Shaking the Nickel Bush (12 page)

“Buddy,” he said, “you ought to know me better'n that. I wouldn't steal stuff! Not out of a store or nothin'. But chickens, that's different. A man's got to eat.”

That time I put my arm around Lonnie's neck and told him he was my buddy, and I didn't say another word about his having swiped most of our Christmas dinner. While I was warming up his beans and putting the coffee on to boil he sat holding the little clay Indian pony, looking at it, and turning it over in his hands. “Could you make one of these here with a rider on it?” he asked.

“Sure,” I told him, “but it wouldn't be much good. As soon as the clay dried, it would warp out of shape and crack. Without a rider I can cast one in plaster so it will last forever . . . or until it gets dropped, but it would be too tough a job to cast one with a rider. The hat brim and the reins wouldn't come out of the mold clean, and the least little bump would break them.”

Lonnie was still looking at the little horse when I dished up his beans and poured the coffee. “How long does it take to cast one in plaster?” he asked.

“Oh, a couple of days in dry country like this,” I said. “One to dry the mold and one to dry the casting. Why?”

“Nothin',” he said. “I was just thinkin'. Will this here one last over Christmas?”

“Sure,” I told him, “if I keep a damp rag around it. It'll last as long as the clay's kept moist.”

“Well, hadn't you best to wrap it up then 'fore we have our supper? You could use one of them dish towels. There's one of 'em ain't too dirty.”

Before he'd touch a bite Lonnie got out the cleaner of our two dish towels, wet it at the water can, wrung it out, and wrapped the little clay horse as carefully as if it had been a sick bird. After he'd stowed it away in the grub box I tossed him the package with his shirt and overalls in it, and said, “There's something Santa Claus left while you were gone to town.”

It's funny how happy you can be over just little things, and how quickly you can forget all about your troubles. Neither Lonnie nor I could sing worth a whoop, but we both knew a few of the old Christmas songs, mostly hymns we'd heard at Sunday School. With the moon hanging over the mountains beyond the river, and a coyote barking somewhere up the valley, we sat by our little fire and sang till we were sure it was past midnight. Then we shook hands, told each other “Merry Christmas,” and turned in as if we didn't have a worry in the world.

10

Rice Pudd'n

C
HRISTMAS
morning I let Lonnie sleep late while I heated a dishpanful of water and washed my underwear, spare shirt, and jeans. I couldn't do much about Lonnie's washing. He was sleeping in his dirty shirt, and his old overalls were so full of grease that I couldn't have got them clean without boiling them in lye water. After I had my washing done and hung out on a creosote bush I washed our dishes and silverware, and scoured the frying pan and Dutch oven with sand. With Shiftless shimmying the way she was, we kicked up as much dust as a cavalry regiment, and most of it seemed to have settled in the orange crate we used as a pantry. And from cooking over greasewood campfires the frying pan, Dutch oven, and dishpan had grown a black shell as thick and hard as a turtle's.

After the dishes were done I started cleaning the hens Lonnie had swiped, but the job would have been easier if he'd just wrung their necks and brought them with their clothes on. In that way I could have rubbed clay into the feathers, smeared on a coat half an inch thick, and roasted them in the coals from a campfire. Then when we were ready to eat them all I'd have to do would be to whack them against a rock. The hard-baked shells would break like an old flourpot, taking the feathers off as clean as a whistle and leaving the meat hot and juicy. But I guess Lonnie had thought he could fool me about having swiped them. He'd yanked off about three-quarters of the feathers—just in handfuls—had torn the skin in half a dozen places, and had got sand ground into the torn parts.

Lonnie never would tell me where he swiped the hens, but it must have been off somebody's roost, and it must have been plenty dark in that hen house. He'd picked two fat ones all right, but it had been years since they'd been pullets. There were dry scales along their breastbones, and they were poochy—like geese—in the rear. That kind of a hen will roast fine in clay, if you give it three or four hours in a good deep bed of coals, but if you try to roast it in an ordinary oven it will usually come out tougher than bullhide. I was afraid ours would come out even worse if I tried to roast them in the Dutch oven, so I decided to cut them up, roll the pieces in white flour, brown them in grease, and stew them into a pot of fricassee.

I could hear Lonnie snoring when I picked off the last pin-feathers and washed the sand out of the torn places, but I'd barely picked up the butcher knife to cut the old hens into pieces when he wailed, “Aw, buddy, it's Christmas Day. You ain't about to make stew out of them chickens, are you? I spent near onto an hour huntin' fat ones like you told me, so's't we could roast 'em.”

“Sure I'm going to roast 'em,” I called back. “I was just getting ready to take their insides out. But if you want them stuffed you'd better shake out of that bedroll and fix our flat tire. I can't make stuffing without stale white bread and sage.”

