by Lauran Paine
“Yeah . . . there were some.”
Charley smiled up at the winking stars. “We better get some sleep, partner. See you in the morning.”
Ten minutes later Button was snoring and Charley, who had been fighting sleep at the beginning of their talk, was now wide awake.
In the morning he did not remember falling to sleep. Sue was already at her cooking fire when Charley rolled out. It was a long walk to the willow creek to wash. When he got there the smell of cattle was strong, although they had left their beds earlier and were no longer visible by predawn light.
On the way back he met Button hiking along with a towel over his shoulder and a chunk of tan lye soap in one hand. They exchanged smiles, spoke briefly, and continued on their way, Button toward the creek, Charley toward the camp, where Sue had breakfast waiting.
He sat on the ground watching her work. She threw him a smile. “Did you sleep well?” she asked, and when he replied that he’d slept like a log she said, “But not for an hour or so.” He stared at her, getting redder by the minute, but she said no more and turned back to the fire. She had heard everything he and Button talked about!
She handed him a cup of coffee, eyes twinkling. “You shouldn’t be surprised, Charley.”
He tried the coffee; it was as hot as the hubs of hell.
“He’s sixteen years old,” she said.
He held the cup by the handle to avoid burning his fingers.
“You continually surprise me,” she said. “Have you ever been married?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then you must have had brothers or sisters.”
“No. No family at all.”
She studied him for a moment. “Then how did you know the right things to tell him last night?”
He tried the coffee and had to lower the cup again. She was waiting for him to speak so he said, “I don’t know as I told him the right things. I just figured what was on his mind. Sue, we been together for a while. You get to know folks best when you’re on the move an’ in camp with them.” He jutted his jaw in the direction of the golden-brown fried potatoes and the crisp meat. “Where did you learn to cook over an open fire? You’re better’n any man I ever knew who did it.”
She accepted the compliment as his way of changing the subject. When Button came along she fed them both and was mostly quiet. She was thinking now about the part they had to do next.
They hitched the wagon to its team and drove out to the graveside. Button and Charley got Boss out, wrapped him completely, and used ropes to lower his body. Sue watched from the shade of the wagon. She moved only when they went for the shovels to begin the filling.
She said a long prayer, which stopped both the shovelers. When she had finished and returned to the wagon, they shoveled the grave full, moving easily, almost effortlessly as men do when engaged in manual labor while their minds are elsewhere.
When it was done Sue returned and stood with them beside the mounded grave, looking at the crest of higher earth that would eventually settle to ground level. By next year, grass would almost completely conceal the fact that this was a grave.
She said another long prayer. Charley watched her. She had never mentioned religion, but he could not believe she hadn’t memorized those prayers long ago. She had a soft, clear voice.
The sun was climbing when they struck camp and headed back toward Harmonville. As before, when they were sitting together on the wagon seat, nothing was said for a long time.
Charley did not believe they could reach town before dark, and was going over in his mind the places he had seen along this route where they could camp. What he had never seen between the distant creek behind them and Harmonville was water. Neither springs nor creeks.
They had a short keg of water in the wagon, so they could get through the night, but the team would do better if there was flowing water.
Sue broke the silence by pointing toward a spit of trees. “There is a sump spring back in there. I know it’s a little early to set up camp, but between that spring and town there is no other water.”
Charley swung the wagon toward the trees. When it was lined out he looked at her. She read his mind. “I ride over the countryside whenever I can. I love open land. Since we’ve been here, there is very little of the range I don’t know.”
Button looked steadily at her. “Do you own a horse?” he asked. She smiled and wagged her head. “No. I take a livery animal. But someday I’m going to own a horse. I’m very fond of horses.”
Button sat watching the trees come down to them. Charley drove in silence as far as the first overripe pines and firs, then stood up to look for passage into the timber. He guided the horses until they were in deep, fragrant shade with a small, horseshoe-shaped clearing on their right.
They all climbed down to set up camp. While Button was helping Charley hobble the team out in the little meadow he said, “Maybe when we go back to gather the cattle we could look for our loose stock.”
Charley nodded.
“And we could give her one of them.”
Charley arose stiffly to watch one of the horses hop out to graze. “Good idea,” he said. They stood together for a while watching the hitch, then started back where Sue had a cooking fire glowing, its light gray smoke rising straight up in the windless sky.
This time all three of them helped with the meal, but Sue gave the orders. She waited until they had been fed, then led off across the little meadow past the horses to the far side of it, where there was a fairly well-marked game trail. She went unerringly to a marshy place alive with gnats.
The sump spring had water in its center. To get out there to drink, one would have to wade through mud.
She worried about the large harness horses getting bogged in mud with their hobbles. Charley reassured her. “They can handle something like that without trouble.”
On the way back to camp Button veered off for his own reason and disappeared up through the timber. Sue had covered another twenty yards before she said, “When Mister Spearman was dying he told me how he’d found Button. He also told me his real name: John Weatheral. Charley, isn’t sixteen a little old to be still calling him Button?”
He thought it probably was, but as he told her, they’d all been calling the kid Button for so long that it might take a while before he’d know they were talking to him if they started calling him John.
