“Did not.”
“Did too.”
Sally stopped the wagon and the two young cowboys halted their horses. They sat in the middle of the street while traffic passed back and forth around them, paying little attention to them.
“Boys,” Sally said, scolding them. “Would you please stop arguing? I’ve got business to attend to, and you do as well. Remember, Smoke wanted you to find some drovers who are willing to make the drive with us. You do understand that, don’t you?”
Pearlie and Cal looked at each other for a moment. Pearlie was the first to speak.
“Yes, ma’am, we understand. It’s just that we were wonderin’…” He let the sentence hang.
“You were wondering what?” Sally asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Miz Sally, that seems to me like an awful big responsibility for me’n Cal to handle,” Pearlie said. “I mean, they’re goin’ to be workin’ for Smoke. Seems like he should be hirin’ ’em. What if we don’t get the right kind of men?”
“Pearlie, you are going to be the foreman, and Cal, you are going to be right under him. Everyone we hire will be working for the two of you, just like they are working for Smoke and me. You’ve been around Sugarloaf for a long time now. You know what kind of men will be good for the job.”
“But…” Pearlie began.
“But nothing,” Sally said. “Smoke has every confidence in the world in the two of you, and so do I. Now, go hire us some good men. You can do that, can’t you?”
Pearlie nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Yes, ma’am, I reckon we can do that. Right, Cal?”
Cal nodded solemnly. “Yes,” he agreed. “We’ll get men you’n Smoke will be proud of.”
“I know you will,” Sally said. She slapped the reins against the backs of the team and the mules strained into the harness, pulling the wagon forward.
“When you’ve hired the men, come down to the general store,” Sally called back over her shoulder as she drove away. “I should have the wagon loaded by then.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Pearlie replied. “Come on, Cal, let’s me’n you go get us some cowboys.”
“You got ’ny idea where we should start?” Cal asked.
“Not directly. But town’s a busy place today. I’m sure we’ll run into someone, somewhere,” Pearlie replied.
Chapter Six
As the two cowboys rode down to the opposite end of town, they saw a fistfight in progress in the street in front of the livery. One of the combatants was a soldier in uniform. He was wearing sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves.
The other combatant was a civilian. The civilian was much younger than the soldier, but he was nearly as big, and he was more than holding his own.
As the cowboys got closer, they saw that the civilian was Mike Kennedy. Kennedy worked for the livery stable as a hostler and as an apprentice blacksmith. Mike was about the same age as Cal, and, in fact, the two were good friends. Mike was younger and smaller than the sergeant, but he was strong and whatever it was that started the fight had filled him with resolve. At first there had been a sly smirk on the sergeant’s face.
“Boy, I’m goin’ to play with you for a bit,” the sergeant said. “Then I’m going to hurt you, and I’m going to hurt you bad.”
But Mike was proving to be a little more than the sergeant expected. The sergeant swung hard with a roundhouse right, but Mike, who was quick and agile, ducked under the swing, then countered with a left jab to the sergeant’s nose. It was considerably more than a light jab, because the soldier’s nose went flat, then almost immediately begin to swell. The sergeant let out a bellow of pain as a trickle of blood started down across his mustache.
“Why, you snot-nosed kid!” the sergeant shouted. “I’m going to knock your block off!” He swung with another roundhouse right, missing again, and this time Mike caught him with a right hook to the chin. The hook rocked the sergeant back, but it didn’t knock him down.
By now a rather substantial crowd had gathered to watch the fight, and everyone was rooting for their champion. To the surprise of both Cal and Pearlie, there seemed to be about as many soldiers cheering for Mike as there were supporting the soldier.
Mike scored with two more sharp jabs, and it was now obvious that the sergeant was on his last legs. He was stumbling about, barely able to stay on his feet. Mike had set him up for the finishing blow when one of the soldiers who had been supporting the sergeant suddenly grabbed the boy from behind. With his arms pinned, Mike was an easy target for the roundhouse right that, until now, had missed.
The sergeant connected and Mike’s knees buckled, but he didn’t go down. Pearlie slid down from his horse and before the sergeant could throw another punch, Pearlie brought the butt of his pistol down on the head of the man who had grabbed Mike. The man collapsed like a sack of potatoes and, though Pearlie and Cal were prepared to have to defend the action if need be, Pearlie found himself cheered by the crowd, civilian and soldier alike.
With his arms now free, Mike was able to finish the fight with two more blows, setting his man up with a hard left jab, then dropping him with an even harder right cross.
With the fight over and nothing to hold the spectators’ interest, the crowd broke up. Several of the soldiers dragged their beaten comrade away with them, leaving Mike standing in the middle of the street, breathing hard from the exertion.
It wasn’t until that moment that Pearlie realized the fight hadn’t been as one-sided as he had thought. Mike had a cut lip and a swollen eye. The boy walked over to the watering trough and dipped his handkerchief into the
