Duster (9781310020889) (12 page)

Right then, the rest of the crowd came
riding up. One second I was all quiet and cool hunkered down in
that water and the next, I was feeling mighty small and unprotected
with those boys on their horses standing over me with a hundred
eyeballs among them—with every pair of eyes perched up on top of a
noisy, flapping tongue, too.

At least it seemed there was that many. They
made noise enough for it, sitting on a bunch of horses that looked
taller than any I'd ever seen before—taller, that is, from my point
of view down below the riverbank level. Those horses looked tireder
than most too. I could see that even being startled like I was.
Those horses was beat. Jesus and me hadn't got there any too soon
with the fresh stuff. Not that I was thinking much about that at
the time.

"Hey, Duster, you can't wash all that dust
out of you that easy. There ain't water enough."

"Careful there, Duster. If you muddy up the
Nueces too much they's gonna be an awful lot of mad folks down
river."

"Don't it beat all now, boys? First we find
'im wallowin' in a puddle of dust an' now in a puddle of water.
That boy likes to wallow."

"Yeah, if we catch him rootin' for acorns
with his nose, we'll lose a rider. Have to hang him up fer
bacon."

They run on like that for a spell. In the
meantime, I got them sorted out. Where there'd been fifty of them a
minute ago, they pretty soon whittled down to just Ike Partley and
Split Emmons and Eben Dyer and Tommy Lucas. And of course that
no-account Jesus who had turned on me just as soon as the others'd
rode up. He was there laughing along with the rest.

I started to get up. Then I remembered my
horse was a good two-three dozen steps away, so I sat back down
again.

"Why ain't you gettin' out, Duster? You
gonna set there soakin' up water until you squish when you
ride?"

There wasn't really any reason to feel so
funny about it, but I did. "Aw, shoot, you guys just got no respect
for a tired cowhand." I stood up then, and got to my horse.

I was just standing there with my leggins
and stuff in my hand, and somehow when I reached for my hat it
fluttered right out of my hand and under Split's horse's nose. The
way that animal acted up was enough to remind me that that
particular sorrel always had been skittish. It didn't get wound up
enough to pitch him off, but old Split was busy there for a minute
or so. Long enough to keep the rest of them interested in him while
I took my time about getting everything pulled on and buttoned and
buckled.

Once I had my dignity back it occurred to me
just how many of them boys was right there beside the river. Unless
I misremembered completely, every single one of our whole cow crowd
was right here in one spot.

"Hey, Ike. Did you fellas get so carried
away wantin' to make light of me that you forgot to leave someone
to watch the cows you've cotched?" I asked. "You better go a-flyin'
or you'll lose 'em all."

"Naw, amigo. I think maybe they could not
catch cows without you an' me," Jesus said. He took his hat off and
brushed the dust off hisself like he was all proud of himself and
had to preen a little.

"You boys ain't quite all that important,"
Ike said in that slow, easy drawl of his. "We managed to get things
under control pretty good without you young'uns underfoot." He bore
down awful hard on that word "young'uns" so as to set us in our
place. "I'll show you later. Right now let's get these horses
settled. We sure can use 'em."

The rest of the bunch peeled their gear off
their tired horses. Me and Jesus held the fresh ones in close until
every-body'd roped out one he liked, then we moved all of them back
upriver a ways and turned off around a little hill to where they'd
left the remuda with the bell mare.

The remuda was scattered
out along both sides of a little hollow that had plenty of browse
and a little creek crossing it at the far end on its way to join
the Nueces. It had to be the same little stream we'd splashed
across not long before we got to the camp on our way down from Fort
Ewell.
It was a good place to leave a
bunch of horses. Not that they had much to worry about this bunch
going anywhere. I don't know a whole lot about horses, but even I
could see that these animals was worn down to a nub. They were even
worse off than the horses Ike and the others had been riding when
they found us. All of these in the remuda was stiff-legged when
they moved, gotten that way by the thorns that stabbed deep when
they went busting through brush after wild cow critters. They'd
pick up long stickers jabbed hard into muscles or, worse, into leg
joints. As long as they kept running and working it didn't seem to
slow them none, but as soon as they cooled off they'd stiffen up
and it'd take days for them to limber up again, longer before the
thorns would work out far enough for us to find the ends and pull
them out.

