ReadWest

by Elmer Kelton

  “Now you're talking. What else would you do?”

  “I'd kick some shit with it—a can, a ball— something.”

  They both laughed.

  “Would you like to run?”

  “Whoa buddy—I'd be a running fool.”

  The old man laughed again, and then he grinned at the boy.

  “Hell—I'd be happy if I could just stand up straight.”

  The kid slapped his leg, laid his head down against the saddle horn and laughed.

  “That's pretty damn funny, Clayton.”

  “You given any thought to what you're going to do when you finish school?”

  The kid looked over at the old man, as though the serious turn in the conversation surprised him

  “Some. Get a job, I guess.”

  “Are you good at anything?”

  “Nothing comes to mind.”

  “What if your foot worked right?”

  “I'd cowboy for one of them big outfits up north.”

  “You have to have a good foot to do that?”

  “They don't hire cripples.”

  “I thought you said you weren't a cripple.”

  “You are what they think you are when it comes to that.”

  “You got a point there.”

  The old cowboy sat up straight and looked across at Early with a serious expression.

  “Well, one thing's sure.”

  “What's that?”

  “If I had a watch, which I don't—mine would damn sure run.”

  They laughed until the laughing ran out.

  A thin layer of clouds obscured the sun and softened the shadows, and a pair of hawks circled high on the mid-morning thermals as though nothing of the earth pertained to them. Below the hawks, except for the insignificant presence of the two horsemen and the effects of time, the land lay unchanged from the day it came to be. For all who crossed this place and trod upon its primordial plain, they left nothing to bear out their time here beyond the dust to which they returned. The hawks before these and the ones before them, down through the time when hawks first appeared, watched the passing of everything below them and nothing remained as it was for very long, except the land.

  The boy, with his head down, turned his eyes to the old man and looked at him a long time. The old man gazed off into the dark blue shadow of the distant line of mountains. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the tobacco sack and papers, and handed them to the kid.

  “Can I get you to roll me a couple extras?”

  The kid rolled two, both packed tight and rolled firm. He took special care twisting the ends. He handed the cigarettes and makings back to the old cowboy.

  “They ain't slobbered on.”

  The look on the old man's face was distant and void of expression. The kid spoke softly.

  “You ain't coming back, are you?”

  The old man turned slowly and looked at the boy, this time with an expression of some divine grace that neither comforted nor unsettled the boy.

  “Early, I done been there and back.”

  The boy chewed at the inside of his cheek as they rode without speaking. He turned to look across at the old cowboy and watched him. The old man's expression was relaxed and he rode with an easy look about him.

  The boy reached across with his hand and touched the old man's arm to get his attention.

  “It's been good to be your friend, Clayton.”

  Clayton extended his hand and the boy shook it.

  “What do you want me to do with this horse?”

  “Just look after him.”

  “I guess it's time I turned back.”

  The old man laughed.

  “What time is it?”

  The kid laughed only this time his eyes were red-rimmed.

  “Half past nine.”

  They both laughed again.

  They stopped the horses and Early stepped down from his. He slipped the canteen from his saddle horn and hooked it over that of the old man, and then he reached into his pocket, withdrew his folding knife and packed it into Clayton's saddlebag, along with the beef jerky and a cornbread muffin he carried wrapped in a cloth napkin. He stood alongside the cowboy—neither spoke. Finally, Early patted him on the leg and the old cowboy smiled and touched the horse with his spurs.

  Bobby Earl Lee stood there, tears running down his cheeks and a knot in his throat. He watched the old cowboy and his horse walk into the blue of the horizon until he could no longer see anything that looked like them. He stepped up into the saddle and sat there another half hour before he finally turned the horse's head toward town.

  ****

  He saw the lights of the town spread out in a small circle before he realized the sun had set. He stood in the barn with its bare bulb hanging from a wire and casting a soft, yellow light just as it had done a thousand years earlier when he and the old cowboy rode out of there.

  He tied the horse, removed the bridle and set the saddle and the wet blanket on the rail behind him. He walked the horse out into the gravel yard, hosed it down and watched the light reflect off the water on its back. When he turned the horse out, he locked the gate, and then went back and sat on the downturned tailgate of Clayton's Dodge pickup.

  Half a bale of grass hay, a rusty tow chain, a pile of beer bottles and a handful of old cigarette butts—an epitaph for a life lived. He looked over at the clapboard house, darker and emptier than he remembered it to be when they rode past it that morning. The boy looked at his watch and smiled.

  When he closed the door of his own house behind him, he heard his mother's voice.

  “Is that you, Early?”

  “Yes ma'am.”

  “We're just about to have supper.”

  “Be right there.”

  Early hung his hat on a peg on the hall tree and looked into the small mirror ringed by hats of various shapes. He wiped his cheeks, and then walked into the kitchen and took a seat at the table.

  “How did you and ol' Clayton do on your ride?” his father asked.

  “We did fine.”

  “Where'd you go to?”

  “Due west, out toward Las Vibras Mountain.”

