In the last part Ben led Ol’ Timer to salvation. After convincing him to sell his two mines and move to a Denver retirement, Ben set out following God’s call.

“Son, it’s close on to winter. Most ranches start letting go, get down to bare bones. You might’ve seen two cowpokes on the road,” the rancher, Dale Vickers waved skyward without direction. “Truth is, I’m sorry as hell to see one of ‘em go. The other was all right, far as cowboys go, but … And I’m not sure others might not leave, too.” Vickers stared into the space between himself and Ben. “Never heard of a ranch so hard to keep help. Where you worked?” Vickers asked Ben.

The Vickers ranch consisted of a full section of Rio Grande bottom land south of Lake City, Colorado. Calling a section, 640 acres, was however, a huge understatement in that the ranch property controlled access to thousands and thousands of acres of mountains and the valleys between. The grassy hillsides flourished with more grazing land than Vickers could ever stock.

“Never have ranched, done a lot, but not cowboyed.” Ben stood silently, his confidence radiating.

Vickers’ eyes widened with curiosity. “And you want put on for the winter? Asking a lot, son.”

“Promise you I’ll earn my keep. Red here’s a quick learner. I’ll do my best to keep up.”

Vickers felt good about the boy, real good. “Don’t have a clue what the bunkhouse problem is,” he said, wondering aloud why he couldn’t keep a consistent crew. Ben’s eyes held his gaze. “But my gut tells me to throw you in there. Check in with Franklin, he ramrod’s the Bar-V.” With that, he threw up his hands in an act of helplessness and dismay, waving Ben toward the bunkhouse after shaking his hand.

Ben led Red to the corral where a group of men were saddling their horses.

“What I say goes,” Franklin said. “You don’t like it, you eat it. I don’t need no suggestions, or complainin’. Timbo over there’s top hand. His words’re mine. Got it?”

Ben hadn’t seen which one was Timbo, but figured he’d learn soon enough. He nodded assent.

“Mount up.”

Ben had no idea where they were going, or what they’d be doing, but figured that the worst that could happen would be that he be sent packing with only the loss of a day, and a chunk out of his pride, a lesson in humility. He wished he’d had more breakfast than the biscuit that lay lonely in his gut.

Timbo sought him out on the ride up the mountain slopes. “We’re bringing the cattle down for the winter. Got most of ‘em the last few days. My word’s law. What I say goes. You don’t like it, you eat it.”

Ben wondered if the two men knew of the echo.

“Stay clear of the main house. Don’t need to talk to any of ‘em. Vickerses, or their help. Clear? Got it? And be sure to do your business in the outhouse. Vicker’s girls ...” He didn’t complete his sentence.

The ranch house was a two-story clapboard housing Vickers, who rarely rode with the crew, his wife, and four daughters, the oldest fourteen, a skinny girl tasked mainly with overseeing the two youngest. The second-born, an eleven-year-old, shadowed her mother every day. None ventured near the cowboys.

Franklin lived in a lean-to shack attached to the tack barn. Timbo and the cowboy crew’s bunkhouse was beyond the hay barn.

Ben nodded.

“And don’t be blinkin’ those eyes at nobody, either, Timbo continued. “Already I don’t like you. You only got the one horse? That’s all most come in with. I’ll show you which you can pick from when we get back. Every other day, horses get rested. Stay where I can see you. I point, you go. Got it?”

Ben got it.

That evening, settled on a board-hard bunk, nothing but a folded blanket for a mattress, he wondered if he’d had it.

The next day was the same, only up a different mountain valley. Returning too late for him to pick a mount the day before, he again rode Red.

“Why you on the same horse?” Franklin yelled from across the group of several cowboys. Everyone knew he was yelling at the new guy, Ben. “You an idiot?” Franklin continued. “You kill your mount, you’re walking outta here. And off the ranch, too.”

Ben saw Timbo grin.

