by Elmer Kelton
“Looks to me like he’s holding too much of it,” Monahan had replied.
Getty was a shortish man with a puffed face and a soft paunch. And, it had developed, a short temper. He hadn’t been in condition to do the cooking the first night at the Blessingames’, but he had done it since. He put up a pretty decent meal, too, if a man didn’t mind listening to him complain.
“Damn these outfits that don’t give a man decent pots to cook in,” he said ten times with every meal. “I’ve cooked for a hundred of ’em, and there ain’t a one ever give me anythin’ I’d cook for a dog in.”
Doug took it with a grain of salt, for he had seen few wagon cooks who didn’t gripe a little. It put a little extra flavoring in the food, like salt. And, as long as it didn’t get to rankling anybody, it gave the rest of the crew something to snicker about—when they got out of earshot.
Stub Bailey came around, and Doug asked him, “Did you go over and see what cooking equipment you could salvage from Paco’s camp?”
“I went over, but there wasn’t anything left. Somebody beat us to it. Stole ever’ Dutch oven, beanpot, knife, fork and spoon there was. Even a couple of wagon wheels that the spokes hadn’t burned out of.”
Monahan swore under his breath. “I was counting on that stuff. Been borrowing from the Blessingames, and I didn’t want to keep on doing it. Took everything we had, did they?”
“One of them poverty nester outfits over on Oak Crick, I figured. Took everything but the posts and burned-up wire. I don’t reckon there’s anybody fool enough to want that.” Bailey added as an afterthought, “By the way, there’s plenty of good posts over there, in the ground. They ain’t set so hard yet but what we could take a good team of mules and yank them out of the ground one at a time.”
Monahan shook his head. “They’re Gordon Finch’s posts. He paid me cash for them. He can take them up himself, if he wants to.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Doug kept watching for Trudy Wheeler to show herself. But so far as he could tell while they were setting up camp, she never did. She was staying in the house.
Late in the afternoon everything was in its place. The Blessingames’ wagons had been unloaded and made ready for a return trip after more posts tomorrow. The cook had a fire going just beyond the tarp on the side of the barn, and pots and pans were rattling. It would be a while before supper.
Doug walked to the Wheelers’ house, up onto the porch, and knocked on the door. He could hear a stirring inside, and presently Mrs. Wheeler opened the door. Doug took off his hat. This tall, strong, graying woman looked at him with no unfriendliness but with no special welcome.
“Good evening, Mrs. Wheeler.”
“Good evening, Mr. Monahan.”
“We’ve gotten everything in order, and I thought I’d come over and pay my respects.”
“That’s nice of you.”
He tried to see around her, but he couldn’t spot Trudy Wheeler. He could tell that Wheeler had been right about the women. They weren’t strong at all on this fencing business. It showed on Mrs. Wheeler, in her withdrawal from her inborn hospitality. She was vastly different from the last time he had been here.
When it became evident that she wasn’t going to invite him in, he said awkwardly, “Well, I guess I better be getting back. Horses got to be fed.” A shading of disappointment crept into his voice. “I’ll be seeing you again, Mrs. Wheeler.”
“Yes,” she replied, and he thought her voice softened a little, for she must have caught his disappointment. “I’m sure we’ll see each other, Mr. Monahan.”
He put his hat back on and walked off the porch, discontent gnawing at him. He hadn’t considered this, the opposition from the women. He was at a loss to put a reason to it. Well, what difference did it make to him, anyway? Main thing was to get the fence up.
After all, they weren’t his women.
* * *
THE BLESSINGAMES WERE up before daylight. By the time the sun broke over the low hills to the east, they had their horses hitched to the three wagons and were ready to go. Doug Monahan stood there watching the breath of the horses rise as steam in the sharp morning air.
“Going to be cold up there on those wagons’ seats, till the sun gets up high enough to take the chill off,” he told Foley.
The huge old man tolerantly shook his head. “Like a spring day. You South Texas boys don’t know what cold weather is. Prob’ly never saw a frost in your life till you come up here.”
