Riders of Judgment

by Frederick Manfred

  “I know, Dale. I was wrong, Dale. Thank God I could still save him.”

  “Thank God, yes!”

  “I’m that sorry, Dale. I am.”

  “Ohhh… forget it.”

  Outrage slowly drained from Dale’s face. With a toss of his head Dale threw back wild dark hair. And presently, as was usual with him, sulk set in and Dale’s lower lip came out.

  Dale said, “Wait’ll Rory hears about this one. The hell I’ll catch. She’s already got her stickers out for me.”

  Joey stirred. “Paw?”

  Dale looked down at the boy in his arms. “How do you feel, button?”

  “I dunno yet.”

  “Can’t you tell me how you feel, Joey my son boy?”

  “I dunno.” Joey sighed out of the depths of his little belly.“Well, I guess I feel worse all over than anywheres else.”

  Dale coughed a half-laugh half-sob. “Oh, God, Rory will spot them soppy clothes immediate.”

  Cain said, “I’ll tell her. I’m the one to blame.”

  But when they went in to tell her, Rory surprised them. One look and she shoved pot and pan to the back of the stove and took the wet half-drowned boy away from Dale and put him to bed for a while in a dry nightgown.

  Cain

  The coyotes were yowling from the alkali hills by the time the men had washed up. The men hung their guns and hats on the deerhorn rack behind the log door and sat down to Rory’s supper.

  It was a good supper too. Just as Cain expected, Rory had fried the bighorn meat deep in fat, so that it fell apart at the least touch of the fork while yet retaining in its tender succulent strings all of its mountain-grass savor. She had quick made some flour gravy from some of the meat juice, and the gravy poured over baking-powder biscuits was enough to make a man forget miles of hard riding. She had also boiled some spuds and baked a mess of beans and fried some onion rings. Cain and Dale asked for and got a fresh raw onion each, which they called “skunk eggs” and ate like apples. There was also canned milk for coffee.

  The table stood in the center of the big room. Dale sat at the head, near the fireplace. Rory sat across from him, near the hot cast-iron range and the counter on the food cabinet. Cain sat on Rory’s right, facing the door, while across from him sat Joey and Gram Hammett, Joey next to Dale and Gram next to Rory.

  The room was a large one, serving as kitchen and dining room and parlor all in one. A Seth Thomas clock hung high over the mantelpiece, festooned with old dried pussywillows. Slowly it pendulumed the time away. The woodwork on the clock was dark, with intricate carvings of flying horses and angels and arrows cut into it. Two guns hung under the clock, a .38 Winchester and a .45-120 “Old Reliable” Sharps buffalo rifle. To the left of the clock, in a dark frame, hung the wedding license with its flourish of fancy handwriting: “Know all men by these presents that before me on this day was joined in holy matrimony …” On the other side of the clock hung a portrait of Gramp and Gram Hammett, Gram seated on a love seat with a pinched smile on her lips and a baffled look in her eyes, and bullnecked Gramp standing behind her just barely hiding a triumphant smile under his handle-bar mustache. On the mantel itself, just below the clock, stood the favorite family knickknacks: a pot of Wandering Jew, a copper dinner bell, an old-style cut-glass decanter, a cup of lead shot for pen cleaning, a fat gold watch with a key for winding attached to its chain. Fresh logs lay piled on the andirons in the hearth, waiting for the first cold day of fall ahead. A poker shaped like a devil’s fork and a small shovel leaned against the bricks. In a far corner stood a high bookcase overflowing with books and magazines: sets of Shakespeare and Dickens, a much worn copy of Ben Hur, a set of religious compendiums, a leather- bound set of the World’s Best Classics, and a complete file of the stockman’s bible, the monthly Stockbreeder—most of them former possessions of Gramp Hammett and all of them well read by every male member of the family. Two worn schoolbooks lay on a side table. They were eloquent testimony that while Joey might be a bit pampered by everybody, he still got his daily schooling from mother. Underfoot dark brown bear rugs covered a puncheon board floor.

  On the table in their midst a flame licked slowly in a saucer of cow tallow. It cast a low mellow almost red-gold light over their faces and hands. It gave the whitewashed walls of squared logs and moss-and-clay chinking the look of plastering done by a professional. It gave a set of bull-elk horns on the wall an almost live look, as if a real bull elk were eavesdropping on their talk. It set up sparkles in the motto on the far wall, making the lettering easy to read:

  Let no stranger leave this house cold or hungry.

