Hey, Cowgirl, Need a Ride?

November 27, 1986: Lick and Al in Camp Lick looked around. There wasn't nobody there. Of course there wasn't nobody there. Just him and the old man on a winter camp somewhere north of the Nevada line in the wilds of Owyhee County. The camp was a twenty-year-old, sixty-five-foot single-wide New Moon house trailer that the company had pulled out here in the middle of a piece of high desert called Pandora's Thumb. Good enough for two cowboys to bach and take care of four hundred cows on winter range. The old man had a car. An old four-door Ford sedan that hadn't had a current emissions sticker in ten years and seldom ran without tinkering. The ranch manager brought them groceries every Wednesday from Bruneau, Idaho, a good two-hour drive. No phone, no fax, no electricity. No Kwik Chek, Wal-Mart, Denny's, Backyard Burger, Pizza Hut, roping arena, therapist, or tanning salon. No contact with the outside world except that weekly visit. "What's the matter with you, Al? Ain't nobody here." "Git my gun, kid. I think they're fixin' to overrun the bunker! Them Huns kin sure fight. I know. I've played cards with 'em. Drunk their whiskey, danced their women, and done their polka. And kid"Al lifted his head conspiratorily"I never did like beer. Took too long to git drunk. Like enterin' the Dixie 500 in a Ford Pinto. Ya spend all yer time just gettin' there. "Did I ever tellya 'bout the time I shot down one of our own planes?" Al paused. A curtain pulled over his eyes. The old man's head crashed back onto the bunk and within five breaths he was snoring like a diesel. Lincoln Delgado Davis, or Lick, as he was known, was a long way from his college degree, his failed marriage, and his fizzled attempt at rodeo. Thirty-four, single, and beholden to no one, he was ambivalent about his future. The word "career" wasn't part of his vocabulary. He'd signed on with this outfit because he wanted to do some ranch cowboyin'. He'd spent time in feedlots and figgered this would be different. It was. Bein' stuck with the old man wasn't so bad. In the two months they'd been together, first at the headquarters and now here, the old man had been through several hallucinatory spells like tonight. Wuddn't no big deal. Lick didn't know exactly how old the old man was. He was cagey about tellin'. Maybe he didn't know himself, but Lick assumed he was long past retirement age. One thing for sure, he did look old. Al's gray hair was thin and about gone on top. His bare head had probably seen less sun than a Carlsbad Caverns bat. In the facial latitudes south of his hat brim his skin was as soft and supple as a welding glove. Years of toasting his ups and downs had left a road map of broken veins across his rosy cheeks and nose. His eyes were faded blue and his fighting weight, which he claimed to have maintained since coming of age, was 146. We can assume that was fully dressed. He stood five foot eight when he enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1943. Out of kindness, one might characterize him as wiry, maybe spry. In the cowboy vernacular, he was just a pore doer. Lick drew the covers up around the old man, turned down the propane lamp, and clanked into the kitchen. The wind whistled through the window edges where the duct tape had come loose. He put on his hat, coat, and gloves and headed out the back door to do the nightly check on the dogs and the horses. October had been mild. Fifty degrees during the day, twenties at night. But yesterday November had kicked Indian summer in the butt with a cold front that brought out the long johns. Low bruised clouds, sleet scraped off God's windshield, and wind that penetrated like taco grease on a cheap paper plate. Lick looked up at the ugly night sky. The dogs were curled underneath the trailer on the leeward side wherBlack, Baxter is the author of 'Hey, Cowgirl, Need a Ride?', published 2005 under ISBN 9780609610916 and ISBN 0609610910.