Monte Walsh

by Jack Schaefer

  "Oh-h-h, you know what I mean. You're getting to be a real successful man and I'm proud of you, you know I am, and just last week they made you a director of the bank and ... and ... and you know how it is, he comes here and everything's all upset while he's here and you don't get much of anything done and after he's gone you're restless for weeks and can't really settle down to your business. And what is he anyway? He's just getting to be an old saddle bum who looks older than he is and smells of liquor half the time and ... and . . . and there you stand right by an open window with air blowing on poor Clark in the bed. I should think you'd have sense enough-"

  The window closed with a sharp snap.

  He sat on the step, still and quiet, and watched the bee moving from spray to spray. It rose for altitude and flew away around the corner of the house.

  "Go on, drift," he said. "That's the best thing us drifters can do." He stretched up and walked around the same corner of the house, limping some, and out into the street and along it toward the plaza. At the corner he saw a small stone where a small boy's shoe and a man's boot had left it. A wry grin showed on his lips and he stepped forward and swung his right foot and sent the stone skipping on out into the plaza. He turned right and moved along and turned right again, in through the big open doorway of the livery stable. He opened the door to the inside office where the loose-jointed man still sat, feet up on the desk. He stepped in and took his gunbelt from a nail in a wall and buckled it around his waist. He picked up his saddle roll and opened the door again.

  "You leaving?" said the man.

  He said nothing, indifferent to or not even aware of the question. He went along the stalls and led out the leggy dun and bridled and saddled stand tied the roll behind the cantle. He swung up and the dun moved forward and he ducked his head a bit and they went out the wide doorway.

  Together the man and the horse, complete in themselves, all that they owned and all that they needed on them and in the saddle roll, jogged steadily along the road out of town, westward, toward the mountains and the river beyond them and the remnants of range land on beyond.

  * * *

  The legend of the Lost Burro Mine very nearly claimed two more victims last week. James Mills and Charles Baxter of this city had obtained what they thought was an authentic old Spanish map and gone into the mountains west of here to search for the alleged mine. On the fourth night something--they believe it was a mountain lion--stampeded their horses. They were unable to find them the next day. They packed what they could carry on their backs, intending to walk out. But by the second day of walking they had lost their way. Four more days they wandered with their food gone and by this time Baxter was very ill from exhaustion and exposure. Mills was preparing, as a last resort, to strike out alone to try and find help when a man came riding up leading their horses.

  A cowboy hunting stray cattle for La Cumbre Cattle Company in that territory had come on their original camp, figured from what was left there what must have happened, searched for and found their horses, and trailed them to their present position.

  "It was a terrifying experience," Mills said yesterday from his home on Third Street where he and Baxter are recovering from their ordeal. "The Lost Burro Mine," he said, "can remain lost as far as we are concerned."

  A Middle-Aged Man

  1906

  HOT WINDS, dry and dispiriting, blew dust along the streets and sent small dust devils whirling to seek out cracks around closed windows and doors to the constant annoyance of harassed housewives. The plaza, that pride of the citizens of Harmony, was no longer a source of proud comment. The flowers in the bed encircling the flagpole had long since shriveled to prickly brown corpses. The clumped bushes in the corners were dejected wilted skeletons. Only the trees, of considerable size now, held to some of their green, but their leaves seemed to rattle in the winds and their thin shade offered little relief from the glare and heat of the sun. There was no water available for such a luxury as public greenery. Even homes had their water rationed by the town water company. The few scant oases of relative freshness on the outskirts marked the holdings of old-fashioned folk who had not yet joined the march of progress and still used deep wells of their own. Drought, that periodic specialty of the south­west, lay prolonged and heavy over the big land.

  The front door of the small sturdy bank building on the southeast corner of the plaza opened and the Honorable Chester A. Rollins stepped out, blinking a bit into the sunlight. The coat of his neat business suit was folded over his left arm and he held his hat in his left hand and his shirt, sleeves rolled up, was open at the neck with his tie ends, untied, hanging limp. The furrows developing in his forehead and the lines around his mouth were deeper than usual and gave his round jowled face a grim discouraged look.

