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  “Just who exactly would you be?” the lawman asked. “You must’ve done somethin’ fine to take such a beatin’. Well?”

  Rat stared at his bandaged ribs and tried to manage a reply. Finally he related his tale of the Wood City doctor and of the hard times since leaving Kansas.

  “Yeah, the cattle market’s gone south for certain,” the sheriff agreed. “Didn’t figure you was any desperado. No poster with your likeness, and who goes look in’ for trouble with an empty pistol in his saddlebag.”

  “Never did get me any bullets,” Rat said, chuckling.

  “Ain’t too bright, are you, boy?”

  “Don’t seem so,” Rat confessed. “I been to a school to learn readin’ and writin’, and I know how to ride and tend cows. But I got no knack with people at all. Far as human critters go, I’m dumber’n spit.”

  “Well, many a man could say that,” the sheriff declared as he unlocked the cell. “Don’t know a man can get himself locked up on account o’ it, though. Best take it easy on them ribs awhile. One’s cracked, I’m guessin’.”

  “I free to go?” Rat asked.

  “Long as you stay out o’ trouble. Got a home, boy?”

  “Not to speak of,” Rat confessed.

  “Where you come from?”

  “All over. Nowhere. Guess you’d say Thayerville. I lived there a time.”

  “Then my advice’d be to go back. Folks what know you’ll give you a better chance. A boy like you rangin’ about’s certain to find bad fortune.”

  “It’s ’bout all the fortune I ever come by.”

  “Well, things can change, youngster. Seen it before. Your horse is over to the livery. Tell Hi Garner I told him the oats and water’s on the county.”

  “I got some money,” Rat objected.

  “You may need it elsewhere. Now get along ’fore I change my mind. And may God look after you. Sure somebody best do it.”

  Chapter Eight

  Rat Hadley was two years getting back to Thayerville. He passed six months on a Hood County ranch, then made the long drive north to Kansas once again. He wandered to Colorado afterward, and thence across the Llano, doing this and that. Nothing lasted long, though, and with worsening cattle markets, ranch work wasn’t to be had. He rounded up a string of range ponies only to find no buyers. Under a hot August sun he followed the shiny rails of the new Texas and Pacific railroad to Weatherford before riding north to Thayerville.

  The town had done some changing. A half dozen houses spread out along the Weatherford market road, and a brick bank now dominated the center of Main Street. There were two saloons now, a small cafe, and a new Methodist church alongside the old schoolhouse. Rat shuddered a moment as he rode past the Morris place. Someone had added a false brick front and turned it into a hotel. Down the street, though, a new and larger mercantile stood near the livery.

  “Two years,” Rat murmured as he traced the thin brownish growth on his upper lip. It could almost pass for a moustache. Even as he was wondering whether anyone would recognize him, a voice called out from the street.

  “Rat!”

  Rat turned and gazed upon a youngish man in a banker’s suit, complete with string tie and bowler hat, waving from the door of the hotel.

  “Mitch?”

  Mitchell Morris trotted out into the dusty street, and Rat swung himself off his horse to greet his old friend. The two of them locked wrists, grinning and nodding and babbling too fast to be understood.

  “Seen Ma and Pa?” Mitch finally managed.

  “Seen nobody,” Rat answered. “Just got in.”

  “Well, we best see to it right off. She’d hide the both o’ us for keepin’ you a secret. Lord, it’s been a while. You went and got some growth.”

  Rat nodded. He was still a good four inches shy of six feet, but it was as tall as he was likely to get. Hadley men ran to small, it seemed. When he’d seen his brother Alex in June, the sixteen-year-old had lamented the family curse.

  “You look good, Mitch,” Rat observed as he conducted his horse to a hitching post and secured the reins. “Ain’t gone respectable, have you?”

  “Only by appearances,” Mitch said, laughing. “Got to keep Ma off the scent. Cards haven’t let me down yet. We get a lot o’ folks through Thayerville now, bound for the new rail spur at Albany or up from Weatherford. There’s a stage line stops here.”

  “Saw the hotel.”

  “Town’s growin’. Fine pickin’s on the card tables.”

  Rat nodded sourly. It didn’t seem fair that some should find an easy way to prosperity while others had to claw and scratch money for supper. He couldn’t begrudge Mitch, though. Was only fitting one of them should have some good fortune.

