Read Online Heed the Thunder by Jim Thompson - Free Book Online

smoking, Sherman a cob pipe, Lincoln a stogie. A box filled with ashes, which served as a cuspidor, stood on the floor between them. Robert Dillon sat back against the wall of the house, intensely interested in the conversation. He could not see why anyone would want to pay money to feed cattle. It seemed to him that it ought to be the other way around.
    “Bobbie,” said Lincoln Fargo, turning his head slightly.
    “Uh-huh,” said the boy.
    “Do you suppose you could get downstairs and back without tearin’ the house down?”
    “Sure, I could. I can do it, Pa.”
    “Well, I doubt it like hell,” said the old man. “But go on. Fetch me and Sherman one of them quart bottles of cider.”
    Titles such as “Uncle,” “Aunt,” and so on were not used in the Fargo family; they were omitted in many families of that day.
    The boy entered the kitchen, and a moment later they heard him raising the trap door to the cellar.
    “Well, Edie got off for her school today,” said Lincoln, his voice low. “Rode in-country with the mailman.”
    “How’d Bobbie take it?” asked Sherman.
    “He don’t know where she’s gone yet. He thinks she’s just downtown.”
    “He’ll get over it,” said Sherman, knocking out his pipe in the ash-box. “He’ll be staying with us tonight, and he can start to school with my kids in the morning. By tomorrow night he’ll be sort of used to his mother being gone.”
    “I hope so,” said Lincoln. “Now, how soon do you want this money? I figure I can borrow fifteen hundred on the place easy enough. It’s all clear.”
    “Well, we ought to get started within the next thirty days,” said Sherman.
    “We can make it by then,” the old man nodded. “Ma will sure be over her ailin’ spell by then. She’ll have to go down to the bank with me.”
    “Yeah, I know,” said Sherman. “Well, here’s the way it stands, then: you buy the feed, I furnish the cattle, and we split the profits and the work.”
    “That’s it,” Lincoln agreed. “O’course, I can’t work like I used to.…”
    “Maybe,” drawled Sherman, “you can get Grant to help. You an’ him together ought to make one fairly good man.”
    Lincoln chuckled, spanking the cigar ashes from his vest; and Sherman grinned in modest self-appreciation.
    The cellar door slammed and Robert Dillon came in from the kitchen. The sleeves of his blouse were dripping, and his clothes and face were flecked with bits of yellow matter. Lincoln almost howled at the sight of him.
    “Now, what in the name of God have you been doing to yourself?”
    “Nothing,” the boy grinned. “I just stopped to look in the egg jar for a minute.”
    “And I suppose the eggs jumped up and threw themselves at you! What the hell was you trying to do, anyway?”
    “Looks like you’d been having an egg fight with yourself,” Sherman remarked. “Pa, do you remember that time in Kansas City when you was running the saloon and I took those settin’ eggs of Ma’s and slipped ’em into your free lunch?”
    “Seems like I do remember something about it,” said the old man.
    “Hell, you ought to! Your arm must’ve been lame for a week after the hiding you gave me.”
    “Why, now,” said Lincoln defensively, “I don’t know as I was ever so hard on you kids. Can’t recollect that I ever gave you a real trouncing.”
    “Well, maybe not.” His son shrugged. “Bob, you’d better run and get yourself cleaned up. We’re going to have to be on our way as soon as I have a drink or two of this cider.”
    “All right, Sherman,” said Bob, and he left the porch meekly.
    He had had the idea for a long time that eggs could be made to bounce, but he was willing to concede now that they would not. Previously he had experimented with fresh eggs stolen from the hens’ nests. And he had tried bouncing eggs that were hard-boiled. But today had been his first opportunity to use eggs put-down in lime water. He had used about a dozen of them, he guessed, and