A B Guthrie Jr Read online

  "That's all right." He was pretty used to rough ones, though maybe not so much so, nearly, as these older hands. Still, for Pa and neighbors, he'd ridden out a few.

  "You want to try an unbroke, ornery one?"

  "I guess so. Can't do more than pile me."

  Ram gave a slow nod. "That knot-headed sorrel, he'll need a heap of breakin'. And the big black with the blaze, they say he's broke to lead. The buckskin is the truck, a night hoss from away back, that I been keepin' from the boys." Ram went ahead to get the bunch to moving. "That Roman­nose bay, see?"

  "I'll catch up the sorrel then, and the black?"

  "Just try the sorrel now." Ram watched as Lat played out a little loop. Outside, others watched, too, men known and unknown, Tom Ping, Carmichael, Sally, more, most acting as if just idleness had brought them there.

  The loop sailed clean and neat. The sorrel was halter­broke. He pulled up, snorting.

  I,at took the horse outside and led him up and tied him to a wagon wheel, feeling eyes turned to him as he moved, the strange and not yet friendly eyes of men who wondered what his caliber might be, .22 or .45 or in-between or maybe only squirt gun. He got a glimpse of Ping, looking on with open interest, and then of Mooman, pulling on a cigarette that seemed to cork his mouth.

  The sorrel disliked the bit and humped up as the saddle hit him but from the ground led out all right as Lat stepped him around to let him get the feel of things. Then, quickly, Lat swung up.

  Two pitches, and he knew he'd stick. The bronc was strong but ignorant of tricks, a high-poler, not a gut-twister. All he knew was jump and thump, and these were not enough.

  Not enough. Not near enough. Each jolt told him so. And then he was sailing, riding air, above the sorrel and to one side, with the saddle still between his legs. He landed hard and somersaulted, tangled with the leather, and got up shaken and looked down and saw the cinch had torn loose from one ring. He took the saddle by the horn and dragged it toward the fire, still feeling eyes upon him, reading in the men's fixed soberness of face an inner ticklement.

  Ram said, "You hunkydory?"

  "Yah. Another cinch around?"

  "Extrys in the bed wagon. I'll catch that bronc back up." Ram made for his horse.

  Tom Ping helped dig a cinch out, saying, "You had the bastard topped, weren't for that accident." The other men were drifting off.

  Lat squatted by his saddle to undo the latigos. He was still working with the first one when he heard a snicker. Another and another followed. It was Mooman, letting loose with little choking brays that rounded out his bullet hole of mouth.

  Tom Ping turned and took a step. "What's so goddam funny?"

  Mooman's laugh died to a smile. His gaze went to Ping as if he hadn't heard right. "Didn't he look comical, ridin' air?" Then his smile died, too, and his eyes slid away from Ping, and it hit Lat that the years had cheated him, not making him a sure man. "Didn't mean to het you up, or Evans, either."

  "All right, Moo Cow," Tom said and moved toward Lat, "but I bet if he'd busted a leg, you'd've laughed your face off."

  Lat said, "It doesn't matter."

  Tom winked and spoke low. "Nope, but it just kind of r'iled me. Outsider bustin' his goddam gut. Stick together is my motto." He smiled. "Bein' as you're not hurt, it was kind of funny, you goin' ass over teakettle."

  Lat said, "Yeah," and glanced up and saw Ram coming with the sorrel in tow. "Saddle's ready."

  "Maybe you ain't feelin' like anotheh sashay," Ram said, pulling up.

  "Why not?" Lat took the sorrel's reins and tied them to the wheel and swung the saddle on. Carmichael and the cook lagged up as he cinched and stepped back with the others as he boarded. There was buck left in the sorrel, but again not near enough. Lat raked him hard. He kicked the last jump from him and wrenched him around and brought him back and got off.

  "Good enough," Ram said.

  "Except, by God, you'll have grit in your mulligan," the cook put in. "A man can't seem to climb a horse around here without one foot in the grub."

  "Hush now, Sally!" Ram's gaze swung from Lat to Mooman. "Now a good-enough man could maybe fight them broncs and still do the day wranglin', or some of it, anyhow. A good-enough man. It ain't a job for weaklin's or wet ears. The pay would be the same as a top hand's."

