Cherokee Page 3

  “Stop saying ‘ain’t.’ It’s not a word.”

  I went on out the kitchen door and walked afoot the half mile over to the big house. It was a nice night. We were finally getting just a little nip of fall in the air. Made the walking pleasant. With it quiet as it was, I could hear the far-off sounds of the ocean. It took me back to when I was a kid and would lay awake nights thinking I could hear the sound of the surf booming up on the beach. Sometimes, when the wind blew hard in from the east, you could actually hear it. We used to go swimming down at a little beach about three miles away, but it had been a long time since I’d done that. I looked forward to J.D. getting up to an age when him and me could do such things together.

  I went in through the back door of the big house. Just off the long hall that ran from front door to back was the large dining room with the huge round table in it. I passed by its open doors. It was still lighted with kerosene lamps, and the two Mexican women were clearing dishes away from supper. I reckoned my brothers and Howard had gotten lucky and Buttercup had been too drunk to cook, and the Mexican women had fixed their supper.

  The big old dining table had been in our family since I could remember. It was an immense, heavy round thing. In my mother’s day it had been polished and clean and unmarked. But since her passing, I was sorry to say, we had reverted to the manners of ruffians and the table reflected that. It bore spur marks where we’d propped our boots up on its surface, cigarillo bums, scuffs of all kinds, scars, and even a little carving with a pocketknife.

  I turned to the left at the next door into the big office. It was funny, but we all sat the same way and in the same place for our evening meetings. We’d been doing it for as long as we’d been having them, and that was going on for five or six years. Ben always sat in a straight-backed chair against the wall facing the door. He always had it tipped back so its front legs were off the floor. Beside him was the sideboard table where the whiskey and tumblers were kept. If he was up, Howard always sat in his rocking chair just a yard from the door to his bedroom. Norris always sat on his side of the two desks we had pushed up against each other to make one big double desk, the desk Howard had been sitting at in the afternoon when he’d laid the light-running surprise on me. Norris had an office in town, in the building of the bank we owned, but he kept some work at home or brought some home that he had to check with me about or get my okay for. Besides the ranch and the real estate in town, we also put money in different municipal bonds and other such ventures as Norris thought profitable. He couldn’t stand to see money just laying around and not working. He was harder on it than Howard had been on us, in turn, as boys. Howard had always figured if a boy had his eyes open he ought to be doing something with his hands. He didn’t expect you to work when you were asleep, and our mother wouldn’t let him work us on Sunday, but those were about the only exceptions.

  I didn’t sit at my desk in the evenings. I keep my herd books and my breeding records there, documentation that I used in the upgrading of our cattle. In the evenings I sat in a big overstuffed chair by the wall.

  When I came into the room everybody already had a drink in their hands, so I walked on over to the sideboard table and poured myself out a tumbler of whiskey. I made as if to kick the legs of Ben’s chair out from under him, and then looked over at the glass in Howard’s hand. I said, “How many that make today, Dad?”

  He give me a sheepish look, but he said, “Been waitin’ and savorin’ it all day.”

  Ben said, “Oh, yeah. We all believe that. Justa, I want to talk to you about gettin’ some new breeding stock in here. You keep saying wait, wait, but we wait much longer we’re going to be breeding back brother to sister.”

  I sat down in the big chair and took a sip of my drink. “I somehow doubt that. How many horses you got in the remuda, six hundred? Seven?”

  He shrugged. “Round figures? About seven-fifty.”

  “That’s a lot of brothers and sisters.”

  “I need some Thoroughbred stock, damnit.”

  “Don’t swear in the house. Makes holes in the roof.”

  Howard said, “Dadgumit, Nora hasn’t been over to see me in a coon’s age. She forget me? And when is she gonna bring my grandbaby by to see me?”

  I said, “Howard, he’s cutting teeth right now and I guarantee you can consider yourself lucky to have him at least a half a mile away.”

