by Elmer Kelton
“Doctor been out today?” he asked.
She nodded. “He just left some more of those awful pills. I think he uses them to keep his patients sick, so he’ll have a steady income.”
He was grateful for the good humor he could see in her eyes. Sarah had always been his refuge. When things went wrong, Sarah always seemed to be able to muster a smile from somewhere and make misfortune easier to take.
“I sent for Luke McKelvie,” he said. “Has he been here?”
“He came in about sundown. He went down to the cookshack to eat.”
Rinehart stood up. “I’ll go on down there, then. I need to talk to him.”
Sarah reached out and caught his sleeve. “Andrew, I want to ask you about Charley Globe.”
“What about Charley?”
“He came up here today and told me he’s quitting. Andrew, Charley’s been with us ever since we came up to this country. He’s one of the few real old-timers.”
The captain frowned. “What’s eating Charley?”
“It’s Archer Spann. Archer’s too abrupt with him. Charley feels he’s entitled to some extra consideration around here occasionally because he’s been with us so long. He’s getting old, and he can’t always keep up. He doesn’t like to be browbeaten by some younger man. And what happened over at that fencing camp the other day didn’t set well with Charley, either. Andrew, you’ve got to do something about Archer Spann.”
Rinehart said defensively, “Archer’s a good man, Sarah, the best man we ever had. Sure, he’s hard. But it takes a hard man, sometimes.”
“But you’ll talk to him, won’t you? And to Charley?”
“I’ll talk to him. And I won’t let Charley quit.”
The cookshack and bunkhouse were combined in one long L-shaped frame building. Captain Rinehart walked up the steps and onto the porch where the washbasins were. He found Luke McKelvie sitting there in the near-darkness, smoking a cigarette.
“Evening, Captain,” the sheriff said, standing up.
“Evening.” They shook hands.
McKelvie said pleasantly, “The place never changes, Captain. It’s just the same as it was when I worked here. Even after all these years, this is the only place that seems like home to me.”
“No,” the captain agreed, “it doesn’t change. As long as things suit us, there’s no reason why they should ever change, is there?”
McKelvie shook his head. “I reckon not.” Then he said, “Cook’s got a good supper fixed in there. You ought to eat a bite.”
Damn it, the captain thought, they’re all trying to take care of me like an old man. “Supper’ll wait. I’ve got something more important. Have you heard what that fellow Monahan is up to?”
The sheriff nodded. “A little.”
“You know he’s been keeping some wire down at Tracey’s Mercantile. He’s taken some of it out, and he’s hauled several loads of cedar posts out to Oak Creek. He’s putting up some sort of a barbed wire corral.”
McKelvie said, “I know. I was out there. He’s going to run a bunch of stock into it to show the farmers that bobwire won’t kill their animals.”
“You know what he’s fixing to do, don’t you, Luke? He’s trying to get those farmers to let him fence their land for them.”
“I understand he’s already got them sold, if he can show them that the stock won’t be hurt.”
Already sold! That jarred the captain a little.
“Luke, you’ve got to stop it.”
“Stop it?” McKelvie dropped his cigarette and ground it under his boot. “How?”
“I don’t care how. Throw him in jail. Run him out of town. Why should I have to tell you how?”
“Look, Captain, I can’t just jail a man or run him out of town because I don’t like him, or don’t like what he’s doing. As long as he’s not breaking the law, I can’t touch him.”
“Luke, you know what that wire can do to this country! It’s always been an open range. It’s been our range. Once a few of the farmers start, some of the ranchers will. In a couple of years they’ll have the range cut up into a hundred pieces. We’ll be fenced off from half of our water. The cattle won’t be able to graze free with the rain and the grass. When the dry spells come, they won’t be able to move the way they used to. They’ll stay right there and graze it and tromp it into the dust, and there won’t be anything left.”
McKelvie sat down again. “I don’t know how we can stop it. If it’s a man’s own land, it’s his land, and that’s all there is to it. There’s no legal way.”
