Duster (9781310020889) (4 page)

What was left was about sixty branded
steers. We pushed them out of the clearing and moved them along in
a bunch to a big pen that had been built out of logs. We put them
inside after a little bit of a ruckus when they didn't want to go
in the gate even though there was two stockade wings built out to
each side to funnel them down and shove them in easy.

It was coming onto dark by the time that was
done, but Digger Bill, Mister Sam Silas's cook—he was called that
because when Mister Sam had bought him he'd been as scrawny as a
grasshopper-eating Digger Indian, but he'd been freed now since
before I was big enough to know anything and since long before the
war—had a bait of roasted meat and pan bread ready for us, and we
fell to it right smart.

Since I was the youngest along on this cow
hunt, I was given the midnight watch, but I didn't mind. I figured
that would give me a chance to get to bed right off and avoid
hearing Ike tell everyone about my first steer.

I sure was wrong about that. I even set it
off my own self. Being it was my first cow hunt, I didn't know
enough to rope up some dead wood and drag it in when I came up to
the fire, so the crew got together to give me a lesson in
manners.

"Well, now, I shorely am glad you could join
us fer dinner, Mistah Dorword, suh," Digger Bill said when I got
through pulling stickers and cat's-claw thorns out of the
hammerhead and came over to the fire. He hustled over and took me
by the arm. "You just set right over heah," he said, pushing me
over to a log someone had drug up, "an' I'll bring yore supper." He
cocked his head and grinned a real big, real yellow smile. "It's
sort of a thing we does fer folks out on theah first cow hunt,
suh."

Digger Bill hurried back to his fire and
pulled a tin plate out of one of his mule packs he had put on the
ground where it was handy. I could see him loading the plate with
meat and corn bread and a big dipper of frijoles.

In the meantime Crazy Longo and Tommy Lucas
and Jesus Menendez—Pico Menendez's boy—come over to where I
was.

"Go ahead and sit down," Tommy said. "Bill
likes to do this for all the new boys their first night out. Makes
people feel right to home, Bill sez."

"You'll hurt his feelings if you don't set
an' let him wait on you just this once," Crazy Longo added.

It was awful nice of them, I thought, so I
sat down on the log like he wanted.

"I'll have to do something to pay him back
for being so nice," I said to the other three fellows.

"Yes, you try to remember old Digger Bill
after this," Jesus agreed.

Pretty soon Digger Bill came over with my
plate all heaped with what looked to be the best chunk of meat he
could cut and a huge bait of bread and beans.

"It sure looks fine," I said, and thanked
him as well as I knew how. Then I dug out my pocket knife and
opened it up to eat with. I sawed off a piece of beef and it had to
be about as good as anything I'd ever eat before, and I told him
so.

Digger Bill glanced down toward where I had
set my plate in my lap, and he smiled like no one had ever paid him
a compliment before. I'd never seen anyone look so purely happy
before over such a little bit of praise, and I made a remark of
that to myself so I'd remember to speak well of his cooking from
time to time so as to please him. While I was thinking about that
his smile just got bigger and bigger.

I speared another piece of meat and smiled
back at him. And right about then it seemed like somebody had came
up and speared my back with about a hundred horseshoe nails right
off the fire.

I mean my whole tail end and legs and feet
and everything just all of a sudden turned into one big pincushion
with a fresh jolt of fire hitting me ten to a second.

I jerked and jumped something awful so that
my plate of food flew up on me, and I came up off that log quicker
than a jackass rabbit. The fire in my britches didn't quit and to
make it worse when I jumped up it must of startled Digger Bill,
because he sort of stumbled and bumped into me. That log was right
behind my feet, and I tripped over it and went down backward over
the log, and just missed a patch of prickly pear that I hadn't seen
there before.

I still didn't have time to examine it for I
kept getting stabbed by them flocks of red hot nails.

I come up off the ground dancing and
thrashing and beating on my britches for all I was worth then. I
couldn't see and didn't care what anyone else was doing all this
time. I just kept jumping and slapping.

