Duster (9781310020889) (28 page)

We was both feeling lazy so we staked the
bell mare out on a picket rope. That way we knew she wouldn't
wander off, and as long as she stayed put the rest of them would
too. The work had been pretty light once the cattle had been caught
so all the horses was in good shape.

Since there wasn't any shade to stretch out
in, we just dumped our stuff on the ground right where we stood and
fashioned a halfhearted camp so we'd have a place to sit and talk
while we waited. We sat on the ground and leaned back against our
piled-up gear and pulled our hats down low over our eyes to keep
the sun off. Being able to do that felt awful good to me. I was
enjoying my hat.

"D'you bring any matches along?" Jesus asked
after a minute or two.

"Sure. I ain't so stupid I'm gonna come off
with a slab of bacon and no way to cook it."

"Well, fetch 'em out and let me have one
then."

I looked over toward Jesus. There he was
with a bit of flimsy paper in one hand and a cloth pouch of tobacco
in the other. "When did you take up smoking them things?"

"Oh, I been smoking a long while."

"Sure, a pipe same as 'most everyone else
around here. I mean them cigarette things."

"Um, just recent like."

"Uh-huh. Just recent. Like after you got to
Hogan's store, which was after you seen that Estrada fellow. Don't
tell me you took a shine to him an' his bandit ways."

"Course not."

"Naw. Of course not. But then why'd you want
to go an' buy a pistol all of a sudden? Answer me that if you
can."

"I just taken a notion to, that's all."

"Don't give me that. Next thing you know
you'll be prowlin' around at night lookin' for trouble to get
into."

"Would you just give me them matches like I
asked?"

"All right. It's your never-mind, I guess."
I dug the block of matches out of the sack and handed them to
him.

Jesus fumbled and fussed and spilled tobacco
all over himself for quite a time before he got a cigarette put
together. When he finished with it, it wasn't much to look at, but
he fired it up and got some smoke out of it.

I watched him without offering any advice,
not being familiar with the manufacture of them myself. I mean,
they weren't real popular. Some of the Mex vaqueros smoked them,
and the Texas cowhands was beginning to pick up on the habit from
them. Probably because they looked to be more convenient than a
pipe. Anyway, I wasn't much familiar with it all, though I'd smoked
some dried weeds once, so I just watched while Jesus worked on the
twisted-up thing he had fashioned. When it was smoked down to a nub
he ground it out in the dirt and went to building another.

"Good?"

"Not bad. Some drier than a pipe, but not
bad." He had the second one built in less time. Then he offered the
fixings to me. "Try one?"

"Sure. Why not?"

I tore a square of paper from the sheet of
it he had and sprinkled some of the tobacco onto the middle of my
piece of paper. A lot of it spilled when I went to roll and twist
it into shape but there was enough inside to try smoking, so I held
a match to the end and sucked some of the smoke into my mouth.
"Bleah ... that tastes awful!"

"It does, don't it?"

"So how come you're smoking a second
one?"

"They tell me it tastes good when you get
onto it. Besides, I got seven cents worth of tobacco and paper
that'd go to waste if I didn't use it up."

"You don't mind if I let you get rid of that
stuff by your lonesome, I hope."

"Naw, you don't gotta smoke 'em."

"That's good, 'cause I wasn't going to
anyhow." I crumpled the cigarette out on the ground and wished I
could get rid of the taste as easy. It left a dry, nasty sort of
taste in my mouth that I wasn't at all partial to.

We frittered the rest of the day away doing
important things. Jesus smoking ... me flipping pebbles at a
prickly pear about twenty feet away. I got so I could hit it pretty
regular too.

In between times Jesus taught me cuss words
in Spanish.

They didn't sound like much when he told me
what they meant in American, but he said they were potent in
Mexican. I'd asked him to teach me, thinking I had got around now
to trying some of the other sins and should give this one a whirl,
too, even if I hadn't much cared for any of them so far.

