by Lauran Paine
He and Otto hauled hay with two wagons and both teams until Shan’s barn was full. Then they made fifty-ton stacks out on the range and built split-rail fences around them to keep the cattle from tearing them down, trampling them, after snow flew. It was grueling labor. Shan fell asleep at the late supper table almost every night. He drank prodigious amounts of water during the day and sweated it out.
Then they moved down to Otto’s to hay, and Sarahlee and Mary came, too. The Mullers’ house was like Christmas with women cooking and washing things and talking all the time while he and Otto worked the hay land, talked a little from time to time when they took a breather, and planned ahead. Otto seemed a little more quiet, more thoughtful, every now and then, as though some strange mood was on him. Shan noticed but paid no heed.
The summer was almost over. It was just as hot during the days but around dawn the air would be sharp, have a winter smell and look to it. Autumn was closing down. There were several frosty nights.
Shan pitched hay onto the wagon and rode with its fragrance to the barn and pitched it over into the hay area and up into the loft until he could pitch hay in his sleep. He was like iron, glowing with health that showed in him like the glow of new money. It was a good way to be and he reveled in it. There was little to mar it, but there was something. Sarahlee wouldn’t let him touch her, and she’d sit outside in the dusk with all of them after supper, sewing and humming to herself. She rarely joined the conversations anymore. And Mary seemed to be avoiding him for some reason. Little things of no vast importance but he was conscious of them. One day Mary left before breakfast and didn’t return until just before chore time. No one said anything about it, but one day, just before they finished haying Otto’s place, Mary disappeared again, and that time Otto remarked on it.
“What the devil do you suppose she’s up to, Shan? Could there be a buck around here some place she’s seeing?”
“Now, Otto, she just needs the exercise is all. You told me yourself they’re different from us.”
“Maybe,” Otto conceded, “but I wish she’d say something ahead of time. That way I could single out a horse for her instead of her taking my old bay the way she does.”
Then they all went up to Shan’s to work cattle. The woman went ahead in Otto’s wagon. Sarahlee and Mrs. Muller gave the cabin a thorough cleaning. Otto and Shan, toned down from hard labor, ran in bunches of cattle and cut the bull calves, branded those Shan had missed, and made a notched-stick tally. They worked hard, ate heavy, and slept like dead men. One evening Shan brought a jug up from the spring house and they all sat around outside, watching the twilight. That was almost the last warm night of the year and it became something to be cherished, later. Something four of them at least never forgot.
When they were almost finished, Ash O’Brien and his older brother rode over from their own round-up camp. Shan had never met the older brother before. He looked like Ash, only larger, heavier, and his name was Tim. They hadn’t been there an hour, drinking laced coffee and exchanging cow talk with Otto and Shan before their father, Will O’Brien, rode into the yard, dismounted, and tied his horse. From time to time the older man would raise his head and study Shan silently. So did Tim O’Brien. Young Ash was as friendly as ever. Sarahlee and Mrs. Muller had a jug of Indian cookies Mary had taught them to make. They served them with the coffee, and the men lounged in their chairs, eating and talking. Will O’Brien finally asked if either Shan or Otto had an iron thole pin. They had broken the one they used on their cook wagon and had no replacement. Otto said he didn’t have one, but Shan told the O’Briens he had one and would be glad to sell it to him. Old Man O’Brien accepted the offer and gave Shan money to pay for the pin, then he took his boys and departed.
The next morning Shan left for town with Sarahlee’s list and the list Otto gave him at the barn when he was harnessing the wagon team. Otto asked what time he thought he’d be back.
“As soon as I get the things loaded. No reason to hang around down there.”
“Good,” Otto said. “Fine.” He sounded unnaturally relieved, and Shan looked down at him in a puzzled way from the wagon seat. Otto gave the near horse a pat on the rump and flagged with his hand. “We’ll hang around here so’s Sarahlee won’t be alone until you get back.” Then he turned without another look at Shan and started toward the cabin.
