valise. Soon he began to vomit as well and his head ached violently. In midafternoon he quit and lay on the ground in considerable misery. After an hour, feeling fever roast him on a spit of illness, he thought he smelled smoke. He rolled to his other side and scanned the prairie. Yes, there was smoke coming out of a mound of soil – might it be a volcano? A black rectangle suddenly showed in the face of the mound of earth and a figure moved into it and hurled something that sparkled briefly. The figure turned and disappeared into the dark rectangle that he recognized as an open doorway. He began to crawl toward it and when he was only fifty feet away, two horses in a makeshift corral began to whinny and snort. The door opened a crack and Martin Merton Fronk called out “Help,” in a feeble, choked bleat.
“What the blue burnin hell is that?” said a voice and a seven-foot gink with white hair wearing a red shirt and too-short California pants came striding out of the dugout with a Winchester in his hands. He was followed by a shorter, younger man, a bench-legged, bullet-eyed rip with a luxuriant but multicolored beard that blew sideways in the wind.
“Who the hell are you and why the blue tarnation are you creepin up on us? You one a them fellas with a sticky rope admires other folks’ horseflesh?”
“Sick. Can’t walk. Meant no harm.” It seemed funny that they saw evil design in him. The talking made him vomit again.
“Christ, you smell like you been shittin yourself as well as losin your okra.”
“Yes. Sick. Sick.” He said a few words about the cornmeal cakes and the dead horse and the sudden diarrhea.
“You get your water at Twospot? Little pond a water there?”
“Yes.”
“That’s squitter water. It’ll make you want a die, make you think your guts is bein pulled out a your asshole with your mama’s crochet hook, but you won’t die and most gets better and some even drinks that squitter water again and has no ill effects. I done it. Anyways, we got the fix-up for it. Just wait here. You ain’t comin into this camp smellin like shit and puke boiled with skunk cabbage for a week. You lay out here folded up like a empty purse and we’ll bring it to you.”
The cure, as they called it, was a tin cup of brown liquid toned up with some kind of cheap whiskey. He drank it and promptly vomited. The man with the multicolored beard fetched a second dose, which he took in tiny sips, willing it to stay down. When the cup was empty he lay in the grass and closed his eyes.
“Give her a hour or two to work,” said the giant and they disappeared into the dugout.
Near sunset they reappeared with a basin of steaming water and some folded garments. They pulled his noisome shirt and pants from him and poured the basin of hot soapy water over him, threw down a flour-sack towel and advised him to get into the fresh clothes.
“My valise …” he said, pointing back the way he’d come.
The tall man said, “Good idee. Why have him stink up our duds with his squitter shit when he can do what he wants with his own?” He saddled one of the horses and rode in the direction of the creek camp. Martin lay naked and cold on the prairie and began to shiver but at least he was no longer racked with spasms. The multicolored beard brought him a biscuit and some clean water.
Before the sun went down the tall man was back with the valise, which he opened and went through with interest. He tossed a pair of pants to Martin and a striped cotton shirt. Martin asked for his spare underdrawers but the man laughed and closed the case.
“Sonny, no man in Texas wears them. Just slows you down whatever you got in mind. I’n use them for a dishclout.”
They gave him a corner in the dugout and the tall man who said his name was Klattner, late of Arkansas, promised – as soon as he learned there were coffee beans in it – that he’d get Martin’s trunk in the morning.
“We been out a coffee a month. Tried to git a little in Woolybucket but they’re out too and no supply wagon due until June. So your coffee will be appreciated. What damn old Woolybucket needs is a good store. The one they got in Woolybucket now, it’s not no good. There’s a crazy doc half runs it when he ain’t layin on a sofa dead drunk. Couldn’t hit a elephant’s ass with a banjo. Used a have a regular storekeeper, but he lost the emporium to the doc in a game of chance. Doc don’t never order enough coffee, flour, sugar, what-have-you. All last winter no flour and no tabacca. My God, he got in a thousand pound a saleratus and not one teaspoon a flour. We horsewhipped him but it didn’t do no good. Bad as ever.”
“Would his name be Doctor Mugg?”
“It would. You know him?”
“No. I was told he was well-regarded at curing sick folks.”
“I don’t know who told you that but the informant was lyin. Doc Mugg couldn’t cure a ham if you gave it to him in front of a smokehouse. What Doc Mugg needs in the cure line is the water cure – for hisself If I was you I’d get better on my own. Fresh air and whiskey is best and plenty work.”
The multicolored beard chimed in. “If I was you I wouldn’t tie up to Doc Mugg for a minute. He’s filled up the graveyard complete and is startin on another. Why don’t you git his store away from him and run it good – run it honorable. Every man would greet you with hearty goodwill wherever you may go.”
But Martin Fronk had fixed his sights on making a fortune as a cattleman, whether drover or rancher, found the idea of running a store repugnant and said so.
“I spose you want a be a cattleboy,” drawled the multicolored beard whose name was Carrol Day, a curiously feminine name, thought Martin, not yet acquainted with the bearded Marions, Fannys and Abbys of Texas who, saddled by their unthinking mothers with dainty names, built savagely masculine frames of character.
“I believe I’m too old to be a boy again of any kind.”
“Age don’t matter. Some a the pertest cowboys is pushin seventy summers. Lookit old Whitey here,” nodding at the tall man who was wrapping rawhide around the helve and head of an axe. “He’s most eighty and he’s more cowboy than any ten ordinaries.”
“He’s a cowboy?”
“Hell yes. Been up the trail to Montana what, twenty times?”
“Twenty-two. And that was enough. It’s too cold up there. Snows all summer. You git paid there’s no place to spend your money. Just turn around and come back to Texas.”
“What about Miles City? What about Cheyenne? What about Denver? I understand you paid them towns a visit on your return journeys many a time.”
“My money was gettin too heavy. Anyway, Martin here don’t want a be no cowboy or no storekeeper. I’n see he’s got bigger ideas in mind.”
“I was thinking about the stock-driving business.”
Both men began to scream with laughter. Carrol got down on the dirt floor and rolled, moaning, “Oh my sweet cabbage patch, ‘the stock-drivin business.’”
“You idiot,” said Klattner. “Make it in the stock-drivin business, you got to know cows like you know your own tweedle-dee. You got to have cowboyed, got to know the markets and men. You have to sweet-talk crazy farmers and handle Indans. We just got burned alive, me and Whitey, in the stock-drivin business. Stampedes, Indan troubles, blueburnin
