6

JUG HUNG THE iron bar back on the hook where it belonged. His hand tingled slightly from the reverberations of the triangle that was used to call the hands to meals.

Eli was scowling when he approached. “You don’t have to ring it so damn much. I’m not deaf.”

Jug shrugged. His habit was to clang the iron and keep on clanging it until the foreman came out onto the porch. It wasn’t that Jug worried that Eli hadn’t heard. He just plain liked to clang the triangle. “Whatever you say,” he said, knowing full well that he would conveniently forget that promise by lunchtime.

“Breakfast ready?” Eli asked.

“Ayuh.” It was a stupid question. Why else would he have rung the dinner bell if it hadn’t been? But then Poole’s question wasn’t really a question, more like a polite way of making conversation without having to say anything.

They went inside to a table intended to seat as many as a dozen and a half men at a time. The place seemed almost empty with just the two of them there.

Jug had the meal all cooked and laid ready. Coffee, of course. Chunks of bacon. About a half gallon of bacon gravy—dang stuff just kept growing once he started trying to add a little of this or a bit of that in his attempts to get it right—and some yellow and brown lumps that were as close as he could come to making biscuits. It was just a good thing that he wasn’t ready to retire to ranch cooking yet for any crew he cooked for would surely draw their time and move on after a couple days of eating at his table.

The fact that Eli had kept coming back for three days now didn’t speak to Jug’s abilities so much as it illuminated the foreman’s lack of culinary skill. Eli’s cooking must be really awful.

Each of them grabbed a heavy crockery plate and mug off the sideboard and carried them to the table, Eli taking his rightful place at the head and Jug sitting beside him. Usually Jug preferred to stay down at the foot end where the segundo’s regular place was, but with only him and Eli eating that would’ve been rude.

“Got anything planned today?” Eli asked.

“You’re the foreman. You tell me.”

“You feeling up to doing some riding?”

“You bet.” And it was, in fact, the truth. He wasn’t feeling good but he was a far sight better now than he’d been when Coosie carried him down in that infernal wagon. He was able to bend his left leg now. A little. It hurt when he did it, of course, but at least he could do it. And he’d torn an old blanket into strips and used that to bind his chest to keep the broken ribs from hurting quite so bad as they had been.

The ribs would take a couple months to really heal. He knew that. Lord knew he’d busted ribs often enough in years past to know what to expect. But with tight binding the pain was bearable.

“Good. I have some errands to run, so I’d like you to ride down to Bonner for me.”

“I can do that.” Errands, the man said. Jug knew what sort of “errand” Eli would be about. There wasn’t but one place in thirty, forty miles where a man might go to perform a legitimate errand and that was Bonner. Apart from a couple hog ranches where a man could get liquored up or buy some time with a cheap whore, Bonner was the only place a man could go for shopping or mail or whatever.

What the foreman had in mind was something else entire. Eli had himself a lady friend. A married lady friend. The whole crew knew it. Jug didn’t know if Eli was aware of that, but it was true. Time to time, Eli would go riding off to “check the grass” or “look at calves” or some such flimsy excuse.

Funny thing was that Eli’s errands always coincided with Abe Goodrun being off on some errand of his own. Whatever took Abe away from home and his young wife meant it was time for Eli to go off on an errand, too.

Jug didn’t know how Miz Goodrun let Eli know that Abe would be away, but she managed it somehow and Eli would go off for the day or sometimes for several days in a row if poor Abe was away shipping beef or something.

It was a crying shame about Abe but none of Jug’s nevermind. “What d’you have in mind for me to do in the big city?” Jug asked, as if he hadn’t a clue about what Eli was really up to.