After someone removed the rag from Gigglehorn’s mouth and he could finally speak, he insisted they drill on the very spot where he had fallen. When they did, they hit water twenty feet down, and Ned Gigglehorn started a new career as a Paranormal Douser. That’s why Calvina Stumplehorst was compelled to put up with his big mouth—no matter how rude or insulting he was.
“Mrs. Stumplehorst thinks that Ned, even if he doesn’t believe it himself, has been touched by the very hand of God. That’s why he can do or say anything he likes.” Doc Solitcz relit his pipe. “Out here, water’s more important than principles.”
Suddenly, the door shuddered with the weight of a body slammed against it.
“That will be Mr. Gigglehorn. Clear a path for him. He was speaking tonight at the Grange Hall.”
The latch on the door was fumbled with then Gigglehorn stumbled in and fell to his knees. Slowly, he rose back up to his feet and propelled himself on booze fumes across the room to his bed—where he collapsed face down.
“How many showed up, Ned?”
“Two. But two’s better than nothing. Who’s that other person in the room?” he said, face planted deep into his pillow.
“The kid who killed the foster fathers. He’s staying with us.”
“Okay,” he said and then passed out.
b
The outfit saddled up at daybreak. A storm had moved in from the LaSalles putting a few inches of snow on the ground over night. It would burn off by ten, but Stumplehorst wanted to check on the calves, anyway. Buster and his colleagues were told to grab a sinker and a cup of coffee and hit the trail. For a few hours, the boys had searched every nook and cranny looking for strays that had gotten separated from their mothers. Not finding any slowly enervated them. Buster found Jared Yankapeed and a half-dozen hands having a smoke on a south-facing draw while they warmed themselves in the morning sun.
“Any a you fellers been down to the river?”
“No need. All present and ’counted for,” said Jared Yankapeed.
“I’m pretty shor ah sawr a mom and her calf come down there from the ridge.”
“Well, why don’t you jes head on down there? ‘In-vestergate the sichee-ashun.’”
Some of the cowboys laughed when he said that. Evidently, his move out of the bunkhouse had not enhanced his popularity. But no matter, Buster was actually working as a cowboy; his horse liked him and the air smelled like grass. As he worked his way down the draw, he came upon two sets of tracks in the mud and dismounted. Poking his finger at them to see how fresh they were, he noticed a lone buttercup, trying to work its way through the ground, had been trampled. Thinking this might be a nice present for Destiny, if he ever gathered the courage to talk to her again, he gently lifted the buttercup from the mud, cleaned it and placed it in his wallet.
Buster continued following the tracks. No more than one hundred yards down the trail, he encountered a lone calf bellowing for his mother. He leaned over and saw another set of tracks continuing on to the river. He rode on, the calf following willingly. The closer he came to the river, the muddier the lowland became. Now he could hear the bellowing of the mama cow and he urged Stinker in that direction. As he came around the bend, he could see the longhorn mother cow half-submerged, lying on her side in a muddy slough.
“Don’t you fret, ma’am. Ah’ll get you outta there in two shakes.”
“Fergit her fat ass, get me out of here!”
Now that was something. The voice sounded exactly like Mr. Stumplehorst’s. Buster twisted around in his saddle to look for him.
“I’m down here!”
And there he was, indeed. Skylar Stumplehorst was trapped beneath the cow, his head barely visible above the water line.
“Hey, Mr. Stumplehorst…what’re you doin’ down there?” Buster kind of guffawed at the absurdity of it all, not realizing how this was aggravating the old man.
“What do you think I’m doing, ya da…?” The “damn idiot” part was garbled as the cow moved and Stumplehorst was momentarily pulled under the water. He fought his way back up and gasped for air.
“What was that, Mr. Stumplehorst?” Stumplehorst was going to repeat what he had said, but thought better of it. Was this how Carlito Dominguez, Gil Svendergard, and Bob Boyle saw their last moments on earth—the kid getting them all alone, with no one around as a witness?
“I said, I was trying to get this cow outta here and then she plumb fell over on me.”
