Timberline dropped his chair to the floor on all four legs. “Hell, Hambone, that’s where I fall out. Supposin’ Crimson Wall back there was to fall down—you can’t tell me there wouldn’t be a hell of a racket whether anyone heard it or not.”
Cain burst out laughing. So did Harry.
“And besides,” Timberline said, “you talk about this ceilin’ failin’ and no human bein’ around to hear. What I want to know is: who built this ceilin’ in the first place so it could fall?”
Hambone thought a moment; then laughed too. “You got me. Pass the jug again, Tim. And don’t hog it all.”
Cain had been eyeing Hambone’s fiddle. “How about twisting the tail of your friend there some, old-timer? A couple tunes afore we hit the hay would be just the thing.”
“Hey,” Harry said, “that’s a great idee. C’mon, Hambone, play us a hymn or two.”
“No,” Timberline said, “no hymns. I ain’t of a mind to sing dirty ditties right after we get through talking about the afterlife.”
Cain said, “Let Hambone decide. It’s his fiddle.”
Hambone soberly considered the fire for a few moments. Finally he decided he was in the mood. While Cain put on another log, and while Harry and Timberline rolled cigarettes, Hambone tuned up.
Soon Hambone was sawing them off, one after another. Every now and then the boys would join him for a few bars, voices rusty and raw, like frogs warming up for a concert.
When Hambone swung into “Sweet Betsy from Pike,” they all joined in. They bayed full blast. This excited Hambone and his fiddle began to cry. Like beads on a string, one song led to another: “The Old Chisum Trail,” “Pretty Quadroon,” “Little Mohee,” “Lament of a Cowboy.”
Timberline liked the last one especially. He bellered it with great hoarse gusto, completely drowning out the others. Only the sharp whining cry of the fiddle rose above it:
“Oh, I walked down the streets of Laredo,
Oh, I walked through Laredo one day,
And spied a poor cowboy all swathed in white linen,
All swathed in white linen and cold as the clay.’’
Cain quit singing halfway through the song. He watched bald-top Timberline roar out of his great mustache-fringed mouth. Bemused, Cain shook his head.
Timberline caught the headshake. When he finished the song, he demanded, “What’s the matter? Your ears hurt?”
Cain laughed. “Tim, I like you. You know that. But durn me, when you sing, you sound like you’re gargling axle grease.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Listening to you, I’m ready to believe you was a moose in the life before this.”
“You don’t like it then?”
“As a human bein’ in this life, no, I don’t.”
“By God, this is a free country, and so long as I’m still in this life, I’ll sing as I please.”
Hambone discovered yet another tune in his head, one Cain hadn’t heard. He sang it alone:
“There ain’t no hoss that can’t be rode,
There ain’t no man that can’t be throwed.
There ain’t no woman that can’t be duped,
There ain’t no man that can’t be ruped.”
Harry said, “Now there’s a song I’ve heard sung in places where a rattlesnake would be ashamed to meet his mother.”
“Well, you would know,” Hambone smirked.
“Say, that reminds me,” Cain exclaimed. “We ain’t sung the best one of all.”
“What’s that?”
“ ‘Riders of Judgment.’ ”
Hambone thought a moment, and nodded. He closed his eyes, searching within for the tune. When he found it, he quickly swung into it.
After a few bars, getting the rhythm and the beat of it, all joined in, even moose-voiced Timberline:
“Get along, little leppy, she’s agetting late,
It’s time you was earmarked and branded by fate.
Hup up, you windbellies, move along, old sucks,
It’s time you was tallied in the Old Man’s books.
Oh, some will be cut for the butcher in town,
Oh, some will be cut for the evergreen hills.
Leppy oh.
“When the Riders of Judgment come down from the sky
And the Big Boss fans wide His great circle drive
And critters come in from low and from high
And critters rise up both dead and alive—
Will you be ready for that Roundup of Ages?
“Roll out, you rannies, she’s abreaking day,
The Big Boss has come to see about your pay.