The captain’s voice grew heated. “If we can’t stop it legally, then we’ll stop it some other way. But stop it we will!”
“If we find a legal way, fine. Otherwise, Captain, you’ll have to count me out.”
“Luke, are you forgetting who put you in there as sheriff? Are you forgetting who you’re working for?”
“I’m not forgetting anything. Sure, you got me put in office a long time ago. You’ve kept me in, and I’m grateful for it. You’ve been like a father to me, Captain. Over the years, I’ve admired you more than any man I ever knew. But there are other people in the county now. I’m working for them, too. Don’t make it any harder for me than it already is.”
“I counted on you to stand by me, Luke. Sometimes it seems like I haven’t got many friends I can rely on anymore.”
“I’m your friend, Captain. And as your friend, I’m telling you to not do anything rash. The old days are gone.”
McKelvie stood up again and extended his hand. “Good night, Captain.”
Curtly Rinehart said, “Good night,” and turned away.
The old days are gone, McKelvie had said. Not yet they weren’t!
Old age may be beginning to slow me, but it hasn’t got me down, the captain thought angrily. I’m not going to quit while there’s any fight left in me. There was a time when nobody ever questioned me. I knew what was good for this country, and I saw that it got done. People recognized that I was right.
Now I’m slowing down. I can’t get around like I used to. My eyesight’s getting bad. I can’t see all that’s going on around me. But I can see enough to know that they’re beginning to point their fingers at me and talk. They’re coming in all the time now, these new ones, looking enviously on what I have and plotting to steal it away from me.
Damn them, if it hadn’t been for me there wouldn’t be anything here! I fought for this range, and bled for it and sweated for it. Now they think because I’m getting old that they can take it away from me! But I’ve still got friends. I’ve still got men with the old spirit. They’ll find out the R Cross is as strong as it ever was.…
Archer Spann walked out of the cookshack.
A hard man, some said about Spann. But he was a man you could depend on when you needed something done.
“Archer,” the captain said, “come walk out to the barn with me. We’ve got some talking to do.”
6
The fencing job went off smoothly enough. The ground near Oak Creek was not rocky, so the digging was not too hard work. By themselves Doug Monahan and Stub Bailey set the posts and strung up the red barbed wire. It was a square corral about a hundred feet long on each side, with a wire gate in one corner and short wings just off the gate to help in penning cattle.
Because it was a temporary job, just for exhibition, they hadn’t dug the holes as deep as usual, nor done as tight a job of stringing wire. But it was sufficient for the purpose.
“There she is,” Doug told Foster Lodge. “Ready to go. The more people we can get out, the better.”
He looked toward Lodge’s milk pen. “Folks’ll always come out if you offer to feed ’em. You got a fat calf we might butcher?”
Lodge frowned. “Well, there’s one out there, but I’m not a rich man, Monahan, and I got a family. You know, I can’t…”
“I figured on buying it from you, Mr. Lodge. I’ll give the barbecue.”
Lodge brightened. “In that case, now, I reck
on maybe I could.…”
When they got off to one side, Stub Bailey worriedly caught Monahan’s arm. “You sure you know what you’re doing? That’s a wicked-lookin’ corral. One bad break and you’ll own a bunch of cut-up cattle.”
Monahan said, “I don’t think so. We’ll let them ease in there and get a smell at the fence. Once they know the wire will stick them, they’re not apt to hit it very hard.”
“I hope you’re right. But you’re sure givin’ a cow-brute credit for an awful lot of sense.”
It looked for a while as if the milk-pen calf wasn’t going to be enough. Even Foster Lodge was amazed at the size of the crowd which turned out for the exhibition. Every farmer on Oak Creek was there, along with his family. The kids played up and down the creek and among the trees. They hadn’t been there long until one of them fell in the icy water, and a farmer had to grab him up and rush him to the Lodges’ dugout, where the women gathered to exchange gossip. Mrs. Lodge was an unwilling hostess, but she managed to cover it up fairly well when the rest of the women began arriving.
