“Oh, yes.” She let go of my hand and turned to walk into the store. Her single braid, sun-streaked, swayed as she moved. She slowed, made a partial turn, and said, “Good luck on roundup. Be careful.”
I touched my hat brim. “The same to you. Good luck.” I thought there was something purposeful in the way she told me to be careful, but I knew there were plenty of dangers in fall roundup—frost, snow, cold rain, and slippery ground for a horse to take a spill.
My gaze traveled past her as she disappeared into the store. Fifty feet away, leaning against the door jamb of The Missouri Primrose, Boots Larose slouched with a cigarette in his mouth. As I paused to observe him, he took a drag on the cigarette, flicked the butt into the street, stood up in a pose of tall boots and yellow-handled six-gun, and strode into the saloon.
Dunbar and I were greasing the wagon axles outside the barn when Bob Crenshaw and George Olney led their saddled horses into the open and made ready to mount up. They had stayed at the ranch all the time that Dunbar, Dan, and I had worked on the corral project, and Lou Foster was giving them a day off before we all went out on fall roundup.
George said, “We’re gonna see how Bob’s beezer holds up until I can get him into a cool, shady barroom.”
Bob smiled and gave a dip of the head, then rubbed his red nose with his handkerchief. “There’s dust and sagebrush everywhere I go, but as soon as we get some cold weather, I’ll be better.”
Dunbar stood with a smear of dark axle grease on his fingers. “I’m never in a hurry for time to pass. Life goes by fast enough as it is. Old folks say the longer you live, the faster it goes. So for your sake, I’ll hope that the cold weather comes early. For the sake of us workin’ cattle, I wouldn’t mind warm, clear weather through the season till we ship the steers.”
“Thanks,” said Bob. “Even cool weather helps.”
“Enjoy yourselves in town,” I said.
George paused as he turned out his stirrup. “I hope there’s no trouble. At first, I was jealous of you two because you got to go to town and we didn’t. But I sure don’t like the sounds of what happened.”
Dunbar rubbed his thumb against his two smudgy fingers. “It’s no good. But I don’t think a fellow would be in danger unless he let on that he knew something about what happened to Bill Pearson or the old horse trader years ago. Just a thought.”
“Well, I don’t know nothin’ to begin with.” George grabbed his saddle horn with both hands and pulled himself up and into the saddle.
Bob sniffled and said, “Neither do I. I don’t talk about things I don’t know anything about, and I don’t ask questions.”
I thought that was a good way to stay out of trouble. At the same time, I thought that keeping to oneself and not asking questions made it easier for someone else to get away with murder, as Mrs. Pearson had said. Rather than open up on that topic any more, I said, “If you happen to run into Boots Larose, you might want to tread light.”
“What’s with him?” asked George as he evened out his reins.
“He seems to be developing some kind of a grudge against Dunbar and me, and he might want to drag you into a conversation.”
“Ha. Is he still sore about the boxing contest we had?”
“That and more,” I said. “I’m not trying to tell you who to talk to or what to say. Just a word or two that he’s got a chip on his shoulder.”
“We’ll go light with him. Ready, Bob?”
“Sure thing.” Bob mounted up and fell into place alongside George. Their horses picked up their feet, and the two cowhands took off for town.
Dunbar and I went back to work at getting the roundup wagon ready. We filled the water kegs and jugs, tied a stout tent pole onto each side of the wagon, and rolled out the canvas to check it for rips, tears, and mouse holes. The chuck box was clean from recent use and was ready to go. With everything in order, we moved to the bunkhouse, where we had a few hours of grinding coffee ahead of us.
Dunbar and I had finished washing the dishes and were sitting in the lamplight at the bunkhouse table. He was reading a newspaper, and I was reading a book.
“What’s that you’re engrossed in?” he asked.
“It’s called The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“How do you come to be reading that?”
“Well, I thought I should be reading something, and I found it in a box of stuff tucked under one of the cots. It’s in good condition. Not all the pages are cut. It looks like someone started it and didn’t finish it.”
