Shaking the Nickel Bush (20 page)

Shiftless sort of hunkered down on her off forehand, the way a horse will when he tries to make too sharp a turn on the wrong lead. But she didn't go end over end, as a horse often will. She rocked toward me till I'll swear my face wasn't a foot off the ground. Then Lonnie jerked the wheel in the opposite direction and Shiftless went into a dance—about the kind a drunk might do on a pogo stick. On the first eight or ten hops I don't believe she ever touched more than one wheel to the ground, but lunged and tipped—from side to side and front to back. By the time Lonnie got her back under control the horses were long gone, and I'd had all the bronco busting I wanted for one day.

We finished out February and the first half of March in two central camps—one between Socorro and Albuquerque, the other between Albuquerque and Santa Fe—and we did better than I'd dared to hope. The only trouble was that, skinny as I was, I nearly froze to death. We'd come far enough north and high enough that the nights were often bitter cold, and there were lots of days when my hands would get so numb I'd have to stop every ten or fifteen minutes to warm them. Of course, I couldn't work in my cut-off jeans, and I couldn't do my best work, because the clay stiffened too much to handle well.

I think it was a combination of the cold evenings, Lonnie's not having enough to do to keep him from being bored, and curiosity that made us into movie fans. Ever since we'd seen that movie in El Paso with the horse-fall strip in it, I'd been anxious to see another—hoping I might see one with me in it. If, on an evening that was too cold for me to work—and often on ones that weren't—we found there was going to be a cowboy-and-Indian picture in one of the nearby towns, we'd hide our stuff away in the brush, wind Shiftless up, and go to see it. With two exceptions I think we saw every cowboy-and-Indian picture that came within fifty miles of us—and those two exceptions were Albuquerque and Santa Fe. I'd learned my lesson about Lonnie and big cities when we were in El Paso, and though I had to get a bit tough a couple of times I kept him away from both cities till I'd finished the last job in our second camp.

As I'd written Mother, I'd planned that we'd be all spring on the way from El Paso to Santa Fe, and that I'd go on to Colorado from there. But while we were in our second camp I changed my mind. There were several reasons for it. In the first place, it would be colder in Colorado than in New Mexico, and it would be too early for the spring cattle work to have opened up. In the second place, I was having too much fun and making too much money to quit the plaster bust business. It seemed to me that if our luck held out—and we kept away from big cities—I might have nearly a thousand dollars tucked away in the cuffs of my Levi's by the end of June. Then when I went to meet Ted Hawkins and my old Colorado friends at the Littleton roundup on Fourth of July, I wouldn't be going just as a cowhand looking for a job. There was plenty of good grazing land in Colorado that could be bought for five or six dollars an acre, and I'd be able to start out as a small rancher—with maybe a quarter-section of good pasture land near the mountains and a dozen or two head of young stock.

At first I thought about taking Lonnie into partnership with me, and then I decided that might be a mistake. It would be better to sell him the idea of going back to his folks in Wyoming. I was sure he'd never willingly give up Shiftless, and without the bust business I couldn't afford to support both of them.

Of course, I didn't tell Lonnie all my plans; it would only have hurt his feelings. Instead, I kept dangling the ownership of Shiftless before his eyes, to keep him away from Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and from spending all his share from the business on girls. I promised him, though, that we'd go into Santa Fe for just one day, to register Shiftless in his name if he had her paid for, then we'd head south again where the weather was warmer.

With my having taken Lonnie to the movies nearly every evening, and threatening to drive Shiftless myself if he left camp without my say-so, he hadn't had much chance to blow money on the girls. Soon after we'd moved to the camp near Santa Fe he cleaned up the last of the eighty-five dollars that I'd promised would make Shiftless his. From then on he was as restless as a caged coyote, begging me every day to lay off so we could go to town and have the registration put into his name. I knew well enough what would happen if I did it, so I wouldn't go till the last job was finished, and even then I made him promise that he'd leave without any argument after we'd spent one day in the city. When we did go, I had nearly a hundred dollars in my pocket, and eight fifties folded into the cuffs of my Levi's. It didn't take much figuring for me to know that Lonnie had a pocket roll almost as big as mine. If he'd swiped as many chickens as I suspected, his share of the gas and grub bill hadn't been more than ten dollars for all the time since we'd left El Paso.

