by Jerry Buck
I was reluctant to see the roundup end. In a few weeks Angus would begin the drive north to Kansas, and I wouldn’t see him again until he returned at the end of the summer.
A few days before he left, Abby baked sourdough bread and we went to visit. She also took along a jar of his favorite sour pickles. I know Abby would have made herself at home in the kitchen, too, were it not for Juanita’s Spanish oaths. After supper, we played checkers and put away nearly a whole bottle of his Scots whisky. I hated to see Angus go, and secretly I envied him that dusty, sleepless, backbreaking, wondrously exiting ride north.
By steady work that summer, I built the house into a respectable home of three rooms. A few hundred yards behind it I built a corral, lashing together cedar poles with wet rawhide. When it dried to steellike hardness, no mustang or bull could tear it down.
In the fall, when a fire felt good again, Abby said to me of an evening, “It’s a good life, Ben Wheeler.”
I had a volume of Blackstone’s Commentaries in my lap. I looked up at her as she darned a black sock. She was sitting in the Boston rocker we had carried from Kansas. The one I bought her because she said she wanted to rock our first child in it.
In the yellowish cast of the lamp, her skin was golden and flawless. Her light brown hair was silky, and her blue eyes were clear. She worked hard and she was tired. It grieved me that this harsh life, this harsh climate, and this heartless, unforgiving land would soon leave her skin as parched as the baked earth and would dull her hair. I had seen it in the other ranchers’ wives.
I looked at her for a long time. Then I said, “Yes, Abigail Elizabeth Carter, it is a good life!”
She smiled and said, “Please, sir, do remember that I am an honest woman. Abigail Elizabeth Carter Wheeler!’
“An honest woman?” I said as I dropped the volume of Blackstone on the floor. “We’ll see how honest you really are.”
I gathered her in my arms, and the last thing she said as we stretched out on the blanket before the fire was, “Quite honest, to be honest.”
Chapter Seven
Spring came suddenly our second year in San Miguel. One day the icy wind was cutting through to the bone. The next the bluebonnets were blooming on the plains. I spent the next six weeks in the saddle rounding up strays for Angus and chewing on Ginger’s sonofabitch stew and red bean pie.
Before sunup every morning we gulped scalding coffee and wolfed bacon and fresh-baked sourdough biscuits. Angus drew an imaginary line down the center of every section, and at first light the cowboys fanned out in search of the steers. Ginger drove his chuck wagon along that center line, and in the afternoon we herded the cattle we had found toward the point where we figured Ginger had stopped.
As he rode along, Ginger sent his helper out to gather firewood. His helper was a slow-witted man named Horace Jinks, but the playful cowboys quickly dubbed him Horse. Firewood was scarce on the range, and if Horse missed a piece, Ginger whipped off his derby and gave him a hard rap that sent him scurrying after the deadfall. Rarely did they come across a thicket that filled the cowhide cooney slung under the wagon. Some days they found nothing, and Horse collected dried cow flops to bum as “prairie coal.”
When we reached camp each evening, Ginger had supper going over a small fire of mesquite, and a half-dozen branding irons would be heating in another fire. We roped and branded cattle until nightfall, ate a quick supper, and fell wearily into our blanket rolls.
Most of the time it was more of a cow hunt than a roundup. The steers bunched around the water holes, and all you had to do was get them moving in the right direction. If a steer was mired in the mud, you were in for a long fight winching it out with ropes wrapped around saddle horns.
Still, enough cows wandered into the deep arroyos to keep us busy day after day rooting them out. A longhorn is an ornery, obstinate critter, and if a cowboy is foolish enough to give one a choice of directions, it’s going to run the wrong way every time. One hot, dusty day I was urging a young bull up the steep banks of an arroyo when it suddenly reversed itself. The tip of one long horn swung wickedly in my direction. It would have gutted me had I not leaped from my buckskin and tumbled down to the bottom of the arroyo. I lost a little dignity, but I came out unscratched.
