Duster (9781310020889) Read online

  DUSTER

  A Western Novel By

  FRANK RODERUS

  A PAINTED PONY BOOK

  Duster by Frank Roderus

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 1986 by Frank Roderus

  Painted Pony Books

  www.paintedponybooks.com

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  For my parents, Frank and Alice Roderus,

  who had faith even when I didn't

  1

  BY A COUPLE of years after the war was over, most everybody had come straggling back home; and by that time, we just had to figure Pa wasn't coming back. We hadn't had word of him since Tim Jenkins came back from Vicksburg in '63 with a chunk tore out of his back end by a Yankee minie ball—one of them that was rigged to blow up after it hit. That Yankee ball had lit in Tim's hind end and then cut loose. Tim always did sit a horse funny after that.

  Anyway, Pa had sent us a howdy by way of Tim and a wad of grayback scrip that he hadn't found any takers for out east and that he figured we might be able to spend back home in Texas. That was the last word we had.

  Not that I'm complaining. We'd been used to making do for a long while, and we always figured we would make out the best we could with whatever tools the good Lord laid up at our doorstep. That was the way Pa had always done—showing us more than telling us but making it stick just the same.

  It wasn't that we didn't love Pa or didn't want him back. We did. But Ma said that wanting wasn't getting and we had best plan on doing for ourselves instead of waiting around and letting the home place run down.

  I had been doing what I could all along since early in '62 when Pa went off with his blanket and brush knife and that big old Walker Colt that he favored.

  At the time, I was just nine years old and not even able to hold up that Walker with one hand. But since I was the oldest and the biggest, Pa give me a pert little grulla gelding for my own and give me a man's rope to work with. The grulla was nice, but us kids could most always find a horse of some sort to crawl up on. What really made me feel growed was that rope.

  It was a grown man's rope, not just a piece of cast-off leavings like I'd played with from the time I could make a fist around a solid hunk of something. It was Pa's own rope, braided up for him out of four-strand rawhide by Pico Menendez, all of twenty-five feet long like the brush poppers preferred, and with a metal ring honda.

  I had worked that rope until I was a pretty fair hand with it. By the time 1868 rolled in on us I could throw a mangana most every time, and I was able to slip a peal onto a calf maybe one time in three. I'd been bringing calves in to home ever since Pa left so we could gentle down those ornery brush cow mamas and steal a little milk for the small fry.

  I had grown considerable in that time, too. Like Pa, I never will be what you'd call tall, but I had strung out some and was showing his kind of stringy, slung-together muscle that marks us Dorword men. I guess I looked a sight then in my homespun shirt and britches and the big straw hat Ma had made herself out of stuff we had on hand. The only store-bought things I owned was a pocketknife and my bandanna, and even that was black since the red and the blue ones was in more demand and could be got rid of easier. Mr. James, the storekeeper in Dog Town, let me have my black bandanna cheap since they weren't popular. Even my galluses were made at home, and I'd carved the buttons for my britches out of some wood scraps. I had a ragtag sort of coat made out of an old blanket, too, though I never liked to wear it when there were other folks about.

  To top it all off, my hair stayed pretty much down toward the bottom of my ears no matter how much Ma prodded at me to let her cut on it, and my face still run some to freckles.

  It was about that time, though, that I figured I oughta quit strutting in front of the little kids in our own family and set out to being the boss of our place for sure.

  Actually there was more to it than just my own feelings. We'd heard that old Governor Pease and his carpetbag soldiers was about to come collecting taxes on us. Folks said that anybody who couldn't pay up would be run off his own land to make room for the movers coming in from back east. A lot of them movers wanted to settle where there wasn't Comanche or Kiowa around, so I guess we were right where they wanted to be. Indians would sometimes be north of us or to the west, but they never did come around our part of the country. I guess that made our area pretty good-sounding to Pease and his carpetbaggers.

  Anyhow, we'd always been able to find aplenty to eat, what with our garden and the beeves that ranged loose in the brush around home. But it was a long time since any of us had seen much in the way of cash money. Other folks hadn't any of it either, so nobody minded much. We got by.

  The thing was, if we had to come up with tax money now I just didn't know what might happen. I couldn't stand to think about maybe losing the place Pa had made for us here, and it would of been worse if Ma had been faced with such a thing.

  I made up my mind one night late, but I didn't say anything to Ma about it right off. First I rode over and talked to Mister Sam Silas. He had a spread further up on the Frio, and I knew he'd be putting a herd up come spring.

  There wasn't much market for cows in Texas those days, but there was even less cash money—so any market at all would do.

  Mister Sam gave me a good feed of beef and corn bread and even some real coffee before we got down to business. He had figured why I'd come, and he gave it to me straight.

  "You're the head of your own spread," he said, "and you have a right to come along as an owner, with your own remuda and chuck. But I do need an extra hand. You're welcome to throw your beeves in with mine and ride along as a paid hand. Since you are only fifteen and not proved out yet, I'll pay thirty cents a day and board, fifty cents if you have a string of horses you want to throw in."

