Cherokee (10 page)

I looked back, but never saw anyone behind us. Of course I didn't expect to see Lew Vara. The only time I would have been aware of him would have been if he'd signaled with a shot or two that he'd caught someone suspicious on our trail. We rode on, and a few hours passed and it commenced to get dark. It was going to be a good, moonlit night, and the road to El Campo was plain to see and smooth riding, so I was content to just travel along as we were.

We rode on into the night. The moon commenced to get up, just barely showing in the western sky. About seven o'clock Ray Hays said, “Boss, course I don't know what our timetable is, or when we got to be where-at, at what time, but my stummick is startin' to dispute me.”

He was right. We'd gotten a late start out of Blessing, and we'd be lucky to get to El Campo much before nine-thirty. I'd been determined to sleep in a hotel bed the whole trip, but it appeared that plan was going to go awry the first night out. By the time we got to El Campo the only thing that would be open would be saloons and whorehouses, and we'd likely not find even the worst cafe open. I said, “Yeah, well, we'll pull up pretty quick. Let's try and make Pecan Creek. Least that way we can water the horses and find some downed wood for a fire.”

About an hour later I could see the straggly line of trees that bordered the little creek come rising out of the prairie. In ten minutes we were there, pulling up the horses and turning left to get away from the road and to find a good place to camp. Pecan Creek wasn't much of a creek. In some seasons, like late summer or winter, it nearly went dry. But now it was bubbling along, about four or five feet across and maybe a foot deep at its worst. We rode along the tree line about a quarter of a mile or so, and then pulled the horses up and got down right by the tree line. The trees were mostly willow and mesquite, with a big cottonwood or sycamore scattered here or there. We unloaded the packhorse first because it took the both of us to do it. Not that one of us couldn't handle the weight; it was just the unwieldiness of the thing. The wagon sheet that Hays and his helpers had made the pack out of was good heavy canvas. They'd sewn it with heavy twine using a punch and an awl. So far it was working good. I felt the packhorse's back and he didn't seem at all tender, which was a good sign that the pack wasn't working back and forth and rubbing him raw. That meant that the two girths had been placed correctly and were holding the pack in place.

Once we got the pack off and on the ground we unsaddled the other horses, took their bridles off, and then tied picket ropes to their halters. After that we led them down to the creek and let them take their time watering while Hays and I gathered up downed wood for a fire. I left the building of the fire to Hays, and took the horses a little way from our camp and tied their picket ropes together. I didn't want to tether them to the trees along the creek because, given that kind of opportunity, a horse will just insist on winding in and out of the trees until he's got himself as tangled up as it's near possible to get.

By the time I come back to the campsite Hays had the fire going good so I could see what I was doing. I unrolled a slab of bacon from its oilskin, trimmed off some of the rind with a butcher knife Hays had packed, and then cut off a bunch of thick slices. The fire was starting to make coals, and I got out the big cast-iron skillet and slid it in among the coals, setting it on top of some, and banking others up around the sides. After that I opened up two cans of beans with my pocketknife and waited for the skillet to get hot. When I judged it had heated properly—and a cast-iron skillet heats slower than a steel one—I laid in the slices of bacon. They commenced to sizzle as soon as they hit the bottom of the skillet. Hays had filled up the coffeepot out of one of the canteens and thrown in a handful of ground coffee. He smelled the bacon as it began to cook and said, “Oh, my, don't that smell good! Boss, reckon they is anything smells as good as bacon frying?”

“Well, there's women's perfume.”

“Aw, I meant stuff you got to smell on a regular basis. Not somethin' you just get a whiff of now and then.”

“Well, bread baking. Or a pie.”

“Them are good too. But I don't see how you can beat the smell of coffee and bacon fryin' in the pan.”

Hays had brought a big sack of biscuits that the cook must have made up special for him because they seemed middling fresh. I set the sack by the fire with the top open so you could just reach in and get a biscuit when you felt like it.

