Shortgrass Song (66 page)

“I just wanted a ranch,” he said. “Not for me. For the boys.”

“They're all gone, now. Except for Caleb. And if he wanted this ranch bad enough, I guess he'd be here fightin' for it.”

Ab cringed. He knew Caleb hated him. The awful guilt came over him, and the fear. Where was Caleb? Why did he live that way? To spite me, Ab thought. Some day Buster was going to come to him, stone faced, and tell him Caleb was gone, too. Ella would curse him from on high. A father should leave his sons living. Death stalked Caleb, like a hawk hovering over him.

“You've got to look after what
you
want,” Buster said. “Caleb's made his own choices.”

SEVENTY-EIGHT

A made daily trips to the railroad station to oversee the surveying of his town. He had to ride past sod huts, frame houses, sheds, cottonwood sprouts, and windmill towers that stood where once his cattle had roamed. The old free range that had been his ranch was now crisscrossed with dirt lanes running between the homesteads.

One of the roads ran right past the cornfield Buster farmed for Ab on shares. One day while riding by, the colonel noticed that some parties unknown had been pilfering sundry roasting ears from his field. He saw several sets of footprints leading from the road to the edge of the cornfield, where he found bare corn stalks, stripped of ears. He whipped his mount to a gallop and found Buster supervising the building of the Holcomb General Store near the train station.

“Buster!” he shouted, getting down from his horse. “Come down here!”

Buster climbed down from the corner of the building, and took the square-shanked nails from his mouth.

“Who in Hades has been stealing my corn?” he demanded.

Buster shrugged. “Probably starvin' homesteaders. They don't take much. They got to eat.”

“I want you to do something about it.” He hitched up his belt, encumbered as it was by the leather rigging of his wooden leg. “They won't get away with stealing my crops in addition to my land.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I don't know. Think of something. You're always thinking of things.”

Buster twirled his clawhammer in his hand. He shook his head. “I just don't how you're gonna stop 'em, colonel. You can't stand out there and guard the cornfield. It ain't hardly worth it for a few ears of corn.”

Ab frowned and stomped away to sit on a stack of lumber in front of the store.

Buster went back to framing the building with the carpenters Captain Dubois had hired through the Holcomb Town Company. He glanced down at Ab every now and then and found him in deep study, solving the problem of the corn thieves.

After almost an hour he heard a saw hacking furiously at a plank and saw the old colonel cutting a length of board. Ab cut three pieces in all, each about two feet long. Then he found a hammer and some nails and fastened the three boards to a four-foot stake he had sawed to a point at the bottom end.

“Buster!” he shouted. “Where's the paint?”

“What color?”

The old man threw his saw down. “In the name of the devil! I don't care what color!”

“There's some buckets of white paint in the depot. Some red over there in the wagon.”

Ab shouldered his blank placard and stalked to the wagon. He found a paintbrush, spent a few minutes slathering his message on the sign, then stepped back to admire his handiwork.

Curiosity got the better of Buster. He put his tools down and walked over to the wagon to read the sign. It was scrawled in gangling red letters across the three boards Ab had nailed to the stake. He had applied the paint rather liberally; it ran down from the letters like blood. The message was just as ghastly:

ONE OF THESE EARS OF CORN IS POISONED. CAN YOU GUESS WHICH ONE?

He planted the sign in his cornfield, facing the road. The pilfering came to an abrupt end. “That will teach these nesters what's theirs and what's not,” he bragged to Buster. He drew a feeling of omnipotence from the sign every time he rode past.

One morning, however, just a couple of days before Buster planned to harvest the corn, Ab glanced approvingly toward his sign and, to his astonishment, found another one driven into the ground right next to his:

NOW THERE ARE TWO. YOU GUESS.

Buster had to laugh when he heard.

“What do you find so funny about these land grabbers poisoning my corn?” Colonel Holcomb railed.

“I thought you poisoned it yourself,” Buster said.

“No, I didn't poison my own corn! I had no cause to. The sign only made them
think
there was an ear poisoned in there.”

Buster almost tore himself open trying to hold his laughter back. “Maybe now they just
think
there's two,” he said.