  “Guess yer cousins still man the counter,” Rat mentioned as he followed his old friend toward the mercantile.

  “Oh, they’ve come and gone. She’s hired herself the youngest Plank boys now.”

  “The Planks?” Rat gasped.

  “Randy and Vesty. Efrem went and shot the old man last summer. Runs with the Oxenberg brothers.”

  “Who?”

  “Road agents,” Mitch explained. “Got ’emselves quite a name hittin’ freight wagons and stagecoaches.”

  “Hereabouts?”

  “No, nothin’ much happens in Thayerville,” Mitch said, sighing. “West o’ Albany.”

  “Strange how things turn out. I never figured Ef for a bandit. Nor killer, either.”

  “Guess you can’t hang a fellow more’n once, and he’s wanted for his pa’s shootin’.”

  “Don’t see any jury callin’ that murder,” Rat grumbled. “Ole man’s time was overdue.”

  “Well, enough talk ’bout Plank. Come along. You just won’t believe the new place. Got our own house outside o’ town, too.”

  Mitch went on and on as they marched down the street to the new mercantile. Upon arrival, Mitch called for his mother, and Mrs. Morris, true to form, greeted Rat with a bear hug.

  “Lord be praised!” she shouted. “I thought you fed to the winds, Rat Hadley. Come meet my new helpers.”

  “Met ’em before,” Rat said, nodding to the Plank boys. They’d grown some, and filled out on Mary Morris’s cooking, but Randy’s dark, shy eyes were as always. As for Vesty, he dashed over and slapped a husky hand on his one-time defender’s back.

  “Went and growed up, Vesty,” Rat observed as he turned the sixteen-year-old around on his heels. “Miz Morris here workin’ you ’nough?”

  “Well, she keeps us busy, Randy ’n’ me,” Vesty answered. “But then you know I never been a stranger to work, and we get to go off to the schoolhouse some.”

  “Yeah, I worked here myself, you know.”

  “And at our place, too,” Vesty said, dropping his eyes. “Guess you heard Pa’s dead. Ma passed on last winter, and he only got worse. Broke Randy’s arm and would’ve kilt him sure if Ef hadn’t taken up a shotgun.”

  “Well, it was a long time comin’ by my thinkin’,” Rat said, noticing the silent Randy cradling his arm.

  “That’s about enough serious talk for one day,” Mrs. Morris announced. “This is a happy occasion. Come along and see Pa, Rat. He’ll never believe you’ve come home. Wasn’t two Sundays past he was remarking how you’d surely got your own ranch by now and a pretty wife to boot.”

  “Got neither,” Rat said, sighing. “Ain’t even come by a job.”

  “Well, that’s certain to work itself out,” she declared. “Pa knows folks with work to be had. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover he knows of something fit.”

  But Mary Morris’s optimism was misplaced. Her husband welcomed Rat warmly enough, but he offered faint hope of finding employment.

  “Even a month back there was building going on, but just now it’s the lean time of summer, Rat,” John Morris reminded the young man. “We hardly do enough business ourselves to merit help in August. In the old days things would pick up once the trail crews came home, but now all the cattle get shipped on the r
ailroad. And the market’s sour, Rat. Real sour.”

  “I know, Mr. Morris. I had ten horses I practically gave away a month back.”

  “Well, something’s sure to come along,” Mrs. Morris declared. “Until then you’ll stay at the house with us.”

  “Couldn’t do that, ma’am,” Rat explained. “I’ve done my growin’. Cain’t take charity.”

  “Is it charity to take in a boy who’s practically kin?” she cried.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rat said, thinking of the Plank boys. “I’d say you have plenty o’ help, and I’m a long time earnin’ my way.”

  Mrs. Morris started to argue, but her husband motioned her to silence. Rat nodded respectfully, then walked off with Mitch to have a look around Thayerville.

  The two old friends spent close to an hour swapping tales of old times and laughing at some foolishness or other perpetrated by the two of them. Then Mitch returned to his gaming table, and Rat stumbled down the street to where his horse was tethered. As he remounted the spry mustang, an unfamiliar voice hailed him.

