The Busted Thumb Horse Ranch (4 page)

“Thass a threat?” Arm asked.

“You bet it is. An’ it’s a bet you boys can’t win.”

“Boolshit,” Arm commented.

“We don’t take to threats real well,” I said.

Turner’s entire demeanor changed from friendly
cowhand to dangerous enemy. “Doesn’t seem to
me either of you is real smart, then. You cause us
any grief an’ you’ll regret it real quick.”

Tiny walked in a few moments after Turner left.
The blacksmith nodded at and greeted most of the
men in the bar and pulled up a chair at our table.
“Damn,” he said, “after a day wrestling with
horses, a man gets a strong thirst.”

Arm waved his arm over the just-replenished
mugs on the table like a magician drawing attention
to a feat he’s just performed.

Tiny drank mugs of beer like other men down
shots of whiskey: he picked up the mug, brought it
to his mouth, tilted his head back, and swallowed
the beverage all in one smooth, well-practiced
move. He performed this four times and then
waved to the tender for more beer. “Ahhhhh,” he
sighed happily. “If that don’t go down nice, I sure
don’t know what does.”

“Our horses check out good?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah. There were some minor quarter
cracks on the Appy, but I took care of them. The
packer’s okay, ’cept for his age. He’s probably older
than God. It looks like he still has some years left
in him, though.”

Tiny told us what he knew about the place I’d
inherited. “Ol’ Ven Gelpwell ’cropped out most of
the land, which ain’t a bad idea. You’ll need to do
some
fencing. But hell, the barn an’ house are
good. I’d say you boys lucked into a real sweet
spread.”

He downed another beer. “Say—a ranch gotta
have a name. Wadda ya gonna call yours?”

I scratched my head. “I haven’t given it any
thought,” I said. “But you’re right.” I was quiet for
a moment. “How about ‘Hulberton Fine Working
Horses’?”

Armando laughed. “Ees stupid. Me, I like,
‘SantaMaria Best Horses.’ ”

“That’s awful, Arm. Why do we need to advertise
your family name? An’ the ‘Best’ isn’t right,
either.”

“Bullshit. I theenk…”

I waved Arm’s next idea away and spoke directly
to Tiny. “Did Ven Gelpwell have a root cellar
or a place to hang beef? I’m gonna fetch in a
head of those free-rangers soon’s I can—I favor
beef almost as well as I do beer.”

“Yeah—he had a little dugout where he stored
apples an’ potatoes an’ salted-down ham. I ain’t
seen it in a while, but I’d guess it’s still there. But
lemme ask you this: why not take one of them
wild pigs ’stead of a beef? You’re gonna lose lots
of good meat no matter how careful you are with
cattle, but a pig, why hell—you can use everything
but the squeal. Beef’s cheaper’n penny
candy in town. I’d get me a pig, I was you.”

Arm and I looked at each other. “Makes sense,”
I said. Arm nodded. “I put a loop over one of
these
porgos
soon as I can. There are many
’round?”

“Yeah. They’re tricky little bastards, so watch
yourself.
A big stud or even a sow will charge a
horse, knock him right off his feet. Sonsabitches
are wild but they make pretty good eatin’. Leave
the big tuskers alone. They’re godawful crazy.
Shoot any I see, is what I’d do.”

“There ees a stream, no?”

“A damn fine one—a year-’rounder. Rarer than
teats on a boot ’round here. Gets awful low this
time of year, but she keeps on runnin’.”

We drank for another hour or so. Arm and I
had the staggers a tad, but Tiny didn’t show any
effects of the beer.

“I think it’s time me an’ Arm got us a meal an’
a bed,” I said.

“Might not be a bad idea for me to head home,
too. The ol’ lady will start in on me if I stay out
too long.”

The three of us stood and started toward the
bat wings.

“Boys,” the tender called. “You got change
comin’—a good bit of it.”

“Call it a tip an’ put it in your pocket,” I said.
“We’ll be seein’ you again.”

Tiny headed back to the stables and Arm and
I weaved our way to the hotel, took a couple of
rooms, and went into the six-table restaurant. We
both ordered steaks from a cadaverous waiter
who probably hadn’t smiled during this century.
We also ordered more beer.

Tiny had said the plates were big, and he wasn’t
exaggerating. They looked the size of wagon
wheels and still the steaks were too big for the
plates and hung off the edges. The meat was a tad
tough, but the flavor was great. Neither of us left
a
scrap of meat on our plates, and had scraped
clean the big bowl of mashed potatoes the waiter
had brought without being asked.

