Читать книгу So Far from Spring - Peggy Simson Curry - Страница 11

CHAPTER IV

His pride smarting from the sting of Monte Maguire’s words, Kelsey set out to learn the cattle business. During the two and a half months that followed his first meeting with her he sat late in the bunkhouse, throwing question after question at Jake. Sometimes he used pencil and paper, trying to make clear in his mind the cycle of grass and cows and weather. At every opportunity he observed at first hand some small detail of a complex business—a calf being born, a cow being doctored for disease, a bull being marked for discard and shipping because of age. And as he began to understand a little about the cattle he saw their relationship to the land.

Grass controlled where they would go at what time of the year. When cattle became restless on the spring meadows, pacing the fences, that meant the flats were turning green. Cowpunchers had only to open the gates, and the cows drifted naturally and easily to the spring range which lay between the ranch and town. In the brownish meadows they had just left, more grass came on, greening later than the flats, where the prairie sagebrush held moisture. And in June, when the flats had been grazed clean, cattle moved on to the fresh, close-to-the-snow grass of the high summer range in the mountains. As old snow melted they moved higher, and as fall came on, with the first flurries of new snowfall, cattle drifted back down onto the flats and meadows.

“I’ve got to get it right in my mind,” Kelsey would say to Jake. “I’ve got to understand more than weather and grass and where the ranges are. There’s the business of keeping calves and bulls and cows separated at the right time.”

And Jake would answer, smiling, “It’s simple, son.”

And after a while Kelsey saw that this was true. Bulls were with cows only at proper breeding time—a time that guaranteed a calf wouldn’t be born in a snowbank. Bulls went out of their tightly fenced pastures to the mountain ranges in July, and ran with the cows until fall. Rock salt was placed in grassy parks, where cows would gather and the bulls would find them. Steers were pushed on the higher slopes to keep them away from the cows. Steer and heifer calves were kept in separate pastures after their first winter. “Because a steer is cut,” Jake said, “that doesn’t change his notions when he reaches a certain age.”

June was branding time; fall was weaning and shipping time. Summer was for making hay, and winter was for feeding from the cured haystacks.

There were two kinds of cattle: range cattle, and purebred stuff. Purebreds were used only for breeding purposes. Range cattle went to the beef markets. In the Park most of the cattle were Herefords, commonly called “white faces” because of their white markings.

“Purebreds are full-horned, Kelsey,” Jake explained patiently, “and got numbers burned in the horns to match numbers on their pedigree. They gotta be kept in tight pastures all the time. Full-eared, too. You never see a purebred with an ear mark.”

Everything about cow business cost money, Kelsey concluded—especially bulls. All bulls were purebred, and a good bull meant good calves. How long would a man have to work at forty dollars a month to buy a bull? His figuring gave him a sense of mingled impatience and futility, but neither feeling lasted. With each new day he went about his work, eager to learn more. And this fine June morning he wished he were helping with the branding and cutting, but Tommy had sent him to town for rock salt.

The lumber wagon rattled along the narrow road. Kelsey, holding the lines lightly in his hands, looked over the backs of the team to the rolling country. One of Taraleean’s letters was in his pocket, but he had not heard from Prim, although he had written her two or three times a week. A paragraph in his mother’s letter stood out vividly in his mind: “Prim Munro’s gone for the summer—to the highlands, some say, but not a soul seems to know where. . . . Before she left, Crowter the rag-buyer was seen with her along the highroad and in the town of a Saturday night. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I think you should know . . .”

He had written Prim again last night, an angry letter with words crossed out and then put in again. What did she mean, running with Crowter after what they had been to each other that night on the shore? And why hadn’t she answered his letters? What was he to think of her, anyhow?

He felt foolish, remembering the words he’d so painstakingly put down the first weeks at the Red Hill Ranch—“Prim, my dearest one . . . Prim, my very own . . .”

Before him now was the wide river he had crossed the first day he was in the Park, and the ranch house south of the pole bridge was the home place of Monte Maguire. As Tommy had directed, he turned in at the gate and followed the rutted road along the riverbank to the ranch house with the dirt roof that sprouted grass and weeds and small tomatored flowers. He tied the team to the hitching post, walked across the bare yard, and knocked on the front door. A middle-aged woman with thin gray hair drawn tightly back from her high bulging forehead opened the door, looking at him questioningly, her pale lips pursed.

