He stalked out of the house as if he didn’t like having his Sunday disturbed by such woman nonsense, but when he was halfway to the barn his stride lengthened and she saw the stiffness of his back and the set of his shoulders. She sat down then and cried.
Anton, the boy, was pouring sour milk into a trough for the pigs when Jeff rode into the Svitac yard. The world could collapse, but pigs had to be fed, and the boy was busy with his thoughts and did not see Jeff ride up. The door of the little house that was half soddy, half dugout, opened, and Mary Svitac called something in Bohemian. The boy looked up, startled, and Jeff smiled. “Will you ride my horse over and tie him in the shade, Anton?”
The flood of hope that filled the boy’s eyes was embarrassing to a man, and Jeff dismounted quickly, keeping his head turned. He took the bundle of curtains from behind the saddle, and handed the reins to the boy; then walked on to the sod house where Mary Svitac stood, the shawl tied under her chin framing her round, expressionless face. He handed her the curtains. “Those pickles you gave us were fine, Mrs. Svitac. Elaine wanted me to bring these curtains over.”
Mary Svitac let her rough fingers caress the curtain material. “I will give you all the pickles,” she said. “We don’t need the curtains. We don’t stay here no more.”
Rudy’s thick voice came from the dark interior of the sod house; and now Jeff could see him there, sitting in a chair, a man dulled with work and disappointments, a man with a limited knowledge of English who had come to a new country with a dream, and found grasshoppers and drought and blizzards and neighbors who tried to drive him out. He looked up. “We don’t stay,” he said.
“Can I come in for a minute, Mrs. Svitac?” Jeff asked.
“I make coffee,” she said.
He stooped to pass through the low door, and he took off his hat and sat down. Now that his eyes were accustomed to the darkness of the room, he saw the big lithograph there on the wall, the only decoration. Rudy Svitac stared unblinkingly at the floor, and a tear ran unashamed down the side of his nose. “We don’t stay,” he said.
“Sure, Rudy,” Jeff Anderson said softly. “You stay.”
Mary Svitac started to cry. There were no tears, for the land had taken even that away from her. There were just sobs—dry, choking sounds as she made her coffee—but they were woman sounds, made for her man; and she was willing to give up fifteen years of work if her man would be safe. “They will fight with us,” she said. “They put cows in my Rudolph’s corn. They tear down our fence. Soon they come to break my house. Is too much. Rudolph does not know fight. Rudolph is for plant the ground and play wiolin—”
“You stay, Rudy,” Jeff Anderson said. “The law will take care of you. I promise you that.”
Rudy Svitac shook his ponderous head. “Law is for Hank Fetterman,” he said. “Is not for me.”
“It’s not so, Rudy,” Jeff said. “You ask Anton. He knows.”
“I ask Anton,” Rudy Svitac said. “He says I am right. Law is for Hank Fetterman.”
The boy came to the door and stood there, peering inside the room. His face was white, drawn with worry; but the hope was still in his eyes and a confidence was there. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. Jeff could hear the sound of horses approaching—Jeff stood up and the feeling that was in him was an old and familiar feeling—a tightening of all his muscles. He went to the corner of the room and took Rudy Svitac’s rifle from its place, and he levered in a shell, leaving the rifle at full cock. He stepped through the door then, and he put his hand on the boy’s head. “You explain again to your father about the law,” he said. “You know, Anton, like we talked before.”
“I know,” Anton Svitac said.
Jeff stepped swiftly through the door into the sunlight, and he saw Hank Fetterman and the same two riders who had been with him at the saloon coming toward the soddy. Only Hank was armed, and this could be handy later, when Hank talked to the judge. If we had expected trouble, all three of us would have been armed, Judge, Hank Fetterman could say. They rode stiffly, holding their horses in. Jeff Anderson stood the cocked rifle by the fencepost, placing it carefully. He pushed his hat back on his head and felt the sun on his back as he leaned there, one foot on a fence rail, watching the pigs eat the sour milk.
He knew when the riders were directly beside him, and he turned, his elbows leaning on the top rail of the fence behind him. His hat was pushed back, but his face was in shade, for he had moved to where he was between the sun and the riders. Hank Fetterman said, “We’re seeing a lot of each other, neighbor.”