  "I ain't weak, and I'm weaned," Mooman said as if hurt pride demanded that much, "but you can look somewheres else."

  Ram smiled easily. "I wasn't talkin' to you." His eyes came to Lat. "Would you accept? Mooman's out of office and will second the nomination so as to step into your boots."

  "You think I can?"

  Ram's hand reached out and rested on Lat's shoulder. His smile deepened the lines around his mouth. "We'll see, but I vote aye, and the ayes have it."

  3

  CARMICHAEL dished himself some breakfast and sat down, feeling sleepy yet and dull. A man oughtn't to get up before the sun itself got up. Then he, for one, felt more like shining, even on hot, dry days like these they'd had. He'd remember as a story to be told, though, how Slim George Stevens lifted his sweat-dirty face and, sober as a sore-tailed judge, asked the noon sun yesterday, "Where the hell was you last January?"

  At this hour most of the men were quiet or grumbling low in the manner of Old Oscar who had just said, "I'd like to waltz into the buzzard that put the name of fruit to prunes." Sally was busy at the pot rack frying sourdoughs and didn't hear him. Ram Butler got up and poured a cup of coffee. Unlike the seated men, who hadn't quite come to, the kid, Lat Evans, had finished up and was dragging in a chunk of wood for Cookie. Good kid, he seemed like. Willing anyway. Busted out with kid's ambition. In the east the coming sun was kicking up red dust. Soon be time to line 'em out. Time now for the last watch to come in, and here came one of them, the flank man, Mexico.

  Mexico rode up, not close enough to ruffle Sally, and got off and came over and helped himself at the pot rack, not speaking until he had let himself down. Then he said, "Calf out there."

  Ram turned to him. "A calf!"

  "Bull."

  "A bull calf!"

  "I got so I can tell a calf, he or she, pret' near every time."

  "It's supposed to be dry stuff, all dry stuff."

  "Wisht you'd told me," Mexico answered through a full mouth. "Too late now to shoo him back." He swallowed and grinned at Ram. "Want me to tell all them other big-bellied cows it ain't legal?"

  Ram got up. Carmichael could feel his small and quick impatience with such nonsense. "All? It won't be funny if we slipped on many, eh, Carmichael?"

  "I seen 'em closer'n you," Carmichael said. "Some I received when you was gone." He liked this Texan and maybe understood him. A conscientious man always was over­loaded. He gave a smile intended to be easy. "You got so many worries, Ram, you got to build up more. One cow with calf slipped in, that's all." He was a fairly conscientious man himself -which maybe was a reason he shied off from responsibility. Being Ram's second on the drive was a mite more than he cared for.

  "I reckon so," Ram answered, nodding slowly. "Mexico, wheah they at?"

  "North of the bunch a piece."

  Ram sighed, still nodding, and patted his chaps with his fingertips. "Carmichael, you mind disposin' of the calf? I'll help get things movin'. Lat Evans can go with you."

  "And neck the cow to a heavy steer, huh?"

  "No. Not time now. Take the bed wagon and dump the calf inside. It'll keep all right today, and the cow'll follow. Tonight we'll neck her."

  Carmichael lapped the last of his syrup and got up. "Ready, young'n?" he said to Evans who had been standing close enough to hear. "I'll take the bed wagon. You come with a horse, a ropin' horse, not one of them catamounts you love to scratch."

  It was a calf all right, a red-and-white, still-damp calf with the wide and trusting look of all new calves. It had found its feet and stood tottery by its ma, its licked hide catching gleams of light like silk. Carmichael whoaed the team and got down from the wagon and wrapped the reins around the h
ub. The cow tossed her head and let out a low bawl and licked the calf again. Carmichael waited by the wheel. Damn it, there was this chore to do, the common-sense, the ordered chore! Baby things died by thousands, didn't they?

  "That cow won't be the barnyard pet," he said as Evans rode up. "Have to dab a rope on her."

  Evans threw an easy loop and drew it tight and strained the cow off from the calf while she bucked against the line and threw her head, bawling through the choke of rope.

  Carmichael went to the bed wagon and got out an axe. One little blow would do it, one tap between the newborn eyes. So would a shot, but the sound would reach the herd and just might spook them.

