CHAPTER ONE
Hewey Calloway was in his element.
It was spring, and West Texas had on her Sunday best. The morning sun was warm, the effects of earlier rains beginning to show. Green shoots had appeared in the few clumps where grass grew, and much of the rest of the ground boasted tallow weed and other plants Hewey knew but couldn’t name. Most of the cows he saw had babies by their sides, full udders, and a thin layer of fat beginning to show on their ribs and over their hip bones. The cows without calves were pig fat and would soon be cut off and sold as freeloaders that wouldn’t earn their keep this year.
Hewey was on horseback, taking it all in with the pride of ownership, but without the headaches or expectation of reward. These were Two Cs cattle and belonged not to Hewey but to ranchman C. C. Tarpley, who had just fired Hewey at the chuckwagon that morning.
It wasn’t the first time Tarpley had fired Hewey, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Hewey had even quit once or twice himself, but the two always came to an accommodation eventually; Hewey was a good cowboy, and C.C. valued that, even if he didn’t value it enough to pay well. Parsimony was a common condition among the ranch owners Hewey had known, though C. C. Tarpley displayed a more severe case than most.
Hewey had a month’s worth of C.C.’s stingy pay in his pocket, a brown horse that would watch a cow, and he was gloriously unemployed.
* * *
So close to his fortieth birthday that he could hear it taunting him in quiet moments, Hewey was the older of two sons. Their widowed father had a restless streak that he stamped indelibly on his first-born. The three Calloways—Pa, Hewey, and brother Walter—had drifted constantly within the East Texas region of blackland farms, picking up what work was available to them. As a boy, Hewey drug a cotton sack for miles before he was big enough to put behind a mule and a pair of plow handles. They were an ill fit for his hands from the beginning, and Hewey chafed to be somewhere else, doing something else. Brother Walter, a year younger, took to farm work like he was born for it. It was only at Hewey’s insistence after Pa died that the two brothers went west looking for cowboy jobs that were said to be plentiful in the Pecos River country, and the brothers found the job situation to be as advertised.
A decade and a half later, in 1904, Hewey had earned a reputation in West Texas and eastern New Mexico as a top hand, and Walter was back behind a plow, but this time it was his own, and he was turning back native sod on his own land. Walter was the only one of the Calloway clan, what little Hewey knew of it, to own land. Back in East Texas, where it rained, Walter’s homestead would sound like an empire up against the farms that were common. In a moment of clarity, someone in the Texas legislature had realized years earlier that it didn’t rain much west of San Angelo, and not a lot even there. The state had a world of West Texas land it couldn’t use and was leasing it to cattlemen at a pittance for grazing. From then on, Texas law allowed homesteaders to claim up to four sections—four square miles—a full sixteen times as much as the average 160-acre farm back east.
It appeared generous to people in rainier regions, but it wouldn’t run enough cows to sustain a single man, much less a man with a family. Walter was one of many West Texans who had a four-section outfit and a family, and most years the money ran out before the year did. His bride refused to give up, however, and at her insistence Walter began breaking out land to farm, first a few acres, then a few more. The delta cotton of the Blacklands could never be grown here, so Walter planted feed crops instead. Hewey had counseled against the entire endeavor, reasoning that land that resented the cow would look even less kindly at the plow. That only got him cold stares from his sister-in-law.
* * *
Alvin Lawdermilk had his hands full supervising a small crew of cowboys sacking out young horses in the breaking pen, but he didn’t miss the approaching rider.
“Howdy, Hewey,” he said with a slight wave of his hand as Hewey dismounted, a friendly acknowledgment but not a broad enough movement to spook the excitable horses. He extended the hand to Hewey through the fence, then quietly eased out the gate and led the way to a spot on the shady side of the saddle barn.
Alvin was middle-aged and graying, a thin man with a slight stoop, but he was still strong enough to fight a recalcitrant horse or mule, his primary products. He left most of the bronc riding to younger hands, having hit the hard, dry ground more often than he cared to already. Besides, he no longer bounced like he had when he was younger.
“What are you doin’ out footloose in the middle of a workday?” he asked Hewey. “Did ol’ C.C. have a stroke and give you hands a vacation?”
“Just one of us. He gave me a permanent day off.” Hewey gave a broad, slightly crooked grin.
“You two can’t get along with or without each other. What’d you pull this time?”
“Wasn’t much, but C.C. is pretty excitable and damned unreasonable sometimes. I was toppin’ off one of the broncs in my string this mornin’, just gettin’ his kinks worked out so he’d settle down for the day’s drive. The next thing I knew, we was right in the middle of camp, scatterin’ cowboys left and right. I was doin’ good to keep a leg on either side of him, and reinin’ that renegade was out of the question, so you can see it wasn’t my fault.
“Even at that the whole thing would’ve made for a good laugh if ol’ C.C. hadn’t been right square in that bronc’s sights. I gotta admit, for a short, stove-up old man, C.C. can still move pretty good when he’s about to git ground into the dirt. By the time the dust cleared he was cussin’ me and I was cussin’ his miserly taste in horseflesh. He blowed up and said his horses was just fine, but if I didn’t like ’em I could draw my time and go ride somebody else’s horses.
“So here I am, ridin’ my own.”
“If you’d got yourself fired a week earlier, I’d have let a couple of these knuckleheads ride on past. They don’t have any trouble bellyin’ up to the table, and they can find their bedrolls just fine, but you’ve gotta lead ’em by the hand to everything else.”
“Thanks all the same, Alvin,” Hewey said, “but I ain’t looking for work just yet. I’ve got a month’s pay to carry me a while, and I ain’t been fired long enough to enjoy it.”
“Does Eve know?” Alvin’s tone took on a note of gravity as he asked.
“I haven’t been by Walter and Eve’s place yet. Your outfit is closer to where the wagon was when me and C.C. had our disagreement.”
“Well, then you’ll stay the night. You missed dinner, but supper will be ready in a few hours.”
“I’d sure like to, Alvin, but I reckon I oughta water out and get on over to Walter’s and see which way the wind’s blowin’.”
“I can tell you right now it’ll be blowin’ straight into your face.”
“Oh, Eve ain’t always on a tear, Alvin. I’ve caught my sister-in-law in a good mood two, maybe three times.”
“And how long did that last?”
“Not very long with me around,” Hewey acknowledged, wincing at the memory. He thought that Alvin’s mother-in-law was just as disapproving. Alvin didn’t need to be reminded of that, however, so Hewey didn’t.
“I’ll sure miss havin’ the company of your womenfolk at a civilized table, Alvin, but if you’ll give ’em my regards, I’d best get on.”
“You’re a damned poor liar, Hewey Calloway,” Alvin said with a chuckle. “You won’t miss Mother Faversham any more than I would if she wandered off in the dark one night and never come home. But two doses of that medicine in the same day are too many for any man, and I have a hunch you’ll get a big dose from Eve.”
Copyright © 2022 by the Steve Kelton Estate