Doug shivered and smiled. “Well, I know what it is now.” He went serious then. “Be careful, Foley. It’d be better if nobody saw you. If anybody asks you, don’t tell them where the posts are going. I’d like to get all the wire and posts in before any trouble starts. After that, they can do what they please, and we’ll be ready.”
Foley flipped the reins and led off with his wagon. From a hundred yards away he turned and yelled back in a voice that would have scared a Longhorn bull out over the corral gate: “Don’t you worry none about me and the kids. We’ll be as quiet’s a mouse!”
The wagons rolled away with a groan of wheels and clanking of chains. Horses snorted in the cold. Doug watched until they were well on their way. Turning then, he saw Trudy Wheeler walking toward the spring, carrying a wooden bucket in each hand.
It was the first time he had seen her since he had returned, except for a glimpse or two of her at a distance as she stepped out on the porch a moment. He stood watching her, admiring her slenderness, her easy way of moving. Then he followed after her.
Entering the rock spring house, she filled the buckets one at a time from the water which bubbled up to flow through the milk-cooling trough and on out into the creek. As she straightened, Doug said, “I’ll carry them for you.”
Startled, she whirled to face him. “Oh, it’s you.” Her breath came fast for a moment. “Why don’t you make a little noise when you come up behind somebody that way?”
“I was afraid you might walk away and leave me.”
She fixed a half-hostile gaze on him, and her voice was cool. “I might have, at that.”
He picked up the buckets. “Where to?”
“The washpot. We’re fixing to put out a washing today.”
He walked along beside her, trying to think of something to say which might offset her coolness, but nothing came to him. She contributed nothing, either, until they reached the big blackened pot behind the house.
“Just pour a little water in there and let me sweep out the pot,” she said.
He did, and she swept the water around inside the pot with an old wornout broom, washing away the settled dust. When she swept the last of the water out she said, “I’ll handle it from here on, thank you.”
He shook his head. “It’ll take a lot of water. I’ll do it.”
He kept toting water until the pot was filled. While he was doing that, Trudy was piling dry mesquite wood underneath and around the pot. She poured a little kerosene around it from a five-gallon can, struck a match and flipped it under the pot. The flame spread slowly, timidly, at first, then grew stronger and bolder with the taste of the wood. In a few minutes it was a crackling blaze.
The warmth of the fire felt good in this chill. But watching it, Doug could not help thinking about another fire a few days ago, and a restless spirit moved in him. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you ever since I got back. Why’ve you been avoiding me?”
“Don’t you know?”
“No, I don’t, except your dad says you don’t like the fence.”
“The fence itself is all right. It’s what we may have to go through because of it that I don’t like.”
“If there’s a fight, I’ll be here to handle it.”
Her eyes were suddenly flinty. “That’s just it, you know there’ll be a fight. That’s why you’re here in the first place. You don’t really care whether we have a fence or not. You’re just looking for a fight with Captain Rinehart, and by building us a fence you figure on provoking it.”
He opened his m
outh but she cut him off before he had a chance to reply. A mounting anger colored her face. “There’s one thing you can say about the captain—he’s no hypocrite. He tells you what he wants and doesn’t want, and no mistake about it.
“We all felt sorry for you that first day, Mr. Monahan. We brought you here because you’d been done an awful wrong. I can’t say I blame you, even yet, for wanting to get even. But when you take an old man like Dad and talk him into building a fence so you can provoke trouble and have a chance at getting revenge, you’re doing him an awful wrong, too. You’re just using Dad and us for bait!”
“Now, that’s not the way it is.…”
“Isn’t it?” Her eyes sparkled. “Then maybe you can tell me what way it is. No, I don’t want you telling me anything! I just want you to leave me alone.”
She turned her back on him, and he knew there was no use trying to talk any further with her, not today. He could feel the red color warm in his cheeks. Something between anger and hurt swelled in him. He left her and walked back toward the barn.
