After we were through with our Wild West show, Papa let us boys and the other half of the crew see the sights in town while the rest of the men stayed with the herd and waited their turn. Some of the men got pretty drunk and lost most of their pay that first time in town. There weren’t all the saloons that were there later, for it wasn’t yet the trail town Helldorado it was to become. But there were still enough saloons and gaudy houses, and cardsharps and pimps who had gotten the word that dumb cowboys were about to hit the town in droves, to get a man in trouble.
Joseph and I made a round of the town and ended up buying a sackful of licorice and going down to the train tracks and laying stuff on the rails for the train wheels to crush. Gunn joined us later, and I smelled liquor on his breath. He staggered and tripped and ended up sitting on the train tracks.
“You’re going to get squashed if a train comes along,” Joseph said.
“I don’t care,” Gunn slurred. “Did you know they’ve got public girls in this town? Keep ’em in a tent.”
Joseph looked at me.
“Gaudy girls, you fools,” Gunn repeated.
“You wouldn’t know what to do with a gaudy girl,” I said.
“Well, let’s go have a look, if you aren’t too scared.”
“You’re too drunk to go anywhere.”
“I only had three drinks. They said that much wouldn’t hurt me. Said I ought to ease into it and practice up.”
“Who said? Does Papa know you were in a saloon?”
“Wasn’t in a saloon.” Gunn’s words were so slurred I could barely understand him. “They kicked me out, but Marco brought me a bottle out back. Said anyone that came up the trail was man enough to have a drink or two.”
“Papa will have Marco’s hide if he finds out. Marco isn’t one of Papa’s favorites anyway.”
“I won’t tell. Marco’s nice to me.”
“You ought not drink that stuff.”
Gunn pulled a pint bottle about three-quarters full from inside his shirt. He tugged the stopper with his teeth and spat it out. He took a quick pull at the liquor and grimaced and stuck the bottle out toward me. “Have a drink?”
“You don’t have the sense God gave a goose. Don’t you ever do what you’re supposed to?”
“I tried that and it hurt. Have a drink.”
“No.”
“Chicken.”
“You think I’m stupid enough to drink that stuff because you dare me?”
“Sissy. I double dare you.”
I took the bottle from him and turned it up. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to drink that stuff. The smell of that whiskey was enough to make you shiver. It was all I could do to keep from gagging, and it made my eyes water.
“That ain’t how you do it. Watch.” He took a pull again.
I counted two gulps and took three gulps myself. “Nothing to it,” I said after I finished coughing. “Where did Joseph go?”
“Beats me.”
We passed the bottle back and forth between us, glancing around from time to time to make sure nobody was watching us. The sun was down by the time we had almost finished the whiskey.
“Marco and some of the men told me that there’s a girl they call Train Horn Sal. For a dollar she’ll spread her legs for you, and for four bits she’ll suck your goober,” Gunn said.
“You’re making that up.” I couldn’t help it that I giggled.
“That’s what he said. How much money have you got left?”
I fumbled some coins out of my vest pocket but spilled them and couldn’t find them all in the dark. “Papa gave me five dollars, but I spent some of it on candy.”
“Five dollars? That’s what he gave me, but he paid the rest of the crew fifty dollars apiece.”
“Yeah, but they hired on. We’re just family.”
“There’s no way I ain’t worth as much as a Mexican.”
“What makes you think you’re better? If it wasn’t for those Mexicans we couldn’t have got the herd here.”
“Aw, I don’t have anything against them, but they ain’t like us.”
“No, they aren’t like us, but did Juanita or José ever hold that against you?”
“Papa said the Mexicans had Texas for two hundred years and didn’t do a thing with it.”
“Papa would have them picking cotton for him if we still grew cotton.”
Gunn snickered. “Papa would have us picking cotton if he still grew cotton.”
“I think I have three dollars left.”
“Let’s go find that train horn girl. Marco said she’ll toot your horn until you can’t take any more and teach you things they never taught you in school.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Chicken. We could at least go peep inside that tent. Have us some fun. I bet she’ll let you stick your finger in her belly button for cheap.” Gunn made an attempt to get up, but fell back down on the seat of his pants.
“What happened to the moon?” I asked, lying down.
“What moon?”
“It was there a bit ago. Half a moon, for sure. Right up there.”
“I can’t see nothing.”
“Me neither.” I giggled again.
“What about that lantern light on the depot house? Can you see that?”
“I see two of them.”
“I don’t see but one.” Gunn laughed like that was the funniest thing ever.
“I think I’m going to be sick. I . . .” My lunch spilled out of my mouth before I knew it, and I rolled over and retched some more. I was still dry heaving later when I thought Gunn was asleep.
“Hamish?”
“What?”
“Do you think any girl would look at me twice? I saw a farmer girl at the store, and she whispered something and pointed at me and her mama made her hush.”
“I don’t know. You’re awful ugly.”
“I’m talking about my arm.”
“I don’t think a girl would care about that.”
“Those damned Kiowa.”
I was too sick to think straight, much less answer him.
“Hamish?” he asked later.
“Leave me alone.”
“Did you ever notice how pretty Juanita’s skin is?”
