by Rod Miller
Rawhide Robinson stopped to sip his coffee and contemplate the continuation of his anecdote. Soon enough, anxious sailors spurred him on, with a range of encouragements, exhortations, and downright threats.
“Calm down, boys,” the cowboy said after another sip of steaming joe. “I’ll get to it.” He studied the bubbles floating atop the coffee mug until tension in the mess was as taut as the latigo on a roping horse, then he talked on.
“I was in that country one time, punchin’ cows for an outfit in Nevada Territory. The ranch lay right against the east face of the Sierras, and in summer we pushed the herds up onto the slopes to graze in the high country.
“The cattle that ranch ran was a mixed bunch—some havin’ been driven up from Texas, others down from the Oregon country, and still others from old Spanish and Mexican herds over in Californ—”
“Enough!” some anxious sailor shouted.
“What about horses?” someone said. “You said you were going to tell us about horses!”
“Who cares about cows?” another asked.
“Nobody!” came the answer.
“Get on with it!” came a chorus of restless voices.
Rawhide Robinson again assessed his coffee, then said, “Take it easy, boys. No need to boil over like foam on a warm beer. Sit back and relax and I’ll get to it.”
“Get to it then!”
“All right, all right. Here’s the deal. I was up in them Sierras hunting lost cows after fall roundup. All on my lonesome, which ain’t all that unusual in them circumstances. But I have since wished I’d had a saddle pal along. Not that I couldn’t handle the work, understand. Just that it would have been nice to have a witness to what I seen. Nobody believed it then, and nobody’s believed it since.”
Again the cowboy paused to check the level in his coffee cup.
And, again, sailor voices rose in unison to urge him on.
“Thing is—and I ain’t ashamed to say it—I got lost. I was following this one cow track up a canyon, you see. It got steeper and narrower to the point I could reach out on either side and grab hold of bushes and rocks and tree limbs. Which was a good thing, for it was so steep I was liftin’ that horse and me up the hill as much as he was—when I wasn’t keepin’ us from slippin’ and slidin’ back down the slope, that is.
“After wearin’ ourselves to a frazzle, we broke out into this little valley. I’d never seen it before, and as difficult as it was to get there, I doubt many others had, either. It was your typical high-country valley—a pretty little lake out in the middle, grassy meadows painted with wildflowers, clumps of trees here and there. And all around, mountainsides as steep as the canyon my horse and I climbed out of to get there. It was as pretty a place as you could imagine.
“Well, we wandered across that little valley and around that little lake till we found the creek that drained it. I let that horse drink his fill then piled off and buried my own nose in that clear, cold wate—”
“*&%#!” some sailor said. “Get on with it! What about the horses?”
“I’m gettin’ to it. Just calm yourself,” Rawhide Robinson said. “Now, where was I? Anyways, I loosened the cinch and pulled the bridle off that horse so he could graze on that tender grass that was brushing his belly—I weren’t afeared of him goin’ anywhere as there wasn’t anywhere to go—and propped myself against the trunk of a tree to take in the scenery and maybe inspect the insides of my eyelids for leaks.
“As I studied the mountainsides around that valley, I got to noticing my horse wasn’t the only one of his kind thereabouts. I counted twenty, maybe twenty-five head of equines on them slopes. There might have been more, but they wasn’t all that easy to see on account of their hides were of a mousy blue-gray grulla color that blended right in with them granite mountains.
“Being an aficionado of horseflesh, I thought I’d catch me up one of them animals to add to my string. So, I pulled my rope off the saddle and set out to sneak up on and snare one. They was a bit skittish, but I managed to work my way close to one. But, soon as I got a lariat’s length away, that horse took off, mane and tail unfurled like a flag. Same with the next one, and the next one. I parked my carcass on a rock and watched them for a while, determined to determine where I might set a trap for one.
“As I got to studyin’ them steeds I saw the darndest thing I ever did see when it comes to horseflesh.”
