or you can fight. To us it don’t much matter one way or the other.”
Fox stood well behind the three advancing men, waiting to get his money’s worth. Hewey saw that argument was useless, and apology never crossed his mind. It had always been his contention that when you faced a snake you didn’t waste time stomping on its rattles; you tried to smash the head. He attempted to dart around the three and get to Fox, but his heavy feet didn’t dart well. The bouncer grabbed him, hauled him off of the ground and swung a fist the size and consistency of an oak stump. Hewey thought his head had exploded. He thumped down solidly on his back.
He heard Walter shout, “Boys, go for the law!” With an angry roar Walter came running, swinging a chunk of firewood. The bouncer went down with a grunt. The other two quickly turned their attention to wresting the firewood from Walter. One of them bear-hugged the wooden chunk to keep it from causing harm while the other furiously pummeled at Walter. Cotton jumped up on that man’s back and tried to take a strangle hold around a thick neck that would have been counted an asset to a Durham bull.
“Boy,” Walter shouted, “I told you to go for the law!”
“Tommy went,” Cotton gritted, still struggling for a hold that would have any effect. The big man pitched like an outlaw horse. In a minute Cotton went sprawling. The man kicked at him but missed. Anger boiled up in Hewey and brought him to his feet. They didn’t seem so heavy anymore. He made for the man who had tried to kick Cotton. The man turned to meet him and they went down rolling, wrestling. Hewey didn’t have much chance to see what else was going on, but he caught a glimpse of the bouncer trying to push to his feet and dropping back on his knees. He heard Fox shouting at him to get up and get back in there.
Hewey had only a vague idea what to do; he had never been much inclined toward this type of endeavor. During most of his life he had been able to talk his way out of scrapes, or to have a horse that would outrun anybody else’s. He twisted and punched and gouged where and when he could. Sometimes he was on top, sometimes on bottom. His head was reeling so much he didn’t always know. But he had the drive to keep struggling.
He sensed that Walter was making a better show of himself, helped along by Cotton until finally the bouncer made it to his feet and punched Cotton in the stomach so hard that Cotton went down choking, gasping for breath. Then the bouncer and the other man together gave their full attention to Walter. In a minute they had him down. The bouncer, his head bleeding because of the lick he had taken from the firewood, angrily began stomping on Walter. Hewey bawled in rage but couldn’t work loose from the fellow holding him. He heard something snap, and Walter cried out in pain.
Someone shouted from on top of the riverbank. Fox started running away. Men spilled down toward the fighters. In a minute the three hired toughs stood hunched together while a big man with a shining badge addressed them in terms that would blister a mule skinner’s ears. They stood and took it like whipped pups.
Somebody lifted Hewey to his feet. When they tried to lift his brother, Walter screamed.
“His leg is broke,” somebody said. “Send for a doctor.”
Hewey wiped the back of his bruised and torn hand across his face, and it came away bloody. He knelt beside his brother. “Walter, do you hurt bad?”
Walter couldn’t answer. He gritted his teeth and tried to keep from crying out again. Hewey almost touched Walter’s leg but caught himself in time. He turned and looked back over his shoulder. “It was that biggest one done it. That bawdy-house bouncer.”
The big man’s anger was gone, and fear had taken its place. “You takin’ us off to jail, Sheriff?”
The lawman’s reply left no possible doubt of his intentions. “Plumb to the third floor. What did you do it for, Jayce?”
“For money. We come after that feller”—he nodded his chin toward Hewey—“but there wasn’t no hard feelin’s on our part. We was paid to teach him a lesson, is all.”
“I hope everybody has learned one,” the sheriff declared. “Who paid you?”
“That fancy gent, that Fox.”
“If there wasn’t anything personal, how come you to break this feller’s leg?”
“It got personal when he hit me up beside the head with a tree stump.”
The sheriff had a deputy with him. He detailed him to go hunt up the dude and deliver him to the courthouse. “I’ll take these three fine gentlemen up to the jail and entertain them at county expense.” He turned to Hewey. “You’ll want to stay with your brother, I expect. A doctor’s on the way. When you can, I wish you’d come on up to my office in the courthouse. We’ve got some talkin’ to do.”
Hewey nodded. He looked back at Walter. The two boys were with him, one kneeling on either side. Tommy cried at the sight of his father lying hurt. Cotton’s nose had been bleeding, but that had stopped. A big splotch was turning blue on his left cheek. He lifted his gaze to his uncle. Hewey couldn’t decide whether he saw rebuke in the boy’s eyes or not. Cotton said, “This all come about because of you ropin’ that automobile.”
Hewey had nothing constructive to say. He only grunted.
Cotton said, “I reckon it seemed like a good idea at the time. But I remember somethin’ my daddy told you. He said you never was one to think about cost, or about consequences. What do you think about this?”
“I wouldn’t have had it happen for the world.”
“But it did, and Daddy has got to live with it.” Cotton grimaced, close to tears. “You’re a good old boy, Uncle Hewey. But sometimes you’re a danger to everybody around you.”