Rise up, you waddies, roll out of your bed,
The Big Boss has come for the quick and the dead.
Oh, some will be cut for the Devil in hell,
Oh, some will be cut for the garden of God.
Waddy oh.
“When the Riders of Judgment come down from the sky
Will you be ready for that Roundup of Ages?”
When they finished, Hambone said, “I don’t agree that’s the best. Me, I prefer ‘Pretty Quadroon.’ ”
Harry said, “I don’t agree either. My favorite is ‘Little Mohee.’”
Timberline said, “You know mine. ‘Lament of a Cowboy.’ ”
Hambone said, “ ‘Pretty Quadroon’ has got good poetry. That’s why I like it the best.”
Harry said, “But it’s about coons, Hambone. While my ‘Little Mohee’ is about the red man. Now we all know the coon don’t come up to the noble red man for blood.”
Timberline said, “You’re both wrong. ‘Lament’ is best because it’s about death and that’s tarnal matter.”
Cain said, “Now I’ll tell you why I think mine is best. Because it’s classic.”
Hambone reared back. “ ‘Classic’? What’s classic?”
“Classic is when a song has got some judgment in it, and has got it in the best. Now you take ‘Riders.’ It’s got heaven in it, and hell, and a lot of other tarnal matter. But better yet, it has got judgment in it. Man judgment and God judgment. It’s just plumb full of judgment all the way through. Now I say, with all that judgment in it, that not only makes it classic, but that makes it plumb classic.”
“All right,” Hambone said. “All right. You got me. I know when I’m throwed.”
“Play it again, Hambone,” Cain said.
They went back to singing and drinking.
Cain
At first Cain had trouble sleeping. The moment he fell away, the roaring voices and the crying fiddle and all the argument about afterlife would start in again and wake him up. He tried all sorts of new positions but each time a loud bray in a dream would kick him out of it again. Or else Old Hambone’s wailing violin would raise him. Cain turned and twisted in his bunk, trying his left side, then his right. He heard Harry turning and twisting on his bunk, too, on the other side of the room. He heard the fire in the hearth fall slowly with soft tushing sounds. He heard Hambone snoring in the far room.
Finally, toward morning, Cain got up in his shirt and underwear and socks and had himself a drink of branch water from the bucket on the washstand. He felt better right away. And, once again cuddled under brown-black buffalo robe, he fell into a deep and untroubled sleep.
When he awoke later, he wasn’t sure what it was that had pricked him up out of slumber. He had the notion that there’d been some kind of noise like the cracking of a wagon wheel on stone. He also had the feeling that he’d lost something.
He lay very still, sleepily wondering about it. He heard a meadowlark whistling cheerily at the breaking day. He heard Hambone snoring in the other room, heard Timberline groaning in his sleep. He was sure it hadn’t been any of those noises.
“No,” he thought, “it was some kind of cracking some ways from the cabin. Not the usual kind around the place.”
As for the feeling of having lost something, he finally decided it was probably the onset of his usual morning blues over the death of his
good horse Lonesome.
In any case, it was Saturday and time to get up. He planned to ride into town later in the morning to buy some supplies, maybe even have himself a fun, before the spring chores and then the early spring roundup caught up with him.
He sat up and put on his hat. He rolled himself a cigarette, stuck it in the corner of his mouth, and lit it with a match from his hatband. He put on his vest, slipped on his pants under the brown-black robe, and, swinging out of the bunk, drew on cold boots. Stretching, he glanced over at Harry’s bunk. And instantly became wide awake. Harry was gone.
“Ah,” he thought, “so that was the noise I heard.”
He stomped into the middle room. It was damp and cold. He swung his arms around his chest a couple of times to warm his finger tips, then settled on his heels before the fireplace and scratched through the ashes until he found live pink coals. He put on a few pieces of kindling and blew the coals into fire. Once the flames got a good start, he threw on some sticks and three logs crossed over each other.
He warmed his hands; then his back; then his front. He lit a funk and started another fire in the round wood stove in the back of the room near the door to the root cellar.
