Читать книгу The Diamond Hitch - Frank O'Rourke - Страница 13

CHAPTER TWO

DEWEY JONES DROVE into headquarters just ahead of supper call. He located the big canvas tarp in the tackroom and snugged it over the chuck wagon, fed the mules, and went to supper. Later on he smoked in his bunk and listened to the talk. Jim Thornhill said softly, “Sure don’t look forward to that Black Brush,” and the others began talking about the Salt River country, building up a vague word-picture in Dewey’s mind. Finally the lamp was snuffed and five o’clock came all too soon, with old Buford’s stentorian yell jerking them upright.

After breakfast Dewey Jones harnessed his mules while the boys saddled their number one horses and rounded up fifteen extra. Bedrolls were lashed atop the chuck wagon and Cochrane gave them some parting words which consisted of wishing them good luck and reminding Hank Marlowe that the front office expected a damned good gather. Hank said, “Do our best,” and Dewey knew the boys didn’t particularly take to Cochrane’s way of talk.

Heading south, Dewey set the pace because their speed had to match the mule gait. They made twenty-three miles that day and camped just outside Snowflake on the irrigation ditch under big, old cottonwood trees. Throwing horses and mules into the pasture, Raymond explained that the Mormons kept the little twenty-five acre pasture for the convenience of travelers.

“Good folks,” Dewey said.

“Sure,” Raymond said. “I was born here. You and me’ll go to the dance tonight.”

Snowflake had about three hundred people and you couldn’t buy coffee, smoking tobacco, or cigars because of the Mormon religion. Raymond knew everybody in town and was treated kindly, but he’d backslid and was called a jack Mormon. The other boys turned down Raymond’s invitation and hit the sack early, and Raymond took Dewey into town for the dance.

“Just mind your p’s and q’s,” Raymond said. “Don’t start no trouble.”

The dance was opened with prayer and a song; then Raymond introduced Dewey to a cousin and she took him around the hall and made him acquainted with everyone. He danced with the girls and liked one pretty little thing who was all blue eyes and yellow hair and kept smiling at him as they whirled around in waltzes and two-steps. Dewey worked up a sharp appetite for the midnight supper, just peeking over at the long table loaded down with fried chicken and ham and cake and pie. He got to bed at one and was up at five, feeling fresh despite the short rest. They ate breakfast at the local cafe and Hank signed the tab which went to Cochrane, and thanked the lady for rising so early to cook just for them; and then they wasted no time lining out south on the Show Low road.

They got into piñons and junipers and cedars that day, and the first high stands of ponderosa pine, with mountains looming up jagged dark to the south and west. Making a twenty-eight mile drive, they hit Show Low at sundown, coming through a shallow valley into the town that sprawled on a slope with trees standing up black and thick to the west. Show Low had gotten its name from a game of Seven Up played on this spot in the early days. There was a big hand with a seven-thousand-acre ranch at stake and the first bidder begged on five and the other fellow gave him one and then said, “Show low, and take it,” and the man showed it and won the ranch, and the name stuck until it became official.

They camped out that night and Dewey cooked a good breakfast of bacon and eggs and fried potatoes. They drove to Cibecue, camped out, and the following morning went seven miles to the rock storehouse where groceries and supplies were kept for outlying ranch work. The storehouse had no windows and just one door lined with flat iron slabs. The next morning Hank, who had gone on ahead during the night, returned with an Apache Indian boy and the string of pack burros.

Dewey studied those burros while he cooked breakfast. He didn’t know much about burros and his first thought was, if that was his kitchen transportation, and he had to pack and unpack those little demons, he wondered who was going to keep them close at hand and how many days it would be before the boys quit because the meals weren’t put out on time.

Hank opened the storehouse and everybody got busy, splitting up all supplies for storage or packing. The storehouse sat in the northeast corner of a big pasture about three sections square, with a little stream running through the middle. The pasture was barbwire fenced, five strands high on cedar posts, and used mainly as a holding pasture. It was one day’s ride from the main ranch and the boys usually rested cattle here before driving on to the railroad. “In a couple of weeks,” Hank Marlowe said, “Cochrane and old Bob’ll come down, pick up the chuck wagon and mules, and take ’em back to headquarters. Now we got to pack and get started. Squab, cut out the kitchen canaries!”

