Naming Day
by Sevenstars
SUMMARY: How Slim came to be called that.
In "The Lonesome Gun," we learn that Slim's father spent several years (beginning when Slim was "seven or eight," as Jonesy says) trail-bossing herds up out of Texas, and that by the time Slim was 13 he was going along. We also learn that Ed Farrell, who hasn't seen him in at least 15 years, knows him by that nickname, which suggests it was given to him around that time. So I decided to write a fic to explain how he got it. I'd also noticed, from the first day I started watching First Season on DVD, that he has a fine scar on his left cheek that you can see when the light catches him just right. I made up my mind I'd incorporate that too if I could. Beta by Katy.
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Outside San Antonio, spring, 1856:
There probably wasn't a prouder boy in all of Texas, that day, than young Matthew Jacob Sherman, Jr. As he rode toward the cow-camp a half a horse-length behind his father, trailing the dun mule that carried their beds and gear, he pulled himself up a little straighter in his saddle, reveling in the knowledge that he was taller already, at thirteen, than most kids his age. He'd begun to get his growth early—Pa had said the Shermans always did do that—and he'd stood five feet two in his socks when he was only twelve; now, a year later, he was five feet four and a quarter inches and weighed an even hundred pounds on the grain scale in town. Seemed like Ma had been doing nothing but letting down his britches all winter, laughingly lamenting that if he went on the way he was, he'd soon be positively indecent.
He'd been pleading with Pa to take him along ever since he'd turned ten—when you had two numbers in your age, it seemed like you were getting grown-up—but Pa had told him he ought to at least get through the grades first ("You know your ma sets a mighty store by learnin'," he'd said), and maybe get a bit more heft on his shoulders. Still, Pa had given him his first horse when he was eight, and begun teaching him to rope as early as his ninth winter, and he'd practiced faithfully every day while the man was away, until now nothing that moved about the yard was safe from him. He'd even snuck into Old Man Harvey's pasture a dozen times or so and roped the man's Jerseys, and he'd thought about trying for the bull, but it was so right down mean he'd decided it was smarter not to. The family's own cattle, being beef animals, Shorthorns and some Herefords, and bigger, he had left alone, the grown ones, anyway—he figured they could as soon pull him out of his saddle as not; but all the calves he had caught at one time or another.
These last two months or so had been the most thrilling of his life. He knew in hindsight that Pa must have been working on Ma ever since he got home last fall, persuading her to let him go, but he hadn't had a hint of it till his birthday, early in January, when Pa, grinning broadly, had given him the saddle he'd bought way back last year and kept hidden in the grain bin ever since. As soon as he saw it—not like the saddles he and the neighbor kids had grown up riding, with its broad, flat Mexican horn and big skirts and the trailing covers (tapaderos, Pa said they were called) over the stirrups—he'd known what it meant. "I'm gonna go with you?" he'd cried in delight, half unbelieving still. "Pa, I'm gonna go to Texas?"
"You're gonna go to Texas, boy," Pa had said, "and plumb up the Shawnee Trail to boot. I already told Ed Farrell not to be botherin' about hirin' us a horse wrangler; you'll be it."
He'd yelled, then, because he just couldn't keep his joy in any longer—yelled so loud that Butterball, the cat, fluffed up her tail and disappeared behind the woodbox. It wasn't for a minute or two that he'd seen that Ma had tears in her eyes. Suddenly his delight drained out of him. She was a strong, healthy woman, but since his own birth she'd suffered four miscarriages, a stillbirth, and three beautiful infants none of whom had survived more than two years. They'd put the most recent in the ground just last year. It suddenly occurred to him that maybe that, just as much as his heft or his schooling or lack of either, was why Pa had waited till now for this. "Ma?" he'd said tentatively, confused.
She'd smiled, kind of watery, and said, "It's all right, Matty. Your cousins Jack and Harry—" they were her sister Aunt Laura's youngest boys, eleven and eight years old— "will be coming to stay with me and do the chores, and I've got Mrs. Browning for company."
He'd hesitated, torn. "Ma," he'd said slowly, "I don't have to go, not yet—"
And she'd smiled for real, then, and looked over at Pa, who was grinning even wider (if that was possible). "If you hadn't said that, Matty, I'd have known you weren't ready. But you did, and you are. You go with your pa, and you do a good job, hear?"
And he'd hugged her, hard, and that had told her everything he needed to say.
