Duster (9781310020889) Read online

  The fellow that had just rode up handed Jesus a stoppered gourd full of water, and we pushed and pulled at the mules until old Gert was in place next to Stardust. Then we climbed up and I laid a hand onto Stardust's rump good and hard—I had forgot my switch somewhere—and we took off through the brush as fast as we could make those mules go.

  7

  WE GOT OUT on the road easy enough by following the tracks that bunch of horses had left the night before. They'd gouged up the dirt so it left a darker shade than what was laying around it, and the sun hadn't been up long enough to dry out what they'd uncovered. By afternoon, though, we probably couldn't have followed in off the road to Estrada because there's so much brush and rock and junk that a horse don't leave much of a print on the ground.

  Jesus guided us out, pulling at Stardust's reins like a proper teamster. This time I wasn't about to go dozing off for a nap—I was too busy watching our back trail for some sign of Texas rustlers coming after us. I wasn't real positive what we could of done had I seen any so it is a good thing we weren't followed. It seemed a long time before we got back to the road.

  By the time Jesus broke his way through the last of the thorn and got both mules pointed down toward Fort Ewell again, the sun was up well enough to make the road smell all heat and dust and dry. After being in the brush so long it seemed strange to hear the mules plopping quiet-like in soft dust instead of having the rattle and snap of breaking brush around us when we moved.

  We kept the pace up and had got maybe a mile down the road when we come up on a rider moving toward us. He was a stranger to me, but he looked like a real important man. He was up on the biggest, prettiest bay mare I'd ever seen—which, of course, pretty well meant he wasn't no cowman even if his clothes hadn't already told us that. A cowman won't hardly ride anything but a gelding. Then, too, his rigging was built for pretty and not for using as it was all carved and conchoed and had one of them Californy-style center-fire cinches that you never see on a working pony in Texas.

  He was a big man and rode real stiff and straight up like he was daring that mare to mess with his dignity. To make it even plainer he was dressed in a fancy, dark gray suit that fit his shoulders too fine to have come off any rack, and there was a neat, black string tie slipped under a collar that hadn't even begun to wilt (which was maybe from him carrying his chin so high, for I never otherwise seen a collar so neat so far out from anywhere). He topped the outfit off with a narrow brim hat about the color of a dove's belly—pearly gray, I think the storekeepers call it—that had never thought to be used for watering a horse or wiping sweat off a worn-down animal.

  Jesus hauled at the reins until we was over to the side of the right-of-way and stopped to show respect. Jesus glanced at me like he expected me to say something, but I shook my head just enough for Jesus to see, and the rider went by without bothering to howdy us or even throw his nose in the air to snub us. I wasn't used to something like that from a stranger and might of said something if I'd been bigger.

  After the fellow was gone on down the road where he couldn't hear, you can bet I told Jesus something.

  "Just what kind of dummy do you think I am?" I asked him. "Looking at me like that. I may not be growed and muscled yet, but there's more than bone between my ears."

  "Well," he said, "I didn't know ..."

  "Well you ought," I told him. "I know as good as you that Juan Estrada may be a sneaky, thieving, no-account Mex rustler. But he saved our hides back there an' it'd be pretty poor of me to tell on him after a trick like that."

  "I just thought you might of knowed that fella going past and mighta told him or something."

  "Now, just how do you figure I'd know a fancy dude like that? Or want to know anyone'd pass without speaking?"

  Jesus sort of grinned a little. "I figured if I knowed who he was you might be a speaking 'quaintance."

  That got my curiosity up, but I sat quiet for a while, not wanting to give in and ask him who it was had passed us. Jesus just rode on looking straight ahead though he tricked himself by letting a bit of a smile tickle the corners of his mouth from time to time. He was busting to show off knowing who that fellow was.

