“Roker said I could have you for a fortnight and you’d do forty horses. You done sixty and at five dollars a head, that’s three hundred dollars. I ain’t payin’ it. We agreed on two hundred and that’s what you’re gettin’.”
“I’ll take the two hundred.”
Eli Laker wasn’t surprised. He had not expected an argument. Word around the county was that Dodd was the best bronc man to come along in anybody’s memory. But to look at him, you wouldn’t know it. Dodd was tall and stout, a good half foot taller than Laker who was no small man himself. But Dodd was a quiet, slow-talking man whose round, smooth, ruddy face gave him the look of a popinjay boy—maybe eighteen—twenty at the most. His skill with horses, however, showed more years than his appearance but those kinds of thoughts never entered Laker’s mind.
Dodd had allowed himself to be cussed and bullied for a fortnight. That was Laker’s way. All his life, Laker had never amounted to much and he knew it. He took pleasure from bullying those who did. Dodd’s arms and body rippled with muscles and even the arrogant Laker was impressed with his enormous strength. But Dodd was the kind from whom Laker took the most pleasure. Dodd was skilled and he was handsome and he was powerful—all the things that Laker wasn’t.
Laker had seen his kind before. Big, slow-talking, easy-going men who were willing to take anything to avoid a fight. Laker took that trait to be cowardice in a man and weakness in this boy. As the days progressed, Laker became more and more bold—his cussings more frequent and his demands more unreasonable. Laker was not the kind to notice the firm set of Dodd’s jaw or the steel in his eyes. Laker only saw that with each of his verbal assaults, Dodd worked harder and it pleasured him deeply to know he could bully and lord it over this big, powerful boy.
Dodd kept going back to a little paint filly he had gentled down the first day. Dodd made a point of riding her first thing in the morning, just before he broke for dinner and the last thing before he quit in the evening every day, and every day Laker would rant, “You done that one already, you goddam stupid son-of-a-bitch. You too damn dumb to know which ones is gentled and which ones ain’t?” Dodd would give no indication that he even heard.
The thing was, folks in these parts did not know Dodd well. He had drifted into Jess Roker’s roundup camp driving about fifteen head of unbranded mavericks. Said he was coming to the camp anyway. Might just as well bring them strays along. Jess was generally slow to hire on saddle tramps but this boy didn’t seem like your average saddle tramp. “Nothin’ really wrong with saddle trampin’. I done my share of it myself, enough to make me damn careful who I put on. I seen too many of them would smile big as the moon while they was fixin’ to shoot you in the back.”
But Roker saw a difference in Dodd right off. The boy, although quiet—almost shy—acted and talked like the rest of the crew. But Roker could see that rowdy behavior, cussing and range talk didn’t come naturally for the boy. Roker saw Dodd’s facade as an attempt to fit in with the rest of the crew. Dodd had a refinement you just didn’t find in the average saddle tramp. He even gave the sense that he knew a whole lot more than he let on, almost like he’d been off to school somewhere and was educated. Roker wondered about it some but not too much. He knew the boy to be honest and hardworking and that was all he had time to really care about during the busy roundup season.
Hands like Dodd don’t come along every day so Roker kept him on after the roundup. His hard work and diligence brought him Roker’s obvious respect and that created some resentment among the other hands. Dodd chose to react to that by asking to ride line, a job hated by most cowpokes because of the loneliness and the danger—and in that wild country riding line was dangerous. Dodd did not care much for the loneliness but he preferred it to the jealous insults and possible fights of the bunkhouse.
Dodd asked to be sent to the hill country. Roker’s operation was big but the fifty to a hundred head he figured he lost every year was still a major loss. None of Roker’s line riders or even the local cattlemen’s association posse had been able to stop the rustling. Beside the loss, Roker was a proud man and could not abide the thought of someone outsmarting him. Roker knew he lost most of his steers along the hill country line and he figured he lost most of them to Deak Lantz.
When he wasn’t drunk or in town patronizing the various ladies of the night, Deak scoured the hills for mavericks but he was also long suspected of going onto neighboring ranches and helping himself to any unbranded calf he came across. Deak was another mysterious character. It was obvious that he had also been a man of education and refinement but he did not try to hide those qualities. In fact he flaunted them and maintained a highly resented superior attitude toward the ranchers and townspeople.
