by Jake Logan
“I can do that easy enough. I knew you were uneasy about that part. Jake never did say he was wonderful.”
“He damn sure didn’t. I took a herd to Abilene once and the damn cowboys played so many tricks on the Chinese cook he quit and walked off. I had to run him down, give him a raise, and make them promise not to pull no more tricks on that bunch.
“He said, ‘Good. Cowboys no more play jokes on me. Me no more pissy in soup.’ ”
“Oh, my God. What did they do?”
“Said no more tricks on him. On another drive, I fired one cook three days out of San Antonio and cooked myself all the way to Fort Worth.”
“You get one there?”
“Damn right, and hugged his neck.”
“You’ve had your share.”
“Worst one was going to Wyoming with stocker cattle. The cook broke his leg. Got run over by his own wagon when the mules bolted at seeing a buffalo. We all had to help him and he was the fussiest old SOB I ever tried to work for.”
“Where will we get a good cook?” she asked.
“We can backtrack and find that last Indian woman, Hoosie, who fed us a meal by the road. I’m sure she’d like to be up here with a pack of horny boys and some good pay.”
Katy laughed, “I bet she would.”
“All right, let’s go have some of his food.” He stood up and stretched.
She rushed around the small table and kissed him. “You know we only did it once so far today. You must be rested.”
He kissed her harder, then winked at her. “I must be really depriving you.”
She narrowed her eyes in a frown. “What in the hell does that mean?”
“Not letting you have all you need.”
She hugged his waist. “Yes, that’s it.”
“We’ll get caught up when we get this cow camp in shape.”
“Good.”
He needed to appraise the horse herd too. Evaluate his crew and learn where the cattle were drifting. And decide how many more hands he needed to hire to hold them on the lease’s perimeters. Having Katy with him would make for some good recreation. If the dugout wasn’t the place, then they had the whole prairie to use for their bedroom.
The hands were riding in and dismounting, looking weary and then half-shocked at the sight of Katy.
One whistled behind his horse, unsaddling. “She the new boss?”
“Who’s she?”
“Damned if I know, but she ain’t hard to look at.”
“Hell no. But I bet he’s the new boss?”
Slocum walked over to where all the unsaddling was taking place. “Gents, my name is Slocum. I’m the new boss.” He began shaking hands and registering faces and names.
Tuffy—red mustache. Alex—short and bowlegged. Kelsy—facial scar. Herbert—pock faced. Peter—the kid. Wolf—gray mustache. Shooter—the one with the Mexican straw sombrero. Darby—wore a derby. And Frank—wore glasses. They were looking around for someone called Bronc who had not came in so far.
Blue, the quiet horse wrangler, was an Indian youth. He gathered up the horses and drove them out to the herd.
“That’s Katy,” Slocum added. “After you wash up and we eat, then we’ll sit around and take this operation apart. Since we’ve got all summer to do this job, you be thinking what we’re doing right and the things we’re doing wrong.”
“Kinda unusual. Bronc ain’t come in. I saw him about noontime. He was fine,” Frank said.
“He ain’t here after supper, we can saddle some horses and go find him,” Slocum told them.
“Yeah, we better.”
Slocum sent Katy through the line first, and went through himself second. There were frijoles—pretty watery to him—some canned corn, and overcooked biscuits, and that was all. No dessert.
O’ Hare and his helper, a mentally handicapped boy called Screwball, dished it out. Slocum wondered what else they ate at their meals. The men shoveled it in without much being said, but it wasn’t the most appetizing nor wholesome meal Slocum had ever endured in a camp.
Under her breath, Katy said, “If Maw fed this slop to her cowboys, they’d all whup her ass.”
He nodded.
When he finished his plate and walked over to give it to Screwball to dump in the tub of hot water, he asked what they’d have for breakfast.
“Same as always. Oatmeal.”
“Thanks,” he said.
