Читать книгу Firestick - William W. Johnstone - Страница 10

CHAPTER 5

“Stick with him, Jesus! Ride him down—show him who’s boss!”

These words of encouragement came from Malachi “Beartooth” Skinner as he leaned leisurely on the outside of a small corral, arms folded across the top rail. Inside the corral, the individual to whom he was shouting encouragement was involved in the very un-leisurely pursuit of trying to stay on a sleek, black, wildly bucking bronco. The rider, Jesus Marquez by name, was a lean, wiry, brown-skinned vaquero—one of two employed by the Double M (for Mountain Men) Ranch, the outfit Beartooth owned with his pals Moosejaw and Firestick. Jesus was young, barely out of his teens, yet already highly skilled in the ways of breaking and training horses. This was thanks to the tutelage of his uncle, Miguel Santros, also employed by the Double M and presently leaning on the corral rail next to Beartooth.

As the two men looked on, the bronc continued to leap and whirl and buck, furiously attempting to dislodge its passenger. But despite being jerked from side to side and snapped back and forth, Jesus remained in the saddle as if nailed there. Through the thickening cloud of dust being kicked up, Beartooth thought he actually saw the young man smile from time to time, after the black would make a particularly frantic maneuver that failed to unseat him.

Beartooth glanced over at Miguel, who was focused intently on his nephew. The older man’s leathery, deeply seamed face showed no emotion, but Beartooth could tell he was both pleased and proud.

“Kid’s a natural,” Beartooth suggested.

Miguel’s shoulders moved in a faint shrug. “I’d like to think I had a little something to do with his skill,” he said. “But it is true that Jesus is a fast learner and arrived possessing a fine set of tools for me to work with.”

A moment after those words came out, the black leaped high and twisted its body sharply while still in the air. The combination move caught Jesus by surprise and threw him badly off balance. The horse came down jarringly hard on all fours, first landing stiff-legged, but then instantly twisting the opposite way. Its young rider couldn’t react fast enough and was sent flying.

“Oh-oh,” muttered Beartooth. “I think the toolbox might’ve just got a dent in it.”

The two men clambered quickly over the fence and hurried into the corral with the aim of making sure the fallen Jesus didn’t get trampled before he could regain his footing. The black showed no intention of trying anything like that, however, instead circling away to the far side of the corral and halting there, feet planted wide, blowing hard, watching the humans with suspicion and perhaps a trace of defiance in its gleaming dark eyes.

Beartooth and Miguel knelt beside Jesus and gently helped him rise to a sitting position. The young man looked dazed, momentarily disoriented, and was sucking hard to regain some of the breath that had gotten knocked out of him. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and began trickling down the sides of his face, making muddy tracks through the thin layer of dust that had settled there.

“Just take it easy for a minute,” said Beartooth. “Nothing’s broke, is it?”

Jesus blinked. “I . . . I don’t think so.”

“Move your legs and then your arms. Slowly,” instructed Miguel. When his nephew had done this, he said, “Good. You are going to be fine.”

Jesus looked around, his eyes taking on some clarity now. “Fine enough,” he allowed. “But not until I have the chance to prove so by climbing back on that black diablo and then staying there until he knows that I am his master.”

Miguel nodded. “I am proud to hear your resolve. And I believe you when you say what you will do. However, that should wait until tomorrow to take place.”

“Tomorrow?” echoed Jesus, his expression showing disapproval of the idea.

“Sí,” said Miguel firmly. “If you get back on the black now, you will be able to break him, it is true. But if you do that, he will always hold a grudge and never be the completely fine mount he has the makings to be. On the other hand, if you allow him this small victory today, then wait until tomorrow to break him, he will remember and appreciate that, and he will go on to be an even finer mount, one with his pride and spirit still intact.”

Jesus looked thoughtful, but at the same time a bit skeptical. “I know well that horses have spirit. But are they also capable of things such as pride and holding a grudge?”

“Indeed so,” Miguel assured him. “If you want to be a top horseman, you must always remember that. It will improve your mastery over the animals and will separate you from the so-called bronc stompers employed by too many cattlemen hereabouts.”

“Bronc stompers?”

“Men who will ride a horse to death in their hurry to break it, rather than take a little extra time and allow the animal the chance to adjust to what is going on, what is being asked of it.”

