For lack of something constructive to do, Hewey was lying on the cot with his right arm over his eyes in Hannigan’s office when a tall man walked in. “Didn’t mean to wake you up,” the intruder apologized.
“Wasn’t asleep,” Hewey said, though he had been napping, compensating for another restless night spent mostly awake.
“You may not remember me. I’m Farley Neal. Mr. Phelps told me you’re needin’ a ride.”
Hewey blinked sleep from his eyes. He recognized the man who it was said was keeping company with Spring Renfro. He arose and shook Neal’s hand. “I do remember you.” He could not have forgotten. He gave Neal a long study, wondering how serious he really was about Spring.
“I’ve got a wagon, and I’m goin’ to Alvin Lawdermilk’s this afternoon. Somebody can carry you on over to your brother’s place in the mornin’.”
Hewey had reservations about riding with Neal, but he did not want to remain in town, either. “You sure it won’t put you out none?”
“I’ve been stranded myself, and somebody always came along.”
He seemed genuine enough, though Hewey kept a few reservations just in case. “I’ll leave Blue a note.” At Hannigan’s paper-strewn rolltop desk he found a pencil advertising the Fort Worth
stockyards and scrawled a few lines on a ruled tablet. “I don’t like for people to worry about me. Blue’s got troubles enough of his own.”
Neal helped Hewey roll his bed, though Hewey would rather have done it for himself. He was not keen on getting in Neal’s debt. He was indebted to too many people already for favors he might never be able to repay. Neal tied the roll and carried it outside. Hewey dragged his saddle, blanket and bridle until Neal came back to take them from him.
Two young horses hitched to the wagon appeared to be in training. Alvin Lawdermilk had long made a business of raising and training horses and mules for the saddle or for harness.
Neal said, “You don’t need to worry about them runnin’ away and spillin’you. They’re pretty well broke.”
“I’m pleased to hear that.” A wreck could undo all the healing he had accomplished and add to the damage.
Neal gave him a boost up, not loosing his hold until Hewey was safely set on the wagon seat. Hewey thanked him and tapped his cane gently against the sideboard. “Never thought I’d ever need three legs to get around.”
“Things happen no matter how careful we try to be. It’s nobody’s fault.”
Hewey saw Fat Gervin climbing into a red automobile in front of the bank and figured he had bought it with his father-in-law’s money. Resentment warmed him, but he said, “No, it’s nobody’s fault.”
He studied Neal, trying to find something about him to dislike. As Neal took hold of the leather lines, Hewey saw that he had big workingman’s hands similar to his own, rough and calloused. One knuckle was knocked down like Hewey’s, probably the result of an accident suffered in the line of duty. His face was lined with the
marks of living, of working in the sun. His gray eyes were crow-tracked at the corners and had a way of looking straight at Hewey, unflinching, yet making no judgment.
Hewey took him to be just what he appeared, a cowboy through and through. He could find no reason not to like him, apart from the fact that he was keeping company with Spring Renfro.
The road to the Lawdermilks’ was long. Neal seemed to sense that Hewey did not feel like talking much, and he did not push him for conversation. Hewey felt more at ease riding on the wagon seat than in Hannigan’s truck. Even when one of the horses broke wind, the smell suited him better than the odor of gasoline.
He wanted to ask about Spring, but he was a long time in gathering the nerve. Instead he asked, “How’s everybody out at Alvin’s? Is Julio Valdez still there?”
“Julio’s the top horse and mule man, after Alvin himself.”
“He always was. How do you get along with Old Lady Faversham?” Hewey regarded Alvin’s vindictive mother-in-law as being a few bricks shy of a full load, a woman who could find fault in Jesus Christ.
“I get along with her just fine. For some reason she seems to like me.”
“I’m glad she likes somebody. She used to pray for lightnin’ to strike me and Alvin both.” Hewey fretted awhile before he asked, “And Miss Renfro?”
“A fine lady. But you know that.”
“I do for a fact.”
Neal stopped the team at a fence line. Hewey apologized for being unable to climb down and open the gate.