  Now, if there is one thing I can say about myself without bragging, it's that I can be just about as set-down stubborn as anyone else once I take a notion to it. I was already plenty riled about that uppity stranger going by us like he was better than anyone else in the whole of South Texas, and then with Jesus so smug about knowing something I didn't, well, it set me off. I wasn't about to ask Jesus anything right then. I wasn't even going to give him the satisfaction of looking his way. But then I decided it would be better if Jesus knew I wasn't going to let him get away with being so uppity, so I looked over at him and said, "Well, I just don't care who that fella was, and you can set there and keep it to yourself from now until the Frio freezes over, for all I care."

  Jesus grinned and said, "I'll do that." He said something more in Mex, but I couldn't understand it.

  That's a funny thing. Everybody figures just because you grow up in a place where a bunch of Mexicans live you can just naturally speak Mex, but it don't work that way. There's been Mexican families living around this part of Texas since just about forever, I guess. They was here before us and maybe they'll be here after us too ... I don't know. But we never saw much of them, since we 'most never got to town and sure never had money that we could afford hired hands to work for us.

  I guess things had been some different before Pa left for the war, 'cause I can remember hearing about the house raising just after Ma came out from East Texas carrying me along in a wagon with her to join Pa at our new ranch near Dog Town. Pa got along pretty good with just about everybody, and I remember hearing that some of Jesus's own kin had helped raise our house with cottonwood logs hauled all the way out from along the Frio.

  Later, when a lot of the men had gone off, Mex bandits started coming all the way up into McMullen County looking for something to steal, and the men that was left to home for one reason or another started taking it out on the Mex families that was their neighbors. I guess it was easier to beat up on somebody close to home. It saved them a ride down to the border, and I guess some figured one Mexican was about as guilty as the next.

  That didn't do a whole lot toward making a spirit of neighborliness, and for a while there Mexicans and Texans rode shy of each other.

  There wasn't much of that going on right around Dog Town, but between everybody being just a little bit cautious about folks who talked different than them and of course us keeping off to ourselves at the ranch anyway, I just didn't know much at all about Mex talk.

  Now that I think on it, it was maybe odder that Jesus could speak English so good than for me to not speak Spanish. Yet, I never once knowed a Mex who couldn't talk pretty good English when he wanted to. Maybe they tried a little harder than us ... I don't know.

  Anyhow, Jesus shut up after that and rode on real quiet, not doing much of anything but watching the road and smirking to himself from time to time. That really did get me mad, and I decided I wasn't going to give in no matter what he done.

  For a time it was all right going on that way, but after a while I commenced to get thirsty again. And Jesus had the water gourd. I went on without saying anything, though, for most of the morning until I was getting worried that if I didn't ask for the water pretty soon I wouldn't be able to talk. Once that dumb Jesus, looking just as smug as ever, took the gourd off his saddle and drank a big swallow out of it, then put it back without offering it to me nor even glancing my way. It was enough to make me mad all over again.

  I thought on it some, though, and after a while I saw that the only thing I had to fuss with Jesus about was that dude we had passed in the morning, and as long as I didn't ask about him there wasn't no reason I couldn't talk to Jesus about other stuff.

  "Jesus," I said finally, "there's no need for you to hog all that water."

  He grinned over at me like he had won something off m
e even though the water hadn't anything to do with any of it. "Why, sure," he said, "all you got to do is ask. Any time at all." He reached behind him and fished up the gourd and passed it over after taking the plug out for me.

  I mean to tell you that water tasted good. It wasn't very cool, but it really hit the spot.

  After I give him back the gourd, Jesus said, "You're just an awful lot like that mule you're riding. You're both stubborn, and you're both ugly. But I think I got you figured out."

  Well, I sure wasn't going to ask him about that, not after all the other troubles I had with him, so I kept my mouth shut.

  Jesus pulled the mules off to the side of the road and let them crop some curly mesquite grass that was beginning to show in patches along the way. When the mules were rested we went on, and before long we could see that the brush was getting thinner and the grass more frequent. Finally, just a little after noon, we broke out of the brush altogether and there wasn't nothing in front of us but dirt and grass and low, scrubby stuff. That and the old wood bridge on the Nueces.

