Shaking the Nickel Bush

  “All but the milk,” he said, “and that’s a cinch. There was only one store open, and they didn’t have no milk, but I seen some cows on the way back—three, four of ’em with fall calves. All we got to do is catch one of ’em and milk her. Calves the size of them don’t suck till late in the afternoon. If we was to go right now we’d likely get a gallon or two. Wish’t I had a horse—a live one—I’d catch one of them old heifers and bring her on into camp, so’s’t we could milk her whenever we wanted. Ain’t you supposed to be drinkin’ milk regular anyhow?”

  Lonnie’s idea sounded like a good one, especially since he said there were no houses between our camp and Fort Thomas. We shook out our throw ropes, took a few practice tosses at creosote bushes, put the dishpan on the back seat, and started off down the road. Lonnie said the cattle were on a desert pasture where there was plenty of fairly tall brush, so we didn’t think we’d have a bit of trouble in catching a cow. We’d each pick one with a good full bag, sneak up on her from behind a bush, and toss a loop over her head.

  It didn’t work that way. Those cows were as wild as antelope, nearly as fast, and they must have had eyes and ears like eagles. We could see them from the road when we got to within a quarter mile, and they didn’t pay a bit of attention to Shiftless’s clatter. But when we’d pulled off the road, hidden Shiftless behind a clump of mesquite, and were sneaking up on them afoot, they began drifting away. They didn’t do any running at first, but just drifted on whenever we’d get within fifty yards of them. Then, when we tried to close in faster, they ran—all except a big white-face bull that seemed to be on the prod. He kept between us and the cows, and he covered their retreat in grand style. If we tried to gain an inch, he’d whirl around, paw dirt up over his back, and dare us to come on, halfway between a bellow and a growl.

  From behind a bush Lonnie made signals with his arms to show me that we should circle wide around, but that didn’t work either. The old bull caught on as quickly as I did. Instead of just turning and pawing, he began charging back and forth, toward one of us and then the other, shaking his head and bawling. And the cows kept drifting farther back into the brush. At last Lonnie motioned for me to come over where he was. “There ain’t no sense in this,” he told me. “If we keep on this way we’ll drive ’em clean into Mexico ’fore we ever catch one. Tell you what we’ll do. It’s open enough in here that I can drive Shiftless easy, and you can stand on the runnin’ board and catch one of them old heifers as I go past her. You could snub her on one of them irons the top’s supposed to bolt onto, and if the bull gets proddy we’ll lead her on back to camp before we milk her. He’d never leave the herd to folla that far.”

  Lonnie was right about being able to drive Shiftless through the brush, and by not being too careful about missing the smaller clumps he didn’t have much trouble in catching up to the cows, but I had all kinds of trouble in trying to stand on the running board and swing a rope. On horseback you don’t have to worry about balance when you go high-tailing after a cow in brush country. The pony will follow right behind, dodging whichever way she does, and he leans as he turns, so the rider can go along with him. But Shiftless didn’t work that way—or Lonnie either. He couldn’t turn one tenth as fast as the slowest of those old cows, and Shiftless leaned the wrong way when she did turn. The horse falls were nothing compared to the spills I took off the running board before we discovered how to do it.

  We had to take Lonnie’s rope, make a harness for me, and lash it to a door hinge. In that way I had both hands free, and I didn’t get tossed every time we made a sharp turn. But it still didn’t work, because Lonnie couldn’t turn sharp enough. The only thing that saved us was that one old cow—the one with the smallest calf—decided to desert the herd. She took off in a straight line for Mexico, and Lonnie took off after her. Of course, he had to do a little weaving to get through the brush, but it wasn’t bad, and when the cow got a little winded he pulled almost alongside of her. I didn’t have a bit of trouble in tossing my loop over her head, and Lonnie stayed close enough that I had her snubbed tight to the top-iron before she hit the end of the rope.