It was early in the forenoon when we drove into Santa Fe, but Lonnie insisted on going straight to the Motor Vehicle office and having Shiftless registered in his name. The minute the clerk gave him the ownership paper he forgot that he wasn't a millionaire. While I was registering at the hotel desk he tipped one bellboy a dollar to lug our stuff up to the room, and gave another a dollar to have his suit pressed in a hurry. By the time I got upstairs he had shucked off his shirt and Levi's, left them where they had fallen, and was taking a bath. He called to me above the splashing, “Listen, buddy, I aim to keep that promise I made you, but you know a day don't end till midnight.”

“Yes, I know it,” I called back, “but you'll be broke long before suppertime, and don't come trying to borrow from me, because I'm not going to lend you a dime. If you had a thousand dollars you'd blow it on the floozies in a couple of hours.”

“You're wrong, buddy! You're dead wrong!” he shouted. “Ain't you took note how I been savin' my dough lately? This time I don't aim to spend more'n a fiver. Just ride around a little to look the town over, and maybe take in a movie. I'll have old Shiftless waitin' outside the front door at straight-up midnight. Is that fair enough?”

“Fair enough,” I told him, “but don't wait for me down there. I'll be sleeping. All I care about is getting away early tomorrow morning.”

While Lonnie was getting dressed and away I sent my own suit down to be pressed, then hung up the clothes he'd shed, and straightened up the stuff the bellboy had dumped in the middle of the floor. I put our bedrolls in a far corner, laid the saddles and outfits on top of them, then set my armatures, supplies, and toolbox at one side. When my suit came back I changed into it, put the loose change and small bills in my pocket, and hung my Levi's in the closet beside Lonnie's. Even by feeling of the cuffs, no one would have guessed that mine weren't as empty as his.

It was a warm, sunny forenoon so I went out to order an additional supply of clay and plaster of Paris, then wandered around the streets sort of aimlessly, and just by chance I found the post office. Since I'd written Mother that I wouldn't reach Santa Fe till late spring I didn't expect to find a letter waiting for me at general delivery, but there was one there. If I'd used my head I'd have known there would be; that Dr. Gaghan would have known where I was every week by the report cards from doctors I had gone to for check ups, and that he'd have told her. He had, and she was worried sick. She wrote that she was afraid I'd lost my good job with the big cattle company, or that I'd had to quit because of my health. She was frightened because I'd slipped to 101 pounds instead of gaining, and she was even more frightened because I'd sent sixty dollars home at the end of February. She said she must insist on a full and honest explanation as to how I was getting hold of any such large sums of money.

I'd written Mother so many lies that I wasn't sure I could remember them all, so when I'd sent her the fifty and ten at the end of February I'd written a very short note, just saying I was feeling fine, and that the weather was nice, and asking about each one at home. Then I'd crossed the river and mailed the letter from Veguita, a little town about thirty miles north of Socorro and so small I was sure she wouldn't be able to find it on a map.

Before answering the letter I took it back to our room and thought about it for awhile. It was certain that Mother was already suspicious about what I'd been writing her, but if I should come a quarter of an inch nearer the truth she'd be even more suspicious. There was nothing to do except to make up some more fairy tales, but I tried to make them sound as reasonable as I could. After a few paragraphs about the great confidence our bosses had in my working partner, Alonzo, and me, I wrote that we'd been sent ahead of the herd again to buy more cattle, and that the extra money was from bonuses we were being paid when we made exceptionally fine bargains in our buying. Near the end of the letter I said that our bosses' only disappointment was with the scarcity of good cattle, that they wanted to gather a much larger herd, so were sending us back into southeastern New Mexico to do more buying. I didn't dare put any money in that letter, but said I'd write again when I got my pay check at the end of the month, adding that I had hopes of a real good bonus that time.

