Boswell's Luck (5 page)

“Well, that's a considerable improvement,” he announced. “Got some old boots here, Rastus. Give 'em a try. I'll judge you're tired o' goin' about in bare feet.”

“You get used to it in the wilds,” Erastus answered. “Thank you, Sheriff. Don't know how I'll pay you back.”

“Was Mitch's ma brought the boots by, son. As to thanks, well, we're all o' us feelin' shame-faced from seein' your back. Your ma had our oaths that we'd look in on you. Didn't do too fine a job o' that, I'm thinkin'.”

“Wasn't your job. I'm of an age to be my own lookout.”

“And you'd likely done a fair job o' it if not for Otto Plank. Hurry into those boots now. Cora' II have supper ready soon.”

Actually, though, before accompanying the sheriff to his house on the outskirts of Thayerville, Erastus had to pass Becky Cathcart's inspection. He felt a little like a horse at auction, what with her sniffing and staring and mumbling to herself.

“Your hair's all tangled,” she announced, “We'll have to get it clipped. You got knobby fingers, too.”

“Figure to cut them off as well?” he asked.

She smiled a bit and waved him on to the house. He got a kinder reception there from Cora Cathcart and little Busby. Mrs. Cathcart gave him a warm, motherly hug and offered her regrets at his ill treatment. Busby brought him a carrot to munch on and pleaded to see the scars on Erastus's back.

“Pay you a nickel,” the boy whispered. “More if I had it.”

“You come swimmin' with me and Mitch sometime,” Erastus answered. “See 'em then.”

As for the dinner, Erastus could hardly believe his eyes. Platters of pork chops and mounds of potatoes appeared before him. Vegetables he'd dared not dream of were piled high atop his plate. He'd been hungry so long he'd near forgotten what it was like to be otherwise. Now, as he gobbled bite after bite, it seemed he was bone empty and would need a year's eating to fill up.

“Pa, look at him,” Becky complained.

“Take your time, Rastus,” the sheriff instructed. “It's not goin' away, you know.”

“Leave the boy alone,” Cora scolded. “Lord knows what he's suffered. Forgive his manners this once.”

Erastus grinned sheepishly and tried to be a bit more patient. His stomach would not be put off, though. It wasn't until he'd finished off his fifth chop and two platters of potatoes and vegetables that he untucked his napkin.

“I've got a peach pie set aside for later,” Mrs. Cathcart announced. “Just now maybe you'd like to take Erastus into the sitting room, Lem. The children and I'll clean up.”

“I can do my part,” Erastus offered. “I've washed dishes aplenty and scrubbed a floor or two as well.”

“Not this night,” the sheriff declared. “Come along, son.”

They strolled together out of the kitchen and along to a small room in the front of the house. Sheriff Cathcart placed a firm hand on Erastus's shoulder, and the boy looked up. Not since J. C. had the life crushed from him had Erastus felt anything but alone. Now it seemed there might be someone to ease the path ahead.

A knock came to the door then, and the sheriff motioned Erastus to a nearby chair and went to answer. Moments later John and Mary Morris joined him in the sitting room. Mitch, all scrubbed up and stiff-collared, followed slowly.

“Sheriff,” Mr. Morris said, “we came to ask after Erastus. Have you thought of his future?”

“There's time yet,” the sheriff answered.

“Have you work for him?” Mrs. Morris inquired.

“No, ma'am, but I can use a boy to sweep the jail house, and there are things here and there.”

“We've done considerable thinking on this matter,” Mr. Morris went on. “It's no service to provide sanctuary for a child only to turn him out later unprepared to provide for himself.”

“We've a counter needs tending,” Mrs. Morris added. “I hired a girl last month, but she's needed to help me sew garments. Mitch went out and filled a spare mattress with fresh straw, and he declares he needs a body to sleep on it.”

“We got room, Sheriff,” Mitch declared. “Shoot, we're together most days anyhow. Half the county already thinks us brothers.”

“Rastus, what's your mind say to this?” Cathcart asked.

“I wouldn't want to take charity,” the boy answered.

“Oh, you'd earn your way, young man,” Mrs. Morris insisted. “But you'd get the Christian upbringing your mother would want, and you'd pick up a bit of cash money over room and board. And if your heart's set on running horses or tending cattle next year, there'd be no barred door or rawhide whip to hold you back.”

