Panhandle

by Brett Cogburn

  “You boys decided to quit eating up ranch supplies and playing cards while the rest of us work for a living?”

  We tried to hide our discomfort over his obvious knowledge of our rep outfit’s recent behavior so far from home.

  “H.B. said to tell you we need a few hands to help drive a herd back here,” Billy said.

  “Did he give you a tally of the herd you’ve rounded up?”

  Wiren was a big man, with a grumpy way about him, but despite his jab about what had been going on out on the general roundup, he seemed pleased at the news we delivered. I handed him a tally written on a scrap of paper. He mumbled to himself over it for a few minutes.

  “It’ll be a couple of days before we finish up branding. You fellows pitch in here, and I’ll send you back with a couple of hands once we’re through.”

  “My stomach has been bothering me something fierce, and I wondered if I might get the time off to ride over to Clarendon and see if I can’t get some Fletcher’s Castoria.” I kept a straight face while he glared at me like I was about to be fired.

  “Never set much store by patent medicines,” he growled, “You know there’s no liquor in the Roost, don’t you?”

  “They tell me it’s dry as a bone.”

  “Is the pain in your gut bad?”

  “Terrible.” I rubbed my belly and grimaced.

  “Well, go on then. I wouldn’t want anybody saying I ignored a dying man’s wishes.” He dismissed me with a wave of his hand as he turned back to his work.

  Afraid he would change his mind, I whirled my horse around and took off for Clarendon without so much as a good-bye to Billy. The thought of being able to look up that girl from the stagecoach, with no competition from him, lifted my spirits. He could work his butt off branding calves while I did a little romancing.

  My elation was short lived. I hadn’t gone a mile before Billy caught up to me. I knew he was coming along by the grin on his face. I just couldn’t figure out how he’d managed it.

  “I told Wiren you were so sick that I was worried about you making it to Clarendon.”

  “He fell for that?”

  “No. He’s just a good boss, and I offered to mail some letters for him.”

  “You’re quite the charmer, aren’t you?”

  Billy shook his vest pocket, and it jingled. “I got us a ten-dollar-apiece advance on our wages to cover the cost of your snake oil.”

  “Why does all this surprise me?”

  We loped north through the breaks of that country. I was tickled to death that Wiren let us go, but there was one nagging thought that put a little bit of a damper on my general good mood. I felt guilty, but, for once, I was wishing Billy wasn’t along. I didn’t intend on sharing that girl’s attention when I found her.

  We camped that night in Palo Duro Canyon, where the endless prairie falls abruptly over immense cliffs down into that giant gash that divides the plains. The canyon was miles wide and shallow where we camped, but deepened and narrowed farther west, until the world above might not have even existed at all. We made a fire beneath the chalk-marked red rock bluffs of the north rim, and sat watching the sun melt into the high caprock miles to the west. The red stone of the canyon walls combined into a single orange glow, and then turned to shadows.

  Once, those timeworn bluffs, at the jagged head of the canyon, had sheltered and hidden the Comanches in winter. That was years before we arrived, but the appearance of a band of Indians dragging their travois from the dark wouldn’t have surprised me. In fact, it would have seemed right. The Comanches and the buffalo were gone, but the Palo Duro was still there—a forever place where you didn’t have to close your eyes to envision the wild scope of a land that once was.

  I wanted to get an early start the next day, so as to make Clarendon by morning. I attempted to go to sleep, but Billy wouldn’t have any of it.

  “I never knew you to take sick.” Billy poked the fire with a piece of shinnery oak.

  “You come with me out of a concern for my health?”

  “I guess I came along hoping to get a dose of the medicine you’re looking for.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It didn’t take much acting for me to play dumb.

  “Damn, can’t you just admit that you’ve been thinking about that girl for a month?”

  “And I suppose you can?”

  He didn’t hesitate for a second. “Hell yes! This is just about a perfect country, except it’s a long way between water and women.”

  “We don’t even know that we can find her,” I said lamely.

