Duster (9781310020889) (6 page)

There wasn't much setting up to do for our
camp, but we got real busy at it for a while. Jesus was just as
busy as me, so I figured he had got thirsty too.

We built up a good fire and kicked the brush
back until we had room to spread our saddle blankets. They didn't
smell too fine, what with having fresh mule sweat slapped on top of
old horse sweat, but they'd be better than laying down on the
little stickers and bits of rock and stuff. I was real careful to
take a torch and study the territory for ants before I threw my
blanket, and I sneaked a look at Jesus and caught him doing the
same thing.

After that there wasn't much for us to do,
and not being so close that we had a whole lot to talk about we
settled down on top of our blankets for a sleep.

It must of been a couple hours later—I
noticed the fire was about gone anyway—when Jesus shook me up."Wake
up, Duster," he said and rattled my head around with some more
shaking.

I came awake quick then and started to ask
him what fool business he was about, waking me up like that, but he
shoved a hand over my mouth to keep me from saying anything. It
worked. Almost kept me from breathing too.

All in all it wasn't any too pleasant since
it had been a while since Jesus had taken time out to wash. Not
that I was in any condition to complain since I was every bit as
dirty myself.

"Shut up," he said. "I heard somebody
coming."

"Well, good," I told him, shoving his hand
aside and sitting up. "Maybe they got a water bag with them. I
could go for a drink even if it is in the middle of the night."

"Don't be so stupid," Jesus said. "Now, who
do you think might be taking this road at this time of night,
eh?"

He had a point, I had to admit, so I jumped
up and the pair of us grabbed our saddles and stuff and slipped off
a few feet where we could watch along the road without being
seen.

We hadn't hardly got hid before we could
make out something coming along the road from down toward Fort
Ewell. There wasn't much light, but the dust in the road stood out
pretty bright, and we could make out some dark shapes moving on it
and could hear the creaking and clinking of gear on a bunch of
horses. They were moving at a pretty good clip and ought to carry
right by us.

It wasn't that easy, though. They got up to
where we had made our fire and pulled up like they'd ridden out
just to meet up with us for a friendly talk.

"Ola," one of them called. "Como es',
amigo?"

They sat there waiting a bit and then
another one called something out too quick for me to follow. I
could feel Jesus moving a little close by like he was getting
nervous.

Then the first one said something that I
couldn't understand the words to, but the meaning seemed pretty
clear. It sounded like he was telling somebody to cut out the
horsing around and step out real quick before the bossman got
mad.

I looked over toward Jesus
and could make out that he
was shaking his
head at me. He reached out and took hold of my sleeve, I guess to
hold me down in case I wanted to get up and go for a walk or a
visit.

The men on the horses didn't say anything at
all for a while. They just sat there and waited for something to
happen.

I couldn't be sure, but it looked like there
was six or seven of them and a couple of extra horses.

Jesus and me hunkered down lower and lower
in the brush and stayed just as quiet as we could. The riders, they
just sat and waited, as quiet as us. I couldn't see too well, but
it seemed like the Mexican who had done most of the talking kept
looking our way while he sat there.

I'd never heard anything so quiet as that
night was. There wasn't any wind, of course, and no birdcall or
coyotes. For a long time there I couldn't even hear their horses
move or mules shuffle around.

As it got quieter, I got to hearing the
sound of my own breathing, and pretty soon the air whistling in
through my nose sounded about as loud as if I was snoring so I
breathed through my mouth instead. I felt better when I couldn't
hear myself breathe.

It seemed queer, but just a little while
before I'd been about as comfortable as a body could be in that
soft, night air. Now, I was commencing to feel downright chill.
That must have been so, because I was shivering just the least
bit.

I glanced over at Jesus again, and real slow
he lifted a hand up and laid a finger across his lips. Not that he
needed to tell me that. Those riders just had to be Mexican
bandits, up on this side of the border maybe to steal horses or
cattle. Mostly they didn't come up north of the Nueces, preferring
to stay down there in the Brasada, between that river and the Rio
Grande where the brush was the thickest and they could hide the
easiest.