“Is Monte Maguire in?”

“You’ll find her at the corral. She’s not often in the house, except to eat and sleep.”

He drove the lumber wagon to the corrals. Back of the barn was a smaller corral, and it was there he saw her. She was bending over a bull that lay on a pile of hay in one corner. She held a bottle of whiskey in one hand, and Kelsey could hear the heavy, rasping breathing of the bull as he walked toward her. She bent lower, setting the bottle aside, trying to force the bull’s mouth open.

“Let me do it,” Kelsey said.

She straightened, wiping sweat from her forehead. “He’s got pneumonia, I figure. One of those Missouri bulls I bought this spring, and the altitude’s hard on ’em. I thought I ought to drench him.”

Kelsey forced the animal’s head back and the mouth open. The bull was feeble. Slobbers ran from his mouth and a yellow discharge from his nose. Monte poured the whiskey down the throat. The bull snorted and choked, but he made no attempt to rise. He was gaunt, the ribs showing under the yellowish-brown hide. He closed his eyes, making an ugly sound.

“Hell,” Monte Maguire muttered, “he’s gonna die anyhow. I just as well have drunk the whiskey and rubbed the bottle on his belly.” She glanced at Kelsey and added dryly, “It was good whiskey and wouldn’t have hurt me—though I see it pains you to think of me, a woman, having a taste of whiskey.”

A thin smile quirked his lips. “I no longer think of you as a woman, Mrs. Maguire.”

A flush spread under the tan of her skin. He was surprised to see anger in her eyes. Her words came out cold and steady. “A lot of men have, Mr. Cameron. And what’s your business here this mornin’? Speak up! I’m not goin’ to stand around all day.”

“Tommy said I should mention I was after a load of rock salt.”

“Get it at Faun Gentry’s. That’s where I do my trading.”

She picked up the empty whiskey bottle and walked away, leaving him standing beside the sick bull.

He drove on, hearing the meadowlark’s clear, sweet notes from the willows. The town of Walden lay on a rough plateau above two rivers. The scattering of log and frame buildings stood lonely and windswept. Approaching the single block of main street, Kelsey felt again a sense of shock and disappointment. There were no trees or shrubs, only the buildings, naked and bold and yet with a sense of unreality about them, as though they had been hastily dumped there on the gray land and might be gone tomorrow. Over them stretched the sky, high and blue and clean, curving down to rest on the tented peaks to east and west.

A woman was hanging out washing before a small log house, her long full skirts hitched up at the waist, showing the men’s boots she wore to wade through the mud, for the earth was soft from a recent rain. The wet clothes whipped in the wind, startlingly white in contrast to the shabby buildings.

The main street was wide, a stretch of mud rutted by the tracks of buggies and wagons. It was splotched with piles of horse manure, some old and some fresh and steaming, a few rusting tin cans, pieces of wood, and sodden fading newspapers that lay against the bleached uneven wooden sidewalks.

To Kelsey’s left a low dirt-roofed log building carried a crude wooden sign with the rough letters BLACKSMITH. Next to it was a similar log cabin, but the sign on the front was so faded he couldn’t make out the words. Beyond these was obviously a hotel, a double-story frame structure painted pale buff and sporting a square balcony facing the street. Beneath the balcony a porch was trimmed in brown scroll and flanked by pillars painted chocolate-brown. Next to the hotel was what appeared to be a sort of town hall, a grayish-white frame building with a cupola and bell on top. Farther on, Kelsey glimpsed a water tower and windmill.

Opposite the hotel was a store building; a faded red-and-white-striped awning jutted out to shade the wooden sidewalk: GROCERIES & HARDWARE. On up this side of the street were saloons and hitching racks and another large frame store building with the word GENTRY’S painted in large black letters across the board front.

As he drove toward Gentry’s store the street scene was one of slow activity. Men talked in groups of twos and threes, and occasionally a woman made her way up or down the street with groceries in her arms. But the town was dominated by the men. Cattlemen and cowhands stood in front of the saloons, talking markets and cows. Their hats rested low over their eyes or far back on their heads, showing the narrow strips of white forehead. Other men moved up and down the street, mingling with the storekeepers and saloon owners. As Kelsey got out of the wagon, tied the team to the hitching rack, and looked around, he noticed the small white frame church east of the main street. It had a sharp, thin steeple pointing up toward the blue. He felt a sense of satisfaction when he looked at it, and a part of him applauded those who had made a church possible in this isolated, crude country. He remembered that Jediah said preachers had the hardest time trying to make a living in the Park, for ranchers made up the larger part of the population and didn’t often drive twenty or thirty miles by buggy to attend church.

