Chapter 2: LEARNING CURVE
Thursday, September 25th... Morning came and went without the kid finding an opportunity to explain his mistaken identity to anyone—no one had time to listen. Going through the grub line at breakfast and hunkering down around one of the campfires, he gradually absorbed enough information to understand all was not as it had first seemed... to his great relief.
These folks weren't rustlers after all—it was a consortium of five separate ranchers pooling their resources to flush out strays that had somehow evaded capture during fall roundup two weeks prior. The main body of each owner's market-bound stock had already been assembled in the holding pens at the rail siding in Laramie, awaiting shipment. Numbers had come up short in the final tally—hence, this last-minute rush to make up the difference. The camp would remain in place another day or two before packing up and driving the residual herd westward toward town.
The ranch owners' names were Gantry, Keogh, Livingston, Bartlett... and Sherman—welcome news because the Sherman outfit had been the kid's destination in the first place. By lunchtime he'd figured out that the cow boss—also the only owner present in person—had to be the man he'd labeled 'Number Two'. Some of the men referred to him as Mister Sherman but others called him 'Slim'.
In any event, Mister Sherman wasn't the man the kid had come to see. That man was 'Number One'—Mister Sherman's employee, Jess Harper.
Throughout the afternoon, as he performed a myriad of chores as instructed, the kid rehearsed his introductory speech... "Hello. Pleased to meet you, Mister Harper. My name's Joseph Daniel Kelly but I go by Jay Dee. You might remember my father, Robert Kelly? Relief driver for Overland about three years ago? Goes by BobCat?"
With most of the hands, Jess'd had left camp before sunrise on one last sweep of gullies, draws and brushy ravines in search of more stragglers. In fact, the only men left besides Jay Dee himself were the three keeping the cattle contained, two guarding the remuda, the cook and his helper, and Mister Sherman. Jay Dee wouldn't have minded joining the bovine retrieval gang, but Mister Sherman had somehow sensed his lack of cowboy expertise and appointed him camp gofer.
Mister Sherman was in a marginally better mood than the day before. The cook had talked him into giving the sore knee a rest for at least twenty-four hours. To that end he was ensconced on a pile of blankets with his back against a tree, wearing only a shirt and his short drawers with the left leg rolled up to mid-thigh. Cookie had applied a compress to the injured knee, refreshing it every thirty minutes with cold spring water. The patient was staving off boredom with a book. Jay Dee later learned that Slim always carried reading material in a saddlebag because he had little patience and hated waiting with nothing to do.
At any rate, Cookie deputized Jay Dee to take over compress rotation as he and his helper needed to start supper. As the newly designated medic approached with a bucket replenished from the spring, Slim bade him sit down.
"Sorry about being grumpy yesterday. I'm not usually that rude."
"That's all right, Mister Sherman, sir..."
"Call me 'Slim'... everyone else does... didn't catch your name..."
"Oh... it's Jay Dee Kelly, sir."
"Jady?" Slim furrowed his brow.
I know what you're thinking... sounds girly... like Janey or something...
"Initials JAY DEE—for Joseph Daniel..."
"I don't believe I know any Kellys. You're not from around here, are you?"
"No, sir. San Buenaventura…Ventura County, north of Los Angeles..."
"Long way from home, aren't you?" A statement, not a question, though it invited response.
"Yes, sir. I'm on a mission, sort of... I was looking for Jess Harper."
Slim's pleasant mien faded as a shadow crossed his face. When a youngster wearing a gun came around looking for the former gunfighter, it almost always meant trouble. Another foolish kid wanting to make a name for himself by adding a notch to his pistol.
"Best leave him be and get on down the road."
"Excuse me?"
"Let me put it to you this way, kid..."
Shit. Are we back to that again?
"You're awfully green to be thinking about taking on Jess Harper. He'd cut you down before you even thought about drawing."
"Sorry... I'm not following..."
"What I'm saying is, you haven't got a snowball's chance in hell of beating him in a showdown... even if you could bait him into squaring off with you, which isn't likely. So you'd best get while the gettin's good."
Slim's thoughts were churning... Good-looking boy. Well-spoken, too. Not the usual sort of rabble. Looks familiar... can't imagine why.
A minute of silent contemplation elapsed as Slim's words filtered through Jay Dee's head. He thinks I'm here to fight Jess Harper?
"Sir, you've got it all wrong. My father sent me here to give Mister Harper a message and some papers, not fight him."
Slim angled his head quizzically. "That right?" The boy seemed shocked at the implication... and earnest enough. "What about? And you can quit calling me 'sir'. I'm not your father."
