by Elmer Kelton
When Vern once more asked about the fence, Mrs. Wheeler parried the question. “He’s hungry, Trudy. Put those biscuits in the oven. Let’s fry him some beef.”
Vern ate hungrily, letting the question ride while he satisfied the insistent grumbling of his stomach. But when he was finished, he pressed for an answer.
“Vern,” said Mrs. Wheeler, “you need to go and rest. Forget about it all for a while.”
Vern looked at Trudy, and she said, “Have you heard of a man named Doug Monahan?”
“The fellow who was building a fence for Gordon Finch? Yeah, I heard about him. I wasn’t in on any of it, though. I was off in a line camp.”
Trudy said, “Well, he’s the one building the fence.”
“Is he out of his head? He knows what happened the first time. It’ll happen to him again.”
Trudy shook her head. “Not to him, Vern. To us.”
Face clouding, Vern Wheeler set down his coffee. He rubbed his head, feeling the painful swelling where the pistol had struck him. “It started with me.”
Trudy said with bitter feeling, “He’s looking for a way to get even with the R Cross. He caught Dad on his weak side and talked him into letting him fence the place. He knows Captain Rinehart won’t let it go by without trying to stop it. He’s set us up like a target, and he’s got rough men hired out there, waiting for a fight. He doesn’t care what happens to us, just so he gets his chance at the captain.”
Mrs. Wheeler said sharply, “Hush, Trudy. You’re making it worse than it really is.”
“I’m not. It couldn’t be worse.”
Vern clenched his fist. “And for this Monahan I lose my job, and all the money I’ve saved for a solid year. I lose the place I aimed to buy, and I might even lose my girl. I’d like to see this Monahan. I’d like him to get a taste of what I got yesterday.”
Trudy Wheeler was looking out the window. “You won’t have to wait long. He’s riding up with Dad.”
“Trudy!” Mrs. Wheeler cried.
Vern Wheeler stood up, shoving his chair back abruptly. He moved to the window for a good look at Doug Monahan.
“No better time to do it than right now,” he said.
Mrs. Wheeler said, “Wait a minute, Vern. There’s no call for trouble, and you’re not in any condition…”
She was talking to empty space, for Vern Wheeler had gone out the door.
She turned back on Trudy, her eyes flashing anger. “Don’t you know what you’ve done? You sent him out there spoiling for a fight, and he’ll be beaten again. In his condition, that’s all that can happen. You’ve done to Vern what you’re blaming Doug Monahan for doing to us.”
Trudy flushed guiltily as her mother’s words went home to her. She moved to the door, wishing for some way to stop what she had started, and knowing there was nothing she could do.
Doug Monahan and Noah Wheeler rode up to the house together and stepped out of their saddles. The old farmer’s gaze swept to the porch and caught his son, standing there.
“Vern! Dundee said he ran into you. What’re you doing home?”
Vern’s gaze was not on his father but on Doug instead. “Ask Monahan.”
Doug stopped short, seeing fire in the young man’s eyes and at a loss to understand it.
“Because of you, Monahan,” Vern Wheeler said, “I was beaten up and robbed of my wages and thrown off of my job. You’ve put my family in line for even worse than that. But I’m going to stop you.”
He stepped down off the porch, his fists tight, his angry eyes on Doug. He towered tall above Monahan.
Noah Wheeler said, “Hold on, Vern.”
“Stay out of this, Dad.”
Monahan took a step backward. “Wait a minute, Vern. I don’t understand what this is all about, but we can work it out someway.”
He could see the swollen red streaks where the gun had struck. He could see the exhaustion in Vern Wheeler’s face. But Vern kept coming. He looped a hard swing. Monahan leaned and caught the jar of it on his shoulder.
“You wanted a fight,” Vern shouted. “Now you got one.”
“Vern, I don’t want to fight you.” The boy went on swinging. Doug put up his hands to ward off the blows. “Vern, listen to me.…”
He had to keep backing up. Vern hit him a hard blow on the side of the face and it jarred him, set his ears to ringing. He caught a right fist with his arm, then felt half the breath gust out of him as Vern’s left came in under his ribs.
