already bitching about Joe Aguirre's sleep-with-the-sheep-and-no-
fire order, though he saddled the bay mare in the dark morning
without saying much. Dawn came glassy orange, stained from below
by a gelatinous band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mountain
paled slowly until it was the same color as the smoke from Ennis's
breakfast fire. The cold air sweetened, banded pebbles and crumbs
of soil cast sudden pencil-long shadows and the rearing lodgepole
pines below them massed in slabs of somber malachite.
During the day Ennis looked across a great gulf and sometimes saw
Jack, a small dot moving across a high meadow as an insect moves
across a tablecloth; Jack, in his dark camp, saw Ennis as night fire, a
red spark on the huge black mass of mountain.
Jack came lagging in late one afternoon, drank his two bottles of
beer cooled in a wet sack on the shady side of the tent, ate two bowls
of stew, four of Ennis's stone biscuits, a can of peaches, rolled a
smoke, watched the sun drop.
"I'm commutin four hours a day," he said morosely. "Come in for
breakfast, go back to the sheep, evenin get em bedded down, come
in for supper, go back to the sheep, spend half the night jumpin up
and checkin for coyotes. By rights I should be spendin the night
here. Aguirre got no right a make me do this."
"You want a switch?" said Ennis. "I wouldn't mind herdin. I
wouldn't mind sleepin out there."
"That ain't the point. Point is, we both should be in this camp. And
that goddamn pup tent smells like cat piss or worse."
"Wouldn't mind bein out there."
"Tell you what, you got a get up a dozen times in the night out there
over them coyotes. Happy to switch but give you warnin I can't cook
worth a sh*t. Pretty good with a can opener."
"Can't be no worse than me, then. Sure, I wouldn't mind a do it."
They fended off the night for an hour with the yellow kerosene lamp
and around ten Ennis rode Cigar Butt, a good night horse, through
the glimmering frost back to the sheep, carrying leftover biscuits, a
jar of jam and a jar of coffee with him for the next day saying he'd
save a trip, stay out until supper.
"Shot a coyote just first light," he told Jack the next evening,
sloshing his face with hot water, lathering up soap and hoping his
razor had some cut left in it, while Jack peeled potatoes. "Big son of
a bitch. Balls on him size a apples. I bet he'd took a few lambs.
Looked like he could a eat a camel. You want some a this hot water?
There's plenty."
"It's all yours."
"Well, I'm goin a warsh everthing I can reach," he said, pulling off
his boots and jeans (no drawers, no socks, Jack noticed), slopping
the green washcloth around until the fire spat.
They had a high-time supper by the fire, a can of beans each, fried
potatoes and a quart of whiskey on shares, sat with their backs
against a log, boot soles and copper jeans rivets hot, swapping the
bottle while the lavender sky emptied of color and the chill air
drained down, drinking, smoking cigarettes, getting up every now
and then to piss, firelight throwing a sparkle in the arched stream,
tossing sticks on the fire to keep the talk going, talking horses and
rodeo, roughstock events, wrecks and injuries sustained, the
submarine Thresher lost two months earlier with all hands and how
it must have been in the last doomed minutes, dogs each had owned
and known, the draft, Jack's home ranch where his father and mother
held on, Ennis's family place folded years ago after his folks died,
the older brother in Signal and a married sister in Casper. Jack said
his father had been a pretty well known bullrider years back but kept
his secrets to himself, never gave Jack a word of advice, never came
once to see Jack ride, though he had put him on the woolies when he
was a little kid. Ennis said the kind of riding that interested him
lasted longer than eight seconds and had some point to it. Money's a
good point, said Jack, and Ennis had to agree. They were respectful
of each other's opinions, each glad to have a companion where none
had been expected. Ennis, riding against the wind back to the sheep
in the treacherous, drunken light, thought he'd never had such a good
time, felt he could paw the white out of the moon.
The summer went on and they moved the herd to new pasture,
shifted the camp; the distance between the sheep and the new camp
was greater and the night ride longer. Ennis rode easy, sleeping with
his eyes open, but the hours he was away from the sheep stretched
out and out. Jack pulled a squalling burr out of the harmonica,
flattened a little from a fall off the skittish bay mare, and Ennis had a
good raspy voice; a few nights they mangled their way through some
songs. Ennis knew the salty words to "Strawberry Roan." Jack tried
a Carl Perkins song, bawling "what I say-ay-ay," but he favored a
sad hymn, "Water-Walking Jesus," learned from his mother who
believed in the Pentecost, that he sang at dirge slowness, setting off
distant coyote yips.
"Too late to go out to them damn sheep," said Ennis, dizzy drunk on
all fours one cold hour when the moon had notched past two. The
meadow stones glowed white-green and a flinty wind worked over
the meadow, scraped the fire low, then ruffled it into yellow silk
sashes. "Got you a extra blanket I'll roll up out here and grab forty
winks, ride out at first light."
"Freeze your ass off when that fire dies down. Better off sleepin in
the tent."
"Doubt I'll feel nothin." But he staggered under canvas, pulled his
boots off, snored on the ground cloth for a while, woke Jack with the
clacking of his jaw.
"Jesus Christ, quit hammerin and get over here. Bedroll's big
enough," said Jack in an irritable sleep-clogged voice. It was big
enough, warm enough, and in a little while they deepened their
intimacy considerably. Ennis ran full-throttle on all roads whether
fence mending or money spending, and he wanted none of it when
Jack seized his left hand and brought it to his erect cock. Ennis
jerked his hand away as though he'd touched fire, got to his knees,
unbuckled his belt, shoved his pants down, hauled Jack onto all
fours and, with the help of the clear slick and a little spit, entered
him, nothing he'd done before but no instruction manual needed.
They went at it in silence except for a few sharp intakes of breath
and Jack's choked "gun's goin off," then out, down, and asleep.
Ennis woke in red dawn with his pants around his knees, a top-grade
headache, and Jack butted against him; without saying anything
about it both knew how it would go for the rest of the summer, sheep
be damned.
As it did go. They never talked about the sex, let it happen, at first
only in the tent at night, then in the full daylight with the hot sun