He and Pa had taken the stagecoach down to St. Louis, and then boarded a big Mississippi steamer for the journey to New Orleans. That boat had been just magnificent, and he'd been so excited Pa could barely get him to go to bed at night. Then they'd transferred to a coasting steamer—not quite so splendid, but still pretty fine—to the mouth of the Colorado River, and a little shallow-draft boat from there to Austin, where Pa had gotten him outfitted and taken him around to see the sights of the growing Texas capital. The last stage of their journey, overland by horseback to San Antonio, had taken three days; he was a seasoned enough rider, Pa had said, but he needed to get used to being in a saddle all day long. And Pa had been right, as he mostly was: that first night he climbed down off his pony's back, he'd been—well, sore wasn't in it. Pa had told him to get his britches off, and had slathered his legs and his tail end with sulphur and molasses; it stunk like all get out, but it helped a lot.
He swung his feet to and fro in the covered stirrups, listening to the jingle of the long bright spurs on the heels of his boots. Boots! And not ground-grubbers' farm boots, either, but the kind the Mexicans wore and Texans had learned to use from them, with the thin, flexible soles that let you get a feel for the stirrup, and the high heels that kept your foot from slipping through it—half-boots only, true, but costly ones, stitched with gold thread. Then supple leather chaps over his gray twill pants—to keep his legs from getting bruised and scratched, so Pa had explained, or cold and wet in rainy weather, and protect them if his horse fell on him, tried to bite him, or brushed him against another animal, and act as armor against sagebrush, cactus, and chaparral and shields against cold wind. A long, wide sash of red silk wound around his waist ("You can use it to tie an animal, if you got to," Pa had said). Greenish-white horsehide gloves, a stout leather jacket with extra hide at the elbows ("so you can fend off brush just by throwin' your bent arms out"), a brown leather vest ("man never knows when he'll need somethin' with pockets in it"), and a blue-on-white pin-striped hickory shirt, with a red-and-white silk scarf ("get used to callin' it a bandanna") loosely draped at his throat and knotted at the side. And a light-brown hat with a broad, upward-curled brim. And under his knee, in a scabbard ("they call it a boot in cow country"), a brand-shining-new 1854-model Volcanic carbine with a sixteen-and-a-half-inch barrel. ("You do a good job this trip," Pa had said, "and maybe next year, when your hands get a tad bigger, I'll get you a sidegun.") His horse was a mousy blue-gray color (Pa had called it grulla) with white socks on both hind feet and a large irregular splash of white ("some call it baldface, some calf or apron; me, I got a fondness for 'pieface' ") covering most of its face, including part of both eyes and nostrils.
Pa heard the music of the spurs and glanced back at him, grinning. He flicked a thumb against his hatbrim, as he'd seen cowboys do in Austin, and Pa nodded and faced front again. To his left, the cattle spread across their bedground, some lying down dozing, some grazing, some standing still to watch the riders pass. They were slim-flanked and agile, long-tailed and long-legged, with flat sides, narrow hips, and long bodies, nothing like the Midwestern cattle, beef or dairy, that he knew at home, and came in such a myriad of colors he could scarcely count them: shades of red, yellow, or brown; faded orange; fawn-colored; grulla like his pony; duns varying from pale through Jersey-cream, brindle, and washed-out to dark; solid jet-blacks, dirty-blacks, blacks splotched with white or red or brown; cleanly bright whites and dirty speckled ones; blues and grays and gray-blues, roans, brindles, creams, buckskins, bays; speckled, spotted, streaked, or splotched, sometimes white with a color, sometimes two colors, like yellow and gray; even one checkered blue and white and yellow. There were red-and-whites, peppered and splotched; linebacked blacks with, sometimes, white speckles on sides or belly; glossy dunnish-browns merging into black, with white speckles and splotches on their rumps; white-faced piebalds; blends of gold and black and brown; a red-speckled yellow well splashed on white and bordered with bluish-green spots (who'd have thought a cow could have bluish-green on it?); a dark brown with black head and shoulders; one that was deep red along the backbone, running to dark brown at shoulders and hipbones, near black from neck and hipbones out, and pure black nose and tail, the legs darkening likewise to pure black at the toes. Some had solid-color faces, others blazes or brockles; some were linebacked, and some had an extra transverse stripe forking down over their shoulders. And their horns!—white or gray or blue with black tips, sometimes solid black, some three or four or five feet from end to end, some six or seven; generally arching more or less forward, but some running up at a gentle slant before sweeping suddenly back parallel to the ground, some curving upward like two sickles, some deeper curved, some with curve on curve, some even pointing one up and one down, or one forward and one back. He guessed their weight at around eight or nine hundred pounds; Pa had said they were considered full-grown when they hit that size, about the time they were four or five years old, but would keep packing on the weight for years to come, not generally reaching a thousand till they were eight or ten. These were the famous "longhorns" of Texas.
And now they were past the cattle, moving downwind to the camp itself. A couple of wagons, similar in size to the small all-purpose kind owned by most of the families he knew, formed the core of it, with men scattered around, sitting on their rolled-up beds, some playing cards, some talking, and others stretched out napping with their broad hats tipped forward to keep the sun out of their eyes. Off to the side the horses grazed, in even more colors than the cattle. He eyed them eagerly. This was the remuda that was to be his charge.
