Monte Walsh

by Jack Schaefer

  "I ain't blind," said the middle-aged man. "When I look at a horse, I see all of him."

  "That's for sure," said someone. "You see so goddamned much it scares you out of getting on any of 'em."

  He might not have heard. He sat, slumped down again, and watched the proceedings with lean weathered jaws moving in slow rhythm, spitting occasionally, and again the men forgot he was there and the work moved along with the rougher ones coming now and the last batch was driven in, five to round out the thirty-three, saved for the finish, all of them tough and full of fight and among them the big ham­merheaded bay.

  One by one the other four were taken and there was considerable action getting them under saddles and one man was thrown to hop away with a sprained ankle and another was kicked in the stomach and was violently sick for a few minutes and a kind of grimness settled over the corral and the men around it, a feeling of response to challenge, and then the four had been ridden and the big bay was alone in the corral. It stood in a corner, aware, muscles tensed, and no one made a move toward it.

  "Ain't that the one you called Bullet?" said someone.

  "Yeah," said the foreman. "We broke him about three years ago, partway anyway, and he messed up two men while we were doing it. Got away and been running with the mares ever since. We haven't been exactly interested in trying to do anything with him. I guess we'll just shuck him, get rid of him."

  Over by the corner post the middle-aged man straightened on his rail. He spat his tobacco quid into the dust, slipped down from the rail, hitched up his old pants. "Hell," he said. "Get a rope on him. I'll ride him."

  A ripple of ironic cheers and sarcastic comments ran around the corral. These dwindled into silence as the middle­aged man seemed not to hear and stooped down to tighten the worn old-fashioned spurs on his scarred boots. They rose again, drowning out the objections of the foreman.

  "Call his bluff!"

  "Let 'im kill hisself!"

  "Think he's made his will?"

  "Ask him how he wants to be buried!"

  Men had jumped down inside the corral, trailing ropes.

  They forefooted the big bay and threw it with a jar that shook the fence and jumped in and hobbled its feet, fore and hind, and tied a blindfold over its eyes. They let it up and it stood hobbled, breathing hard, nostrils red-socketed. Two men slapped on a saddle and two more worked to get a bridle over the big head.

  The middle-aged man stepped in close, took hold of the bridle, pulled it away, looked at the wicked bit, and threw the bridle over his shoulder. "Hackamore," he said.

  "Anything you say, Dad. It's your funeral."

  A stout hackamore was brought, adjusted over the big head. The saddle was cinched tight. Two men held by the hackamore and another, cautious, loosened the hobbles and dodged lashing hoofs. The horse stood, quivering, waiting in the darkness of the blindfold. The middle-aged man moved in closer, reaching for the reins.

  "Hold it!" A young man, a lean young length of whipcord, jumped down from a rail and strode out. "Don't do it," he said. "Just because you been ragged, don't go breaking your neck. I'm willing to believe you been a ripsnorter in your time. You think he ought to be rode, let me take him."

  The middle-aged man turned to look at the young man. He reached out and patted the young man on the arm. He turned back to the horse.

  "Don't do it. That thing's a keg of dynamite."

  The middle-aged man turned to look at the young man again. He said something, clear and distinct in the dust-moted air of the corral, and he turned back and had the reins and in one smoothh motion was up and in the saddle. The other men jumped away and he reached, fumbling with the knot on the blindfold, and flipped the cloth away.

  The big bay rocked upward, swallowing its head, spine arched, whirling in midair, and came down hard. Again and again it rose, whirling, jolting down stiff-legged. It stopped. The middle-aged man, erect in the saddle, settled himself more firmly into it.

  The big bay screamed and launched into a circuit of the corral, bucking and pitching. Around and around it went, seeming tireless, and minute after minute passed and cheers and shouts struck through them and the horse and the man were oblivious to these, intent on their own deadly desperate game, and the horse stopped, shuddering, heaving for breath, and the man sat erect, rump flat to the saddle, a part of the animal beneath him.

  He reached up and took off his hat, tugging to loosen it, and slapped the horse alongside the head with it and raked with his old-fashioned spurs. The big bay screamed again and was off into another circuit, pitching wildly. Minute after minute passed and throats were hoarse around the rails and the horse stopped again, shuddering.