They crossed the little clearing and paused at the outer limits of the camp. She brushed his arm with her hand. “Wouldn’t it be uncomplicated if this was what life was all about?”
He looked at her. “You’re a town woman, Sue.”
She laughed and strode forward. “Not at heart. In springtime and autumn I dream of driving out here somewhere in an old wagon and making a camp.”
He followed her into camp without taking his eyes off her.
Chapter Twenty-four
A Seal-brown Horse
They reached Harmonville a little past noon the following day after an early start. Sue left them down at the public corrals to hasten home. Her brother was returning to the kitchen from the embalming shed across the alley and greeted her with a big smile. He went to the stirrup pump to fill a basin as he said, “How’d Button hold up?”
“Fine. Better than I expected,” she said, and shook the blueware coffeepot. It was empty so she scrubbed it as they talked and made a fresh potful.
“If the circumstances had been different, Walt, the drive out, the camping, the cooking over an open fire, and driving back would have been perfect.”
She watched him dry his hands and go to the table to await the coffee. “And you?”
“I embalmed Baxter and his cowboy. They’ll be buried this afternoon. Marshal Pierce and Judge Collins got into an argument night before last at the saloon. This morning when I went down to the cafe for breakfast, they were sitting together and talking like there’d never been an argument.”
“What was the argument about?”
“The judge was ma
d because he’d expected to spend one day in Harmonville and he’s spent close to a week and still hasn’t been able to hold a decent court. He was yelling that this sort of thing set him back a week on his schedule so’s he wouldn’t be anywhere that he was supposed to be for the rest of the season, and folks in all those towns would raise hell with him.”
Sue brought two cups to the table and sat down. “But he’s going to hold court?”
“No,” her brother said with a twinkle. “That’s what caused the eruption. Marshal Pierce went down to Kelseyville and sent a telegraph to Santa Fe and got back a telegraphed approval for extradition, then rode back to Harmonville in time for a drink before bedtime, and ran into the judge at the saloon and showed him the telegraph message.”
“Wasn’t there one of those prisoners who wasn’t a fugitive, Walt?”
He shrugged. “I think I heard something about that. . . . This is good coffee.”
She smiled. “It tastes that way every once in a while after the pot is scoured and the grounds are fresh.”
He left to visit a patient. She was three days behind on her household chores. She worked methodically, doing chores she could have done with her eyes closed, and thought of Button and Charley. When someone rolled bony knuckles over the roadway door she went swiftly to the front of the house and was smiling when she opened the door. The smile faded.
A beard-stubbled man with perpetually narrowed eyes and skin the color of old copper removed his hat and introduced himself with a flourish that made his hat brush against his long rider’s coat. “Ma’am, my name is John Welton. This here is my business associate, Wes Long. He was told over at the saloon you might know where he could find a gent named Charley Waite.”
She was trying to place them; she was sure she’d seen them before. “He might be at the jailhouse, or the roominghouse.”
“No ma’am, we already been to those places. And the saloon.”
She had a hunch. “Did you try the livery barn?”
They hadn’t. “No ma’am, but we’ll go down there.” John Welton fidgeted as his partner stood like stone, gazing at the handsome woman. Welton said, “It’s about some cattle we heard he’s got somewhere out yonder. We’re livestock buyers.”
She remembered now where she had seen them: standing together in front of the cafe. “If I see him I’ll tell him you are looking for him.”
Welton smiled. “We’re obliged,” he said and walked halfway to the front gate before putting his hat on. He said something to his companion as they turned southward toward the lower end of town.
Sue went back to work.
A large freight outfit drawn by six pairs of Mexican mules came into town from the north with the driver and swamper on the high seat. Other roadway traffic had to yield. Behind the wagon a dozen or so yards, far enough back to avoid dust, a solitary horseman rode along looking left and right, an obvious stranger to Harmonville.
The freight wagon turned down the eastside alley to the dock behind the general store. The mounted stranger continued southward to the livery barn. He was not a tall man, nor was he particularly thick, but he had a look of confidence in himself. He asked the hostler where a man named Hugh Fenwick could be found and was directed to the jailhouse or the saloon.
As he was removing his gloves, folding them under his shell belt, Charley Waite came up out of the barn trailed by Button. They had been back at the wagon.
The stranger turned, watched Charley come up out of the barn gloom, and said, “I’ll be damned.”
Charley grinned. “Yes, you will. It’s been a long time, Frank.”
The stranger shoved out a hand. “You’re lookin’ good, Charley. Still freegrazin’?”
Waite gripped the hand and released it. He introduced Button. The stranger extended his hand while eyeing the tall youth. “You know you’re in bad company, son?”
Charley and the stranger laughed. Button smiled a little uncertainly until Charley said, “Frank Cole and I rode together years back. We put in some rough times together. Frank, you’re passin’ through?”
“No. I got a letter from a man named Fenwick. Charley, about the time you hired on with that freegrazer I went to workin’ for the law. This feller Fenwick wrote me up at Raton so I came down to see what he’s got to offer. He said they needed a town marshal down here.”
