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Show / * "And we weren't punching cows or chasing rustlers, just digging holes. John got fed up widi it after a while, and what he liked least about it, I was his boss. He'd been a big fullback and captain of die team and I'd just been a lineman, and now here I was giving him orders. He kept getting touchier and touchier, and one day- I guess we'd been up there about three weeks or more-one day I told him to do something and he said, 'Do it yourself.' Well. I said by god you do it or I'll fire you, and the first thing you know we were swinging at each other. Just a scrambling around in the dust and sliding all over that fool hill and swinging for all we was worth. Blacky he let us go on for a while, said he figgered it'd clear the air, but if you ask me he was getting a big kick out of it. Then he broke us up. We was ready to quit all right, blood all over us, but John was sore and he still wouldn't take my orders, and I was a whole lot madder because by god I was boss and if he was gonna work for me he'd damn well take my orders. So I was gonna fire him that weekend, but come Saturday Blacky said why didn't we ride down into town and get the poison out of us, and that sounded a whole lot better. So we rolled up some clean duds and tied em on our saddles and rode down to Ridgeway. Took us three or four hours and I don't think we said a word to each other the whole way. "Well, my Aunt Lois was living there then. Reuel had a little sort of a general store and was getting ready to go broke again, so we stopped there and had a bath, first time in a month, and ate somebody else's cooking for a change. Then we got a bottle-no, we each got one: we weren't gonna be friends about anything- and went down to the dance at the schoolhouse. Those dances were pretty wild times in those days." "Still are," said Henry. "Well, that's what you go to dances for, feel your oats and sow em too. And we was scratching like a couple of bob-cats. Hadn't seen girls or whiskey for a month and we was out to make the best of both of 'em. John he found himself a girl right off, and I was tailing this little filly around, one of those flirty girls pretty as a picture, except she had this boy friend and he didn't take to me and he had a couple of friends to back him up. So I hollered for John. He came a runnin' too, speaking or not. That's the way it works, you stand up for your friends no matter what, and it turned out to be quite a fight." 234 |