  “Pshaw,” he said. “Couldn’t be no worse’n what you was. I swear your mother . . .” He stopped all of a sudden and looked away. It got kind of uncomfortably quiet. The death of our mother, Alice, had hit Howard uncommonly hard. I’d been about sixteen at the time, old enough to see and to understand what was happening. She’d died and, overnight, Howard had gone from a strong, full-of-life man to someone who seemed to be shrinking right in front of our eyes. It was about that time that I’d started having a hand in running the ranch matters. Howard seemed to have lost all interest in anything, including living. And then, just as he was starting to come out of it, he’d taken the bullet through the chest and that had completed the decline.

  Into the silence Norris said, “Shay Jordan paid me a visit at the office today.”

  That was Norris for you. He’d been busy at some papers when I’d come in so he’d made no motion to signify he knew I was in the room. So now, without so much as a howdy, he was straight into business.

  I said, “Yeah?” Shay was the oldest son of Rex Jordan, the man who was disputing our property line. Shay was twenty-four or twenty-five and he had a kind of swaggering way about him, just enough of the bullyboy that I hadn’t cared for him even on short acquaintance. Besides him there was the younger brother, Roy, who was about nineteen or twenty and showed every sign of wanting to grow up just like his big brother. The father, Rex, was a man I figured to be in his late forties or early fifties. I’d never met the missus, but I understood that Rex’s brother lived with them. They had moved out from somewhere in far west Texas, and did not appear to be interested in being sociable. They had bought Old Man Fletcher’s place when he’d moved back to Tennessee to live with his married daughter. They hadn’t much more than settled in when they’d started a squabble with us about our boundary line.

  The trouble had come up over a drift fence we’d built to keep our cattle from straying too far to the southwest. It wasn’t much of a fence, just three strands of smooth wire strung on cedar posts, and wasn’t much more than a mile long. It wasn’t intended to keep anyone out of our property or limit anyone’s right-of-way. Its only purpose had been to throw our cattle back toward the east to keep them from mixing with the numerous brands on the smaller ranches that lay to the south and west of us. But the Jordans had taken it as an attempt to fence them in. They’d declared that where they came from was open range country and a man didn’t go to fencing his neighbors out. They’d said the grass was there for all, that no man owned it, and that by gawd, they weren’t going to stand for it. We’d agreed with them, and had said we weren’t trying to fence anybody in or out, that we’d just put up a drift fence because our cattle tended to drift to the southwest on account of the eastern wind off the gulf and we were just trying to make for less work when it came time to gather.

  But unfortunately, it was at the time that the troublesome barbed wire was just being introduced into the Southwest, and squabbles were breaking out all over the country about it. We’d tried to explain to the Jordans that we believed in open range also, and that the drift fence wasn’t intended to do more than turn back a few wandering cows, that it wasn’t strong enough to stop a herd of prairie jackrabbits. But that hadn’t been good enough for them. They’d been convinced that the drift fence was the first step in a planned campaign on our part to fence off the whole range and shut out the small rancher. Nothing we had been able to say had seemed to convince them otherwise. The discussion had taken place on our front porch, the Jordans declining to enter the house or to accept any form of hospitality. Norris had dismissed them as trash, but even trash can
be trouble if it keeps showing up on your doorstep.

  After that was when they’d trotted out a surveyor and claimed the fence was on their property. They’d advised us of their intentions to tear it down, but a visit from the Matagorda County sheriff, Lew Vara, had convinced them it would be wiser to wait until the issue was finally settled. That Lew was our friend, and perhaps my best friend outside of my brothers, had had nothing to do with the matter. The fence hadn’t been proven to be on their property. Then, of course, had come our surveyor, and after that a lawsuit on their part, except the lawsuit sought a little more than just the little strip of land the fence was on. It claimed a much larger chunk of our deeded land than had originally been in question.

