Kelsey rubbed his eyes, which were bloodshot and smarting from the smoke. He was drunk, as much from winning as from the whiskey. “No,” he said, getting to his feet, standing tall in the little room, his red head thrown back, “not a check, but a cow—a cow that’ll have a calf in spring, a good cow with a straight back, short legs, and just enough white showing in the right places, a cow out of a good bull. That’s what you owe me, Vic.”
“You pick her or I pick her, come fall?” Vic asked.
“You pick her, Vic. I trust you.”
“I give you this cow, then, when we bring the cattle off summer range. Any cow Vic Lundgren has is a good cow, Scotty, and don’t let nobody tell you no different. I give you my word on it, and my word is better than gold in the Park—eh, men?”
Faun Gentry nodded, belching loudly. The man Slim slipped quietly out of the room. Bill Dirk began to gather up bottles and poker chips. Posser just sat, staring down at the table, reaching in and out of his pocket, looking at the empty hand and then putting it back, as if he couldn’t believe the pocket was empty.
Kelsey walked out of the saloon, swaying from side to side. He pounded Faun on the shoulder and told him what a noble gentleman he was, by heaven, and that great blood ran in his veins and he was proud to know him, by God! Faun responded in the same mood and then went slowly toward his store, pulling a big key from his pocket.
As Kelsey started across the street Jediah Walsh fell into step beside him. In the middle of the street Jediah pulled a pistol from his pocket and fired it into the air, shouting, “Hurrah for the Fourth of July!”
“It’s not,” Kelsey said, hiccuping. “It’s only June.”
“Well, hell, it still starts with J, don’t it?” Jediah looked all around as though he expected to see some activity on the quiet street, sighed, and pocketed the pistol. “Come on, son, we’ll go to the hotel. And I’ll bunk with you!” He linked his arm through Kelsey’s. They wove across the empty street and up the creaking wooden steps into the hotel.
In the lobby a fat woman sat behind the desk, picking her teeth with a hairpin. Her little eyes bored into Jediah. “Where’s my man?”
Jediah bowed awkwardly. “Possy, ma’am, he’s just delayed collectin’ his winnin’s from Mr. Dirk.” He bowed again and urged Kelsey toward the stairs.
“He better be,” she said dryly. “We got no money to lose, and him coughin’ his head off every night.”
They got to the room, which was bare-floored and had a tom green blind flapping at the window. When Kelsey lighted the lamp a fly began to bump monotonously against the ceiling. Jediah squinted up at the fly. “Crazy son-of-a-bitch. Thinks he can break right out into the sky. Like some people, I reckon.”
“Watch the lamp,” Kelsey warned. “We don’t want to set fire to the place.”
“Listen, son, I been drunker than this more times than I can count. And I’ve started all over again the next mornin’. How much’d you win?”
“A hundred dollars and some—that’s besides what Vic owes me. I’ll send that hundred to Scotland.” And he stood thinking of Big Mina and suddenly said angrily, “That’s why Prim’s not got my letters. Big Mina’s got them first. I ought to have known.”
“You did good, son,” Jediah said. “What you gonna do with a cow, though?”
“Start my own cow herd, that’s what.”
Jediah started taking off his shoes. Then he got into bed, fully clothed, and pulled the covers to his chin. “Some folks ain’t gonna like it, you havin’ a cow,” he said, yawning.
Kelsey pulled up the blind and looked over the buildings to the land, big and fresh in the first light of morning. “Ever hear of Bobby Burns, Jediah?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“He was a poet—wrote about real things, like men drinking together of a Saturday night. Listen, I’ll tell you about them. . . .” And he began to quote Burns, his heart quickening to the lilt of the words. He turned to the trapper and shouted, “My God, isn’t it wonderful? To think it and feel it and then say it like he did!”
“It is,” Jediah Walsh said. “You turnin’ in, son, or you gonna sleep roostin’ on the side of this bed like a damn chicken?”
“I was thinking of Prim, my lassie. I was thinking how long it’s been since I saw her face and heard her voice. I was remembering the way she felt in my arms, and her tears. I should have married her, Jediah. It wasn’t right I should leave her, not after what we’d been to each other.”
“You can send for her,” Jediah said. “And never be sad for havin’ loved a woman. Just be grateful you had the chance.”
“But the sadness is in it, and I can’t help it. It runs in me like a streak of darkness, Jediah.”
“In all of us,” Jediah said, “but don’t be sorry.”
Kelsey got up, walked to the washstand, where the big white bowl and white pitcher were sitting. He poured water into the bowl and tossed it against his face. He blew out the lamp and moved toward the bed, a music moving with him, whirling in his head with the words of poetry and with the thought of Taraleean and Prim. He tossed his shirt and pants on the floor and got in beside Jediah. The smell of the beaver castors, rank and overpowering, swept over him. But then he slept suddenly, plunging into darkness as though he had fallen over a steep cliff.
CHAPTER V
September. A few early snows had dusted the peaks with white. The cattle began their slow drift to lower country, wandering along the creeks, moving through the open gates into the meadows and onto the flats. It was an inevitable and unhurried homecoming.
The lush green feed of summer range was now cured and had a greenish-brown color. This was the feed that hardened the fat on cattle and put them in shape for the long drive to shipping points. The hair on the cattle was long and in bloom, shining darkly as though it had been oiled, for maturity came early in the high country where any summer night might carry the breath of snow.
By the middle of the month it was roundup time at the Red Hill Ranch. On a clear, still morning, before daylight, Kelsey sat at breakfast with Monte Maguire, Jake, and the other punchers. Outside the yard fence other cowpokes were gathered around the chuck wagon of the Big C outfit from Wyoming, for the Big C ranch cattle drifted onto the summer ranges of the Park. In turn, some Park cattle made their way to the grazing grounds of the Big C. In the meadow below the ranch house the Big C cavvy mingled with the horses of Monte Maguire’s riders, feeding on the short second crop of grass that came up following the haying season.
“You got any chaps?” Monte looked at Kelsey, the yellow lamplight shining on the tan of her face.
It was the way she always threw a question at a man, he thought, giving him no warning.
“There’s an old pair of angoras in the bunkhouse,” Jake said. “I don’t wear angoras any more. Like the batwing leather ones better.”
Tommy Cameron frowned. “What would he want with a pair of fuzzy pants? They’d
