There was Con, Connor Kevin O’Brien, the 50 year old Irishman who was built like a bull and, true to Irish stereotype, drank like a fish. His red beard was thick as bramble. He tried to make up for his five foot eight frame by trying to be the strong, fearless one on the ranch. He loved to tell of every arm wrestling match, every fist fight (all the way back to primary school) and bar brawl he’d ever been in. He was likable , quick witted, and good hearted really. But, he was not fearless. Dale had seen him on two occasions in confrontations, and both times Con had shook like a leaf in the wind. Fact is, people never really thought of Con as short much, but he did, and his inferior feelings caused him to put on a false bravado that detracted from an otherwise pleasant personality. His years of hard drinking were catching up to him. He was much slower to recover from a night of drinking now, but he could still wrestle a steer to the ground when he had to.
Bo Hanson was the opposite of Con. Tall, lanky and quiet. Bo talked little and smiled a lot. He could work from daylight to dark and not utter twenty words. He said once , “I just don’t have a lot of words in me.” When Bo was 15, a tornado roared down on his families’ farm in west Kansas. Bo had gone down to the creek for water when the storm hit, and he had ducked under the rocks in the spring for shelter. When the fury of rain and wind had passed, he climbed up the bank of the creek, and stared at the devastation. Two miles of debris was all that was left of the farm. He buried his father, mother and sister that day; his brother two days later, when a neighbor found the body in a ravine. Bo left Kansas soon after that and just drifted west. He ran into old Tom McCubbins, the owner of the Leaning Y Ranch, in Tucson, and Old Tom brought him to the ranch to work a while. That was thirty years ago. After all he’d been through, at so young an age, any words must seem idle to him, Dale figured.
Willie Mathus was from eastern Tennessee. Willie had fought for the Confederacy during the war and that made him unpopular with Yanks and with many folks of his own color. Truth is, Willie never understood or cared much about the politics of the war, he had joined because the plantation owners son had. They were like brothers. Both young men wound up as soldiers in the 5th North Carolina Cavalry. Willie as a cook, his friend an officer. Willie survived the war, his dear friend did not. Freed after the civil war, he had left home and joined a wagon train headed for California and a new life. After the wagon train had stopped in New Mexico for supplies, Willie had decided to light out on his own. He rode in to the Leaning Y Ranch looking for work and they had needed a cook. And a fine cook he turned out to be. Hard built but soft natured, Willie was liked by everyone who knew him. Many had respect for his shooting ability too. He could put out a jack rabbits eye at one hundred yards.
There were the youngsters, like Tom Davis, the prankster. Bill Watts the short fused bronc-buster from Oklahoma, and Shawn Hennessey, another Irishman, who was a top hand and roper, to round off the list in the bunkhouse. The boys on the range today, Jake, Fred, and Pablo were all solid, dependable young men.They would be riding in soon from counting cattle this week, in need of a bath and Willie's good cookin'. 'Every size, color and make up', Tom liked to say '....and all as good a hand as anywhere in the Territories. Better than many.'
The Leaning Y was home to all these men. The only real home a few of them had ever known.“Everyone here is from somewhere else” they all liked to say, “and never goin’ anywhere.” ‘Never goin’ anywhere’ Dale mused, 'until today.' He looked at his cup, tossed out the remainder, and stepped off the porch toward the stables.
Dale was a relative newcomer to the Leaning Y . He had an education but loved ranching, and just was never really happy anywhere but in the saddle, workin' with cows. After leaving his native Virginia, he worked at a few ranches in New Mexico and Texas, and did a stint as railroad security man. He had decided to move on to Arizona seven years ago. He had stumbled on to the ranch while the Leaning Y hands were checking spring calves on the Mexican border. He had ridden into their camp, where Willie met him and offered him a hot plate. Old Tom McCubbins came to check on things later that day, liked Dale after a little conversation with him, and offered him a job. Dale accepted. Two months later, Old Tom died from a snake bite and the ranch was turned over to his son Tom Jr. Tom hated to be called “junior” so it had always been “Old Tom” and Tom. Tom now owned the Leaning Y.
Dale and Tom saw ranching pretty much eye to eye, and things had gone well. After two years, Tom appointed Dale manager. None of the hands had voiced any objections. No one had a keener eye for quality stock than Dale. He was high on discipline but fair in his judgments. He worked hard and expected others to, but he new each man had his own way of doing things. Together they all got the job done. The Leanin’ Y was doing well today. That fact didn’t make leaving any easier. But as much as he had come to love the twenty thousand acres of this ranch, and loved working with this bunch of cowboys, he knew he had to go. People were going to get hurt if he stayed.
(To be continued)