  He raised his right hand and wiped sweat from his forehead under its receding hairline and walked angling across the plaza to the barnlike building of the Rollins Livery Stable. He opened the small door to the musty inside corner office and looked in. "Anything doing?" he said to the gangling loose-jointed man who sat at an old desk with a magazine spread open in front of him.

  "A salesman's got the buggy," said the loose-jointed man. "I gave him old Dolly, figuring she'd take the heat best. He says he won't put her out of a walk." The man pointed at a picture in the magazine. "I been reading here about these Haynes automobiles. You really going to get one?"

  "No," said Chet Rollins. "Not this year. The way things are going right now I couldn't even buy a bicycle."

  "So you didn't do so well over at the bank," said the loose­jointed man.

  "No," said Chet. "I didn't."

  "And you a director," said the man.

  "That's just it," said Chet. A grim little smile flicked on his face. "When we checked all the figures, how deep I'm in already, I voted against myself." He started to close the door.

  "Hey," said the loose-jointed man. "If you ever do get one of the things, what'll you run it with?"

  "What it takes," said Chet. "Gasoline."

  "I mean where'll you get the stuff?"

  "Stock it right here," said Chet. "Add that as another line. More people'll be getting the things." He wiped his right hand across his forehead again. "That is, if we don't all go bankrupt in the meantime." He closed the door and walked to the much newer two-story building next door to the Rollins Feed Store and in through the wide open doorway. The dim interior of the first floor, a dirt roadway straight through to another wide open doorway at the back with low wooden platforms running along the two sides, seemed almost empty. A few scant piles of baled hay on the left side, a few piles of bags of grain and milled and mixed feed on the right side. Near the back end of the inside roadway stood an empty flatbed wagon with a patient drooping team in the harness. On the right side platform a short heavyset man in overalls was sacking grain from a bin, weighing the bags on a balancing scale.

  Chet walked past the front stairs on the left which led up to the front offices rented to a land development company, a surveyor, and Harmony's latest young lawyer. He pulled himself by a post up on the right side platform, waited till the heavyset man tied the bag on the scales and lifted it off, then stepped onto the scales himself. He reached to lay his hat and coat on a pile of bags, then juggled the weights until the lever arm fluttered in balance. He emitted a small groan and loosened his belt a notch. "I'll be running out of belt soon," he said to no one in particular. He stepped off the scales, picked up his hat and coat, turned to the heavyset man. "Hey, Sam," he said. "Is that Harvey Kneale's rig?"

  "Yeah. He's upstairs waiting for you."

  Chet started to jump down from the platform, thought better of that, walked to the three steps down, crossed the roadway, went up the three steps to the left side platform and on up the back stairs and opened the door at the top into his private business quarters. A single large office, neat and clean and businesslike. A calendar and a few framed pictures of Harmony worthies with appropriate inscriptions and a chart of the town and i
mmediate environs on the walls. Four reasonably comfortable side-armed chairs for visitors, two on each side of a table on which was a neat stack of newspapers and several magazines. A hat tree in a corner. Two wooden filing cabinets. A small bookcase containing an assortment of catalogues. A still-new flattop desk with a padded swivel chair behind it. An office obviously dedicated to businesslike business. Except perhaps for two possibly distracting touches. The window near the desk was big, the biggest yet installed in town, and the desk was so placed that anyone sitting at it, with a slight swing of the swivel chair, could look out over the roof of the house across the alleyway behind the building, on over the roofs of other houses beyond, on past the last marring patch of the growing town into the great open indifferent spaces of the big land. And in the corner opposite the hat tree four incongruous objects hung in a row from wooden pegs: a limp coil of old hemp rope, a pair of battered old spurs, a worn gunbelt with the nicked handgrip of an old .45 showing from the holster, a rusting Slash Y branding iron.

