McAllister 1

by Matt Chisholm

  Two

  WE WERE NOW a good way from the cattle pen, so we had to hold the day’s catch there on the prairie in the brush. There were still some pretty lively beasts among the cows, so we needed four men at all times to hold them where they were and that stretched our resources to the limit.

  Over our hasty meal that night by the light of the fire, McAllister said, “We don’t have enough men, the chow ain’t fit for pigs and every damn horse we have ain’t nothin’ but goddam crow bait. Old Dice Roberts is the meanest bastard in West Texas and that is surely sayin’ somethin’.” One of Dice’s sons nodded. McAllister was only stating the truth. “It’s goin’ to be like this until we get to Colorado. You an’ me want our heads tested, Matthew, an’ that’s a fact. Why ain’t we over to Kelligrew’s gettin’ drunk or diggin’ for gold or chasm’ the wild ones? Can you tell me?”

  “Dice pays cash money,” I said. McAllister sneered. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  Dice rode out to us that night and proved to us that McAllister was right to possess doubts about the man’s ability or willingness to pay. Old Dice fell out of the saddle of his pony, his small mean mouth as tight as a wren bird’s ass and he said, “I ain’t bringin’ you good news, McAllister.” McAllister said, “Can you remember when you last spoiled your day by bringin’ somebody some good news, Dice?” He knew he couldn’t offend the owner if Dice thought he could get us cheap by suffering it.

  “You bein’ lippy,” said Dice, “don’t help none to make a bad situation better, McAllister.”

  “You suddenly found, surprise, surprise, that you don’t have no goddam cash money to pay us.”

  Dice looked amazed. “I call that uncanny, Rem ole-timer. I had an aunty once who had the second sight like that.”

  “You went to the bank an’ they turned you down.”

  Dice looked even more amazed. “How in tarnation do you do it, man? That’s ezackly what happened.”

  “So now you’re goin’ to offer us a percentage of the sellin’ price when we get to Colorado,” said McAllister.

  Dice looked triumphant. “This time you got it all wrong,” he cried. “I wasn’t goin’ to do no sech thing. No, sir, there wasn’t nothin’ further from my mind.”

  “You just didn’t know about it yet,” said McAllister. “But me with my second sight, I know better.”

  “No, you’re wrong, Rem.”

  “No, sir, I’m goddam right.”

  “I wouldn’t do no such rash thing.”

  “Oh, yes, you would,” McAllister insisted. “An’ I’ll tell you for why, Mr. Roberts—because Matthew there an’ me is goin’ to pull stakes and raise the dust out of here right this minute if you don’t do exactly that.”

  Old man Roberts looked like a man who had to suffer one of two catastrophes— either his eyes would pop clean out of his head or he would bust a blood vessel. Or maybe both. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a cork in a creek and he pointed a knobbly forefinger at McAllister, shaking with rage—“Nobody don’t back-talk me that way, least of all a goddam hired man.”

  McAllister said: “Jesus H. Christ, I ain’t no hired man. Why, a hired man gets paid.”

  I do not know to what lengths this scene would have protracted itself if, at that moment, one of the riders with the herd had not sung out: “Somebody a-comin’, McAllister. Afoot.”

  The heated exchange stopped instantly. All of us near the fire looked at each other in wonderment. We were a good few miles from the nearest human habitation and everybody we knew, however poor, owned a horse and would not have deigned to walk. So this was a stranger coming.

  A few minutes later, there walked into the firelight, after stopping courteously at a distance and asking if they might come in, the strangest pair I had ever clapped eyes on.

  There were two of them, a middle-aged man and what I thought then to be a small boy. The man was remarkable in that he possessed but one leg of flesh and bone. The other, from the knee down, was a peg. He must have walked many miles on that stump and just thinking about it in all that heat made me sweat and wince with the pain of it. Yet his face was as calm and contained as any I ever saw on a man. He wore a hard derby hat which once, long ago, had been gray—or so I imagined. It was now dented in more than one place and was decorated by an eagle’s feather stuck jauntily into a hatband of Indian manufacture. That was the word that tells you all about the fellow— “jaunty”. I’m sure Texas never saw a jauntier.

