OYSTERS AND AMBITIONS
“If you’d come on and
go to Wyoming with me, Duke, I think it’d be
better for you than California. That low country
ain’t good for a feller with a tender place
in his lights.”
“Oh, I think I’m all right
and as good as ever now, Taterleg.”
“Yes, it looks all right to
you, but if you git dampness on that lung you’ll
take the consumption and die. I knew a feller
once that got shot that way through the lights in
a fight down on the Cimarron. Him and another
feller fell out over ”
“Have you heard from Nettie
lately?” Lambert broke in, not caring to hear
the story of the man who was shot on the Cimarron,
or his subsequent miscalculations on the state of
his lights.
Taterleg rolled his eyes to look at
him, not turning his head, reproach in the glance,
mild reproof. But he let it pass in his good-natured
way, brightening to the subject nearest his heart.
“Four or five days ago.”
“All right, is she?”
“Up and a-comin’, fine as a fiddle.”
“You’ll be holdin’
hands with her before the preacher in a little while
now.”
“Inside of a week, Duke. My troubles is
nearly all over.”
“I don’t know about that, but I hope it’ll
turn out that way.”
They were on their way home from delivering
the calves and the clean-up of the herd to Pat Sullivan,
some weeks after Lambert’s fight at Glendora.
Lambert still showed the effects of his long confinement
and drain of his wounds in the paleness of his face.
But he sat his saddle as straight as ever, not much
thinner, as far as the eye could weigh him, nothing
missing from him but the brown of his skin and the
blood they had drawn from him that day.
There was frost on the grass that
morning, a foretaste of winter in the sharp wind.
The sky was gray with the threat of snow, the somber
season of hardship on the range was at hand.
Lambert thought, as he read these signs, that it would
be a hard winter on livestock in that unsheltered
country, and was comfortable in mind over the profitable
outcome of his dealings for his employer.
As for himself, his great plans were
at an end on the Bad Lands range. The fight at
Glendora had changed all that. The doctor had
warned him that he must not attempt another winter
in the saddle with that tender spot in his lung, his
blood thinned down that way, his flesh soft from being
housebound for nearly six weeks. He advised a
milder climate for several months of recuperation,
and was very grave in his advice.
So the sheep scheme was put aside.
The cattle being sold, there was nothing about the
ranch that old Ananias could not do, and Lambert had
planned to turn his face again toward the West.
He could not lie around there in the bunkhouse and
grow strong at Vesta’s expense, although that
was what she expected him to do.
He had said nothing to her of his
determination to go, for he had wavered in it from
day to day, finding it hard to tear himself away from
that bleak land that he had come to love, as he never
had loved the country which claimed him by birth.
He had been called on in this place to fight for a
man’s station in it; he had trampled a refuge
of safety for the defenseless among its thorns.
Vesta had said nothing further of
her own plans, but they took it for granted that she
would be leaving, now that the last of the cattle were
sold. Ananias had told them that she was putting
things away in the house, getting ready to close most
of it up.
“I don’t blame you for
leavin’,” said Taterleg, returning to the
original thread of discussion, “it’ll be
as lonesome as sin up there at the ranch with Vesta
gone away. When she’s there she fills that
place up like the music of a band.”
“She sure does, Taterleg.”
“Old Ananias’ll have a
soft time of it, eatin’ chicken and rabbit all
winter, nothing to do but milk them couple of cows,
no boss to keep her eye on him in a thousand miles.”
“He’s one that’ll never want to
leave.”
“Well, it’s a good place
for a man,” Taterleg sighed, “if he ain’t
got nothin’ else to look ahead to. I kind
o’ hate to leave myself, but at my age, you
know, Duke, a man’s got to begin to think of
marryin’ and settlin’ down and fixin’
him up a home, as I’ve said before.”
“Many a time before, old feller,
so many times I’ve got it down by heart.”
Taterleg looked at him again with
that queer turning of the eyes, which he could accomplish
with the facility of a fish, and rode on in silence
a little way after chiding him in that manner.
“Well, it won’t do you no harm,”
he said.
“No,” sighed the Duke, “not a bit
of harm.”
Taterleg chuckled as he rode along,
hummed a tune, laughed again in his dry, clicking
way, deep down in his throat.
“I met Alta the other day when I was down in
Glendora,” he said.
“Did you make up?”
“Make up! That girl looks
to me like a tin cup by the side of a silver shavin’
mug now, Duke. Compare that girl to Nettie, and
she wouldn’t take the leather medal. She
says: ‘Good morning, Mr. Wilson,’
she says, and I turned my head quick, like I was lookin’
around for him, and never kep’ a-lettin’
on like I knew she meant me.”
“That was kind of rough treatment for a lady,
Taterleg.”
“It would be for a lady, but
for that girl it ain’t. It’s what’s
comin’ to her, and what I’ll hand her
ag’in, if she ever’s got the gall to speak
to me.”
The Duke had no further comment on
Taterleg’s rules of conduct. They went
along in silence a little way, but that was a state
that Taterleg could not long endure.
“Well, I’ll soon be in
the oyster parlor up to the bellyband,” he said,
full of the cheer of his prospect. “Nettie’s
got the place picked out and nailed down I
sent her the money to pay the rent. I’ll
be handin’ out stews with a slice of pickle
on the side of the dish before another week goes by,
Duke.”
“What are you goin’ to
make oysters out of in Wyoming?” the Duke inquired
wonderingly.
“Make ’em out of?
Oysters, of course. What do you reckon?”
“There never was an oyster within
a thousand miles of Wyoming, Taterleg. They wouldn’t
keep to ship that far, much less till you’d used
’em up.”
“Cove oysters, Duke, cove oysters,”
corrected Taterleg gently. “You couldn’t
hire a cowman to eat any other kind, you couldn’t
put one of them slick fresh fellers down him with
a pair of tongs.”
