"Ramon'll be back in a few minutes," Jesus told me. "He's out back at the smokehouse." He nodded on past the jacal and I noticed for the first time there was a little smokehouse back there that was leaking thin streams of white smoke between the poles it was built of.
"Teresa says Ramon's just gone to check the fires." That was real interesting to him, I guess, Ramon being his cousin and all, but I was more interested in finding out what the girl's name was.
I got to feeling awkward just standing there like a lump with Teresa looking from Jesus to me and back again. Thinking about it, I felt myself start to get hot in the face and I knew I was blushing like a little kid. "I better put the mules up," I said.
I snatched Jesus's reins from him and dragged both mules off to the corral. I could hear Jesus and Teresa talking about something while I stripped our gear off the animals and turned them loose to roll in the dirt. By the time I got done, they was laughing about something, so I stayed busy hanging our saddles and stuff on the corral rails and checking to see that everything was in good shape.
The next time I looked over their way, there was a real good-looking young fellow talking to them. I was a little mad at first, but then I decided he must be Teresa's brother because I saw him pat her on the backside. It was a playful sort of light smack really, but something no proper Mexican girl would allow from anybody outside the family.
It seemed to fit that this boy'd be part of her family, for he was as smooth and good-looking in his way as she was soft and pretty in hers. It still didn't please me much about him being there because next to his tall, neat-muscled frame and bright, quick-flashing smile, I knew I'd look awful gawky and clumsy.
Jesus looked over my way and I ducked my head down to the bridle I had been fiddling with, but it wasn't in time to keep him from seeing I'd been watching them.
"Hey, Duster." I didn't want to, but I looked up again anyway. "Come on over here," Jesus called out.
I thought about leaping over the poles, but figured with my luck I'd hook a shoe and end up sprawled out on the ground, so instead I let myself out the gate like any little kid and went on over to them. Close up, the Mex fellow—he couldn't of been more than eighteen or maybe nineteen, tops—was even better looking.
He smiled real friendly and stuck a hand out when I got near. " 'Ow you get a name like Duster? Is a good story I bet-cha." He grinned, and I couldn't help liking him.
"Please-to-meetcha," I said. "I'm really Douglas Dor-word, but ugly cow chasers like Jesus call me Duster. I reckon you can too."
He threw back his head and laughed out loud. He sure seemed a happy one.
"Well, you come here with Jesus you mus' be hokay, even if he is such an ogly person of a cow hunter." He clapped a hand on my shoulder. "You are welcome to come any time to the house of Ramon an' Teresa Nunez, eh, companero?"
I felt real good to be friends with this happy, competent-looking Mexican, but that lasted just a second. Then it dawned on me what he'd said. This here was Jesus's cousin Ramon, not Ramon's boy, and that pretty little girl of fifteen or so was his wife.
I must of got awful red real sudden-like for they got a tremendous kick out of it. Jesus and Ramon just yukked up a storm, and Teresa was laughing at me too. That made me get redder and redder until I felt like I had been baking both cheeks over a branding fire.
"Look," I said. "Ramon, I... oh... oh, shoot." I stomped my foot. "I don't know what I want to say."
Ramon went over and put an arm around Teresa's shoulders. "Si, I onderstand. You give me a, uh, complimen' you call it, to my good taste, eh? An' I got to agree, yes, my Teresa is the pretties' girl there has ever been. Yes."
Teresa said something in Spanish and Ramon gave her a little squeeze. "She doesn't have much English, but she is not a bad ole woman for all that," Ramon said. "What she tole me is that she thinks you are a nice boy an' she is glad there is now somebody aroun' this place that thinks she is pretty an' will not beat her so much like I do." The way he was grinning I could tell it was a joke the both of them shared between them.
I felt some better then. It was mighty fine of them not to be mad after I'd made such a pure fool of myself like I did. Looking back on it, I'd have to guess that as well as being nice folks they was right then too interested in each other to worry much about other people. Jesus told me later that they'd only been married a few months. Anyway, I sure felt beholden to them.
