June stood up as good as she always was and took the gal’s hand. Lon said, “You mind the lady, now,” but that was to encourage the gal; June didn’t need it. They went by Mike and then Lon, and the gal’s tight saddle pants brushed his knee . . .
Manners insisted that he talk to Fat Man while the dude’s gal was taking care of June. He said: “Anything you want to know about the rodeo, Mister, just ask. I used to work rodeo myself, before I settled down.”
Fat Man was trying to be agreeable, too. “Local boy?”
“No,” Lon said. “East sider—from back on the edge of the desert.” He laughed. “Land in here costs just about as much an acre as my whole ranch is worth.”
Fat Man offered cigarettes. Lon took one, and struck a match on his thumbnail for the two of them. “Nice of the lady to help out with my little girl.”
The dude said, “Sure,” uncertainly. Then he added quickly. “Hold my seat for me, will you, buckaroo? I’m going to get a beer.”
It was some trouble to let the fat body out, but they managed it. When he was gone, Mike said reflectively, “When you were travelin’ around, Pop, what’d you used to enter in?”
Lon said, “Depends. When a rider brought home money, he’d just go in for one, two things the next day. Maybe calf-roping and bronc-riding. After a dry spell, you’d put your name down for everything you could afford. One time I borrowed on my saddle from the fella that was promotin’ the show, and ran my name right down the list—includin’ the wild horse race and the cow-milking, bull-riding and—if I remember right—I tried to ride the clown’s trick mule for five dollars, too.”
Mike said, “Should think you’da been sore.”
His father told him, “I don’t remember. Don’t remember the last half of the day at all. Woke up in a stall on some hay, with sixty dollars in prize money, over what I’d borrowed. But only way I know how I got there is hearsay.”
Mike laughed. There was no danger of him ever doing any damn-fool thing like that. He was all rancher. All the time climbing up the canyons, looking for springs, trying to figure out some way to irrigate the ranch. He was the solemnest ten-year-old that Lon had ever known, which was funny, because it didn’t seem to come from either side of the family.
Mike said, “Here comes June and that lady. Pop—”
Lon said, “Yeah?” with some caution. He was shy of questions; they made him wish he’d gone to school more.
“Pop, I don’t like that fat man.”
Lon sighed. This was easy. “You don’t have to, Mike. Maybe so, though, he’d be all right if you saw him in what Tommy calls his natural habitat.”
“Well, I’m glad I don’t have to like him,” Mike said. “The lady’s pretty, though. His wife.”
Lon swallowed. An honest father would probably explain that the lady wasn’t Fat Man’s wife. And if it was done right, it might not start a lot of other questions that Lon wouldn’t be able to answer. But June was wriggling back in, followed by the gal, and there wasn’t any use saving the speech till later; just let it die.
June was bubbling, her eyes bright and her cheeks pink. They had had bottles of pop, and they had weighed themselves, and the lady’s name was Vera Mae and—smell, Pop—Vera Mae had put perfume behind June’s ears—
Lon smiled and laughed. He said to the gal, “You combed her hair, too. I thank you.”
“Kindly,” Vera Mae added. “June has lovely hair. Where did my ch—friend go?”
“Get himself a beer,” Lon said.
Vera Mae said, “Move over, Mike,” and sat down between the kids.
Mike said, “June told you my name.”
“Right the first time.” She nodded toward the arena. “Bull-riding just start?” Out there a gray-haired cowboy had himself straddled on a yellow Brahma. He gave it a pretty good ride, and jumped clear without the pickup men. “Duke Holloway,” the girl said. “About as good a rider as follows the rodeos.”
“I’ll bet he’s not as good as Pop was when he traveled around,” June said.
“I’ll bet he is,” Lon said. Something in the way he said it made the girl laugh. He asked her, “You ride?”
“Not buckers,” she said. “I’m a roper. When they have mixed-team roping, Duke and I work together. And I do some trick riding.”
“You must be pretty good.”
“I’d never get first money at Pendleton,” Vera Mae said. “Or any kind of money at Madison Square. But I can catch a head about four out of five and a heel, one out of three.”
“That’s not bad,” Lon said. “You got no call to run yourself down.”
“I wasn’t,” she said. “Hello, big boy.”
Fat Man didn’t look pleased about finding her sitting between Mike and June. He stood there a second, having trouble balancing in the squeezed space, and then Vera Mae switched, fast, and ended up on the other side of June. Fat Man sat down again, holding his beer, and put his hand back on her knee. This put him in a good humor, and he asked Mike, “Them the kind of cows youuns run?”
Mike looked at the Brahma bulls out in the arena. A fellow was riding a gray one, and the three already ridden were still larruping around the field, refusing to use the runout gate. “Naw,” Mike said.
“But you’ve got a ranch,” Vera Mae said. “June told me. Over by the desert.”
“Just a quarter-section,” Lon said.
Fat Boy perked up. “Hundred and sixty acres,” he said. “That could be worth a lot of money. Land, in this state, is going for forty dollars an acre, and up.”
Lon laughed. “Up where I live it ain’t. Ten bucks an acre’d be a big price. Country runs about one cow to thirty acres. But I got a Forest Service right to run sixteen head, and with luck, I make out.”
The dude was really interested now. It was like Lon must remember to tell the kids; just because a man was fat and had bad manners, you oughtn’t to throw off on him. Fat Man probably made as much in a month as Lon made all year, working hard, and it was probable, if you could get him to put his mind to it, he could tell a brush-whicker like Lon how to do better with what he had.
“My name’s Dutcher,” the Fat Man said. “I’m in the hardware business.” Out in the arena, steer-stopping was going on, and nobody was much interested. Some fellows were trying to line up some hot-bloods with flat saddles on the track, but they were having trouble. “I sell logging equipment,” Dutcher said, “and so on. What’s this about the Forest Service?”
“The national forest around my place is all logged over and thinned out,” Lon told him. “But there’s pretty good grazing. So they give me an allotment. I can run sixteen head on the forest and my land throwed together. And—”
The gal was stirring. “There’s nothing more on the program I want to see, big boy,” she said. “Let’s go have a drink.”
Mr. Dutcher’s eyes got kind of glassy. He squeezed the leg he had been resting his hand on, and said, “Good idea. Maybe we’ll see you, cowboy.” He looked at the kids, and his voice got on that silly radio kind of manner again. “Don’t go ridin’ no outlaws, now, young-uns.”
When they were gone, June stared at nothing for a long time. Then she made a pronouncement. “I like Vera Mae,” she said.
Lon laughed. What she meant was just the same as Mike when he said he didn’t like Mr. Dutcher. “You kids had enough rodeo?” he said.
They thought. “I want to go back to the hotel and take