Smiling Country

CHAPTER 1 Hewey Calloway did not know how old he was without stopping to figure, and that distracted his attention from matters of real importance. In his opinion anyone who wasted time worrying about his age had more leisure than was good for him. He had not acknowledged a birthday since he had turned thirty a dozen years agoor was it fifteen? In horse years, Biscuit was older than his rider, but the brown gelding was equally indifferent to the passage of time. Any minor concessions to his age were offset by steadiness and a light-reined response to any task Hewey called upon him to perform. He could outguess a cow in nine of ten confrontations and outrun her the other time. Hewey could not say nearly so much about the green-broke pony on which Skip Harkness picked his way along the rocky mountainside above Limpia Creek. Since Hewey and the freckle-faced kid had left the corrals and chuck wagon camp down on the yucca flat, the colt had stepped high and kept its ears working nervously while it watched for a booger. Any booger would do. It had already pitched twice, once spooking at a jackrabbit skittering through the underbrush, then taking fright at the cry of a disturbed hawk that sought to scare the horsemen away from its nest high in a tree. The two outbursts had been little challenge, for Skip was young and wiry and laughed at every jump. Hewey respected anyone efficient at his trade, but he worried about this button's long-range prospects. A kid from a blackland farm back in East Texas, Skip had cowboyed a couple of years and learned just enough to be dangerous to himself and everybody around him. Small triumphs tempted him to kick trouble in the ribs when it could just as well have been left asleep. Instead of pulling up on the hackamore rein to stop the pony from pitching on treacherous sloping ground, Skip had encouraged it to buck harder by spurring high in its shoulders and back in the flank. The colt pitched until its sorrel hide glistened with sweat. Hewey could not bring himself to criticize, for he used to show off too, not all that long ago. He still gloried in a challenge, but he saw no future in suicide. He said, "I've seen broncs that'd throw you so high the hawks'd have to look up to see you." "Ain't been a bronc throwed me since I was sixteen." Hewey guessed Skip to be eighteen, no more than nineteen at the outside, with his heart in the right place but his head on backward. "Biscuit would've busted you good when he was a colt. He flattened me several times." "Was that before or after the War between the States?" The kid was thumbing Hewey in the ribs about his age and Bistuit's. This was 1910. "Wasn't nothin' I could do then that I can't still do. I can ride more miles, find more cows and rope more calves..." He quit talking, for Skip's satisfied grin said he had thrown out the bait and Hewey had swallowed it, hook and all. Hewey never understood why some buttons barely weaned from mother's milk took such pleasure in warting their betters. His nephews would never do such a thing, not Cotton or Tommy. They showed respect, even when he knew they disagreed with him. He wished he had one of them here now instead of this reckless kid with more brass than good sense. They could teach Skip something about manners. If he put his mind to it he could almost feel sorry for the youngster, born too late to see Texas before the grasping hand of civilization reached out and spoiled it. Hewey had ridden across more country than Skip was likely ever to see. He had driven cattle to the Kansas railroad and had broken broncs from the Rio Grande to the Canadian line. He had shipped out to Cuba under Teddy Roosevelt. HeKelton, Elmer is the author of 'Smiling Country' with ISBN 9780812540192 and ISBN 0812540190.