He was asettin’ on the platform down to the depot with his saddle and a war bag that looked mighty empty like he was shy of clothes. He was not saying I, yes, or no to anybody when I rode up to town on that buckskin pa gave me before he was shot down in the street.
Pa let me have the pick of the horses for sale in the town corral, and I taken a fancy to a paint filly with a blaze face. “Son”-pa was hunkered down on his heels watching the horses-“that filly wouldn’t carry you over the hill. She looks mighty pert, but what a man wants to find in horses or partners is stayin’ quality. He wants a horse he can ride all day and all night that will still be with him at sunup.
“Now you take that buckskin. He’s tough and he’s got savvy. Horse or men, son, pick ‘em tough and with savvy. Don’t pay no attention to the showy kind. Pick ‘em to last. Pick ‘em to go all the way.” Well, I taken the buckskin, and pa was right.
Looking at that man setting on the edge of the platform I decided he was the man we wanted. I gave no further thought to Johnny or Ed. “Mister,” I said, “are you rustling work?”
He turned those black eyes on me and studied me right careful. I was pushing fourteen, but I’d been man of the house for nigh three years now. It didn’t seem to make no difference to him that I was a wet-eared boy. “Now I just might be. What work do you have?”
“Ma and me have a little outfit over against the foothills. We figured to roust our cattle out of the canyons and bring ‘em down to sell. There’s a month of work, maybe more. We’d pay thirty a month and found and if I do say so, ma is the best cook anywheres around.”
He looked at me out of those black, careful eyes and he asked me, “You always hire strangers?”
“No, sir. We usually hire Johnny Loftus or Ed Shifrin or one of the loafers around town, but when I saw you I figured to hire you.”
The way he looked at me was beginning to worry me some. “Why me?” he asked.
So I told him what pa said when we bought the buckskin, and for the first time he smiled. His eyes warmed and his face crinkled up and laugh wrinkles showed at the corners of his eyes where they must have been sleeping all the time.
“Your pa was a right smart man, son. I’d be proud to work for you.”
We started for the livery stable to get him a horse to ride out to the ranch, and Ed Shifrin was in front of the saloon. He noticed me and then the man who walked beside me. “torn,” Ed said, “about time your ma started the roundup. You want I should come out?”
Did me good to tell him, the way he’d loafed on the job and come it high and mighty over me. “I done hired me a man, Ed.”
Shifrin came down off the walk. “You shouldn’t have done that. The Coopers ain’t goin’ to like a stranger proddin’ around among their cows.” He turned to the man I hired. “Stranger, you just light a shuck. I’ll do the roundin’ up.”
The man I’d hired didn’t seem a mite bothered. “The boy hired me,” he said. “If he don’t want me he can fire me.”
Ed wasn’t inclined to be talked up to. “You’re a stranger hereabouts or you’d know better. There’s been range trouble and the Coopers don’t take kindly to strangers among their stock.”
“They’ll get used to it,” he said, and we walked away up the street.
About then I started worrying about what I’d done. We’d tried to avoid trouble. “The Coopers,” I told him, “they’re the biggest outfit around here. They sort of run things.”
“Who runs your place?”
“Well. Me, sort of. Ma and me. Only she leaves it to me, because she says a boy without a father has to learn to manage for himself.”
We walked on maybe twenty yards before he said anything, and then he just said, “Seems to me you’ve had uncommon smart folks, boy.”
Old Man Taylor brought out the sorrel for us. While the stranger was saddling up and I sat there enjoying the warm sunshine and the barn smells of horses and hay and leather, Old Man Taylor came to where I sat the saddle and he asked me low-voiced, “Where’d you find him?”
“Down to the depot. He was rustling work and I was looking for a man.”
Old Man Taylor was a man noted for staying out of trouble, yet he had been friendly to pa. “Boy, you’ve hired yourself a man. Now you and your ma get set for fireworks.”