Ab thundered away at a gallop. He rode to the Mayhall Ranch and found Terence picking his own corn with the strap of a sack looped over one solid shoulder.

“Mayhall!” he shouted, swatting stalks aside as he limped between the rows.

“Good mornin', colonel,” Terence said, taking his hat off to fan himself.

Ab stopped a few feet away. “I have never seen the likes of thieves and vandals as those you brought into this valley! You have turned my peaceable ranch into a hive of ne'er-do-wells. I want to know who poisoned my corn!”

Mayhall scratched his head. “Why, colonel, I was told you poisoned it yourself.”

“Who put that sign in my field?”

“Sign? What sign?” Mayhall wrinkled his nose and squinted quite convincingly.

Ab shuddered with anger. He turned around and marched back down the furrow.

“Wait, colonel.”

The old man stopped.

“If it's good safe corn you want, why don't you just say so. I'll be neighborly. Here.” He tossed an ear at Ab. “You can have some of mine.”

Ab caught the ear and threw it back.

Mayhall ducked, laughed, and began tossing ears at Ab as he stalked away. “Hope you don't have any trouble sellin' that poisoned corn!” Mayhall shouted.

Ab pulled the signs up and threw them away, but it was too late. Someone had notified the newspapers. One Denver editor, a rabid opponent of public-land fencing and, as such, an old enemy of Ab Holcomb's, made great sport of the tainted-corn fiasco. He even had the audacity to refer to Ab as “a colonel of poisoned corn.”

No buyer would accept a single ear of Ab's corn that summer, and the Denver and Rio Grande would not ship his crop to another market where he might find a willing buyer. The newspapers had sources in Monument Park who kept a close eye on the colonel's produce. He was stuck with wagonloads of corn.

“Now what are we to do?” he asked Buster. “Let it sit out in the weather and rot? Let the bugs get it?”

“I'll build us a big corn crib,” Buster said. “We can fence in a stockyard and feed it to the cows. They can't read no signs.”

Ab sighed as he looked out over the remnants of his ranch. “I never thought I'd see the day when my own cattle would stomp this park into a stinking stockyard,” he said.

SEVENTY-NINE

They were total strangers—he a line rider for the Seven Stars, she a common whore of Seymour, Texas. They inspected each other only briefly before they went upstairs.

He looked familiar. She wondered. No, she would have remembered the—two mops hiding his mouth. The rest of his beard looked about two weeks old. He needed a haircut. He had been out at some line camp for a while. At least he had taken a bath. No, he was not a regular. He was new. Maybe he would be the one to take her away. She would work a little harder for this fare—the way she did With all the new ones that didn't just outright disgust her.

She looked familiar to him, too. He couldn't figure out why. He had seen his share of whores, that was why. They were starting to look alike. No, he didn't know her, and that was the way he liked it. He knew whores had it tough, but he didn't want to hear about it. He just wanted to see her smile, feel her soft skin, and get his money's worth. If he didn't some other jack would. He would treat her kindly. He was doing her a favor.

She closed the door and started taking off her dress. He pulled his boots and pants off and sat on the bed. She pulled the curtains together to dim the afternoon sunlight and came to him, wearing only a frilly pair of bloomers. She was not particularly big breasted, but what she had was firm, and he felt the guilt giving way to the old recurrent longing. She had the build of a railroad trestle: straight and strong. He didn't speak.

She smiled. She was painted like a porcelain doll, her mousy hair piled up in ringlets. She lay on the bed and touched his arm. He rolled onto her. She closed her eyes. He nestled his mustache against her neck, touched his lips to her skin, and smelled the powder on her shoulders.

She felt his rough hand touch her above the waist of the frilly bloomers and move across her heaving stomach. A peculiar touch. Over her ribs gently. He almost tickled her, but there was something strange in his tender grip. His left hand found her breast and squeezed, as if to pick up a melon.

Her eyes opened. With her right hand, she put her fingers over his. The first two felt odd. No fingernails. Too short!

“Caleb?” she said in a husky voice, feeling his frost-shortened digits.

