Joey crooked his head in the direction of the sheep corral behind the barn.
“And Gram?” Cain stiff-legged back to Lonesome. He took off his gloves and pocketed them. One eye still on the door, he un cinched the saddle along with his bedroll and slid them off Lonesome too.“Eh?”
“In the bank.” Joey crooked his head at the privy in the willows behind the house. “Making a deposit.”
“What!” A grin cracked across Cain’s walnut face. “You talk like that about your own greatgram?” Cain swung the saddle and bedroll onto the hitching rack, making sure it sat securely balanced.
“Why do you hang up your saddle for, Unk?”
“No cowboy worth his salt throws gear on the ground. You know that. Might get it tromped on. Besides, sand’ll stick to the sweaty underside and give the hoss saddle sores.”
“Why do you dress up when you come here, Unk?”
“Ain’t I company?”
“Why do you wait to water your hoss, Unk?”
“After a run, a horse is too heated to drink water right away.”
“Why do you wear a mustache, Unk? Paw don’t.”
“To strain the color from my language around little buttons like you.”
A tall gray Plymouth Rock rooster came cockalorking around the corner of the log cabin. Joey spotted him, and with a quick dextrous turn and throw of his play lasso, roped the rooster around the legs and jerked him to the ground. The rooster let out a surprised squawk. “Calf on the ground!” Joey yelled. “C’mon, you bustard you, slap that dottin’ iron on him! We got us another Mark-of-Cain calf.”
Cain couldn’t help but laugh and join in with the game. He grabbed up an old rusty branding iron leaning against the far end of the cabin and ran for the rooster. “Hot iron comin’ up! Hold ’em, cowboy!”
“Ya-hoo! Yi!”
With that, Rory showed at the door. “Joey, you little dickens you, how many times must I tell you not to rope that rooster! He’s the only one we got. Oh. Hello, Cain.”
Cain turned; stood up; and lifted his hat in mock deference.
“Howdy, ma’am. Nice evenin’.” Then he added, after a look at her, “Rory, for godsakes, what happened to you? Get caught in a stampede?”
Joey said, “I told you to wait till you see her.”
“You shut up you, you little dickens!”
The right side of Rory’s face was all brockled over with blue bruises. Her right eye was black and almost shut. From where he’d sat on the ridge overlooking the garden, Cain hadn’t been able to make out the details of her face. Cain was shocked. What with being far along in her pregnancy, and her face red, the Rory who stood before him was hardly the slim grass-finished Rosemary he’d once loved. Close up she looked forty, when she actually was but thirty.
“Dale didn’t get drunk and beat you up, did he?”
Rory’s back arched. She became all horns and rattles. She said, icily, “You know Dale never indulges.”
“‘Indulges,’ is it? Lady, please. Bite shallow and I’ll follow you.”
“Joey, take that rope off that rooster right now. Pronto! You hear? And give it here.” Stepping heavily, one high-laced black kid shoe at a time, a hand on a knee, she came down off the stoop.
“No,” Joey said.
Rory hit him a whack over the ear.
Cain cleared his throat. Hitting the boy he didn’t like. “Now, Rory, what’s the harm in a little fun? When I was a kid I used to rope roosters too. I once even roped the neighbor’s baby.”
Rory whirled on him, belly coming around slow. Her mouth squared open. “So you too are out to spoil the little brat, eh? Gram ain’t enough, eh?”
Cain swallowed. He looked down at Joey. “Guess we better get that string off that calf, waddy boy, or we’ll both be hung as a couple of outlaw hen wranglers.”
“Aw, hell, Unk—”
“What!” Again Rory leaned over her burden and whacked Joey, with her right hand and then her left, biff-baff.“Watch your language, you little shitepoke.”
Joey jumped, then looked up at Cain from under a throw of gold hair. “Guess it’s a case of wrong brand, huh, Unk?”
“That’s it, pard.”
Lonesome trailed over then, head held carefully to one side to avoid stepping on the reins. He nuzzled Rory’s back; her neck.
Rory jumped, heavily, but when she saw who it was, she suddenly smiled, her swollen face opening in a big wide crease.“Why, Lonesome, you old sweetheart you. You still like that perfume, don’t you?”
