“Well, must be somethin’ for me, Sully,” Rat declared. “I done some carpentry. You could use some cabinets in this place, maybe a porch outside.”
“That would be for the line manager to decide, Rat. Truth is, I don’t have a thing for anybody.”
“The boys’ll take it hard,” Rat said, leaning against the wall.
“Most of them just hired on for pocket money,” Dawes responded, “I told Billy I might could use him to run messages.”
“I got nothin’ lined up myself, Sully.”
“Worried that might be, Rat. I can pay you a bonus of ten dollars. Else-wise, well, all I can say is check around.”
“I been ’round,” Rat explained.
“It’s the only advice I know to give,” Dawes said, drawing the promised bonus money from an adjacent drawer. “And to wish you luck. Feel free to refer any prospective employer to me. I’ll have some good words for them.”
“I appreciate that,” Rat replied. “Thanks, Sully.”
The telegrapher grinned as he passed Rat a pair of five-dollar bank notes. Rat nodded, unsuccessfully trying to hide the disappointment flooding his face.
For a week Rat made his way from one Thayerville enterprise to the next, greeting saloon keeper or blacksmith with equal humility.
“I give Sully Dawes a good day’s labor for a fair wage,” he assured each one. “I’d give the same to you.”
There was always a nephew or a town boy hired to sweep floors or exercise horses, though. And other work simply wasn’t to be had.
He next rode among the farms and ranches that occupied the hills and range past town. Rat was startled to discover so many abandoned houses and empty barns. When he did find someone at home, he often had to sidestep idle youngsters and stumble to the door, only to hear the same sad refrain.
“I ain’t got work for my own self,” tall, gaunt Cyrus Keller explained. “Ain’t sold a hog in six months, you know.”
“Times is hard,” Rat had replied, nodding sadly. And as the days passed, his shoulders sagged and his face grew long. He found himself standing on porches, hat in hand, pleading to speak with ranch foremen or cattlemen.
“Was a time when I’d at least been welcome to sit at table,” Rat grumbled to Mitch. “Folks see me comin’ and treat me like I got some sickness to give ’em.”
’Things’ll get better,” Mitch assured his haggard friend. “Been out to see Mr. Hanks yet? He’s got a high opinion o’ you, Rat, from the old days. He’s the richest man in the county, after all.”
“He sent us packin’ after Pa died,” Rat recounted. “And didn’t take me in after the drive to Kansas.”
“Even so, he’s out there, Rat. Ain’t much o’ anybody else.”
Rat had to admit the truth of his friend’s words. And so that next morning he saddled his horse and rode out to the Circle H to speak with Orville Hanks.
Rat was unusually solemn as he passed the old line cabin that had once been home. He paused a moment, remembering the thunder of boyish laughter, the sound advice offered with fatherly patience, his mother’s somber announcement that he must go to live with the Planks.
“Don’t suppose it was yer doin’, Pa,” Rat whispered as he knelt beside his father’s grave. The young man stared intently at the simple white cross. Hope and promise, it seemed, were buried along with J. C. Hadley.
Rat’s humor wasn’t improved by the sight of boys splashing away the morning down at the Brazos. That was his river, after all. It would always belong to Rat and Mitch and Alex. These brown-shouldered youngsters were intruders!
Rat splashed across the river, then turned his horse north and west. He didn’t answer the waves of the swimmers. Nor did he visit the white oak or Tom Boswell’s grave. Rat Hadley needed no reminder that poor fortunes got a man buried.
The sight of a stranger prowling the range on a half-wild mustang wasn’t generally welcomed by most outfits, and Rat drew company as he approached the ranch house. First a shaggy-haired young cowboy riding the fence line latched onto Rat’s trail. For close to a mile the boy shadowed Rat. Then, as the horse corrals came into view, two older hands confronted Rat. Aside from a tobacco-chewing stranger, a more familiar face challenged the Circle H’s visitor.
“Hold up there,” Payne Oakley called. “Got business here?”
“Thought to have a word with Mr. Hanks,” Rat explained.
“And what makes you think he’d have any interest in seein’ you?” Oakley asked.