I was seeing three lantern lights down at the depot house by then.
“You boys get up before a train runs over you,” Papa’s voice boomed out of the dark.
“Papa, you’re going to pay me fifty dollars like the rest of the men,” Gunn said.
Something grabbed me by the shirt collar and jerked me to my feet. Gunn was beside me, and we leaned on each other to stay upright.
“Who gave you the whiskey?” Papa asked and gave us a shake.
“I stole it,” Gunn said. “Took my pistol and held up the saloon.”
Papa kicked Gunn in the seat of the pants and sent him sprawling. “I ought to tan both of you. Get on now. We’ve got to load those steers at daylight.”
“I’m sorry, Papa,” I said.
Papa shoved us ahead of him. I don’t remember how we got to where we had left our horses, or who saddled them.
“I don’t think I can ride,” I said.
“You’ll ride,” Papa said.
“Yeah, you’re a Dollarhyde,” Gunn snickered.
I heard Papa cuff him upside the head, and then we had to wait for Gunn to puke some before we could ride out of town.
“I don’t care if I ever see that old town again,” Gunn said, groaning like he was in agony.
Papa laughed. “What, and miss Train Horn Sal?”
Chapter Twenty-one
We cut out the first batch of steers the next morning and drove them over to the stockyards. They had a train of stock cars pulled off on a siding, and we helped load them out, twenty steers to a car. You’ll hear some people refer to cowboys as cowpunchers, but nobody did back in the day. It’s a dude term that nobody on the range ever used. Some city joker must have seen men urging and pok
ing cattle through the chutes with a prod at some stockyards or load-out ramp, and coined the term.
Fact is, I never heard anybody use the word “cowboy” until later. If any dude had dared call one of my papa’s men a boy he might have gotten a dose of lead poisoning or seen the business end of a knife. If it weren’t for my brothers and me that year, there wouldn’t have been any boys on a cattle drive. Trail driving might have been a business for young men, but the key word is “men.” Down Texas way, we called ourselves “hands,” or some down south even referred to themselves as “vaqueros,” not differentiating between themselves and their Mexican counterparts in the trade. But I guess everything has to have a name, and somewhere along the way, the name “cowboy” stuck.
We turned the rest of the herd that was still out on grass over to the buyers’ men, and our whole crew headed for town again en masse. That poor town never knew what hit it. Our Mexican vaqueros had been pretty reserved their first outing in town when they went in shifts, but with all of them together to egg one another on and the camaraderie of the other trail crew in town, it didn’t take long for things to get a little rowdy. Abilene didn’t even have a town marshal, as if those Kansas yokels didn’t have a clue how much pent-up need to celebrate was packed in a man who had been weeks or months on the trail.
Some of the other trail crew’s men decided to make a run on their horses through town, popping their pistols and yelling like wild Indians. Most of the good people of Abilene decided it was a good time to retreat indoors and fuss between themselves about the uncivilized nature of Texas cowboys. It wouldn’t have mattered if I told them we Dollarhydes were from Alabama, for to them, we were still unreconstructed rebels, and Papa never hid it that he wore the gray during the war. And despite the abolitionist tendencies of those Jayhawkers, most of them turned their noses up at our Mexican vaqueros and thought of them even worse than they did us. Hypocrites, if you ask me.
The trail drivers pretty much had their way with the town, even though they didn’t harm anyone or tear up anything. . . much. Papa and the other trail boss eventually gathered them up and calmed them down, and for the rest of our stay they behaved pretty decent.
Papa paid for new clothes for all three of us boys, and brand-new hats and boots. We went over to the cabin that some Irish woman had set up as a bathhouse and then paid a visit to the local barber before we put on our new duds. Other than a bath in the river, it was the first time I’d been close to clean since we left Texas. As soon as we walked out of the barbershop we all had a good laugh at one another. The sides of our heads were peeled so short that it looked like somebody had whitewashed them. That barber wasn’t much at his trade, if you ask me, and I don’t think he left any of us more than three hairs on the top of our heads—sheared us like sheep.
There was a man in town that would take your picture for two dollars, and Papa marched us down to the hotel. The photographer was a portly man with round spectacles perched on his nose and a grizzled goatee. He was also a man who took his business very seriously, no matter that he operated from town to town out of the back of a dilapidated buggy pulled by a one-eyed mule, and no matter that his studio was nothing more than an imitation Persian rug hung across one wall of his hotel room.
“You will not have your photograph taken, Herr Dollarhyde?” the photographer asked in a thick Swedish accent.
Papa was usually a friendly man, but he looked at the Swede with obvious contempt. “I hear you took pictures during the war.”
“Ja, I did. And I sold them to Brady. Maybe you see some of them? Have you been to New York?”
“I saw some of them.”
The Swede must have noticed Papa’s scowl, and he pointed at Papa’s rebel cavalry hat. “I see that you were in the war.”
“I was.”
“Will you go over there with your younglings and let me make your photograph?”
“You just make a picture of the boys.”
“Maybe you think I wear the blue? No? I assure you that I only took photographs. I don’t shoot at nobody. Never fought you Johnny Rebels.”
