“When I was a boy, not much older than you, I traipsed around with some men not any better than Sites and Reese. I nigh got myself into more trouble than I could handle. I knew what could come of x.he lay very still for a while and his breathing was slow and awful heavy. He seemed to have trouble catching his breath.
“I’m sorry for the follm at home,” he said.
‘Teale wanted to send his girl to school, and Sackleton planned to buy a milk cow for his wife.
Most of them needed money to tide them over until planting time.
Now they’ll be hard up.” “I’ll get it back, pa. If it’s the last thing I do.” ‘I wouldn’t put it on you, son.
You’ll have to make your own way now.” He knew he wasn’t going to make it. Right there he said it, and I sat there beside him, holding his hand, wishing I’d not said some of the mean things I’d said, wishing I’d listened more than I had, understood him better. I’d never stood in his boots, trying to make a living against the works of nature and the changes of money value and the like. I’d never had a boy to raise all alone.
“Pa,” I whispered, not able to speak out loud, “Pa, I’ll make it.
I really will. I know what you tried to do for me, and I’ll pay them back. You gave your word, and now I give you mine.” He kind of squeezed my hand, so I guess he heard me, and then he was dead. He went easy at the last, just a sort of sigh.
Gangrene had set in, the bearded man said, and the poison was all through him. They might have saved his life by taking off his leg, but nobody there had ever done the like, and anyway, he wouldn’t hear of it.
We laid him to rest on a high knoll alongside the river, and I set up there with a cinch-ring held by two sticks and burned his name and the date into a wooden slab. Not that it would last long-things don’t in that country. It was little enough mark for him to leave on the land.
He lay there alone like many another before and after, simple men who just wanted to build their homes, and to help build a country.
If he was to make any mark at all it had to be through me. I was all he left in the world, aside from a worn-out saddle and a hard-used Winchester.
When I stuck that slab into the ground I went down the knoll to saddle up.
The man with the reddish mustache, he was standing there beside the fire, and he said, “Young to take in after those men?” “Yes, sir. That’s what pa would have done.” “Mind if I ride along? That’s a lonely ride you’ve got ahead of you.” Well, I just looked at him and felt a lump come into my throat.
‘allyes, sir. If you’ve a mind to.” “He was quite a man, that father of yours. Only death could stop a man like that.” “Death won’t. I’m a-going” to ride in his place.” “Were you very close? You and your pa?” “No, sir. I wouldn’t listen to him. I ficured I was a whole sight smarter. I never guessed how much he knew.” “You are at t alone. A lot of us didn’t listen when we should have.
It takes time for a boy to appreciate his father.” He turned to the bearded man. “Wright, will you take my hides off my hands? And we’ll need a couple of pack horses and some grub.” “All right, Con. Take what you’ve the disneed for.” And that was how I met Con Judy, and how we rode together on a trail that wasn’t to see an end for a long, long time.
The trail led toward the Canadian, and I learned a thing or two about Con Judy. Pa had been a good man on a trail, but he coulddt match up with Con. Time and again when I lost the trail he would pick it up, seeming to know almost by instinct the way they had taken.
Nobody talked less than he did ” but you can learn about a man by riding with him. He never wasted a motion, never took an unnecessary chance. He scouted every possible ambush, every creek-crossing. He never made a point of it, but he knew what he was doing.
One day I told him what Doc and the Kid had said about Bob Heseltine.
When I finished Con simply said, “You never know how a man will stack up until he’s faced with it.” When pa died he left mighty little. He had eighteen dollars and a few cents in his pockets, and a worn-out pistol. His Winchester was better than mine. On the ranch we’d left behind there was a cabin, a corral, and a few head of scrub cattle alongside a water hole.
Eighteen dollars wasn’t going to carry me far, but I had eight dollars of my own money and I could sell his pistol and my Winchester.
They wouldn’t bring much, but I’d get maybe fifteen to twenty dollars for them.
Toward sundown of the third day we rode up to Happy jack’s stage station. Vvulst Con sat his horse, rifle in hand, I scouted the corral.
None of the horses I was looking for was there.
Happy jack came out, rolling down his sleeves. He had been washing up dishes after feeding the stage passengers. He didn’t know me from Adam, but he knew Con Judy. I was to find that a lot of folks did.
“They were here,” Happy jack said. “Rode in about sundown last night.
Bought themselves a meal and a couple of bottles and paid for it with gold money. I figure they’re headed for Mobeetie or Dodge.” “They dit say?” ‘ationary a word.” So we set up to the table and finished the grub jack had left from the stage crowd. It was venison steak and beans. Between the two of us we must have drunk a gallon of black coffee.
“That Heseltine,” jack suggested, “he had him a woman over to Granada.
Worked in a saloon.” ‘Aren’t many women in tills country,” Con Judy said.
“And he’s got money,” I added.
When we rode into Granada it was blowing a norther and it was cold.
Made a body wonder what he’d done with his summer’s wages.
Had the dust been just a mite thicker we could have gone right past the place without ever seeing the town.
There was a scattering of such towns over thousands of square miles-a half-dozen soddies, a salooin, and what passed for a store.
There would be stacks of buffalo hides dried stiff as boards, corrals, and a lean-to that was both stable and blacksmith shop. Sometimes there was a creek, often just a seep of water or a spring.
Occasionally there was a dug well.
The houses were unpainted, and grayed by wind and sun, street alternately muddy or dusty. This place was no better or no worse than any town beginning from nothing, struggling to make a shape and a plan for itself.
The man in the saloon said, ‘She’s gone.
Feller rode in here yestiddy.
He done showed her some gold money and she lit out like her skirts was afire.” That was the way of it. We were always a little Iate, or a little too far behind.
We ate what the man had to offer, and neither of us did much talking.
Finally Con said, “We might find a trail after this dust, but likely not. Heseltine has money and he has a girl, so I’m guessing he’ll ride for some place where he can spend money. That means Denver City or Leadville.” We rode westward, and in the long silences of the prairie trail, with only the whisper of hoofs in the brown grass of autumn, my thoughts kept turning back to pa. It was little enough of a life he’d had, and I knew that the only way I could repay him was to trail those men down and take our money back to Texas. Pa had been a man to stand on principle, and I said as much to Con.
Con was older than me by ten years, I surmised, although he never said and folks in the West weren’t much on asking or answering personal questions.
A man was what he did, how he shaped up at work, or against trouble.
Con was hard to place. Mostly he spoke like an educated man, but other times he’d talk careless like those of us who didn’t know any better.
No two men can ride a trail together without coming to know each other, and I came to know Con Judy.
I found myself wanting to be like him. And after I’d been with him a while, I began to speak better-a little more the way he did.