Somewhere south in Sonora

From Kansas City, he sent his first letter back, regretting to leave home without talking it over further, but there didn’t seem to be any use. Possibly there wasn’t any more West, he allowed, but he had to go out and see. He hopped off the train at Tucson and heard of a stage that ran south toward the Border. That sounded right, and he walked three blocks with his bags to perceive—no jehu with long flicking lash, but a chauffeur, the stage being a motor-bus.

Elbert couldn’t appreciate the scenery. Yes, there was a big ranch down yonder, the driver said. Yes, there was cattle. Irrigation and alfalfa had reclaimed this waste stuff. Some cows presently appeared wearing an ‘HCO’ brand.

‘What does that stand for?’ Elbert asked.

‘Heaslep and Company.’

No Circle X or Lazy M—but irrigation, alfalfa fields, Heaslep and Company!

‘The HCO runs everything down here—big land grant stretching almost to the Border,’ the stage driver said.

Elbert was let down and made his way to a group of low buildings in the distance. At the farrier’s shop, he inquired for the foreman, and was told to look for a door ahead, marked ‘Office.’ ‘You’ll find Frost-face in there or somewhere about,’ the blacksmith said.

Elbert’s pulse picked up a little at the name of the foreman, but it was certainly a business office he entered.

‘We’re not short-handed,’ snapped the little gray man, with worried face. ‘Things dull down in winter. Nothin’ much to do right now but keep off the hoof-and-mouth disease.’

Outside there was a succession of sick blasts from a truck—the sound of an engine, not only decrepit, but dirty and dry. Elbert turned to the door.

‘Wait a minute, young fellow. We might use a man on the chuck wagon—I wonder if you could drive old Fortitude?’

‘A mule?’ said Elbert. ‘I’m sure I could learn—’

‘Mule, hell, motor truck—can’t you hear her?’

‘I’m afraid I can,’ Elbert said wearily. His father had been right.

One distinct value about Heaslep and Company, however—no women in the establishment. Even the cooking staff was Chinese. But the rest was hard to bear. Efficiency and trade had settled down as unromantically as upon a tannery. Heaslep’s was a stock farm, a beef factory, anything but the cattle ranch of dreams. This part of Arizona was sunk in no foam of Indian red. The vast range lay on a squat mesa, partly penciled over with irrigation ditches. Elbert’s tardy soul, longing for the thunder of a stampede, sickened at the sight of thousands of domesticated moos, rack-fed in winter, market-fattened from fenced alfalfa fields, branded in chutes and railroaded as scientifically as tinned biscuit. The only longhorns hung over the mantelpiece in the dormitory of the cowhands. Even the imported bulls were businesslike.

Most of the ranges were deserted by this time, the cold weather settling down. Elbert had been taken on as ‘Bert’ Sartwell, but his first letters from home gave the real thing away. All hands relished the discovery. Over a dozen of the men were in for his first Sunday, the day they started him in filling up gopher holes in the environment of the main buildings. Elbert was told that the best way was to soak old newspapers into a pulp and poke them down into the holes with a stick; necessary business every week or ten days during the gopher season. This was the height of it, he was informed.

‘You see, the paper hardens down,’ Cal Monroid said.

‘And gets fire-proof,’ added Slim Gannon, his side-kick.

Elbert set about his work, a bit coldish and blank at the extent of the job before him. He had never read of this department of ranch work, and wondered if it meant he was to be relieved of the motor truck. Toward midday he looked up from his poking, to find that at least ten of the cowhands had closed in, having stalked him like an Indian band. Their enthusiasm was high and prolonged. Elbert smiled and blushed, but said nothing. For a day or two after that they tried to call him ‘Poke,’ but the name didn’t take hold. The men liked to say Elbert too well. ‘Elber-r-rt,’ they would chirrup, and inquire if he had ever done any bull-dogging.

He was not relieved from the truck. His work was to carry mails and bring in supplies from the town of Harrisburg, eleven miles to the north. He sometimes made two trips a day when the truck would permit, but the tantrums of old Fortitude were a subject of conversation at Heaslep’s only a little lower in the scale than the hoof-and-mouth disease.

On his third or fourth Sunday, Elbert spread newspapers on the ground and set about taking down Fortitude’s strained and creaking mechanism part by part. His activity and absorption began to attract a Sabbath crowd.

‘He’s gettin’ her whole plumbin’ out,’ Slim Gannon remarked. ‘I’m layin’ four to three that we’ve heard her last belch.’

Cal Monroid considered for half a minute, noting the orderly lay-out of tools, inwards, greases and oils, and how carefully Elbert had numbered the parts. Cal began to fancy a vague purpose underneath it all and casually remarked: ‘I’ll just take you on, Slim, for half a month’s pay.’

Elbert toiled through the hours. By sundown when he took his place at the wheel, all Heaslep’s was taut with strain. The works purred, the car moved. ‘It’s down-grade, she’s just rollin’!’ breathed Slim. But Elbert reversed; old Fortitude backed and curved, did a figure eight to new music without hitting post or wall.

‘I win,’ said Cal.

‘She ain’t belched yet,’ said Slim.

The two moved off to settle the technicality.

Dreary months of trucking. Elbert’s insatiable interest in horsemanship had been little encouraged at Heaslep’s. He was permitted to learn the bad ones by experience, and was rapidly disconnected several times, discovering his audience when it was too late, as on the day of ‘poking’ gopher holes. Though it was generally allowed things looked up a little when the range grass began to grow, Elbert lost heart before the winter was over. It seemed a long time to him since he had left home, but it wasn’t so by the calendar. To judge by letters, the family had its hands out beckoning, but Elbert felt neither his father nor sisters would miss having the laugh at his expense.

Hard to leave Cal and Slim. This pair had warmed up a trifle toward the last. It was Cal Monroid who helped Elbert up from the turf the last time he was spurned by an HCO untameable, and Cal’s easy tones had a soothing effect:

‘It’s about time you were sitting a real horse, Kid. Give me your shoe—’

And Elbert was lifted up on old Chester, who had his ‘stuff’ down so fine, you wouldn’t believe he knew anything. Chester was the morning-star of Cal’s string, and right then Elbert began to know the difference between an outlaw and a real man-horse. That one brief word ‘Kid,’ still sounded in his ears. It seemed to have let him into a new world, the world of Cal Monroid and Slim Gannon, the latter said to have taken the Tucson Bronk Cup two years straight; both men being held as cool and fast in a pinch. This episode held the faintest possible answer to what he had come West for, but Elbert had already decided to depart, his plan being to go on to the coast, before starting back East.