Neal said, “I’d have to open it anyway if I was by myself, and I’m pleased to have the company.” He handed the lines to Hewey. “Reckon you can drive them through after I open the gate?”
Hewey took the reins in his right hand and flexed the stiff fingers
of his left, which protruded beyond the cast at the first joint. He did not want to admit to any doubt about his ability to handle the green team, though that doubt was substantial. “Nothin’ to it.”
He eased the team through the open gate. Though one of the young horses began acting up, Hewey kept a firm grip on the reins and brought the pair to a stop. His right hand was slick with sweat, but he felt a sense of minor victory. So far as he could remember offhand, it was the first substantial challenge he had met and mastered since his big bronc wreck.
He handed the lines back to Neal and rubbed his sweaty hand against his trousers. “Like I said, nothin’ to it.”
The horses surged against the harness. Silent a while, Neal finally said, “Spring tells me you and her once came close to marryin’.”
“She told you about that?”
“We don’t have any secrets. I’ve told her all about my first wife. Ada was a good woman, patient and kind, a lot like Spring. Saw most things the same way. She was …” Neal’s voice thinned, and he looked away. However long it had been, it was obvious that he still grieved a little.
Hewey said, “People say you and Spring may marry up.”
“Everybody’s talked about it but us. How would you feel if we did?”
Hewey had to be honest. “I don’t know.”
“Do you feel like you still have some claim on her?”
“No claim. I don’t reckon I ever did have. But to be honest, I still think about her a lot. Sometimes I wish …” He felt his hand sweating on the cane: “I wouldn’t blame you none if you put me off right here and let me walk back to town.”
“I wouldn’t deserve her if I did a thing like that. I can understand you still thinkin’ about her. After my wife died, I roamed around a long time tryin’ to find someplace I belonged. Then I met Spring.
She’d come close to marryin’ once even before she knew you, but the poor feller died in Cuba durin’ the war. Did you know about that?”
“She told me.”
“She made me feel like I’d finally found a home. I expect it was that way for you, too.”
“For a while, ’til the old ways got the best of me and I thought I just had to leave.”
“I had the travelin’ fever once. Finally got over it. Have you?”
Hewey rubbed his hand against the bandaged knee, which ached from the jolting of the wagon. “I don’t know. Maybe. That crazy black stud may have put the fire plumb out.”
Hewey had worked for Alvin Lawdermilk for short periods, so the ranch headquarters was like a second home to him. It was comforting to see it ahead as they passed through the final pasture gate. Several goats, unafraid, clustered at the roadside and watched like kids at a parade. A burro stubbornly stood its ground in the middle of the road and would not move until Neal got down from the wagon and threatened it with a stick.
The place appeared but little changed from the last time Hewey had seen it except that a modest new house had been constructed to one side of the sprawling single-story one that was home to Alvin, Cora and Cora’s mother. Hewey surmised that the smaller house had been put up for Neal, who could not be expected to sleep in the combination bunkhouse and toolshed indefinitely, though Julio Valdez had done it for years.
The small schoolhouse had a fresh coat of white paint that gleamed in the sunlight like vanilla frosting on a cake. There Spring taught children from several miles around because town was too far away. To their regret, Alvin and Cora Lawdermilk had never had children of their own, so they had built the country schoolhouse on their place that they might enjoy the sight and sound of others’sons
and daughters. Spring lived in a corner room of the L-shaped Lawdermilk house and took her meals with the family.
Hewey was not sure if school was out for the summer, but certainly it must be out for the day because the sun was almost down. He watched the white building nevertheless, hoping he might see her step outside at any moment.
A screeching peacock heralded the wagon’s approach, and a couple of blue-gray guinea hens trotted out of its way in a fluttering panic. The Lawdermilk headquarters had always been something of a menagerie. Whatever the species—beast, fowl or fish—if it was not carnivorous and would survive here, Alvin had it. It was Noah’s ark without the water.
Julio Valdez heard the trace chains and came out of the barn as the wagon passed on its way to the big house. He shouted a greeting and trotted alongside, extending his hand. “Hey, Hooey, you come to stay?”
