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  Life on the Texas range has always been harsh, but for Clint Wayford it’s becoming impossible. Now sixty-five, the careworn widowed rancher must face the fact that he is no longer able to work his horses or the land the way he once did ... Losing ground in his struggle to survive on his own, Clint may soon be forced to sell the land ... then the chance to preserve the property turns up in the unlikely prospect of Miguel Ramos, a young Mexican boy who has crossed the Rio Bravo in search of work.

  BEFORE HONOR

  By Geo W. Proctor

  First published by Doubleday in 1993

  Copyright © 1993, 2018 by Geo. W. Proctor

  First Edition: December 2018

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Cover illustration by Gordon Crabb

  Series Editor: Mike Stotter

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with Lana B. Proctor

  To my uncle, Jack Proctor, who used to take me rodeoing with him.

  Before destruction, the heart of man is haughty, and before honor is humility.

  Proverbs 18:12

  Chapter One

  An invisible knife carried on the wind slid through the open vee of the unbuttoned fleece-lined coat. The icy blade penetrated Clinton Wayford’s chest and drove straight to the rancher’s spine, twisting there.

  “Damn!” Shock burst forth in a frosty white cloud from Wayford’s lips. “Cold enough to freeze the milk in a cow’s udder!”

  He cupped wrinkle-creviced hands to his mouth and warmed them with another misty puff of breath while his pale blue eyes rolled upward. A blink cut the harsh glare from the kitchen light behind him that flared into the darkness of early morning. Overhead un-quavering stars sprinkled the slate gray predawn sky like gems no larger than the points of pins.

  Not so much as a high, thin, wispy cloud marred the sky. The situation deserved another curse from the old rancher’s lips. Rain in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas always came as a welcomed visitor no matter how short its stay. Here, near the Davis Mountains, rain often was a commodity reserved for those granite peaks rather than the plains sandwiched between the mountain range to the north and the Chihuahuan desert to the south.

  A conflicting desire accompanied by a fleeting twinge of guilt kept Wayford’s mouth closed to hold back a curse and almost whispered a thank-you for the lack of moisture. This morning his sixty-five years weighed heavily on his shoulders. The thought of working in winter sleet or snow doubled the bitter bite of the cold. The below freezing temperature was enough for any man to contend.

  His gaze moved across the cloudless sky again. Without difficulty he picked out the bright blue of the star Spica high in the southeast. Near the western horizon lay white Sirius, the brightest of all stars a man could see from anywhere in Texas.

  Wayford felt a momentary swell of pride in his ability to identify the brighter stars and the constellations in which they dwelled. His father had taught him the basics of finding his way in the night when he had been no more than ten years old. The remainder of his knowledge had been gleaned from amateur astronomers who gathered from around the country on the Prude Ranch up in the Davis Mountains for a week every May to attend a conference they dubbed the Texas Star Party.

  Although most topics discussed by these night sky enthusiasts soared a mile or two over his head, they were a friendly bunch more than willing to share the views of planets, star clusters, galaxies, and nebulae they located in their telescopes. For ten years Wayford had set aside at least one night during the gathering to spend wandering from telescope to telescope and gazing upon the beauty God placed within the heavens.

  Another chill worked its way up and down the rancher’s spine as a blast of wind caught him full face and gusted down the collar of the open coat. This morning was not meant for stargazing or woolgathering. In only a few seconds the cold crept into every joint of his body, leaving it aching, especially his fingers. He blew on his hands once again while he leaned down to retrieve the battered pair of boots that stood beside the door stoop. Stepping back, he closed the door to shut out the darkness and the wind.

  A halfhearted grunt drew Wayford’s attention to a liver-spotted hound curled beside the wood stove. The dog’s head lifted a hair, and his brown eyes opened to slits with which to peer at the rancher for a lazy moment. The hound then once more closed his eyes and lowered his head to bury nose beneath tail.

