Killoe (1962) (2 page)

"Good!" Tap squeezed my shoulder. "We'll make a team, won't we, boy? Man, it's good to be back!"

He glanced over toward the corral where Karen was standing. All of a sudden he said, "Well, you understand what's needed here. When you are ready for the trail, I'll take over."

He walked away from us and went over to where Karen stood by the rail. Tim Foley glanced after him, but his face revealed nothing. Nevertheless, I knew Tim well enough to know he disapproved.

Foley turned and went into the house and the others drifted away, leaving Pa and me standing there together.

"Well," Pa said, "Tap's back. What do you think of him?" "We're lucky to have him.

He knows the waterholes, and he's a good hand. Believe me, Pa, before this drive is over we'll need every man."

"Yes, that we will." He seemed about to say something more, but he did not.

Pa was a canny man and not given to unnecessary talk, and I knew that if he had something on his mind he would say it soon enough. Something was bothering him, however, but all he said a minute later was, "Do you remember Elsie?"

Elsie Henry had been Tap's mother, and I did remember her. She was the only mother I'd ever had, but somehow she never seemed like a mother ... more like somebody who came to stay for a while and then went away. Yet she was good to Tap and me and, looking back on it, I knew she had done a lot of thinking before she broke loose and ran off.

"Yes, I remember her."

"She wasn't cut out for this life. She should not have come west."

"I often wondered why she did. She was a pretty woman with a taste for pretty
clothes
and Fancy living. Seems to me she would have been happier back east."

"Character," Pa said, "is the thing, whether it's horses, dogs, or men. Or women, for that matter."

He walked off without saying anything more, and I took my horse to the corral and stripped off the outfit and hung it up. All the time I was thinking of what Pa had said, and wondering what lay back of it.
Pa had a way of saying things that left a lot unsaid, and 'I 'was wondering just how he wanted that comment to go.

But with the trip coming up, there was very little tine for thinking of that. Or of anything else.

It was spring . . . hot and dry. There had been some good winter rains, and there should be water along the trail to Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos.

Squatting on my heels near the corral, I gave thought to that. Karen and Tap had wandered off somewhere, but right now I was thinking about horses. We would need a cavvy of fifty or sixty head, and with all the horses we could round up between us, including those belonging to Tim Foley and Aaron Stark, we would be short about twenty head.

Two of the wagons needed working on and there was harness to mend. Also, we must get a lot of lead for bullets, and cast enough at least to get us started in case of Comanche trouble. And we would need some additional barrels for carrying water.

Zebony Lambert strolled over and dropped to his heels beside me. He was smoking tobacco wrapped in paper, a habit some of the Texans were picking up from the Mexicans.

Most of us smoked cigars, when we smoked.

"So that's Tap Henry."

He spoke in a peculiarly fiat tone, and I glanced around at him. When Zeb spoke in that voice I knew he was either unimpressed or disapproving, and I wanted them to like each other.

"We spent a lot of time together as boys, Zeb. He's my half brother, stepbrother.., whatever they call it."

"Heard that."

"When his Ma ran off, Pa let him stay on. Treated him like another son."

Zeb looked across the yard to where Tap was laughing and talking with Karen.

"Did he ever see his mother again?"

"No. Not that I know "He fancies that gun, doesn't he?"

"That he does . . . and he's good with it, too."

Zeb finished his cigarette, then pushed it into the dirt. "If you need help," he said, "I stand ready. You'll need more horses."

"You see any wild stuff?."

"Over on the Leon River. You want to try for them?" Zeb was the best wild-horse hunter anywhere around. The trouble was there was so little time. If we wanted to travel when there was water to be found we should be starting now. We should have started two weeks ago.

Zebony Lambert never worked for any man. Often he would pitch in and help out, and he was a top hand, but he would never take pay. Nobody understood that about him, but nobody asked questions in Texas. A man's business and his notions were his own private affair.

"Maybe we can swap with Tom Sandy. There's a lot of young stuff down in the breaks, too young for a trail herd."

"He'll throw in with you if you ask him."

"Sandy?" I could not believe it. "He's got him a good outfit.

Why should he move?"

"Rose."

Well, that made a kind of sense. Still, any man who would leave a place like he had for Rose would leave any other place for her, and would in the end wind up with nothing.

Rose was a mighty pretty woman
and she kept a good house, but she couldn't keep her eyes off other men. Worst of all, she had what it took to keep their eyes on her, and she knew it. "She'll get somebody killed."

"She'll get Tom killed."

Zeb got up. "I'll ride by about sunup. Help you with that young stuff." He paused.

"I'll bring the dogs."

Zebony Lambert had worked cattle over in the Big Thicket and had a bunch of the best cattle-working dogs a man ever did see, and in brush country a dog is worth three cowhands.

He went to his horse and stepped into the saddle. I never tired of watching him do it. The way he went into the leather was so smooth, so effortless, that you just couldn't believe it. Zeb had worked with me a lot, and I never knew a better coordinated man, or one who handled himself with greater ease.

He walked his horse around the corral so he would not have to pass Tap Henry, and just as he turned the horse Tap looked up.

It was plain to him that Lambert was deliberately avoiding him, for around the corral was the long way. Tap laid his eyes on Zeb and watched him ride off, stepping around Karen to keep his eyes on him.

The smell of cooking came from the house, where Mrs. Foley was starting supper.

Karen and Tap were talking when I approached the house. He was talking low and in a mighty persuasive tone, and she was laughing and shaking her head, but I could see she was taken with him, and it got under my skin. After all, Karen was my girl--or so everybody sort of figured.

