Brush Country Two Texas Novels

Chapter One It was a sorry way for a cowboy to make a living, Doug Monahan thought disgustedly. Bending his back over a rocky posthole, he plunged the heavy iron crowbar downward, hearing its angry ring and feeling the violent jar of it bruising the stubborn rock bottom. He rubbed sweat from his forehead onto his sleeve and straightened his sore back, pausing to rest a moment and look around. Across the broad sweep of the gray-grass valley, up the brush-dotted hill and down again on the gentle far slope, new cedar posts stood erect like a long row of silent soldiers. And stretched taut down the length of the line, four strands of red barbed wire gleamed brightly in the late-winter Texas sun. Doug Monahan had the look of the cowboy about him, the easy, rolling gait, the slack yet somehow right way of wearing his clothes that stamped him as a man of the saddle. But he wasn't riding now, and he hadn't for quite a spell. Sweat darkened his hickory shirt under the arms and down the back, the spots rimmed with white salt and caked with dirt. The knees of his denim pants were worn through and frazzled out. His brush-scarred boots were run over at the heels from a long time of working afoot. He gripped the crowbar with big, leather-gloved hands, lifting it and driving it down into the narrow posthole. Each strike chipped off rock and caliche. Sulfurous sparks flew angrily against his dusty boots. The rocky ground was fighting him every foot of the way. At length he went down on his knees with a bent can to scoop dirt and chipped rock out of the hole. Wiping sweat from his stubbled face, he stood up and stretched. His gritty hands pressed against the small of his back, trying to ease the ache that was there. His gaze drifted in satisfaction back down the fenceline, where two other men also were digging postholes. Past them, a dozen cedar posts leaned at crazy angles in unfilled holes an even rod apart. Beyond these stretched the unfinished fence, stout heart-cedar posts hauled up from the river and tamped solid in holes nearly three feet deep. And on them, the heavy No. 9 wire gleamed with its bright red coat of factory-dipped paint and its wickedly sharp barbs. The pleasant tang of mesquite smoke drifted to him on the crisp breeze. Monahan looked down toward his chuckwagon. By the sun, which with retreating winter still stood a little to the south, it was almost noon. Paco Sanchez would have dinner ready directly. Monahan frowned a little, watching his wagon. Gordon Finch sat there with three of his men, sipping coffee. Sat there like a lazy pot hound. He had a right to, Monahan supposed, for after all, this was Finch's ranch. But nothing ever graveled Monahan quite so much as to have someone sitting around idly on his fat haunches and watching him work. The easy breeze carried with it a sharp breath from the Panhandle to the north. Monahan shivered as the chill touched him. He picked up the crowbar and began chipping again. Hard muscles swelled tight within the rolled-up sleeves as the bar battered its way downward. This was a real comedown for Monahan. Once he'd had a ranch of his own down in the South Texas brush country, and there had been a time when he might have been too proud to do this kind of work. But a long, hard drought can make a man do things he never thought he would. Doug Monahan was young yet, with a glint of red in his hair and whiskers to go with the Irish name. He had blue eyes that could laugh easily, or could strike quick sparks, like the strong iron bar that bruised its way into the resisting earth. Finishing the hole, measuring it by a ring he had painted thirty inches up on the bar, he walked to a small stack of cedar posts. He picked one and dropped it into the hole. He stood it sKelton, Elmer is the author of 'Brush Country Two Texas Novels', published 2006 under ISBN 9780765310194 and ISBN 0765310198.