Way of the Gun (9781101597804) (14 page)

The conversation had gone a little too far by now to suit her father. “That'll be enough from you, young lady,” he warned her sternly. “Right now Mr. Carson is a guest in our house, and what he does or is thinkin' about doin' is none of our business.” He looked at Carson then and offered an apology. “I'll have to ask you to forgive my daughter's lack of hospitality. She ain't really saddle broke yet and sometimes she likes to buck a little bit too much.”

“No harm done,” Carson responded. “But I'd like to let her know that I know how to work cattle. That's all I've ever done since I was Lucas's age. I can drive 'em, rope 'em, brand 'em, ride roundup, and most everything else except chuck wagon. I ain't much of a cook. I ain't sayin' I'm better'n anybody else at it, but Mr. Bob Patterson thought I was good enough to hire for three years.”

His statement brought broad smiles to the faces of Nancy and Frank, and a grin to Cain's square jaw. “Well, I might have use for somebody like that,” Cain said, although he had no idea who Bob Patterson was. “We'll talk after supper.” He paused to cock an eye in Millie's direction. “That is, if it's all right with my younger daughter.” That brought a few chuckles from everyone but Millie.

“Horse feathers,” Millie said in disgust. “I'll go see what's keeping Lizzie from getting supper on the table. Lucas, don't you go getting yourself settled down just yet. Lizzie oughta be about ready for you to carry supper down to the bunkhouse.” She left the room.

“I know it,” Lucas called after her, then added, “Boss.” It was a regular chore since there wasn't a cook shack and a separate cook for the ranch hands, and he didn't have to be reminded by his sister.

It was rather obvious that the young boy objected to his sister's authoritative manner. Carson couldn't help wondering if she was always this abrasive to every stranger who showed up at the ranch, or was it just him? He made up his mind at that moment that he would attempt to stay out of her way as much as possible.

Supper that night was a grand affair from Carson's point of view, his having become accustomed to suppers on the trail. Not surprisingly, there was beef, but there was also ham, potatoes, beans, onions, huge biscuits, and plenty of hot coffee. Carson helped himself as each bowl was passed, and lit into his plate with total concentration. Judging by the meal put on the table on his first night, he decided that he and Lizzie's cooking were going to get along just fine in the event he was hired. He was engrossed in the process of trying to cut a large piece of tough beef in two when he suddenly glanced up to find Millie's eyes focused on him. It gave him pause to wonder if his table manners were in need of polishing. He glanced around the table to see if anyone else was watching him, but everyone seemed to be busy with their own eating, and he couldn't see any difference between their manners and his. When he glanced back in Millie's direction, she looked away.
That girl just flat doesn't like me,
he thought.

After supper, the men retired to the porch while the women cleared the table and Lucas went to the bunkhouse to retrieve the empty pots. The gracious host, Mathew Cain brought out a box of cigars and offered them. “Albert Smith gets these shipped in from San Francisco,” he said, referring to the owner of the general merchandise store in Big Timber. After everyone was lit and a heavy cloud of smoke hung over the porch, Cain opened the subject of employment for Carson. “I can use a good man,” he said, “if you're as good as you said you are in the parlor. I want you to talk to Justin, though. He's been doin' all the hirin' for the last couple of years. It would have to be all right with him.” He turned his head to look down in the direction of the barn. “I'm surprised he ain't back yet. I suppose he'll show up before long. I don't see no reason why he wouldn't hire you. We need a couple more men—lost one last month, got bucked off a horse and broke his neck.” He paused as if to observe a moment of sympathy, but it was no more than a moment, and then he continued. “Anyway, you can grab you an empty bunk in the bunkhouse—there's a few—and we'll see what's what in the mornin'. All right?”

“Yes, sir,” Carson said. “I appreciate it.”

Justin had still not shown up when it was time to think about calling it a night, so Cain announced that it was past his bedtime, which signaled an end to the men's smoking session. Carson left to pick up his possibles from the tack room and transfer them to the bunkhouse. “I'll walk down with you and introduce you to the men,” Cain said.

Frank said good night and went to find Nancy. He found her and her sister in the bedroom, but Nancy told him she needed a moment more with Millie, and sent him to wash up for bed. When he had gone, Nancy sought to finish her conversation with her younger sister. “I want you to understand something, Millie. I know I'm your older sister, but I fully appreciate the fact that you've been the woman of the house ever since Mama died. And I know you've done a good job. I didn't come out here to try to take over your job or your position with Papa. Frank and I came all this way to get a new start in life, and work with you and the family. We hope to build our own little house close by, and I certainly don't want to take your place. I probably couldn't do as good a job as you've done, anyway.”

“Oh, Nancy!” Millie cried in alarm. “I don't think that way at all. I apologize if I gave you that impression. I certainly didn't mean to. I'm so happy to have you come home, and I wouldn't care one bit if you wanted to be the woman of the house. I hoped that you and Frank would live with us here in this big house. There's certainly room for you, and I know Papa would be pleased if you did. You're my big sis, and you can pull your rank any time you want. Whatever did I do to make you think I wasn't glad to see you?”

“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 turned 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.”