Deak told many stories as to why he was now living in the mountains with his squaw and a half-breed daughter but the most commonly believed was the one he told most frequently when he was very drunk—that he was caught in bed with the preacher’s wife and had killed the preacher to keep word from getting out. But Deak found that a woman who would cheat on her husband would also tell on her lover. Deak, the story went, had headed west to keep from getting hung.
But that was all academic now. Deak had not been seen nor heard of in almost a month. Roker was surprised at how the news of Deak’s disappearance had left him with mixed feelings. Although he had thoroughly disliked the man, Deak had been a worthy adversary. Roker was sure that Deak was up in the hills somewhere in a shallow grave with one of Dodd’s bullets in his belly.
Eli Laker was not one to see character in a man. All of the qualities Roker knew Dodd to possess eluded Laker. Laker saw only an inexperienced boy who would allow himself to be pushed around. Laker smirked as he thought of those twenty extra broke horses he’d gotten for free. Laker handed Dodd ten twenty-dollar gold pieces and turned to go into his house.
“I’ll be takin’ the boy and that little paint. Reckon that one hundred dollars will cover your boundin’ money and the cost of that horse.” Dodd had spoken matter-of-factly, just as if he were telling Laker the time of day.
Laker stopped abruptly and stood staring at the half-open door. He was surprised, as all bullies are when someone challenges them. His surprise quickly turned to anger. “Hell, boy, you ain’t takin’ nothin’. You wasn’t told to do them extry horses. You was just a damn fool for doin’ them. They’re mine and I already told you, you ain’t gettin’ nothin’ for them. And that boy ain’t goin’ nowhere. I got him law bound.”
Dodd pushed his hat back and looked Laker hard in the eyes. For the first time, Laker saw something in Dodd that put a mild fright into him. Dodd again spoke slowly and emotionlessly. “Ain’t that much that riles me and I’m slow to judge a man bad but I done some judgin’ on you and your whole damn family since I been here. Reckon I’d have been riled if I seen a dog treated like you folks do that boy. I come close to givin’ you a good beatin’, the way you done him yesterday. But, knowin’ you, a beatin’ would have led to a gunfight and you’d have been dead. I thought on it and I reckoned I’d give you a choice. You can let me take that boy or you can fuss with me about it and have a bullet in your belly. Don’t make no difference to me. Either way, the boy goes with me.”
Laker’s laugh was the nervous laugh of a man now not completely sure of himself. But his years of bullying and blustering were a more powerful motivator than his mild apprehension. “If you was more of a man, I’d whip your ass. Hardly seems sportin’ whippin’ a chicken-ass coward like you. ’Side ’a that, takes too much energy. I’ll let the sheriff take care of you. I’ll law you. I got papers on that boy.”
“I ain’t never heard of a dead man puttin’ the law on somebody.”
“You ain’t thinkin’ good, boy. You can’t shoot me. You ain’t fast enough. Even if you was, you ain’t got the belly for it.”
“I ain’t one to go lookin’ to kill a man, but I done it when there was no other way. You’re makin’ it look more and more like there ain’t no other way. When a man’s plain out mean and he won’t talk sense, that’s reason enough to kill, I reckon, and I never had a better reason than you give me this last week.”
Laker was becoming more and more uneasy and his blustering now, Dodd recognized, was even more dangerous. He blustered now from fear, not arrogance. Dodd knew from past experience that that was the point at which nervousness became impulsiveness. He only half listened to Laker’s prattle but he watched him intently.
“Talkin’ don’t kill a man. I done my share of gunnin’ in my time and I was faster than most. I ’low as I still am. You want to shoot, boy, square off or get off my place.”
Dodd, when he left home, had vowed that he would not reveal his identity. He needed to make it on his own. He did not want to be coddled because of who his father was. But now he knew he had Laker at an unfair advantage. Dodd knew Laker was no match for him but he also knew that, because of the man’s stupid pride, he would draw. Dodd had not considered the possibility of a situation like this when he made his vow and he knew that he now must break it. He would not leave the boy but neither would he kill a man who he knew had no chance against him.
“Before you draw on me, reckon it’s fair you know who you’re callin’ out.”
