Shortgrass Song (28 page)

“Javier's leavin' first thing in the mornin' to take over his uncle's place. He already sold his homestead to Papa.”

Caleb looked over the backs of the horses at Pete's grinning face. “He's leavin' for good?”

“Yep.”

“What do you want to get rid of Javier so bad for?”

“I don't want to get rid of him,” Pete said.

“Then what are you grinnin' about?”

“Papa made me manager of the ranch. Startin' tomorrow.”

“Oh. Congratulations. Now, help me get these horse collars loose, will you?”

“You don't understand what I'm sayin'. If I'm manager, I can run this place like I want, hire who I want. Come tomorrow mornin', you won't have to mess with horse collars. I'm hiring you on to ride a cow pony.”

Caleb dropped the rigging between the horses and passed under the throatlatch of the one between him and his brother. “But I don't have any horses,” he finally managed to say. “I don't even have a saddle.”

“I already thought of that. You can have Matthew's saddle. And we'll put his horses and mine together and draw for 'em. About time we divvied his outfit anyway.”

Caleb looked back at Buster.

“That's what you always wanted, wasn't it?” Buster said.

Caleb nodded.

“Then go ahead and holler or somethin'.”

Caleb turned to Pete. “What did Papa say?”

Pete took some scraps of paper from his pocket and shook them up in his hat. “I didn't tell him. I'm not goin' to either. He told me to run the place the way I wanted, and that's what I mean to do. Here, you get the first draw.”

Caleb reached into the hat and pulled out a piece of an old peach can label.

“Which one did you get?” Pete asked.

Caleb read the writing on the back of the label. “Five Spot.”

“Dang it! I was afraid you might get her.”

*   *   *

Caleb barely slept at all that night for thinking about horses and saddles and ropes. He was starved for action. His thoughts had been mired in guilt for months, and he had had no excitement to relieve his shame. Ab had forbidden him to play at any more dances, taking from him the one thing that gave him pride and identity. He was glad that Pete had finally taken a stand for him. With Pete to help him, he thought he could stand up to his father and finally take his rightful place as a Holcomb. He knew he could not do it alone.

When Caleb arrived at the bunkhouse in the morning, Javier was saying his farewells to the cowboys.

“You damned
borrachos
better not come to see me when Señor Ab gets your land and says adios. I don't want any
Tejanos
with short ropes working on my ranch.”

“Hell, Javier,” Slim Watkins said, “I'd go to ropin' with a piggin' string before I went to work for you again.”

Javier couldn't be rankled this morning. He just laughed and shook hands with all the boys, then rode south with his three best horses, stopping only to say farewell to Buster.

As Caleb cinched his saddle around Five Spot, he heard some of the cowboys pestering Pete about something. They wanted to know who would get to fill the vacant foreman and straw boss positions.

“I don't know yet,” Pete said.

“I hope you're not plannin' on makin' your little brother a foreman,” Piggin' String said.

“I will if I see fit,” Pete answered.

“Every man in the outfit's got time on him. He hasn't branded a single head.”

“His name is Holcomb and this is the Holcomb Ranch. I'd be a liar if I told you I didn't favor him.”

“I won't take a top job until you all know I've earned it.”

The cowboys turned around to see Caleb sitting on Five Spot, fastening the end of his rope around the saddle horn.

“He looks like he means to go to work,” Pete said. “I'd find my saddle if I was you boys.”

After the men got ready to ride, they walked their horses away from the corral and started past the cabin.

“Do we have to ride by the house?” Caleb asked. “Papa might see me.”

“Let him see you. He's gonna see you sooner or later.”

The dread he felt of his father almost overwhelmed him. He felt as if he were going to meet someone for a fight. He had thought often of leaving Holcomb Ranch, of finding his freedom alone in the mountains. But he had rarely envisioned himself standing up to Ab. He would never have even tried without Pete's help. He looked at his brother with admiration. Pete's face showed that he was actually taking joy in the coming confrontation.

