Free The Run for the Elbertas by James Still Page B

“it’ll be beyond traveling. A horse bogs to the knees.” He slid to the ground, limbering his legs.
    Father led Aaron’s horse into the mare’s stall. He brought a brass-trimmed saddle onto the porch. Aaron shook his boots, loosening mud balls, letting them fall on the steps. His tracks smudged the floors. Mother prepared a meal for him, our supper having long been eaten; and Lark and Zard and Fern pried at Aaron with their eyes. I studied his leather clothes: ox-yellow coat, belt wide as a grist mill’s, fancy boots. I’d never seen boots matching the ones he wore. Father had a costly pair, a pair worth eighteen dollars, yet they weren’t lengthy, or pin-pointed, or hid-stitched like Aaron Splicer’s.
    Aaron shucked off his coat. A foam of sheep’s wool lined the underside. “Thar’s not a cent in yearlings,” he said. “Hit’s jist swapping copper for brass. Beef steers are what puts sugar in the gourd, and nary a one I’ve found betwixt here and the head of Left Hand Fork.”
    â€œCrate Thompson cleaned the steers out o’ all the creeks forking Troublesome,” Father said. “I’ve heard a sketch about him being on Quicksand now. I reckon they’s a sight o’ beef in the neighborhood o’ Decoy and Handshoe.”
    Mother brought a plate of creaseback beans, buttered cushaw, and a sour-sweet nubbin of pickled corn. Fern raked coals upon the hearth for the coffeepot. While Aaron ate, Father had me and Lark brighten Aaron’s boots. We scraped the caked mud away, rubbed on tallow, and spat on the leather. We polished them with linsey rags until they shone.
    â€œI never saw boots have such sharpening toes,” Father said. “You could nigh pick a splinter out o’ yore finger with them.” He thrust his own boots forth to show the bluntness of the shoecaps. “But cattlemen allus crave leather with trimmings.”
    Our cats leapt upon my knees. They watched Aaron, twitching their whiskers, tensing their spines; they held crafty oblong eyes upon him. I thought, “I’m liable to be a cattleman when I’m grown up, and go traveling far. Yet it’d take a spell to get used to thorny boots. I’d be ashamed to wear ’em.”
    Aaron finished eating, wiped his chin with the hairy back of a hand, and walked his chair nearer the fire. Father offered him a twist of home-raised tobacco. He bit a chew, stretching the poles of his legs to the hearth, saying, “I’d take a short cut to Quicksand if I didn’t have these yearlings on my neck. Maybe I’d get thar before Crate Thompson buys every last steer.” He rubbed his chin stubble; he frowned till his face wadded to wrinkles. “Reckon your eldest boy could round them calves to Mayho town for me? A whole day would be saved.”
    I raised off my chair, hoping. I was nine years old, old enough to go traipsing, to look abroad upon the world.
    â€œHo, ho,” Father chuckled, big to tease, “you wouldn’t call that turkey track of a forked road a town. Now, Hazard or Jackson—” he hesitated, seeing Mother’s eyes upon him. The posts of his chair sunk level with the floor. “That’s agood-sized piece for a boy to walk alone. Thirteen miles, roundy ’bout.”
    â€œI’ll pay a dollar,” Aaron said. “A whole silver dollar. Silas McJunkins’s boy will be at my house with the money when they’re penned. Silas’s boy is driving two cows down from Augland in the morning.”
    â€œI saw Mayho on a post-office map once,” Father said. “Hit looked to me like a place where three roads butt heads. But if this town soaks hits elbows in Troublesome Creek, hit’s bound to be a good ’un.”
    Mother sent Fern, Zard, and Lark to bed. Before going herself she brought in a washpan and a ball of soap. Father poured hot water from the kettle, and Aaron washed his