“Hell, Dodd, a blind man can see what you are.”
“Well, if you know me so good, what’s my last name?”
“Don’t know that matters. A boy will die just as fast with one name as two.”
“Name’s Doddson Forrest. I reckon you’ve heard tell of Luke Forrest.”
Eli Laker blanched at the name. “Godamighty, you ain’t one of Luke Forrest’s boys?”
“Yes, sir, I am. Might be I ain’t my Pa but he learned me and by the time my talk was squeekin’ he said he was right proud of how I done. You still want to face me down?”
Laker didn’t want to back down but he didn’t want to die either. If this boy was a Forrest and was just a tiny part of his daddy, Laker knew he was no match for him. But it just wasn’t in Laker to keep his mouth shut. “Luke Forrest ain’t your pa. No boy of Luke Forrest’s would be saddle trampin’.”
“A boy won’t never be a man if he stays in his pa’s shadow. I think that way and Pa agreed. Ma died birthin’ me and Pa and my nine older brothers and their wives done for me too much. I seen that I liked easy livin’ and bein’ done for too good and when I thought on it, I didn’t like what I seen. I’ll go back when I think I’m half the man my daddy is. He learned from pokein’ and broncin’. I’m damn proud to be his son. Ain’t no better man to try to be like. I reckoned I’d learn like he did.”
“All that talk don’t make Luke Forrest your daddy.”
“You want to chance it?” Dodd’s eyes were steel blue, hard and confident and calm, without a trace of fear or of anger.
No. Laker didn’t want to chance it but he couldn’t keep his mouth shut either. “What the hell’s eatin’ you about that damn boy, Dodd? Hell, he ain’t nothin’. It’s fussin’ over that boy makes me think you ain’t no Forrest. I’ve knowed about Luke Forrest for forty years. He didn’t get to be the biggest rancher, the toughest and richest man in these parts by frettin’ over some shit-ass, bastard, throwaway of a boy. That boy eats my food. He sleeps under my roof. I paid good money for him and I can do as I damn please with him. I need that boy for chorin’. My woman needs him for helpin’ her with house things. Now, you just get the hell on off my place.”
With a lightning movement of his hand, Dodd drew his bowie knife from its sheath and threw it at Laker’s feet. Laker gasped when he saw the blade buried deep in the dirt, the handle vibrating from the force of the throw. It had come so close to Laker’s right foot that it nicked the sole of his boot.
“Pick it up and read what’s etched on the blade.”
Laker stood dazed for a moment then bent to pick up the knife. He didn’t bother to keep an eye on Dodd. It didn’t matter anymore whether he was a Forrest or not. As fast as Dodd was, Laker knew he would be beaten. There was no need to watch him. If Dodd wanted to, he could kill Laker, watched or not.
The neatly engraved inscription on the blade did not surprise Laker. To Dodd Forrest on his fourteenth birthday. I love you, boy, and I’m proud of you. Dad.
Even a fool like Laker can face reality sometimes. What he held in his hand was proof that he had almost talked himself to death. He trembled. His hand shook so violently that he dropped the knife. His heart was pounding and he felt dizzy. He bent to pick up the knife and almost fell on his face. He tried to talk but nothing came out. He couldn’t breathe. He thought he was dying. He leaned back against the house and gasped for air. The gasps gradually changed to deep breaths and slowly he regained his wits.
Laker was terrified. He had bullied and insulted Luke Forrest’s son for two weeks. He had threatened to whip him and even to kill him. He knew now that Dodd could have killed him any time he had wanted to and he was afraid that he still might. He had to find a way to placate him.
But Laker was the victim of too many years of habit. Even in the face of death, he had to try to save face. “I’ll pay you for them extry horses and you can have the paint. But I need that boy. You want a bound-boy, leave mine be. Go on into town. They got a heap of them at that orphanage.”
“It ain’t so much that I want a boy. It’s that I don’t want you havin’ one, particular that one. And I don’t want your money. Come Tuesday a week, I already seen that I might have to take that boy. I done them extra horses to cover your boundin’ money and the filly. You’d best just take my offer. Even if I didn’t kill you, you and your old lady and that hell-bitch daughter of yours keep doin’ him like you do, you’ll kill him in a month and then you won’t have nothin’.
