Panhandle

by Brett Cogburn

  The upshot of the matter was that I had been gone over a month from home, made one freight haul, and had lost fifty dollars on the trip. Not only was I broke, but I was in debt a hundred dollars to the company of Wright and Rath for a replacement mule they fronted me. My body couldn’t seem to shake loose from the sickness, and the promise of me making much money that summer looked pretty dim right then.

  By the time I’d detoured down Wolf Creek to stop by my home I was more than ready to see Barby, and allow her to baby me around a few days. The thought of a little of her pampering and a willing ear to hear my troubles lifted my spirits considerably, despite the dark funk I was in. I was anxious for my home place to come into view, and maybe Barby would come to meet me down the road like she sometimes did.

  Nobody came to meet me even after I had driven all the way up to the yard in front of the house. Both of Long’s ox rigs were gone, and there was a strange horse tied to the corral fence. I set the brake on my wagon, and climbed down from my seat when a movement in the distance caught my eye. It was Fawn standing on her porch, and I waved at her. She went inside her house without waving back.

  I was studying the tied horse as I made my way to my door. I didn’t recognize the brand it wore or the rig on its back, but assumed it was probably another cowboy who had come by to pester Barby. The door was open, and as I reached it I heard the sound of a man’s voice and Barby’s giggle. The combination of the two began to build a pressure in my head and chest.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  “Hello, Tennessee,” Billy said merrily as I stepped inside, and then he tried to correct himself, “uh, I mean Nate.”

  He was sitting at my table and holding Owen on his knee. My eyes darted to Barby where she stood across the room at the stove. Her eyes were a little big, and one hand nervously smoothed at her dress front. I brought my attention just as quickly back to Billy. Owen stared at me, and then turned away and let out a playful squeal as he ducked his head into Billy’s chest.

  I was a man right then who felt he was at the end of his rope, with nothing left to lose or win, because I knew what was coming before Barby said a word.

  Misery has a way of building upon itself by reminding you of every other single thing that is wrong and equally miserable in your life. Seconds seemed like hours while I stood in my own house where I should be king, and my mind compiled the list of sins laid at the feet of my wife and best friend. I knew in my faltering heart that what I imagined would hurt no more than the truth I was determined to hear.

  “Nathan . . .” Barby stopped short of whatever she was going to say, and started across the room to me.

  She was wearing a new dress that I’d never seen, and that I hadn’t bought for her. I stopped her at arm’s length and held her before me, running my eyes over the dress, and recognizing for the first time that she was wearing a fancy silver hair pin I’d never seen either.

  “Billy bought it for me as a wedding present.” Her voice told me she knew how I was going to take it before I even opened my mouth.

  Maybe I was too sick, but nothing I told myself seemed to quell the anger rising in me. When I looked at Billy smiling at me with Owen in his lap all I could think was that he’d come back to get what was his in the first place. The more I looked at him the more I knew that he already had figured out that Owen was his, and that Owen knew it too.

  I started to speak, but a fit of coughing buckled my knees and I had to grab for the edge of the table to steady myself. Barby threw her arms around me, and steadied me in her embrace. The table slid away under my weight and Owen started to cry.

  “How long have you been here, Billy?” The phlegm from my throat choked my words.

  “Not long.” He stood where he had risen to dodge the flying table with my son clutched in one arm. It was obvious to me that the bewilderment in his voice was no more than an act.

  “You’re sick,” Barby cried out like she gave a damn.

  Weakly, I shoved out of her grasp and reached for Owen, but my legs banged against a chair in my way and knocked it against the wall. Billy held Owen out to me with a look on his face like I had gone stark raving mad. He never knew how right he was.

  I pulled Owen to me and stepped back to place both Barby and Billy under my glare of judgment and condemnation. Barby was crying, and that started Owen crying again, which set the dogs outside to barking at the door. She reached for him with her face twisted with hurt, all but begging me to let her lay hands on her husband and child. For a moment I wanted more than anything to let her touch me again, but the hurt I felt was tearing me apart.

