JOHNSON BECOMES BOSS OF THE ANVIL
The Johnsons went to live at Lafe's place beyond the Willows, in Hope
Canon. And there they occupied a frame house on the crest of a knoll. It
was an ideal locality for a bridal couple, privacy being its most
pronounced feature. For nobody else lived in the Canon and their nearest
neighbors were the citizens of Badger, fourteen miles distant, beyond a
swelling valley and a fringe of hills.
Hetty was so busy making habitable the three bare rooms of the home,
that the days were as minutes to her and the weeks took wings. It was
absolutely amazing what she achieved with two tables, a packing case,
six chairs, a bureau and some mats and window curtains--all these
freighted from Badger in a wagon. No room of the three gave the
appearance of having been slighted. In lieu of pictures, she contrived
to bestow brightness to the walls by tacking up covers from magazines,
and solid comfort was afforded by bunks built in corners of two of the
rooms. They were draped with Navajo blankets and Hetty had constructed
them herself of substantial oak, Lafe being an indifferent carpenter and
immensely impatient of it. After the manner of his kind he hated any
task that could not be done on horseback. That Hetty had a taste for
show cannot be denied, because the bed in her room was hung with
mosquito netting in the shape of a canopy, and there was a wondrous blue
coverlet. Indeed, it was fit for a royal couch.
To a bachelor of long standing, adjustment to married life brings with
it certain brain shocks and sudden vistas. It is constantly unfolding
surprises that burst on his vision as wonders. So many shifts of their
household arrangements struck Lafe as unique that he could not forbear
mention of them to his friends in Badger--with the air of a discoverer,
confident that nothing like this had ever been done or attempted before
in history. Whereupon they would emit merry jeers and the older men
would assure him that he would soon be harness-broken.
But the greatest change was in his outlook on life, in the new
perspective and the new responsibilities that the married state opened
to him. A year before, the sheriff would have chafed at any restraint
which prohibited enjoyment with his friends after the fashion of the
country. Now, he willingly abandoned all his former boon companions whom
he chanced to meet, and did not do it with a sense of righteousness for
having lived up to his duty, but cheerfully, gladly, because their
companionship seemed now stale and flat and purposeless. And he was
always anxious to get home.
"Don't you lose none of them parcels, sheriff," they would chaff,
standing on the sidewalk to watch Johnson tie his purchases to the
saddle.
"Has she done begun to cut your hair yet, Lafe?" another inquired.
Johnson would grin comfortably, and with an "Adios, you fellers," ride
off towards Hope Canon. Invariably he brought a present for Hetty.
Everything pretty that he saw struck him as a possible gift for her, so
that their home waxed in comfort.
In his blighted days of singleness, Lafe had often taken hearty
amusement out of the simple fact that some among his married friends
were obliged to rise at unearthly hours in order to light fires and do
household chores which he considered to be within the feminine province.
On the first mornings of their residence in the new home, he performed
these tasks as a loving attention. Of course, ever after he had to do
them as a duty. Once a man does a thing, he establishes a precedent
which a conscientious individual finds it hard to break--but, bless you,
Lafe would never have permitted Hetty to do jobs of this sort, that were
within his own powers of performance. So he helped cheerily as
dishwasher and assistant housemaid, this gunfighting sheriff of Badger.
Yet Lafe did not emerge wholly scatheless from the ill customs of a
lifetime. On a day, old man Horne sent him to Badger in company of a
cattle buyer, with whom Horne was making a deal that ran into hundreds
of thousands of dollars. And his orders were that Johnson was to get the
buyer drunk and keep him in that enviable condition as long as he could.
This is considered legitimate in the cow country and "good business."
Lafe did so. And in the course of his enthusiastic labors, he took on a
cargo which he found some difficulty in storing. The night of his
return, Johnson, as he rode up Hope Canon, sang a ditty which were best
forgotten by a respectable married man.
The house was in darkness, and when he would have entered their bedroom,
he found the door locked.
"This ain't no time to get mad," Lafe said warily, winking into the
dark, and went to sleep on one of the bunks.
Next morning his appetite for breakfast was far below normal, but he
kept Hetty busy boiling coffee.
"What was the trouble last night?" he had the brazenness to ask.
"I knew there was something the matter when I saw that note you sent
from town by the boy," said Hetty, "and I didn't want to see you. What I
don't know won't hurt me much, I reckon."
Lafe was feeling very shaky, and looked up at her from his plate with
marked shamefacedness.
"It won't never happen again," he promised, and Hetty came around behind
his chair and put her arms about his neck.
"You've been a pretty good boy," she whispered, "but, oh, Lafe, I just
couldn't bear to see you. That's why I locked the door."
Johnson took to his cow work with much zest. The Anvil range was a huge
domain, a kingdom in itself. The bawling of Horne's calves sounded from
the 108th to the 111th meridian of longitude and the Anvil steers grazed
a thousand hills. Much of this land was free range, the property of the
American people; but Horne controlled it by owning all the water-holes,
and defended his rights by the iron hand. In addition to the free grass,
he had some hundreds of thousands of acres under fence, which was his by
purchase of Spanish grants--a portion of it on the other side of the
Border.
To be boss of the Anvil, then, meant something. Directly and indirectly,
Lafe had two hundred men under him. Fifty of these were cowboys; the
others were employed as windmill hands, as farmers to grow feed for the
cattle in winter, and as laborers to put up new fences, corrals and
division camps, for Horne was laying out the range on his own lines.
Johnson chose his outfit with considerable shrewdness. He was a keen
judge of men and knew cattle from horn to hoof and beyond to the stock
yards. Therefore the Anvil riders were famed in the land as expert
cowmen. Ability to ride or dexterity with the rope did not win a cowboy
a place with the Anvil. He took those who best understood the science of
the range. Most of them were Texans, and men of mature years.
"The northern boys make better busters," he told Horne. "Take 'em all in
all and they can beat our boys riding. But they don't know cattle like
these longhorn Texans do. No, sir; it takes our southern boys to know
how to handle cattle."
Thus did Lafe make a propitious start and win respect. And the months
went by, and the two in Hope Canon were ridiculously happy.
Unruffled happiness cannot endure for long. Perhaps it would pall if it
did. A thing, to be deemed precious, must have contrasts to establish
its value. So there entered into the wedded life of the Johnsons its
first severe jar.