for a nosebag of oats and a roll in the corral dust.
There was little change in Burn English excepthe was sleeping better, or so Miss Katherine said Senora. The room smelled of the grassy plains now that
Each day he could, Davey poked his head inside the sick room or asked Miss Katherine for news, in the kitchen. The crew was busy gathering spring calves, driving steers out of the hills and draws. A sick man was poor excuse for conversation when wrecks and mountain cats and the tracks of big grizzlies and losses from the rustlers were the more usual bunkhouse gossip. Most of the talk was about rustlers; someone close to home was stealing from the neighbors.
Finally Davey presented himself at the kitchen door, well after the big Sunday meal. Meiklejon tried to stop him, but Miss Katherine showed up and settled the matter, as she often did.
“Ah, Mister Hildahl, you’ve come for your usual visit.”
Davey squeezed past the boss, who stared into the distance as if Davey didn’t exist.
She left him in the small room, alone except for the patient lying on the narrow bed. The room was dark and smelled sweet with the herbs and an undertaste of something putrid. Davey’s eyes watered, but he didn’t rub them; he knew from experience that only made the itch worse. It was the voice that galvanized him out of his trance.
“Who’s there?”
A weak voice Davey hadn’t heard for a long time. He grunted: “It’s me, Davey, come for a Sunday visit. Wanted to tell you I saw your colt a few days back. That leg healed fine…no limp and only a few white hairs. He’s looking right good for a durned mustang.”
“Did you brand him?” English’s hand came up, grabbed Davey’s wrist, and, even half dead, there was strength in the smaller man. Davey was pulled close, so all he could see was the violent twisting of English’s features. “Did you brand him?”
Davey nodded as he pulled his hand free. “Yeah, and cut him loose of the hobbles.”
English was slow to hear the words. He coughed and slid both hands over his belly and shut his eyes. “How long I been here? Where…you brand that colt?” Then the hand got Davey again, but most of the strength was gone.
Davey pulled up a chair and sat, let the hand cling to him. He thought of Miss Katherine sitting in the same chair through the long nights and days, dozing while she waited for Burn English to choose. Now Davey tried his own brand of comforting. “English, you rest. Let me tell you, and you listen, ’stead of pushing and making me mad.” He watched the drawn face, shadowed by a thin, dark beard, the eyes sunken deep into the bony skull. Usually lit with fire, the eyes were soft, downright friendly. Man must be weak as a new calf to show emotion. Davey wondered, as he did sometimes, what got the mustanger this far, what grew the fire and rage inside him.
English nodded, all strength used up, and Davey did the talking. “You been here more’n two weeks now. She’s been tending you with a Mex woman. She got you smelling good…first time for you, I bet. Kinda like grass after a good rain. Beats that mustang stink you favor.” English’s face tightened and Davey decided it wasn’t right teasing a sick man.
“Got a hole in your belly and a cut cross your right leg goes up to your backside. Your neck got scratched some, but it’s clean now. Hands’re cut up, too, but they’re almost healed. Hell, you ain’t much worse than you been running the brush on a half-broke bronc’.”
English surprised him; nothing new in that. “Yeah, my gut.” The man let it rest while he took in air. “Feel it… sleeping. Fire inside my bones.” That was a truth near as anyone could speak.
Davey rested his arms across his chest, hunched over. English’s words dug deep.
“Davey?” Too soft, Davey leaned over, close to the man’s mouth. “Saw things…heard voices. Like I wasn’t here.” Rested again, struggled for air. Davey wiped his friend’s wet face. “Where I was goin’…good enough. Strange…hearing about your own dying.”
Like any lonesome man, English talked his own brand of talk. But not now, these were clear and precise pictures that shivered along Davey’s spine.
“Light, Davey. I could lie down and rest and not hurt. That was the promise.”
English quit then, sagging deep into the mattress until Davey knew he would disappear. The fiery eyes closed, the large bony hands, covered with half-healed scarring, lay fragile on the stained blanket. Davey got up and walked to the door, glancing back at the cot and the exposed figure. He hoped that English would come awake his cantankerous self, and forget the voices, the light, and then maybe Davey would return for a visit.
Gordon Meiklejon thought he’d tipped the young man quite well, and was surprised at the look on the boy’s wind-burned face. This messenger had brought the news that a great, snorting bull was arriving in Socorro, with Meiklejon’s name stapled to the entire railroad car in which the bull rode in its solitary glory. A trip to Socorro was in the making. Miss Katherine had her long list of needed supplies; it was mid-May and the winter reserves were depleted.
Gayle Souter drove the wagon, pulled by a sorrel team, and Red Pierson rode with the foreman. Gordon was pleased with himself; he knew most of the men’s names by now. Pierson was a stout youngster who followed orders, yet could think for himself, if needed. This, Souter had repeatedly told Gordon, was a necessity in any good hand.
The season was late to be putting the bull to the L Slash cows. Timed delivery of the calf crop was important to maximize their growth before the all-important fall gather, according to Meiklejohn’s schedule. But this was an experiment, and the bull’s first harem would be herded with him to the pasture north of the ranch.
It was much easier ruminating over the matters of Edinburgh Supreme and his ladies than to consider the chaos at the ranch. The unwanted patient remained, better now but not yet well, and Miss Katherine showed the effects of his stay. The woman was drawn thin, and barely spoke even to her obvious favorite, Davey Hildahl. Hildahl was another matter entirely. Meiklejon refused to dwell on what he saw in the man’s eyes.
When the procession arrived in Socorro, they first visited the rail yard where the magnificent Red Durham stood in its reinforced pen. The bull swayed impassively, chewing massive amounts of old hay, occasionally blowing long strings of mucus from its nostrils, bellowing, eyes closed, head back, as if proclaiming its potency to an indifferent world.
Well satisfied with the purchase, Gordon waited while Souter took a closer look. Gordon watched his foreman—would Souter find the generosity to admit that Gordon had done the right thing in buying this animal? Souter took his time, but finally said it was a magnificent beast, indeed. Ought to make quite a change with the range cattle they were now running.
Later, when he was settled in his room at the Southern, Gordon realized the crafty old foreman had not said anything approving Gordon’s choice. For that maneuver, Gordon smiled to himself, delighted with Souter’s gambit.
Souter set Red to putting up the horses at Billy’s livery while he returned to the rail yard and the Red Durham bull. If he went into Billy’s, there’d be drinking and cursing and stories to swap with his old friend. Let Red deal with the hostler’s sour nature. But first he paid Red some of what the ranch owed him, warning the boy to keep out of trouble, especially to stay away from the liquor. “This ain’t a night on the town, son. We got hard work tomorrow and you best be ready. Find yourself a nice girl and talk to her, maybe buy you both a piece of pie.” He watched Red’s face, read the embarrassed anger, and grinned. Some t hings never changed.
Souter cursed his own self. It was having the
Souter rested a boot on the bottom rung of the fence and the red bull turned its enormous head, shook it violently against the spring gnats, and glared at Souter out of fiery eyes.
