by Elmer Kelton
Thirty miles, carrying saddle and bedroll … For a cowboy, used to saddling a horse rather than walk a hundred yards, that was worse than being sentenced to sixty days in jail. He looked at Doughbelly. “Maybe if I went and apologized to him…” He did not finish, because he had rather walk than apologize for doing what every man in the outfit would like to have done.
Mullins said, “You’re either cookin’ or walkin’.”
Hewey swallowed. “Damn, but this is a hard outfit to work for.” But he turned toward the chuckwagon. “I’ve never cooked for anybody except myself, hardly.”
“Nothin’ to it. You just fix what you’d fix for yourself and multiply it by twelve. And it had better be fit to eat.”
“At least there won’t be no tomatoes in it.”
Hewey had always taken pride in two distinctions: He had never picked cotton, and he had never herded sheep. He had not considered the possibility that he might someday cook at a wagon or he might have added that as a third item on the list. Now he would never be able to.
He grumbled to himself as he sliced the beef and made biscuit dough and set the coffeepot over the fire. He glared at the distant form of Doughbelly Jackson squatted on his bedroll, his back turned toward the wagon. He figured hunger would probably put the old scoundrel in a better frame of mind when supper was ready, and he would come back into camp as if nothing had happened. But he had not reckoned on how obstinate a wagon cook could be when he got a sure-enough case of the rings.
At last Hewey hollered, “Chuck,” and the cowboys filed by the chuckbox for their utensils, then visited the pots and Dutch ovens. He fully expected to hear some complaints when they bit into his biscuits, but nobody had any adverse comments. They were probably all afraid the cooking chore might fall on them if they said anything.
Grady Welch tore a high-rise biscuit in two and took a healthy bite. His eyes registered momentary surprise. “Kind of salty,” he said, then quickly added, “and that’s just the way I like them.”
Hewey looked toward Doughbelly. He still sat where he had been for more than an hour, his back turned. Matthew Mullins edged up to Hewey. “Seein’ as you’re the one caused all this, maybe you ought to take him somethin’ to eat.”
“The only thing wrong with him is his head. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with his legs.”
“At least take him a cup of coffee.”
Hewey thought a little about that thirty-mile walk and poured steaming black coffee into a tin cup. Each leg felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds as he made his reluctant way out to the bedroll where Doughbelly had chosen to make his stand, sitting down. He extended the cup toward the cook. “Here. Boss said you’d ought to take some nourishment.” To his surprise, Doughbelly accepted the cup. He stared up at Hewey, his eyes smoldering like barbecue coals, then tossed the coffee out into the grass. He pitched the cup at Hewey. “Go to hell!”
“I feel like I’m already halfway there.” Hewey’s foot itched. He was sorely tempted to place it where it might do the most good, but he managed to put down his baser instincts. He picked up the cup. “Then sit here and pout. You’re missin’ a damned good supper.”
Hewey knew it wasn’t all that good, but he guessed Doughbelly would sober up if he thought somebody else might have taken his place and be doing a better job.
That turned out to be another bad guess. Doughbelly never came to supper. At dark he rolled out his bedding and turned in. Hewey sat in lantern light and picked rocks out of the beans he would slow-cook through the night.
Mullins came up and lifted Doughbelly’s alarm clock from the chuckbox. “You’d better put this by your bed tonight. If he don’t get up at four o’clock in the mornin’, it’ll be your place to crawl out and fix breakfast.”
Hewey felt that he could probably throw the clock fifty feet and strike Doughbelly squarely on the head. He took pleasure in the fantasy but said only, “If I have to.”
As Mullins walked away, Grady sidled up. “He’s bound to get hungry and come in.”
Hewey glumly shook his head. “He could live off of his own lard for two weeks.”
Hewey lay half awake a long time, then drifted off into a dream in which he fought his way out from a huge vat of clinging biscuit dough, only to fall into an even bigger can of tomatoes. The ringing of the alarm saved him from drowning in the juice. He arose and pulled on his trousers and boots, then punched up the banked coals and coaxed the fire back into full life. He kept watching for Doughbelly to come into camp, but the cook remained far beyond the firelight.
