The Chuckwagon Trail

by William W. Johnstone

  “I reckon so,” Mac said. “But if there’s an outfit looking for a hard worker willing to learn, then I’ve got me a job, and we’ll be the first to reach the rail yards or know the reason.”

  “That’s what I like about young’uns,” the driver said. “You got spunk, you got determination, and you got shit for brains. But I wish you well.”

  Mac barely heard. He was content to ride along to Waco and already anticipated getting a job with one of the big cattle outfits.

  CHAPTER 7

  Dewey Mackenzie was spun this way and that by the incredible rush and bustle in Waco. He had been dazed by the crush and the number of people in New Orleans. That town was bigger than Waco, but even with the deepwater ships and riverboats coming and going, it couldn’t hold a candle to Waco.

  For all that, he couldn’t find a decent job. Every rancher he approached had already filled his crew for the cattle drive to Abilene or other towns along the railroad up north. Mac was weeks too late getting in line for even the most menial employment on one of the drives.

  Waco had its share of jobs, but the best he could do was to swap mucking stables and tending horses at a livery stable in exchange for a place to sleep and one meal a day. Without even a few dollars, he couldn’t hope to buy a new saddle or another horse. But he took the job anyway, because there was nothing else.

  After a solid week of hunting for something better, he felt trapped. He was getting by and nothing more. He was perched on a bale of hay thinking about that when the livery owner came up behind him and poked him in the ribs.

  “You settin’ down on the job already? Ain’t been but a day or two since I hired you.”

  Mac stood up quickly and turned around. He said, “Sorry, Mr. Benbow. I appreciate the chance to work, I really do, but I need money. Just having a roof over my head’s good, and the meal goes a long ways toward keeping my backbone from rubbing up against my belly, but there’s no way I can get ahead.”

  “All the outfits are full, I reckon.” Benbow rubbed his stubbled chin. “You got to town too late.”

  “I’ve found that out. Without a horse, I can’t even ride out to any of the ranches to see if the ones forming up their drives outside Waco need help.”

  “Can’t speak to that,” Benbow said. He scratched himself. “Now, I will need help here after all them cowboys are gone. Might be I can pay you a salary.”

  Mac perked up. “Really?”

  “Won’t be much. Maybe fifty cents a week. You know how slow business is.”

  Mac’s spirits sank again. Two dollars a month, even if he saved every penny, wouldn’t buy him even a swaybacked nag after a year’s hard work.

  “Better to go rob a bank,” he said, dispirited.

  Benbow frowned. “I’ll fire you straight out if I hear any more of that talk. Nobody works for me that’s an outlaw.”

  “I won’t be one,” Mac said hastily. “Fact is, I tried to sell my six-gun over at the gunsmith shop. All he’d give me for it was two dollars.”

  “You’d need ten times that for even a broke-down horse,” Benbow said. “The times are rough. There’s a panic back east that’s causing all kinds of ripples out here. Banks closing, businesses going bankrupt, or so I’ve heard. I don’t put much store by those newspapers that reach Waco a month after getting printed. Better to stay up with the local paper. Yes, sir, the Waco Examiner is all I need to keep informed.”

  He wandered away, talking to himself. Mac understood that. Sometimes when a man is alone too much, talking to himself was the only way to keep from going crazy. He had certainly talked out his dilemma with himself more times than he cared to remember during the past few weeks.

  He got to work mucking out the stalls. Then he tried prying a pebble from under a horseshoe on one of the animals stabled there. Benbow wouldn’t show him how to actually shoe a horse or even hammer back a loose shoe. All he was good for was cleaning the stalls, feeding the horses, and leading them around for a bit of exercise out in the corral behind the stable. Resigned, he applied himself to the chores until it was time to close the stable for the night.

  “You go get yourself a meal over at Sadie’s,” Benbow said. “I told her to fix up something special tonight.”

  “Special?”

  “Might be her fried chicken. Nobody fixes a hen better ’n her. You tell her I said that.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Benbow, but I can’t go into a restaurant smelling like this.” Mac sniffed deeply and almost gagged on his own stink.