  "Open the gate!"

  "Let 'em out!"

  "Give 'em room!"

  The outer gate opened and the big bay plunged through and leveled into full gallop. Men with saddled horses near raced to them and vaulted into saddles to follow. The big bay plowed to a stop and swallowed its head again, exploding into action more furious than before. Men rode in a circle around it, yipping and shouting encouragement, and the middle-aged man swung with every twist and wrench and waved his hat, answering yip for yip. Suddenly he swayed, dropping down to the right side. The cinch had loosened under the pounding and the saddle was slipping around.

  "Grab the hoss!"

  "Grab a cyclone you mean!"

  "He's a goner now!"

  "Not a chance! He'll be killed sure!"

  No. He was around and under the big bay's neck, hands clamped to the noseband of the hackamore on each side of the big jaws, feet up and around and old spurs hooked in the cinch now pulled up over the back. He clung there while the horse reared, trying to paw him off with its forefeet, and one hand worked on the noseband, twisting this to clamp it tight and choke off the big bay's breath.

  The foreman, running up, gun in hand, responsibility hard on him, stepped in close to the plunging horse, dodging, watching his chance, and shot it in the head just behind an ear. It crumpled down and the middle-aged man crawled out from under as it went down.

  He pushed up to his feet, slow, and stood looking at the lifeless body of the big bay. "Goddamn it," he said to the foreman. "Why'd you go and shoot him? He'd of made a right good horse."

  Sunlight from the wide window that faced west lay across the still-new flattop desk and a stubby pipe on it in the neat office that was dedicated most of the time to businesslike business.

  The long-jawed man shifted on his chair.

  "Yes," he said. "I think maybe you'd of liked seeing that. That man can ride. There ain't any better word for it. He can ride. That hoss wasn't anytime anywheres near shaking him. He'd of rode it to a frazzle if it took all day. Even with that saddle gone I'll bet he'd of wore it down. Like I say, it sticks in my mind. Coming back I kept thinking about it an' there's two things I keep remembering. One's the way he looked the moment he was up there on that hoss. He was bigger, taller. He wasn't any drifting saddle tramp. He was a whole man an' he'd be one wherever he was and whatever he might be doing an' right then he was doing what he was born to do. He was taking a beating the like of which I never hope to have and he had a little old smile on his face like he was en­joying every bit of it."

  The long-jawed man shifted again on his chair, remembering. "An' the other thing," he said. "It's what he said when that young one tried to stop him like I told you. He just looked at him an' he-"

  "I know," said Chet Rollins. "He said `Shucks, it's a horse, ain't it.'"

  The long-jawed man sat up straight on his chair. "Well, I'll be," he said. "How did you-" He stopped. Chet had risen and was moving around the desk and past, toward the open doorway.

  "Sam!" he called down the stairway. "Hey, Sam! Kneale'll be down in a minute! Scrape together what he needs and load the wagon!"

  The long-jawed man was up, surprised. "Hey. You said you was in a hole. What d'you think you're-"

  "I'm doing some more carrying," said Chet. "Somehow. I'll make out. Somehow. I been forge
tting a lot of things. That's what this country teaches you. To hang on. Somehow." He had picked the man's hat off the table. He held it out. "Get on down there before I change my mind."

  The long-jawed man clumped down the stairs, bumbling thanks as he went. The Honorable Chester A. Rollins, businessman, bank director, current chairman of the town council, was alone in his neat office. He closed the door and moved to the wide window and looked out, over the roof of the house across the alleyway, over the roofs of other houses, on past the last patch of the growing town into the great open spaces of the big land. Seen thus, in the far long perspective, the fence lines and the telegraph poles and the other marks of man and his changes in the name of progress were lost, dwindled, absorbed into the overall immensity and drought was a mere passing blemish with its own burnt brown beauty and the land stretched away, serene and indifferent, to the distant lonely magnificence of the mountains.

  "Yes," he said softly. "Yes. He's still out there. Somewhere. Where he belongs."

  * * *

  "And I suppose you intend to be a fireman too."