“Fight!” Vern shouted. “Come on and fight!”
Doug kept his arms in close to his body, trying to anticipate where Vern would hit him. “Vern, I’m not going to fight you!”
Vern was breathing hard, exhaustion catching up with him. He kept swinging until the strength was all gone from him, until he could barely stand. His father stepped in and grabbed his arms.
“Vern, stop it!” He shook his son. “Vern, I don’t know what touched you off, but you’re wrong, dead wrong. Now go back in that house and sit down. You’ve got nothing to blame Doug Monahan for. You ought to be thankful he didn’t knock your head off. He could have.”
Breathing heavily, Vern pointed his finger at Monahan. “Another time. I’ll do it another time.”
“Come on,” Noah Wheeler said curtly, turning Vern around and leading him back toward the house. Mrs. Wheeler came down the steps and helped.
Trudy Wheeler stood on the porch, her stricken gaze following her brother first, then drifting back to Monahan.
Noah Wheeler paused at the door. “Trudy, come on in the house. I got something to say, and I want you to hear it.”
There was a bench out in the yard. Doug Monahan slumped on it, his hand over his ribs where Vern had struck him hard. He struggled to regain the breath that had been knocked out of him. A thin trickle of blood worked down from a small cut above his eye. His battered hat lay on the ground. Either he or Vern had stepped on it.
Hesitantly Trudy Wheeler came down off the porch and moved out beside Monahan. He watched her silently, pain in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said haltingly. “I’m afraid I caused this. I wanted it awhile ago, but now I’m ashamed.”
“It’s all right. I expect I know why you did it.”
“You could have hurt him bad, if you’d wanted to.”
“It looked like he’d been hurt enough already.”
“Thanks,” she said softly, “for not hurting him anymore.”
Noah Wheeler called her again. Trudy glanced once more at Monahan, then went into the house.
* * *
PAULA HADLEY TOOK it better than Vern Wheeler had hoped.
Soberly staring at his big hands, trying to keep down the lump of disappointment in his throat, he said, “I reckon we’ll have to put off getting married. I can’t buy that land till I find some way to get my money.”
They sat together on the sofa in the front room of the Hadley house. Paula took his big hand in her little one. She lifted it to her lips and kissed the bruised knuckles. Tears glistened in her brown eyes.
“I don’t care about the land, Vern. You’re all that matters.”
“I’m not going to marry you broke, Paula. When we get married, I want it to be open and proud, and your dad approving of it.”
She gripped his hand tightly. “It isn’t fair, one stubborn old man like the captain, ruining things for us this way. We’re just little people, we couldn’t hurt him. What does he want to hurt us for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Keeping your money that way—three hundred dollars can’t mean much to him.”
“Maybe that’s it. It don’t mean much to him, and he can’t realize how much it means to somebody else.”
Paula said, “Or he doesn’t care. He’s too used to running everything to suit himself. Somebody needs to show him that we don’t belong to him. Nobody belongs to him.”
Vern’s face was troubled. “Maybe that’s it. I was so mad, I didn’t realize it at first. I’ve watched th
e R Cross push other people ever since I’ve been here. None of it ever touched me but now I’ve had a dose of it myself, and I can see it for what it is.”
Understanding came into his face. “They pushed Monahan, and he’s fighting them back the only way he can. He’s about the first one that ever did.”
“What about your father, Vern? Doesn’t he realize what he’s getting into?”
Vern nodded soberly. “He sits still most of the time and don’t say much, but he sees everything. Maybe he just figured it was time folks declared their independence.”
Paula leaned her head against Vern’s broad shoulder. “That doesn’t make it any easier on us.”
“Maybe it wasn’t meant to be easy. The things that count don’t always come easy, Paula.”
“What’re you going to do, Vern?”
“Go help them, I guess. I’ll find some way to get my money back, maybe. And even if I don’t, maybe I can help whittle that bunch down to size.”
Heading down the track-ribboned dirt street for the road out of town, Vern heard a youthful voice call his name. “Vern Wheeler, hold up there!”