Shan looked after him with a vertical crease between his eyes. It was a strange way for Otto to act. He lifted the lines and his shoulders at the same time, dropped both, and hunched forward on the seat.
By the time he got to Tico, it was lunchtime. The sun was straight overhead. He went to the Mercantile and crossed off the things he wanted as he and an elderly clerk grunted with them to the wagon. By the time he was loaded, it was late afternoon. At the smithy he had to wait while the blacksmith beat out several thole pins and sold three of them to Shan. By then it was almost sundown, too late to start the trek back. He drove the laden wagon to the livery barn, left it parked securely out back where its contents couldn’t be stolen, paid for a pair of tie stalls, some hay and grain for the team, crossed the dusty roadway to a café, and studied the list as he ate. He had everything he’d been sent for. He leaned back with a good feeling, lit his pipe, and smoked. The world looked good. Later, he went to the saloon and polished off three cups of Green River, then went back outside, feeling more expansive and comfortable than ever. They’d be expecting him home in another hour or two, but when he didn’t show up by 9:00 p.m. or so they’d figure he’d decided to stay over.
He was standing in the waning light when a group of range men went flashing past, spurs and rein chains ringing. One reckless face turned, saw him, and broke into a wide, toothy grin. The group was fifteen feet farther down the thoroughfare when the grinning face called out: “Howdy, Squawman! Hey, fellers, there’s Otto Muller’s Abe Lincoln boy yonder …”
They swirled down the shadowy lane with only the echo of their jingle and creak lingering where Shan stood. He drew up slowly and twisted to see where they halted, but traffic and the dusk kept them from him. He turned and began to walk southward on the plank walk. He wasn’t angry exactly, just ready to see some excitement. Willing to take issue over that name.
But he didn’t find them. He visited four saloons but didn’t see anyone who grinned like that or said anything to him. He saw a lot of riders and they saw him, but not a one of them spoke. Then he met Tim O’Brien on the plank walk and invited him in for a drink. O’Brien turned him down, said he rarely ever drank, and Shan replied that Tim was the first Irishman he’d ever run across who wouldn’t drink the spots off a bar top. O’Brien looked straight at him without replying.
“You drank laced coffee up at my place yesterday,” Shan said.
“Yes, that was a sociable drink. I don’t drink much ever, Mister Shanley, and never at all in town.”
“It won’t hurt you,” Shan insisted. “You know, O’Brien, when I was in the army you’d get judged by how much whiskey you could hold.”
“I don’t judge folks,” Tim O’Brien said with a growing edge to his tone, “and I don’t like them judging me.”
“Who’s judging you?” Shan said in surprise, then he looked at O’Brien a moment before turning away. “Fellers like you make me sick,” he said.
“Shanley! Oh, forget it … you’re drunk.”
Shan turned back slowly. “Who’s drunk? Why you damned fool, I’ve drunk more whiskey than you have water, and I can count the times I’ve been drunk on the fingers of one hand.”
“Then you’d better start using the fingers on the other hand right now,” O’Brien said. “I know when a man’s drunk.” There was a hard light in his eyes.
Shan walked back a few steps and for a moment he said nothing. They were nearly of a size but Shan, even trimmed down and stone hard, was easily twenty pounds heavier. He dropped his gaze to O’Brien’s high-heeled boots and smiled. “You woul
dn’t know a drunk if one hit you,” he said, “teetering around on those silly boots like a dance hall girl.”
O’Brien’s eyes were very still, his face grew pale, and when he spoke, his voice was even softer than before. “Maybe I think the same about fellers who wear those flat-heeled squatter’s boots,” he said.
“Squatter’s boots?” Shan looked down. “Drover’s boots you mean.”
“No, I mean squatter’s boots. Squatters … fellers who come along and take up rangeland others been running cattle on for ten years … squatters.”
Shan raised his head. Excitement moved in the depths of his eyes; he was almost grinning. “If I’m a squatter, why I expect I’m the first one that ever turned O’Brien cattle back off my range then.”
