Duster (9781310020889) (20 page)

There wasn't much worry about them getting
over hot. It had quit raining the day before, after three days of
steady downfall, but the sky was still clouded over solid. A sky
like that is a rare thing in McMullen County, but now we'd left
McMullen a ways behind us and I didn't know what to expect. The
land here was different—more soil and less rock, a little more
green and a lot less thorn—so I figured it might be natural for the
weather to be different too. I'd never been this way before, and I
couldn't judge what was usual and what was not.

This sky now, normal or
otherwise, looked awful strange and almost scary to me. It wasn't
real black with big, tall storm clouds. Instead they was a darkish
gray, some like light-smoked glass and some almost white. They were
low, too—so low I could almost reach up and grab a handful of
whatever it is
clouds are made of. Looking
up at them I decided it would be near to possible to catch one if I
stood up in the saddle and jumped or maybe climbed a tall tree and
tossed a loop up to trap one.

I guess what made it seem so scary instead
of just different was how fast them clouds was moving. I'd never
seen anything go so fast. There wasn't a whole lot of wind, but
these clouds was racing overhead. They come just flying in from a
downstream direction, which meant they were coming in off the
water, the Gulf of Mexico that is, and from a good ways off.
Between them being so low and coming so fast it almost seemed that
they was coming down at me like a runaway team.

Still and all, I rode easy and with my eyes
up. After a little while, when I had got used to it, it didn't seem
at all scary any more, just exciting somehow. It made me want to
get up and go places I'd never been before—maybe on a ship across
the Gulf or to just get on a fast horse and go as far and as fast
as he could take me. It sounded fun, but when I thought about it I
had to laugh at myself. Here I was on a cattle drive, going to a
place I'd never been, already seeing things I'd never seen. When I
remembered that, I had to admit that I couldn't of asked for much
more. Except maybe to be clean and dry for a change.

But putting it all together, I had to figure
I was almighty lucky. Maybe that skinny preacher's words had took.
I don't know. But I had it pretty good. I had all the food and
coffee I could hold and a good horse to ride always, and when it
was all over I'd have some cash money to outfit myself and more
left over to carry the family of us for a year and better—two if
need be.

Just the other night, I'd heard B.J. Hollis
talking to Mister Sam Silas about some fellow they both knowed but
whose name I hadn't heard. This fellow had been hurt something
awful during the war and had laid up in a hospital over in Georgia
somewheres until just this past winter.

To hear B.J. tell it, when
this man come through Georgia and then Alabama and then Mississippi
and then finally got on
home to Texas, he
figured we was about the best-off folks he'd seen the whole way
along. Bad off as we'd been at times in Texas, we never had to
worry for meat nor for garden truck neither. We always had
something to eat, though at times it didn't spread too far. Still,
our biggest lack was for cash money.

This friend of B.J.'s had said out east
there was folks whose fields had been burnt off and their stock
stole. Now, their fields was starting to come back, but they didn't
have meat more than once a month some of them and if we was lacking
in cash money they had clean forgot what it was. This fellow had
told B.J. he had to walk it from Georgia to Texas and along the way
he'd seen many a boy with no shirt of his own and feet that had
never been in a pair of shoes.

Riding along like I was, I wiggled my toes
inside my shoes and thought about how they might be damp and mud
covered, but those shoes was mine—made up good and sturdy from the
hide of an old cow that wore our brand. We had carried that hide
and half the carcass in town to old Jedediah Soames and he had
tanned the skin into leather and made up shoes for the bunch of us.
We got the shoes and Mister Soames had got half a beef and what
leather he had left over after he made up our footgear. I'd wished
at the time that I could of had boots, but Ma had said no. She said
boots take up too much leather, and it wouldn't of been fair to
Mister Soames.

Now, with earned money the next thing to
being in my pocket, I'd been setting up to buy boots for myself
after we got to Rockport. Yet some folks out east, even growed
folks, would of give most anything to of had the shoes that—I
admitted it to myself—that I was ashamed of wearing on a cow
drive.