  “Here’s a nickel. Go get yourself a bath over at the barbershop. It’s next to the hoosegow.”

  “Thanks.” Mac looked at the solitary nickel in the palm of his grimy hand and wondered how far it would go.

  He quickly found out. One bath, no hot water—and the water had been used a couple times before him. But he got a brush and soap, and the barber promised some sweet stinkum for his hair. He pulled shut the curtain around the galvanized tub and stripped down to his long johns. Mac worked to wash his shirt and trousers, then hung them up from hooks on the back wall.

  Taking the bar of soap and brush, he pulled down the top of his long johns and stepped into the tub. The cold, dirty water was like a miracle elixir for him. Settling into it, he started scrubbing his back and lathered up so much it looked as if he had replaced the water with suds. He started to sing, then heard someone come into the barbershop.

  “Howdy, mister,” the barber greeted the newcomer, sounding as jovial as he would with any potential customer. “You lookin’ to get that mop of hair trimmed up?”

  “Ain’t what I’m lookin’ for. You seen this owlhoot?”

  Mac scowled. The curtain blocked his view of the man who’d come into the barbershop, but the voice sounded familiar. Using the long-handled scrub brush, he moved the curtain aside just a little. He jerked up and almost came out of the tub, sloshing water everywhere.

  “You ain’t gettin’ more water. What’s in the tub’s all you get,” the barber called. “Now who’s this you’re huntin’ for?”

  Mac sank back and held the curtain open the barest amount. Through the slit, he saw a man he had never expected to see again in all his born days. The scarred face with the nose mashed over to one side, the cauliflower ears, the hands that looked like sledgehammers . . . this was Pierre Leclerc’s henchman, the one Mac mistakenly had thought worked for Micah Holdstock as his bodyguard.

  “This is his likeness. You see him?” The mountain of a man held out a wanted poster. Mac couldn’t see the picture on it because the barber held it in both hands and peered myopically at it.

  “Can’t say I have, but this time of year there’s hundreds of new faces passin’ through town. What’s he done?”

  “Murder.”

  “You a lawman? You don’t show a badge that I can see.”

  “You might call me a bounty hunter. I work for the man who lost his father-in-law. His wife is real distraught”—the plug-ugly worked hard to get the word out, as if he had rehearsed it—“and wants justice done since the law ain’t interested after he hightailed it out of New Orleans.”

  Mac sank deeper into the tub and let the curtain slip shut. His heart hammered so hard, he thought he would create a miniature storm in the water and send a tidal wave out into the barbershop.

  “There a reward?”

  “A hundred dollars. Says so right there.”

  Mac heard the poster rustle as Leclerc’s henchman pointed it out.

  “So it does. Well, now, I ain’t seen him. You show this to the marshal? He’s a real law and order gent.”

  “He told me to get lost because he’s got his hands full with all these cowboys in town.”

  The barber gave a mumbled answer. A few seconds later, the outer door slammed shut, and the barber called, “You ’bout done back there? I got a business to run, and you said you don’t want your hair cut.”

  Mac shook his wet hair. It had grown to almost shoulder length. He had considered cutting it himself, but now he de
cided not to. He needed to grow a beard and mustache, too, to make himself look different from the wanted poster.

  “Be out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  “Shake a tail, all right, but it’d better be yours and not no lamb’s.”

  Mac dropped the brush and soap, stood and looked for a towel. Finding none, he dried himself off the best he could, then put on his still-damp clothes. With some trepidation, he pulled back the curtain and stepped out, sure he would find the barber training a six-shooter on him. To his relief, the man sat in his barber chair and read the newspaper. On the bench where prospective customers waited he saw the wanted poster.

  Trying not to be too obvious, he snatched up the poster, folded it, and stuffed it into his coat pocket. This was one less chance for his past to catch up with him. He stepped out into the chilly evening air. Or was he shivering because of the close escape?

