Stranger in Thunder Basin (Leisure Historical Fiction)

by John D. Nesbitt

  Another one that Ed had his doubts about was a husky dark horse. Its coat varied from dull black to dark brown, and it had a thick black mane and tail. When Ed took him out for a ride, the horse would break into a run for no apparent reason. Then he took to bolting when Ed threw his leg over the saddle and hadn’t caught the right stirrup yet. It was all Ed could do to hang on until he got the horse reined in.

  “He’s got a lot of fresh on him,” said Jory. “He’ll come around.”

  On the twenty-fourth, the day before the work season began, Cal Tompkins brought in four more men. Two were brothers named McLaughlin, who kept to themselves. One was a man a few years older than Ed or Jory; his name was Jeff, and he said he was from Arkansas. The fourth was a short, bald, pot bellied man named Reuben, who came to cook. He had been coming to the ranch for a few years, so he took over with full authority. He put Ed to peeling spuds and the McLaughlin brothers to rustling firewood. That night he served fried beefsteak, and when Jeff pushed back his plate at the end of the meal and said it was pretty damn good, Reuben’s face stiffened.

  “It better be. And put your plate in the wreck pan before you sit back on your ass and smoke a cigarette.”

  Jeff paused as he was drawing out a bag of Bull Durham. The features in his face seemed to lower about an inch, but he did as he was told. Then he rolled his smoke, lit it, and started talking about hunting wild turkey.

  Homer said he favored roasted duck.

  “Duck or goose, especially your barnyard types, are a little too greezy for me. ’Sides, I like to go out and hunt my own.”

  “They do that here,” said Homer.

  “Wild turkey?”

  “Not so much. Mostly other men’s beef.”

  Jory and Ed laughed, but the McLaughlin brothers kept quiet and didn’t look up from rolling their cigarettes.

  Jeff said, “I’ve heard of that,” and he seemed to Ed like the type who liked to get in the last word.

  All six of the ranch hands went to working with their horses the next morning. Ed was glad he’d had a few days’ head start when he saw how handy the three new fellows were. The McLaughlin brothers, bird faced and quiet, roped out their horses with a keen eye and a deft hand. Jeff had a looser style, but when he slapped on a saddle and pulled the cinches, Ed could see he was showing the horse who was boss.

  By the second day, each man was to have ridden all the horses in his string. Only one man at a time could take a horse into the round pen, and the others were spread out so as not to get in one another’s way. As the day was warming up after noon dinner, Ed roped the dark horse and led him out of the corral. He got the saddle and bridle on all right, then walked the horse out so he could tighten the cinch another notch or two. He also wanted to get out of the way in case the animal bolted when he swung aboard.

  That was exactly what the horse did. It broke into a dead run before Ed could get his right foot into the stirrup, and he had to hang on to the saddle horn and clamp with his leg to keep from being jolted off. The horse was heading for open country, while Ed was getting banged up and still couldn’t catch his stirrup. With his right hand he pulled the slack in his reins, and then with his left he tried to rein the animal in. When the horse didn’t slow, Ed pulled harder. Then the animal bunched up, and the real trouble began.

  When the horse had been running, Ed had been looking out over his low head, but now he was looking down into the dark swirls of mane. He tried to grab the saddle horn with his right hand, but the bucking fit continued. The fury and the force were tremendous. Still pulling on the reins with his left hand, Ed found the saddle horn with his right, then lost it, got knocked against the swells like before, smashed his left hand on something hard, and went flying off to the right. The ground came up to meet him, hard, as he landed on his hip and right arm. He felt the horse step on his legs, and then he was alone, lying in the dirt by a clump of sagebrush, still wearing his hat.

  He pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and saw the horse about seventy yards away, reins on the ground as he stood in profile watching the man rise from the dirt. Wavering, Ed got onto his feet and tested his legs. His right knee hurt like hell, but he could walk. The last two knuckles on his left hand had swollen up, and the fingers didn’t move very well.

  He knew he was supposed to get back on the horse. First he had to catch him. With slow steps he moved toward the animal, keeping his eye on the front quarter. The horse moved, stepped on a rein, and stopped. Ed walked up to it and took the reins.

