Panhandle (8 page)
Authors: Brett Cogburn
I left Andy in camp, and rode out to the herd we had gathered that day. Billy met me halfway, riding from the direction of the cut herd. He seemed to be mulling something over in his mind, and I was willing to sit silent myself. I was bad to let things stick in my craw.
“You don't think I had anything to do with those penned steers, do you?” Billy was dead sincere, and doubt crept into his voice.
“I believe you.”
“You're still pissed though, ain't you?”
“I'll get over it, I guess,” I measured my words. “It just ain't sitting with me too good right now.”
“That's just Little Carl's beans working on you.”
“Maybe so.” Carlito cooked the hottest beans I ever ate, and my belly was already feeling the effects. “I bet I fart like a Missouri mule tonight.”
“Just don't stampede the herd.”
I laughed. “I'll try not to.”
“I need some of those beans myself.” Billy started to head for camp.
“Billy?” I stopped him a few yards off. “That's the last time I'll turn a blind eye to rustling.”
“I hear ya, and I'll stand by ya.” He rode off in the dark.
I headed for the edge of the herd, my mind on Billy and rustled cows. I didn't think for a minute that Billy was in on hiding those steers, but he damned sure knew who was. Anywhere there were herds of cattle there was bound to be rustling, and it looked like the steal was on in the Panhandle.
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e'd been out about a month, when Hell's Bells Gruber asked if one of us would like to make a quick trip back to headquarters. Our portion of the cuts had grown into a large number. He wanted a crew to come down and help drive them home. We were slowly getting far enough away from our range that the number of our brands was thinning out considerably. Also, there were a good number of cows and calves in the herd. A mixed herd was harder to drive, and the dust, heat, and handling were hard on the young calves.
e'd been out about a month, when Hell's Bells Gruber asked if one of us would like to make a quick trip back to headquarters. Our portion of the cuts had grown into a large number. He wanted a crew to come down and help drive them home. We were slowly getting far enough away from our range that the number of our brands was thinning out considerably. Also, there were a good number of cows and calves in the herd. A mixed herd was harder to drive, and the dust, heat, and handling were hard on the young calves.
I quickly volunteered for the ride. I was saddling my horse before daylight the next morning, when Billy joined me. Somehow he'd managed to talk Gruber into letting him go. I wondered what he was up to while we made the sixty-mile trip in one day's ride, arriving at headquarters late in the evening. Our little Texas horses were tough.
The next morning we saddled fresh horses, and found Wiren in camp with one of his wagon bosses about ten miles out. They had a herd gathered out on the plain, and were branding calves. The dust rolled up thick from beneath the hooves of the herd, and the air was filled with the sound of bawling cattle. Three crews were working on the ground with a couple of mounted men roping and dragging calves to each crew.
Wiren was working with one of the ground crews, and we rode up to him while he jumped on the next calf drug to him by its heels. Once the calf was branded, ear-notched, and castrated, he got up from the animal and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of one shirtsleeve.
“You boys decided to quit eating up ranch supplies and playing cards while the rest of us work for a living?”
We tried to hide our discomfort over his obvious knowledge of our rep outfit's recent behavior so far from home.
“H.B. said to tell you we need a few hands to help drive a herd back here,” Billy said.
“Did he give you a tally of the herd you've rounded up?”
Wiren was a big man, with a grumpy way about him, but despite his jab about what had been going on out on the general roundup, he seemed pleased at the news we delivered. I handed him a tally written on a scrap of paper. He mumbled to himself over it for a few minutes.
“It'll be a couple of days before we finish up branding. You fellows pitch in here, and I'll send you back with a couple of hands once we're through.”
“My stomach has been bothering me something fierce, and I wondered if I might get the time off to ride over to Clarendon and see if I can't get some Fletcher's Castoria.” I kept a straight face while he glared at me like I was about to be fired.
“Never set much store by patent medicines,” he growled, “You know there's no liquor in the Roost, don't you?”
“They tell me it's dry as a bone.”
“Is the pain in your gut bad?”
“Terrible.” I rubbed my belly and grimaced.
“Well, go on then. I wouldn't want anybody saying I ignored a dying man's wishes.” He dismissed me with a wave of his hand as he turned back to his work.