Hewey bowed his head. He could see no argument with that. He heard Walter rasp to Cotton, “Leave your Uncle Hewey alone, son. He didn’t mean nobody any harm.”
“He never does.”
The doctor drove up in a buggy. He examined Walter’s leg and found what everybody already knew. He made up a temporary splint and directed some of the crowd in loading Walter into the bed of a wagon. They hauled him to the doctor’s office. There he completed his examination, set the leg with help from somebody steadier than Hewey, and he put it into a cast.
“How long’s he got to stay in that thing?” Hewey asked.
“Six weeks at the least. Eight, more likely.”
Cotton protested, “Doctor, my daddy’s a farmer. We’ve got crops to finish up, stock to be worked.”
The doctor sternly shook his head. “I don’t care what he is. If he tries to walk on that leg in less than two months he’ll be a cripple the rest of his life.”
Cotton turned to Hewey, his eyes stricken. “What’re we goin’ to do, Uncle Hewey?”
Hewey had no answer. At times like this it seemed he never did. The best he could muster was a weak and meaningless, “We’ll get by.”
“How? You just tell me how!”
“Someway.”
The courthouse was a huge Gothic stone structure like something out of a book on the terrors of the olden times when young princes were smothered to death and queens had their heads chopped off. Its cupola stood a full two stories above the three-story building itself. It made Hewey’s head hurt all over again to look up at the big clock near the top. He didn’t know why he looked. It made no difference what time it was.
He found the sheriff’s office without trouble. He could hear the sheriff’s stern voice as he entered the hallway. He walked in reluctantly, hat in his hand. The sheriff had Fox and the other three men sitting on a bench along one wall, thoroughly cowed before the majesty of the law. He looked up at Hewey. “How’s your brother?”
“In a bad fix. He won’t walk for a long time.”
The lawman frowned. “I suppose you know you’re partly responsible?”
Hewey hung his head.
The sheriff asked, “How you figurin’ on gettin’ him home?”
“I don’t know. I reckon I’ll have to borrow or hire a wagon.”
“A banker in town is fixin’ to leave early in the mornin’ to inspect a loan out in that part of the country. He’s takin’ an automobile. I believe I could talk him into carryin’ your brother.”
Hewey considered. “You reckon that’d be faster than a wagon?”
“Anything is.”
Hewey gave his consent. “If there’s any expenses…”
The sheriff pointed his chin at Fox, who looked very little like the dude he had been yesterday. “Mr. Fox here is in a generous mood. He has already agreed that he will foot any and all expenses havin’ to do with your brother’s … accident. Otherwise he’ll roost in the jailhouse till the snow flies.” He looked at the other three. “Unless you have some objection, I’ve decided to let these men go. They all seem to have remembered that they were about to leave town anyway.”
Hewey nodded. “As long as it ain’t west.”
The bouncer looked at his huge hands. “Don’t worry, I ain’t goin’ west. They got some rough old boys out there.”
* * *
The automobile had a broad seat in the back. With some effort they were able to prop Walter up so that he could be reasonably comfortable. Cotton was to go along and help take care of him on the trip. Hewey and Tommy would follow, bringing home the four horses.
Hewey said, “Cotton, I always promised I’d get you a ride in an automobile. I didn’t mean for it to be like this.”
“You can’t help bein’ the way you are, Uncle Hewey.”
“I’m goin’ to change, boy. Believe me, I’ll change.”
Cotton gave him a quiet gaze that told all of his doubts, then he climbed into the green automobile.
Hewey watched the machine pull away, leaving a trail of smoke that smelled to him as if it would chase the devil out of hell. Cotton never did look back. Shoulders slumped, Hewey turned to Tommy.
“Boy, we’d just as well be on our way too. We’ve seen about all there is of this place.”
* * *
They went first by the Alvin Lawdermilk headquarters, getting there at dinnertime the second day. Hewey had talked little to Tommy on the way; his mind had dwelled much on what he would say here, and later at home. He burst through the front screen and faced a surprised group at the table. Spring Renfro looked at him in astonishment, holding her fork motionless halfway to her open mouth. As he had expected, she looked a lot better than that wheeligo girl.
“Miss Renfro,” he blurted, “I’ve changed my mind. I’m thataway inclined. But before I ask if you are too, there’s somethin’ I want you to know. While I was in San Angelo I tried to consort with a lewd woman. I couldn’t do it, but you got to know that I tried.”
She pushed her chair back and slowly came around the table. Her initial surprise gave way to the beginnings of a smile. “It’s all right, Mr. Calloway.”
He held up his hands. “There’s somethin’ else. I wasn’t at San Juan Hill. I never even seen Teddy Roosevelt except from a long ways off. The day they went up that hill I was flat on my back with the drizzlin’ dysentery.”
She walked up until her thin body was against his. Smiling, she laid her fingers across his mouth and brought her left arm around him. She momentarily forgot all her schoolteacher training and lapsed into the vernacular as she leaned her head against his chest. “Hewey Calloway, I wisht you’d just hush.”