That drew a pallid grin from the kid.
"It's a personal matter, Mister Sherman... if you don't mind."
"I do mind. Jess's my best friend. There's nothing 'personal' about him I don't know. Whatever you have to say to him I'll either hear about right then... or right after."
"I don't know..." Jay Dee wavered. "Dad said you're a good man… honest and trustworthy… but…"
"That's a mighty fine recommendation... except I don't know your father."
"If you're Matthew Sherman, owner of the Sherman Ranch near Laramie, he knows you. Unless there's another one."
"No. That's me. Maybe you'd better refresh my memory..." Slim relaxed a smidgen, though still wary... and now more than a little confused. "How about letting me hold that iron while you talk..."
Jay Dee nodded and extracted the pistol from the belt he'd been instructed to wear at all times, handing it over butt first.
"My father was here three years ago... with a cousin—Robert Cooper? They were temporary drivers for Overland stage when there was an accident near your ranch. They ended up staying for a couple of weeks? You might remember them as BobCat and PlumbBob?"
The memory of that unfortunate set of circumstances came flooding back to the rancher—Jess with a fractured leg, himself with bronchitis, his brother Andy with the measles, their 'uncle' Jonesy with sciatica, and their houseguest Kim with broken ribs. The whole ranch might've gone under had it not been for the combined efforts of friends and neighbors pulling them through. Among those who'd pitched in were those two stage drivers from California who'd borne an eerie resemblance to Jess—so remarkable that they'd been convinced there had to be a family connection somewhere and promised to look into it. To Slim's knowledge nothing had ever come of that although the two Bobs'd kept in touch sporadically since then.
"Does this have anything to do with that inheritance that Jess might... or might not... come into?"
"I believe so, Mister Sherman... but I don't know the details. I have two sealed envelopes that I'm supposed to give him... privately."
"For Pete's sake, just call me Slim, will you? And I could use some more cold water on that knee..."
As the youngster unlimbered himself from his cross-legged position and went to refill the bucket, Slim studied him, finding little in common with his dark-haired, blue-eyed friend... except maybe his build—spare and slim-hipped. With his fair hair and hazel eyes, BobCat's son must take after the mother.
"If you're on your way from California, how'd you end up on the wrong side of the mountains?"
The boy looked chagrined. "I didn't think to ask the conductor to wake me up when we got to Laramie so I slept right through to Cheyenne."
"You could've taken the next train back... or the stage. It would've dropped you off right at my door. Yet you turn up here on horseback. Mind if I ask how you came by a warmblood like that gray? He's no mustang."
"He sure isn't. Well, I was trying to think what to do and had some time to kill, so I went for a long walk. Saw that horse in a corral and stopped to admire him. The man who had him claimed he was plumb loco—unrideable and unsellable. Said he was gonna shoot him because he couldn't afford to feed a useless animal. I offered him forty dollars. For another ten he threw in a saddle and bridle."
"Buying an unbroken horse on impulse isn't too smart," Slim observed lightly.
"I know that. But I could see quality breeding there... not sure what, exactly. And he was green-broke... enough for me to work with."
Slim nodded. "And you thought you could finish him yourself?"
"Oh, sure. Took me four days, though. I named him 'Tencendor'—after Charlemagne's warhorse."
Though he took care not to show it, Slim was impressed—not only with the boy's acquaintance with military history but his presumed mastery of horseflesh... if he were as good as he claimed he was. Slim and Jess had been discussing the idea of getting into the mustanging business to supplement the ranch's income. Jess was a top wrangler but Slim didn't want to take a chance on him being injured again and had argued for hiring someone else to do the dangerous work.
"Takes a lot of nerve to ride an untried horse cross-country on an unmarked trail."
"The man gave me directions," Jay Dee said defensively. "And Dad told me the ranch was twelve miles east of Laramie and thirty-eight miles west of Cheyenne. I thought, well... we could do that easy in maybe two days. They didn't say anything about mountains in between."
"Why didn't you follow the stage road?"
"Dad also said I should take the time to see the petroglyphs at the Skull Rocks. Seemed like only a minor detour from the stage road. According to the man, they should be up ahead a couple of miles... somewhere close to your ranch. Guess I'm not as good at following directions as I thought. This is the first time I've been away from home on my own."
Slim grinned. "You didn't do too bad. It's twenty miles to my ranch from here if you were on the stage road... which you weren't. That runs about two miles parallel to and south of the Happy Jack trail you were following... which would've taken you right through the rocks about six miles east of my property. Eventually it connects up with the stage road three miles this side of the ranch."
