Riding in abreast of the Blessingames’ three post-laden wagons, Doug found that Stub Bailey and Noah Wheeler had been busy while he was gone.
“Watch out for those stakes yonder,” he called back to old Foley Blessingame, on the lead wagon. “They mark where the posts are to be set.”
Foley saw them and swung his mules a little to the right so the heavy wheels would pass between two stakes, set a rod apart.
Stub Bailey rode out grinning to meet the wagons. He shook Doug’s hand and motioned toward the line of stakes. “Half afraid you wasn’t comin’ back, Doug. I sure would’ve hated to drive all them stakes for nothin’.” His gaze roved over the Blessingames’ wagons, and especially over the Blessingames themselves. “Man alive,” he breathed, “they all come out of one family?”
Monahan nodded, and Bailey shook his head. “I’d sure hate to be the woman who had to give birth to that bunch.”
Monahan grinned. “Well, they came one at a time, I reckon. They’ll haul in all the posts we need, then stay and help us build the fence.”
Bailey approved of that. “I’ll bet they can make a pick and shovel sing ‘Dixie.’”
“The first Rinehart man who gets himself crossways with them may sing a little, too,” Doug said.
Big old Noah Wheeler was standing in front of his barn waiting as the three heavy wagons rolled up, their iron rims grinding deep tracks into the shower-dampened earth, crushing the cured brown grass. “Howdy, Doug,” he said. “Looks like you’ve brought the makings.”
Doug stepped off his horse and shook the farmer’s rough hand. “Ought to be enough posts to get us started. Plenty more where these came from. Wire ought to be here by the time we get enough posts up to commence stringing it.”
He hadn’t realized how tired the long ride had made him until he sat down a moment on the barn’s front step. He was glad to be back here. He felt himself drawn to this pleasant place with its good corrals, its scattering of Durham cattle, its ducks swimming out there on the surface tank, and its chickens scratching around in the yard. He liked the Wheelers’ little red frame house with the front porch that would be so good for sitting and rocking in the late summer evenings.
Without wanting to show it, he looked around for Trudy Wheeler and felt vaguely disappointed that he didn’t see her anywhere.
“How’s the family, Noah?”
“Fine, getting along fine.” Wheeler looked toward the house. “Halfway thought they’d come out to look, but I reckon not.” He frowned. “Doug, in case they say anything, don’t worry yourself too much about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re not as much in favor of this fence as I thought they’d be. Fact of the matter, they’re against it. You know how women are. Or do you? You’re not married, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“Time you get married, you’ll know what I mean. A man ought to go ahead and do what he wants to and not let the women bother him, I guess. Ought to let them know he’s the boss. But when the time comes, you hate to do it. A man who’s got womenfolks has just got to put up with a certain amount of that, I reckon.”
Doug had an uneasy moment, afraid Noah Wheeler was leading up to calling the whole thing off. He thought of Captain Rinehart, and of his foreman, Archer Spann, and he felt his heart quicken. Wheeler couldn’t call it off now, and cheat Monahan out of the satisfaction he’d get from humbling them.
Wheeler put an end to his anxiety. “I thought maybe we’d start down on the southwest corner and work up. That’s where the most of the strays come in from, and we’ll cut them off first.”
There was the immediate problem of getting settled. Best thing to do with the posts was to unload them right where they would be needed.
“Where’ll you be putting up, Doug?” Foley Blessingame asked. When Doug showed him the barn, the old cedar cutter said, “If it’s all the same to you, we’ll just put up our tent when we bring that last load of posts. Me and the kids is used to it, and the barn won’t be none too roomy anyhow with this crew you got.” Dundee had brought out four men.
Out at the side of the barn, Doug rigged up three posts and stretched a tarp to them from the edge of the roof. This cover would help protect the cook in bad weather. They could set up a stationary chuckbox out here under the tarp. The cook could have his fire just beyond it, where the smoke would lift clear and not drift back underneath.
The cook was Simon Getty, the grunting, red-faced man Doug had picked up in Torrance’s livery barn. Monahan had borrowed a horse from Torrance so the cook could ride with him. Torrance was to pick up the animal when he brought the wire. But the cook had barely managed to stay on him to the Blessingames’ camp. From there, he had ridden the last wagon.