A man working over some iron pots on the gently smoking campfire looked up and waved. "Matt! Welcome!" And the boy saw that he was an older man, maybe five or six years younger than Pa, with a battered brown bowler set squarely on his head.
"Jonesy!" Pa hollered back. "How'd you winter?"
The cook—the boy supposed he was that, seeing the piece of flour-sacking tucked lengthwise into the band of his pants—shook his head mournfully, but there was a bright shrewd gleam in his faded eyes. "I believe my sacroiliac's gettin' worse, not better," he said gloomily. The boy wondered what a sacroiliac was. It sure didn't sound good.
"You rascal," said Pa. "The only reason you say that is so I'll make sure you got somebody to relieve you of the heavy work."
"Wouldn't say that if you had it," retorted Jonesy.
A dark-haired boy came around one of the wagons with an armload of wood, dumped it conveniently near the fire, and came forward as the riders drew rein, taking their bridles as they swung down. "Mike, Jonesy, want you to meet my boy, Matt Junior," Pa said. "Son, this is Jonesy, camp cook—and you mind, now, on a drive the cook ranks next under the boss—and Mike Farrell, his louse."
Jonesy stuck out his hand. "Pleased to meet you, young Matt," he said. "Heard you'd be our horse wrangler this trip."
"That's what Pa said, uh—Mr. Jonesy," he agreed.
"Not Mister," the cook corrected him. "Just Jonesy. If it's good enough for your pa, it's good enough for you."
"I guess it is, if you say so... Jonesy." He'd heard Pa speak of this man. He and Jonesy had been together ever since Pa's first drive after the war, back when young Matt wasn't any more than seven. "What's a louse?" he asked.
"Somebody that helps the cook," Mike volunteered; he must have been as small for his age as young Matt was big for his, there being a good eight inches in difference between them. "My pa, he's the segundo—means he's next after your pa and Jonesy—he says maybe, a year or two, I'll get to be a horse wrangler like you, and then a couple years on I'll be drivin' cows."
He wondered whether being the boss's son was why he'd skipped this apparently common stage, but was too polite (or perhaps too prudent) to ask. "Dinner be on soon, Jonesy?" Pa was asking.
" 'Nother half an hour or so, Matt. You got plenty of time to unsaddle your horses and pick your bed-down spots."
So they did. As he stripped the saddle off the grulla, laid it on a patch of ground that seemed relatively free of rocks, and helped Pa get the gear off the mule, he thought on his name. He guessed "young Matt" wasn't too bad a thing to be called, but there were times he wished he hadn't got stuck carrying the same name as Pa. Not that he was ashamed of Pa, oh, no. Pa wasn't a young man—he'd be fifty-two come August—but he was lean and straight and broad-shouldered, well above six feet even without his high-heeled boots, and if there were gray streaks in his hair and beard, still he had all his teeth and his eyes were keen enough to shame most hawks. When he was even younger than his son was now, he'd been part of the movement that made the Ohio Valley the big beef-raising region of the country, helping graze the cattle, round them up on horseback, brand and earmark the calves, and drive the stock to market. At eighteen he'd been among the first freighters to travel the Santa Fe Trail. In his late twenties and early thirties he'd caught wild horses and sold them in the river towns of Missouri, taken trade goods out to the mountain men's rendezvous (and there met such famous trappers as Jim Bridger and Kit Carson), and started in driving cattle out of Texas, then just a new-made republic. In his late thirties and early forties he'd driven more cattle and traded with the Indians, and done a little freighting to the new forts along the Oregon Trail. He'd joined up with a militia outfit when the trouble started along the Mexican border, been voted sergeant, and served with honor; when he was mustered out they'd given him scrip enough to claim more than 2700 acres of land ("When I get up enough of a stake," he'd said more than once, "we'll head out West and find us a place with good water and good soil, and make a home there; Wyoming maybe—that's a fine country, grass and sweet water, and mountains hard by for timber"). Now, in his fifties, he was a highly respected trail boss. A single Texas cowman often didn't have enough selling-age cattle to make up a proper-sized herd, so men like Pa would gather up stock belonging to several and agree to drive them to market for a set price, maybe two to four dollars a head, out of which the boss paid himself and his crew, provided supplies and a remuda, and paid grazing and water fees as necessary, particularly in the Indian Nations. Whatever was left above and beyond that was apportioned out to the owners according to how many cattle they'd contributed.