  But it made no difference about the lawsuit. They couldn’t win it whether they were right or wrong, and there really was no telling about right or wrong with some of the rusty old land grants most titles were founded on. We’d win for two reasons. First, and most rightfully, we’d occupied the contested land for forty years. But more importantly, we had a hell of a lot more money than they did and we could keep dragging them through court until they either quit or went broke.

  Norris said, “Yes, and young Mister Jordan was not particularly polite. He inferred that there was all sorts of ways to settle disputes and going to law—his phrase—was just one of them. I believe he was implying mischief.”

  Ben said, “I believe I might have to give that smart-alecky little bastard a school lesson. Teach him some manners.”

  I looked over at him and said sharply, “Ben! You stay the hell away from Shay. And the rest of the Jordans too. You understand me?” Outside of a man named Wilson Young, Ben was as good with a gun as any man I’d ever seen. He was good with horseflesh and handguns. But that’s where it stopped. He was hot-tempered, had no judgment, and even at twenty-eight had a hell of a lot of growing up to do. Sometimes it was all I could do to manage him. I said, “The last thing this county needs is for you to start a blood feud.”

  He said, “Well, I ain’t answering for my actions if he comes talking like that around me.”

  I said, “He was talking to Norris.”

  The words were no more than out of my mouth when I realized the mistake I’d made. Norris was overly sensitive about his toughness. It wasn’t enough for him to be ten times smarter than the rest of us bookwise; he had to be just as tough with his fists or a gun. The minute I said it he straightened up in his chair and looked at me like I’d just slapped him in the face. I said, as quick as I could, “He went to Norris because he is in town and can be got to. And he knows can’t no trouble break out in town. To see me or you he’d have to come on our property, and he ain’t going to do that.”

  I could see it had mollified Norris a bit. I said, “What exactly did he say, Norris?”

  My brother shrugged and leaned back in the chair. “Wasn’t much that he said. It was more the way he was swelling around and making sure I could see how big the revolver was he was wearing. I told him I thought our lawyers might be close to some sort of an agreement, and he said close didn’t count with him except in horseshoes and handguns.”

  Ben said, “Shit!”

  I smiled. “Why Ben, that sounds exactly like something you’d say.”

  He give me a hard look. “You watch your mouth, big brother.”

  I said, “Just so long as you remember who the big brother is. And also who the boss is. I’d hate to have to fire you again.”

  He colored slightly and took a quick drink of his whiskey. It was true that I had indeed fired my own brother for directly disobeying an order. Of course I couldn’t run him off the ranch; that was his home. But I’d taken away his job as boss of the horse herd, along with his salary, and told him if he wanted to work on the ranch he could apply to Harley for a job as a common cowhand and draw a cowhand’s wages, sleep in the bunkhouse, and eat with the hired hands.

  He’d done it, stiffly and angrily, until it had finally penetrated his thick skull that an outfit can’t have but one boss and that that boss ain’t got time to explain every order he gave. After that he’d come and apologized and said he’d gotten exactly what he had coming. I’d offered to reinstate him to his position with the herd and the salary that went along with it, but he’d insisted he deserved at least a month of punishment, and he’d stuck it out. There wasn’t anything halfway about Ben.

  Howard said, “Now don’t be bringin’ that up again.”

  Norris said, “Ben, I wouldn’t think you’d want trouble with the Jordans. I saw the daughter on the street the other day. A mighty comely piece of yard goods. How old is she, twenty?”

  “Nineteen,” Ben said. Then he blushed again.

  I said, “You better stay away from her until this matter is settled.”

  He said, “Goddamit, Justa, you want to write out for me in the morning what I can do during the day? Save me a awful lot of thinking.”

  I said drily, “You don’t sound much like a man who is trying to get on my good side so’s I might consider letting you buy some high-priced Thoroughbred breeding stock.”

  Norris laughed.

  I finished my drink, got up, and set the empty tumbler on the sideboard table. “I got to get home. I can’t sit here talking to such as you the balance of the evening.” I glanced over at Howard, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring off into space thoughtfully.