Come night, we built up a good fire and
cooked us some chunks of bacon. For something a little special
afterward, we opened two bags of dried peaches with our knives and
ate until our bellies was about to bust. It was a right good meal
considering that Bill wasn't around to do the fixing.

After supper, Jesus tried to talk me into
throwing the dice with him, but I figured it would of been my forty
cents against his credit. And anyway, I had really sinned enough
for the time being so I passed up the instruction and we turned in
early, both of us rolled up in my soogan. The next thing I knew,
old Jesus was shaking me awake in the middle of the night. With his
hand over my mouth again.

"Aw, c'mon," I mumbled. "Take yer Mexican
bandits an' go 'way."

He just kept shaking me. "Wake up, amigo.
Thees time they ess gringo bandidos."

"Huh?"

"I say thees time they ess gringo bandidos,
eh?"

I pried my face out of the soogan and looked
up. Sure enough there was a couple of strangers setting beside the
remains of our fire. They were the same pair I'd seen back on the
Atascosa that day—the ones who'd mistaken me for a dirt farmer.

"Evenin', boy," the one wearing a coat
said.

"Aw shut up with bein' so perlite to the
kid. We'd o' had 'em way back there if you hadn't been so perlite
then." The other one was the mean one as I recalled. I couldn't
recollect his name, but I sure could remember that I didn't like
him the least bit.

"Will you settle yourself down, Ben? There
ain't no call to get upset now. We caught up with 'em now, an' we
can carry 'em back an' let the boss have his talk with 'em like
he's been wanting to."

"A few welts on their
backs won't keep 'em from talking,
and
I've got a mind to give 'em a few. Specially that one," Ben said,
pointing at me. "That there one lied to us or we wouldn't of had
all this ride just to find them."

"I never," I told him. I might have tried
some sinning here lately but I wasn't no liar and wouldn't be
called one. "You asked me had I seen a herd going north and I
hadn't. The only one I knew of was ours, and we was going
east."

"Don't back-talk me, kid. If I say you was
lyin' then that's what you was doin'." Ben reached over and hit me
alongside my head—hard!

"Mister, you're crazy. What difference does
it make anyhow? What d'ya want us for?"

"Never mind what we want you for, kid. You
do what you're told and keep yer tongue shut or I'll whale you 'til
you have to walk all the way back."

"Now settle, Ben, I done told you that
oncet," the other one said. "It ain't nothing for you boys to get
upset about. The gentleman we work for wants to have a talk with
the both of you, an' he sent us to fetch you to him. That's
all."

"We don't specially want to go nowhere but
home right now. Who is it wants to see us?"

"That's sort of a secret about who it
is—business, you understand. And, boys, it ain't really left up to
you if you want to come along. We was told to fetch you, and fetch
you we will ... one way or another." His voice was low and steady
when he said that, and I could tell he meant it. I began to suspect
that this one might be just as mean as Ben when it came down to
it.

"You check with Mister Sam Silas in the
morning and see if he thinks we ought to go with you to see this
man."

"We'd just love to do that, boys, but we
wasted too much time already. We'll be leaving tonight—the four of
us."

"We can't do that, mister. We got these
horses to tend until morning, and then Mister Silas'll be here an'
we can ask him."

"I won't tell you again, boy. Any more talk
an' I'll just ask Ben here to whale on you a bit until you're ready
to come along. But I warn you, oncet old Ben starts on a beatin' he
don't like to quit until his arm gets tired, and that does take
awhile."

Ben grinned and spat into
what was left of the fire. Some
of the
spittle dribbled down into his beard, which was a lot longer than
when I'd seen him before, and he didn't even wipe it off. Between
that and his expression—all eager and mean—I like to got
sick.

"You seen me beat someone afore, ain't you,
Josiah? 'Member that Mex'can woman down to Piedras Negras? She
acted right once I'd got done with her, didn't she?"

"He's right, kid. That woman acted real nice
to Ben after he'd showed her he wouldn't take any trifling."

"Yeah. 'Member how her face was kinda
crooked after that 'cause of her jaw bein' broke? She looked funny
after that, didn't she, Josiah?"