Even though Doug had hired a couple of out-of-work ranch cooks to prepare the dinner, many of the women had brought along cakes and pies anyway. It was a good thing, because most wagon cooks couldn’t have baked a cake, even if they’d wanted to.
A good many people from Twin Wells were on hand, too, for a look at this new curiosity. Albert Brown, the portly old banker, had left the lending institution in the able care of his teller and was at the barbecue. He was shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with everybody he could get around to. He seemed to be laughing all the time. One banker who could refuse you a loan and make you feel good about it, Monahan thought.
Three or four of the smaller ranchers from up at the head of Oak Creek were there, too, rubbing shoulders with the farmers and townspeople. These were likable men, and Monahan spent what extra time he could find visiting with them. They were like the neighbors he had known in South Texas, before the drought.
Most of the men spent their time down around the corral, feeling of the wire, testing its strength. More than one of them tore his shirt.
“A taste of this,” Doug heard one of them say, “oughta ruin the appetite of them Fuller Quinn cows.”
“If Quinn had to pay me for all the feed his stock has ruined, he’d be out twistin’ rabbits, he’d be so broke,” another said.
Sheriff Luke McKelvie rode out about mid-morning. He didn’t have much to say, just stood around and watched, and listened. Once he walked up to look the fence over. He shook his head distastefully as he fingered the sharp barbs.
Still siding with the captain, Doug Monahan thought. He wondered if McKelvie had something up his sleeve.
“Monahan,” the sheriff asked, “what do you figure on getting out of all this?”
“A living, Sheriff. You make yours keeping the peace. I make mine putting up fences.”
McKelvie grinned dryly, and there wasn’t much humor in him. “You’re making it darned hard for me to keep the peace. There’s lots of people around here who don’t like your bobwire.”
“But there are lots who do like it and need it.”
McKelvie frowned. “It’s your right to build it, I reckon, and I can’t stop you. But I’ll tell you frankly, Monahan, I don’t like the stuff. It’s been a pretty good country, just the way it was. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I don’t want to see it changed.”
“Change is the only thing you can be sure of in this world.”
McKelvie hunkered down and watched the farmers examining the corral. “Look at it like a cowman—that’s where your main opposition is going to come from. Bobwire, once it gets started, will cut him off from a lot of watering places, and a lot of free range he’s always used. It’ll cut him off from the trails he’s accustomed to following to market.
“Then there’s the extra cattle you always find on the open range. They don’t belong there, but you got to figure on ’em. Maybe the barber or the saloonkeeper or the mercantile man have twenty or thirty head apiece. A lot of cowboys, too, have a handful of cattle in their own brand. They just turn ’em loose and let ’em run on the free range.
“As the country closes up, those people will find themselves crowded off first one place, then another. They’ll double up wherever the range isn’t fenced yet, and make it hard on the ranchers who hold out to the last before they give in and fence too. Eventually it’ll freeze the free-grass man plumb out.
“Then, look at it the way the cowboy will. It takes a lot of cowboys to keep a cow outfit running, the country wide open like it is. But you cut this land up into little pieces, it won’t take near as many men to work it. A lot of those boys’ll be out of a job, and they’re smart enough to see that already.”
Monahan nodded soberly. “You’ve got some good points there, Sheriff, but look at it from the other side. As long as the range is wide open, how can a man develop his own land, other people’s cattle crowding into his water and onto his grass? A range hog like this Fuller Quinn keeps throwing more cattle on the range all the time and squeezing the other outfits. The rancher can’t breed up his own herd much because so many stray bulls are running around loose. Cow thieves can latch onto a man’s cattle and carry them off, and he’ll never miss ’em till branding time.
“But you put a fence around him, now, and he can do what he pleases. He can build up the best cattle in the country if he’s a mind to. He can fence the range hogs out. He can put a crimp in the cow thief because it won’t be easy to put stolen cattle across half a dozen fences and not get caught somewhere.
