Chapter 8

I guess it took me about a week before I wasn't walking funny, and feeling tender when I did. I had played back in my mind the entire conversation I'd had with Juana, but I still couldn't understand why she had attacked me like that. I had offered her the kiss and she had accepted. It wasn't like I had tried to take liberties with her. I felt lucky that she was so short and that I was pretty tall. Had our heights been closer, I might be singing in a higher register. Even though I'd been sore, I hadn't been idle. Miguelito had sent back a signed contract and Danny was over at Mr. Lyons' ranch with two copies of that contract. I had told him to get Mr. Lyons to either sign the contract or else we'd shut down the water to his herd.

I went out to the main corral and spent some time admiring the big black stallion.I still looked forward to riding him, but I wanted to wait until after he'd done some good work with my mares. From all reports that I'd been getting, he was finding life pleasurable in that mare filled corral. I was looking forward to hearing that quite a few of the mares had caught and were with foal. I had just turned to head back to the ranch house when I saw Danny riding up the trail towards the ranch. He wasn't moving at his usual quick pace, and his hair hung down across his shoulders. I waited for him to draw nearer before I hailed him over to the porch.

"You get that contract signed okay?"

"He said he wasn't signing any contracts Mr. Gardner. I told him what you said about shutting off the water, and he said that a verbal agreement is legally binding. Said he'd sue if you did that to him."

"Give me that contract. I'll just go see if he tells me the same thing. In the meantime, you and the hands go cut off the flow down to the flumes. We'll just see who winds up suing who. I knew that bastard was going to try something like this. I want that water shut off before my horse gets saddled. Tell one of the hands to saddle me something fast, but not the stallion." Danny handed me the contract copies that I'd sent him down to get signed, and then he rode over to the corral to get some hands to turn all the water off that we were sending to the watering basins. Five minutes later, with a rifle in the scabbard and my pistol belted on, I took off down to the Lyons' Ranch. It took more than an hour, and I was mad enough that I didn't pay my sore balls any attention at all. I pulled up in front of the ranch house and shouted a greeting towards it. Franklin Lyons came out to his porch, and he was cradling a scatter gun of some kind. The sort of little shotgun that my mama used to use to keep varmints away from her hen house. I liked to almost laughed, and would have if I wasn't so mad at having to come down and get this taken care of.

"What in the hell do you mean by not signing the agreement that we made earlier?"

"Get down off your horse Mr. Gardner. There's certainly no need for us to stand out here yelling at each other in front of my employees." I pulled my rifle out of the saddle scabbard, and jumped down from my horse, Indian style. I think that the speed of it unsettled the man some. My balls paid the price for my impetuosity when I landed though, and I cringed at the pain. I made a vow to remember that everything that looks good won't always feel good.

"Lyons, I shut down the water. There is enough in the basins and troughs to keep your herd going for another few days. After that's gone, you can whistle for your damn water, because you aren't going to be getting any more of mine."

"Did that person that you sent here tell you why I refused to sign?" I had walked until I was very close to the porch, and the closer I came, the more nervous Lyons seemed to get.

"He didn't need to tell me anything else after he said that you had refused to sign. That contract wasn't something that you had the right to not sign. There wasn't anything in it that we both didn't agree to."

"On the contrary sir. There was a lot of verbiage that we hadn't agreed to. I didn't read it, but there was more written on the page I glanced at than everything that we had agreed to. I'm certain of that." I turned around and walked back to my horse. Once I was in the saddle and had put the rifle back in it's scabbard, I looked down on Lyons.

"That contract had some things that I never read either. I signed it because my Uncle Charlie said it was what you and I had agreed to. You can suit yourself by not signing it, but that won't get water for your herd will it? When I was riding over from the ranch I believe I heard a bunch of crazy people shooting holes in all of those nice troughs that you had built. I sure hope you weren't planning on getting some more use out of them." I spurred my horse, and turned him around and rode away. I figured Lyons would be sending a crew out to look at his troughs. I wanted him to do that just so he'd know that I'd turned the water off just like I said I had. It looked to me like I might have just cost myself close to two hundred head of cattle by my insisting on a written contract. I figured that I'd ride the long way and make sure that Miguelito got the news from me rather than someone else.

