Duster (9781310020889) (13 page)

I sat down on the ground there next to
Tommy—he didn't look to be much more awake yet than me—without
saying anything, just waking up sort of, until Ike decided the
bacon was burned enough to be done and handed the spider over
toward us.

We each of us picked a piece out with our
fingers. I heard Tommy grunt a little, but I never let on how hot
it was even though for a second there I thought the grease had
burnt through until it hit bone. Still, it tasted fine.

The rest of them came over and sat down, and
the six of us cleaned up on a whole bunch of bacon and coffee
too.

It still wasn't full light
yet by the time we was finished and set into loading our gear on
the packhorse, and I guess no
body felt
awake enough to be talkative, for we sure was a quiet crowd. The
air still felt a mite nippy with morning chill but it smelled fresh
and was real pleasant with the only sounds being from feet
shuffling around on the ground or a cinch strap snapping home when
someone would pull the girth up tight on his night
horse.

I got my stuff rolled together and then
tried to help Tommy Lucas load everything on the packsaddle. Not
that I accomplished much. I've heard folks say you can tell how
long a man's been in the West by how he rigs a packhorse, but I
don't believe that. I've lived all my life in Texas and can't put
up a pack tight enough that it won't jiggle apart inside of five
miles.

Tommy Lucas, though, could fling stuff over
his shoulder toward a pack saddle, waggle a rope over it with his
eyes closed, and still come out with an outfit a blind mule could
carry all day and never lose a thing. He was that good. I enjoyed
watching him, though I can't claim I learned much from it.

He must of appreciated me trying to help,
though. When he was all done he smiled at me and asked, "Them
fellas find you?"

Now, that surprised me. Not so much that I
didn't know what fellows he was asking about, although I didn't,
but that he'd asked at all. If there is one thing Tommy Lucas is
not, it is talkative. He'll enjoy a prank as much as anyone and
laugh right along with the rest. Sometimes he'll even joke some
then. And he'll work his share or more. But that man might go
better than a day without opening his mouth except to eat, yawn, or
spit.

"Fellas?" I asked. "I don't know who all you
mean so I'd have to reckon they never found me. When was they
looking? Who were they?"

Tommy shrugged. "Jus' before you got back.
Tough lookin' pair. Lookin' for you 'n Jesus." He added, "Didn't
tell 'em nuthin'."

"I sure don't know who they could of been.
We never saw anyone coming down here from Fort Ewell. I guess they
didn't say who they were or anything like that, or what they wanted
us for."

Tommy shook his head no.

I started to ask him if there had been
anyone else around when they came, thinking maybe someone else
might of talked to them and would know more about what they'd
wanted. I didn't bother to ask after I thought about it. Anyone
else would of mentioned it inside of a day or two, so Tommy had to
of been alone when he talked with them fellows, whoever they
were.

I sure hoped they didn't need to find me too
awful bad, for I knew they wouldn't have got much help from Tommy.
He said little enough to us and just about nothing at all to anyone
else.

At first I was worried it might be a message
that Ma was sick or something, but then I realized it couldn't be
that because they would of left word. And anyway, Tommy had said
they was looking for me and Jesus so that wouldn't make sense.

I couldn't figure out who it might of been
and for a while I studied on it. I couldn't work it out any way I
tried and eventually I gave up. If they wanted me bad enough they'd
find me, and if they didn't then it wasn't about anything important
enough to worry over.

Anyway, we got the outfit ready to move and
were in our saddles plenty early. Ike gave the lead rope of the
packhorse to Jesus which meant he'd have to haze the remuda along
after us that day. It had turned out the new Mex horses would stay
to a bell mare so it wasn't much of a job, especially with cattle
moving as slow as they do, but still no one liked to herd the
remuda. It was counted as being a second-rate sort of job, and I
have to admit I was feeling a bit prideful that I hadn't got the
remuda that first day driving.

