Duster (9781310020889) (9 page)

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.

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
been 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.

"Ramon'll be back in a few minutes," Jesus
told me. "He's out back at the smokehouse." He nodded on past the
jacal and I noticed for the first time there was a little
smokehouse back there that was leaking thin streams of white smoke
between the poles it was built of.

"Teresa says Ramon's just gone to check the
fires." That was real interesting to him, I guess, Ramon being his
cousin and all, but I was more interested in finding out what the
girl's name was.

I got to feeling awkward just standing there
like a lump with Teresa looking from Jesus to me and back again.
Thinking about it, I felt myself start to get hot in the face and I
knew I was blushing like a little kid. "I better put the mules up,"
I said.

I snatched Jesus's reins from him and
dragged both mules off to the corral. I could hear Jesus and Teresa
talking about something while I stripped our gear off the animals
and turned them loose to roll in the dirt. By the time I got done,
they was laughing about something, so I stayed busy hanging our
saddles and stuff on the corral rails and checking to see that
everything was in good shape.

The next time I looked over their way, there
was a real good-looking young fellow talking to them. I was a
little mad at first, but then I decided he must be Teresa's brother
because I saw him pat her on the backside. It was a playful sort of
light smack really, but something no proper Mexican girl would
allow from anybody outside the family.

It seemed to fit that this boy'd be part of
her family, for he was as smooth and good-looking in his way as she
was soft and pretty in hers. It still didn't please me much about
him being there because next to his tall, neat-muscled frame and
bright, quick-flashing smile, I knew I'd look awful gawky and
clumsy.

Jesus looked over my way and I ducked my
head down to the bridle I had been fiddling with, but it wasn't in
time to keep him from seeing I'd been watching them.

"Hey, Duster." I didn't want to, but I
looked up again anyway. "Come on over here," Jesus called out.

I thought about leaping over the poles, but
figured with my luck I'd hook a shoe and end up sprawled out on the
ground, so instead I let myself out the gate like any little kid
and went on over to them. Close up, the Mex fellow—he couldn't of
been more than eighteen or maybe nineteen, tops—was even better
looking.

He smiled real friendly and stuck a hand out
when I got near. " 'Ow you get a name like Duster? Is a good story
I bet-cha." He grinned, and I couldn't help liking him.

"Please-to-meetcha," I said. "I'm really
Douglas Dor-word, but ugly cow chasers like Jesus call me Duster. I
reckon you can too."

He threw back his head and laughed out loud.
He sure seemed a happy one.

"Well, you come here with Jesus you mus' be
hokay, even if he is such an ogly person of a cow hunter." He
clapped a hand on my shoulder. "You are welcome to come any time to
the house of Ramon an' Teresa Nunez, eh, companero?"

I felt real good to be friends with this
happy, competent-looking Mexican, but that lasted just a second.
Then it dawned on me what he'd said. This here was Jesus's cousin
Ramon, not Ramon's boy, and that pretty little girl of fifteen or
so was his wife.

I must of got awful red real sudden-like for
they got a tremendous kick out of it. Jesus and Ramon just yukked
up a storm, and Teresa was laughing at me too. That made me get
redder and redder until I felt like I had been baking both cheeks
over a branding fire.

"Look," I said. "Ramon, I... oh... oh,
shoot." I stomped my foot. "I don't know what I want to say."

Ramon went over and put an arm around
Teresa's shoulders. "Si, I onderstand. You give me a, uh,
complimen' you call it, to my good taste, eh? An' I got to agree,
yes, my Teresa is the pretties' girl there has ever been. Yes."

Teresa said something in Spanish and Ramon
gave her a little squeeze. "She doesn't have much English, but she
is not a bad ole woman for all that," Ramon said. "What she tole me
is that she thinks you are a nice boy an' she is glad there is now
somebody aroun' this place that thinks she is pretty an' will not
beat her so much like I do." The way he was grinning I could tell
it was a joke the both of them shared between them.

I felt some better then.
It was mighty fine of them not to be mad after I'd made such a pure
fool of myself like I did. Look
ing back on
it, I'd have to guess that as well as being nice folks they was
right then too interested in each other to worry much about other
people. Jesus told me later that they'd only been married a few
months. Anyway, I sure felt beholden to them.

"We brung your mules down from Mr. Trembel,"
I said, wanting to get onto a different subject. "They're over in
your corral there," I added even though he could see that for
himself.