  For a coat, he wore a garment of the claw hammer variety, so ancient that its once black was now green. It totally lacked buttons and was held closed by a beautifully hand-tooled belt of Mexican design from which hung, in a battered holster, a revolver of monstrous proportions. The man himself was of so slight a build that an observer could only wonder that he was able to remain upright in opposition to such a ponderous weight. His faded and patched striped pants had one leg folded under the stump of his leg, the other was tucked into a boot which looked big enough for a man a foot taller than he was. The heel of this was adorned by a large and rusty Mexican spur. Slightly comic he may have been, but somehow that did not prevent the man from being impressive.

  His companion was as different as it was possible to be. While the one-legged man gazed about him with a tranquil, even commanding air, this other one shot quick glances that I could liken only to those of a furtive squirrel. As I say, at first I took him for a young boy, but no sooner was he illuminated by the firelight than I saw that he was a man of any age between twenty and fifty, one of those close-drawn, ageless men, small in stature and so small-boned as to look delicate. But delicate he was not. He was wiry and tight-mouthed, one of the whipcord, rawhide types without an ounce of fat and no flesh to spare either. His bowlegs were encased in old shotgun chaps, unable to boast a fringe or any kind of decoration. His lean body was covered by a faded blue hickory shirt. His pants were supported by a thong of rawhide from which hung a knife which could have boasted of being a short sword. His head was covered by a wide-brimmed hat of Mexican fashion, much battered and so large that it would have fallen to his shoulders had it not been for his large ears. Again a man could be fooled into thinking this one as comical as the other, but somehow there was nothing comical about him. Menacing rather.

  The one-legged man would plainly be the spokesman in whatever company he found himself. He lifted his derby one inch from the pepper-and-salt hair which looked as if it had been cut with his companion’s knife, tapped it back into position again and beamed upon us all.

  “Good evening to you, gentlemen. Do I have the honor of addressing the master of this establishment?”

  “Yessiree,”' yapped old Dice, “you certainly do.”

  “Permit me to introduce myself, sir. Lowell Harpingdon Smith, at your service. My companion is Horace Mangold, likewise.”

  “Howdy,” says Dice. “Name’s Hamilton Roberts.”

  I’d never heard the Hamilton before and I guess I began to giggle a little girlishly till old Dice gave me one of those looks which are pure homicide.

  He wasn’t going to introduce any of us, so McAllister took over and named us all.

  The one-legged man brightened even more and cried: “It goes without saying that your renown has reached me, sir.”

  “Is that a fact?” said Dice, tickled out of his skin.

  The one-legged man damped his vanity by saying, rather coldly, I thought, “I was referring to Mr. McAllister, sir.” It was clear that, now knowing there was a famous man in our company, he was going to address himself to no one else, except in passing. “Mr. McAllister, it has come to my ears that you are preparing a herd for the trail. Is this correct?”

  “Sure is,” said McAllister.

  “McAllister here,” pipes up old Dice, “is on my payroll.”

  Pegleg ignored him in the grand manner. I never saw a man snubbed better in my life. “May I enquire if you have the post of trail-cook filled, Mr. McAllister?”

  “No, I don’t,�
� said McAllister.

  “In that case,” said Lowell Harpingdon Smith, “maybe I could feel free to offer myself for the post.”

  “Sure,” said McAllister. “You couldn’t cook worse than no cook at all.”

  He had said the wrong thing. The one-legged man took umbrage on the spot. He summoned up a lethal glance for poor McAllister that made Dice’s look like a love-glance. “You have my word, Mr. McAllister, that this crew of yours will never have eaten better in their lives. Come wind or rain, sun or snow, flood or pestilence, stampede and Indian attack, they shall be fed like kings. Even if the owner,” and here he gave that glance to old Dice who was sitting there squirming, “offers supplies of the usual trashy quality, the cooking will be superb. My word on it.”

  “You’re hired,” said McAllister.

  Smith beamed and rubbed his hands together with dignified gratification. “Now, Mr. McAllister, if you have not yet had the opportunity of engaging a remudero, my companion here has had a lifetime of experience in the handling of horses. He is tireless. Sleep is something he does not require. His loyalty is beyond doubt. I recommend him heartily to you.”