Again the cowboy paused, much to the chagrin of the spectators, and moseyed—taking his own sweet time about it—to the coffee urn for a refill. Prodded by the protestations of his audience, he eventually settled into his accustomed squat against the bulkhead, relaxed into the rocking of the ship on the sea, and continued.
“Them horses, see, was so accustomed to living on them steep slopes that the legs on one side of them—the uphill side—was shorter than the legs on the other side—the downhill side.”
“Oh, pshaw!” came a protest.
“Twaddle!” came another.
And, “Nonsense!”
And again, “Baloney!”
“Balderdash!”
“Bosh!”
The cowboy waited for the many and varied expressions of disbelief to subside.
“It’s the truth, boys, as sure as I’m sittin’ here. Them horses was so accustomed to them slopes and sidehills they adapted themselves to the terrain. And, watching them, I can tell you there ain’t never been no horse nowhere as well adjusted to their occupation as them Sierra sidehill horses. They could scurry around the slopes so fast you couldn’t keep up on three regular horses. They was surefooted as a spider on a ceiling—never a misstep, never a slip, never a slide. Now and then I’d spook a bunch of them with no thought but to admire their locomotion.
“They could angle up, they could angle down, they could circumnavigate the mountain so fast they was back before you even knew they were gone. Around and around and around they’d go, up and down and around.
“But then I got to noticing that while there were horses going both directions, each horse could only go one way, depending on which way his legs was built. If he wanted to get somewheres behind where he was, he’d have to go clear around the mountain to get there—which didn’t amount to much difficulty for them, on account of they was so quick about it.
“Watching them like that, I figured out how to go about gettin’ a loop on one of them—I set me a trap. What I did was, I spooked a bunch of them around the mountain on a downhill course and whilst they was goin’ ’round the other side I hid out in a cluster of rocks above where I figured they’d pass by when they came back. I shook out a loop and waited about two beats of a bat’s wing and lo and behold, here they come.
“I backhanded as fine a hooleyann as ever you did see and that loop settled around the neck of the horse I was aiming for. I pulled up the slack and scrambled out of that rockpile, wrapped that rope around my backside, dug in my heels and sat on it. That horse dragged me a rod or two before givin’ it up and I drove him on down the slope to the meadow—took us two trips around the mountain to do it, but by the time we did it I had him broke to lead.
“ ’Tweren’t no trouble at all, till we got to the bottom.”
Yet again, Rawhide Robinson paused in his peroration. And again, the assembled sailors protested until he resumed.
“Boys, you can imagine what the problem was. Surefooted as that Sierra sidehill horse was on the slopes, he was as useless as a whistle on a plow when on flat ground. Couldn’t stay upright at all. Soon as he’d take a step, why, he’d tip right over!”
“So what did you do?” came a query.
“Well, there weren’t nothin’ I could do, except slide that steed over against a slope where he could stay upright. Then I swatted him on the rump with my thirteen-gallon hat and, with a tear in my eye, watched him tear across that sidehill slick as a trout in a water trough.”
“So what you’re saying, cowboy,” one of the sailors said, “is that these Sierra sidehill horses you bragged on so much is
basically useless.”
“Oh, you’d think so. But I’ve thought about it and think not,” Rawhide Robinson said.
“Well, what are they good for, then?”
Rawhide Robinson tipped his hat back and adopted a more serious demeanor.
“I aim to go back there. I aim to catch me up another one of them Sierra sidehill horses—one that goes around the mountain to the left. Then, I’ll catch me one that travels right. Then, I’ll hitch them together nice and tight. That way, they’ll prop each other up on the short side, you see.
“Between the two of them, they’ll be as good as three ordinary horses.”
Silence permeated the mess as the sailors cogitated on the thought. Then, as if on cue, a chorus of perfectly synchronized voices erupted with a voluble and vociferous “@*#&$%!”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
* * *
After a month at sea—more or less, as he had given up any attempt to differentiate the stultifying sameness of days—Rawhide Robinson was hungry. Oh, not that there wasn’t plenty to eat aboard the USS Cordwood. The stores were well stocked, the galley always busy, and tables in the mess laden with food.