Cain quick blinked his eyes. He remembered a time almost forgotten when Lonesome had first noticed perfume on her, as if he, well-born himself, knew a thoroughbred when he saw one.
“See, Cain, he hasn’t forgot my favorite perfume after all this time. I haven’t used it in years. Just happened to find the bottle again today as I was cleaning. See, he’s nuzzling me where I always put a drop.”
Cain held still.
Joey asked, “What is it when Lonesome starts smellin’ up them other horses in the corral then?”
To keep Joey out of further trouble, Cain quick said, “Well, Rory, and have you seen what I brought? For supper?”
Rory turned, still smiling. “You did get a bighorn then?”
“Yessiree.” Cain pointed to the skinful of meat and the big coiled horns. “And butchered it for you.”
“Young?”
“Just turned a year. You kin tell by the growth rings on his horns.”
Her face still held bright. Almost she looked again like she had in the old days. It was with pain that Cain remembered the mean words she’d once said to him, that time he took her home a year after killing Cecil Guth. “One night you set and say, yes ma’am, no ma’am, and look like a stuffed owl. The next night you drink up all of Gramp’s whisky and make love like a horse. Lord knows what next to expect from you. Cain, if you can’t remember I’m a lady, there’s the door. Besides, and don’t forget it, I’m your full cousin.”
She went over and stroked the curled horns. “What are you going to do with the head?”
“You want it?”
“We could mount it.”
“It’s yours.”
She looked across at the sun. It was just then sinking behind the Old Man in a great throw of exploding yellow-banded light. It seemed to be burning a hole into the Old Man’s white hair. “I won’t have time to get a roast ready any more today. But we can fry some up. And we can hang the rest in the cooler for tomorrow night.”
“Good. You got you a star boarder.”
Rory selected a prime piece from the skin. Still smiling, she climbed the stoop and disappeared into the house.
Cain sighed. He picked up the rest of the meat and the head of horns and went for the well. Over his shoulder, he called, “All right, Lonesome boy, I guess you’ve cooled enough now to drink. Hup.”
“Can I lead him, Unk?”
“Sure. But be careful he don’t roll on you.”
Cain hadn’t more than said it when with a snort Lonesome sank to his knees and rolled over, first on one side, then the other, grinding his neck in the soft gray dust, wriggling in delicious balance exactly on his curved spine, forefeet up like a playful puppy’s, rear legs up like an awkward cow’s.
Joey held on, allowing Lonesome all the slack he needed.
Presently Lonesome had enough, and got up, knees first, then body, then rear legs, and gave himself a tremendous shuddering shake. A little cloud of dust floated off. It made Joey cough.
After he’d hung the meat and the head low in the cooler beside the well, Cain hauled up a couple of buckets of water for Lonesome. He left the cover off the well thinking Lonesome might need more. One leg up on the drinking trough, he stroked Lonesome’s flank lovingly. Dusk turned Lonesome’s black mane to a running fire of bronze. Joey stood on the other side of Lonesome, trying to put up a leg too on the wooden trough.
Cain said, “What was Mom so mad about when I first come?”
�
�I dunno. Paw came home with some news early yestiddy morning that Mom didn’t like and they had a fight.”
“I can see that.”
“You should’ve heard them. First there was Paw tellin’ Mom something. Then came an awful quiet. I could hear ’em in bed laying still as mice, thinkin’. Then slowly Mom started in talkin’ low, then she got mad hearin’ what she had to say to him, givin’ Paw the devil from here to hell an’ back. And then finally Paw come to and he got mad and he finally hit her a whack. Then she hit him. He hit her. She hit him. And the noise in the house got to be something awful. I run out like I had to make a deposit in the bank I got so scared. Sounded like they was shoein’ a horse inside the house. Pretty soon even Gram couldn’t stand it and she came by me in the privy, me on the big hole and she on the little one. Well, when we come back later, after they had enough, both of ’em was so bloody in the lamplight where they wuz patching each other up it was hard to know ’em from fresh hides. Mom was so swole up she looked like she was gonna have two babies. ‘T’while Paw looked like a slunk baked-apple.”
