Rhizomania, or The Cavalry Gun

“Did you want me to shoot him in the back?” asked Shorty, shifting the rifle in his arms so he could get at his tobacco pouch. “You told him to run, you know you did,” said Doran. “We should have kept him at the house and taken him to the sheriff.” “And told the sheriff that a man came in our barn and moved a horse and tied him up wrong?” Shorty opened the leather pouch, withdrew a cigarette paper and a pinch of tobacco, and began to roll a smoke. “There ain’t any laws against being a just plain stupid person, Doran.” “They cut the fence!” Doran shouted, curling his hands into fists.  He paced around in a circle, the loose uppers of his mulehide boots rubbing against his bare legs. “They about beat me to death!  They was going to burn the barn down with Redboy and Ben in it!” Shorty licked the cigarette paper’s edge, finished the tight cylinder, then stuck it in his mouth. He lifted the lantern from its spot on the grassy turf, raised the mantle on it, and applied the hot fl

“Your ribs was all popped out of place,” said Shorty. “Shifted over, with their tethers all twisted. You’re all right now, ain’t you?” He picked up his Winchester from among damp clumps of buffalograss, and held out a leathery hand for the fallen man to take. “Go ahead and get up on your feet and see if you can walk.” Doran briefly considered coming around to the man’s other side and offering another hand, but he thought it best to stay back and ready in case there was trouble.  Shorty had a good grip on the Winchester, but if the man lunged for the rifle, Doran could step up and push him down as long as he had a couple steps’ head start.   The man rolled forward on his dusty knees, then cautiously pushed himself up from the ground, waiting to straighten his back until he had taken an experimental deep breath. Satisfied, he had a change of attitude. He now stood upright with his shoulders rolled backward into a defiant posture, so that he both leaned back in a contentious man’s sl

Then he heard Redboy’s high, frightened whinny.   Doran’s feet were in his boots and he was on the other side of the one-room dwelling in a moment, leaving behind him and a spilled tin cup lying in a dark puddle of cold coffee, plus an upset chair, in his wake.   Outside in the cool night air, Doran heard behind him, through  the open doorway, the sounds of a sleepy, confused Shorty, stumbling in the dark and swearing continuously.  From inside the dark cabin came a louder, metallic sound. After a moment, Doran identified it as the spilled tin cup on its side, rattling across the pine floorboards and hit the wall. Shorty said loudly, to the dark, empty room, “What are you about , Doran?” But Doran, even if he'd felt like explaining a spilled coffee cup on the floor, did not have time for rhetorical questions. He'd already begun to run toward the barn, where Redboy’s distress sounds had intensified, both vocal distress calls and the heavy thumps of hoofs hitting the s

“We went  every  day,” said Shorty, sounding astonished at the younger man’s ignorance. “I had a good job on the work crew that laid in all those lagoons and canals –“ “Lagoons?” “Don’t you know nothing ?” said Shorty, mopping his face with his bandanna, then tucking the damp cloth into his pants pocket. “The fairgounds was all water up the middle. The Grand Basin and canals off the main basin, leading off in every direction.With gondola boats, like a canoe but the ends curl up.  And then there was islands. Lagoons and waterways around the islands. Who do you think dug all that out?”  Shorty leaned over, reached out and picked up a well-worn work boot from a wall shelf. He grasped the broken-off end of some loose stitching with his thumb and forefinger, and began to pull the stiff, dirty thread away from the leather. “Some of the other fellas thought the foreman might not want me to hire on. Thought I was too little. But when I went to see him, I told him, “You let me dig all