  “Speak for yourself.” Billy didn’t lack in confidence. And he had reason where women were concerned. I’d never seen him around decent women, but the girls along the row were crazy about him.

  I went to bed grumpy and jealous over a woman I’d never met. I didn’t have a claim on that girl, but it was like he was busting in on my own private little dream. I went to sleep with Billy still sitting by the fire.

  Morning came and we left camp for the short ride to Clarendon. Billy seemed to have slicked up a bit, and I grumbled to myself. I felt I probably looked like I ought to be thrown out with the wash. I don’t know how he did it.

  Clarendon wasn’t much to look at early on. You could pass through it at a run and never wind your horse. It showed signs of building, but was still pretty hardscrabble looking. The buildings were a mix of different types, lumber being in short supply out on the treeless plains.

  We stopped in the middle of the main street. Both of us were silent, thinking the same thing. Two could be a crowd sometimes.

  Billy beat me to the punch. “I need a new shirt. Think you could handle the mail?”

  An angry protest started to form on my lips, but I had second thoughts. Looking at Billy made me wish I was cleaned up a bit. I decided to find a place to knock the dust off and curry and brush up a little.

  I took the mail from Billy and we parted ways. Before I went looking for that girl, I intended to find a barber and a bath. I was going to outshine Billy this time, come hell or high water.

  I had to settle for a haircut given by the blacksmith’s wife, as Clarendon hadn’t as yet acquired a barber. The same woman mended and laundered my best white shirt for a half dollar. I washed up the best I could in a tub out back of their shop. When I headed down the street to the post office I was feeling quite dapper in my damp, semi-white shirt, and half-dollar haircut.

  By the time I had finished my preening and mailed Wiren’s letters, it was early afternoon. I hadn’t as yet struck any sign of Barbara Allen, or Billy either for that matter. Careful questioning of a citizen got me directions to Allen’s store.

  I found the store, and as I’d suspected, I found Billy also. I saw him through the window. He was at the back of the room appearing to study a new hat. Barbara Allen was helping him, and he was making her smile.

  She laughed just as I stepped into the room. It sounded rich and husky, tinkling across the store and filling my head. I fought the burn of jealousy.

  My courage threatened to fail me, and I hesitated in the doorway. There I was, the same man who climbed on bad broncs, swam swollen rivers, roped outlaw cattle, and generally dealt with some danger to my general health on a daily basis, and yet I was scared as hell. I was scared of a little red-headed girl who had stopped her conversation with Billy to study me.

  Like I said, she was red-headed. Auburn was what most folks would call it. Her hair was dark except when some light hit it, and then it shone with a red hue. She was tall, and slim. There was something about her carriage that bespoke pride. Or maybe that was the way she held her chin up just a touch. It wasn’t in a snooty manner, just like she knew something you didn’t. There was that same bright gleam to those green eyes that I had thought on for more than a month. I could have loved her for just her eyes.

  I never had words enough to tell anybody else the proper way I felt about anything important. Looking back on that moment, a lot of things come
to mind. However, I can think of no words to do justice to the way she looked, or what she stirred in me. She was simply the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  A male voice cleared his throat and startled me out of my trance. That girl was looking at me like I was daft, and I was feeling hot around the gills about then. A snooty-looking gent wearing glasses stood behind a small counter. He cleared his throat again, and I stepped into the room.

  “Can we help you, sir?” His sounded like a Yankee, and said “sir” like that may have been a questionable subject where I was concerned.

  Lifting one foot at a time, I made my way into the room. I was suddenly conscious of my spurs rattling. Awkward didn’t begin to describe the way I felt right then.

  “I said, can we help you?” The man raised his voice a little like he thought I might be hard of hearing.

  “I just came to look,” I muttered.

  He tipped his chin down and looked over his glasses at me. He waved his arm at the stacks of goods in shelves behind him, and scattered about the small room. “Feel free to survey our stock, and tell us if we can help you find something in particular.”

  “I’m just looking,” I repeated.