  “Anyone ever tell you, you’re as useless as tits on a boar hog, Vanberg?” Wayford spoke directly to the dog, but the hound gave no indication he heard or even cared that his master uttered a sound. “Don’t know why, but I still hold out hope for your worthless carcass. One of these mornings you’re going to fetch in my boots and have them all warm and cozy when I’m ready to put them on.”

  The dog continued to ignore the man.

  Wayford smiled. In spite of his words, he had never owned a smarter dog than Vanberg. The hound knew the morning ritual too well to be stirred until it was time for chores. Then, and only then, Vanberg would be on his feet, eyes open bright and wide, ears perked, and tail a-wagging, ready for the day at his master’s side. No man could ask for more than that from a dog, nor did Wayford. Vanberg, however, gave more.

  By blood Vanberg was a bird dog, a retriever. He had been given to the rancher as a pup eight years ago by a dry dirt farmer near Lampasas. The hound now bore that man’s name. Even as a whelp the dog had been as smart as a whip. While he matured, Vanberg never ceased to amaze his owner. Without a speck of training, the dog proved to be as handy at sniffing out a cougar as any cat dog Wayford had ever encountered during his sixty-five years. Unlike many cat dogs, which cost ranchers thousands of dollars, Vanberg displayed the common sense to stay out of the way of a mountain lion that abruptly turned on its canine pursuers—something that could not be said of dogs specifically trained to hunt cougar.

  Vanberg also proved to have more than a bit of shepherd instinct coursing through his veins. With exactly the same amount of training required to learn to track a mountain lion, the dog picked up the ability to herd, whether the animals be sheep, goats, or even cattle or horses.

  Wayford proudly studied the sleeping animal. Atop all that, Vanberg could still scare up a jackrabbit or a covey of quail whenever his owner decided to try his hand at hunting.

  “But that don’t make you near perfect, you worthless flea bag,” Wayford said aloud as though afraid the dog might have read his thoughts of praise. “You still ain’t got the sense to bring in my boots and warm ’em for me.”

  Vanberg gave another half grunt when the rancher placed the cold-stiffened boots near the stove’s open oven door.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Wayford took a coffeepot from a cabinet, filled it with water and coffee, and placed it on the stove. “Guess there’s no reason for me to leave my boots outside anymore.”

  No reason, he thought, yet, old habits were hard to break. Lizzie never allowed him to wear his work boots in the house. She contended they made their home smell like a barn. Wayford never argued the point. Sole leather had a way of soaking up various unsavory odors associated with substances a rancher was bound to step square in the middle of at least a dozen times a day. He simply tugged off his boots, left them by the back door stoop, and slipped into the house slippers Elizabeth had always left waiting for him in the kitchen.

  Five years had passed since cancer claimed Lizzie. In that time, he conscientiously had kept the dirty work boots out of the house. He liked to think the simple action was a way of honoring the woman who had shared her life and this house with him. It seemed little enough to do, and a habit he had no desire to break.

  He took a chipped mug with a gaudily colored scene that proclaimed the beauties of Washington D.C. from a cabinet and placed it on the kitchen table. A lifetime ago when Wayford traveled the rodeo circuit, he had bought the souvenir. In the early fifties, on the way to New York’s Madison Square Garden, he had rerouted his drive five hundred miles out of the way just to say he had seen the nation’s capital.

  What seemed like a grand adventure to a young rodeo calf roper in his twenties now stood as memory a-swirl in foggy haze. Often the rancher found it difficult to recall the man to whom that memory belonged. The mug, almost forty years old, seemed to be the only thing real about that distant side trip.

  A tilt of his head toward the stove told his ears the coffeepot had begun to boil. He had time for a cigarette. He lifted a pouch of Bull Durham from the center of the table and slid a La Ritz paper from the orange folder attached to the bag. With his left hand he held the paper slightly curved between his fingers while he sprinkled an even portion of cut tobacco onto the paper. He used both hands to roll the cigarette and sealed it with a quick lick of the tongue.