“Just the night, Hooley. Ain’t caught you a señorita yet?”
“They run too fast for me.”
Alvin Lawdermilk strode onto the broad porch of the big house, a jolly smile breaking across his ruddy face. “Well, looky what just dragged in. Couldn’t stay away from Cora’s cookin’, could you, Hewey?”
“Been tastin’ it in my dreams.”
Alvin helped him down and hollered for his wife. “Cora, put another plate on the table. Better make it a platter. Look who’s come for supper.”
Hewey had noticed a telephone line strung above the barbed-wire fence that paralleled the wagon road. Alvin had a telephone now, but Hewey doubted that he needed a phone to talk to anyone within less than two miles. His voice would carry that far.
Cora came out onto the porch, wiping her hands on a white apron edged with lace. There had always been something of
gentle elegance about Cora Lawdermilk, even when she and Alvin had started their married life thirty-something years ago in an unpainted one-room shack. She had spent those years guiding and cajoling her husband past his various weaknesses, the worst being whiskey and cussing, so that they might not be parted in the hereafter. If Alvin had truly quit drinking, as was claimed, the hereafter seemed secure. He was in other ways an upright citizen, a substantial rancher who his neighbors repeatedly re-elected to be a county commissioner. Everybody in the community would turn out for his funeral someday. Hewey hoped that was still years in the future.
Cora already knew of Hewey’s injuries, but even so she seemed dismayed. She was the caring kind of woman who would bandage a sparrow’s broken wing and raise dogie calves on a bottle. “Alvin, you help him up the steps and into the house so we can feed him. There’s nothin’ like good solid food to hurry the healin’ process.”
The screen door was bumped open, and a heavyset woman pushed onto the porch in a wheelchair, her gray hair atangle, her voice belligerent. “I can’t hear myself think for all the commotion.” Her accusing eyes lighted upon Hewey and did not soften as they took in the cast and the bandaged knee. “Some people are like a bad penny. They keep comin’ back.”
“Mother!” Cora admonished her.
Hewey could not remember anybody ever shutting Old Lady Faversham up before she had her say. “First cowboy I ever saw that was bound up tight enough to suit me. He ain’t in no condition to be a danger to poor weak womenfolk.”
No matter how well Alvin had provided for her daughter in later years, Mrs. Faversham had never forgiven him for having been a poor man at the start. She had always felt that Cora had settled for too little in marrying him. She had become equally protective toward
Spring Renfro, fearful that some lusty rakehell might despoil her innocence.
Hewey had always felt a little guilty in the old woman’s presence whether or not he had done anything to feel guilty about. “I’ll just be spendin’ the night and movin’ on, Mrs. Faversham.”
She raked him up and down with what the vaqueros out at the J Bar would call an evil eye. “Been many a young maiden’s life ruined in just one night. But I reckon you’re not in a shape to do much damage.”
Her eyes softened as Farley Neal came up onto the porch, carrying groceries in his arms.
Anybody that old woman likes has got to have something wrong with him, Hewey thought But for the life of him he had not seen it, and he had been looking.
Hewey used the cane to hold the screen door open for Neal, who had both hands full. Cora said, “Go on in, Hewey. You know where the washpan is, on the back porch.”
Washing one-handed, he dried his face on a towel and cast the pan of water out into the yard, scattering several chickens and a guinea hen that had been pecking around in the dirt. He walked back through the hall into the dining room.
There stood Spring Renfro, blue eyes wide. He had taken her by surprise. She brought both hands up to her face. “Hewey! I thought you were still in Alpine.”
“I left,” he said, realizing how silly that sounded. Of course he had left, if he was here.
She stared at him for a long, quiet moment. Once the surprise was gone, her eyes guarded whatever thoughts lay behind them. She said, “You’re looking better than when I saw you last.”
He wanted to say, You’ve always looked good. But all he managed was “Pleased to see you again.”
She came closer, looking at his arm. “I hope it’s knitting all right.” Her voice was neutral, with the kind of general solicitude she might have given to anyone, even a stranger.
He wished for more. “If itchin’ means knittin’, it is.”