  That bridge and the mud huts on the far side of the river looked almighty good to me right then.

  "Eeeeeya," Jesus hollered. "Duster, even if these old mules drop dead right here we've made it to Fort Ewell."

  I gave Stardust a good thump, and him and Gert took off across that last stretch as hard as they could go. They got so carried away with smelling water or something that they actually trotted most of the way across the flat.

  "Don't stop 'til you get to the water barrel, Gert, and then you best stand back and let me in first," I yelled.

  We clomped and stumbled our way down the road and onto the bridge. The mules didn't much like the hollow sound their hooves made on the wood of the bridge and they shied just a little. Maybe they'd never before been any place where there wasn't good, solid ground underneath them, but a tap on Stardust's backside woke him up to the idea that there was more solid territory ahead and we hustled on over to it.

  That bridge was something new for me, too. I'd heard about the Nueces just about all my life, and up toward Dog Town it wasn't really very far south of us since the Nueces took a bend north to Three Rivers where it and the Frio and the Atascosa all come together. But somehow I'd never seen it—staying close to home like I had.

  The way most folks talk about the Brasada—the big brush thicket down below the river—you'd think the Nueces was the dividing line between hell and Texas. To hear them tell it there wasn't much south of the Nueces except murderers, rattlesnakes, and thorns.

  When we got right up on the bridge so we could see down to the water, I was about half-expecting to find the river-banks made of brimstone and to see Old Scratch himself peeking out of the mesquite.

  What we found, of course, wasn't so special. The Nueces was a sort of ordinary stream running nice and quick and not even carrying enough clay then to make it look bloody. It was something of a disappointment after all the buildup.

  "Is not so different than our Frio, eh?" Jesus said, like he was reading my mind.

  "It sure ain't what I expected," I admitted. "It seems awful tame."

  "I seen it lots of times before," Jesus said with a touch of brag in his tone like he'd been everywhere from St. Louie to New Orleans.

  "Well, now I seen it too."

  By then we were all the way across and walking on the Brasada side of the river. In truth it didn't look the least bit different from our side, and Fort Ewell didn't look much different than Dog Town except for being some smaller and only having one log building; everything else was 'dobe.

  "We'll go on up to the store and see will they tell us where to find my cousin," Jesus said.

  "Long as they got some water that's fine with me."

  It was plain enough that the wood building was the store. It had a big old plank nailed up across the front with "General Mercantile and Transit" printed on it. The sign was weathered, but it was plain enough to make out at a pretty good distance.

  I noticed Jesus setting up some straighter in the saddle and reaching up to tug at his hat.

  "Oh, I reckon you're pretty enough already, Jesus," I said.

  "Good enough for you maybe, but this here's a place that may have a pretty little senorita somewheres. I got to look spruced up jus' in case we are lucky."

  "Fat chance you'd have getting any decent girl to look your way twice, unless it's to laugh at you," I said. "And you smell 'most as bad as me, and that's 'most as bad as these mules."

  "We'll fix that up as quick as we can find my cousin's house," he promised.

  Jesus plow-reined us to a stop in the general neighborhood of the store building, and we slid to the ground. I got to admit I didn't feel a whole lot of regret getting off that mule for the last time. Forty miles and one night just isn't long enough to make me attached to an animal that ugly. Though maybe I was getting sort of used to the one-eyed beast. I mean, she didn't look quite as bad now as she had in Dog Town.

  I set to dipping some water from a barrel and pouring it into the trough for the mules while Jesus got them tied up good. It wouldn't do to have them run off now that we'd got them all the way to Fort Ewell. Then the both of us went inside the store.

  It wasn't much of a place, but it was all the store there was in Fort Ewell. I'd heard somebody say once that it had been here off and on since back during the Mexican War when some American dragoons had camped in the area. They'd named it Fort Ewell though as far as anyone could recall there hadn't been a trooper in blue or gray near the place since.

