Duster (9781310020889) (3 page)

"You can't muscle them out of this brush,
an' you got no dogs trained to push 'em out for you, so you keep
'em headed the way you want with your horse. Unless you want to
throw an' brand a critter, you use your rope for a flail to whack
them with when need be and forget about roping them down.

"Most of 'em, you'll find, won't take kindly
to being pushed in one direction, so you tail 'em down to give them
some manners. Mind, though, if you tail a critter maybe four, five
times and it still turns back on you an' wants to fight, you leave
it be. It'll take the dogs to move one like that out into the
open."

Ike was talking for my own good, so I sat
still in my saddle and looked him in the eye while he set me
straight on the business I was getting paid to be in.

This was a country where men ran more to
tough than to meat; but even so, Ike was remarkable for being so
straight up and down and narrow-like. He had sun wrinkles set deep
around his eyes, and the skin at his throat where his bandanna
hadn't covered it was all brown and cracked like leather. Every
time he grinned at me or took one of those laughing fits I could
see where he was missing some ivory right in the middle of the
yellow nubs of teeth he carried. It must of been convenient for
spitting, judging from what I could see of him in action that
way.

"Now, you shake loose from this fellow an'
I'll show you what to do with him," Ike finished up.

I booted the hammerhead a bit so he'd move
forward and give me some slack in my rope. That steer hiked his
tail up in the air and scrambled on his feet right away. He took
out trying to run even before I could shake the loop loose, so I
had to follow after him trying to let him free and him steady
moving on, tripping and snorting for maybe fifteen, twenty yards
before he finally kicked my loop off.

Soon as he done that, he lit out hard as he
could, and Ike right on him. My hammerhead wasn't to be left
behind, either. He knew lots more about the cow business than me
and he wanted in on it all, so I had a good spot real close to
watch Ike work.

As far as I could tell, Ike hadn't any idea
there was a thorn bush closer than the Indian Nations. He just kept
his head down and rode.

One of those old longhorn cattle could give
a racehorse a mighty fine go of it for a short stretch, but Ike was
close to start with, and inside a hundred yards he was right up on
that old steer. He got behind it, shoulder to rump, and when he was
where he wanted to be, he just leaned down and grabbed hold of the
steer's tail streaming out behind him.

Ike straightened up with a holler, pulled up
on that steer's tail, and wrapped it around his saddle horn real
quick. His horse cut hard to the left.

The steer went down again, except harder.
His hind legs just got lifted out from under him. Or, maybe it was
more his hind end being lifted up off his legs. Anyway, he was
busted down good and proper.

Ike looked back at me and grinned real big,
then he stood up in his stirrups and half bowed, waving a hand
toward the steer to tell me it was all mine again.

The steer got up, but slower this time, and
it took time out to look around and snort a little, rolling its
eyes, before it lit out for another run.

When it took off this time I was ready for
it. I booted the hammerhead in the ribs—I didn't have any spurs,
but the horse got the idea all right anyway—and we jumped after
that steer.

This time, the longhorn cut away from us
every time we got close, so it wasn't much of a trick to point it
in the direction of the clearing where a couple fellows was waiting
to hold all the caught animals in a bunch.

Of course, it wasn't any easier riding now
that the steer was headed the right way. Those long whips of droopy
mesquite still hung their thorns out all ready for someone to come
busting through and get stuck full of them. I was beginning to be
awful glad Ma had dug out Pa's old leggins to cut down for me and
for the coat she'd made up for me out of some leather she had got
somewhere. The stuff was awful hot and stiff until it made me think
of a picture I'd seen once of some old-time cavalry trooper in iron
pants and vest, but it kept the thorns from gouging in too deep
when they hit.

It didn't take long for us to get where we
were going. One second we was going up, down, and sideways behind
that brindle steer, and the next we was out of the heavy stuff and
running down hard on a bunch of maybe a couple dozen cattle and a
couple of riders.

