CHAPTER 1
Walker West grew up on the edge of a small town and after high school graduation worked with his father, a farm and ranch fencing contractor. During Walker's eighteenth year on the job his father, who'd never recovered from his second wife's death from cancer a year earlier, died from a heart attack while playing poker with his cronies in the back room of a bar.
Fifty-eight thousands bucks was all Walker could get for the house, truck and fencing equipment. He worked with the new contractor for three weeks to get him on the right track and then headed west.
Nine hours on trains, changing at times and having the feeling he was doing some backtracking, convinced Walker to get off at the next sizeable city and that's how he came to take a room in Rossiter.
Walker's only vice was he fucked women, almost any woman who took a liking to him, although he never directly paid for it. A weakness for the flesh had lead him into some fights that he won and fights that he lost with husbands or boyfriends and he'd had a couple of STD scares but somehow he'd scraped through with his good health intact and his dick unscarred.
The worst misadventure had been when a cuckold husband's two brothers held him down and the husband pulled out a knife and said he'd remove 'the Motherfucker's nuts', but apparently easier said than done. The aggrieved guy had slashed through Walker's belt, jerked open his pants but as he put the steel against the scrotum he suddenly vomited over his brothers and Walker. In the ensuing bedlam with the brothers cursing and fighting Walker managed to escape and even ended up with the knife that he gave to his father who later lost it.
During the monotonous time on trains Walker had thought about his future. With savings he had more than $130,000 and concluded it was time to settle down with a nice lady and for her to punch out a couple of kids to build a West family. His late mother would have been proud of him thinking like that. He was two when a horse fatally kicked her.
The look of Rossiter appealed to Walker, not being a place of all glitter and no substance. And it was big with a population of almost 40,000.
Widow Chappell... that's what she called herself... was a homely soul but a skinflint with the food. Walker was paying for a coffin-sized room plus breakfast and dinner and his sheets changed every tenth day and his towel replaced every fourteenth day. He considered it a good deal for what Mrs Chappell charged apart from the kindergarten-sized meals. But some of the women residents never ate more than half their meals and would push their plates across to Walker to clean up. They thought that was cute but the two bank guys and the insurance guy thought he was uncouth.
"You conduct is disgraceful," opined the insurance guy one evening, acting as if he were boss of the dining room. Unfortunately for the guy that night he was seated directly opposite Walker who reached across, hauled the guy across the table by his lapels and slapped him hard, snarling, "Don't you dare lip me buster."
Wiping about blood from his mouth Maurice whimpered, "I'm bleeding."
"Great, bleed to death you loudmouth."
Two of the females clapped and the other two joined in. From that night the three other guys grouped defensively at the far end of the table and a couple of the women took Walker with them whenever they went out together to the movies or to a bar. Because none of the females including Mrs Chappell appealed to Walker as the prospective mother of his children he didn't pursue the opportunities on offer and the women, aged between eighteen and thirty-eight, simply assumed he was gay.
Walker was unsuccessful in finding work initially because he didn't have a prepared CV, written references or even a phone number for a previous employer. However he did strike it lucky. He was out jogging round a council reserve and when taking a breather watched a council guy attempting to run a wire along a replacement fence line.
He stopped and chatted to the council foreman whose two assistants were away on an urgent job. Walker offered to help but the guy said no, there was an insurance problem. He looked at his watch and said it was mid-morning coffee time, jumped into his pickup and was gone for forty minutes.
When he returned he boggled. Three of the four plain high-tensile strands were strung out and tensioned correctly and Walker had dumped five battens (droppers) between each two posts as required to evenly space the wires apart to make the fence stronger.
The guy had forgotten about insurance problems and allowed Walker to work with him. Walker was doing it to keep in touch with real work. They had finished stapling the battens to the wire and had loaded all the gear into the pickup and were leaning over the side yarning when a supervisor drove up.
"How the hell did you get this fence finished so quickly Owen?"
"This guy helped me. He used to work for his father who was a fencing contractor."
"Do you work for us Buddy?"
"Nah," Walker yawned.
"Jesus Owen... insurance and public liability."
"I know. Look Royce, why not get him on the payroll? He's looking for work. You could send him and me out to the reservoir and do that seven miles of re-wiring and some post replacements. We've put it off for two years and the patience of the State Conservation Department must be wearing real thin."
"Oh yeah, great idea. So would you like to work for us young man?"
"Yeah, I'll do a bit of fencing for you. With a fencing job that long we'll need a tractor with hydraulic pounder, materials dumped 400 yards apart and a spinning jenny mounted on Owen's pickup. Then we two can rip into it."
"Right we already have quantities worked out. See to it that he gets what he wants Owen. Bring him in and see me first thing in the morning. By then I'll have approval to hire him. What's your name?"
"Walker West."
The supervisor grinned and said that was a name for a movie star. "Well we'll be sending our two fencing crews up to observe your techniques and aptitude. You appear to have a head down and ass up approach as well as utilizing modern techniques and equipment. We may as well learn from you as well as use you."
"That's fine Royce. Um Owen and I will be hard at it. What about sending someone up each day with hot food and Italian machine coffee at noon? Hard work requires deep fueling."
"Yeah, yeah," Royce laughed. "The elite crew. The mayor would have a fit if she found I was pulling something like that. I know, her daughter is on the payroll swanning around doing nothing of note. She's pretty with great tits. I could send her up with everything wrapped in pink and delivered with a great smile."
Royce almost rolled around he was laughing so much.
"I don't care who delivers it Royce. Just get it done and you'll see the results. This 150-yard baby you see strung up here is just a forerunner of what Owen and I will achieve up at the reservoir."
Owen looked alarmed. "Hold on pal, my sexy wife would kill me if I arrived home half-dead with fatigue."
Royce rubbed his chin. "The mayor did ask if I could find her daughter some delivery work to do. She hasn't had much of an education and has an awful work record having switched jobs nineteen jobs. Delivering food could be within her capabilities. She needs exercise carrying boobs that big."
Walker looked pleased but Owen said, "In your dreams pal; no one on council gets hot meals delivered, not even the mayor."
After Walker signed on next morning, Owen picked up a new spinning jenny and he drove Walker out to the reservoir and they continued along the fence line for an inspection.
"Jesus, some one has been up here and removed the old barbed wire probably to sell for scrap so we get some of our investment back," Owen grinned. "That's saved us heaps of work. Coiling that stuff would have taken us weeks. We are also lucky we only have to keep cattle out, so it's just a four-strand fence."
"That's twenty-eight miles of wire to hang, stretch and knot."
"Christ Walker, I know that. Do you think I know nothing?"
"Okay then how long will this job take us?"
"Search me. I'm only here to lay out wire, stretch and loose staple it and nail battens. I suppose you know?"
"To build a 7-mile four-wire fence on prepared and easy ground would take approximately 700 man-hours but luckily we have most of the posts in but we still have a total of twenty-eight miles of wire to hang. Provided there are not too many replacement posts to bang in I reckon working eight-hour days six days a week we should be finished in four weeks or sooner if you get off your butt."
"The estimate is four men to take six weeks."
Walker smiled. "The difference is pal you and I are here to work but you are the boss. You can slack off but don't expect me to back off when there's work to be done. How many battens between posts have been specified?"
"Four instead of five."
"Then we'll finish inside a month, no sweat."
The tractor was delivered with some posts at 9:30 and Owen and Walker were underway.
Just before noon as Owen was about to jump off the tractor he yelled, "Vehicle coming, lights flashing. Christ do you think Royce has actually sent us lunch?"
"Yeah I thought he would," Walker lied, arriving to stand beside Owen as the older man jumped off the tractor.