  Lifting the coffeepot from the stove, he poked a long splinter of wood inside the ancient black monster. He waited a moment and withdrew the sliver, its end dancing with flame. This he used to light the tip of the cigarette that dangled between his lips. He took two short puffs to make certain the tobacco was lit, then drew deeply on the thir
d. He exhaled the smoke in a thin blue stream while he dropped the splinter into the stove and placed the pot back on the fire.

  The rich flavor of the tobacco in the early-morning hours held a satisfaction that he had never been able to explain to nonsmokers, especially his daughter Mary, who constantly nagged him about the dangers of lung cancer and emphysema whenever she came to visit. Her mother’s death from stomach cancer had tripled Mary’s adamant protests against her father’s continued tobacco use.

  Wayford flicked the ash from the cigarette into a dime store glass ashtray. He had cut back on his smoking, no longer buying packaged cigarettes. He told himself that the flavor of store-bought, ready-rolleds did not compare with that of paper and fixings. The reality of the drastic cutback to those cigarettes he found time to roll himself stemmed from the “sin” tax Congress—and the state legislators repeatedly slapped on tobacco products. A carton of smokes cost over eighteen dollars. For a man who found it increasingly hard to pay his feed bill, shelling out almost twenty dollars for a carton of cigarettes was akin to the rancher buying caviar and champagne for his daily meals.

  Wayford drew on the cigarette and exhaled again before he switched on the radio sitting atop the refrigerator. The plastic box refused so much as an impolite belch of static. With a sigh the rancher twisted the knob to the off position. The radio had gone on the fritz a week ago and been added to a growing list of items to be replaced when there was money.

  A radio sat at the bottom of that roster of needed items. Although Wayford enjoyed listening to music, the selection of channels was limited to one country and western station broadcasting from the nearby town of Alpine. At night that station went off the air by nine o’clock. As for television, there had never been one in the house. The mountains to the north, east, and west prevented any chance of receiving the Midland channels, and the El Paso stations to the west lay too far away. The monthly cost of cable was a luxury beyond his means.

  More than the country and western tunes the radio provided, he missed the sports reports. During the fall and winter he kept tabs on the local high school football and basketball teams. When spring arrived, he avidly tracked the progress of both the American and the National Leagues. The New York Yankees remained his long-standing favorite team, but he openly admitted a soft spot for both the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros. If asked why he supported either, other than both were Texas baseball teams, he would have been hard-pressed for a legitimate answer. Neither team had been more than also-rans season after season after season. The same could be said, he reminded himself, of the Yankees in recent years.

  From his spot beside the stove, Vanberg rose and gave a toothy yawn while he stretched his lanky frame. With a glance at the rancher, the spotted dog sauntered to a corner of the kitchen where his food and water bowls sat. He dipped his muzzle to the first and began noisily crunching a mouthful of Purina Dog Chow.

  Wayford took the cue from the hound and looked at the stove. The coffeepot percolated strong and loud. Steam rose in a steady column from the spout. The rancher filled the mug with the dark brew and added a spoonful of sugar to cut the bitterness. Five years of making his own morning coffee had done nothing to improve its taste, he realized while he took a tentative scalding sip. Lizzie’s coffee he had always taken black. This pot, when he came back inside for breakfast in a few hours, would take at least two heaping spoons of sugar to make it palatable.

  “Time to get a move on, Vanberg.” Wayford placed the coffeepot atop a potholder on the table for reheating later. “Sun’ll be up before we know it.”

  The dog waited patiently at the back door while the rancher nudged off the house slippers and tugged on the old boots over two pairs of woolen socks. Wayford then buttoned the coat tightly beneath his chin before pulling the fleece collar up snugly about his neck. A sweat-stained, doe gray Resistol hat that barely retained its steam-rolled brim and crown creases came down from a nail driven into the wall beside the door and was firmly set atop Wayford’s head of white hair.