  “How many times has he been here?” It was plain that it was a question I’d already formed an answer to.

  The color drained from Barby’s face, and I saw a little of the life slowly go out of her right there like blood seeping into the sand. I hurt so bad that I needed to hurt her, and I hurt more seeing that I had done it. My head swam with a weakness that was more than the pneumonia, and I whirled at the sound of Billy moving beside me. My hand clawed clumsily for the butt of my pistol, but could not seem to find it with a proper hold. Billy stepped by me and out the door.

  I was left standing with my pistol shaking in my hand and only Barby before me. She slumped into a chair and buried her face in her hands. I didn’t know what to say, and felt sure that it was Barby who had some talking to do. I waited to hear what lies she would tell, and if she could look me in the eye and say them.

  She looked up at me with her tear-flooded eyes begging me to let her have Owen, and held out her arms pitifully for that much mercy. I couldn’t resist the need I felt in her, and I handed him over. She pulled his face to hers and kissed his forehead, and rocked back and forth with him pressed into the fold of her. Those wet, green siren eyes of hers looked at me again and I saw anger instead of shame.

  “He’s been here pulling bogged cattle for you for two days, you jealous, ignorant man,” Barby sobbed.

  It took a moment for her words to soak into the middle of the storm I’d worked up in my heart. The cheap suspicions I felt had taken a hold of me, and wouldn’t easily let go. I strained to interpret the look on her face for what truths it might contain.

  “If you trusted me so little, then why’d you marry me?” Her voice gained strength, and cut at me with a razor edge.

  I reached out for her, but she ducked her head down away from my gaze, and balled up protectively over our son. I was left a man standing in the middle of nothing, with nowhere, or no one to reach out for. Just as quickly as I had been ready to accuse, I found myself feeling the fool. Maybe I needed her so much that I would grasp on to any hope she threw my way, but I believed her—I wanted to believe her. I stumbled to the door and stopped there braced against the jamb, frantically searching the yard for the sight of Billy.

  He was mounting his horse and I holstered my pistol and ran to stop him. I headed him off and he turned the horse so fast he almost ran me down. I grabbed at his bridle, and Billy looked like he would put the spurs to his horse if I didn’t let go. The horse slung his head, lifting me off the ground and swinging me wildly about at the end of my arm. It was only a death grip, willed by the realization that I had to make peace with Billy if I were to find forgiveness with Barby, which allowed me to hold on.

  “Wait, Billy.”

  I could see no disgust in the way Billy looked down at me. Instead, I saw only disappointment on the face of my friend who I believed might be no friend at all.

  “Maybe I’m a jealous fool.” I was torn by the feeling that I might be apologizing for nothing, and thus, even more the fool.

  “You’re wrong, Nate.”

  I sought to catch my breath as much as I sought what I should say. Neither wish would come to me, but I had to keep talking or Billy would leave and Barby might go right after him. I hated myself for the weakness and indecision I felt right then. Easy answers eluded me and I could not decipher truth from lie, or love from loss.

  “She said you’ve be
en saving my cattle.”

  Billy didn’t answer immediately, and I knew if I was as innocent as he let on to be, I would ride right out of there and leave me sitting in the dust. I also knew that nothing would be the same after this, because a mended fence isn’t the same as the fence you started with. I was sure of that because I knew that I could not forget, or entirely forgive, if I had been in their shoes.

  “Heel flies,” Billy said.

  “What?” Mention of flies had no place in the turmoil of my mind right then.

  “Heel flies are bad this year, and your cows are getting bogged in the creek trying to get away from them.”

  “I’m sorry,” I croaked, and no two words ever came harder for me.

  It came over me then that Billy was telling the truth, and that time would prove it so. I’d come home and accused the woman I loved of adultery with my friend who was instead working to save the small herd of cattle that I had worked so hard to put together, and could not replace.

