West of Nowhere

by Alan Lemay

  I can't explain it any better than that. But, anyway, I was able to understand it, now that Hugh Kerry was really thrown, two loops and a whop, at first sight of this girl.

  "We've got to hunt up a drink," I told him.

  "I don't know as I want a drink," Hugh said, for maybe the first time in his life.

  "You sick?"

  Hugh mumbled and cussed and tried to pass it off, and finally allowed that the average cowhand didn't live right, in his opinion. "Who do you reckon she is?" he wanted to know. "I'd give a month's pay to know that one thing."

  "Fine," I said. "You be writing out an I.O.U., while I go up and ask her."

  But, do you know, he wouldn't let me go within a hundred feet of her, let alone ask her a civil question? So, instead, I asked another feller that was standing around looking like an in3fester of this Whinrock dump.

  "Who is that girl just went in the hotel with that other girl?"

  "Don't you know who that is? Why, that's Bernice Scott!"

  I turned sad, feeling sorry for Hugh. "You're sure?"

  "Do I look dumb?"

  "I refuse to answer," I said, "for fear of starting a public disturbance." I went back to Hugh. "We'll now continue our interrupted pursuit of a drink," I told him. "That girl is not for the likes of me, let alone the likes of you. That is no more nor less than the daughter of the Interstate Land and Cattle Company. Her pa owns two million cows."

  The wind went out of Hugh Kerry. "I don't believe," he said at last, very humble, "I don't believe I could make much headway with the daughter of the Interstate."

  "That," I said, "is a masterpiece of understatement... a pure masterpiece."

  He didn't take my word for it. He went and talked with the feller I had talked to, and later two other fellers. But they told him the same.

  You wouldn't hardly believe how that boy was crumpled up. I never saw a feller so knocked out by just one sight of a girl. He wasn't any good at all the rest of the night. Finally I took him back to camp and rolled him in his bed.

  I thought he would be over it by morning. But by light of day he seemed to feel even worse than ever, with no interest in life, or even in breakfast. And Hugh, being so low in his mind, must be the reason for the next misfortune that come snaking through the brush and leaped aboard him, no later than at once.

  This morning we were still holding our Half Circle D stock about half a mile away from the shipping pens, which was still being hogged by S Bar Bar cattle. The S Bar Bar cars were already on one of the sidings, and our cars were there, too, but an hour after sunup we couldn't make out any signs that the S Bar Bar was loading, or even figuring on it, and we was held up.

  Our boss, Crazy Bob Jackson, had hunted up the S Bar Bar boss in the course of the night to see about this very thing, and Crazy Bob had come back very grouchy, and seemingly empty-handed. So now Crazy Bob rounded up four, five of us, and he told Hugh Kerry to take us over to the S Bar Bar boss and ask if there was anything we could do to help them load.

  This S Bar Bar boss was a big, lanky feller, with a big nose stuck slantwise across his face, so that his pan looked very much like the Box Z brand. He was a very crusty sort of jigger. Some way or another, he had got himself appointed a deputy under-sheriff in charge of loading chutes, or some fool thing like that, and on this account he was wearing a .45 swung on his leg. With two exceptions this was the only gun I saw in Whinrock, and it left me very unfavorably impressed with the feller, it seemed so selfwhooping and kind of whistle-headed to be wearing a gun just because he had horned in on some little political job. This dizzy jigger's name was Ike Stone.

  Hugh Kerry now rode up to this S Bar Bar boss. "Mister Stone," he said, "I wonder could we loan you the lend of these boys here, to kind of help you start to get your loading going?"

  Ike Stone-he was standing on the ground drinking a cup of coffee, though it was already half past five in the morning, and the day a quarter gone he looked Hugh Kerry over very cool and slow, and somewhat insulting. I saw that he was the victim of a hangover that was a beaut'. "Why, you young whippersnapper!" Ike Stone said. "Show me my business.. .huh? Well, you take your so-and-so outfit back to your this-and-that boss, and tell him I'll load when I please and how I please, without no help from you or any other sand apes. Now hightail it out of here, before I take you down and slap you with the flat side of your horse!"