That didn't seem to be
doing any good, so I took a-shedding clothes as quick as I could.
Pa's old leggins was fastened up
with
metal buckles at the waist and down at each foot, and I never knew
of such contrary bits of dumb metal before. They wouldn't break and
they wouldn't turn loose and I thought I'd go plumb out of my mind
before they came popping free.

I didn't take time to unbutton my pants—just
slipped off my galluses and shucked them off still buttoned up.
I've tried it since and just couldn't do it, but I did it then. All
my kicking already had my shoes worked loose and I thought I was
home free, but by then I was getting stabbed up higher too and real
quick my coat and shirt went flying over my head.

I rubbed and scraped and slapped like a
madman, and I could see then that I'd sat in a mess of big red ants
when I settled on that log, and they could really bite. I swear
some of them had got tired of the chewed-up skin on the outside of
me and was trying to burrow their way inside for some fresher
territory to gnaw on.

All the hopping and jigging must of had me
off balance again, for I remember tripping over someone's boot and
flopping down on the ground again. The dust felt good when I hit
the ground so I just stayed there and wallowed in it while I
finished scraping off the last of them big ants.

When I got so I could think again I was
sitting there in a dry pool of thick dust, all covered over with it
and naked as a body could be.

All the rest of the crowd was gathered
around peering at me and laughing and hooting until I thought
they'd be sick.

"I told you boys he's a real duster. Now,
that just proves it," Ike Partley called out. At least, that's what
I think he said. I couldn't hardly make out the words, he was
laughing so.

I'd have got mad and lit into somebody there
and then if I'd of known who to start on. Those bites hurt.

"I'd say Bill's done pretty well by you,
Duster. Next time you ride in you might remember his kindness and
drag in some wood for his fire." I looked and it was Mister Sam
Silas himself who was talking in a real dry, easy voice from where
he stood at the edge of the crowd. He was the only one of them that
wasn't having a good belly laugh at the whole thing, but even he
had a touch of smile that kept twitching at the corners of his
mouth.

I was still awful hot about it and was
sitting there glaring at them.

Off to my left a couple of yards, Crazy
Longo was doubled up from laughing and you could see he had laughed
so hard his belly hurt, but he couldn't quit. He was dabbing at his
eyes with the tail end of his bandanna and was staggering weak, so
he sat down to get his strength back, maybe so he could laugh some
more.

As it turned out, though, the handiest thing
near him was that same log, and he sat down on it, all bent over
and giggling and patting at his eyes.

He gave out a big sigh and about two more
full-sized chuckles and then his eyes got big and his mouth dropped
open and he hollered louder than a scared panther. Then, he jumped
up off that log like a pebble out of a sling, and the dance started
over again with a new center of attraction.

I guess I must of stirred those ants up
pretty good.

WE HAD STARTED the hunt up along the Frio
River and worked our way down it for the better part of a week,
gathering beef for the market slow-like while we came.

Things were pretty well under control, and
the brush wasn't so thick further down the river, so Mister Sam
Silas decided to send a bunch of us down along the Nueces to gather
up anything that had drifted down to the river and stopped there
for the winter.

He put Ike Partley in charge of this crowd
and sent along Tommy Lucas and Eben Dyer and Charlie Emmons's
brother Johnny who we called Split—short for Lickety-Split—and
Jesus Menendez who was just a year or two older than me and whose
name doesn't sound anything like the way it is spelled but instead
sounds like Hay-soose. And I went along too.

We was running sort of shy on horses since
they got used up pretty quick working in the heat and the thorns
like we did, so Ike and the others started on down with what we
had. Jesus and me were to go the long way around and try to pick up
some more at Fort Ewell where he said he knew of some Mexicans who
should have some horses to swap for our wore-out stuff.

Mister Sam Silas and a couple of the other
owners wrote out bills of sale for fifty head of horses, mostly
good stuff, that he said he'd leave penned up at his home place to
be picked up later by the Mexicans. To save time, me and Jesus was
to go to Fort Ewell by the stagecoach that ran between San Antonio
and Laredo. It sounded pretty good since neither of us had ever
been on a stage before.