"We brung your mules down from Mr. Trembel," I said, wanting to get onto a different subject. "They're over in your corral there," I added even though he could see that for himself.
"I sure hope you got 'em for a good price," Jesus said. "Them mules has got to be the two most beat up critters ever."
We walked over to lean on the top poles of the corral, and I could see Ramon wince a little when he got a good look at Gert and Stardust.
"Well," he said, "as long as they got bottom I cannot say much bad of them. I got no need for them to be fast or pretty."
Despite his words, Ramon looked plenty down at the mouth. It was easy to see he'd bought those mules without looking them over first.
Ramon thought it over some and brightened up a little. "Anyways," he said, "that brown one don't look so bad."
Jesus and me bust out laughing. Ramon was pointing at old Gert. She was standing sideways to him and all he could see was her near side, just like I had when I'd first seen her back in Dog Town. Ramon hadn't seen that gouged-out eye of hers yet.
"What you find so fonny?" Ramon asked.
Jesus stuck two fingers in his mouth and let out a loud whistle. Gert and Stardust both perked up their ears and swung their heads around to look at us.
"Aieee," Ramon said, "now I see why you laff." He flashed a bunch of white teeth at us. "Is a good joke on me, eh?"
"Jus' wait 'til you ride them," Jesus said. "Is an even better joke then, right, Duster?"
"You mean you ain't going to tell him?" I asked.
"Be more fun to let him find out his own self." Jesus had that gleam in his eye that I'd seen a few times before, usually just before some cowhand got real uncomfortable as the butt of a practical joke.
Ramon just looked confused.
"Ah, that ain't fair," I said and proceeded to explain to Ramon how he'd have to go about getting Stardust and Gert to go where he wanted them. When I was done Ramon just shook his head.
Finally he shrugged. "They will do jus' the same for what I need." He straightened his shoulders and pushed his chest out some. "I 'ave a very good job, you know. Don Jose Fuega has pastores tending great flocks of sheeps from here to Nuevo Laredo an' for many miles north an' I shall be his vaquero an' carry food an' coffee an' mail if there is any. To all of these pas-tores I will carry these things. It is the way Don Jose Fuega himself started these many years ago."
"Sheep?" I asked. "Where you gonna find sheep around here?" I'd never seen one of them animals, though of course, I'd heard of them.
Ramon looked like he couldn't believe I had just asked what I did. "From here all the way to Laredo on the Rio Grande an' up the Grande to Piedras Negras there is many more times the sheeps than there is of your wild, estupido cows. Why, Senor Stuart who runs the store here tol’ me the clerk of this LaSalle County tol’ him there is maybe five times as many sheeps as there is cows."
Now, that sort of shook me. I had growed up all my life knowing that the Good Lord made the brush for cows, and for us brush poppers who chased cows. It didn't seem right, somehow, that down here where the Brasada was supposed to be the wooliest brush of all I'd find more sheep than cow critters.
It also shook me some when Ramon talked of LaSalle County. I had clean forgot that we left out of McMullen County some time before we got to the river. As far as I could recollect, it was the first time since I was able to walk that I'd been outside of McMullen County. And if we had to go just a few miles on south to find our horses we'd be out of LaSalle and into Webb County, where the government police kept having such a time with rustlers
working the Brasada. They had just about give up trying to do anything there, and now there was talk about going against the government and starting up the Rangers again.
"Jesus," I said, "long as we're down here anyway, I'd like to hunt up one of them sheep and take a look. If they make out so good in the brush it may be something to think on. I mean, they can't be any harder to throw and brand than an old mossy-horn bull."
"Duster, if you decide to take up sheep ranching, you let me know. I surely would like to see that," Jesus said.
"An' I would bring all my oncles and cousins too," Ramon said.
"What for?" I asked. I couldn't figure out what they was driving at.