“Call it old time’s sake,” Rat answered. “I see you got yer hand healed up, Payne. Bet you never thought I’d get this big, eh?”
“You know him?” the young cowboy asked.
Oakley studied the strange face in front of him. Rat doffed his hat and grinned.
“Can’t be,” Oakley cried. “Not Rat Hadley!”
“Well, I never knowed anybody else to lay claim to such a name,” Rat countered.
“Coley, you run along to the house and fetch Mr. Hanks,” Oakley instructed the boy behind them. “Tell him the worst excuse for a wrangler to come out o’ Texas’s come to see him.”
“Sir?” Coley asked.
“Tell him J. C.’s boy is here,” Oakley added. “And be quick ’bout it. This particular fellow is apt as not to slip through our fingers. Was forever rid in’ off to swim a creek or run some horses when I set him to some other task.”
“Sounds familiar,” Coley said, grinning at Rat. “I’ll be tellin’ him, Payne.”
Oakley waved his other companion back to work, then escorted Rat to a water tank. They left their horses to have a drink. Then Rat passed ten minutes filling in the ranch foreman on two years of growing and wandering.
“Road’s made you hard, Rat,” Oakley observed.
“Road’s been hard, Payne.”
“That’s a blessin’, son. Later on you’ll see it so yourself. Easy path leaves a man soft. And this country ain’t one to forgive a man’s shortcomin’s. No, sir. It buries ’em.”
“Buried Pa.”
“And he was never short o’ the mark, Rat. Best kind o’ man.”
“So I guess bein’ hard’s not enough. You got to be lucky.”
“Well, that helps,” Oakley confessed. “But in the final accountin’, that ain’t enough, neither. Man’s got to stand tall when the winds blow.”
Rat grinned and shook his head. J. C. Hadley had been a man to talk that way. But hard and tall didn’t land a man a job. It was Orville Hanks that would decide that.
Hanks appeared on the broad veranda of his house with two of his sons. Rat hadn’t known any of the Hanks boys very well, what with their being older, and he merely shook their hands politely and agreed to taking after J. C., especially in the face.
“Bandy-legged, too,” the elder Hanks observed. “Likely from all them cactus spines you put in your seat mustang huntin’.”
“Figured that’d be a long time forgotten,” Rat said, laughing. “ ’Cept by me, o’ course.”
“Was the day we lost J. C.,” Hanks muttered. “Ain’t likely to be forgotten ever. They still call you Rat?”
“With this nose?” Rat asked. “Cursed permanent, you could say.”
“Well, it’s fittin’ not everything’s changed. Come walk a way with me, Rat, and tell me what’s brought you all the way out here. We don’t get many visitors, and most o’ them’s bill collectors or salesmen.”
“I’m neither.”
“Nor’s it likely after bein’ back in these parts weeks and just now comin’ here that you come to swap old stories.”
“No, sir,” Rat admitted. “If you know I’ve been here, I guess you also know I’ve been cuttin’ telegraph poles and helpin’ Sully Dawes string wire.”
“Ain’t got so old I don’t know what’s happenin’ in this county, Rat.”
“Line’s finished.”
“Know that, too. Know you’ve been doin’ some ridin’ hereabouts as well.”
“Lookin’ for work,” Rat explain
ed. “Got some money put by, but not enough to keep me fed through winter. And a man needs somethin’ to put his hands to.”
“I can’t help you, son.”
“You know, Mr. Hanks, ain’t anybody I’d give leave to call me that. Not with Pain his grave. But you, and Payne, and maybe Sheriff Cathcart all done a share o’ puttin’ me on my feet once. You give me a chance to get past hard circumstances and prove myself.”
“It’s no small pride I take in it, Rat,” Hanks confessed. “I’ve signed on boys aplenty, but few o’ them ever measure up. You never give me call to regret takin’ you north, nor invitin’ you to roundup when you was a grub.”
“I thank you for it, too, Mr. Hanks, and I swear you’ll have no reason to regret takin’ me on again.”
“Know that,” the cattleman said, frowning. “Rat, you been on the range this last week. What do you see? I sent half my outfit ridin’. Cattle market’s gone south, with nary a promise o’ return in’ anytime soon.”
