The Revenge Of Pride

The moon was almost straight up in the heavens making the night nearly as light as day. As the rider cut across country not using the wagon road, raising and falling as he disappeared in the valleys and swales to appear again on the high ground. He was moving fast because Frank Willard was days late getting home. His father would be troubled by his absence because he had not planned to be away from the ranch so long.

Pulling the bay horse in on the last hill overlooking the valley Frank pushed his hat back on hair as black as a raven’s wing, while he observed the wagon road below him. It was nearly overgrown with grass because it was seldom ever used, except by the Willards when they went to Hill City occasionally for supplies. A hand went to the pocket of his shirt for tobacco and papers. As he freed the right boot from the stirrup and lifted the leg to hook it over the pommel of the saddle, Frank shook tobacco into one of the papers. When he returned the tobacco to his pocket he let his gaze touch his back trail and the hills about him. He lit the cigarette while listening to the night that was almost quiet. The distant cries of the coyotes and the faint murmur of the creek down by the road where the water spilled over the ledge of rock were the only sounds that broke the stillness.        

The bay horse stirred under him, ready to move on after the few moments rest. Frank straightened in the saddle while his gaze sought out the ranch buildings across the valley where they stood close to the first low hills of the mountain range rolling and climbing back toward the north. They looked green and lush in the moonlight, but Willard knew that it was not true for this was home. He was raised here. Anything you received from this land you earned - every penny.

His father had come here sometime after the Civil War, with a young Spanish woman, his mother. She was very beautiful, or so he had been told. She had died giving him birth, not having the strength to survive this harsh, lonesome land. Because it had taken his mother he wanted to hate this land. But as he gazed at the sleeping hills about him, Frank realized he had become a part of it -- its vastness, its ability to make or break a man in a few short weeks, and, occasionally, its beauty.

The bay horse moved again, tossing its head, wanting to go on home. Frank settled him with a word, as the red ashes of his cigarette illuminated the deep bronze of his features. Thoughts of the past came tumbling one by one. He could remember wanting and needing his mother the first years of his life while his father saw to the running of the ranch. Rodney, Frank’s brother, had always been larger than he was, so if Frank didn’t mind what he was told, Rodney would cuff Frank’s ears. He would go running to his bed or hide in the barn where he would cry, wanting someone to love him and take care of his small hurts, to help fill the loneliness of his life. Some part of each day Frank would go to his mother’s grave out back of the house with a bunch of wild flowers he had picked down by the creek to place on her grave. He would spend some time there talking to his mother, wondering if his life would have been better if she had lived.

The Willard ranch was a small spread because of the limited amount of grass this land produced. The two hundred acres of valley grass had to feed the remuda and also furnish winter feed for the three hundred odd cattle the Willards run. During the summer the cattle ran back in the hills where the grass was poor, at best. Most every summer the water holes from the winter snow run-off dried up, so the cattle had to be moved to water.

Frank flung the cigarette from him and pulled his hat down, as he jumped the bay horse from the hill top. The bay plunged down the slope sending rocks and dirt ahead of him, with its iron shoes ringing loudly on the rocky ground. Reaching the valley floor the bay was almost full out, so Willard pulled him down to an easy lope, to come into the wagon road, passing through the sagging gate into the ranch yard, to swing down from the saddle at the corral. Frank’s brothers’ brown gelding and his father’s sorrel nickered, leaving the hay to poke their noses over the gate. Frank loosened the saddle and as he pulled it free from the bay’s back and deposited it on the ground, Tom Willard hollered from the house, “If that you, Frank?”\

As he opened the gate to shoo the other horses back to let the bay horse in, Frank answered, “It’s me, Pa.”

The bay horse laid back his ears, not wanting to play for he was tired and wanted to get at the hay in the rack.

Frank swung the gate closed with the soft whisper of leather from his chaps and the jingle of his spurs in the dust of the yard. With a grunt he shouldered the stock saddle to move it to the porch. The moon had made its climb and now had begun to make its descent to the west. A spring a few yards from the house was loud in the night stillness, where it tumbled over the ledge of rock, to collect in the pool below. Two ageless willow trees flourished at the water’s edge, sinking their roots deep into the wet dark soil, to give the place its name Willow Spring Ranch. Frank disposed of the saddle on the porch with other gear, to step into the silhouette darkness of the house. It was a low structure of one room, built of log and stone, with the fireplace in the opposite wall from the entrance. A black bearskin rug was on the rough planking of the floor before the hearth, along with an old wooden rocking chair, where Tom Willard passed winter evenings smoking and gazing into the fire. A match flared sending flickering shadows through the room, illuminating Tom Willard’s tall shape in red ragged underwear where he sat on an old four-posted bed that had come in the wagon all the way from Sante Fe. The flickering light showed his rugged well-formed features, burned red by the wind and sun. Peeling of the skin left white blotches on cheek and nose. The shaggy auburn hair was streaked with gray. The aroma of long green tobacco lingered in the still air of the room, as the match went out.

Tom Willard spoke around the stem of the pipe, his voice being deep but gentle. “Frank, where have you been? I made a trip down into the basin thinking maybe you were in trouble again.”

“Sorry, Pa. Didn’t mean to cause you any undue anxiety.”

Frank discarded hat, chaps and gunbelt on the peg by the door, then strolled across the worn planking of the floor to his bunk. With a deep throated sound expressing disapproval, Rodney Willard aroused from sleep as the bunk groaned and squeaked under its burden. Rodney shifted his great bulk to a sitting position and scrubbed the sleep from his features that displayed a three day growth of red whiskers with a huge hand.

Tom Willard continued, “It’s been three years, Frank, since Buck Cross gave you that beating and threw you off the Flying H. You have to get hold of yourself, Frank. You can’t go on having a grievance the rest of your life, riding with the likes of Monto Trail, that will get himself hung sooner or