Stretching again, yawning, he went over to the washstand beside the door and poured some water out of a bucket into the basin, laid aside his hat, opened his black shirt, and sloshed his face and his ears, even wetting well up into the roots of his dark hair. He dried himself off briskly in the rough sack towel. He made a point of drying his mustache tips and rolling them. He combed his hair in a broken mirror. He emptied the used water into the slop pail under the washstand.
There was a waking groan in the back room. Cain went over and poked in his head. He saw Hambone stirring on his bedroll on the floor. His blanket seemed humped up unnaturally high in the middle. Timberline on his side was still dead to the world.
Cain smiled. “You take on company during the night, Hambone? Who you got in bed with you?”
“Who? Me?” Hambone’s old rheumy eyes cracked open, red along the lids. “Oh. That’s my sourdough keg. Started to get cold in here last night and I thought I better sleep with it. Keep it warm and working.”
“Say,” Cain said, “now there’s something I never thought of.”
“I done it afore.”
Cain studied the high hump under Hambone’s blanket. “How about me using some? I’ll make you some splatterdabs so thick and light you’ll think them wasp nests.”
Hambone sat up in bed. He put on his hat first and then rolled and lighted himself a cigarette. “Sourdough flapjacks, eh? Now there is a great idee. I’ve heard about your pancakes.” Hambone puffed a thick cloud toward the ceiling, some of it smoke, most of it chilled breath. “Make me some and I’ll go get you some fresh branch water for coffee.”
“Done.” Cain went over and picked up the warm five-gallon wooden keg. An ancient yeasting smell rose from it.
Hambone watched Cain lift the keg in his arms. “Don’t drop it now.” Love for the keg shone in Hambone’s old eyes.
Cain said, “Say, by the way, Harry’s gone. You hear him pull out in the night?”
“No.”
“Wonder where he went?”
“Don’t look at me. I know less about the habits of that ramblin’ ranny than you do.”
Timberline groaned on his bedroll on the other side of the room.
Hambone looked over. “Tim, you old moose you, if you ain’t out a bed by the time I get back with the water, I’ll throw it all on you.”
“That’s right, Tim,” Cain said. “We ain’t in the habit of servin’ breakfast in bed around here.”
“What a headache!” Timberline groaned. “The toothache was a little thing compared to this.”
Cain laughed and, still holding the warm keg in his arms, went back to his fires in the middle room. He tied on a cook’s leather apron. A couple of helpings of the sticky gelid yeast and he was soon busy mixing batter.
As he worked, tongue caught between teeth, he continued to wonder why Harry had left in the night. Harry hadn’t mentioned going anywhere the previous evening. In fact, they’d half agreed that he should stay close to home while he, Cain, went to Antelope.
Hambone came scuffing in on old tottery boot heels. “Where’s the bucket?”
“Over by the washstand. There’s still a little in. You might like to wash off last night’s scut first.”
Hambone grunted. He hoofed it to the bucket, poured out what water was left, snorted in the gray basin a couple of times, loud, like an old gelding testing strange water, and then pawed over the towel. He said, “Cain, remind me to wash out my canyon before I head back to the Derby ranch tomorrow, will you? Jesse always complains about the way I smell after a long winter wolfin’.”
Cain smiled. “Well, the ice is out of the crik and it’s full of fresh mountain water. Help yourself.”
Hambone picked up the bucket. He was about to open the heavy log door, when he saw something. He said, “You say Harry is gone?”
Cain looked up from mixing batter. “Yeh. Why?”
Hambone pointed. “Look at that log you propped against the door last night when we went to bed. It’s still there.”
“Say, that’s right.”
“You sure he still ain’t in his bunk? Or under it?”
“No.” Just to make sure, though, Cain stepped into the bedroom. After a moment, he came back. “No, he’s not in there. And he didn’t climb out of the window either. Because there’s an old spiderweb over that.”
Hambone stared down at the propped-up log. “Now how do you suppose he got out?”
