Leaving Cheyenne Read online

  So I went on home, eighteen miles by myself.

  twelve

  The Wednesday before Christmas, Dad decided it would be a good time to kill the hogs. We had four big shoats to butcher; more hog meat than me and Dad could have eaten in two years. Dad had done made arrangements to sell three of the carcasses, though; the fellers he sold them to came over to help us. Dad had gone over special and asked Molly to come cook for the crew, and Johnny was there, of course, mostly just getting in the way. When you took Johnny off of his horse he was the worst hand in the world.

  Me and him did the actual killing, shooting, and sticking, while Dad and the other men built the fires and got the water ready. Dad, he wouldn’t have wallowed around in the hogpen mud for half the pork in Texas. Johnny worked the gun and I worked the butcher knife, and we laid them low. Then we got our horses and drug the carcasses up to the fire one at a time.

  Johnny bitched around so much while we were scraping the carcasses that Dad finally sent him off down in the River pasture to drive in a yearling he thought was getting sick. Actually Dad must have liked Johnny; he let him get away with a damn sighr more than I ever got away with.

  About nine-thirty Molly come riding up; she had on her red mackinaw. Just seeing her made me feel so good I could have jumped six feet. I never realized how lonesome I stayed till I got close to Molly. Not even then. When I realized it was when I had been close to her and one of us was leaving. Then for a day or two the world would look twice as bad as it really was.

  I took her down to the barn and put her horse where ours wouldn’t kick hell out of him. I got her back in the hallway, out of sight, and gave her a kiss.

  “Silly,” she said. “Who ever heard of kissing in the morning?”

  She wouldn’t let me hold her hand when we got outside because she was afraid everybody would tease us. She was right; they would have.

  It was a good day. We got the hogs butchered without no trouble, and Molly cooked a big dinner and everybody enjoyed it and complimented her on it, and that made her feel good. Johnny even made it back in time to eat; for once he showed pretty good manners. In the afternoon we made soap and cracklins and the other fellers loaded their pork and went home. It was nearly suppertime before we got all the kettles cleaned, so Molly decided to stay and fix supper, too. Johnny went on home. Dad gave him a quarter of pork for a Christmas bonus and he told us all Merry Christmas and went off with it tied to his saddle. Watching him leave made me blue for a minute; it was strange. I knew right then he’d never get Molly to marry him, only for a minute I wished he could have. It would have been nice for him if he could have.

  “Well, we done a good day’s work,” Dad said. “Let’s go inside where it’s warm. I could stand some supper.”

  We went in and the kitchen was nice and warm. The lamps were lit. Me and Dad sat at the table and watched Molly working around the sink and around the stove, not paying us much mind; it was a treat for us just to watch. Me and Dad had batched for nine years, and we thought we got along pretty well, but having Molly in the kitchen eating supper made the way we usually done it seem pretty flat and dull. The house was just so much fuller with her in it. I guess Dad felt it too.

  “Sure do appreciate your coming over to cook,” he said. “This here’ll beat Christmas.”

  Molly turned and looked at him a minute; she had a pan of biscuits in one hand and a gravy bowl in the other, and I don’t think she even heard him. She just smiled and went on cooking, and Dad never repeated it. He was looking too tired, Dad was. He hadn’t been feeling too good, I didn’t think. Course he never said a word about it.

  Molly fed us beef and beans and biscuits and gravy and pie, and we ate plenty of it. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and I couldn’t keep from wishing I could get her to marry me. Then we could have her around all the time. She sat down at the other end of the table and drank her coffee, not saying anything but perfectly content. We were all quiet, but it was a real easy quiet.

  Finally Dad got up and said he had to go to bed. He offered to pay Molly something, but of course she wouldn’t take nothing. So he gave her a quarter of pork and some cracklins and told me to ride home with her to see that she got there all right.

  Then it was just me and her in the kitchen.

