Free Coyote Wind by Peter Bowen Page B

his boots. Madelaine dished him up some scrambled eggs, salsa, a couple slices of her good bread with chokecherry jam.
    Du Pré ate.
    “I got some fence to fix,” he said, “check my place out.” My few cows, horses, brushed-up little creek. I fix it up, work hard, lose more money.
    He drove home. Maria was gone, off to school, bad-ass girl on the Honor Roll. People she hung around with probably couldn’t read well enough to see her name, she’s safe.
    What about all this.
    Du Pré filled a pocket of his down vest with fencing staples, took a fencing tool, a shovel, a topper’s ax.
    When he heaved against the rusty barbwire gate the top strand broke, so he had to go back and pull a coil of wire off the spool. He fixed the gate, shut it, began to slowly walk the fence. Do a mile or so today, then more sometime. If his cattle got out they would be hazed back by the neighbors. No bitching, no cattleman needs the brand inspector pissed off at him.
    Du Pré topped a little rise, looked down, saw four of his neighbor’s steers at rest in his pasture. They got up when they saw him, trotted back home. Du Pré followed them to the downed fence. A post had rotted off, a cow had leaned against it until it snapped and the fence went down. Lots of tracks both ways.
    I’d better fix this fence, here. Not too good a neighbor, me.
    Du Pré cut a new post from a dead juniper, dug out a shallow hole, set and tamped the post. He stapled the wires back on.
    The four steers looked glumly at him from the neighbor’s pasture.
    Spoilsport.
    Du Pré saw his horses, one was limping. He hadn’t worked his stock, they looked at him and trotted off, all but the one who was hurt in the foot.
    “Tch tch,” Du Pré clucked, coming up to the gelding. The oldest one, twenty years, gentle old fellow.
    Du Pré patted the horse’s neck. He lifted the left front hoof, saw the bad split.
    Du Pré slipped his belt off, put it round the horse’s neck, led him back to the little tumbledown barn. Got to fix these hinges, too, whole place is slumped and tired.
    Us Du Pré, we been here a while.
    Du Pré found the old inner tube, the rope, the Epsom salts. He went to the house, made up a batch of warm water, poured in the salts. He carried the kettle back out to the barn and slipped the inner tube over the horse’s leg; tied it up, rope over the horse’s withers. Poured in the warm drawing water, the horse danced a little at the strange feeling.
    “Hohoho,” said Du Pré. The horse stood, liking the warmth on his sore hoof and leg.
    Du Pré left him there, went to the house for lunch. He found a can of sardines, can of tomatoes. What the West was built on, cowboys ate and drank these. Piles of rusty cans at every good place to stop and have lunch. Ghost meals.
    Du Pré went to the living room, cluttered with the magazines Maria brought home, but clean. He looked at the pictures on the mantel. Catfoot and Maman. Maria. Jacqueline, big smile, first baby, boy of course, Gabriel, of course.
    Du Pré at a fiddlers’ contest, first place, Du Pré half-drunk in the picture, little cheap trophy in his hand.
    Picture of his father’s sister, Aunt Pauline, with one of her husbands.
    Aunty Pauline, blond, brown-eyed, good-looking woman. Trouble woman, she’d had three husbands.
    Aunty Pauline, used to ride trick horses in the rodeo.
    She’d be maybe sixty now? Du Pré hadn’t seen her in more than twenty years.
    Aunty Pauline.
    Who Mama wouldn’t speak of after that one time.
    Du Pré didn’t know what had happened. Long time ago.
    Where was Aunty Pauline now?
    Red River.

CHAPTER 23
    D U P RÉ WAS FLICKING his eyes over the brands, the cattle bawled in the chute. Funny job he had, no one needed him, then they opened the newspaper, saw prices up, or the banker didn’t want to extend the note and they all wanted him right now. He’d be working till midnight tonight, for sure.
    Pretty dull, too. While I’m here, somebody within twenty miles is losing