"Duster, you're not only the ugliest gringo I ever rode with, you're also the dumbest," Jesus said. "Even I know you don't run sheep the same as cows, an' I don't know nothing about sheep."
"Now look a-here," I said. "There ain't but one way to go about working critters in the brush an' it don't make no difference at all if they got big horns or long hair. You still got to bust 'em down and brand 'em so's they'll be ready to be rounded up and sold up by the fella that owns them. There ain't no way you could pen feed that many animals—not an' make it pay."
"Ha ho, Duster, you will make a fine cowman one day," Ramon said. "But these sheeps, they is not the same. You turn a cow loose in the thorn an' it comes out fat an' fighting to stay there. You turn a sheep loose in the brush and it don't come out at all 'cause it ver' soon make a meal for a coyote.
"What you got to do wid the sheeps is to keep them in a big bunch, all together, so you can keep the other animals away. An' then when you want you jus' bring them home to sell for meat or to cut the good wool off them, eh? An' wool—tha's where you get the good money for raising the sheeps, so you don't burn it with a iron, an' if you cut the wool an' brand the sheeps then pretty soon you can't even find the sign for all the wool growed over it."
"I still don't understand it, but I guess them sheep really are some different than our McMullen County cows," I said. "I'd sure admire to see a herd of sheep being worked some time."
"Sure, amigo. One o' these days you an' Jesus come down here an' ride with me a few weeks. I show you all there is to see of this sheep business, you bet. An' maybe by then I show you a fat baby boy to tend my sheeps one of these days, eh?"
I couldn't think of much I'd enjoy more the first chance I had to slip off on a lark, and I said so. Jesus, he took on more to teasing Ramon about him maybe being a poppa.
I couldn't figure out some of the jokes even when they was trying to tell them in English, and I guess they was having trouble understanding it themselves. Pretty soon they gave up being polite on my account and switched into Spanish.
9
IT WASN'T TOO hard the next morning to follow upriver about ten miles until we came to a big, rambling adobe that wandered every which way. It was a big old place that had been added on to here and there with every new room going off in a different direction and showing a different amount of softening at the corners.
The house was built on a little rise. Below, there was a stand of pecans, the kind that gave the Nueces its name. Down the slope from the river there was a big space that went a mile or more deep and probably a couple miles on up the river. On that whole plain there wasn't but a few clumps of brush. The rest of it was covered mostly with patches of sacaguista, a coarse, salt grass that grows in much littler pockets up our way but makes fine graze.
It might of surprised me more the day before, but I was already beginning to learn that the Brasada was really pretty much the same as our kind of brush country, even if folks did talk about it as being different. The big difference was in the people who lived there, not in the thorns.
Off on this open pasture—I never did decide if it had growed that way or if someone took the time and muscle to clear it—we could see little bands of horses scattered here and there.
There was something odd about those bunches of horses, even at a distance, and at first I couldn't figure out why they didn't look natural. Then I realized what it was.
"Jesus, look there at all them bands of horses. Each bunch is just one color. See…there's a bunch of paints up ahead by the river and on over yonder there's nothing but blacks. Why, I never seen the like."
"Aie-yi-ee, Duster, you sure ain't traveled much. Just about every Mexican horse herder keeps his horses apart like that to keep the blood pure."
Jesus pointed toward the bunch of paints that was the closest to us. "See the stallion up high on the bank where he can keep watch? All the rest of them horses are mares an' young'uns, and they belong to the stallion. When the males are big enough they'll be branded an' cut an' put into a separate work herd for breaking. Then, the rancher will sell from that herd. The best males and their manadas are kept for breeding."
"Well, I'll be. From here it sure looks like it works, too. That's mighty handsome stock."
"It oughta work. We been doin' it for a couple hundred years," Jesus said. "Come on. Let's get up there an' see if we can deal."
We took off walking again like we'd been doing all the way from Ramon's jacal, carrying just our bridles to save weight.
Jesus looked over at me and pretended he was about to fall down. Then he grinned. "I am not sure but I think maybe it was bad luck when I started ridin' with you, Duster. Ever since then I have had to do most of my riding on my own feet."