Those old longhorns are wide awake when they
run, and when this one saw what was up ahead he must of figured it
was a crowd he didn't want to hang around with. He piled on the
brakes and stopped real quick, and of course that fool hammerhead
did the same thing. Me—I tried to keep on going and got the saddle
horn shoved into my belly for not being quick enough.

The dust was flying pretty thick by then,
but there wasn't anything wrong with that hammerhead's eyesight. He
got things sorted out real quick, and before I had time to worry
about the way that horn had belted me, he was off and going again
to cut the steer off and keep him from diving back into the
brush.

The steer didn't like that, so he hooked a
horn at the hammerhead's near shoulder before he turned back.

I was all experienced by then, of course,
and I knew just what to do with that steer. When he turned away I
kicked the horse right up behind him.

I leaned down and grabbed up the end of his
tail real quick like Ike had done.

Now, that old horse was mean sometimes. And
he was ugly. But some cowhand had trained him real good. He knew
just what he was supposed to do when he felt me bend down and then
straighten up quick. He cut off to the left with a jump, and at
just the right angle too—not so sharp it would pull the horse over,
and not so shallow it would dump the steer forward on his neck and
maybe break the neck bones and kill him.

That steer had been tailed before, and he
jumped too.

They was both a bit quicker than me. What
with all the chasing and bending and grabbing and straightening I
had forgot to wrap the steer's tail around my saddle horn. I got to
say, though, that I did have a good hold of that tail.

I held on tight; the
hammerhead went off to one side; the steer went off to another, and
I ended up losing my grip, which was just as well, since by then I
wasn't riding a horse any more. Instead, I was stretched out
sideways with nothing but maybe five feet of sweet Texas air
between me and that firm
Texas ground. It
didn't take me long at all to make my journey through the one to
meet the other.

The next thing I felt was a thump and a thud
and then the air swooshed out of me until I could perfectly
understand why that steer didn't want to be tailed down but once. I
first thought I'd lay there and loaf a little bit while I sniffed
some fresh-raised dust—which was easy, since my nose seemed to be
full of it—until I remembered all of a sudden that that steer had
no cause to feel kindly toward me and might be coming back any old
time.

I got up real quick, then, and looked
around. I could see the brindle steer standing quiet at the edge of
the bunch of cattle that had already been caught. Charlie Emmons
and B.J. Hollis was riding around them cows looking real serious
like, not looking my way even one bit although every once in a
while one of them would sort of go limp like he was about to fall
off his horse.

Ike was riding up on me from the other
direction, leading the hammerhead and grinning. He didn't say a
word while I crawled back up on my horse, not even when I jumped
some and had to reach back to pull a thorn out of myself before I
could sit right in the saddle.

THE MORNING WENT pretty good after that. Ike
and me teamed up, and between us we got a dozen more old mossy
horns out of the jungle where they could be held still.

I sure didn't forget a second time to take a
turn on the saddle horn when I grabbed hold of a cow's tail. It
really was pretty easy once I got the hang of it, though city folks
have told me since that they'd be scared to try it. I might of been
scared too if I'd thought about it much, but at the time, it was
just another way to handle cattle, and I figured I'd best learn to
do whatever the grown hands did.

Anyway, Ike sort of stayed with me, and we
done all right. Since we was working range cattle and not just
gathering up for a herd, we quit along about noon and came out of
the brush to take care of the stuff we had caught up during the
morning.

Mister Sam Silas put me to holding the
cattle in a bunch since I was still pretty green on the job. We had
maybe a hundred-fifty head of mixed stuff all told, and of them
maybe thirty was cows with calves. The calves didn't count, of
course.

While me and about three others held them in
a bunch, Ike and Crazy Longo and a couple more worked the cows and
calves out of the bunch and roped the calves down by one of the
fires that they had got going by then. There the mama cow'd be held
off by the rider while a couple fellows on the ground would brand
and earmark the calf with whatever sign the mama was wearing.