I don't believe Lonnie ever woke up or got up any faster in all the time I knew him. By the time I had the hens cleaned, he'd jacked up the wheel and was going at the flat tire like a coyote trying to dig a gopher out from under a rock. “Come gi'me a hand, buddy!” he hollered. “Don't reckon this here tire's been off in a month o' Sundays. It's froze to the rim like as if it was cemented. Here, take this piece of broke spring and pry that side loose while I get the tire iron and screwdriver in over here.”

It took us nearly half an hour to pry the tire off the rim, and when Lonnie took the inner tube out it looked like a patchwork quilt. There were already two rubber plugs in it, and six or seven glued-on patches. “Jeepers!” Lonnie said as he turned it around and looked it over. “It's a wonder we didn't have a blowout on one of them mountain roads—and, brother, that would of been all! . . . what with Shiftless bein' a mite loose in the steerin' gear and wheel bushings. Hmf! I'd about as leave have a paper sack in there as this thing—'twould hold air better. Well, you go on with your housekeepin', and I'll get this hole plugged up, one way or 'nother.”

I'd daubed a good thick covering of clay on the biggest sweet potato so it would bake in the coals, had peeled the onions, and was cleaning the celery when Lonnie came over to the fire and asked to borrow my new knife. As soon as I passed it to him he reached down and began cutting one leg of his overalls off at the knee.

“What in the world are you doing that for?” I asked him.

“Got to make a boot for that tire,” he told me. “Where it blowed out it's wore down to paper-thin, and I won't be wearin' these dirty britches no more noways. Anyhow, not to town, and on Christmas Day. A man's got to get dressed up once in a while.”

I helped Lonnie while he folded the piece he'd cut off his overalls and stuck it over the broken place inside the tire. Then we put the mended tube back in, pried the tire onto the rim, and pumped, and pumped, and pumped. The old air pump hadn't been used for so long that the leather valve washers were all dried out, and the only way we could get it to take hold at all was by unscrewing the top and pouring in water every few minutes. I think we got about as much water as air into the tire, and when we had it about halfway up Lonnie told me, “Leave it go. That's enough to get me into town, and I'll fill it up at a garage. They don't charge you nothin' for air. You just tell 'em you'll come back later and buy some gas.”

He peeked up at the sun and shouted, “Jeepers Creepers! It's near onto noon. Mind fillin' the radiator while I change my cloze?”

I'd filled the radiator and wiped the thickest of the dust off Shiftless by the time Lonnie came back, and he really looked like a gentleman. He had on his new shirt and overalls—with the cuffs turned up the way I wore mine, but nearly six inches above his ankles. He'd shaved, combed his hair, polished his old boots as well as he could with bacon grease, and dusted off his hat. “Reckon I'll need about four bits,” he told me as he peeked at his reflection in the windshield. “Spent myself clean broke last night . . . what with that mince pie and all.”

I gave him a half-dollar and said, “That ought to do it all right. All we need is a loaf of stale white bread and a dime's worth of sage.”

I'd cranked Shiftless and Lonnie had warmed her up till she began hitting on all four, then he leaned out over the door and asked, “Look, buddy, if I was to get some rice and raisins, do you reckon you could whack up a rice pudd'n? My maw always used to make it on Christmas, and it was larrupin' good.”

“Rice custard?” I asked him.

“I don't know,” he said, “but there was yellow all in amongst the rice . . . and lots o' raisins.”

“Then you'll have to get a quart of milk and a nutmeg,” I told him. “We've got plenty of eggs. Both those hens were laying, and they were full of yolks.”

Lonnie gave Shiftless a shot of gas, kicked the pedal into low, and started off with a roar. By the time he'd gone a hundred feet he had old Shiftless up to fifteen miles an hour, and she was going down the road like a drunk running for a train. Every time the front wheel came around to the place where Lonnie had put in the piece of overall leg it hopped and made a sound like a flapping sole on a worn-out shoe.

I didn't expect Lonnie to be gone more than an hour at the most, but it was nearly two before he came back, and when he came he was as excited as a little boy at his first carnival. “We're all set, buddy! We're all set!” he yelled as he turned Shiftless off the road and came dodging toward camp through the creosote bushes. “I was pretty dang sure of it when I seen that little horse last night!”

When Lonnie turned off the road I'd expected our patched tire to blow at any second, and I was watching that wheel when he pulled around the last clump of brush between us, but the old tire wasn't on it. Instead, there was a pretty fair looking one—not new, but without any of the canvas lining showing.

Lonnie jumped out over the door as Shiftless switched her tail and came to a stop. He threw his arm around my neck and hollered loud enough to nearly break my eardrums, “We're set, buddy! We're set, I tell you! Look what I got for that little old horse you made—and two gallons of gas to boot. Boy, howdy! If you can make enough of 'em I can trade 'em for all the gas and grub we'll need! Even tires! If that little critter had of been made out of somethin' hard, 'stead of mud, I could of got a brand new tire for him.”

“That's fine,” I told him. “I'll bet I can make them as fast as you can trade them off, but did you get the other stuff you went after?”