Later on, I almost wished
that I had. Sometime after this,
when
there was a market for cattle as beef, some smart cowman figured
out that you could make the most money on a trail herd of three
thousand beeves, counting the wages you paid for cowhands against
the losses in animals lost, killed, or stole along the way and
driving them with a crew of a dozen or maybe a few more riders. But
that was up on the grass plains. I'd bet they never figured to push
steers through Texas brush country when they said three
thousand.

The five of us had a gosh-awful time with
three hundred cows going through that big thorn thicket we used for
range. We'd ride along slow and easy and everything pleasant, and
all of a sudden some stupid longhorn would shove his nose up in the
air and twitch his nostrils and then, bam, he'd be off at a run to
bust loose from that herd so's he could go where he darn well
pleased. Or one would get tired of going in the direction we wanted
and he'd turn and roll a horn down ready to gouge with and then
come running straight at us so we'd have to do some fancy slapping
at his eyes with our ropes to change his mind. Or we'd ride up over
a little rise in the ground and find that whole bunch of cows had
decided to follow along the easy way up a little hollow instead of
walking up that next rise.

And to make it all worse, of course, we had
to do all this in brush as high as a man a-horseback in some spots
and with dust so bad we couldn't see from one end of that little
herd to the next and with noise all around so we couldn't hardly
think with cattle bellowing and horns clacking together and with us
hollering until we got hoarse and snapping our ropes against our
leggins to make more noise. It was something all right, but I
wouldn't of missed it for anything, and to come right down to it,
it was more than just the thirty cents a day!

We pushed them like that
until about ten o'clock in the morning, and even though it was
still early in the day we were plenty hot and dusty by then. Since
we were just going to Rock-port I guess it really didn't make much
difference, but Ike pulled us down anyway and we stopped them
alongside the river so they could rest and drink some if they were
of a mind. If you push cattle during the heat of the day you walk
the meat right
off their bones, so what
you do is drive them early in the morning, let them lay up at
midday, and then let them drift along real easy late in the day.
That's if you're in something of a hurry like we was, wanting to
join up with Mister Sam Silas and get the drive over with and us
home. There's a better way if you don't care none about time and
want to have the cattle gain weight on the way. For that, you let
the beeves get up and start themselves drifting in the
morning—they'll do that once they're trail broke—then drive them
for only an hour or so before the ten o'clock break.

Anyhow, we pulled them up for a rest
sometime short of noon. We'd been away from the river for a few
miles but now we was back to it, so there was no worry about water
for the cattle or for us.

Once they seemed to be settled, I crawled
down off my horse to stretch and let my legs loosen a little after
the morning's ride.

"Duster, how's about stirring up a fire for
us?" Ike called out to me. "Jesus oughta be up to us in a minute or
two with the packhorse."

"Yes, sir," I hollered back. Not having
actually been along on a drive before it hadn't occurred to me that
we'd have time for lunch. Hunting cows like we'd been doing before
we never had time for a nooning, what with the branding and all we
had to do once we'd gotten together some cows to work on. Now, with
the herd put up and on the trail—our piece of it anyway— we had
time to rest ourselves while those old longhorns took it easy.

I hustled up some dry sticks real quick and
had the makings of a fire in no time.

"Eh, muchacho, what you gonna do with that
pile o' sticks?" Jesus asked when he brought the packhorse up.

"Aw, I just been admirin' it. If I practice
up real good I'll learn myself how to build bridges so's we can
cross rivers without gettin' wet." For a minute or so there, I'd
just been sitting on the ground waiting, not having any matches to
light the fire with. "Whyn't you crawl down from that animal an'
help me put us a lunch together?"

"Hokay."

Jesus ripped Tommy Lucas's nice, neat packs
apart until he found a block of lucifers and tossed them over to
me. Then, he burrowed into those packs some more. By the time I had
the fire going, Jesus had found some more bacon—I think it was
really jowl—and the makings of pan bread.