“How do you like it?”
“It’s something different for me.”
“It’s not James Fenimore Cooper, that’s for sure.”
“Or Treasure Island, either. It’s hard to believe that the same author wrote both of them. But that was the reason I decided to read this one.”
“It would be a surprise, all right. You get to expecting something similar when you pick up another book by the same author.”
“Up until now.” I reflected on some of our earlier conversations. “Is there an author you have as a favorite?”
“I can’t say that I have one to the exclusion of another. I can take ’em dead serious, like Thomas Hardy, or I can take a mixture of sentimentality and peculiarity, like Charles Dickens.”
I said, “I’ve read Oliver Twist, but I don’t know Thomas Hardy.”
“Gloomy stuff. Not Gothic, like Jekyll and Hyde or Frankenstein, but pessimistic. Tragedy in the provinces.”
“Where everyone ends up miserable.”
“That’s right.”
I was amused once again by how cheery he became when we talked about morbid topics. “Anything good in the newspaper?” I asked. “Any hangings?”
Dunbar winced. “Not in this edition, I’m glad to say. I’m not as fond of those things in real life, close to home.”
Dan sat at the end of the table when he was done putting away the pots and pans. He said, “Enjoy the comfort, boys. You’ll miss it when we’re out on the range and the weather turns wet and cold.”
I said, “That’s not the only thing I’m dreading. I don’t look forward to another three or four weeks in the company of Crowley’s men.”
“It’s just part of the work,” said Dan. “You can’t expect to like everyone when you get a bunch of men like that together.”
Dunbar smoothed out the newspaper on the table. “What about Crowley?”
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll be there very much. He leaves most of the work to his men.”
“He does make himself scarce,” said Dunbar. “He’s not easy to get to know.”
Dan raised his eyebrows. “It’s hard to tell what’s there. He keeps to himself. Never been married, as far as I know. He doesn’t socialize. Doesn’t drink.”
“Oh.”
“I think you could say he’s pretty guarded. One of those fellows who’s afraid that if he has a drink or two, he’ll let something slip about what he’s really like. Like some men who come from a low way of life, and don’t want anyone to know it. My old man used to say, never trust a man who doesn’t drink.” Dan laughed. “Then he’d add, never trust a man who does, either.”
A haze of smoke hung in the morning lamplight in the bunkhouse, and the air was heavy from the heat of the cook-stove, the aroma of fried bacon and potatoes, and the fumes from the kerosene lantern. Bob was drinking his fourth cup of coffee, but it didn’t seem to be doing him much good. His eyes were swollen and watery, and his face was flushed. He dabbed at his nose with his handkerchief every ten or fifteen seconds.
Lou took a puff on his cigarette. “You don’t look so good, Bob. How much beer did you drink?”
“Not that much, but I think it might have made things worse. We rode through a lot of sagebrush, and just about every weed in the world is ripe right now.”
Dunbar said, “The atmosphere in general is heavier at this time of year. As far as that goes, it might help the air in here if we opened a door.”
“
Go ahead,” said Dan. “It’s not that cold outside.”
Dunbar rose from his seat, crossed the room, and opened the front door.
Lou said, “Bob, I think you’d better stay inside today. Help Dan with anything he needs. Bard can ride out with George.”
The sunrise was casting a yellow glow against the light blue sky in the east when we rode out of the ranch. I was riding a speckled gray horse from my string, and I was keeping alert to see if he was going to try to step out from under me.
As soon as we were well out of earshot, George began plying me with questions about Dunbar—who he was, where he came from, what kind of a past he had, and whether he had a tendency to thump other men.
Because I didn’t know much about Dunbar, I found it easy to give minimal answers. In response to the last question, I said, “You must have heard some talk about him in town.”
“I heard he beat the tar out of Boots Larose for sayin’ somethin’ about a woman.”
“I was there. He hit him only once. You know how stories are. The more they get told, the more they grow.”
“Ain’t that the truth?”