  Norris said, “You’ve got to tell me soon how many steers you intend to sell off. The market is showing signs of dropping, and unless you want to winter the whole bunch you’ve got to make a decision fairly soon. There’s a new issue of Treasury bills coming out that will pay four and a half percent. You sell a thousand head, that would give me some important capital to work with. It would certainly beat feeding that many cows all winter.”

  I said, still thinking about Howard, “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  Before I could get out the door Ben said, “Do I get a yes on those Thoroughbred studs? Five or six would make a big difference in the quality of the horse herd in two or three years.”

  “Get me some prices,” I said.

  Howard said, a sort of plaintive note in his voice, “You be by tomorrow, son?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll stop in.”

  I left then, walking home in the soft night. I decided, at least for a while, to forget about Howard and his revelation of being a youthful bandit. Like Nora had said, the old man was getting along. He wasn’t just getting hard of hearing; he was getting hard of remembering too. I walked along, looking forward to playing with my son. But I was looking forward even more to playing with his mama a little later on.

  I was a simple man; it didn’t take much to make me happy, especially if it came in a package of goods like Nora.

  CHAPTER 2

  I didn’t wait until the afternoon to go by and see Howard. Instead I dropped in mid-morning when I knew there was no one else around. I knew Ben was out with the horse herd and of course Norris had gone to his office in town. I wanted to get the business with Howard over with so I could spend the balance of the day surveying the herds with Harley. I had decided to sell all the crossbred steers over the age of four. I knew we’d have plenty of fives, and there ought to be a goodly number of sixes according to my books, and a couple of hundred sevens and some scattered eights. I figured the numbers would run to somewhere around eleven hundred head, and at an average price of ninety dollars a cow, that ought to give Norris some healthy money to buy Treasury bonds with. I had debated about marketing the fours also, which would have been about another thousand head, but I’d decided to hold them back for the spring market in anticipation of a better price. Of course the price could go down just as easily as it could go up. But that was ranching; there wasn’t that much difference between it and rolling the dice for a living, except ranching wasn’t against the law. That is, so long as you were ranching your own cattle.

  I found Howard out on the big front porch taking the sun and having a cup of coffee. Someb
ody had brought him out his rocking chair and he was sitting there, looking content, looking out over the vast cattle business he’d started and mostly built.

  I rode up, dismounted, and dropped my reins on the ground. All our horses ground-reined. If they didn’t think they were as securely tied when those reins were hanging on the ground as if they were snubbed to a tree then they were on their way to the auction block. A rider in a hurry didn’t have time to hunt up a hitching post when he was working cattle or some such. Ben had strict requirements for a Half-Moon horse, and they either made the grade or got sold to somebody that didn’t expect as much out of an animal he might spend most of his day with.

  I made my way up on the porch and sat down in a wicker chair next to Howard. I took note that he was wearing his boots, which I took as a good sign that he was not only feeling better, but might be thinking better about his request of the day before. I said, “Well, Howard, it appears you’ve looked the place over. You going to buy it?”

  He was chewing tobacco. He made a futile effort to spit off the porch, and only managed to put a brown splotch on the white railing. He said, “Place looks run-down. Don’t know who’s been bossing it but it appears they ain’t been steady on the job.”

  “That the way you see it, huh? Think you could do better?”

  “Son, I learnt a long time ago they wasn’t nothin’ educational about getting kicked twice by the same mule. First time this particular mule kicked me, I found me the first fool I could to go back in the barn and get him harnessed up.”

  I lit a cigarillo. “Well, I always wondered what I was. Now I know. Just something for a mule to kick.”

  He looked over at me. “You thought anymore on what we talked about?”

  I took a moment answering, drawing in a lungful of smoke and then slowly blowing it out. “I’ve thought enough to know you are going to have to tell me considerable more about this matter before I agree to do anything. I do, however, give you full permission to talk to Norris or Ben. I’ll agree to the money. It’s the rest of it I’ve got to know about. They may not be so picky.”