The Cowboy Way

by Elmer Kelton

  From the corner of his eye he caught a furtive movement off to the left of the flock. The dog suddenly snapped to attention, then barreled off in pursuit of a coyote. It came back after a time, panting heavily. Blood was drying around its mouth. Coyote blood, Hewey surmised.

  In admiration he said, “I wonder what they’re feedin’ you. I’d like some of it myself.”

  Late in the afternoon the dog chased down a jackrabbit and ate it. Hewey realized the animal was not being fed at all. It was making its own living. He told the dog, “You ought to be workin’ for C. C. Tarpley. At least he feeds good.”

  He worried about how he would get the sheep to bed down. To his surprise, they did it on their own at dusk, instinctively pulling into a fairly compact band. The dog circled them a couple of times, chastising a few independent-minded ewes that tried to find a sleeping place a little away from the others.

  A while after dark Hewey was reminded why sheep tend to bunch up at night. He heard a coyote howl, answered shortly by another. He had always enjoyed listening to coyotes. He regarded them as a natural element in the landscape, helping give this part of the country its unique character. They had never represented any kind of threat to him before. But tonight was different. These sheep were vulnerable, and like it or not, he was responsible for them. He saw the dog listen intently, then trot off to circle the flock. He had staked Biscuit on a long rope to graze. He saddled the horse and moved off after the dog.

  He had no gun. If a coyote showed itself, he could do little except run at it with his rope and chase it away. The dog was a weapon in itself. Somewhere ahead, in the darkness, Hewey heard the yipping and snarling that indicated a fight. In a while the dog appeared, acting proud of itself.

  Hewey grinned. “Dog, if I ever get in a fight, I want you on my side.”

  Next morning, while he fixed a meager breakfast of coffee, bacon, and baking powder biscuits, he wondered how he would go about getting the sheep up and off the bed ground. They took care of the problem themselves, rising to their feet and grazing in the dawn’s warm light. They began to drift. The dog moved tirelessly, starting them in the right direction. Hewey had little to do but move a few of the lame and lazy, then follow.

  Herding sheep ain’t as tough as I thought, he told himself. The dog does most of the work.

  The flock moved no faster than yesterday. At this rate he figured they might reach town by tomorrow evening, or more likely the day after. A cow herd would have made the distance in half the time, a steer herd even less. A determined turtle could leave these sheep behind.

  Toward noon, he saw what he had feared most, three cowboys riding toward him from the east. He had not wanted anyone to see him here. He had swamped out a saloon a few times, but never had he sunk so low as to herd sheep. He could only hope these men were all strangers.

  He was not that lucky. A tall, lanky rider grinned, a gold tooth shining as he approached. He exclaimed, “Hewey Calloway! When did old C. C. start runnin’ sheep? And why ain’t you already quit?”

  Reluctantly Hewey reached out his hand and shook with Snort Yarnell. With Snort spreading the word, it would not take two days for everyone within seventy-five miles to know about Hewey’s disgrace.

  One of the cowboys guffawed. “This can’t be the Hewey Calloway you’ve told us about, Snort. He was supposed to be eight feet tall and a ring-tailed tooter. My, how the mighty have fallen.”

  Resentfully Hewey said, “I’m tryin’ to get these sheep off of C. C.’s range as quick as I can. I don’t suppose you fellers would like to help me?”

  Snort still grinned. “I don’t suppose we would. We got our reputations to think of.”

  Snort had a reputation as a top hand when he was sober but a hell-for-leather carouser when he wasn’t. He asked, “Where’s the owner at? Did you shoot him?”

  “I don’t have a gun with me. Besides, you know I can’t hit a barn from the inside. I got these sheep on my hands by tryin’ to do some sick folks a favor.”

  He realized they did not believe him. They probably thought C. C. had fired him and he had to accept whatever job came along. It had happened before, but things never became so serious that he was forced to herd sheep.

  The laughing cowboy looked to be about twenty, just old enough to think he knew it all and had nothing more to learn. If he didn’t stop laughing, Hewey was of a mind to teach him something new.

  Stiffly Hewey said, “I’ve told you how it is. If that’s not good enough, you can go soak your head in a water bucket.”

