“I don’t know.” Nancy hesitated. “Nothing, I guess. I just thought you might feel that way. I should know you better than that. Maybe it was the way you sort of attacked John, like you resented all of us piling in on you.” She paused then to look hard at her sister. “Why do you dislike John so much?”
“I don’t know,” Millie said. “I don’t really dislike him. Like you said before, I really don’t even know the man. I just wanna be sure he’s not another one of those gunmen that have been riding through here every once in a while, I guess.”
Nancy still puzzled over her sister’s reaction to one who had been of such service to her and Frank. Then it struck her. A suspicious smile spread slowly across her face, and she said, “He is good looking, isn’t he?”
“What?” Millie sputtered. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really noticed, and I certainly don’t care whether he is or not.” She turned on her heel then and left the room, saying, “I’d best get out of here so you and Frank can get ready for bed.”
Nancy stood there smiling as she watched her leave the room, thinking that there might have been a reason for Millie’s behavior that she had not even considered. Millie might have felt a threat with their arrival, but it was not from Nancy. Maybe she was in fear of a weakness in her resolve to function in a man’s world on equal terms. Perhaps she had convinced herself that she was better off if she never allowed herself to become interested in a man, and maybe John Carson presented a challenge. If that were the case, then she might be determined to fight any attraction to the tall young man.
Chapter 9
The four ranch hands whom Carson met in the bunkhouse all seemed friendly enough. One of them, who looked to be quite a few years older than the other three and introduced himself as Mule Simpson, showed Carson which bunks were unclaimed. “Two of the fellers is out with Justin,” Mule told him, “so you won’t wanna get one of theirs, especially Pruett’s.” All of the bunks, except for those of the four men present, had straw tick mattresses rolled up, with a blanket and pillow stacked on top. Carson assumed this was the procedure followed whenever the men were away from the ranch for a while. “Pruett’s a little fussy about his things. His name’s Pruett Little, but there ain’t nothin’ little about him, so it’s best not to rile him.”
“I appreciate it,” Carson said, recognizing the subtle warning that Pruett was the one who liked to throw his weight around. There always seemed to be one. “I’ll try not to aggravate him if I can help it.”
“I don’t expect they’ll come in tonight, since they ain’t here by now,” Mule said. “They’ll make camp and come in in the mornin’ about breakfast time.”
There wasn’t much time for conversation beyond introductions, since it was almost bedtime for the men. Morning came early on the M/C, so everyone was soon ready to kill the lantern and hit the hay. Carson rolled out the straw mattress on one of the unclaimed bunks, shook the dust out of the blanket, tested the pillow for any signs of vermin life, and settled in for the night.
He was awake the next morning before sunup while the other men were still sleeping, a habit formed by his many days on cattle drives. He moved quietly out the door and walked a dozen yards or so behind the bunkhouse to empty the coffee consumed the night before, shunning the outhouse located behind the main house. When he returned to the bunkhouse, the other men were just stirring. “I swear,” Mule said, “I thought you’d hightailed it durin’ the night—decided you didn’t wanna work here after all.”
Carson shrugged in response. “I wasn’t gonna leave before breakfast, if the chuck’s as good in the mornin’ as it was last night.”
Shorty chuckled at the remark. “The chuck’s the main reason we work for Mr. Cain.” A man whose nickname was for an obvious reason, Shorty had had very little to say the night before. “So we’d best go take care of the stock so we ain’t late for breakfast.”
“Come on with me, John,” Mule said. “I’ll show you what chores have to be done before breakfast.” He stood aside when Shorty and the other two men passed out the door. “Don’t wanna get run over by the younger fellers,” he said with a chuckle. “They’re in a hurry to get to the feed room in the back of the barn. Miss Millie comes down to the barn every mornin’ to milk the cow, and sometimes she don’t take time to put her robe on over her nightgown.” He paused when he stepped outside the bunkhouse door. “As cool as the weather’s gettin’, I don’t suppose they’ll get many more mornin’s to get a look.”
“I don’t think she likes me very much,” Carson said. “Last night she looked at me like I was a weevil in the flour bin.”
