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the tobacco paper together, conserving his spit for the long, dusty afternoon
ahead of them. Roundups were brutal on a cowboy. Rain or shine, he worked
every day until his muscles were too weary to know the difference, and never
got enough sleep. It would be a grueling six weeks or longer.
"Why don't you smoke ready-mades and save yourself all that work, Nate?"
Webb asked.
"I don't smoke as much this ways--and it's cheaper," he added the decisive
factor. He squinted through the swirl of smoke at the cowboy sauntering toward
them. Hobie Evans was not one of his favorite people. Nate was of the opinion
that Ed Mace could have chosen a better representative for his Snake M
brand--but then, he didn't have much time for Ed Mace, either.
"Well, Mr. Big Boss?" Hobie stopped in front of Webb, addressing him in a
derisive challenge. "Are you figurin' on standin' around all day?"
Before Webb could respond, Nate inserted, "Sure seemed to me like there's a
lot of strays mixed in that herd. More'n usual. Most of 'em were carryin' a
Snake M brand, too. How do you s'pose that happened?"
"We had a lotta trouble with our fences this year," Hobie was quick with an
answer. "Add to that the way the snow drifted. It made regular bridges for the
cows to walk over the fence. Those honyockers get right testy about cattle
gettin' into their fields," he declared with a grinning smirk.
"They sent 'em scattering with no courtesy at all about headin' 'em back to
where they belong. The boss really needs to string new fence, but money bein'
as short as it is, I don't imagine he'll be able to do much about keepin' his
cattle in
this year."
"You look all tore up about that, Hobie," Nate remarked dryly.
Webb took a last drag on his cigarette, then dropped the butt and crushed it
under his heel. "Might as well get started branding and sorting this batch."
He signaled the start of the long afternoon's work by walking to the big,
rangy bay horse he used for roping and swinging aboard. By the time he'd
turned his horse toward the herd, the rest of the men were either sitting on
their horses or stepping a boot into the stirrup.
It was customary for the ranch owner or his foreman to select the first calf
to be branded at the roundup, so Webb rode into the herd and shook out a loop.
He smoothly roped the nearest bounding calf and dragged it to the fire, where
the branding irons of the various represented ranches were heating to an
orange-red. The problem of choosing which brand to use was easily solved by
applying one of the basic principles of cowboy lore. The calf would be branded
the same as its mother, and a cow was quick to inform a cowboy with her
wild-eyed bawling when he'd roped her calf.
Webb took one look at the cow watching anxiously over her roped calf and
called out the brand: "Triple C!" Two of the men on the ground wrestled the
youngster down and Old Shorty Niles burned the appropriate brand on its flank.
A dozen more calves were branded in the same manner. Two more ropers joined
in with Webb to work the herd. The next calf he snared was a hefty-sized
youngster that had the look of a late-fall calf. An indistinct brand was
already
burned on its hip and it looked suspiciously like the Snake M even though its
frantic mother carried the Triple C mark. The bellowing calf was thrown to the
ground and the two men holding it looked expectantly at Webb, waiting for him
to call the brand.
"Triple C." He shouted the order to blot out the other brand, then picked
out Hobie Evans from the other reps around the branding fire. "Evans! You'd
better tell Mace to teach his stray calves not to suck Triple C cows," he
warned. It might have been an accident that the calf had the wrong brand, but
then again, it might not. Webb had known he couldn't let the incident pass
without a comment. Silence could have signaled to the unscrupulous an open
season on unmarked calves.
The Snake M man had a decidedly unpleasant look on his face, but he made no
comment to Webb's cutting advice as the air turned acrid with the smell of
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singed hides.
When Lilli walked into the general store at Stefan's side, she noticed the
quick glances and the whispers from the wives of other drylanders. She didn't
blame Stefan for the knowledge in their eyes. The source was undoubtedly Franz
Kreuger and his meek wife, who repeated everything her husband told her. Lilli
felt like the heroine in that Nathaniel Hawthorne book, The Scarlet Letter.
She walked a little straighter into their midst, her head held high. She was
accustomed
to this silent treatment, having endured so much of it from Stefan. Trust, she
was learning, was a fragile thing. Once broken, it took a long time to repair,
but the restoration was never total. The cracks were always visible, like a
mended piece of china. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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