I got a pot of coffee going and put the
bacon on to fry, while Jesus took Ike's big spider and got to work
on the pan-made corn dodgers. Between the two of us we got it done
in hurry-up order, then Jesus stood and waved his big sombrero to
call the rest of the bunch in.

They seemed to be as hungry as us, for they
come right in, squatting around on the ground while I passed the
food. They pitched in right enough on the fried jowls, but when
they hit those corn dodgers they really went to work.

"My gosh, these here dodgers is good," Split
said. "I ain't had chuck this fine since we left Digger Bill up on
the Frio."

"You ain't just a-woofin'," Eben said.
"These is prime."

"They are pretty fair," Ike admitted. "I
didn't know you could cook so good, Duster."

"Wasn't me that done it. Truth is, Jesus is
the one fixed them dodgers. He ought to be the one gets the
credit." Now, honest, I hadn't meant to put anything off on Jesus
but the praise. But I guess he seen what was coming better than me,
for his face fell from a smile right smack down to a frown.

"Jesus, with a fine talent
like you got with a little grease an' cornmeal, I guess what we
oughta let you do is do the cookin' for us right on until we get
back up with Mister Sam an' the
rest," Ike
told him. "You just hang onto that there packhorse, an' we'll take
care o' them beeves, hear?"

Jesus's face hit a new low then. I guess
he'd been counting awful hard on me spelling him with the remuda.
Now, it looked like he was stuck with the horses all the way north
to Three Rivers.

ACTUALLY, IT WASN'T as bad as Jesus liked to
make out. Every meal on our way north, he gave me the devil for
sticking him with the horses and him figuring to be such a fine
hand with cows. But it only took us four days to drive along the
Nueces to Three Rivers where we was to meet Mister Sam Silas and
the rest of the crowd.

Three Rivers is where the Frio and the
Atascosa join up with the Nueces. From there on down to the Gulf
the river is called the Nueces. The Frio and the Atascosa really
come together a few miles north of where the Nueces bends over to
the east for the run downhill to the Gulf. Come to think of it, I
don't know the proper name of the part after they come together and
before they join the Nueces, but that whole little area in there we
always called Three Rivers, and everybody always knew where we
meant, so there wasn't any problem ever.

There wasn't any corral built on our side of
the river there, so late in the day Ike got us all together and
bunched that little herd of cows for crossing over.

I'd never helped take a
herd over swimming-deep water before, so it was something brand new
to me. Mostly, so I
wouldn't be in the
way, I tried to hang back in the drag where I always was
anyway.

Once the herd was bunched up tight on the
west bank, Ike went himself to get the lead steer moving. I never
have figured out what makes a whole herd of cows follow one or two
leaders, but every herd has its lead animals. You start out with a
bunch of critters that have just been caught and most of them never
before had sight or smell of one another and inside of a day or two
there'll be at least one animal up front and he'll stay there at
the point as long as you drive that herd, whether you're just going
to Rockport or up to Oregon country. And those cows don't seem to
pay much mind to how they pick a leader either. You'd think it
would be the biggest or the meanest or the oldest or something, but
this lead steer of ours wasn't much over four years old and as
skinny an old liver-and-white-speckled animal as ever I saw, and to
top it all off he had only one nub of a horn—the other was gone
complete—so he sure didn't get to be the boss by fighting for
it.

Anyway, Ike gave out with a loud
"Ayeeeiiieee-yah" yell and choused that skinny steer down the
little bit of bank along the river there, and the two of them
splashed out into the water. In a couple more strides the steer and
Ike's horse were both off their feet and setting out to swim, with
Ike and the horse on the downstream side of the steer.

The horse just rolled his eyes some, stuck
his neck out and his nose up, and went to kicking. The steer didn't
like it, and he tried to scramble back to a place where he could
get something solid under his hooves, but just then, Ike laid a
knotted rope on his snout to keep his head toward the far side, so
the steer made do with a loud snort and a low bawl before he set
down to some serious swimming. And Ike, right about then the water
got to waist high on him, and he let out something of a squeal
himself.