Afraid he would change his mind, I whirled my horse around and took off for Clarendon without so much as a good-bye to Billy. The thought of being able to look up that girl from the stagecoach, with no competition from him, lifted my spirits. He could work his butt off branding calves while I did a little romancing.
My elation was short lived. I hadn't gone a mile before Billy caught up to me. I knew he was coming along by the grin on his face. I just couldn't figure out how he'd managed it.
“I told Wiren you were so sick that I was worried about you making it to Clarendon.”
“He fell for that?”
“No. He's just a good boss, and I offered to mail some letters for him.”
“You're quite the charmer, aren't you?”
Billy shook his vest pocket, and it jingled. “I got us a ten-dollar-apiece advance on our wages to cover the cost of your snake oil.”
“Why does all this surprise me?”
We loped north through the breaks of that country. I was tickled to death that Wiren let us go, but there was one nagging thought that put a little bit of a damper on my general good mood. I felt guilty, but, for once, I was wishing Billy wasn't along. I didn't intend on sharing that girl's attention when I found her.
We camped that night in Palo Duro Canyon, where the endless prairie falls abruptly over immense cliffs down into that giant gash that divides the plains. The canyon was miles wide and shallow where we camped, but deepened and narrowed farther west, until the world above might not have even existed at all. We made a fire beneath the chalk-marked red rock bluffs of the north rim, and sat watching the sun melt into the high caprock miles to the west. The red stone of the canyon walls combined into a single orange glow, and then turned to shadows.
Once, those timeworn bluffs, at the jagged head of the canyon, had sheltered and hidden the Comanches in winter. That was years before we arrived, but the appearance of a band of Indians dragging their travois from the dark wouldn't have surprised me. In fact, it would have seemed right. The Comanches and the buffalo were gone, but the Palo Duro was still thereâa forever place where you didn't have to close your eyes to envision the wild scope of a land that once was.
I wanted to get an early start the next day, so as to make Clarendon by morning. I attempted to go to sleep, but Billy wouldn't have any of it.
“I never knew you to take sick.” Billy poked the fire with a piece of shinnery oak.
“You come with me out of a concern for my health?”
“I guess I came along hoping to get a dose of the medicine you're looking for.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.” It didn't take much acting for me to play dumb.
“Damn, can't you just admit that you've been thinking about that girl for a month?”
“And I suppose you can?”
He didn't hesitate for a second. “Hell yes! This is just about a perfect country, except it's a long way between water and women.”
“We don't even know that we can find her,” I said lamely.
“Speak for yourself.” Billy didn't lack in confidence. And he had reason where women were concerned. I'd never seen him around decent women, but the girls along the row were crazy about him.
I went to bed grumpy and jealous over a woman I'd never met. I didn't have a claim on that girl, but it was like he was busting in on my own private little dream. I went to sleep with Billy still sitting by the fire.
Morning came and we left camp for the short ride to Clarendon. Billy seemed to have slicked up a bit, and I grumbled to myself. I felt I probably looked like I ought to be thrown out with the wash. I don't know how he did it.
Clarendon wasn't much to look at early on. You could pass through it at a run and never wind your horse. It showed signs of building, but was still pretty hardscrabble looking. The buildings were a mix of different types, lumber being in short supply out on the treeless plains.
We stopped in the middle of the main street. Both of us were silent, thinking the same thing. Two could be a crowd sometimes.
Billy beat me to the punch. “I need a new shirt. Think you could handle the mail?”
An angry protest started to form on my lips, but I had second thoughts. Looking at Billy made me wish I was cleaned up a bit. I decided to find a place to knock the dust off and curry and brush up a little.
I took the mail from Billy and we parted ways. Before I went looking for that girl, I intended to find a barber and a bath. I was going to outshine Billy this time, come hell or high water.
I had to settle for a haircut given by the blacksmith's wife, as Clarendon hadn't as yet acquired a barber. The same woman mended and laundered my best white shirt for a half dollar. I washed up the best I could in a tub out back of their shop. When I headed down the street to the post office I was feeling quite dapper in my damp, semi-white shirt, and half-dollar haircut.
