Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry

Author:Larry McMurtry [McMurtry, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780684853871
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2010-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

twenty-four

Johnny sure made a good hand. Me and him got things done in a day that I would have fiddled around with a week if I had been by myself. Besides, he was enjoyable to work with. At least most times. Sometimes he was the most aggravating feller I knew. Ever once in a while he acted like he still intended to try and court Molly some, but I didn’t figure he’d get very far with that.

Having him to do the cow-work left me more time to get ambitious, and the land bug began to bite me pretty bad. I had already decided that land was something I’d never have enough of. So one day I buckled on my spurs and rode to Wichita to the bank and borrowed enough money to buy them three sections that joined me on the northwest. They were a good place to start extending. I had a deed drawn up and took it with me for the other feller to sign, and started home.

I rode hard that afternoon; the automobile was broke down or I would have gone in it. The weather was terrible—it was late August—and I didn’t need no thermometer to tell me it was over a hundred degrees. When I crossed the Taylor place I decided to take the deed up and show it to Molly. I was proud of that deed, and I already knew Eddie wasn’t there; I had looked that morning.

Molly was, though, ever inch of her, and she couldn’t have looked better to me if she’d been Lily Langtry. I knocked at the back door and went on in, and she was just turning away from the stove. She had been putting up the last of her garden stuff.

“You’re about as hot as I am,” I said.

“I’m glad you come,” she said. “Let’s sit down and cool off.”

I drank a couple of dippers of water out of the water bucket. She sat down at the table and I offered her a dipper full.

“I believe I will,” she said, and she took the dipper and tilted her head back and drank. She had really been working: the arms of her shirt were sweated halfway down her side, and the tip ends of hair around her neck were wet. Her old shirt was plastered to her stomach. But she looked like the real thing to me; when she took the dipper down I leaned over and kissed her and she reached up to put her hands behind my head, so the dipper dripped water on my shoulder.

“You know why I’m glad you come?” she said. “I’ve been saving something to show you.”

I grinned; I sure felt good. “What have you got I ain’t already seen?” I said.

“This, Gid,” she said, standing up. She grinned to herself and pulled the ends of her shirttail up and stuck her stomach out at me. It didn’t look much bigger than it ever had, but it looked a little, and I got the message.

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