The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [98]
A bull bellowed, and the boy fired again. The herd bunched, bumping each other, bellowing, shaking their clumsy heads at the blood smell. Then the leader broke suddenly, and what was left of the herd was off, from stand to dead run, in one moment of panic, driven mad by the scent of death.
The boy fired into the dust cloud that rose behind them, but they were out of range before he could reload again.
It’s better to wave them off carefully with a blanket after killing all you can skin, the boy thought to himself. But this had worked out all right. Sometimes it didn’t, though. Sometimes they stampeded right at the hunter.
He rose stiffly, rubbing his shoulder, and moved back down the rise to his picketed horse. His shoulder ached from the buck of the heavy rifles, but he felt good. Lying back there on the plain was close to seventy or eighty dollars he’d split with Leo Cleary… soon as they’d been skinned and handed over to the hide buyers. Hell, this was easy. He lifted his hat, and the wind was cold on his sweat-dampened forehead. He breathed in the air, feeling an exhilaration, and the ache in his shoulder didn’t matter one bit.
Wait until he rode into Leverette with a wagon full of hides, he thought. He’d watch close, pretending he didn’t care, and he’d see if anybody laughed at him then.
HE WAS MOUNTING when he heard the wagon creaking in the distance, and he smiled when Leo Cleary’s voice drifted up the gradual rise, swearing at the team. He waited in the saddle, and swung down as the four horses and the canvas-topped wagon came up to him.
“Leo, I didn’t even have to come wake you up.” Will Gordon smiled up at the old man on the box, and the smile eased the tight lines of his face. It was a face that seemed used to frowning, watching life turn out all wrong, a sensitive boyish face, but the set of his jaw was a man’s… or that of a boy who thought like a man. There were few people he showed his smile to other than Leo Cleary.
“That cheap store whiskey you brought run out,” Leo Cleary said. His face was beard stubbled, and the skin hung loosely seamed beneath tired eyes.
“I thought you quit,” the boy said. His smile faded.
“I have now.”
“Leo, we got us a lot of money lying over that rise.”
“And a lot of work….” He looked back into the wagon, yawning.“We got near a full load we could take in …and rest up. You shooters think all the work’s in knocking ’em down.”
“Don’t I help with the skinning?”
Cleary’s weathered face wrinkled into a slow smile. “That’s just the old man in me coming out,” he said. “You set the pace, Will. All I hope is roaming hide buyers don’t come along …you’ll be wanting to stay out till April.” He shook his head. “That’s a mountain of back-breaking hours just to prove a point.”
“You think it’s worth it or not?” the boy said angrily.
Cleary just smiled. “Your dad would have liked to seen this,” he said. “Come on, let’s get those hides.”
Skinning buffalo was filthy, back-straining work. Most hunters wouldn’t stoop to it. It was for men hired as skinners and cooks, men who stayed by the wagons until the shooting was done.
During their four weeks on the range the boy did his share of the work, and now he and Leo Cleary went about it with little conversation. Will Gordon was not above helping with the butchering, with hides going for four dollars each in Leverette, three dollars if a buyer picked them up on the range.
The more hides skinned, the bigger the profit. That was elementary. Let the professional hunters keep their pride and their hands clean while they sat around in the afternoon filling up on scootawaboo. Let them pay heavy for extra help just because skinning was beneath them. That was their business.
In Leverette, when the professional hunters laughed at them, it didn’t bother Leo Cleary. Maybe they’d get hides, maybe they wouldn’t. Either way it didn’t matter much. When he thought about it, Leo Cleary believed the boy just wanted to prove a point