  He walked over to the calf. The cow strangled out a bawl. The calf looked up at him and mouthed an unsure bleat. He raised the axe and let it down and rested on it with one hand on the handle while he spoke to Evans. "What was them orders, now? To dispose of the calf, wasn't it? Just to dispose of it?"

  "That's what he said."

  The kid didn't look in love with this deal, either, which set him up a peg. Kids could he awful cruel, crueler far than need be in a business cruel enough. "Dispose?" he said. "That could mean a pile of things. Means put away, don't it? And if I put the calf away in the bed wagon, ain't I disposed of it?"

  He didn't need an answer. He scooped the calf up and carried it over and found a place for it. He walked back toward Evans then. "Let Ramrod do his own baby-killin'." He rubbed his moist hands on his shirt. "The cow'll be on the peck. You know the trick of gettin' off the rope? Ride fast around, circlin' her with your lariat, and pull away and down she'll go."

  "Yes," Evans said and spurred his horse. With her front feet the cow cleared the circled rope, as Carmichael knew she would, but she couldn't clear behind. She thudded down, her hind legs yanked out from under. Evans jumped from his horse and ran up and slipped the noose from her neck and i an back and climbed aboard almost before she got untangled.

  "Skookum," Carmichael said and edged back toward the wagon. She wasn't on the prod, though. She just went smelling for her calf.

  For an instant Carmichael stood by the front wheel, wondering what Ram would say but not caring much. There were jobs and jobs.

  Evans pulled up alongside and began to coil his rope.

  "You know," Carmichael said, "the nighthawk might not like it, bein' the wagon is his day bed, but what's a little calf shit to a wrangler?"

  From a rise a mile or so ahead of the herd, the point was all that Butler could make out, the lead cows and the riders at the sides and behind them nothing but a long, thick, creeping worm of lava dust. Here, looking back, a man could almost believe the leaders pulled the worm, as if hitched to it and bound forever to have it on their heels.

  It was hell for men behind, hell for swing and flank and double hell for drag, and the riders would be riding masked by their bandannas but still with dust in mouths and noses, dust in ears and hair, on cheeks and lashes, dust powdered, layered, streaked by tears and slaver, dust in the deep-split lower lips that were better left unlicked.

  Butler put a finger to his own, wishing it would heal, wishing axle grease or bacon grease or a leaf of chewing tobacco would cure it, as some believed before a trial. If anyone complained, the boys said to use the inside lining of an egg, and then they grinned their sore-mouthed grins, for who could come up with an egg? Eggs, States' or plain, were town and city fare, and just the thought of one brought water to a man's mouth and made his split lip worse.

  Well, to hell with hell. They'd seen the bigger part of it and made good time regardless -Camas Creek, Big Wood River and then this lava desert where, back a piece, they'd heard the earth's guts rumbling and sniffed at hot and cold air that its holes let out. To the sinks of Lost River then, to Birch Creek, to Mud Lake and on to Beaver Creek. Fair camps. Poor camps. Heat. Dust. Physic water. But things were all right just the same. Cattle trail-broke. Men in good spirits, cracking jokes, laughing though it hurt, singing to the herd or singing just to be singing, singing songs that stayed in the head, old songs, strange songs, bits of song that rolled around with thought.

  Your grub is bread and bacon

  And coffee black as ink;

  The water is so full of alkali

  It's hardly fit to drink.

  Now, here, upstream on Beaver Creek, he could see the Tetons and the Rockies rising, rising clean and cool and snow-patched, purple in the purple distance. There the worm would die, there on the climb to Monida Pass, and they'd cough up this corruption and breathe air that wasn't two­thirds snot.

  You will never get consumption

  By sleeping on the ground.

  He had to find a place to water and then a place to camp, but before going on he looked back of him again. The mess and bed wagons were rolling up, following the traveled trail from Salt Lake to Montana that they'd struck just north of Mud Lake. Behind them were two distant clouds of dust that he guessed were freighters' wagons or stages. This empty country had a railroad, too, that now and then he spotted, an uncompleted narrow gauge reaching for Montana. The saddle-horse band ranged to the west of the herd, a smaller, paler, not-so-dusty worm. That would be Lat Evans at the tail, hazing them along.

