held kraut. He added a cup of sugar and then flour until he had a thin batter. He set the keg on the hot water reservoir and clamped the wooden lid down tight. The lid had two cleats on top and side handles, so when packing it, the pack cover fitted down over the keg and the diamond hitch held it snug all the way.
Dewey had to keep the keg warm all night. He got up at two and made sure the sourdough was warm. Whenever it started working—some folks called it rotting—it was on the road and would be ready for making biscuits in another twenty-four to thirty-six hours, depending on weather conditions. If the weather was rainy and damp, it took sourdough twelve to twenty-four hours longer to work than in bright, warm times.
Next morning the boys brought in sixty head of burros from surrounding hills and canyons. Dewey wondered what in hell they wanted with so many burros, but the best way to learn was keep his mouth shut and listen. He watched the boys feed each burro a quart of oats and half a pound of cotton-seed cake; next morning those burros were right in camp, johnny-on-the-spot, braying and bawling for more. Then Raymond told Dewey that after being fed that way three or four days, the burros would always come back here.
That night Dewey made sourdough biscuits along with a big beef roast. The boys ate everything and yelled for more. They were talking easy with him by then, for they knew he could handle the cooking job, and he was on time with meals when they rode in tired and hungry. Driver Gobet said, “Dewey, where’d you learn to cook?”
“All over,” Dewey said. “When I was a kid in Texas, then on shows and around cow outfits.”
“Raymond was sayin’ you rode and bulldogged,” Jim Thornhill said. “You ever stick a bronc till the last whistle?”
Dewey grinned and took a seat on the doorstep facing the others who were sprawled out on the grass with their coffee cups and after-supper smokes. “I stuck a few,” he said, “but I sure been in plenty of balloon ascensions.”
“Was you ever at Prescott?” George Spradley said. “I was there four years back.”
“Not that year,” Dewey said. “But I hit the show two years ago.”
“When’d you start bronc ridin’ and bulldogging like that?” Driver Gobet asked.
“I was thirteen,” Dewey Jones said. “My older brother was on a show; I run off and joined him.”
“It sure always sounded to me like a good life,” Spradley said. “That big prize money and all that travel.”
Dewey Jones looked at them, and through them, down the lost years at all the shows and the money that came and went so fast, at the broken bones and the broke spells when a man tightened his belt and hoped for luck in the next town. They saw that life with the eyes of anyone who did not know, and he saw it as he had lived it, and he could not lie to them.
“No,” Dewey Jones said gently. “It ain’t a good life, George. I been at it, off and on, for sixteen years, an’ I got off the train in Holbrook with a dollar and eighty cents to my name. There’s a few boys can make it pay, but most of us have got to work half the year to make enough money to catch the next big show and do some more hoping again. If I had any sense I’d quit.”
“You goin’ back?” Raymond asked.
“I figure,” Dewey Jones said, “on hittin’ the Las Vegas, New Mexico show right off this job. I’ll give it a good try. If I don’ finish in the money I ought to be old enough to get some of that sense.”
“I rode at Prescott,” George Spradley said. “Four summers ago. I figured I knew one end of a bronc from the other, Dewey. I sure found out different. Them boys are really good.”
“You get that way,” Dewey Jones said. “For whatever it means or what it’s worth.”
Hank wandered off to the storeroom and came back with a thirty-foot length of new lariat rope cut from the big coil. He sat down beside Dewey and began working the rope, kneading out the bigger kinks. All day long the boys had been shoeing horses and greasing chaps and repairing saddles, cutting off fresh ropes, getting them stretched between trees to remove the kinks. Hank started making the honda in his new rope and Driver Gobet worked on the turkhead knot in the end that was tied to the saddle horn. They hadn’t shaved in a week; they were paring down to hard working weight, getting browner from sun and wind, rubbing the new blue off their Levi jumpers and pants. And with that, they had accepted Dewey as one of the outfit. Just talking tonight, he knew, kidding him about bronc riding and asking questions, showed how they felt. It was funny how a man could work anywhere in the West and feel right at home. “Them was good biscuits,” Hank said, fingers working on his honda. “What’s your recipe, Dewey?”
“’bout like anybody’s,” Dewey said. “You want to know?”
“Sure,” Jim Thornhill said. “I got just one belly. Sometimes I wonder what I’m shoveling into it.”
Dewey Jones smiled into his chest and started talking, “Well, whenever I get my sourdough to working into a reasonable thick batter and it smells a lot like it’s already been eat, I take out whatever I want and of course put back the same amount of flour into the keg, and pour some lukewarm water into the keg, then a spoonful of sugar, stir it good, and keep it in the sunshine. Then I take soda and salt and put that in some flour, and mix it good so the soda don’t cake and make brown spots in my baked biscuits. I take my hand and run out a hole in the bowlful, make a bird-nest, pour the sourdough in there, work it into the dry flour until it gets hard enough to handle without sticking, then lay it on the board and work hell out of it with my hands, maybe work in a little more dry flour, choke the biscuits out from the doughstack and jam ’em in the oven pretty close together. Then I dip my hand in grease and pat the tops, and let them raise about thirty to forty minutes, get about three to three and a half inches thick. Then I’ve kept my Dutch oven on the fire all this time to get hot, and I put the lid back with some live coals on top. I found out that whenever you set the oven onto live coals, be sure and bank up around it or air’ll make the coals flare up and burn two or three biscuits and the others don’t seem to get more than just done on the bottom. When the biscuits are done—that oughta take about thirty minutes over a slow fire—I take my ganch hook and raise the lid, and if they ain’t brown on top, put on a shovelful of coals and let them go a few minutes more. Then raise the lid and yell for them ignorant cowboys to come and get it.”
“And that’s all?” Jim Thornhill said innocently.
“Sure,” Dewey said. “Nothin’ to it.”
“You do the cooking,” Thornhill said. “I’ll just stick to the simple work.”
Everybody laughed and got ready for bed. Dewey went into the kitchen and felt pretty good inside and out. Sometimes a man never got close to a new outfit, and other times he was made to feel at home within a few days. He was still the tenderfoot on this outfit, but the boys liked his cooking and had no complaints about his behavior. That was enough to sleep solid on, and work through the next day while the boys finished shoeing and repairing equipment. After supper that night Hank came to the kitchen for a cup of coffee and sat on the woodbox awhile before unloading his mind to Dewey.
“Well,” Hank said. “We go south and east in the morning, into the Black Brush country. We’ll be gone eight days, but somebody’ll be here every day and can bring you anything you might forget.”
“Any corrals out there for bronc breaking?” Dewey asked.
“No,” Hank said. “So just as well leave your