  “The dress and comb were just presents for the wife of a friend.” Billy didn’t mean to, but he cut me a little deeper.

  “I just took it different.”

  “I’m just as happy for her as I am you, that you two married and have got a kid.” Billy paused to let that soak in before he added, “Remember, she was my friend before you were married.”

  I remembered, and that was the thing I couldn’t let go of, no matter how hard I tried.

  “You shouldn’t buy another man’s wife a dress.”

  Billy nodded. “I can understand that. It was just a dress, and I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Get down and stay. You are welcome here anytime,” I said.

  We looked at each other, and both of us knew the lie in what I said. Good intentions would have to serve in place of truth where our friendship was concerned. I had won Barby, but it was me who felt the lesser man.

  “I’ll go find something to do while you patch it up with her,” Billy said.

  “You understand, don’t you?” I wasn’t sure myself just what I was asking.

  “I reckon I do.” He stepped from his horse and slapped me on the back just like nothing had ever happened.

  “I’ll totter around the corral a little, and you go talk with your wife.”

  I knew I had it to do, but that didn’t stop me from being scared to death. The awful thing about apologizing to a loved one is that by the time you are ready to say you are sorry, you realize just how wrong you were. The walk up to the house was a long one.

  Barby was waiting for me, and I guessed she had been watching out the window. I had hoped she would say something first and maybe that would lead me to that perfect thing to say that would make everything alright between us. She said nothing, but at least seemed willing to hear me out.

  “I’m sorry.” I have never said anything that I meant so earnestly, and yet sounded so weak to my ears. “I love you and Owen more than anything,” I added.

  What I said had no miraculous effect on the hurt I saw in her, nor did she offer me the comfort of appearing soothed by my words.

  “He doesn’t know about Owen,” she finally said.

  Intuitively, she knew what I feared, and put it before me. My knees weakened and the room swam around me, and Barby became a vision that I could not keep in focus no matter how hard I tried. I could feel the sweat popping out on my forehead, but I was determined to stand until I was sure she still loved me. Still, I welcomed the pain of the floor rushing up to slam into me, and Barby was there holding on to me and crying again.

  “Do you love me?” was the last thing I remember saying.

  “Yes,” she whispered in my ear.

  I wanted to hold her, but I couldn’t find the strength to lift my arms. I wanted to make her understand that I’d never meant to hurt her so, but not a word came out. I feared to let her out of my sight, but my eyes succumbed to the weariness that weighed me down and the pressure that had threatened to burst me open floated away.

  “Don’t ever hurt me like that again,” Barby whispered.

  I would have promised her had I heard. I would have lied, stolen, or murdered if she had asked me to. The devil be damned if good intentions led to sweet lies and heartache ahead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  In a matter of days Barby had me nursed back to health, or at least had me feeling good enough to want to be out and about. I think it was as much the company of her and Owen as it was the home remedies she applied, or the bed rest she enforced. My chest felt normal again, and I was simply a weaker version of my usual healthy self.

  Billy was staying in the tepee and riding my cattle every day. He was pulling not only bogged cattle that belonged to me, but nearly every brand in the surrounding country. The heel flies were bad, bad that year, and the cattle would head into the creek to dodge their bites. There were other cowboys from the country around working just as hard, but that didn’t make the work any easier. Billy would pull one or two out and drive them off from the creek just to return only to often find that more cows bogged while he was gone. It was nasty, hard work, and he’d injured his horse’s back pulling them out by his saddle horn. Once I was home, he took a pair of harnessed mules along to drag the bogs out with.

  I rode out with him one morning against his insistence that I was still too weak. We only found one lone steer that day stuck up to his belly, and I operated the mules while Billy dug him out a little and put a rope around his middle. He rigged another rope inside the loop where we could pull the noose open and back through the honda after we got him out. Without that second rope we’d have to throw the steer to get the rope off. Sometimes we had to anyway, but it often worked, and a rope around the middle beat breaking the steer’s neck pulling on his horns.

