Hell, it was a quandary and no mistake.
We rode on until it began to get dark. I knew there was no chance we could make La Grange at any decent hour. Consequently we veered off the road, and hunted around until we found a grove of mesquite trees and made camp.
It was like a thousand other camps I’d made before. The ground was just as hard, the Gulf Coast mosquitoes were just as big. You couldn’t get cleaned up; you couldn’t clean your teeth without going to a hell of a lot more trouble than it was worth. The food had to be the same because you had to pack food that wouldn’t spoil and there wasn’t just a hell of a big selection of that. When I’d been fifteen it had been fun. By the time I was twenty I was beginning to think it wasn’t all that big of an adventure like I’d thought it was at an earlier age. By the time I was approaching thirty and was making a lot of money, I figured I’d done my share of that kind of living and it was somebody else’s turn. Then, after I got married, I was completely convinced that I deserved a good bed in a pleasant house with a pretty woman beside me. And then had come Howard with his simple little request.
While we circled the horses around and around in a tight little area to tramp down the grass I mentally gave Howard a damn good cussing. But it wasn’t doing any good; I was still out in the open with a chill wind starting to kick up and Howard was home in bed.
We ate beef and bread and canned tomatoes, and finished off with some canned peaches, mainly just punching a hole in the can and drinking off the juice and then sucking the peaches dry. After that we sat around with coffee and whiskey. Off to the north of us I could see a dim glow. I figured it was either a prairie fire or La Grange. Hays thought that more than likely it was La Grange.
I said, “Yeah. I reckon.”
I figured we were about ten miles short of it. But on beyond it, on the road to Austin, which was the general direction we were taking, was the town of Bastrop. I figured it to be about thirty miles from La Grange, maybe thirty-five. But cutting cross-country we could make it closer, maybe just thirty or thirty-five miles from where we were camped. There was no railroad line that ran through La Grange, but I knew there was a northbound line out of Bastrop, a line that ran to Austin and then on the Fort Worth, and from there, I figured a man just about had to be able to get a train from someplace in Oklahoma.
I knew Howard didn’t want me to do it that way, for reasons known only to himself. But Howard wasn’t stuck with a bewildered packhorse and a rig that didn’t allow us to make much more than thirty miles a day. Besides, we were probably going to spend so much time looking for this Charlie Stevens that we’d spend the extra time it would have taken us to go all the way horseback.
Still, I knew I was thinking angry and that a man ought not to make decisions in that frame of mind. I’d told Howard I’d horseback his gold to Charlie, just as it had been horsebacked away from him, and I was going to do my dead-level best to stick to that line of agreement.
Hays said, “Boss ...” He kind of hesitated. Then he said, “This gonna be a real long trail?”
“Your bones getting old, Ray?”
“Well, no, you just ain’t give me no indication of when it’s gonna end.”
I tilted my watch toward the glow of the fire. It was a little after nine. I said, “We better get to bed. Maybe if we start early enough we can get out of our own shadow.”
Hays lifted his head to the wind. He said, “Damned if that wind ain’t gettin’ colder. You don’t reckon we could be gettin’ a norther this early, do you?”
“I hope not.” But we were in Texas, and a blue norther could come swooping over those flat plains and drop the temperature forty degrees before you could get into your coat.
Hays got up. He said, “I reckon I maybe better borrow my blanket back from that damn horse. Ain’t gonna make me smell no better, but that’s better than freezing.”
“You ain’t going to be anywhere where it’s going to much matter how you smell.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say that. Just takes the heart plumb outten me.”
We got settled down for the night. I could see clouds scudding across the night sky, blotting out the stars. It was getting colder. Even through my blankets and my clothes I could feel it. I was starting to wish I’d put on my sheepskin-lined jacket, but I was just too sleepy to get up and get it. Hays was laying right beside me, and he was right about the blanket he’d loaned the horse. It smelled like hell.
It came on to rain about midnight. Hays and I rose as one, grabbing our bedrolls and the ground cloth and dashing into the thicket of mesquite. We made another trip back as the cold rain started to pelt down to bring in our saddles and the pack. We dragged them in under our feet and then squatted there under the ground cloth, half wet and all cold and miserable as hell.
We’d been sitting there, listening to the rain hitting the tarp we were holding over our heads, for about an hour. We’d got a whiskey bottle out of the pack, and were passing it back and forth to ward off the cold. I said, “Hays?”
“Yessir?”
“You remember before we went to bed asking me how much longer we might be on the trail?”
“Yessir.”
I took a swig of whiskey. “Well, if we can make it to Bastrop by tomorrow night, this is the last goddam night we camp out like a couple of fucking poor-ass Injuns.”
CHAPTER 6
Even with the rain keeping us up half the night, we were still able to be up and bustling around before dawn. We were both still about half chilled to the bone, and Hays somehow stumbled around and found us enough dry wood to get a pretty good fire going. We didn’t want it so much for cooking breakfast as for making coffee and getting warm and drying out our damp clothes. After what I’d said the night before, about if we could make Bastrop by that night it would be our last night on the ground, Hays was all for mounting up and taking off without fooling around with anything. But I knew we were going to make good time on account of I’d decided to do something he didn’t know anything about. So I bade him just to bide his time and get himself comfortable and to fry up some bacon while I got the coffee going.