  “My sweet stinkum,” he said, half turning to go back into the barbershop. His hair turned cool in the late breeze and begged for some toilet water. Violet, jasmine, a touch of the Three Flowers pomade his pa always got for special occasions when he went to the barber...

  With a sigh, Mac turned away from the shop. As much as the perfumed goo would please him, at least until he mucked the next stall, he didn’t dare take the risk of the nearsighted barber matching his face with the wanted poster.

  He walked along Waco’s side streets, wondering how far he could get without a horse. Stealing one would bring down the wrath of the law on his head. The newly formed Texas Rangers reportedly never let a criminal escape alive. They’d either gun down a horse thief or see him strung up.

  Mac touched his neck and decided a rope around it for thievery wasn’t in the cards for him. It was bad enough that he had been framed for murder back in New Orleans and that Leclerc had sent out bounty hunters to track him down.

  His belly began to grumble from lack of food. He turned toward Sadie’s, the restaurant Benbow had mentioned. He went in the front, but a short, generously built woman with arms crossed over her chest shook her head. Her dark expression warned him from making a scene.

  “Benbow said I could get a meal here,” Mac explained.

  “Yeah, he told me you’d be around.” She sniffed. Mac wished he had dared return for the toilet water. He had scrubbed off the dirt and most of the stable smell, but that extra touch would have gotten him a seat in the restaurant. “Into the back.” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, swirled around, her skirts flaring, and stalked off.

  Mac followed meekly. He was pleased to see so many people in the restaurant, all chowing down and obviously enjoying it. Even if he got the scraps, he wasn’t going to starve. That the leftovers from their plates might actually taste good was a bonus he hadn’t dared hope for until now.

  “Sit. Eat.”

  “Do I get a choice?” He pulled up a chair at a table set off to one side of the small kitchen. The cook worked with admirable speed to get out orders.

  “Yeah, you get a choice. Eat what’s set in front of you or don’t.” With that Sadie poked the cook, mumbled something to him, and returned to the dining room.

  The cook dropped a plate in front of him, heaped with fried potatoes, grits, and a ham steak big enough to have come from a hog the size of a riverboat. He got himself a glass of water and sat down to begin.

  “Here. Biscuits. You gotta have biscuits.” The cook set a plate with four golden-brown biscuits on the table beside Mac’s plate.

  He mumbled thanks around a mouthful of food. He kept eating until he was sure he was going to pop, then kept going. The last meal he’d eaten that was anywhere near as bountiful, not to mention tasty, had been at the restaurant where he’d worked in New Orleans. He wiped up the last of the grease from the ham with the final biscuit, then sat back and rested his hands on his bulging belly.

  “Those were about the best biscuits I ever ate,” he said. “How do you do it?”

  “Here, I’ll show you.” The cook motioned him over. “Need more. You do what I say.”

  Before he knew it, Mac was wearing an apron and was up to his elbows in flour and dough. He was sliding them into the oven when Sadie came in with a man who limped slightly. He was weather-beaten and had eyes that darted this way and that constantly, as if he was watching for trouble. Mac couldn’t help himself. He moved to see if the man wore a star on his vest.

  He heaved a sigh when he saw that wasn’t the case. In spite of the low-slung iron on the man’s hip and his alert behavior, anticipating trouble, this wasn’t a lawman.

  “Him.” Sadie pointed at Mac. “Not the other one. The other one’s a helper.”

  “I’ve eaten here often enough to know who you got fixing your grub, Sadie.”

  “What’s this about?” Mac couldn’t help himself. The wanted poster weighted a ton in his pocket. He had to know if he ought to slip the leather keeper off the hammer of his S&W and get ready to shoot it out.

  “This here’s Lem Carson. You talk real polite to him.” She shot the cook a hard look, swirled about, and returned to the dining room, which was still filled with customers.

  “You fix these?” Carson popped a biscuit into his mouth and chewed. He closed his eyes, and Mac thought the man was going to die, but if he did, he’d be going to the Promised Land happy. The smile crossing his face showed that he appreciated the biscuits as much as Mac had.

