Free The Jump-Off Creek by Molly Gloss

watched him
come up to her house, carrying the parcel wrapped in newspaper and a towel, balanced across the pommel of the saddle. Down the long, cleared valley, when he had hallooed the house, the sound had seemed a faint wordless piping. He had come slowly on afterward and sat a moment on the horse looking at the crooked line of the new brush fence going up the hill behind the house. Then he had gone around past the shut-up window to the door and put his parcel down on a stump, not getting off the horse to do it, just leaning over from the saddle and leaving the towel folded around it so it sat on the stump in a lumpish bundle. She did not know why she had stayed there at the high end of the creek, in the cold damp shadow beneath the trees, not going down to speak to him, just standing holding the bucksaw down in her hands and watching him silently.
    â€œWait,” she said, murmuring. “I’ll bring you the tin.” She went in and found it and brought it out to him with his piece of clean towel folded up inside it. He put his hat on his head, settling it carefully, and took the plate from her with both hands.
    â€œIt was a very good pie,” she said, and smiled a little. “I am not able to make a decent one myself, I have a heavy hand with the rolling pin.”
    He ducked his chin again. He turned the plate in his hands. Then he said, looking just past her, “When I was a kid I worked as a cook’s monkey over in Idaho. The cook was named Sweet. He took the time to teach me the trade. He said he’d seen years when a good cowboy couldn’t buy himself a job, but a good cook could pretty much always find work. He was right about that. I guess I spent as many summers cooking as I ever did cowboying. It’s stood me and Blue through a few lean times.”
    She nodded, surprised. Her notion of him felt somewhat undone. “You are lucky, there, Mr. Whiteaker.”
    He shifted his weight as if he might leave, but then he stood where he was. “We’ve got nine cows of yours,” he said suddenly. “If you’ve got Angell’s branding iron from him, or one of your
own, we’d get your calves done along with ours. We’ll be starting up pretty soon.”
    She had watched the branding of a single heifer calf as she had stood on the railroad platform beside the stockyards in North Platte, Nebraska. That was her experience of it. It was not clear, from what Mr. Whiteaker had said, if he meant to do it for her, or show her how it was done.
    â€œI have got the CrossTie brand from the real estate man,” she said. “I guess it would be good to keep the same.”
    â€œYes.”
    She nodded and looked at him stoutly. “For fairness sake and for my own instruction, I expect you will let me lend a hand. I am quick to learn, and somewhat stronger than I appear.”
    He dropped his head, hunting for something in the mud. “We have worked a few branding crews with a woman holding down an end,” he said slowly. “On a small outfit it’s usual for the man’s wife to pitch in, or his daughters if he has them.”
    She nodded a second time. “I am used to doing that myself,” she said, smiling slightly.
    He pinched the pie tin in his fingers, turning it. Then he put it inside his kit bag. While he was fiddling with the tie-downs she said, without asking a question of him, “I have not ridden out at all, to get in my calves.”
    He looked at her sidelong. After a while he said, “Claud didn’t get around to a count, or a branding either, last year, and he would’ve lost a few to weather since then. We’ve been over this ground pretty well ourselves. These nine calves might be all there is out of CrossTie cows.”
    She had half expected it. She tightened up her mouth but in a moment let it out, smiling grimly. “I suppose I had better grow squashes then, if I’m not to starve.”
    Mr. Whiteaker