Cain didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at Joey’s lively picture. “Oh, come now, Joe boy, it couldn’t have been that bad. You know the Hammett men ain’t exactly wife-beaters.”
“Well, Paw did hit her though.”
“I don’t hardly believe it.”
Foot still up on the drinking trough, and still stroking Lonesome’s black coat lovingly, Cain fell to musing to himself. Yes, the Hammett men were hardly wife-beaters. They were wild and dark sometimes, but they were hardly that.
Cain remembered the days when he and Harry and Dale, besides being just brothers, were also inseparable waddies, calling themselves the Three Mustangs. They were full of the devil then, scorning all women except Gram, “whooping and hollering and raping around,” and having themselves a time.
Eventually all three might have married stranger women, and thus have remained jolly kin together at family reunions and family weddings and family funerals, remembering privately and ignoring publicly—if it hadn’t been for Cain killing Cecil Guth.
But he had shot Cecil and that was the end of the brothers as the Three Mustangs. Instead of waddies faithful and true to each other they became rivals wary and watchful of each other. When Gramp wasn’t around, he and Harry had played up to Rory for all they were worth, trying to catch her alone, doing her favors, buying her expensive presents, while Dale looked on weakly and sullenly.
Then, before either he or Harry got very far with her, Rosemary all of a sudden eloped with Dale. Just why they could never get her to say. Maybe it was because she knew she could never choose between the two or there would be another shooting. Maybe it was because she was shrewd enough to see that both Cain and Harry would be slow to pick a fight with the weaker brother. And maybe it was because her kind needed the weakest one anyway.
Cain smiled, slow, down at Joey. He asked, quietly, “Your maw and paw fight often like that?”
“No. That’s the first I know of.”
Cain shook his head sadly.
“Unk, kin I come and live with you?”
“What? Oh, now, my waddy boy, I’d like that of course, but you got your own folks.”
“Unk, why don’t you get married like Paw?”
The flesh around Cain’s smoke-blue eyes crinkled up. “Maybe one of these days I will. Send for a wife out of a mail-order catalogue.”
“Paw says what you need is one of them widders what needs her weeds plowed once a week.”
“He says that, does he?”
All the while, Joey hadn’t been quite able to get his foot up on the drinking trough like Cain. He finally climbed onto a support under the trough and tried again. He got his foot up all right, but the foot he stood on wobbled on the support, and after a moment of tottering he lost his balance. Before Cain could grab him, Joey tipped lengthwise into the open mouth of the well, and in a quick falling streak, a surprised gold face and a blue-clad body and a pair of red boots vanished into the black below. There came a fleeing boy’s cry; a muted splash.
Lonesome’s noble head popped up from the drinking trough.
“Joe boy!” Cain cried.
Then Cain unfroze. He tore off the remaining planks of the well cover; tried to see down. But all he could make out, some thirty feet down, was a winking surface of liquid ebony. “Balls of fire!”
He saw right away he couldn’t trust his weight to the bucket rope. It was too frayed. Quickly he hobbed over to the hitching rack on which he’d set his saddle. A nervous belch broke from him. He grabbed the lasso from the horn and, iron spurs chinking on the rocky yard, hurried back to the wellhead.
He put his hat to one side and peered down. “Joe? Joe!”
No answer.
He anchored the rope to the trough. He was about to let himself down hand over hand, when he heard gurgling below. He listened.
Some more gurgling.
Peering down again, he saw whelming rings on the liquid ebony surface.
A weak voice whimpered up at him.“Unk?”
“Joe boy! You all right down there?”
“Oh, Unk!” The boy’s voice almost broke. “I’m drownin’!”
Cain finally spotted him—face gleaming up, Joey was clinging to a piece of sprung wooden curbing. Cain hardened; yet spoke very calm. “Hold tight, Joe boy, and I’ll be right with you.”
“I’m gonna drown, Unk.”
The way the boy tried to stay on top of his terror made Cain catch his breath. “Hang on, boy.”
“It’s awful slidey, Unk.”
Cain leaned far into the wellhead, dark hair sliding down in a straight throw over his blunt brow. Swiftly he shook out a little loop. He made his voice land on the water beside the boy; calm. “Joe, I want you to count to twenty. Start in. One, two—”
“I’m gonna drown, Unk.”