Mule looked surprised. “Is that a fact? Millie’s pretty much friendly with all the men. She runs the ranch with an iron hand, but she gets along with ever’body. Ol’ Lizzie’s the one that’s got a temper on her, if you set her off. She’d be quick to come after you with one of those butcher knives of hers. But as long as you don’t aggravate her, she’s sweet as a peach.” He lowered his voice to almost a whisper, even though there was no one around to hear what he said. “She must be sweet some of the time, ’cause everybody thinks that little boy of hers looks a helluva lot like Mr. Cain. Don’t tell nobody you heard that from me. I’m just sayin’ what everybody thinks.”
It didn’t matter to Carson, one way or the other. He figured what Mathew Cain did with his cook was his and Lizzie’s business. He smiled to himself when he realized that he hadn’t even signed on yet, and already he knew Pruett was the bully and Mule was the gossip. He appreciated the fact that Mule had made an effort to make him feel welcome, however. Curious, he couldn’t help asking, “How come they call you Mule?”
“I don’t know,” Mule answered. “My name’s Merle, and somehow over the years, it got changed to Mule. No particular reason, I reckon.” Carson nodded but made no response. He would have guessed, however, that the name might have been inspired by Mule’s long face and his larger-than-normal ears.
* * *
As Mule had predicted, Justin and the two men showed up at the ranch in time for breakfast. They had found about thirty head of cattle that had bunched up in a narrow ravine near the foothills of the mountains. By the time they had driven them back with the other cattle, it had gotten too late to start back that night. Justin, as was his habit, came straight to the bunkhouse to eat with the crew. He was surprised to find a strange face at the long table at one end of the building.
“Looks like we got us a guest, boss.” It was Pruett who spoke first.
“Looks that way,” Justin replied, eyeing Carson with curiosity.
Mule spoke up then. “This here’s John Carson. Mr. Cain hired him on yesterday.”
“Is that right?” Justin said with no show of emotion as he continued to study the stranger.
Carson got up from the bench to face Mathew Cain’s elder son, who was almost an exact duplicate of his father, even to the square jaw and the thick head of hair. The main difference was the generous infusion of gray in the father’s hair, but the heavy frame and long arms were all a direct inheritance. “I wasn’t exactly hired on,” Carson said. “Your father said I could bunk here last night and talk to you this mornin’ about hirin’ on.”
Justin nodded, understanding the situation, and also aware that his father wouldn’t have told the man to stay overnight had he not been convinced that he was worth hiring.
“Tell him, if you don’t hire him, he’s gonna have to pay us for the grub,” Pruett joked, and winked at Clem Hastings, the man who had ridden in with him and Justin. He made a place for himself on the bench between Mule and Shorty. “Move over some, Shorty, and pass that platter of bacon.”
Carson was immediately reminded of Jack Varner. Pruett was about the same size. Carson hoped that was where the similarity ended.
“Let’s eat some breakfast first,” Justin said. “Then we’ll talk about it.” He sat down at the end of the bench, and all hands tur
ned their concentration to focus on the breakfast. When it was finished, Justin took a few minutes to assign his men the work he wanted done that day, and then he took Carson to the corral where he had instructed Shorty to drive in some of the horses from the remuda. “You got your rig in the tack room, I reckon?” Justin asked. Carson nodded. “Go on and get it.”
When Carson returned with his saddle and bridle, Justin told him that all of the horses now in the corral had worked cattle, so he was to rope one, saddle it, and move the rest of the horses out of the corral and drive them back with the others on the range. Recognizing it as a test, although a fairly simple one as far as he was concerned, Carson took a coil of rope hanging on a post and fashioned a loop, then paused a moment to look over the group of horses bunched at the upper end of the corral. His selection made, he walked toward them, his approach causing them to move around the corral in a circle. He took a couple of turns over his head with the rope, then threw it at a red roan. The loop landed neatly over the horse’s head and Carson drew it up tight. Using a post in the center of the corral for leverage, he pulled the roan up to a halt and calmed it down with a few strokes of his hand while he put the bridle on it. In a short amount of time, he had the horse saddled and he climbed aboard. Watching with a good measure of interest, Justin walked over and opened the gate. The horses immediately passed out of the corral, with Carson following behind. Outside, he quickly headed them off and turned them toward the herd grazing on the range, driving them easily to join the others.
