by Jake Logan
“I told them at the store to tell you we had to get Hoosie’s things. That we’d be there tomorrow night.”
He dismounted, kissed her, and shook his head. “I never stopped there. I couldn’t find out anything. A stable worker said to go to King Phillip’s.”
“Yeah, this is his party. Hoosie’s sister had some of her money and she wanted to collect it before she moved out to the cow camp, because she was afraid she’d never get it otherwise.”
“She collect it?”
“No.” Katy wrinkled her nose. “Her sister had spent it all on hooch before we got here yesterday evening.”
Simple enough, it was as he had suspected before he asked her.
“You hungry?” she asked.
“I could eat.”
She swung on his arm. “Hoosie wasn’t easy to find. I didn’t find her till yesterday afternoon. She had a new friend. There she is now.
“This is Slocum. He thought we were lost.”
“Oh, I am so sorry. My sister, who is worthless as shit, she borrowed five dollars from me and told me she would have my money back in two days. But she never came to pay me and I have only a little money from my food sales. Then I found she was out here with our cousin’s husband. But she had already spent money on booze with him that she earned as a whore and was supposed to pay to me.”
“I understand. Do you have a horse?”
“Two.” She held up two fingers.
“Are they here?”
“One is at my house. I was going to pack my things on him.”
“Tomorrow we move to the cow camp. We also have an extra one we can load.”
“I am so glad to go to work for you.” She smiled big. “Cooking on the roadside is not a very dependable business.”
He agreed, but felt he might not have a crew or a job left if he didn’t get back to both soon. “I’m glad you’re coming to help me.”
“Let’s go find some food.” Katy was tugging on his arm. “You coming, Hoosie?”
“Sure.”
He bought them some stew from a woman Hoosie knew, and they had squaw bread to go with it. Sitting cross-legged on the grass, Katy asked how they were doing at the camp.
“If they all have not quit, I’ll be lucky. They’re having to cook for themselves.”
Both women winced at his words.
He dismissed their concern. “We’ll get it all straightened out when we get back, but we need to push to get back out there tomorrow.”
They both agreed.
“Oh,” Katy said as if she had forgotten to tell him. “There is someone here who says those Hudson brothers are in this area.”
“Who says that?”
Katy brushed her arm at Hoosie to get her attention. “Who knew them?”
“Yellow Flower.”
“She here?”
“No, she left for Tahlequah.”
“She live up here?”
Hoosie shook her head. “She lives wherever the man she lives with lives.”
Katy broke up laughing. “That’s complicated enough.”
“Sometimes I can say things better in Cherokee,” Hoosie said to dismiss her speech.
“She say that she’d seen them lately?”
Katy nodded, chewing on her bread. “She was bitching’cause they made her stay to cook for them and also sleep with them. I think she needed some money and offered to have sex with them for money. They got her to their camp, then made her stay and be their slave.”
“Did she say where that was?”
“Were they over on the Grand River?” Katy asked Hoosie.
“I can’t recall the place. All she did was swear about the pig-dicked one and what he did to her, huh?”
“I’d guess he was rough on her.” Katy agreed.
“The name of that place comes to you, you be sure to tell me.”
“We will. Those two killed his friend in Texas,” Katy told her. Then she elbowed him. “Did you bring a bedroll?”
“No, I thought I’d find you two sooner.”
Katy made a face and got up, brushing her butt off with her hand. “I’ll go find us a blanket. Be right back.”
Hoosie chuckled. “She missed you last night. She’s not going to miss you tonight. She cried and moaned to me a lot—oh, him not here.”
Slocum shook his head like he didn’t believe her. The notion that the Hudson brothers were still around had set his interest on edge. He’d get them if they stayed around for very long.
At sundown, Slocum and Katy were on a grassy ridge a long ways from the stomp, but he could still hear the drums and hey-yeah, hey-yeah in the distance. Hard at making furious love, with him on top pounding away, they became more and more absorbed by the minute, their attention to their sensual peak the goal. In an explosion from the end of his shaft, the head split open, and in pained exertion he came deep inside of her in three rapid blasts. They collapsed sweaty-slick, belly to belly.