“I saw boys at the river, and this Coley … “
“My grandsons,” Hanks explained. “Got my oldest boy Fitz at the line camp now, and near everybody left on the payroll’s family. Payroll! We haven’t handed out wages in eight months.”
“Maybe I could round up some mustangs,” Rat offered. “You still need mounts.”
“Boy, you ain’t listenin’,” Hanks complained. “I sell horses nowadays to make my taxes. Even then it’s tough to make a price at it. Better you try a town job. Range’s dead.”
“Have,” Rat said, staring at his feet.
“Yeah, not much money to be made anywhere. Funny thing is I thought once the Indians were rounded up and staked out on reservations, cow people’d make their fortunes. Didn’t count on all the new land openin’ up north and west. Then the railroads come in and take the profit out o’ trailin’ range beeves. Got to breed ’em now, it ’pears. Takes money, buyin’ bulls.”
“Mr. Hanks, I’ve done near everything one time or another. I’d scrub plates or fry eggs.”
“Got a cook, Rat. No, your chance’d have to be somewhere else.”
“Where?” Rat asked, throwing his arms in the air. “I never in my life begged for help, but I got no other forks in my road. I tried all I know to do, and there’s nothin’. Paused to read me Job, and I always thought it cruel mean for the Lord to send so many torments to one man. Now I don’t think ole Job had it so bad after all.”
“I read Job some myself,” Hanks said, softening his hard-jaw stance. “Lord did relent some where ole Job was concerned. Maybe he’s got a heart for wayfarers, too, Rat, ’cause I just thought o’ somebody you might try.”
“Who?”
“Friend o’ mine,” Hanks said, pulling a scrap of paper from his shirt pocket and scrawling a note. “Ned Wyler. Operates the Western Stage Company out o’ Ft. Worth. Used to run a route to El Paso, but with the Texas and Pacific runnin’, they mostly move people up to Jacksboro, then across to Thayerville and along to Albany. He might could use horses, and he might hire you to fetch him some. I done my best by you,” he added, passing Rat the note. “You tell him I said you was iron-rumped like yer pa. He finds out you be Corporal J. C. Hadley’s kid, he’ll do what he can.”
“Was this Wyler fellow in yer company, sir?” Rat asked.
“No, he was a Yank colonel,” Hanks explained. “Near got his hide peppered when we hit his camp. Yer pa grabbed him by the seat o’ the pants and drug him atop a horse. Captured him, ole J. C. did.”
“I don’t see how that would put me in much favor,” Rat argued.
“Wasn’t just that,” Hanks explained. “We had a stiff-necked major come down and say we got to shoot Colonel Wyler in answer for the Yanks shootin’ one o’ our officers. Well, yer pa went and liberated Wyler ’fore the major could do it. Next day word come the war was over. General Forrest give up his sword, and we turned for home. Wyler saw we got to the railroad personal. There’s a debt owed there.”
Rat nodded. But not to me, he thought.
Nevertheless he rode south from the Circle H, recrossed the Brazos, and headed east toward Ft. Worth. Three days later he stepped into the office of the Western Stage Company and asked for Ned Wyler.
“I’m Wyler,” a burly, bull-necked giant called from behind a cluttered desk. “Who’s here to bother me now?”
“Erastus Hadley,” Rat announced. “I got a note for you from Orville Hanks.”
“Yes?”
“I come lookin’ for a job, Colonel Wyler.”
“Not many Texans ever call me that,” the former officer declared as he accepted the note. “Hanks vouches for you, I see.”
Rat studied Wyler’s eyes. The note was already crumpled and tossed aside. Devoid of hope, Rat played his final card.
“I’m to tell you Corporal J. C. Hadley was my pa,” Rat said.
“Oh,” Wyler responded. “Your father did me a great service once. Is this a collection call?”
“Pa’s been dead five years,” Rat answered angrily. “He never saw need to call on you himself, nor’d he mention what he did to me. Wasn’t that way, Pa. If he saved yer neck, it was ’cause he figured there was right to it. So I got no hold on you, Colonel. I’m nineteen years old. I been scratchin’ my hold onto life since I can remember. Mr. Hanks said you might could use a man to get you remounts. I got the devil’s own way with horses, and I sit a horse better’n most.”