“That don’t mean they’ve got no religion,” Jediah had said. “Man can’t live in this country, with the big peaks and seein’ life all around him every spring, without havin’ a humble and grateful feelin’ toward something. Don’t matter what you call it, son; you’ll know it’s there when you been in the Park a while.”

Kelsey walked across the wooden sidewalk, looking at the half-dozen men lounging in front of the building. Their friendly, curious faces were turned toward him in frank appraisal. One of them was talking. “. . . and the judge, he come out dressed like he was ready to hold court and he looked at that cow dead by the meadow fence. Then he turns to Shorty, his hired man, and says, ‘I presume she must have expired during the night.’ ”

The men burst into laughter, and Kelsey smiled as he walked into the store. The air smelled of dust and cigar smoke. Confusion lay over everything, as though all the goods brought into the valley had been tossed here and there with no thought of arrangement. Counters lined the walls, and big wooden tables in the center of the store were covered with all manner of materials—bolts of dress cloth, kegs of nails, harness, shoes, canned goods, horse liniments, saddles, boxes of candy.

Kelsey walked between the tables, brushing against them, trying not to knock things onto the floor. He saw a little bald-headed man behind a counter, a man with a tuft of sandy-colored hair above each small pink ear, and he knew that this must be Faun Gentry.

Faun was smoking a cigar. It hung in the corner of his mouth, the black stub moving up and down in the yellow skin of the thin sagging face. The sunken brown eyes peered from wrinkles of flesh, making Kelsey think of a bloodhound. Faun was waiting on a tall, rounded woman who held a baby in her arms. A shabby coat partly covered her faded calico dress, and a man’s hat, old and crumpled, was jammed over her untidy brown hair.

“That be all, Miz Plunkett?” Faun asked, the cigar moving with his words. “You want me to charge it?”

She shifted the baby to her hip. “We can’t pay you till Harry ships come fall, Faun.”

“Sure, sure, I understand. Cowman’s always broke till shippin’ is over. You stop and see Dolly ’fore you go home. She’s ailin’ again. It’s because she won’t go out in the sun—claims the sun’s too strong in this country and leathers a woman’s skin. I tell her I’d rather she’d get tough skin than be like the stiff I’ve got laid out in the back room.”

The woman nodded, smiling. Then Faun took the cigar from his mouth and leaned across the counter, lowering his voice. “Did I tell you ’bout Ellie Lundgren last week? Y’know how she is, pretendin’ to be so damn prissy. Well, she ain’t satisfied with the meat Vic’s got out on the ranch, whether it’s a cow he’s butchered or a buck he shot in the pasture. She comes in here and sniffs everything, her nose in the air like always. And she says, ‘What kinda meat you got, Mr. Gentry?’ I names everything from ribs to roast, and she just shakes her head. Then I says, ‘How about some nice tongue, Miz Lundgren?’ ‘My,’ she says, ‘how could I eat anything come outta an old cow’s mouth?’ And then I says, ‘Well, Miz Lundgren, you just bought five dozen eggs.’ ”

Mrs. Plunkett’s laughter rang out, hearty, catching laughter, and Kelsey joined in. They turned to look at him then, and Faun came around the counter and held out his hand. “Howdy, stranger.”

Kelsey grasped the slender, nicotine-stained fingers. “I’m Kelsey Cameron, Tommy’s cousin, and he sent me in after rock salt for the Red Hill Ranch.”

“Well, well, so you’re the fella from Scotland. Want you to meet Amie Plunkett. She’s your neighbor to the south—runs the post office for the west side of the Park.”

Amie smiled at him with warm brown eyes. “It’s high time I’ve met up with you. I’ve been sorting those letters from Scotland and wondering about you.”

But no letters from Prim, Kelsey thought, only from Taraleean. What was Big Mina Munro doing to his lassie while he was away here in a far country?