Caleb tried to keep hidden behind the other riders, but they were too strung out to give him much cover. He strained to keep his eyes on the plains, but his eyes kept straying back toward the log house. He knew his father was in there. Ab hadn't gone much of anywhere since Matthew died. The sun was streaming over the stalks of the shortgrass plains, enriching the hues of the wildflowers on the two graves and tinting the windowpanes.

Suddenly the curtain pulled open, and Ab's face emerged from the darkness of the cabin. It surfaced behind the glass like the face of a corpse bobbing up from a dark pool. Week-old whiskers caught the fire of the morning sun. Caleb tried to look away in time, but his father's eyes locked onto his and flared as the face sank back into darkness.

The cabin door burst open, and Ab hopped out onto the porch. He hadn't even taken the time to strap on his peg. The hollow length of his pants leg flailed wildly as he struggled to balance himself. “Pete!” he yelled. “What's he doing on that horse?”

“I made him a cowhand,” Pete said, reining his horse to face his father.

“His job is farming. Get him off that horse.”

“You told me to run this ranch as I see fit,” Pete said. “I see fit to make Caleb a cowhand. He's almost a grown man, Papa. He's old enough to pick the kind of work he wants.”

Caleb didn't feel almost grown, not with Pete doing all his talking for him. He felt Sam Dugan looking at him with disgust. He felt hollow and gutless. A spark of resentment flared within him, and a deep simmering rage began to move.

“Get him off that horse, or you can get off this ranch,” Ab said.

“You made me manager. I say Caleb is gonna work cows now.”

“I'll go draw your wages, then.” Ab spoke as if addressing a common ranch hand. “I can get another manager.” He hopped back toward the cabin door.

“Wait!” Caleb shouted. “You don't have to draw anybody's wages. If you don't want me workin' your cows, I won't work 'em.”

“Caleb!” Pete scolded under his breath.

Ab held the doorframe and balanced on his one leg. “Now that's talking sense,” he said.

“What the hell would you know about talking sense?” Caleb's ire began to boil. It felt good.

“What did you say to me, boy?” Ab growled.

“I said what the hell would you know about talking sense, old man? You don't know your sons from your wage hands.”

Sam Dugan and Piggin' String McCoy traded looks. But Pete was worried. He knew Caleb was slow to anger but had a tendency to erupt once in a while over the smallest thing. He had once seen Caleb chase Matthew over a fence in a snarling rage simply because Matthew had called him a plowboy one time too many.

“You get off that horse and stand there till I get my leg on,” Ab ordered.

“You can stick that leg up your ass for all I care,” Caleb said. He opened a floodgate on a world of frustration he had held back for years.

“Come here!” Ab shouted, red-faced.

“Come out here and get me, you crippled old son of a bitch. I'll be in those mountains before you open the gate.”

“You'll be in that cornfield by the time I get my leg on, or you'll feel my razor strap on your hind end! I won't let you run off to those mountains and get yourself killed like you did…” Ab caught his words in his throat but made the mistake of glancing at the graves.

Caleb let his old festering guilt turn to wrath. He advanced on his father, feeling the power of the horse through his spurs. “I didn't get my mother killed. A log fell on her. And as for Matthew, it was your old war pal that killed him. You should have shot Cheyenne Dutch a long time before Javier did. It was
your
fault.” He took devious delight in turning the guilt back on his father.

Ab's leg was trembling under him. “Come here, boy!”

Caleb reined Five Spot back toward the bunkhouse.

“Caleb! I'm strapping my leg on!” Ab turned into the cabin and slammed the door behind him.

“Hot damn,” Sam Dugan said.

Pete spurred his horse and overtook Caleb. “Where are you goin'?”

“I'm gonna roll some clothes up in a blanket and get some money.”

“Then what?”

Caleb pointed at the Rampart Range. “I'm goin' up to see those mountains, first. Maybe I'll hire on at one of those ranches over in South Park for the roundup. Then I thought I might go up to the Palouse country and see those Nez Perce horses.”

“What?” Pete said. “Now slow down and think for a minute. You're makin' up your mind too fast.”

Caleb chuckled and felt a great wave of oppression gush from him. “It ain't sudden, Pete. It's a long time comin'.”