“Looks like what he needs is a good sweat bath,” Foley had commented dryly. “Sweat the alcohol out of his system. Man ain’t got no use drinkin’ if he can’t hold his liquor.”
“Looks to me like he’s holding too much of it,” Monahan had replied.
Getty was a shortish man with a puffed face and a soft paunch. And, it had developed, a short temper. He hadn’t been in condition to do the cooking the first night at the Blessingames’, but he had done it since. He put up a pretty decent meal, too, if a man didn’t mind listening to him complain.
“Damn these outfits that don’t give a man decent pots to cook in,” he said ten times with every meal. “I’ve cooked for a hundred of ’em, and there ain’t a one ever give me anythin’ I’d cook for a dog in.”
Doug took it with a grain of salt, for he had seen few wagon cooks who didn’t gripe a little. It put a little extra flavoring in the food, like salt. And, as long as it didn’t get to rankling anybody, it gave the rest of the crew something to snicker about—when they got out of earshot.
Stub Bailey came around, and Doug asked him, “Did you go over and see what cooking equipment you could salvage from Paco’s camp?”
“I went over, but there wasn’t anything left. Somebody beat us to it. Stole ever’ Dutch oven, beanpot, knife, fork and spoon there was. Even a couple of wagon wheels that the spokes hadn’t burned out of.”
Monahan swore under his breath. “I was counting on that stuff. Been borrowing from the Blessingames, and I didn’t want to keep on doing it. Took everything we had, did they?”
“One of them poverty nester outfits over on Oak Crick, I figured. Took everything but the posts and burned-up wire. I don’t reckon there’s anybody fool enough to want that.” Bailey added as an afterthought, “By the way, there’s plenty of good posts over there, in the ground. They ain’t set so hard yet but what we could take a good team of mules and yank them out of the ground one at a time.”
Monahan shook his head. “They’re Gordon Finch’s posts. He paid me cash for them. He can take them up himself, if he wants to.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Doug kept watching for Trudy Wheeler to show herself. But so far as he could tell while they were setting up camp, she never did. She was staying in the house.
Late in the afternoon everything was in its place. The Blessingames’ wagons had been unloaded and made ready for a return trip after more posts tomorrow. The cook had a fire going just beyond the tarp on the side of the barn, and pots and pans were rattling. It would be a while before supper.
Doug walked to the Wheelers’ house, up onto the porch, and knocked on the door. He could hear a stirring inside, and presently Mrs. Wheeler opened the door. Doug took off his hat. This tall, strong, graying woman looked at him with no unfriendliness but with no special welcome.
“Good evening, Mrs. Wheeler.”
“Good evening, Mr. Monahan.”
“We’ve gotten everything in order, and I thought I’d come over and pay my respects.”
“That’s nice of you.”
He tried to see around her, but he couldn’t spot Trudy Wheeler. He could tell that Wheeler had been right about the women. They weren’t strong at all on this fencing business. It showed on Mrs. Wheeler, in her withdrawal from her inborn hospitality. She was vastly different from the last time he had been here.
When it became evident that she wasn’t going to invite him in, he said awkwardly, “Well, I guess I better be getting back. Horses got to be fed.” A shading of disappointment crept into his voice. “I’ll be seeing you again, Mrs. Wheeler.”
“Yes,” she replied, and he thought her voice softened a little, for she must have caught his disappointment. “I’m sure we’ll see each other, Mr. Monahan.”
He put his hat back on and walked off the porch, discontent gnawing at him. He hadn’t considered this, the opposition from the women. He was at a loss to put a reason to it. Well, what difference did it make to him, anyway? Main thing was to get the fence up.
After all, they weren’t his women.
* * *
THE BLESSINGAMES WERE up before daylight. By the time the sun broke over the low hills to the east, they had their horses hitched to the three wagons and were ready to go. Doug Monahan stood there watching the breath of the horses rise as steam in the sharp morning air.
“Going to be cold up there on those wagons’ seats, till the sun gets up high enough to take the chill off,” he told Foley.
The huge old man tolerantly shook his head. “Like a spring day. You South Texas boys don’t know what cold weather is. Prob’ly never saw a frost in your life till you come up here.”
Doug shivered and smiled. “Well, I know what it is now.” He went serious then. “Be careful, Foley. It’d be better if nobody saw you. If anybody asks you, don’t tell them where the posts are going. I’d like to get all the wire and posts in before any trouble starts. After that, they can do what they please, and we’ll be ready.”