O’ Hare never asked them if they wanted seconds, and he simply dumped the remains off the slope in the grass. One of the cowboys pointed that out to Slocum behind the cook’s back and Slocum nodded that he saw him do it. Hellfire, Austin was damn lucky he had this many cowboys still on the payroll.
“What’re you going to feed Bronc when he comes in?” Slocum asked O’Hare.
“He knows when we eat around here. He can catch up at breakfast.”
“O’ Hare, we’re gonna make some changes around here. And you better listen.”
“Cram it up your ass, you didn’t hire me anyway. I work for Austin, not you or that whore you brung up here.”
Slocum’s fist caught O’Hare under the jaw in a haymaker, lifted him off his boot soles, and sprawled him out on his back. “Load up and get the hell out of here in five minutes or you’ll be pushing up daisies.”
“I don’t work for you.”
“You don’t work here either. Now get your things and get out of here or I’m going to plant your ass.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“There ain’t no seeing about nothing. Get out of my cow camp.”
Every hand was on his feet and watched every move they made. In a few minutes, O’ Hare had his war bag loaded and was hiking east for town. The sun was deep in the west and the prairie looked on fire in the orange light.
“Couple of you boys catch up some horses and ride out in the last direction Bronc was seen. He may be hurt or pinned down somewhere. If you don’t find him, we’ll all go look again in the morning.”
“Who’s cooking in the morning?” Katy asked.
“Ma’am, I’d sure help you,” Pete, the kid, offered.
“Don’t leave me out, ma’am,” Shooter said, bent over sweeping his boot toes with his sombrero.
“Sounds to me like you have all kinds of help, Katy.”
“We’ll see how well we can do then.” She shook her head.
“Darling, anyone could beat that old, stinking billy goat at food preparation.”
Four hands rode out in the twilight searching for their compadre. Slocum hoped the man was simply walking in rather than hurt.
“Let’s sleep out on the prairie tonight. I ain’t much on caves,” Katy said. “And if we’re going to stay out here, find me a wall tent, huh?”
“I’ll give you the money to buy one when you go look for that woman Hoosie on the road tomorrow.”
“I’ll find her.” She swung on his arm. “I bet you want to stay up to see if they find him. By the way, how bad does your hand hurt from hitting that damn guy?”
“It’ll be fine.”
“Sure. Why, I bet you can’t stir pancake mix in the morning with it.”
He laughed at her. “We’ll see.”
The ranch hands came back in an hour. Bronc’s horse had stuck a front leg in an animal burrow and broken his leg. The cowboy was fine, but packing his gear on his shoulder had slowed him way down. He appeared to be in good spirits and thanked Slocum for worrying about him.
“And for firing the Irish pig as well.”
They all cheered. Someone found a few cold biscuits for Bronc.
“Let’s get some sleep,” Slocum told them. “The new supplies will be here in the morning and we’ll start cooking with oak wood in a couple of days.”
He trudged off to where Katy had spread the bedroll, far enough away that the help didn’t have to hear their pleasures. When he was undressed and in the bedroll, she scooted her small heinie up against his flank. She reached around and then inserted him inside her.
> His calloused hand squeezed her right breast and she sucked in more air. In a second she rolled over on her belly. He was raised up on his knees enough so he didn’t crush her and began pouring the fire into her. Then they swapped places and she rode his pole.
“Let me under you,” she asked. “I want to really feel you when you come tonight.”
They switched and he was back inside of her giving her a race for her money. Her strong legs encircled him and she raised her ass off the blankets to meet his charges. At last he came hard, and she wilted a like flower in 110 degree heat. Sprawled out, she mumbled. “Good . . . night.”
He was wondering about the Hudson brothers. He’d get word one day, find them, and even that score for his buddy. Katy rolled over and then inserted him in her. “You want to poke me. . . .”
He wrapped around her and wondered how much more he must do to get this cow camp working. A coyote yapped close by, and he studied the stars on the north sky. There would be lots of nights like this one before they gathered up and shipped his cattle. Damn, they had to cook in the morning. He better get some shut-eye.
