“Good enough,” Tom said.
Clay was Clay Ramsey, who Big Ben introduced as the ranch foreman. Clay was thirty-three years old, with brown hair, a well-trimmed moustache, and blue eyes. About five feet ten, he was wiry and, according to one of the cowboys who worked for him, as tough as a piece of rawhide.
“Saddle Thunder for him,” Big Ben said, after he explained what he wanted to do.
“Papa, no!” Rebecca protested vehemently.
“Honey, I’m not just being a horse’s rear end. If he can ride Thunder, he can ride any horse on the ranch. There wouldn’t be any question about my hiring him.”
“I can ride a horse, Mr. Conyers,” Tom said. “But I confess that I have never tried to ride a bucking horse. If that is what is required, then I thank you for your time, and I’ll be going on.”
“He’s not a bucking horse,” Clay said. “But he is a very strong horse who loves to run and jump. If you ride him, you can’t be timid about it; you have to let him know, right away, that you are in control.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ramsey. In that case, I will ride him.”
“Ha!” Dusty McNally, one of the other cowboys said. “I like it that you said you
Thunder was a big, muscular, black horse who stood eighteen hands at the withers. Although he allowed himself to be saddled, he kept moving his head and lifting first one hoof and then another. He looked like a ball of potential energy.
“Here you are, Mr. Whitman,” Clay said, handing the reins to Tom.
“Thank you,” Tom said, mounting. He pointed toward an open area on the other side of a fence. “Would it be all right to ride in that field there?”
“Sure, there’s nothing there but rangeland,” Clay said. “The gate is down there,” he pointed.
“Thank you, I won’t need a gate,” Tom said. He slapped his legs against the side of the horse and it started forward at a gallop. As he approached the fence, he lifted himself slightly from the saddle and leaned forward.
“Come on, Thunder,” he said encouragingly. “Let’s go see if we can find us a fox.”
Thunder galloped toward the fence, then sailed over it as gracefully as a leaping deer. Coming down on the other side Tom saw a ditch about twenty yards beyond the fence, and Thunder took that as well. Horse and rider went through their paces, jumping, making sudden turns, running at a full gallop, then stopping on a dime. After a few minutes he brought Thunder back, returning the same way he left, over the ditch, then over the fence. He slowed him down to a trot once he was back inside the compound, and the horse was at a walk by the time he rode up to dismount in front of a shocked Big Ben, Clay, and Dusty. Rebecca was smiling broadly.
Tom patted Thunder on his neck, then dismounted and handed the reins back to Clay. “He is a very fine horse,” Tom said. “Whoever rides him is quite lucky.”
“He’s yours to ride any time you want him,” Big Ben said. “That is, provided you are willing to come work for me.”
“I would be very proud to work for you, Mr. Conyers.”
“Come with me, Tom, is it?” Clay invited. “I’ll get you set up in the bunkhouse and introduce you to the others.”
“Tom?” Rebecca called out to him.
Tom looked back toward her.
“I’m glad you are here.”
“Thank you, Miss Conyers. I’m glad to be here.”
Tom ate his first supper in the cookhouse that evening. Mo introduced him to all the others.
“Where is Mr. Ramsey?” Tom asked. “Does he eat somewhere else?”
“Mr. Ramsey?” Mo asked. Then he smiled. “Oh, you mean Clay. Clay is the foreman of the ranch, but there don’t any of us call him Mr. Ramsey. We just call him Clay ’cause that’s what he wants us to call him.”
“Clay is married,” one of the other cowboys said. “He lives in that first cabin you see over there, the only one with a front porch.”
“He married a Mexican girl,” another said.
“Don’t talk about her like that,” Mo said. “Maria is as American as you are. Emanuel Bustamante fought with Sam Houston at San Jacinto.”
“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it,” the cowboy said. “I think Senor Bustamante is as fine a man as I’ve ever met, and Mrs. Ramsey is a very good woman. I was just sayin’ that she is Mexican is all.”
“I assume that none of you are married,” Tom said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be eating here in the dining hall.”
“Ha! The dining hall. That’s sure a fancy name for the cookhouse.”
“I don’t mean any disrespect for Clay,” Mo said. “But it don’t make a whole lot of sense for a cowboy to be married. First of all, there don’t none of us make enough money to support a family. And second, when we make the long cattle drives, we’re gone for near three months at a time.”
“And Dodge City is too fun of a town to be in if you are married, if you get my meanin’,” one of the other cowboys said, and the others shared a ribald laugh.
A couple of cowboys decided to razz the tenderfoot that first night. Tom had been given a chest for his belongings, and while Tom and the rest of the cowboys were having supper, Dalton and one of the cowboys slipped back into the bunkhouse and nailed the lid shut on his chest.
When Tom and the others returned, Tom tried to open the lid to his footlocker, but he was unable to get it open.
“What’s the matter there, Tom? Can’t get your chest open?” Dalton asked.
By now Dalton had told the others what he did, and all gathered around to see how Tom was going to react. Would he get angry, and start cursing every-one? Or would he be meek about it?
Tom looked more closely at the lid then, and saw that it had been nailed shut by six nails, two in front and two on either side.
“That’s odd,” he said. “It seems to have been nailed shut.”
The others laughed out loud.
“Nailed shut, is it? Well, I wonder who did that?” Dalton asked.
“Oh, I expect it was a mistake of some sort,” Tom said. “I don’t really think that anyone would nail the lid shut on my chest as a matter of intent.”
“Whoo, do you think that?” Dalton asked, and again, everyone laughed at the joke they were playing on the tenderfoot.
“All right, fellas, you’ve had your fun,” Mo said. “Wait a minute, Tom, I’ll get a claw hammer and pull the nails for you so you can get the lid open.”
“Thank you, Mo,” Tom said. “I don’t need the claw hammer to get the lid open.”
“What are you talking about? Of course you do. How else are you going to open the lid if you don’t pull the nails out first?”
“Oh, it won’t be difficult. I’ll just open it like this,” Tom said. Reaching down with both hands, he used one hand to steady the bottom of the chest and the other to grab the front of the lid. He pulled up on the lid then and, with a terrible screeching noise as the nails lost their purchase, the lid came up. Reaching into the footlocker, Tom removed a pair of socks.
“Ahh,” he said. “That’s what I was looking for.”
“Good God in heaven,” someone said, reverently. “Did you see that?”
“Dalton, I don’t think you ought to be messin’ any more with this one. He’s as strong as an ox.”
“Did you get a count?” Smoke asked Pearlie.
Pearlie held up the string and counted the knots. There were fourteen knots.
“I make it fourteen hundred in the south pasture,” he said.
“I’ve got another eleven hundred,” Cal added.
“And I’ve got just over fifteen hundred,” Smoke said.
“Wow, that’s better than four thousand head,” Pearlie said. “We’ve got almost as many back as we had