“But when I think on it, I reckon I do want that boy. I’ve took to him. Any boy no bigger than him who can take the beatin’s and the mouthin’ you damn people been givin’ him and keep his fight—seems he ought to be a Forrest.”
In all his years of blustering and bullying, Laker had never gotten himself into this position. Most folks had nothing to do with him. They found his boorish ways an irritation but really not worth their time. Laker would bluster and threaten and think he had scared them off or had gotten the better of them. He was too arrogant and too ignorant to realize that he was being ignored. So, in his present confused state, he simply did as he always had done. “Well, you ain’t takin’ that boy. You won’t shoot me and your pa won’t fuss at me none. You Forrests are too smart to risk hangin’ over a goddam bound-boy.”
“I’ll tell you for true, Mr. Laker. I ain’t never heard of a man hangin’ for killin’ when he’s been drawed on. You’re scared, Mr. Laker, and you ain’t thinkin’ right. If I square off, you’ll draw and I’ll kill you. Now, try to understand this. I’m like my pa. I don’t take pleasure from killin’ folks but I got this feelin’ that I would take some from killin’ you. What killin’ I’ve done give me a sick feelin’. I’ve killed Indians that tried to take my hair. I’ve killed white men who tried to take my land or my stock. I didn’t like what I felt then and I don’t like what I’m feelin’ now. Killin’ should make a man feel sick but the thought of killin’ you gives me pleasure. That ain’t right, but what I’ve seen here ain’t right either. Mostly I’m a happy man. I hold bein’ happy mighty high—higher, could be, even than my stock or my land. Could be even higher than my hair. A man who ain’t happy ain’t got much of a life and he might be better off without it. The way I saw that boy done has took my happiness from me. I reckon I might kill for that and for what you’ve took from that boy.”
“I ain’t took nothin’ from that boy.”
“You’ve took his childhood. If there’s any time in a man’s life when he ought to be happy, it’s when he’s a boy. You’ve took that from him.”
Eli Laker was now having to deal with what he had always known about himself. He was not a brave man. He was, in fact, a coward with strong feelings of inferiority. As a child he had been—to some extent in reality but mostly in his imagination—looked down upon because of the poverty and drunkenness of his home. His father was the proverbial town drunk and his mother, though not as public, was just as much a drunk. He had been the youngest of fifteen children, many of whom had died as infants or very young children. Those who had lived had left home by the time they were in their teens. Eli had no idea who any of them were or if any were still living.
Although he felt inferior to other children, he learned very early that his size provided his one advantage. He could hurt other children and therefore bully them. That had become his style of living. He grew to be a big man and became a passible hand with a gun. He spent his first forty years drifting—sometimes a lawman, sometimes a gambler—mostly an outlaw but he was never successful at any of his pursuits. He never worked cows or wrangled horses. In fact he had never done any physical work and, as he grew older, he became fat and soft.
At forty he had married the ill-tempered daughter of a moderately successful horse wrangler and had run the place since the old man’s death seven years earlier. He had lived on the place ten years before the old man died but he did no work. Laker decided that he was the business manager and spent most of his time in town, mostly drinking but occasionally working out horse deals. Most of the deals were bad and the old man grew to hate Laker. Had it not been for the fact that he doted on his daughter, the old man would have run Laker off.
After the old man’s death the place became more and more rundown and made less money each year. His blustering and ill temper made it impossible for him to keep or even hire help so he took a bound-boy, no more than eleven years old, and what work was done on the place was done by the boy.
But the previous winter Laker had had a stroke of luck. The winter had been a bad one and the deep snows had driven the wild horses from their mountain pastures to Laker’s valley. He had corralled them, about a hundred of them, mostly by luck. The horses had found good grass and sweet water in a box canyon just inside Laker’s land. With good grass and water, the horses hadn’t tried to move. They didn’t even know they were trapped until Dodd came and started to work them.
Laker could get an average of twenty-five dollars a head so after paying Dodd five dollars a head for breaking them, Laker had twenty dollars clear profit. With sixty broke horses—the other forty were too young or too wild—that was twelve hundred dollars, more than he had ever been able to put together at one time before.