  From a coat pocket, he unwadded a pair of thin leather work gloves. When handling stock, whether steer or horse, Wayford usually shunned gloves. A man needed nothing between him and the animal with which he worked. However, frostbitten fingertips did not read the feel of an animal; they only ached.

  “Let’s get at it,” Wayford said to the dog while he lifted the coffee mug from the table, took a sip, then opened the back door.

  Vanberg bounded eagerly into the frosty morning and ran straight to a bushy salt cedar that grew at the corner of the adobe ranch house. The hound hiked a rear leg and relieved himself of a nighttime of pressure. Leaving a dark patch of steaming mud behind him, the dog wheeled and trotted to the rancher’s side.

  Wayford greeted the graying morning with far less enthusiasm. In spite of the coat’s thick fleece lining, the freezing cold seeped inward, quickly spreading through the rancher’s body until a dull ache throbbed within every joint. He downed two hasty gulps of coffee to ward away the chill and succeeded only in scalding his tongue and the roof of his mouth.

  You’re getting to be an old man, he lied to himself amid a stream of silent curses deriding the biting temperature. There was no “getting” to it; he already was an old man. A stubborn old fool! The addendum brought a ring of harsh truth. Only a fool—a sixty-five-year-old fool—would try to run a two-section ranch on his own. Even in his twenties he had the common sense to know it took ranch hands to work a spread.

  Only a bigger fool would consider doin’ anything else. Wayford felt a swell of pride edge away the cold in his chest as he surveyed the land that stretched around him. The gray predawn paid no compliment to the winter-browned plains reaching out for miles in all directions. Nor would the rising sun paint a prettier picture, the rancher admitted to himself.

  Grassland was grassland; there was no way to escape the monotony of prairie flatness. The only relief offered was the rugged silhouettes of mountains that lay on the horizon no matter what direction Wayford looked. To anyone who had seen the Rockies, the ranges of Texas’s Big Bend country appeared more like massive, rocky hills that abruptly pushed out of the flat ground for no rhyme or reason, rather than mountains.

  The Piney Woods of East Texas and the Gulf Coast were far more eye-appealing than the high plains. But this chunk of prairie contained a hidden beauty for Wayford. It belonged to him. Before him his father, his father’s father, his father’s father’s father, and his father had claimed title to the land.

  Wayfords were not the first Texans to settle this isolated part of the state, but when they came, they stayed. In the 1850s Amos Wayford journeyed west with a survey team to establish a site for a military fort that would become Fort Davis in the Davis Mountains. Unlike many of his profession who contracted with the U.S. Army, Amos did not buy up large sections of land and then resell them to the government for an exorbitant profit. He bought land and stocked it with cattle and horses. In turn he sold both to the Army and the Butterfield Overland Stage that eventually routed through Fort Davis on its way to the California coast.

  Amos Wayford did not get rich, but he found a way to live off the land. So had his descendants. Clint Wayford attempted to do the same—ever since his parents died in the fifties and left the Wide W Ranch— whose brand was a single W stretched to the width of four normal letters—to their only son.

  Wayford pursed his lips and shook his head as he walked toward a small corral attached to the left side of a twenty-five-stall red barn a hundred yards behind the ranch house. His youth had not included a vision of an aging man working from sunup to sunset, struggling to milk a living from land that often seemed as dry and ornery as a barren cow.

  “I ain’t cut out to be no cow boy. I’m a horsemaw,” he had told his father the day he announced his intention to seek fame and fortune on the professional rodeo circuit.

  His father had not condemned the aspirations of a son whose head was filled with dreams of adventure and glory, but said, “This land will be waiting here when you’re man enough for it.”

  The Army delayed Wayford’s rodeo career for two years—one of those years spent trying to stay alive in Korea while the Red Chinese did their best to see he did not. Another two years of driving from one end of the U.S.A. with a horse trailer hitched behind a pickup truck as he moved from one rodeo to the next had proved he was no Casey Tibbs. He had reached the conclusion he was mediocre, at best, with a rope and pigging string when the telegram arrived that told of the car wreck.