  The horse would not let him on. Each time he raised his boot to the stirrup, the horse moved away sideways. After a few attempts, Ed walked the horse in a circle and tried again. The horse still moved aside. Ed tried the routine a few more times, but he felt so beaten up that he had to lead the horse back to the yard.

  Jory stood with his thumbs in his belt as Ed came limping in. “Pitched a fit, did he?”

  Ed held up his left hand, which had a big round swelling by now. “Banged me up pretty good. Stepped on my leg, too. At least the right one. I tried to get back on, but he wouldn’t let me, and I was beat to hell.”

  “Sometimes you just can’t. At least you’re walkin’.”

  Ed lay on his bunk the rest of that day and through the next. He had purple-and-blue bruises on his inner thighs, a bruise like a purple-and-red plum on his right knee, a scrape on his left shin, an aching big toe, and smaller sores and bruises along his arms. The swelling on his left hand had gone down a little, but he still couldn’t find the last knuckle.

  “You’ll be fine,” Homer said. “You’re young, and nothing’s broke. It could have been a lot worse.”

  On the second day after his wreck, he was able to hobble up and down the length of the bunk house, though the step down to go out back caused him a shooting pain in his right leg.

  The bruises on his knee and thighs spread and met in a blotchy mass. He was worried at the bruises getting larger instead of smaller, and then they started to dull in color. He figured the best thing he could do was move around, so he hobbled from his bunk to the kitchen and back every hour or so.

  Reuben the cook sat and smoked a cigarette. “That’s what old age is going to be like,” he said.

  “I don’t want to think about old age.”

  “Maybe you won’t have to.”

  The next day, the bruises were starting to turn yellow on the edges and in the thin spots. On the day after that, some of the splotches were becoming speckles. When Homer asked him how he was doing, he said it was starting to itch.

  “That’s good. When it starts to itch, that means it’s startin’ to get better.”

  Ed opened and closed his left hand. It was all vivid to him—the desire to stay on a thrashing animal, the need to ride it out, and the knowledge that he had to get back on when he could. “This thing still hurts,” he said, “and so does my knee, but I’m goin’ to get back on that horse, even if someone has to hold him for me.”

  Homer smiled. “That’s the way to make a hand.”

  Chapter Four

  With four coils in his left hand and the tail of the rope dangling toward his boot, Ed leaned into the wind and swung his loop. Punkin the bay horse was on his smooth, dead run, eating up the ground between him and the steer. Ed felt at one with the horse, his balance perfect and the purpose clear. As the horse’s right shoulder came even with the steer’s left hip, Ed threw his loop, aiming at the tip of the steer’s right horn. The loop settled over the horns and hung on the tip of the steer’s nose, then moved an inch back. Ed jerked his slack, then slowed the horse, took his dallies, and turned the steer.

  The animal fought, shaking its head and planting its feet, but the little bay horse leaned into the job and pulled the steer skipping back to the herd. Once there, Ed tried to shake the loop off the horns, but it stayed put. Bill McLaughlin rode close, leaned down, and pulled it off.

  “Little sumbitch doesn’t want to stay with us,” he said. “Who knows but he’ll try to leave in
the night.”

  Ed nodded thanks and turned away, hauling in his rope as he went back to his place. With twenty-seven head and five riders, a fellow would think they had things sewn up pretty well, but this was the fourth or fifth time the steer had tried to break away.

  Tompkins had sent everyone but Jory to pick up these cattle, which were held over from a roundup farther south, and it was a two-day job to trail them back to the ranch. Homer said he had a good place picked out to camp overnight, but Ed didn’t look forward to trying to keep the little herd together during the night.

  On through the hot afternoon they rode, with the herd strung out nearly a hundred yards. Bill McLaughlin took it upon himself to ride herd on the unruly steer, and every time it tried to cut loose he was right on it, slapping it in the face with his rope and hazing it back to the herd.