  “Let’s go over to my house, Gid,” she said. “Dad’s gone to Wichita. You and him won’t bother one another tonight.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  When we got there we built up the fire in the fireplace and sat in front of it a long time. I gave Molly her Christmas present, but I wouldn’t let her open it, and we sat there not talking much or kissing much or anything, just resting together. Then she leaned forward and took some pins loose and shook down her long hair and lay back against me so the firelight shone on her face and eyes and mouth. I was half-sick, I loved her so much and was so excited by her. In a minute I was all wrapped around her. She wanted to go in the bedroom, and pulled her shirttail out as we went down the hall. It was cold as ice until we had been under the covers for a while, and then it got toasty warm and only Molly’s fingers were cold. And there wasn’t no old man to worry about, so we could go ahead. Only I was so excited about her I didn’t do no good; I don’t guess I knew enough about what I was doing.

  “Oh hell,” I said. “Dammit. I wouldn’t blame you for marrying somebody else.”

  “Be still and hush,” she said, and kissed me.

  “I don’t see why you put up with me,” I said.

  “You’re my favorite,” she said. “You ain’t done nothing wrong. You just enjoy me a whole lot, I can tell that. And that’s what I want you to do. Go to sleep, sugar.”

  And I did: it was the best sleeping in the world. When I woke up I could hardly believe I’d slept so good. Molly was still asleep and I was holding her. It was pure enjoyment. Finally I woke her up because having her asleep made me feel lonesome. We hugged and talked awhile. But she wouldn’t say she’d marry me.

  “That would be wrong,” she said. “I don’t love you that way.” And then she leaned over and looked me right in the face, with her hair touching my chest. “But you love me that way, don’t you?” she said, as if she had never thought of it before. “You do love me that way, Gid,” she said. “That’s going to be so sad. I don’t love anybody that way.” And she lay with her face tucked into my neck a long time, so I could feel her breath on my Adam’s apple.

  About daybreak we got up and had a real good breakfast and were cheerful as we’d ever been. I went home and worked and was all right that day. But the next day when I woke up I was so lonesome for her I was sick. All I could see that day was her face leaning over me, and her hair.

  thirteen

  It didn’t seem like I was going to be able to stand not having Molly around more of the time. Every time I thought about her I got bluer and bluer. And if that wasn’t trouble enough, Dad had me farming. It was a warm January and looked like it was going to be warm all winter. Johnny was doing most of the cow-work, and Dad was just mostly piddling around; he still wasn’t feeling good. So for four days in a row I had to go down and follow them worthless mules around that worthless field, thinking about Molly all the time and wondering when I’d get to see her.

  Then one Monday about the middle of the morning Johnny come through the field on his way to the League pasture. He was jogging along looking pretty discouraged, and I waved at him to come over. I was tired of kicking clods around anyway, and he got off his horse and we set by the plow awhile.

  “Don’t you get tired of this?” he said.

  “Naw, I love it,” I said. “I’d like to do this for the rest of my life. What are you so down in the dumps about?”

  “Oh, Molly, I guess. I wish I wasn’t so damn sweet on her. Hell, I oughtn’t to be. She don’t care nothing about me. At least not like I want her to. She just ain’t got no sense.”

  “She’s got the wrong kind of sense,” I said. “Anyhow, what’s she done now?”

  “Nothin
g she hasn’t done before,” he said, looking real sour. “I rode all the way over there to visit her last night and the first thing I saw was Eddie’s damn automobile. I never even went in.”

  “See ’em?”

  “I looked through the kitchen window. He was sitting there eating vinegar cobbler and she was waiting on him just like he owned the place.”

  That made me plain sick. We sat there for about ten minutes, neither one of us saying a word. I couldn’t think of one hopeful thing.

  “Shit on the world,” I said. “Let’s go someplace. I’ll be damned if I’ll plow my legs off while she cooks cobbler for somebody like Eddie. Let’s just go to the Panhandle and show them all.”

  “All right,” he said. “You going to leave the plow here?”

  I did. I rode in on one mule and unharnessed. Dad was up at the house, sitting by the fireplace trying to shave a corn off his toe. He looked pretty tired, but I wasn’t in no mood to sympathize.

