Gambling Man (3 page)

Nathan was the kind of man a boy could be proud of. Here was no plodding small-town storekeeper like Sam Baxter, no timid businessman like Jed Harper. Nate Blaine was cut to no particular pattern; no set of cut-and-dried rules controlled him.

In a crowd Nate stood out like black against white and all others became shadowy and indistinct. He had a way of throwing back his big head and looking down with vague contempt upon the tallest man. There was a breath of danger about him that was not entirely due to the guns he wore.

It was all too clear that Nathan did not care a tinker's damn whether he was liked, but he demanded respect and he got it, no matter how grudgingly.

It was the morning after Nate's arrival that Jeff first began to experience these new sensations of pride and importance. Aunt Beulah was particularly grim and snappish that morning. “Jefferson,” she said shortly, halfway through breakfast, “it's time you got started to the pasture with Bessie.”

“Gee, I'm. not through with my flapjacks yet!”

“Well, don't dawdle. You'll be late for school.”

It was strange how she could serve up flapjacks and pork sausage to Nathan and still pretend that he wasn't there. Nate sat smiling faintly all through the meal, speaking occasionally to Wirt or Jeff. If he was aware of the chill behind Beulah's eyes, he did not show it. “No need to hurry, son,” he said pleasantly. “I'll get my horse saddled and we can ride to the pasture, if you don't mind doubling up.”

Jeff could hardly believe that Nathan, even though he was his father, would let him ride that fine black animal. “Do you mean it?”

“Sure I do.” Nathan stood up from the table, that quiet smile still touching the corners of his mouth. “That was a fine breakfast, Beulah, and I'm grateful. Now if you'll excuse me...” He nodded to Beulah and Wirt and walked out to the cowshed.

Eagerly, Jeff pushed his plate away and started to follow his father.

“Finish your breakfast,” Aunt Beulah said sternly.

“But you told me to hurry!”

“Never mind. Stay right here and clean your plate.”

Uncle Wirt looked kind of funny, but he said nothing. Reluctantly, Jeff pulled the plate back and finished the flapjacks as quickly as possible, thinking how unpredictable his aunt could be when she took the notion. One minute she was hurrying him, the next minute she was trying to detain him. Out of pure orneriness, he thought bitterly, just to keep me from riding that black horse.

Then a strange thing happened when he finally finished his plate to Aunt Beulah's satisfaction. “Jefferson,” she said, stopping him as he hurried for the back door, “I want to tell you something.” Suddenly she put her thin, hard arms around him and held him hard, something she hadn't done since he was very young. “We love you, Jefferson,” she said tightly. “You're all we've got, me and Wirt.”

It was very strange, and it made Jeff uncomfortable. He was no baby. He didn't like having women paw at him.

“I've got to get started with Bessie,” he said, twisting away.

Nathan had already turned the cow out and was in the saddle. “You ready?” he asked. Then he kicked out a stirrup and swung Jeff up behind. The animal's flanks were sleek and warm, and the saddle leather creaked luxuriously as Jeff settled himself behind his father. “Gee,” he said in awe, “I'll bet this is the best horse in Texas.”

Nate Blaine laughed abruptly. “You might not be far wrong.”

Jeff would not soon forget that morning, especially the looks of envy that other barefoot cowboys shot up at them. And later, as they rode through streets of Plainsville to the academy, it seemed that everybody stopped for a moment to watch them.

There goes Nate Blaine and his boy, they were saying. Suddenly the name of Blaine had become something to be proud of.

Jeff became more aware of this as one moment followed another. Suddenly people looked at him differently. He was “young Blaine,” Nate Blaine's boy.

That afternoon he found his pa waiting for him near the head of Main Street.

“You finished with your studies at the academy, son?” Nathan asked.

“For today I am. You waiting for somebody?”

“That's right. What do you aim to do for the rest of the day?”

Jeff's heart beat a little faster. Maybe his pa was going to let him ride behind the saddle again. “I guess I'll go after Bessie, like always.”

“You mind if I ride along?”

It was then that Jeff saw his pa's black hitched at the watering trough. Beside the black there was a sleek bay mare, her coat recently brushed and gleaming like a new dollar. “I got the mare at the public corral,” Nathan said. “She's yours for the rest of the day, son—if you feel like ridin', that is.”

Jeff found that he could not speak. Of course he had ridden horses, but not very often. Just enough to whet his appetite for it, and he had hardly ever seen a horse, even Phil Costain's old dray nag, that his thighs didn't ache to feel a saddle between them. He looked quickly at his pa to make sure that he wasn't joking.

Nathan smiled. “Climb up, son. We'll ride to the pasture together.”

There was nothing in the world, Jeff thought, like riding a good horse to make a man feel like a man! He felt the saddle, cured by sweat and by a hundred soapings to a rich tobacco brown. He climbed up on the mare and felt nine feet tall as he surveyed the town from his lofty position in the saddle.

Nathan Blaine said nothing, but laughed quietly. He reined his black into the street, and Jeff put the bay around and rode beside him.

Jim Lodlow, a scholar at the academy with Jeff, was standing in front of Baxter's store as they rode past. Jeff felt a bubbling inside and had a crazy impulse to giggle. Look at Jim Lodlow bugging his eyes!

But Jeff only nodded as they rode past, as though to imply that he was used to riding fine bay mares every day of the week. The fact that his bare feet did not quite reach the stirrups didn't bother him at all.

They reached the pasture in practically no time, and Jeff guessed that they could wait a while before calling Bessie. Besides, he was just getting the feel of the saddle and hated the thought of climbing down and letting down the barbed-wire gate.

His pa had a curious, faraway look in his dark eyes as he looked out at that cleared, fenced land.