“It’s good to see you at home, Hewey.”
“I ain’t home yet.”
“You’re among friends anywhere you go. You’re always at home.” She gave him the smallest of smiles, finally, and Hewey melted.
Old Lady Faversham wheeled her chair down the hall and stopped in the doorway to the dining room, shocked at seeing the two together. “Farley Neal, you better get yourself in here. A wolf is after your lamb!”
It had been Lawdermilk family custom to gather around the piano in the parlor at night and sing while Cora or Spring played. Hewey’s singing was more appropriate for night guard at the edge of a cattle herd than for a parlor, so he kept his voice low. Spring’s clear soprano carried the melody in perfect pitch, and Hewey thought Neal’s smooth baritone would serve well in a church choir. The two made pleasant harmony together. Much too pleasant, Hewey felt.
Old Lady Faversham had a strong voice better served in yelling than in singing. She could not carry a tune in a milk bucket.
Cora said, “I haven’t had a chance to buy any new sheet music in a while, Hewey. Surely you have learned a few new songs.”
He had, but they would not do for a family parlor. “I’m afraid I don’t have much ear for music.”
“But you’ve got big eyes for a nice-lookin’ woman,” said Mrs. Faversham, her gaze switching to Spring, then back to Hewey.
Hewey felt his face flush. If Spring had any reaction, he could not see it.
Eventually the piano went silent and the conversation began to lag. Old Lady Faversham slumped in her wheelchair, mercifully
quiet, her eyes closed. Alvin yawned, and Cora laid down the knitting that had occupied her hands. Hewey reluctantly pushed himself to his feet, leaning heavily upon his cane.
“It’s high time I let you-all get your rest.” He turned to Spring. “You’ve got school to teach tomorrow.”
“School’s out for the summer,” she said. “But it is late.”
“I’ll be takin’ my bedroll out to the toolshed.”
Neal said, “There’s an extra bed in my house. No need to wake up Julio.”
A house would be more comfortable than the shed, though Hewey wondered that Neal was being so kind to him. Perhaps he was trying to make a good showing for Spring. Hewey saw nothing wrong with that so long as it got him a good bed. “I’m obliged.”
Spring said, “Be careful on the steps, Hewey. Help him, Farley.”
Hewey appreciated her concern, though it rankled that she had to see him this way, unable to take care of himself without help the way he used to do.
Damn you again, Fat Gervin.
He and Neal said their good nights and walked to the smaller house, which Hewey assumed would be Neal’s and Spring’s together if they married. Just inside the door Neal struck a match and lighted a lamp. The house still had a new-lumber smell and the faint odor of recent painting. Hewey recognized a couple of pieces of furniture as having come from the Lawdermilk parlor. The rest appeared new but plain and utilitarian.
He said, “High livin’ for a cowpuncher.”
“I’d’ve settled for much less, but Cora insisted. She wanted it to be nice for Spring … if things go that way.”
“They will, won’t they?”
A tone of doubt crept into the slow answer. “I was figurin’ they would.” He looked at Hewey, then turned away. “I’m not sure now.”
Hewey wondered what he meant by that.
Neal showed him a spare bed in a small room off the kitchen. Hewey tried to keep his eyes closed, hoping to bring on sleep, but he kept opening them, looking at moonlight reflected from the window. He was as wide awake as if it were the middle of the day. He thought a long time about how he must look to everybody, especially Spring, hobbling around on one leg and a cane, one arm useless except for limited movement of the fingers.
The doctor had told him to keep the knee tightly bound at least a couple more weeks, but now of a sudden the binding seemed oppressively heavy and hot and restrictive. He flung the thin covers aside and sat up on the edge of the bed. He had cut off the right leg of his long underwear above the knee to accommodate the binding. Even then it had been difficult to pull the shortened underwear and his pants on over the bulge of cloth.
With no light except what came through the window, he found the knot the doctor had tied in the gauze covering. He could not untie it with his fingers, so he cut it with his knife and began to unwrap the binding, slowly and carefully at first, then quickly, wanting to be done with it.