Sometimes I worked alone. Sometimes I worked with Chago Duran, a bronzed young Mexican in tight black pants and a high-crowned sombrero. He was a slight, mustachioed man with enough Indian blood to broaden his features and enough Spanish blood to give him an ample supply of touchy, Castilian pride. If he took to you, you could not ask for a truer friend. I reckon he could just about outride, outrope, and outshoot any man I’d ever run across.
Sometimes I worked with Alamo Rehnquist, a short, sinewy man who rode a horse like an extension of the animal. He was an open, friendly man and utterly fearless. He stood no higher than Major Mosby had, and like the Ranger leader he would charge any man or beast if he was provoked enough.
And sometimes I rode with Dusty Morgan, a whelp just barely weaned from his mother’s teat. His adolescent voice still occasionally cracked, especially when he was excited. Dusty was too young to know fear. He was also too young to know when the smartest thing a man could do was back off. He reminded me of myself at that age.
Once and only once, I rode the range with Ed Crayler. Crayler was one of Angus’s top hands. He was a man with one squint eye, yellow teeth, rancid breath, and a disposition to match. The short of it was that Crayler was a braggart and a coward.
Around the camp fire Crayler taunted Dusty and Zack Freeman, a former slave who worked as a wrangler and kept the remuda.
Every pound of coffee in the chuck wagon was packed with a peppermint stick. Ginger used the candy to reward whatever cowboy was in his favor at the moment, though in fact Ginger rarely looked upon any of the cowboys with anything less than contempt. But as it happened, the candy frequently went to Dusty. It never went to Crayler. Sometimes nobody got it.
Crayler suspected that Ginger was feeding the candy to his dog, Caesar. It stuck in his craw like a piece of meat that wouldn’t go down. He didn’t dare take it out directly on Ginger, so Dusty became the target.
He picked on Zack because Zack was black and a former slave, and thus, in Crayler’s eyes, defenseless. I guess Crayler figured if Zack ever did fight back, the other cowhands would resent it and come to his aid.
The day I rode with Crayler, he decided to see how far he could push me. I think he took me for a fancy-pants lawyer riding along on some kind of lark. I didn’t pay him much mind, and he got bolder by the hour. I wasn’t looking for trouble, but I was only going to be pushed so far.
In the late afternoon he went too far.
His horse “accidentally” bumped against mine on the edge of an arroyo. I nearly went over the side, and only the surefootedness of my buckskin saved me from a nasty spill.
I leaped out of my saddle onto Crayler’s back and pulled him to the ground. There I proceeded to pound the stuffing out of him.
He steered clear of me after that.
So I put the miles between Crayler and me and flushed out more strays until I knew I had to return to my office to tend to business.
I was also anxious to get back to Abby. Those long, lonely nights, I climbed into my blanket roll, stared at the bright prairie stars, and thought of little else.
As the roundup drew to a close, my share of dogies due me under my agreement with Angus was enough to fill my corral. I took only twenty back with me. My land was already taxed by the small herd I had accumulated last year, and I didn’t have a dime to spare for grain or hay.
Dusty volunteered to help me drive the calves in, not that twenty calves were that much trouble. When I saw his face light up at the sight of Abby, I knew the real reason he had come.
I hung back and let him drive the calves into the corral. Dusty waved his riata furiously over his head and whistled shrilly. His batwing aparejos flapped in the wind as he spun his horse to head off an escaping calf. Dus
ty turned it into a grand show that Abby enjoyed immensely.
Abby applauded his horsemanship, and I thought Dusty’s grin would split his face in two. He stammered and reddened every time she spoke to him or looked in his direction. “Shucks, ma’am” seemed to be the only words in his vocabulary. I never saw a happier kid than when she sent him away with his stomach straining from his fill of blackberry pie and his cheeks glowing from her chaste peck.
“I want a son just like that,” she announced as we watched Dusty ride away.
“He’s a good lad,” I agreed. “Reminds me of myself when I was his age. The range will toughen him fast.”
“But it won’t take the gentleness out of him,” she said. “Just as it hasn’t taken it out of you.”