What he meant I didn’t know, nor did it make any kind of sense to me. My hired man came out with the sorrel and he swung into the saddle and we went back down the street. Only he was wearing chaps now and looked more the rider, but somehow he was different from any cowhand I could remember.
We were almost to the end of the street when the sheriff came out of the saloon, followed by Ed Shifrin. He walked into the street and stopped us. “Tom”-he was abrupt like always-“your ma isn’t going to like you hiring this stranger.”
“Ma tells me to hire whom I’ve a mind to. I hired this man and I wouldn’t fire any man without he gives me cause.”
Sheriff Ben Russell was a hard old man with cold blue eyes and a brusque, unfriendly way about him, but I noticed he cottoned up to the Coopers. “Boy, this man is just out of prison. You get rid of him.”
“I’ll not hold it against him. I hired him and if he doesn’t stack up, I’ll fire him.”
My hired hand had sat real quiet up to now. “Sheriff,” he said, “you just back up and leave this boy alone. He sizes up like pretty much of a man and it begins to look like he really needs outside help. Seems to me there must be a reason folks want to keep a stranger out of the country.”
Sheriff Ben Russell was mad as I’d ever seen him. “You can get yourself right back in jail,” he said; “you’re headed for it.”
My hired man was slow to rile. He looked right back at the sheriff with those cold black eyes and he said, “Sheriff, you don’t know who I am or why I was in prison. You recognized this prison-made suit. Before you start shaping up trouble for me, you go tell Pike Cooper to come see me first.”
Nobody around our country knew a Cooper called Pike, but it was plain to see the sheriff knew who he meant and was surprised to hear him called so. He said, “Where’d you know Cooper?”
“You tell him. I figure he’ll know me.”
Seven miles out of town we forded the creek and I showed him with a sweep of the hand. “Our land begins here and runs back into the hills. Our stock has a way of getting into the canyons this time of year.”
“Seems plenty of good grass down here.”
“This here is deeded land,” I told him. “Pa, he always said the day of free range was over, so he bought homesteads from several folks who had proved up, and he filed on land himself. These are all grazing claims, but two of them have good water holes and the stock fattens up mighty well.”
When we rode into the ranch yard ma came to the door, wiping her hands on her apron. She looked at the new rider and I knew she was surprised not to see Ed or Johnny. The hired man got down from his saddle and removed his hat. Neither Johnny or Ed had ever done that.
“The boy hired me, ma’am, but if you’d rather I’d not stay I’ll ride back to town. You see, I’ve been in prison.”
Ma looked at him for a moment, but all she said was, “torn does the hiring. I feel he should have the responsibility.”
“And rightly so, ma’am.” He hesitated ever so little. “My name is Riley, ma’am.”
Ma said, “Supper’s ready. There’s a kettle of hot water for washing.”
We washed our hands in the tin basin and while he was drying his hands on the towel, Riley said, “You didn’t tell me your ma was so pretty.”
“I didn’t figure there was reason to,” I said, kind of stiff.
He took a quick look at me and then he said, “You’re right, boy. It’s.none of my business.” Then after a minute he said, “Only it surprised me.”
“She was married when she was shy of sixteen,” I said.
Supper was a quiet meal. With a stranger at table there were things we didn’t feel up to talking about, and you d
on’t ask questions of a man who has been in jail. We made some polite talk about the lack of rain, and how the water on the ranch was permanent, and when he’d finished eating he said, “Mind if I smoke?”
Reckon that was the first time in a while anybody had asked ma a question like that. Pa, he just took it for granted and other men who came around just lit up and said nothing, but the way ma acted you’d have thought it was every day. She said, “Please do.”
It sounded right nice, come to think of it.
“You been getting good returns on your cattle?”
“The calf crop has been poor the last two, three years, but Ed and Johnny said it was because there were so many lions in the mountains. You have to expect to lose some to lions.”
“Good range,” Riley said, “and plenty of water. I’d say you should make out.”
