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Show -3- 6 3 rne norse naa movea a tew steps, careful of the dropped reins, to get at a tuft of desert grass, but he could not chew well with a bit in his mouth and he did not much savor the grass anyhow, so he only mouthed it, mumbled it, something to do. He raised his head at the old man's approach, a strawberry roan with a deep chest, a five-year-old gelding, strong and tough and intelligently trained, at the beginning of his prime. Bert Cardon was long past his, shrunken two inches from his full six feet and now so thin that he couldn't have weighed more than one-ten, but still a tough old man, drying up but not warping, who walked carefully but not stiffly and still with some of his old erect grace, his boot heels punching small holes in the sand. Those boots were hand-tooled and of the best cowhide. He also wore Levis, a khaki shirt which had belonged to one of his sons and which was too big for him, the cuffs turned back and then bottoned, the neck buttoned too but with enough space left so that he could have reached inside, and around his neck a blue polkadot neckerchief. He was further protected from the sun by a widebrimmed and peaked hat, grey with a black band, sweat stained. He had a new one just like it hanging on the elk antlers back at the ranch house, one which he estimated would be the last he would every buy; nowadays his hats lasted on and on, but he couldn't expect his body to do the same. Lately, in fact, everything he bought he speculated about: would this be his last new pair of Levis, this his last mackinaw? Would he ever wear out this pair of boots, that pair of gloves ? The idea of his clothes surviving him caused him no pain, it bemused him. He had lived long enough. But so had Dick Martin. The Bar Z hadn't even known they were losing cattle to rustlers until Cardon's younger brother Tim had stumbled onto Martin's camp, rode right into it before he knew who the gang was, and then it was too late. They shot him, filled his body astonishingly full of holes, and left him to the buzzards. But now Martin |