The Cowboy Way

by Elmer Kelton

  Johnny swayed sleepily to his feet and rubbed his eyes. He was surprised he had slept so late. But it had taken him hours to get to sleep. He rolled up his blanket and tied it to his saddle. Then he strolled out and took a look down the street.

  Old Floyd Thurmond’s rider came out of the doctor’s door and worriedly stepped down off the front porch. Apprehension quickly rose in Johnny. He trotted over to the doctor’s house.

  “What’s wrong, Harvey?” he asked the rider. “What’s happened?”

  The cowboy eyed him coldly. “So this is where you spent the night. When he really needed you, you weren’t there to help him.”

  Johnny felt weak. Clyde!

  “We guarded the old man’s fence last night,” the cowboy said. “When sunup come and nothing had happened, the old man decided to go over to Clyde’s and see how he made out. We found the fence jerked down and cut in places for a quarter of a mile. And Clyde was shot.”

  Shame flooded through Johnny. He stared down at the toes of his boots. “Is he—is it bad?”

  The cowboy nodded. “Looks bad. We didn’t dare bring him to town. The doc’s going out to the ranch. I got to go to the hotel now and break the news to his wife and Dottie. If I was you, I’d keep out of their sight.”

  Harvey turned contemptuously and mounted his horse. He rode on up the street.

  Johnny choked. He wanted to cry, something he hadn’t done in years. They had all been right, he told himself bitterly. He was just a no-good, fiddlefooted loafer that wasn’t worth his weight in river rocks. For the first time in his life, people had begun to have confidence in him. And he had let them down.

  He turned and started back toward the livery stable, kicking up dust as he went.

  The anger against himself slowly turned into anger against the fence cutters. Gunning down a man for trying to protect his own land and feed his own family! They probably figured they had licked the Thurmond outfit now—gunned down Clyde and scared off the kid cowboy.

  Well, it wasn’t going to be that easy, Johnny told himself. Even a fiddlefoot takes root sometimes, and Johnny was going to do it right here. If they wanted to tear down the fence, they’d have to gun him down first. He’d show the fence cutters, and he’d show Clyde and Dottie.

  He swung a fist at a horsecollar hanging on a peg and knocked it ten feet across the stable. He saddled up, tied on the sack containing his fiddle and paid the grinning hostler. He struck a brisk trot down the sleepy street. He shot one quick glance at the Thurmond buckboard beside the hotel.

  Idly his gaze settled on the Golden Eagle saloon. He reined up a moment, then angled his horse across to the saloon. He tied him loosely, stepped briskly up onto the sidewalk and pushed through the swinging doors into the empty saloon.

  A swamper looked up in surprise and stopped mopping the floor. Johnny saw the saloon owner idly wiping the wooden bar.

  “Selkirk,” he said evenly, not moving, “I’m going to put up Clyde Thurmond’s fence where the wire cutters dropped it last night.”

  Selkirk stared at him, a trace of a smile on his bland face. “So what? Why come to me about it?”

  Johnny doubled his fists. “Everybody knows the fence cutters hang out in here—and that you’re a friend to them. Well, you can tell them that if they want to come back tonight and tear down what I put up, I’ll be there waiting. And they won’t do it cheap!”

  He turned and walked out. The doors were still swinging as he mounted and rode on toward the wagon road.

  The fiddle kept bouncing against his knee as he jogged along. If it hadn’t been for the fiddle, people might not have regarded him as shiftless ever since he had started out on his own, he thought bitterly. Clyde and Dottie might not have condemned him. And maybe Clyde wouldn’t be lying there in the ranch house now, possibly dying of bullet wounds.

  Johnny untied the sack. He hefted the fiddle a minute in indecision, then hurled it away. It landed in a bush at the side of the trail. Johnny glanced at it blackly, then rode on.

  At the ranch he wanted to go into the house and see how Clyde was. But he recognized old Floyd Thurmond’s horse tied in front and knew he had better not. The old man would turn on him like a bear. Clyde likely wouldn’t want to see him either.

  Johnny stopped at the little bunkhouse. He found a couple of cans of tomatoes and some sardines he had bought on another trip to town and hadn’t eaten. He dropped them into a sack. At the barn he picked up a pair of wire pinchers, a sackful of staples and as much barbed wire as he could carry coiled up across his saddlehorn. Then he struck out for the fence.