  In the late afternoon, Homer led them half a mile west to a muddy little waterhole. Not far away was an outcropping of ancient mud that would give shelter against anything that came out of the west. The McLaughlin brothers held back and watched the cattle crowd around the water while the other three riders went to the campsite.

  “Look out for snakes,” said Homer. “This is always a good place for ’em.”

  Jeff dismounted with his lariat in hand and began stalking the area. He had a distinctive way of walking, with the tips of his boots pointed outward, and he was a little heavy around the middle, so it looked as if his weight shifted back and forth from one foot to another. At the edge of the bare spot, close to the base of the little bluff, he stopped and squared off. Holding a big loop as if he were about to rope heels, he brought the lariat up and around and swatted at the ground. He slapped another half dozen times with the braided rawhide whistling and then thudding. Then with the toe of his boot he lifted a medium-sized snake and sent it on a low trajectory into the sagebrush.

  Homer, resting his rein hand on the saddle horn, turned to Ed. “If you don’t have that habit, you’d just as well not pick it up.”

  “Killin’ snakes?”

  “With a rope.”

  Jeff went after his horse, which he had left ground-hitched. The animal had flinched at the first sounds of the lariat but had stayed put.

  A little later on, as Ed was coaxing a fire out of a small heap of sagebrush, Jeff spoke up.

  “What’s wrong with killin’ snakes?”

  “Nothin’,” said Homer. “I just wouldn’t do it with a rope.”

  “Rawhide’s pretty hard. Works good.”

  “I wouldn’t want the chance of pickin’ up a fang when I was pullin’ the rope back in.”

  “I had leather gloves on.”

  “That’s fine,” Homer said. “You do what you want. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve heard of a fang goin’ through thicker leather than that.”

  Ed looked up and raised his eyebrows, as a way of saying he was interested in the story.

  Homer went on. “Like a lot of tales, this one came out of Texas. The way it goes, a young fella died after killin’ a snake, but they couldn’t find any bites on him, and they didn’t know what killed him. His brother inherited his boots, which were in a lot better shape than his own, and not long after he took to wearin’ ’em, damn if he didn’t die, too. Well, what with the boots bein’ the one thing in common, the other fellas looked ’em over, and they found a rattlesnake fang right here in the crease.” Homer pointed at his own boot.

  “Sounds to me like a tall tale from Texas.” Jeff pulled out his tobacco sack and crinkled his nose.

  “Might be,” said Homer, “but I wouldn’t want to push my luck around rattlers.”

  Thick smoke was coming out of the nest of dry sagebrush, so Ed took off his hat and fanned air into the base. A small blaze leapt up, and the smoke cleared. Ed pushed himself back onto his heels and stood, then looked around at the McLaughlin brothers.

  “Are they gonna stay on shift for a while?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Homer. “Get yourself some rest in the meanwhile.”

  They crossed the trail from Glenrose to Litch at mid-morning the next day. Ed glanced at the Barrow, a quarter mile to his left, and remembered the first time he had seen it. He hoped that the next time he went past it to the west, he would get a better reception in Mrs. Porter’s self-acclaimed boarding-house.

  In the afternoon, they pushed the cattle up and over the pine ridge, where Ed saw the domed anthills and thought again of his first trip this way. The weather was hotter now, the days longer. He had been through his first payday and fitted himself out with spurs and a six-gun. Jeff still treated him as if he had just gotten weaned, especially when they shot cans in back of the barn, but Ed knew he was making progress.

  The men had sat down at the mess table and were waiting for Reuben to bring on the pot of beans when the storm announced itself. It began with a patter of heavy raindrops, then a strong wind and the rattle of pellets on the roof and back wall.

  “Sounds like hail,” Jory said. He got up and opened the back door. A rush of cool air came in, and water was already running off the roof in a curtain. “Sure is,” he said, slamming the door.

  The rattling sound became steadier and louder. Everyone got up from the table and went to stand about six feet from the back window. Marble-sized hailstones were coming in at a slant and whacking on the window, while farther out, they struck and bounced two feet up from the ground.

  Jeff moved to the edge of the window and looked out to the side. “Good thing we got in,” he said. “That would sting like hell.”