Jesus scowled. “Breaking a horse by riding it to death accomplishes nothing.”

“Least of all for the horse,” said Beartooth.

Jesus turned his head and looked at the black. Their eyes locked and held for a long moment—until Jesus said, in a low voice, “Tomorrow.”

The black chuffed and dug at the ground with one of its front hooves.

Miguel smiled. “He says he will be waiting and is looking forward to it.”

Beartooth straightened back up. “Tomorrow it is, then. I’ll go ahead and unsaddle the black, then turn him out with the others. When Jesus’s rattled bones have finished settlin’ back into place, you two go on to the bunkhouse and get cleaned up for supper. Take it easy for a while, until Miss Victoria rings the bell to come eat.”

* * *

After he’d seen to the black and put away the saddle and bridle Jesus had been using, Beartooth left the corral area and headed for the main house of the Double M Ranch headquarters. The house was a two-story, wood-frame structure, something a bit uncommon to the area. It was built straight and true and solid, always with a fresh coat of whitewash, trimmed in bright green. When Beartooth and his companions had made the decision to quit being mountain men and settle into more conventional lives, they had agreed that wherever they put down roots, they would build and maintain a fine, substantial home. The main house at the Double M was the result, and each man took pride and worked hard to make sure it always lived up to their goal.

The sinking sun of late afternoon cast a long shadow ahead of Beartooth as he strode along. By his reckoning, he had endured fifty winters in his lifetime, give or take a couple either way. He was a sliver under six feet tall, square-shouldered, lean and solid. Unlike Firestick, there was no gray in his reddish-brown hair. His clean-shaven face was too narrow and his green eyes too intense and probing for him to be considered classically handsome. But he had an easy grin, with a slightly roguish slant to it, that made men want to be pals with him, and certain kinds of women—especially given how the grin came combined with a deeply dimpled chin—want to learn more about what was behind that roguish slant.

As he stepped up onto the front porch, Beartooth was met by a wave of delicious-smelling cooking coming from inside the house. He detected roast pork, cabbage, fresh-baked bread, and some kind of pie. Peach, he thought. He was sure of the first three; the pie might have been more a case of wishful thinking as far as exactly what kind it would turn out to be. In any case, he knew it was sure to taste great thanks to the kitchen talents of Victoria Kingsley, the Double M’s cook and housekeeper.

Entering the house and passing through the parlor, Beartooth paused in the kitchen doorway to breathe in more of the delightful aromas and at the same time drink in the equally pleasing sight of Victoria. She wore a short-sleeved brown blouse buttoned at the throat, a full-length flower-patterned skirt, and a white apron tied at the waist. Beartooth preferred seeing her in this kind of apron rather than the bib-style ones, with shoulder straps that muted her mature, all-over-womanly curves. Victoria was nearing thirty and no longer willowy, but to Beartooth’s eyes—and to those of any red-blooded male with a lick of sense—she was still a mighty fine-looking gal. Her chestnut hair was thick and rich, her face was unlined and finely sculpted, and she had eyes as blue and sparkling as the deepest, purest mountain pool Beartooth had ever looked into.

Sensing his presence in the doorway after she had placed two loaves of bread in the warmer, she turned her head and glanced back over her shoulder. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”

Victoria gave a faint shake of her head. “You didn’t. I think I’ve finally gotten used to how quietly you, Firestick, and Moosejaw move . . . especially for such large men. Whenever I turn around, I’m prepared to find that one of you has entered the room while I was looking away.”

She spoke with an English accent, at times stronger than others, as befitting the land of her birth before coming to America and eventually to the West with a spirited cousin who was a dreamer and a hopeless romantic. That cousin—her name was Estelle, and she’d been closer than a sister ever since childhood—had convinced Victoria without a great deal of difficulty that the arranged marriage her parents were pushing her into with a man for whom she felt no love would be a tragedy she’d regret for the rest of her life. So the pair had fled together to the hopes and thrills and promises of a new country.

On the way west, to a wildly expanding world of cattle empires and endless opportunities such as Estelle had read about in books, she contracted pneumonia and died. This left Victoria jarringly alone and needing to fend for herself on the Texas frontier. Her pride refused to let her contact her family back in England for aid. She vowed to forge on in pursuit of all that she and Estelle had set out after. With her looks, she could have easily succumbed to any number of marriage proposals, but she wanted something more than to settle for an arrangement of convenience—the very thing she had escaped—as a means to simply be taken care of by someone.

