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go. Russell exchanged a few words with one of the cowboys who had been assigned to do some of the
necessary farmwork near the ranch. Someone had to take care of the chickens and gather eggs, harvest
alfalfa hay and stack it.
Making hay was a difficult job. It took experience to know when the hay was well-cured, when the
color was right, how long it should lie in the swath after being mowed, and when it was dry enough to be
stacked. It was drying out in the fields right now, changing color under the bright, hot Texas sun. There
was nothing like the sweet smell of well-cured hay. It had a perfume that seemed to saturate the air for
miles around.
But the cowboys took little pleasure in such work.
They felt it was beneath their dignity to perform such tasks why, that was a job for sodbusters, not
cow-boys! And since they were merciless in their teasing of each other, the hands who had to do
sodbuster work were artfully ridiculed by the other cowpunchers.
While Russell was talking with the ranch hand, Ad-die approached Jessie from the side. " 'Morning,
Jes-sie. I see you're not wearing that nasty old sidesaddle today. What a pretty horse you are. Yes, you
are." Jessie's head turned in her direction, ears twitching expectantly. "We're not going to have any
problems like we did yesterday," Addie continued, reaching a hand in her pocket and pulling out a lump
of sugar. "We're making a deal, Jessie you know what it is- and this is evidence of my good faith.
And believe me, if you live up to your end of the bargain, there's more where this came from."
Jessie bent her head and took the sugar delicately between her lips, looking at her with wary brown
eyes. Suddenly she gobbled it and pushed her nose strongly against Addie's midriff, nudging her for
more. "I can tell we're going to be good friends," Addie said con-versationally, pulling out another lump
and extending it to the horse. Jessie's nose was as soft as velvet as it brushed her palm in search of the
sugar. She stroked the side of the mare's neck and showed her the spurless boots she wore. "See,
Jessie? Slick-heeled, just for you."
Jessie offered not one twitch of protest as Addie slipped the tip of her boot into the stirrup and hoisted
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herself up into the saddle. After swinging a leg over the saddle, she arranged her divided skirt and looked
at Russell expectantly. He had just finished his con-versation.
"I'm ready."
"Looks like y'are." Russell mounted his horse, a large white gelding named General Cotton, and they
rode away from the house, out into the range. "I guess you know your mama wasn't too happy 'bout
this," he said, looking like a boy who had just gotten away with a prank. .
"I don't understand why," she replied, sincerely puzzled. "What could be wrong with me looking over the
ranch with you?"
"She's always had plans for you, Adeline. Plans about making you into somethin' you aren't meant to be.
Sending you to that school in Virginia to learn about fancy manners and poetry books, hoping you'd' find
some eastern lawyer or businessman to hitch up with well, I knew it wouldn't work. I knew you'd want
to come back where you belong. Cade and Car-oline favor your mama. She wasn't born to ranching.
She's settled into this life pretty well, but in her heart she'll never stop hankerin' for her people in the East.
But I think you favor me, Adeline. And you and I were born to this." He waved his hand at the land in
front of them. "Look around you. Would you trade all this to live in a hotel or a town house with the kind
of goody-goody May wants for you? You don't want a man decked out in city clothes, someone with
soft hands and white skin, afraid of dirt and animals, and everything that's nat'ral. They city whips the
manli-ness out of 'em. Our boys out here are rough cut, Ade-line, but they're men, and they got respect
for a woman. Too much respect to let 'er wear the pants in the family and do their work. A man out here
knows how to take care of a woman."
Addie listened to him with growing alarm. She didn't want to wear the pants in the family or to bully any
man. If or when her thoughts ever turned to marriage, she would need the kind of husband who would let
her be his partner, his lover and friend. Was it useless to hope that someday she would find someone
who would let her be his equal?
"Let's talk about something else," she said, her forehead creasing, and obligingly Russ started lectur-ing
heron the running of the ranch. The horses' hooves splashed through a shallow stream, then thudded
along the edge of an alfalfa field. A line of trees bordered the other side, having been planted there to act
as a windbreak. On the other side of the field, the lush green of the land turned to the dry brown-green of
true rangeland. Addie noticed that all the trees they passed by had clipped edge on the bottoms, like
skirts that had been hemmed too short.
"Why have the lowest leaves of all the trees been clipped like that?"
Russell seemed pleased by her interest. "That's the browse line, honey. That's about as high as the
live-stock can reach when they browse over the land and chomp on the trees. When you see that, you
know the land is being overgrazed. That's why Ben moved the herd further out to richer land. If he didn't,
the grass would be so thin the cows'd have to eat on a dead run to get enough. "
"But how long can you keep moving the herd around before you run out of good land?"
"Run outta land?" Russell laughed uproariously.
"We got half a million acres. We're not gonna run out anytime soon. And if we did, there'll always be
more land in Texas."
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"I don't know if Texas is as big as you think. Sooner or later the land "
"Texas not big? It covers practically the whole country, 'cept for the little bit we let the other states
divide amongst themselves. "
They rode over miles of arid rangeland, past herds of longhorns whose heads were dipped low as they
grazed lethargically. Russell's face was alight with an emotion beyond pride as he regarded the animals
with their swishing tails and lethal horns. "Beautiful, ain't they?"
"There certainly are a lot of them."
"Not bad for a man who started out with nothin' but two dollars in cash and an empty belly. Feels good
to a man, Adeline, to look over what he owns and know he's built somethin' that'll last forever. To know
he'll go on forever. This'll never be anything but Warner land, and I was the one who took it for his own." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]