Most real riding hands take a whole lot of
pride in a few things about them like a hat, a pair of boots with
fancy stitching on the sides, and a double-rigged saddle with a
sound tree and a wide, strong horn. Pa's saddle was good as they
come even if it did have a flat, high tilted horn like the old
style and the old, narrow stirrups with long toe fenders in front.
Nowadays, the fancier saddles I'd seen had wide stirrups without
the tapaderos, and some had pockets all over them to hold a man's
possibles.

I'd never of parted with Pa's saddle, but
I'd surely been thinking of getting a proper hat and some boots
with yellow stitching on the sides. I'd been thinking about those
boots night after night for ever so long now, and I had decided on
having them made up with a DD brand stitched on each side. In fact
I'd been thinking about leaving the DD for just Ma and the little
kids and maybe having my boots made up with a special brand all my
own. 3D would be the same enough to keep Ma from getting unhappy,
but it would be different enough to keep things straight when Tom
and Johnny and even little Bo got to a size that they'd be working
cows.

Oh, I had really been thinking tall of
myself. It's a wonder I never split my shirt open from puffing my
chest out.

Thinking about them folks in Georgia,
though, I made a resolve to myself right then and there. When we
got in to Rock-port and Mister Sam Silas paid us all off, I was
going to get just plain old store boots off the counter top—with no
yellow stitching to spell out 3D. I made up my mind I was going to
be saving so Ma and the little tads wouldn't have to scrimp too
awful bad.

I felt better after that, and I grinned up
at those racing clouds just as happy as if I had good sense.

The horses seemed to be feeling about as
chipper as me, and I pushed them right along. It didn't take any
time hardly to reach the creek Bill had told me about. It was a
little farther than he'd said, but there wasn't any mistaking that
it was the right one.

It came in from due north just about like
Digger Bill had said. That meant it came in at an awful narrow
angle, for the Nueces here was falling more south than east. I just
hadn't stopped before to think of the direction we'd been
following, so it surprised me some.

Anyway, the creek was narrow and a couple of
feet deep, and it ran water real quick. I could tell it carried
some flow most all year around, for there were nice big trees along
it, and upstream there was a big, thick clump of willows that hung
all the way over the water from both sides so that I couldn't see
anything beyond them.

Right at the mouth where it widened out to
meet the Nueces, there was a good place to ford so I didn't have to
get wet, and the bottom was flat and hard. And up under those
willows I was just betting I'd find some nice rocks that would be
perfect for crawdads to hide under.

I put those horses across quick as could be
and drove them on a little ways until I found a good place to leave
them, close along the river so they hadn't far to go for water or
grass either one. Then I hustled myself back to the creek and
gathered up more than enough wood to last Bill for the night and
the morning too.

I'd been feeling kind of low earlier, but
now I was just bouncing and ready to go. After all of Bill's wood
was gathered, I went right on busting around looking for downed
wood until I had another good pile laid on the bank upstream close
to the willows.

This, I got started and built into a right
cheerful fire, just for me. I shucked out of my clothes and rubbed
them together in the water some. I hadn't soap, nor even fine sand
to really go at them with, the creek bottom being full of stone and
pebbles like it was, but I guessed plain water and a fair amount of
muscle would likely do them some good.

When my stuff was about as clean as I could
get it, I heaped some more wood on the fire, wrung my clothes as
dry as I could get them, and hung everything on bent poles close to
the fire to finish the drying.

Then, I did what I'd been looking forward to
more than anything. With that fire waiting to dry me off, I walked
smack into that little creek and sat myself down in it. I let water
just run all over me and scrubbed some too, using a handful of
leaves from off the bank. It felt so good I couldn't hardly stand
it, and I sat and did nothing but soak until I had to get out to
put more wood on the fire and to turn my clothes around
wetside-to.