  Chet nodded to a hunch-shouldered long-jawed man in dusty range clothes who sat on one of the chairs by the table, big hat off and on the table. He walked to the hat tree and hung his own hat and coat on it and pulled off his tie with a savage little jerk and hung it too. He walked around behind the desk and eased down into the swivel chair and opened the middle drawer and took out an old stubby pipe and began to fill it from a small leather pouch.

  The long-jawed man rose, picked up his chair, carried it over by the desk, set it down, hunched into it. The two men looked at each other.

  "I reckon you know why I'm here," said the long-jawed man.

  "I can guess," said Chet, striking a match, lighting the pipe.

  "I been everywhere," said the long-jawed man. "I've wore out my backside traipsing around. There ain't any grass anywheres. Not that I can get. I got to keep on feeding."

  Chet sighed. He rose and went around the desk to the filing cabinets, pulled out a drawer, hunted a bit, took out a folder. He came back to his desk, eased down, started to open the folder.

  "Don't bother," said the long-jawed man. "I know the figures well as you do. Maybe better. I stay awake nights thinking of 'em. I know you been giving me a discount too. Don't think I ever thanked you proper on that."

  Chet sighed again. He struck another match and was busy with the pipe.

  "I got to keep on feeding," said the long-jawed man. "Or sell for what I can get. An' you know what that means the way things are. Wiped out." He looked down at the floor. "Back where I was five years ago." He looked up. "No sense beating around the bush. This dry spell's got to break sometime. Maybe you could keep me going for one more month." He looked down at the floor again, interest apparently focused on the toe of one boot. "Two weeks anyway," he said.

  Chet raised his right hand and wiped sweat from his forehead. He stared at the folder on the desk, unable to look at the other man. The lines of his face hardened. "No," he said, flat, tired. "I can't do it. I can't get any more credit either." He frowned at the folder and poked a finger at it and his voice tightened, bitter. "I'm carrying half the whole goddamned county as it is. The bank's been carrying me. One in Albuquerque's been carrying our bank. There's an end to it. Everything's stretched to the limit."

  Silence in the neat office dedicated to businesslike business.

  "That final?" said the long-jawed man.

  "You think I like it?" said Chet, sharp. "You think I get anything out of turning you down? Headaches, that's what I get, saying no all the time. That's it."

  "Don't fret yourself," said the long-jawed man gently. "I knew before I come it'd likely be that way. Felt I owed myself one last try." He stood up and stretched a bit. "I been busted before," he said. "You think I don't know you been carrying me longer'n you had any right to?" He hunched down into the chair again, unwilling to leave without some gesture of understanding, of friendship enduring past defeat. He looked around the room and saw the four odd items hanging from their wooden pegs. "Never noticed them things before," he said. "Never thought of it but maybe you've worked cows too."

  "Yes," said Chet, easing some. "I rode my share once."

  "Sure you did. I should of known." The long-jawed man leaned back in his chair. "Reminds me of something I saw last week. Some reason it sticks with me. Maybe you'd of liked seeing it. I was way over past Magdalena looking for grass an' I come on an outfit that was cutting back on its hosses to only what they could get by with. Save what grass they had for the cows. They'd rounded up all the hosses they had extra, including some that'd been running loose for quite a time. Was planning to work 'em over in the morning an' see what was worth saving. There was-- But maybe you're busy. Got things to do."

  "No," said Chet, settling back in the swivel chair. "I haven't a thing to do except sit here trying not to think how much I owe the bank."