There wasn't much to do after I'd written the letter, so I spent the afternoon around the Plaza, looking through the old buildings that still remained from the early Spanish days. I'd just come out of the museum late in the afternoon when I caught a glimpse of Shiftless. Lonnie was tooling her through the Plaza as proudly as if she'd been a Rolls Royce. He had a gaily dressed black-haired señorita beside him, and two more on the back seat. They were all laughing and merry, but didn't seem a bit rough or coarse.

After I'd found a restaurant with food I could eat, I went to a movie and didn't get back to the hotel until nearly midnight, but Lonnie had been there ahead of me. His saddle and outfit were gone from the top of his bedroll, but everything else was just as I'd left it. I don't know when he sneaked in, but he was asleep in a chair when I woke up the next morning. I let him sleep till I was shaved and dressed. Then when I shook him awake he looked up sheepishly and said, “Honest, buddy, I didn't. . . .”

“Never mind the excuses,” I cut in. “Just get into your old duds and lug this stuff down to Shiftless. But you'd better give me the pawn ticket before you change. I'll redeem your saddle and outfit on our way out of town.”

18

End of the Trail

W
HEN I'd written to Mother I'd planned that we'd drive right on south to Roswell, then try our luck in the southeast corner of the state, but it didn't work out that way. It was the middle of the afternoon when we reached the little town of Moriarty—accent on the
i
—east of Albuquerque, on the main highway running east and west. I'd known Lonnie was out of makings before we'd left Santa Fe, but I thought it might be a good idea to let him suffer a bit for his sins, so I never mentioned it till we were pulling into Moriarty. Then I passed him a quarter and said, “Why don't you stop here and get yourself a sack of Bull Durham?”

Lonnie was gone long enough to have bought all the Bull Durham in town, but I didn't mind. It was a nice warm afternoon, so I just slumped down in the seat for a little siesta. I didn't more than half wake up when he came hurrying back, took our sample from the back seat, and hurried away again. Ever since I'd made it he'd taken great delight in showing it to any audience he could scare up, telling them we were the Cowboy Artists of the Southwest, and that he was the one who made the finished produck. I couldn't see any harm in his catching himself a little glory in Moriarty. But Lonnie wasn't out for glory that time. He was anxious to hurry us back into business, so he could make good on the twenty-five I'd had to pay to get his saddle and outfit out of hock.

I don't know how long Lonnie was gone on the second trip, but when he came back around the corner his face was all aglow. “Hey, buddy,” he shouted to me, “I got a job for us! And I collected in advance.” He came hurrying up to Shiftless, poked a limp ten-dollar bill out to me, and babbled, “Keep it all, buddy! That makes a fiver on the hock ticket. I told you I'd get it paid off 'fore you knowed it. You can start right in on the old buzzard; here's a pi'ture of him. I had to wait while he went home to get it.”

I was licked and I knew it, but there was no sense in scolding Lonnie when he was so happy about having put over a big piece of business. But I did suggest that in the future he let me make the deals, and that he stay and watch Shiftless while I went and had a talk with our new client.

The talk was a lot easier than I'd expected. My new client was one of the nicest old gentlemen I ever ran into, and he knew exactly what had happened. He said he'd been over to Albuquerque two or three times while we were camped near there, that he'd seen several of my busts, knew what they cost, and had planned to come and see me about making one for him. Of course, I told him that since Lonnie had made the deal at ten dollars I'd do the job for that price, but I explained about its taking three days to dry plaster, and that I didn't usually plan to stop unless I could get half a dozen jobs in the same area. He understood perfectly, laid another fifteen dollars out on the desk beside my hand, and told me he'd scare me up some more clients. He did. Six of them. And when I'd finished my work at Moriarty he asked me if I'd do him the favor of going to Santa Rosa and making a bust for a friend of his there. He'd been so nice to me that I wouldn't have refused if he'd asked me to go to the North Pole to make one, but our going changed the whole shape of my plans.

The banker at Santa Rosa had five jobs lined up for me—one from forty-five miles away—and when I was finished there, he asked me if I'd do some for friends of his near Tucumcari. With it being early April the nights were becoming warmer, so I didn't mind going farther north, but we needed a day to catch up with our housekeeping. Ever since we'd left Santa Fe I'd been busy every minute I could keep awake, modeling faces in clay, making molds, or chipping out and finishing busts. With the exception of our suits, every rag of clothes we owned was dirty, and our dish towels looked as though someone had scrubbed floors with them. We'd done our Santa Rosa work at a little pocket in the hills beside Pecos River, so I decided that we'd take a day off to do our washing there where we'd have plenty of water. While it dried, we'd just be lazy and lie in the sun.