Charley gazed out into the roadway. Two raffish older men were approaching, wearing almost identical rider’s coats that reached below their knees. He had seen them before. As he swung his attention back to Frank Cole he said the same thing the hostler had told the stranger. “Try the jailhouse or the saloon. He owns the saloon and the poolhall. He’s been acting town marshal since the former one pulled out in a hurry.”
Cole nodded slowly. “Trouble?”
“Fenwick will tell you. Frank, look me up this evening. We’ll talk.”
Cole nodded, winked at Button, and passed the approaching cattle buyers on his way to the jail-house.
Charley was turning away when one of the cattle buyers hailed him. “Mister Waite?”
Charley turned back, nodding.
“Well, Mister Waite, this here is my partner Wes Long, an’ I’m John Welton. We’re livestock buyers. The lady up at the doctor’s place told us we might find you down here.”
The two men stopped, nodded to Button, and waited. Charley looked them over. He’d met livestock buyers many times. These two looked typical. He did not ask how they knew he might have cattle to sell, but simply said, “It’s a big herd, gents.”
Wes Long seemed pleased. “Fine. We’d like to ride out an’ look ’em over if you don’t mind. We got the latest market reports from Omaha. If they’re in good flesh we’d like to buy ’em.”
Charley looked at Button. “This here is my partner, John Weatheral. He’ll ride out there with you. It’s a mite late in the day and it’s a long ride.”
Wes Long rubbed his hands together. “First thing in the morning then.” He turned toward Button. “We could meet you down here. We got to hire horses. Maybe about six o’clock, Mister Weatheral?”
Button said nothing, only nodded his head. After the livestock buyers had departed he turned a worried expression toward Charley. “I don’t know anything about selling cattle. You should go out there with them.”
Charley was watching the two buyers cross the road up by the saloon, long coats flapping, when he replied, “Just show ’em the cattle. Tell ’em to make their offer and that we’ll decide whether to sell or not when you get back.” He smiled at the gangling youth. “Mister Weatheral, while you’re out yonder I’ll see what I can turn up about the Omaha market. If their offer matches it, we’ll talk it over when you get back.”
Button’s anxious expression did not leave. “But . . .”
“Partner, you’re not going to learn any younger.” He slapped Button on the back and struck out in the direction of the cafe with Button trudging worriedly at his side. Just before they went inside Charley halted and said, “Button, you’re growin’ up. It’s time you tried out bein’ a man.”
“Charley, I never done anything like this before. There was always you and—”
“You’re not goin’ to sell the herd, partner, just ride out there, show them the cattle, an’ let them make their offer. Button, you got to start sometime. Now let’s get something to eat.”
“They know I’m just a kid.”
Charley was reaching for the door when he replied. “The one who talked called you Mister Weatheral. Folks don’t call kids mister. Quit worrying.”
But that was easier said than done. An hour later when they were back down at the wagon, Button said, “Charley, I’m worried.”
The older man was fumbling with horse harness draped over the wagon tongue when he replied, “Button, you’re a man. You’ve seen a man killed, you’ve buried two men, you darn near got killed yourself. You been through one of the worst storms I’ve ever seen. You’ve drove cattle with men, you’ve lived in wagoncamps with them, doing
a man’s work.” Charley stopped straightening the harness and turned. “An’ you got the stirrings all men get about your age. Boyhood is behind you, partner.”
Charley fished in a trouser pocket, brought forth some silver, and handed it to Button. “Go down to the roominghouse and get yourself a room. I got one down there. I’ll be along later. If I miss seein’ you when you ride out in the morning, I’ll be waitin’ when you get back.”
He left the youth standing beside the old wagon and struck out up the alley northward. Button watched him go with trepidation and a slowly awakening resolve.
Charley crossed through a weedy place between buildings, emerged on Main Street, and slackened off as he approached the gate out front of the Barlow cottage.
Sue came from the back of the house, opened the door, and smiled. “Some cattle buyers were looking for you,” she said as she stepped aside for him to enter.
“I met them. Button’s goin’ out with them in the morning to show them the cattle.”
She did not raise her eyebrows nor say what he expected: that Button was a boy. She led the way to the kitchen, where she’d been preparing supper for her brother, who was out on a call, and invited Charley to share the meal. He declined and sat down, dropping his hat beside the chair.
She went back to the stove. It was hot in the kitchen, and fragrant. He watched her for a moment before saying, “Was everything all right when you got back?”
She replied without turning. “Yes. Did you know they buried Mister Baxter and his cowboy today?”
“No.”
“And that Marshal Pierce got authorization from Santa Fe to extradite his prisoners to Denver?”
He hadn’t known that either. “What about the judge?”
She turned. I heard he was upset, but I don’t think he really objected too much. He’s been complaining for days that he’s been delayed here in Harmonville. . . . Charley?”
“Yes’m?”
“Those cattle buyers looked like a pair of schemers to me.”
He nodded. “That goes with cattle buying. Don’t worry. They’ll make an offer. When Button gets back we’ll talk it over. If their offer is too low, the cattle will stay out there putting on tallow and we’ll find another buyer. I’ll get a newspaper down at the general store in the morning and see what the Omaha market is paying.”