“You tell Tommy,” Amie went on, “he isn’t treatin’ you right. You oughta be gettin’ around and meetin’ some people. What’s he up to, keepin’ your nose to the grindstone? And I’ll bet you’ve been lonesome, too.” Impulsively her hand touched his arm. “You come see us real soon—and stay for supper. Harry’s been wantin’ to meet you. Every time Hilder rides down for the mail he talks about you and we ask him how you’re gettin’ along.” She gave his arm a little shake. “Don’t let Tommy get you down. Everything’s going to be fine.” The baby began to whimper, and she started rocking it gently in her arms. “I’ve got to get home now. I’ll expect you down. We’ll be lookin’ forward to it.”

Kelsey thanked her and watched her walk from the store.

“Helluva fine woman,” Faun said, “but don’t make much of herself—always looks ’bout the way she did just now. When she come into the Park—a few years back, it was—she was some fancy chicken. Dressed to make a man turn his head and look, I can tell you. Don’t seem to care any more, though. Maybe because Harry’s got her pregnant all the time. And folks say she never gets around to fixin’ herself up because she’s too busy readin’ books. Why, I even heard she takes a book to the privy with her—in winter, too, when it’s cold. Now, would you think a person’d get anything through his head when his other end was freezin’?”

Kelsey laughed. He liked Faun Gentry.

“But I’d take Amie any day, books and all, before I’d have any truck with Ellie Lundgren. Vic Lundgren’s one fine fella and about as good a cattleman as there is in the Park, but Ellie—little dried-up wisp with a pinched-in mouth like she’d been suckin’ on a sour pickle. Vic’s cross, that’s what people call her. Ain’t it hell how a good man can get stung?” Faun sighed and then added, “What’d you say Tommy wanted?”

“Rock salt.”

“Well, we’ll get around to that all right. Listen, it’s slack time in the store right now—must be gettin’ close to noon. Come on in the back room, and I’ll set us up a drink. Dolly, my wife, she’s agin liquor—agin sin too. The new preacher’s got her wound around his finger. Why, hell, she’s up there singin’ hymns in the new church damn near every night, and worst is, she can’t carry a tune. Sour as cat piss, Dolly’s singin’. Well, let’s go back now before somebody comes in.”

The back room was small and littered with empty boxes. Against the far wall was a long table with a sheet spread over it. A form lay under the sheet. Faun waved a hand toward it and said, “Fella drifted in here ’bout a month ago. Been hangin’ around Bill Dirk’s saloon, takin’ the boys in poker. Got himself shot last night. Had it comin’. Was him or Bill. Forced Bill into it. Didn’t find no letters or anything on him, but I gotta fix him up a little and bury him. I don’t like the job, but nobody’ll take it on but me, and you can’t let a man stay on top of the ground for the magpies and coyotes to tear him apart.” Faun reached under a box and pulled out a whiskey bottle. “Drink up, son. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

When Kelsey handed him the bottle, Faun nodded and murmured, “Thanks, don’t mind if I do.” Faun took a quick drink, made a face, coughed and said, “God, that’s good whiskey! Listen, you can’t go home this afternoon.”

“I thought I should.”

“Stick around. We’ll have a poker game at Bill Dirk’s tonight. Have some fun, son. You’ll need it if you expect to stay in this country and be happy. There’s nothin’ to equal a good poker game—not even an accommodatin’ woman. Tell Tommy I was outta rock salt and you had to wait till the evenin’ freight wagon got in from Laramie. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll pay you to help me bury this fella this afternoon. That way you won’t feel you’re pinchin’ yourself to sit in on a few hands.”

Kelsey thought about it. Faun went on, “It spooks me, buryin’ a man alone, and the minister’s gone outside—that’s anywhere outside this valley, son. And you could eat supper with Dolly and me. She likes company, and she’s a good cook. Only don’t mention the poker game. I’m comin’ down to work in the store, see? I’d take it as a real favor if you’d help me, Kelsey.”

“Well, all right, then.”

They buried the stranger at five o’clock that afternoon in the shabby graveyard at the edge of town. It was a lonely place on a little hill, and clumps of sagebrush grew around the wooden markers. Kelsey thought of his father, laid to rest in a fine grassy plot a mile from the village. It was like a lawn, that graveyard, and not a weed in it. The stone on his father’s grave was the finest marble and carefully inscribed. And there was a high stone wall to keep cattle and horses from walking over the graves.

But did it matter? he asked himself, leaning on the shovel, looking beyond the graveyard to the vast open country and the far mountains standing over it. What was the end of man but dust the cows might walk through in the evening, when the last blue flower had closed before the dark? Ah, the pity of it!