After a time Hewey shook the kid horse jingler out of a deep sleep and sent him off to bring in the remuda so the cowboys could catch out their mounts after breakfast. He entertained a wild notion of intercepting the horses and turning them in such a way that they would run over the cook’s bed, but he had to dismiss the idea. The laws against murder made no special dispensation for wagon cooks.
The cowboys saddled up, a couple of broncs pitching, working off the friskiness brought on by the fresh morning air. Grady Welch had to grab the saddle horn to stay aboard. Pride gave way to practicality; he was still aching from the last time when he didn’t claw leather. Hewey had to stand beside the chuckbox and watch the cowboys ride out from camp without him. He felt low enough to walk beneath the wagon without bending over.
Doughbelly rolled his blankets, then sat there just as he had done yesterday, shoulders hunched and back turned. Hewey went out to a pile of well-dried wood a Two C’s swamper had cut last winter for this campsite. He began chopping it into short lengths for the cookfire.
He heard the rattle of a lid and turned in time to see Doughbelly at the Dutch ovens, filling a plate. Hewey hurled a chunk of wood at him. Doughbelly retreated to his bedroll and sat there eating. Angrily Hewey dumped the leftover breakfast onto the ground and raked it into the sand with a pot hook to be sure Doughbelly could not come back for a second helping. He hid a couple of biscuits for the kid horse jingler, who would come in hungry about midmorning.
Hewey was resigned to cooking the noon meal, for Doughbelly showed no sign that he was ready to come to terms. He peeled spuds and ground fresh coffee and sliced steaks from half a beef that had been wrapped in a tarp and hung up in the nearby windmill tower to keep it from the flies and larger varmints.
From afar he glumly watched horsemen bring the cattle into the pens, cut the calves off from their mothers, and start branding them. He belonged out there with the rest of the hands, not here confined to a few feet on either side of the chuckbox. He had been in jails where he felt freer.
Doughbelly still sat where he had been since suppertime, ignoring everything that went on around him.
The hands came in for dinner, then went back to complete the branding. Finished, they brought the irons and put them in the hoodlum wagon. Mullins told Hewey, “The boys’ll drive the horses to the next camp so the jingler will be free to drive the hoodlum wagon for you.”
By that Hewey knew he was still stuck with the cooking job. He jerked his head toward Doughbelly. “What about him?”
Mullins shrugged. “He’s your problem.” He mounted a dun horse and rode off.
The kid helped Hewey finish loading the two wagons and hitch the teams. Hewey checked to be sure he had secured the chuckbox lid so it would not drop if a wheel hit a bad bump.
At last Doughbelly stood up. He stretched himself, taking his time, then picked up his bedroll and carried it to the hoodlum wagon. He pitched it up on top of the other hands’ bedding.
An old spiritual tune ran though Hewey’s mind, and he began to sing. “Just a closer walk with Thee…” He climbed up on the hoodlum wagon, past the surprised kid, and threw Doughbelly’s bedroll back onto the ground.
Doughbelly sputtered. “Hey, what’re you doin’?”
Hewey pointed in the direction of Upton City. “It ain’t but thirty miles. It you step lively you might make it by tomorrow night.”
He returned to the chuckwagon and took his place on th
e seat, then flipped the reins. The team surged against the harness. He sang, “As I walk, let me walk close to Thee.”
Doughbelly trotted alongside, his pudgy face red, his eyes wide in alarm. “You can’t just leave me here.”
“You ain’t workin’ for this outfit. You quit yesterday.”
“Hewey…” Doughbelly’s voice trailed off. He trotted back to where his bedroll lay. He lifted it up onto his shoulder and came running. Hewey was surprised to see that a man with that big a belly on him could run so fast. He had never seen the cook move like that before.
Hewey put the team into a long trot, one that Doughbelly could not match. The kid followed Hewey’s cue and set the hoodlum wagon to moving too fast for the cook to catch.
Hewey had to give the man credit; he tried. Doughbelly pushed himself hard, but he could not help falling back. At last he stumbled, and the bed came undone, tarp and blankets rolling out upon the grass. Doughbelly sank to the ground, a picture of hopelessness.
