and faced the soft night wind, rolling a smoke, waiting for supper. Dewey Jones looked the home ranch over critically and liked what he saw; and just then the cowboss rode in from the south and shook hands and Dewey Jones knew that here was the real boss of the Flying A.
Hank Marlowe was a little bitty dried up fellow with a thin leathery face, the kind of man who didn’t know buying or selling cattle, but sure knew them on the range, where to catch, how to handle, where to run. Cochrane was the storekeeper who ran up the figure columns, but Dewey Jones had more respect for the Hank Marlowes. He knew what they could do. Hank gave him an easy first look and headed inside, the cook yelled, “Come get it before I throw it away,” and Dewey Jones followed the crew into the kitchen for supper.
He kept his mouth shut and listened, and thought over everything he’d noticed about the home ranch. The ranch house was L-shaped, built of reddish-brown sandstone mortared with adobe mud and flat-roofed with big viga pines that came, Raymond told him, from near the ranger station at the foot of the Mogollons up Hebron way. The west end was private quarters for Cochrane’s family, the kitchen occupied the middle, and the lower leg of the L facing south was the big bunk room.
Down by the corrals Dewey had noticed the old up-and-down bellows in the blacksmith shop, with plenty of ought and double-ought shoes for the small mountain horses. The big corral had long feed troughs for cotton-seed cake. The crew brought cattle down from the hills, fed cake and gentled them to the sight of humans before making the final drive to the train. The home ranch was about two thousand acres fenced into two big pastures with fine grass, and everything was in first-class condition.
“Comin’?” Raymond said.
“I’ll hang around,” Dewey Jones said.
The crew went into the bunk room and Dewey grabbed a dish towel and began helping the cook clean up. Bob Buford was about sixty-five, bald-headed and stumpy, a typical Irishman who threw his brogue around reckless and, like most cooks, started right in giving Dewey the low-down on the ranch. Buford was an old railroader who’d lost one hand on the Denver & Rio Grande long ago at Durango, and what with telling Dewey all that personal history, old Buford filled him in on the crew. It was funny how those men, ridden with and seen less than a day, had already taken certain shape in Dewey’s mind. Old Buford elaborated on each one, and Dewey Jones felt pretty good inside because his own first judgments were borne out.
George Spradley was forty, one of those real quiet, good cowboys who came from Young, Arizona, and had a wife and two kids. He was five-eight and weighed around one-fifty and sported a big handle-bar moustache. His riding partner was Driver Gobet, old Buford explained, and Driver was a good man, taller than Spradley, slender and well built, with a hatchet face spilling down sharply behind a long nose. There was Jim Thornhill, called Thistlepatch, who was an easy six-two and weighed over two hundred pounds. He had sandy hair and red whiskers, he talked in a slow drawl and didn’t say too much. Old Buford explained that Thistlepatch was now twenty-five, a Montana boy who’d left home at thirteen and worked down into Arizona and been riding ever since on different cow outfits, the Cherrycows, the R4, at times for the government on the reservation keeping outfits off the Indian grass, and finally for the Flying A.
Buford began talking about Raymond Holly, but Dewey cut him off because he knew Raymond from way back. That brought them to Hank Marlowe and old Buford spared no praise regarding the cowboss. Buford maintained that Hank was the best roper Buford knew, one of those men who could walk out in the morning and say, “What do you want?” and take another man’s rope and ketch, either hand, in nothing flat. Hank had grown up around Winslow and spent his childhood roping wild burros, and now he was rated the best cowboss in the country.
“Bob,” Dewey Jones finally said. “What kind of a bird is this Cochrane? How is he on feeding the boys?”
“Damned penny pincher,” Buford said. “Saves pennies on the groceries.”
“How long you been here?” Dewey asked.
“About eighteen years,” Buford said. “Cochrane’s the first bastard I’ve worked for, but his wife’s a fine woman and they got a good kid.”
Dewey Jones said meaningly, “I’m getting groceries tomorrow—”
“Buy what you want,” Buford said flatly. “Hank’s the cowboss, he feeds his men. Cochrane won’t know what you buy because the bill goes to the Los Angeles office.”
Old Buford didn’t tell Dewey Jones what to buy, but he did guess that Dewey might be a greenhorn on pack outfits, and so began giving the low-down on that subject. “Pard,” old Buford said passionately, “you sure got to watch them goddamned ornery burros. Them sonsabitches’ll rifle camp every time you get ten feet away from ’em.”
Dewey said, “Which ones are bad?”
“Them kitchen burros,” old Buford said. “Tom, Jerry, Jim Toddy, and Benstega. Them four with their black hearts!”
“You must know ’em,” Dewey Jones said.
“Know ’em! Lemme tell you!”
Old Buford began working up a big head of steam, but Dewey Jones waved and escaped into the bunk room, found an empty bunk and unrolled his bed. He lay back and smoked and listened to the boys talk, because you could learn more just listening, getting the real feel of an outfit. He felt their respect for the cowboss, but any time Cochrane’s name was mentioned it came offhand and gave him the feeling none of the boys thought too much of the G.M.
He smoked a final cigaret and closed his eyes when Thornhill snuffed out the lamp. Nobody had asked him any questions. They were all reserving judgment until he proved up. Raymond turned in the next bunk and said, “‘Night, Dewey,” and Dewey Jones mumbled, “‘Night, Raymond,” and let sleep take him down the long, soft trail with the sore-muscled dreams of gone shows and bad rides and carnivals, of women he’d known and drunks he’d been on, of twenty-eight years spent and gone. He didn’t move until five o’clock when Raymond shook him awake and old Buford yelled stridently.
“Come and get it!”
Cochrane showed up to give the day’s order at breakfast. Cochrane told Dewey Jones to get the chuck-wagon team, drive to town, and get a bill of groceries to last ninety days. Raymond went out and had the four chuck-wagon mules ready when Dewey came down from the house. Raymond showed him the harness in the tackroom, wished him luck, and hurried off to saddle up and join the crew. Hank Marlowe said, “See you tonight, Dewey,” and led them off about the day’s business. Dewey Jones harnessed the mules and headed for town, making notes all the way, studying out his order for Babbitt Brothers Mercantile Company in Holbrook, letting the mules follow the road, paying no attention to the country as he licked his pencil stub and made out his order. When he hit town and entered the store, he had the bill nearly ready for the clerk.
And right off the bat his first item made the clerk laugh. The clerk said, “What in hell are you doing with fifty pounds of corn meal on a cow outfit?”
“Listen,” Dewey Jones said stiffly. “Onions and corn meal and sage make a good dressing for roast beef where I come from. You got any objections?”
“No,” the clerk said.
“All right,” Dewey Jones said. “Let’s get to popping.”
The clerk grinned and began filling the boxes. Twenty-five pounds each of onions and pinto beans, hundred and fifty pounds of Hill Brothers Blue Box Coffee, the one-pound square boxes only because Dewey Jones used a pound and a half for breakfast,