Arm leaned back in his chair and belched. “I’m
ready to meet my bed,” he said, and yawned.

“Me, too. Let’s do it.”

The rooms weren’t a whole lot bigger than closets,
but the beds had real mattresses rather than
shucks and sawdust. I fell onto mine bed fully
dressed except for my hat, and I assume Arm did
the same with his. I was asleep immediately.

Well before dawn a goddamn rooster right below
my window started his racket. I heard a gunshot
from the adjacent room. Blessed silence
returned and I went back to sleep.

It must have been near seven thirty or eight
o’clock when we met up down in the restaurant. I
don’t think I’d slept that long since I was in a
cradle. Both our hangovers were mild and we
were both hungry as bears coming out of hibernation.
The cadaver hustled over and I ordered
six eggs, steaks like we had the night before, and
hash-brown potatoes. At first, the ol’ fellow
thought we were going to split that plate. I made
certain he realized we individually wanted what
I’d ordered.

We chowed down and drank a pot of coffee.

When the waiter brought the bill, I noticed he’d
added on fifty-five cents for the rooster Armando
gunned. We paid up for the grub, the rooms, and
left a good tip.

The day promised to be another that’d almost
raise blisters on a man’s skin. We walked down to
the stable. Tiny’s anvil was ringing like a bell in
spite
of the heat. We gave Tiny a fifty to open an
account for us, saddled up our horses, and packed
our old fellow. I asked Tiny where our ranch was.
“Straight east, maybe four or five miles,” he said.

The first sign that told us we were on our land
was some broken-down fencing that’d once been
a couple-acre corral. “We’re home,” I said.

“Sí,”
Arm said, “feels right, no?”

“Yeah. It feels right, pard.”

We could barely see the top of the barn because
of the lay of the land—fairly gentle rises and
slopes. We plodded along, sweltering.

“Peeg,” Arm whispered. “Over there—in the
scrub.” He loosened his throwing rope from the
latigo strip on his saddle. His black horse, dripping
sweat, perked up immediately, Arm transmitting
his excitement to the animal. I took a
tighter grip on the packer’s lead line. Arm shook
out a good loop and nudged his horse with his
spurless heels. The black took off as if he were
fired from a cannon, his hooves flinging clumps
of dried buffalo grass and dirt behind him.

The pig—a young one, maybe a hundred, a
hundred and fifty pounds—burst out of the scrub
and began covering ground in that clumsy-looking
but actually quite fast way they have of
running.

Arm was up and next to the pig in a few seconds,
swinging a loop over his head. The pig
wasn’t stupid; he cut sharply to his left, putting
Arm both behind and way the hell out of position
to throw. He caught the pig and the same thing
happened. Arm’s horse was sucking air but still
working
hard. This time, when they got close
enough to throw at, the pig cut to the right—a
move Arm and his horse were expecting. Arm’s
loop struck out like a striking snake and dropped
over the pig’s head. At that very moment, Arm’s
horse stumbled, banging a front hoof against a
rock. Arm screamed, shaking his right hand as
he snubbed the rope over his saddle horn. Somehow,
he’d gotten his thumb in a small coil of the
close end of the rope as he did so. I could hear the
thumb snap from twenty yards away.

The pig hit the end of the rope and flipped up,
crashing down on his back, squealing. “Sonommabeetch!”
Armando shouted, and made a cross-draw
with his left hand to the pistol on his right
leg and put six rounds into the pig. “
Jesús Cristo,
that hurts,” he said.

“Why the hell didn’t you just take the pig out
with the Sharps?” I asked.

“Ees bad luck. A man captures his first food on
his land. Thass the way it’s always been.” He held
his left hand out in front of him. The thumb was
already twice its normal size and the nail was
mostly gone.

“And this is good luck?” I asked.

He glared at me for a long moment, his eyes
burning like embers. “The name of theese ranch
is now an’ forever ‘The Busted Thumb Horse
Ranch.’
Sí?
”

Arguing at that point would have been stupid
and maybe dangerous. Anyway, I figured it was a
name folks wouldn’t forget. “Agreed, Armando,”
I said. “Now, let’s get a splint on that thumb an’
wrap it good. I’ll drag the pig on to the house.”

“I need the liquor first to dull the pain.”