  There was a real quiet minute, while it sure looked as if there might come a wailing and gnashing of teeth in the cow business. Then Art Stacker, a red-headed kid with a poker face, he let go a long-drawn snort of distress, and I saw that he was sure going to blow up like a balloon and bust if things didn't change pretty quick so that he could laugh out loud. So I followed his eyes to Hugh Kerry, and it pretty near killed me, too. Hugh was just sitting there dumbfounded, unable to figure out any move, and I never saw such a silly expression on human face, or cow face, either.

  After a second or two the other boys caught on, and we all sat there kind of shaking in our saddles, but keeping quiet and our faces straight. As Hugh Kerry just quietly turned his horse and rode away, looking so licked that even his pony had his tail between his legs, we was all glad to turn our horses and follow after, anxious for nothing so much as a chance to laugh out loud without letting on to Ike Stone.

  When we got out of Ike Stone's hearing-and also out of hearing Ike Stone, who was shouting remarks after Hugh intended to be funny Art Stacker began singing a little song. It was a song that Hugh Kerry had been singing just the day before, when we come slashing up to the town, with him all full of oats and high-flying ideas and interest in life.

  Art's voice cracked up, and he let go a crowd of laughter until he like to fell out of the saddle, and his pony blew up, probably with laughter, too, for all I know, and away they went across the flats, the pony bucking and Art cackling so he could hardly stick. All the rest of us followed along, whipping up our ponies side-by-side, and laughing fit to die until we was ashamed of ourselves. All except poor Hugh. He just trailed into camp about as low in his mind as a man could get and so hopeless he just didn't seem to give a hoot any more.

  I guess we got our giggles out of our system, for after a while some of the boys began to get curious about what had happened to Hugh to change him so. I had explained to one of the fellers the night before about how Hugh had fell and busted his spirits over a girl he got a look at on the street, only to find out he had fell in love with the Interstate Land & Cattle Company by mistake, and how Hugh had spent the rest of the night trying to sing "I'm just a poor cowboy and know I done wrong." but unable to get through any of the verses without being overpowered by the sadness of the song. Maybe I shouldn't have told that about Hugh, but, anyway, this feller now explained it to the others, and, by golly, that set them off again.

  The S Bar Bar finally got started loading, but still we waited around all day, and toward night we had kind of wore out the funniness of Hugh's misfortunes and begun to lose interest.

  But now Charley Brumbaugh, the outfit's serious thinker, he hitched up his pants and tuned in. Charley was having heavy going as cook, mostly due to it being so difficult for him to reach below his knees, and all the cooking being done on the ground. He had finally got the coffee on the fire by means of puttering around with his cook stick, and he came and stood over Hugh while nature took its course.

  "The way I see it," Charley Brumbaugh said, "you got one of these double-jointed problems. You might say it divides into two sections."

  "You, too, can get divided in two sections," Hugh told him, "if you pester around me."

  "In the first place," said Charley, "you have went to work and got yourself grossly insulted by this here Ike Stone. And, in the second place, the reason you let yourself get done this way, you was low in your mind over you seen a girl. You want to know what I'd do in your case?"

  "No," said Hugh.

  "Well, then," said Charley, "since you've asked me, I'll tell you. In the first place, I'd go over there and ta
lk to this Ike Stone. `Ike,' I'd say, `I have been thinking over them remarks of yours you made this morning, and I've come to the conclusion that they was unfriendly.' Follering which," said Charley, "I'd take his gun away from him and...."

  "And shoot yourself," Art suggested.

  "And slap his face," Charley corrected him. "Now, most likely, he will pick himself up and make a pass at you."

  "That last is a shrewd guess," Art said.

  "As soon as he made a pass at me," said Charley, "I'd step in and down this bum with a straight left to the button. The day after John L.Sullivan fought in Carson City, him and me had a few words in a saloon, and he made a pass at me, and I stepped in with a straight left to the button. It laid him just as flat as the shadow of a fried egg."

  "Sullivan never was in Carson City," Art said.