“Well, I guess you know, old feller.”
Taterleg fell into a reverie, from
which he started presently with a vehement exclamation
of profanity.
“If she’s got bangs, I’ll make her
cut ’em off!” he said.
“Who cut ’em off?”
Lambert asked, viewing this outburst of feeling in
surprise.
“Nettie! I don’t
want no bangs around me to remind me of that snipe-legged
Alta Wood. Bangs may be all right for fellers
with music boxes in their watches, but they don’t
go with me no more.”
“I didn’t see Jedlick
around the ranch up there; what do you suppose become
of him?”
“Well, from what the boys told
me, if he’s still a-goin’ like he was
when they seen him last, he must be up around Medicine
Hat by now.”
“It was a sin the way you threw
a scare into that man, Taterleg.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t lay him out
on a board, dern him!”
“Yes, but you might as well let him have Alta.”
“He can come back and take her any time he wants
her, Duke.”
The Duke seemed to reflect this simple
exposition of Jedlick’s present case.
“Yes, I guess that’s so,” he said.
For a mile or more there was no sound
but the even swing of their horses’ hoofs as
they beat in the long, easy gallop which they could
hold for a day without a break. Then Lambert:
“Plannin’ to leave tonight, are you Taterleg?”
“All set for leavin’, Duke.”
On again, the frost-powdered grass brittle under the
horses’ feet.
“I think I’ll pull out tonight, too.”
“Why, I thought you was goin’ to stay
till Vesta left, Duke?”
“Changed my mind.”
“Don’t you reckon Vesta
she’ll be a little put out if you leave the
ranch after she’d figgered on you to stay and
pick up and gain and be stout and hearty to go in
the sheep business next spring?”
“I hope not.”
“Yeh, but I bet she will.
Do you reckon she’ll ever come back to the ranch
any more when she goes away?”
“What?” said Lambert, starting as if he
had been asleep.
“Vesta; do you reckon she’ll ever come
back any more?”
“Well,” slowly, thoughtfully, “there’s
no tellin’, Taterleg.”
“She’s got a stockin’
full of money now, and nobody dependin’ on her.
She’s just as likely as not to marry some lawyer
or some other shark that’s after her dough.”
“Yes, she may.”
“No, I don’t reckon much
she’ll ever come back. She ain’t got
nothing to look back to here but hard times and shootin’
scrapes nobody to ’sociate with and
wear low-neckid dresses like women with money want
to.”
“Not much chance for it here you’re
right.”
“You’d ‘a’
had it nice and quiet there with them sheep if you’d
‘a’ been able to go pardners with Vesta
like you planned, old Nick Hargus in the pen and the
rest of them fellers cleaned out.”
“Yes, I guess there’ll be peace around
the ranch for some time to come.”
“Well, you made the peace around
there, Duke; if it hadn’t ‘a’ been
for you they’d ‘a’ broke Vesta up
and run her out by now.”
“You had as much to do with bringin’ them
to time as I did, Taterleg.”
“Me? Look me over, Duke;
feel of my hide. Do you see any knife scars in
me, or feel any bullet holes anywhere? I never
done nothing but ride along that fence, hopin’
for a somebody to start something. They never
done it.”
“They knew you too well, old feller.”
“Knowed me!” said Taterleg.
“Huh!”
On again in quiet, Glendora in sight
when they topped a hill. Taterleg seemed to be
thinking deeply; his face was sentimentally serious.
“Purty girl,” he said in a pleasant vein
of musing.
“Which one?”
“Vesta. I like ’em
with a little more of a figger, a little thicker in
some places and wider in others, but she’s trim
and she’s tasty, and her heart’s pure
gold.”
“You’re right it is, Taterleg,”
Lambert agreed, keeping his eyes straight ahead as
they rode on.
“You’re aimin’ to
come back in the spring and go pardners with her on
the sheep deal, ain’t you, Duke?”
“I don’t expect I’ll ever come back,
Taterleg.”
“Well,” said Taterleg abstractedly, “I
don’t know.”
They rode past the station, the bullet-scarred
rain barrel behind which Tom Hargus took shelter in
the great battle still standing in its place, and
past the saloon, the hitching-rack empty before it,
for this was the round-up season nobody
was in town.
“There’s that slab-sided,
spider-legged Alta Wood standin’ out on the
porch,” said Taterleg disgustedly, falling behind
Lambert, reining around on the other side to put him
between the lady and himself.
“You’d better stop and
bid her good-bye,” Lambert suggested.
Taterleg pulled his hat over his eyes
to shut out the sight of her, turned his head, ignoring
her greeting. When they were safely past he cast
a cautious look behind.
“I guess that settled her
hash!” he said. “Yes, and I’d
like to wad a handful of chewin’ gum in them
old bangs before I leave this man’s town!”
“You’ve broken her chance
for a happy married life with Jedlick, Taterleg.
Your heart’s as hard as a bone.”
“The worst luck I can wish her
is that Jedlick’ll come back,” he said,
turning to look at her as he spoke. Alta waved
her hand.
“She’s a forgivin’ little soul,
anyway,” Lambert said.
“Forgivin’! ‘Don’t
hurt him, Mr. Jedlick,’ she says, ‘don’t
hurt him!’ Huh! I had to build a fire under
that old gun of mine to melt the chawin’ wax
off of her. I wouldn’t give that girl a
job washin’ dishes in the oyster parlor if she
was to travel from here to Wyoming on her knees.”
So they arrived at the ranch from
their last expedition together. Lambert gave
Taterleg his horse to take to the barn, while he stopped
in to deliver Pat Sullivan’s check to Vesta
and straighten up the final business, and tell her
good-bye.