"I would, too, if I had any good ones," Mister Sam told him. "If you know of any good, trustworthy hands looking for a riding job, let me know. I have one here I might want to replace if he doesn't start showing some respect."
Ike spit at the rock again. "I'll do it too, if he ain't a good friend. But I couldn't hardly wish you off on anyone I favor. You bein' so mean an' all."
"Glad you'all noticed. I would have hated for it to go to waste."
"Now that you're satisfied about that, what can we do for you?"
"Duster and I need a couple good eating beeves out of the herd. Something wearing one of my brands."
It didn't take Ike hardly a minute to work into the herd and haze out a pair of animals. They wouldn't of been thought to be of much account, I guess, except we was moving the culls out of our country and these two were the best of a bad lot. They was each two or three years old and packed a good load of meat on their bones. The problem was that they was both females and both had bad bones.
It happens like that with animals, sometimes. They develop normal except for their hindquarters, say. These cows were gimpy in the hindquarters like they'd never grown all the way. Even I could tell neither one would be likely to drop a calf proper, and if they could, you wouldn't want that bad blood carried on anyway. It seemed a shame to lose a pair of heifers with their bearing years ahead of them yet, but it would be a worse shame if the calves lived and messed up the herd with more bad bones. Besides, it would more likely be that they couldn't drop the calf and then both it and the mama would die out in the brush and be wasted.
Anyway, me and Mister Sam Silas took these heifers from Ike and drifted them up away from the river. I had figured what Mister Sam intended as soon as he asked Ike for the cows, and I was right about it. We pushed them with us right to that little farm where I'd got the medicine.
We had to go all the way back up to camp and then up that little creek since that was the only way I knew to get there. It didn't seem such a long way in the daytime, so even with having to chouse those little cows it didn't take too long.
We came up behind the soddy like I'd done the night before, and at the edge of the clearing we stopped and set still for a minute.
"Hello the house," Mister Sam called out.
I noticed I'd been right the night before. There was a small, neat and well- weeded garden straight ahead of us. It had a low fence around it that didn't look like much but was sturdy built. Past that was the leavings of the winter's woodpile, the one that had like to tripped me. And past that and to the left was the soddy.
After seeing how tidy the inside of that soddy was, it was kind of sad to get a good look at the outside. The inside was so awful nice the way they'd fixed it up. The outside just looked awful.
That's one thing you have to say about a soddy. They look like something a great huge cat has drug home to its cave. Oh, there's good things that can be said for them. They don't cost a shinplaster cent to build and don't take more than a spade or even just a pocketknife for tools if that's all you have got. They'll keep you warm in winter and cool in summer. They'll keep most of the rain off your neck. But on the other side of it, what rain they do let down on your neck is mud by the time it seeps through the roof. And where the water gets through, so can little bugs and tiny scorpions and such.
The appearance, of course, is mostly bad inside and out, though the inside can be fixed up like these folks had done. As for the outside, there's no help for it. They look awful. It's the grass that holds it all together, like the straw in dried clay brick, but bits of grass and roots poking out of the walls gives the whole building the look of a hairy brown thing that has died and ought to be buried before it starts to smell. And no matter how careful you are in the building of it, a soddy commences to start to melt around the edges immediately it is finished.
The corners of this one were still pretty sharp, so I guessed it hadn't been standing for long, and you can tell easy with a sod building. They melt a lot quicker than adobe.
It didn't make much sense to me for anyone, even a foreigner, to build a soddy when there's wood close by—and I'd seen inside how well this fellow worked with wood—so I had to figure they came to this place last fall and believed a soddy would put them under a winter roof quicker than a log house.
Anyhow, when we didn't get an answer to the holler, we rode around to the front of the place and then we could see why no one had answered.
It sure looked like these folks figured to be dirt farmers. There wasn't an animal around bigger than the hens I'd heard the night before, but they sure were working hard to clear land for crops.
They already had about ten acres cleared. There was a strip of bare dirt that started right in front of the soddy and stretched off in the direction away from the creek. It didn't seem the right way to do it, what with the bottomland just a little ways off toward the creek, but then I don't know anything about being a plow-jockey nor about which kind of dirt is best for growing things.
This is where they'd chosen to put their farm, though, and they were hard at it. That's why they hadn't answered—they was all too busy working. The woman had some kind of sharpened pole or stick and was walking along gouging into the dirt with it. The girls were going along behind her, one of them dropping something and the littlest one covering it up. Sowing seeds is what they had to be doing. The man was away off at the other end of the cleared patch, cutting brush to clear more land for planting and grubbing out the roots as he went. He was a slow, thorough worker and even at the distance I could see the easy power he put into his labor.
"Hello, there," Mister Sam bellowed again. This time the littlest girl turned around and looked back to where we were. She turned back around and must of said something to the other girl, for she looked toward us and then looked back toward her mother. Next, the woman looked us over, and finally the man did. They made a regular chain of heads turning.