Tap looked up. "You know, Karen, I can't believe Danny's grown up. He used to follow
me
around like a sucking calf."

She laughed, and I felt my face getting red. "I didn't
follow
you everywhere, Tap,"

I replied. "I didn't
follow
you over the Brazos that time."

He looked like I'd slapped him across the mouth, but before he could say something mean, Karen put a hand on his sleeve. "You two are old friends . . . even brothers.

Now, don't you go and get into any argument."

"You're right, Karen," I said, and walked by them into the house.

Mrs. Foley glanced up when I came in, and then her eyes went past me to Tap and Karen.

"Your brother is quite handsome," she said, and the way she said it carried more meaning than the words themselves.

For three days then we worked sunup to sundown, with Tap Henry, Zeb Lambert, and Aaron Stark working the breaks for young stuff. Pa rode over to have a talk with Tom Sandy about a swap, and Tim Foley worked on the wagons, with his boys to help.

Lambert's dogs did the work of a dozen hands in getting those steers out of the brush and out of the overhang caves along the Cowhouse which gave the creek its name.

Jim Poor, Ben Cole, and Ira Tilton returned from delivering a small herd to San Antonio and fell in with us, and the work began to move faster.

Every time I had the chance I asked Tap questions about that route west. The one drive I'd made, the one up through Kansas and Missouri into Illinois, had taught me a good deal about cattle, but that was a sight better country than what we were heading into now.

The corn grinding was one of the biggest jobs, and the steadiest. We had a
cornmill
fixed to a post and two cranks on it. That mill would hold something around a peek of corn, but the corn had to go through two grindings to be right for bread-baking.

We ground it once, then tightened the mill and ran it through again, grinding it still finer.

We wanted as much corn ground as possible before the trip started, for we might not e able to use the grinder on the road without more trouble
than
we could afford.

Between grinding the corn and jerking beef, there was work a-plenty for everyone.

None of us, back in those days, wore store-bought clothes. It was homespun or buckskin, and for the most part the men dressed their own skins and made their own clothes, with fringe on the sleeves and pants legs to drain the rain off faster. Eastern folks usually thought that fringe was purely ornamental, which was not true.

For homespun clothes of either cotton or wool, the stuff was carded and spun by hand, and if it was cotton, the seeds were picked out by hand. Every man made his own moccasins or boots, repaired what tools or weapons he had, and in some cases made them from the raw material.

Down among the trees along the Cowhouse the air was stifling. It was a twisty creek, with the high banks under which the cattle took shelter, and it was hot, hard work, with scarcely room to build a loop.

A big brindle steer cut out of the trees ahead of me, and went through them, running like a deer, with me and that steeldust gelding right after him. Ducking a heavy branch that would have torn my head off, I took a smaller one smack across the face, making my eyes water. The steer lunged into a six-foot wall of brush and that steeldust right after him. Head down, I went through, feeling the branches and thorns tearing at my chaps. The steer broke into the open and I took after him, built a loop, and dropped it over his horns.

That old steeldust sat right back on his haunches and we busted that steer tail-over-teakettle and laid him down hard. He came up fighting. He was big, standing over sixteen hands ... and he was mad ... and he weighed an easy eighteen hundred.

He put his head down and came for me and that steeldust, but that bronc of mine turned on a dime and we busted Mr. Steer right back into the dust again.

He got up, dazed but glaring around, ready for a fight with anything on earth, but before he could locate a target I started off through the brush at a dead run and when that rope jerked him by the horns he had no choice but to come after us.

Once out in the open again and dose to the herd, I shook loose my loop and hazed him into the herd.

It was heat, dust, sweat, charging horses, fighting steers, and man-killing labor.

One by one we worked them out of the brush and up onto the plain where they could be bunched. Except for a few cantankerous old mossyhorns, they were usually content as long as they were with others of their kind in the herd. That tough old brindle tried to make it back to the brush, back to his home on the Cowhouse, but we busted him often enough to make a believer of him. Tap, like I said, was a top hand. He fell into the routine and worked as hard as any of us. We rolled out of our soogans before there was light in the sky, and when the first gray showed we were heading for the brush. We wore down three or four horses a day, but there are no replacements for the men on a cow outfit. Breakfast was usually beef and beans, the same as lunch, or sometimes if the women were in the notion, we had griddle cakes and sorghum . . . corn squeezings, we called it. Morning of the third day broke with a lowering gray sky, but , I we didn't see that until later. We had two days of brutal labor behind us, and more stretching ahead. Usually, I slept inside. Pa and me occupied one side of the Texas, Tim Foley and his family the other side; but with Stark's wife and kids, we gave up our beds to them and slept outside with the hands. Rolling out of my soogan that third morning, it took me only a minute to put on my hat--a cowhand always puts on his hat first--and then my boots and buckskin pants. The women had b
ur
lap and we could hear dishes a-rattling around inside. Tap crawled out of his blankets and walked to the well, where he hauled up a bucket of water and washed. I followed him. He looked sour and mean, like he always did come daybreak.

With me it was otherwise---I always felt great in the morning, but I had sense enough to keep still about it. We went up to the house and Mrs. Foley and Karen filled our plates. That morning it was a healthy slab of beef and a big plate of beans and some fried onions. Like always, I had my bridle with me and I stuck the bit under my jacket to warm it up a mite. Of a frosty morning I usually warmed it over a fire enough to make it easy for a horse to take, and while it wasn't too cold this morning, I wanted that bronc of mine to be in a good mood.

Not that he would be . . . or ever was.