“Looks that way,” Jeff said.
Hank Fetterman quieted his horse with a steady hand. His eyes never left Jeff Anderson’s face. “I asked you once today if you was a friend of the Bohunks,” he said. “Maybe I better ask it again.”
“Maybe it depends on what you’ve got on your mind, Hank.”
“The Bohunk’s been eating my beef,” Fetterman said, “I’m sick of it.”
“You sure that’s it, Hank?” Jeff asked quietly. “Or is it just that there’s something that eats on you and makes you want to tear down things other folks have taken years to build up?”
There were small white patches on either side of Hank Fetterman’s mouth. “I said the Bohunk was eating my beef,” Hank Fetterman said. His lips didn’t move. “You doubting my word?”
“No,” Jeff said. “I’m calling you a liar.”
He saw the smoldering anger in Hank Fetterman, the sore, whisky-nursed anger, and then the cattleman felt the full shock as the flat insult in Jeff’s voice reached through to him. He cursed and half twisted in the saddle, blinking directly into the sun. “You forgetting you ain’t a lawman any more?” he demanded.
“You decide, Hank,” Jeff said.
They looked at each other, two men who had killed before and knew the meaning of it, two men who respected a gun and understood a gun. They said nothing and yet they spoke a silent language, and the man who had been a lawman said, I’m telling you to back down, Fetterman; and the man who wanted to be king said, You’ll have to be big enough to make me. No actual words, and yet they knew; and they faced each other with muscles tense and faces drawn, and appeared at ease. Jeff Anderson had dealt himself into the game, and he had checked the bet.
Hank Fetterman saw the rifle by the post. He knew it was cocked and loaded. He wondered if Jeff Anderson was actually as quick and as accurate as men said he was; and because he was Hank Fetterman, he had to know, because if he backed down now, it was over for him and he knew it. He jerked his horse around, trying to avoid that direct glare of the sun, and he made his decision. His hand went for his gun.
Jeff Anderson saw the move coming. It seemed to him that he had plenty of time. He had placed the rifle carefully and now he held it, hip high, gripping it with one hand, tilting it up and pulling the trigger all at the same time. He didn’t hear the sound of the rifle’s explosion. You never did, he remembered; but he saw the thin film of gunsmoke, and he saw Hank Fetterman’s mouth drop open, saw the man clawing at his chest. He didn’t feel the sickness. Not yet—
Time passed as if through a film of haze, and nothing was real. Then they were gone and a canvas was stretched over the still form of Hank Fetterman, and Rudy Svitac was whipping his team toward town to get the coroner. Now the sickness came to Jeff Anderson. He stood by the barn, trembling, and he heard the boy come up behind him. The boy said, “This was in the street in town, Mr. Anderson.” The boy held out the tin star. “I told my father how the law was for everybody in America. Now he knows.”
Jeff Anderson took the tin star and dropped it into his pocket.
Elaine saw him through the front window. She had been watching a long time, and she had been praying, silently; and now she said, “Thank God,” and she went and sat down, and she was like that when he came into the room. She wanted to ask him about it, but her throat kept choking; and then he was kneeling there, his head in her lap, and he was crying deep inside, not making a so
und. “It’s all right, Jeff,” she said. “It’s all right.”
For that was the thing he had to know—that it was all right with her. He had to know that she loved him for the man he was and not for the man he had tried to become. He couldn’t change any more than Billy Lang could change. She had never told him to take off his gun—not in words—but she had wanted him to, and he had understood, and he had tried. No woman could ask for greater love than that a man to try to change himself. And no woman need be afraid when she had such love. She thought of young Anton Svitac and of her own son who was to be, and she was calm and sure.
A long time later she picked up Jeff’s coat and laid it across her arm. The tin star fell to the floor. For a long time she looked at it, then she bent her knees and reached down and picked it up and put it back into the coat pocket. She went into the bedroom then and hung the coat carefully. From the bureau drawer she took a clean white pleated-front shirt and laid it out where he could see it. Marshal Jeff Anderson had worn a clean white pleated-front shirt to the office on Monday morning for as long back as she could remember. She didn’t expect him to change his habits now.
