“It be good. Hard sometimes, but it be good.”
I nodded. “You a monitor, bein’ on guard and all?”
“Nope, only my day to keep an eye on things here. The monitors, they be down at the river. I expect you’ll get to know that river, and the Sycamore, real good.” Musty mounted and rode off with an, “Adiós.”
»»•««
As promised, the crew came a roaring in at noon. There were nine of them, and they made a show of coming in. The yellow-haired and Mex girls were back on the porch with a couple of other Mex women, and Gabi and Marta—I wondered what they’d been “talking” about. There was a tall white woman too, and I guessed she was Mrs. DeWitt. Mex kids were running up to the corral as those hands runned their horses in, whooping and squalling and smacking their mounts with their hats.
Before the dust had settled, they were dragging saddles off and hanging them on the fence. The horses were at the water trough, and the boys headed to another one, splashing water on their faces and on each other. One ol’ boy threw a hat of water on the back of another, and they started scuffling, but they were only horsing around. One of them boys was a Mex, and it seemed no matter to anyone.
They all headed to a pole barn near the big house, and there was a long table set there. Some Mex girls were standing behind big pots, and the crew lined up. Gabi waved at me to come over. She was talking to a barrel-chested, sorrel-haired man.
“Hi,” he said. “Lee Cleland. Mr. DeWitt hired you?”
“Yes, sir. Bud Eugen.”
“We’ll have none of that, Bud. Call me Lee.” His face was creased and leather-brown, hooded eyes with heavy eyebrows. His handshake was a firm jerk. I gave him a quick rundown on my hiring.
“Well, that’s mighty fine. You’ll give them boys out there now a break. Let’s dig into the chuck, and we’ll talk. Chuck was mashed frijole beans, tortillas, and goat stew with tomatoes.
I got introduced to all the crew. It would take me forever to remember all their names.
Dodger Lampe I liked the looks of. Little sinewy guy making jokes. “I just throwed a horseshoe in the coffee and it sank. The coffee ain’t ready.”
After dinner, I asked Lee about Marta. “I kinda picked her up a time back and ain’t been able to shake her. She ain’t my woman or nothing. She don’t talk.”
Lee stopped me holding up a scarred hand. “Gabi says she’s right as a trivet. She helped out with this feed. Gabi’ll put her to work for room and board, if you’re good with that.”
“That be fine by me.” I’d ask Gabi where Marta would be bedding down. It would feel queer asking Lee.
“I’ll be seeing you this evening,” said Lee, scooping up beans in a folded tortilla. “We moved some cattle up to the Sycamore to water. They’re there now. We gotta move them back to the southeast, or they’ll just stay there. Those banditos been roaming that creek and making off with cattle, cutting through the V-Bar-M to the northwest.”
“Word is a lotta ranches been losing head, hard winter.”
“You heard right, Bud. We lost some, not only to banditos, but to the cold. We’re keeping them in three herds and head them to behind sheltering ridges. You know how cattle are, not always so dumb. They head themselves there now.” He was pulling his boot back on. “Damn corns. Clay had the fore-sense to stock up on hay and cow cake too.”
Lee called a fella over with his left arm all taped and splinted with two boards. “Stone Eskin,” the gangly punch mumbled.
“Tell Bud why you’re nicknamed Stone.” He was laughing.
“My given name’s Graves.”
“Graves Stone,” cackled Lee. “Get it? Old Stone had a pony roll on him, so he’s doing what he can here. Lucky he ain’t got one of them Graves stones planted over his head.” Lee rose to his feet with a groan. “He’ll get you anything you’re needing.”
Every hand scraped his leftovers into the squirrel can, washed his dishes in a tub, and headed to the remuda corral.
“You can get settled in today,” said Lee. “How about in the morning you be ready for a couple or three days out? I’ll turn you over to Gent Podger, and he’ll get you started monitoring.”
“Sounds good, Lee.”
The show at the corral was only starting. It was a Mex-style corral—a potrero, round in shape, pairs of cedar posts with cross-laid mesquite limbs stacked solid between them. The old limbs at the bottom rot sooner or later and as the fence shrinks in height, fresh limbs are stacked on top. A fence like that’ll last forever.