  “He’s hired,” said McAllister.

  Before Smith could reply, old Dice chirps up with: “This is needless extravagance, McAllister. You don’t want a horse wrangler till you hit the trail.”

  McAllister seemed deaf to the owner’s words.

  “Mr. Smith … Mr. Mangold … there’s one snag.”

  “A snag,” cried our new cook, “I thought affairs were going too swimmingly. Ah, you think that, with our qualifications, our demand for wages would be too high. I do assure you, sir, that—”

  “Any demand for wages,” said McAllister, “is too high.”

  The smile was wiped from Pegleg’s face. “Do you mean to say … ?”

  “There are no wages.”

  The little squirrel of a man under that Mexican hat swore softly. Smith said: “No wages?” He sounded more than slightly heart-broken.

  McAllister said: “We are at this very moment in negotiation with the owner to decide what percentage of the herd’s selling price we will receive. Pull up a boot-heel and say your piece, mister.”

  “Gladly,” cried Smith and came hop-and-step to join us at the fire.

  Three

  I THINK IT was when Pegleg Smith joined us that we became a crew. He not only cooked us a heavenly meal that night, he tended the injured Golly with all the skill and coolness of a medical practitioner and informed us that it was his custom to work only with crews that abstained totally from the consumption of alcoholic liquor. Solemnly, McAllister assured him that this was such an outfit. Orville Moss made strange choking noises.

  The small bow-legged man, Horace Mangold (or Horry, as he came to be called), almost at once confirmed our first impression that he was or had been a professional jockey. That he knew horses he left us in no doubt. He had a wonderfully self-confident and firm way and they seemed to know that he understood them. He was swift, deft and unhurried with them. His small wrists were of steel. His voice when he spoke to them, which he did constantly, was hoarse and incomprehensible to us humans, but they knew what he was saying. With the men, he was cold, almost hostile. The only person for whom he seemed to have regard was the cook. However, though he received McAllister’s orders with a surly look on his thin face and responded to them laconically or not at all, he carried them out to the letter and did not have to have one repeated.

  The crew, being young and full of fun, no matter how tired they might be at the end of a day’s work, almost at once tested his mettle and found it a little too rich for their blood. It was the Moss boys who started it, naturally. Charlie played some practical joke on the little man and before you could say “knife”, it had turned into a fight. Before McAllister could intervene blows were being exchanged—well, maybe not exchanged, for Horry seemed to be beating the dust from Charlie’s clothing and receiving nothing in return. Brothers Manny and Orville at once sprang to Charlie’s aid, only to find themselves very quickly flat on their backs, one struck in the belly and the other in the mouth. The first brought up his dinner, the second spat out a few teeth. The fight ended as fast as it started and Horry had established himself among us in no uncertain terms. No more jokes would be played on him.

  The days passed. We caught up and brought in the wild cattle, working through daylight until we hardly knew what time of day it was, horses and men worn down to skin and bone, dust-caked and sweat-drowned, staggering from bed to saddle and, if really lucky, back to bed again. The cook always had a meal ready for us, the little jockey catching horses as fast as the boys needed them and they surely needed them in plenty. The thickets seemed to be inhabited by a race of outlaws, bulls that would show fight at the drop of a hat, cows fierce in defense of their calves, old steers that carried brands years old.

  And, as was inevitable in that kind of country with men working as fast and hard as they could go, we had more casualties. Hopper Roberts, old Dice’s eldest boy, was torn from the saddle through not ducking quickly enough under an overhanging bough. He didn’t break any bones, but he found walking, sitting down, lying down and standing up a painful process for about a week. I could tell from his face that sitting a horse was pure torture. But like everybody else there, he possessed a stubborn pride and would rather have died than rest up.

  Perfido Suarez, our Mexican rider, had a horse hooked from under him in thick brush and, as if this was not enough, was pinned against a tree by an irate mossy-horn. It took three riders and pistol shots fired in the animal’s face to get Perfido out of that one. I guess he had a few ribs busted. We tied him up tight with rags, bandannas and rawhide, shot the injured horse and Perfido was back at work the following day, tight-lipped and pale.

