by Elmer Kelton
Old Foley sat on the edge of a cot, grinning. “You missed your callin’, boy. You ought to been a wagon cook.”
That brought up a memory of Paco Sanchez, and Doug Monahan’s face went tight. Blessingame was quick to sense the change.
“One of the kids was in town day or two ago and heard a rumor,” he said. “Heard you lost that good old cook you had.”
Doug nodded, dipping lard out of a big bucket and dropping it into a skillet. News sure could get around. He told Blessingame the whole story.
The old man nodded gravely. “Looks like a good country for a smart man to stay out of. There’s plenty other country needin’ fences anyway.”
“I’m not staying out of it,” Doug told him.
Blessingame’s bearded face showed a little of a grin. “I figured that. I said a smart man.”
When the supper was about done, Blessingame walked outside and gave a great roar. His voice was as strong as his bull shoulders. That yell should have reached to Kiowa County.
In a moment he returned. “Here come the kids.”
The “kids” were four huge, brawny men with red hair and red whiskers. The youngest was in his mid-twenties, the oldest probably thirty-five. Every one of them showed the gross stamp of old Foley Blessingame in the breadth of shoulder, the deep boom of voice. Doug had made a point to have flour and dough on his fingers so he wouldn’t have to shake hands with them as they came in. Those great ham-sized hands would crush his own like an egg. Even as it was, they pounded him on the back till his breath was gone.
Here was a family known all the way back to East Texas, old Foley Blessingame and his four “kids,” Foy, Koy, Ethan and John. Nearly three-quarters of a ton of hard muscle among them, and not an ounce of it fat. Most of the time they stayed out in the country and never bothered anybody. But when they came to town for a little unwinding every two or three months, townspeople took up the sidewalk, locked their doors and hid their daughters.
Widowed fifteen years, old Foley never let his boys outpace him. “Snow on the roof ain’t no sign the fire’s out inside,” he often said.
When the hangovers were done, he always went back to town alone and sober, remorsefully paying for the breakage. “Bunch o’ growin’ boys,” he would explain; “a man can’t always hold them down.”
None of the boys had married yet. The sight of them, Doug imagined, was enough to stampede a girl anyway. Even if one ever got interested, she was bound to reason, and correctly so, that she would immediately find herself burdened with cooking and washing and scrubbing up after the rest of the family as well as the one she took on.
There wasn’t much extra room in the tent, what with five cots and a cookstove. Doug left supper in the pans he had cooked it in, letting the five men file by and take what they wanted. They took plenty.
“Doug’s havin’ a little trouble convincin’ some of the boys over in Kiowa County that he likes his fences to stay up,” old Foley told his sons. “I think mebbe we ought to some of us step over there and give the folks a little lecture.”
Doug fidgeted uneasily. “Well, that’s not exactly what I came over here for. Mainly I need a big order of posts.”
“We got ’em,” Foley said. “We been choppin’ more than we been sellin’ here lately.”
“I noticed that,” Doug replied, “and I’ve been thinking. Maybe you ought to quit chopping awhile and let the demand catch up with the supply.”
“Got to eat someway,” said Foley.
“You could work for me, building fence.”
Foley frowned. “Sounds like hard work. That’s the main reason I quit farmin’ back in East Texas, wanted to git away from that hard work.”
Doug grinned. There wasn’t any harder work in the world than cedar-cutting, and Foley Blessingame knew it better than anyone.
“The way I see it, Foley, you and your boys could have a hundred yards of fence built while most people were still gouging out that first posthole. And when the folks over in Kiowa County see the size of the Blessingame bunch, they’re going to study awhile before they do anything to sour your temper.”
“Well,” Foley conceded, “I’ve noticed folks gin’rally let us have our way about things. Not that any of my kids ever loses their temper. We’re easy to get along with.”
“I’ll pay you good.”
Foley nodded. “I know you would. But I ain’t sure about it. Never did cotton to working for the other feller. Always liked to be my own boss, you know what I mean? Never any argument thataway. I worked for a man once when I was jest a button, twenty-five or -six years old. He got to sassin’ me one day, and I let my temper git the best of my good judgment. Always did feel sorry for that feller afterwards. I just rode off and never even let him pay me the wages I had comin’, I felt so bad about it.”