The hands were in the big corral with the remuda. They were pointing and shouting as they roped their afternoon horses from the herd of spares. Some were getting in each other’s way with all the lassoing going on. The boys worked in pairs after catching a horse. One would ear the horse to the ground and hold him there while the other saddled him, sat the saddle, nodded, and came up off the ground with the horse pitching. One humped up his back and started topping off something fierce, and everyone was a whooping and yelling. The Mex kids were on the mesquite fence yelling too. Everyone finally got their favorites saddled and settled down.
After the crew dashed off, I wandered around seeing the place’s layout. The bunkhouse was a big adobe room with doors front and back and windows on both sides—with glass even. There were bunks with warbags under them or hanging on pegs and a coal stove, a table and not enough chairs. A couple of bedrolls were spread on the plank floor. There’s always some hands preferring the floor. There weren’t any spare bunks.
The washstand out back had a tin roof over it, tin sides on the north and west, wash pans, big round clay water pots, and mirrors. Nearby was a respec’ably clean two-hole shitter. I knew about cleaning shitters. When I was a young’un, one hog-scorching July, mama nailed me into one for two blessed days for doing a poor job cleaning it.
I could tell the Dew was bringing on extra hands, because there was a tent out back with four cots. Extra quilts were piled on those. I bet those ol’ boys cold-footed it into the bunkhouse for the stove first thing.
The hay barn was open-front and beside it, a shed full of feedbags, salt blocks, cottonseed cake, and pails. I was thinking I could bed down there on some hay since there was no spare bunks. I’d have to ask the majordomo. The tack room was clean and organized, and there was a workshop next to it with a blacksmith set-up. The place had all the fixings of a good ranch.
Behind the big house was another long adobe house with six doors for the house-Mexes, probably Lee too. There were courtyard walls on both sides running from the big house to the back house with a gate in each. Some Mex kids were playing with wooden toy animals.
A Mex fella came past leading a bull. It was huge shiny black critter. The kids all ran over to pat its slab sides. It was as gentle as a milk cow.
Stone said it was Mr. DeWitt’s prize bull, Quicksilver. He’d bought in St. Louis the past spring. It had cost a pretty penny, not only for the bull, but to railroad it to Del Rio. “He’s got big plans for improvin’ the stock.”
Everything I’d seen and heard told me this was a serious ranch.
Well, I decided, I couldn’t put it off, so I went to ask Gabi about bunking in the feed shed.
Chapter Twenty
I knocked on the kitchen door on a room sticking out the back of the big house. Marta was at the door smiling big and wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and drying her hands on a checkered apron. She waved me in, gripped my arm, and led me to the dining room door. The kitchen floor was ox blood-coated dirt, linseed-shiny and smooth. The rest of the house had varnished board floors.
Gabi came over with a smile. “Can I help you, Bud?”
“Ma’am, I don’t mean to bother you none, but you know, Marta ain’t my woman or nothing, but I was wondering where she might be staying.”
She looked surprised. “I’ve been talking to Marta, asking questions. You two stay together?” She wasn’t shy about asking it.
“Sorta, ma’am. She gets cold being a litt
le thing. It’s best if she stays with her own kind.”
Gabi gave a little frown. Don’t know why. I was just saying.
“Maybe I can stay in the feed shed for now, seeing there ain’t no extra bunks.”
“You can sleep there, but it has the scampering mices to keep you awake.”
“I’ll be fine, ma’am.”
“Marta can stay with Carmela and Inés, the cooks.”
“That’ll be good, ma’am. I don’t wanna be no trouble.”
“Marta will be sad. I think she wants to stay with you.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think that’ll be good for either of us.”
She nodded, leaning against the door frame. “I will have Roberto make two more cots.”
“I’m much obliged, ma’am. Don’t mean to put no one to trouble. The hay’s fine to sleep on.”
“Roberto needs something to do,” she said. “I will tell Marta.” She frowned again.
I felt easier now. “I’m supposed to be a going down to the river in the morn for three days to guard. I guess I need to get some grub from you.”