It was enough to convince Justin, as well as Clem Hastings, who had paused to watch with him. It was plain that the new man had, in fact, worked as a drover before. When Carson loped comfortably back to the corral and dismounted, Justin met him with the news that he was hired. “You’re just in time for the fall roundup,” he said. “We’ll be startin’ before long. Might be a good idea for you to spend that time gettin’ to know our range. I’ll send one of the boys out with you to show you where our range runs into the Bar-T’s. Thirty dollars a month, bed and board, is that all right with you?” He didn’t wait for Carson’s answer. “Hope it is, ’cause that’s as much as I pay.”
“That’ll do fine,” Carson said. “’Preciate it. I’ll throw my other saddle in the bunkhouse with the rest of my possibles. I rode in on a bay, leadin’ a black. They’re grazin’ with your horses, but I expect I’ll bring the bay back here to the corral. The black’s a good horse, but he ain’t ever worked cattle before.”
“Fair enough,” Justin said, and offered his hand. They shook on it. “Like I said, we’re gonna be startin’ roundup in a few weeks, so we need to get some chores caught up around here before we go. There’s a pile of logs over on the other side of the smokehouse that’s gonna have to be sawed in lengths and split up for firewood. I figure that’s a good job for you and Shorty. He already knows he’s gonna be doin’ it, so go on over and work with him. Maybe you can cut that pile down some.”
“All right,” Carson said, and turned to go right away. He figured that this was another test to see if he had any objection to doing ranch chores. Chopping firewood was probably a job that was always given to a new man. He had to wonder why Shorty got stuck with the job. Justin watched him walk away for a few seconds before turning to go to the house.
“Well, look who he sent to help me,” Shorty sang out when he saw Carson come around the smokehouse. As chilly as it was, he had already shed his coat. “Ain’t you got no gloves?”
“Nope,” Carson replied. “Reckon I’ll have to do without ’em.”
“We got a heap of wood to cut up. You’re gonna wish you had ’em.”
“I do already,” Carson said matter-of-factly. “Let’s get at it.”
They lifted a log and propped it across the sawhorse, then got on either end of a crosscut saw. That’s how the morning was spent, sawing logs into lengths that would fit in the fireplace and Lizzie’s kitchen stove, staying hard at it until the noon meal was called. Shorty proved to be a talker on a par with Mule, so Carson didn’t have to say a lot, and in the process, he learned some things he had not been sure of about running free-range cattle. There were several ranches in the valley that grazed their cattle on the free range. Since there were no fences, ownership of the cows was determined by the brands they wore. The job at roundup was to separate every ranch owner’s cows from the other brands and drive them back to his home range for the winter.
When young Karl Krol sounded the angle iron announcing the arrival of the noontime meal at the bunkhouse, Carson and Shorty had no more logs to saw and a small mountain of lengths ready for splitting. “We done all right,” Shorty commented as they both pulled their shirts on, having shed them earlier. “We mighta outdone ourselves, might be more’n we can split before supper.”
“We’ll just have to hump it this afternoon,” Carson said. Feeling eyes upon him, he turned to see Millie standing at the back steps of the house watching him. As soon as he turned to see her, she spun on her heel and went in the kitchen door. That’s one strange girl, he thought.
“Well, here come the woodcutters,” Pruett announced when Carson and Shorty walked into the bunkhouse. “You boys about finished choppin’ that firewood?”
“No,” Shorty replied, “but we will come suppertime. Ain’t nobody can chop wood like me and John.”
“I’m glad we finally found out what you’re good at,” Pruett needled. “We knew it wasn’t cowpunchin’.” He laughed at his joke. “And you got you a helper, too.”
“You wait till suppertime,” Shorty fired back. “Me and John’ll show you and the rest of the boys what two good men can do when they set their mind to it. That’ll shut that big mouth of yours.”