  He didn’t have any trouble finding where the fence cutters had been. In their haste to tear down as much of the fence as they could, they had not done much actual cutting. Instead, it looked as if they had tied ropes to the wire and pulled down big sections of it, jerking staples out of the posts.

  All the rest of the day he worked in the blazing sun, stopping only to eat a can of sardines and gulp down the canned tomatoes. He untangled the snarled-up wires and stapled them back to every fourth or fifth post, splicing where necessary. By dark he had much of the damage repaired in a temporary way.

  But the coming of darkness made him reconsider his problem. He had been angry when he had made his little speech in the saloon. He hadn’t given any real thought to the consequences.

  But now the anger was gone. In its place was a cold realization of the danger he had stepped into. The wire cutters were sure to come tonight. If Clyde Thurmond hadn’t been able to stand them off, what chance did a footloose kid have?

  One thing sure, he couldn’t just ride away. He would be branded a coward wherever he went. He had to stay.

  Cold sweat popped out on his face and a clammy fear rose in him. He rubbed his hand across his face and remembered the burn of the fiddle string.

  The fiddle string! He caught a sharp breath. If a little string did that, what might a big wire do? His heart raced as an idea struck him. A slim chance, but it might work. He had to try something.

  Johnny decided to make his stand at a gate. He cut off a fifty-foot piece of wire. He wrapped the wire around the gate post about chest-high to a man on horseback and fastened it down securely with four staples.

  The riders would likely come down the fence looking for him, he reasoned. No matter from which direction they came, he would have the wire and pivot post waiting for them.

  As the full moon rose, Johnny squatted on the ground to wait. Every night sound quickened his pulse as he listened for hoofbeats. Jack rabbits rustled the scattered dry mesquite beans. Night birds called. A coyote came close, then bounded away. One hour went past, then two.

  Finally he heard them. They were coming down the fence from the west. They didn’t seem to be trying to keep from making noise. Maybe they hoped to scare him away.

  Johnny was scared, but he wasn’t leaving. He swung into the saddle, grabbed the end of the wire and wrapped it twice around his saddlehorn. He moved back and out from the fence until the fifty-foot wire was drawn fairly taut. Then he sat quietly and waited.

  They showed a moment against the moonlit skyline as they topped a rise. There weren’t many. They probably figured it wouldn’t take many to booger a kid like Johnny.

  Apparently they didn’t see him until they were within fifty feet of him. “There he is, boys,” the man out in front said cautiously.

  They rode up to within twenty feet. They sat there and eyed Johnny a full minute. He counted six men. He didn’t think they could see the wire tied to his saddlehorn.

  “Well, button,” the leader said, “you had your chance to clear out. Now you’ll take what’s coming to you.”

  Johnny tried to keep his voice even. His hands trembled a little. “And just what is that?”

  The leader rested his hands on his saddlehorn and leaned forward on them, his arms straight. “Well, in the first place, we brung along an extry set of wire pinchers. We’re going to make you help us cut that wire.”

  Another r
ider pushed up even with the leader. “Say, Jake, ain’t he that fiddling kid?”

  The one called Jake nodded.

  “Well, then, I got a good notion to stomp them fiddling fingers when we git through with him.”

  The leader grunted. “All right, button. Let’s git started. And don’t reach for your six-shooter. We’ll do what we done to Thurmond.”

  Johnny acted as if he was going to dismount. Suddenly he leaned low over the right side and spurred his horse. He let out an ear-splitting yell and started a wide swing around the fence cutters.

  “Stop him!” the leader yelled. “He’s getting—” The wire caught him across his chest and jerked him off the saddle before he knew what had happened. The second man clawed at his gun, but the wire dragged him down.

  Johnny knew he had caught them by surprise. Shouts and curses rose in the night as the cutting, gouging wire hit man after man and dragged each one off. In a few seconds only one man was left in the saddle. He was outside the wire’s range.

  Johnny knew it was time to get out of there. Desperately he struggled to get the wire loose from his saddlehorn. The jolt of hitting the men had drawn it taut.

  Some of the downed men were feeling on the ground for guns that had fallen from their holsters. One was firing wildly at Johnny.

