The Cattlemen by Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg (eds.)

Author:Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg (eds.) [Pronzini, Bill & Greenberg, Martin H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Western Fiction
Publisher: Fawcett Gold Medal
Published: 1986-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

The air was still crackling when they fed the cattle the next morning after breakfast, forking the long, crisp native hay along the trampled places near the low sheds. Afterward Heister looked at his stacks, sparkling with the wind-driven frost, and then he looked across the long land where there were no fences.

They went back to the house. There was nothing to do until late afternoon when they would have to break ice in the creek again. The warmth of the house and Beckett’s silence made Heister irritable. He was on the verge of telling Beckett that he didn’t have to stay here if he didn’t like it.

But Beckett was a good man. He got along with the summer crew better than Heister. Besides, he was an old man and had no place to go. Then, how could he have so much pride, a sure pride, too, not the touchiness of an attitude falsely held. He had nothing and he didn’t care, and yet he was a man respected. It was damned odd.

Beckett sprawled in a chair by the fireplace, reading a soiled magazine. Whatever satisfaction he had taken from life would not suffice for Heister. Fred Beckett was a living example of what Jim Heister did not want to be at sixty. A few fool deals like listening to Sexton and the others would fix a man so that he would wind up with nothing.

Heister kept studying the old man until he hated the sight of him.

“I think I’ll go to town, Fred. What do we need?”

“Nothing.”

Heister’s sorrel humped when the blanket touched its back. It bucked down the yard and all the way to the first deep drift. After that it settled down. The sounds of hungry cattle came a long way across the snow from the Sexton place. Heister saw that Sexton had put boards on top of the wire around his last haystack. Five hundred cattle were milling there, bawling their hunger, pawing down through the layers of crust to the frozen earth.

In Sexton’s east fields was more than enough hay to have carried them through, but it was all uncut and under three feet of snow now. Heister rode into the yard. He knew he was not welcome and so he sat his horse and called out. Sexton came out of the bam, kicking away the snow that piled up in front of the door when he tried to close it.

“What do you want, Heister?”

“I want to talk to you about that hay.”

After a time Sexton said, “Put your horse in here.” He opened the door of the bam. It was warm inside, or so it seemed once the wind was cut off. “Let’s go to the house,” Sexton said.

“In a minute.” Heister walked past the stalls and looked outside at the corrals. There was a whiteface bull in one and ten heifers in another. “That all you figure you can save of the new stuff you bought last fall?”

“About,” Sexton said glumly.

“I can give you the hay to save your Herefords, at least.

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