Elmer Kelton is a major and widely respected name in modern western fiction, as evidenced by his unprecedented four Spur awards and three Cowboy Hall of Fame Western Heritage awards. While writing for western novels during the 1950s and 1960s, he also edited several ranching magazines, including The Ranch Magazine and Livestock Weekly. His work deals mainly with the settlement of Texas, from its early days as a frontier filled with danger and opportunity to the days of the oil boom. His more than thirty novels include such classics as The Man Who Rode Midnight, The Day the Cowboys Quit, and The Good Old Boys, all modern benchmarks of western fiction.
The Burial of Letty Strayhorn
Elmer Kelton
Greenleaf Strayhorn frowned as he rode beyond the dense live oak motte and got his first clear look at Prosperity. The dry west wind, which had been blowing almost unbroken for a week, picked up dust from the silent streets and lifted it over the frame buildings to lose it against a cloudless blue sky. He turned toward the brown packhorse that trailed the young sorrel he was riding. His feeling of distaste deepened the wrinkles which had resulted from long years of labor in the sun.
“Wasn’t much of a town when we left here, Letty, and I can’t see that it’s got any better. But you wanted to come back.”
Prosperity had a courthouse square but no courthouse. Even after voting some of its horses and dogs, it had lost the county-seat election to rival Paradise Forks, a larger town which could rustle up more horses and dogs. Greenleaf hoped the dramshop was still operating. He had paused in Paradise Forks only long enough to buy a meal cooked by someone other than himself, and that had been yesterday. He was pleased to see the front door open. If the sign out front had been repainted during his twelve-year absence, he could not tell it.
“Finest in liquors, wines, and bitters,” he read aloud. “Cold beer and billiards. Our kind of a place. Mine, anyway. You never was one for self-indulgence.”
The sorrels’ ears poked forward distrustfully as a yellow dog sauntered out to inspect the procession. Greenleaf tightened his knee grip, for the young horse was still prone to regard with great suspicion such things as dogs, chickens, and flying scraps of paper. It had pitched him off once already on this trip. Greenleaf was getting to an age when rodeoing was meant to be a spectator sport, not for personal participation. The dog quickly lost interest in rider and horses and angled off toward the live oak motte to try and worry a rabbit or two.
Greenleaf tied up the horses in front of the saloon, loosening the girth so his saddle horse could breathe easier. He checked the pack on the brown horse and found it still snug. Seeing no others tied nearby, he knew the saloon was enjoying another in a long succession of slow days.
He stepped up onto the board sidewalk, taking an extralong stride to skip over a spot where two planks had been removed. Somebody had evidently fallen through in the relatively distant past. The rest of the boards were badly weathered, splintered, and worn. It was only a matter of time until they, too, caused someone embarrassment, and probably skinned shins.
The whole place looked like the tag end of a hot, dry summer. Whoever had named this town Prosperity was a terrible prophet or had a wicked sense of humor, he thought.
A black cat lay curled in the shade near the front door. It opened one eye in response to Greenleaf’s approach, then closed the eye with minimum compromise to its rest.
The bartender sat on a stool, his head upon his arms atop the bar. He stirred to the jingling of spurs and looked up sleepy-eyed.
“Beer,” Greenleaf said. “A cold one if you’ve got it.”
The man delivered it to him in a mug and gave him a squinting appraisal. “Ain’t your name Greenleaf Shoehorn?”
“Strayhorn.”
“A name like Greenleaf ain’t easily forgot. The rest of it …” He shrugged. “Didn’t you used to work on Old Man Hopkins’s place?”
“And married his daughter Letty.”
Memory made the bartender smile. “Anybody who ever met Letty would remember her. A mighty strong-willed woman. Where’s she at?”
“Outside, on a horse.”
The bartender frowned. “You’d leave her in the hot sun while you come in here for a cool drink?” He walked to the door. “All I see is two horses.”
“She’s under the tarp on the packhorse, in a lard can. Her ashes, I mean.”