He frowned. “Course, I would’ve had to wait a week to git it. He was that long comin’ to.”
Foley got up and began gathering the boys’ tin plates, dumping them into a tub. “Say, Doug,” he asked pleasantly, “you like to play poker?”
Doug shrugged. “Used to, a little.”
Foley commented, “I’d rather play poker than eat, only I can’t get these shiftless kids of mine to play anymore.”
Doug didn’t feel like playing, and he caught the friendly warning in the eyes of the Blessingame boys. But he wanted to keep on Foley’s warm side. “I’ll play you a game or two, if we don’t put much money in it.”
“Penny ante’s fine. Ethan, you go fetch us some matches to use.”
In two hours Foley seldom lost a hand. He had a pile of matches in front of him that could burn off all the grass in three counties. Doug never had seen anybody with such a phenomenal streak of luck. Even at penny ante, he had lost more than he wanted to.
“Bedtime,” Foley yawned at last, raking up the matches and starting to count them out. “Unless you want to keep on and try to win it back.”
Doug shook his head. “I can’t beat your kind of luck.”
Foley walked outside a few minutes, and Ethan Blessingame whispered, “We tried to give you the high sign. It ain’t all luck. He cheats!”
Next morning Doug got up and cooked the breakfast. He started a pot of red beans and mixed up a new batch of dough before he left the Blessingame camp. Foley watched admiringly as Doug put the dough together.
“You ought to been a woman,” he said. “But on second thought, if you was, you wouldn’t be out here. I reckon we’d best leave well-enough alone.”
Doug said, “Made up your mind yet about working for me?”
Foley nodded. “Full stomach always weakens my judgment, Doug. We decided we’d take you up on that proposition. Jest one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“Make sure there’s somebody in your outfit can play poker. You play a mighty poor hand, yourself.”
* * *
FROM THE BLESSINGAME camp Doug rode on to Stringtown, the nearest point on the railroad from Twin Wells. He struck the rails several miles out and followed them in. They still had a little of the new shine to them, and the ties hadn’t weathered out badly yet. It hadn’t been more than a couple of years since the line had come through.
Stringtown wasn’t fancy to look at, but it was all new. The original paint coat still stuck to those frame buildings which had been painted at all. Stringtown had sprung up because of the railroad.
Doug’s first stop was the railroad depot, where the telegrapher was tapping out code on the key. “Can you take a message to Fort Worth?” Doug asked.
“If you can write it to where I can read it,” the little man said and nodded at some sheets of yellow paper weighted down by a small gear wheel from a locomotive.
Doug wrote the address of a Fort Worth hardware company and asked the price of a hundred spools of No. 9 barbed wire, including freight to Stringtown. He handed the message to the telegrapher. “I’ll be back around directly for the answer,” he said.
He walked out of the depo
t building, thinking he might cross over to a saloon and while away the time where it was warmer. On the platform, he heard the whistle of an approaching train, and he leaned back against the yellow-painted wall to watch it.
It was an eastbound passenger train. It whistled again, coming into town, and began slowing down. A conductor hung precariously off the side of one car as the train’s momentum slowed, and he jumped down to the ground, his shoes sliding on the grime-blackened gravel. A Negro porter stepped down and set a wooden platform in place.
Suddenly Doug wished he wasn’t standing out in the open this way, for he saw Sheriff Luke McKelvie of Twin Wells, walking up to the train. A sullen young man was handcuffed to him. A tall man in a dark suit stepped off the train, looked around, then moved directly toward the pair. McKelvie shook hands and motioned toward his prisoner, saying something. Taking a key from his pocket, he removed the handcuffs. The other man immediately brought out his own cuffs and locked himself to his new prisoner. The engine whistled a warning. The two boarded the train and disappeared inside.