Hewey let the team go a little farther, then hauled up on the lines. He signaled the kid to circle around him and go on. Then he sat and waited. Doughbelly gathered his blankets in a haphazard manner, picking up the rope that had held them but not taking time to tie it. He came on, puffing like a T&P locomotive. By the time he finally reached the wagon he was so winded he could hardly speak. Sweat cut muddy trails through the dust on his ruddy face. “Please, Hewey, ain’t you goin’ to let me throw my beddin’ up there?”
Hewey gave him the most solemn expression. “If you ain’t cookin’, you ain’t ridin’.”
“I’m cookin’.”
“What about them damned tomatoes?”
“Never really liked them much myself.”
Hewey moved over to the left side of the wagon seat and held out the reins. “Long’s you’re workin’ for this outfit again, you’d just as well do the drivin’. I’m goin’ to sit back and take my rest.”
Supper that night was the best meal Hewey had eaten since Christmas.
FIGHTING FOR THE BRAND
You hear a lot of talk nowadays about loyalty and what it means. Old-time cowboys knew what it meant. The loyalty they had to the brand they worked for has seldom been equaled, before or since. Sometimes they loved the outfit; sometimes they didn’t. But as long as they rode its horses and ate its grub and drew its pay, they were loyal. Even when that meant risking their lives for it. Even when it meant taking up a gun against a friend.
Up in the Texas Panhandle, old-timers still talk about the day Shag Fristo and Curly Jim came riding into Dry Fork, pockets empty and the seats of their pants shiny and thin from rubbing a saddle so long.
They were cousins, but it didn’t show.
Curly was the short one, his shoulders as thick and broad as an ax handle is long. And he was always grinning, even the few times he ever got mad. The boys said he slept grinning. Riding into Dry Fork, he was singing to himself. Not pretty, but loud enough that he couldn’t hear his stomach growling at him.
Shag Fristo was the one folks always looked back at a second time. He was uncommonly tall, his shoulders a little slumped, the way those old cowboys often got. His hands were as big as a saddle blanket. His rusty red hair bristled out over his ears, the reason people called him Shag. He was scowling that day because he was thirsty and hungry. That always made him restless, and restlessness usually put him in a frame of mind for a fight. He hadn’t had a fight for the better part of a month.
That fight had had far-reaching implications, however, and was the reason Shag and Curly Jim were riding the chuckline, looking for work. They’d been playing a peaceful game of poker down in the Pecos country when the house man had decided he didn’t like the cut of Shag’s clothes, or maybe the lack of cut of his hair, and Shag had decided he didn’t like the cut of the deck. The disagreement had wound up with the saloonkeeper looking for somebody to help him build the saloon back, and the sheriff looking for Shag.
Shag’s scowl deepened as he reined his sorrel horse toward the twin set of wagon ruts that passed for a street in Dry Fork. There were two rows of sunbaked adobes, with a few new lumber houses sitting up on blocks so high off the ground they made Shag think of a barefooted fat woman hoisting her skirts to wade a puddle of water.
Shag pulled out a lonesome-looking silver dollar. “Last steer from a mighty herd,” he said. “Do we eat it or drink it?”
“Flip it,” said Curly.
“Heads for whisky, tails for beef.” Shag flipped it, caught it in his hand and slapped it down on his thick red wrist so hard the dust flew. He swore under his breath. Tails.
In the little box-and-strip eating place they hungrily inspected the quarter of good red beef hanging up there, then laid their silver dollar on the counter and took chili.
Cornering the last spoonful, Curly asked the slump-shouldered cook, “You know any outfit that needs a couple of good hands? Shag here can ride and rope anything that’s got hair on it, and I’m better than he is.”
Just a chuckwagon cook moved to town, the cafe man nodded his bald head. “Matter of fact, I do. Old Man Jesse Wheat out at the Flying W was in this mornin’, lookin’ for a cowboy.”
Curly stood up, wiping the chili from his chin. “Let’s go, Shag.”
The cook held up his dough-crusted hand. “Just a minute there. I said a cowboy. When Jesse Wheat says one, he means one. Kind of set in his ways, he is.”
Thoughtfully Curly and Shag eyed each other. Curly looked at the few cents change and said with regret, “We better do it, cousin. Maybe it won’t be for long.”
