“Sure, sure, I understand. Cowman’s always broke till shippin’ is over. You stop and see Dolly ’fore you go home. She’s ailin’ again. It’s because she won’t go out in the sun—claims the sun’s too strong in this country and leathers a woman’s skin. I tell her I’d rather she’d get tough skin than be like the stiff I’ve got laid out in the back room.”
The woman nodded, smiling. Then Faun took the cigar from his mouth and leaned across the counter, lowering his voice. “Did I tell you ’bout Ellie Lundgren last week? Y’know how she is, pretendin’ to be so damn prissy. Well, she ain’t satisfied with the meat Vic’s got out on the ranch, whether it’s a cow he’s butchered or a buck he shot in the pasture. She comes in here and sniffs everything, her nose in the air like always. And she says, ‘What kinda meat you got, Mr. Gentry?’ I names everything from ribs to roast, and she just shakes her head. Then I says, ‘How about some nice tongue, Miz Lundgren?’ ‘My,’ she says, ‘how could I eat anything come outta an old cow’s mouth?’ And then I says, ‘Well, Miz Lundgren, you just bought five dozen eggs.’ ”
Mrs. Plunkett’s laughter rang out, hearty, catching laughter, and Kelsey joined in. They turned to look at him then, and Faun came around the counter and held out his hand. “Howdy, stranger.”
Kelsey grasped the slender, nicotine-stained fingers. “I’m Kelsey Cameron, Tommy’s cousin, and he sent me in after rock salt for the Red Hill Ranch.”
“Well, well, so you’re the fella from Scotland. Want you to meet Amie Plunkett. She’s your neighbor to the south—runs the post office for the west side of the Park.”
Amie smiled at him with warm brown eyes. “It’s high time I’ve met up with you. I’ve been sorting those letters from Scotland and wondering about you.”
But no letters from Prim, Kelsey thought, only from Taraleean. What was Big Mina Munro doing to his lassie while he was away here in a far country?
“You tell Tommy,” Amie went on, “he isn’t treatin’ you right. You oughta be gettin’ around and meetin’ some people. What’s he up to, keepin’ your nose to the grindstone? And I’ll bet you’ve been lonesome, too.” Impulsively her hand touched his arm. “You come see us real soon—and stay for supper. Harry’s been wantin’ to meet you. Every time Hilder rides down for the mail he talks about you and we ask him how you’re gettin’ along.” She gave his arm a little shake. “Don’t let Tommy get you down. Everything’s going to be fine.” The baby began to whimper, and she started rocking it gently in her arms. “I’ve got to get home now. I’ll expect you down. We’ll be lookin’ forward to it.”
Kelsey thanked her and watched her walk from the store.
“Helluva fine woman,” Faun said, “but don’t make much of herself—always looks ’bout the way she did just now. When she come into the Park—a few years back, it was—she was some fancy chicken. Dressed to make a man turn his head and look, I can tell you. Don’t seem to care any more, though. Maybe because Harry’s got her pregnant all the time. And folks say she never gets around to fixin’ herself up because she’s too busy readin’ books. Why, I even heard she takes a book to the privy with her—in winter, too, when it’s cold. Now, would you think a person’d get anything through his head when his other end was freezin’?”
Kelsey laughed. He liked Faun Gentry.
“But I’d take Amie any day, books and all, before I’d have any truck with Ellie Lundgren. Vic Lundgren’s one fine fella and about as good a cattleman as there is in the Park, but Ellie—little dried-up wisp with a pinched-in mouth like she’d been suckin’ on a sour pickle. Vic’s cross, that’s what people call her. Ain’t it hell how a good man can get stung?” Faun sighed and then added, “What’d you say Tommy wanted?”
“Rock salt.”
“Well, we’ll get around to that all right. Listen, it’s slack time in the store right now—must be gettin’ close to noon. Come on in the back room, and I’ll set us up a drink. Dolly, my wife, she’s agin liquor—agin sin too. The new preacher’s got her wound around his finger. Why, hell, she’s up there singin’ hymns in the new church damn near every night, and worst is, she can’t carry a tune. Sour as cat piss, Dolly’s singin’. Well, let’s go back now before somebody comes in.”
The back room was small and littered with empty boxes. Against the far wall was a long table with a sheet spread over it. A form lay under the sheet. Faun waved a hand toward it and said, “Fella drifted in here ’bout a month ago. Been hangin’ around Bill Dirk’s saloon, takin’ the boys in poker. Got himself shot last night. Had it comin’. Was him or Bill. Forced Bill into it. Didn’t find no letters or anything on him, but I gotta fix him up a little and bury him. I don’t like the job, but nobody’ll take it on but me, and you can’t let a man stay on top of the ground for the magpies and coyotes to tear him apart.” Faun reached under a box and pulled out a whiskey bottle. “Drink up, son. It’ll put hair on your chest.”
When Kelsey handed him the bottle, Faun nodded and murmured, “Thanks, don’t mind if I do.” Faun took a quick drink, made a face, coughed and said, “God, that’s good whiskey! Listen, you can’t go home this afternoon.”
“I thought I should.”
“Stick around. We’ll have a poker game at Bill Dirk’s tonight. Have some fun, son. You’ll need it if you expect to stay in this country and be happy. There’s nothin’ to equal a good poker game—not even an accommodatin’ woman. Tell Tommy I was outta rock salt and you had to wait till the evenin’ freight wagon got in from Laramie. And I’ll tell you what, I’ll pay you to help me bury this fella this afternoon. That way you won’t feel you’re pinchin’ yourself to sit in on a few hands.”
Kelsey thought about it. Faun went on, “It spooks me, buryin’ a man alone, and the minister’s gone outside—that’s anywhere outside this valley, son. And you could eat supper with Dolly and me. She likes company, and she’s a good cook. Only don’t mention the poker game. I’m comin’ down to work in the store, see? I’d take it as a real favor if you’d help me, Kelsey.”
“Well, all right, then.”
They buried the stranger at five o’clock that afternoon in the shabby graveyard at the edge of town. It was a lonely place on a little hill, and clumps of sagebrush grew around the wooden markers. Kelsey thought of his father, laid to rest in a fine grassy plot a mile from the village. It was like a lawn, that graveyard, and not a weed in it. The stone on his father’s grave was the finest marble and carefully inscribed. And there was a high stone wall to keep cattle and horses from walking over the graves.
But did it matter? he asked himself, leaning on the shovel, looking beyond the graveyard to the vast open country and the far mountains standing over it. What was the end of man but dust the cows might walk through in the evening, when the last blue flower had closed before the dark? Ah, the pity of it!
“Don’t seem right to leave him with no Scripture said over him,” Faun muttered. “But the preacher’s gone.” He leaned on the shovel, staring down at the fresh dark earth.
“I’ll speak over him,” Kelsey said. “I want to.” He took off his wide-brimmed, mud-stained hat and bent his head. And words his father had said to him as they walked the shore came back to him. “ ‘Man . . . cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down . . .’ ”
Yes. And myself to come to this, and Taraleean—dust and the sun going down, and the names to be blown away and forgotten. And even Monte Maguire to come to this, big and strong as she is, and the life beating up like a high sea in her body . . .
He went on into the Lord’s Prayer, feeling the earth solid beneath him and the wind against his cheek. He finished, put on his hat, and turned to go.
“You did good, son,” Faun said gravely. “A man oughta know the Scripture. There’s a time it fits when nothing else will.”