McKelvie watched until satisfied. Then he turned and walked toward Doug Monahan, dropping the cuffs in his coat pocket. “Hello, Monahan. Saw you as I came up, but I was too busy to say howdy. Had to transfer a prisoner.”
Monahan shook hands with him, wishing he hadn’t had the misfortune to run into the Kiowa County sheriff.
“Got my job done, and now I can relax,” McKelvie said. “Care to have a drink with me?”
Monahan declined as gracefully as he could. “I got some business to attend to, thanks.” He didn’t care to have McKelvie pumping him, and he had a notion the sheriff could worm a lot of information out of a man without really seeming to.
“Well,” replied McKelvie, “that’s too bad. But I think you’re showing good judgment, getting out of Twin Wells.”
A sharp thrust of stubbornness brought a reply from Monahan before he could stop himself. “I haven’t left there for good. I’ll be back soon enough.”
The sheriff’s easy smile faded. “I’m sorry, Monahan.” Regret clouded his gray eyes.
Monahan watched the sheriff walk down the street, and he felt like kicking himself. Whatever secret there might have been was out now. McKelvie would probably poke around until he knew just what Monahan was up to, and the report wouldn’t be long in getting to Captain Rinehart.
Well, that was the way it went. A man got mad and said things he didn’t mean to. There wasn’t much he could do about it now except go right on as he had planned. He didn’t go across to the saloon, though. Instead, he went back into the depot and sat down on a hard wooden bench, leaning back against the wall and waiting for the answer to his wire. When it came, he sent another message constituting an order for wire and staples to be shipped to him at Stringtown. He promised to send a check immediately. Mailed here, it would be in Fort Worth before they got the order ready to ship.
Handing it to the telegrapher, he asked, “Who’s a good freighter around here? I’ll want him to haul this shipment out for me.”
The telegrapher said, “Try Slim Torrance over at the livery barn. He’s got new wagons, and he’s a good man. Besides, he’s my brother-in-law.”
“Reason enough for a recommendation,” Doug said.
The livery barn bore the name Spangler & Torrance, and it smelled strongly of dry hay and liniment and oil, horse sweat and manure. A practical combination, Monahan thought, livery barn and freighting outfit. He found Slim Torrance in the rear of the barn, rubbing some evil-smelling concoction on the leg of a lame mule.
“I got a shipment of barbed wire due from Fort Worth in a few days,” Doug told the chunky, red-faced freighter. “I’d be much obliged if you’d haul it over into Kiowa County for me.”
Torrance nodded. “Freightin’s my business. You jest tell me where you want it, and I’ll git it over there.”
Monahan gave him instructions as to the trail. He added, “It wouldn’t be a bad idea if you skirted around town. Folks don’t have to know about it for awhile. Wouldn’t hurt to cover the load with a tarp, too, so it won’t stand out if somebody happens to pass you on the trail.”
Torrance frowned. “Wait a minute now. If it’s one of them kind of deals, I don’t know…”
“I’ll pay you half of it in advance.”
Torrance wrestled with himself a minute, and the money won. “All right, I’ll do it.”
Writing out the check, Monahan said, “It’ll be better for all of us if nothing’s said about this till the shipment’s delivered. No use setting out bait to catch trouble.”
“No use atall,” Torrance agreed, carefully folding the check and shoving it deep into the pocket of his denim pants.
“By the way,” Monahan said, “I sure could use a wagon cook. Know anybody around here who can cook and needs the job?”
Torrance said, “Got jest the man for you. Come on back in here.”
Later, riding out, Monahan saw McKelvie’s horse tied down by the depot.
In there now pumping the telegrapher, he thought, more angry at himself than at McKelvie. He won’t leave town till he knows.
8
Riding in abreast of the Blessingames’ three post-laden wagons, Doug found that Stub Bailey and Noah Wheeler had been busy while he was gone.
“Watch out for those stakes yonder,” he called back to old Foley Blessingame, on the lead wagon. “They mark where the posts are to be set.”
Foley saw them and swung his mules a little to the right so the heavy wheels would pass between two stakes, set a rod apart.
