Leaving Cheyenne

by Larry McMurtry

  But Old Man Taylor was a pretty sly old bastard himself—you couldn’t hem him up for long. He walked over and grabbed the coyote by the snout and looked at his ear.

  “By god, it is yours,” he said. “I come off without my spectacles this morning.

  “Say,” he said. “I like the looks of this coyote, Adam. How much will you take for him?”

  That even surprised Dad, only he never much let on. He got out his plug and cut himself off some tobacco; then he offered the plug to Old Man Taylor and he cut off a bigger chew than Dad’s. All the time Dad was thinking it over. I bet he thought it was funny as hell.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Cletus,” he said. “I ain’t been watching the market too close. I’d have to get about three dollars for him, I guess.”

  “By god, that’s fair,” the old man said, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t take out his pocketbook and pull three one-dollar bills out of it and hand them to Dad. Dad folded them together and stuck them in his shirt pocket. That was a dollar more than the ears would bring in bounty money.

  “Good trade,” the old man said. “Wonder if them boys would help me a minute, Adam. I might as well earmark him while I got him caught.”

  “Sure,” Dad said. “You boys get down and help Mr. Taylor mark that coyote.”

  The old man stood back and opened his pocketknife, and there wasn’t nothing for it but for us to do the dangerous work. I went up one rope and Johnny up the other, and we managed to get his snout without being bit too bad. I muzzled him with my piggin string and we threw him down and hogtied him with Johnny’s. Then the old man cropped his ear and the job was done.

  “Much obliged, boys,” he said. “Now I’ll know the bastard next time I see him.

  “Can I borrow your piggin strings and just leave him tied awhile?” he asked, real friendly. “Tame him up a little. After a while I’ll send that girl of mine and get her to lead him up to the house. She ain’t got a damn thing else to do.”

  The thought of Molly having to drag that coyote to the house made me fighting mad. But Dad was ready to go.

  “Let’s get home, boys,” he said. “We got all them calves to brand. Much obliged, Cletus. Take care of yourself. Hope he makes you a good coyote.”

  “Oh yeah,” the old man said. “He’ll do.”

  “Well, that was a damn good trade,” Dad said. “Three dollars always comes in handy.”

  “Hell, we caught him,” I said. “We ought to get a little of it.”

  We come to the gate and Dad stopped and waited for one of us to get down and open it. Johnny did.

  “Oh you think so, do you?” Dad said. “Well, I don’t. He was my coyote to begin with. All you done was rope him. If you was to rope one of my calves, that wouldn’t make it yours, would it?”

  “What made him yours?” I said. “You wasn’t serious about that earmark business, was you?”

  He just kept riding and never answered.

  “Shit-fire,” Johnny said. “I believe I’ll quit, Mr. Fry. I better go back and untie that coyote before Molly has to come drag him to the house. I don’t want her fiddling with that big bastard. He might bite her hand off.”

  “I’m with you,” I said. “Let’s turn him loose. We can get back in plenty of time to do the branding.”

  “The hell you will,” Dad said. “I just got you boys out of one scrape and I ain’t got time to get you out of another. Cletus is just waiting for one of you to come back so he can get that extra dollar out of your hide. He’d get it too, don’t think he wouldn’t.”

  “Dollar,” I said. “You made three.”

  “Yeah, but Cletus will get two back when he sells them ears to the county. Why, he ain’t gonna keep no coyotes. He just spent that money to keep from backing down.”

  Me and Johnny couldn’t hardly believe it.

  “You mean a poor man like him would spend three dollars just for that?” I said.

  “Who’s a poor man?” Dad said. “Cletus Taylor ain’t poor. He’s just tight. Just because he don’t spend money don’t mean he ain’t got any. I don’t spend much myself, and that’s one reason I got so much more than most people.”

  “Well,” Johnny said, “if I was a man and I had money, I believe I’d at least buy myself and my daughter some decent clothes to wear. I wouldn’t go around dressed disgraceful. I believe I’d spend a little of it enjoying life.”