"I'd be lyin' to you if I said I wouldn't rather be riding even that old Gert mule. Come to think of it I'd like to be on Gert right now so's I could leave the driving up to you an' take a nap."
"There's a lazy gringo streak in you, Duster."
"I can't say no to that, my friend, and I ain't even ashamed of it."
We hoofed it on up toward the big adobe. The closer we got, the neater and nicer kept we could see the place was. When we got up to the house, I snuck a look around, and from the yard in front of the place I could see a long ways, it being up on top of the hill like it was. There must of been ten or a dozen manadas of horses in sight, each one held apart from the rest by a boss stallion. Away off up the river we could see some dust and could make out that a crew of vaqueros was working some of the horses up that way.
Down below us was a big old pen that had been hid behind the hill when we first got a look at the hacienda. The pen was made of logs stuck endwise into the ground real close together, harder to build but a whole lot stouter than the post-and-rail fences most cowmen make. The pen covered maybe three or four acres though I'm no hand at figuring the size of a piece of land. The riverbank was low there and someone had dug a ditch through to make a little watering tank at one end of the pen. Right at the moment, the pen was empty.
The house seemed to be just as empty, judging by appearances. We couldn't see or hear a soul around the place.
There was a big covered veranda, or porch-like walk, built out at the front of the place. We went under there and found it real cool. There was all kinds of doors and windows opening out on that porch, but we didn't know which one we should go to to try and find someone.
It being so quiet and still, I didn't want to holler out a hello, and I guess Jesus felt the same, for he was as careful as me to keep from making noise when we walked. Finally I looked over at him and whispered, "I don't think there's anybody to home, or if there is they're taking a little nap before siesta."
"That don't make sense," he said.
"I know."
"What do we do now?"
"I don't know, but I sure don't aim to just walk in an' set."
"Me too, amigo. Ramon said this was a nice place, but I never saw anything quite so grand."
Jesus was right about that. Even Mister Sam Silas's big ranch house couldn't take a candle to this place. The shutters was all open on the windows to let air in, and we couldn't help but see into some of the rooms.
One that seemed to be the main room had a fireplace at the other end that would have been big enough for a half-growed boy to stand up in without s
tooping.
We couldn't see the whole room from where we stood, but I'd have been willing to bet I could set our whole house down in it and still have space left over.
The furniture was big and heavy, and we could see where someone had taken and carved designs all over the wood. Even on the backs of the chairs and stuff where it wouldn't show except from the window where we stood.
The floor was made out of some kind of odd-shaped bricks or something, not just packed dirt or smoothed off logs, and it was shiny like someone had rubbed grease all over it. Here and there on the floor there was rugs scattered too. Not rag rugs, either. They was real, woven rugs, deep red and covered with pretty figures in different colors, and they had fringes around the edges.
Hanging up above it all, there was a great big candle holder sort of thing that was slung down from a chain and must of had thirty candles in it and had little things hanging all over it like glass raindrops.
Jesus spotted the candle holder thing too and gave me a nudge with his elbow. We both leaned down closer to the window so we could get a better look at it. We was bent over like that, gawking at all those pretty baubles hung on the candle holder, when we heard a real polite cough behind us.
The both of us jerked up straight and turned around quick. We hadn't really been doing anything wrong, but for just a second, there, we sure felt like we had. It was like we'd been caught looking in at folks in their house instead of just looking in at their home by itself. I hoped they wouldn't be mad at us.
When we got turned around and got our eyes up off the floor we could see it was an old Mexican that had found us peeping in the window. One look and it was easy to see that this old man was the rancher we had come out to see.
He was a little fellow, short and as thin as a whip, and in spite of being right on up there in age he looked to be about as tough as a whip too. Not mean tough, though. He just looked like whatever came his way he could take it, get up off the ground if he had to, and pick right up where he left off before. And he looked like an awful lot had come his way from time to time.
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