  “Son, you haven’t come up from Weatherford, have you?” a short, barrel-chested man in his mid-forties asked.

  “Yessir,” Rat answered.

  “Seen a wagon on your way?”

  “Was one,” Rat recalled. “Full o’ balin’ wire and boxes, I think.”

  “That all? No posts?”

  “No, sir,” Rat said, scratching his head. “Not as I saw.”

  “Well, that’s a fine thing,” the man stormed. “I got fifty miles o’ wire to string, and nothing to put it on.”

  “Sir?” Rat asked. “You mean telegraph wire?”

  “Well, it’s got no barbs! I’ve already hired boys to plant the posts, and here I got none, and no pine trees for Lord knows how far.”

  “Oaks’d pass, or junipers,” Rat offered. “I know where a man could cut ’em, and you could haul ’em in with a wagon.”

  “Do you just? And who exactly would you be, young man?”

  “Erastus Hadley,” Rat said, “but people call me Rat. I guess I’ve been across every inch o’ this country one time or ’nother. I could cut yer posts if you’d trust me with the work.”

  “And what would you want for a wage?”

  “What the job’s worth,” Rat answered. “You would’ve paid somebody for ’em. Pay me instead.”

  “In need of a job, are you?”

  “Bad need,” Rat confessed. “Wouldn’t be permanent, I know, but maybe later you’d find another use for a man proved handy.”

  “Might at that, Rat. I’m Sullivan Dawes, out to operate the telegraph here in Thayerville. They call my Sully. You’re hired. Now when can you start work?”

  “There’s light yet today,” Rat replied. “Be an hour ridin’ to the trees. Start when I get there.”

  “Well, that’s what I like to hear,” Dawes declared. “Wait just a minute, though, and I’ll hire a wagon. You might as well take the boys along. They can fell trees, I suppose.”

  “If they cain’t, I’ll show ’em the trade,” Rat promised.

  So it was that Rat Hadley went to work for Western Union. Fifty miles meant hundreds of poles, especially along the stretches where the market road crossed open country, and Rat couldn’t believe his good fortune. Moreover, building the telegraph line was something a man could take pride in. For once Rat Hadley rode tall.

  The work wasn’t easy, especially with the sun blazing morning and afternoon, but the air was fresh in the Brazos bottoms, and the company was good. Sully Dawes sent out town boys as he found them, mostly snaggle-toothed teenagers hungry for work and pocket change. Some found felling trees beyond their ability, and others disliked the heat. A freckled redhead named Billy Bedford stuck, though, and he always managed to locate one or two others to help.

  Finding trees was a challenge, too, especially when they had to be straight. But by prowling here and there, Rat thinned stands of oak and juniper, and the ranchers raised few objections knowing the telegraph would link them with Ft. Worth’s swelling stockyards.

  Rat and his youthful crew cut thirty posts at a time, then set them at intervals along the Weatherford road. Afterward Sully Dawes inspected the work and satisfied himself the wire and relays were nailed into place. It was while planting posts a dozen miles south of town that Rat got his first peek at a grown-up Becky Cathcart. When Billy identified the visitor, Rat dropped his jaw.

  “Cain’t be!” he exclaimed.

  “I heard you were back,” she called from her buggy. “You filled out those shoulders just fine, Rat.”

  “You done some fillin’ yerself, Miss Cathcart. Got the young men buzzin’, I’ll wager.”

  “Not so you’d know,” she grumbled. “There’s a dance at the church Sunday. Care to come?”

  “Don’t know I got any clothes fit for socializin’.”

  “They’ve got suits at the mercantile,” she scolded. “You can’t go around half naked all your life.”

  Rat gazed at his sweat-streaked belly and reddened.

  “Guess not,” Rat confessed as the boys laughed. “I’ll get some clothes. Figure we can walk a bit later on?”

  “Tomorrow. I’m in Weatherford tonight to visit my aunt. I like looking at the stars, Rat.”

  “I’m call on you tomorrow,” he promised.

  The buggy rolled on, and he tossed his hat skyward.

  “That’s the sheriff’s daughter,” Billy warned. “You watch you don’t get throwed in jail, Rat.”

  “Sheriff and I been acquainted a long time,” Rat assured his young friend. “Saved my life when I was yer size.”