No one looked his way, all suddenly too interested in the yellowed aspens. No one had yet introduced themselves, each averting his eyes, preventing Ben from taking the initiative. He decided to play it out. If a losing hand, all he’d lose was the ante, which was only time that he had to spare anyway. Mid-day he saw the value of a second mount, Red clearly outside his range of stamina. Ben did the work, pushing Red into thickets and around rocky knobs in search of cattle, but not too hard, a walking pace may not impress the boss, but it would do.

That evening after chuck, he sought out Timbo.

“Oh, yeah yer horse. Either of those two bays,” he said, nodding into the corralled herd.

Ben hoped he’d understood which he’d pointed out, several of them fitting the bill. Ben bit his tongue, withholding a question about spare horses that the two cowboys who’d quit must have used. He decided to try them out that evening, rather than chance saddling another man’s in the morning, or worse, getting bucked off in front of everyone. He entered the pen, cautiously approaching a bay with an interrupted stripe, one that might be easier to identify, and one that he was sure hadn’t been ridden either of his two days of work. The mare jerked her head up and down as Ben attempted a halter.

“Easy girl.” Gently and slowly, Ben moved the others away from his pick, separating it from the herd. With his back to the pick that he named Queenie, he began a rhythmic talk to her, barely keeping her in sight peripherally. He had to keep moving in order to keep her isolated. He hoped for enough daylight to get it done. Ben didn’t notice the crowd of men gathering along the corral fence. Presently, the herd stilled themselves in a corner of the rectangular pen, Ben between them and Queenie. One of the men thought to open a gate nearest the herd, moving them to another pen. One called Slim brought Ben his saddle and tack along with a friendly smile. Ben thanked him, wondering how many western men were called Slim.

Ben and Queenie were alone in the corral. Ben walked a tight circle a short distance from her, always keeping his back to her, talking gently. After about five minutes, Ben stopped at his saddle and tack, picking up his bridle, his back entirely turned to the horse. He stopped his chatter. Within a moment Queenie ambled up to him, nuzzling the ground at his feet. Guardedly, Ben turned and slid the bridle over her head, gently talking to her, stroking her neck, but not yet looking at her full on. Queenie did not resist the saddle. Nor his mounting her. Expecting the worst, Ben cautiously relaxed, bidding the animal to circle within the corral. He could hear murmurs of acceptance from the men.

“Ben, is it?” asked Slim, the one that brought him his gear.

Ben nodded.

“That one’s been broke, but too hard to catch. Always took two men to rope her. Not worth the trouble. The other … Let all of us get ours out first in the morning and, well … I guess we’ll have to see.”

“Thanks,” Ben said.

“When yer done here, I’ll introduce you around. See, the newer men are afraid you’ll take their winter from ‘em, and us year-rounders, well, I guess we just gotta see how things play out with Timbo and Franklin.”

Not exactly sure what he meant by the Timbo and Franklin remark, Ben merely repeated his gratitude.

The next day, no trouble with Queenie, they travelled the south side of the same valley, where slopes were much steeper and rockier. Ben was eternally grateful not to suffer Red that work. It would have been the end of a fine horse.

Ben thought it odd that Timbo and Franklin were nearly inseparable. He would have thought a top hand was like a supervisor, a subordinate to the foreman, a deputy that served as boss when away from the boss. He recalled that at the ranch they acted peculiar, as well: standing too close, sitting too close, walking too close – closer into personal space than normal. And when one was out of the bunkhouse, they were both out. He decided to test his guess.

Before breakfast the next morning he asked Slim to pay no mind to what might happen, implying that the sentiment spread among the others. As soon as Franklin reached his normal place at the end of the eating bench, Ben hopped beside him, taking Timbo’s normal spot. The energy from Timbo was palpable, electrifying. Ben picked up his plate, wolfing down a few bites as if in a hurry to use the outhouse. Timbo was nearly hysterical, for no obvious or reasonable cause. Franklin’s slight smirk was undecipherable. As if at the starting gate of a race, the instant Franklin forked up his last bite, Timbo shouted for the men to mount up. “Let’s go, boys. Get ‘er done! Mount up!” He was chagrinned to see Ben already mounted.

