by Max Evans
“Have you seen Levi?” she asked, knowing Big Boy’s fondness for him. “I’ve been dying to get in and see his carvings, but Les throws a fit every time I mention it.”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “The boy’s awful good.”
“I know. Big Boy told me. Oh,” she said, “in case you’re worried, I suppose I should tell you. . . . I’m in Colorado visiting my folks.”
I didn’t say anything. I hated being part of this rendezvous, and I wished with artery-tearing misery that it was me she’d come to see instead.
The waitress brought the baked salmon, and we ate for a while without talking. Then she said, “How is he, Pete?”
“Well, he’s fairly happy with the race horses. You know any kind of horse will do as long as he’s a good one, and if he’s not, Big Boy will make him one. Look what he did with Old Sorrel.”
“I know,” she said, blushing slightly.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“There’s no need to be sorry about the truth,” she said. “Well, anyway, I’d like to see Big Boy with a little outfit of his own— no cattle, just horses to train and trade.”
“I think he’d be happy if he just had you,” I said.
She smiled, and put her hand over mine. “Thank you, Pete, that’s awfully nice, coming from his best friend.” She thought a minute and added, “You know, he will never be completely happy.”
“No one is,” I said.
“I know, but we all try to find some kind of middle ground.” “Not Big Boy,” I said. “You know what he told me? He said nobody can be satisfied because everything in this goddam world is in competition with everything else. Every blade of grass is in competition with the one next to it and every coyote is trying to swallow more meat than the next one and every vulture is hoping to find more dead, and every stream is trying to beat the next to the ocean, and every goddam cactus is straining to plunge its roots deeper into the desert than the rest.”
“A cowboy philosopher,” she said without sarcasm.
“Yeah,” I said. “But Big Boy wasn’t complaining, you know.
He doesn’t mind these things. As far as he’s concerned, they are the end of truth.”
“That’s one of the reasons I love him, Pete,” she said. “But his main trouble is he’s a man out of his time. He craves the old days, when a man’s word had to be his bond because there was no paper around to sign. And he wants his justice to be personal. Pete, if things were like they were in his father’s and his grandfather’s time, Big Boy would already have shot half the people in this country. If a car breaks down Big Boy is helpless, but let a horse outlaw and he’s in complete control.”
“The horsemen will come into their own again,” I said. “He likes rodeo,” I added, “but not enough to make a career out of it. He just gets a big bang out of it, that’s all.”
“I know,” she said. Suddenly she was saying things I didn’t want to hear. “Pete, I love him more than anything in the world. I’m ready to go with him”—she paused a moment—“anywhere, any time. But he keeps telling me he wants to make a stake so he can take care of me right. Hell,” she said, “taking care of me right is just his being with me, that’s all. That’s all it takes. No more, no less. We fit, Pete. There are no fancy words for it. We just mesh, that’s all.”
The truth of it hurt; but I was committed now, so I said: “Don’t you see you’re the only thing in this world besides raising hell and having fun that he can tie to the old ways? You’re as special as a lone pioneer woman among a thousand rough-ass miners, trappers, scouts, and cowboys.” I didn’t know where these thoughts came from and I didn’t know if it was right to say them, but it seemed to settle something in her mind.
We finished, and she followed me in her car out to the motel. I unlocked the Spanish-style room and pulled the curtains back. Then I got her bags out of the car, and she walked in ahead of me. The light through the window struck her hair and a soft copper glow shone out of its depths and I could see the swell of her body against her dress. I could smell the subtle aroma that was hers alone. Like a fingerprint, it was hers among one billion women. It was Mona.
I watched her move about the room in her sure flowing way, and I stared at the bed. For a moment I imagined being there with her, holding her with all the tenderness there could ever be.
She caught my look, and I damn near dissolved. And then I did something I would never have believed myself capable of—but I just couldn’t help it, not even if Big Boy had been pounding on the door: I grabbed her and pulled her mouth to mine. Without control I dragged her down across the bed by the back of her hair, crying. I kissed her face, her neck, and the top of her breast, feeling the world melt from under me.