  “Seems to be the trend of the day.” The storekeeper cast a glance at Billy, who continued to make the girl giggle. Those giggles sped my heartbeat and cast small frown lines on the storekeeper’s face. I wondered if he was her father.

  “Hello, Nate.” Billy was smiling like I was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

  My throat felt like I had swallowed a chunk of rock, and I strained to force myself, through sheer willpower, to speak.

  “Have you met Miss Allen yet?” Billy waved his outstretched hand to gesture to her like he was the Prince of Persia or something. He was quite the gent, our Billy.

  Triumphantly, I managed to mutter something totally incomprehensible under my breath.

  Billy stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “This is my friend, Nate Reynolds. He’s a real talker when you get him going, and when he decides to speak something other than Comanche.”

  I wondered if the store could sell me a place to crawl into and hide, or if there was an undertaker to give Billy a proper burial when I cut his bloody guts out. I managed to smile appreciatively at the obvious concern of my dear friend.

  “What brings you to our fair city, Mr. Reynolds?” Barbara Allen asked.

  Like with Billy, I had the sneaking feeling that I was the source of the greatest amusement for her. Her eyes held the same mischievous glint.

  I didn’t give myself time to register what she said. I was too caught up in the sound of her to listen. My tongue took off before I was ready, and I blurted out, “I came a horseback.”

  Billy staggered off to compose himself, but he didn’t laugh, I’ll give him that. I don’t guess he felt it was a laughing matter to watch a man shoot himself in the foot. Hell, I had shot my leg off at the knee.

  Barbara Allen held her composure as still as a corpse. I watched the strain in her face, and the tight-lipped straightening of her mouth. Once she had gathered a slow, deep breath, and let it out in a little shudder, she pointed a finger out the store’s front window.

  “Is your horse out front?” she asked dramatically, and I thought her acting technique decidedly unskillful and overplayed. “I so love horses, especially these wooly little Western ponies.” She started for the door.

  What did she mean “wooly little ponies”? I might refer to our horses as ponies, but that was just a habit. I didn’t mean cart ponies, or something. And Dunny sure wasn’t wooly. His coat was summer slick and shiny as moleskin. I followed her, and I was thinking of plenty to say.

  Out the door she went, and Billy and I like to have torn the doorjamb off going out it at the same time. We stopped at the edge of the street, and both of us took our most nonchalant and favorite stances. Dunny stood tied at a rickety hitching rail before us. I don’t know where Billy’s paint was.

  Barbara Allen stepped lightly to Dunny’s head, and he eased against his tie, eyeing her carefully.

  “You gotta move softly around these Western horses, Miss Allen,” Billy advised.

  “Oh, fiddlesticks! He’s as gentle as a baby.” And to prove it, she wrapped her arms around Dunny’s head, and pressed her face against his jaw.

  Now Dunny was generally a quiet, gentle horse who never got in a storm over anything, but he was always a touch skittish about someone handling his head. I’ll be danged if he didn’t just put his head in her chest like a lap dog. He stood there three-legged with his eyes half-closed, and ate up every bit of the petting she gave him.

  “He’s a sweetheart.” Her voice had a strange tilt to it that I couldn’t place.

  “Billy claims he’s the best cutting horse in the country.”

  “Is that so?” She seemed mightily impressed.

  “He’s all right,” Billy mumbled weakly.

  “Come on, Billy, tell her about him. I ain’t going to brag on my own horse.”

  Billy looked like he had bitten into something sour. “You wouldn’t want Dunny to seem immodest, would you?”

  “You and those big words, Billy. You’re sure a talker when you get going.”

  “Piss on you,” Billy hissed under his breath.

  “Sore loser,” I said quickly.

  “What was that?” Barbara Allen asked.

  Billy returned my slap on the back and answered, “Why I was just telling Nate what a fine day it was to be out on the town with a good friend with such a wonderful horse.”

  She eyed the both of us for a moment. “He is wonderful, isn’t he?”

  “You could ride him if you want,” I said bravely.

