“Shame,” the older man agreed, keeping his face still, although his eyes sparkled. “Still, you’re a man grown, Gray. Ah, speakin’ on that, care to stay to dinner?”
“Thank you kindly, John,” Gray said with every evidence of sincerity, “but I got to get back home. Royal’s watching the place. He’s a good man, but Josh’d skin me if I went larking off too long.”
“My Melanie will be disappointed, you’ve always been a favorite of hers, you know.”
“I’ll be sorry to miss seeing her,” Gray said with evident dismay, “but like I say, I got to get back.”
“She up and got herself engaged to Duane Carter last week, sure I can’t talk you into stayin’, after all?” the other man asked with only the slightest hint of a smile.
“Little Melanie? Why, she can’t be more than…Lord! She’s got to be nearing nineteen now. Congratulations, John,” Gray said, taking his hand again, though he frowned as he did. “Damn!” he said. “Just think, all this time I thought of her as a little girl. Guess I let her slip through my fingers, didn’t I?”
“Guess so,” the other man agreed. “Don’t know who was sorrier about that, her ma, or her. But she couldn’t wait forever. Surely is a good thing your big brother is such a fiend with numbers, Gray, since I remember you was at her eighteenth birthday party just last spring. Didn’t happen to take any drama classes back at school, did you, son?” he asked, not bothering to conceal his smile now.
“Me?” Gray asked, grinning back at him. “No, my interest in the theater is strictly that of an appreciative audience, John.”
“Awfulappreciative, from what we hear.”
“The only thing sadder than a heifer without her calf,” Gray said solemnly, “is an actress without an audience.”
“Damn, but I’m glad Melanie got herself hooked up with that Duane, after all,” the other man said, shaking his head as he nonetheless smiled.
And so was Gray glad as he rode away. Melanie was a nice girl, which made her about the only kind he didn’t need.
But a few days later, as he neared his home, he wasn’t so sure just what it was that he needed. It had been a long and tiring journey back. No roads could make fast work of the trip across the mountains, and somehow, no matter how he yearned for home, it was hard to hurry when he was riding through them. The smell of the pines—the air itself made him as drunk as anything he’d ever had from a glass. Still, he’d made decent time, because he’d been so preoccupied with his thoughts that the beauty of the land around him didn’t distract him as much as it usually did.
Melanie getting married! He couldn’t stop thinking about it. Not that he minded. He was genuinely glad for her, she was a sweet child, and for all she’d grown up handsome enough, she’d not been either clever or handsome enough for him to take for more than an hour at a time. And while that was enough of a span of time for his commerce with most women, it would never be enough for marriage, and that was all that was good enough for a good girl like her. She’d certainly wanted that, it had been in her every word and gesture at her birthday party—Lord!—she’d been sweet on him ever since he could remember—but the problem now was that he was forced to remember a time before she’d even been at all. He’d been ten years old the day he’d heard she was born. Now she was going to be married and would soon have children of her own. It was so sobering a thought, it robbed even the intoxicant of the high reaches he traveled through of its power to lift his spirits. But there was another he looked forward to.
He’d been riding the edge of his own wire for hours, and when he finally looked up to the endless blue sky to see that he was riding under the high wooden arch that bore the name and symbol of his home again, he waited for the familiar surgeof exhilaration he always felt at coming home. It came. But more faintly than usual, and he’d a disturbing notion that it might be because it felt too familiar.
Maybe, he thought, it was diluted because it was becoming too commonplace an experience. He’d just come up from Denver and Aspen and Leadville, but he’d traveled up past Fort Laramie, then across the Casper just this past summer, too, and before that to Chicago and New York only last spring—all for business and pleasure—and down to New Orleans for pure pleasure just before that. But lately it seemed the pleasure had been tainted by the fact that he’d been seeking it so hard, and the business itself was no longer the pure pleasure it had been.
What he needed. Gray decided as he rode down the long road to his home, was none of the things he’d sought, neither drink nor sex nor triumph at business— but good hard physical labor. Because work, like all those other diversions, drove everything from a man’s mind but his performance of it. Only it left a man feeling good about himself afterward.
He paused at his house just long enough to drop off his carpetbags, leave his horse at the stables, and get on another. Then he rode out toward the northern reaches of his land, where he knew the men would be. This time of year they’d be moving the herd in closer to home, preparatory to selling off excess stock and weaning the last calves, in order to thin the herd down hard for winter. Those ranchers who had survived it had learned some bitter lessons during the terrible winter two years ago. But he’d not gone far before he saw a familiar paint with a tall, thin rider coming his way.
“You’re back,” the man said when they came abreast, and they clasped hands hard as the man’s thin, solemn face broke into a wide white smile.
“And ready to go. What can I help you boys with?” Gray asked, with a matching smile.
“Nothing. The weather’s been real soft and easy, and we got most everything nicely in hand, boss,” the thin man said.
He was a tall and rangy man, with the sort of outsize bones that would never have enough flesh on them. His hair was a dusty brown beneath his Stetson, and his clean-shaven face had a leathery tan, he’d a wide, narrow-lipped mouth, and a thin narrow nose to match his other spare features; only his surprisingly expressive hazel eyes gave his face animation.
“Well, but the ‘boss’ wants some work to do. Royal,” Gray said on a laugh.
“Just lazied around up in Aspen, did you?” Royal asked. “No climbing down mine shafts or crawling up mountains, as usual? Guess you got all those scrapes on your cheek playing, huh?”
“I went to the theater near there,” Gray said agreeably. “Actresses are so fierce…oh come on, Royal, what are a few scrapes? You know climbing and tunneling isn’t work for me. ‘Fie upon this quiet life—I want work’! Boss me no bosses either, there never was a ranch that couldn’t use an extra hand, especially in the autumn.”
“You said it pretty enough, but I guess you got a first,” Royal answered, as he guided his horse back toward the main house, “because I was just coming in for the day.”
“And if you’re coming in, I can bet my immortal soul there’s no more work,” Gray sighed, and turned his own horse to accompany him. “So be it. You can catch me up on what’s been going on here.”
“Let’s see,” Royal said. “Old Henry’s got a sore tooth and has been taking down about a quart a day for it, so I guess if you really want work bad enough, you can bully him into getting the damned thing drawn before the other boys knock it out—along with some others—because all he’s been doing is whining. Boyd got something interesting at Celia’s house in town, so everybody’s staying away, and Celia’s almost as sore about it as he is, which is to say, considerable. Steady had another litter, and they’re all spoke for already… And there’s a couple of letters from your brother waiting for you on the hall table.”
“And they all say, ‘Come to New York,’?” Gray sighed.
“Wouldn’t know,” Royal said.
