Duster (9781310020889) (7 page)

I tried to kick loose, and I tried biting
some and punching with all the knees, elbows, and fists I could
muster, but before I could make out there was any improvement with
this first Mexican another one had pounced on me. It didn't take
much of a scramble then until I was stretched out on my back with
everything pinned down tight except my tongue.

Since that was all I had left that I could
use, I turned loose with my tongue next. I hollered for all I was
worth, giving Jesus all kinds of good advice about how fast he
should run and how quick he should bring back some help to avenge
his dead saddle partner, which was what I figured to be real
quick.

The Mexicans that was sitting on me didn't
pay me no mind. They just held me down sort of casual like and let
me holler off some steam.

After a bit, one of them reached over and
took hold of a solid handful of hair and lifted my head to where I
could see something more than straight up.

Across the way a bunch more of them was
dragging Jesus back toward the main group. He came along pretty
willing, except every few steps, he'd try to jerk loose and would
take to spitting and cussing until one of the Mexicans would give
him a clout alongside his head. Then he'd quiet down for a few
steps more.

They carried him right along to where the
leader was. When he got there Jesus quit trying to tug loose and
stood up real stiff. He looked over at me and said, "We tried
pretty good, hey, Duster? They know we ain't the kind to just lay
there and get shot."

I was trying to think of something real
brave to say to that, but the leader of the bunch spoke up
first.

"Eh, you boys think we gonna shoot you? I
scare you good, eh?" He got a fine laugh out of that. "I gots to
say you got nerve enough you don't want to go without you try to
get away from me. But no, no, you don't get away so easy from Juan
Estrada, eh?"

He waved me up next to him, which I did with
a generous assist from the two Mexicans who'd caught me.

When we was both up close,
Estrada waved a pointing finger under our noses and glared at us.
"So, you think maybe I make war on babies? You think maybe you are
so grown up I got to kill you so I don't worry what you do behind
my back, eh?" He jammed his fists against his hips and stood
staring at us with his jaw stuck out. "I think maybe I should do
jus' that an' shoot you both deads jus' to keep you from bothering
me. I
think maybe I should do that." He
turned around and stood with his back to us, but we could see from
the way his shoulders were heaving that he was working himself up
to an angry spell.

He stood like that for maybe a full minute,
not moving except for that heavy breathing that got loud enough we
could hear it.

All of a sudden then, he swung around fast
and flung his finger out again like he was going to shoot us or hit
us or something. We both of us ducked. "An' I will do it if you one
more time make me forget that Juan Estrada does not shoot babies."
He jerked his hand up in the air in a fist, then waved us away.

He growled some more and stomped off,
calling out to someone to bring the horses up. I would be lying if
I said I didn't feel awful relieved right then.

Someone caught up the horses and brung them
and our mules out on the road, and we all got sorted out and
mounted. Once our blankets and saddles was up on the mules we
didn't have to worry about leaving anything behind, and in no time
we was strung out on the road with a Mexican leading Gert and
Stardust.

They took us up the road toward Dog Town
again at a clip that was pretty fast for those old mules though
they seemed to make out all right.

After an hour or so, we turned off the road
and shoved through the brush. The Mexicans had been talking and
joking and having a fine old time until then, but once we was off
the road they shut up and told us to keep quiet too.

We went along slow-like through the brush
with only the sound of leaves and thorn branches being shoved
around to mark our going. Every once in a while someone would cough
or lean over to one side to blow his nose and it would sound real
loud and sort of scary. It was awful dark, after all, and I
couldn't help but get the idea that any loud noise would bring
something terrible down on us out of the dark.

Jesus and me shuffled
right along with them on our mules, and I think we was both too
scared of noise right then to speak up even if there had been a
company of Rangers in the
brush we could
call out to to save us. Not that that was likely, since they was
disbanded after the war.

We went on like that for a half hour or more
before Estrada pulled up and let the others ride past until we came
up to him.

He said something in Spanish to the two that
was leading our mules, and they stopped too.

Estrada jerked his head to point in the
direction we had all been riding in and told us, "Up there we meet
some good frens of us, an' I think maybe you would tell someone
about them an' they, maybe they think about this an' they want to
shoot you right here. You don't want this, si?"

Jesus and me let him know that was real fine
with us not to see those fellows. Any way he wanted to handle it
was all right—anything shy of shooting us himself so as to save
them other fellows the trouble.

What it was all about was easy to figure.
Bandits and rustlers being what they are, they have something of a
time getting rid of the stuff they steal close to home. They can't
steal a cow from one man and then sell it to his neighbor, and
rustlers don't like long drives with strange stock any more than
the next man. Plus, the stock records keep them from selling to
honest shippers, for their books are checked by the county
inspector. On the other hand, no honest Texan resents getting a
bargain on stock carrying Mexican brands, and I guess the Mexican
ranchers feel pretty much the same way about bargain cattle wearing
Texas brands.

The way the rustlers worked it out was that
Mexican ban-didos would steal Mex cattle and then swap them for
Texas cattle that had been stole by Texas rustlers. Then both could
turn right around and sell the other fellow's stuff in a place
where nobody'd be asking questions about the brands.

It worked out all right for the rustlers,
but some less for the Texas and Mex ranchers who had to buy each
other's stolen stock to make up for the losses from their own
herds. It was a sort of swap deal with the rustlers getting paid to
handle the middleman chore—and the ranchers not having much to say
about whether they wanted to swap cows with someone on the other
side of the border.

Anyway, I figured Estrada and his bunch were
here to pick up some stuff that had been stole somewhere in Texas.
I couldn't figure why they'd be making a one-way deal and not
passing any Mex cows on to our rustlers unless the Texans owed
Estrada some from a past deal or something like that. But I sure
wasn't going to ask him to tell me what it was about.