Her eyes bleary, she smiled up at him and squeezed his arms. “I’m better,” she mumbled and he kissed her.
6
The next morning, he hurried back to the cow camp and left the women to gather Hoosie’s things. They promised to be out there by dark. Slocum rode in past noontime, and Darby and Screwball met him.
“You find them?”
“Yeah, you know Indians.” He dropped off his tired horse. “Today ain’t too damn important to them. They’ll be here tonight.”
Darby laughed and his helper decided he should too. Then Darby said, “That’s an Indian for you. We have a deer that the Kid shot yesterday evening. It ain’t too big and we got the ribs cooking, plus the meat we boned off it. That should feed the men tonight. Maybe we can cut out a beef and slaughter it. They’re getting fat on this grass and that might be a treat.”
Slocum agreed, stripping out his girths to unsaddle his horse. “We’ll let the two women take over the cooking in the morning.”
Darby took off his bowler and wiped his wet face on his shirtsleeve. “Good, I like cowboying better.”
“I don’t blame you. Nothing showed up wrong?”
“Yeah, Bronc thought he found some tracks where some rustlers might have hit us. I sent Wolf with him. He’s got the most experience of any of us. Figured he could read the tracks better than any of us. So we’ll see what he finds.”
“That was good. May just be someone crossing the range, but there’s thieves all over this country.”
Darby nodded, squatting down for the two of them to talk. “Where did you find the women at?”
“I didn’t stop at the store, so I didn’t know Katy’d left word for me there. But I found them at King Phillip’s stomp. Never met him, but I found the women there trying to collect a debt.” Slocum shook his head like he couldn’t believe it all. “They’re getting the Indian woman’s things today and will be here by nightfall they promised.”
If he didn’t know how hot Katy’s britches were for him, he’d even doubt that.
“You reckon Austin will sell these cattle and close this operation down in the fall? You know it’ll be harder than hell for most of us to find work that late.”
“I’ll write him and ask. He may have another set of cattle lined up to bring up here.”
“I know you can’t guarantee us much, but we’d all like to know. Didn’t you used to work for the Blair brothers?” Darby asked.
“Yes.”
That was in the days of the first drives to Kansas. Slocum recalled those days clearly. Things were tough everywhere, but there wasn’t a pot to piss in or window to throw it out in 1866 Texas. Maverick cattle running all over the damn country, and not worth a buck a head down there.
Those cattle were more like deer. Brush hid the longhorns, who only came out to graze at night like feral hogs. Even herded and handled they were haints. A Dutch oven could clang wrong and the damn critters threw up their heads and stampeded en mass for New Mexico or even the gulf. I remember it rained hard in a set of those years, and eve
ry damn river was flooding when we needed to cross it. Cowhands drowned by the hundreds.
There were a passel of small, crude crosses on fresh graves beside those rivers, and they were soon trampled down by another herd. Those men—their mothers and wives never knew where they’d been planted. I remember ole Hank. Why, he could play a Jew’s harp like a concert musician. Damn, I sure missed him going the rest of the way up there and coming back. Buried him on a high rise above the Canadian—well, not really. We looked up and down the banks for three days with no luck, and then we drove a cross in the ground up there and prayed that God had found him. We told everyone to say he was buried so they didn’t fret about it, but we never did find him or that harp. Then when I got back to Texas, as the boss I had to go by to give his family his pay and tell his widowed mother and the girl who lived with her—his intended woman, who’d held his baby son in her arms the whole time—tell them he was buried in the Indian Territory.
“Yeah, I’ve been there, Darby. Wasn’t no Sunday school picnic either.”
Darby agreed.