  Anyone would think a cow that had been run full tilt for a mile would be ready to give up and act reasonable, but that was the most unreasonable cow I ever had anything to do with. Five or six times she hit the end of that rope so hard she threw herself, and each time she nearly jerked Shiftless off her wheels. Then when one of us would try to follow up the rope toward her, so we could twist her down for milking, she’d charge. After we’d barely escaped from a dozen charges Lonnie shook out his rope and hind-legged her, but she was stout as an elephant. Even with Lonnie weighing a hundred and fifty she could drag a leg behind her and pull him around like a poodle on a string, and she kept shrieking like a train engine on a cold night.

  If we could have stayed with it and worn her down a little more, I think we might have been able to throw her and hogtie her for milking, but we gave out before she did. We had to sit in the shade of a bush for awhile, to catch our breath and figure out what to do next. It was Lonnie who figured out the scheme that worked. Moving real slowly so as not to excite the cow, we unhitched the head rope, ran it through the spokes of the near front wheel, under the engine, and snubbed it to a spoke in the far wheel. Then we did the same with the heel rope, but used the rear wheels. In that way the cow couldn’t charge the one doing the snubbing, and since she couldn’t see him, she didn’t worry too much about Shiftless. I did the hazing-in as quietly as I could, and each time the cow sidled nearer to Shiftless, Lonnie took in on the snubbing ropes, first one end and then the other.

  It wasn’t more than twenty minutes before we had that cow winched up against the side of Shiftless so tight that she couldn’t wiggle. With the heel rope on her outside leg, she couldn’t kick with the inside one, and her head was plastered tight against the front wheel. The only thing she could have done was to flop over onto me while I was milking her, but Lonnie took care of that by climbing on the back seat and hauling on her tail.

  All the time we’d been trying to make the old cow listen to reason her calf had been standing back at the edge of the bushes, bawling us out for trying to swipe his dinner, but he must have done all right before we got there. I stripped right down to the last drop and didn’t get over three pints, but it sloshed around so much in the dishpan that I couldn’t have handled much more anyway.

  That old cow acted as if her whole fight had been only to protect her honor. As soon as I’d finished milking her she stood as quietly as if she’d been barn-raised. And she didn’t fight at all when we slipped the ropes off. She trotted away into the brush, then stopped just before she was out of sight and looked back over her shoulder, as if she were telling us, “I’ll let my husband know about this.” I don’t know whether or not she let him know, but he didn’t give us any trouble when we drove back to the road. I couldn’t watch where we were going very well, because I had to hold the dishpan high to keep the milk from slopping.

  It didn’t seem as if we’d spent very much time in getting that three pints of milk, but the sun was halfway down toward the mountains when we got back to camp. And, of course, the fire had gone out. While Lonnie built a new one—with lots of greasewood roots, so we’d have plenty of big coals for the roasting—I made the stuffing for the hens. It wasn’t as good as Mother used to make, but it wasn’t too bad either. I broke the stale bread into little chunks, moistened it with milk, tossed in a couple of egg yolks from one of the hens, sliced in plenty of onion and celery, and sprinkled it good and heavy with salt, pepper, and sage. I was pretty sure those hens were going to be awfully tough if I tried to roast them dry, so I jammed the biggest one into the Dutch oven, put in a little water, covered it tight, and hung it over the new fire where it could steam till the roasting coals were ready.

  I’d made custard pies when I was baching with my grandfather, so I knew how to make the custard part, but I’d never tried to make a rice custard pudding. I knew Mother baked hers
in the oven, but I didn’t know whether she put the rice in raw, or boiled it first. It really didn’t make much difference, because I was going to have to boil our rice anyway, since we had only one Dutch oven. And the only thing I had to boil it in was the dishpan, so we poured the milk into the quart jar Mrs. Larsen had put my stewed chicken in. There was just a little more than enough to fill it, and we drank that.

  After I’d washed the pan I dumped in the pound of rice Lonnie had brought from town, explained to him that the raisins would be added later, and poured in enough water to cover the rice. Then Lonnie found some good-sized rocks, and we propped the pan up over the fire. Everything went fine at first, and we sat watching the grains of rice bubble up to the top as the water began to boil, but it drank that water as if it had been a herd of cattle. I had to keep adding more and more to keep it from sticking on the bottom of the pan and burning. We tried setting it off the fire to slow it down, but that didn’t do any good. And it swelled even faster after we put the raisins in. By the time it was cooked soft we had nearly a dishpan full, and it was sort of sticky. “That’s all right,” I told Lonnie. “Of course, I can’t eat it, and you won’t want this much pudding, but you can always eat the rest of it for breakfasts, like mush.”