When the man saw us, he started walking back our way. I noticed he brought his ax along with him and he carried it in both hands like he wanted to have it handy. The woman joined him as he came up to us.
They were up pretty close before they seemed to recognize who I was. Maybe they hadn't seen it was me because of the rag around my head. I hadn't been wearing it the night before, and I guess from a distance I might of looked like a hardcase with a bandage on my head.
Anyway, when they seen who it was they commenced to smiling, and the man slung the ax over his shoulder. They said something to each other in that language I didn't understand.
"Iss dis your ill friend, young boy?" the woman asked.
"Oh, no, ma'am. This here's Mister Sam Silas—the boss of our cattle drive."
She came up to Mister Sam's horse and stuck her hand up to shake just like a man would. "So nice to be acquainted," she said.
Mister Sam's mouth never so much as quivered toward a smile. He shoved his hand out and shook like he didn't think a thing of it. "Pleased to see you folks," he said. "You all helped us out of a real bad situation with that laudanum. My man was quite sick, and you helped to make him well. We owe you for that."
The man, the foreigner, said something to his woman. I couldn't make out what the words was, but I knew he was asking what Mister Sam had said. Then she talked some, telling him what Mister Sam had said, and then he talked some more.
"My husban' is not good vith the English," the woman said, "so he ask me to tell you ve are happy your ill friend feels better. Ve are new here and know very little about this land, but people always must help people. Ve are frighten in this land because ve do not know it, but you make us feel more better because ve can help even if ve know so little. This is a gudt thing."
"Well, ma'am, we just wanted you to know we appreciate your help, and we brought these two heifers along with us. Thought you might find use for them. They're no good for calving and no good to us, but you might get some meat off them if you want," Mister Sam said.
The woman's eyes got big, and she
turned and talked real fast with her husband, and at first his eyes lit up too but then his face iced over while he was saying something back.
"My husban says to tell you ve do not need paid for the med'cin," she said.
"Nobody said anything about pay, ma'am. Duster, here, brought the rest of your medicine back to you. These animals are just something we want to give out of friendship, not payment, to welcome you to Texas as neighbors of sorts. Like I said, they are no good to us, but they might be to you."
The way they talked that over, you could tell the man didn't hardly believe it. I don't know but I'd guess that wherever they came from cows are scarcer than they are in Texas. They acted like it was something special instead of a couple no-account heifers. While they was talking it over, I fished in my pocket for the bottle of laudanum, which I'd completely forgot until Mister Sam mentioned it, and gave it over to him so he could return it to them.
When they was done talking again, Mister Sam spoke up quick before she could tell us what her husband had said. Maybe he understood what they'd been saying, for he was an almighty well-educated man. Or maybe he just knew something about these kind of folks, for he told them, "I don't mean to be rude, ma'am, telling you all what to do, but out here we take it unkindly if people will not accept a gift that is freely offered. But I cannot tell you what you ought, so Duster and I will just leave these animals here where they are. If you feel you can accept them, take them. If not, leave them. In that case they will not find their way back to the herd. They will run off into the brush and go wild again, at least until someone spots them for bad breeders and shoots them so they will not spoil the blood on whatever range they are on then. So you do whatever you think is right."
He handed the bottle down to her and turned his horse away. Me, I took a second to haze those two little heifers into a corner between the soddy and a shed they had put up for some purpose. Then I waved and rode off after Mister Sam. The littlest girl waved back.
"Duster," Mister Sam said when I caught up with him, "those folks there are going to have a rough time of it, but I would wager they make it in the long run." He shook his head. "But that surely is one stubborn man. He won't change. But then, I would bet he has the grit it takes to bend the land to his ways, instead."
"Could you make out what they was saying?"
"Enough. They're Germans. I grew up near a settlement of Germans in East Texas. They almost have that country settled now, and soon there will be more dirt farmers in through this area too. One farmer comes in and makes the land work for him, and then there are more coming right along behind. I wouldn't be surprised but what the cattle business gets pushed out past the Pecos in a few more years. Or up north somewhere if they can ever figure out what to do about the buffalo."
"Why didn't them folks want the heifers?"
"They thought we were trying to give them charity, and that old man won't have his neck bent by taking such. They're practical folks, though. They won't let those animals run off to go wild. He can take them with his head still up as long as it's to keep them from going wild. That way nobody's been done harm."
"Yessir," I said. "That's good."
"It is indeed, Duster. It is indeed."
20
NEXT DAY IT was back to firewood and cook chores and horse punching for me. Crazy Longo was feeling better, though, and we pushed right along after that little layover.
We drifted down the Nueces as easy as you please, watching the mottes get thicker and feeling the air get heavier with moisture, and it seemed like only another day or two until we were plumb out of the Texas I knew and into a sandy, rolling country that wasn't near so rocky nor a tenth as thorny as the brush country that I knew as home.