The Apache boy drove the four kitchen burros over and gave Dewey his first close look. He could tell the leader right off, that was Benstega, who weighed around four hundred and seventy-five pounds. Benstega was brown with a white face that boasted a brown streak down the middle.

“Jim Toddy,” Squab said, pointing to the other brown burro.

Jim Toddy was smaller than Benstega. Tom was mouse-colored and a little bigger than Jim Toddy. “This one,” Squab said, slapping the last burro, “Jerry.”

Jerry weighed around four hundred and was sort of grayish-white, more from age than anything else. Dewey looked them over while they eyed him in burro fashion, and Hank Marlowe swallowed a grin. Dewey Jones might not understand burros now, but a month from today he’d know too damned much and wish he never learned.

Hank laid out blankets and hair pads for each burro, put good blankets over the hair pads, with pack covers all ready. Dewey sorted out his kitchen equipment while Squab led the other ten pack burros up and saddled them. Dewey got everything in neat stacks, dried fruit, flour, sugar, Dutch ovens and pots and pans, cutlery and tin cups and plates. He’d never packed burros before but he could load a mule, and this couldn’t be too different. Hank had brought a quarter of fresh beef from the home ranch, and this was on a piece of canvas, waiting to be packed.

Hank said then, “You ever pack burros?”

“No,” Dewey said honestly, “but I can learn.”

Hank slapped the kyack boxes and pointed to a canvas bag hanging on Tom’s saddle. “Each one can handle a hundred and fifty pounds, so we split up the loads equal as possible. Put your odds and ends in that bag, stuff like baking powder and bacon and tin cups. We’ll load today, you watch how it’s done.”

Benstega got the flour and one box of fruit. Jim Toddy got three boxes of fruit and three cases of Pet milk. Tom got his kyack boxes filled with pots and pans, and the odds and ends in the canvas bag, Dutch ovens and the quarter of beef on top. Jerry got the sugar, a sack on each side and one on top. “Now,” Hank said, “the rest goes on the other burros.”

They packed the cotton-seed cake, the other three cases of Pet milk, the oats, the tomatoes and corn and bedrolls on the ten pack burros. Dewey was rusty at the job and the burros were different from mules, but he gradually got the hang of things. He had trouble with his diamond hitches; his fingers were all thumbs, he felt like a rank amateur because Squab and Hank tied down so fast. But finally the burros were packed, the few extra supplies locked in the storehouse. The other boys had left, driving the spare saddle horses, leaving Dewey with Hank and Squab. The Indian boy lined the burros up and took his place at the lead, the burros fiddling around a little while before following him up the trail nose-to-tail.

“We got twelve miles to go,” Hank said. “Can’t hurry burros, so enjoy yourself.”

They rode in the rising sunlight that filtered down through the trees, on a winding trail that bore steadily south and east into wild country. The Indian boy slouched lazily in his saddle, paying no mind to the trail, letting horse and burros follow a path they knew from long experience. Hank rolled a smoke and then said casually, “You ever worked in rough country before, Dewey?”

“Not this kind,” Dewey said, “but I worked for the Adams Cattle Company back in New Mexico, that’s the old A6. I sure can see the difference in the way you do things.”

“Rougher country,” Hank said. “I reckon you used wagons back there.”

“Yes,” Dewey said. “We had line camps at the Adams and you could get over near all of it in a wagon so we never knowed what a pack horse was except for carrying beds. There was line camps with good ranges, and the wagons carried bedrolls and groceries from one camp to another. We’d start roundup at Red River Camp.”

Hank pushed his old black Stetson back and nodded in understanding. Like all cowmen, Hank was interested in other parts of a common land and trade, in a big country where methods might differ but down-to-earth working and living were always the same. Then too, Hank had stayed back today to ride with Dewey Jones and find out some more about the new cook.