Accustomed as he was to the monotony of chuckwagon and bunkhouse food—beef and bacon, biscuits and beans, with the occasional addition of raisins in huckydummy or with rice in spotted pup, and the rare dried apple pie—he had to admit seafaring fare offered more variety.
There were salt pork and salt beef by the barrel. Peas, pickles, and potatoes. Rice. Cheese. The occasional onion or turnip. Sauerkraut. And, an offering not available—even banned—on a cattle drive or at the ranch, a daily dose of stimulating spirits in the form of a rum ration.
Still, shipboard sustenance, all boiled to mush, was—and Rawhide Robinson mined the hollows of his mind for the right word—bland. Or was it banal? Humdrum, perhaps? Or insipid? In the end, he opted for plain dull.
For despite the monotony of the cowboy menu, the cook—call him cookie, coosie, cocinero, sourdough, dough belly, dough roller, dough wrangler, biscuit shooter, belly cheater, bean master, sop n’ taters, hash slinger, pot rustler, or kitchen mechanic—knew, without fail, his way around a chili pepper. Ranch and chuckwagon fare, having originated in Texas and the Southwest where Mexican cuisine was common, involved piquant peppers and assorted south-of-the-border seasonings that added vim and vigor. The resultant cowboy palate—those parts of it not perpetually scorched by repeated applications of hot peppers—appreciated flavorsome fare.
And so Rawhide Robinson, sitting and stirring a bland bowl of boiled something or other whilst fantasizing about chili stew, welcomed the interruption when Ensign Ian Scott stormed into the mess.
“Come along, Mister Rawhide! There’s something you must see!”
The cowboy put the quirt to shank’s mare and hastened after the excited officer, wondering what unlikely image interrupted the endless sea. As he followed young Ian forward (or fo’ard, in sailor speak), he saw a smudge on the horizon. Two of them, in fact, rising from the water.
“What is it?”
“The Strait of Gibraltar!”
“I see,” Rawhide Robinson said. He had read of the place somewhere, sometime, but his knowledge of it would not fill half a page in the tiny tally book in his vest pocket. “What about it?”
“It’s the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea!”
Rawhide Robinson attempted to muster some excitement at the announcement, but his blank look informed the ensign that a modicum of education was in order.
“You see that pinnacle starboard off the bow? That’s the Rock of Gibraltar. Europe! The other eminence, to port, is a mountain called Jebel Musa. That’s in Africa!”
“I see,” the cowboy said, his interest piqued. He tipped back his thirteen-gallon hat and said, “I’m sure there’s a story about that.”
“Many, many tales,” Ensign Ian gushed. “The Strait has a long and storied history in seafaring lore. The Greeks, who knew the Strait from the opposite side, said the god Hercules pried the Atlas Mountains apart there. They called the Rock and Jebel Musa the Pillars of Hercules.”
“Must have been something, this fellow Hercules.”
“Indeed. There are books written about his escapades—not so different from yours, I may say. They say Hercules posted a notice at the pillars warning off ships: ‘Nothing lies beyond,’ he said. You see, the Greeks believed the Strait marked the end of the earth. The Romans thought so, too, designating the Strait on their charts as the entrance to Hades.”
“I can see that, given the nature of the scenery I’ve seen these past weeks,” the cowboy said. “Seemed like Hades in more ways than one.”
“Well, we’ll soon be in different waters. I had better get busy. Preparations are already underway.”
“Preparations? What preparations? Why not just sail right through?”
“With luck, that’s what we will do. But it can be treacherous. The Strait is narrow—barely eight nautical miles in places. And the steep sides of Europe and Africa funnel the winds through there at high speed. The current, too. We’ll hold to the center, where the water tends to flow eastward, as much as we can. But, unless I miss my guess, there will be winds to deal with.”