"So I would've got there eventually?"
"Eventually, yes. So you're not actually working for anyone here?" Slim asked.
"No. It was just coincidence I happened to be here when you guys came in and assumed I belonged to one of the other ranches." Jay Dee looked around guardedly. "Shouldn't I be... um... doing some work?"
Slim grinned. "You ARE working. Someone has to look after a poor old cripple like me and Cookie has more important business—our supper! Besides, I want to hear more. Like... why are you here instead of your father? No offense, but..."
"No problem. Don't know if you remember his regular job was teaching? He just took up a new position—superintendent of Ventura Unified School District—so he couldn't get away."
"I seem to recall your father mentioning you were going on to college?"
"Yes, sir. I've been accepted to University of California in Berkeley but I'm taking a deferred year."
"I'm not familiar with that term..."
"It's when you take a year off between high school and college. They used to call it doing the 'Grand Tour'. Dad says it broadens your horizons and takes some of the itch out of your britches. I guess everyone wants to get away from home as soon as he can. Do new things. Meet new people. My parents both did it. Matter of fact, that's how they met... at the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the British Museum in London, except they were already postgraduates."
Slim could only shake his head in envy and wonder. What he would've given to be able to do such things in his late teens... before settling down to ranching… instead of going to war.
"Are you on your way to Europe, too?"
"Oh no… nothing that grand yet. Maybe after college, if everything works out."
"Was this commission for your father your only reason for coming here? Or are you in a hurry to get some other place?"
"I wanted to have a look around the frontier before it's gone, then maybe push on to the East Coast by train. Originally I was thinking of taking a clipper around the Cape of Good Hope to go home... but that was before I got Tencendor. So now I guess I'll just go far as I can and see as much as I can on horseback, then turn around and go home by train—depending on how well he travels in a boxcar. As for coming here... that was Dad's idea, because of the convenience—on account of Laramie being right on the main line."
"I wouldn't call having to backtrack from Cheyenne convenient."
"Well... it would've been if I hadn't missed my stop."
Something else occurred to Slim... "I also recall, at the time, we—your father and I—decided not to tell Jess about that possible inheritance unless and until it was a sure thing. I don't believe he's ever been told or he would've mentioned it."
"I wouldn't know anything about that," Jay Dee shrugged. "Mom's the one who's been involved in genealogy research, not Dad. I don't think it's settled yet or I would've heard."
"Then let's not say anything about it, okay? Unless the subject comes up in whatever paperwork you've brought."
"Whatever you say."
Slim appeared to be cogitating on something so Jay Dee stopped talking out of politeness.
"This mission... is it urgent?"
"Not that I was told."
"So you're don't have any immediate time constraints?"
"Only in the sense I have to be home by next September. Why?"
Slim intuited that this boy was intelligent enough to grasp why he needed the favor he was about to ask... and that merited an explanation.
"I had some other business that conflicted with fall roundup, so I put Jess in charge. It's his first time and he's doing a great job... but I'd rather he wasn't distracted until it's done and the cattle on their way to Chicago, which will be in a few more days. End of the week at most. You see what I'm getting at?"
"You want me to hold off giving him the envelopes until then."
"Exactly. Would that be a problem for you?"
"I don't think so. I'd need someplace to stay in the meantime, though."
"When we're done here, you can come home with us. I'll tell him you're our new hired man. If we're lucky he won't remember the name or make the connection right off."
"Sounds like a plan. I have a question, though. If he's in charge, why are you here?"
Slim made a face. "When you've always been the one making the decisions, it's awful hard to delegate authority."
Just before sunset the riders returned, triumphantly driving before them a hard-won forty-three head of cattle representing nearly fifteen hundred dollars as the market currently stood. Worth a day of brutal brush-beating. Jess was in high spirits as he sauntered over to where Slim and Jay Dee were sitting on a downed log, shoveling in supper.
"What's this? Gotcha a new teacher's pet?" Jess joshed, juggling his plate and a cup of coffee as he sat on the ground.
"Got us a temporary new hand. I reckon I messed up this knee worse than I thought," Slim lied with aplomb. "We'll be needing the help."
Jess had been about to voice a complaint about Slim hiring someone without at least asking for his input, but concern for his partner's well-being shoved that aside.
"You gonna be okay 'til we get to town? Should I send someone out to get the doc?"
"No. I'll ride in the chuckwagon with Cookie and he can swing by the ranch. By the way, this here's Jay Dee Kelly... Jay Dee, meet Jess Harper."
"Jady?"
Shit. Not that again!