"I sure hope you got 'em for a good price,"
Jesus said. "Them mules has got to be the two most beat up critters
ever."

We walked over to lean on the top poles of
the corral, and I could see Ramon wince a little when he got a good
look at Gert and Stardust.

"Well," he said, "as long as they got bottom
I cannot say much bad of them. I got no need for them to be fast or
pretty."

Despite his words, Ramon looked plenty down
at the mouth. It was easy to see he'd bought those mules without
looking them over first.

Ramon thought it over some and brightened up
a little. "Anyways," he said, "that brown one don't look so
bad."

Jesus and me bust out laughing. Ramon was
pointing at old Gert. She was standing sideways to him and all he
could see was her near side, just like I had when I'd first seen
her back in Dog Town. Ramon hadn't seen that gouged-out eye of hers
yet.

"What you find so fonny?" Ramon asked.

Jesus stuck two fingers in his mouth and let
out a loud whistle. Gert and Stardust both perked up their ears and
swung their heads around to look at us.

"Aieee," Ramon said, "now I see why you
laff." He flashed a bunch of white teeth at us. "Is a good joke on
me, eh?"

"Jus' wait 'til you ride them," Jesus said.
"Is an even better joke then, right, Duster?"

"You mean you ain't going to tell him?" I
asked.

"Be more fun to let him find out his own
self." Jesus had that gleam in his eye that I'd seen a few times
before, usually just before some cowhand got real uncomfortable as
the butt of a practical joke.

Ramon just looked confused.

"Ah, that ain't fair," I said and proceeded
to explain to Ramon how he'd have to go about getting Stardust and
Gert to go where he wanted them. When I was done Ramon just shook
his head.

Finally he shrugged. "They will do jus' the
same for what I need." He straightened his shoulders and pushed his
chest out some. "I 'ave a very good job, you know. Don Jose Fuega
has pastores tending great flocks of sheeps from here to Nuevo
Laredo an' for many miles north an' I shall be his vaquero an'
carry food an' coffee an' mail if there is any. To all of these
pas-tores I will carry these things. It is the way Don Jose Fuega
himself started these many years ago."

"Sheep?" I asked. "Where you gonna find
sheep around here?" I'd never seen one of them animals, though of
course, I'd heard of them.

Ramon looked like he couldn't believe I had
just asked what I did. "From here all the way to Laredo on the Rio
Grande an' up the Grande to Piedras Negras there is many more times
the sheeps than there is of your wild, estupido cows. Why, Senor
Stuart who runs the store here tol’ me the clerk of this LaSalle
County tol’ him there is maybe five times as many sheeps as there
is cows."

Now, that sort of shook me. I had growed up
all my life knowing that the Good Lord made the brush for cows, and
for us brush poppers who chased cows. It didn't seem right,
somehow, that down here where the Brasada was supposed to be the
wooliest brush of all I'd find more sheep than cow critters.

It also shook me some when Ramon talked of
LaSalle County. I had clean forgot that we left out of McMullen
County some time before we got to the river. As far as I could
recollect, it was the first time since I was able to walk that I'd
been outside of McMullen County. And if we had to go just a few
miles on south to find our horses we'd be out of LaSalle and into
Webb County, where the government police kept having such a time
with rustlers working the Brasada. They had just about give up
trying to do anything there, and now there was talk about going
against the government and starting up the Rangers again.

"Jesus," I said, "long as we're down here
anyway, I'd like to hunt up one of them sheep and take a look. If
they make out so good in the brush it may be something to think on.
I mean, they can't be any harder to throw and brand than an old
mossy-horn bull."

"Duster, if you decide to take up sheep
ranching, you let me know. I surely would like to see that," Jesus
said.

"An' I would bring all my oncles and cousins
too," Ramon said.

"What for?" I asked. I couldn't figure out
what they was driving at.

"Duster, you're not only the ugliest gringo
I ever rode with, you're also the dumbest," Jesus said. "Even I
know you don't run sheep the same as cows, an' I don't know nothing
about sheep."

"Now look a-here," I said. "There ain't but
one way to go about working critters in the brush an' it don't make
no difference at all if they got big horns or long hair. You still
got to bust 'em down and brand 'em so's they'll be ready to be
rounded up and sold up by the fella that owns them. There ain't no
way you could pen feed that many animals—not an' make it pay."