“Listen, Shanley …” The words were soft but razor-edged. A few bystanders were drawing close, winking to one another.
“Listen yourself, you dance hall heifer.”
“I wish it’d been me instead of my brother you talked so hard to that day you met our herd going out.”
Shan’s ire was beginning to rise a little. “Talked hard to? That’s a damned lie. I just told him I needed my feed is all, and if that’s talking hard, O’Brien, I expect you’d better get used …”
O’Brien’s fist streaked outward without any warning. Shan didn’t see it coming until it exploded under his jaw, and he went over backward. He wasn’t hurt, just bowled off balance. Looking up, he saw the bystanders, grown to a considerable crowd now, grinning wider than ever as he got to his knees. Men were calling to their friends. Shan was back on his feet before he understood what they were saying.
“Come on. That squawman and Tim O’Brien’re mixing it.”
He hurtled himself at O’Brien. “Squawman! Who’re you calling a squawman!”
O’Brien was as fast as a cat but he was no match for big Ryan Shanley, not even when Shan wasn’t fighting mad. “Whose a squawman!” Shan bellowed at the top of his lungs. “I’ll show you who’s a squawman … an Abe Lincoln boy …!”
After the first brief exchange of blows, Shan struck O’Brien almost at will. Nothing O’Brien had hit him with could check his forward momentum. The difference between them was essentially that Tim O’Brien couldn’t hit hard and Shan could. He’d been hitting since his orphanage days. In the army he’d learned how and when and where to hit. He had scars acquired from twenty years of fighting, and now, slightly over thirty, he was a rugged and experienced fighter, which Tim O’Brien was not.
A tearing blow that caught O’Brien under the ear, after a thunderous slam had half turned him, ended the fight. Shan stood, wide-legged, looking at the unconscious form, half on, half off the plank walk, in the purple dust of the darkened roadway.
“Who else’s got those squawman notions?” he challenged the crowd, stone-still and silent now, sobered. “Who else wants to get a little piece of an Abe Lincoln boy? Come on …!” He swore at them, but no one came forward and a few on the outskirts drifted away. The others watched him with all the respect they’d show a crouched cougar, lashing its tail.
He turned and shouldered roughly past them, was almost clear of the faces when behind him a man in the crowd with the guns and spurs of a rider lifted a hand high and brought it down hard. There was a sullen shine of blue steel seconds before the crunch of metal over bone, and Shan collapsed without a sound.
When he came around later, his head ached fiercely. He got up out of the dirt and saw that Tim O’Brien was gone, and there was a hush around him. He crossed to a watering trough and washed his head, probed the bump, guessed with no effort how he had acquired it, and went down to the livery barn. The night swamper nodded to him in total silence and busied himself with a handbarrow and a shovel. He climbed to the loft, buried himself in the hay, and tried to sleep and forget. A little scimitar-shaped moon shone through gaping mow doors.
He was hitching up an hour before dawn. By daybreak he was well up the stage road, northward. There wasn’t a rider anywhere in sight. He surmised the O’Brien outfit must have pulled out of Tico the night before, probably not long after they’d patched up their boss’ son. At the Muller place he pulled in and watered the team, made a cigarette, and looked solemnly at the empty house, smoked, and felt like swearing at himself. What resentment still lingered was directed at the coward who had struck him over the head from behind.
Squawman! It hadn’t been just that blurry rider, loping past. Those men in the crowd had called him that as well. He thought of young Ash O’Brien, the way he’d looked at Mary the time she had been with Shan and they’d met. And later, how he spoke of seeing Sarahlee and Mary, “the Injun girl,” he’d said. Dull anger stirred and grew and simmered. That was where it had started.
He drove out of Otto’s yard and angled toward the road. Later, when he got home, he set the brake in front of the cabin and got down. Otto and Mrs. Muller crowded up along with Sarahlee. They all helped carry what belonged to the Shanleys inside. Otto’s things were left in the wagon, and Shan walked beside the team to the barn, where he was unharnessing when Otto appeared in the doorway, eyes watching Shan, his little pipe going.