  Now the mounted man was coming in. Johnny freed the wire just as the moving rider fired at him. He stood his ground, jerked out his own gun and triggered two fast shots at the man. The rider twisted in the saddle, then fell to the ground.

  Not waiting a second, Johnny spurred back around behind the wounded man’s horse and hazed it toward the others. The gunfire had scared the horses. Not a man had been able to get back in the saddle.

  Johnny bent low over the horn as the men on the ground fired at him. He wanted their horses now, all of them.

  One man had managed to catch a horse and had one foot in a stirrup. Johnny spurred by him. He swung the barrel of his gun down across the man’s head. Then he was in the clear—with all six horses in front of him!

  Behind him, two or three men were still firing. He snapped back a couple of parting shots as he loped away. Suddenly he felt as if someone had hit his arm with a hot branding iron.

  He swayed in the saddle, sickened and dizzy from pain.

  Somehow he managed to stay astride. He got the horses headed for town and let them slow down to a fast trot. His head swirled, and he was sick at his stomach. He gripped the saddle horn grimly with one hand and kept himself on.

  Much later he reined up in front of the sheriff’s house beside the jail. He tried to swing down, but sprawled weakly in the street. He struggled to his feet and staggered to the front steps. After a long minute’s pounding on the door, he got the sheriff out.

  Johnny sank down onto the edge of the porch and quickly told his story. “You’ll find them all out there afoot some place.”

  The sheriff put his big hand on Johnny’s shoulder.

  “I’m taking you over to the doc, son. Then I’ll get me some men together and we’ll round up your fence cutters.”

  The doctor found that the bullet had gone on through Johnny’s arm. As he cleansed the wound and bound it, he told Johnny that Clyde was going to pull through.

  “You’ve lost a lot of blood, youngster. I’ve got an extra cot in the back room. You’d better lie down and get you some sleep.”

  Wearily Johnny lay down. Later on he couldn’t even remember his head hitting the pillow.

  The midday sun was bright when something awakened him. He blinked a minute and saw old Floyd Thurmond standing in the door.

  “Didn’t mean to wake you up, son,” Thurmond said quietly, hat in hand. “How you feel?”

  Johnny tried to raise up, but nausea pulled him down again.

  “That’s all right, son. Stay there. You know, it looks kind of like you’ve stopped the fence cutting in this country. The sheriff found your six men.”

  The old man went on. “One of them was shot up pretty bad. He got scared he was going to die and told about how they shot Clyde and killed Jed Tatlock, and who all was with them. The sheriff’s out now rounding up the whole bunch.”

  Suddenly Dottie came into the little room. Johnny felt his pulse quicken. She looked at her father, grinned sheepishly, and leaned over and kissed Johnny. She stayed there a long moment, looking proudly at him.

  Finally she said, “I’ve got something for you, Johnny.”

  She stepped out of the room, then came back carrying something. She held up his fiddle and bow, and laid them across his cot.

  “We found them where you had thrown them into a bush, Johnny.”

  His eyes burned a little. His throat was choked. He let the fingers of his good hand rove lovingly over the fiddle.

  “When your arm gets well,” Dottie was smiling, “I want you to play that tune for me. You know, the one you made up for me.”

  A warm glow spread through Johnny, and he grinned. Sure, he would play it for her, play it as many times as she wanted him to.

  With a little luck, he might be playing it for her the rest of his life.

  THE DEBT OF HARDY BUCKELEW

  I guess you’d call him crazy. We did, that spring of ’78 when old man Hardy Buckelew set out to square his account against the Red River.

  That was my third year to help graze the Box H steer herd from South Texas up the Western Trail toward Dodge. The first year I had just been the wrangler, bringing up the remuda to keep the riders in fresh mounts. A button job, was all. The second year they promoted me. Didn’t matter that they put me back at the dusty tail end of the herd to push up the drags. It was a cowboy job, and I was drawing a man’s wages, pretty near.

  Old Hardy Buckelew had only one son—a big, raw-boned, overgrown kid by the name of Jim, wilder than a Spanish pony. They used to say there was nothing Jim Buckelew couldn’t whip, and if anything ever did show up, old man Hardy would whip it for him. That’s the way the Buckelew were.