We’d built a pretty good fire. Once the dry wood had worked itself up we’d been able to put on some of the wet wood, and it had caught and dried out while it was burning. As a consequence we had a fire that would warm a body through and through.
But it burned down pretty quick, and I got out the coffeepot while Hays went to work on the bacon. We hadn’t suffered much damage from the rain other than having to sit up and be uncomfortable for a couple of hours. The biscuits had somehow managed to get damp but, as Hays said, that just made them easier to chew.
We made a pretty good breakfast, and then Hays got the horses in just as it was coming dawn. The wind was still pretty chill, but it wasn’t blowing near as hard as it had been the night before, so we knew it had just been a mild thunderstorm come through. If it had been a norther, a blue norther, we’d of had on every speck of clothes we’d brought and would be looking for several more days of the same misery. There ain’t really nothing quite as cold as that first Texas norther of the winter. Hays said he’d once known a lady in Abilene who could match it for just plain old bare-ass cold. He said they could get this lady to sit on a keg of beer in the warmest days of the summer, and after no more than an hour and a half of sitting they’d have beer so cold it would make your teeth ache to drink it.
We got the horses saddled and bridled, and then I directed Hays to fetch me over one of the kegs of nails. I was standing pretty close to the fire, still getting warm. He give me a kind of a funny look. “You want one of them kegs over there?”
“Yes,” I said. “Bring me a damn keg. What’s the matter with you?”
He went over to the pack, worked out one of the kegs, and then lugged it over and set it down on the ground in front of me. I wasn’t about to fool with the top. With no mallet and with the wood having swollen even tighter with the wet weather, I didn’t figure there was any way to get the top
off. Of course a nail keg is made just like any other kind of barrel, big or small, with staves held in place by wires pulling them together. I picked up the keg at each end, raised it over my head, and smashed it to the ground.
Hays said, “Boss, what in hell!”
Some of the staves had bent and separated, but not enough. I picked the keg up again, lifted it as far up as I could, and flung it straight down to the ground with all my force. It burst open and nails came spilling out in all directions. In amongst the nails and the broken wood I could see the two canvas sacks of gold. I pulled them out and laid them on the ground beside me. On each white canvas sack the letters were clearly printed: U.S. MINT.
Hays was staring at the sacks. He said, “What in hell is them sacks doin’ in a keg of nails?”
“Hand me the other keg, Ray.”
He brought the keg over, still staring at the sacks on the ground. I repeated my process with the second keg, and soon the two sacks had turned into four. Hays said, “Boss, what in hell be goin’ on here?”
I didn’t answer him, just picked up two of the sacks and carried them over to my horse. I put one sack in each pouch of my saddlebags. They didn’t weigh much over fifteen pounds apiece, so I didn’t figure the extra thirty pounds was going to be any hardship on my animal. I said, “Ray, are you blind? Can’t you see those two sacks need to be put in your saddlebags? Or do you want me to carry all the load?”
He went over, still wearing that puzzled look, and picked up the two bank bags. “Damn,” he said, as he picked up the two sacks, “these here are shore heavy for they size. They as heavy as . . .”
He stopped and looked at me. He said, “Is they what I think is in these sacks?”
I nodded.
He just stood there. “Boss, this here is gold. An’ you had it hid in them kegs so nobody’d know. Ain’t that right?”
I nodded.
“Only the packhorse couldn’t carry it on account of it galling his back, what with the weight of this an’ them nails that is scattered all over the prairie.”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Is they as much in here as it feels like?”
“Twenty-five thousand dollars worth.”
“Oh, lordy!” he said. “Oooooh, lordy! Boss, right now I feel like ever’ bandito ’tween here an’ Mexico can smell this here gold. We are gonna be shot, get robbed, get our throats cut, maybe get burned alive all on account of we carryin’ all this here gold. Boss, this is frightful!”
“How come you reckon I didn’t tell you what was in them kegs?”
“How far we got to carry this here death notice?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Ray, you can take on worse than anybody I know. We’re seventy or eighty miles from where we got this gold. Nobody around here knows we got it.”
He was putting one of the sacks in one side of his saddlebags. As he came around the end of his horse to put the second bag in the other side he just waved his hand at me. He said, “Say anything you’re a mind to. Just go on in yore innocence. But I’m tellin’ you they is thieves and murderers can smell this here gold. I jest want to know when I’ll git my next hour of sleep. A week? Two weeks?”
I stared at him and shook my head. “Hays, you are some piece of work.”
“I’m jest askin’ how long I got to hold myself in mortal terror. How far we goin’ to pack these here coffin makers.” He put up his hand. “I know, I know. What right has ol’ Ray Hays got to be askin’ a question that only concerns his very life. I’m jest askin’ where I might can expect to be buried.”
“Oklahoma,” I said.
