“Ha, Wade, you think Pearlie ain’t got you pegged?” Toby said with a laugh.
Big Rock, Colorado
Pearlie took the buckboard into town. He stopped first at Cousins’ General Store to fill the list of food items needed for the chuck wagon while the roundup was ongoing.
“Hello, Pearlie,” Cousins said, greeting the young cowboy as he came into the store. “Come for your possibles, have you?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Cousins,” Pearlie replied. “We’ll need beans, flour, bacon, coffee, sugar, and some dried fruits. It’s all written out.”
“You got a buckboard outside?”
“I do.”
“I’ll fill your order and take it out to the buckboard for you. If you have anything else to do in town you can go ahead and take care of it.”
“Thank you. I’ll do that.”
Food wasn’t the only thing on Pearlie’s shopping list. From Cousins’ General Store he walked over to the gun shop where he bought several boxes of ammunition in various calibers. From there he went to the post office to pick up the mail. By the time he got back to the store, the food had been loaded onto the buckboard. He touched the brim of his hat, in a salute to Cousins, climbed into the seat, picked up the reins, and clucked to the team.
Sugarloaf Ranch
Back at the ranch, Smoke Jensen was standing in an open field by the barn. Twenty-five yards in front of him were three bottles inverted on sticks of varying heights, one as high as a man’s head, one about the height of an average man’s chest, while the third would align with a man’s belly. The sticks were ten feet apart.
Off to Smoke’s right, but clearly in his vision, Cal was holding his right hand out in front of him, palm down. There was an iron nut on the back of his hand, and beneath his hand, on the ground, was a tin pie plate.
The full-time hands, the ones who had stayed through the winter, as well as some of the new men, the temporary cowboys who were showing up for the spring roundup, were gathered around in a semicircle to watch the demonstration.
Cal turned his hand over, and the nut fell. The moment Smoke saw Cal turn his hand, he began his draw. He fired three quick shots, breaking all three bottles before the iron nut clanked against the tin pan.
The men cheered and clapped.
“Damndest thing I ever seen!” one of the cowboys said.
“How can anyone be that fast?”
“I’ve read books about him, but I always thought they was just made up,” another of the hands said. “I never know’d there could be anyone that could really shoot like that.”
“Yeah, but this is just trick shooting,” a new cowboy, one who had never worked at Sugarloaf before, said. “Seems to me folks who can do trick shootin’ ain’t always that good when it comes to the real thing.”
Cal, who was picking up the iron nut and the pie pan, overheard the last remark. “Trust me. When it comes to the real thing, he’s even better.”
“How would you know?”
“’Cause I’ve been right there beside him when the real thing happened,” Cal said.
He walked over to join Smoke, who had gone back up to the big house. Smoke was leaning against the porch, punching out the spent cartridges and replacing them with live bullets. “Better not let Sally know we used one of her pie pans for this.”
“Oh, yeah, I nearly forgot!” Cal said. He examined the pie pan carefully, then breathed a sigh of relief. “Ah, it doesn’t look like it was hurt any.”
At that moment Pearlie came driving back in the buckboard. He came all the way up to the porch, smiling as he was holding up a letter.
“Looks like you got a letter from Miss Sally,” Cal said.
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” Smoke said.
“Reckon how long she’s going to be gone before she comes back?”
“Next week, I believe,” Smoke said as he reached for the letter. “Unless this letter says something different.”
My Darling Smoke
I have enjoyed my visit back East, (please notice that I did not say back home, as the only home for me is our beautiful Sugarloaf) but am growing anxious to return. The weather here has been abysmal; it snowed ever y other day for the two weeks I spent in New York. I did get to see a play in which Andrew and Rosanna MacCallister appeared. It made me feel special to be sitting in the theater, watching as they enthralled the audience, knowing that their brother and my husband are good friends.
I visited Washington, D. C., and President Cleveland asked about you. Smoke, I am used to everyone in the West knowing who you are, but when a hotel concierge, a restaurant maitre d’, a hack driver, and the president of the United States ask about you, I must say that it does give me pause.
Mrs. Cleveland, whose name is Frances, is a most delightful person. She is younger than I am, but is mature beyond her years. She took me on a personal tour of the capital, and how fun it was to see the city through her eyes.
How glad I am that I stuck to my childhood dream of seeing the wonderful West, and how fortunate I have been in finding in you, the love of my life. I shall be returning home next week, and expect to arrive in Big Rock at eleven o’clock Tuesday morning. I can hardly wait until I breathe the high, sweet air of Colorado once again, and, if I may be so bold as to put it in words, to taste the lips of the man of my dreams.
Your loving wife,
Sally
“Yahoo, boys!” Smoke said. “She’ll be back home next Tuesday!”
“Reckon we’ll be through ridin’ bog by then?” Cal asked.
Pearlie chuckled. “You ain’t never really through ridin’ bog, Cal. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know, but it’s generally worse right after winter is over,” Cal said. “Then it starts easin’ up some.”
Another necessary, but unpleasant job, would be cleaning out the water holes. It would require a team of horses and a scraper. Depending on the size of the hole, and how much weed, mud, and cow-dung there were in the water, it would sometimes take up to a week just to clean one hole.
Of course, even before the general roundup was done, there would be a roundup of all the newly born calves, so they could be branded. This was the kind of work that was keeping Smoke, Pearlie, Cal, and the other cowboys, those who had been present all winter, and those who were newly signed on for the spring roundup, busy.
CHAPTER TWO
Big Rock
When Sally Jensen stepped down from the train it was nearly midnight. Dark and cold, the little town of Big Rock was a windy emptiness under great blinking white stars. “What ever do you see in that wild and wooly West?” Molly Tremaine had asked, during Sally’s recent visit with her. Molly was an old schoolmate, now married to a Boston lawyer.
“It isn’t something that can be explained,” Sally replied. “It is something you have to experience. There is nothing more beautiful, nothing more vibrant, than to live in that wonderful country.”
Sally wished Molly could be here, right now, to get a sense of the magnificent wonder of the place—high and dry, with the stars so huge it was almost as if she could reach up and pluck one from the sky.
Sally had written to Smoke telling him she would arrive mid-morning Tuesday, but when she was in St. Louis she took advantage of a faster connection, which caused her to arrive in Big Rock almost twelve hours ahead of her schedule. At first she thought only of the time she would be saving, not realizing it meant she would arrive in the middle of the night. She was alone on the depot platform and there was no one to meet her.