The bartender’s face fell. “She’s dead?”
“Took by a fever two weeks ago. Last thing she asked me was to bring her back here and bury her on the homeplace alongside her mama and papa. It was so far, the only way I could do it was to bring her ashes.”
Soberly the bartender refilled the mug Greenleaf had drained. “Sorry about Letty. Everybody liked her. Everybody except Luther Quinton. He hated all the Hopkinses, and everybody that neighbored them.”
“It always makes it easier when you hate the people you set out to rob. Less troublin’ on the conscience.”
“He still owns the old Hopkins place. He may not take it kindly, you buryin’ Letty there. Asked him yet?”
“Wasn’t figurin’ on askin’ him. Just figured on doin’ it.”
The bartender’s attention was drawn to the front window. “If you was thinkin’ about askin’ him, this’d be the time. That’s him comin’ yonder.”
Greenleaf carried his beer to the door, where he watched as the black cat raised up from its nap, stretched itself luxuriously, and meandered out into the windy street, crossing Quinton’s path. Quinton stopped abruptly, turning back and taking a path that led him far around the cat. It stopped in the middle of the deserted street to lick itself.
The bartender remarked, “Superstitious, Luther is. Won’t buy anything by the dozen because he’s afraid they may throw in an extra one on him. They say he won’t even keep a mirror in his house because he’s afraid he might break it.”
“He probably just doesn’t like to look at himself. I never liked lookin’ at him either.” Quinton had long legs and a short neck. He had always reminded Greenleaf of a frog.
Quinton came to the door, looking back to be sure the cat had not moved. He demanded of the bartender, “How many more lives has that tomcat got? I’ve been hopin’ a wagon might run over him in the street.”
“She ain’t a tomcat, and there ain’t enough traffic. She’s liable to live for twenty years.”
“I’d haul her off and dump her, but I know she’d come back.”
Quinton’s attention shifted to Greenleaf, and his eyes narrowed with recognition. “Speakin’ of comin’ back …” He pointed a thick, hairy finger. “Ain’t you the hired hand that married the Hopkins girl?”
“Letty. Yep, I’m the one.”
“There’s no accountin’ for some people’s judgment. Wonder she ain’t killed and scalped you before now. Has Indian blood in her, don’t she?”
“Her mama was ha
lf Choctaw.”
“Probably some kind of a medicine woman. That Letty laid a curse on me the day I took over the Hopkins place. Cow market went to hell. Calf crop dropped to half. Rain quit and the springs dried up. I had nothin’ but bad luck for over a year.”
“Only a year? She must not’ve put her whole heart into it.”
Dread was in Quinton’s eyes. “She back to cause me more misery?”
“She died.”
Relief washed over Quinton’s round, furrowed face like sunshine breaking through a dark cloud. He was not one to smile easily, but he ventured dangerously near. “I’m mighty sorry to hear it.” He gulped down a glass of whiskey in one long swallow. “Mighty sorry.”
Greenleaf grunted. “I can see that.” He turned to the bartender. “Old Brother Ratliff still doin’ the preachin’?”
The bartender nodded. “You’ll find him at the parsonage over by the church. My sympathies about Letty.”
Greenleaf thanked him and walked out. He had not expected this to be a pleasant homecoming, and running into Luther Quinton had helped it live down to his expectations. Untying the two horses, he looked a moment at the pack on the second animal, and a catch came in his throat. He had worked his way through the darkest of his grief, but a lingering sadness still shadowed him. He wanted to fulfill his promise to Letty, then put this place behind him for once and all. His and Letty’s leavetaking from here had created a residue of memories bitter to the taste.
Not all the fault had been Quinton’s. Letty’s father should have known he was dealing himself a busted flush when he tried farming on land where the average rainfall was only about fifteen inches a year, and half of that tended to come in one night if it came at all. Letty’s stubborn nature was a natural heritage from both sides of her family. She had tried to keep on farming even though her father had accomplished four crop failures in a row. He had died of a seizure in the middle of a diatribe against the bank for letting him borrow himself so deeply into the hole and refusing to let him dig the hole any deeper.
A Century of Great Western Stories Page 17