Ensign Ian Scott’s prediction proved prescient. While the USS Cordwood was able to find favorable current flowing eastward, a stiff wind from the Mediterranean roared through the Strait. Once the sails and course were set and the sailors well situated to carry out their assignments, Ensign Ian rejoined the spectating cowboy in the wind-whipped fo’c’sle (which Rawhide Robinson, prior to his shipboard schooling in sailor lingo, read in books as “forecastle” and incorrectly iterated each and every syllable).
From his station, the cowboy and his companion could observe the action on the ship and enjoy an unobstructed view of the approaching Strait.
“As you have no doubt observed over the passing weeks, Mister Robinson, a sailing ship usually moves forward by sailing somewhat side to side; crossing at an angle, repeatedly, the desired direction.”
“Well, I did wonder about all the wandering, but I never could make no sense of it. ’Course one direction seemed as good as another on all this water. Worse than trying to trail cattle across the empty plains in Indian Territory, where everything looks alike. So, if weren’t for the sun you could go ’round and around in circles and not even know it. I guess I figured it was the same with you-all—you were trying to keep the ship on the trail, but kept losing it.”
As the winds picked up, the ship angled into it, then later came about to take on the opposite angle. “Not quite, sir,” the ensign said. “It’s the wind, not the sea. Seldom does it blow steady in the direction you wish to sail, allowing you to ‘run with the wind’ as we say. So it is necessary to ‘tack’—set the sails and rudder so the wind pushes the ship in the general direction of travel. You sail at that angle for a time, then use the rudder and set the sails to turn the ship; still in the general direction of travel, but angling across it in the opposite direction from before.”
Rawhide Robinson lifted his lid and scratched his head and contemplated the notion of tacking. “I reckon I can see how it works. You could trail a beef herd the same way, but it would take a whole lot longer to get where you was goin’.”
“True enough. But with a sailing ship, there’s no alternative to tacking. Often the only way to get where you’re going is to go what seems the wrong way, as the alternative is going nowhere.”
Again, the cowboy contemplated the finer points of seamanship as the ship once again changed its tack. “How do you know when to turn?”
“Experience. Seamanship. It’s what makes a man a sailor. Captain Clemmons excels at the art. Sailing into the wind, as we are, requires a master’s hand. The idea is to close haul as much as possible—”
“Haul?”
Scott kneaded his chin as he considered a translation. “Heading up into the wind is most difficult. As the ship changes tack, it reaches a point where the wind is
straight on and the sails are useless. ‘In irons,’ we call it, or in the ‘no-go zone.’ If the ship isn’t moving fast enough to maintain momentum through the zone, you’re dead in the water. So, the angle of your tack is critical. ‘Close hauling’ means sailing into the wind at the sharpest angle possible while maintaining enough speed to tack through the no-go zone.”
Rawhide Robinson screwed his hat down tight in the ever-increasing wind and spread his legs to maintain balance in ever-rougher seas. Boiled mush sloshed around inside like the waves outside. “Don’t sound none too easy,” he said, swallowing hard in an attempt to counterattack the rising contents of an uneasy stomach.
“It isn’t. But Captain Clemmons will get us through.”
And indeed he did.
Later, in the calmer waters of the Mediterranean, weary sailors relaxed on deck. Rawhide Robinson sat with them, as still as possible, as his stomach had yet to recover from the high winds and rough water of the recent passage. Impressed though the rest of him was with the majesty of the Strait of Gibraltar, his digestive system was less than enthralled.
One sailor, still mopping sweat from a sparkling brow, said, “Mighty high seas for these waters. Last time I sailed the Strait, the waves weren’t so rough.”
“Tossed us about a mite, they did,” said another.
Still another said, “The wind—that &*#$ wind—liked to blow me right out of the rigging!”
The conversation turned, as such conversations often do, to recollections of past challenges equal to or greater than the recent difficulties. Rawhide Robinson heard stories of gales that shredded sails, winds that shattered masts, a wind so stiff a ship sailed backward for two days and a night, and even a questionable account of a gust that plucked the feathers from seabirds.
“Aw, shucks, boys,” Rawhide Robinson said to fill a lull in the discussion. “You ain’t never seen wind. I mean a real wind.”
