Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories (16 page)

They sat down to supper—a quiet meal lately;
at the end of these long hot days both were often too tired to talk
or eat very much. Gloria noticed that Ray seemed to have little
appetite for anything tonight, but that was not terribly unusual
either, of late.

It was when she was just getting up to clear
away that Ray put both elbows on the table and said a little
abruptly, as though he had been planning the words for some time,
“Gloria, we need to talk.”

Gloria slid back into her chair and looked
at him questioningly, a little concern touching her face. Ray said,
without lifting his eyes from the tablecloth, “You know there
weren’t half as many calves this year as I figured on. And with
this dry weather the cattle are all so poor they won’t bring nearly
enough at market come fall unless we sell practically all of
them—maybe the whole herd.”

“Oh, Ray, no,” said Gloria, leaning forward
earnestly. “Not after you’ve worked so hard building the herd up
this much. You
wouldn’t
sell them all.”

“I’ve been working it all out, the past few
days, and I don’t see any other way,” said Ray, shaking his bowed
head. “I had it figured that the increase in the herd would pay the
interest on the note and a little on the principal every year, and
then in a few years when the interest got smaller we could start
keeping some of the calves. But if they only bring half the price I
counted on, it’ll take more than half the herd to pay the interest,
and I’ve got to put something on the principal too. If we don’t do
that we’ll be stuck paying the same interest year after year and
we’ll never get out from under.”

“And what’ll we do—after that?” said Gloria
in a lower voice, after a short silence.

“We’ll scrape through the winter somehow,”
said Ray; “next year we’ll have to live off what we can raise here.
If I can save a little of the money from the cattle I’ll try a cash
crop—if that comes through we can pay the interest again—maybe put
by a little toward rebuilding the herd.”

“We’d break even,” said Gloria slowly, “but
we’d be back where we started.”

“Worse places to be,” said Ray. He looked at
her and tried to smile. “It’s not all that bad, Glorie. We’ve got
another month of summer left, anyway, before I’ll start looking for
a buyer.”

She nodded, quietly. And after another
minute she got up and began clearing away the dishes, without
speaking again. She knew all that Ray had not said. With the
mortgage hanging over them it would be years before they could save
any money to buy cattle again. She knew, better than anyone, Ray’s
dreams of building his own herd, and how close he had been to the
reality before the hot weather had come, and the cattle began to
droop and grow thinner. She had known this was coming. Most nights
she could not help but sleep soundly, exhausted from the day’s
work, but there were other nights when she lay awake, staring at
the pattern of moonlight that filtered through the calico curtains
onto the wall, listening to Ray’s slow breathing beside her and
thinking about what they were going to do and what would happen
with them. She wondered sometimes if on the nights she went to
sleep, Ray lay awake, staring at the same pattern of moonlight and
thinking the same thoughts.

Gloria stole a look over her shoulder from
the stove. Ray was still sitting with his elbows on the table and
his hands clasped, staring in front of him. The long way around to
the dream, if it ever came, would be harder and more wearisome. Ray
was a cattleman to the bone; he would hate the idea of walking
behind a plow. Gloria had a sudden impulse to go to him, to put her
arms around him or run her fingers through his hair or make some
other gesture of comfort. But something held her back. She felt
that at this moment it would only emphasize her helplessness to do
anything about what was troubling him, the fact that she had
nothing to offer but a caress. It was a feeling foreign to her, and
it made her more uneasy than their tangible troubles.

Ray got up while she was washing the dishes,
and went over and sat down in the rocking-chair by the stove, with
one foot stretched out in front of him, looking into the dim grate
full of coals. Gloria finished drying the dishes and putting them
away on the packing-case shelves, and went into the bedroom to hang
her apron on its nail. When she came out, she stood a moment and
looked at her husband. Then she went over to him and sat down on
his knee, and curled up in his lap with her head against his
shoulder. She was just small and slight enough to do this without
endangering the health of the rocking-chair. Ray shifted slightly
to make her more comfortable, and put his arm around her.

“Tired?” he said.