Hays had made the fire out of dry mesquite, which cooks uncommonly hot, so I was obliged to keep turning my bacon with the point of the butcher knife to keep it from burning. I finally pulled the skillet back a little and then dumped in the two cans of beans. Of course the beans were already cooked. They come that way in the can. Same way you got tomatoes or peaches or whatever. Some day, I thought, I was going to have to find out how they did that. They couldn't put the beans in the can and then seal them up—and I didn't even know how they did that—and then cook them, or else the pressure would build up in the can like steam in a boiler and blow the whole damn thing apart. They had to cook the beans first and then put them in and seal them up. But Nora said that wasn't the way they did it. She said they did it the same way she put up preserves in the glass bottles with the wire hooks that pulled the lids down tight and clamped them.

The water was starting to bubble in the coffeepot, and Ray pulled it back from the fire so it would just simmer. Then he got up and went over to the pack right behind me to get out tin plates and forks and tin cups. I could hear him rattling around and heard him mutter, “Nails. Damn. Carrying nails.”

I smiled to myself in the dark. I'd tell him sooner or later, and then he'd wish it was nails we were carrying. If he knew we were camped out on the bald prairie with $25,000 in gold, he'd get so jittery he'd never go to sleep. And not because he was worried about the money, but because he'd be worried that someone would know about the gold and come and try and take it and feel the need to kill him in the process. No, I was very definitely doing Ray a favor by letting him think we were hauling kegs of nails around the country.

He came back and handed me my plate and cup and utensils. He said, “Say, ain't we kind of close to El Campo?”

I said casually, “Yeah. I figure we're about ten miles short of it. I was planning on making it tonight and staying at a hotel.”

He looked surprised. “You wuz?”

“Yeah.”

“How come us to draw up?”

“You went to complaining about being hungry. I have never mistreated my hired hands yet and don't mean to start with you.”

I could see his face pretty good in the light of the camp fire. He was kind of chewing at his lip. I knew what he was thinking. He said, “Well, I never meant to interfere with yore plans with my stummick. I'd of just as soon rode on.”

“No, a man has got to see his men are well fed.”

He said, kind of clearing his throat, “Uh, uh, don't guess you'd want to ride on in once we've eat?”

I smiled at him. “What's on your mind, Ray? You're not thinking about that whorehouse in El Campo, are you? Or ain't there two there?”

“Three,” he said.

I said, “Well, la-de-da. Ray Hays. You mean you are thinking of being unfaithful to Maybelle's girls? Even the two fat ones? Give your business to an out-of-town establishment? Hell, El Campo is three times as big as Blessing. They don't need your money near as bad as Maybelle's does.”

He got a kind of longing look on his face. “Don't reckon we'll be stopping there for any amount of time as we pass through tomorrow?”

“We ain't even going to be passing through there, much less stopping. We'll go around El Campo to the east. I figure this time tomorrow night we'll be camped near La Grange somewhere on the banks of the Colorado River.” Of course it was my intention to be camped in a bed in a hotel in La Grange, but I wasn't telling Hays that. It was much more fun kidding him, making him think he might not see the inside of a town for however long the trip took.

He said, “Whyn't maybe we could make it to La Grange by tomorrow night? Can't be but fifty miles up there. Maybe not even that far. Might even be less.”

The beans were starting to bubble, and I knew the coffee was ready by the aroma. I took a big spoon and filled Hays's plate and passed it to him. He was filling me a tin cup of coffee. I said, “Ray, you might as well make up your mind that there is gonna be damn little fun had by either one of us on this trip. Now eat them beans and bacon and be happy you got that. Here's the biscuits.”

The beans and bacon were just about all a man could want. That was all I could say about the business of camping out on the trail—it made the food taste so much better. If Nora had tried to give me a plain dish like bacon and beans at home, I'd of thrown a fit and demanded a steak or a roast or at least fried chicken. But out on the trail, with the night air getting a little nippy, wasn't anything that tasted quite as good as what you were eating sitting around the fire with the stars for your roof and the moon your lantern.

