17

“ ’LO, JUG.”

“ ’Lo yourself, Bernie.”

“Is that coffee I smell?”

“Ayuh, help yourself. I made plenty.”

Bernie Randall stripped off his gloves and reached for a cup. He smelled the brew before he drank, then smacked his lips and said, “It isn’t Coosie’s, but it beats hell out of a bellyful of crick water, which is what I had for lunch. Didn’t think to carry any food along. Is that some leftovers from lunch?”

Without waiting for an answer, Bernie grabbed a plate and a spoon and began loading up with last night’s beans that Jug recooked today with some molasses and onion chunks added to them to make them a little different this time around.

“Damn, Jug. This here’s pretty good,” he mumbled around the first mouthful.

“Dig right in. Have all you want.”

It was clear that Bernie intended to do exactly that. And after all, there was plenty of everything. For the past week and a half Jug had been cooking enough to serve at least two, but Eli hadn’t eaten with him in the cookhouse since the morning Jug made those awful biscuits. And delivered that mail.

Not that either one of them had said a word about the letters from back east. But the foreman hadn’t come to a meal again since then. He would wander over about half-past breakfast and grab a cup of coffee while he laid out Jug’s work for the day. Then he would disappear, sometimes into the main house where he had taken to sleeping this past year or so or he would saddle a horse and ride off someplace.

It kind of tickled Jug to note that when Eli took off like that he would choose any direction at all. Except one. He never, ever rode off toward the Goodrun place.

“What’d you come in for, Bernie?” Jug asked his unexpected visitor.

“Jesse sent me on ahead to let the foreman know we’re about finished with the gather. He wants to know should he cut the herd out there or bring the whole bunch down.”

Jug nodded. Jesse’s judgment on the subject would be at least as good as Eli’s, but Eli was the foreman and not Jesse. Asking was the right thing to do although either one of them could read the grass and the calendar and the weather and come up with the right answers to that and a couple hundred other questions.

For that matter, Jug and a good many of the other fellows could do the same if they wanted to. In Jug’s case, he didn’t want to.

“About done with working ’em?” Jug asked.

“Yeah, just about. They were gonna make one more gather today. You know the draw above where that Injun burial platform used to be?”

Jug knew it. When he first came to this country you could still see the warped and weathered poles where the platform collapsed after nobody knew how many years. There weren’t any bones left or anything else that a body might want for a souvenir, but a little bit of the platform had been intact then. The amazement to him was that any hand on the outfit and probably most of the fellows working anyplace this side of Hayden Creek would also know that spot. Most of them, Bernie included, came into the country years after the last visible traces of that old burial platform disappeared. But they all knew where it had been and could relate directions based on that knowledge. So yeah, he knew exactly the draw Bernie meant.

“They were gonna work that today, then if they had some daylight left start the herd. Get ’em away from the hills and the brush so they wouldn’t be so likely to try an’ break out.”

Jug glanced toward the sky, purely a reflexive habit since they were indoors and he sure couldn’t see the sun’s position from in here, and decided they would already be moving toward the home place if they were going to at all today. He was already pretty sure about the general time of day anyhow. “Got any notion what you’d like for supper, Bernie?”

“Biscuits. I’d like me some biscuits,” Randall declared.

Jug grinned. “That’s good. Make enough for me, too.” He handed Bernie the water bucket he’d been about to fill when the cowboy arrived, then walked out quick before Bernie could squawk.