  Despite the heat of the day, and the hot stove, the log cabin was cool. There was even the pleasant dampish smell of a cave in it.

  Joey had been roused to eat. He came to the table in his nightgown. After a couple of bites, he began talking his head off, making bright remarks about everything said, sassing Gram, sassing Mom, even offering Dale some sage advice on how to run the sheep ranch.

  “Say, Paw, don’t you think we oughter put a better lid on that wellhead? With some regular iron hinges from Antelope? Like Lord Peter’s got on his fancy well?”

  “We could,” Dale said from the head of the table.

  “And put a sign on it so everybody kin read it.” With only his head and thick neck visible Joey looked a ten-year-old. “And keep it the hell closed.”

  “We could,” Dale said into his meat.

  Rory said from her end of the table, “That’s enough now with that rough talk, Joey. Little boys should be seen not heard when there’s older company present.”

  Joey chirped on as if he hadn’t heard her. “Next time I’m gonna wait till Unk’s got it closed afore I—”

  “Shut up!” Rory snapped. “Next time. Next time. You’re always bright after the fact. Like your father.” In the tallow lamplight, under her gold-blond hair, Rory’s dark blue eyes, even the swollen one, took on the black glitter of shoe buttons.

  Gram looked up from where she was munching on a biscuit with toothless gums. She had hair that was as stringy and as coarse as white horsetail. Her face resembled a hearth with the ashes taken out. She had hands like reversed oak roots. She spoke in a dry leathery voice. “Better listen to your mom, sonny, or as sure as Old Johnny God is in His heavens, I’ll get hell for it again.” As she talked bits of biscuit crumbled out of her mouth.

  Rory said, quiet, eyes dark dots in the low light, “Well, Gram, you sometimes do indulge him too much.”

  Joey said, “Gram, you mustn’t talk with food in your mouth. Yore spittin’ in my face and it ain’t perlite.”

  “Hey now,” Dale warned. “Respect for your greatgram now please.”

  Gram laughed, gums showing clay-pink. Her cheeks wrinkled up like old kidskin. “It’s all right, sonny.” Her old rheumy eyes gleamed. “The days pass by, your blood changes, and gradually you forget.”

  Rory said, “Gram, it is your fault he talks like that.” Rory picked up a white bowl heaped with spuds and passed it around for a second time. “If you’d slap him now and then, he wouldn’t dare talk back to you. Fear makes love, you know. Like Gramp used to say.”

  The laugh vanished from Gram’s old face. “Creation alive and mercy me,” Gram murmured to herself, as her eyes slowly filled with tears, “I can’t slap the boy. Never. Little boys are old so soon.”

  “What’s that got to do with it?” Dale asked, accepting a bowl of gravy from Cain. “If he’s bad he’s bad and ought to be walloped.”

  “Oh, what’s the use a talking to her,” Rory said. “A person is just barking at a knot telling her to quit spoilin’ the boy.”

  Gram hardened up at that She asked snappish, “A knot, is it? And when have I been spoilin’ him?”

  “Oh, Lord, Gram, let’s not go into that again.”

  Gram pushed her old face forward. For a moment she looked sixty instead of eighty. “When? When? You tell me. You spoilbutt yourself you!”

  “Just yesterday,
if you must know.”

  “I did not.”

  “Why, you did too! You gave him them dried apples I was saving for a Sunday pie. When you thought I wasn’t looking.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did.”

  “I did not. Did I, Joey?”

  Joey gave them both a pair of big blue eyes; then turned his gold head a little and gave Cain a sly wink.

  Rory got mad then. “You see? You see how she lies, Dale? And you see what the boy does then? Even winks, he does. The little dickens.”

  “Aw, Rory,” Dale started to say, “now—”

  “But I saw her give them to him with my own eyes. That’s how she lies. Right under my nose even. If that boy don’t grow up an outlaw, it’ll be a miracle to me.” Rory shook her head sadly. She was flushed from the stove and the argument both. “Just a spoiled and pompered child, that’s what he is.”

