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 equipment here. We’ll be back for another round of provisions before we take off for Cherry Creek, that’s our first stop on the general roundup. Now we’re leaving 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