“Knowing your father’s modesty, that probably means you can outride the devil, too. I don’t need stock handlers, Hadley.”
“I dug holes for telegraph poles up in Thayerville, and cut the poles, too. I could build you corrals or … “
“They’re built. I don’t need diggers or woodcutters. It does happen I need a stagecoach guard for the westbound run out of Thayerville and the eastbound back from Albany. Ever fire a gun?”
“Since I could hold one,” Rat replied.
“Ever hit anything?”
“Only what I aim at,” Rat said with blazing eyes.
“Such as?”
“Shot a rattler at a hundred yards when I was seven. A bull buffalo at ten. Been hittin’ things ever since.”
“Ever shoot a man?”
“Once,” Rat said, frowning.
“Tell me about it,” Wyler urged, stepping closer and listening with new interest.
“Was on the trail drive north,” Rat explained. “First time I ever fired a handgun ’cept at targets. Raiders come at us, and I was atop a hill with my buddy Mitch Morris.”
“And?”
“Riders charged. I aimed at a boy no older’n I was and kilt him with my first shot. Didn’t see it then, not with the smoke and all. Later, though, I saw him dead with my bullet ’tween his eyes.”
“Shoot at anybody since then?”
“Never had a need, Colonel.”
“Nor the desire?”
“You been a soldier, sir. You got any such desires?”
“No, I’ve seen enough dead men.”
“So’ve I,” Rat growled.
“If you were to sign on with me, Hadley, you’d likely have call to shoot again. We’ve had trouble.”
“You’d pay me to shoot men. That it?”
“To protect the coach. If you never hit a man, I wouldn’t care. Only you’d have to keep them clear of our coaches and protect the passengers. If it came down to that, could you do it?”
“If he was after me and mine, yessir, I think so.”
“Not sure?”
“Can anybody be?”
“Well, that’s honest enough. We’ll give you a try. Pay’s twenty dollars a week. You see Nate Parrott in Thayerville. That’s your home, I take it.”
“Sort of.”
“Give him this letter,” Wyler said, scrawling a note. “Tuesday next you ride the westbound to Albany. Next day you return on the eastbound. Got that? Runs twice a week that way.”
“Fair enough.”
“Off days you help at the freight office.”
“If you like, Nate can put you up in the stable loft. Save you a few dollars if you don’t mind the company of horses.”
“I’m pretty used to ’em,” Rat confessed. “People never’ve much taken to me.”
“A bath and a shave’ II help that. Here’s your first week’s pay. See if you can’t come by some shirts and a pair of trousers that fit. Keep the gambling and drinking out of your way, too. I expect the straight and narrow, Hadley.”
“Yessir.”
“One more thing. Good luck to you.”
“Luck and me’s strangers, Colonel. But I’ll make out fine just the same. I won’t disappoint you.”
Wyler nodded, and Rat imagined he would have to fall mighty short of the mark to lose the colonel’s confidence. Sometimes you could tell things in a man’s eyes. And the burly Wyler was almost smiling.
Chapter Ten
The Western Stage Company operated out of a small plank building between the bank and the hotel. There were three tiers of shelves for storing freight in back. with a narrow counter up front for selling tickets and conducting the freight business. Out back a small stable housed remounts and such employees as had no other place to bed.
When Rat stepped inside, he was greeted warmly by a slight-shouldered clerk in his late twenties.
“I’m Nate Parrott,” he said. “Can I sell you a ticket to Albany?”
“No, I brought you a note from Colonel Wyler,” Rat explained. The clerk accepted the crumpled paper and read it quickly. A smile appeared on his face.
“Glad to have you,” Parrott announced. “We been makin’ do with stray cowboys or nobody at all. I’ve been scared to trust any money to the coach, what with the trouble others have had along the river.”
“You the new guard then?” a heavy-set stranger called from the shelves.
“For a time anyhow,” Rat answered.
“Yer young,” the big man observed. “Used to work for the Morrises, I’m guessin’.”
“Yessir,” Rat said, searching his memory for the name that matched the face.
“You wouldn’t remember. I only came into the store ’round plantin’ time back then. Was farmin’.”
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