He pulled his horse around and spotted his old friend Rooster Preech stepping off the boardwalk in front of a saloon and striding out into the sun to meet him. A broad grin cut across Rooster’s red, freckled face. He always had looked as friendly as a collie dog. Uncut red hair bristled out over his ears and curled into a tangled mess on the back of his neck, just above the collar. A short, uneven thicket of rusty whiskers covered his face, too, some of them still soft and fine, some stiffening with the arrival of manhood.
“Don’t be in such an all-fired hurry, Vern. Come on, let’s have us a drink together.”
Vern glanced toward the saloon, his eyebrows raised. “You reckon they’d let us have it?”
“Sure, I got the barkeep thinkin’ I’m twenty-five.”
Vern doubted that. He figured the barkeep just didn’t care. He swung down from the horse and slapped Rooster on the shoulder. “With all that cover on your face, he couldn’t tell but what you was sixty. You been out in the brush lately?”
Rooster waited while Vern tied his horse, then held the door open for Vern to get in ahead of him. “I was. Cattle been keeping me busy.”
“Who you working for?”
Rooster was a moment in answering that. “Well, myself, I guess you’d say.”
“You haven’t got any cattle.”
Rooster laughed. “I stay busy.”
The bartender looked questioningly at Vern Wheeler. Self-consciously, Vern said, “I’ll take whatever Rooster does.”
“Bourbon,” said Rooster. The bartender left them a quarter-filled bottle and two glasses, and Rooster watched over his shoulder till the man was gone out of hearing. “I happened to run into Lefty Jones yesterday. He was leavin’ the country in kind of a hurry.”
Vern’s interest quickened. “I been wondering about him. He sure got away from that line camp fast. I never even saw him leave.”
“From what he told me, Archer Spann didn’t give him much choice.”
Vern frowned darkly. “That figures.”
“Lefty told me what happened to you. Pretty raw deal about your money, son.” Rooster had a habit of calling Vern “son,” even though they were the same age. It was his way of showing he’d been around more and knew more of the world and its ways.
An eagerness was in Rooster’s voice as he leaned forward. “You want to get even with ’em, don’t you?”
When Vern did not reply, Rooster said, “Sure, you do! And you’d like to git your money back while you’re at it, wouldn’t you?”
Vern looked up sharply. “What’re you driving at, Rooster?”
Rooster nodded at Vern’s glass. “Drink up.” Vern cautiously tasted it and flinched. Little as Vern knew about whisky, he could classify this in a hurry. “I like my women and my whisky cheap and plentiful,” Rooster used to say, even when he was too young to have much savvy about either one.
Vern set the glass down still nearly full. “Get to the point, Rooster.”
Rooster grinned like a fisherman seeing a fish well on the hook. “Workin’ that line camp, you oughta know that country up on the north end of the R Cross mighty well.”
“Like the back of my hand.”
“You know where the best grazin’ is and where the cattle is gen’rally at. You could find ’em in the dark, and you’d know the best way to push ’em outa there in a hurry.”
Sensing the rest of it, Vern drew back, a vague disappointment bringing pain to him. But he knew there was no reason for surprise. He’d known Rooster Preech a long time, had liked him and ridden with him. But he had always sensed that Rooster would wind up riding the back trails with a fast horse and a quick loop, worth more money in jail than out.
“Rooster, I’m not going to steal any R Cross cattle.”
“Nobody said anything about stealin’! But if you was to decide to take enough cattle to get your three hundred dollars back, I know where there’s a man who’ll take ’em off your hands and not ever worry hisself about the brand on ’em. It wouldn’t really be stealin’. It’d jest be gittin’ back what they stole from you.”
For a moment Vern was tempted. Why shouldn’t he do it? They had taken his money with no compunctions at all.
“It’s dangerous, Rooster. There’s been men got their necks stretched out real long for getting caught with R Cross cattle.”
“They got caught. We won’t. You know that country to where we’d always have a way of gittin’ out.”
Vern studied him speculatively. “Rooster, what would you be getting out of this, if we just took three hundred dollars’ worth of cattle?”