Then, all of a sudden, there was Nueces Bay off on our right as we drove the cattle along the north side of it. And the next day we were skirting Corpus Christi Bay, the biggest bunch of water I'd ever seen and more than I could of imagined, with the town of the same name away off on the other side of the bay from us. We struck north from there, in sight of water all the way, and with Mustang Island across the blue from us.
We drove on up past Aransas Pass, having to be careful all the while now to not let the herd trample somebody's private property, and came at last to Rockport, which was protected by the bulk of St. Joseph Island.
The town was only a few years old, but it made up for the raw newness of the lumber by being so busy. And there wasn't any doubt about the business that went on there. We had to be careful of the wind around Rockport. Not that it was blowing so hard—just fierce. We didn't want to have to smell more of it than we had to.
When we first come up with the herd, we could see the hide and tallow plants dotted here and there near the town. There was a few small ones setting around, and about four big buildings in the pack, each of them big and new and ugly with the timber not yet weathered down to a comfortable tone.
But what really got us, of course, was that smell. Lordy, but it stunk. Great heaps of rendered meat were stacked high around the buildings. The meat turned into rotting, gray masses that was alive with maggots and buzzards and a white bird called a sea gull. From a little ways off, the piles of rotten stuff looked like a live, black and white spotted animal from the way they was covered with moving birds in those two colors.
The first time an eddy of wind shifted to me close to one of them piles, I like to puked. I did gag a couple of times, and for a second or two, I thought it was all going to come up. It didn't, but for a spell there, I felt so punk that I wished it had come up and got it over with. I never smelt anything so bad in my life and never expect to smell anything worse in the future.
The stink laid over everything, and when a breeze would come up off the water and sweep it away for a second the clean smell was so good it just made the other seem that much the worse after the wind fell off again.
Folks who worked around there told us they got so they didn't hardly notice it once they got used to it, and I guess that is so for I got kind of used to it myself. But not completely. It was always there and even if I could ignore it after a spell, I knew it was there. Just about the time I thought I was over it, it would sneak up and grab hold of the inside of my throat and tighten down until I wanted to gag.
Rockport was the world's biggest carrion heap. It seemed like it was every cow critter in Texas piled up under a hot sun to die and rot.
With beeves not worth hardly anything for meat, some fellows had realized that the Yankees and the foreigners would still want leather and tallow, and Rockport was their way of turning Texas cattle into cash money. Oh, a few of the slaughterhouses packed the meat into barrels of brine and sold bully beef to the army or for use on ships or whatever. And I believe one outfit was canning some sort of embalmed beef into tins to sell to the movers who was hitting west in ox wagons. They called that stuff meat biscuit.
Most, though, never bothered much with the meat except to render it down to get the tallow out. The meat, they would throw away. There wasn't hardly any tallow in the tenderloins, and I saw one farmer hauling a spring wagon loaded with beef tenderloins. I asked him about it and he said the factories give them away to anyone who wanted them. He said him and his missus would eat a few tenderloins, and the rest he'd feed to his hogs.
It seemed an awful waste, but I guess there wasn't any other way. I thought about them children back east, but there wasn't any way to ship the meat to them. Even if somebody could of stood the cost to ship it, it would of spoilt before it got there. But I didn't have to like it, and I could tell none of the others liked it a bit better than me. It was just something hateful that had to be done if we was to get along.
The way it worked there in Rockport was that the cattle would be bought for their worth in hides. The packer would put them in his pens and then drive them inside a few at a time, or shoot them outside and drag them in if they wanted to act up.
The hides would be stripped off and put on racks for drying. They was sold green, to be tanned
by whoever bought them.
The fat was scraped, and the fattier pieces of meat was thrown into big vats that was kept going all the time to render the tallow out of the meat. Once the tallow was collected, it was poured hot into barrels for shipment out.
The bones was piled separate in big heaps outdoors so the birds and insects could clean away most of the meat that was left on them. These would be sold too, to be crushed up and used for fertilizer. The hooves and some of the other scraps were useful for glue, so they could be sold too.
About the only thing that was considered really worthless, like I said, was the meat. And that's about enough to break a cowman's heart, though I guess there's no real good reason to feel that way. It wasn't that the animals was being wasted. They wasn't. But it seemed so when you looked out at those terrible, vile mounds of decaying cow meat heaped up on the ground.
You can probably understand why only the culls, only the most useless cattle, was brought on a drive to Rockport. The only money a body wanted out of there was what he had to have for his ranch and his family. Any more would seem almost sinful, for anyone who would of raised animals with no better hope than to take them to Rockport oughten to of been in the cow business. Even I could understand that, and me only fifteen at the time.
Anyway, we'd got our cattle to the market, and they would end up as a pile of dried hides in one spot and a pile of rotting meat in another, and we'd go home with enough money to see us through until a proper market opened up for our beeves. There was some who said it would be possible to take the cattle north and sell them at a decent price, and maybe our McMullen County men could try that the next year. Some folks were said to be doing it already, so if it worked for them, maybe Mister Sam Silas and the rest would be willing next year. I know I never wanted to bring DD cattle to Rockport again if I could help it.
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