  "No, ma'am. When I get bigger I'm going to be a cowboy. Like Monte Walsh."

  An Ending

  1913

  A MAN and a horse. A tall squint-eyed aging man, outside any conceivable exact calculation, any age at all past the half-century mark, lean and weathered like a wind-whittled mountain pine, and an aging compact cow pony, dun in color, wide between the eyes, stout-muscled, deep-chested.

  They jogged along a road that climbed in slow gradual slope, dipping to cross dry arroyos that dropped away to the right, then climbing again. Spring crept through these lower levels, soft in the sun-warmth of the afternoon air, freshening in the faint new green in the scant clumped grasses and along the whiplike branches of the few scrub willows in the arroyos. Winter still held the heights on ahead, entrenched in the high canyons and up the forested steeps of the mountains where the snowpack clung, settled and hardened through the months past, to a depth of ten feet or more. Yet even there, unseen, beneath the white mantle, the old recurrent promise stirred in tiny rivulets seeping down, the beginnings of the thaw.

  The man and the horse jogged along, quiet in the mutual respect and shared confidence of the years, climbing slowly, steadily, toward the distant heights. They stopped where another road came in from the left and a low store building and several squat houses and a few outlying sheds marked the start of a junction settlement. The man swung down and the horse stood, patient, ground-reined, and the man stepped up on the low porch of the store building and opened the door.

  The storekeeper, in overalls with once-white cloth tied around his waist, was behind his counter weighing out beans from a barrel into paper bags. He stopped, scoop in hand, and looked up. "Monte Walsh!" he said. "Now I know spring's on the way. You headed on up to the valley?"

  "Yep," said Monte. He closed the door behind him and pushed his battered old wide-brimmed hat up his forehead. "Got to get the place in shape. Be taking some stock up there in a couple weeks. You got any of that molasses plug left?"

  "Sure, Monte, sure. I been saving it for you." The store­keeper turned to his shelves.

  "Say, Monte," said a round-shouldered round-bellied man sitting on a kitchen chair by the stove. "What's this I been hearing about you throwing young Mike Morrell through a plate glass window?"

  "Shucks," said Monte. "It wasn't no plate glass window. Just a plain ordinary everyday kind of a little old window. He asked me that same fool question one time too many."

  "What question?"

  "Why, when was I going to turn my horse in on a god­damned autymobile."

  The round-shouldered man rocked on his chair, slapped his knees. "Wish I'd of been there," he said. "Wish I could of seen it." He turned toward a thin man in overalls and sweater on another chair on the other side of the stove. "I'd of give a dollar to see that," he said.

  "Knew I had some," said the storekeeper, setting four small flat oblongs wrapped in tinfoil on the counter.

  "They ain't got any anywheres in town," said Monte, taking the oblongs, stowing them in pockets. "What'll it be? I reckon they've gone up like everything else these days."

  "Well, now," said the storekeeper, scratching behind one ear. "If you've got the nerve to chew that stuff, I ain't got the nerve to charge you for it. But maybe you'll keep an eye out for a good log. Something I can use for a ridgepole. I'm thinking of putting me up a barn."

  "Sure," said Monte. "Sure thing. I'll haul one down for you first chance I get."

  The door burst open, flapping wide, and a boy, maybe all of fourteen, gangling, knobby-limbed, stumbled over his own big feet hurrying in. "Monte!" he said. "I knew it was your horse! I just knew it!"

  "Why sure," said Monte. "He ain't changed none. Not like a goddamned machine that goes to changing models all the time."

  "Remember what you said? You said I could come up and be with you some this summer! You'd teach me to rope! You did now, you said it!"

  "Why sure," said Monte. "Soon's school's out and the weather's decent, you come up for a week or two." He reached out and slapped the boy on a shoulder. "I got a ways to go before dark. See you." He moved to the doorway and out, closing the door behind him.

  "You heard him," said the boy to the storekeeper. "You heard him say it. If my folks still won't believe me, you can tell them. You heard him."

  "I always feel better when he's been around," said the round-shouldered man. "More like maybe life's worth worry­ing along with. Now can anybody tell me why that is?"