“Inés will get you food.”
Inés wasn’t much older than Marta. She was a pretty girl, not beautiful pretty, but pretty because she was always smiling; her eyes smiled too. It looked like her and Marta was buddying up. That was good. The two of them loaded me up with airtights of beans, peas, and peaches; jerked beef and venison, some bacon in wax paper, and hard biscuits and tortillas. Gabi said the monitors could ride to the house for one meal a day, whichever one we wanted.
»»•««
After pitchforking sweet-smelling alfalfa hay into a corner of the feed shed, I set my bedroll and gear there. Roberto, who was forever humming, was banging and sawing away in the workshop. He said the cots would be finished tomorrow.
The crew rode in at dusk and weren’t so much for putting on a show. They looked tuckered out. Lee and his number two, Lew Cassels, gave me a rundown on the crew. Lee had a good handle on things, and I could tell by the way the boys talked to him that he was respected and a straight dealer.
We had us a treat for supper—Marta’s frijole beans. The boys couldn’t stop praising them beans. “I ain’t never had no frijole beans like ’em,” announced Musty Musson. He was picking through them naming off what he found. “Tomater, onion, what’s this, green pepper? All this ham hock and bacon, and some green stuff.”
“That’s jalapeño, Musty, ya idgit. Ya sounds like a damn Yankee.”
Lew declared, “Its pepper hot and sweet at the same time.”
I think Marta poured in a dollop of lick.
What with Carmela’s biscuits and dried apricots and pears boiled syrupy, the crew was well satisfied.
Lee said, “I didn’t ever think I’d see the day the hands didn’t miss fried beefsteak for supper.”
“Ya got yourself a hell of a cookin’ woman, Bud,” announced a fella whose name I ain’t learned yet.
“She ain’t my woman, but she can do a righteous job on frijole beans.”
No one disputed either of what I said.
The boys had a fire going outside the bunkhouse, and they sat on buckets, nail kegs, and dry-goods crates, speaking of the day and asking about myself. They liked the injun shootout and road agent stories, especially about Marta touching off the scattergun to scare the piss out of the supposed desperado. Nobody said a word about Marta being my woman. I was thinking Gabi had said something to them. There’s always some busybody what gotta speak his mind.
I didn’t like much talking about myself. If it started sounding like you were blowing about yourself, you could lose your place at the fire.
Dodger Lampe, I found his given name was Tom, was telling stories. “I worked at this spread near Lampasas and that ol’ man had some new-fangled modern ideers. Sometimes they even worked out. One of his ideers were to drive ’bout a thousand head of turtle up to K-City.”
“Turtles, ya say?” asked Rick “Snorter” Cadwell, a big, slow-moving, but powerful East Texan.
“I ain’t shittin’ ya. Turtles. Said ’em damn Yankees likes ’em in a delicacy soup.”
“Damn Yankees et some outlandish vittles. I heard tell they even et oysters,” said Stone Eskin.
“What’s oysters?” asked Jerry Twining.
“It’s something lives in the water inside a seashell. Supposed to be nasty,” declared Stone.
“Stick ’em oysters up your ass,” grumbled Dodger. “Let me finish my story.”
“Well, go on then and stop talking about what them damn Yankees eat,” shouted Lee.
Dodger threw a cow chip at Lee. “Well then, y’all don’t interrupt me no more.” He took a deep breath. “Slowest damn drive I ever been on. We’d play three, four hands of stud, break a couple of mustangs and shoe ’em, and then catch up with the herd.” He chunked a stick on the fire, building suspense. “One night, after we had the herd all settled in, the ol’ man tolt us to go and turn all ’em turtles over on their backs.”
“What in hellfire fer?”
“I tolt y’all, don’t interrupt me. I’m losin’ my place here.” After a long pause, “Well, I ask him jus’ that, why for we turnin’ these turtles on their topsides? We goin’ to havta do it all over in the mornin’.
“That ol’ man looked at me like I’d plum lost my brains. ‘Can’t ya see a storm’s a comin’. Y’all ever see a herd like this stampede?’”
