Duster (9781310020889) (23 page)

After breakfast, I told Mister Sam that I
was ready to go, and we switched our saddles to day horses.

"We'll ride by and check the herd on our
way," Mister Sam said, so we rode on downriver a little way.

B.J. and Ike were there already. They had
ate breakfast early and then came out to relieve the night
herders.

Ike came over to us and sat easy on his
horse, one leg draped over the horn of his saddle. He spit at a
little rock and hit it near dead center. Ike grinned at Mister Sam
and said, "Come to check up on us, have you? Man oughta trust his
own riders anyway."

"I would, too, if I had any good ones,"
Mister Sam told him. "If you know of any good, trustworthy hands
looking for a riding job, let me know. I have one here I might want
to replace if he doesn't start showing some respect."

Ike spit at the rock again. "I'll do it too,
if he ain't a good friend. But I couldn't hardly wish you off on
anyone I favor. You bein' so mean an' all."

"Glad you'all noticed. I would have hated
for it to go to waste."

"Now that you're satisfied about that, what
can we do for you?"

"Duster and I need a couple good eating
beeves out of the herd. Something wearing one of my brands."

It didn't take Ike hardly a minute to work
into the herd and haze out a pair of animals. They wouldn't of been
thought to be of much account, I guess, except we was moving the
culls out of our country and these two were the best of a bad lot.
They was each two or three years old and packed a good load of meat
on their bones. The problem was that they was both females and both
had bad bones.

It happens like that with animals,
sometimes. They develop normal except for their hindquarters, say.
These cows were gimpy in the hindquarters like they'd never grown
all the way. Even I could tell neither one would be likely to drop
a calf proper, and if they could, you wouldn't want that bad blood
carried on anyway. It seemed a shame to lose a pair of heifers with
their bearing years ahead of them yet, but it would be a worse
shame if the calves lived and messed up the herd with more bad
bones. Besides, it would more likely be that they couldn't drop the
calf and then both it and the mama would die out in the brush and
be wasted.

Anyway, me and Mister Sam Silas took these
heifers from Ike and drifted them up away from the river. I had
figured what Mister Sam intended as soon as he asked Ike for the
cows, and I was right about it. We pushed them with us right to
that little farm where I'd got the medicine.

We had to go all the way back up to camp and
then up that little creek since that was the only way I knew to get
there. It didn't seem such a long way in the daytime, so even with
having to chouse those little cows it didn't take too long.

We came up behind the soddy like I'd done
the night before, and at the edge of the clearing we stopped and
set still for a minute.

"Hello the house," Mister Sam called
out.

I noticed I'd been right
the night before. There was a small, neat and well- weeded garden
straight ahead of
us. It had a low fence
around it that didn't look like much but was sturdy built. Past
that was the leavings of the winter's woodpile, the one that had
like to tripped me. And past that and to the left was the
soddy.

After seeing how tidy the inside of that
soddy was, it was kind of sad to get a good look at the outside.
The inside was so awful nice the way they'd fixed it up. The
outside just looked awful.

That's one thing you have to say about a
soddy. They look like something a great huge cat has drug home to
its cave. Oh, there's good things that can be said for them. They
don't cost a shinplaster cent to build and don't take more than a
spade or even just a pocketknife for tools if that's all you have
got. They'll keep you warm in winter and cool in summer. They'll
keep most of the rain off your neck. But on the other side of it,
what rain they do let down on your neck is mud by the time it seeps
through the roof. And where the water gets through, so can little
bugs and tiny scorpions and such.

The appearance, of course, is mostly bad
inside and out, though the inside can be fixed up like these folks
had done. As for the outside, there's no help for it. They look
awful. It's the grass that holds it all together, like the straw in
dried clay brick, but bits of grass and roots poking out of the
walls gives the whole building the look of a hairy brown thing that
has died and ought to be buried before it starts to smell. And no
matter how careful you are in the building of it, a soddy commences
to start to melt around the edges immediately it is finished.

The corners of this one were still pretty
sharp, so I guessed it hadn't been standing for long, and you can
tell easy with a sod building. They melt a lot quicker than
adobe.

It didn't make much sense to me for anyone,
even a foreigner, to build a soddy when there's wood close by—and
I'd seen inside how well this fellow worked with wood—so I had to
figure they came to this place last fall and believed a soddy would
put them under a winter roof quicker than a log house.

Anyhow, when we didn't get an answer to the
holler, we rode around to the front of the place and then we could
see why no one had answered.

It sure looked like these folks figured to
be dirt farmers. There wasn't an animal around bigger than the hens
I'd heard the night before, but they sure were working hard to
clear land for crops.

They already had about ten acres cleared.
There was a strip of bare dirt that started right in front of the
soddy and stretched off in the direction away from the creek. It
didn't seem the right way to do it, what with the bottomland just a
little ways off toward the creek, but then I don't know anything
about being a plow-jockey nor about which kind of dirt is best for
growing things.

This is where they'd chosen to put their
farm, though, and they were hard at it. That's why they hadn't
answered—they was all too busy working. The woman had some kind of
sharpened pole or stick and was walking along gouging into the dirt
with it. The girls were going along behind her, one of them
dropping something and the littlest one covering it up. Sowing
seeds is what they had to be doing. The man was away off at the
other end of the cleared patch, cutting brush to clear more land
for planting and grubbing out the roots as he went. He was a slow,
thorough worker and even at the distance I could see the easy power
he put into his labor.

"Hello, there," Mister Sam bellowed again.
This time the littlest girl turned around and looked back to where
we were. She turned back around and must of said something to the
other girl, for she looked toward us and then looked back toward
her mother. Next, the woman looked us over, and finally the man
did. They made a regular chain of heads turning.