We split up on our ride, went out on a circular pattern, and met as planned. One thing we were supposed to be on the lookout for was any stock with Bill Pearson’s brand. I didn’t see any, and George said he didn’t, either.
On my second circle, I rode past the Pearson homestead. It looked the same as it did the day Dunbar and I stopped by almost three weeks earlier, with the exception that it seemed even more forlorn. The door of the house was still tied shut with a piece of telegraph wire, and a low ridge of blow sand had gathered on the doorsill. Not a bird or rabbit was in sight, and only a few chicken feathers were caught in the weeds along the corral.
When I met up with George again, the sun was climbing high and heating up the day. I said, “We’re not far from Blue Wolf Spring. It wouldn’t hurt to water our horses.”
George agreed, so we took the fifteen-minute detour. As we approached the spring, it had the same appearance as always. The low clay bluffs, narrow canyon, cropped chokecherry trees, and pocked damp earth all appeared as before. The scene gave me the feeling that the land remained constant, in spite of whatever malice men carried with them as they traveled over it. I imagined Ainsworth and Larose out on the range somewhere, devising their next move against Dunbar and perhaps me.
We loosened our cinches and let the horses drink. While George rolled a cigarette and smoked it, I observed the area around us with its cow pies, bleached bones, and old foundation stones. I wondered if the ghost of Alex Garrison haunted the place. I thought that if it did, it did not bear any ill will to the likes of us.
We tightened our cinches and mounted up. The speckled gray horse was not giving me any trouble, and I thought the ride had done a good job of wearing him down a little. George’s brown horse was sweating as well. The sun had climbed high enough that we decided to meander back to the ranch instead of trying to fit in another loop.
As we rode along, the heat of the sun reflected from the ground, and it seemed held down by the heavy air above. For miles around, not a tree was in sight—only small hills and bluffs here and there. We veered straight south to go around the back side of one low bluff, and out of habit I drew rein before I rode out into the open.
Off to the right a quarter of a mile, where the land sloped down to a trail that ran in a north-south direction, a buckboard rolled along, pulled by two dark horses. Two men sat on the seat, and I saw in an instant that the taller one, dressed in light-colored clothes and hat, was Borden Crowley.
A minute later, I identified the man handling the reins as Fred Mullet. I imagined he was driving the boss to town to stock up on provisions for roundup, and as before, I pictured Larose and Ainsworth off on their own, hatching a plan.
For the moment, I thought it was just as well not to show ourselves. I believed we were still on Crowley’s land, and although no one would begrudge us for watering our horses at a spring on his property, I did not know how touchy he would be. So I signaled to George to hang back and be quiet. We dismounted and held our reins. I put my hand over the nose of the speckled gray horse.
As the wagon moved closer, voices rose on the air. Crowley’s voice had a tone of anger, and Mullet’s answers were short and muffled. George and I looked at each other and waited.
A minute later, Crowley’s voice became more audible. “You’re just a stupid son of a bitch! You never know when to keep your mouth shut. Why don’t you learn somethin’? You gonna be a jackass all your life?”
I could not pick out the mumbled response.
Crowley’s voice cut the air. “Don’t make me mad, you idiot! You’ve got to be the dumbest ass in the world. Whose business is it, anyway?”
The sounds of the horses and the wagon wheels subsided enough for me to hear Mullet say, “I didn’t think it would do any harm.”
“You didn’t think! That’s your problem! You don’t think! You make me so damn mad I could choke you!” Crowley held a kind of walking stick upright between his knees, and he pounded it on the floor of the buckboard. “Stop this wagon!” he hollered.
The wagon halted, out in the middle of an empty rangeland.
“Now get out!”
“What for?”
“Get down!”
I could see Mullet’s frowning face as he said, “Why?”
Crowley’s voice rose even louder. “Because I said so!”
Mullet handed him the reins and climbed down. “Now what am I supposed to do?”
“I don’t care! You can stand there for the rest of your life, or you can walk back to the ranch.”
Mullet stood without speaking.
Crowley shook the reins, and the wagon moved forward. It did not go ten yards before it stopped. Crowley turned in the seat, using the stick to steady himself.