“Count!”
“One—two—three—”
“That’s it.” Cain let down the loop, deftly trying to settle it directly over the boy’s thin shoulders.
“—seven—eight—nine—”
There was just a foot to go, when the loop slid out through the honda. The knot of it hit the boy on his gold head.
“—thirteen—oh, Unk, I’m gonna fall in!”
“Count!” Cain held back an impulse to roar it. “Hold tight.”
There was no time to set the loop again. Cain let the knot settle against Joe’s chest. “Joe, listen now. Let go one hand and grab the rope.”
“Unk—”
“Try it. Let go one hand and grab the rope.”
“I can’t, Unk.”
“Do it!”
“Unk—”
“Blast it, do it!”
Cain could more feel than hear the boy scrabbling, desperately trying to hang onto the filmy wooden curbing. Cain shot down his voice again, this time powerfully, low, letting the animal in him get into it, letting the animal in him strengthen the animal in the boy, commanding it. “Do it, Joe! Grab it, Joe!”
With a whimper of utmost reluctance, with a creature’s whimper, yet having to do it, as if hypnotized, Joey did it. He let go one hand and grabbed the rope just above where the knot lay against his chest.
“Now grab with the other hand!”
Because Cain had set it so strongly in the boy’s mind, Joey’s other hand also let go and grabbed the rope. With that the lad swung free of the slippery wall and pendulumed awash in the deep water a few times. Curdles of dirt from the wooden wellhead hit the water, setting off little wrinkles across the big ripples.
Again Cain sent down his voice, low, powerful. “Hang tight onto that rope now, Joe! That’s it. And up you come. Steady as you go.”
Little fists fierce, Joey held tight.
“I’ll have you out in a jiff, my boy.”
Hand over hand Cain drew him to the top, the boy’s soppy gold hair showing more plainly on every haul, until his head rose through the opening, and up into the purple dusk. One
look at the boy’s pallid face, and Cain’s heart bounded in his chest. Cain clutched the boy to his bosom; held him close. Water poured from the boy’s clothes. Miraculously his little red boots were still on, spilling water. Cain hugged him. He became sopping wet too. When he thought of what might have happened, almost did happen, his mind burned. This was the kind of lad Gramp Hammett recommended they drown. Because he happened to be a firstborn son. “If you want a good obedient wife, drown the firstborn son.” Such monster thoughts. Cain wished Gramp were around right then. He’d beat him up. Drown a dear close bundle of bunnyboy flesh like this? Well, he’d take the boy any day even if it meant living with a Rory on the prod. He hugged Joey close. “My boy, my boy,” he whispered, “my little waddy boy Joe.” He couldn’t see for the tears clotting his lashes.
He didn’t hear the sounds coming up behind him. A stringy hard hand grabbed him roughly by the shoulder. Then a man’s tight-pitched voice demanded right in his ear, “Great thunder, Cain, you trying to drown my oldest boy?”
Cain whipped around. “Dale! Man, am I glad to see you!”
A long lank of a man, hatless, grabbed Joey out of his arms; hugged him to his own breast. “You better be.”
Cain blinked tears out of his eyes. “He’s all right, thank God.” “Thank God, bull!” Dale comforted the boy to his skinny chest.
“Joey my son boy, you all right?”
Joey drooped. The shock of the fall, the sudden immersion in cold water, the desperate scrabbling up out of the water onto the sprung wooden well curbing, Cain’s terrible demands upon him, had emptied him.
“Son?”
“Paw.”
Dale gave Cain a fierce incredulous look. His gaunt wind-honed face was blue with it. “How the blazes did you let this happen?”
Cain swallowed. “I guess it was my fault at that.” He hated getting caught. “I left the cover off the well thinkin’ maybe Lonesome might want some more water. The horse was drinking from the trough and the boy was playing around it. You know. And somehow, before I knew it, he lost his balance and fell in.” Cain looked down at the wet rope in his hand. “I guess I’m not used to having kids around.”
“I guess you hain’t!” A sob racked Dale. “Cain, when you got kids around, blast it, you got to be thinking about where they is every blessed minute of the day!”
Riders of Judgment Page 8