Darby began his spiel about “going north.” “I made three drives up there. Last trip, my cousin was fourteen and he made a hand. But a drunk for no good reason shot that boy down in the streets of Abilene. Two days later, I drowned that no-good bastard in a horse tank with my bare hands. Held that no-good son of a bitch under water till he stopped breathing. They arrested me for murder. I wasn’t in jail long. Second night, some Texas boys blew the damn door off the jail with blasting powder. Then they gave me a fresh horse and a wad of money and sent me home. Haven’t used my real name since.”
“Tough business.”
“But damn, Slocum, I ain’t a dirt farmer or a store clerk, so what the hell. I ain’t rich in many ways, but listening to the meadowlark sing or quail cock bob-white. That’s really better than anything I know about in this world.”
Slocum knew exactly what Darby meant. A good horse, sun on your face, wind at your back—like the old Irish poem asked for—and a man could live contented. Oh, hell, and a woman in his bed every once in a while doesn’t hurt either.
Where were Wolf and Bronc? The rest of the men were back for the day and shook Slocum’s hand, acting glad he’d returned. He promised them that the womenfolk would be there that evening sometime.
They ate venison, potatoes, and some sweet rice with “bugs” for desert. The day dimmed and he wondered where the two women were. Then he heard horses, and in the bloody last light, he saw two packhorses with a rocking chair strapped on the top of one. They’d made it.
Of course, there were plenty of willing hands to help them unload and set up the first tent by coal oil lanterns for Hoosie. Slocum decided to put his and Katy’s up in the morning at a little more distance. It didn’t matter. He and she would be under the stars one more night. As they worked setting up things for the new cook, he kept a wary eye out for his two men still out.
Darby, hat in hand, was scratching the thin hair on top of his head. “You, like me, wondering what they run into out there?”
“I have no idea, but they must be like a good hound and staying on a track.”
“Wolf knows lots about that stuff.”
“I guess so. Come daylight, we’ll go look for them. I hope to hell they’re all right.”
“You never can tell up here. I bet there’s more damn wanted men in this part of the country than in the rest of the USA.”
They both laughed.
Slocum promised Hoosie that several of them would be up to help her in the morning. She wasn’t a bad-looking woman, she had a full figure, but she wasn’t simply fat. In fact, he could see several of his bunch had been charmed by her looks already. He’d put her down as sultry looking, brushing her long black hair and standing at the entrance to her tent that first night.
Her salary might be supplemented by the crew’s contributions to her fund. He sent everyone off to their bedrolls and listened to the coyotes yap. With Katy swinging on his arm and the two of them headed for their bedding, he still wondered about his two hands not coming in.
More dang coyotes cutting loose out under the stars. He stopped and kissed Katy. That lasted a long while. With her running her palm over his tool, it only added to his being more interested in her skinny heinie. Whew, that woman loved it—but so did he.
7
Dawn wasn’t even purpling the eastern horizon when they dressed and were getting ready to help Hoosie. Pulling on her pants, Katy grumbled, “I hope she knows I’m missing my morning treatment from you.”
“We’ll make it up tonight.”
Tying her blouse tail and buttoning some of the buttons so they pushed her small tits together, she shook her head—still lamenting about being deprived. From where they had slept and dressed, he could see a lamp on over in his new cook’s tent. Good, she was ready. He flexed his right hand—the soreness was about gone. There was no word about their former cook, and Slocum didn’t miss him.
Looking across the wide horizon reminded him that two of his men were still out there in the dark—somewhere. With Katy swinging carefree on his arm, they met Hoosie outside her tent.
“Pretty damn early, no?” she said to Katy.
“Damn cowboys got to beat the sun up or it’s a sin.”
“I’ll get used to it. What will they expect?”
“Why not some pancakes and some fried bacon? They’ll like that,” Slocum said.
“Fine with me. Let’s get some fires started.”
Screwball arrived, looking half-awake in the light of the lantern. “I can fill the coffeepots.”
“Good. My name is Hoosie.”