  "Well, John L. and me took it for Carson City, but, of course, you smarties know best," Charley said. "Now your problem is half solved, Hugh. You have laid out Ike Stone, and that squares that part of it. You know what I'd do then?"

  Art Stacker suggested: "You'd make a pass at yourself, avoid it, then step in and lay yourself flat with a straight left to the button."

  "I reckon that's supposed to be funny," said Charley.

  "Not so funny," said Art, "as useful."

  "This girl is really the simplest part of the problem," Charley said, ignoring Art. "What's to stop you from going to town and hunting up this girl again? What's to stop you from going up and speaking to her in a nice way, and making a date with her? If you don't know how to go about it, I can tell you...."

  "Hugh hasn't got enough cattle," I said. "He's just about two million head short of even qualifying."

  "You figure," Charley asked me with pity, "that a girl related to the Interstate Land and Cattle Company is in need of any cattle?" He turned back to Hugh. "What's a couple of million cattle?" he demanded. "Practically a mere nuisance. You're both human beings, ain't you? What's to stop...?"

  "What's to stop the old man from raising hell," I put up to him, "if he gets back here and finds no eats fixed?"

  Charley went to take care of his coffee pot, which was boiling over in a state of abandoned hilarity.

  Hugh Kerry sat staring very steadily at Charley's yardwide back. Pretty soon a kind of crazy gleam came into Hugh's eye, and he began fingering over the knuckles of his left hand. "You know," he said, that crazy gleam coming out plain on the surface, "it would be a very strange thing if that old fool happened to be right. I don't know but what he is right."

  I walked away in disgust.

  When I next noticed Hugh, he was saddling his horse. I walked out and tapped him on the shoulder. "Don't ride off on the lone prairie and shoot yourself yet," I said. "Never shoot yourself on an empty stomach."

  "I got work to do," Hugh told me.

  All of a sudden a suspicion struck me. "You going to town?"

  "Maybe I am," he said. "In a little while, after I see to one other thing."

  "Great grief in the foothills!" I said. Already I saw the rest of the answer. "Can it be," I said, "that you don't realize that old Charley Brumbaugh hasn't got enough sense to tell the front end of a horse from the back end of a cow ... or, for that matter, vice versa?"

  He looked at me long and steadily with a cold, hard, yet somehow feverish glimmer in his eye. "Every man has a right to be right once in his life," he said. "Even Charley Brumbaugh."

  "You mean you're going to deliberately walk up to Ike Stone and slap his face?"

  "I take his gun away from him first," said Hugh, "according to the scheduled plan."

  "Hell in the desert!" I said. "I got to see this."

  I run for my saddle.

  Ike Stone had made some headway by fits and starts during the day, but he was still loading his S Bar Bar cattle as we rode up to the chutes. He was sitting on a fence, watching his cowboys haze his cattle around with a lot of noise of whoopings and cows bellowing and hoofs stamping around, and he was looking very black and gloomy, with the smoke of his cigarette mixing with a continual drift of dust from the work and a smell of cows perspiring.

  Hugh Kerry dropped off his horse. "Hello, Mister Stone," he said, very cool and level.

  Ike Stone turned around and looked at him without any outstanding delight. "Beat it," he said at last, and turned back to looking at the cattle.

  Ike Stone's holster had slipped down to where you could see the handle of the gun between two bars of the fence, and Hugh Kerry reached through and got it. He gave the gun a kind of flip, and sent it flying over the cattle train.

  Everybody stopped work and stood staring as Ike Stone spun on the top rail to face us.

  "Come down here," said Hugh. He grabbed Ike Stone by the ankle and snapped him down off the fence. Ike's boot heels had no sooner hit the ground than Hugh let go with a full swing and slapped Stone's face so hard that Stone's feet seemed to kind of jerk out from under him, and he went down in a kind of reclining position.

  But not for long. The boss of the S Bar Bar fairly seemed to bounce, and he come to his feet, cussing a blue streak. His face was near as red as a bay horse, except where you could see Hugh's handprint laid on like whitewash.