  She cast a glance down at her dress and then back at me. “I don’t think I am attired for it. And besides, we don’t properly know each other.”

  The red rose in my face and my ears burned like fire. “Perhaps when you get to know Dunny properly you might ride him.”

  Our eyes met across the space between us, and for a minute I thought she was going to let me have it, but it never came. And then she did the damnedest thing, and winked at me. It was just one little quick flick of her eye, and the slightest hint of a smile. For a second I wasn’t sure if I had seen what I saw, and then I was glad Billy hadn’t seen what I saw.

  Her hands continued to stroke Dunny’s forehead. “Perhaps, Mr. Reynolds.”

  In the matter of seconds I was made mute again. A moment ago I had been riding high and tight, and now I had blown a stirrup and was one jump away from landing on the seat of my britches. And she knew it.

  The door behind us swung open, and the storekeeper stuck his head out. “It’s the heat of the day, daughter.”

  She stepped away from Dunny’s head, and paused at the doorway. “Are you gentlemen’s names written in the Lamb’s Book of Life?”

  Now neither one of us knew a thing about sheep, and nobody was apt to be writing our names down in any kind of books, much less one about the lambs. That didn’t stop us though. It didn’t even cause us to hesitate.

  “Why no, Miss Allen, but I have always felt a strong interest in that subject,” Billy said gravely.

  “It is a shame that our work finds us rarely in the vicinity of church houses,” I added.

  Both the girl and the man eyed us carefully. “Call me Barby. That’s what everyone calls me.” She looked to the storekeeper as if to confirm her statement. “Isn’t that right, Father?”

  He looked as if he had just as soon we didn’t call at all.

  Billy stepped forward and offered him his hand. “We haven’t met yet.”

  “Yes, we didn’t,” her father said a bit smugly, or maybe it was just that funny wang to his speech that made it seem that way. He was a stiff sort, and very proper.

  “Father, this is Mr. Champion and Mr. Reynolds.” She pointed us out. “And this is my father, George Allen.”

  We shook hands all around, and he looked like he was ready for us to v
amoose. The talk had come to an abrupt end, and both of us had just about enough of the uncomfortable silence. We were trying to find a way to leave when we didn’t want to do any such thing.

  “You should come to the church picnic with us this afternoon,” Barby said. A look passed between her and her father that I couldn’t interpret, but could have guessed at. “Wouldn’t that be nice, Father?”

  Even put on the spot like he was, I was surprised that he quietly, if not fervently, agreed. When she giggled and hugged him for it, I didn’t feel like the only sap on the street right then. If she had been my daughter I wouldn’t have let the likes of us within ten miles of her.

  “I always enjoy a bit of picnicking. Don’t you, Nate?” Billy’s voice was stuffy and imitating Mr. Allen’s accent.

  “But of course.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Whenever I think about picnics, or Sunday camp dinners I shall always remember my way back to that little cottonwood stand on the banks of a small creek at the edge of Clarendon. All picnics should be held there with the sunlight scattering down through the tree limbs, and a little breeze coming cool through the shade now and again, rustling the cottonwood leaves above.

  There was a long plank table heaped with the potluck offerings of the women of the community, and they fussed over it like hens in the barnyard while their children ran wild beneath, around, and through them. The men gathered in casual clusters to visit with their fellow men, while remaining within easy striking distance of the food. There was a slight hint of pride in their bearings, as if some ancient office had been placed upon them, and their roles and positions were necessary and invaluable to the whole process of the dinner.

  Clarendon wasn’t called Saint’s Roost for nothing, and a long, tall galoot in a black wool suit was asked to say grace over the food. He was sure fervent, and I figured that was the reason they had chosen him for the job. He missed his calling and should have been a lawyer, because after what seemed like five minutes of praying even I was looking around me expecting to see the Lord himself waiting to eat. The violent noise of growling stomachs must have reminded that sky pilot of Daniel in the lions’ den, and rather than face such rampant and terrible hunger he called it quits. Everyone put a little extra wallop into their amens.