With that twelve hundred dollars and the fact that he had to pay no wages, Laker thought he was rich. The county would bound you a boy until he was sixteen for fifty dollars. Laker’s boy was young but he was feisty and strong and he would do as much work as many of the men Laker had hired in the past. He didn’t eat as much as a grown man and Fanny could make over Laker’s worn out britches so Laker expected at least five good, cheap years out of him.
But the boy vexed Laker to no end. Laker had to think folks were afraid of him. He wanted them to cower when he came near them. He wanted to see fear in their faces and submissiveness in their demeanor. But the boy had a confident, almost cocky attitude and a pride about himself that no amount of Laker’s blustering, yelling, cussing, bullying and beating could crush. The boy would yell and cry when he was being beaten but he would walk away with his head held high and usually give whichever Laker had administered the beating a good cussing as he walked away. He was not defiant but if he were overworked he would refuse to do more. If he was told to do a thing in a manner which caused unnecessary work or was just plain stupid, he could usually think of a better way and Laker, knowing the boy had uncovered his ignorance and stupidity, would rage or sulk or drink—according to his whim—but whichever response he chose, it was always preceded by a thorough, almost vicious beating. The fact that the boy wasn’t afraid of them confused and infuriated the Lakers. It even, to some extent, intimidated them for it threw into question their entire way of life.
And now Dodd. The fear and confusion, the anger and the hate—all the misgivings and insecurities of his lifetime, so thinly buried under his facade of bravado, were now vividly brought to mind. He felt again his boyhood’s public anger and the inner pain that had caused him to shed many a private boyhood tear. He hated the boy he had been and he hated Dodd for making him remember.
Laker knew he would have to let Dodd have the boy but he didn’t know how to give in. He kicked at the ground. He looked at the sky. He realized that he still had Dodd’s knife in his hand. He flipped it, hilt forward and held it out as if it were a peace offering. Dodd took the knife, sheathed it and said, “I ain’t turnin’ my back on you until your gun belt is lyin’ on the ground. Take it off.”
“I ain’t…”
“Jesus Christ, Li, shut your goddam mouth. That shit-ass boy ain’t worth pig piss. He ain’t worth gettin’ yourself killed for. Let him go. He ain’t been nothin’ but trouble since he come on the place anyway. They got a whole passel of boys at that orphanage. We can get us one ain’t so goddam uppity.”
His wife’s ranting seemed to pull Laker out of his stupor. “Shut your damn mouth, woman. I’ll handle this.” He tucked both thumbs under his belt, stood with his legs wide apart, his shoulder back, again assuming an attitude of surly confidence. He smirked at Dodd as though he’d won. “Well, hell. I got twenty broke horses I didn’t expect to have. Take the little bastard. I’ll just sell what it takes to get another one.”
The answer was gentle and matter-of-fact, but with steel in it.
“I ever hear of another bound-boy on this place, you’re a dead man. In fact, I ever hear of you treatin’ a dog like you did that boy, you’re a dead man. Now, ease that gun belt off.”
Laker hesitated. He looked at his wife, back at Dodd and then back to his wife. With a firm nod of her head she told Laker what to do. Slowly, as if he were having to force himself, he unbuckled the belt and let it fall to the ground.
Dodd turned and walked toward the corral. Laker stood in a stupor, overwhelmed by the angers and fears of a lifetime but still driven by its habits. He bent to pick up the gun.
The boy yelled and Dodd drew and whirled but there was no need to shoot. Laker sat dazed on the ground, leaning against the house—his wife standing over him, an iron skillet in her hand. “You damn fool,” she said. “If you’re gonna get yourself killed, do it where I don’t have to watch it.”
The boy said nothing when Dodd led the paint to him and lifted him onto her back. Dodd called toward the house, “I’m goin’ into town now. I’ll buy a new saddle and bridle at the livery. You can pick these up the next time you’re in town.”
Dodd reined his big bay gelding over to the open kitchen window. “Remember what I said about havin’ another bound-boy on the place. I’m tellin’ the judge and sheriff the same thing. I reckon it won’t do no good to say anything to them orphanage folks. From what I hear, they crawled out of the same rat hole as you folks. But hear me good. You take it in your head to spite me, you’d best dig your grave before you go into town.”
Copyright © 2003 Gordon L. Klopfenstein