  "Yeah. An' how much the rest of us owe you. But quit that. It won't do no good. Well, like I was saying they had them hosses gathered an' some mean ones in there too an' there was this man that'd come drifting in sometime along the afternoon an' hung around for a meal an' he'd seen what was doing an' he'd said if they didn't mind why he'd just stick around a while an' maybe help out some with the riding. The men there they was young mostly an' they thought they was good the way young ones get to thinking nowadays an' they liked to fancy themselves up with fancy-priced gear, like I say, the way young ones're apt to these days, an' they didn't know just how to take him, being as he was older an' didn't look like too much to them. They wasn't mean, just young an' full of good opinions of themselves, an' they figured to take him as a kind of a joke an' they joshed him plenty an' he didn't pay them much mind at all, just went about his business of bedding down with a patched old bedroll the kind I ain't seen in years back of the bunkhouse. They kept on batting it among themselves, calling him dad an' even granddad an' old round legs an' things like that an' saying likely he couldn't last even two minutes on any old plug that really kicked up its heels a few times an' you know, I was getting a mite peeved myself 'cause I ain't so young too any more but I can still straddle a hoss or two like I bet maybe you can too. I stayed on the night 'cause I figured it might be interesting. I'd had a look at him an' them young ones was right, he wasn't much to look at, not casual-like an' quick an' not expecting much. He could of been just a saddle tramp drifting around an' he had a bad cough now an' again. But I'd seen him move, quiet an' easy an' putting each foot down like it knew right where it was going, an' if you looked close he wasn't so old as he looked, maybe not much more'n you there yourself, only beat-up and hammered around by hard living. Minded me somehow of some of them oldtime trail hands I knew back when I had my own first boots. He did look kind of worn-out in oldtime gear about gone through in places. But I had me the feeling there was still plenty man left inside them old things. Like I say, I stayed the night an' then come morning. . .

  The sun rose strong and clear over the burnt brown grasses of the parched land. All of the men of the outfit were there and with them some from other ranches, drawn by word of the day's doings. Breakfast and the first-rising horseplay and joshing were over, out of the way. Most of the men sat on top rails of the smaller of the two adjoining corrals, ready for turns in the saddle. The foreman sat leaning against the tall post from which hung the outer gate, closed now, and a tally book and a pencil showed jutting from his shirt pocket. Twenty feet away by a corner post, shoulders slumped and feet hooked behind the second rail down, sat a middle-aged man, worn and nondescript from battered hat to scarred old boots.

  Beyond, in the larger corral, thirty-three horses moved restlessly, aware of the annoyance coming, and among them, proud and powerful, seeming to tower above most of the others, moved a raw rough long-legged hammerheaded big bay. Two men, mounted, rode through them, cutting out the first batch of four.

  Someone opened the gate between the two corrals and the first four were driven through and the gate closed. Ropes swirled and men moved warily and two of the fou
r were bridled and saddled.

  "Now take it easy," said the foreman. "We're not aiming at exhibitions, just to see how they behave. They've all been broke at one time or another."

  "Hey there, Dad!" called one of the men. "You going to show us on one of these?"

  The middle-aged man shook his head. He shifted a quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other. "Kid horses," he said.

  Laughter rose around the rails. "Ain't he a wise one," said a young voice. "Bet he'll find an excuse every time."

  The middle-aged man might not have heard. He sat, still and quiet, watching the proceedings from under the pulled­down brim of his battered hat.

  The two horses were ridden, nothing much past snortings and a few mild crow-hops, and the foreman wrote in his tally book and the two were led away through the outer gate and the other two prepared. The sun arched higher, warming toward the heat of the day, and the work moved along, four horses driven into the smaller corral at a time, and there were some flurries of real action, brief but fast, and the men, intent on the work, forgot the middle-aged man on the top rail by the corner post and he sat there, still and quiet, occasionally spitting tobacco juice into the dust below him, and watched the proceedings from under the brim of his hat.

  A small nervous roan was being saddled. It sidled away, flinching, uneasy. The middle-aged man straightened a bit on his rail. "Stay off that one," he said, voice striking out into the corral. "You want to ruin him? Split hoof."

  "Keep your nose out of this, Granddad," said the man, trying to fasten the cinch.

  "Wait a minute," said the foreman. "Take a look."

  The roan was held, firm, and one man warily inspected its feet. The right forehoof was broken in front, cracked under up to the frog.

  "You sure got sharp eyes, Dad," this one called out cheerfully.