Then her voice came to me, soft and calm. “Please, Pete, stop.” Her hands were pushing me away easily and without violence. I stood up trembling, my chest heaving, feeling the tingling of blood spreading under the skin of my face.
She sat up on the bed and straightened her dress, perfectly composed.
“Hand me my purse, please,” she said.
I picked it up from the floor where I must have knocked it. She took a tissue and a small mirror and wiped her mouth clean where I had mashed and spread her lipstick. Then she started combing her hair.
I stood rooted, trying to speak. Finally I said, “Are you going to tell Big Boy?”
She looked at me a moment consideringly. “No,” she said quietly.
Suddenly my legs gave out under me and I sat down in the nearest chair. Well, she had saved a killing for now. Then it hit me in the solar plexus, where I believe a man’s conscience hides: Just how dirty could one man be to another? Take a mans trust, his friendship, and try to steal his woman—a woman he was risking his life for. But wasn’t I willing to do the same? No matter, I could not explain it away or escape the guilt I felt.
It was almost impossible, but I turned and walked to the door. I said, “I’ll tell Big Boy you’re all set. He’ll be in after a while.” “Thanks, Pete,” she said, “thanks for everything.” And she added, “Come and have dinner with us.”
Big Boy finished working the horses about four, went in the tack room and washed, shaved, and put on clean clothes. We rode to the motel together. I got out and went to my room.
About an hour later Big Boy knocked and yelled, “Come on, Pete, we’re going uptown.”
“No,” I said, “you all go ahead.”
“Hell no,” he said, “come on along.”
“Well, just a minute, let me wash up.” I had tried to sleep and forget they were alone together in the motel room. I didn’t want to go with them, but I didn’t want to be alone either.
We went to this eating place with a cocktail lounge adjoining and had a few drinks before dinner. I drank about two to their one and was feeling somewhat better by the time we ordered steaks. Big Boy was smiling and talking. He polished off his steak before I got started. Mona ate slowly, relishing every bite, looking up at Big Boy with shining eyes. Big Boy was telling stories about people he liked and some he didn’t like so well.
“Were you there, Pete, the time old Delfino was drunk and everybody was singing? He yelled out, ‘Sing, you birds, before I tear up your nest.’ ”
“Yeah,” I said, “that crazy Delfino.”
“Did he ever tell you about his brother-in-law? He’s always cussing his brother-in-law about something. He told me: ‘I didn’t see his face but I sure hear his tracks. He hits me right smack in the top side of my face when my back she turned.’ ”
We had another drink to wash down the steak, and Big Boy went on talking like he’d just learned how and liked it.
“I was sitting in the Hi Lo Cafe the other day with Levi. We were eating a steak about the size of this one, and in came Jim Ed Love with one of his hired hands. Old Levi looked up and said: Well, there comes old rich-ass Jim Ed with his hired hand. Watch him, Big Boy, he’ll order one bowl of chili and two spoons.’ ”
After a while we
went into the lounge. All the men stared hard at Mona. I didn’t blame them. It was strange, her ability to capture the eyes and stop the breath of men and yet convey a very clear message: ‘Hands Off.’ I could never remember a man pawing her or getting fresh with her in public. I guess it was because she gave the impression when she was with a man she was sure enough with him.
I went over and played the jukebox, and Big Boy and Mona danced. I tried not to watch but I suppose I wanted to torture myself. They meshed, as Mona said. Two big fine people together. I, their closest friend, should have been happy for them. Well, I was trying.
They danced a long time. Then I saw Big Boy nod his head toward me, and I knew he had told Mona to dance with me. It was truly the last thing I wanted to do, but it would have looked wrong if I hadn’t.
I tried not to hold her up against me, but she just naturally danced in the bend of a man. The sweat came in my palms and my lungs ached, as though I had just finished tying a five- hundred-pound calf. And that smell of hers just went right through my clothes and the pores of my skin to the marrow of my bones.