“Well, Rat?” Mitch asked. “Figure you can stand my snorin'?”

“Done it before,” Erastus answered. “Truth is, I miss not havin' a brother 'round.”

“When would you want to take him?” the sheriff asked.

“This very minute,” Mrs. Morris said, rushing over and halfway choking Erastus in her generous arms. “We'll tend him like our own, Sheriff, and see he comes to no ill.”

“I don't suppose a boy could expect better, could he, Erastus?”

“No, sir,” Erastus agreed.

The sheriff took Erastus back to the kitchen so he could express his thanks and say farewell to Mrs. Cathcart and the children. Erastus did so, getting another motherly hug, a polite curtsy from Becky, and a whispered plea to join the swimming from Busby.

“I'd stay if you wanted, you know,” Erastus whispered to the sheriff before turning toward the Morrises.

“You're welcome there, son,” Cathcart explained. “It's a good home with plenty o' comforts. You'll get along fine.”

“I know I will,” Erastus said, gripping the sheriff's hand. He then hurried to join Mitch and the family they would share thereafter.

After the horrors experienced at the Plank place, anything would have been a welcome change. And in truth the Morrises provided good food and kindly treatment. There was Mitch, too, to swap tales and share wayward thoughts. For the most part those thoughts never got past their amber scalps. Mary Morris ran a taut household, with prayers at mealtime and Bible verses read every night. Erastus had fallen into a world of starched collars and Philadelphia shoes, with little time for anything besides work, lessons, and prayer.

“You're behind on your learning, I'm afraid,” Mrs. Morris declared the first time she glimpsed Erastus's pitiful scrawl in her ledgers. “We'll remedy that. I've got Mitchell's old school books set aside, and I'll tend to your ciphers myself.”

“A man don't need so much learnin' to run down range ponies,” Erastus objected.

“Well, I never heard anyone balk at a chance to better himself, Erastus Hadley. Here the Lord's handed you a splendid opportunity, and you'd throw it away like a ball of used string.”

Erastus bit his lip. He feared telling her how a use could always be found for a bit of string, but reading stories about princes or dragons wouldn't sink a fence post.

Lessons weren't the only vexation to face the boy. He tended the mercantile counter two full hours in the morning and three each afternoon. When there wasn't a customer to help, and that was most of the time, he'd sit atop a hard oak stool and fidget. The monotony of life threatened to drown him!

So it was that Erastus rarely missed the chance to escape with Mitch out to the river and the Brazos hills that would always ring with recollections of his father and mother, of a better life behind. Upon returning, retribution was swift and sure. John Morris knew how to use a belt, and Mary assigned both miscreants extra verses.

“Don't think Pa puts his heart in it, though,” Mitch confessed afterward. “He likes to ride himself.”

“Yer ma's plumb put out, though,” Erastus observed.

“Oh, she thinks boys are the devil's henchmen. Could be she's right, too.”

“Could be,” Erastus added with a grin.

As summer passed into fall, and winter came and went, Erastus Hadley regained his old spirits. Between the fare provided at the Morris table and tidbits offered by Becky Cathcart or some of the town women, he began to flesh over his bones once more. Bit by bit he grew taller. His shoulders took on muscle, and he lost the gaunt, empty stare Otto Plank had placed in his eyes.

Oh, he was sure to be no giant, for his father had been a smallish man. Most of the town boys had four or five inches on him, and Mitch was half a foot taller. But nobody gave him any trouble, for there was a rock hardness in Rat Hadley, and he could latch hold of an enemy and punish him considerable.

Naturally he wasn't overly fond of being called Rat, but Mitch rarely used anything else, and by now the whole town had settled on it. To make matters worse, the pointed Hadley nose had grown to excess, and even Mary Morris remarked he resembled his rodent namesake.

“You can't help bein' what you are,” Mitch declared. “And there are worse names a body could come by.”

Rat Hadley wondered.

After a year of tending counter, memorizing Bible verses, and sitting beneath the watchful gaze of Mr. Thadeus Barley in the Thayerville schoolhouse, Rat could hardly contain his joy when Orville Hanks happened by with an invite to help the Circle H roundup crew.