Shag picked up a coin and flipped it.
“Heads I take it, tails you do.” It was tails again.
So Curly rode out for the Flying W, but not before he had dug deep into his war bag and pulled out his most prized possession, a pair of silver-mounted spurs. He had won them roping steers against another roper of some reputation down in South Texas. He had never once contaminated them with horse sweat.
“If you don’t find you a job pretty quick,” he told Shag, “you’re liable to need these. Somebody ought to pay a right smart for them.”
So it was that Shag Fristo and Curly Jim got tallied out to different brands. It was the first time in years the cousins had been more than rock-chunking distance apart.
Shag took the change from the dollar and went down to the wagon yard. A friendly little game of poker got started on a saddle blanket. By suppertime Shag had won enough to buy chili for several days, along with prairie hay for his sorrel horse.
Next day he was sitting in the shade of the livery barn, thinking of buying that saddle blanket and a deck of cards and setting up in business for himself. A buckboard came rattling into town, its dust winding down past the wagon yard and drifting up to the doctor’s house.
Two men followed it on horseback. One of them shot a quick, hard glance at Shag. He was a little old wrinkled-up man with bristly gray whiskers as stiff as barbed wire and eyes that looked like the business ends of two .45 cartridges.
“That there’s Skinner Hamilton,” the hostler informed Shag, pointing the stem of a pipe that would knock down a grown dog. “Owns the Rafter H, and is as ornery as a wildcat with the hives. Him and Old Man Jesse Wheat, they’re like a couple of fightin’ roosters. Been feudin’ so long they probably don’t neither one of them remember what started it.”
“Wheat?” Shag frowned. That was the man Curly Jim had gone to work for.
The hostler nodded. “They’re both old bachelors. Stands to reason a woman caused the bust-up. And here of late it’s broke out kind of mean. Been a little old squatter outfit between their ranches for years. This squatter, he had the best hole of water in fifty miles of here. A little while back he quit. Left the country.
“Some folks say Jesse and Skinner squeezed him out. I reckon that’s more idle talk than solid information, but anyhow the minute the squatter’s wagon and his cattle went out of sight over the hill, them two had their cowpunchers pushin’ cattle i
n behind them. They been playin’ tug-of-war ever since. Jesse’s men hold the water a few days and don’t let nothin’ drink there but Flying W cattle. Then Skinner’s bunch shows up and runs them off, and they chase out everything but Rafter H stuff.
“Folks call it the banty rooster feud. It’d be comical if they wasn’t gettin’ so serious. Liable to be a killin’ out there yet, you watch what I tell you.”
About then the two men Shag had won the money from came back with a fresh stake. In considerably less time than it had taken him to win it, he lost the whole wad. So Skinner Hamilton struck him at the right moment.
The old man stood there and looked Shag up and down like he was a horse or a plow mule. “Man tells me you’re lookin’ for work.”
Shag nodded. The old man looked at him harder, as if about to chew him up and spit him out. “You’re not one of them newfangled cowboys that wants to quit soon’s it’s dark and expects to laze around all day Sunday, are you?”
Shag solemnly assured him he worked twenty-six hours a day, forty days a month.
The old man chewed his tobacco and kept looking him up and down. “One more thing, then.” He motioned Shag into the livery barn and pointed at a stack of hundred-pound grain bags. “See how hard you can hit that top sack.”
Shag put his shoulder into it and hit the sack so hard it tumbled off. The stitching broke, spilling grain on the dirt floor.
Skinner’s whiskered jaw worked the tobacco faster. “You’ll do.” He turned to a man who had ridden in with him, a medium-tall cowboy with a cut and bruised face and one eye a shade blue. “This here’s my foreman, Peeler Milholland.”
Shag shook Milholland’s hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
Milholland just nodded. Shag looked into his eye—the one that wasn’t swollen shut—and thought he could see sympathy there. Or perhaps it was just pain.
At the ranch that night, Shag studied the faces of the cowboys over his plate of beef and frijoles. Every man looked as if he had stumbled and fallen into a meat grinder—black eyes, skinned noses, blue-bruised cheekbones.