We all of us hated cat's-claw. Its thorns
was barbed on the ends and when a mess of it stuck into a horse
we'd have to take a stick or the flat side of a knife blade to pry
it loose.

Worst of all, though, we hated the viznaga
that we called devil's head. Many a time I've seen a cowhand get
down off his horse in the middle of a cow hunt to dig out a viznaga
down to the roots so he could kill it off. In time, I learned to do
that myself. What earned the devil's head its name was that it grew
low, just about right to slap a fetlock or lodge in a hoof even.
And the thorns had little bitty barb hooks all along the length of
them. You couldn't pull them out without them breaking off, and
left alone in the flesh like they had to be they'd work themselves
in deeper instead of backing out. If they got in a joint they could
cripple the best horse there was.

Ike told me he'd had to
turn a couple horses loose from the remuda to make it on their own,
maybe with a wild band. They'd been crippled in a different way.
Sollaoed, they called it. Wind broke. You never could tell how much
a horse could give. Sometimes they'd be weaker than you figured or
sometimes they just had so much heart they'd give more than they
had it in them to spend on running and working in the heat. Either
way they might be sollaoed, and once they had their wind broke it
was like their lungs had just busted. After that, no matter how
much they was rested or how good they was fed, they never
would be good for anything more than a walk and
not too much of that either or they'd just stand still and heave
for air that didn't seem to do anything for them.

These two Ike had turned loose had been
sollaoed chasing cows. There wasn't anything else he could of done
for them. They was both rough broke geldings, too ornery to give to
a kid, like for riding to school, and no use for breeding. On their
own in the brush they could find grass and mesquite beans and water
enough to get along, and they could set their own pace; wouldn't
even have to run if they didn't want.

I was some worried they might be easy game
for wolves— there was some of them supposed to be around—but Ike
said those little prairie lobos like we had around us was afraid to
tackle a growed-up animal. They hung around waiting for a calf to
be dropped, hoping they could sneak in before the mama could hook
them one with a horn. They wouldn't go after any growed-up animal
unless it was already down off its legs and not able to get away.
And the wolves wouldn't know these sollaoed horses couldn't run
away from them, Ike said. That made me feel some better and I
didn't worry about them anymore.

I sure was still curious, though, about what
they'd done with the cows they'd caught so far. I knew those horses
didn't get so wore out with no cows to show for it.

Finally, my curiosity got the better of me.
"Ike, what in this world have you done with the cows you all've
been catchin'?"

Ike flashed a few tobacco-stained tooth nubs
at me and leaned over from his horse to mine so he could slap me
real hard on the shoulder. "I shore am glad you asked me that,
Duster. The boys've been working awful hard while you young'uns
went off takin' it easy." He spit and got a prickly pear dead
center.

"They's some old cow pens nearby where we
can keep them critters behind a stockade wall. Don't know who ever
built 'em, but you can find such pens here and there all over this
country. A few fresh posts and a little green cowhide got things
patched up real fine now."

"Sounds good to me," I said. "I'll have to
get a look at this pen tomorry."

"Oh, I reckon we can do
better by you young'uns than
that. You
see, there's got to be somebody riding the outside at night to keep
the critters resting easy. It wouldn't do for them to get a smell
of bear or wolf and try to bust loose. They might get it done. So,
what we got to do is have a couple fellas slip along the outside
an' sing a few Texas lullabyes. Sort of thought you could take the
first half of the night and then let Jesus pick up the
rest."

"Nice of you," I said. I should of figured
something like that would happen when I opened my big mouth. It
seemed I never would learn. I headed on back to camp so's I could
get a bite to eat while I had time.