  It was a fair deal he offered, and I told him so. I didn't have enough horses of my own to ride and knew there would be too many cattle being moved around the country come spring for me to be able to borrow a string, so I took the thirty cents a day.

  I was busting to tell Ma when I got home, but I set it off for a while instead. Finally at dinner one night when the racket had settled I figured I'd best plunge into it.

  "Ma," I said, "it's time I got to putting us back in shape. I've hired out to Mister Sam Silas as a rider. He'll pay me cash money and let us throw our culls into his herd for a drive over to Rockport." I guess I stopped for a minute there before I went on. "It's a thing I've got to do."

  "I don't want you to do it, Douglas," she said with her face all firm and lined like it gets when she's going to set her heels into something, "but there's a man's work needs to be done and you are the eldest. I will ask only that you take care. And mind you watch the company you keep."

  I was so tickled I just had to give Ma a hug, though I had a pretty good idea what her approval was letting me in for.

  Pa had had a good many cattle under the DD brand—for Douglas Dorword after his name—mine too for that matter—before he left. But for six years the only branding done for us was by our neighbors when they came across some of our stuff mixed in with theirs. We had no idea now how many of our cattle might be shoving along through that brush out there.

  It had been about all I could do so far just to keep us in milk and try to keep the brush pushed back off our holdi
ng pasture.

  To get some of our beeves in Mister Sam's drive I knew I'd have to count on some DD animals being caught during the roundup all our neighbors would be holding come May or so. I was determined, though, that I wouldn't put anything but culls into that herd. Not to Rockport, I wouldn't. I wanted that scattered-out herd of ours to grow by what it could.

  I just hoped two things: one, that I could handle my own share of the work; and the other, that the maverickers all over the country didn't cut too deep into our DD animals. That second part was a pretty lonesome hope, though. Right then, there was lots of loose cattle with no brands on them and no way to figure out what brand they ought to have.

  Some claimed that a maverick was theirs if it was on the range they laid claim to, but that was just plain silly. Come a hard winter, one of those long-legged, long-horned critters might drift along with its backside to the wind for a hundred miles or more. Even a well-branded herd might be scattered over three counties by spring. In a country where most of the men had been too busy fighting a war to take time for branding it was just sort of natural that herds got scattered from one end of Texas to the next, and after a couple years, there was just no way you could look at all those slick hides and say what herd an animal's mama came from once upon a time. It just couldn't be done.

  At the same time the country was being overrun by those maverick cattle there was a bunch of maverick men wandering loose. Some of them got so in the habit of branding slick-side cattle that they took the calves of even branded cows. It had used to be that your cow's calf was as safe two counties away as it would be at home.

  Before the war, McMullen County saw a stranger maybe once in a couple months. And they didn't stay strangers for long, most of them. Now, with so many men back home only to find their herds scattered and gone into the brush or across the border, and with other men coming out of the ripped-apart east looking to find a life for themselves in Texas, things were different.

  There wasn't too many maverickers around Dog Town, but I'd heard things were pretty frisky over along the coast and up on the plains. We figured it was only a matter of time before the maverickers moved into McMullen County and started busting cattle out of the brush and putting new brands on them.

  We wasn't in too bad a shape really, since Pa had recorded our brand and ear marks in our home county and to the south and east of us, too; that was the way our stuff would drift. Several times since he'd been gone, we had got payment for the sale of some of our cattle caught down in Duval County and sold off by ranchers there. They'd just throw in our strays with their own stuff when they had a herd size to meet, and the money from those animals of ours would be sent along with a McMullen County man the next time one passed through. It was considered proper for the man who'd caught and sold the animals to keep one dollar a head for his trouble.

  Twice, found money from cows we didn't even know we owned pulled us out of some tight spots. We never would of known about the sales if those ranchers hadn't up and sent the money, because I sure wasn't traveling and checking county stock books when I was little. Those men just went on and did what was right, although they maybe could of used that money too, times being what they was.

  You can bet I never forgot those folks down south of us, and I don't expect I will forget them either. You just naturally have to figure you owe folks like that. Anyway, like I was saying before I got sidetracked, I had a lot of work ahead of me, but I was wound up tight as any drum and raring to go. It's not every day a gangly kid like me gets his first real job horseback.

  ****

  The first Sunday of May that year...I forget what date it was...Ma got us all up early. She usually let us sleep in until she had a fire going and some breakfast just about ready.

  This Sunday, though, we all got rousted out right away. I remember it was still dark like it always was when she woke. She came in and shook the three little tads out of the big shuck bed first. Tom, the next biggest to me, and Johnny got up okay, but little Bo set to crying first off. He wasn't used to being up so early.

