The two boys rode alongside the men, not talking. They looked around at all there was to see, glad to be out of school doing anything on horseback.
When the four riders drew near, the old mother cows and heifers and calves all stopped grazing and stood as still and alert as deer, watching them approach, then began to move away across the grass toward the far fence line.
You boys go turn them, Guthrie said. Don’t you think, Raymond?
That’s right. Head them back this way.
The boys touched up their horses and loped off after the cattle, riding like oldtime cowboys out across the native grass on the treeless high plains under a sky as blue and pure as a piece of new crockery.
THEY GATHERED THE CATTLE AND DROVE THEM BACK TO the home corrals and then shut them up in the holding pen east of the barn. Then they dismounted and loosened the cinches and watered the horses and tied them at the pole fence. The horses stood and shook themselves, resting with one back leg cocked. They each were dark with sweat at their necks and flanks and lathered between their back legs.
Raymond and the two boys began to work the cows and calves now, pushing one cow-calf pair at a time out of the holding pen into the high plank-sided alley where Guthrie stood at the far end ready with the swing gate. One of the boys would trot behind with a herdsman’s whip, heading them down the alley. The calves stayed close to their mothers, but when they reached Guthrie he shoved the head of the gate between them and closed it, sorting the cow out to pasture and the calf into a second big pen. As soon as they were separated both cow and calf began to bawl, crying and calling, milling in a circle. The dust rose in the air out of the unceasing noise and commotion and hung above them in a brown cloud that drifted away only gradually in the low wind. And all the time the cattle kept stirring, shoving against one another, then standing still to set up to bawl, and the calves in the pen kept raising their heads and bawling and crying, their mouths thrown open, showing pink like rubber and roped with slobber, their eyes rolled back to rims of white. Now and then a cow and its calf would locate each other along the plank fence and stand breathing and licking at the other through the narrow spaces between the rough boards. But when the cow would move away, milling along the fence, the calf would lift its head to bawl once more. It all grew louder and dirtier as the morning hours passed.
In the holding pen Raymond said: Here now, you want to watch this one. She tends to be a little snorty. Stay back from her.
A tall black cow came trotting out from the pen with her calf close behind. The boys succeeded in turning them both into the alley and got them headed toward Guthrie. At the end of the alley she came rushing at him, tossing her head as if to hook him. He climbed quickly up the fence two or three boards, and when she reached for him with her horns he kicked at her head. Then she and her calf dodged into the pasture before he could jump down and swing the gate. Ike called: You want me to go get them, Dad?
No, I’m going to leave her. We’ll get a rope on the calf later. That all right, Raymond?
That’s exactly right, Raymond said.
They went on working cattle in the bright day in the dust-filled pens. The day had warmed up a little, the wind had stayed down and they grew warm in their lined jackets. By half-past noon they were finished.
You better come up to the house for some dinner now, Raymond said. I believe these boys here could use something to eat.
Oh, we’ll just go into town, Guthrie said. We’ll get us something to eat at the café. But let us get that calf in first.
No, you better come up to the house. We’ll get the calf later. I got some of that good ground beef thawed out from the locker. It’s going to waste if you don’t come in. I ain’t going to eat all of it by myself.
They left the corrals and walked across the gravel drive to the house and porch where they slapped the dust off their jeans and stomped their boots and went inside and took off their warm jackets and hats, and Raymond washed his hands and face at the sink and started to cook at the old enameled stove. Guthrie and the boys washed up at the sink after him and dried off on the kitchen towel. You boys can help me set the table, Guthrie said.
They got down plates and glasses from the cupboard and set them on the table and laid out silverware, then looked in the old refrigerator and took out bottles of ketchup and mustard. Anything else? Guthrie said.
You can open this can of beans, Raymond said, so I can heat it up. Maybe one of you boys can find some milk.
They stood about in the kitchen watching him cook, and when he was finished at the stove they sat down at the table to eat. He carried the big heavy frying pan to the table and forked two hamburgers onto each plate, the meat was badly overcooked, black and hard as something poked out of a campfire. Then he set the pan on the stove and sat down. Go on ahead and eat, he said, unless somebody wants to pray. No one did. He looked around at them. What are you waiting on? Oh hell, I forgot to buy hamburger buns, didn’t I. Well shoot, he said. He got up and brought a sack of white bread to the table and sat down again. You boys can eat these hamburgers without buns, can’t you?
Yes sir.
Okay then. Let’s see if any of this is worth our attention.
They passed the dish of heated beans around the table and poured ketchup on the hamburgers. The ketchup soaked through and made pink circles on the bread. The bread turned soggy and came apart in their hands so that they had to lean over and eat above their plates. There was not much talking. The boys looked once at their father, and he nodded toward their plates and they ducked their heads and went on eating. When the beans came around again they each spooned out a second large portion. For dessert Raymond got down four coffee cups and opened a big can of grocery-store peaches and went around the table to each place and spooned out bright yellow quarters into each of the cups and poured out the syrup in equal quantities.
Meanwhile Guthrie was looking about the kitchen. There were pieces of machinery and bits of leather and old rusted buckles collected on the chairs and in the corners.
Raymond, he said, you ought to get out of the country now and again. Come into town, have a beer or something. You’re going to get too lonesome out here.
It does get kind of quiet sometimes, Raymond said.
You better drive into town one of these Saturday nights. Have a little fun for yourself.
Well, no. I can’t see what I’d do with myself in town.
You might be surprised, Guthrie said. You might find some manner of interesting trouble to get into.
It might be some kind of trouble I didn’t know how to get out of, Raymond said. What’d I do then?
AFTER LUNCH THEY WENT OUTSIDE AGAIN AND THE TWO boys mounted their horses and rode into the pasture among the cows and located the tall black cow and dropped a rope on her calf and dragged the stiff-legged calf back into the big pen with the rest. The cow made a run at them there, but they were able to turn her away and take the calf inside.
The cattle were all still bawling as before. They would go on bawling and milling for three days. Then the cows would grow hungry enough to move farther out into the pasture to graze and their bags would dry up. As for the calves, Raymond would have to fork out brome hay in the long row of feed bunks in the holding pen and bucket out ground corn on top of the hay, and he’d have to watch them carefully for a while or they might turn sick.
WHEN GUTHRIE AND THE BOYS DROVE OUT TO THE county road to return to Holt, they could still hear the cattle from a mile away.