Stub Bailey came out the barn door and saw Monahan’s face. He looked past Doug to the girl, who was cutting up blocks of homemade soap and stirring it in the heating water with a wooden paddle, agitating it a lot more than she needed to.
“Got the lecture, did you?” Stub said. “I could’ve told you.”
Monahan felt like snapping at Stub to shut up, but he managed to withhold that. Still, he couldn’t look Bailey in the face.
“I got a little of the same, but I expect she saved the big load for you because you’re the boss,” Stub said. He paused and gazed seriously at Monahan. “Maybe you ought to take a good look at yourself and do some thinkin’ on what she said. She could be ninety percent right.”
9
Captain Andrew Rinehart sat in the heavy oak swivel chair at his big roll-top desk, cavernous eyes blinking in disbelief at his foreman Archer Spann.
“Noah Wheeler building a fence? You must be mistaken, Archer.”
“No mistake, Captain. Shorty Willis and Jim was scouting that south prairie when they came up on three wagons loaded with fence posts, moving northwest on that old freighter trail. There was a big old man driving the lead wagon, and four others coming along on the other two wagons. Whole bunch was redheaded and looked like a set of giants, Shorty said. Shorty stopped and asked them where they was taking the posts. The old man told him, ‘To hell, Sonny, and we’ll take you with us if you don’t go on about your business.’”
The captain shook his gray head. “Redheaded giants. Sounds like Shorty’s been drinking. I’ve warned those boys.…”
Spann protested, “He wasn’t drinking, Captain. Jim backed him up. They left the wagons but circled back and trailed them. They went straight to Noah Wheeler’s place.”
“Did the boys look around any? What did they see?”
“They saw men digging postholes and setting posts. They didn’t see any wire, but there were posts scattered along Wheeler’s boundary, up next to Fuller Quinn’s country.”
The captain took a long breath and let it out slowly. Regret sharpened his wind-bitten face. “Noah Wheeler. He’s the last one I’d ever have thought would do it.”
“The last one?” Spann asked sharply, then softened the edge in his voice. “He was the first one to move into this country and break up land away from Oak Crick. He’s never asked you about anything or told you what he was going to do. He’s got a head of his own, that nester has, and it’s time somebody bumped it for him.”
The captain studied Archer Spann silently, his eyes unreadable.
Spann said, “I tried to get you to let me do something about him when he first moved out there and took up land that you’d been using. It would’ve been easy to chase him back to the crick. Clear out of the country would’ve been even better.” Spann’s dark eyebrows knitted, and his black eyes took on an eager light. “It’s not too late. When we get through with him, he’ll pack up and leave, and he won’t look back.”
“What would you do, Archer?”
“Burn him out. Tear up whatever fence he’s got built. Run cattle into his fields. Show him he’s nothing but a farmer after all, no better than the rest of those Oak Crick nesters.”
The captain slowly shook his head. “He’s more than just a nester, Archer, a great deal more. There won’t be any burning him out. And there won’t be any R Cross cattle on his fields, either. We’ll just ride over there and talk to him.”
Spann swallowed hard. “Talk to him?”
The captain nodded. “He’ll see our way.”
Disappointed, Spann said, “It’s a mistake, sir.” The captain eyed him sharply, and Spann backed down a little. “I mean, sure, we’ll talk to him first, if you’d rather. We can do something else later, if we have to. When do you want to go?”
“In the morning will be all right.”
“I’ll get a bunch of the boys ready.”
The captain sounded impatient. “We don’t need a bunch of men! Just you and me. We’re going to talk to him, that’s all. He’ll listen.”
Spann nodded in resignation. “I hope so, sir. I hope so.”
He walked out, softly closing the captain’s office door behind him. Out of the old man’s sight, he let the welling anger run its course. He struck his right fist sharply into the palm of his left hand.
He half hoped Wheeler wouldn’t listen. Then perhaps Archer Spann could give that contrary old farmer what he’d been asking for ever since he had been out here.