  I never did see but one thing Jim couldn’t whip.

  He was only nineteen the first time I saw him. That young, he wasn’t supposed to be going into saloons and suchlike. He did anyway; he was so big for his age that nobody paid him much mind. Or if they did notice him, maybe they knew they’d have to throw him out to get rid of him. That wouldn’t have been much fun.

  One time in San Antonio he fell into a card game with a pair of sharpers, and naturally they fleeced him. He raised a ruckus, so the two of them throwed together and lit into him. They never would have whipped him if the bartender in cahoots with them hadn’t busted a bottle over Jim’s head.

  Now, a man who ever saw old Hardy Buckelew get mad would never forget it as long as he lived. He was one of those old-time Texas cowmen—the likes of which the later generations never saw. He stood six feet tall in his brush-scarred boots. He had a hide as tough as the mesquite land he rode in and a heart as stout as a black Mexican bull. When he hollered at a man, his voice would carry a way yonder, and you could bet the last dollar you owned that whoever he hollered at would come a-running too.

  Old Hardy got plenty mad that time, when Jim came limping in broke and bruised and bloody. The old man took him way off to one side for a private lecture, but we could hear Hardy Buckelew’s bull voice as far as we could see him.

  Next day he gathered up every man he could spare, me included, and we all rode a-horseback to San Antonio. We marched into the saloon where the fight had taken place and marched everybody else out—everybody but the bartender and the two gamblers. They were talking big, but their faces were white as clabber. Old Hardy busted a bottle over the bartender’s head and laid him out colder than a wedge. Then he switched those fiery eyes of his to Jim Buckelew and jabbed his stubby thumb in the direction of the gamblers.

  “Now this time,” he said, “do the job right!”

  Jim did. When we left there, three men lay sprawled in the wet sawdust. Jim Buckelew was grinning at us, showing a chipped front tooth like it was a medal
from Jeff Davis himself. His knuckles were torn and red-smeared as he counted out the money he had taken back from the gamblers’ pockets.

  Old man Hardy’s voice was rough, but you couldn’t miss the edging of pride in it. “From now on, Jimbo, whether it’s a man or a job, don’t you ever take a whippin’ and quit. No matter how many times it takes, a Buckelew keeps on comin’ back till he’s won.”

  Now then, to the debt of Hardy Buckelew.

  Late in the summer of ’77 we finished a cow hunt and threw together a herd of Box H steers to take to Kansas and the railroad before winter set in. Hardy Buckelew never made the trip himself anymore—too many years had stacked up on him. For a long time now, Will Peril had been his trail boss. Will was a man a cowboy liked to follow—a graying, medium-sized man with the years just commencing to put a slump in his shoulders. His voice was as soft as the hide of a baby calf, and he had a gentle way with horses and cattle. Where most of us might tear up enough ground to plant a potato patch, Will Peril could make livestock do what he wanted them to without ever raising the dust.

  He handled men the same way.

  This time, though, Hardy Buckelew slipped a joker in the deck.

  “Will,” Hardy said, “it’s time Jimbo took on a man’s responsibilities. He’s twenty-one now, so I’m puttin’ him in charge of this trail herd. I just want you to go along and kind of keep an eye on him. You know, give him his head but have one hand on the reins, just in case.”

  Will Peril frowned, twisting his mule-hide gloves and looking off to where the cook was loading the chuckwagon. “Some men take longer growin’ up than others do, Hardy. You really think he’s ready?”

  “You want to teach a boy to swim, you throw him in where the water’s deep. Sure he’ll make some mistakes, but the education he gets’ll be worth the price.”

  So we pointed them north with a new trail boss in charge. Now, Jim was a good cowboy, make no mistake about that; he was just a shade wild, is all. He pushed too fast and didn’t give the cattle time enough to graze along and put on weight as they walked. He was reckless too, in the way he rode, in the way he tried to curb the stampedes we had before we got the cattle trailbroke. He swung in front of the bunch one night, spurring for all he was worth. His horse stepped in a hole and snapped its leg with a sound like a pistol shot. For a minute there, we thought Jim was a goner. But more often than not a running herd will split around a man on foot. They did this time. Jim just walked away laughing. He’d have spit in the devil’s eye.