  “Most young fools would,” Dad said. “That’s why most young fools are broke.”

  Me and Johnny shut up. There was no use arguing with Dad. And he was right about one thing. Just as we crossed the Ridge we heard the .10-gauge go KLABOOM, like a damn cannon.

  “One less coyote,” Dad said. “And that many more frying chickens I’ll get to eat next spring. I’m glad you boys have finally learned to rope.”

  six

  Old Man Taylor got his damn revenge anyhow, only he took it out on Molly instead of us. I could have killed him for it.

  Two nights after the coyote roping they were having a big harvest-time square dance over in Thalia. It was about the biggest dance or get-together they had between the Fourth of July and Christmas, and I had an agreement with Molly that me and her would go. I asked her the day we went fishing, while Johnny was still up in the Panhandle. He was mad enough to bite himself when he found out I had done asked her. He ended up having to take Mabel Peters, and it served him right.

  Anyway, I got all spruced up and was going to use Dad’s buggy. I drove over to Molly’s just about dark, and I was sure excited. I didn’t care too much about the dance, but the thought of getting to ride all that way with Molly sitting by me was something to be excited about.

  But when I got to Molly’s the house was completely dark. It surprised the devil out of me. There wasn’t no light on of no kind. For a minute I thought Johnny must have pulled some kind of a sneak and taken her off already. I didn’t know what to think. It was a still, pretty night, and not a sound to be heard. Finally I hitched the horses and walked across the yard and up on the porch. Still not a sound. I hesitated a minute before I knocked on the door—I decided her old devil of a daddy was hiding in there someplace, waiting to jump out and give me hell about the coyote. I walked around on the porch for a few minutes, hoping somebody inside the house would finally hear me and say something. Molly could have lain down to take a little nap and rest up for the dance.

  But nobody said nothing.

  “Hell-fire,” I said, finally, and went up and knocked on the door good and loud.

  “I can’t go tonight, Gid,” Molly said, and it like to scared me to death. She had been standing just inside the door all the time, but off to one side of the screen, so I couldn’t see her.

  “You’ll have to go on without me,” she said. “I ain’t feeling good.”

  “My goodness, Molly, you scared the daylights out of me. Why don’t you turn on some kind of light.”

  “I don’t want to,” she said, and her voice was trembling. “I just want to be in the dark, Gid.” And then it was real quiet, and I knew she was standing there crying, even if I couldn’t see her. Molly cried the quietest, she never made a sound at all. Then I heard her move off in the dark and bump into a table or something and run down the hall, and things were quiet agin. The only sound I could hear was the windmill creaking.

  I didn’t know what to make of it. Something was bothering her pretty bad for her not even to ask me in. One thing I knew, I wasn’t going to no dance without her. She could forget about that.

  But that didn’t solve the problem of what to do. I had to get to talk to her, and the only way to do that was to go in the damn dark house and find her. I wished I had had enough sense to ask her if her dad was there. If she was the only one home, I was all right. But I could just imagine that old man, standing in the living room with a club, waiting for me. The more I thought about it, the madder it made me. I remembered how he had cussed me and Johnny when he found us with that coyote. Finally I opened the screen door and doubled up m
y fists and clobbered on in. About three steps inside I stopped and crouched over, watching for him.

  But he didn’t come. If somebody had come in with a light, I would have looked silly as hell. Pretty soon I knew damn well he wasn’t there. Molly wouldn’t have let me walk into no bad situation without warning me. And the old man wouldn’t have waited for me to come in: he would have come out. Besides, if he had been there I would have smelled him, he was such a fragrant old bastard.

  So I went on down the hall to Molly’s room and didn’t give the old man another thought. Sure enough she was in on her bed, crying. The moonlight was coming through the window. I went over and sat down on the edge of the old creaky bed and put my hand on her arm.

  “Now, honey,” I said, “don’t lay there taking on. Turn over and tell me where you hurt and I’ll see if I can find some medicine.” It was strange, because Molly wasn’t the kind that went around being sick.