  His racket waked me up too, and I got up off the rope cot I had made for myself. I could see Molly—she was maybe six then—standing on the other side of the hung blanket that turned our corner into a bedroom. She was knuckling her eyes and had her lower lip stuck out in a pout. She kept shut, though, so I knew she had been hauled out of bed right along with Ma for they shared the big bed Pa made when he homesteaded the place.

  This particular morning Ma had us get dressed in a hurry. She never made a move toward the fireplace, so I could tell she had something special in mind, and I helped her hurry the little kids along.

  As soon as we were all dressed she had me get a bucket of water and then she gave us each a fistful of cold fritters left over from the night before, and we each got a cup of water. I asked her about the milking, but she said there wasn't time. Those half-wild cows we had been milking still had their calves so it would be all right to leave them be for the morning.

  Anyway, by then it was near daylight and Ma took each of the littlest two, Molly and Little Bo, by the hand and blew out the candle, and we set off walking.

  We had it figured out where we were going by then. We were going to MacReedy's place about nine miles off. There was supposed to be a circuit preacher stopping there.

  We had to walk it since the only horses we owned was my grulla and an old scrub pony that was on the lame side. Besides which, we didn't have a wagon any more since Ma had sold it a year or so before when Little Bo got so bad sick he had to be doctored.

  The walk took a little while, but Ma and me took turns helping the small fry, and there was road most of the way.

  By the time we got to MacReedy's the preacher was already warmed up and well into his talking. There was a whole gang of people there—sixty or more, I'd guess. There was about eight wagon rigs pulled up in the yard, and the corral looked like it would bust from all the saddle horses turned loose in it.

  Folks was sitting all over the packed earth yard. Most of the grown-ups had pulled chunks off MacReedy's woodpile for stools, and the little kids just spread out around them. A few families, Mister Sam Silas's for one, had buckets of food with them, and most of the rest had brought sacks along to hold their lunches.

  The preacher was set up on MacReedy's front stoop. Someone had put a chair there for him, but by the time we got there he was too wound up to set in one spot. He was pacing up and down that little stoop, and I got the feeling that even with the pacing he hardly had room enough to swing his arms when he needed to.

  We'd never heard this particular preacher before, maybe because we so seldom got over to one of the ranches that had preachers in to give services. This fellow had mighty good wind. His voice was maybe a little too thin and whiny for politicking, but it carried good and had a lot of follow-through, so he did all right as a preacher. When he turned fast his coat would flop back against him, and you could see he was awful skinny— looked like you might be able to fold him up like a jackknife and tote him home rolled up in your slicker. But what he lacked in meat, he made up for in hair. He had a beard that hung down near as far as the strings of his tie, and his head hair pretty much did justice to the beard.

  When we got settled so that we could listen to what he was saying, he was talking about damnation and what brings you to it, like most of the preachers did. But this fellow wasn't taking any chances on folks missing out on the meaning of the quotations. He'd rattle off a few book names and chapter numbers without reciting them—figuring, I guess, you could recollect them and look them up later if you were of a mind. Then he'd pitch in with a real down-to-earth explanation of what it was that would lead you to damnation.

  I couldn't follow some of what he said about painted harlots and stuff, probably because out here we didn't have extra money for paint and the like; we just had to let things weather. And some of it didn't seem to apply, since I'd never had a drink of hard liquor and didn't figure on it real soon.

 
Then along toward noon he got onto a subject that I could follow pretty good. He started talking on tobacco and other knockshus weeds, and I could understand that all right.

  Last summer Jaimie Roe and me rolled up some cigarillos out of weeds and dried shucks, and we smoked up a mess of them like we'd seen some of the Mex vaqueros do. The preacher said that would make you a sure candidate for punishment, but we'd already been punished pretty good right on the spot. It could be we used the wrong weeds.

  I have to admit I didn't get much out of the other preaching, but I could tell it was plenty powerful and had I been much of a sinner at the time I might of enjoyed it more.

  Ma always enjoyed singing the hymns best, and she'd turn to good and loud when the preacher called off a name to be sung. When she was singing those hymns, her eyes would get all crinkledy-like at the corners, and she looked sort of pretty. I think the little kids noticed that, too, because I'd catch them looking up at Ma every time when they was supposed to be singing—even Molly who loved to sing her own self. Molly didn't know all the words then, so she'd listen long enough to catch onto one or two key words and then kick in real hard with them every time they came due in the song.

  Along about midafternoon when it was getting time for us to be leaving before they broke for dinner—so folks wouldn't be trying to give us some of their lunches—Ma stood up and asked the preacher if he'd say her a special prayer.

  The preacher hollered "Yes, sister," at her, expecting her to give testimony or something probably.

  "Brother," she called out to him, "I've listened to you preach, and I know you tell the Lord's word. I would feel better in my heart if you would pray with us for the safety of my eldest. He has to leave tomorrow to do a man's work, and he will need the Lord's guidance to bring him safely home from that cow drive. Will you do that, brother?"