  “He did,” Mac admitted as he poked a thumb at the cook. “He just showed me how he does it.”

  “A cowboy will ride through hell if there’s a decent biscuit at the final roundup.” Carson took another biscuit and rubbed his fingers over it. “Nice texture, good taste.” He stopped playing with it and munched on it. “I’ve got a job open for a chuckwagon cook. You interested?”

  Mac turned to the cook, who paid no attention.

  “You,” Carson said. “I’m asking you. I know José won’t leave Sadie. If you can make biscuits this good—half this good!—I can offer you a job.”

  “Chuckwagon cook?” Mac felt as if the room whirled around him. That wasn’t a job he had ever considered. “You got a job as wrangler to offer? I can do that. I ride and—”

  “We got a full company already,” Carson said, shaking his head. “I’m trail boss for the Rolling J ranch, the one outside of town owned by Sidney Jefferson. You hear of it?”

  “I’m new to town, but I’m willing to sign on. Maybe you got a job as night herd? I can sing passably, leastways that’s what the pastor back home always said, but he was a charitable man.”

  Carson shook his head.

  “Wrangler?” Mac said again. “I don’t mind doing the menial work.” Seeing no response, Mac hurried on, “I’m working in a stable right now. Benbow’s, over by—”

  “I know the place. And I know Benbow.” Calculation came into the trail boss’s eyes. “He doesn’t pay you more’n a meal a day and a place to sleep. The Rolling J isn’t the richest ranch in Texas, but Mr. Jefferson’s not a pauper, either. He hires top hands.”

  “I can see to your remuda and—”

  “Cook. We need a cook something fierce since we’re hitting the trail tomorrow morning. That means the cook’s got to feed the outfit, hit the trail, and set up with lunch before noonday.”

  “Then get along ahead of the herd for the evening meal,” Mac said. “I’ve never cooked.”

  “He can do it. He’s got the eye,” José said, never looking up from a steak he fried on the stove.

  “That’s a plenty good enough recommendation for me. You’ll be paid a dollar a day on the trail.”

  “I don’t have a horse or gear.”

  Carson looked disgusted.

  “What’s a cook need any of that for? You drive the wagon, you tend the team, you fix the meals for thirty-seven men three times a day.”

  Mac was staggered by the work required. He was no cook, even if he had watched how meals were prepared in New Orleans and José had given him the secret to flaky biscuits.

&nb
sp; “The one thing that’ll send me hunting another cook is if you hit the bottle,” Carson warned. “Do you drink?”

  “You mean whiskey? I’ve been known to take a nip, but mostly I’m content with a dipper of water to quench my thirst.” Mac spoke the truth and saw immediately this was the best possible answer. It went a ways toward explaining why Lem Carson was so anxious to hire a new cook. The old one must be on a real bender.

  “You’ll have charge of a couple bottles of whiskey in the larder, but it’s not for drinking. Nobody drinks it. Nobody. It’s medicinal, and you get to dispense it. The men’ll come up with the damnedest ailments you ever did hear to swindle you out of a shot. You don’t give that who-hit-John to them, no matter what. The whiskey is for those in real need of having their senses dulled, after getting a leg broke or being kicked in the head by a horse. I don’t tolerate drunk cowboys. If I did, Mr. Jefferson would fire me in a second. He’s a God-fearing teetotaler.”

  Mac pressed his hand against his coat pocket. The rustle of the wanted poster helped convince him what he had to do. Without prospects in Waco, working for bare survival and not a penny more at the livery stable, he might as well have drowned in the Mississippi. He had to leave town in a hurry.

  “You’ve got yourself a cook, Mr. Carson.” He thrust out his hand.

  “Call me Lem. Everyone else does. If I seem friendly, that way you’ll take it better when I chew you out.” Carson shook his hand, sealing the deal.

  “Good. He hired you. Now get out of my kitchen. I got work to do.” José made shooing motions, took the biscuits from the oven, and turned back to his frying steak, sizzling and popping in the skillet.