When the man saw us, he
started walking back our way. I
noticed he
brought his ax along with him and he carried it in both hands like
he wanted to have it handy. The woman joined him as he came up to
us.

They were up pretty close before they seemed
to recognize who I was. Maybe they hadn't seen it was me because of
the rag around my head. I hadn't been wearing it the night before,
and I guess from a distance I might of looked like a hardcase with
a bandage on my head.

Anyway, when they seen who it was they
commenced to smiling, and the man slung the ax over his shoulder.
They said something to each other in that language I didn't
understand.

"Iss dis your ill friend, young boy?" the
woman asked.

"Oh, no, ma'am. This here's Mister Sam
Silas—the boss of our cattle drive."

She came up to Mister Sam's horse and stuck
her hand up to shake just like a man would. "So nice to be
acquainted," she said.

Mister Sam's mouth never so much as quivered
toward a smile. He shoved his hand out and shook like he didn't
think a thing of it. "Pleased to see you folks," he said. "You all
helped us out of a real bad situation with that laudanum. My man
was quite sick, and you helped to make him well. We owe you for
that."

The man, the foreigner, said something to
his woman. I couldn't make out what the words was, but I knew he
was asking what Mister Sam had said. Then she talked some, telling
him what Mister Sam had said, and then he talked some more.

"My husban' is not good vith the English,"
the woman said, "so he ask me to tell you ve are happy your ill
friend feels better. Ve are new here and know very little about
this land, but people always must help people. Ve are frighten in
this land because ve do not know it, but you make us feel more
better because ve can help even if ve know so little. This is a
gudt thing."

"Well, ma'am, we just
wanted you to know we appreciate your help, and we brought these
two heifers along with us. Thought you might find use for them.
They're no good for
calving and no good to
us, but you might get some meat off them if you want," Mister Sam
said.

The woman's eyes got big, and she turned and
talked real fast with her husband, and at first his eyes lit up too
but then his face iced over while he was saying something back.

"My husban says to tell you ve do not need
paid for the med'cin," she said.

"Nobody said anything about pay, ma'am.
Duster, here, brought the rest of your medicine back to you. These
animals are just something we want to give out of friendship, not
payment, to welcome you to Texas as neighbors of sorts. Like I
said, they are no good to us, but they might be to you."

The way they talked that over, you could
tell the man didn't hardly believe it. I don't know but I'd guess
that wherever they came from cows are scarcer than they are in
Texas. They acted like it was something special instead of a couple
no-account heifers. While they was talking it over, I fished in my
pocket for the bottle of laudanum, which I'd completely forgot
until Mister Sam mentioned it, and gave it over to him so he could
return it to them.

When they was done talking again, Mister Sam
spoke up quick before she could tell us what her husband had said.
Maybe he understood what they'd been saying, for he was an almighty
well-educated man. Or maybe he just knew something about these kind
of folks, for he told them, "I don't mean to be rude, ma'am,
telling you all what to do, but out here we take it unkindly if
people will not accept a gift that is freely offered. But I cannot
tell you what you ought, so Duster and I will just leave these
animals here where they are. If you feel you can accept them, take
them. If not, leave them. In that case they will not find their way
back to the herd. They will run off into the brush and go wild
again, at least until someone spots them for bad breeders and
shoots them so they will not spoil the blood on whatever range they
are on then. So you do whatever you think is right."

He handed the bottle down
to her and turned his horse
away. Me, I
took a second to haze those two little heifers into a corner
between the soddy and a shed they had put up for some purpose. Then
I waved and rode off after Mister Sam. The littlest girl waved
back.

"Duster," Mister Sam said when I caught up
with him, "those folks there are going to have a rough time of it,
but I would wager they make it in the long run." He shook his head.
"But that surely is one stubborn man. He won't change. But then, I
would bet he has the grit it takes to bend the land to his ways,
instead."

"Could you make out what they was
saying?"

"Enough. They're Germans. I grew up near a
settlement of Germans in East Texas. They almost have that country
settled now, and soon there will be more dirt farmers in through
this area too. One farmer comes in and makes the land work for him,
and then there are more coming right along behind. I wouldn't be
surprised but what the cattle business gets pushed out past the
Pecos in a few more years. Or up north somewhere if they can ever
figure out what to do about the buffalo."

"Why didn't them folks want the
heifers?"

"They thought we were trying to give them
charity, and that old man won't have his neck bent by taking such.
They're practical folks, though. They won't let those animals run
off to go wild. He can take them with his head still up as long as
it's to keep them from going wild. That way nobody's been done
harm."

"Yessir," I said. "That's good."

"It is indeed, Duster. It is indeed."

NEXT DAY IT was back to firewood and cook
chores and horse punching for me. Crazy Longo was feeling better,
though, and we pushed right along after that little layover.

We drifted down the Nueces as easy as you
please, watching the mottes get thicker and feeling the air get
heavier with moisture, and it seemed like only another day or two
until we were plumb out of the Texas I knew and into a sandy,
rolling country that wasn't near so rocky nor a tenth as thorny as
the brush country that I knew as home.

Then, all of a sudden, there was Nueces Bay
off on our right as we drove the cattle along the north side of it.
And the next day we were skirting Corpus Christi Bay, the biggest
bunch of water I'd ever seen and more than I could of imagined,
with the town of the same name away off on the other side of the
bay from us. We struck north from there, in sight of water all the
way, and with Mustang Island across the blue from us.

We drove on up past Aransas Pass, having to
be careful all the while now to not let the herd trample somebody's
private property, and came at last to Rockport, which was protected
by the bulk of St. Joseph Island.