When he had gone to the bunkhouse ma started picking up the dishes. “How did you happen to hire him, torn?”
So I told her about the buckskin and what I thought when I saw this man, and she smiled. “I think you learned your lesson well, torn. I think he is a good man.” And then she added, “He may have been in prison, but he had good upbringing.”
Coming from ma there was not much more she could have said. She set great store by proper upbringing. Awhile after, I told her about the talk with Ed Shifrin and Sheriff Russell, and when I came to the part about Riley telling Russell to tell Cooper to come see him, I could see that worried her.
Cooper had some tough hands working for him and we didn’t want them around. Year after pa was killed, some of them tried to court ma, but she put a stop to that right off.
Come daylight just as I was pulling on a boot I heard an ax, and when I looked from behind the curtain I saw it was Riley at the woodpile. Right off I could see he was a hand with an ax, but what surprised me was him doing it at all, because most cowhands resent any but riding work, even digging postholes.
The way it worked out we rode away from the place an hour earlier than I’d ever been able to with Ed or Johnny, and by noon we had hazed seventy head down on the flat, but we were mighty shy of young stuff. Whatever else he was, I’d hired a hand. He was up on pa’s bay gelding and he knew how to sit a cutting horse and handle a rope.
Next three days we worked like all getout. Riley was up early and working late, and I being boss couldn’t let him best me, but working with him was like working with pa, for we shared around and helped each other and I never did see a man learn country faster than he did. Time to time he’d top out on high ground and then he’d set a spell and study the country. Sometimes he’d ask questions. Mostly, he just looked.
Third day we had built us a hatful of fire for coffee and shucked the wrappings off the lunches ma fixed. “You said your pa was killed. How’d it happen?”
“Ma and me didn’t see it. Pa had been to the Coopers’ on business and when he got back to town he picked up some dress goods for ma and a few supplies. He was tying the sack on the saddle when he had a difficulty with a stranger. The stranger shot him.”
“Was your pa wearing a gun?”
“Yes, sir. Pa always wore a gun, but not to use on no man. He carried it for varmints or to shoot the horse if he got thrown and his foot caught in the stirrup.”
“You hear that stranger’s name?”
“Yes, sir. His name was Cad Miller.”
That afternoon we ran into Ed Shifrin and Johnny Loftus. First time I’d seen them up thataway except when working for us, but they were coming down the draw just as we put out our fire. Riley heard them coming before I did, but he looked around at the mountainside like he was expecting somebody else. He looked most careful at the trees and rocks where a man might take cover.
Both of them were armed, but if Riley had a gun I had seen no sign of it. He wore that buckskin jacket that hung even with his belt, but there might have been a gun in his waistband under the jacket. But I didn’t think of guns until later.
“You still around?” Shifrin sounded like he was building trouble. “I figured you’d be run out before this.”
“I like it here.” Riley talked pleasant-like. “Pretty country, nice folks. Not as many cows as a man would expect, but they’re fat.”
“What d’ you mean by that? Not as many cows as you’d expect?”
“Maybe I should have said calves. Not as many calves as a man would expect, but by the time the roundup is over we’ll find what happened to the others.”
Shifrin looked over at Johnny. “What about the kid?”
Johnny shrugged. “To hell with the kid.” The way they talked back and forth made no sense to me, but it made sense to Riley.
“Was I you,” Riley said, “I’d be mighty sure Cooper wants it this way. With the kid, and all.”
“What d’ you mean by that?”
“Why, it just won’t work. There’s no way you can make it look right. The kid doesn’t carry a gun. You boys don’t know your business like you should.”
“Maybe you know it better?” Johnny sounded mean.
“Why, I do, at that. Did Sheriff Russell tell Pike what I said?”
“Who’s Pike?” Shifrin asked suspiciously.
“Why, Pike Cooper. That’s what they used to call him in the old days. He ever tell you how he happened to leave Pike County, Missouri? It’s quite a story.”