We cleaned up the bacon and beans, even wiping the skillet clean with pieces of biscuit, and then Hays took the plates and the utensils and the skillet down to the creek to give them a wash. I put a little more water in the coffee, added a half a handful of ground coffee beans, and set the pot back in closer to the fire. The fire had burned down until it was just glowing coals. We had some extra wood on hand, and we'd use that for light when we got ready to locate our bedrolls. The night was so quiet I could hear the sound of our horses grazing. Hays came back and I got out the bottle of whiskey. We poured the cups half full of coffee, and then I added some whiskey to mine for “sweetenin' ” and passed the bottle across to Hays, who did likewise. After that we both leaned back against our saddles and sipped coffee and whiskey and thought our own thoughts. Mine were mainly concerned with the long trip ahead, and missing Nora, and how in hell I was going to find one man in the whole state of Oklahoma. Maybe he'd been elected governor and then he'd be easy to lay hands on. But other than that, I had no idea of how to go about the chore except start with the Tribal Council as Lew Vara had suggested.

After a time we finished our second cup and Ray threw the balance of the dry wood on the fire. As soon as it blazed up we set about unrolling our sleeping bags and putting down the ground sheet so as not to be sleeping with the chiggers and ticks and whatnot. I took off my boots, loosened my belt, took my revolver out of the holster and put it handy, and then laid back on my blankets with my head on my saddle. Ray was just beside me, to my right. I closed my eyes and tried to get comfortable on the hard ground. Just about the time I was starting to relax Hays said, “Boss?”

“What?”

“Gimmee a thought to chew on so I'll drop on off to sleep.”

It was a habit he had that I had always found the strangest notion a grown man had ever come up with. But we'd been doing it for a number of years. He claimed if somebody else gave him a thought, it would keep his mind off his troubles and then he could relax and drift on off. He said if he came up with the thought it would invariably be about some of his troubles, and then he'd just agitate himself the whole night through.

I said, “Hays, you beat anything, you know that?”

“Come on, Boss, you'll be wantin' to git off early in the momin'. I need my sleep.”

“Who does this for you in the bunkhouse?”

“Oh, first one and then the other.”

“They don't make fun of you?”

He sounded surprised. “What fer? Ain't nuthin' funny 'bout a man tryin' to get a good night's sleep.”

I sighed. “All right, give me a minute.”

I had been thinking about the Jordans and all the trouble they could make before I got back and just how Norris and Ben would handle it. I said, “You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your enemies.”

He took it and got quiet. Hays slept on his back with his hat over his face. The fire was dying down, but I glanced over and saw him settling his hat more securely over his face. I never could understand how anybody could sleep with their face inside a smelly old hat.

I was just starting to get relaxed again, and could feel sleep working its way through my body, when Hays said, “Boss?”

“What!”

“That do be true. An' I never even thought of it before. You can't pick yore enemies. They jest happen. If you could pick 'em, why you'd pick little old folks that couldn't be much of a bother. Ain't that so?”

I said, with a threat in my voice, “You are damn well fixing to find out.”

It took him a few seconds, but then he said, “Oh. I ain't sayin' another word. Not one word. You've heard the last out of me tonight.”

“Fine.”

“Unless they's a commotion of some kind. Or it comes on to rain. Or—”

“HAYS!”

“Yessir. Not 'nother word.”

We got a good early start, just taking time to make some coffee and eat a few biscuits and then we were back on the road. We jogged along, making El Campo around nine of the morning, and skirting it to the southeast, then turning back northwest once we were by it, and picking up the road to La Grange. Weren't many travelers out and about. Before noon we met one farmer heading into El Campo with a load of pigs in his wagon, and a couple of solitary horsemen trotting along. They were just ordinary folk, going about their business, and ordinarily I wouldn't have paid them the slightest mind. But there's something about running around the country carrying $25,000 in gold that causes you to look at people in a different light.