Delayed Deposit: Part I

Part one of two of a Western short story

Mike Goad // Pixabay

An earlier version of this story was included in my first book, The Ranch Next Door and Other Stories (now out of print). I felt it had enough merit to warrant a second lease on life, and so here is the completely overhauled and revised edition.

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“Well, how does it feel?” said Russ Murphy.

He looked over at his brother, on horseback beside him. Connor Murphy grinned back at him, and shook his head. “I don’t suppose it’ll sink in till we’ve had a few months out from under.”

“No,” said Russ, “I guess not.”

He had said it, of course, because he was still trying to figure out how it felt for himself. His younger brother could sometimes find words more easily. Con was right—you had to know what it was like living without something of this size hanging over you before you could appreciate what its ending meant. Russ grinned back at him, and neither of them said anything more for a while.

The grin felt strange on his face. It had been too long since some honest-to-goodness feeling inside had prompted a real smile to break through his usual serious expression, too serious sometimes for his twenty-two years. Con could always make him laugh whether he felt like it or not, but it was good to feel happy for a solid reason. Today he would be quit of a weight that had been heavy on his shoulders ever since the day, more than three years ago, when his father had showed him the receipt for the loan against their quarter-section claim.

Murphy senior had borrowed heavily against the land as soon as he had proved up on it, and sunk most of the money into fences and equipment, sure that with these improvements he and his sons could increase their small herd of stock in plenty of time to meet the mortgage. Two winters past, illness had carried him off and left his sons with several thousand dollars in debt on the land that was their only inheritance. Since then they had worked in daylight and dark, through bitter winter and parched summer, the only visible goal in front of them at any given time the next payment they could put down against the mortgage. But this morning it was all over. In Russ Murphy’s vest pocket, where he could feel the crackle of the folded bills against his breast, was two hundred dollars that would clear the Murphy debt finally, and for good.

Russ looked again at his younger brother as they rode side by side in the dry wagon-track across the prairie. Con, just twenty, was looking up at the blue sky, his hat tilted back at a carefree angle. Ever since their father died, Russ had carried a double responsibility in his own mind: paying off the mortgage and looking after his brother. The end of the mortgage now seemed to symbolize his release from both. Con had grown up during these last two years. Russ had felt sometimes, when the outlook was at its worst and still his brother’s good spirits never flagged, that Con did not understand the gravity of their situation, but he knew now that feeling had been unjust. Con was resolutely sanguine no matter what he might be feeling, and that quality had carried them through the hard times as much as Russ’s steady management. He had done his share and more, and Russ was justly proud of him, although he was not the sort who could easily find the words to say so.

They crested a rise and the town lay before them: a single wide street laid out across a level section of prairie, its half-dozen blocks lined with brick and frame buildings, a few high false fronts of stores rising above the rest. Smaller houses had begun to appear on the narrower streets that crossed it at intervals, forming it gradually into a recognizable city grid. It had never looked so well to the brothers as it did this morning, against its expansive backdrop of land and sky.

They rode into town, along the main street, and pulled up in front of the bank, a solid single-story brick building set close on the street. A low, roofed porch without railings ran the width of the front. The brothers dismounted and tied their horses at the hitching rail, stepped up on the porch and went inside.