“No,” said Gloria with a soft little sigh,
watching the dying coals in the stove, “not very much.”

Ray moved his arm a little, a gesture that
seemed to draw her closer. And Gloria knew that she had been wrong.
From here nothing looked so bad as it had done before. She knew by
the way Ray held her that he felt the same way. Their closeness was
the most precious thing they had, and it was that—if anything
could—that would help them weather the storm.

* * *

The town of Baxter, so called of courtesy on
the map, had begun life as an isolated trading-post. With the
influx of people brought by the opening of nearby public land to
homesteading, other buildings had sprung up around it like
low-roofed mushrooms: a blacksmith shop, land office, feed and
grain store; and eventually an assortment of larger stores and
saloons. The original cluster of buildings were of sod; the newer
ones, built of lumber hauled for the purpose, had gradually formed
into a single straggling street of beaten dust.

Ray Collins reined in his team in front of a
store at the newest end of the street, and gave Gloria his hand to
help her down from the wagon seat. “I won’t be ten minutes,” she
said.

Ray set the brake on the wagon and climbed
down on the other side. “No hurry. I’ve got to talk to a couple of
people, and then I’ll meet you back here.”

“All right.”

Ray had walked about half the length of the
street when a voice he knew hailed him from the boardwalk in front
of one of the buildings, and he turned to see the rancher McDonough
coming down the steps toward him. He stood and waited, rather
unwillingly.

McDonough must have seen the extra layer of
reserve that shut down over the younger man’s face at his approach,
but he did not let it affect his own manner. “Morning, Collins,” he
said. “Good thing running into you like this; I’ve been wanting to
see you again. Can I buy you a drink?”

“It’s a little early,” said Ray.

“Never mind that, then. But why don’t we go
inside and sit down. I want to have a talk with you.”

Ray knew there was no point in refusing;
McDonough would merely make a chance to talk to him on some other
occasion if he did. So he agreed, and they went into a nearly-empty
saloon and sat down facing each other at a table by the wall.

McDonough owned one of the only large cattle
ranches still operating in the vicinity. He had shrewdly kept
afloat during the homesteading boom by paying his cowboys to file
claims and buying the land from them when they proved up, and by
buying out adjoining homesteaders who changed their minds and gave
up the effort—thus keeping control of a fair amount of what had
once been open McDonough range. Ray Collins had also been shrewd in
his own way. He had used savings from six years’ worth of cowhand’s
wages to prove up on a quarter-section of land with the six-month
residency, and had added to it by purchasing the relinquishment on
another claim beside his. His thoughts tended not towards empire,
but a small, solid ranching operation, a home and a future.

McDonough opened the conversation without
delay. “You know what I want to talk about,” he said. “I’ve said it
before, but I want you to give it another thought, a serious one.
This dry summer has been hard on everybody’s herds. I’ve been
making out all right—but I’d feel a lot better if I had those four
miles of Wanderlust Creek you’ve got under fence to fall back on
for water.”

Ray half laughed. “I don’t know why you’d
think I’d be willing to give up having that water for my herd.”

“You’ve got a note on that place, haven’t
you?” said McDonough. “It’s no use trying to pretend, because I
know what you’re up against. You’ll have a hard time getting out
from under it with a herd that size, after being hit with weather
like this. I want to give you a fair deal.”

“It’s not the deal I want. If I sell out,
where does that leave me? I’ll have the note paid off and nowhere
to graze my cattle.”

“You’ll have some cash in hand, too, to
start over somewhere else.”

Ray shook his head. “I chose that spot for a
reason. I’ve put almost three years of work into it. I don’t want
to start over somewhere else. If I have to sell off my herd at
least I’ve still got the land. That’s the surest bet, to my way of
thinking.”

“I know what you mean,” said McDonough,
“about putting the work in. You would be starting over, I admit.
That’s why I’m willing to go one better over my last offer, to make
it easier for you. I’ll give you a job.”

“A job?”

McDonough nodded, moving forward in his
chair as he warmed to his explanation. “You can run your cattle in
with mine, and I’ll pay you top cowhand wages. I know you’ve got
the experience to be worth it. With no mortgage to worry about you
can save out of that, and in a year or so have saved enough to put
you back in business on a spread of your own somewhere else.”