  “Dad,” I said, “things are just going wrong. I’ve had enough of this country. Me and Johnny are going up on the plains for a little while. I hope you can hire you a little help.”

  “Going, are you?” he said. “That oil-fielder running you off?”

  “Not by a damn sight,” I said. “I’m sorry to leave you.”

  “Oh, I guess I can do the work,” he said. “I always have.”

  I seen he wasn’t gonna act nice, so I didn’t say any more to him.

  “Let me hear from you now and then,” was the last thing he said.

  So we rode to Henrietta that night and arranged with an old boy to take the horses back to Archer County for us. We got good and drunk, and along about midnight we caught the train north. Our spirits weren’t too good, but we were the only passengers, and we each got a bench and went to sleep. I dreamed that Dad was out terracing in the moonlight. When I woke up Johnny was still asleep and I had a headache, so I went out on the porch of the caboose. I guess we were about to Childress then; anyhow we were on the plains. The cold air kind of cleared my head. It was exciting to see all that country stretched out around me, but I felt pretty sad, too. I was split: I was glad to be where I was, and yet I wanted to be where I had just left. Looking down the rails, I couldn’t help but think of the people at home, Dad and Molly mostly.

  Thinking about them, I got lonesome, and went in and woke Johnny up. We stayed awake the rest of the night, talking about all the different big outfits we could work for. It would be the JAs most likely, or maybe the Matadors, depending on where we decided to go from Amarillo. We had about fifteen dollars apiece, cash money, and our saddles and saddle blankets, so we felt pretty well off.

  We got off the train at the big brick station in Amarillo, and it was like getting off at the North Pole. The wind whistled down those big streets like the town belonged to it, and the people were just renters it was letting stay.

  “Goddamn,” Johnny said. “I never realized it was this cold up north in the wintertime.”

  We got a hotel room and decided to take the day to look around. Only the hotel room was so toasty and warm we stretched out and slept till almost six o’clock. When we went outside the lights were on and the streets were plumb empty, like the wind had blown everybody away. We found some saloons, though, and the people were in them.

  “Let’s celebrate before we go to work,” I said.

  He was agreeable, and boy did we celebrate. I wished we’d eaten supper first. I guess around home we never drank enough to keep in shape. We found some girls, too, even if they wasn’t no raving beauties. We would have kept them for the night but they said our hotel was too respectable for them. They wouldn’t take us to their places, so we went back to the saloons and drank some more and did without.

  When we finally got back to the room we agreed we’d have to get up at four o’clock and look for a job. Boy, it was a bad night. If the hotel hadn’t had a bathtub, we would have ruined the place. I brought up a good gallon, myself, before morning, and I wasn’t nothing to Johnny. He made twice as many trips as I did. About the time it got light I seen him on his way to the bathroom agin, only he was crawling.

  “What are you doing crawling?” I said. “Can’t you even walk?”

  “I might could,” he said, and crawled on in anyway. I thought that was pretty funny.

  “Hell, I can at least walk,” I said. He was in asleep on the bathroom floor.

  We never made it up at four, but we did get downstairs by about six-thirty. I had got emptied out and was feeling okay, but Johnny wasn’t. I made him eat some breakfast, though, and he kept it down.

  “That’ll make you good as new,” I said.

  “I’ll never be that good agin,” he said.

  By the time we got our hotel bills paid it was after sunup. The wind was still cold as ice.

  “How much money you got?” I said.

  “Oh, few dollars,” he said. “Enough to last.”

  But, by god, when we counted, we had three dollars between us. Where the rest of it went I’ll never know.

  “We better go to Clarendon,” he said. “That’s the place to get jobs. Hell, we’ll be broke by supper.”

  So we got railroad tickets to Clarendon; they cost a dollar apiece. Johnny went to sleep right off, but I sat up and looked out the window. That old plains country sure did look cold and gray to me, and I wasn’t so sure I liked it. We ought to have waited till springtime to leave home. But still, it was a good feeling to be loose like we were; it was a kind of adventure, in a way, and it didn’t too much matter about the cold. It mattered more about Molly and Dad. I was just glad Johnny was along. It wouldn’t have been much fun by myself. I couldn’t figure out what had happened to all our money.