I didn't mind being wet
when I knew I could get dry again anytime I wanted, so I walked
back into the water, then, and commenced to sort of crawl my way up
under the willows,
turning rocks as I
went. It wasn't long before I began finding dark, heavy crawdads
and soon had to go back to get my rag hat to carry them in. I
crawled back under the willows and worked my way up along the far
bank, and I got a good-sized crawdad every few steps.

Under the overhang from all them trees it
was cool and shady. What little light there was was soft and looked
almost green after bouncing down from switch to switch. It smelled
soft too, somehow. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but
with the fresh running water and cool shade and damp earth along
the bank cuts it smelt fresh and clean and nice under there. It was
so pleasant and comfortable with that fresh, clean odor and the
nice feel of the water drying in the air from my back and shoulders
that I wasn't in any hurry.

I worked my way along slow, bending over to
look for the crawdads and enjoying the feel of droopy willow
switches running lightly over my back when I moved. Even though I
wasn't really looking too hard, I found a whole mess of big
crawdads easy, and pretty soon I had all my makeshift sack could
hold, so I took them back to dump into a big sack I fashioned out
of my leggings and then went back up the near bank looking for
more.

The stand of willows went for maybe fifty
yards upstream and I hunted that whole section until I think I'd
turned over every rock in that stream bed at least once and maybe
more. I also had near a bushel of crawly gray-black critters
stashed in my coat and leggings and finally in a rock and mud basin
I heaped up near the creek bank.

By then I was beginning to
think about how the rest of the boys' eyes would pop when they saw
all them pretty crawdads, and I guess I was wanting to lay it on
plenty thick. When
I ran out of luck under
the willows I went right on upstream. I was all dried off by then,
except for my legs, of course, where I was wading, but the sun had
come out and felt nice on my back. I went wading right along,
stooped over so as to reach the rocks under water, carrying an old
rag half full of wiggling crawdads and not wearing a stitch of
clothes.

Every bit of my concentration was spent
trying to hold my cloth full of crawdads together and trying to
peer past the surface of the moving water to find likely looking
rocks to search under. I wasn't paying no mind at all to what was
up on the creek banks here above the willows.

I was bent over trying to lever up a
particularly long, flat rock when I heard some scuffling in the
grass alongside the creek.

"Hi," somebody said in a quavery sort of
voice, and I heard some giggles.

I'd been concentrating awful hard on that
rock, trying to figure the best place to lift up on it to tip it
out of the way, and I guess I still wasn't paying much mind to
anything else when I looked up.

"Hi yourself," I said just as natural as you
please. There was a couple of girls standing there about ten feet
away from me.

The bigger one looked to
be maybe fourteen. She had a round face that was sort of red in
color, I noticed, and a dusting of freckles across the top of her
nose. Her hair was about the color of a jack-squirrel and was
pulled back and tied somehow at the back of her neck. She was
wearing a long, floppy dress made out of homemade cloth. I could
tell for it looked just like what Ma made. And she had an apron on
that she was holding up in one hand to carry something down inside
it. I couldn't see
what they were
gathering. There was pecan trees near, but it couldn't of been them
at this time of year. Mushrooms, maybe.

The little one was maybe eight or nine years
old and pretty much looked like a littler copy of the big one
except she didn't have an apron on. I couldn't tell if she had
freckles or not for both her hands was clapped up over her face.
She was red complected too and seemed to be having giggle fits.

That puzzled me-—for about half a
second.

I wasn't wearing no clothes.

"Go 'way," I hollered. I didn't know what to
do, but if I could, of I would of crawled underneath that rock I
had been trying to lift. Instead, I stood there and turned red all
over—as they could plainly see. "Go 'way now. Git."

I started to cover myself up with my cloth
but I thought better of that real quick. I didn't want those
crawdads in my rag to be held anywheres near that close. Next, I
wanted to scrunch down under water, but it wasn't deep enough right
there. Finally, I did the third best thing I could think of. I
flung myself straight for the bank and crouched down alongside it.
Lucky for me, there was a couple foot of straight drop there, and I
hid behind that as best I could.