The next dawn when Katy wasn’t looking, Slocum whipped up her batter with his left hand; the right one hurt like hell. He knew better than to punch a man in the face like that, but when that bastard had called Katy a whore, he couldn’t stand it. She may be a nymphomaniac and a wild woman, but he wouldn’t put up with anyone calling her a whore.
The hands helped keep the cooking range stoked with dry chips and the heat up. Darby sliced the bacon and sharpened every knife in the kitchen area. Some of the others fried the meat, and when the stack of pancakes reached the sky, they ate and drank Screwball’s coffee. Which was good. They gorged themselves till they were full, then ate some more and bragged on Katy’s cooking.
She beamed like a possum. Then he told them that she was going to order herself a tent in town and find a nicelooking Indian woman to cook for them who knew how to cook well.
The hands washed the dishes and Slocum saddled Katy’s mare, then had the wrangler find her a gentle horse for the Indian woman to ride back. They took an extra saddle out of the supply wagon and saddled him. With his .30-caliber spare six-gun for protection, Katy rode off and promised to be back by dark.
Walking Bird and the supplies arrived, and Slocum and Screwball, the mentally handicapped helper, unloaded it with the teamster. When the teamster had gone back to town, they set into baking some potatoes for supper. There was some butter in the goods, and after washing the potatoes, they rubbed them in butter and rolled them in coarse salt, then put them in a Dutch oven with ashes under and over it to cook all day. He explained to the boy how to keep the heat even all day. He found some sourdough starter and charged it with sugar so he’d have some ready to go after he made bread for supper. There was part of a deer left hanging under some wet canvas to keep it cool. They deboned a lot of it to cook for supper, then cut up several onions to fry with the meat later. For their noon meal, they had some of the venison fried with onion, and the boy grinned. “Gawdamn, that’s real food. Guess O’Hare never knew how to make it.”
“He knew. He was just damn lazy. And after lunch, you go downstream and take a bath and wash your clothes, ’cause that Indian woman won’t let you around her smelling like you ain’t wiped your ass in a month.”
“Me know bath.”
“Good. After you get done eating, go do it.”
“It Saturday night?”
“No, it’s bath for you night.”
“Me do it. My father, he won’t come back?”
“Was O’Hare your father?” Damn, he’d never considered that. “Did he say so?” There was a resemblance between the two of them, Slocum noted.
“Me don’t know.” The boy shrugged like the question was too hard.
“Well, we’ll take care of you.”
“Wash dishes? Take bath?”
“I’ll wash ’em. You go bathe and scrub them clothes. Let them dry.”
While his bread baked, Slocum visited with Blue, the quiet Indian youth who herded the horses. He learned there were four to five horses per hand. That way they didn’t need to feed them grain, using them only a few days out of the week. Only a handful of tender-footed ones needed to be shod, especially up there where there wasn’t a rock to be found in a section of land. Blue said he had a few that needed to be culled. Three were wind-broke and couldn’t do much cow work before they went to heaving for breath, and two had shin splints, a painful bone condition in their front legs that made them cripple.
He’d need to spend some of Austin’s money for more saddle horses. The boys complained like all cowboys do about there being too much real estate for the cattle to go over for the hands they had to keep them in this district. He intended to ride with some of them when Katy got back and learn more about the range. In the dead foreman’s daybook, it showed 3,500 head were delivered in several bunches in late April to the site. But for some bunches he had not made a detailed delivery number, so there was no telling how many steers they had lost or that had disappeared. Most of the cattle he’d seen were doing well, reaching back to lick a circle where it itched, which told him they were really gaining weight. All of them had been re-branded with a Triple A brand on the right, the old brand on them having been vented. Hard to tell about the ears. They had been notched by the previous owners. They ranged from roans to whiteface, a lot less of the old longhorns, but there were some calico colors among them too. Most were two years old, which meant the few younger ones had another summer to build frame. Some had age on them, and Austin probably got them for nothing. Austin knew cattle and was a real hand at bunching them at sale time. But before they did that in late fall, Slocum would need fifty more solid cow ponies and a half dozen more hands.