  Snort shrugged. “No use gettin’ on your high horse, Hewey. If that’s the best story you’ve got, stick with it. Me and the boys are headed for town to do somethin’ we’ll worry about for a month.”

  Hewey had never seen Snort worry about much of anything. He said, a little enviously, “You-all have a good time.”

  Snort said, “We’ll drink a toast to you, and to your woolly friends.”

  They rode away, leaving Hewey thinking about going to Canada or someplace where nobody knew him.

  He had hoped no word of this would get back to C. C. That hope was dashed now, for Snort had never kept a secret in his life.

  The dog seemed finally to accept Hewey. It trotted along at his side when it was not busy bringing errant sheep back into the flock. At least not everybody will be lookin’ down on me, Hewey thought.

  The dog chased after a coyote late in the day and came back exhausted. It laid down in the scant shade of a greasewood bush and panted while the flock moved on. But its sense of duty soon brought it back to Hewey’s side.

  Hewey said, “If I could ever find a woman as dependable as you, I might get married.”

  Eve was dependable, but brother Walter was welcome to her. Along with her many good traits, including being a world-beating cook, she carried a few liabilities such as a tendency to burden him with criticism and unsolicited advice.

  Hewey did not sleep much that night. He kept hearing coyotes. He imagined them skulking into camp and dragging off helpless lambs. He had heard that coyotes sometimes ate them alive. He kept Biscuit saddled and made several circles around the bedded flock. That seemed to please the dog.

  If I ever get this bunch to town, he thought, I’ll never wear wool underwear again.

  He watered the sheep at a dirt tank which belonged to C. C. He knew the old man would consider the water hopelessly contaminated and unfit for cattle, but even sheep had to drink. The dog plunged in and swam across the tank. On the opposite bank it shook itself, then jumped back in. Hewey considered doing the same, but the sheep had muddied the water too much.

  The sun was almost down on the third day when he caught first sight of the stone courthouse and the tallest windmill in Upton City. He realized he would not be able to get the sheep all the way to town before night. He would have to camp one more time. The realization of being so near, yet so far, chapped him like a wet saddle.

  He thought about Snort and the fun he must be having. He wished he could run all these sheep over a cliff, but there was not a decent cliff anywhere this side of the Davis Mountains. Be damned if he would drive them that far.

  Approaching town the next morning, Hewey loped ahead to the wagonyard to open the gate into a large corral. He saw the stableman walking toward him from the barn and shouted, “Sheep comin’ in.”

  “Been expectin’ you,” the stableman answered back.

  So much for secrecy. Damn Snort Yarnell, he thought.

  He knew how to pen difficult cattle, but he had no idea how to go about penning sheep. They approached the open gate with suspicion, a few ewes almost starting in, then running back into the flock. The stableman grabbed a ewe and dragged her through the gate despite her stiff-legged resistance. Several ewes made a tentative move to follow, then the flock surged through like water from a broken dam. Some in their haste bumped heavily against the gate posts. The dog finished the job by pushing a last few reluctant sheep through the opening.

  Hewey tied Biscuit to
the fence while the stableman closed the gate. He said, “You were lookin’ for me?”

  The stableman replied, “When those sick folks hit town, they said some cowboy was bringin’ in their sheep. They didn’t know your name. Then Snort came in, and we all knew Hewey Calloway had turned sheepherder.”

  “I owe Snort a good cussin’ out.”

  “You won’t have any trouble findin’ him. He’s over yonder under the shed with the two punchers he brought along.”

  When cowboys came to town they usually slept on cots or on the ground at the wagonyard rather than pay for a room at the boarding house. No one as yet had built a hotel in Upton City.

  Hewey asked, “What about the sick folks?”

  “Doc Hankins fixed them up pretty good. Says they ought to be able to travel in three or four days.”

  Hewey walked with the stableman to the open shed where the cots were. The smart-talking young cowboy was leaning against a post, bent over and holding his stomach. The other squatted on the ground, moaning, his eyes glazed. Snort Yarnell sat on the edge of a steel cot, holding his head in both hands. His face was pale as milk.

  The stableman said, “They haven’t drawn a sober breath since they hit town. Now they’re payin’ the fiddler.”

