beer and kissed her on the way back, but outside of that it had been a long time, with anybody except Joan. “This is the first time since—it happened—I’ve been happy,” he said.
Again she was gone. “Take a look at Brownie’s leg for me,” she said. “He banged it in the trailer.”
Lonnie opened the stall door and slipped in. She shut the door after him, and he was in the dark stall, the air warm and heavily loaded with horse and manure and oat hay. He patted Brownie’s nose, slid a hand up and over the gelding’s neck to hold him; Brownie wasn’t wearing a bridle. The other hand slid down one front leg and then the other. “Cool and smooth,” he said. “And he’s got a good deep bed.”
He slipped outside again and fished in his pockets for cigarettes while Vera Mae latched the door. As soon as he struck the match, a figure moved down the line. Vera Mae called, “It’s all right, Slim,” and the watchman didn’t come near them. She said, “You’re an awful damn fool, Lonnie. Mentioning your wife to me—just then.”
He said, “I had it to do. You’d maybe forgotten I have two kids.”
“And a lot of memories,” she added.
“I don’t know about that.” Lonnie sucked on his cigarette, and then threw it down. “Maybe I’m not smart enough for that. I’m sure’n hell bullheaded, though . . . ”
Vera Mae’s voice had lost its life. “What happened to her?”
He sensed that it wasn’t a question, that she didn’t really want to know. But he said, “I worked Mulemouth a couple of hours a day, got him so I could saddle him, ride him around the breaking corral a little. Said I was going to take him out next morning . . . Joan slipped out early, and did it for me . . . A couple of weeks later, I was riding, and I found her saddle, with the cinch broke, up in the pine woods . . . ”
“Threw her?”
“She got dragged a hundred yards before her foot came out of the stirrup. I was down in the meadow, where we night pasture the rest of the horses . . . ”
“Good God,” Vera Mae said. Her hand found his arm and slid down to his hand.
“Yeah,” Lonnie said. “Yeah . . . well, for a while, I did what riding I had to while the kids were in school. But school’s out soon. I had to see if horses scared ’em. Mike saw it, saw the end of it, and threw Junie down on the bed so she couldn’t look out the window.”
“Oh, good God,” Vera Mae said again. “You poor kid . . . What would you have done if they’d cried at the rodeo?”
“Tommy Burns—he’s district ranger up at Salal Flats-would give me a letter some place. I could work in a sawmill, I reckon. Or on one of the dairy farms down in the flat country. I can milk and plough and all . . . ”
The other hand found him, and she was in his arms again. “I thought you were a rube when I first saw you.” The words were a little muffled by his coat.
“I traveled rodeo for a year. I been around . . . Vera Mae, the kids are crazy about you, they never took to anyone so good, and—well—I’d been saving money in case I did have to move. Got enough to put in a bathroom now; there’s a place off the back hall where I can knock a door through, and then I’ll build a wooden floor, and Sears have got the complete outfits, toilet, water heater, tub and washstand—Unless you’d rather have a shower?”
She was shaking, and he thought she was crying. But when she raised her face, it was dry under his kiss and twisted up with laughing. She said, “Cowboy, is this a proposal or a plumbing catalog?”
“I told you I was dumb.
Her horse snorted and went to the other end of the stall at her voice. “Don’t ever say that again. You hear me? Not ever again.”
“All right,” he said. “We’ll make out fine, Vera Mae.”
CHAPTER V
IT WASN’T EXACTLY a pickup, but they always called it that. Lon was glad Vera Mae hadn’t laughed when she’d seen it. He went over all the things in his mind that he’d told her about the homestead, and decided she couldn’t have expected him to have a real Ford or Chevvie pickup. Those trucks cost a couple of thousand dollars . . . A thirty-six Ford does fine, and if you saw down the rear end and build a good, hardwood body, you got as good a pickup as Henry ever made.
Sure, she knew he was poor, knew the ranch and the allotment together only ran a truckload of beef, knew the house—well, the cabin—had running water but no bathroom. Just a faucet in the kitchen . . . She’d understand about the grease stain in front of the porch where he’d drained the car last time, in order to get in the shade, and how the oil’d disappear in a little while.
Thank goodness, the kids were along and would insist on hopping out to open the gate. There wasn’t any reason in the world he hadn’t put the new catch on, except he never remembered to throw it in the car until he was almost to the gate, and it never seemed worthwhile to make a trip all the way down there when you had to go exactly there to get in and out.
Of course, with a forge standing right beside the house, he should have welded the leg for the stove, but it cooked just as well with two bricks under it, and for a man who’d bragged so about having running water, he should have put a washer in the faucet. And it was plain slovenly to have left the dishes in the sink yesterday morning, but they had had to get an early start or sleep two nights at the hotel.
Yeah, and before Duke brought Brownie up, he’d have to get the stall fixed where Belle and Betsy had kicked at each other and broken the partition down. But after all, the horses weren’t in except when it rained, and the rain was over for the year. But if that was so, why was his slicker still hanging in the kitchen so you had to go sideways to get in and out, either that or get slapped in the face?
He wouldn’t blame her if she turned right around and went back.
Vera Mae snapped him out of what was beginning to make the sunlight fade off this pretty piece of road under the Douglas firs, with a big stream running alongside. He said, “When these trees begin to give way to the pines, we’ll be getting into our country.”
Vera Mae said, “I’m looking forward to it,” and he knew she meant it. She got up on her knees and peered through the window. “Both of them asleep,” she said. “With their spurs on. Mike’s left one has slipped down till it’s on the bottom of his sneaker.”
“Duke was sure nice,” he said. “I’d never a thought of giving the kids wedding presents. Good of him to offer to bring Brownie up, too. Nicest thing he did was give you away, though. I had a market for you.”
“You ole sweet thing,” Vera Mae said. Her voice sounded so absent-minded he glanced over at her. She was still looking through the back glass, and he thought a cop must be following them until she said, “They’re getting too much sun back there; they’ll have headaches when they wake up. No, don’t stop.” She bent over and slipped off her boots. “If you stop, they’ll wake up. Just slow down.”
He had a hard time driving and watching her at the same time as she opened the door and slipped out. He cut his speed as low as it would go without bucking, or having to be shifted, and she worked back along the running board and jerked the tarp up on the bows with one hand, hanging on with the other. The wind caught the tarp and tried