Rooster smiled and looked back over his shoulder to make sure the barkeep was still out of earshot. “Now, you wouldn’t want them to git off scot-free, would you? I thought we might jest take along a few extry head. Sort of exemplary payment, they call it in court. Enough to justify me and another feller or two I know for helpin’ you. You wouldn’t have to have them extry cattle on your conscience. As far as you’re concerned, you’d only be takin’ enough for your three hundred dollars. The rest’d be jest between me and them other fellers.”
Vern stood up, shaking his head. “Thanks for the drink, Rooster.” Most of it remained in the glass. “But I reckon not. I want to fight the R Cross, but that’s not how I figure on doing it.”
Rooster shrugged, disappointed but still smiling. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t try, son. It’s still a good offer, and any time you change your mind, jest holler.”
* * *
CHRIS HADLEY CLOSED his saloon at dusk and walked home, content to let the other places have the night business. A man with a teenage daughter couldn’t leave her alone all the time. He moved along with head down, barely nodding to the people he met on the street, for his mind was on other things.
He hung up his hat and coat and stood before the wood heater, warming in its pleasant glow. His daughter said, “Good evening, Papa. I’ll have supper ready in a little.”
Worry creasing his high forehead, Chris Hadley said, “Paula, come here and sit down. I want to talk to you.”
She came, but she didn’t sit, for she had supper cooking on the stove.
Hadley said, “Vern Wheeler was in town today. He came here, didn’t he?”
“Yes, Papa, he did.”
A grimness came to Chris Hadley’s face. “What for?”
Paula was a moment in answering. Her face tightened with decision. “I guess you know, Papa, without having to ask, but I’ll tell you. He asked me to wait for him. And I told him I would.”
Chris Hadley sat down wearily and exhaled a long breath.
He rubbed his hand over his face without looking up at Paula. “I knew we’d stayed here too long. I ought to’ve sold out and moved a year ago. Paula, I’ll not let you do it.”
“I love him, Papa. I’m going to marry him.”
Hadley said, “Paula, for
years I’ve saved so I could send you back where you belong, give you the kind of life you were born for. I’m not going to let you throw it away on Vern Wheeler or anybody like him.”
“I don’t know anything about any other kind of life, and I don’t care. I just know I love Vern Wheeler, and I’m going to marry him.”
Angered, he said, “Paula, you never gave me any trouble when you were growing up. No man could have had a better daughter. I never thought you’d ever defy me this way.”
Her lips trembled, but her brown eyes were firm. “I never thought I’d have to.”
“I’ll remind you, Paula, you’re under age! I can stop you from marrying. I’ll send you away somewhere to school until you forget this foolishness.”
She brought her hands up over her breasts and clenched a small fist over the locket her mother had left her. “It’s your right, Papa, but I’ll tell you this: I won’t forget. As soon as I’m of age, I’ll come back, and I’ll marry Vern Wheeler!”
11
Doug Monahan was worried. The barbed wire hadn’t arrived. The work had gone on without trouble. Occasionally a rider would show up on the high rise out yonder and sit awhile in the gray grass, watching. Eventually Dundee would drift his way, and the man would get back on his horse and fade out of sight.
The line of set posts was a long one now, stretching well over a mile already and waiting for the wire.
“Stub,” Monahan said, “something’s wrong. That wire ought to’ve been here a week ago. I wish you’d take a horse and ride over to Stringtown. See what’s the matter.”
Stub returned bringing the kind of report Doug had expected.
“That wire’s sittin’ over there in the depot gatherin’ dust. They won’t anybody haul it.”
Angrily Doug said, “What about that freighter, Slim Torrance? I paid him half of the freight in advance.”
Stub Bailey dug a wrinkled, sweat-stained check out of his shirt pocket. “He sent it back to you. Here.”
Doug swore under his breath while Stub explained. “Sheriff McKelvie seen you over there that day and knew there was somethin’ up. He hung around till he found out what it was, and he went to see this Torrance. Now, it seems like Torrance did something or other over here one time that wasn’t strictly according to the statutes. He never did say just what. Anyhow, the sheriff told him if he brought a spool of that wire into this county, or even had it sent, he’d yank him up by the scruff of the neck and throw him in the jailhouse over at Twin Wells.”