“Well, how far away is the Palouse country?”

“I don't know. I guess I'll find out.”

Pete grunted, trying to formulate his thoughts into words. “Well … Come back in a month or two. Maybe Papa will change his mind by then.”

Caleb chuckled again. “He won't come to it that quick. I'll give it a year.”

“A year!”

“Yeah.” He looked toward the cabin. “I'll see you when Buster's flower garden starts in blooming again next spring. I don't care if Papa changes his mind or not, but I'll come back to see you and tell you what all I've done. That's a promise.” He shook Pete's hand and loped toward Buster's house.

Ab's wooden leg tapped down the steps of the front porch. He stalked toward the group of mounted men as Pete returned to them. “Where's that boy going?”

“He's leavin',” Pete said.

“Well, go catch him!”

Pete looked down on his father. He had become an old man in one winter's time. “Go catch him yourself,” he said. “It was you that ran him off.” He spurred his horse for the open range and all the cowboys followed, not wanting to stand alone with old Ab Holcomb.

Though Buster had not heard the words, he had watched the entire confrontation from his cabin and knew something had gone wrong with Pete's plan to make a cowboy out of Caleb. “How long?” he asked, when Caleb told him he would go away.

“I promised Pete I'd come back and tell him some wild stories when your wildflowers start in blooming next spring.”

“You got enough money?”

“Yeah. But I need a rifle. I'll trade you my other four horses for your Winchester repeater.” He was tying his blankets and clothes in a roll.

“You can have the rifle,” Buster said.

“I don't want you to give me anything. I'll trade you the horses for it.”

“The rifle ain't worth that much. You can take it on loan, and my fiddle, too.”

“I can't take your fiddle.”

“Yes you can, and you
will
take it, too. A man who can fiddle won't never go hungry.” Buster carried the fiddle and the rifle outside and tied them to Caleb's saddle. “Won't get rich, but you won't go hungry.”

Caleb tied his bedroll down to the saddle's cantle strings and mounted. “Well, so long, Buster,” he said. He wanted to say more, but he looked back toward the cabin and saw his father coming. He shook Buster's hand and rode around the cornfield toward Monument Creek. The mare grunted and heaved under him as she ran, feeding on the excitement she sensed through the saddle. Caleb gave her rein as he embarked upon the quest for a vision he had seen of himself: riding by day, singing by night, surrounded by admiring friends who held him at fault for nothing.

Buster stood in the shadow of his cabin and watched the young man mount the Arapaho Trail. He wanted to take Ab and shake some sense into him. He had seen friends sold south before the war. He had watched Miss Ella fall under the ridge log. He had lost touch with Long Fingers and left his own unborn child in the Indian Territory. Matthew was dead and Javier was gone. But none of it caused him the kind of despair he felt watching Caleb ride away.

He heard a splash in the irrigation ditch and saw Ab floundering across.

“Buster! What in Hades do you mean, letting him ride off like that?”

Buster watched Caleb top the bald hill across the creek. “He ain't my son.”

THIRTY-TWO

It took Milt Starling about fifteen minutes every morning to work the cricks and cramps out of his legs before he could get up. The left knee and the right ankle usually gave him the most trouble. A California mule had kicked the knee in '49, and a Cherry Creek sluice box had collapsed on the ankle in '61. He was getting too old for mining camps.

Milt finally got on his feet and hobbled out of the back room, into the store and saloon he kept at the lower end of Gregory Gulch, below Black Hawk. He grabbed the sign he had painted the day before and limped to the front door.

North Clear Creek rushed under the boards of his porch, which stood on stilts in the water. A single step led down into the current, as if someone might walk up out of the creek for a cocktail. Customers normally used the steps on either side of the porch, however, where they could step onto the porch from the creek bank without getting their feet wet.

Milt looked around the side of his building to see if his men had gotten up for work yet. The back room he slept in butted up against the canyon bluffs, forcing the porch into the creek. The canyons of Gregory Gulch and North Clear Creek did not facilitate the laying out of towns, but where gold was found, men would build.