I was about fifty feet from Miguelito's shack when I recognized Juana bending over a clothes tub and a scrub board. She was treating somebody's shirt pretty harshly on that scrub board, and soapy water was sloshing all over the place. I stopped my horse and sat there watching her rubbing out the dirt from one of the sleeves.

"That's what I like to see, an Indian that values cleanliness. You taking in people's wash now between your legal document preparation work?" When she turned to scowl at me, I was glad I was sitting on my horse. She'd have a hard time getting another chance to knee me from where I was. "Go get your grandfather Juana, I need to talk with him."

"He's not here. If he was though, I'd tell you to get him yourself. I don't work for you any more."

"You never worked for me, unless you mean those papers that you copied. Up at the ranch I was just letting you bunk out on my porch for a spell. That isn't the same as working for me."

"He's not here. I don't know when he'll be back. Go away." That's when she started in crying. What is it about some girls that they can be fine one minute, and then crying to beat the band the next one? My mama used to do that sometimes too. It nearly drove my daddy crazy when she did that too.

"I need to talk to him, it's important. It's about the cattle, and it's not anything that's good."

"You can leave him a note or tell me. He's been mad at me ever since I got back, and it's all your fault."

I left her there and rode up to the ranch. I never could make much sense out of talking with a woman. I was starting to see how my daddy just couldn't take any more of it. The more you liked one, the worse it seemed to get. It was turning out to be a bad day all around for me. Riding uphill on a horse wasn't making my balls feel any better either. It was a nice day though, so I dismounted and walked the last mile or so. I saw Miguelito sitting on my porch, in my chair, and eating something from one of my tin plates. I wish I'd known he was up there, I'd have remounted and ridden in the last quarter mile or so.

"Why are you walking boy? Them nuts of yours still sore?" I guess you already know what I think of Indians who think they're funny. As much as I'd tried to do to make things better at the reservation, practically ever since I first laid eyes on Miguelito, he goes and makes fun of me any way. I pulled out my pistol and fired three feet over his head into the ranch house wall. He ducked pretty damn quick for an old man, but was yelling at me the whole time he was heading for cover. "Boy have you gone loco? What the hell was that for?" I had already re holstered my pistol.

"Those damn horseflies. I didn't want it to get at your food and lay eggs in it or something. I don't think I got him that time, but I'm keeping a sharp lookout, so you go on ahead and finish your eating and your funny comments." I saw three of my hands running towards us carrying their rifles. "You boys go on back in the corral. Miguelito and I are just having some fun together over here."

"Do what he tells you. I'm all right. He saw a horse fly and it spooked him." Miguelito had stood up and was cleaning food off of his face and his shirt and pants. "Boy, there aren't many men who ever took a shot at me and are still alive to talk about it."

"If I had taken a shot at you, you wouldn't be alive to talk about it. What in the hell are you doing up here anyway? I've been looking for you down on the reservation."

"I heard about the trouble with that cattleman, and I thought I'd save you the trip down the hill from here. Juana had told me what she did to you, and I figured you might still be healing up from it." I could see that he wanted to get back to talking about our business.

"I saw Juana and she was crying. She says that you've been mean to her ever since she came back to the reservation."

"She should be crying. That girl causes all of us nothing but trouble. If she hadn't riled things up, you and Danny wouldn't have had that run in. It would have been a sight better for everyone if you had just gone ahead and done what you wanted to. You remind me of your father that way boy. He never could just go straight ahead with anything. If he had, maybe your mother would still be alive, and him too."