Sarah Rinehart made her way into the captain’s office and sat down, breathing a little harder for the effort. She had done better these last few days. She had been walking some outside, and she seemed to be regaining much of her strength. There was color in her face that the captain hadn’t seen in months.
Seeing her like this had given him a lift he hadn’t felt in a long time. Every cowboy at the headquarters had noticed how much better the captain’s spirit had been. At times he would even soften up and laugh with them. It had been a long time since the captain’s stern manner had eased so.
“What was the matter with Archer Spann?” Sarah asked. “He walked out of here looking awfully mad.”
“Mad?” The captain sounded surprised. “He didn’t act mad. A little disappointed, maybe.”
“Looked mad to me. What happened?”
Briefly Rinehart told her. Worriedly Sarah asked, “What are you going to do, Andrew?”
“Nothing much. Just go over and talk to Noah.”
“And if that doesn’t change his mind? What then?”
The captain frowned darkly. That possibility evidently hadn’t entered his mind. “It will, Sarah. Don’t you worry yourself over it.”
Sarah said, “Perhaps if it were just you, I wouldn’t worry about it. But Archer Spann worries me. And lately he seems to have a lot of influence over you.”
Rinehart stiffened. “I always do what I want to, Sarah. No man ever tells me what I ought to do.”
“No man ever used to,” she said resolutely.
* * *
ARCHER SPANN PULLED up his horse and pointed out across the rolling gray prairie. “Yonder it is, Captain, just like Shorty said.”
Andrew Rinehart felt a sharp stab of disappointment, seeing the line of firmly set fence posts stretching several hundred feet along Noah Wheeler’s boundary line. All the way out from the ranch headquarters the captain had tried to maintain a hope that the boys had been wrong. He had known all the time that it was a vain wish. Yet, seeing the proof now brought a painful letdown.
“Looks like I owe Shorty Willis an apology,” the captain conceded quietly. From the corner of his eye he caught the fleeting smile of self-satisfaction that crossed Spann’s face before the foreman could suppress it.
It brought a touch of anger to him, for the captain was still a man of pride, a man who hated to be found wrong in any degree, who hated most of all to give another man the satisfaction of having been right.
; “I’ll do the talking, Archer,” the captain said curtly. Spann had the good judgment to nod agreement. “Yes, sir.”
From behind them somewhere a horse nickered. Turning in the saddle, the captain saw a rider trailing along at a respectful distance, saddlegun cradled in his arm. Rinehart realized that they probably had been under surveillance for some time. He clenched his fist and had a sudden feeling of being squeezed into a tight corner.
“Not a friendly outfit,” Spann observed.
The captain squinted but could not make the man out. “Who is he?”
“Name’s Dundee. Used to work for Finch.”
“I passed the word around I didn’t want anybody hiring any of Finch’s hands.”
“It looks like he’s working here,” Spann said pointedly.
Grinding out a harsh word under his breath, the captain touched spurs to his big gray horse, moving across the thick mat of cured grass toward the fencing crew. The men who had been digging holes and tamping in posts dropped their tools and drifted together. The captain could see they were all armed. It was different from the way it had been at Monahan’s fencing camp.
He saw a thin wisp of smoke rising, and the sight of a campfire reminded him how cold he was. Riding in closer, he kept watching for Noah Wheeler. His fading eyesight made it hard for him to see faces, but he finally recognized the big farmer’s tall frame, moving toward him from a pile of cedar posts.
“Hello, Andrew,” Wheeler said.
Spann glanced sharply at the captain, surprised at this farmer’s casual use of Rinehart’s first name. He had never heard anyone but Mrs. Rinehart herself call the old cowman Andrew.
“Hello, Noah.” The captain held back a moment, then reached down and took the big hand that Wheeler offered.
Wheeler said, “Pot of coffee on the fire. Get down, Andrew, and have a cup with me.”
The captain waited, and Wheeler said, “You must be cold. A little hot coffee would do you good.”
The captain caught the pleasant aroma of the simmering coffee, and he felt a strong yearning for it. He was a-quiver from the morning cold which had worked through to his bones.