I thought no more about it until darkness closed upon us. Despite the early spring, it still felt good to stand by a fire. I poked the embers to revive the flames. Abby took off her apron, wiped her hands on it before hanging it on a peg, and came to stand by me. I slipped an arm around her waist, and she leaned her head against my shoulders.
“You remember I said I wanted a son like Dusty,” she whispered.
I nodded absently.
“Or maybe a son like you when you were a boy.” She was silent for a long moment. The fire popped and hissed. The feel of her was soft and warm.
“Of course,” she added, “it could be a girl.”
I spun her around and held her by the shoulders. I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
She laughed gently and said, “You’ve been gone six weeks. A lot can happen in that time. I was almost sure the day you rode off, but I wanted Doc Sideley—”
“You saw Doc? What’d he say?”
She looked at me with that Madonna look of hers. “He said—” She hesitated. “He said I’m in the family way.”
I threw my arms around her and hugged her tightly. Suddenly I released her. “I’m sorry,” I stammered as awkwardly as Dusty. “I shouldn’t hug you like that. It might hurt the baby. Our son.”
I’ve always been one to keep my emotions to myself. I never wanted to burden other people with my troubles, and I’ve always felt my joys were too special to be shared. Until I met Abby. She allowed me to shamelessly express the feelings I’d always hidden from others. Right then and there I let out a “Whoopeee!” that would have commanded attention in the noisiest cow town saloon.
Abby laughed at my unexpected display, but her eyes glistened with moisture in the firelight.
Chapter Eight
The next morning I hitched up the buckboard, and Abby and I rode into San Miguel. She wanted to shop and visit, but she also tucked a broom and some rags into the back of the buckboard to tidy up my long-neglected office.
I tied up by the Stockman’s Bank. We crossed the creaking wooden sidewalk into the bank. There was an outside entrance to my second-floor office—I didn’t want my clients subjected to Otis Rankin’s scrutiny—but I wanted to see if Otis had any work for me.
Otis welcomed me back and greeted Abby in his courtly manner. He said, “I ’spect, Miz Wheeler, you must be right proud to have your man back.” A big smile crossed his broad, red face, and for once he didn’t have a cigar stuck in the middle of it. Then he turned to me. “Ben, it’s been a spell. I got a pile of stuff right here on my desk waiting for you.”
Eyeing the broom and rags in Abby’s hands, Otis said, “I guess we got us a spot of cleaning to do. Henry sweeps out after closing, but I don’t ’spect he’s been upstairs since you left.”
The bank was a dark and solemn place, and its two occupants, Otis Rankin and Axel Swensen, added little humor to it. Otis looked upon banking as a sacred trust, and he tended to be a little pompous when doing business. Swensen was a pale and morose man. He never seemed to talk except when it was absolutely necessary, and even then he issued his words like the bank’s hard-earned currency. He was the bank’s bookkeeper and teller, and he was totally devoted in his service to Otis.
Two teller’s cages faced the front door, and an ornate wooden balustrade separated the back of the bank. Otis opened the gate and stood back for Abby and me to pass through. In the rear was Otis’s desk, an old leather couch, and a huge, squat vault with its heavy door slightly ajar. Otis usually worked at the desk, but if more than a few customers were waiting for Swensen, he would open the other teller’s cage for a few minutes.
Otis picked up a bundle of papers from his desk and put them into my hands.
“I’ll take care of these things first,” I said.
“I’d ’preciate it, Ben. Some of ’em been waiting a spell.”
The door to the stairs was between Otis’s desk and the vault. Abby and I climbed the steep steps in the dim light. At the landing at the top, I found the key to my office and opened the door.
Abby stepped in ahead of me. Wrinkling her nose, she said, “It’s so musty in here.”
I dropped the documents onto the desk top, then rubbed a finger across the surface. I traced my Running W brand in the dust.
“If you spent more time tending to business in your own office and less time riding roundup for Angus Finlay, it might look more presentable,” she said.
I threw her a glance, and her quick smile told me she was teasing. Working the range was hard, dusty, sweaty, tiring work, but those days on the plains filled me with a sense of freedom I hated to surrender.