When the cloth lay like spaghetti on the floor he cautiously tried flexing the knee. It moved, though stiffly, like a tight hinge badly in need of oiling. With the movement came pain like a knifepoint punching into the joint. He worked for several minutes, improving the flexibility, though he could not straighten the leg completely. When he had worked up enough confidence he reached for his cane and stood, putting his weight first upon his left foot, then increasing it slowly on the right.
He found himself shivering and realized he was sweating profusely. A night breeze through the window was chilly upon his skin. He wanted to close it but feared he would wake Neal. He raised the tip of the cane from the floor and tested his full weight on the
leg. He found he could stand, even if shakily. When he tried to walk, however, the leg gave way with a stabbing pain. He caught himself on the cane, stopping a fall, but the impact made a loud thump. It had almost been another disaster like his first attempt to walk on a crutch. He felt dizzy and sat back on the edge of the bed.
A match flared, lighting Neal in his underwear. “Are you hurt?”
Hewey’s face warmed with embarrassment. “My feelin’s are shot to hell. I think I’m all right otherwise.” He felt like ten kinds of a fool.
The flame curled the match down near the end, burning Neal’s fingers. He quickly dropped it and struck another, lighting a lamp on a small bureau. He touched his tongue to the burned fingertips. “You weren’t supposed to take the wrappin’ off so soon, were you?”
“That doctor doesn’t know how helpless I feel when people have to take care of me like a baby. I’m a grown man.”
“Let me look at that knee.” Neal knelt, gently probing it with his fingers. The joint remained sore, but the surface looked almost normal except for a reddish scar.
He said, “Let’s see how far you can bend it.”
Hewey showed him. “It won’t straighten all the way.”
“It’s been bound hard and fast. You have to expect it to be stiff at first.”
Hewey felt a rush of disappointment that left him empty and a little angry. “If I was a horse they’d shoot me.”
“A horse and a man ain’t the same.”
“They are in some ways. When a horse gets too old or too stove-up to use, you shoot him or turn him out to pasture. I ain’t ready for the pasture.”
Neal smiled. “Surely you don’t want me to shoot you.”
“No, but if the chance comes my way, I may shoot Fat Gervin.”
“Want me to help you rewrap the knee?”
“No, I’ll leave it like it is. That doctor’s way off in Alpine. I won’t tell him if you won’t:’
Hewey managed a little sleep, once he forced down his disappointment. He awoke to the crowing of a rooster and the neighing of a horse in a corral, letting everybody know it was time to feed.
The knee felt lighter with the binding off. Hewey tried bending it again. At first it was tighter than when he went back to bed, but after a few attempts he got it to flex as far as it had last night. He tried standing on it without the cane, though he held to the bedstead as a precaution. After a few tentative steps he decided he could not throw away the cane as he had thrown away the binding, not for a while.
Peeking into the room where Neal had slept, he found the bed made and the man gone. Through the open window floated the distant sound of conversation from the corrals. In the early morning light, he could see Neal and Alvin forking hay to horses and mules. Julio was probably milking the Jersey cows.
Iought to be out there helping, he thought, feeling guilty for having slept almost to sunup, but he knew he would be more a liability than an asset Some of last night’s anger revived.
He limped to the barn, leaning on the cane, his eyes squinted against the first bright sliver of sunrise on the horizon. Alvin hollered, “Sleepin’ late, ain’t you, Hewey? The Bible speaks hard against sloth.”
Hewey tried to think of an appropriate rejoinder, but none came. He was not in a joking mood. He guessed that Alvin and Neal had close to thirty young horses and mules in the big corral. These would be in training for riding or working to wagons or plows. Alvin no longer broke them himself. He farmed them out to various young bronc riders such as Tommy Calloway to be ridden several times, wearing the rough edges off so they were ready to start their
real lessons administered by Alvin, Julio and, Hewey supposed, Neal. Hewey had rough-broken a good many himself in times past, turning them over to Alvin to be honed into useful shape.