“I been through that country,” Hank said. “Just where is that camp?”

“On the east end,” Dewey said, “near the old town of Catskill. The Adams was fenced in pastures and we’d round up a pasture and throw it into the corrals at Red River Camp. Next day them cattle was transferred on up to the Carrizo Camp, and from there to Castle Rock Camp close to Vermejo Park, and then to Penaflor Camp where they done all the earmarking and branding. Then the cattle was turned loose and went on up into the Costilla country on summer range. Them old cows, when they was turned loose, would mother right up to their calves and hit a shuck for that summer range. The Penaflor Camp was on the old U. S. trail going up into the Costilla.”

“Sounds like a pretty good outfit,” Hank said.

“It was,” Dewey said. “The ranch was twenty-eight by seventy-one miles. There was streams in every valley, and springs come out of most hills. Plenty of grass when it showed from under the snow. But hell, Hank, it gets cold in that country. Nothin’ uncommon to get ten, fifteen below zero.”

Hank looked around them at the rocky slopes and the cloudless sky that forewarned of blistering summer days. Hank said wistfully, “We could stand some of that cold, running water here.”

“Say,” Dewey said, “about this horse-breaking. How many you got to break, are they all raw broncs, how does the horse-breaking fit in with cooking on this outfit?”

“You ever done both before?”

“In New Mexico,” Dewey said. “You know, when I’m in camp and cooking don’t take full time, I like to use that spare time breaking a few broncs. But very seldom out of the breaking pen back in New Mexico because if a man has stuff acookin’ and turns his bronc out, he’s apt to stampede and you might not get back till everything is burnt up. What do you think about me asking how much extra some bronc breaking would be worth?”

Hank said, “What’s Cochrane payin’ you for cooking?”

“Eighty-five a month.”

“What do you think about forty a month for whatever bronc breaking you can do?” Hank said. “But understand, I don’t want you to neglect the cooking job. Cooking and keeping these cowboys fed is worth a lot more than the bronc breaking.”

“Fair enough,” Dewey said. “My breaking’ll be in the corrals, hackamore breaking them because I understand these broncs has got to be turned out every night to feed.”

“That’s right.”

“Well,” Dewey said, “I cain’t have drag ropes on over two or three at a time, so when that Indian boy wrangles the horses he can pick up the drag ropes on a couple of broncs and tie them to a post and then, as I get time, I can tie up a foot on those broncs and saddle and unsaddle ’em and as they go along I can ride them quite a bit in the corrals and have them pretty well on the way to be broken by the time roundup is over.”

“That’s fine,” Hank said. “So the price is agreed on?”

“Suits me fine,” Dewey said. “I sure don’t like laying around camp. Once I get things lined up, I can turn out the meals pronto. I got fifty pounds of corn-meal and onions and sage, and I think a good roast beef will produce just as good corn-meal dressing as turkey or chicken, and it sure breaks the monotony of these sourdough catheads.”

“Sounds good to me,” Hank said, “but I never heard of that corn-meal dressing before.”

“Hell,” Dewey said, “you never get too old to learn, Hank.”

Hank Marlowe laughed softly. “You New Mexico punchers might not be worth a damn in Arizona, but your cooking routine sounds fine to me. . . . Squab, keep them burros moving!”

Hank was evidently satisfied with their talk because he rode out on the flanks through the remainder of the day, scouting the country as they moved along. They hit the main ranch at five o’clock, unpacked the burros, and carried the groceries into the kitchen and the big storeroom at the other end of the ranch house. The boys had arrived earlier but nobody had started a fire in the kitchen, so Dewey built a blaze in the double-oven Majestic Range and began throwing a fast meal together. Squab carried in plenty of dry piñon wood and hung around close, watching Dewey with sharp black eyes in a dark face that never moved with outward emotion. Dewey cooked a feed of baking powder biscuits, cream gravy, beef, and stewed apples for dessert. After supper Squab helped him clean up the kitchen and once everybody had spread their bedrolls on the grass outside, Dewey got right to work on his sourdough.