  Anyway I could sure believe the store had been around that long. I could tell that from the smells of bacon and long-gone beef and Mex peppers and a bunch of other stuff that I couldn't figure out right offhand. The place was sort of dark and cool and seemed to wrap around us with all those old, warm smells and a real quiet yellow-brown light that managed to get through the greased paper set in windows up under the eaves.

  There was shelves over every bit of wall space, and piles of boxes and bags and even some cans was stacked up on them. Overhead, there was some chunks of bacon hung up, and off in one corner a big man with a stump leg whittled out of wood was sitting in a rickety looking old rocking chair.

  The storekeeper looked us over without saying anything. Every once in a while he'd push back in the rocker with his peg and then come back down with a thump when it hit the puncheon floor. I could see where the peg had wore a little hole in the floor timbers, bumping up and down like that.

  He was a tough-looking old man with his hair pretty much gone. I couldn't help noticing too that even though his homespun was beginning to pull apart and was none too clean, he was shaved so close he looked pink cheeked and shiny.

  "Welcome to look," he said after he sized us up. "Lemme know if you want to buy." He closed his eyes and went back to his rocking.

  "No sir," I spoke up. "We didn't come to do neither. This here is Jesus Menendez and we're looking for his cousin Ramon Nunez. We was hoping you could tell us the way."

  The old man opened his right eye and ran it up and down Jesus some before he made up his mind. He jerked his head just the least bit and said, "Up the river a piece. Third 'dobe."

  We gave him our thanks and backed out into the sunshine again. It seemed hotter, somehow, while we collected the mules and led them off afoot.

  Now, it isn't often you'll see a couple Texas cowhands walking and leading animals that could be rode, but me and Jesus didn't talk about it or anything. We just gathered up our reins and commenced walking.

  8

  I GUESS I had been expecting Ramon Nunez to be something like Jesus's father, Pico, who was sort of small and quiet and gray around the ears, or even like Juan Estrada. I sure didn't expect what we found when we got to his jacal.

  The 'dobe wasn't very big, but it was real neat-looking. It was new, too. I could tell because the corners of the walls and windows were still sharp and straight and not rounded off and crumbly like they get in old houses when water and wind has be
en after them.

  There was a few of the usual strings of peppers hung outside by the windows, and off to one side there was a tight-looking corral that was so new the peeled poles hadn't started to gray yet from the weather.

  By the front door was the prettiest, black-haired, dark-eyed little girl I'd ever seen. She was crouched down against the wall working over a handful of corn, using a flat-sided stone to crush the kernels on her metate. And she was just about my age, too.

  She looked up when she heard us coming and smiled— real shy but friendly—and stopped pounding the corn. She waited there, looking up at us from under a hank of that shiny black hair that had fell down across her face. With those big, soft eyes and little piece of a smile she looked just about as timid and as ready to take to flight as a young doe getting her first look at a human.

  I couldn't help noticing her tiny wrists and long, slim brown fingers. I saw, too, how small and straight her nose was and how her nostrils flared just the least amount when she raised her eyebrows as if she wanted to ask us something but was too shy to speak.

  All this made me feel sort of funny down deep in my belly, and my throat felt like it was being tickled with a bunch of feathers on the inside. I didn't know what it was but it was more nice than not, and I began to think that if Ramon Nunez had a daughter like this, maybe Jesus and I should stay here for a day or two while we looked for horses to take down the river to Ike and the rest of our bunch. I had all but forgot about our jobs for a little while, but now I was interested in finding the best horses around Fort Ewell. And in taking time to make sure we got nothing but good stock!

  I snuck a glance over at Jesus, but he didn't seem to be so taken with the girl, which was all right with me. Instead he talked with her some in Spanish. I could make out that he was asking for Ramon and probably explaining who we was. I couldn't catch what her answer was, though it sounded awful nice. She had a voice that was just as soft and warm as her eyes. It fit her perfect.