“Anything new in town?”
“I got into a fight, Otto.”
Otto’s eyes widened a trifle. “Who with?”
“Tim O’Brien.”
“Tim?” Otto said in surprise. “Why, Tim’s no fighter, Shan. I mean, he don’t start fights. I’ve known him for eight years and have yet to see him give offence.”
“I guess it was my fault,” Shan said. “We were joshing and one thing led to another, and he busted me one. When I got up, I knocked him out.”
Otto looked unbelieving. “Well,” he said finally, “doggone it. You know those O’Briens are about the squarest folks around here, Shan.”
Shan straightened up, passed Otto to throw the harness into the wagon box. “It was a damned fool thing,” he said.
“Did you have a few drinks before it happened?”
Shan felt irritated but he nodded his head meekly enough. “I expect that’s what it was … but I’d eaten.”
Otto knocked out his pipe and squinted at the sun. “Well, let’s get some dinner.”
“Here,” Shan said, holding out a thole pin. “I got three of them. One for you, and two for me.”
Otto stuck the pin into his trouser pocket and crossed the yard beside Shan. After they had eaten, they both went down to the spring house and took a bath. The water made Shan feel a lot better. He began to search his mind for justification for the fight and found plenty but it wasn’t anything he could tell Otto so he didn’t speak of it again.
The Mullers drove home that evening. The next day and the day after Shan spent splitting logs and snaking them down to the yard to weather. He meant to use them the next spring for building the fence around the hay fields. The third day Otto rode up with a shotgun across his lap.
“Been sage hen hunting. Figured you might like to come along.”
Shan was grateful for the diversion, and although he had only a few loads for his scatter-gun, he saddled up, tied his sheepskin coat aft of the cantle, and told Sarahlee where he was going.
They rode west of the barn, out through the hayed-off land, but didn’t stir up a single sage chicken. Otto struck out across the road then.
“Probably be better over here,” he said.
By the time they came upon the abandoned range camp of the O’Brien outfit, they had seen several of the ungainly birds and had bagged two. “Too bad you had that fight, Shan. The O’Briens are your nearest neighbors next to us, son.”
“I’m sorry, too,” Shan said, poking at the rubble left behind at the cow camp. “I’ll apologize next time I run across O’Brien.”
“If he lets you,” Otto said, grunting back into the saddle. “I expect there were a lot of fellows standing around when you whipped him, weren’t there?�
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“There was quite a bunch before it was over.”
“Yeah,” Otto said. “Well now, folks in Wyoming are a little different than other folks that way, Shan. You can apologize to Tim, and he might even accept it, but I know his paw. Old Will won’t be so quick to forgive and forget. He’ll expect you to apologize in town, Shan. Maybe some Saturday when there’ll be the same crowd handy to hear you.”
Shan looked disbelievingly at Otto and his face darkened. “I’ll be …”
“Now wait a minute,” Otto interrupted. “Maybe you were right in whipping Tim for all I know. I’m just telling you how folks out here look at those things. You’ve got to eat the same humble pie you made Tim eat when you licked him in front of a crowd.”
“I couldn’t do that, Otto.”
“I don’t expect it was pleasant for Tim, either, boy.”
“He asked for it.”
Otto’s eyes flashed for a moment, then he said: “I’m saying the O’Briens are good neighbors, Shan. If you’re going to keep them that way, you’ve got to make up for hitting Tim.”
They rode on for a half mile more before Shan drew up when a sage chicken whirred out of the broken grass in front of them, and Otto dismounted, ran forward a little, and fired at it. He missed and swore.
“I guess I’ve got to do it, Otto. I guess they’ll be a little mad at you, too.”
“I can stand that,” Otto said, remounting. “I’m thinking of all of us living and working out here, Shan. There’s no sense in having to turn away when you see a man riding past. Especially over something as silly as a fistfight between you and Tim. You’ll help them and they’ll help you as the years go by.”