The crew drifted back in late afternoon and went to sniffing down the aroma of sourdough bread. Soon Slocum got out two loaves of it and a sharp butcher knife, then a pound of some homesteader’s wife’s butter that she’d probably bartered for food at the store, and he turned them loose. The whole crew sipped fresh, hot coffee and put away his fresh bread.
“Things are damn sure looking up in this outfit, especially when it comes to eating. Hell, even Screwball smells better,” the Kid—Pete—said and they all laughed.
They had beans that had cooked all day, flavored with onions, some chili, and lots of fried bacon, plus the bread. They really dug in while he kept an eye out for Katy and the new cook. Sundown came and they still weren’t back, but he attributed that to the fact that the Indian woman might have needed to pack her things.
Slocum, Screwball, and two cowboys who had lost the draw the night before were up long before dawn lighting the cow chips to cook over, making pancakes and individual fried fruit pies for the men to carry with them. Things were getting along fine till someone shouted, “Skunk!”
One thing a cowboy hates is skunks in camp. They’d all heard stories about drovers being bitten in their sleep by a rabid skunk and dying in a living hell. For another thing, when they shot the animals, the dead ones usually left the camp smelling bad or had pissed all over their gear or bedding.
Soon a dozen pistol shots went off, and when Slocum went outside in the purple light before the sun came up to see what had happened, the gagging aroma of the damn skunk filled the air.
“How many were there?” he asked.
“Two,” someone piped up. “They must have been breeding to smell that bad.”
Everyone laughed, but they went around light-footed in case the whole family was there. No one had gotten directly hit by the spray, but the odor was strong in the air.
“Hell, even the pancakes have absorbed the odor,” Darby complained, forking in the last of his breakfast at the table, and they all laughed.
“I guess we better throw away these fried fruit pies we made,” Slocum said.
“Hell no,” came the chorus. “Skunk or no skunk, we can eat ’em.”
In a short while, Screwball was washing th
e dishes. Blue was busy catching horses for the men in the rope corral. Each man in his turn gave Blue the name of the horse he wanted for the day, and he tossed a loop over its head, then handed him the lead. Slocum was planning on going looking for his women since they hadn’t come in as promised.
“I’m going to find them females, so supper may be on your own tonight. They should have been back by now.”
Several men agreed with him.
“Darby, you will be in charge if I ain’t back by dark. You have Screwball boil some frijoles. He can do that. And there’s some more sourdough bread.”
“We can handle it.”
Blue caught Slocum’s horse, and Slocum saddled him, then headed east. No sign of the women on the road, though he did pass the wood man and told him they’d unload it in the evening when the hands got back. The plain-faced red man with the hooked nose nodded under his black hat. “I see you then.”
No one, when he asked in Vinita on the street, knew anything about a woman who called herself Hoosie. He stopped at the livery and asked the stable hand if he knew her since he looked Indian.
“She was here a few days ago. Then a pretty girl came by a day or so ago looking for her too.”
“Where did she go?” Slocum figured that was Katy.
“To look for her.”
“Where was that?”
“Over east.” He used his hand to wave it that direction. “You ask for King Phillip, she might be out there.”
“Thanks,” Slocum said and pushed on. What would they be doing at King Phillip’s place? Whoever in the hell he was.
Midafternoon, he rode up on a ridge and saw a large number of wagons and tents all around a grove of cottonwoods on a creek. There were lots of horses picketed. Children screaming, running about, and many cooking fires. Must be a stomp being held there.
He asked the first old woman he saw if Hoosie was there.
She nodded and waved him toward the south part of the gathering. He was riding through the camp when he heard Katy calling for him. He reined up, stopped, and turned as she joined him, out of breath. “You get my message?”
“No. Who had it?”