As always, Alvin picked out favorites for special treatment. He moved close to a young red roan and caught a handful of mane high up on the neck. He led it out to the fence where Hewey stood. It walked along obedient as a pup. “I wisht you’d look at this colt. Smarter’n my mother-in-law and ten times easier to get along with. If you ever get tired of Biscuit, this one would make you a good hand. He already watches a cow like a cat watches a mouse.”
“Me and Biscuit are figurin’ on gettin’ old together … someday.” The rate he was going, Hewey thought darkly, he might have little use anymore even for Biscuit, much less a young colt.
Alvin patted the colt on the neck and let it go. He unlatched the gate and came outside, waiting for Neal. Julio walked up from the milking pen, carrying a pail in each hand.
Alvin said, “We’ll eat breakfast, then I’ll take you over to Walter’s and Eve’s in my automobile.”
“I hate to pull you away from your work.”
“Farley and Julio do most of the work anyhow. I’m gettin’ too stove-up. Comes a time when we all have to settle for less than we used to.”
Hewey sensed that Alvin was not just speaking about himself.
Through breakfast Hewey sat across the table from Spring. He stole glances, trying not to be obvious, and often found her staring at him. She would avert her eyes, hiding her judgment, whatever that might be. Neither said much. Old Lady Faversham held the floor through most of the meal anyway, talking about the hardships women had to endure living in an uncivilized environment, not the least of them the ingratitude of their men. That train of thought led her to a lecture about the faithlessness of cowboys.
After breakfast Alvin asked, “Cora, how would you and Spring like to go with us? You-all ain’t had much chance to visit with Eve lately.”
Cora begged off, saying she had too much work stacked up. She said, “Spring, why don’t you go? You could return those dress patterns I borrowed from her and take her some of the preserves we put up last week.”
Spring seemed caught in a bind. She glanced at Hewey, then at Neal. His nod told her it was all right to go, but his eyes wished she would not. She shook her head, not looking at Hewey. “There is a lot of work to be done. Perhaps another day.”
Hewey stared at the ground in regret. He had much to apologize to her for if he ever got the chance, and if he could work up the nerve. Likely as not it was too late anyway. The time for apology had been four years ago.
Alvin went to start the automobile and back it out of the hay shed where it was kept safe from the weather. Shortly the roar of the engine told Hewey that Alvin had pulled the car up to the front of the house. He gave Spring one more quick glance. “I’ll go fetch my roll,” he said, and left as hurriedly as the cane would allow.
He heard Old Lady Faversham behind him, telling Spring she had made the right decision. “I don’t blame you, not wantin’ to go with Alvin and that fiddle-footed cowpuncher. His kind are a dime a dozen and badly overpriced.”
Neal came into the little house as Hewey finished tying his bedroll. “I’ll carry that for you,” he offered.
Hewey said, “It wasn’t my idea to invite her in the first place. She belongs to you.”
“She doesn’t belong to anybody. She’s a free woman.”
Hewey wondered if the man wasn’t too good to be real. “Lots of old boys I’ve known wouldn’t have so much trust.”
Regret pinched Neal’s eyes. “I didn’t always have. I was young and green and a little jealous when I married. Kept a tight rein on Ada when there wasn’t any reason for it. I realized that after I lost her, and I didn’t like myself much.” He hoisted Hewey’s bedroll over his shoulder. “I wouldn’t want Spring to look back years from now and have regrets on my account.”
You’re the right man for her, Hewey thought. But the thought was too painful to speak aloud.
Cora gave him several messages to take to Eve. Hewey assured her he would deliver them, though he knew he would forget most of them before he got there. For the hell of it he waved good-bye to Old Lady Faversham, who sat in her wheelchair on the porch. She did not respond. She was not there to wish him farewell but simply to be certain that he left.
Spring and Neal stood side by side. Neal nodded at Hewey, and Spring made a weak smile that carried a hint of sadness. Hewey forced himself to look away, facing forward. The automobile backfired, and Alvin came within inches of running over a flustered peacock that contested him for the right-of-way and yielded just in time. Alvin laughed. “Them peacocks belong to my mother-in-law. When she ain’t screechin’, they are.”
