Centennial (79 page)

Promotion within the swings and flanks didn’t mean much, but at the point positions it did. Nate Person was moved up to scout, and now he ranged far ahead of the herd, seeking alternate routes to water; some days he was scarcely seen and he missed quite a few meals. The control of any string of cattle lay with the left point, for when cattle stampede, in the northern hemisphere at least, they almost invariably veer clockwise. Right point is a dangerous position because the man riding there may be run over, but the left point is determinative. The man in that position must ride fast enough to turn the lead cattle inward upon themselves; this throws them into a milling confusion which gradually tires them out. When Person was promoted to scout, this important job of left point was open, and to it Canby was appointed. In his laconic way he told Poteet, “I can do it.”

Right point remained to be filled, and Poteet surprised everyone, including the man himself, by promoting Mike Lasater to it. He was a good horseman and he was brave, but he was also a convicted thief and no one had expected Poteet to select him for such important work. “I’ll take care of it,” Lasater said, and he did. He was conscientious and able to anticipate what cattle might do. After several days Skimmerhorn told Poteet, “You made a fine choice.”

Now, in the evenings, began the after-supper yawing, and Jim Lloyd listened with amazement as the younger cowboys, little older than he, told of their exploits. It was not until several nights had passed that Jim began to suspect that perhaps some of the tales were more invention than truth.

He had the bad luck to challenge the wrong man. The talk was of rattlesnakes, and Canby said, “There was this man from Illinois and we told him, seventeen times we must have told him, ‘Don’t build your house against them rocks,’ but he did, in late November, and all during a very hard winter he smiled at us, because we were out in the open and he was snug against them rocks, and we broke our backs gatherin’ wood while he was protected against the wind. But come late April, like we expected, we hear this dandy from Illinois inside his house screamin’ for help, and we knowed what was up.”

Here Canby halted dramatically, and only Poteet and Person know what was up, but the others were too trail-hardy to ask, so it fell to Jim Lloyd to say, “What was up?”

“Heat from the sun had brought the rattlesnakes out from them rocks, and when this dandy wokened up he sees sixty rattlers in his room, with some of them draped over his bed, and he like to died.”

Again a dramatic pause, broken by Jim’s question: “What did he do then?”

“For one thing, he wet the bed. For another, he kept screamin’, because there wasn’t no place he could put his foot down to escape. Of course, we knew the rattlers was torpid ...”

“What’s that?” Jim asked.

“Half asleep ... just out from hibernation. So we went in and just swept ’em away like they was dust—shook the covers and flicked ’em off on the floor. We got him out of there, but we wouldn’t never go back, not even for his things. We had to send a boy in to fetch them.” He paused and added, “Sixty rattlers in one little room. That makes you think.”

It was Lasater who told the story that Jim had to challenge. He said, “I mind when O. D. Cleaver was comin’ home from buyin’ a milk cow, and if there’s one animal on this earth that hates the rattlesnake, it’s the milk cow, because as you know, the rattler loves milk better’n anything, and he’ll creep up on a cow and suck her dry. Moves from teat to teat, I’ve seen ’em do it.”

“I don’t think a cow would allow it,” Jim suggested.

With deep scorn Lasater stared at the boy, then continued: “So as O. D. was leadin’ his milk cow home he spots this rattler alongside the road, not harmin’ anybody and tendin’ its nineteen baby rattlers. Like pencils they were, not much. So as soon as the cow sees the mother rattler she lunges at her, and what do you suppose the mother rattler does? She opens her mouth and makes a call, I guess. O. D. couldn’t hear the call, of course, but he supposes she made one, for every one of the nineteen baby rattlers scurries across the sand and jumps into mama’s mouth and back down into her belly, whereupon Mrs. Rattler glides away to safety just as pretty as you please.”

The story pleased the audience and reminded them once more of nature’s inherent mysteries, but Jim Lloyd spoiled its effect by saying, “I don’t believe rattlers can do that. The babies would suffocate.”

Lasater drew back his head as if he had been slapped across the face. “Are you sayin’ it didn’t happen?” he demanded.