  They put us off in Clarendon about one o’clock. Johnny was all refreshed, and we turned up our collars and went walking down the street to see the town. It would have been a nice walk if it hadn’t been for carrying the saddles.

  I guess we were lucky; the first thing we struck was a horse auction. They were auctioning off a couple of hundred broncs some fellers had driven in from New Mexico. A lot of cattlemen were there. After we watched the bidding awhile we saw a funny-looking old man who didn’t look like he could be very important, so we asked him if he knew where two cowpunchers could get a job. He was pretty friendly.

  “You boys cowpunchers?” he said. “What else can you do? Can either one of you ride broncs?” He was a grizzly old feller and didn’t have but half an ear on one side of his head.

  “Both of us can,” Johnny said. Which was a damn lie; he couldn’t ride a bronc if all four of its feet were hobbled. He was an awful good hand on a horse, but he wasn’t no hand to make a horse, so I contradicted him.

  “I can ride broncs and he can do everything else,” I said.

  “My name’s Grinsom,” he said. “I could use a couple of hands myself. I’m gonna have a bunch of horses to drive home when this is over, and then somebody’s gonna have to break them, I damn sure ain’t. You boys come along and I’ll try you for a week. I’ll give you a dollar apiece to give these broncs a good ride, and if we get along with one another it’ll be fifteen a month and bunk and board. That suit you?”

  It didn’t seem no great amount of money to me, and I couldn’t figure a little dried-up feller like Mr. Grinsom owning much of a ranch, but Johnny thought it was fine, so we hired on. It turned out Mr. Grinsom owned thirty-eight thousand acres. He bought nineteen broncs and offered me and Johnny our pick of them to ride to the ranch.

  Since Johnny had spoke up about being a bronc rider, that was pretty funny. He got throwed four times on the way to the ranch. I only got thrown once, and that was an accident. I was looking around and not paying enough attention to what I was doing.

  “You ain’t gonna break no broncs that way,” Mr. Grinsom said to him, after the fourth buck-off.

  Johnny was about half-crippled by then, and too mad to lie. “Hell no, I ain’t no damn bronc rider,” he said. “Gid can break these h
orses; he likes that kind of stuff. I’m a cowboy. I like to ride a horse that already knows something, so I can get work done. You keep me a week, and if I don’t turn out to be the best hand you got by then, why by god just fire me.”

  Mr. Grinsom got tickled. He had pretty much of a sense of humor, at least about some things.

  “My boys may give you a little competition,” he said.

  It turned out he really meant his boys, too. He had a big fat good-natured wife and seven grown sons. He had two hired hands, too, but he never worked them half as hard as he worked his own boys. All the boys’ names started with J: Jimmy, Johnny, Jerry, Joe, Jakey, Jay, and Jordman. I never could tell them apart, but they were nice enough old boys. They had a great big bunkhouse, and me and Johnny and the two hired hands and the seven boys all slept in it. We ate supper at the big house, and Mrs. Grinsom explained to us that after they’d had the fourth boy it had got too noisy in the house and they’d put them out in the bunkhouse with the cowboys when they got big enough to get around. I don’t know where all the noise went; the only words I ever heard them say were: “Thank you for the supper, Momma, it sure was good.” Each one of them said that to Mrs. Grinsom after their meals.

  Me and Johnny thought it was a pretty strange family. But the other two cowboys, one’s name was Ed and the other’s name was Malonus, they really thought so. They were so glad to have new hands around that wasn’t in the family that they just about hugged us.

  The next morning the old man asked me if I really wanted to break the horses. I said for a dollar apiece, like he offered, I’d give them a good first ride.

  “How many do you want to ride a day?” he said.

  “Oh, I ought to be done with them by three o’clock,” I said. “There ain’t but eighteen left. I rode one yesterday.”