  Homer cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t stand too close to the glass.”

  Jeff ignored him and hooked his thumbs in his belt.

  The storm seemed to be picking up. The hail was falling in a thick and steady racket, but through the window Ed could see that bigger stones were coming in the midst of all the smaller ones. As big around as hen’s eggs, they came at irregular intervals, thudding against the roof and wall. Smash, smash-smash, smash-smash-smash, smash.

  Everyone had moved back from the window, and the hailstones big and little were visible as they came driven by the wind. Some of the stones hit the glass and made slush, while others bounced off.

  The window crashed, and a ball of ice landed on the floor. The irregular impacts continued on the wall and roof, still with the background of the steady rattat-tat of the smaller stones. Another hailstone, round and white as a china doorknob, smashed through what was left of the windowpane.

  Within half an hour the storm had passed over. The men put on their hats and went outside. The sky had cleared, and the sun had not yet touched the western rim. Sunlight poured through the calm, clean air, though a chill hung there as well. Hailstones lay in a carpet all around and in a long heap at the base of the bunk house. Ed picked up a larger one and looked it over. It seemed like strange fruit, a frozen white spherical berry composed of a cluster of tiny balls. He dropped it in a mound of slush.

  Out front, Tompkins and his wife and two little children were standing in the yard. The little boy, who was about six years old, was holding up a hailstone that covered his palm. A black-and-white puppy was looking up at the boy’s hand.

  Mrs. Tompkins took the little girl inside, leaving her husband and son to the company of the men.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” said the boss, “you could take a look around and see if anything needs fixin’ to night.”

  Down by the barn and corrals, water was running toward the grove of cottonwoods. Closer to the barn, a bird nest lined with horse hair and dried grass had fallen from an elm, and the drowned little birds lay with their buggy eyes closed and their beaks opened.

  “This isn’t so bad,” said Jeff, rocking along in his usual gait. “I’ve seen jackrabbits brained by hailstones as big as your fist.”

  Leaves and twigs lay all over the ground within forty yards of the cottonwoods, but in the wide distance beyond, the clear, blue sky seemed as innocent as ever.

  Ed sat back on his bunk
, half watching and half listening as Jory, Homer, and Jeff played dominoes. Before the rest of the crew arrived, Jory and Homer played cribbage of an evening, as Ed didn’t care for table games. He did sit by and enjoy the talk, though. Now with Jeff in the company, it was not so pleasant, so Ed tried to keep his distance. He wasn’t the only one. Just this evening, Jeff tried to get a five-or six-handed poker game going, but the McLaughlin brothers kept to themselves as always, and Reuben said he was saving up to go see the Queen of En gland.

  “Friend of yours?” said Jeff, with his usual tinge of sarcasm.

  “Not yet.” Reuben widened his nostrils. “But when she gets to know me, she’ll probably want me to stay.”

  “You’d have to learn to play whist or quadrille.” Reuben tapped his ashes. “Who says I don’t know already?”

  Jeff turned and said, “How about you, Ed? Play some poker?”

  “Not my game.”

  “Well,” Jeff said, “I guess we can play dominoes, then.”

  The game got under way as it often did, with a mixing and clattering of tiles and a running line of table talk.

  “Who’s got the boxcar?” asked Jeff. “Whoever’s got the double six, start things out.” He had names for the other doubles as well—fifty-five, forty-four, thirty-three, twenty-two, snake eyes. He called the tile that had two blanks “double nuts.”

  “No one’s got it?” said Homer. “We’ll start with the double five then.”

  “Fifty-five. Somebody’s little sister. Your turn, Jory.”

  When the next round began, Homer laid out the double six. “Here’s the mule,” he said.

  “Boxcar.” Jeff drummed his fingers on the table.

  Reuben, who was sitting at the end of the table and rolling another cigarette, looked up with his annoyed expression. “You’ve got to name everything, don’t you?”

  “What do you mean? That’s its name.”

  “Homer says ‘mule,’ and you’ve got to cover it with ‘boxcar,’ like one dog pissin’ on top of where another did.”