“I wasn’t there,” Jim backed up, “but I doubt ...”

Lasater responded by drawing his Colt’s Navy and slamming it onto the ground before him, its steel-blue barrel glistening in the firelight. “Are you calling O. D. Cleaver a liar? He seen it, goddamnit. He seen it, and you’re calling O. D. Cleaver a liar.”

“No, I’m not,” Jim apologized. “If he seen it ... well ...”

“That’s better,” Lasater said, replacing his revolver.

That night when Jim went to bed the others winked at one another and waited, and sure enough, moments later there came a scream of terror, followed by Jim dashing back to the fire, his face ashen white.

“My God, what is it?” Buck the wrangler cried.

“There’s a rattlesnake in my bed!”

“Oh, my God!” Buck cried in equal horror, even though he had been the one to plant it there.

“I kicked my shoes off and slipped my feet in ...” The memory was too painful, and Buck asked solicitously, “Did it bite you?”

“I don’t think so,” and as Jim started inspecting his ankles by the fire he slowly realized that the others were laughing at him, and instinctively he knew that his future in the outfit depended upon how he accepted this hazing. Keeping his hands about his left ankle and scrutinizing it with care, he said slowly, “The rattler had a good chance at me, so he was either asleep or dead. I guess he must have been dead, because I don’t think Buck would be brave enough to pick up a live one and put him in my bed.”

With a burst of laughter, he caught up a handful of dust and threw it across the fire at the wrangler. When he went back to bed the men laughed and told one another, “He’ll be a pretty good kid,” and they joshed Buck, claiming that the boy had known all along that the rattler was dead. But Jim, lying alone, wondered at the intricacy of the joke that had been played on him. It had started far back in the evening with the first mention of rattlesnakes, and he had swallowed every piece of bait they had thrown before him, so that when he finally felt the snake in his bed he had nearly fainted with fear.

Along with the hazing, which continued for two weeks, the older men were generous in educating Jim regarding trail customs. Once when he returned, hot and dusty, he threw himself on the ground, his head back, his lungs gasping for clean air, but Nate Person caught him by the arm and warned, “Don’t never do that, Jim.”

“What?”

“Throw yourself on the ground thoughtless, that way. Always look first. When a cowboy sits down, nine things can happen to him, and eight are bad.”

“What you talkin’ about?” Jim asked in perplexity.

“He can sit on cactus, or embers from the fire, or somebody’s plate, or a Gila monster or a scorpion, or steer piss, or cow flop, or worst of all, a rattlesnake. If you’re lucky, one time in nine you get a little rest. So you look before you sit.”

The first time he came back to the fire after a twelve-to-two night guard, he went quietly to Canby’s sleeping bag and shook him, intending to say, “Canby, your watch,” but before he could utter a word Canby was bolt upright, jabbing a revolver in his face and cursing him. “Don’t never touch a sleepin’ cowboy” he growled, wakening the other sleepers, the very thing Jim had been trying to avoid.

“I coulda blown his head off!” Canby snarled. “Goddamn kid comes sneakin’ up on me and grabs me like he was a Indian.” He muttered all the way to the herd, and Mr. Poteet warned Jim, “When you approach the man who’s to take your place, let him hear you comin’. Above all, let him hear you call his name. Start about here and say in a low voice, ‘Canby! Canby! It’s Jim. Your turn.’ And he’ll know everything is all right. But for God’s sake, don’t touch him. You could have been killed.”

They also taught him how to sing during the night watches. “It’s a fact,” Person explained as he rode with Jim. “Cattle, ’specially them longhorns, stay quieter if they hear a man’s voice. So we sing the night through. I heard a fella say, ‘Singin’ hangs a veil of confidence about the herd.’ They stay content inside.”

The men sang various songs, but the one Jim adopted was the greatest of the cattle songs, the one that struck closest to the heart of what a cowboy was:

I ride an old paint, I lead an old dan.

I
’m
off to Montanny to throw the hoolihan.

We feed
’
em in the
coulies and water in the draw.