By the time I had finished my preening and mailed Wiren's letters, it was early afternoon. I hadn't as yet struck any sign of Barbara Allen, or Billy either for that matter. Careful questioning of a citizen got me directions to Allen's store.
I found the store, and as I'd suspected, I found Billy also. I saw him through the window. He was at the back of the room appearing to study a new hat. Barbara Allen was helping him, and he was making her smile.
She laughed just as I stepped into the room. It sounded rich and husky, tinkling across the store and filling my head. I fought the burn of jealousy.
My courage threatened to fail me, and I hesitated in the doorway. There I was, the same man who climbed on bad broncs, swam swollen rivers, roped outlaw cattle, and generally dealt with some danger to my general health on a daily basis, and yet I was scared as hell. I was scared of a little red-headed girl who had stopped her conversation with Billy to study me.
Like I said, she was red-headed. Auburn was what most folks would call it. Her hair was dark except when some light hit it, and then it shone with a red hue. She was tall, and slim. There was something about her carriage that bespoke pride. Or maybe that was the way she held her chin up just a touch. It wasn't in a snooty manner, just like she knew something you didn't. There was that same bright gleam to those green eyes that I had thought on for more than a month. I could have loved her for just her eyes.
I never had words enough to tell anybody else the proper way I felt about anything important. Looking back on that moment, a lot of things come to mind. However, I can think of no words to do justice to the way she looked, or what she stirred in me. She was simply the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
A male voice cleared his throat and startled me out of my trance. That girl was looking at me like I was daft, and I was feeling hot around the gills about then. A snooty-looking gent wearing glasses stood behind a small counter. He cleared his throat again, and I stepped into the room.
“Can we help you, sir?” His sounded like a Yankee, and said “sir” like that may have been a questionable subject where I was concerned.
Lifting one foot at a time, I made my way into the room. I was suddenly conscious of my spurs rattling. Awkward didn't begin to describe the way I felt right then.
“I said, can we help you?” The man raised his voice a little like he thought I might be hard of hearing.
“I just came to look,” I muttered.
He tipped his chin down and looked over his glasses at me. He waved his arm at the stacks of goods in shelves behind him, and scattered about the small room. “Feel free to survey our stock, and tell us if we can help you find something in particular.”
“I'm just looking,” I repeated.
“Seems to be the trend of the day.” The storekeeper cast a glance at Billy, who continued to make the girl giggle. Those giggles sped my heartbeat and cast small frown lines on the storekeeper's face. I wondered if he was her father.
“Hello, Nate.” Billy was smiling like I was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.
My throat felt like I had swallowed a chunk of rock, and I strained to force myself, through sheer willpower, to speak.
“Have you met Miss Allen yet?” Billy waved his outstretched hand to gesture to her like he was the Prince of Persia or something. He was quite the gent, our Billy.
Triumphantly, I managed to mutter something totally incomprehensible under my breath.
Billy stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “This is my friend, Nate Reynolds. He's a real talker when you get him going, and when he decides to speak something other than Comanche.”
I wondered if the store could sell me a place to crawl into and hide, or if there was an undertaker to give Billy a proper burial when I cut his bloody guts out. I managed to smile appreciatively at the obvious concern of my dear friend.
“What brings you to our fair city, Mr. Reynolds?” Barbara Allen asked.
Like with Billy, I had the sneaking feeling that I was the source of the greatest amusement for her. Her eyes held the same mischievous glint.
I didn't give myself time to register what she said. I was too caught up in the sound of her to listen. My tongue took off before I was ready, and I blurted out, “I came a horseback.”
Billy staggered off to compose himself, but he didn't laugh, I'll give him that. I don't guess he felt it was a laughing matter to watch a man shoot himself in the foot. Hell, I had shot my leg off at the knee.
Barbara Allen held her composure as still as a corpse. I watched the strain in her face, and the tight-lipped straightening of her mouth. Once she had gathered a slow, deep breath, and let it out in a little shudder, she pointed a finger out the store's front window.
“Is your horse out front?” she asked dramatically, and I thought her acting technique decidedly unskillful and overplayed. “I so love horses, especially these wooly little Western ponies.” She started for the door.
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