  The mules sucked the steer up out of the mud, and Billy came sloshing out right behind him. The slip rope worked and the steer trotted off shaking the mud from his back, seemingly no worse for the wear. On the other hand, Billy was covered from head to toe in mud, and looked about give out.

  I suggested we stop and eat the lunch Barby had sent with me, and Billy readily agreed to a break. We found a high rock ledge atop a little butte, and laid our vittles out where we could watch the country below us while we ate. After I finished eating, I lay back on the rock, and pushed my hat down over my face to shade my eyes. I must have dozed off for a while, because the next time I looked Billy had moved to the edge of the drop-off, and was sitting with his feet dangling out over space, and his eyes upon the horizon.

  “This is one hell of a good country,” Billy said to himself, as much as he did to me.

  “That it is,” I said as I swung my legs off the ledge and took a seat beside him.

  “Maybe we should have let the Indians keep it,” Billy muttered.

  Being a tried and true Texan, Billy was no lover of Indians, so his words surprised me a little. “Hard to run cattle with Comanches on the loose.”

  “That’s a fact, but we ain’t going to last here near as long as the Comanche did.” Billy dropped a rock and watched it fall and bounce down to the bottom of the hill.

  “This is cattle country, and there will always be cowboys here,” I said.

  Billy shook his head and pointed to the east and then to the west. “Do you know what’s out there?”

  I waited for him to tell me.

  “Look just as far as your eye can see,” Billy instructed me, but all I saw was prairie grass rolling in the wind and miles of sky.

  “The railroad is just out off the edge of where the world drops off. It’s getting closer everyday, and every mile of track they lay shrinks this country down a little more. Soon it won’t be such a big piece of country at all,” Billy said. I noticed for the first time the sadness in his voice, and the melancholy mood about him.

  “That railroad will be the ruin of it all, I guarantee you. The farmers will come in here by the droves hungry for land, and ignorant enough to think they belong here. It’ll be the farmers an
d the railroad that end open range, and not the damned Association.”

  “A lot of them say that’s why they are organizing, so that they can hold on to a big chunk of this before the railroad brings the farmers,” I said, just to play the devil’s advocate.

  “Damn it all!”

  “Times are changing. I guess that’s the way of things.” I was thoroughly convinced of the sad truth of what I said.

  “And that’s the shame of it,” Billy said with a long sigh. “I liked it just the way it was.”

  “You’re still driving herds north.”

  Billy nodded agreement, but didn’t seem comforted at all by the thought. He stared off at the skyline, and I could tell that in his mind’s eye he was following the North Star along trails once passed, and driving herds with friends long since gone to market.

  “I went all the way to Fremont’s Orchard with that herd.” Billy reached a hand to point north to a far place only the map of our minds could see in the distance. “And the Association, and the lawyers, couldn’t stop me.”

  “I wish I’d been with you.” I knew that kind of life wasn’t to be for me anymore, but I meant what I said just the same.

  “I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anybody,” he said.

  Billy wasn’t given to speaking of himself, but something moved him that afternoon—something so powerful that he opened forth the flood gates of his memory and I listened while he talked the sun down from the sky. He told me of his family, and of his life before I’d met him, when Texas had been a damned hard place to live. I listened to every word he said, and I’ve never heard its like again.

  “You came to this country later Nate, but my daddy brought my older brother and me out of Mississippi when I was four. My name was Cavenaugh back then. Daddy had one good horse and a rifle, and he scouted the trail while my brother drove the oxen and I rode the lead steer all the way to the country southeast of Henrietta. He built us a dogtrot house, and we set in to farming crops, and running a few cattle and hogs in the Cross Timbers. My brother was just in his teens when the war broke out, and Daddy told him to stay and watch over me while he went off to fight. We never saw him again, but we heard he was killed at the Battle of Pea Ridge up in Arkansas.