Whatever the reason, they was up to no good,
riding through the night out in the brush like this. I didn't want
to have anything to do with them, and I guess Jesus didn't,
either.

If they wanted to sit
there the rest of the night, though,
there
wasn't anything we could do about it, so we just kept still, hoping
they'd figure they had the wrong place and go off to wherever they
were going.

The thing was, they didn't show any signs of
being tired of waiting.

After a time, the one I took to be the
leader stepped his horse a couple of paces straight toward us and
took off his hat.

"Bravo, Pedro," he said, right in our
direction. I couldn't figure what he was up to or who this Pedro
fellow was supposed to be. Then I found out.

"E-e-e-e-yah," someone screamed right beside
my ear. "Ola, muchachos."

I jumped so bad that I fell right straight
through the clump of coma we were hiding behind. Jesus let out a
yell and came up running—or he would have if a big, grinning
Mexican hadn't had him around the waist. It didn't take me long to
get my legs under me with the same notion, but by then, another
Mexican had me by the arm. He was laughing so hard I might of got
loose, but truth to tell is that I was too scared to try.

The other Mexicans were laughing, too, and
calling out in Spanish that I couldn't follow.

"What's this all about, mister? Let go of
me, you hear?" I guess I said a lot of things, but they didn't do
any good except to make the bandidos laugh that much harder. So I
shut up.

"What we got here, eh?" the leader said. "We
got some young gringo roostlers out in the Brasada, eh?" It must of
sounded pretty funny to him he took on so, but Jesus set him
straight with a bunch of Spanish talk that went on for a minute or
more.

The Mexicans all got off their horses and
two of them led the animals back off the road out of sight. The
rest of them crowded around us and the one by me turned loose of my
arm. It was safe enough, that was sure. Up close, I could see all
the artillery they was wearing, and I sure didn't want to cause
them the expense of restocking their ammunition supply.

Up close, I could see the
leader was short, no taller than me, but real stocky. He looked
like he could take into a bear for
a
rassling match and not be giving anything much away. He was most as
hairy as a bear, too, with a droopy mustache and hair laying down
on his shoulders.

He was all loaded down
with revolvers, too. There was
one stuffed
into a big old holster on his right side and another tucked in
behind his sash on the left. And he had the biggest knife I think I
ever saw slipped in next to the revolver in his sash. He looked
like a hard one for sure, but if he hadn't smelled so bad I might
have taken him for something of a dandy what with the hatband slung
around his sombrero. That hatband was made out of metal—I took it
to be silver, most likely—and even in the bad light, I could see
how fine it was worked. It must of been all of three fingers high
and it picked up every speck of light there was around. There
wasn't any missing that band.

He caught me looking at it and tipped his
hat down a little so I could admire it better.

"You like that, eh?" he said. "Is very
important to have people know who you are, an' when someone sees me
they know it is me, eh?" He reached out and patted me on the
shoulder. "Sometimes though, boy, you don't want so ver' much to be
seen, eh? Sometimes, like tonight like you wanted to hide away from
these terrible bandidos, right?"

He swept a hand around to point out his men,
and they laughed at some joke he must of made.

The bandit leader stepped close in front of
me and pushed his face up next to mine real close so he just about
had the tips of his mustache in my ear.

He put an arm around my shoulders and gave a
low huh-huh-huh chuckle. "So sometimes, when you want to hide from
bandidos, you take your hat off so it don't shine bright like a
pretty star in the night, eh?"

He really got all broke up
over that, laughing and carrying on. Me, I just felt sort of
stupid. Jesus and me must of stuck
out
like a couple of moons, crouched behind the brush there with our
hats hung out like signal lanterns.