  Hewey found it in himself to feel sorry for Snort, a little.

  The stableman said, “If you hadn’t got yourself saddled with those sheep, you’d be in the same shape now that Snort is. You’re lucky.”

  “Awful lucky,” Hewey said sarcastically, thinking of the good time Snort must have had.

  A wizened little man in slouchy clothes and a battered felt hat came walking down from the boarding house. Hewey groaned as he recognized C. C. Tarpley. He said, “I was hopin’ he wouldn’t hear about these sheep. I reckon I’m fixin’ to get fired.”

  A scowl twisted C. C.’s wrinkled face. He declared, “I thought you were workin’ for me. What’s this I hear about you bringin’ those sheep to town?”

  Hewey had been trying to decide how best to tell him. He said, “Wasn’t nothin’ else I could do, C. C. Sick as them folks was, and as slow as they were movin’, there’s no tellin’ how long they might’ve had their sheep on your land. I was tryin’ to get them off of it as fast as I could.”

  This implied that Hewey was just trying to do the boss a favor.

  C. C. would appreciate that more than the thought of doing a favor for a sick family. The old man was not often given to doing favors for anybody.

  C. C.’s scowl slowly faded as he thought it over. “I never looked at it that way. You done right, Hewey.”

  Relieved, Hewey said, “All in the line of duty, C. C.”

  The old rancher started to turn away but paused. “By the way, how long have you been gone from the ranch?”

  Hewey counted on his fingers. “This is the fourth day.”

  “Looks to me like you’ve had enough holiday for now. You’d better be gettin’ back to work.”

  Hewey’s disappointment went all the way down to his toes. “Yep, reckon I had.”

  He stood with hands shoved deeply into his pockets as C. C. walked away. The stableman said sympathetically, “There’ll be a next time.”

  Hewey felt the roll of bills he had intended to spend on celebration. He drew them from his pocket and extended them to the stableman, holding back one to buy his dinner. He said, “Those sheep are goin’ to need some hay, and that dog deserves a good chunk of beef to chew on. With what’s left of this, I wish you’d make sure those folks’ wagon has plenty of groceries in it when they leave.”

  Smiling, the stableman placed a hand on Hewey’s shoulder. He said, “You’re a better man than you know, Hewey Calloway. Even for a sheepherder.”

  Hewey grunted. “Don’t blab it around. I’ve got my reputation to think of.”

  He untied Biscuit and swung into the saddle. “See you in a couple of months. I’ll throw a real party next time.”

  He was already dreading it.

  THAT 7X BULL

  That old motley-faced bull bellowing his arrogant way up and down the caprock country was about all that was left to show for the sprawling 7X outfit. The 7X had been burned onto his roan-colored hip in the last fall branding before the receivers took over. They sold the rest of the cattle and scattered them all over hell and half of Texas. But nobody ever smeared a loop on old 7X again. His horns were mossy now from age, and his red-flecked hide was scarred from scores of fights which had all ended the same way.

  Old 7X was a holdout of the longhorn strain. True, his sire had been a white-faced Hereford brought in to deepen the bodies and shorten the legs of the rangy Texas cattle. But 7X had taken after his mammy, a waspy old outlaw long of horn and leg, short of patience and temper.

  I said the bull was about all there was left. Dodge Willingham was still around too. He was on the off side of sixty, spare and dried as a strip of jerked beef. He’d been with the 7X outfit ever since they’d trailed their first longhorn cattle up from the South Texas brush country. There hadn’t been any barbed wire then, and a man whose luck played out could still lose his scalp under a bloody Comanche moon.

  After the bust-up, Dodge had stayed on with the new Bar J, which had bought out the headquarters division of the 7X.

  Dodge and the big bull had a right smart in common. They were both throwbacks to a time that was gone. And they were fighters, the both of them. Every so often an old restlessness got to riding Dodge, like the time in Midland he decided a saloon was too quiet for his taste. He hollered disgustedly, “What is this, a church?” and tipped a table full of cards and poker chips into the players’ laps. They beat the whey out of him. Dodge had a wonderful time.

  He was an old hand when I first knew him. I was just a raw young kid who wanted to walk in his footsteps, but mostly he acted like he didn’t know I was there.