His breath stopped short in her ear. He pushed himself up to look at her. “How did you know?…” He pushed farther away, kneeling between her thighs. “Who the heck?…” His hemp sagged.

Her eyes glistened. She pushed herself up on her elbows and smiled. “Don't you remember? Denison, Texas. I'm Tess Wiley.”

He turned apple red. “Oh, for the love of God!” He jumped off the bed and hid on the floor, the edge of the mattress shielding him from her view. He shoved his feet desperately into his pants. “They said your name was Candy!” He peeked over the edge of the mattress.

She was sitting cross-legged, confused. “That's just my sportin' name. What's wrong with you?” She scooted to the edge of the bed.

He jumped up, retreated, turned his back, fastened buttons. He studied her face. Too pretty. He couldn't believe it was her. He advanced on her suddenly, held her face in his hands and pulled her upper lip away from her teeth.

“Hey!” she said, swatting his hands away. “I ain't no horse!”

“I thought you had a bad tooth!”

“It got rotten. I pulled it out with a pair of tongs.” She removed one of her front teeth. “This one's carved out of an old piano key.”

In shame, he sensed the eyes of God drilling him like skewers. His angel-mother turned her haloed head in humiliation. Pete scowled. Matthew laughed. He cussed and picked up his boots.

“Where are you goin'?”

“I'm gettin' out of here!”

“Why? There somethin' wrong with me? Ain't I good enough for you, now that you know where I come from? I hope you don't want your money back!”

He shoved his foot into a boot. “No, I don't want the damn money.” He raised his eyes to her, looked quickly away. “For God's sake, put some clothes on!”

She sighed, exasperated, and sprang from the bed.

“Didn't that preacher come see you in Denison? I told him to look after you.”

She gasped. “So you're the one sent him. He took care of me, all right. About once a week, till his wife found out. Them church-goin' biddies liked to have tarred and feathered me!”

He stomped his other boot on. “What did you do with all that money I gave you in Denison?”

“You didn't give me nothin'!” She shook her dress down over her head. “That was my money that Angus stole from me.”

He glanced to make sure she was dressed. “Well, what did you do with it?”

“I bought me a farm, that's what.”

“What did you want with a farm?” He propped his hands on his hips and stared at her as if she were the most ignorant child on the face of the earth.

“I wanted to grow corn, stupid.”

“You? Alone?”

“Well, why not? I grew up with a hoe in my hands. I can grow corn.”

“If you can grow corn so damn good, what's makin' you whore for your keep?”

“Don't you git snotty with me.” She fastened buttons and glowered fiercely. “The man that buys a whore ain't no better than she is.”

Caleb tucked his shirt in. He didn't answer. He knew she was right.

“Anyway, I had me a good corn crop. I was livin' with some settlers. We all had farms until the ranchers ran their cattle into our fields. The folks I was stayin' with got scared and left, and I didn't have no money, so I had to turn to sportin'.”

“You're lyin'. I've seen acres and acres of corn around this town. Them farmers ain't left.”

“The ranchers gave up on runnin' 'em off.”

“Then how come you won't go back to your farm?”

“I ain't got no house to live in.” She sat on the bed and pouted.

“Won't any of them settlers take you in again?”

She shook her head. Her eyes were getting puffy, but she wouldn't cry in front of him. “Not since I turned to sportin'. I ain't good enough for 'em. Or you neither, I guess.”

He frowned. She had an excuse for everything. “I don't believe you ever had a farm. Farmers work on their feet, not on their backs.”

Tess fixed her eyes on a pitcher of water on the night-stand next to her. “Well, you think you know everything,” she growled in her hoarse way. “I don't always do it on my back. Some of my regular customers have more fancy ideas than you.” As she spoke, she slid her fingers around the handle of the pitcher. Suddenly, she jumped up and splashed the water at him.

He had seen her reach and knew what she was up to. She owed him one. When the water came at him, he jumped aside and only got sprinkled. He started to laugh at her failure until the pitcher bounced off the top of his head and broke against the wall. The seat of his pants landed in the puddle on the floor. “Damn your hide…” he began. But the basin came flying next, and he considered flight wiser than talk.