“Don’t be a fool! Are you going to stand there like an idiot?”
“I don’t know what you want me to do.”
“Get up here and drive this wagon. Just keep your mouth shut the rest of the way to town, and don’t make me mad.”
“Yes, sir.”
George and I exchanged another glance. The wagon creaked as Mullet climbed aboard, and a few seconds later it rolled away.
George told the story about Crowley and Mullet that same day at noon dinner. Gossip being a main stock in trade with him, he wouldn’t have been able to keep it in much longer. When he finished the story, he said, “I’ve seen men fly into a fit like that and not make any sense. My old man was like that, but he was drunk when he did it. This was in the middle of the day, and from what I’ve heard, Crowley doesn’t drink.”
Lou Foster said, “He doesn’t.”
Dan whacked the wooden spoon on the lip of the pot of beans. “It’s the vapors. They get to some people. Rise up from down in the guts and work their way up to the brain.”
George shook his head. “Well, I’m glad I don’t work for him.”
The sun was making its fast drop at the end of the afternoon, casting an orange glow in the western sky. Dunbar and I were sitting outside the bunkhouse and waiting for the supper bell to ring. Dan had made biscuits, and even though he had the front and the back door open, the air inside was stifling. I was making my way through a few pages of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dunbar was reading another old newspaper he had found. Not far from where we sat, Bob and George were playing a game of checkers on a board they balanced on their laps.
The sound of horse hooves on dry ground caused all four of us to look up. Boots Larose rode into the ranch yard by himself, sitting straight up on a bright sorrel horse with a white blaze and four white socks. Larose himself wore his tall, dark brown boots with mule-ear tabs, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he had stopped a quarter-mile back to shine them.
He rode past the bunkhouse without looking our way, much less waving. He rode up to the ranch house, dismounted, tied his horse, and knocked on the door.
&
nbsp; Lou Foster appeared at the doorway, and after a brief exchange, he took the small envelope that Larose handed him. I assumed it had to do with the upcoming roundup, as they both acted as if the exchange was routine and expected.
With no further ceremony, Larose returned to his horse, taking long and definite strides that made his spurs jingle. He pulled the reins loose from the hitching rail, flicked them into place, and sprang up into the saddle. I thought he would rein the horse around, but he gigged it straight ahead and rode out of the ranch yard at the far end, past the cookshack end of the bunkhouse. I imagined he went that way so he wouldn’t have to ride past the four of us again.
The maneuver was not lost on George and Bob. They both looked up and stared.
George twisted his mouth and said, “Boots must be in a hurry.”
I thought I detected a dry tone as I recalled our conversation from earlier in the day.
“It’s all right,” said Dunbar. “We’ll have plenty of time for fellowship in the next few weeks.”
“Just as well. He won’t be comin’ to us and wantin’ to stay in our tent when the rain starts drizzlin’. Or yours, either. I guess I shouldn’t say that, but it seems to me that Boots isn’t as friendly as he used to be.”
Bob sniffed and ran the sleeve of his shirt across his nose. “It’s the company he keeps.”
A picture of Dick Ainsworth rose in my mind, with his tight presence and hard stare. Cold, wet weather and slippery ground would be bad enough in the coming weeks, and the prospect of fellowship, as Dunbar put it, made for another kind of dark cloud.
CHAPTER TWELVE
At our first roundup camp, I helped set up the tent off the end of the chuck wagon. The afternoon was warm without much of a breeze, but Dan wanted to show the new night wrangler the routine of setting up the canopy, so I helped.
I was glad not to have the job of night wrangler this time. It was the lowest job on the roundup crew. Not only did the nighthawk have to watch the horse herd, but in the daytime, he had to help the cook move camp and set up. He also had to fetch water and firewood. For sleep, he grabbed what bits of time he could find. The job was ragged enough during spring roundup, but in the fall, the nights were longer and colder, which meant that the snatches of rest were shorter and colder.
Dusk Along the Niobrara Page 15