Though getting in and out of the car was a struggle, Hewey insisted upon opening and closing the gates. The wooden ones were little challenge, but the tight wire gates were almost more than he could handle. Alvin was sensitive enough to Hewey’s pride that he let him wrestle them alone, though it must have taken all the patience he could muster not to get out and take over. Alvin would never be a good poker player; whatever he was thinking showed in his face, and his pity was apparent.
It only made Hewey feel worse. “Sometimes I almost wish that stud had killed me instead of leavin’ me in this shape, havin’ to depend on everybody.”
Alvin frowned. “Have you talked to the Lord about it?”
“Pray? I’ve prayed for other people, but it always seemed selfish to do it for myself.”
“Not when you’ve got a real need. The Lord generally answers, though not always like you hope for. You remember how fond I always was of whiskey? It got to a point that I was sick a lot of the time, so me and the Lord had a long talk about it. Well, I done the talkin’, but I could tell He was listenin’, because pretty soon it got to where it tasted so bad to me that I didn’t want it anymore.
“When He takes things away from us, He usually gives us somethin’ in trade. We lose the energy we had when we were young, but He gives us more wisdom. And as He takes away our ability to do one thing or another, He also takes away most of the want-to so we can be content with what we’ve got left.”
“I ain’t content with the way I am, and I don’t intend to settle for it.”
“Fine. The Lord loves a man who won’t give up tryin’.”
“It wasn’t the Lord that put me in this shape; it was Fat Gervin. Be damned if I’ll let him win.”
Alvin nodded approval. “You’re gettin’ mad, and that’s good. As long as you’re mad, you’ll keep fightin’. But when you go as far as the Lord intends for you to, you’ll have to make your peace and be glad for what you’ve still got.”
“What have I got? The shape I’m in, I’ll do well to swamp out Dutch Schneider’s saloon.”
“You told me Morgan Jenkins offered you a job as foreman. You wouldn’t have to ride no rough horses to do that.”
“I couldn’t take care of a ranch afoot.”
“The wheel has been around for thousands of years. Every buggy and buckboard has got four of them.”
Hewey noticed dust rising to the south. Alvin pinched his eyes
almost shut, trying to see through the haze. “Looks like horses runnin’. You don’t reckon somebody’s rustlin’ a bunch of my stock? I ain’t got a gun with me.”
Hewey doubted that Alvin had ever pulled a gun on anybody in his life. It was not his style. He was a peacemaker, like Walter.
Rustling had become rare in this big country because the horse had not been born that could outrun a sheriff’s telephone calls. In these vast distances a thief would have to travel far and hard to remove himself from harm’s way.
Alvin left the road and set the car bouncing across the open pasture. Hewey held tightly with his good hand to keep from being tossed around in the seat. He could only imagine what this jarring might do to his innards.
When they were close enough that Alvin could see the horses clearly, he braked to a slow stop, relieved.
“They ain’t mine. I wouldn’t allow any on my place as sorry as them.”
Two riders were driving a remuda of thirty or so runty-looking Mexican ponies. A horseman with his shirttail hanging out reined toward the car. Hewey recognized the no-name cowboy he had met on the C. C. Tarpley ranch.
Alvin shouted, “Where you goin’ with them broomtails?”
The cowboy’s clothes were dirty, and he had several days’ growth of whiskers, showing he had been on the trail. “We’re takin’ them to Mr. Gervin for delivery to a buyer. They come from down on the Pecos.”
Alvin said, “It’d be a lot easier to take them along the road than to cut across my ranch.”
“It was Mr. Gervin’s orders to bring them this way. We’ll be off your place before they have a chance to eat much of your grass. Adios.” The cowboy spurred off after the horses.
Alvin said, “Now, why would Fat give an order like that?”
“So he could tell a buyer that they came from your ranch and not exactly be lyin’ about it.” Hewey explained about the bunch Gervin had sold to Old Man Jenkins under false pretenses.
Alvin swore. “The duplicitous son of a bitch!”
Hewey was surprised to hear such language come from Alvin. He didn’t used to say words like duplicitous.