LITMIR.BIZ

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Cochrane said. “You know a diamond hitch?”

      “Yes,” Dewey Jones said.

      “The ranch is all pack,” Cochrane said. “Ain’t been a wagon on it in fifteen years. Pay is eighty-five.”

      “That’s okay,” Dewey Jones said quickly.

      He decided that Cochrane was more man than he’d figured on first size-up. Cochrane had judged him and figured he’d do, at least on the surface, and besides Cochrane was in a tearing hurry to ship his cattle out. Cochrane said, “We got a horse you can ride back. Tomorrow morning you pick up the chuck-wagon teams and come back to town and get your bill of groceries for ninety days.” Then Cochrane gave him another, sharper stare and added, “You want anything else, smoking tobacco, clothes, you get it with the groceries and charge it to the ranch.”

      “Thanks,” Dewey Jones said.

      “All right, go meet the boys.”

      Raymond Holly was waiting down the fence. Dewey Jones followed him to the back pen and shook out his hair blanket while Raymond brought up the extra horse, an old cutting sorrel about fifteen years old who grazed along with the herd coming in. Dewey Jones slapped the old sorrel and spoke a few words, saddled up, and rode out with Raymond to join the crew.

      He met Jim Thornhill and Driver Gobet and George Spradley. They didn’t say much, just smoked and sized Dewey Jones up and reserved judgment. They stood in the depot shade while Cochrane made out the papers for shipping the thirty-one cars of cattle to the Flying A grazing land in California. Then Cochrane came around the depot and said, “Let’s pull stakes,” and led them out of Holbrook on a dirt road that ran south across the level plateau country.

      The road wound through arroyos and over level flats toward Snowflake and Show Low. They rode a bare land sprinkled with sage and chamiso, with a few stunted cedars growing in the shade of arroyo banks and along the slopes where topsoil was thicker. Cochrane took the lead, the others strung out, and Raymond Holly brought up the rear with Dewey Jones.

      Raymond hadn’t changed a bit. He was always eager for talk, he fairly begged Dewey Jones to start asking questions like any new hand was bound to. Dewey Jones let him slobber a reasonable time before he said, “Raymond, what kind of an outfit is this?”

      Raymond sighed with relief, coming unstoppered like a bottle of home brew. “Greasy sack, Dewey.”

      “They got a pretty good string of horses?”

      “Fair,” Raymond said. “But they ain’t broke out no young stuff the last two years. The horses is gettin’ run down. Boss bought thirty head from the Bar R, that’s what you’ll be aworkin’ when you get time off from cookin’.”

      Dewey Jones wondered how much time he’d have off from cooking on a pack outfit. He said, “How’s the watering places on the ranch, Raymond?”

      “Pretty good in some spots, not so good in others.”

      “They got decent corrals?” Dewey asked. “Good bronc pen?”

      “Yup.”

      “These bronc pens,” Dewey said. “They round corrals with a snubbin’ post in the middle?”

      Raymond squinted a moment in thought. “Well, they’s a good one at Cherry Creek made outa aspen poles with wire wove in between. That’s our headquarters for the long stay, and our first move.”

      “Where’s the next move?” Dewey asked.

      “Hole-In-The-Ground.”

      “Where’s that?”

      “Way to hell and gone from headquarters,” Raymond said. “We go to workin’ from there on back.”

      Dewey Jones frowned. He had to build camp on water and when he had to shoe a bronc or work around, away from the cooking, he’d have little time to haul water up from any far place. He said, “How far these corrals from water?”

      “On Cherry Creek,” Raymond said, “you’re right on water, just out of dust range. But that Hole-In-The-Ground country, well, you got to pack it about a hundred yards up the hill. Use the burros, put a ten-gallon keg on one burro, two keg’ll last the day. The wrangler’ll handle that and the wood.”

      “I know,” Dewey Jones said shortly. “What about this string of broncs. They pretty big stuff, any well-bred, or just common mountain ponies?”

      “Just common,” Raymond said. “They won’t give you much trouble, Dewey, not the way you can ride.”

      Dewey Jones accepted Raymond’s compliment and rode in silence, thinking he wasn’t much shucks as a bronc rider considering his present condition. A dollar-ten in his pockets and the clothes on his back. Then he straightened and glanced at the country and drummed up a dust-caked grin for Raymond.

      If he could stick for three months, he’d come back to town with a decent grubstake and, this time, he’d get on the train and head for Las Vegas and the big Fourth of July show. No drunk this time, he promised himself, no throwing it away. Then he remembered all the times in the past, all the drunks and the bad mornings and the washed-out feeling, and hunched over in his saddle and rode in silence through the rising dust.

      A man made himself big promises and, like the wind, they kept on blowing ever hopeful until life was gone. But there had to come a time; there must be a time in every man’s life when he corked the last bottle and took the train.

      Cochrane led them down a long grassy slope into ranch headquarters at suppertime. Dewey Jones unsaddled and turned the old cutting sorrel into the big corral and followed Raymond around the blacksmith shop to the ranch house. They washed at the wooden stand outside the kitchen door and faced the soft night wind, rolling a smoke, waiting for supper. Dewey Jones looked the home ranch over critically and liked what he saw; and just then the cowboss rode in from the south and shook hands and Dewey Jones knew that here was the real boss of the Flying A.

      Hank Marlowe was a little bitty dried up fellow with a thin leathery face, the kind of man who didn’t know buying or selling cattle, but sure knew them on the range, where to catch, how to handle, where to run. Cochrane was the storekeeper who ran up the figure columns, but Dewey Jones had more respect for the Hank Marlowes. He knew what they could do. Hank gave him an easy first look and headed inside, the cook yelled, “Come get it before I throw it away,” and Dewey Jones followed the crew into the kitchen for supper.

      He kept his mouth shut and listened, and thought over everything he’d noticed about the home ranch. The ranch house was L-shaped, built of reddish-brown sandstone mortared with adobe mud and flat-roofed with big viga pines that came, Raymond told him, from near the ranger station at the foot of the Mogollons up Hebron way. The west end was private quarters for Cochrane’s family, the kitchen occupied the middle, and the lower leg of the L facing south was the big bunk room.

      Down by the corrals Dewey had noticed the old up-and-down bellows in the blacksmith shop, with plenty of ought and double-ought shoes for the small mountain horses. The big corral had long feed troughs for cotton-seed cake. The crew brought cattle down from the hills, fed cake and gentled them to the sight of humans before making the final drive to the train. The home ranch was about two thousand acres fenced into two big pastures with fine grass, and everything was in first-class condition.

      “Comin’?” Raymond said.

      “I’ll hang around,” Dewey Jones said.

      The crew went into the bunk room and Dewey grabbed a dish towel and began helping the cook clean up. Bob Buford was about sixty-five, bald-headed and stumpy, a typical Irishman who threw his brogue around reckless and, like most cooks, started right in giving Dewey the low-down on the ranch. Buford was an old railroader who’d lost one hand on the Denver & Rio Grande long ago at Durango, and what with telling Dewey all that personal history, old Buford filled him in on the crew. It was funny how those men, ridden with and seen less than a day, had already taken certain shape in Dewey’s mind. Old Buford elaborated on each one, and

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