After two days, they agreed to be buddies again. But Dale had written her a love letter for Valentine's Day. "One year we were both in love with the teacher," he says. "We had only one disagreement," Hank says.ĭale's face starts to turn red. Some years they were the only boys in school, sitting one behind the other in the desks, arriving early when it was cold to start up the fire in the stove, playing catch with a couple baseball gloves at recess, and when the weather turned hot, riding to a creek on the way home to shuck off their jeans and swim buck naked under the willows. The two of them grew up four miles apart on neighboring ranches and rode their horses to get there. It was a little one-room school house, Hank explains. They often glance into each other's eyes, Hank ribbing his partner and either patting him on the back of his shoulder or nudging him with his elbow. They are so easy with each other, they're like a pair of old boots. "You two guys been riding together a long time?" Don says. But that little filly over there is looking for a young stud, and I'll put money on it." "You fell off your horse once too often, and you gimp around like a grandpa. "That ain't the way I heard it," Hank says. "The young pretty ones kinda lose interest when ya start gettin' long in the tooth."
"And ya ain't gettin' any younger either, pardner," Hank says. "I ain't ready for that kind of regular," Dale says. How many times do I have to tell you that?"
"You want it regular," Hank is saying to Dale, "You gotta get yourself hitched. Don has put his own ring in his jeans pocket and is getting the feeling back of being single. He is the married one of the two, a wide gold ring on the hand holding his beer bottle. Hank is wearing a crisp checked shirt, and he's got a big oval belt buckle, shined and polished, from when the two of them took first at a big rodeo last year. The girl, in short curly hair and a cowboy hat, is talking to the bartender, a crew-cut guy with sideburns, all duded up with a red silk scarf around his neck. "Or are they all broke?"ĭale makes a face and then glances over his shoulder down the bar. "When's the last time you took a look in the mirror?" says Hank and grins over his beer. "He's had his eye on that girl down the bar, but she ain't had enough to drink yet to give him a second look." You might get lucky yet." Hank laughs and turns to Don, the brims of their hats almost touching. "I like to think I did better than get lucky." Hank has his back to the wall under the mounted head of a bison.
"Aw, we got lucky today, don't you think, Dale?" The three of them are standing pushed together near the end of the bar. One of them, Hank, turns to his partner and gives him a wink. "You looked real good out there," Don says to the two men. They sat upright in their saddles as the announcer called their time, tugging their hats onto their heads and looking at each other with warm smiles as the crowd applauded. He remembers their neat dash from the chute, horses galloping after a white-faced calf, and their ropes whirling in the air and sailing over its horns and under its rear hooves, too fast to really see. It is stifling hot, and the noise of raised voices and laughter would wake the dead.ĭon has found two men, Hank and Dale, who took second that day in calf roping at the rodeo. The Frontier Bar in Crawford is jammed, mostly with cowboys standing shoulder to shoulder and drinking beers. This work is copyrighted by the author and may not be copied or distributed in any form without the written permission of the author. If you are offended by such material or if you are not allowed access to it under the laws where you live, please exit now.
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