“Don’t go gettin’ too big for your britches,” Pruett warned. Shorty knew he was in little danger of trouble from Pruett because of the great difference in size. The other men wouldn’t stand for any physical retaliation on the bigger man’s part. Knowing this as well, Pruett turned his japing upon the new man, who looked more capable of accounting for himself. “How ’bout it, John Carson? You think you can outwork anybody on the M/C?”
Carson, already focusing on his dinner, paused to consider his response. He didn’t want to get started with Pruett as he had with Jack Varner, but he didn’t want to give Pruett the idea that he could be bullied. “What I think,” he finally answered, “is that Shorty can outwork anybody on the M/C. I’m just helpin’ him do it.” Pruett didn’t know how to respond to that, but he didn’t want to let Shorty have the last word, so he forced a chuckle and said, “I’ll bet you two don’t get halfway through that woodpile before supper.”
Unwilling to back down, Shorty responded, “How much?”
Pruett didn’t expect to be taken up on the bet, and he hesitated for a few moments before replying, “Why, I’d bet you two dollars you don’t split half of that wood.”
Caught up in his pride, Shorty was not willing to back down. “I’ll bet you five dollars me and John cut up the whole damn pile.”
Now Pruett was interested for sure. “By suppertime?” he stressed.
“By suppertime,” Shorty responded confidently.
“You got a bet,” Pruett said, and looked around at the others present. “You heard that didn’t you, boys? The whole damn pile by suppertime.”
Returning to the woodpile after dinner, Carson commented to his work partner, “Looks to me like we’re gonna have to work like hell if we’re gonna split all this wood by suppertime.”
“Yeah,” Shorty replied somewhat contritely. “Sometimes my mouth is bigger than Pruett’s. I reckon we’ll get done what we can, and I’ll have to hear him bray like a donkey about it.”
Carson picked up an ax, tested the weight, and said, “Why don’t we split every damn piece of this wood, and you can bray like a donkey?”
Shorty grinned. “Now, that’d be somethin’, wouldn’t it? Shut his big mouth then.”
So they waded into the huge mountain of sawed lengths, both men with axes swinging at a steady pace, with no pauses between lengths, with no sound other than that of a soft grunt as the ax came down on the round section of tree trunk, followed by the splitting sound of the wood. A stack of stove-ready firewood soon began to pile up between the two men, who now seemed to be caught up in the accomplishment of their goal. Very few words passed between them, only a determined smile now and then as the pile grew to waist high. Before long, they could no longer see each other when the pile became higher than Shorty’s head, but the steady blow of ax blade against wood never stopped until a sharp crack signaled a broken ax handle. “I’ll be right back!” Shorty exclaimed, and ran to the barn to get another ax, knowing that would be quicker than taking the time to put a new handle in the one he had just busted. “I’ll fix that handle later,” he announced when he returned to the woodpile.
Sheer determination kept the two men at it throughout the afternoon, and as the pile of lengths waiting to be split steadily diminished, their will seemed to gain strength. By this time, most of the others in the house and around the barn were aware of the attempt to claim the woodcutting title of the M/C. The contest drew spectators to stop and gawk from time to time, most of them calling out encouragement. The two participants seemed to pay them no mind. They just kept chopping.
“He sure knows how to swing that ax, doesn’t he?” Lucas said.
Millie jumped, startled when he came up behind her as she was standing looking out the kitchen door. Recovering quickly, she responded, “Huh, anybody can chop wood. Men,” she scoffed, “have to make a game out of everything, even chores.” She spun on her heel and left him standing there.
When Lizzie called Lucas from the kitchen door to come carry supper down to the bunkhouse, he reluctantly left to do her bidding, for the two woodcutters were down to only a few lengths left to split. For the two men, it only caused them to work harder, for Shorty’s boast had been that they would finish it all by suppertime. Lucas seemed to sense the significance of that. Whether or not this was the reason he tarried a little on delivering the food to the bunkhouse, no one could say. They were down to one length by the time Lucas set the pots on the table and signaled the men. Carson and Shorty both attacked the last one with a triumphant vengeance. They threw their axes aside then and shook hands, both men drenched with sweat. Shorty looked down at the blood on his hand after they shook, and knew the price Carson had paid to back him up.
Way of the Gun (9781101597804) Page 15