“I can remember,” Nathan said slowly, “when there wasn't a foot of barbed wire in this part of Texas. Blackjack corrals and a few rawhide branding pens were all the fences we had.”

Jeff had not thought of his father as an old man, and still didn't. Things just happened fast in Texas. It seemed that the squatters had come overnight, almost, and had hemmed the big outfits in and pushed them back toward the hills to the north.

But Nathan Blaine remembered when Sam Baxter's store was the only one around. The dry run to the east of town had been a flowing stream then, and a man from Kansas had put up a water wheel and ground flour on the shares. Those two buildings and a blacksmith shop had been all there was to Plainsville in those days, before the big outfits began coming here and the town started to grow.

Jeff found himself listening with interest to what his pa had to say. It gave him a funny feeling to remember he was twelve years old and knew practically nothing about his own father.

Jeff said, “That must have been a long time ago.”

“Yes, I guess it was. I was about the age you are now, I guess, when my family started down from Missouri to settle in Texas. Not much more than squatters we were, if the truth were told. My ma was set on getting the family a piece of land and living on it. She never did get the land, though, that she had wanted so much.”

“Why not?” Jeff wanted to know.

Nathan Blaine turned his head slowly and gazed to the north. “Osages,” he said. “White trash had them stirred up and they were raiding settler wagons coming through the Territory.”

“Your ma was killed?”

“And two brothers. Me and my pa were the only ones to get to Texas, finally. Not that it did us much good.”

“Why not?”

Nathan looked at his son. “Never mind. It's not important now.”

Man and boy, they sat their horses proudly and gazed thoughtfully into the distance.

“Would you like to ride a piece down the fence?” Nathan asked.

And Jeff said, “I don't care,” meaning that he was itching to.

They touched their horses and rode along the stretched barbed wire. Beyond was a stand of cottonwood marching green and proud across the prairie, following the banks of the narrow stream called Crowder's Creek.

The sun was still an hour away from the western edge of the world, and they rode all the way to Crowder's Creek before pulling up. “There used to be yellow cats down there,” Nathan said, gazing down at the ripply ribbon of water.

“There aren't any more,” Jeff complained. “The squatters built fish dams upcreek and cleaned them out. Were you in Plainsville when the hands from the big outfits used to come in to trade?”

“Yes. The town was different then.”

“I remember,” Jeff said, nodding, and Nathan Blaine smiled that thin smile of his.

Suddenly Jeff's pa threw himself out of the saddle and walked a little way toward the stream. Staring out past the creek, he said, “I guess I wouldn't be much surprised if you didn't like me. I sure haven't been much of a pa to you, and that's the gospel.”

Jeff was surprised that the talk had taken this kind of turn. He would have preferred to keep it impersonal. Now he felt uncomfortable, as though he had done something wrong, and he didn't know exactly what kind of reaction was expected of him.

“I never said I didn't like you.”

He thought he saw his pa stand just a little straighter. “Well, you've got a right to, and I don't deny it. I guess I can't rightly explain just why I ran off from you when you was just a tyke. I've thought about it at times— but I don't know.”

He was still looking across the creek, as though he spotted something interesting on the other side. But he went on in the same quiet, thoughtful voice.

“Once several years ago I was down south with the Mexicans, and right out of the clear it dawned on me that I'd had enough chasing, and what I really wanted was to come back to Plainsville and see my boy. That very night I got packed and rode clear up from Chihuahua. Then, when I got about an hour's ride from town, I turned around and went back again. I don't know just why I did it.”

Jeff said nothing, for he knew that his father expected no answer. This was the first time a grown person had ever talked to him like an adult. It was flattering in a way, and he was proud to be talked to as an equal; but still it was confusing.

Then Nathan Blaine turned away from the creek and looked at his son. “Well, I'm glad you don't hate me, anyway. That's about all I can rightly expect.” Suddenly he smiled, and walked over and stroked the bay's neck. “That's enough talk about me for a spell. Jeff, why don't you tell me about yourself?”

He didn't ask, “Have you been a good boy?” or “Do you have a girl?” or “Do you like your teacher?” Jeff hated those questions, and they were the ones adults always asked.

Not Nathan Blaine. He had come right out and asked, “Tell me about yourself.” Man to man.

It gave the boy a warm feeling to be taken in and treated as though he had some sense, even though he was only twelve.

“Well,” he said importantly, “I'm pretty good at figures at the academy. Uncle Wirt says I'll be taking over the tin shop books before long, if I keep it up.”

“I see. What else are you good at, Jeff?”

“I'm a pretty good tin worker; Uncle Wirt teaches me a lot of things about it. I made a bucket for Aunt Beulah that she says is the best she ever saw, and I can roll and rivet stovepipe as good as anybody.”

Nathan Blaine continued to stroke the bay's neck, but he no longer looked up at his son. “Your uncle taught you all that?”

“Sure,” Jeff said. “He taught me to braid rawhide lariats, and make slingshots and willow whistles—a lot of things. He's been pretty good to me, I guess.”

There was a sagging to Nathan Blaine's face, and suddenly he stopped stroking the bay and clinched his fist as though he were about to hit someone. “So your uncle taught you a lot of things, did he?”

Jeff didn't like the look on his pa's face. He wasn't smiling now. He looked grim and almost angry.

“Well,” Nathan said, “here's something I'll bet he never taught you. Do you see that glistening stone across the creek, just at the edge of the cottonwood shade?”

Puzzled, Jeff nodded. The stone looked about the size of a buggy hub.

Nathan Blaine's hand moved almost faster than the eye could follow. As if by magic, his Colt's .45 jumped from his holster to his hand. The revolver exploded twice in quick succession, and Jeff stared dumbly as the glistening rock on the other side of the creek leaped into the air like a frightened cottontail.