Cora had rode with me into the Union many and many a time during harvest back in the good days, sitting proud beside me on the seat. She’d grab a Coke out of the ice chest while we unloaded, prattling on to the bookkeeper Mrs. Rubottom about the critters and the clouds and the shape of the wind. Old Mrs. Rubottom nodding along as she kept track of the spuds and corn and wheat so we’d be sure to get our fair share at the end of harvest, each family proportioned to what it’d put in, sliding some of the profit over to families with newborns and sick ones, reckoning out payments on a tractor for everyone in the Union to share out.
Now Mrs. Rubottom was dead, there wasn’t no call for bookkeeping, and I didn’t tote Cora along to the Union. Bunch of idled dirt farmers quaffing whiskey in a empty warehouse cussing at the world ain’t no place for a little girl.
I had to walk in myself. The last horse on my team gave out in September after it drank alkali-poisoned water. I wasn’t the only one walking, I’ll tell you that. Them that still had horses were more lucky than good.
*****
A few days after me and Cora had our little talk, I was back at the Gleaner’s Union. Whiskey jugs making the rounds, some of the boys talking about hiring out when Jerry Sherrill said to hell with that. He was headed into the mountains to trap bears. Said them pelts would bring fifty dollars or better down in Casper. But you couldn’t walk the furs out. You needed a animal.
“You really think there’s still bear back there?” I asked.
“I know there is,” said Sherrill. “And wolf. Mink, even. They’re begging for pelts down in Casper. You got them rich ladies out in New York paying top dollar, you know.”
I thought about my dead team of horses. “Be damned,” I said.
Ron Weizkowski come riding up. He’d brought along another jug. He joined in the jawing and allowed that if a man had four-legged transport, there was pelts for him up in the mountains.
“You’d need that good horse both ways, though,” he said.
“You got a good horse,” said Sherrill.
“She’s all right,” said Weizkowski, eyeing his mare. “But she don’t hold no candle to that Mustang of Ryne’s. I ought to know. I just seen it.”
“Did you now?” I said.
“Over on Pumpkin Ridge,” said Weizkowski. “Asked him if he didn’t maybe want to join us. He said he had business elsewhere.”
“I know where, the son of a bitch,” I said.
*****
We called Ryne all the names, and Harlan all the names, and Griselda all the names. The jugs kept going around and we decided we best look into this ourselves. About half a dozen of us mounted up. We didn’t have no plans. We hadn’t got that far along. Them that didn’t come cheered us as we left, holding up jugs in salute. I rode double with Weizkowski.