  Butler clucked to his horse. He'd played in luck in rounding up a crew. Carmichael. Stevens. Mexico. Sally. The partners, Drury and Codell. All of them, even the two youngest, Ping and Evans, who tended to pair off because of age, different as they were except for it. Ping for a known fact could spot Evans a half a dozen years or more of rough experience -Texas, up the trail, here and yonder, getting educated fast, too fast maybe for the taste of older men. He'd lost the greenhorn's eagerness to please, like by seeing things to do beyond his set job. Or was it just the greenhorn in Evans? The young wishing? Hard telling. People changed or got changed, by themselves and time or the little godalmighties. Might turn out one way, might another. Anyhow, that Evans sure as hell could ride.

  My love is a rider,

  Wild broncos he breaks . .

  Some day for the fun of it he'd tally all the little god­almighties. The men you met and what came of it. The way cards acted. The weather that could break you. The price of cows. The badger hole that threw your horse and got you tromped to death. The hankering that took you to a chippie that took you for your roll and maybe left a little something to remember her by. The friend you trusted. The way cards acted. Add them up and what did you have?

  All the same, now that he was pressing thirty, he should be putting out some plans. By and by he'd quit this hiring out to others, this buying cows and driving them for men who sat at home and enjoyed the taste of liquor while he got wages and a cracked lip. Take this bunch of unbroke horses that he'd mostly gathered up himself and wouldn't get a dime out of except maybe for a bonus that would last one night in town. He knew where he'd locate there in Texas. Just let those pasteboards act right once!

  Ahead was a good-enough watering place, and it was now late afternoon. Best bring the cattle to the creek and let them get their fill and push on then two miles or more. That way, they'd be ready to bed down and not be water-logy from drinking in the morning. Any damn fool knew that much, but some didn't.

  He stood in his stirrups and twisted around and signaled with his hat and saw a point man answer, his movement like the moving feeler of the dust worm. He watched a little while to see that things were right and then turned back around and tapped his horse, hoping he could find a little grass to put the cattle on. The chances didn't look too good.

  Out of the rolling in his head one of the scraps of song came to his lips, and his horse cocked back an ear to listen.

  Come close to the bar, boys,

  We'll drink all around.

  We'll drink to the pure,

  If any be found . . .

  That would be Fort Benton, not sooner. Camp near a town and not only did the damn town dogs worry the herd but most of the boys, including some of the best ones, got a big thirst on. They did even at trading posts where whiskey mi
ght be alcohol and water flavored with pepper or a plug of tobacco or soap to make the Indians sick and so show them they had drunk the real stuff. The trick was to dodge such places, as he had dodged a post called junction, or to give orders when you couldn't, for whatever good they were. Boys would be boys. Not as you blamed them much. But you had to get a trail herd to Montana before snow closed the mountains. You had to meet a set time. Jubilate when you got there.

  "Just amble to some feed," he said to his horse, and again the horse bent back an ear. "That's all we're needin' now." Just grass and rest. Just grub and easy sleep. The cows were in good shape. They hadn't stampeded even once. They'd made their twelve to fifteen miles a day and maybe even gained a little flesh. And they had cost per head just fifteen dollars!

  He was a Texas man, and Texans stuck up for the long­horns, but they were wrong. These Oregon cows, these hefty reds and roans were better. Carried more tallow, had more sense, handled quieter. Too tame, boys like Ping complained, forgetting how it was to turn a herd that picked the dead of night to run in. On your horse then and after them, to the clatter of horns that you might not see at all, to thunder that rose out of the ground, drowning out the higher thunder that often caused a run. Watch out, hoss, watch out! Watch out for varmint holes and cut banks, watch out for rocks and stumble blocks, else what's left of us is hoof jam!

  It wasn't likely that these cows would ever stampede now, not after being under herd so long and never in a run and quiet-natured to begin with. Around two thousand head of good mixed stuff, of steers and dry cows, plus a wet one. That's what they'd deliver at Fort Benton.

  He could laugh at himself now. Back there he sure had climbed a nightmare, multiplying one calf into a hundred or a thousand and seeing the miles ahead and snow deep on the pass before young legs and anxious mas could cross. One calf? Calves? The Territory of Montana? He knew it for a crazy notion then, but still he couldn't shake it.