Josiah looked at me with a trace of smile on
his lips. "See what I mean, kid? Old Ben would even enjoy it—he's
sorta odd that way, but useful."

I didn't say anything more after that. Maybe
I'm a coward or something ... but I didn't want to hear any more
about that Mexican woman, and I didn't want Ben to hit me again.
That first clout had been hard and I guess he wasn't even thinking
about it much more than he'd think about swatting at a fly that lit
on his arm.

I looked over at Jesus, who hadn't said a
word or moved a muscle since he woke me up. If I had been smart I
would of acted the same as him instead of talking so much.

Jesus, he just shrugged his shoulders a bit
and started to gather our things together.

It didn't take long to roll everything into
a bundle that would tie behind a saddle. We hadn't much to speak of
except my sack of presents and the soogan, a small spider and a few
scraps of food that we'd been saving for breakfast. The presents
and the spider went behind my saddle on the steeldust, and Jesus
loaded the rest with his saddle on the grulla he'd come to
favor.

"At least you boys know how to act on the
trail," Josiah said. "We'll let you handle the camp chores on the
way, won't we, Ben?"

I wanted to ask how far we
were going and how long it
would take but
I didn't, I was that cowed by Ben. I knew the rest of our bunch
would find the horses all right in the morning— they wouldn't
wander off with the bell mare staked in place— and after they got
over being mad they'd wait a day or even two but if we weren't back
by then they'd have to head on home without us.

Ma would be terrible fretful if the rest
came home and told her we'd lit out from Rockport. I didn't want
that to happen, but there wouldn't be anything else Mister Sam and
the boys could think when we disappeared.

And there wasn't much hope of us getting
back before they left for home. Ben's talk about Piedras Negras had
made me begin to suspect we might be in for quite a ride. That
place was a long ways off on the other side of Maverick County
across the river from Eagle Pass—twice as far as we'd come—and it
would take a lot of riding to reach it if that was where we was
going. Even without a herd to slow us up it would take a week or so
just to get there.

We still didn't know who this man was that
wanted to talk to us, or what it was we could tell him when he did.
Still, I wasn't going to ask again, not right away anyhow. Jesus's
shrug had expressed things pretty good. There just wasn't anything
for us to do but wait and see what happened when we got there.

IT WAS A good thing our horses had had a
couple days to rest after we got into Rockport for we rode straight
through the night, only stopping for a few hours toward dawn to let
the animals roll and water while we fixed some breakfast out of the
stuff Josiah and Ben had on a packhorse they was leading. Then we
went right on until past noon before we stopped to make a proper
camp and to let the horses rest up.

That Josiah wasn't one you'd care to be
friendly with, but I had to admit he knew how to get the most out
of a horse without making it overtired. That first night and day,
we must of gone sixty miles or more, until we were getting close to
Beeville anyway, but the animals still had a lot left in them when
we stopped.

I'd been used to working horses around
beeves, and that will pretty well use one up in a morning. I hadn't
done any cross-country traveling before, but these fellows sure
had, and it was amazing how much ground they covered without
working up more than a good, healthy sweat on the horses.

Mostly, we went at a brisk
singlefoot, which will cover more territory than you might think,
and then every once in a
while, Josiah
would pick it up to an easy lope that we'd hold for five or ten
minutes. After that, every time, we'd have to get off and lead the
horses for about the same amount of time that we had loped them—and
then back into the saddle at that quick, shuffling walk.

I couldn't say I was enjoying the
experience, but I was paying attention and was learning a thing or
two. And I was sure hoping I could put the knowledge to work soon
to get me home the quickest way I could. I was still plenty worried
about what Ma would think if we weren't back when the rest got
there, and they would probably be back in McMullen County in a
week's time. I was also some worried about what Mister Sam Silas
would think of me. During the night, I'd remembered that the
steeldust belonged to him even if I had started thinking of it as
mine, and he would likely think me a thief when he found his horse
gone, too. The only thing good about it was that Bill was holding
my money. The family would get that, regardless.