“Don’t seem right to leave him with no Scripture said over him,” Faun muttered. “But the preacher’s gone.” He leaned on the shovel, staring down at the fresh dark earth.

“I’ll speak over him,” Kelsey said. “I want to.” He took off his wide-brimmed, mud-stained hat and bent his head. And words his father had said to him as they walked the shore came back to him. “ ‘Man . . . cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down . . .’ ”

Yes. And myself to come to this, and Taraleean—dust and the sun going down, and the names to be blown away and forgotten. And even Monte Maguire to come to this, big and strong as she is, and the life beating up like a high sea in her body . . .

He went on into the Lord’s Prayer, feeling the earth solid beneath him and the wind against his cheek. He finished, put on his hat, and turned to go.

“You did good, son,” Faun said gravely. “A man oughta know the Scripture. There’s a time it fits when nothing else will.” He shouldered the shovel, and they walked to the waiting wagon.

Faun’s home was a four-room log cabin two blocks from the main street. The walls inside the house were covered with printed cloth that was tacked at the ceiling and stretched tight and tacked again at the bottom log. Everything was so clean it brought pleasure to Kelsey. “It’s like being home,” he said.

Dolly Gentry was pleased to see him. She was plump, had a small pale face and little soft hands that glittered with rings. She patted her hair, which fascinated Kelsey, for it was an odd shade of black with no shine to it, and because of the way it fitted her head he wondered if it might be a wig.

As they sat at the table she said, “You must find the Red Hill lonely, and no pleasure or good comes to any man who works for Monte Maguire. She’s nothing but a—”

“Dolly!” Faun scowled at her.

“Well, it’s true! Why shouldn’t I say so?”

“You’ve no proof, Dolly.”

“Ha! Proof! Does a woman need proof when one of her kind spends all her time around men? And how’d she get hold of all that land she’s added to her holdings since old Flit Maguire died? Why did Tommy Cameron give up his good homestead, turn it over to her and go to work for her? And what about the cowpunchers who worked for her, got fired, and left the country broke? What happened to their money? You know as well as I do that lots of them never spent anything in town.”

“Dolly,” Faun said, “all you say is gossip. Monte’s the best customer I have, and I’d thank you to keep your mouth shut.”

“That’s it,” Dolly said peevishly, “stand up for her. Men always do. But she can’t pull the wool over a woman’s eyes! Why, she hadn’t been married to Flit Maguire any time when she was chasing all over the country with his hired men.”

“And why not? Flit got so he wouldn’t even bring her over town when he came for groceries. And he was a lot older than Monte. I never liked Flit Maguire, Dolly. He was a hard, cruel man, and I’d not have blamed her if she’d left him.”

“Ha!” Dolly laughed shortly. “She wouldn’t leave him, not when she knew he was old and ailing and owned a ranch and cattle. She knew he’d die and she’d get it. And no wonder he wouldn’t take her anywhere—a girl he picked up in a cathouse!”

“Shut up!” Faun shoved his chair back from the table. “And she was only dealin’ cards at the house, in case you didn’t know the truth.”

“Dealing cards! Well, that’s the fanciest name for it I ever heard!”

“Come on, Kelsey.” Faun turned at the door. “I’m working at the store tonight. Won’t be home till late.”

“Is that so? See you don’t drift into Bill Dirk’s saloon, close as it is to the store.”

Faun’s brows lifted. “Bill Dirk’s? How would I have time to get over to Bill Dirk’s?” He walked with Kelsey into the soft June night. The wind had gone down, and a stillness hung over the town. When they got to the street they angled across it to where a wooden sign hung creaking in the wind—BILL DIRK’S.

“Looks like a few o’ the boys got in,” Faun said, jerking a thumb toward the horses tied at the hitching rack.

Inside the air was smoky and close. There was a crude wooden bar at the far end with an oil painting of two naked women hanging on the wall behind it. Bill Dirk came forward. He was short and fleshy, with thin black hair parted in the middle and slicked down, but the ends stuck up like spikes. His features were fine, almost feminine, and he wore a big diamond on his little finger. He shook Kelsey’s hand and said, “I know Tommy. Good man, but no poker player. We don’t ask him no more. He’s afraid of money—pains him to lose and damn near scares him to death to win, for fear he won’t be able to keep it. Man oughta leave poker alone if he’s afraid of money. Come in the back end. We got a game ready to go.”

