War Party (Ss) (1982) (6 page)

"Does it matter?"

Mr. Buchanan's face stiffened up. "We thinfc it does. There's some think you might be an Indian your own self."

"And if I am?" ma was amused. "Just what is it you have in mind, Mr. Buchanan?"

"We don't want no Injuns in this outfit!" Mr. White shouted.

"How does it come you can talk that language?" Mrs. White demanded. "Even Tryon Burt can't talk it."

"I figure maybe you want us to keep goin* because there's a trap up ahead!" White declared.

I never realized folks could be so mean, but there they were facing ma like they hated her, like those witch-hunters ma told me about back in Salem. It didn't seem right that ma, who they didn't like, had saved them from an Indian attack, and the fact that she talked Sioux like any Indian bothered them.

"As it happens," ma said, "I am not an Indian, athough I should not be ashamed of it if I were. They have many admirable qualities.

However, you need worry yourselves no longer, as we part company in the morning.

I have no desire to travel further with you-gentlemen."

Mr. Buchanan's face got all angry, and he started up to say something mean. Nobody was about to speak rough to ma with me standing by, so I just picked up that ol' rifle and jacked a shell into the chamber. "Mr. Buchanan, this here's my ma, and she's a lady, so you just be careful what words you use."

"Put down that rifle, you young fool!" he shouted at me.

"Mr. Buchanan, I may be little and may be a fool, but this here rifle doesn't care who pulls its trigger."

He looked like he was going to have a stroke, but he just turned sharp around and walked away, all stiff in the back.

"Ma'am," Webb said, "you've no cause to like me much, but you've shown more brains than that passel o' fools. If you'll be so kind, me and my boy would like to trail along with you."

"I like a man who speaks his mind, Mr. Webb. I would consider it an honor to have your cornpany."

Tryon Burt looked quizzically at ma. "Why, now, seems to me this is a time for a man to make up his mind, and I'd like to be included along with Webb."

"Mr. Burt," ma said, "for your own information, I grew up among Sioux children in Minnesota. They were my playmates."

Come daylight our wagon pulled off to one side, pointing northwest at the mountains, and Mr. Buchanan led off to the west. Webb followed ma's wagon, and I sat watching Mr. Buchanan's eyes get angrier as John Sampson, Neely Stuart, the two Shatter wagons and torn Croft all fell in behind us.

Tryon Burt had been talking to Mr. Buchanan, but he left off and trotted his horse over to where I sat my horse. Mr. Buchanan looked mighty sullen when he saw half his wagon train gone and with it a lot of his importance as captain.

Two days and nearly forty miles further and we topped out on a rise and paused to let the oxen take a blow. A long valley lay across our route, with mountains beyond it, and tall grass wet with rain, and a flat bench on the mountainside seen through a gray veil of a light shower falling. There was that bench, with the white trunks of aspen on the mountainside beyond it looking like ranks of slim soldiers guarding the bench against the storms.

"Ma," I said.

"All right, Bud," she said quietly, "we've come home."

And I started up the oxen and drove down into the valley where I was to become a man.

*

Get Out of Town
.

Ma said for me to ride into town and hire a man to help with the cows. More than likely she figured
I'
d hire Johnny Loftus or Ed Shifrin, but I had no liking for either of them. Johnny used to wink and call ma "that widder woman" and Ed, he worked no harder than he had to. Man I hired
I'
d never seen before.

He wasn't much to look at, first off. He was smaller than Johnny Loftus by twenty pound, and Johnny was only a mite more than half of Ed Shifrin, and this stranger was older than either. Fact is, he was pushing forty, but he had a hard, grainy look that made me figure he'd been up the creek and over the mountain.

He wouldn't weigh over a hundred and forty pounds soaking wet, which he wasn't likely to be in this country, and his face was narrow and dark with black eyes that sized you up carefullike before he spoke. He was a-settin' 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 dton'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."