Their tails are all matted, their backs are all raw

Ride around, little dogies, ride around
’
em slow.

They
’re
fiery and snuffy and a-rar
in’
to go.

He never tired of the words or the monotonous tune. A thousand cowboys would sing this ditty to their restless herds and quiet them. The verse Jim liked best was a dandy:

Old Bill
Jones had a daughter and a son.

One went to
college, the other went wrong.

His wife was killed in a poolroom fight,

But still he keeps sing
in’
both morn
in’
and night.

Jim, who knew little about girls, speculated on what had happened to the daughter, but it was the wife part that delighted him. He could see Bill Jones and his tough partner swingin’ pool cues and bashin’ in heads, and he was sorry the old girl was done in. He had seen pool tables and bowling alleys, too, at Fort Richardson, south of Jacksborough.

The strangest song sung by any of the cowboys was that of Bufe Coker, for he favored what had served as a South Carolina anthem:

Hurrah, hurrah!

For southern rights, hurrah!

Hurrah for the
Bonnie Blue Flag

That bears the single star.

When Jim rode with him he could hear the rebel singing this old battle song as though Coker were still marching in defense of a lost cause. He would begin to shout the words, and then Jim would quieten him. The opening verse of the song worried Jim:

We are a band of brothers,

Native to the soil,

Fight
in’
for the property

We gained by honest toil.

“What property you talkin’ about?” Jim asked, and Coker replied, “Niggers, what else?”

Jim once asked Mr. Skimmerhorn about this, he having fought on the northern side, and Skimmerhorn explained that no body of men had ever fought so valiantly for an idea so wrong. This judgment confused Jim even more and he raised the question with Mr. Poteet, who said, “It’s a stupid song, but I marched to it. Who ever heard of a crusadin’ army fightin’ to protect mere property, and slave property at that?”

As Jim came to know the cowboys better, he discovered how special these men were, these wanderers of the range. They were at ease only with other men; women perplexed and sometimes terrified them. When they told stories of women they spoke with a fifteenth-century gentility and almost always it was the man who appeared foolish or at fault. They held women in a distant respect, and one night when Buck started to tell of a different kind of woman he had met in Kansas, Poteet stared at him reprovingly and indicated by a nod of his head toward Jim that a young boy was present, and Buck ended lamely, “Well, she was some woman,” and his listeners grinned.

The talk turned to horses, and Lasater told of the legendary horse that roamed the Texas prairies—the fiery-eyed white mustang that no one had ever been able to rope. Several times he had appeared to parties that had lost their way and were perishing of thirst, and with mane flashing in the sunlight, led them to safety. He had done many remarkable things, including the time he had broken through three sets of latches which Mexicans had constructed to imprison him, but his greatest feat was leading a party of women through a prairie fire.

“O. D. Cleaver saw that mustang as he broke through the fire,” Lasater said. “That pony had chose the only path to safety, and as he finished his job his mane was afire.”

“A fire that big ...” Jim Lloyd began. But once more Lasater had his revolver out and was demanding, “Are you calling O. D. Cleaver a liar?”

“No, if he seen it ...”

“You better be careful, because he did see it and he told me about it, personally.”

On a starry night so beautiful and so mild with the coming of spring that the men lingered long at the fire, Savage, who rarely talked much, said, “Just over the hill is Fort Phantom ... that is, the ruins of it.”

“That’s a crazy name for a fort,” Canby said.

“That’s what it was,” Savage insisted. “My dad served there when the fort was bein’ built in 18 and 52. He said it was the worst fort in the world—hot, dirty, bad food, no water, nothin’ to do ... day after day, nothin’ at all.”

“What’s the point of your story?” Lasater asked.

“Just this. In 18 and 54 the government finally listened to the complaints and decided to shut the place down, temporary. On the last day as the men were movin’ out my dad heard the major say, ‘It would be a blessin’ if this damned place was burned to the ground. Otherwise they’ll use it again.’ So when the major and the men around him moved on, what do you think my dad and six of his friends did?”