“Worth only gettin’ half yer breakfast?” Slim asked Ben.

“What do you think?”

“Kinda answers why some of the men been getting’ crapped on, why some others left. Guess it’ll be up to Franklin now. Surely, he knows a little girl when he sees one. Watch yer back. I expect we’ll be carryin’ you back down today. Rest of us, we’ll do what we can.”

Ben nodded, wondering if he’d overstepped his calling.

For the first time in anyone’s memory, Timbo broke from Franklin, working the mountain as a top hand should. The entire day someone from the crew found reason to ride between him and Ben.

+++

In front of the bunkhouse the next morning, Franklin shouted orders for the day, culling those cattle to be driven to the rail yard, branding those that missed it the last spring, and separating those to be sold locally.

Timbo hollered to Ben, “You ride fence. Get on the outside so’s you don’t have to open any gates or wire that don’t need opened.”

The men all glared at Timbo, knowing that outside the fence was impassable with the river bank and rocky bluffs. Timbo turned toward the corral.

Exiting the tool shed with a fencing tool, Ben saw Franklin, who told him to forget the fence and to hitch up the buckboard, he’d be driving it to Lake City. “I’ll be leading a steer to our butcher,” he said. “You’ll catch up to me ‘fore we get there. Oh, and bring your chestnut.”

After tying his horse and the steer to the back of the wagon once Ben caught up, Franklin climbed on beside Ben. “You the one stopped that stage hold-up some time back? Then deputied for Watson over in Creede?”

Ben nodded.

“Well, we don’t need no lawman here at the Bar-V.”

“Just trying to cowboy,” Ben replied, snapping the reins.

“Not too fast. We want that meat back there nice’n tender.”

After a mile of silence, Franklin spoke. “Guess I shoulda known, figured things out a long time ago. Timbo. He reminds me so much of” … Franklin swallowed hard. “Think my son woulda turned out like him. Boy could rope, ride … wadn’t ‘fraid a’ nothin’. Died of some kinda fever. Never did know which one. His ma couldn’t take it an’ went back home to Texas. Timbo, well, he just makes me think of Little John. Wasn’t so little when he died, though, nearly full grown.

“Timbo, now … there’s somethin’ there I just ain’t seen.”

“Sir, I’m sorry if I …”

“Naw. Ain’t you got men riled up. And it wasn’t you that made others quit these past years.”

“Sir. I don’t think most men care nothing about his personal twist.”

Franklin winced at the words.

Ben continued, “It’s just that they want to be treated for how they work, for the men that they are, and not punished for what somebody believes that they’re thinking.”

“He been doin’ that?”

Ben said nothing.

After a period of silence, Franklin finally cleared his throat and harrumphed a well then.

“Sir, my take is that he confused your affection for something else. And if you were to lay it out for him …”

“Oh, I can do that, all right. But the men’ll have no respect for him. Not that they do now. I see that now. My feelings must have, sort’ve, kinda messed with my seein’ that. Like I was always seein’ him through my own eyes, and not theirs, seein’ my son, not Timbo.

“Naw. I heard that the Circle-T across the river was gonna be up for sale. It ain’t the Bar-V, but I think I can convince Mr. Vickers that even if it don’t turn a profit, it won’t be five years and its value will double. Once the railroad comes through, anyway. Timbo gets promoted, and the men get shed of him. The Bar-V oughta settle, make ‘im more money.

“We get to Lake City, I’m gonna give you a month’s pay. Your bedroll’s in the wagon, there. I know you ain’t been here a week, but I’m doin’ it for Timbo … and for you. And I’ll tell anybody that asks you’re a top wrangler.”