“All but the milk,” he said, “and that's a cinch. There was only one store open, and they didn't have no milk, but I seen some cows on the way back—three, four of 'em with fall calves. All we got to do is catch one of 'em and milk her. Calves the size of them don't suck till late in the afternoon. If we was to go right now we'd likely get a gallon or two. Wish't I had a horse—a live one—I'd catch one of them old heifers and bring her on into camp, so's't we could milk her whenever we wanted. Ain't you supposed to be drinkin' milk regular anyhow?”

Lonnie's idea sounded like a good one, especially since he said there were no houses between our camp and Fort Thomas. We shook out our throw ropes, took a few practice tosses at creosote bushes, put the dishpan on the back seat, and started off down the road. Lonnie said the cattle were on a desert pasture where there was plenty of fairly tall brush, so we didn't think we'd have a bit of trouble in catching a cow. We'd each pick one with a good full bag, sneak up on her from behind a bush, and toss a loop over her head.

It didn't work that way. Those cows were as wild as antelope, nearly as fast, and they must have had eyes and ears like eagles. We could see them from the road when we got to within a quarter mile, and they didn't pay a bit of attention to Shiftless's clatter. But when we'd pulled off the road, hidden Shiftless behind a clump of mesquite, and were sneaking up on them afoot, they began drifting away. They didn't do any running at first, but just drifted on whenever we'd get within fifty yards of them. Then, when we tried to close in faster, they ran—all except a big white-face bull that seemed to be on the prod. He kept between us and the cows, and he covered their retreat in grand style. If we tried to gain an inch, he'd whirl around, paw dirt up over his back, and dare us to come on, halfway between a bellow and a growl.

From behind a bush Lonnie made signals with his arms to show me that we should circle wide around, but that didn't work either. The old bull caught on as quickly as I did. Instead of just turning and pawing, he began charging back and forth, toward one of us and then the other, shaking his head and bawling. And the cows kept drifting farther back into the brush. At last Lonnie motioned for me to come over where he was. “There ain't no sense in this,” he told me. “If we keep on this way we'll drive 'em clean into Mexico 'fore we ever catch one. Tell you what we'll do. It's open enough in here that I can drive Shiftless easy, and you can stand on the runnin' board and catch one of them old heifers as I go past her. You could snub her on one of them irons the top's supposed to bolt onto, and if the bull gets proddy we'll lead her on back to camp before we milk her. He'd never leave the herd to folla that far.”

Lonnie was right about being able to drive Shiftless through the brush, and by not being too careful about missing the smaller clumps he didn't have much trouble in catching up to the cows, but I had all kinds of trouble in trying to stand on the running board and swing a rope. On horseback you don't have to worry about balance when you go high-tailing after a cow in brush country. The pony will follow right behind, dodging whichever way she does, and he leans as he turns, so the rider can go along with him. But Shiftless didn't work that way—or Lonnie either. He couldn't turn one tenth as fast as the slowest of those old cows, and Shiftless leaned the wrong way when she did turn. The horse falls were nothing compared to the spills I took off the running board before we discovered how to do it.

We had to take Lonnie's rope, make a harness for me, and lash it to a door hinge. In that way I had both hands free, and I didn't get tossed every time we made a sharp turn. But it still didn't work, because Lonnie couldn't turn sharp enough. The only thing that saved us was that one old cow—the one with the smallest calf—decided to desert the herd. She took off in a straight line for Mexico, and Lonnie took off after her. Of course, he had to do a little weaving to get through the brush, but it wasn't bad, and when the cow got a little winded he pulled almost alongside of her. I didn't have a bit of trouble in tossing my loop over her head, and Lonnie stayed close enough that I had her snubbed tight to the top-iron before she hit the end of the rope.

Anyone would think a cow that had been run full tilt for a mile would be ready to give up and act reasonable, but that was the most unreasonable cow I ever had anything to do with. Five or six times she hit the end of that rope so hard she threw herself, and each time she nearly jerked Shiftless off her wheels. Then when one of us would try to follow up the rope toward her, so we could twist her down for milking, she'd charge. After we'd barely escaped from a dozen charges Lonnie shook out his rope and hind-legged her, but she was stout as an elephant. Even with Lonnie weighing a hundred and fifty she could drag a leg behind her and pull him around like a poodle on a string, and she kept shrieking like a train engine on a cold night.

If we could have stayed with it and worn her down a little more, I think we might have been able to throw her and hogtie her for milking, but we gave out before she did. We had to sit in the shade of a bush for awhile, to catch our breath and figure out what to do next. It was Lonnie who figured out the scheme that worked. Moving real slowly so as not to excite the cow, we unhitched the head rope, ran it through the spokes of the near front wheel, under the engine, and snubbed it to a spoke in the far wheel. Then we did the same with the heel rope, but used the rear wheels. In that way the cow couldn't charge the one doing the snubbing, and since she couldn't see him, she didn't worry too much about Shiftless. I did the hazing-in as quietly as I could, and each time the cow sidled nearer to Shiftless, Lonnie took in on the snubbing ropes, first one end and then the other.