Abby set to work with her broom and rags. I walked to the front windows and said, “Let’s get some air in here. Place smells like Ginger’s dog on a rainy day.”
I opened a window and looked down on the rutted main street of San Miguel. If I had been of a demonstrative nature, I would have been tempted to shout my joy to the townspeople below: “Come Thanksgiving I’m going to be a father!” Across from the bank I spied Asa Stanley loading sacks of flour onto the back of a wagon in front of his general store. “Hey, Asa, guess what? I’m going to be a father!” I laughed at my own foolishness. Asa had seven children, and he might wonder why anyone would get excited over a minor thing like a pregnancy.
I couldn’t see the street directly below me because the bank’s flat porch roof extended out to the edge of the wooden sidewalk. I could see the Bluebonnet Saloon down the street, and even at this early hour it was doing a good business. A cowboy reeled out of the swinging front doors and nearly collided with a stout woman headed for Mrs. Barber’s dress shop. He lifted his sweat-stained Stetson to her, but she twirled her parasol to put him out of sight and flounced off.
In front of the livery stables, Nimrod Jones’s oldest boy, Albert, groomed a big roan. The bam was a dull red, and I doubted that Nimrod had painted it since that first coat a decade ago. The stables hid the blacksmith shop next to it, but I could hear a ring of steel that told me Bob Dudley was working on a wagon wheel.
I started to turn away when my eye was caught by a movement at the end of the street, where three new buildings had been slapped together and the bare pine boards were turning to ocher in the sun.
Four men rode slowly into town. They could be cowboys from an outlying ranch, coming to town after the roundup to spend their thirty dollars a month on a few trinkets and the raw whiskey Solomon Grace served at the bar of the Bluebonnet Saloon.
Yet the coating of alkali dust on their wrinkled linen dusters and the weary way they sat in the saddle told me they had ridden a long trail.
The sight of them gave me an uneasy feeling. They were too tense and watchful. They looked vaguely familiar, particularly the big man with a bushy black beard and the tall, clean-shaven man riding beside him.
I had to remind myself I didn’t wear a badge anymore. As a former peace officer, I thought any stranger in town looked suspicious. But I was a lawyer now, and I had hung up my Colt .45. The only time I strapped it on nowadays was to pop at rattlers on roundup.
“There!” Abby said triumphantly. I turned from the window to admire her standing with a rag in her hand. She was a picture.
“Now it won’t shame
me to have you receive your clients.”
I laughed. “Not too many of them breaking down the door to get in here. But it does look a sight better.”
“Well, just you wait, Mr. Lawyer. Your reputation has already spread from the Pecos to the Colorado. I’m thinking it won’t be long before they’ll know your name in Austin.”
“Next think you know you’ll have me standing for the legislature,” I said, shaking my head.
“Now, that’s a thought, Mr. Wheeler. That truly is a thought.”
I knew Abby better than to believe she was just chatting idly. If she had set her bonnet for Austin— But I didn’t want to think about that. Not yet. I was still just a poor country lawyer.
I said, “You better scat. You got shopping and visiting to do, and I got these papers to take care of before Otis comes huffing and puffing up the stairs to see what’s taking so long.”
I cupped her under the chin, raised her face to me, and kissed her. She smelled lightly of lilac.
“I better run,” she said.
“I’ll see you down the steps.”
“Darling,” she said firmly, “I’m only pregnant, not helpless.”
“The steps are kind of steep.”
“I’ll walk slowly,” she said.
I watched her careful descent for a moment, then called after her, “I hope you spend just as slowly. A dollar is hard to come by.”
I heard the trill of her laughter as I turned back to my desk. The swivel chair squeaked in protest under my weight. Why hadn’t I remembered the oil? Creaking saddle leather was a song to my ears, but this could drive me to distraction.
I picked up the batch of mortgages and liens Otis had handed me in the bank just as I heard the sound from the bank below.
CRACK!
I knew instinctively it was a .45.
Cold fear clutched my heart.
CRACK!
The second shot sounded before I could even rise from my desk.