When I told Lonnie what I'd planned he didn't think much of the idea. “We ain't no washerwomen, buddy!” he told me. “We're artists, and artists shouldn't ought to do their own wash. It ain't fittin'! And besides, our time's too dear. Ain't we makin' ten bucks a day? A tenner would buy the both of us brand new cloze, right from the hide out, sox and all.”

“Go ahead and buy yourself new duds if you can afford it,” I told him. “I can't. But we're going to take the day off anyway. Besides the washing, I've got a couple of letters to write, and my tools and armatures to clean.”

Next morning Lonnie spent an hour polishing Shiftless while I washed the breakfast dishes, scoured our pots and pans, and put a dishpan of water on to heat for my washing. When he'd finished the job he took our suitcase from the back seat, came to the fire for a basin of warm water, and went down to the river edge without saying a word. After he'd shaved, he peeled off his dirty shirt and jeans, tossed them into the river, and put on his city suit. Then he came back to the fire and asked, “Say, buddy, how many jobs have we did since we left Santa Fe?”

“Twelve,” I told him. “The hock ticket for redeeming your outfit was twenty-five bucks, you've drawn ten, and your share of the grub and gas has been five, so there's twenty dollars coming to you.”

As I stripped two tens off my pocket roll Lonnie seemed a bit embarrassed. “Look, buddy,” he told me, “I wasn't pressin' you none. It's only that . . . well . . . what with buyin' new cloze and all . . .”

“Sure enough. I know how it is,” I told him. “You've found some dame in Santa Rosa who will let you ride her around in Shiftless and buy her ice cream. Have a good time, but get back here early. We're going to be on the road by sunup.”

I don't know when Lonnie came back to camp, but he must have done his shopping before he picked up the girl, and it must have been late enough that he thought it best to get ready for an early takeoff before turning in. He was snoring like a fat sow when I woke up at dawn, and laid out beside him were a new blue shirt, sox, and a pair of Levi's. As always, he'd bought the Levi's six or eight inches too long, but had folded the cuffs neatly, and put a rock on them to make the creases sharp. I let him sleep till I had breakfast ready, then woke him just before sunup.

We were a week at Tucumcari, and from there were sent on to Dalhart, nearly a hundred miles to the northeast, across the line in the corner of the Texas panhandle. When I'd sent Mother the end-of-March money order from Santa Rosa I'd stuck to my story about going into southeastern New Mexico to buy cattle, but I had to get another letter off before we left Tucumcari. I couldn't have doctors' cards going to Dr. Gaghan, showing me headed northeast, while I was telling Mother I was going southeast.

There was only one thing I could think of, and after I'd mailed the letter it was too late to change my mind, my story, or my direction. I'd racked my brain to think of any reason why our bosses might be sending us to the northeast, and could think of only one, so I'd written it. I said our bosses had decided to divide the great herd, cut out the best steers, and have my working partner, Alonzo, and me drive them to market at Kansas City. To make it sound more reasonable, I wrote that we'd be driving them over the old Santa Fe Trail—hoping no one would tell her the old trail had been out of use for more than a quarter of a century.

From there on there was no way out. We stopped to make camp wherever I could get four or more jobs within a radius of twenty miles, and followed fairly close to the route of the old trail. There was never a time when I wasn't busy, and I never had to spend much time in hunting for work. I don't remember our ever breaking camp when I didn't have at least one bust to make for some banker farther on. The only thing I had to watch out for was that we didn't get sidetracked. Some one of my clients was always wanting me to go north, south, or west to make a bust for a friend of his, but I'd make promises only for jobs that would keep us moving to the northeast.

When I'd written Mother from Tucumcari I'd made up my mind to work things out so we'd reach Kansas City at the end of June. Then, if I'd been able to save a thousand dollars, I'd get out of the plaster bust business, go to Littleton for the Fourth-of-July roundup, and find myself a little place where I could get started in the cattle business.