  And while I’m on the subject of Perfido, I may as well give you a word or two about him, because you’ll be hearing a lot more about him by the time this tale is done.

  His name meant simply “liar”. Because that was what he was. Not in the way of his telling lies in the ordinary business of life, but because he had the skill of telling wonderful windies. Tall stories, if you will. He would always begin a yarn in the most commonplace way so that his listeners were at once convinced that he was relating some event that took place the day before. He had a marvelous way of bringing characters to life. A few words and we could all see them clearly in our mind’s eye. Then gradually, almost imperceptibly, they would grow taller and taller until it slowly dawned on his audience that they were being taken. It was an art which Texans greatly admired, but I never before or since met a Mexican so adept at it. I think that was one of the reasons why the Texas boys, though not great lovers of Mexicans, accepted Perfido without reservation. Added to which he was so plainly superior in the horse-and cow-sense that they could not fail to respect him.

  He was a middle-aged man who had worked for the Roberts’ all his working life. Why he stayed with old Dice, who treated him no better than a dog, I shall never know. When he had been paid last, I never heard. He was one of those all-around hands without whom a cow crew is sadly lacking. McAllister and I had known him since we were boys.

  So we caught cattle through the days and watched them through the long hours of night, drifting the herd each day now nearer to the home place and adding to them as we went. The weather stayed close and even at night breathing was no pleasure. In the thickets the heat was so great that man and horse were worn down in no time at all. We could change our horses, but the men had to be made of iron and had to endure anything that the climate and the necessity of catching and holding wild cattle liked to throw at them. It took us two and a half weeks to get a fair-sized herd back in the home corrals where we intended to hold them no longer than it took to road-brand them. Already exhausted, the men had the sweatiest task ahead of them, even though we employed a branding chute to avoid the roping and throwing of individual animals for the cutting and branding. So for another week, we ate dust as we burned the
hides with our road brand. To avoid further hunting and to keep our numbers up, we road-branded any slick-ears or neighbors’ cattle we found among them. We notified the owners what we were doing and would pay them their market price when we returned from Colorado. At that time a man sold all the cows he was able, so desperately short of money were Texas folk. A good many of them no doubt had Confederate money, but that was worth no more now than the paper it was printed on. One time I saw a man light his cigar with a hundred dollar bill.

  Be that as it may, McAllister had been forming a crew. I do not have to tell you that a cow crew is not formed by a bunch of horny-handed cowboys signing their John Henries on the dotted line. Cow crews are mainly made by trail bosses.

  And trail bosses are apt to be men who know their business. No cowman allows three or four thousand head of cattle, even if they are scrawny longhorns scraped and roped out of the brush, to a pilgrim or a damn fool. McAllister may have shown himself at certain times of his life to be a wild and apparently irresponsible fellow, but those of you who have followed his career thus far will know that he was a steady man in a crisis, unyielding in his purpose and constitutionally incapable of backing down before any man—except if it proved profitable.

  The crew trusted him. They knew that he stood firmly between them and the owner. Even old Dice’s three sons knew that. And McAllister knew that he could push old Dice Roberts pretty far because Dice was not going to find another trail boss who could get a large herd across the Comanche Trail into Colorado.

  That’s what Rem and me were thinking of—the Comanche Crossing. The trail drivers in the crew were no doubt having their dreams of what they would do when they were paid off at the diggings, like having a whale of a time with the ladies of the town (most likely Denver), drinking more than their inexperienced heads could take and generally helling around so they could go home and talk about when they had seen the elephant. But, like I say, McAllister and I were thinking about the Staked Plains, the living hell we could peer into soon after we crossed the Pecos. Mostly we feared too little water and too many Indians. We remembered the experiences of those cattlemen Goodnight and Loving (make a coarse joke about those two names if you will—most people do when they first hear them). Oliver Loving had met his death from injuries and hardships endured on the same perilous drive. I guess we both felt that old Dice Roberts was sending one or two of these young boys to their deaths for a percentage of the herd. Already McAllister and I were promising ourselves that we would see that the mothers or sweethearts or what have you would receive their due share in the case of a death.