Estrada told one of his bandits, a little
man with a big smile and a bigger revolver, to stay with us, then
he and the one that had been leading my mule rode on off to catch
up with the others.

Old Gert clumsied her way up beside Stardust
and we settled down to do some waiting. I just sat quiet, but Jesus
and the Mex—I picked up that his name was Oberon—talked in
whispers. They chatted real friendly for quite a spell.

Since I couldn't make out one word in four
that they was saying, I sat there with old Gert and listened to the
night. Not that there was so much to listen to. Estrada and the
rest of them must of gone up ahead quite a ways because we couldn't
hear a single thing—not even cows. Mostly those old range critters
will bed down pretty quiet except for their midnight stretch when
they all get up to stomp around a little and hunt up a mouthful of
graze to hold them until morning. Even when the herd is down and
still, though, some old steer will get up every once in a while to
sniff the air and maybe bawl a little and clack horns with his
neighbor before he goes back to sleeping.

We was far off enough from the rustlers that
we couldn't hear the first thing of a herd of cows. About all I
could hear of anything was an occasional rustle in the brush nearby
where maybe a jack rabbit or a coyote or a javalina would be
wandering by and give a jump when he smelled that there was horses
and people close. They tell me there's a lot of wildcats and even
some little prairie wolves in the brush down our way, but I've
never seen a wolf in McMullen County, and the cats are too shy to
be seen very much.

After a considerable time, a little breeze
picked up and rattled the brush around some, so I knew it wouldn't
be long before the sky started to lighten up. That air felt clean
and fresh on my face, but it was cool, too, and reminded me that we
was running shy on sleep. There wasn't much to do about it except
shiver a bit and pull the leather closer over my chest to help keep
off the chill.

I must of dozed off some then, because the
next thing I knew, I could feel old Gert shifting around underneath
me, moving her weight from one foot to another, and when I looked
up, the sky was all gray so the stars could barely be made out, and
there was enough light I could pick out branches and even some of
the bigger thorns on the mesquite and retama around us.

Old Gert had spotted some sweet-smelling
huajillo just ahead of us, and she cocked her one good eye at it
and shuffled her feet some more until she decided she wasn't going
to let me interfere with breakfast; then she picked her way over to
it and dropped her head to pull at the soft, new growth.

Jesus and Oberon had shut up some time
before, I guess, maybe running out of lies to swap, for they was
both slouched low in their saddles and looked to be about half
asleep.

The breeze picked up more as the sky got
lighter and the stars began to fade away for the day. Pretty soon,
Stardust moved up to help Gert out with the huajillo, and Jesus got
awake enough to stretch and pound himself on the chest to warm
up.

Oberon said something in Spanish and Jesus
turned to me and grinned. "He thinks we are not so very pretty in
the morning, Duster," he said.

"Well, tell him I got no desire to go to
courtin' him so he needn't care about that. Besides, he don't
deserve no better. It's what he gets for leading a life of crime."
The moving around had just made me feel colder and meaner instead
of better.

Oberon kicked loose of his
horse and slid down on the ground to join us. Jesus told him
something, repeating what I'd said I guess, and he seemed to get a
kick out of it instead of taking offense. He said something back
and Jesus told me, "He
says he was going
to invite us to join him, but now he thinks maybe you would not
make a good bandit after all."

Oberon said something else and Jesus said,
"He says you are missing out on something good. He says the pretty
girls in Mexico like boys with their pockets full of gold from
selling gringo cows."

That did seem to mean I'd been right in what
I thought about them. "Tell him the hours don't suit me," I said.
"I like to sleep at night."

Jesus and I went back to our stomping
around, and Oberon fiddled with his saddle, loosening the cinch;
then he dug around in a leather wallet laced on behind his cantle
until he found a few strips of jerky that he divided up in three
equal shares. He handed us our share and said something to Jesus
who passed it along to me: "He don't have no water—says he's sorry
about that." I smiled at him and bit off a big chunk of jerky to
show him I didn't hold it against him. The jerky tasted pretty good
for a fact, and it didn't seem quite so cold once we had that
inside us.

By the time the jerky was gone, it was
plenty light enough to see. Jesus and Oberon found themselves a
clear space and sat down on the ground so they could huddle over
some bone dice Oberon pulled out of a pocket somewhere. I watched
long enough to decide I couldn't figure out what they was doing,
and then wandered off to see if I could spot some quail or
something to chunk rocks at since I was still hungry and didn't
have anything better to do.

I kicked around for the better part of an
hour without seeing anything more interesting than a big old
chuckwalla, and I left it alone. They say the Indians used to eat
them, but I'd had to be a sight hungrier before I'd eat a lizard as
ugly as that one was.

I got back to the mules just about the time
another one of Estrada's men came riding up at a good pace. He
called out something before he even got stopped, and Jesus jumped
up from the ground real quick.

"Come on, Duster. Them gringo rustlers heard
we was here an' they don't want to take a chance on us seeing them.
They want Estrada to shoot us an' leave us out here. He sent word
for us to get on our mules and get on about our business quick
before them gringos decide to come do the job themselves."

The fellow that had just rode up handed
Jesus a stoppered gourd full of water, and we pushed and pulled at
the mules until old Gert was in place next to Stardust. Then we
climbed up and I laid a hand onto Stardust's rump good and hard—I
had forgot my switch somewhere—and we took off through the brush as
fast as we could make those mules go.

WE GOT OUT on the road easy enough by
following the tracks that bunch of horses had left the night
before. They'd gouged up the dirt so it left a darker shade than
what was laying around it, and the sun hadn't been up long enough
to dry out what they'd uncovered. By afternoon, though, we probably
couldn't have followed in off the road to Estrada because there's
so much brush and rock and junk that a horse don't leave much of a
print on the ground.