  “That right?” the redhead asked. “Well, that don’t mean he’ll let you court his daughter.”

  Billy turned out to be right. When Rat appeared on the porch of the sheriff’s house, a taller Busby Cathcart bid him wait.

  “Pa’s got words for you, Rat,” the boy explained.

  “Bus?” Rat asked, confused by the youngster’s worried look.

  The sheriff then stormed out of the door, clamped a wrist on Rat’s arm, and led the way back of the privy.

  “I did you a favor once,” the lawman pointed out. “Tonight I’ll do you another, Rat. Best you move along.”

  “Sir?” Rat gasped.

  “Best you understand how things are, boy. A man comes callin’ on a girl, he best have merits.”

  “Merits?”

  “A home,” Cathcart explained. “A job with promise. I’ll bet the shirt you’re wearin’ tonight’s the first new one you’ve paid for in a year’s time. I got just the one daughter, Rat, and I’ll have her happy. You can’t offer her that.”

  “Was just goin’ walkin’s all,” Rat argued.

  “Best not make beginnin’s when there’s no place for it to go, Rat. Mind your place. Elsewise we’ll talk again.”

  The glare in the sheriff’s eyes ate into Rat’s insides. He turned and stumbled back into town, past the mercantile and the bank and the other marks of civilization. He found his camp and shed his new clothes. You couldn’t put a suit on a no-account and make him a man!

  Rat kept clear of town afterward. He put his every effort into erecting the telegraph poles, and his only moments of escape were the afternoon swims he shared with Billy and whoever happened to be along that day. On toward the end of September the line was only fifteen miles shy of Weatherford. Rat was wedging a juniper pole into its deep, rocky hole when a voice called his name from the road.

  “Still ain’t got rid o’ them back scars, eh?” Mitch Morris shouted from atop a sleek black gelding.

  “Ole Plank put ’em there to remind me who I was,” Rat barked without gazing up. “Help me keep my place.”

  “What’s this talk?” Mitch asked. “What place?”

  “Oh, he had a visit with the sheriff,” Billy explained.” ’Bout Becky.”

  “Can’t take all that to heart, Rat,” Mitch argued. “Cathcart won’t let me near her, either, and look at me? Have you ever seen su
ch a prosperous fool in all your life?”

  “You do look fair, Mitch,” Rat admitted with a hint of a grin. Mitch was decked out in a brown suit with vest, and a gold watch chain bobbed in his pocket. Prosperity seemed obvious.

  “I’m on my way to Weatherford for a bit o’ business,” Mitch explained. “Maybe you’d care to join me for some supper at the Station Hotel? I’m buyin’.”

  “Be late when we finish, Mitch. Maybe another time?”

  “I’d come,” Billy volunteered. “If yer buyin’.”

  The other boys added their voices, and Mitch grinned.

  “Got to find you civilized company, Rat Hadley. Elsewise you’re certain to sprout a tail and stay out here in the rocks forever.”

  ’Least they don’t chase me elsewhere, Rat thought as he waved Mitch along down the road. It was hard watching the dust swirls diminish. Harder knowing Mitch was headed somewhere, and Rat Hadley was no better off than one of those juniper poles. He swallowed hard. Would the trail ever tum? Was there nothing better ahead?

  Chapter Nine

  Rat Hadley devoted himself heart and soul to completing the Thayerville-Weatherford telegraph line. As the last of the poles took its place alongside Station Street, and Sully Dawes spliced two wires to link the two Texas towns, Rat wiped sweat from his forehead. Billy Bedford shouted, and the other youngsters joined in the cheer.

  It was later that afternoon, in the telegraph office, when Rat listened to the staccato tapping that Dawes translated into words.

  “Test message’s come through,” the operator told Rat. “Looks like we’ve built ourselves a telegraph line!”

  “Yessir,” Rat said, grinning.

  “You’ve done a real fine job for me, son.”

  “So what’s next?” Rat asked. “We goin’ out to Albany or maybe over to Jacksboro?”

  “Neither,” Dawes answered. “I can get a message through to Albany already. I just send through Weatherford, you see. The Ft. Worth line has a spur line up to Jacksboro. All we really needed to communicate with most of the state was to tie into the line at Weatherford.”