“What I’m getting at, I guess, is that with the fence the country will finally be permanent. It’ll produce more and make a living for more people. There’ll be more towns, and they’ll be bigger ones. Sure, barbed wire is going to hurt some people. But it’ll help a lot more of them than it hurts.”
McKelvie had rolled a cigarette. He licked the edge of the brown paper and stuck it down, then sat there with it in his fingers. He eyed Monahan keenly.
“We’re both putting up some pretty talk, Monahan. Now let’s just break down and get honest with each other. I meant all I said, but I reckon the main reason I’m against your wire is because it’s going to hurt the captain. You can’t understand this, maybe, but he’s been a great man in his day.
“And when we come right down to it, you’re not really much interested in the people of Kiowa County, or whether they get their land fenced or not. If it hadn’t been for what happened in your camp the other day, you’d’ve probably left here and everything would’ve been peaceful. But now you’re mad, and you got a hate worked up for the captain. You’re determined to stomp on him, and nothing else matters much to you.”
Monahan shifted uncomfortably. “I’m going through with it, McKelvie. It’s too far gone to pull back now, even if I wanted to.”
McKelvie nodded. “I knew you would. But I wanted you to know how I stand.” He stood up stiffly and started to move away. He paused a moment and turned back around. “There must be an awful emptiness in a man, Monahan, when all that matters to him is revenge.”
* * *
THE BARBECUE WAS about done, and Monahan was getting ready to call the crowd to dinner when a young cowboy rode up looking for McKelvie.
“Sheriff,” he said when he found him, “there’s been a fight down at the T Bars. They sent me to get you.”
McKelvie studied the boy, debating whether he ought to go. “What kind of a fight? Anybody hurt?”
“I don’t know, Sheriff. I wasn’t there. They just sent me to get you.”
McKelvie cast a worried glance at the barbed wire corral, then at Monahan. “All right, son,” he said then, “let’s go.”
Monahan ladled out red beans to the crowd. Stub Bailey stood beside him, forking barbecue onto tin plates as the people came by in single file.
“When that banker Brown comes up,” Monahan said, “be sure you give him plenty. He’s liable to be lending the money
for a lot of fence.”
After a while the crowd had finished eating.
“They sure didn’t leave much of that calf,” Bailey remarked ruefully. He had been one of the last to get to eat, and he hadn’t found much that was to his liking.
“So much the better,” Doug said. “The more there are, the more fence we may get to build.”
Once fed, the crowd was getting restless, wanting to see something.
“All right, Stub,” Doug said, “it’s time to give ’em the show.”
The cattle they wanted were scattered in a green oat patch behind Lodge’s barn. The two horsemen circled them slowly and eased them down toward the creek. Some were gentle milk stock, but a few showed a strong mixture of wild Longhorn blood. These part-Longhorns were quick to take the lead, stepping long and high and holding their heads up, looking for a booger.
They didn’t have much trouble finding it. With women’s billowing skirts and the shouting of playing youngsters, the cattle kept shying away from the crowd. Not until the third try did Monahan and Bailey manage to get them to the wings and push them into the corral. Monahan rode through the gate, stepping down to close it from inside.
The cattle pushed on to the far side of the corral and stopped there, nervously smelling of the barbed wire. This was something new to them, and they distrusted it, especially the high-headed Longhorns. Some of them jerked their heads back and pulled away when they touched their noses to the sharp barbs. A couple of the gentler cows licked at the wire until they hit a barb.
Monahan allowed the cattle a few minutes to get used to the enclosure. Then he rode in behind them, slapping his rope against his leg to get them milling. They circled around and around the fence, looking vainly for a way out, but never did they let themselves brush against the wire.
The crowd had worked down to the corral now.
“By George,” a farmer exclaimed, “that’s not half as bad as it looks. They got onto it in a hurry.” He pulled back from the fence and ripped a hole in his coat.
“They learn faster than you do,” his wife commented.