  "Who is he?" said the thin man from the other side of the stove.

  "Who is he? Why-why-why he's Monte. Monte Walsh."

  "You're new here," said the storekeeper. "You'll be knowing him like the rest of us. Works for old Judge Hartley down in town who owns most of that big valley on up past the river. What the mining company doesn't own, that is. Runs cattle up there for the judge and keeps the place open for fishing and such when the judge can be up there. Spring and summer, that is. Spends the winter in town knocking around, part of it in jail usually when the judge can't get him off for some devilment or other. Fusses around with a few horses. You get one from him and you got something."

  "Best damn man with a horse I ever knew," said the round-shouldered man. "They'll just about sit up and talk for him. Wonder why he never went in for rodeoing and things like that."

  "Monte?" said the storekeeper. "He ain't that kind. He's real."

  "I'd give a dollar," said the round-shouldered man, "to of seen him when he was a young one. I'll bet he was something to keep book on."

  "To be straight about it," said the storekeeper, "I expect you'd have to say only the judge pays him but he works for haif the whole county. All of us up in here. Just about anything needs doing, you holler for Monte. You lose some stock that wanders off and you can't find it, you holler for Monte. If he ain't already come on it, and's bringing it in. You got a horse needs gentling, you holler for Monte. You get a sick animal and no vet'll come up in here, you holler for Monte. You can't get your deer or your elk for some winter meat, you just mention it to Monte and he'll take you where they are. You get yourself into any kind of trouble in the back country and more like than not it'll be Monte comes riding along and gets you out of it. You got a branding job on your hands, you don't even need to holler, likely he's already there ready to help. One thing he won't do. That's help string a fence."

  "He don't like 'em," said the round-shouldered man. "He don't like 'em at all."

  "Fences?" said the thin man.

  "Fences," said the storekeeper. "And automobiles."

  * * *

  The man and the horse jogged along the road that climbed in more perceptible slope now. It dipped through cut banks to cross an arroyo. Damp spots showed along the arroyo bottom, moisture seeping underneath, through the sand.

  They jogged on. The dun pricked up its ears. The faint popping sound of a straining motor came from somewhere behind. Monte pulled rein
and turned in the saddle. A shiny new automobile, a touring car with top down, its shininess already becoming overlaid with dust and a few mud streaks, was coming up the road.

  "Good God a'mighty," muttered Monte. "Even up here."

  The car approached, straining up the grade in second gear, and he recognized at the steering wheel, in goggles and visored cap, the field superintendent of the mining company. The car stopped alongside the dun. The motor died with a gurgling gasp.

  "Well, well," said the superintendent, pushing up his goggles. "You see me bringing progress even to the back country. I figured I'd pass you about here. This thing is really something." He patted the steering wheel. "Saw you leave town three hours ahead of me. Now I'll be on up in the valley way ahead of you. If we could get that decrepit old nag of yours in here, I'd give you a lift."

  "Thanks," said Monte, dry, disgusted. "I reckon we'll make it on our own."

  "Sure," said the superintendent. "But slow. Damned slow. Old-fashioned." He patted the steering wheel again.

  "Mighty early, ain't you?" said Monte.

  "Early?" said the superintendent. "Why, I've got a crew up there already getting the mine in shape. I'm aiming at a record this season. Start taking out ore in a few days. Next week I'll have a crew checking the track up from town and clearing any drifts left. We'll be rolling three weeks ahead of last year."

  "You'll bust your buttons," said Monte. "Being so god damned modern and in a hurry."

  "Why not?" said the superintendent, cheerful. "It's no skin off your nose. Only mine." He pulled down his goggles, began to adjust the gas and spark levers under the steering wheel.

  "From here," said Monte, hopeful, "it looks like that thing up and died."

  ' "Watch," said the superintendent. He climbed out, took the crank from the floor of the car, went around to the front, inserted the crank, heaved grunting with it. The motor exoded into life with a roar and a cloud of exhaust and the dun, startled, leaped sideways and stopped, ashamed of itself, and looked off into distance. The superintendent dashed back around, jiggled his levers, and the motor quieted. He climbed into the driving seat, waved cheerily, and was off up the road.