  Gram helped herself to some baked beans. She munched on a few, mouth open. She swallowed noisily. “Never saw such funny beans. Spots on them like that. Look like one-eyed bugs. Never saw such beans with spots on ’em like that. Black.”

  “They grow that way,” Rory said icily.

  “Good, though,” Gram said, again spraying food over the table in front of her.

  “Gram,” Joey said, making a show of wiping off his face with a finger, “please don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  “Oh, yes indeedy. I forgot again.”

  Rory said to Cain, careful to keep her swollen eye out of Cain’s line of vision, “See if you can make that little wetnose shut up and behave.”

  Cain’s heavy brows came up; then came down. He’d been eating quietly to himself, determined to keep out of an augering match with his brother Dale and cousin Rory. Two sets of black eyes were enough. Besides, he was one of those who hated talk at the table. Cowboys on the trail rarely talked while they ate. He held his peace.

  Rory flashed her one good eye at him. “Well?”

  Cain looked across at Joey. Shortening up the lad’s stake rope would probably be a good idea at that. But he’d be damned if he said so as long as the boy wasn’t his. He loaded up his fork with potatoes and inserted the food beneath his mustache.

  Gram said, “Never saw such beans. Must be a new invenshun. Got a spot like a one-eyed bug. Good, though.”

  Rory hated all bugs—bedbugs, fleas, ticks, box-elders—and Gram’s talk gave her a pain. “Oh, shut up about that once, will you, for heaven’s sake!”

  Joey said, “You can shut up for me too. I’m about as tired of it as anybody.”

  Dale finally reared up and hit Joey one over the head.

  Cain looked on astonished. Not an hour before Dale had given him, Cain, the devil for being careless with the boy around the well.

  Dale caught the accusing look in Cain’s eyes. “A few doses like that will cure him of sucking eggs, acting smart interrupting folks.”

  Gram said, “Never saw such beans. Got a spot like a bug. Good, though.”

  “Please, for godsakes, shut up about those beans, will you please?” Rory said.

  Cain quick hid his eyes, staring down at his gravy-streaked plate. It hurt him to look at Gram, to look at departed and fallen grandeur. The wonderful Gram he remembered from back in the old days when they still lived in Siouxland; the Gram who with Gramp raised him and Harry and Dale and Rory; the fierce old lady who goaded Gramp Hammett to start over again by moving into another state; the Gram who in her earthy wisdom took a bucket of Siouxland angleworms with her and planted them in the garden behind the house; the Gram who gloried with Gramp when he came up with a successful breed of cattle by crossing Hereford with Longhorn; the dignified lady who instructed them as to why they should be proud they had Hammett blood in their veins… well, here this Gram sat now across from him, mostly an appetite caught in a sack, a few chalk-brittle bones holding it up, decked over with coarse white hair and wrinkled kid-leather skin.

  Raising his eyes, he saw that Gram had slipped into one of her cries again. What kind of memory tickled that old unraveling brain now? A vision of Gramp rampant beside his hearth? A fleeting vision of her own lost virginal beauty?

  Off to one edge of his vision, Cain felt, almost saw, Rory’s dark eyes on him, wondering what he was thinking about. It occurred to Cain that a glimpse of a person caught off to one side of the eye revealed more than a head-on look. For one thing, the other person, not knowing he or she was caught in the vision, let the animal inside look out. For another, one’s own animal seemed to see better. At the moment, he could read Rory’s thoughts better than she could read his. And what he saw there bothered him.

  Gram was saying something. Cain cocked an ear.

  “Nobody thinks about me any more. Not even Old Johnny God. Or He would’ve long ago took me up in heaven with Him. Why don’t He take me? I’m ready. I’ve been ready for twenty years. Ae, terrible it is to get old in old age. One hardly knows oneself any more. With nothing to do but sit on one’s one-spot all day, waiting for the ashes to go out. Ae, terrible it is.”

  Cain cleared his throat heavily. His blunt face was almost black in the candlelight.“Now, Gram, you know we all love you.”

  “Love me. Hmmph! In a pig’s eye you do.” Tears wimmered in Gram’s milky marble eyes. “You’re all just waitin’ for me to go. Watchin’.”

  Cain sucked at a bit of meat caught in a tooth. The grimace gave him a grave reflective look.

  The others looked down at their plates.

  Joey said, “Unk, you stayin’ over for the night?”

