It was all too clear that Nathan did not care a tinker's damn whether he was liked, but he demanded respect and he got it, no matter how grudgingly.
It was the morning after Nate's arrival that Jeff first began to experience these new sensations of pride and importance. Aunt Beulah was particularly grim and snappish that morning. “Jefferson,” she said shortly, halfway through breakfast, “it's time you got started to the pasture with Bessie.”
“Gee, I'm. not through with my flapjacks yet!”
“Well, don't dawdle. You'll be late for school.”
It was strange how she could serve up flapjacks and pork sausage to Nathan and still pretend that he wasn't there. Nate sat smiling faintly all through the meal, speaking occasionally to Wirt or Jeff. If he was aware of the chill behind Beulah's eyes, he did not show it. “No need to hurry, son,” he said pleasantly. “I'll get my horse saddled and we can ride to the pasture, if you don't mind doubling up.”
Jeff could hardly believe that Nathan, even though he was his father, would let him ride that fine black animal. “Do you mean it?”
“Sure I do.” Nathan stood up from the table, that quiet smile still touching the corners of his mouth. “That was a fine breakfast, Beulah, and I'm grateful. Now if you'll excuse me...” He nodded to Beulah and Wirt and walked out to the cowshed.
Eagerly, Jeff pushed his plate away and started to follow his father.
“Finish your breakfast,” Aunt Beulah said sternly.
“But you told me to hurry!”
“Never mind. Stay right here and clean your plate.”
Uncle Wirt looked kind of funny, but he said nothing. Reluctantly, Jeff pulled the plate back and finished the flapjacks as quickly as possible, thinking how unpredictable his aunt could be when she took the notion. One minute she was hurrying him, the next minute she was trying to detain him. Out of pure orneriness, he thought bitterly, just to keep me from riding that black horse.
Then a strange thing happened when he finally finished his plate to Aunt Beulah's satisfaction. “Jefferson,” she said, stopping him as he hurried for the back door, “I want to tell you something.” Suddenly she put her thin, hard arms around him and held him hard, something she hadn't done since he was very young. “We love you, Jefferson,” she said tightly. “You're all we've got, me and Wirt.”
It was very strange, and it made Jeff uncomfortable. He was no baby. He didn't like having women paw at him.
“I've got to get started with Bessie,” he said, twisting away.
Nathan had already turned the cow out and was in the saddle. “You ready?” he asked. Then he kicked out a stirrup and swung Jeff up behind. The animal's flanks were sleek and warm, and the saddle leather creaked luxuriously as Jeff settled himself behind his father. “Gee,” he said in awe, “I'll bet this is the best horse in Texas.”
Nate Blaine laughed abruptly. “You might not be far wrong.”
Jeff would not soon forget that morning, especially the looks of envy that other barefoot cowboys shot up at them. And later, as they rode through streets of Plainsville to the academy, it seemed that everybody stopped for a moment to watch them.
There goes Nate Blaine and his boy, they were saying. Suddenly the name of Blaine had become something to be proud of.
Jeff became more aware of this as one moment followed another. Suddenly people looked at him differently. He was “young Blaine,” Nate Blaine's boy.
That afternoon he found his pa waiting for him near the head of Main Street.
“You finished with your studies at the academy, son?” Nathan asked.
“For today I am. You waiting for somebody?”
“That's right. What do you aim to do for the rest of the day?”
Jeff's heart beat a little faster. Maybe his pa was going to let him ride behind the saddle again. “I guess I'll go after Bessie, like always.”
“You mind if I ride along?”
It was then that Jeff saw his pa's black hitched at the watering trough. Beside the black there was a sleek bay mare, her coat recently brushed and gleaming like a new dollar. “I got the mare at the public corral,” Nathan said. “She's yours for the rest of the day, son—if you feel like ridin', that is.”
Jeff found that he could not speak. Of course he had ridden horses, but not very often. Just enough to whet his appetite for it, and he had hardly ever seen a horse, even Phil Costain's old dray nag, that his thighs didn't ache to feel a saddle between them. He looked quickly at his pa to make sure that he wasn't joking.
Nathan smiled. “Climb up, son. We'll ride to the pasture together.”
There was nothing in the world, Jeff thought, like riding a good horse to make a man feel like a man! He felt the saddle, cured by sweat and by a hundred soapings to a rich tobacco brown. He climbed up on the mare and felt nine feet tall as he surveyed the town from his lofty position in the saddle.
Nathan Blaine said nothing, but laughed quietly. He reined his black into the street, and Jeff put the bay around and rode beside him.
Jim Lodlow, a scholar at the academy with Jeff, was standing in front of Baxter's store as they rode past. Jeff felt a bubbling inside and had a crazy impulse to giggle. Look at Jim Lodlow bugging his eyes!
But Jeff only nodded as they rode past, as though to imply that he was used to riding fine bay mares every day of the week. The fact that his bare feet did not quite reach the stirrups didn't bother him at all.
They reached the pasture in practically no time, and Jeff guessed that they could wait a while before calling Bessie. Besides, he was just getting the feel of the saddle and hated the thought of climbing down and letting down the barbed-wire gate.
His pa had a curious, faraway look in his dark eyes as he looked out at that cleared, fenced land.
“I can remember,” Nathan said slowly, “when there wasn't a foot of barbed wire in this part of Texas. Blackjack corrals and a few rawhide branding pens were all the fences we had.”
Jeff had not thought of his father as an old man, and still didn't. Things just happened fast in Texas. It seemed that the squatters had come overnight, almost, and had hemmed the big outfits in and pushed them back toward the hills to the north.
But Nathan Blaine remembered when Sam Baxter's store was the only one around. The dry run to the east of town had been a flowing stream then, and a man from Kansas had put up a water wheel and ground flour on the shares. Those two buildings and a blacksmith shop had been all there was to Plainsville in those days, before the big outfits began coming here and the town started to grow.
Jeff found himself listening with interest to what his pa had to say. It gave him a funny feeling to remember he was twelve years old and knew practically nothing about his own father.