Ray stared at him for a minute, and then he
shook his head abruptly. “I can’t do that, McDonough, even if I
wanted to. I’ve got a wife. I can’t bring her out there. You know
you haven’t got any fit place for a woman to live, especially if
she’s got to be alone most of the time with only a lot of
cowpunchers around.”

McDonough was a bachelor. “It wouldn’t be
for keeps, you know. You could set your wife up in town for the
winter; see her as often as the work lets you. Six months would
give you more than two hundred dollars, and you’d have your
cattle—and that’s something to think about. Look at it against
where you are right now.”

Ray sat still, thinking. Then he shook his
head again, more slowly, but with increasing surety. “Sorry,
McDonough. I don’t want to sell. I’ve made up my mind.”

McDonough’s shrewd light eyes held his for a
second, and then the older man gave a slight shrug and shake of the
head. “Well, I hope you don’t regret it.”

“So do I,” said Ray briefly, getting up. He
wanted to get away from this conversation as soon as possible.

McDonough sat still, but his eyes followed
him. “If you change your mind—”

“I know. But don’t count on it.”

“I’ll be seeing you, then.”

Ray went out and walked back up the street,
his hands in his pockets. His original errands were no longer
important. He walked fast with his head bent a little, and so when
he rounded the bend where an awkwardly-placed store jutted a corner
into the street he bumped into a man coming the other way. The man
started to apologize and then broke off: “Sorry—Ray!”

The conversation with McDonough had blotted
memories of other things for the moment, and Ray’s spirits lifted
at sight of a well-known face. “Chris! Well, I’ll—you’re the last
person I expected to see. How are you?”

They shook hands heartily. Chris Borden was
a year or two younger, with dark hair and a good-natured, ingenuous
face. “Never was better. How about you?”

“Just fine.”

Chris paused a second, pushed his hat back
and spoke awkwardly. “Listen, Ray—I’m awful sorry about what
happened the other day. I’m new there, and I didn’t know what a low
coyote that Jones can make of himself when he wants to. If I’d
known that was your fence we cut I wouldn’t even have gone with
him—”

“I’ll bet,” said Ray, with only a small
glint of irony in his voice. He knew his friend’s sincerity, but he
wanted to forget the incident for his own peace of mind. “Forget
it, Chris. What’re you doing here, anyway? I take it you’re working
for McDonough.” He motioned Chris to join him and they went on up
the street together.

“Yeah. Just drifted this way looking for a
job, and he was hiring. I guess you know him? How long you been
here?”

“Almost three years now. I came in and filed
when they opened up this land for settlement, and I own a half
section clear now—or almost.” He thought of the note. “Had to break
some ground the first year, but I’ve been running a small bunch of
cattle. I got married last year too.”

“I guess you did,” said Chris, grinning.
“Got a mind of her own, hasn’t she—from what I saw. Bet she keeps
you on your toes.”

“Shows how much you know,” said Ray, trying
not to show just how proud and fond he was of his wife, an effort
that only served to make him look slightly ridiculous.

They were approaching the wagon and team in
front of the store, and as Ray moved toward it Chris put a hand on
his arm and held him back. “Say, you’re not leaving? Haven’t seen
you in years, and we’ve barely had a chance to say hello. Come on
over and let me buy you a drink and talk a while.”

“I don’t know. I’ve got to be getting
home—”

“You old married men. You can be late for
once.”

Ray was smiling a little, but he said, with
an eye on the wagon behind Chris, “It’s not exactly that,
it’s—”

“I suppose your wife doesn’t let you in the
saloon,” said Chris with a mock air of friendly pity. “Come on, you
can get away with it this once. She’ll never have to know anything
about it.”

Ray, trying hard not to laugh, looked up at
the wagon seat where Gloria, who had climbed up there in time to
hear most of this conversation, had seated herself with a very
demure smile during the last speech. “It’d be kind of hard to come
up with an excuse now, wouldn’t it?”