Afterward I had three more fast drinks. Then I felt sick. I told them I was going down the street and look up an old girl friend. I caught a cab and went back to my room. Later on in the night Big Boy and Mona returned to theirs.
As dawns go, it was a pretty dawn.
Thirteen
Shipping time at Hi Lo. The cowboys rode in the hills and canyons, yelling, sweating, whipping coiled ropes and gloved hands against their chaps. Little bunches of scattered red stock were gathered into bigger bunches and then into the final count, according to the size and wealth of the ranch. The calves and the yearling steers were cut from the rest and loaded on trucks or trailed into Hi Lo, where stock buyers from Illinois, Kansas, Texas, and all over waited to weigh and load them onto cattle cars. They would be moved into feed lots and fattened further on rich, ripe grain. Then from the slaughterhouses they would go to cities all over America and from there to millions of dinner tables.
Hi Lo was busy as an ants’ nest during this period. The stores were full of ranchers paying bills, some owed for eleven or twelve months, and buying things they had wanted for their families all year. The women planned excursions to Ragoon for a little fancy shopping.
The smell of money was everywhere. The bars overflowed, and the poker and pitch tables ran over with greenbacks. New cars and pickups were seen up and down the streets. Notes were paid at the bank and credit was reestablished. It was a time of plenty, and had been for some years now. The people were lulled into a sense of security. But they had overstocked their land to take advantage of these high prices. There had been plenty of grass to produce fat cattle this fall, but winter was just ahead. I must admit that this was as true of me as of anybody else. Even though the high wind had started cutting around the edges of the thinning grass, I bought only one stack of hay and said, “Hell, I’m ready for winter.” I didn’t think. For soon I would wish with all my heart that I had bought three stacks and let the new pickup and all the whisky and poker go by the board.
But now the beef flowed in like ants to pure honey, and the money flowed with it. Out in the hills and canyons, though, the mother cows responsible for all this meat and gold were beginning to find the grass stems harder and harder to find. It wasn’t bad yet; they had their summer’s fat to carry them awhile, but all the same they were having to work at grazing long before deep winter set in.
The men driving the cattle pulled at the brims of their hats, and their eyes watered constantly from the dust of the herds. The wind rose gradually, slackened, and rose again. It pushed across the rolling hills, bending the brown grass, and shoved on into the mountains, whipping the limbs of the timber and oak brush. Things were beginning to give before this dry, remorseless wind. It blew day and night, tearing at the very plant life it had once seeded. But who now worried about the wind? With a pocket full of money and our bills paid, we could afford to stay in out of it most of the time.
I helped Big Boy and Hoover gather their stock. We rode into the brush and rocks for three days, wearing down ten head of horses. The cows were fat and wild after being free all summer, and we lost a little weight chasing them into bunches big enough to move down on the flats and the gathering pasture.
Big Boy was happy. He was working with horses and cows and men who knew their jobs. The jeeps, the airplanes, and the laws of the land faded away. We came into headquarters at night, tired to the guts and half starved, and when we had filled our bellies we collapsed in our bunks.
At daybreak we were down in the corrals, skylighting our horses so we could catch them for a long day ahead. That’s the way they had worked in the old days and that’s the way Big Boy and Hoover wanted it now. When we had made the final gather and cut the calves from the mother cows, we trailed them all the way into Hi Lo swallowing dust, with Hoover losing $2,000 worth of meat from the drive. But that was the way they wanted to do it.
Jim Ed Love owned a small lot just a mile and a half from town. He had big stock trucks to unload his thousands of head there, and then it was only a short drive to the stockyards. For days a steady stream of cattle moved this short distance to the loading pens so that everyone could see the wealth and power of Jim Ed Love. It cost him a little in weight, this short move, but he figured he made it up in prestige. And though I hated to admit it, he was right.
Les Birk, Mona’s husband, was there along with many other hands. But nobody thought to fight during this time. They were all too busy to hate. But later on, when the work was done, things would return to normal.