“You photographed the bodies, didn’t you? Drove around the battlefields after the fighting was over and took pictures, even though the dead couldn’t give you their leave.”
“It was a noble undertaking, Herr Dollarhyde. History. Such a struggle should not be forgotten, no matter which side you were on.”
“To hell it shouldn’t. Take the boys’ picture.”
The photographer squinted over his glasses at Papa and then quickly went about his business. He studied me before he dug in a trunk of props and produced a fringed buckskin hunting coat of the kind that some of the Indians wore. “I think this will fit you. You are a tall boy.”
“You want me to wear that?”
“Ja, you are a man of the West, no? This make you look tough and all the unger damer will swoon when they see you in this.” The Swede looked over his shoulder and winked at Papa.
“All the damn what?” Gunn asked.
“The young ladies.”
“I’m not wearing that silly thing,” I said, and saw Papa nod his approval from the other side of the room.
“Give it to me,” Gunn said. “I’ll wear it.”
The Swede sat me in a chair with Gunn and Joseph posed slightly behind and to either side of me. I took my hat off and tried to finger comb my hair, but the Swede complained, so that I put it back on.
“No, no, you keep the hat. And this is for the little guy.” The Swede had Joseph hold a rusty old musket by the barrel in front of him, butt plate resting on the floor. Joseph looked askance at it, but kept it. We might have been boys, but none of us would have been caught dead owning such an antique piece of junk.
Gunn dug in the trunk on his own and without asking the Swede. He came out with a silk sash and pair of white, beaded buckskin gauntlets with fringe down the cuffs. He quickly wrapped the sash around his waist and stuffed his Dance pistol in it, along with one of the gloves. He put the other glove on his hand and rested it on the back of my chair.
“Good. You look dangerous and romantic,” the Swede said.
“You look silly,” I said.
Joseph giggled and Gunn elbowed me in the shoulder.
The Swede ducked under his camera hood until he was satisfied we were in focus. “You younglings will have to be very still.”
As soon as he was done tinkering with the window curtains to let enough light in the room, he went into the closet and came out with a wooden tray containing the film plate and slid it into the camera. He stood beside the camera and smiled at us with his hand on the cap of the brass-tubed lens.
“This picture will be no goot if vee don’t hold the still.” He removed the lens cap with a flourish and began to count off seconds out loud. “En, två, tre, fyra, fem . . .”
I caught myself holding my breath and my eyes began to water from fear of blinking.
“You can breathe, youngling,” the Swede said. “But be still. Sex, sju, åtta, nio, tio . . .”
After what seemed like an eternity, he placed the cap back on the lens. “There, vee are done.”
I heard Joseph suck in a big breath as I did.
“Let me see it,” Gunn said.
“It will take a moment.” The Swede took his film box back into the closet and wasn’t in there very long. He came back out holding the little tin plate gingerly. “Be careful not to touch the photograph. It will smudge and scratch very easily until I put the varnish on.”
We had a big laugh looking at the photo, and Papa came over and joined in. Joseph and I looked like we were scared to death, or so somber as to be at a funeral. But it was Gunn’s image that was the funniest. Not only did he have his Great White Scout outfit on, but for some reason, his chin was tilted up like he really thought he was somebody.
“Where did you come up with that pose?” Papa asked. “I never knew you were such a dandy.”
Gunn growled something under his breath and stomped out of
the room.
“You come back in an hour and I will have your photograph ready for you,” the Swede said and winked at me. “Then you can show it to your sweetheart, no?”
Papa stepped between us and gave the man his pay. I wanted to stay and learn more about how the Swede developed his photographs. The smell of chemicals and all the labeled bottles and gadgets intrigued me.
But Papa guided us out of the hotel before I could ask any questions. Joseph ran into Gunn’s back on the boardwalk.
“Watch out, Peckerhead,” Gunn said.
I thought Papa would scold him, but Papa’s attention was elsewhere. A man in a fancy suit was coming down the boardwalk to us with a frown on his face, and the county sheriff was with him. It was plain to see that some kind of trouble was brewing and Papa was at the center of it.
Chapter Twenty-two
“Mr. Dollarhyde, I would like to speak with you,” the man in the suit said.
“You’re speaking to me.”
“There’s no call to act unfriendly,” the sheriff said.
I could see that lawman was paying special attention to Papa’s rebel hat. He seemed pretty proud of his badge, although I wondered where he had been an hour or two earlier when Papa’s men were running wild.
“Excuse me. Please allow me to introduce myself.” The man in the suit was even taller than Papa, slender and narrow in the shoulder, and with the look of a banker or bookkeeper about him. He held out his hand to Papa. “I’m Clayton Lowe.”
Papa shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you. What can I do for you?”
That made the Clayton fellow stammer a little bit. “I was hoping we could discuss the cattle you drove here.”
“What for?”
Clayton and the sheriff passed a look between them before Clayton continued, “Are you a Southern man, Mr. Dollarhyde?”
“You know good and well that I am. What business of yours is that, anyway?”
Clayton held up his hands, palms outward. “No offense intended. It’s just that I happened to be of the opposite persuasion doing the War of the Rebellion.”
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