THAT COUNTRY DOWN along the Nueces was cram
full of cattle, cows wearing half the brands in creation and a
whole lot with no brand at all. We tore into them for fair,
branding and turning loose the calves and she stuff, cutting and
holding the young steers, and mostly keeping clear of the old mossy
horns.

It didn't take hardly any time for us to put
a herd together, especially since there was so few of us to drive
them through that rough country with no roads or proper trails. We
couldn't handle many. Of the six of us, one'd have to handle the
horses, too, so that left only five of us to drive beeves.

We put up a herd of three hundred. Ike
figured that would be plenty to keep us busy. He said he'd be happy
if we could get two-hundred-fifty of them up the Nueces to where we
was to meet Mister Sam Silas and the rest of the crowd. Figuring
like that, Ike had us put only steers in the herd to be driven, and
we took only our own brands. It was easy to do since so many of the
cows down there was mavericks without a brand until we come
along.

By the time the herd was put together, not
much more than a week after Jesus and me joined them, I counted
thirty-two steers in the bunch of them wearing the DD brand. Most
of them was from my every seventh share of the slicks, but a few of
them was wearing old brands. Those brands had likely been burned on
by my pa before he left home. It gave me something of a funny
feeling seeing them.

The last morning in our camp on the Nueces,
Ike rousted us out early—'bout four o'clock. I'd had the early
night watch again and I was still awful tired. One minute I was
laying there snuggled down deep in my soogan. It felt warm and nice
pulled over me. I guess I was about half awake; probably I'd heard
Ike getting up though I didn't realize it right off.

The night air was cold on my face, but I
didn't mind. It just made the rest of me feel that much warmer
under the soogan, and I wriggled a little to feel that warmth on my
shoulders and backside. There was a few sharp sticks or rocks under
my right hip, but they didn't gouge at me too bad being as they
were padded some by the soogan between me and them.

I laid there all toasty warm, and not
thinking for a minute about where I was I had my mouth all set for
some of Ma's fresh biscuits and a big glass of milk cooled off from
the night air. We always set the pail from the evening milking
outside, under the dogtrot roof, so it would cool for morning. I
thought I could hear Ma building up the fire.

I opened my eyes, thinking to tell my
brother Tom to go out and fetch the pail in, but instead of him I
seen Tommy Lucas hunkered down next to me ready to shake me out,
and on beyond him was Ike Partley stirring up the fire.

I set up and rubbed my eyes and instead of
Ma calling for the kids to get up I heard Eben Dyer cussing at
Jesus and old Lickety-Split who kept kicking at his feet to make
sure he got awake. Eben is probably the hardest man in this world
to get up in the morning. He'll wake up just enough to quit snoring
but he draws the line there and won't budge the least bit unless
you keep at him with a toe or maybe a hat full of water if you have
enough to spare.

As big as Eben is, it's a
good thing he don't get mad easy. He'll raise a fuss sometimes, and
he'll cuss something awful of a
morning,
but he's just funnin' when he does it. If there's a rock handy on
the ground he may pick it up and chunk it at who-ever's trying to
get him up, but with a rock he always misses and it must be on
purpose because if his hand closes on a nice, big clod of dirt
you're sure to get hit square between the shoulders when you try to
get away. I think Eben is hard to get up on purpose. It always
starts our day off good trying to think up ways to get Eben out of
his blankets quick. And I've noticed he never has any trouble
getting up in the middle of the night to stand his watch on the
herd.

Anyway, I pulled my shoes on, put my hat on
my head, rolled my soogan up, crawled into my leather, and I was
set for the day.

Ike had the fire going by then and the smoke
smelled real good on that cold morning air. By the time I got over
there he had dumped some coffee into a pail to boil and had put
some thick slices of bacon into the big old iron spider he carried
strapped on top of the packhorse. I hadn't noticed being hungry
before, but once I caught the smell of that bacon my mouth began to
water. I could feel it sure, though up to then I'd always thought
that was just a thing folks said for a way of talking. More than
likely it'd happened to me but I just never noticed it. Hungry as I
all of a sudden was, there just wasn't no way not to notice it
then.