  Lonnie didn’t like the idea of eating rice for mush, and he didn’t think we had too much for pudding, but I was kind of licked for a way to make the custard—with the dishpan full of rice and the Dutch oven full of hen. We finally worked it out by pouring part of our milk into the coffee cups. Then I added what were left of the eggs out of the hens—some of them were as little as peas—poured in more or less sugar, and grated in some nutmeg by using a rough stone for a grater. The jar worked fine for mixing. All we had to do was to screw on the top and shake it. Then, of course, we had to keep pouring back and forth between the cups and the jar till we had the mixture all alike. Lonnie poured it over the rice while I stirred it in and grated more nutmeg on top. Even though we couldn’t bake it, I think it would have been pretty good rice pudding if I’d stirred it a little harder and broken the sticky lumps up more than I did. The custard cooked fine, just set up close to the fire, and the nutmeg on top made it look almost as though it had been baked in an oven.

  We let the first hen sort of steam and stew along until we’d finished the pudding, then drained off what broth there was, drank it, and covered the Dutch oven over with coals for roasting. It was dark before that old biddy was cooked enough that the breast meat would break when I stuck a fork into it and twisted. But she was almost tender by the time Lonnie’s sweet potato was done. We put what was left of the onions and celery right into the pot with her, and even if it was a little late when we had our Christmas dinner it was a durned good one. Lonnie wouldn’t say the rice pudding was as good as his mother’s, but he ate nearly a quart of it, so it couldn’t have been too bad.

  I didn’t dare leave the second hen lying around raw, even though the nights were chilly, so we cooked her while we were eating and resoaping our saddles before we turned in. It gave us a lot of time to talk about what we were going to do after we got steady jobs, and we sang some of the old songs over again three or four times. Lonnie didn’t know but a few of them—“Silent Night,” “Jingle Bells,” and ones like that. But even if we were nearly broke and out of jobs, it wasn’t a bad Christmas.

  11

  Little Clay Horse

  STARTING the morning after Christmas we hunted jobs just as hard as we could. We followed every pair of wheel tracks that turned off the road anywhere between Fort Thomas and Safford, on both sides of the Gila River. But we found only one job—not too bad a one—but Lonnie wouldn’t take it. The rancher passed me up like cold soup, but he let Lonnie show him that he was good with a rope, and offered him thirty a month—more when roundup time came. Lonnie tried to take us both in on the deal, but when the rancher shook his head he backed away. “Naw,” he said, “it’s the both of us or none. My buddy here, he can’t drive our automobile, and I wouldn’t want to leave him stranded. We’ll mosey along, but maybe we’ll drop back and see you later.”

  I tried to tell Lonnie that I could learn to drive Shiftless without much trouble, and that I thought he’d better take the job. I said I’d try to find one near by, and that if I didn’t we’d keep in touch with each other during the winter. Then we could find jobs together when roundup time came. When Lonnie shook his head I thought it might be because he was afraid I wouldn’t leave him his saddle and outfit, so I said, “You don’t need to worry about the outfit, Lonnie. If you want to, you can send me a little out of your pay checks, but it’s yours anyway. It has been right from the beginning.”

  Lonnie shook his head again, climbed in behind the wheel, and said, “Twist her tail, buddy, and let’s get a move on. We’re wastin’ time here.”

  The day Lonnie turned that job down we had to drive to Safford, so I could go to a doctor and get a report card to mail. While I was waiting for the doctor to examine the specimen I wrote a short letter to Mother, telling her our boss was sending my partner and me over into New Mexico for some cattle, and that he was going to meet us in El Paso, Texas, so she could write me there. Then, when the doctor was too busy to notice, I took the last fifty-dollar bill out of the cuff of my Levi’s and put it in the letter. I didn’t dare not to, for fear I might be tempted to break it. Then too, if the doctor charged me two dollars I’d have only $1.85 left in my pocket, and I couldn’t feel right about telling Lonnie we were dead broke while I still had the fifty.