  What happened then was so quick that it seemed like both men struck at once. As Ike Stone rushed, he let go a long-reaching overhand left that would have downed a horse, if it had hit one, and Hugh ducked in quicker than a greased cat. There was a loud crack that was Hugh sticking out his left and Ike running into it. This time Ike Stone was on his back in the dust, with his knees sticking up crooked, and one hand waving kind of slow and futile in front of his face.

  Hugh Kerry turned to the cowboys of the S Bar Bar, who had chosen to take the part of bystanders. "Pour a bucket of water over him," Hugh ordered them, "and, when he comes to, ask him what day it is, and, if so, how does he know?"

  With that Hugh swung into his saddle and jog-trotted slowly down the line of the chutes and around the end of the train. He turned his pony toward the town.

  "Boy, boy," I said, "that left was a sweetheart! That was every bit as good as the imaginary wallop with which Charley Brumbaugh knocked out John. L.Sullivan."

  Hugh shrugged his shoulders. "We'll see how the other half of Charley's advice works out," he said.

  "Hugh," I said, "listen to me. You have taken a damn' fool piece of advice...maybe the worst and silliest advice I ever heard...and through guts and a good straight left, you have somehow made a dumb play stand up. I have no doubt that you are now the hero of the S Bar Bar cowhands, and they will make up a song about you. But let this satisfy you. Get your chin up off the saddle horn, and we'll go back and eat. What do you care if you can't have all the girls in the world?"

  "There's only one girl I ever took any notice of," Hugh said.

  This was not exactly true, but I let it pass.

  "Go on back, if you want," he said, and rode on into town.

  Naturally we did not find this girl standing in the same place. We hunted up and down the street, looking in stores and around corners. Sundown came, and faded again, and it was dusk. I was trying to tell Hugh Kerry that maybe this girl was imaginary, too, like the achievements of Charley Brumbaugh.

  Then, just as he was about to give it up, we sighted her once more, and Hugh froze in his tracks. In the dusk we couldn't see her so good as we had the day before in all that golden light. Yet, even from 'way down the street I would have recognized her out of a thousand, or ten thousand, or at the end of a hundred years. Every move she made set you with the idea that there never had been such a girl before, and never would be again, was you to look forever.

  Hugh Kerry's voice brought me out of it. "Good bye, Bill," he said. He turned and stuck out his hand, very sad and solemn, like a man who is about to get shot, or possibly hung.

  "Turn back, Hugh," I said, "before you make yourself look like a fool. You have exactly the same chance with this girl as Charley Brumbaugh has!"

  "I got to try it, Bill," he said very solem
nly. He sounded like a man I once heard use those very same words, just as he was about to jump his horse across a rock split that he must have known his pony couldn't make.

  "Well, good bye, Hugh."

  "Good bye, Bill." He leaned forward and loped his pony down the street. He run twenty yards past the girl, then turned and walked his pony back, and swung down, alongside. Hugh took off his hat and spoke to her. The girl kind of hesitated, then stopped and answered him.

  I sat waiting for Hugh to back away, looking foolish and whipped, and get back on his horse again. But somehow it seemed that there was some delay in this program. Hugh did not get back on his horse right away. It must have been three or four minutes while Hugh and the girl stood there talking, and all the time I was getting more restless, and kind of nervous, feeling that something was wrong.

  Then, dog-gone it, the strangest thing happened yet. I couldn't believe my eyes. I couldn't hear what they was saying to each other, but now I heard the girl laugh, and I saw Hugh begin to kind of grin. After a minute more, I'll be darned if the two of them didn't turn and stroll off down the street absolutely arm in arm!

  I stared after them, and so did my horse, and so did Hugh's horse. Me and the two horses, representing three nonplused ninnies, not one of us understanding any more about this thing than another. Finally I reached up and pushed my mouth shut and climbed down off my horse and went in the Elite Cafe.

  An hour later, when I come out, Hugh's horse was still there.

  Charley Brumbaugh had been bad enough with his bragging and his tall stories and his free advice before this thing happened, and now that somebody had actually carried out his advice, and not only that, but it had worked, I naturally thought there would not be any living with old Charley any more.