Digger Bill loaded us and our saddles into
the dougherty wagon from the Silas ranch and drove us into town,
rocking and bouncing and having a good old time. We had got along
right well after the ant fight, and I'd never forgot even once to
take wood to his fire when we was out in the brush.

He dropped us off at the post office and
went on back to join up with the rest of the outfit working out in
the brush closer to home.

Once Digger Bill was out of sight Jesus
turned to me, hitched up his pants and leggins, and said, "Well,
amigo, we better catch us a stagecoach to Fort Ewell, eh?" Just
like he did that 'most every day.

I gave him a nod and we swaggered inside as
handsome as you please, not even stopping to chat with the dogs
that were laying in a puddle of cool shade in front of the
building.

"We need two tickets on the stage to Fort
Ewell," Jesus announced to Benjie Zakkut behind his post office
window. "We got business there."

Benjie didn't say a word. He reached down
and got a schedule of some sort to study on, though there was only
the one stage that came through Dog Town and he dealt with that one
stage twice a week, once going each way on the only road through
town, every week of the year. "Four dollars for the two of you, and
you got to ride up top with your saddles if there's a full coach,"
he said at last.

Jesus's bustle sort of drained out of him,
and I guess mine did too. We hadn't thought about paying the fare,
seeing as how the trip was for Mister Sam Silas. And we guessed he
hadn't thought of it either.

Jesus punched me with his elbow and we went
back outside.

"How much money you got on you, Duster?" he
asked.

"I can tell you that without even looking. I
got my pocket knife and a lucky arrowhead, and that's all. I don't
like to jingle when I walk."

"I am not much better, I
think," Jesus said. He dug a hand under his leggins and came up
with a two-bit piece, a half-dime and a three-cent shinplaster that
you couldn't do anything with but buy a stamp since only the
government would take paper scrip. They
had
to. "It ain't much, is
it?"

"It sure won't get even one of us to Fort
Ewell. Now what do we do?"

He shook his head. "I don't know, but I
ain't exactly high on the idea of hoofing it no forty miles with a
saddle on my back." He grinned. "Makes you wonder what a horse
thinks of it, don't it?"

"Maybe, but if I had one I wouldn't stop to
ask. I'd just ride an' be happy it was him and not me walking."

We hunkered down next to the building to
think on it awhile, and Jesus drew some designs in the dust with a
stick. Every once in a while he'd look up like he was about to say
something, then he'd mutter a little in Spanish and go back to his
drawing. Me, I was thinking, would we be fired for not doing what
we was supposed to be doing? At thirty cents a day I hadn't been
much help to the family so far.

"Aieee," Jesus said
finally and thumped his knee. He rattled something at me in Spanish
that I couldn't follow, then backed up and said it over again so I
could understand. "The store. The gringo store in Fort Ewell. He
must have things to sell and so there must be a wagon that comes to
bring him these
things of small value and
great profit. We can get a ride with the wagon."

"Sure," I said, "and someone up here has got
to know the teamster. We'll check with Mr. James and Mr. Hardy and
the others."

We left our saddles beside the post office
door and commenced our search.

Hardy's General Store, Grocery, and Saloon
was the closest so we went there first, and Mr. Hardy was glad to
oblige.

"Sure, boys," he said. "Chuck-a-luck
Williams freights through here to Fort Ewell and beyond. Comes
through regular as can be, and if you like I'll ask him to give you
a ride on down there."

We lit up all smiles then. Until Mr. Hardy
went on.

"He'll be through here next week. Makes the
trip twice a month, and he'll be due then."

The next thing we knew we were hunkered down
beside a building again, the only difference being it was Hardy's
store we were setting beside and the dogs was different ones. Jesus
went back to drawing in the dust.

We sat like that for a while longer until we
heard someone come out of the store, though we was feeling too down
to look and see who it was.