been done could be undone by enduring.
Arm in arm, he and the old man went down the road together, not into the sunset, for that was behind them, but into the dawn or where the dawn would have been if it had been that time of day. They went down the road together, the old man and his kid, the kid became a man, and he got rid of the book with the one hundred and eighty-two names, getting rid of a lot else along with it. And it was the last book he ever compiled of that kind.
21
'That's quite a story, Art,' Mitch laughed. 'Is that really the way little Big Spring became big Big Spring?'
'You hintin' that I'm a liar?' his friend demanded crustily. And then he also laughed. 'Well, that's pretty much the way it happened,' he said. 'It's a middlin' true story. No story can be gospel true unless you've got all the facts and the time to tell 'em, which is two gots I ain't got. You figure on savin' that bottle for yourself, or passing it like a gent?'
Mitch chuckled and passed the bottle of sour mash. His friend downed an enormous drink of it, without the slightest change of expression, and began rolling a brown-paper cigarette. He was eighty years old, Mitch knew, and he looked a healthy sixty. He was an ex- cowhand, ex-gambler, exrancher and ex-banker. He described his present vocation as gal-chasm' and booze-tastin'.
They were sitting in Mitch's room in the town's leading hotel. The old man could have written a check for the full value of the hotel, and the block it stood in. Yet he pinched out the coal of his cigarette, and put the butt into the pocket of his threadbare shirt.
Mitch had seen many old men do the same thing in these far-out western cities. Men with permanently bowed legs and faces as brown as saddle leather, and fortunes so large they could not even spend the interest on them. They sat around the hotel lobbies in Big Spring and Midland and San Angelo, reading newspapers that other people left behind, squeezing two or three smokes out of the same brown-paper cigarette. But it was not because they were stingy. They had simply grown up in an era and an area where there was little to buy and few opportunities for buying. The same newspaper might be passed around a bunkhouse for months, because a newspaper was a rare thing and something to be treasured. Similarly, a man was careful with his tobacco, for it might be a very long time before he could replenish his supply.
That was why the old men were as they were-because of the way they had lived as younger men. Because they had reversed the usual order of things, learning the value of everything with suitably little regard for its ephemeral, meaningless price.
'Let's see now,' said Art Savage, Mitch's friend. 'What was we talkin' about before you hid the whiskey and got me all confused?'
'Mrs. Lord,' Mitch grinned. 'And since when could anyone hide whiskey from you?'
'Don't get smart with me, bub. But about Gidge Lord- Gidge Parton, I always think of her. Used to tomcat around with her a lot before she married Win Lord. A leetle bit younger'n I was but that didn't seem to make her no never mind. Don't know just what might have come of it if Win hadn't edged in on me, because that Gidge was really a lot of gal…'
Savage paused, his faded blue eyes contemplating the past and its might-have-beens. Mitch brought him out of it by passing the whiskey bottle.
'So you haven't seen her in recent years?' he suggested.
'Who the hell says I ain't?' Savage demanded. 'Sure, I seen her. Two-three months after she was married, we started gettin' together again. Didn't feel quite right about it in a way; it's always kind of consciencesome triflin' with another man's wife, y'know, and it ain't ever been healthy in Texas. But Gidge wanted to, and with Win boozin' and whoring all the time, I didn't feel too bad about it. We finally broke it up when she got pregnant. Reckon I'd've broke it up before then, if I'd had my ruthers, because a lot of Win's nastiness had rubbed off on her, and she could run him a close second for low-down. What the hell are you grinnin' about, anyways?'
'Me?' Mitch said innocently. 'Well, nothing really. It just occurred to me that perhaps you were-'
'Don't you say it!' Savage said grimly. 'Don't you dast say it! Anytime I see a thing like Winnie Lord, Jr., coming out of a place I been in, I'll pinch its head off. He's Win's begettin' and don't you ever think he ain't. The spittin' image of him. You ever seen the two of them together at the same age you couldn't have told 'em apart.'
Mitch murmured reassuringly. He declared that he had never seriously thought that a fine man like Savage could father such a skunk.
'About these checks, Art. What do you think would be a good approach on them?'
'Sue. Have to pay off in the long run on good paper.'
Mitch explained that suing was out of the question. Savage scratched his ankle with the toe of his boot and reached for the whiskey again. It was just possible, he said, that suing wouldn't do any good anyway; fella sued he might find a long line ahead of him.
'Come t'think of it, that's probably why them checks wasn't paid, Mitch. The way Gidge is feelin' the squeeze, she ain't paying nothing she can possibly get out of.'
'Yes?' Mitch said. 'I'm not sure I follow you, Art.'
'What's so hard to follow? The ranch is in trouble, money trouble, an' it couldn't happen to a nicer outfit.'
'But how could it be, for God's sake? Over a million acres of land and two or three hundred producing oil wells, and-'
Savage told him how it could be. Because the ranch didn't end with its million acres. It stretched all the way to New York and on down to South America, and even over into Iran and the Far East. The ranch holdings included chain stores and apartment houses, and shipping and manufacturing companies, and so damned many other things that even Gidge Lord probably didn't know what they were.
'Oh, sure, she's got people runnin' the shebang for her. Whole office buildin' full of 'em in New York, I understand. But the best people in the world can't help you none if you don't listen to 'em, and they sure can't make a dollar be in more'n one place 't once.' Savage paused, chuckling with grim satisfaction. 'Told her a long time ago she was spreading herself too thin-just tryin' to be friendly, you know. And you know what she told me?'
'Something pretty unpleasant, I suppose.'
'It was, oh, it was unpleasant, all right. Not to mention downright dirty-mouthed. Had a mind to repeat it to her last week when she paid me a call, but I just don't believe in talking that way in front of ladies even if they ain't.'
Savage revealed that Gidge Lord had tried to borrow money from him (without success, naturally!). The banks were loaded with her paper, and would take no more, and she was now beating the bushes for private money. She needed twenty million-or so she had told Savage-and she was short more than half of it.
'I told her if she was so hard up she'd better clamp down on Winnie, but o'course she'd never do it. Prob'ly couldn't, short of killin' him, and anyways I guess what he blows in doesn't stack up to a lot when you need as much as she does.'
'I suppose not,' Mitch said. 'Particularly when he can have so much fun without paying anything for it.'
'Oh, sure. They're real fond of doing that.'
They finished the bottle, the old man drinking most of it. Mitch saw him to the door, and they shook hands.
'Well, thanks for dropping in, Art. Let's get together again when I'm out this way.'
'Anytime,' Savage said. 'You just whistle an' I'll come arunnin'. Did I tell you anything helpful?'
'Helpful?'
'Uh-uh. For when you go out to the ranch tomorrow.'