“Got a trail herd to put together, son,” the rancher explained. “You and Mitch are welcome to come along, scare in a few strays and help with brandin'. I'll pay you ten silver dollars a week and feed you to boot.”

“The boy has chores here, and I need Mitch in the storeroom,” Mrs. Morris objected.

“Ma'am, ain't a way under heaven you'll keep them boys to indoor work with 'em sproutin' like July beans. Sometimes you got to give a spry colt its head, you know.”

“He's right, dear,” Mr. Morris agreed. “Leave them to go. We won't have any business to speak of until harvest anyway. The men will all be heading to Kansas.”

“Not my boys!” she argued.

“Not this year anyhow,” Hanks replied with a grin. “Give 'em another year and best Dodge City look out.”

Mitch was the first to raise a howl, but Rat added his own a second later. Bright and early next morning the two of them rode atop Mitch's speckled mare to the line camp, and thence along to where Orville Hanks was assembling his roundup crew. Every boy in the county was there or else at one of the other ranches, and there were extra men hired on, too. Rat and Mitch rode out with Payne Oakley and Braxton Holley four or five miles upriver. The four of them began driving scattered longhorns out of the tangled ravines and back toward the main camp.

It wasn't easy work. In fact it was near as hard a thing as Rat had ever put his hands to. He choked on dust, drowned in his own sweat, and twice near got the sharp point of a horn for his efforts. Toward twilight he swam in the river with Mitch, and the two of them compared aches and bruises.

“Can't abide that pinto cow pony Payne set me on,” Mitch grumbled. “Bites, you know. And the fool critter threw me into a bed o' pencil cactus to boot.”

“Your mare's not up to this kind o' work,” Rat told his friend. “I got a mustang I'll swap you.”

“I seen that one,” Mitch said, grinning. “No thanks.”

“Ain't any worse'n sittin' on Mr. Barley's oak bench all day!”

“Sure is. I got pains in my bottom that'd unsettle an iron kettle. And at least in the schoolhouse you get to eye Melissa Turnbull.”

“Don't you like the view out here?” Rat asked, pointing to the nearby hills.

“Why, all I see's scrub brush and sandstone. Every critter either bites or stings. Don't know why a cowboy takes to such a life.”

“Air's good when the cows don't raise any dust, Mitch. And there's Dodge City, too.”

“Well, we're not go in' to Kansas, you know.”

“Not this year,” Rat said, grinning.

As it happened, Rat was already figuring how tall he'd be at sixteen. Even if he didn't grow another inch, though, he vowed to be on his way north next spring. There were excitement and adventures aplenty on the cattle trail, but there was also talk of a railroad coming west from Ft. Worth that would put the trailing days to an end. He didn't plan on missing his chance on account of a year's growth or a few chin whiskers.

Maybe it was that notion that drove him to work so hard. Or perhaps being Rat Hadley he didn't know any other pace. Whatever, Rat was a true wonder on horseback. He outrode most every man in the camp, and his rope rarely missed its mark the first time. As to dogging a calf or running a reluctant bull back to the herd, he had few equals.

“Boy's small and real stringy,” Oakley told Orville Hanks. “But I'll tell you right now, Mr. Hanks, I'd take him for a partner any day. He don't quit on a critter, and he's quicker'n a greased pig. The horses treat him like family.”

“It's the Hadley blood,” Hanks announced. “Can't breed a nag and get a cuttin' pony. You want a cattleman, you got to start with the right stock.”

“You hear that, Rat?” Oakley called. “Mr. Hanks says you might just have the makin's.”

“I take that as high praise, sir,” Rat answered. “Pa always thought you hung the moon, Mr. Hanks.”

“I valued your pa, too,” Hanks replied. “Won't be long 'fore you're ready to trail steers to market, Rat.”

“I'm eager to try, Mr. Hanks. Give me a chance.”

“Next year, boy. I got a full crew now, but I'll have a place waitin' next year.”

“I'll be here!” Rat shouted, tossing his hat into the air.

That same night while riding guard Rat observed a pair of shadows approaching through a narrow ravine. At first he thought they might be boys come to visit their fathers or maybe somebody coming back from a late swim. Their bare shoulders and thin frames made it seem likely. But as they came closer, the faint moonlight illuminated them, and Rat saw they were wearing buckskin leggings and carrying bows.