  She wouldn’t answer me, though, and for a few minutes I just had to sit there, holding her the best she would let me. She moved over under my arm and acted like she was glad to have me there, but she wouldn’t look up. She wasn’t crying loud, but she sure wasn’t happy.

  In a little while I fumbled around and found some matches and lit the lamp. The minute I had the light on I seen what it was all about. Her face and throat and the front of her dress was all wet from tears, but the trouble was, she had a black eye. It wasn’t a bad one. In fact it kind of made her look prettier or older, in a way, but you could tell she had one. I knew who done it, too.

  “Don’t you say a word against my daddy,” she said. “I know what you’re thinking. He wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t been so mean.”

  That was a lie, but I never said a word.

  “I sure am sorry about it,” I said in a minute. “But it ain’t bad, Molly. It ain’t no reason to stay in the dark all the time. By tomorrow you won’t even be able to tell it.”

  I wanted to cuss the worthless old bastard good, but that would have just messed things up.

  “I know it, Gid,” and the tears were pouring out of her eyes. I sat down and hugged her again. “But the dance is just tonight,” she said. “And you’re all dressed up and look so nice, you ought to go on. I had my dress all fixed, too. I’d been looking forward to it for I don’t know how long. Why does it have to happen at such a bad time?”

  I could see how it was a pretty big disappointment. To a girl, especially. Molly never got to go places very often. In fact, it was just very very seldom that she went any place. When you come right down to it, she didn’t like much being as cooped up as Mabel Peters, only there was so much more of Molly to coop up.

  “Now hush, sugar,” I said. “It ain’t such a great calamity. This ain’t the only dance there’ll ever be. We’ll get to go to plenty more.”

  “No we won’t,” she said. “I don’t care.” She pulled up the counterpane and wiped her face, but there was still a little puddle of tears in the hollow of her neck. She looked at me kinda mad and I got out my handkerchief and wiped her throat. She was so pretty, black eye or not.

  “I wish there never would be another one,” she said. “Then I wouldn’t have to be so disappointed. I know I won’t get to go, even if there’s a hundred dances. I guess I’m just too mean.”

  “Oh hush that up,” I said. “You ain’t mean, and you ain’t hurt, either. We can have just as much fun right here as we could have at the dance.”

  “But I don’t want to stay here. I stay here all the time, Gid. I wanted to go where there were a lot of people having fun.”

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s go. It ain’t late. That little old shadow on your eye ain’t no reason to stay home.”

  But that just made her cry more. I never knew girls had so much crying in them. Missing that dance didn’t amount to a hill-of-beans in the long run, but Molly acted like her heart was broken.

  “Now you hush,” I said. “This is a silly damn way for you to act. If you want to go, why get up and dry your face and let’s go. Hell, by the time we get there everybody will be so drunk they wouldn’t notice if you had three black eyes. And if you don’t want to go, why hush anyway, and let’s go in the living room and pop some popcorn or something. Crying all night won’t do any good.”

  Finally she did hush and just lay back against me. I held her until I was sure she had calmed down.

  “That’s better,” I said. “Have you decided yet?”

  “We’ll just have to stay here,” she said. “I don’t want to go to the dance unless I can go looking nice, and I can’t do that with this eye. Besides, my dress is all wet. But you ought to go. Just think of all the girls you could dance with.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Me and you may dance a little ourselves, before the night is over. Johnny can take care of all them other girls.”

  “He said he wouldn’t. When I told him I had already promised you, he said he intended to go to the dance drunk and not dance a single time, just to spite me.”

  “Sounds like him,” I said. “But what he says and what he does are two different things. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Not when it comes to me, they ain’t,” she said.

  “Where’s your dad tonight, anyway?”

  “He was out of whiskey and had to go to Henrietta. He may not be back for two or three days.”

  “Let’s go in the living room then,” I said.

  We did, but we never popped no popcorn. I had had a big supper anyway. We built a big fire in the fireplace; it was the only light we had. Molly started to the kitchen to get something and I caught her in my arms and swung her around a time or two and kissed her.