“Ah can see that now,” Buster said, leaning forward in his saddle. Buster gestured a thumb in the direction of the calf.
“Found her calf up yonder.”
“Oh did ya?”
“Yep. Where’s yor horse?”
“She run off.”
“Well, ah s’pect she’ll turn up at feedin’ time.”
“S’pose so.” I’m dead, Stumplehorst thought to himself. “So, uh…how you likin’ yor new bed?” he said, trying to present himself as a caring human being that didn’t deserve to die so young.
“Oh, ah’m likin’ it real fahn. Those two gennelmen’re a coupla characters, ah’ll tell you that!”
“That they are. That they are.” There was a long pause. Then Stumplehorst couldn’t wait any longer. The black water was rising up his nostrils as he and the cow sunk lower into the mud. “Say, son…I was jes wonderin’…” he asked, choking.
“Yes, sir?”
“Could you be so obliged as to throw me a loop?”
“Why, Mr. Stumplehorst…if you needed hep, why dint ya jes say so? Watch this!” Buster proceeded to take his lariat and spin a small loop on one side of his horse, roll it over his shoulders to the other side. “Whatcha thinka that?”
“Em-pressive,” Stumplehorst burbled, the water now up to his eyeballs.
“Shucks, that was nuthin’.”
Buster widened his loop and spun it over his head until he and Stinker were completely under it, then stood up on the saddle and jumped, skipping the rope beneath his boots—once, twice, three times and then once on one foot. When he checked for Stumplehorst’s approval, he was chagrined to find the old man had completely disappeared under the water, missing the big finale! Deflated at having lost his audience, Buster tossed a ham and eggs loop over the cow’s horns and sat back down in the saddle. He tied off the lariat and chirked for Stinker to back up.
Stumplehorst weakly held onto the cow’s head as it was released from the mud’s suction. He was on all fours, coughing up bog water. Buster jumped from his horse, slung him over his shoulder then placed him in the saddle.
“Where’re those other coffee boilers?” Stumplehorst croaked.
“They paddled back to lunch,” Buster said, climbing on the back of the horse.
“Oh they did, did they?”
Buster giddy-yapped and Stinker, not thrilled with the extra freight, gave a world-weary moan and began trudging up to the three-mile ridge that splintered in four sections like the food dividers on a camp plate. On the bottom left of the plate was the Puster’s ranch, then the Stumplehorst’s in the middle, and Jimmy Bayles Morgan’s pony outfit on the right, at the top of the plate the pockmarked Gil Svendergard property. Buster slowed to read a sign posted at the Puster gate. It was a notification that the ranch had been taken over by the First National Bank of Vanadium.“What’s this mean?”
“Ol’ man Puster gone and went belly up…” Stumplehorst said.
“Huh?”
“Threw his cards in.”
“That’s too bad, ain’t it?”
“Well, he weren’t much of a bidnis man, truth be tole.”
“Why don’t the folks ’round here give him the money so he can keep the place?” Stumplehorst turned around in the saddle and just looked at him.
“That’s a good one.”
They rode on. Buster was thinking.
“Think the bank would let a feller like me take it on?”
“And there’d be unicorns…and dear old pappy’d rise from the grave and we’d all go fishin’. No, son, that there would be highly unlikely. A little thang called eco-nomics comes into play. Know what that is?”
“No, sir. What issit?”
Stumplehorst went to answer, but realized when it came right down to it, he didn’t know what economics was, either.
“All I can tell ya is this. You could study it yor whole damn life and still not unnerstan it.” He could see the perplexed expression on Buster’s face. “Look, son, I ain’t tryin’ to be an asshole. But the way thangs er set up, a hard workin’ cowboy like you’s never next in the chute for a place like this. Never. Ever. That’s jes the God’s honest truth.”
Buster nodded, but didn’t believe it. He just figured Mr. Stumplehorst was still rattled from almost being drowned by the cow.
“Mind if I ask you a somethin’, since we’re still chewin’ on this eco-nomics issue?”
“Sure, Pop.”
“That Svendergard woman. How much she git for that old place of hers after you…uh, after her old man, uh…how much did she get per acre from that golf course feller?”