“Yeah, yeah, mine’s Screwball. I-I’m y-your helper.”
“He’s a hard worker,” Slocum said.
“Good. You know, Indians change their names whenever they get ready to change their lives. Maybe I will change yours.” She shook her head. “Good help should have a better name than that.”
“It won’t matter what you call me. I been called lots of things. Some of them pretty bad.”
“You fill the pots with water. I can light this fire,” she said, already on her knees and scratching matches to ignite her fine cedar kindling. The kindling soon caught and she rose, watching that it didn’t go out. Standing at last, she straightened her skirt, then put on an apron that Katy handed her.
Slocum cracked eggs, and Katy sifted flour in a bowl for her. “You may be out of syrup,” she told the cook.
“You make it out of water and brown sugar?”
“Yes.”
“I can do that.”
“We’ll let Slocum whip up the batter, and I can put the frying pans on to get them hot,” Katy said.
Screwball was already back with water in the big kettles for coffee, and he heaved them up onto the stove. That task completed, he went back on the run with two canvas buckets for more water for them.
“My, that boy works hard,” Hoosie said, busy getting her syrup ready. “I will think of a good name for him today.”
Soon the coffee water began to boil and the two women began pouring batter into the fry pans, where it bubbled. Hoosie put the ground coffee in both pots along with a little salt. Then they began flipping pancakes.
“Should I ring the bell?” Screwball asked.
Slocum nodded to her and she quickly said, “Yes.”
“From now on, that’s your decision,” he told her.
“Oh, all right. I am the boss of when to get them up, huh?” Hoosie shook her head from side to side with a spatula in her hand like he’d made her a big official of the camp.
The sleepy crew came to the long wash table that Screwball had set up for them with bowls, water, soap, and towels. When they finished and came inside, they peered at the cooks.
“Good morning,” echoed across the board.
“Same to you. I hope you are all very hungry,” Hoosie said, taking two heaping platters of pancakes to the table.
The crew started in to fill their
plates, already bragging on her food.
Katy hung on Slocum’s arm. “They will love her, huh?”
“They already do. I need to go and look for the two men who didn’t come back last night.”
“Can I go?”
“I think you and Hoosie need to spoil my crew with some treats. I’m putting Darby in charge of the men. I’ll take one man with me.”
“Who is that?” she asked.
“Shooter. He’s a little older and tougher than some of them.”
She agreed.
He left her at the table area where they prepared food. She and Hoosie were eating pancakes from their plates between refilling cups and putting out more pancakes.
“Boys, I’m going to select Shooter to ride with me to look for Bronc and Wolf. When you get full, come join me by the horses,” he told Shooter, who nodded. “Darby is the boss while I’m gone.”
Everyone agreed and picked up their tin plates, cups, and silverware to dump in Screwball’s big washtub.
Slocum hauled his saddle and pads out to the rope corral. Blue roped his horse, Spook, and handed him the rope. Slocum began saddling him. Spook had settled down after being ridden all over. A long ways from the day Slocum had bought him down in Texas at that livery. He cinched up the girths, dropped the stirrup, and nodded to Shooter, who joined him as he swung on board.
“They were headed south.” Shooter said, indicating the direction.
“Surprises me too. The better place to sell any cattle you stole would be up in Kansas.”
“If they’re tracking them, they may have wound back that way.”
Slocum agreed and waved good-bye to Katy. He had some hardtack and jerky in a poke tied on his saddle in case they had to ride farther than they could make in just the one day.
They made good time. Following the land southward, midmorning they found tracks. Slocum and Shooter decided that they belonged to the two missing hands—both horses were barefooted. The steer tracks were older, and shod horses were tracking the cattle hooves. That must mean, Slocum decided, that it had been twenty-four hours since his men had followed the rustlers’ trail.
Slocum stood in the stirrups, but there was nothing as far as he could see but rolling grass. They began to short lope. No sign of his men worried him; after this long they should have came back unless they had a hot trail.