  During the first few days of January we worked our way back along the south side of the river, going to see every rancher between the highway and the mountains. The only thing that saved us from getting right down to our last penny was that I made a little clay horse every evening, and that Lonnie had pretty fair luck trading them in the towns for a few gallons of gas or some grub. But it was Shiftless that brought us our best luck. Her shimmying got so bad that we couldn’t drive her over five miles an hour, and we’d put her over so many rough roads in the back country that we’d worn out her transmission bands.

  The brake went first, but Lonnie was able to stop by using the reverse pedal. Then the driving band started slipping so badly that he had to ride the low pedal all the time. As we were pulling into a little town one evening it gave out entirely, so there was nothing we could do but stop and camp.

  There wasn’t any sense in trying to make clay horses enough to pay for new bands and bushings for the front wheels—or for the grub we’d need while we were making the repairs. Lonnie had already traded two horses in that town, one to the only store and one to the only garage. The market was already flooded, but that night I made a horse’s head. It was about six inches high, with an arched neck and curly mane. I worked on it till way after midnight, and did the very best job I could. The next morning I told Lonnie to sleep in while I cleaned up our dishes and made my last gluten flour into bread. At ten o’clock he was still sleeping, and I had the bread all covered over in the coals to bake, so I took the horse’s head and went into town.

  I didn’t go to the store or the garage, but to the bank. It was a little one, not much bigger than a bedroom. A girl about my age was in a cage at the front; beyond her I could see the bald head of a man who was writing at a desk, and behind him was the iron door of a vault. I was barely inside the door when the girl in the cage called, “Good morning.” Then she noticed the little clay head, and sort of squealed, “Oh, you must be the artist who sculped that cute little horse at the store.”

  With what I had in mind I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t an artist; only a cowhand out of a job. So I went to the window, passed the little model in to her, and said, “It’s an American Saddlebred horse. I saw him at a horse show in Boston.”

  The girl was a pretty one, and her eyes sparkled as she turned the head in her hands, oo-ing and ah-ing over it. I was so busy watching her that I didn’t notice the bald-headed man until he bent over her shoulder, looked at the model, then up at me,
and asked, “You do that yourself?”

  On the way in from camp I’d rehearsed what I was going to say to that banker, but with the girl having said what she did when I came in, and with our being so hard up right then, it didn’t come out the way I’d planned. “Yes, sir,” I told him. “I’m the cowboy artist . . . just passing through this way. Had to come west for my health. This is just a little toy I knocked out last night by the campfire.”

  Then to make things sound sort of offhand I said to the girl, “You may have him if you’d like to. I just make them as a pastime. My regular line is portrait sculpture . . . you know, making likenesses of people’s faces.”

  Quicker than a wink the banker asked, “What do you charge?”

  “Well, that depends,” I told him. “If I make several in a town—just out of clay like this—I charge ten dollars apiece. But if it’s an exclusive commission . . . if I agree to make only one in the town . . . for the leading citizen, or the banker, or someone like that, then I charge twenty-five . . . in advance . . . but when I make a deal of that kind I cast them in plaster . . . so they look like marble, you know. If they’re only clay they warp out of shape as soon as they dry.”

  The old gentleman peered at me over the top of his glasses and said, “You don’t say!”

  I knew right then I had him hooked, but I was scared. Anyone could have seen that he’d been a range man before he became a banker. His face was craggy and weatherbeaten, there were deep sun wrinkles flaring out from the corners of his eyes, deep clefts in his cheeks, and if he had false teeth he wasn’t wearing them. When I’d lived with Ivon I’d modeled several busts of young fellows we worked with, and some of them had come out fairly good, but I’d never tackled anything so tough as a face like that banker’s. My mouth was so dry my tongue clucked when I said, “Yes, sir. They’ll warp till you’d hardly recognize them if they’re left in clay.”