“She tole me not to tell nobody.”
“Well, I’m your Pops. You can tell your Pops anythin’.”
“But she was my mama.”
“Well, she ain’t your mama no more, son. She run off to a nudie camp.”
Buster was still reticent.
“Haven’t you ever played poker? Kings beat Queens.” Buster considered the wisdom of that. He had a point.
“Four thousand an acre.”
“Four thousand an acre! Holy Christ Almighty! Four thousand an acre for the ugliest piece of land on Lame Horse Mesa?” The news made Stumplehorst wiggle his legs like a little girl. “Are you sure you didn’t hear fourteen hundred an acre?”
“Ah heard what ah heard, Pops. Four thousand.”
“Hmm,” was all Stumplehorst said. He was quiet after that.
b
Mrs. Stumplehorst and her daughters were serving the hands lunch at the outdoor picnic table when Buster rode up with the old man. By now, Stumplehorst had recovered enough to make a grand entrance and got off the horse by himself. Bowleggedly—and with boots still filled with water—he squished his way to the table, giving every man the stink eye and causing each one of their forks to freeze in various proximities to their mouths. His wife looked at him quizzically as he sat soggily next to her. Getting a whiff of him, she grimaced and clasped a hankie over her nose and mouth.
“Gracious, Skylar, why do you smell so?”
“That there is a very good question, mother.” He paused to blow some black gunk out of his nose into a napkin and look at it disdainfully. “I SMELL, cause jes one hour ago, I had one foot in the very sulphurs of HELL!” He now pointed to Buster. “And this boy, here, who you were all quick to con-dem, goddamn SAVED me!” He waited for this pronouncement to sink in to everyone at the table.
“Whoop-dee-doodle,” his wife finally said. Undeterred, he moved on to Jared Yankapeed, seated on the other side of him. He put his face up to his, LBJ-style. “Question is…where was you, top hand?”
“I were…”
“Porch perchin’!” Stumplehorst said, finishing his sentence. “That’s where you was!” He then grabbed Yankapeed’s plate of food from under his nose and walked it to the end of the table and threw it down. Then he picked up Buster’s plate and carried it back with him. “Son, from now on, yor eatin’ next to me.”
Every eye at the table was on Buster as he made the Pomp and Circumstance March to the head of the table. Destiny, pleased as she was with Buster’s coup, was smart enough to indicate nothing to her mother and sisters. She watched as Buster sat down next to her father then, poker-faced, served the latecomers their lunch. Buster smiled up at her, smiled at her father. Could it be that in two short days Buster had climbed out of the slough of questionable provenance to be accepted as suitable company for their daughter? Mrs. Stumplehorst, who was watching Buster’s moment in the sun, redirected her attention to Destiny—the mother’s kestrel’s eye detecting a damning blush on her suprasternal notch.
“Keep him away from our daughter,” she hissed to her oblivious husband.
Stumplehorst harrumphed. He was alive and not about to let his wife ruin the triumph of his resurrection.
“Take a powder,” he said. Then turning to Buster, the new apple of his eye, “How’s the beef, son?”
“Top shelf,” Buster said, but it was the heap of mashed potatoes that he found more interesting. Beneath, was a folded piece of notebook paper. He was careful to slip the note into his hand without the old lady seeing him read it under the table. It said, Get them to take you to the Puster Auction.
CHAPTER SIX
Ground Zero: The Puster Auction
Plummeting meat prices and the payments on a $145,000 tractor he needed like another solar keratosis dealt old man Puster the last bad card on a cattle ranch that had been in his family since 1876. There was a great deal of faux solemnity as everyone from Lame Horse Mesa pawed through the Pusters’ possessions. The stock would be sold at below-market prices. The Stumplehorsts had assigned Doc and Ned to look over the Puster quarter horses and cattle, while Skylar and Calvina, the Morgan Stanley of ranch foreclosure, had already anchored down front row seats for the land auction. Skylar was betting that the secret price paid for the Svendergard Cement Company had not yet reached the ears of Vanadium’s Main Street. Sure, there might be some ass-scratching neighbors taking a lowball swing at the place, but no one had the resources of the Stumplehorsts. If what Buster had told her husband about the Svendergard property was true, a bid of six hundred and forty thousand could net them five million next year when they flipped it. Calvina was so excited she forgot herself and held her husband’s hand.