Once the calf was branded—and cut, if it was
a male—it and the mother was turned back into the brush. This was
hot work, but in a year or two that work would mean cash money in
someone's pocket if a drought or a freeze-up or unchoicy
maverickers didn't take the calf off first.

As for me, I had it pretty easy just riding
around the bunch and chasing back any of them that tried to break
for the jungle. Some of them mossy horns looked like they'd never
seen a man before, and they didn't take much to being handled.
Every once in a while, one of them would throw his head up and
snort. As soon as I saw those nostrils flare, I knew he was coming
out at a run, and sure enough there would be a chase to turn him
back or tail him. There wasn't but a few got past us, so I guess we
did all right, and most of them only got loose because when we left
the bunch to chase one down there'd be another whole mess of them
breaking out behind him through the hole we'd left chasing that
first one.

It got pretty exciting at times, but it was
sort of fun too and I didn't mind when we got busy.

After all the calves was taken care of and
chased out of the way, we started cutting out the grown mavericks
for branding. That was really fun to watch since them full grown
beeves that was about to become steers didn't like being told what
to do.

It took two riders to handle one of them.
One would go into the bunch and find a maverick and ease it out to
the edge, then the second rider would slip a rope over its horns
and haul it out in the open where the first man could put a loop on
its hind legs and stretch it out flat so the branders could get to
it.

The way they worked the
branding was that the boss of the cow hunt, Mister Sam Silas, got
the first two and then they went branding and marking in turns, one
for each owner along
on the hunt. They
started all over again when everybody'd had his brand put on a
beef.

I was some surprised when Ike rode up to me
in the middle of the thing.

"What's your brand, Duster?" he asked.

I couldn't figure out why he wanted to know,
but I told him. "It's a DD on the near shoulder with a jinglebob
left and cropped right ear. Did you see one in that bunch?"

"Nope," he said. He spit through the gap in
his teeth and nodded toward a rangy old spotted critter that Tommy
Lucas was hauling out of the bunch on the other side. "That's your
animal over there, but B.J. said he couldn't recollect for sure
just what markings your daddy used."

"Mine?"

"You're an owner, ain't you," he said and
rode back into the dust that was carrying up pretty thick now that
the short brush and curly mesquite grass was all trampled and
gone.

I just kept looking over to where that old
spotted beef was being thrown and cut and marked out for the
Dorword ranch. I couldn't quit watching while he was marked like
that. First the pair of D's was burned onto his left shoulder, then
the left ear was split longways below the gristle so a flap of skin
hung down while the rest of the ear stood out straight, and finally
the right ear was cropped by lopping off the tip to leave it
squared off straight up and down. It must of been quite awhile
since a longhorn was so marked, and it made me feel real funny
inside while it was being done.

I'd sure never expected to get a share of
the mavericks, what with drawing wages and all. I didn't have dogs
or horses to throw in for the hunt, and I'd brought little enough
cornmeal and salt with me for the chuck packs. I sure had never
thought of being counted in with Mister Sam Silas or Charlie Emmons
or the rest of the owners.

There was six ranchers taking part in this
cow hunt, counting me as one of them, so with the first two being
branded for Mister Sam Silas, I'd get every seventh maverick
brought out whether it was beef or cow. It was a nice thing to
think on since the steers would bring maybe six dollars in Rockport
and the cows would bring calves for later years. It made me think
maybe Ma and us had a good future coming for us thanks to neighbors
like Mister Sam Silas and the rest.

I watched them finish with that spotted
steer of mine and turn him over to Crazy Longo and a couple of
Mexican vaqueros who were holding the beeves we'd take to Rockport
later.

I was watching so hard, in fact, I let two
cows break clean past me out of the main bunch and had an awful
time getting them back where they belonged.

After that I paid more attention to my
job.

Ike and the rest finished cutting out the
slicks, enough of them that I guessed I had four critters branded
and either turned loose or put in the market bunch. Then they went
through a lot quicker and ran off all the she-stuff back into the
brush.