  The boy tipped his head toward the west and filled his bowl with leftovers from the night before.

  “How did Clayton hold up?”

  “He did fine—he's a top hand cowboy, you know.”

  “He's been at it all his life from what I hear.”

  “He rode for Buffalo Bill.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Yessir. He rode in the Great Entrance with Sitting Bull and some others too.”

  His mother and father looked across the table at one another. His father flinched slightly to make his point.

  “That old story went around a few years ago—it was pretty much just an idea Clayton fancied. Wasn't no truth to it.”

  “Well he knew Annie Oakley and he had one of her bullets to prove it.”

  His father shook his head and his mother raised her eyebrows.

  They ate in silence and the boy's mother sensed the unsettled nature of her son's demeanor.

  “You okay, Early?”

  The boy looked up at his mother, then over at his father.

  “Clayton didn't come back with me.”

  “What do you mean?” his mother asked.

  “He kept riding.”

  “Where?”

  “Out there. He just kept going.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He said he was just going to keep going.”

  His father sat up straight and held his spoon with beans still in it.

  “He won't make it out there.”

  “I don't think he aimed to.”

  “To what?”

  “Make it.”

  His mother held her hand to her mouth.

  “Oh my Lord.”

  His father stood.

  “We'll go see the sheriff first thing in the morning and have him send someone out.”

  “He ain't t
rying to hide.”

  “Can you tell them where to go?”

  “Yessir—but Clayton isn't looking to come back.”

  ****

  Bobby Earl Lee and his father sat on the porch of their adobe-walled house and waited for word from the sheriff's office.

  Two days prior, the sheriff set off into the desert driving a four-wheel drive pickup, followed by a deputy pulling a two-horse trailer.

  They followed the course described by the boy, and the father and the son watched the rolling vortex of dust that followed the two police vehicles across that barren plain. Long after the vehicles disappeared from view, the rising coil of dust could be seen against the dark wall of the mountains.

  “They don't expect to find Clayton alive,” his father said, as he leaned against a post on the porch.

  “I don't suppose they will.”

  The boy leaned forward in his chair.

  “Do you think Clayton was crazy?”

  “Well, son—I ain't sure you could call him crazy. He was eighty-one years old and I think maybe his memory got clouded some is all.”

  The boy stood and walked over to gaze out across the desert that looked more alive to him than he ever remembered. He nodded toward the sky.

  “See them clouds?”

  His father nodded.

  “They're serious clouds—they run high in the sky and they bring good weather.”

  The father looked skyward, but he neither confirmed nor denied he knew that.

  “This ain't real good cow-country. It takes forty acres to run a pair—and that's if you got the water.”

  The boy tried to speak again, but his throat tightened up and he sat down in the same chair and bit his cheek.

  He sat there in silence, and then took a deep breath.

  “He wasn't crazy.”

  It was past dark when the sheriff stopped by the Lee house and spoke to Early's father. They found Clayton's horse, unbridled and unsaddled the sheriff told him. They searched the area but found no sign of the old man. They continued the search the next day, but gave up when they ran out of daylight without finding any sign of the old cowboy.

  They would wait thirty days and then file an assumed death report, the sheriff told the father. They shook hands and the sheriff turned to leave. Halfway down the steps, he turned back and told him he was sorry.

  In the morning, the boy's father told him the sheriff had stopped by. When he told Early they found Clayton's unsaddled horse, the boy's eyes welled up with tears but he did not cry.

  “He couldn't get back up on him,” the boy said.

  There was no more talk of Clayton until the day the preacher stopped by and told them they scheduled a memorial service for him on the coming Friday. When Friday arrived, Early rode in the backseat of his father's Buick and stared out the side window. On one side, the modest buildings and irregular rows of houses made up the small town; on the other side the desert rolled out onto the plains, and he saw two horsemen: one young, one old, riding toward the mountain. He heard their laughter and he watched them as they rode in silence as cowboys do. He watched the dust spin up from under the feet of the horses. There was a purpose about the two riders that made them appear important because of it.

  He watched them as though he could fly beside them and them not know it. The younger one had no bad foot and the old one showed no sign of age. The horses stepped out, and they showed no sign of the heat, even though the heat itself rose from the ground and shimmered in the distance. Neither cowboy wore a watch, for they had nowhere to be but where they were, and time was of no concern to them.

  When Early turned and gazed out the other window, he saw a small group of people dressed in black and standing around a new headstone where no earth had been removed for a grave.

  He followed his mother and his father and stood behind them while they shook hands and nodded at those in attendance. He stepped around his father and, when he stood on his toes, he saw Clayton's name on the stone.

  The preacher came, dressed in a black cowboy frock coat. He carried a thick, tattered Bible in one hand and used his free hand to touch those to whom he spoke. He prayed and blessed the deceased and bid the Lord grant him a place in heaven, for the old cowboy was a good man.

  They sang The Old Rugged Cross. When they finished, a cowboy Early did not know stood near the headstone with a beat up guitar and sang The Strawberry Roan in a whiskey voice long since burned out in all the honky-tonks that were the road signs of his life.