Fourteen
Big Boy dropped by to see me. “Listen, Pete,” he said, “you know those hillbilly Adkins boys?”
“Clem and Ake,” I said.
“Yeah. Well, they want us to pick up Uncle Bob and his hounds and come out to hunt. They say the coons are thick as clabber milk down there.”
“How far do they live below Hoover’s place?”
“About eleven, twelve miles, I guess,” he said.
“Well, come on,” I said. “By the time we get Uncle Bob and the dogs loaded and make the drive, it’ll be time to hunt.”
We took off in his pickup toward town and Uncle Bob’s place. I knew Big Boy had gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to get permission for Uncle Bob to hunt there, but he felt a kinship thicker than blood with the old hunter.
Uncle Bob lived about three miles out of Hi Lo with a crippled wife and uncountable hound dogs. He had a prize fighter’s face with a half-smoked cigar stuck in it at all times. He wore bib overalls and always smelled of coyote, coon, bobcat, or skunk. Sometimes I thought the odors of all these animals and many more had so impregnated his skin that the creatures of the wild just accepted him as one of their own. I know that when setting one of his steel traps he took very little precaution to stand upwind, and he always seemed to have exceptionally good luck anyway. He had running dogs for coyotes, and trail dogs for coons, bear, and mountain lion, but it was the coyote that fascinated him most.
Big Boy admired him a lot. In a way they were very much alike. If there was ever another man out of his time, it was Uncle Bob. He was as wild and free as the varmints he hunted. If he had lived in Kit Carson’s day he would have been a wealthy and famous hunter. He had a lot of trouble, too, around Hi Lo like Big Boy. His brand of trouble was a little different, though.
Uncle Bob just couldn’t help pinching women. His battered face testified to the times this had been violently resented. No matter; whenever the wind blew a female skirt or a quick movement pulled it tight, Uncle Bob just had to pinch. He had a thumb and forefinger that bit in like forceps, and the only way to stop him would be to cut his arm off. Most folks kind of indulged his weakness nowadays since he was getting so much older. In the past Uncle Bob had suffered innumerable beatings, but on the other hand he had administered just as many in defense of his dogs. A man that could stomp hell out of him for pinching a woman would find the process reversed if
he insulted one of Uncle Bob’s dogs.
Uncle Bob hunted every way but in an airplane. He hunted on foot, on horseback, and in his old Plymouth coupe. He kept a trap line every winter and made a little spending money this way, but it was the hunting, loose and free, that got his blood to moving. His main satisfaction in life was to be in on the kill. I damn near got killed once myself trying to keep up with him.
We were hunting horseback along a malpais-rimmed, oak-brush-filled canyon. Uncle Bob was riding his old bay mare, Mandy. The old mare had been on so many hunts that when the dogs took off she just naturally followed. It didn’t make any difference where they went, Mandy went too.
I had a pair of staghounds with a rope strung through rings on their collars. I held both loose ends in my right hand. If we jumped a coyote all I had to do was drop one end and the rope would pull out of the ring without ever checking their speed.
Uncle Bob held two greyhounds the same way. We worked slowly along the rim, looking for a place to get down. We decided one of us should be riding in the bottom. Just then a coyote jumped up and took off right along the rim of the canyon. The hounds leaped out with the horses pounding after them.
As the dogs closed the gap, I could see the coyote’s tail start switching from side to side, which meant he was putting out all he had. This coyote knew it, too, for just as one grey made a lunge for him he dived off the side of the canyon.
Well, I didn’t want to hurl myself off that pile of boulders and brush, but when old Mandy and Uncle Bob flew by, my little brown horse followed.
It was not a very pleasant ride. All I could see was Mandy’s tail thrashing up and down and gaining a length at a time. Just when I began to think the brown would keep his feet after all, we hit a spot not far from the bottom that was almost clear of rocks, and that’s where we rolled over and over at full speed. The momentum and force of the rolling horse sent me sailing through space. I hit the ground all right, but it was several moments later before I came to. I sat up and felt around and couldn’t believe I had no broken bones.