Stub Bailey rode out grinning to meet the wagons. He shook Doug’s hand and motioned toward the line of stakes. “Half afraid you wasn’t comin’ back, Doug. I sure would’ve hated to drive all them stakes for nothin’.” His gaze roved over the Blessingames’ wagons, and especially over the Blessingames themselves. “Man alive,” he breathed, “they all come out of one family?”
Monahan nodded, and Bailey shook his head. “I’d sure hate to be the woman who had to give birth to that bunch.”
Monahan grinned. “Well, they came one at a time, I reckon. They’ll haul in all the posts we need, then stay and help us build the fence.”
Bailey approved of that. “I’ll bet they can make a pick and shovel sing ‘Dixie.’”
“The first Rinehart man who gets himself crossways with them may sing a little, too,” Doug said.
Big old Noah Wheeler was standing in front of his barn waiting as the three heavy wagons rolled up, their iron rims grinding deep tracks into the shower-dampened earth, crushing the cured brown grass. “Howdy, Doug,” he said. “Looks like you’ve brought the makings.”
Doug stepped off his horse and shook the farmer’s rough hand. “Ought to be enough posts to get us started. Plenty more where these came from. Wire ought to be here by the time we get enough posts up to commence stringing it.”
He hadn’t realized how tired the long ride had made him until he sat down a moment on the barn’s front step. He was glad to be back here. He felt himself drawn to this pleasant place with its good corrals, its scattering of Durham cattle, its ducks swimming out there on the surface tank, and its chickens scratching around in the yard. He liked the Wheelers’ little red frame house with the front porch that would be so good for sitting and rocking in the late summer evenings.
Without wanting to show it, he looked around for Trudy Wheeler and felt vaguely disappointed that he didn’t see her anywhere.
“How’s the family, Noah?”
“Fine, getting along fine.” Wheeler looked toward the house. “Halfway thought they’d come out to look, but I reckon not.” He frowned. “Doug, in case they say anything, don’t worry yourself too much about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re not as much in favor of this fence as I thought they’d be. Fact of the matter, they’re against it. You know how women are. Or do you? You’re not married, are you?”
“No, sir.”
�
�Time you get married, you’ll know what I mean. A man ought to go ahead and do what he wants to and not let the women bother him, I guess. Ought to let them know he’s the boss. But when the time comes, you hate to do it. A man who’s got womenfolks has just got to put up with a certain amount of that, I reckon.”
Doug had an uneasy moment, afraid Noah Wheeler was leading up to calling the whole thing off. He thought of Captain Rinehart, and of his foreman, Archer Spann, and he felt his heart quicken. Wheeler couldn’t call it off now, and cheat Monahan out of the satisfaction he’d get from humbling them.
Wheeler put an end to his anxiety. “I thought maybe we’d start down on the southwest corner and work up. That’s where the most of the strays come in from, and we’ll cut them off first.”
There was the immediate problem of getting settled. Best thing to do with the posts was to unload them right where they would be needed.
“Where’ll you be putting up, Doug?” Foley Blessingame asked. When Doug showed him the barn, the old cedar cutter said, “If it’s all the same to you, we’ll just put up our tent when we bring that last load of posts. Me and the kids is used to it, and the barn won’t be none too roomy anyhow with this crew you got.” Dundee had brought out four men.
Out at the side of the barn, Doug rigged up three posts and stretched a tarp to them from the edge of the roof. This cover would help protect the cook in bad weather. They could set up a stationary chuckbox out here under the tarp. The cook could have his fire just beyond it, where the smoke would lift clear and not drift back underneath.
The cook was Simon Getty, the grunting, red-faced man Doug had picked up in Torrance’s livery barn. Monahan had borrowed a horse from Torrance so the cook could ride with him. Torrance was to pick up the animal when he brought the wire. But the cook had barely managed to stay on him to the Blessingames’ camp. From there, he had ridden the last wagon.
“Looks like what he needs is a good sweat bath,” Foley had commented dryly. “Sweat the alcohol out of his system. Man ain’t got no use drinkin’ if he can’t hold his liquor.”