  A few people spoke and, when the last one finished and the preacher asked if anyone else had anything to say, the boy stepped forward, stood alone before the gathered crowd and spoke up in final defense of his old friend.

  “He knew Annie Oakley,” he said, and then he stepped back and no one spoke and no one moved. The preacher asked them to bow their heads, and when they did, he prayed again. When they opened their eyes and said amen, two perfectly rolled cigarettes lay at the base of the headstone.

  Every week after that, the boy walked to the cemetery on Saturday mornings, sat near the modest headstone, and visited with the old cowboy. He touched the name, CLAYTON M. TODD, and touched the dates: JULY 2, 1873 - AUGUST 15, 1954. He smiled at the long life the man lead. Some days he would leave a flower, on others a mesquite branch or a rock from the desert. Once in a while, a passerby would see a perfectly rolled cigarette at the base of the headstone.

  He told the old man all the things he planned to do when he got his foot fixed. Then he would look at his watch and laugh.

  In the fall, just before the weather turned bad, a man in a suit knocked on the door of the house and his father answered the door.

  “Good morning sir. I'm Roland Carson. I represent the law firm of Haskins, Deloit, and Rogers. Is this the residence of Bobby Earl Lee?”

  “Yessir, it is. I'm his father.”

  “And his legal guardian, I assume?”

  “That's right.”

  “I have a few documents here for you to sign on his behalf.”

  “For what?”

  “Clayton Todd left the boy this.”

  Carson deposited a heavy burlap sack onto the peeling deck of the porch and tapped an envelope tucked into the breast pocket of his sweat-wrinkled coat.

  “I'll sign for it.”

  Carson produced a clipboard with several layers of forms and pointed in turn at the line on each where he instructed Lee to sign. With each signature, Carson moved the carbon paper to the next form and Lee signed again until the process was completed.

  “Is this going to cost me?”

  “No sir, it's just a legal requirement to settle the estate and verify that we executed as instructed. Mr. Todd's estate was modest, I assure you.”

  Lee handed the clipboard back to Carson and pointed at the burlap bag.

  “So, what's in here?”

  Carson smiled for the first time since his arrival.

  “It's a saddle.”

  Lee shook his head and smiled in return.

  “The boy don't even own a horse.”

  Carson smiled again, retrieved the envelope from his breast pocket and when he spoke he delivered his words slowly so as not to lose any of the meaning in them.

  “This saddle was a personal gift given to Mr. Todd in the year of 1890, and it includes this personal letter of authenticity signed by Wm. F. Cody.”

  The father shook his head and smiled. He shook hands with Mr. Carson and Carson reached into his front coat pocket.

  “Oh, and there is one more thing.”

  He withdrew a small velvet box and handed it to Mr. Lee.

  “I have no idea what this one is all about,” Carson said.

  Early's father opened the box slowly and smiled.

  “It's the casing from a .44-40 round,” he said.

  Bobby Lee Earl never sold the saddle. He had surgery on his ankle but never walked without a limp.

  He cowboyed most of his life in the high desert country of West Texas and visited t
he gravesite of Clayton Todd each year without fail.

  The month he received his first paycheck he paid $12 for his first good watch.

  Don Bendell’s western Strongheart accumulated seventeen five-star reviews on Amazon.com in its first year of publication. His main character, Joshua Strongheart, was also incorporated into his modern military thriller series. The author of twenty-seven books and over 2,500,000 books in print worldwide, Bendell’s writing style has often been compared to the iconic Western author Louis L’Amour. The sequel to Strongheart, Bloodfeather, will be released by Berkley in 2013. The story in this collection introduces Joshua Strongheart in another original Western adventure.

  A 1995 inductee into the International Karate and Kickboxing Hall of Fame, Bendell is a disabled Vietnam veteran and former Green Beret officer, and lives with his wife Shirley on a ranch in southern Colorado. www.donbendell.com.

  THE HANDSHAKE

  Scottie Middleton was a tow-headed youngster with freckles and an infectious smile. He had a serious set to his jaw when he looked at the imposing three story brick Fremont County sheriff’s office and jail on Macon Street one block over from Main Street. It was 1875, and Canon City, Colorado, home of the Territorial Prison, was a small bustling town enjoying the best climate in the Territory of Colorado, which would become a state in less than a year. Scottie hitched up his homespun trousers, wiped the drainage from his nose, and walked into the big imposing building. In the front he first stopped and looked again at the tall black and white half-Arabian/half-Saddlebred gelding Eagle, which was ridden and owned by the famous half-Sioux/half-white Pinkerton Agent Joshua Strongheart. When he got inside, he saw a large sheriff’s deputy with a mutton-chop mustache.

  “Well Saints preserve us!” said the deputy, “It is a leprechaun we have here. Or is it just a strappin’ young lad?”

  “I’m a boy,” said Scottie, his jaw set despite feeling intimidated in the strange surroundings.