me. What you so proud of, son?”
“Whores over fours. Can you beat ’em?”
“Shucks, I only got treys over deuces. Shake out something, Hank. I want to peek at a good hole card.”
A Big C puncher raised up from the tarpaulin-covered bunk where he had been half asleep. “Say, that little buckskin I was ridin’ threw me higher than a kite up in Ruby Gulch on Independence Mountain today.”
“How come?”
“Slim and I run onto a black bear in the strip of willows at the spring below the aspen patch. We tried to rope him. Every time I got ready to spill a loop on him, my horse would jump sideways. He finally spun away, and I was usin’ the spurs on him when he flipped his tail over the rope. Jesus! I didn’t have a chance. He tossed me halfway to heaven. Then he bucked all the way to the willows, with me tearin’ along right behind him. A fella can run like hell when he’s on foot and thinkin’ a bear is about to snort in his flank with every jump.”
“I’d like to ’a seen it. Your horse was lucky he didn’t bust a leg among all them prairie-dog holes.”
“Most of our punchers was wearin’ their forty-fives. I could have shot him. Y’know, Jake, you oughta carry a gun when you’re ridin’ rough country. If a good horse breaks his leg, only kind thing a man can do is shoot him.”
Jake nodded. “I know, but I just don’t take to packin’ pistols. A man should, for if he gets throwed and hung in the stirrup, havin’ a gun to kill a horse might be the thing would save his life. But I guess I’ll go on takin’ my chances with myself and my horses. I figure the only men who oughta pack guns are the men who really know how to handle ’em. Y’know, when the West opened up and wagons was crossin’ to California and Oregon, they had more damn fools kill people by accident just because men had guns and didn’t know how to use ’em. Hell, you’re always hearin’ about Indians killin’ people on wagon trains, but you don’t hear much about people killin’ each other because they got careless with guns or was plumb ignorant about usin’ them.”
Again there was a lull in conversation. No sound came from the poker table, where the men held their cards close, studying them carefully.
Jake yawned. “Must be a flock of full houses and flushes out in that hand of draw. Well, boys, tomorrow we do the field roundup here, cut the stuff for shippin’, and any strays that go into the jackpot. Suppose the Big C figures on shippin’ about next week.”
“Yep. More ridin’. A man spends half his life in the saddle.”
“Far as I’m concerned,” Jake murmured, “it’s as good a place to spend it as any.”
Kelsey moved away from the stove, into the frosty fall night. He walked slowly down the worn path to the ranch house and stood for a moment, looking up at the stars. They were big and close and very bright. He thought of Prim and of the harbor, where the night sky was soft and the sound of the sea was always with a man.
The yard gate creaked, and he saw Monte Maguire walking toward him. She came to stand beside him, saying nothing, looking out across the land. He wondered what thoughts ran in her mind. Did she think only of cattle on a night like this—or of the man who had been her husband? Did the enormous silence of the world here, so close to the sky, make her lonely; was a part of her crying for things the mind could never define?
She turned her head and looked at him, and he knew she tried to see into his face. His heart suddenly felt big and crowding to his throat. Then, quickly, she brushed past him and went into the house.
CHAPTER VI
Kelsey rode into the yard of the Plunkett ranch with the cold fall rain drifting over him. He’d come for the Red Hill Ranch mail. After tying the horse to a fencepost, he walked through the muddy yard, which was pockmarked where the chickens had dusted themselves in summer.
To Kelsey the house had an easy, slipshod appearance that matched Amie’s character. Built of logs, it had settled on one side, listing toward the east. In many places the mud chinking had fallen from between the logs and been replaced by rags. There were no curtains up, for Amie never got around to ironing them until they were so mussed it was time for another washing.
Beyond the house he could see the river, running high from the heavy fall rain. Yellow leaves clung to the willows, made brighter by the wetness of the day.
He stepped onto the sagging porch. Sodden chickens huddled under it. A clutter covered the gray boards of the floor. There were old tin cans, worn coats and shoes, toys, a wooden washtub, a rusty boiler, two pitchforks, shovels, and a soggy crust of bread a child had dropped half-eaten. He knocked on the door, which was sticky from jelly-smeared fingers, and heard Amie’s warm voice lifted in a shout. “Come in if you can get in!”
Harry Plunkett was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. He wore no shirt, and his long gray underwear was stained at the armpits with sweat. Opposite him sat Amie, her dark hair wound carelessly on top of her head, loose strands clinging to her plump cheeks. She was wearing a soiled pink wrapper; the hem was stained black from trailing across the kitchen floor. The baby, a little girl, cooed to herself where she lay in a clothes basket, her pink toes thrust in the air above her. From another room came the noise of the three small boys playing.
“Coffee’s hot,” Amie said. “Sit, Kelsey, and take a load off your feet.”
Harry looked sour—in one of his brooding moods, Kelsey thought; Harry was either away up or away down in his mind. He was big and fair-skinned and heavily freckled, much younger-looking than his wife. Now he stuck a finger in his ear and worked it back and forth. “Got them head noises again.”
“Oh, hell,” Amie muttered, setting a cup before Kelsey, “he gets them every year this time. When haying’s over and he starts thinkin’ about winter, then he’s got wheels in his head.”
“By God, you wouldn’t think it’s so funny if you had ’em,” Harry said, scowling at his wife. “You gonna get Kelsey his mail, or are you gonna sit here and run off at the mouth for an hour?”
Amie thumbed her nose at him, and a brief smile lighted Harry’s face. The dirty hem of the wrapper flipped behind her as she went from the kitchen to the small bedroom which was the post office.
Harry poured coffee and shoved a cream pitcher toward Kelsey. A hard yellow river of cream curved from the mouth of the pitcher and down its bulging front. “I dunno if this country’s worth what it takes out of a man,” Harry complained. “Man tears his guts out chasin’ water and shovelin’ manure all spring. Then he runs himself thin after the cattle until they’re ready for summer range. After that it’s put up hay, and every time a cloud rolls over the range a man worries for fear he’s gonna get his grass wet, and then it’ll burn and maybe have to be put up damp, and after that it can sweat in the stack and cause sickness in the cattle come winter. And winter—what’s before a man in winter but shovel hay until his back’s broke down and—”
“It’s not shovelin’ hay that’s broke down your back,” Amie said tartly, putting a pile of mail on the table before Kelsey. “And any time you want to take over the kids and the house I’ll be glad to pitch hay. I’d just like the chance—no kids to fuss with, no meals to cook, no house to clean.”
“You oughta been a woman like Monte Maguire,” Harry said, his eyes narrowing as he looked at his wife. “She run right out of the