I looked over at Jesus, and he seemed to be
feeling about as down on himself as I was on me. One of the bandits
gave him a poke in the ribs and another took hold of Jesus's old
hat and pulled it down over his ears. They was having a high old
time of it all.

"Well," I said, "you've got us now. If you
ain't going to kill us right off, how about letting us have a drink
of water? We come off from Dog Town without none."

That got another good round of yuks from
them, but the leader sent one of the men over to the horses to
fetch a water bag.

"I think mebbe we got time to geeve a drink
before we kill you, muchachos," the leader said.

I did wish he'd quit pointing out how young
and stupid we were. But the water tasted awful good when it came.
Between the pair of us, Jesus and me just about finished off that
sack of water. I didn't have any idea where that foul-smelling
goatskin sack might of been before it hit my lips, but right then,
I didn't care.

The Mexicans waited real polite till we
finished drinking what we could hold, then they passed around some
strips of jerked meat for us to make a supper out of.

Jesus was chattering away in Mex talk like
it was a family get-together, and I was feeling some better myself,
not being quite so worried about it all.

When we was finished, the leader pulled a
real pretty little tobacco canteen out of his coat pocket and built
up a smoke Mexican style, rolling loose tobacco up inside a bit of
paper. They called that a cigarette, and some of the Texas hands
was starting to pick up the practice.

One of his men jumped right up with a block
of matches when he was done, and the head man wedged off a wood
match with a long fingernail and made a big show of getting his
smoke lit up and puffing right.

"Now, muchachos," he said,
"we 'ave this problem, you
see. We gots
our work to do up here in Texas an' I think we do not want to leave
you here all alone while we go off to our labors, eh?"

He scratched his belly and I couldn't
help but notice how close his fingers came to the revolver in his
sash. There must of been a little piece of jerky left in my throat
'cause I could feel something sticking there.

NOW IT JUST may be that some folks in A
situation like we was in will have their lives strung out for them
in memory as a sort of instant refresher in all the fine things
they've done and all the good reasons they oughtn't to quit hanging
around, and maybe some others think to draw themselves up all
straight and tall and make a fine, proud resolve to go out like a
man.

I got to admit I never thought of them
things. After all, there really wasn't much past worth thinking on
and I wasn't up to making any claims on being grown up right then,
either.

So, the way it turned out, I was too pure
scared to think about anything right off. I took a look over at
Jesus, and even in the moonlight I could make out how long his face
was. Either he thought quicker than me or he was a different kind
of scared. For one second, he was standing there like a whipped
puppy and the next second he was head-down, arms flailing, and
going at a dead run after not more than a hop, scoot, and two good
jumps to build up speed.

Those Mex bandits had no more than jerked
their heads to watch Jesus than I was off and running the other
way. I may not be the quickest when it comes to thinking things up,
but when a fellow sets me a good example it don't take me any time
to pick up on it. So I did that.

I ducked down and bolted clean past the
nearest two while they was still gawking in the direction Jesus had
took out.

There wasn't but a few paces distance to
clear and I'd be past our saddles and other truck and into the
brush where maybe I could hide. I pumped my legs just about as hard
as they would go and ran clean through a patch of brush. It wasn't
more than waist high, though, and didn't do any more than to tip me
forward some while I caught up my balance and took another
jump.

The distance between me and where we had
spread our saddle blankets wasn't getting smaller near fast enough
to suit me, but I wasn't about to quit for that disappointment. A
couple more jumps, and I was there.

I kicked my leg out to leap over the coals
from the fire, and I got up in the air pretty good too. Then some
fool Mexican had to wander by from one side—he must of been one of
them that was off with the horses—and catch up my hind foot just
about the time I was all the way up off the ground. The top part of
me kept right on going while my foot stayed back there with the
Mexican. I come down flat, clean across Jesus's saddle, and it's a
wonder I didn't bust the tree all to splinters. It might of been
some easier on my belly if it had busted.