early with seventy head of burros. You and Squab pack up and follow along. You better take two horses, Dewey.”
“I’ll take the old sorrel,” Dewey said. “An’ that old bone-spavined dun.”
“Fine,” Hank said. “Well, see you tomorrow, Dewey.”
“‘Night, Hank,” Dewey said.
He heard the boys settling down for the night, rolling over in their blankets on the grass, working the stones and twigs from under their shoulders and hips. Squab came in the back door with an armload of piñon wood, silent as always, making no sound on his moccasins.
“Goin’ in the morning,” Dewey said. “Better sort out eight days provisions now, Squab.”
“Good,” Squab said. “What you need, Dewey?”
Dewey rattled off his list and Squab helped him stack up the groceries beside the table, ready for packing after breakfast. Dewey checked his sourdough keg and made sure he had plenty of salt and pepper. Then he heated some water and propped up the mirror on the stove back and shaved off his week’s beard. He changed into new Levis and shirt and jumper, and lay down on his blankets long after the other boys were asleep. He heard Squab rolling up nearby, fitting his skinny frame to the ground.
“Rough country tomorrow?” Dewey asked sleepily.
Squab said, “Jesus!” and began snoring.
CHAPTER THREE
NEXT MORNING the boys put on thick leather jackets and batwing chaps, and flat little hats with floppy brims and throat latches that snugged firm under their jaws. They shoved piggin strings under right chap legs, and nobody bothered toting a gun. Ropes were wound in tight coils on the saddle fork and were shielded by the right knee. Saddling up, every man laced heavy leather tapaderos over his stirrups to protect his feet. During breakfast Hank gave Dewey a quick run-down on the nature of the work ahead.
“These cattle are renegades,” Hank explained. “Been out here since the year one, a lot of ’em. It ain’t an easy job and it goes like this. . . .”
Jumping a steer, Hank explained, they whipped the little loop out about eighteen inches and laid it right back over the right shoulder. When old bossy hit an open space it was just one quick swing to open a reasonable loop, then squeeze it down as it left the hand. If they caught, fine; if not they’d take off again, winding up rope on the run. The brush was a kind of blackjack oak with little limbs that grew out and then curled inward, so hard you could scarce cut it with a sharp knife. When one of those limbs hooked a boot or shirt, it tore deep. “It’s rough work,” Hank said, “an’ the boys come in hungry, Dewey. Don’t ever just cook enough. Cook more.”
Hank and the boys left after breakfast, driving seventy head of burros and the extra saddle horses. Dewey had an idea and rummaged through the storeroom, found a little sheep bell, and hung it around Benstega’s neck. “Good,” Squab said. “Others won’t leave him, Dewey, this way we hear him easy all the time.”
They packed supplies for eight days and took off, Squab leading and Jim Toddy ambling out first behind Squab’s horse. But inside of twenty steps Jim Toddy stopped abruptly and old Benstega took the lead, the sheep bell tinkling under his neck. Not far down the trail Benstega bent his packbox around an outthrust limb and the other burros repeated that maneuver, stepping exactly in Benstega’s tracks. Dewey realized that a man might be trailing burros and figure he was following maybe two, when there could be six or more. Riding that morning, he watched them closely and began what was to be a long, rewarding—and sometimes maddening—education.
They traveled a wild country where timber grew on the north slopes, piñon and cedar, and ponderosa that went up thirty feet but no more. When they topped out on Wild Horse Mesa the country changed abruptly and sheered off into brush, and Squab led them on a downward trail that headed straight for Jesus into the Black Brush country. Dewey saw the tiny limbs that hooked out and waited to rip holes in a man. It was rough, wild country but it was free and open and clean. No fences, no houses, no people. It made him feel free inside and hope that nothing ever happened to change the sweep of canyons and mountains and endless brush flats.
They hit the regular camp at two o’clock and found it a cleared space above a nice spring that ran off down a ravine and formed a tiny stream. The boys had already killed a beef and hung the four quarters on tree limbs; and far out in the surrounding brush, floating inward once in a while, came the sounds of Hank and the boys chasing cattle. Dewey unpacked the burros and watched them head for a sandy place and take their roll. They went down like a horse but turned over all the way like a cat, and once they were dusted good Benstega led them into the trees where they rubbed necks and backs against the trunks. They were still shedding winter coats and the warming weather probably made their hides itch under the thick hair.
Dewey set up his camp just as he’d done back in New Mexico. He placed two kyack boxes on the ground and put one on top. He stored his flour, suet, and extra pans and pots in the bottom boxes; he kept cold biscuits in the top box for any boy who might come in during working hours with a pulled shoe. A man was always hungry when he had a few minutes to breathe, and Dewey wanted meat and biscuits on tap every hour of the day. Squab gathered flat rocks for the cooking fireplace and from that job headed out to pick up dry wood. Just as Dewey turned to the fresh beef he saw the rider coming down the slope into camp. Squab said, “Indian Tom,” and dropped an armload of wood beside the rocks.
Indian Tom was part of the crew but had just come up from the reservation. He looked Dewey over when Squab introduced them, accepted cold beef and biscuits, and wolfed the food down. He was almost six feet tall and weighed about a hundred and seventy, and he was as bald-headed as any Indian Dewey ever saw. His neck hair was plaited in thin pigtails and Tom wore the ends under his leather jacket and batwing chaps, with big tapaderos on his stirrups. Tom finished his beef, took a swig of water, and rode off without a word of good-by.
“No talker,” Squab said. “Hard worker.”
Dewey nodded and got to work on the beef. He lowered the four quarters and took them down to the spring and washed each one thoroughly, then got his four drawstring canvas sacks and shook them out clean. He didn’t have time to cook a roast for supper, so he put a beef quarter in each bag, laid them on a blanket, and covered them over with spare blankets and pack covers. That kept the meat fairly cool during the day, and at night he would always hang them up in the trees.
Dewey got out the cold beef and biscuits for supper. He built up the fire and had coffee going strong just before the boys rode in from their first day’s work. From today on Dewey would follow a regular cooking schedule. He’d cut meat in the morning, cook dinner and supper together. That way he would always have meat left over from dinner to warm for supper. They never moved meat from one camp to another in this country, so when that time came Dewey would take enough meat for one meal and leave the rest for animals.
When the boys rode in Dewey saw just how tough the job was—fresh rips in jackets and chaps, deep gouge marks on the rounded noses of the tapaderos. They ate and smoked and rolled up in their blankets, all of them dead-tired and half-morose in their weariness. Hank lingered over coffee and finally said, “Get your cuttin’ horse in the morning, Dewey, come on out and see how the work’s done.”
“I’d like that,” Dewey said.
“But you don’ want no part of it,” Hank said. “I’m just warning you.”
Dewey grinned. “I’m the cook, Hank. I reckon that’s true. I might go lally-gagging out there and bust a leg. Anyway, I’ll have a nice roast