He turned into stone and stared at me. “Oklahoma? Oklahoma? Oklahoma!” He sighed and looked away. “Hell, if I’d knowed that back at the ranch I’d of shot myself in the laig or somethin’. I’d a never refused the job, but a man’s got a right to disable hisself if he takes a mind to.”
I just shook my head. There wasn’t anything I could say. “We better get that pack on the packhorse. And don’t forget to use the saddle blanket.”
“You mean my blanket.”
“Listen, if you don’t get a move on we won’t get to Bastrop by tonight and you’ll get to use that blanket again on yourself.”
That speeded him up.
We set out and, without that awkward weight to contend with, the packhorse could make pretty good speed. Of course he was just about as good a pony as either of the horses Ray and I were riding. He’d just gotten a little old for the hard and fast work we put cow horses through during busy times of the year.
After we’d been riding about an hour Ray said, “Nail kegs, huh. You know, I must be gettin’ kind of slow upstairs. I ought to’ve figured out right away that they was somethin jest not quite right about them nail kegs. Man wouldn’t be goin’ off carryin’ kegs of nails to some kind of job. You need nails for lumber. So it jest natcherly makes sense that whoever was brangin’ the lumber would brang the nails. I don’t see how come I didn’t catch on to that and see that you was up to somethin’ else.”
“Well, Ray, you know you’ve been hitting the bottle pretty hard here lately. Could be it has something to do with that. I know that the old Ray Hays wouldn’t have been fooled all that easy. But you put a few years on a man, add a few too many drinks . . . it all adds up.” I looked over at him. He was sitting stiff in the saddle, a worried look suddenly coming over his face.
I said, “You reckon? What are you now, Ray, forty? Few years older”
He turned his face to me, his mouth open. “What are you talkin’ about? You know blame well I ain’t no forty year old. Hell, I’m a year younger than you!”
I shrugged, trotting along in the saddle. “All the same, wasn’t me didn’t know what was inside those kegs. I wasn’t the one took it for granted that a man would be hauling kegs of nails cross-country horseback.”
“Well of course not.” Then he said, “Hell, you knowed what was in them kegs besides nails. Quit tryin’ to mix me up. I’m already worried as a tick on a smokin’ dog.”
“I was hoping you’d stay in the dark about the gold the whole way just on account of the way you are carrying on now. Hays, ain’t nobody but us knows we got this gold. If you keep your mouth shut or don’t go around wearing a sign it will stay that way. Of course, knowing you, you’ll blurt it out the first saloon you’re in.”
“Won’t have to,” he said complacently. “They’s outlaws can just look at you and tell you are holding deep. They might not ’zactly know what it is, but they’ll know we are packing heavy.”
I looked over at him. Sometimes his conversation made me want to drown him in the nearest river. I said, “All right, supposing that is so. You think I just plan to hand them this gold? What the hell you think I brought you along for? We are supposed to guard this gold. You and I are supposed to know how to shoot a gun. You sabe?”
He just nodded knowingly. “Won’t matter. They’ll take us from behind some dark night. Catch us unawares. You should have never taken that gold outten them nail kegs. If I’d knowed what was what I’d of made shore you didn’t bust them kegs. It was a mighty fine idea.”
“Hays, it made you suspicious. Think what it would have caused somebody with any sense to think.”
I kicked up the pace and we rode on. The country was beginning the gradual change from the flat plains of the coastal area to the rolling grasslands of south central Texas. When we turned north we’d begin to see some chopped-up country with a few hills and some valleys and more underbrush and bigger trees. It would be a less gentle country than our home country, but nowhere near as rough as that further north and to the west.
We got into Bastrop about a half an hour before dusk. True to my prediction we’d made good time once we’d fixed the packhorse so he could keep pace with our saddle horses. Once into town we headed straight down the main street toward the depot, which was on the north side of town just at the very outskirts. I got down, leaving Hays to watch the horses and the gold, and went i
nto the depot. From the ticket clerk I found out there was a northbound train out the next morning for Fort Worth through Austin with no changes. He didn’t know about connections on into Oklahoma because a different line served the country in that direction. I made arrangements for us to have a stock car added to the train, with preparations for the care of our horses such as water and hay and such. We would also ride in the stock car with our animals. The clerk was willing that we do so, but he said, “I reckon you know it’s gonna get a little brisk as you head north and they is going to be a pretty good wind blowing through the slats of that stock car.”
I told him I didn’t care. As a matter of fact I had always preferred to ride with my animals rather than the chair cars, which were generally crowded and noisy and too hot. With the MKT that operated through Blessing, I could generally get half a car rate even though there was just our animals. But that was the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, a line Howard had considerable influence with. This clerk worked for the Denver and Rio Grande, and he not only had never heard of the Half-Moon ranch, he didn’t give much of a damn. Consequently he charged me for a full car, and insisted on me buying two passenger tickets for me and Hays. He said, “I don’t care where you ride, but you got to have a ticket to ride.” The matter cost me $68, which was a considerable sum for a train ride for two men and three horses just to Fort Worth. Fortunately, I was carrying better than $500 in cash and could stand the price, but much more of that and we were going to have to go to drinking cheaper whiskey.
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