Cain went into the back bedroom where Timberline lay sleeping. He examined the window carefully; came back out. “Spiderweb there too.”
“Funny,” Hambone said.
Cain settled on his heels and looked at the log. Then he saw something. “Hah,” he said, “he went out through here, all right.”
“How do you figure?”
“See this scratch here above where the log ends? Harry lifted the log away, stepped through the door, reached in a hand around the corner and set the log in place, and let it slide back when he closed the door.”
“I’ll be dogged.”
“Thoughtful of him. With the country full of night riders.”
“I’ll say.”
“But I don’t like it,” Cain said.
“Neither do I,” Hambone said.
Then Hambone put on his coat and went out to get the water.
Cain went back to mixing pancake dough.
Hunt
Hunt heard the cracking of the wagon wheel on stone too. But Hunt knew what it was. Going down the head of a deep draw, one of the supply wagons whacked into a boulder, dishing both wheels on the left side. The coupling pole underneath snapped too. In the falling snow and half-dark, driver Perley Gates had failed to spot the boulder.
Hunt cursed under his breath. Perley had the dynamite and it was lucky he and all the rest hadn’t been blown to hell.
Ahead and below in the draw, Walrus held up a hand. He signaled for the men to dismount. He came strutting down the line and said low to each man, “We’ll light a fire here and have us all a good warm first.”
Hunt didn’t like it. “Can’t hang around here too long.”
“Why not?”
“I know for a fact Cain is an early riser.”
“It’s all right,” Walrus said. “We just had a message from Mitch that all is quiet.”
“How far is it yet?”
“Less than a mile.”
“Well… all right.”
Hunt and a dozen half-frozen men rustled up some dry sagebrush and got a good fire going. Luckily the wind was in the northwest and it carried the scented yellowish smoke away from Cain’s cabin. Perley and the other cooks quickly made coffee and served it piping hot in tin cups.
The boys barely had themselves two sips of coffee, when the snow quit all of a sudden. Presently the sky lightened in
the west, toward the Big Stonies, instead of the usual east, and boulders and bushes came up clearly for the first time since the raiders had left Irv Hornsby’s ranch. The warm coffee and the hot fire thawed the men out and soon they took off their yellow slickers and overcoats and tied them up behind the cantles.
Every face was grim, tight-lipped. Every face was reddened over by wind and firelight. There was no joking. All knew death might come to some that day. Ike and his Texans wore cold hard expressions. They seemed to be relieved that they were at last going to get action. Irv and Jesse and their loyal cowboys also moved about with stony faces, eyes squared and drawn with terrible gravity. Planning the invasion had been one thing; making it come to pass was another.
Hunt found himself admiring Wallace Tascott some. The major had ridden at the head of his men all the way from Hornsby’s ranch, straight up as if on parade, never once lifting a hand to wipe ice and snow from his mustache. That was one thing the army did for a man—toughened him into tolerating any kind of rough riding.
Walrus came strutting on fat legs through the men again. He had new orders to give. Four men were to help the wagon drivers hold the horses close in the draw, out of sight, while the rest were to deploy around Cain’s two buildings in the meadow. Hunt was to lead a bunch across the Shaken Grass and go around to the north behind the barn, picking up Mitch on the way. Ike and his Texans were to swing around still further to the west, and hide behind the bridge and the ditch. Irv and Jesse were to take yet a third group and go around to the south side of the buildings, creeping through sagebrush and greasewood to the top of the ridge or bench overlooking the meadow. One side, the east, was to be left unguarded, but that was open meadow, and a man running across it could be cut down by a good crossfire from the other positions.
“The orders are simple.” Walrus rocked back and forth on fat stub legs. “Place your shots well and shoot down every man that shows out of that cabin!”
The raiders nodded. They tightened cartridge belts; gave their carbines a last look; then trailed off in three groups.
Most of the snow had melted. But the going was greasy. Men had to stop every so often and clean off their boots.
Riders of Judgment Page 35
