He came out of his self-pity once when a dark colt with a ragged white scar appeared on a ridge, to the side of the team. The colt whinnied. Davey stopped the team and the off-sorrel whinnied back. It was the mesteñero’s orphan mustang—maybe he was lonesome for company and Davey could rope him, bring him in for English to see.
The colt snorted, lowered his head, then flicked his tail and was gone. Davey hoped it wasn’t a bad sign.
Chapter Thirteen
The supplies were piled up outside the small hut that served as a sometimes post office. It was well past dark when Davey got in, and he loaded up alone, tacked a note to the door saying Thanks to the driver and that the L Slash had what they needed. He turned the now docile team around, headed once more for home.
He had to stop around three in the morning, by his crude reckoning. It was god-awful dark. His eyes burned, but mostly the team needed a drink and a few minutes rest and some grass, before they tackled the long uphill pull to the L Slash cutoff. It wasn’t a long trip home in miles, no more than five or so, but whatever Meiklejon had ordered was heavy, and Davey could read that the team was working too hard at each small rise.
So he slipped their bits and let them graze a half hour while he built a smoke and leaned on a wheel, knowing if he laid down or even sat with his back up against something solid, he’d sleep and be even more late getting in.
By the time he reached headquarters, Davey was nodding over the lines as the team set a good trot, eager for a nosebag of oats and a roll in the corral dust.
There was little change in Burn English excepthe was sleeping better, or so Miss Katherine said Señora. The room smelled of the grassy plains now that Señora Ortega had her hand in the medicines.
Each day he could, Davey poked his head inside the sick room or asked Miss Katherine for news, in the kitchen. The crew was busy gathering spring calves, driving steers out of the hills and draws. A sick man was poor excuse for conversation when wrecks and mountain cats and the tracks of big grizzlies and losses from the rustlers were the more usual bunkhouse gossip. Most of the talk was about rustlers; someone close to home was stealing from the neighbors.
Finally Davey presented himself at the kitchen door, well after the big Sunday meal. Meiklejon tried to stop him, but Miss Katherine showed up and settled the matter, as she often did.
“Ah, Mister Hildahl, you’ve come for your usual visit.”
Davey squeezed past the boss, who stared into the distance as if Davey didn’t exist.
She left him in the small room, alone except for the patient lying on the narrow bed. The room was dark and smelled sweet with the herbs and an undertaste of something putrid. Davey’s eyes watered, but he didn’t rub them; he knew from experience that only made the itch worse. It was the voice that galvanized him out of his trance.
“Who’s there?”
A weak voice Davey hadn’t heard for a long time. He grunted: “It’s me, Davey, come for a Sunday visit. Wanted to tell you I saw your colt a few days back. That leg healed fine…no limp and only a few white hairs. He’s looking right good for a durned mustang.”
“Did you brand him?” English’s hand came up, grabbed Davey’s wrist, and, even half dead, there was strength in the smaller man. Davey was pulled close, so all he could see was the violent twisting of English’s features. “Did you brand him?”
Davey nodded as he pulled his hand free. “Yeah, and cut him loose of the hobbles.”
English was slow to hear the words. He coughed and slid both hands over his belly and shut his eyes. “How long I been here? Where…you brand that colt?” Then the hand got Davey again, but most of the strength was gone.
Davey pulled up a chair and sat, let the hand cling to him. He thought of Miss Katherine sitting in the same chair through the long nights and days, dozing while she waited for Burn English to choose. Now Davey tried his own brand of comforting. “English, you rest. Let me tell you, and you listen, ’stead of pushing and making me mad.” He watched the drawn face, shadowed by a thin, dark beard, the eyes sunken deep into the bony skull. Usually lit with fire, the eyes were soft, downright friendly. Man must be weak as a new calf to show emotion. Davey wondered, as he did sometimes, what got the mustanger this far, what grew the fire and rage inside him.
English nodded, all strength used up, and Davey did the talking. “You been here more’n two weeks now. She’s been tending you with a Mex woman. She got you smelling good…first time for you, I bet. Kinda like grass after a good rain. Beats that mustang stink you favor.” English’s face tightened and Davey decided it wasn’t right teasing a sick man.
“Got a hole in your belly and a cut cross your right leg goes up to your backside. Your neck got scratched some, but it’s clean now. Hands’re cut up, too, but they’re almost healed. Hell, you ain’t much worse than you been running the brush on a half-broke bronc’.”
English surprised him; nothing new in that. “Yeah, my gut.” The man let it rest while he took in air. “Feel it…sleeping. Fire inside my bones.” That was a truth near as anyone could speak.
Davey rested his arms across his chest, hunched over. English’s words dug deep.
“Davey?” Too soft, Davey leaned over, close to the man’s mouth. “Saw things…heard voices. Like I wasn’t here.” Rested again, struggled for air. Davey wiped his friend’s wet face. “Where I was goin’…good enough. Strange…hearing about your own dying.”
Like any lonesome man, English talked his own brand of talk. But not now, these were clear and precise pictures that shivered along Davey’s spine.
“Light, Davey. I could lie down and rest and not hurt. That was the promise.”
English quit then, sagging deep into the mattress until Davey knew he would disappear. The fiery eyes closed, the large bony hands, covered with half-healed scarring, lay fragile on the stained blanket. Davey got up and walked to the door, glancing back at the cot and the exposed figure. He hoped that English would come awake his cantankerous self, and forget the voices, the light, and then maybe Davey would return for a visit.
Gordon Meiklejon thought he’d tipped the young man quite well, and was surprised at the look on the boy’s wind-burned face. This messenger had brought the news that a great, snorting bull was arriving in Socorro, with Meiklejon’s name stapled to the entire railroad car in which the bull rode in its solitary glory. A trip to Socorro was in the making. Miss Katherine had her long list of needed supplies; it was mid-May and the winter reserves were depleted.
Gayle Souter drove the wagon, pulled by a sorrel team, and Red Pierson rode with the foreman. Gordon was pleased with himself; he knew most of the men’s names by now. Pierson was a stout youngster who followed orders, yet could think for himself, if needed. This, Souter had repeatedly told Gordon, was a necessity in any good hand.
The season was late to be putting the bull to the L Slash cows. Timed delivery of the calf crop was important to maximize their growth before the all-important fall gather, according to Meiklejohn’s schedule. But this was an experiment, and the bull’s first harem would be herded with him to the pasture north of the ranch.
It was much easier ruminating over the matters of Edinburgh Supreme and his ladies than to consider the chaos at the ranch. The unwanted patient remained, better now but not yet well, and Miss Katherine showed the effects of his stay. The woman was drawn thin, and barely spoke even to her obvious favorite, Davey Hildahl. Hildahl was another matter entirely. Meiklejon refused to dwell on what he saw in the man’s eyes.