Foley flipped the reins and led off with his wagon. From a hundred yards away he turned and yelled back in a voice that would have scared a Longhorn bull out over the corral gate: “Don’t you worry none about me and the kids. We’ll be as quiet’s a mouse!”
The wagons rolled away with a groan of wheels and clanking of chains. Horses snorted in the cold. Doug watched until they were well on their way. Turning then, he saw Trudy Wheeler walking toward the spring, carrying a wooden bucket in each hand.
It was the first time he had seen her since he had returned, except for a glimpse or two of her at a distance as she stepped out on the porch a moment. He stood watching her, admiring her slenderness, her easy way of moving. Then he followed after her.
Entering the rock spring house, she filled the buckets one at a time from the water which bubbled up to flow through the milk-cooling trough and on out into the creek. As she straightened, Doug said, “I’ll carry them for you.”
Startled, she whirled to face him. “Oh, it’s you.” Her breath came fast for a moment. “Why don’t you make a little noise when you come up behind somebody that way?”
“I was afraid you might walk away and leave me.”
She fixed a half-hostile gaze on him, and her voice was cool. “I might have, at that.”
He picked up the buckets. “Where to?”
“The washpot. We’re fixing to put out a washing today.”
He walked along beside her, trying to think of something to say which might offset her coolness, but nothing came to him. She contributed nothing, either, until they reached the big blackened pot behind the house.
“Just pour a little water in there and let me sweep out the pot,” she said.
He did, and she swept the water around inside the pot with an old wornout broom, washing away the settled dust. When she swept the last of the water out she said, “I’ll handle it from here on, thank you.”
He shook his head. “It’ll take a lot of water. I’ll do it.”
He kept toting water until the pot was filled. While he was doing that, Trudy was piling dry mesquite wood underneath and around the pot. She poured a little kerosene around it from a five-gallon can, struck a match and flipped it under the pot. The flame spread slowly, timidly, at first, then grew stronger and bolder with the taste of the wood. In a few minutes it was a crackling blaze.
The warmth of the fire felt good in this chill. But watching it, Doug could not help thinking about another fire a few days ago, and a restless spirit moved in him. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you ever since I got back. Why’ve you been avoiding me?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No, I don’t, except your dad says you don’t like the fence.”
“The fence itself is all right. It’s what we may have to go through because of it that I don’t like.”
“If there’s a fight, I’ll be here to handle it.”
Her eyes were suddenly flinty. “That’s just it, you know there’ll be a fight. That’s why you’re here in the first place. You don’t really care whether we have a fence or not. You’re just looking for a fight with Captain Rinehart, and by building us a fence you figure on provoking it.”
He opened his mouth but she cut him off before he had a chance to reply. A mounting anger colored her face. “There’s one thing you can say about the captain—he’s no hypocrite. He tells you what he wants and doesn’t want, and no mistake about it.
“We all felt sorry for you that first day, Mr. Monahan. We brought you here because you’d been done an awful wrong. I can’t say I blame you, even yet, for wanting to get even. But when you take an old man like Dad and talk him into building a fence so you can provoke trouble and have a chance at getting revenge, you’re doing him an awful wrong, too. You’re just using Dad and us for bait!”
“Now, that’s not the way it is.…”
“Isn’t it?” Her eyes sparkled. “Then maybe you can tell me what way it is. No, I don’t want you telling me anything! I just want you to leave me alone.”
She turned her back on him, and he knew there was no use trying to talk any further with her, not today. He could feel the red color warm in his cheeks. Something between anger and hurt swelled in him. He left her and walked back toward the barn.
Stub Bailey came out the barn door and saw Monahan’s face. He looked past Doug to the girl, who was cutting up blocks of homemade soap and stirring it in the heating water with a wooden paddle, agitating it a lot more than she needed to.
“Got the lecture, did you?” Stub said. “I could’ve told you.”
Monahan felt like snapping at Stub to shut up, but he managed to withhold that. Still, he couldn’t look Bailey in the face.
“I got a little of the same, but I expect she saved the big load for you because you’re the boss,” Stub said. He paused and gazed seriously at Monahan. “Maybe you ought to take a good look at yourself and do some thinkin’ on what she said. She could be ninety percent right.”