Cherokee Read Free Page A

have committed a breach of honesty as a callow youth, but there’d been plenty of years in between for him to have put the matter right rather than waiting until such a late date.
    The truth be told, I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Howard’s body might be failing him, but I’d never found cause to fault his mind. And yet they did say that when a man reached a certain age, his faculties seemed to go haywire and he got confused and went to making stuff up and forgetting everyday matters. But for the life of me, I just couldn’t see that happening to Howard. And yet I couldn’t believe he’d actually stolen $500 from a man and let it slide over all these years either.
    I was about to leave the office when the bedroom door opened and Howard stood there. He said, “I charge you on your honor not to mention this to either of your brothers.”
    â€œHell, Howard, I ain’t going to mention it to nobody as far as that goes. But look here, let me ask you—”
    I got no further. He had closed the door. I had seen the hurt and the helplessness in his face just before the door had closed. It did not make me feel very good. Now I was sorry I had questioned him so closely. But never in my wildest dreams would I have figured to stir up such a hornet’s nest.
    I left the house with a good deal of trouble on my mind. The big clock in the hall said the time was just a little after four. I didn’t much feel like riding the four miles back out to where we’d been inspecting our herd of purebred Herefords when the summons from Howard had come, so I stepped out the front door and took a seat in one of the wicker chairs on the large roofed porch that ran around two sides of the house. I got out a cigarillo, lit it, and looked out over the land and the buildings, just kind of idling over in my mind what Howard had just said. Most of the outbuildings of the ranch were in front of me, headed west. We had two big barns, both made out of sawn lumber. They were out toward the edge of the headquarters area. In between was a bunch of corrals and holding pens, and then closer to the house was the bunkhouse where our regular hands slept and lived, and then another shack where we put up hired hands who we used seasonally. In between was a neat little frame house where our foreman, Tom Harley, lived with his wife. He’d been in Howard’s employ for as long as I could remember, and the foreman for at least twelve years. It had been me that had fired his predecessor and put him in the job. Harley was a good steady hand who did what you told him and never tried to use too much imagination. I’d explained all that to him when I’d put him in the job, saying that if any imagination was called for I’d handle it. And now I sat there envying him the luxury of not having to do too much thinking. I was doing way more than I wanted to and it was not a pleasure.
    Finally, I decided the hell with it and descended the steps of the porch, untied the big sorrel gelding I was riding that day, mounted up, and headed for my own house.
    I had been married for a little more than two years, and I’d had a house built for my bride and myself about a half mile away from the big house where Howard and Ben and Norris lived.
    Her name was Nora and she was six years younger than me. We now had a one-year-old son, but she’d led me on one hell of a merry chase before I’d ever got her roped and thrown. She had been a town girl, of religious parents, and she was some little concerned with the violence and the danger that simply living my kind of life involved. The country, even in that late year toward the turn of the century, was far from civilized, and she worried and fretted herself every time I had to tend to some ranch matter. She’d told me many times before we were married that she just wouldn’t consider me a serious suitor until I’d done what she considered