“That ol’ Dodger, he tells tales as tall as a southbound goose,” Stone howled.
The fire died to coals, and we could see our breaths in the cold air. The hands wandered off. I was getting up to head for the shed when Marta walked up. She stood there glaring at me, her arms crossed. All I could say was, “Lo siento.” Sorry.
She turned and walked through the courtyard gate to the cook’s house.
Chapter Twenty-One
Things never seem to go my way sometimes. When I woke up Marta was bundled beside me in the hay. Like a damn pup that won’t go away even when you chuck rocks. Yeah, I hung on to a pup like that once.
She crawled out of her covers when I was pulling on my boots. She stood glaring at me like the night before, making me feel low. Snorting she headed for the kitchen and her chores. There are some people that are going to have their way no matter what.
Dodger said there was a lot of talk among the crew about her stomping out of my shed that morning. No one else said anything.
»»•««
Lee and I rode northwest after a big breakfast. We were going to Sycamore Creek and follow it to the Rio Grande. The Sycamore was the northwest boundary of the Dew. The Vermejo-Maxwell Ranch, or V-Bar-M, was on the other side of the creek.
“The banditos like to come up-creek from the Rio, until we started to monitor it,” Lee said.
“They still try and run up the creek?”
“Nope. They run through the V-Bar, crossing the creek at different places.”
“What’s the V-Bar crowd say about it?”
“Not much.” Lee was squinting in that direction with a frown. “They ain’t much help. I think old man Maxwell’s got an arrangement with them.”
“Any particular place they cross the creek?”
“There’s over a half-dozen crossing places, and we share nine mile of creek with the V-Bar.” He spit into the mud. “That old man’s a sumbitch. I don’t trust him at all.”
“How’s Mr. DeWitt deal with him, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Clay tries to keep things cordial. We don’t want no troubles with Maxwell. But he knows that sumbitch can’t be trusted.”
The Sycamore made a few big loops as it ran toward the Rio Grande. It was down in a gorge twenty to forty feet deep, higher on the V-Bar-M side than ours. The creek made a big loop to the north starting about two miles from the Rio, and the Rio itself made a big loop to the west, bending into Mexico. They called it the Sheep’s Head owning to its shape.
“You’ll be spending a lot of time hereabouts,
Bud.”
Even being winter, it was pretty country. What would be the top of the Sheep’s Head was a big grove of blackjack oak, green year-round, like the wooly head of a sheep. The sheep’s snout was separated from the face by a gentle twenty-foot bluff. The lower sandy ground beyond that bluff, in the Rio’s loop curving into Mexico, was covered by carrizo cane.
The higher ground on the V-Bar-M side was bothering me. Anybody could come up unseen. If they were quiet, they could be on top of any monitor on the low side before he knew they were there.
As we followed the Sycamore, Lee showed me the crossing places. “They come down into the creek, and then follow it one way or the other, to come up someplace else.”
He looked around with the eyes of a hawk, able to see anything out of the ordinary. I wanted to learn this place that well.
“I’m hoping to scare up Gent Podger. That polecat’s most likely watching us right now.” He chuckled.
“What do the rustlers usually do?”
“Them Mexes’ll grab three or six head, or whatever they can get, and run them to the Rio. “Hell”—with a disgusted look—“they’ll run them down the bluff and through the cane breaks on the flats below.” His expression grew sour. “They don’t give a good damn if they break the cattle’s legs. They grab what they can and hightail it outta here.”
“They make off with a lot? I was gonna work for an ol’ boy down toward Laredo. He couldn’t take me on because he’d lost so many head to Mex rustlers.”
“It’s only worrisome so far,” Lee muttered, sweeping the tree line. “But the way they’re picking away it’ll start us hurting before long…bastards.” We rode toward the woods. “We don’t chase ’cross the Rio after them, because they have bushwhackers laying in wait. Last month we had a fella shot in the leg and his horse killed trying to do that. This is getting back like the old days,” said Lee.
“How so?”
“J. King Fisher,” he said in a less than amiable tone. “Ever hear of him?”
“Nope.”
The Hardest Ride Page 9