They went past the bar and through a narrow doorway into a small room with a window set high in the wall. Around a bare table four men were waiting: the Swedish rancher, Vic Lundgren; Jed Posser, who ran the hotel; Slim, a cowhand from the south end of the Park; and Jediah Walsh.

Jediah peered at Kelsey with his faded blue eyes. “Shucks, boy, if I’d known you was comin’ in I’d have rode with you instead of on horseback. I come in late this afternoon. My ears was plugged with wax again. Friend of mine come up yestiddy, and I got him to watch the headgate while I was gone. Old Doc Bingham said it wasn’t any wonder I was deaf as a post. Sit down, boy. Y’know how to play this game?”

“Dalt and Jake played with me a couple of times in the bunkhouse.”

“Dalt, eh? Well, that young fella knows his cards. But Jake never did have any card sense. Born without it. Always havin’ to ask who bet and who raised and if it’s stud or draw. And he wants to stay in every pot because he can’t stand to be out. Holds his cards up close like he hoped to read new spots onto them. Now, Vic there, he’s the one to watch. He’s been suckin’ us dry all year.”

The blond middle-aged Swede nodded. “Yup, yup,” he said, clicking his false teeth. “You want to start now, Dirk?”

“What we come for, ain’t it?” Posser said, his pale eyes shifting nervously. His hand trembled as he stroked down his thin iron-gray hair. He began to cough and finally put a soiled handkerchief over his mouth.

Slim said nothing. He was tall and thin and moody-looking.

“Deal ’em. I come to play.” Faun rubbed his tobacco-stained hands together. “And bring in the bottle, Dirk. I’m thirsty.”

“Open for two bucks.” Vic’s teeth clicked.

“Raise the openers. Up two,” Kelsey said.

They looked at him. Jediah smiled, his old lined face beaming. “That’s tellin’ ’em, boy!”

The game settled into silence except for the placing of bets and the clanking of chips and silver. The air got heavy and stifling with smoke. Faun Gentry took off his tie and then his coat. Jediah Walsh sat in his heavy underwear and the stench of sweat and beaver castors came from him. The bottle passed from hand to hand. The cowboy, Slim, looked more gloomy. Posser twitched nervously. Periodically Vic Lundgren’s teeth clicked and he muttered, “Yup, yup!” Faun Gentry smoked constantly; as one black cigar burned away, a fresh one replaced it. Only Jediah Walsh was relaxed.

Kelsey won pot after pot. He began to feel expansive. Why, hell, he thought, I’m on top of the world tonight. I can’t lose. I’m like a damned blood in the old country!

This was the life! This made a man forget a girl in Scotland, a girl who didn’t write him as she should; made him forget the lonely nights at the Red Hill Ranch, and his heart crying for the green land far away. And God, the fun of it!

He looked around the table, filled with affection for all these men who had welcomed him to their game. “Since I left my mother, Taraleean, I’ve not spent such a wonderful night,” he said, his voice rising with excitement. “But I’ll be no hog with my money. From now on the whiskey’s on me!” And he tilted back in the creaking chair, shouting, “Hey, bar-lad! Set them up on Kelsey Cameron! Wet the gentlemen’s whistles, please!”

The men laughed, and Vic Lundgren said, “He ain’t like Tommy. And did you ever see anything like the hot streak he’s had? Beginner’s luck, yup, yup!” Vic stood up a little unsteadily and lifted the fresh bottle. “Here’s to you, Scotty. May you live long and have a good woman to sleep with!”

Again the game settled into silence. They played harder now; the money was shoved from hand to hand, but most of it stopped before Kelsey. Daylight was showing against the narrow high window when Vic stood up and said, “Breaks me. And I still owe you fifty dollars, Scotty. You want a check, huh?”

Kelsey rubbed his eyes, which were bloodshot and smarting from the smoke. He was drunk, as much from winning as from the whiskey. “No,” he said, getting to his feet, standing tall in the little room, his red head thrown back, “not a check, but a cow—a cow that’ll have a calf in spring, a good cow with a straight back, short legs, and just enough white showing in the right places, a cow out of a good bull. That’s what you owe me, Vic.”

“You pick her or I pick her, come fall?” Vic asked.

“You pick her, Vic. I trust you.”