  Cain fitted on a smile. “I could. Though I ain’t had an invite yet.”

  Joey’s eyes opened. He scratched at an itch inside his white nightgown. “Where you gonna sleep? We ain’t got but two beds.”

  “I’ll probably sleep in the usual place.”

  “On the floor?”

  “Right. With my back for a mattress and my belly for a blanket.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “What!”

  “Why don’t you sleep with Gram once? And let me sleep on your dream-sack.”

  Cain almost choked in his coffee.

  At that Rory shoved back her chair. “Well, I guess it’s time for our treat.”

  Everybody looked up. Even Gram.

  “Betcha it’s homemade ice cream,” Joey said. “When did you make it, Mom?”

  “I bought it the last time we was t’Antelope.”

  Dale’s long head gandered up. “That was over a month ago. Why ain’t we had it before?”

  “We ain’t had us a special occasion before, that’s why.” Rory couldn’t quite look either Dale or Cain in the eye. “I thought with Cain bringin’ us a fresh bighorn all the way from under the Old Man… well, I thought one good treat deserves another.”

  Dale’s lower lip set out some.

  A hand to her knee, Rory got up, heavily. From behind the food cabinet, up in the high window, she took down a tray filled with round dishes. In the center of each dish quivered a mound of translucent red.

  Dale’s hollow eyes opened very wide.“What is it?”

  “Eat it and find out,” Rory said. She passed the dishes around. All looked at the treat with wary eyes: Gram, Dale, Cain, Joey.

  “Don’t be afraid of it,” Rory said. “It ain’t poison.” Rory sat down and began sampling hers with relish.

  They spooned at the quivering red slowly.

  When they finished at last, Rory asked, “Well, and how did you like that Jello now, hah?”

  “Jello. So that’s what it was,” Joey said. “Johnny Goodin said he had some last Fourth of July. He said it was a new invention.”

  “I wasn’t askin’ you, peckersnap,” Rory said. She threw a digging look at Dale. “I was asking that deadhead paw of yours.”

  Dale raised on that. “Jello be damned,” he exploded. “I’d rather stick a funnel in my mouth and run against the wind, for all the good that fancy fluff-duff is gonna do me.”

  Cain sta
rted to laugh—until he saw the look in Rory’s eyes.

  About that time Gram began to fuss on her side of the table. She tinked her spoon in her dish. She cast eye-rolling looks at Cain.

  Cain blinked. What was bubbling in that ancient head now?

  Rory, then Dale, noticed Gram’s fussing. Quiet settled around the table.

  Gram took to eyeing Joey then.

  Joey fidgeted. His hide-bottom chair creaked. Finally he said, “I know what Gram wants. She wants for Uncle Cain to read the Bible tonight she told me.”

  Gram said, “A passage from the Good Book. That would be nice.” For all her years, she quick got to her feet, and hobbled to a side table under the north window, where she picked up a thick black volume. Hobbling back, she handed it to Cain, a halfwily smile puckering her wrinkled lips.

  Cain recognized the puckering look. In her old age it often appeared on her face. It was a waiting ferine look. Gram knew he didn’t care much for churchgoing and such, or reading the Good Book at the table. He read it when he felt like it, when alone, or when remembering some passage he fancied and wanted to savor again. In her sly way she knew she had him trapped in Dale’s and Rory’s presence, that his sense of courtesy would not let him refuse. She had got her way with Dale and Rory, making them read it as long as she was with them. Now she was reaching out to make him do it.

  Or was there another reason? Shame Dale? Show him who she thought most resembled Gramp reading the Word? Show him that if cousins did have to marry, it should have been Cain, the oldest of the Hammett brothers?

  Cain fumbled with the Good Book. The gold lettering in the leather cover, Holy Bible, was almost worn off from much handling. He opened it slowly.

  Rory abruptly got up and walked heavily to the north window. She stood looking out at the mountains to the northwest.

  Cain said, “Don’t you want me to read it, Rory?”

  “Go ahead. Don’t mind me.”

  Cain looked at her back, at her thickish neck. And looking at her, he noticed the new high windows again. Just a month ago Dale had raised them three feet. As a breeder of sheep in cattle country, he and his family were in danger of being shot at as they sat around the table in lamplight. Silhouettes on the window shades made perfect targets.