  “Now ain’t this dancing?” I said. “Ain’t this better’n dancing in a big crowd, anyway? If you ask me, that black eye is the nicest thing about you tonight.”

  “I wish you’d take off that stratchy necktie,” she said. “It’s about to rub a raw place on me.”

  “Boy, I will,” I said. “It was choking me anyway.” I took it off, and my wool coat too. But I never let Molly get to the kitchen.

  “Now let’s dance,” I said. “Just us two. Let’s round dance. You hum the music.”

  She put her head on my chest and hummed a little bit of some song. I hugged her against me real tight and we moved around the living room floor, in the shadows of the fire. “Let’s just imagine the music, Gid,” she said. “I can’t remember what I’m humming half the time.”

  “I ain’t got that much imagination,” I said, but we kept dancing anyway; we danced real slow. Molly’s hair had a good smell. I got to wanting to kiss more than I wanted to dance, so I stopped and made her tilt her face up and let me. We stood there so long I expected the sun would be coming up. But it was still dark and shadowy.

  “I want to make up to you for the other day,” I said. “I sure do love you.”

  She kept standing there against me with her eyes shut, and didn’t say anything, but when I kissed her agin she seemed real glad.

  “It’s okay then? If I make it up to you tonight? I’ve been worrying about it a lot.”

  “Yes, I want you to,” she said, “but let’s stand here a little while longer. Let’s not think about anything.”

  So we stood there and kissed some more and got closer and closer together and finally moved on down the hall to Molly’s room, where we had been at first. When we got there I remembered something and left her for a minute and went and latched the screen doors. I went back and she was crying.

  She grabbed me and I held her tight. “Where did you go?” she said. “You never needed to leave me and go nowhere.”

  “Just to latch the doors,” I said.

  She got fighting mad all of a sudden. I had to hold her to keep her from hitting me. “Don’t ever leave me like that agin,” she said. “I don’t care if the doors are latched or not. Next time you leave me, just keep going.” And she actually bit me, she was so mad or hurt or something. I almost shoved her down I was so surpr
ised. But I held her in the middle of the floor till she got real quiet and we were close together and kissed a long time agin. I never wanted to leave her, that’s for sure. What I couldn’t figure was, how I was going to get my boots off without stopping the kissing for a minute.

  “Let’s sit down, Molly. These new boots are killing me.”

  “Poor Gid,” she said. “Here, sit on the bed. I’ll help you take them off.”

  And in a minute she had, and I was holding her agin. Then I accidentally tore her pretty dress. I thought that would cook my goose, but it never. She put her hand on my neck and kissed me. I started to tell her I was sorry but her mouth kept stopping me. “Don’t talk no more,” she said, “don’t you say another word tonight.”

  I was the first one awake. I guess I expected Dad to be shaking my foot. But there was just Molly; she was lovely. In a minute she woke up too and yawned and saw me and giggled and snuggled over and kissed me. It was purely delicious. Only I had begun to realize that Dad’s buggy and horses were still hitched outside, and that it was past daylight and he was wondering where I was.

  “Good god,” I said. “Dad’ll skin me alive. I ought to woken up and gone home.”

  “Scardy-cat,” she said. “Let’s stay here all day. That will show them they ain’t the boss of us. I’d like to stay right here, where it’s nice and warm and just us, wouldn’t you? Can we?”

  “Oh lord, I’d like to too,” I said. “But Dad is the boss of me, I guess. I better skedaddle.”

  “Well, I wish we could stay,” she said. Then she sat up and grinned, without no covers or nothing. “But I’ll cook you some hot biscuits, anyway.” And in a minute she had kissed me and crawled over and got out of bed. She was poking around in a drawer looking for some Levis, with just her behind pointed at me.

  If it didn’t bother her, I didn’t see why it ought to bother me. I loved her and I didn’t figure I’d have too much trouble persuading her to marry me, after we’d spent the night. Only when I looked down at the bedsheets I couldn’t figure it out.