"I'm not sure that I even know what you're talking about, but I think that I'd prefer that you stopped talking about it right now. My mother and him have both been dead for awhile and no amount of jawing about it is going to change a thing. He loved her. Doesn't matter what he did, because he did the same thing to himself every day after that."

"It matters boy. I like you, but it matters. You can shoot them horseflies all you want to boy, I'm too damn old and tired to care that much any more. You don't understand how much the reservation has riding on us staying on your good side. The past month or so has been the best we've had it in more than thirty years. We were starving and dying. It got so I couldn't make myself go out and even talk to my people, that's how bad I felt."

"I wish you hadn't told me that. I should have come down and talked to you a lot sooner than I did. I had a good notion of what you all were being put through. I've been blaming the Indian agent instead of people like me who just stand by and let it keep going like it has. I'm sorry."

"I didn't tell you that to make you sorry. It's Juana that should be sorry. She's old enough that it's past time that she should think about somebody besides herself. She lived there before you brought them cattle down. She sees the difference but it only matters to her what she wants."

"Well, what do you think about Mr. Lyons, and me stopping watering his herd over that dumb contract?"

"He came to you because you could solve his problem cheaper than the other fella. Do you think that changed in the last two weeks?"

"It might have. The other guys got too greedy before. They might have changed their tune after Lyons found a better deal than what they offered."

"You think they'd water his herd for less than four cattle per week? Don't forget that Lyons was paying to freight the water back and forth too. The way he does it now, all he needs is to graze them on the range and bring them by for a drink."

"Don't you think that he'd figured all of that out before he decided not to sign my contract?"

"Maybe he's a man who doesn't like being pushed. If you look at it from where he stands, that contract might seem like pushing to him. What did he say when you went to see him?"

"He said there was more in the contract than what we'd agreed to. He's right too, there was. That's my Uncle Charlie though, not me."

"You got a pen and some paper and ink? Write up a new one that only says what you agreed to. It doesn't take a lawyer to write an agreement. I bet Juana would write it for you if you don't want to be bothered doing it."

"I can write, I'm not ignorant you know."

"She might stop crying if she thought I wasn't mad at her any more. This way it would help me out. I'd even ride a damn horse down there so we could send her back up on it. You'd be doing me a favor if you kept her up here with you. There's several boys down there who seem to have their hearts set on me killing them. Sooner or later, that's what they'll force me to do if she's left down there."

"I thought you wanted us to stay away from each other?"

"Naw, that's just a sneaky Indian trick to get a man interested in a girl. We did the same thing with your daddy and it worked, slick as snake snot. He wasted a lot of whiskey trying to do his sneaking around and getting her drunk. We'd have traded her for twenty pounds of good flour and half a pound of salt."

"So you don't mind if I take her to my bed and try her out?"

"Man ought to try anything expensive before he buys it."

"Does Danny feel the same way?"

"Hell, it was Danny's idea, as soon as he found out how many horses you had up here."

"Go tell one of the hands to saddle you up a horse. You tell Juana that she'll have to apologize for kneeing me though. I won't let somebody work with me that won't admit when they've been wrong."

"If I tell her that boy, there's a good chance that she'll lay you low again as soon as she's within range to do it. You certain that that's what you want?"

"Tell her not to come up if she's planning on trying that again. I won't take that kind of treatment from any man or woman."

"You've got a lot to learn boy. You tell a woman not to do something, it's the same as putting a red flag in front of an angry bull. It's an invitation, pure and simple."

"You tell her what I said. I'm willing to risk it. I might shoot her though, if she somehow gets through all of my other defenses."

"If you do find it necessary to do that, you might think about running away right after. That's the same advice I gave your daddy, but he didn't listen to me."

"That's the second time that you implied that it wasn't my daddy's hand that actually pulled the trigger the night he got Gardner fever. I've let the first two times go by because if I ever found out that somebody else was there who helped him, I'd be bound to give them a fever myself."