By late June we had worked our way to within thirty miles of Kansas City, I had only one more bust to finish, and I'd saved a little more than the thousand dollars I'd planned on. I had eleven fifty-dollar bills in each cuff of my Levi's, more than a hundred and fifty dollars in smaller bills in my pocket, and my last job still to be paid for. I didn't worry a bit about the money when we were in camp, because I was always wearing my Levi's or sleeping with them rolled up for a pillow. But ever since the barber in El Paso had mentioned pickpockets, I was nervous about taking a lot of money into a big city. It bothered me all the time I was working on that last bust, and the night I finished it I sat up long after Lonnie had gone to sleep, writing a letter to my older sister, Grace.

Ever since we lost our father, Grace and I had sort of worked as a team. She'd never believe some of the fairy tales that I could sometimes palm off on Mother, but she'd believe me if I told her the straight-out truth, no matter how fantastic it sounded. Besides, she knew I could recognize the kind of a bush nickels grew on, and had a knack for shaking them off. Then too, she was more or less the treasurer of our family.

Right after Father died I'd made some pretty good money by riding at the racetrack in Littleton—something Mother would never have let me do if she'd known about it. But it was money that we needed, and I'd made it honestly, so Grace slipped it, little by little, into the grocery bill, and Mother never found out about it. That night after Lonnie had gone to sleep I wrote Grace a long letter and told her the exact truth about the plaster bust business, and that I was sending her a money order for five hundred dollars. I told her to work any of it that was needed into the family, and that she should keep whatever wasn't needed till I came home or wrote for it.

Of course, I couldn't mail the letter directly to Grace, since everyone at home would want it read aloud if it came to the house, so I had to write a little note to Dr. Gaghan. In the first paragraph I just wrote that I was feeling fine, was going to Littleton, and that he'd get his next report card from there. Then I told him I was enclosing a letter which I would appreciate his giving to Grace privately, because it was about a family matter with which I didn't want to worry my mother. Next I wrote a letter to Mother, telling her we would reach Kansas City in a couple of days, then I was going right on to Colorado. I said we'd be getting an extra bonus when we delivered our cattle at the stockyards, so I'd have plenty of money for the trip, and was enclosing a money order for sixty dollars. Then I filled in the rest of the letter by asking about all the others at home, and telling her that I'd look up all our old friends as soon as I reached Colorado.

The next morning Lonnie drove me into the town where I had to deliver my last bust. After I'd collected for it, I asked the banker if I could use his washroom, but all I used it for was taking five fifty-dollar bills out of each cuff of my Levi's. From there I went to a doctor, got a report card, and went to the post office. I bought my money orders, mailed my letters, and went back to camp feeling happier—and more proud of myself—than I had ever felt in my life.

On the morning of July first we broke camp for the last time, threw out all my armatures, what was left of the clay and plaster, and all our working clothes with the exception of the blue shirts and Levi's we were wearing. Then we lined our dishes, pots, and pans up along the roadside where someone would find them. Our days of being the roving cowboy artists of the Southwest were over, and I didn't want to reach Kansas City with a bunch of junk we couldn't take into a first-class hotel.

We didn't stop on the Kansas side of the river, where the stockyards were, but drove right to the downtown section of Kansas City, Missouri. Then I asked a policeman to direct us to the best cattlemen's hotel in town. He sent us to the Dixon, on Twelfth Street just off Main, and I took a four-dollar front room on the third floor. It wasn't that I wanted to put up in style, but I did want to be sure we would be in a hotel where my Levi's would be safe in a closet.

From the time Shiftless had been transferred to Lonnie's name I'd lost a little control over him. I couldn't threaten to sell her if he didn't do as I said, and it would have been silly to tell him he couldn't take her away from camp evenings to give the girls a ride. I knew he must have spent considerable money during April, May, and June, but it was rolling in so fast that I was sure he couldn't have spent it all. I didn't realize he had until we'd checked into the hotel, had our city suits pressed, and were changing into them. Then he asked to borrow twenty dollars so he could go see the town.