Buster parted company with Ned and Doc when they went into the barn for the livestock auction. He was on his own mission to find Destiny. He caught a glimpse of her in front of the Puster’s house with her sisters looking over the household items. Laid out on several tables were all the pots and pans, cheap crystal glasses for special occasions, used clothes and silly romance novels. Buster could see Mrs. Puster sitting in the window of the house. He smiled and waved to her, but she was too sad to wave back. Buster took a deep breath and approached the girls. Trying to be amusing, he picked up what looked to be a hot water bottle that had a hose attached to the end of it, put the business end of it in his mouth and the bag under his arm and started prancing around in front of Destiny, pretending to play the bagpipes.
“Oh, you take the high road and ah’ll take the low road…Areee! Areee!”
Destiny looked at him aghast then doubled over, laughing herself sick. At the end of the table, Jimmy Bayles Morgan, under a wide brimmed Mexican-style cowboy hat, regarded him sour-faced, as he sorted through a bargain bin of household odds and ends, toying with an electronic garage door opener.
“Know what that thing is ya got there?”
“No,” Buster admitted.
“That there is a doose bag. The part you got in your mouth goes up a woman’s dingus.” Buster nodded with the new information and let the nozzle fall limply from his mouth.
“A young man makin’ an ass of hisself over a flirty little girl…cain’t say ah much abide a that,” Morgan said. The auctioneer’s microphone squawked to life. Jimmy Bayles ambled off to the land auction. Whoever bought this property was going to be important to him—he would have to get permission to take his pony rides across their property from his to the Bureau of Land Management.
The Cowboy Auctioneer was a familiar attraction at all these events. His tuxedo jacket and his black Stetson lent a little class to an event that was not much higher on the social ladder than vultures tearing apart a dead cow.
“All right, folks, we got a six-hunnert and forty acre ranch with a main house and four outbuildins’ opening at five-hunnert an acre—do I hear five-hunnert? Five-hunnert, I’ve got five-hunnert, do we have six, give me six, do I hear six, six-fifty, seven. I’ve got seven-hunnert do I hear seven-fifty, seven-fifty, seven-fifty, eight. I’ve got seven-fifty, do I hear eight with four outbuildin’s, do I hear eight-fifty?”
Skylar and Calvina Stumplehorst had agreed to hold back until some of the steam had left the bidding. Now was the moment. Skylar raised a finger slightly.
“I’ve got eight-fifty, eight-fifty, do I hear nine?”
None of the ranchers would go nine. As far as they were concerned, it was already over-priced.
“Nine,” someone said from the back.
Everyone, including Skylar and Calvina, turned in their folding chairs to see. It was a little man in a gray suit and cordovan wing tips—the little holes of which were already filled with cow shit. No one had ever seen him before.
“I’ve got nine, do I hear nine-fifty, nine, do I hear nine-fifty?”
Skylar raised a laconic finger.
“I’ve got nine-fifty, do I have a thousand?”
The person in the back answered silently this time.
The bidding went back and forth—for what seemed like hours—but only took minutes. Twelve hundred fifty. Thirteen hundred. Skylar thought he’d shaken the man off with a bid of fifteen hundred, but the gray suit’s response was “two thousand.” Skylar wanted to go higher, but Calvina gripped his finger and held it down in her lap. Now the real estate agents, representing clients on cell phones, wondered whether the man in the gray suit knew something that they didn’t know. Coldwell Banker bid twenty-five hundred an acre. Re-Max upped it to three thousand. Sotheby’s kicked it up to four thousand. This group batted it back and forth in rapid succession: four thousand five hundred, an acre, five, six, seven… They stopped to catch their breath as if to say seven thousand an acre—what are we thinking? Then the little man in the gray suit raised his hand and said, “Seven-five hundred.”
Improbable Fortunes Page 10
