That Old Ace in the Hole. Annie Proulx
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Your panhandle millionaire prefers a live in a trailer house and put the money into land and horses. Anyway, how lucky you are, Bob Dollar, to have a good job in a world where so many strive hand to mouth. In that case you probably don’t mind givin me a month’s rent in advance? I got a be protected in case you skip.”
He smiled and said he would write the check on the spot, then added, “Is there something in that plastic container? I thought I saw something move. In the top one?”
“That’s Pinky.” She reached for the box, set it between them and pried up the cover. Bob was horrified to see a tan tarantula with baby pink feet staring up at him. He rose so abruptly his chair tipped over. The spider reared back in alarm.
“She won’t hurt you,” said La Von. “She’s very quiet. I’m surprised you noticed her move. She spends most of her time in her hideout.” She pointed at several pieces of heavy bark propped at the back of the sweater box. “It seems a little dry,” she said, putting her hand in the box and feeling the wood chips and soil. The spider ignored her. She took up a small bottle near the phone and squirted the cage interior with a fine mist, replaced the cover.
“Long as I’m misting,” she said, putting down the bottle and reached for the other box.
“You’ve got two,” said Bob without enthusiasm.
“This one is different,” she said, carefully lifting up one corner of the lid. “This is Tonya. She’s a Togo starburst, an African arboreal. They’re both arboreals, but Pinky comes from Latin America, from the rain forest.” Bob moved closer to get a better look. “Stay back, Bob, this one can jump and she is very aggressive and bites like a flash. The bite can make you feel pretty sick.” He saw the grey spider had a beautiful starburst pattern on its carapace. It was not as large as Pinky. He was relieved when LaVon put the cover back.
“I only had Tonya for a year, but Pinky almost five. She could live to be eight or nine years old. That’s a short life span for a tarantula. Now your Mexican blond can live to be forty. They are long-term pets.”
The sky was the color of cold tea when he went out.
On the bunkhouse porch that evening when it grew too dark to see the words he fetched his flashlight, for he was at the point in the narrative where the lieutenant was looking at drawings by Old Bark’s son (who had earlier danced with “extravagant contortions”), autobiographical drawings in which the son vigorously attacked Pawnees with his lance. The lieutenant was generous, praising the execution and the “considerable feeling” for proportion and general design. Bob felt that if the lieutenant had had Old Bark’s son in a drawing class he would have given him a gold star. But when the famous guide Thomas Fitzpatrick came on the scene, cautioning the lieutenant never to tie mules to bushes, for they twitched the branches, each rustle convincing them that the enemies of mules were creeping near, the flashlight began to dim and falter and after a few minutes he gave up and went early to bed. At that moment, sitting in the deep dusk, the flashlight beam weakening, the course of Bob Dollar’s life shifted, all unknown to him, for he was conscious only of his annoyance at the lack of light and swore to get a camp light or candle the next day.
In 1878 in Manhattan, Kansas, Martin Merton Fronk, twenty-three years of age, the son of a German immigrant watchmaker, sat on Doctor Jick’s leather examination table, coughing and wheezing.
“Well, young man,” said Doc Jick, “what I think is that you are suffering from a concentration of the humid nature of our local atmosphere, which, however fragrant and delightful to the majority of nostrils, affects some few in a deleterious manner. You, I fear, are among that rare number. Your constitution is somewhat weak and renders you unable to enjoy or profit from the lowland airs. I advise you to seek a higher, drier climate where crystalline breezes sweep through the atmosphere with rapidity and frequency. I would suggest to you the high plains of Texas where other sufferers have gone before you and found themselves much improved within a year. Not a few with tuberculosis.”
“Do I have tuberculosis?”
“I think not. You have a sensitivity to vapors and dampness. I have no hesitation in recommending you to the Texas high ground. There is, in fact, a very good medical man in Woolybucket – oh, these Texas town names – who has cared for and cured a number of respiratory cases far worse than yours. You can seek him out with confidence. D. F. Mugg, M.D., keenly interested in the malaises of the human body and good horse trader as well.”
“I have no idea what I might do out there to make my living.”
“I understand it is a fair country for farming, but even better for the raising of cattle. Many men, especially young men such as yourself, are flocking to the region seeking their fortunes through the rich grass and pure water. Once your lungs have healed in the healthful air, as I have every confidence they will do, I do not doubt that you will be yo-ho-hoing and riding at breakneck speed across the flower-spangled highlands. You might go farther north to Wyoming Territory or Montana, but those environs suffer deadly winter chill and blizzard snows. At least Texas has warmth.”
Later, Fronk reflected bitterly on those words. Yet while in a state of blissful ignorance he put his affairs in order and converted most of his worldly goods into cash ($432), argued with his father, who still cherished dreams that his son would come to the watchmaker’s bench. After three days of wrangling the father understood the son’s departure was inevitable, and, in late April of 1878, Martin Fronk climbed onto a huffing, west-bound train accompanied by a valise and a trunk packed with such necessaries as an axe, some good hemp rope and fourteen back issues of the Louisiana Go-Steady, an occasional illustrated paper of incendiary political views and attractive engravings of little-known foreign regions, a class in which Martin mentally placed Texas, high ground and low. As well he had put a small sack of yams in the trunk and a paper packet of coffee beans wrapped and tied by his younger sister, Lighty
When the train stopped for an hour in a town that seemed to consist of one large emporium and swarms of cattle, he got out to stretch his legs, entered the store and purchased three cans of oysters, one of which he opened and ate on the platform, the other two going into his valise. The train started with a terrific jerk, then settled into a monotonous and swaying side-to-side motion. In the issue of the Go-Steady he was perusing, a timely article on cattle raising had his rapt attention, and he barely noticed the extraordinary span of the bridge over which the train was passing, 840 feet in length, the conductor announced.
Cattle, he read, needed no care nor cosseting on the Texas plains. One turned them out and let them graze as they would, then, once or twice a year, rounded them up with the help of the children of the region (thus he interpreted “cowboys”) and drove the beasts to market in exchange for money. So plentiful were ownerless cows on the Texas plains that a poor but ambitious man could make his fortune in one or two years. Coughing lightly, he turned the page and read that a cow valued in Texas at five or ten dollars would sell for thirty dollars in Kansas City. The article described the economics of driving three thousand cows from Texas to a Kansas railhead. The eleven men needed to drive them, including a cook, each cost thirty dollars per month – that was $330. Another hundred went to the trail boss, another hundred to provisions: that made $530 a month in costs. The cows could bring $90,000. Suddenly, his future seemed clear.
The article went on to explain that the most efficient and inexpensive procedure was to arrange for the services of a contract drover rather than use one’s own cowboys, who were needed on the home ranch to care for the next cow crop. Or, in yet another scenario, the article presented the example of a rancher with six strong sons who managed the trail drive with animals from the ranch, sons who were paid little or nothing, for the ranch would come to them in the sweet by-and-by. But, Martin thought, one did not find six strong sons on alder bushes. He supposed it would take decades, even if he had a wife, to grow strong and cattle-minded sons. As he read on he understood that contract drovers themselves could make fortunes, and eventually purchase and stock