The young cowboy rode hard, lashing at the big sorrel mare to urge her on. They splashed through freshets and churned up the soggy prairie ground, but in spite of his efforts, he arrived at the swollen stream too late to help. The others there before him had already managed to urge the last frightened cow back across through the swift, cold water to the proper side. He saw the cold, wet cows, smelled their wet hair, and heard them bawling against the background noise of the roaring water and the cursing of the cowboys. He pulled his panting, sweating mount to a halt in the midst of the other cowboys and had no more than dismounted when he felt himself jerked forward and off-balance by the big, burly hands of Clint Chambers.
“Damn you, Starr,” said the big man, “that’s my horse you’re riding.”
Henry Starr wrenched Chambers’ hands loose from his shirtfront and backed off a couple of steps, slipping in the wet ground and regaining his balance. He tried to think of an appropriate response, but Chambers didn’t give him time to formulate it.
“You damn near rode him to death,” Chambers continued. “Look at him.”
“Mr. Roberts told me to get down here quick,” said Henry. “When the boss says to move fast, I move, and I don’t care whose horse I kill.”
“Yeah, well, I notice that you didn’t get down here quick enough to do any work,” said Chambers, giving Henry a rough shove, “you damned lazy redskin.”
Henry felt the anger suddenly boil up inside him even as he staggered backward from the shove, again sliding in the mud beneath his feet. He was embarrassed. The others were watching. As Henry caught his balance and doubled up his fists to retaliate, a third cowboy stepped in front of him, grabbing him by the shoulders.
“Hold on, Henry,” he said.
“I didn’t start this,” said Henry. “He did.”
Two others took hold of Chambers’ arms and held him back.
“Turn me loose,” shouted the big man. “By God, I’ll teach him a lesson.”
“Just calm down,” said the cowboy who was holding Henry. “We still got work to do. If you two got a grudge, settle it later. Come on. Mount up.” Henry shrugged and turned toward the horse he had ridden up on.
“No you don’t,” said Chambers. “Not on my horse.”
“Suit yourself,” said Henry, and he turned away from Chambers’ horse. Chambers climbed quickly into the saddle and started riding toward the ranch house. Henry thought that for a man who had just wanted to fight him for having ridden his horse too hard, Chambers was sure moving out fast. The hypocrite, he thought.
“Here,” said the calm cowboy, handing Henry the reins to another mount. “This is the one he rode out on.”
“Thanks.”
All during the ride back to the ranch house, Henry seethed. He was burning inside. He was seventeen years old and full of the pride of youth, and he was an Indian working in the midst of a crew of white men. He had been pushed and yelled at in front of other men. He had been made to look foolish, slipping and sliding in the mud. He had been chastised for having done something he felt he had every right to do—more than that, something that he was, in fact, obligated by his employer to do. The back of his neck burned from the humiliation. He had left home because his white stepfather treated him, he felt—no, he was certain—unfairly—treated him like a snot-nosed kid with no sense and no rights. He could recall the many times C.N. had told him over and again to wash his neck even though he had just done so. C.N. thought that his brown skin was dirty. Well, he had gone out on his own, and he would not be treated that way again. He did miss his mother, but then, well, she just shouldn’t have married that white trash, C. N. Walker.
Back at the ranch house, Henry went inside to talk to the boss. He found Roberts in his office, sitting behind the big desk.
“You get those cows turned back, Henry?”
“Yeah,” said Henry, shuffling his feet and looking down at the floor and suddenly wishing that he had done a better job of cleaning the mud off his boots before coming in to see the boss. “Well, really, the other boys had it done by the time I got there, but that’s not what I came to talk about.”
Roberts looked up from his paperwork.
“What is it, Henry?” he said.
“I’m quitting.”
“You’re quitting? What for? Haven’t I been fair to you?”
“You’ve been more than fair, Mr. Roberts. I’ve got nothing against you.”
“Then what is it?”
Henry told Roberts about the incident with Chambers and his horse. Roberts took a deep breath and leaned back in his big office chair with a creak. He nodded knowingly.
“I already heard about that,” he said. “Chambers beat you in here and told me all about it. His side of the story, of course. I’ll tell you what I told him. He was wrong. You were in the right. When a man hires on with me, he hires on his horse, too. I sent you to do a job, and that horse was available. You don’t have to quit on account of that.”
“Thanks, Mr. Roberts,” said Henry, “but I guess I’ll be moving on anyhow.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
Henry just looked at the floor, so Roberts reached into a drawer of the desk and pulled out a cashbox. He counted out some money onto the desk.
“You’ve been a good hand,” he said, “but if you’ve made up your mind, I won’t try to change it for you. Here’s what I owe you.”
Henry took the money and shoved it into his pocket.
“Thanks, Mr. Roberts,” he said.
“If you ever want a job back here again,” said Roberts, “it’s yours. And if you need a reference from me for a job somewhere else, I’ll give you a damn good one. You tell them that.”
“I appreciate that,” said Henry. “Be seeing you.”
He turned and walked out of the house and soon found himself riding aimlessly across the prairie. He was fantasizing a finish to the argument with Chambers—one in which he thrashed the bully with his fists. Gradually the anger subsided, and Henry began to marvel at the extent of the open prairie. He was still in the Cherokee Nation (though people were beginning to refer to it collectively with its neighboring Nations as “Indian Territory”), but he was as far north as he had ever been in his short life. He had spent nearly all of his seventeen years in the thickly wooded hill country around Fort Gibson. Henry’s memories of Fort Gibson were emotionally mixed. The earliest remembrances, from the days when his father, George, known as “Hop,” was still alive, were pleasant, but they had been far too few. Henry’s mother had remarried after the death of Hop Starr, and Henry’s new stepfather was C. N. Walker, a white man. Henry hadn’t liked C.N. from the beginning, and when C.N. had sold Henry’s horse and saddle, bought and paid for with Henry’s own money, money he had earned for himself, the young man had left home for good. He had wandered north, an incredible eighty-some-odd miles away from home, and found a job on the Roberts Ranch.
Roberts, too, was a white man, Henry mused. Things were quickly changing in the Cherokee Nation. He could remember a time when whites had been few and far between, but the Nation’s government had allowed more and more renters to move in, and white men married Cherokee women for land rights in the Cherokee Nation. In addition, droves of whites had simply wandered into the Nation and squatted. Roberts was decent enough, but it seemed to Henry that C. N. Walker and Clint Chambers were more representative of the race. He longed for the good old days, which, of course, were not much more than ten years behind him, and then an ironic realization surfaced in his brain.
He had thought that he was riding aimlessly across the prairie, but, in fact, his path was leading directly to the home of the Morrisons—Mr. and Mrs. Morrison and their daughter, Mae. The Morrisons were renters. Mae was Henry’s sweetheart. He was feeling bad, and he wanted to see her, and they were white.