He boiled two medium-sized potatoes until they began falling apart. He strained them through a cloth that took the juice off, poured that juice into the five-gallon wooden keg that originally held kraut. He added a cup of sugar and then flour until he had a thin batter. He set the keg on the hot water reservoir and clamped the wooden lid down tight. The lid had two cleats on top and side handles, so when packing it, the pack cover fitted down over the keg and the diamond hitch held it snug all the way.

Dewey had to keep the keg warm all night. He got up at two and made sure the sourdough was warm. Whenever it started working—some folks called it rotting—it was on the road and would be ready for making biscuits in another twenty-four to thirty-six hours, depending on weather conditions. If the weather was rainy and damp, it took sourdough twelve to twenty-four hours longer to work than in bright, warm times.

Next morning the boys brought in sixty head of burros from surrounding hills and canyons. Dewey wondered what in hell they wanted with so many burros, but the best way to learn was keep his mouth shut and listen. He watched the boys feed each burro a quart of oats and half a pound of cotton-seed cake; next morning those burros were right in camp, johnny-on-the-spot, braying and bawling for more. Then Raymond told Dewey that after being fed that way three or four days, the burros would always come back here.

That night Dewey made sourdough biscuits along with a big beef roast. The boys ate everything and yelled for more. They were talking easy with him by then, for they knew he could handle the cooking job, and he was on time with meals when they rode in tired and hungry. Driver Gobet said, “Dewey, where’d you learn to cook?”

“All over,” Dewey said. “When I was a kid in Texas, then on shows and around cow outfits.”

“Raymond was sayin’ you rode and bulldogged,” Jim Thornhill said. “You ever stick a bronc till the last whistle?”

Dewey grinned and took a seat on the doorstep facing the others who were sprawled out on the grass with their coffee cups and after-supper smokes. “I stuck a few,” he said, “but I sure been in plenty of balloon ascensions.”

“Was you ever at Prescott?” George Spradley said. “I was there four years back.”

“Not that year,” Dewey said. “But I hit the show two years ago.”

“When’d you start bronc ridin’ and bulldogging like that?” Driver Gobet asked.

“I was thirteen,” Dewey Jones said. “My older brother was on a show; I run off and joined him.”

“It sure always sounded to me like a good life,” Spradley said. “That big prize money and all that travel.”

Dewey Jones looked at them, and through them, down the lost years at all the shows and the money that came and went so fast, at the broken bones and the broke spells when a man tightened his belt and hoped for luck in the next town. They saw that life with the eyes of anyone who did not know, and he saw it as he had lived it, and he could not lie to them.

“No,” Dewey Jones said gently. “It ain’t a good life, George. I been at it, off and on, for sixteen years, an’ I got off the train in Holbrook with a dollar and eighty cents to my name. There’s a few boys can make it pay, but most of us have got to work half the year to make enough money to catch the next big show and do some more hoping again. If I had any sense I’d quit.”

“You goin’ back?” Raymond asked.

“I figure,” Dewey Jones said, “on hittin’ the Las Vegas, New Mexico show right off this job. I’ll give it a good try. If I don’ finish in the money I ought to be old enough to get some of that sense.”

“I rode at Prescott,” George Spradley said. “Four summers ago. I figured I knew one end of a bronc from the other, Dewey. I sure found out different. Them boys are really good.”

“You get that way,” Dewey Jones said. “For whatever it means or what it’s worth.”

Hank wandered off to the storeroom and came back with a thirty-foot length of new lariat rope cut from the big coil. He sat down beside Dewey and began working the rope, kneading out the bigger kinks. All day long the boys had been shoeing horses and greasing chaps and repairing saddles, cutting off fresh ropes, getting them stretched between trees to remove the kinks. Hank started making the honda in his new rope and Driver Gobet worked on the turkhead knot in the end that was tied to the saddle horn. They hadn’t shaved in a week; they were paring down to hard working weight, getting browner from sun and wind, rubbing the new blue off their Levi jumpers and pants. And with that, they had accepted Dewey as one of the outfit. Just talking tonight, he knew, kidding him about bronc riding and asking questions, showed how they felt. It was funny how a man could work anywhere in the West and feel right at home. “Them was good biscuits,” Hank said, fingers working on his honda. “What’s your recipe, Dewey?”