Something about the easy way Riley talked was bothering them. They weren’t quite so sure of themselves now. “And while you’re at it,” Riley added, “you get him to tell you why he left the Nation.”
Neither of them seemed to know what to do next. The fact that Riley seemed to know Cooper bothered them, and Johnny was uneasy. He kept looking at me, and I kept looking right back at him, and that seemed to worry him too.
“You boys tell him that. You also tell him not to send boys to do a man’s job.”
“What’s that mean?” Shifrin was sore and he shaped up like a mighty tough man. At least, he always had. Somehow when they came up against Riley they didn’t seem either so big or so tough.
“That means you ride out of here now, and you don’t stop riding until you get to Pike Cooper. You tell Pike if he wants a job done he’d better come and do it himself.”
Well, they didn’t know which way was up. They wanted to be tough and they had tried it, but it didn’t seem to faze Riley in the least. They had come expecting trouble and now neither one of them wanted to start it and take a chance on being wrong. Or maybe it was the very fact that Riley was taking it so easy. Both of them figured he must have the difference.
“He’ll do it!” Johnny replied angrily. “Cooper will want to do this himself. You’ll see.”
They rode out of there and when Riley had watched them down the slope without comment he said, “We’d best get back to the ranch, torn. It’s early, but we’d better be in when Cooper comes.”
“He won’t come. Mr. Cooper never goes anywhere unless he feels like it himself.”
“He’ll come,” Riley said, “although he may send Cad Miller first.”
When he said that name I stared right at him. “That was the name of the man who killed my father.”
“Riley, what I’ve seen today, I like. If this comes to a case in court I’d admire to be your lawyer.”
“Thank you, but I doubt if it will come to that.”
We had a quiet supper. We had come in early from the range, so Riley put in the last hour
before sundown tightening a sagging gate. He was a man liked to keep busy.
At supper Riley said to ma, “Thank you, ma’am. I am proud to work for you.” Ma blushed.
Next morning ma came to breakfast all prettied up for town. Only thing she said was, “Your father taught you to stand up for what you believe to be right, and to stand by your own people.”
There was quite a crowd in town. Word has a way of getting around and folks had a way of being on the street or in the stores when it looked like excitement, and nobody figured to finish their business until it
was over.
We left our rig with Old Man Taylor and he leaned over to whisper, “You tell that friend of yours Cad Miller’s in town.”
Ma heard it and she turned sharp around. “What does he look like, Mr. Taylor?”
Taylor hesitated, shifting his feet nervouslike, not wanting to say, or figuring why ma wanted to know. But ma wasn’t a woman you could shake off. “I asked a question, Mr. Taylor. I believe you were a friend of my husband’s.”
“Well, ma’am, I figured so. I figured to be a friend of yours, too.”
“And so you are. Now tell me.”
So he told her. It was a warm, still morning. We went down to the hotel, where I waited, and ma went out to buy some women fibrin’s like she won’t buy with a man along. All the chairs were taken in front of the hotel, so I leaned against the corner of the building next to the alley.
Moment later I heard Riley speak from behind my right shoulder. He was right around the corner of the building in the alley.
“Don’t turn around, boy. Is Cooper on the street?”
“Not yet, but Cad Miller is in town.”
“torn,” he said, “just so you’ll know. I was in prison for killing a man who’d killed my brother. Before that, I was a deputy United States marshal.” He hesitated. “I just wanted you to know.”
Nobody on the street was talking much. A rig clattered along the street and disappeared. The dust settled. A yellow hound ambled across the street headed toward shade. Ma went walking up the other side of the street and just when I was wondering what she was doing over there the Coopers turned into the upper end of the street.
The boys were riding on his flanks and the old man was driving a shining new buckboard. Cooper pulled up in front of the hotel and got down. His boys were swaggering it, like always, both of them grinning in appreciation of the fun. Cooper stepped up on the walk and took a cigar from his vest pocket and bit off the end. His hard old eyes glinted at me.
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