“ ’Course you do.” I fetched an unopened quart
from the packhorse and brought it to Arm, who’d
swung down from his horse. While he sucked at
the booze I looked around for a good, straight
stick in the brush. I went back to the packhorse,
dug out my winter long johns, and tore off a
sleeve, which I then cut in strips with my boot
knife.

Arm was pale faced but ready for me.

“No other way to do this, partner,” I said.

“Do eet. The longer you talk the bigger the
goddamn thumb gets.”

Armando clamped his teeth together as I set
the splint and took a dozen or more wraps around
it with the long john fabric. Only occasionally did
a moan escape him. When I was finished he further
anesthetized himself with booze. “You done
it good, Jake,” he said. “Still hurt some, though.”

Arm climbed onto his horse. I walked out to
the end of the rope and took a wrap around my
saddle horn. We rode toward the barn and house,
the pig bouncing on and over the uneven, rocky
land. The packhorse, scared but not scared
enough to bolt, came along docilely, although his
ears were back and his eyes wide.

The house was a pretty old thing and looked to
be in decent repair. What surprised me was the
hugely fat lady on the porch, sweeping furiously,
almost enveloping herself in a cloud of grit. From
inside we could hear an off-key song bellowed
out in Spanish. There was a small two-horse farm
wagon tied to the hitching rail in the shade of the
barn.

I know a few words of Spanish:
puta, pendejo,
and the like, but that’s about it. Arm obviously
had no such problem and lit into a conversation
with the sweeper. They went back and forth
quickly, Arm grinning in spite of his thumb, the
lady answering two-or three-word questions
with long and dramatic-sounding paragraphs.

“Tiny,” Arm said to me, “sent these two fine
ladies out to clean the house for us. This
mamacita
is Blanca and the one singing inside is Teresa.
We’re supposed to pay them a buck or two.”

Blanca hefted herself down the two stairs from
the porch to the ground and followed the rope to
where it was around the pig’s neck. She said
something to Arm.

“Blanca and her pard weel butcher an’ salt the
pig for a dollar.”

“I ain’t much of a butcher,” I said. “Tell them to
do it. Let’s go inside an’ give the house a look-see.”

Teresa was the exact opposite of Blanca; she
was as thin as a stalk of green wheat. She was
flailing a feather duster around. She smiled at us
but kept her singing going.

There wasn’t a whole lot of furniture in the
living room: a horsehair-covered couch, a pair
of big, soft chairs, a small table, and three lanterns
hanging from the walls. The floor was
hardwood and it gleamed—the ladies must have
scrubbed hell out of it. There was a good-size
fireplace; a Confederate officer’s hat and a saber
were mounted above the mantelpiece.

We wandered into the kitchen. There was an
inside pump, a sink, and a bunch of cupboards. I
pulled
one open. It was filled with precisely
aligned bottles of tequila. There must have been a
dozen of them. The rest of the cupboards were
empty except for mouse shit and spiderwebs.

Arm grabbed a bottle, pulled the cork with his
teeth, and drank. “Mediceen,” he said after a moment.
“Good for thumbs.”

There were two bedrooms upstairs and a small
room that could have been an office or even a
kid’s room, although nobody had mentioned if
Ven Gelpwell had been married or had a child
with him. The ladies must have gotten out here in
the dark: the upstairs was clean and smelled of
furniture polish. There were mattresses on the
beds, both of which were piss stained. We’d slept
in worse places.

We meandered out to the barn. I’ve always respected
a tight, well-built barn, and this one was
as good as they came. The big front doors swung
easily, although they needed a bit of oil on their
hinges. The stalls—eight of them—were 12’ × 12’,
which is a good size. There was a birthing stall,
too. The ladder to the hay storage above was stout
and sturdy and the floor up there was plenty
strong enough to support all the hay we could
cram into it.

When we came back down a five-foot rattler
was sliding out of one of the stalls. Arm drew
and killed the snake. “We can’t have no rattlers
’round,” he said, “but I weel bet we got no mice or
rats. We leave blacksnakes alone, no?”

I could see that Armando’s thumb still hurt
pretty bad, in spite of the tequila. His face was
pale, too. “If you tell the ladies to get to the pig,
we
can cook up a batch of pork chops, Arm. ’Til
they’re ready, you can get some rest.”

“I don’ need no res’,” he said, but it was a matter
of form for him. Revealing any weakness of
any kind would make him, in his mind, less of a
man. He went to the porch and spoke with Blanca,
and then waved me over.

“The ladies weel do the pig now an’ then continue
with the cleaning of the house. I weel try a
bed to see does it make for sleep.”