The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [104]
He felt alone and inadequate, and for a moment a panic swept him, leaving his forehead cold with perspiration. The worst was still ahead, telling Virginia.
Wheelock had been in the hotel dining room and he had approached the big rancher hesitantly and told him he was sorry to bother him….
“Mr. Wheelock, I paid you prompt for that breeding. The calf was too big, that’s why it died. I did everything I could. If you’ll breed her again—”
“I heard the calf strangled. Son, when you help a delivery, loop your rope around the head then bring it good and tight along the jaws, and a few turns on the forelegs if they’re out.” He drew circles in the air with his fork. “Then you don’t strangle them to death.” And he laughed with a mouthful of food when he said, finally, “The breeding fee generally doesn’t include advice on how to deliver.”
E. V. Timmons leaned back from the rolltop and palmed his hands thoughtfully as if he were offering a prayer. He looked at the ceiling for a long time with a tragic cast to his eyes. When he spoke it was hesitantly, as if it pained him, but with conviction….
“Buying trends are erratic these days, Dave. Tomorrow, demand might drop on a big item and I’d have a heavy inventory on my hands and no place to unload. It means you have to maintain a working capital.”
Tom Wylie was sympathetic when he told him about most of his stock dying from rattleweed poisoning.
“That’s mean stuff in March, Dave. Got to keep your stock out of it. You know, the best way to get rid of it is to cut the crowns a few inches below the soil surface. It generally won’t send up new tops.” He asked Boland if he had seen Timmons. And after that he kept his sympathy.
John Avery was in the hotel business. He was used to walls and space limitations. “If my cows got into rattleweed I’d put fences up to keep them the hell out. You got to organize, boy!” Avery’s supper was waiting for him….
Virginia would understand.
Hell, what else could she do? He saw her pale, small-boned face that now, somehow, seemed sharper and more drawn with their child only a few days or a week away. She would smile a weak smile, twisting the hem of her apron—and it would mean nothing. Virginia smiled from habit. She smiled every time he brought her bad news. But always with the same sad expression in the eyes. Sometime, in the future, perhaps there would be a real reason to smile. He wondered if she would be able to. Now, with the baby coming…
Virginia had waited tables in a restaurant in Sudan because she had to support herself after her folks died suddenly. She was a great kidder and all the riders liked her. Broadminded, they said. He used to pass through Sudan a few times a year when most of the Company herds were grazed near the Canadian. After a while, he went out of his way and even made excuses to go there. She never kidded with him…
When he told the others about it, they said, “She’s a nice girl—but who wants a nice girl? You get bone-tired pushing steers from the Nueces to Dodge; but, son, you can throw off along the way anytime you want—”
It had been raining hard for the past few minutes when finally he led his mare into the long, rickety shed, unsaddled and pitch-forked some hay.
The rain, he thought, shaking his head. The one thing I don’t need is rain. He tried to see humor in it, though it was an irritation. Like an annoying, tickling fly lighting on a broken leg.
He walked up the slight grade toward the dim shape of the adobe house, passing the empty chicken coops, then skirted Virginia’s vegetable garden, moving around toward the front of the house. He saw a light through a curtained side window. At the front of the house he called, “It’s me,” so as not to startle her, then lifted the latch on the door and pushed in.
Virginia Boland stood next to the oilcloth-covered table. She twisted