Cherokee Read Free Page B

“settling down.” Of course I’d many times tried to explain to her that it was rough country and that a man had to stick up for himself and his and protect what he owned or he’d get plowed under. But none of that had made any sense to her. Her daddy ran the general mercantile store in Blessing, and came home every noon for lunch and every evening for supper, and she’d wanted the same from me. To make it all worse she’d taught the little school in Blessing, and hadn’t thought so much of the way I spoke. She’d gotten so fed up with me and my ways that she’d once gone through the motions of running off with a Kansas City drummer who traveled in yard goods. But it had been a bluff. She’d gotten off the train in Texarkana and come home, and we’d taken right back up where we’d left off.
    But then, hell, I’d been a week late for my own wedding on account of me and Ben having to be down in Monterrey in Mexico getting Norris out of jail.
    But she’d married me anyway, week late or not. What that had mainly meant was that I’d had to learn to lie to her in a different way when I was about to go off and do something she considered dangerous or uncivilized. You have to lie to a woman you live with in a different way than one you don’t. Lying to your wife is a hell of a lot harder than lying to the girl you’re courting. Wives get to know you a whole lot better, and they get that way of looking at you that lets you know you ain’t fooling them for a second.
    My house was a low, rambling hacienda of eight rooms with thick concrete and adobe brick walls and a roof of red Mexican tiles. Out back was a barn and a small corral where I generally kept anywhere from two to three horses. Ben ran the remuda, the horse herd, with the help of Ray Hays and three Mexican vaqueros, and he instinctively knew more about horseflesh than any man I’d ever met, but I kind of liked to keep a few ponies around to get them used to me and my ways. I generally kept a young horse around getting him finished off to my way of thinking. Of course he was a broke horse, tame and ready for cattle work by the time I got him from Ben, but I liked to keep him working his way up to my standards. And then I’d keep a quick horse around, a horse that had a lot of early speed and could get you out of a tight place in a hurry. And also, I liked to have a horse around like the big sorrel, who was part quarterhorse, but had a lot of American Standardbred in him. He was a stayer, a horse with good speed, but with legs enough to take you there and bring you back.
    I turned the sorrel into the corral, unsaddled and unbridled him, and then turned him loose with the two other horses already there. Later I’d come out and give them some grain, but for the time being I just made sure they had plenty of hay and water.
    I went in the house through the kitchen. Nora’s maid, Juanita, was at the sink washing up some potatoes and onions and other truck. I just managed to squeeze by between her and the kitchen table. We might not have had the best maid around, but we damn sure had the fattest. She said that “Señora Viyliams” was in the parlor. I set my hat on the kitchen table, and walked on down the short hall and turned into the sitting room. Nora was on the divan doing some kind of needlepoint. She was wearing a little light blue gingham frock, and she looked up when I came in the room. She said, “Well, mister, what are you doing home so early?”
    Nora was just the exact amount of pretty. If she’d been any less pretty I wouldn’t have been the envy of every man in the county. If she’d been any prettier I’d of never got any work done. She had hair that was a little more yellow than the curing prairie grass and soft blue eyes and delicate features. She was prim and proper and faithful in her churchgoing, but I knew what was beneath that innocent-looking