“I give you this cow, then, when we bring the cattle off summer range. Any cow Vic Lundgren has is a good cow, Scotty, and don’t let nobody tell you no different. I give you my word on it, and my word is better than gold in the Park—eh, men?”

Faun Gentry nodded, belching loudly. The man Slim slipped quietly out of the room. Bill Dirk began to gather up bottles and poker chips. Posser just sat, staring down at the table, reaching in and out of his pocket, looking at the empty hand and then putting it back, as if he couldn’t believe the pocket was empty.

Kelsey walked out of the saloon, swaying from side to side. He pounded Faun on the shoulder and told him what a noble gentleman he was, by heaven, and that great blood ran in his veins and he was proud to know him, by God! Faun responded in the same mood and then went slowly toward his store, pulling a big key from his pocket.

As Kelsey started across the street Jediah Walsh fell into step beside him. In the middle of the street Jediah pulled a pistol from his pocket and fired it into the air, shouting, “Hurrah for the Fourth of July!”

“It’s not,” Kelsey said, hiccuping. “It’s only June.”

“Well, hell, it still starts with J, don’t it?” Jediah looked all around as though he expected to see some activity on the quiet street, sighed, and pocketed the pistol. “Come on, son, we’ll go to the hotel. And I’ll bunk with you!” He linked his arm through Kelsey’s. They wove across the empty street and up the creaking wooden steps into the hotel.

In the lobby a fat woman sat behind the desk, picking her teeth with a hairpin. Her little eyes bored into Jediah. “Where’s my man?”

Jediah bowed awkwardly. “Possy, ma’am, he’s just delayed collectin’ his winnin’s from Mr. Dirk.” He bowed again and urged Kelsey toward the stairs.

“He better be,” she said dryly. “We got no money to lose, and him coughin’ his head off every night.”

They got to the room, which was bare-floored and had a tom green blind flapping at the window. When Kelsey lighted the lamp a fly began to bump monotonously against the ceiling. Jediah squinted up at the fly. “Crazy son-of-a-bitch. Thinks he can break right out into the sky. Like some people, I reckon.”

“Watch the lamp,” Kelsey warned. “We don’t want to set fire to the place.”

“Listen, son, I been drunker than this more times than I can count. And I’ve started all over again the next mornin’. How much’d you win?”

“A hundred dollars and some—that’s besides what Vic owes me. I’ll send that hundred to Scotland.” And he stood thinking of Big Mina and suddenly said angrily, “That’s why Prim’s not got my letters. Big Mina’s got them first. I ought to have known.”

“You did good, son,” Jediah said. “What you gonna do with a cow, though?”

“Start my own cow herd, that’s what.”

Jediah started taking off his shoes. Then he got into bed, fully clothed, and pulled the covers to his chin. “Some folks ain’t gonna like it, you havin’ a cow,” he said, yawning.

Kelsey pulled up the blind and looked over the buildings to the land, big and fresh in the first light of morning. “Ever hear of Bobby Burns, Jediah?”

“Can’t say as I have.”

“He was a poet—wrote about real things, like men drinking together of a Saturday night. Listen, I’ll tell you about them. . . .” And he began to quote Burns, his heart quickening to the lilt of the words. He turned to the trapper and shouted, “My God, isn’t it wonderful? To think it and feel it and then say it like he did!”

“It is,” Jediah Walsh said. “You turnin’ in, son, or you gonna sleep roostin’ on the side of this bed like a damn chicken?”

“I was thinking of Prim, my lassie. I was thinking how long it’s been since I saw her face and heard her voice. I was remembering the way she felt in my arms, and her tears. I should have married her, Jediah. It wasn’t right I should leave her, not after what we’d been to each other.”

“You can send for her,” Jediah said. “And never be sad for havin’ loved a woman. Just be grateful you had the chance.”

“But the sadness is in it, and I can’t help it. It runs in me like a streak of darkness, Jediah.”

“In all of us,” Jediah said, “but don’t be sorry.”

Kelsey got up, walked to the washstand, where the big white bowl and white pitcher were sitting. He poured water into the bowl and tossed it against his face. He blew out the lamp and moved toward the bed, a music moving with him, whirling in his head with the words of poetry and with the thought of Taraleean and Prim. He tossed his shirt and pants on the floor and got in beside Jediah. The smell of the beaver castors, rank and overpowering, swept over him. But then he slept suddenly, plunging into darkness as though he had fallen over a steep cliff.