“’bout like anybody’s,” Dewey said. “You want to know?”

“Sure,” Jim Thornhill said. “I got just one belly. Sometimes I wonder what I’m shoveling into it.”

Dewey Jones smiled into his chest and started talking, “Well, whenever I get my sourdough to working into a reasonable thick batter and it smells a lot like it’s already been eat, I take out whatever I want and of course put back the same amount of flour into the keg, and pour some lukewarm water into the keg, then a spoonful of sugar, stir it good, and keep it in the sunshine. Then I take soda and salt and put that in some flour, and mix it good so the soda don’t cake and make brown spots in my baked biscuits. I take my hand and run out a hole in the bowlful, make a bird-nest, pour the sourdough in there, work it into the dry flour until it gets hard enough to handle without sticking, then lay it on the board and work hell out of it with my hands, maybe work in a little more dry flour, choke the biscuits out from the doughstack and jam ’em in the oven pretty close together. Then I dip my hand in grease and pat the tops, and let them raise about thirty to forty minutes, get about three to three and a half inches thick. Then I’ve kept my Dutch oven on the fire all this time to get hot, and I put the lid back with some live coals on top. I found out that whenever you set the oven onto live coals, be sure and bank up around it or air’ll make the coals flare up and burn two or three biscuits and the others don’t seem to get more than just done on the bottom. When the biscuits are done—that oughta take about thirty minutes over a slow fire—I take my ganch hook and raise the lid, and if they ain’t brown on top, put on a shovelful of coals and let them go a few minutes more. Then raise the lid and yell for them ignorant cowboys to come and get it.”

“And that’s all?” Jim Thornhill said innocently.

“Sure,” Dewey said. “Nothin’ to it.”

“You do the cooking,” Thornhill said. “I’ll just stick to the simple work.”

Everybody laughed and got ready for bed. Dewey went into the kitchen and felt pretty good inside and out. Sometimes a man never got close to a new outfit, and other times he was made to feel at home within a few days. He was still the tenderfoot on this outfit, but the boys liked his cooking and had no complaints about his behavior. That was enough to sleep solid on, and work through the next day while the boys finished shoeing and repairing equipment. After supper that night Hank came to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and sat on the woodbox awhile before unloading his mind to Dewey.

“Well,” Hank said. “We go south and east in the morning, into the Black Brush country. We’ll be gone eight days, but somebody’ll be here every day and can bring you anything you might forget.”

“Any corrals out there for bronc breaking?” Dewey asked.

“No,” Hank said. “So just as well leave your equipment here. We’ll be back for another round of provisions before we take off for Cherry Creek, that’s our first stop on the general roundup. Now we’re leaving early with seventy head of burros. You and Squab pack up and follow along. You better take two horses, Dewey.”

“I’ll take the old sorrel,” Dewey said. “An’ that old bone-spavined dun.”

“Fine,” Hank said. “Well, see you tomorrow, Dewey.”

“‘Night, Hank,” Dewey said.

He heard the boys settling down for the night, rolling over in their blankets on the grass, working the stones and twigs from under their shoulders and hips. Squab came in the back door with an armload of piñon wood, silent as always, making no sound on his moccasins.

“Goin’ in the morning,” Dewey said. “Better sort out eight days provisions now, Squab.”

“Good,” Squab said. “What you need, Dewey?”

Dewey rattled off his list and Squab helped him stack up the groceries beside the table, ready for packing after breakfast. Dewey checked his sourdough keg and made sure he had plenty of salt and pepper. Then he heated some water and propped up the mirror on the stove back and shaved off his week’s beard. He changed into new Levis and shirt and jumper, and lay down on his blankets long after the other boys were asleep. He heard Squab rolling up nearby, fitting his skinny frame to the ground.

“Rough country tomorrow?” Dewey asked sleepily.

Squab said, “Jesus!” and began snoring.