  I’ll never forget the spring day the Bar J foreman dropped in at our dugout line camp. Ellison Finch was Old Man Johnson’s son-in-law. Finch never wanted you to forget who the boss was. He jerked his thumb at Dodge’s .30-.30 rifle on its pegs over the door.

  “Dodge,” he said, “I’ve took all I’m goin’ to from that old red roan bull. He’s killed a dozen of my … of the ranch’s good bulls, and he’s chased off plenty of others. He’s sired more scrawny wild calves than me and you could both count. Now I want you to take that gun and go find him. Spend a week if you got to, but find him. And make almighty sure he’s dead before you ride away.”

  Dodge’s pale gray eyes seemed to glisten as he looked up at the gun. His horny fist knotted up hard as a live-oak stump.

  “Looky here, Finch,” he spoke after a long minute, “old 7X has been around a long time. He ain’t got much longer to go. Why don’t you just leave him be?”

  When he had been an ordinary thirty-a-month cowboy like the rest of us, Finch had stood in awe of Dodge. Now he had married into the order-giving class. He glared a hole through the aging cowpuncher.

  “That old bull has outlived his time,” Finch said. “He’s a nuisance, even a hazard. If you won’t kill him, I’ll get me somebody that will.”

  After Finch left, Dodge walked out to the barn to sit and brood. He stayed there till dark, and I knew better than to go bother him. In my own mind I was already grown. But to Dodge Willingham I was still just a button and supposed to keep quiet. Next morning he took the .30-.30 and rode out. About suppertime he was back, his mouth a straight, hard line. He barely spoke a word for a week.

  Old 7X was never mentioned again until the fall roundup. The wagon was camped at Comanche Wells on the caprock the day Dodge failed to come in on drive. We went on with the branding and cutting out of long-age cattle to push to the railroad. But all the time we kept looking over our shoulders. Late in the afternoon we saddled fresh horses and started out to search.

  We met Dodge walking in, a mile from camp. His clothes were torn and smeared with blood. The side of his face was skinned like he’d slid down a mountain on his ear.


  “That old dun stumbled on a slope and broke his neck,” he told Finch. “Taken me an hour to work my saddle off of him. I carried it a good ways and left it where I could find it again.”

  I noticed that Dodge looked at the ground as he talked. He had always been able to stare the devil straight in the eye and spit on him. Something in his voice didn’t ring true. I knew. But Finch took Dodge at his word. That is, till we got the old puncher back to the wagon and stretched him out on his tarp-covered bedroll. We took the blood-smeared shirt off of him. Finch stared in wonder at Dodge’s wound. Anger boiled into his sun-blistered face.

  “That gash you’ve got there … I know a horn tip when I see one. Did you shoot that 7X bull like I told you to?”

  Dodge knew he was caught. You could tell by the sick look that wiped across his stubbled face.

  Finch bent over him, his fingers stuck out stiff as wagon spokes. “I ought to fire you, Dodge. I would, if I didn’t know the old man’d raise hell. Now that bull’s sired him another crop of mean, scrubby calves. You ought to’ve shot him. We’ll bring him in now. We’ll tie a clog to his foot and drag him in if we have to. He’ll go to market with the steers and wind up as sausage. Before it’s over, you’ll wish you’d killed him.”

  Anybody else would just send another cowboy out to kill the bull and say nothing more. But Finch wanted Dodge to know who the boss was.

  Dodge didn’t seem to be worried much. I guess he knew the old outlaw too well. “I jumped 7X up there close to the bluffs,” he told us later. “I thought I’d run him off away from the drive so nobody would see him. But before I could hardly move, he’d rammed a horn right through that dun. I like to’ve not got away from there myself.”

  Even then you could hear the pride in Dodge’s voice. “What I mean, boys, he’s a fighter. Ain’t many of us left.”

  For the next few days Finch would detail a few punchers to go and try to bring old 7X in. The results were always the same. Some of the hands never got close enough to see anything of the bull except his south end going north. Others caught up with him and wished they hadn’t. The rest of us went on with the regular roundup work. Finch had taken Dodge out of the saddle and put him to swamping for the wagon cook—washing up the utensils, shagging in the wood.