So instead she sought whatever socially acceptable “woman’s work” she could find—washing, mending, cleaning, cooking—in order to get by independently. Eventually this led to her hiring on as cook and housekeeper for the men of the Double M. It wasn’t the culmination of her dreams, to be sure, but it was a safe, acceptable position, one she often had to remind herself not to become too complacent with.

“Hope you understand we don’t move the way we do to unnerve you,” Beartooth was explaining. “It’s just that, the way we lived out in the wild and up in the mountains for all those years, we learned to move silently or we might sudden-like quit livin’ at all.”

“I understand,” Victoria said. “I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why anyone would want to pursue that extreme lifestyle, but I understand how you had to adapt in order to survive.”

Beartooth smiled. “Nobody can ever appreciate that lifestyle unless they’ve felt the urge and gone on to live it. It ain’t something you can sit down and reason out as a good idea or a smart way to live. It’s something that’s either in you or it ain’t.”

“And to this day it remains in all three of you, doesn’t it?” Victoria said with a faint smile of her own. “The love for that life and those times, I mean.”

“Yeah, I reckon it does,” Beartooth admitted, somewhat surprised to hear himself say so. “But, barrin’ something drastic, I don’t see any of us ever returnin’ to it. There are plenty of old-timers still walkin’ the mountain paths and trappin’ the streams, but it’s really a young man’s game. Me and my pards, we decided we were a little long in the tooth to keep after it.”

“Nonsense. The passage of years means little to hardy men like you three.”

“Maybe not. But there are other ways to prove it.” Beartooth shrugged. “You’re right, though, about the love for that life—the savorin’ of it, I guess you could say—still bein’ in all of us. I’m pretty sure Firestick and Moosejaw feel the same way. Only, like I said, barrin’ something drastic, I don’t see any of us returnin’ to it.”

“Let’s hope not,” Victoria said. “Surely you must know there are many in these parts who would hate to see you leave.”

Her words left Beartooth at a loss for how to respond. Since settling here in the Buffalo Peak area, Firestick and Moosejaw had each found romantic interests in town. To them, Victoria was a welcome addition to their ranch life—competent and eye-pleasing in her role—but that was as far as it went. Beartooth’s feelings toward her, however, had grown into something more. And there’d been indications she might have similar feelings toward him, but as of yet, neither had gotten around to expressing anything with words.

So, Beartooth wondered, when Victoria responded to the possibility of him and his friends returning to the mountains by saying, “Let’s hope not,” then adding how there were many who would “hate to see you leave” . . . was she speaking only for the “many”—or was she including herself? Or was she perhaps speaking mainly for herself?

It was ironic, considering how Beartooth always had a smooth, easy way with women—albeit the certain kind he’d mostly come in contact with before—that here he was feeling flummoxed, not sure how to act or what to say, when it came to the first woman who might truly mean something to him. Flummoxation like this was enough to actually drive a man back up into the mountains!

With Beartooth momentarily tongue-tied, Victoria followed up on her own remark by saying, “Before you wash up for supper, would you mind bringing in some fuel for the stove’s wood bin? Otherwise I might forget and then run short for tomorrow’s breakfast. And I really dread going out to the woodpile in the predawn hour.”

“Sure. No problem,” Beartooth replied, grateful for the disruption of his awkward silence. “With all the chores you do around here, us fellas ought to do a better job of keepin’ that bin full for you—without havin’ to be asked.”

“I don’t mind fetching some for myself, except, like I said, early in the morning. A rat jumped out at me one time when it was still too dark to see well, and I’ve been skittish ever since. And right now I need to stay here and keep an eye on those pies in the oven.”

Beartooth’s eyebrows lifted. “Pies, as in more than one? I thought that was part of what I smelled. Peach, right?”

“Sorry, but no,” Victoria said, knowing how fond he was of peach pie. “They’re both blueberry this time. But I promise to make peach next, before the end of the week. All right?”

Picking up the bucket for hauling in the wood for the stove, Beartooth said, “I’ll hold you to it. And I aim to make sure you’ll have plenty of wood for the baking. In the meantime, though, blueberry ain’t exactly a hard sacrifice. So, you stay here and guard ’em good while I commence to fetchin’ your fuel.”