Being named after a man who'd done everything Pa had done, who was respected and trusted as Pa was, had to be a good thing, and the boy often promised himself he'd do everything he had to in order to live up to it. But still, he wished there was some other thing he could call himself. Ma always called him "Matty;" he didn't mind it so much from her—Ma was Ma, after all—but now that he was growing up, it sounded like a little kid's name. Pa usually just called him "son" or "boy." Most of the family called him "June," short for "Junior," and that was worst of all: June was a girl's name! He thought of something Pa had told him about the Indians, how among them, when a boy got to a certain age, he went out away from the camp to fast and smoke and pray until a vision came to him that would tell him what things he had to do to bring spirit-favor on himself. At some point after this—perhaps from something seen or heard in the vision, perhaps from some brave deed he performed on an early war trail—he would take or be given a new name, and the one by which he'd been called in boyhood would be "thrown away." He sort of wished white folks had a custom like that, or at least the option of it, so that if a fellow wanted to, he could earn or choose some new name to be known by.
A man strode up to Pa, holding out his hand. "Matt! Somebody told me you'd got here. And this has to be your son?"
"That it is, Ed," Pa agreed, and made introductions. Young Matt shook hands with Ed Farrell, Mike's father and the boss's segundo. He was fifteen or twenty years younger than Pa, not so tall, and leaner. "Well, how many head we got this trip?"
"Finished the road-branding just two days back," Farrell said. "Counted five thousand and thirty-two. Seventy-four different brands altogether. Got the tally book anytime you want to see it."
"It'll wait," said Pa, as Jonesy suddenly started banging on a washbasin with a wooden spoon. "Grub won't. Come on, boy."
**SR**
After dinner, young Matt sat discreetly near enough to Pa and Ed Farrell to hear their talk as they looked over Ed's "tally book" and a battered map of the trail. Pa had already told him that the route they would be taking went by many names: the Old Texas Road, because it had been a popular route for folks moving into the state; the Shawnee Trail; most recently, since the creation of the Kansas Territory, the Kansas Trail. One section of it, from Fort Gibson north, had its own name, East Trail. Starting at Laredo on the Rio Grande, it meandered more or less north through San Antonio, Austin, and Fort Worth, crossing the Nueces, Colorado, and Brazos Rivers on the way. It crossed the Red River at Shawneetown (now more generally known as Denison), went past Fort Washita just north of it, through the Choctaw Nation and over the Canadian into Creek territory, over the Arkansas and past Fort Gibson into Cherokee country, and crossed into Kansas at Baxter Springs, then ran on across the southeast corner of the Territory and up to Kansas City, where the cattle would cross the Missouri River at the big bend, or else through Joplin, slantwise northeast to Sedalia, and from there roughly east to St. Louis. Many cattlemen were by now stopping short of the latter, aiming instead for Kansas City, Westport, and Independence, where westbound freighters and pioneers were ready to buy trail beef and work oxen, Army quartermasters and Indian agents were in the market for beef, and Midwestern cattle dealers were looking to fatten Texas cattle and ship them east. If all went well, this distance—about 650 miles, as opposed to 850-odd for the full trans-Missouri journey—could be covered in some six weeks, and then they'd go back to Texas for a new herd; counting travel time back, which was faster, it was possible, if the winter didn't close down early, for a crew to take three separate bunches up the trail in a single season. For this the boss got between $100 and $150 a month, the segundo $90 to $112, the cook as much as $75 ("A cook can make or break a drive, boy"), the ordinary hands up to $50, and the wrangler $25. Supplies ran nine or ten dollars per man per month, including medicines and tobacco, the last being customarily provided by the boss. All this meant that even if they were only paid for the actual time they were driving, young Matt could count on a season's wage of at least $112.50 and maybe close to $190. He already knew what he meant to do with it: give it to Pa to put with their stake, to get a place in Wyoming. That would make them partners, kind of.
Besides himself, Jonesy, Mike, and Pa, young Matt learned, there were eighteen men on the crew, about one for every 350 head: you needed a low man-to-cow ratio on account of longhorns being about halfway to wild critters, plus they had to be spaced more or less equally to keep the cattle moving and make sure none bolted off and lost themselves. The remuda tallied over 170 horses, because each man had to change at least twice a day and liked to give his mounts a day's rest in between if he could, plus he needed at least one "night horse" for keeping herd guard after dark, a couple of well-trained ones that knew how to work cattle instead of just push them, and a good "swimmin' horse" to get over the many rivers. And Pa, because he served as forward scout, had to have two more than anybody else. Young Matt had a string too—only four, and by no means the best in the bunch, because he didn't have to do night guard; most bosses hired both a day wrangler and a "nighthawk," but Ed hadn't been able to find anyone to fill the latter position this year, so the horses would have to be let graze freely at night, with hobbles put on only a few drifters and troublemakers. Then there were the men's personal mounts, and the two four-horse teams that drew the wagons. The men stored their bedrolls in the "bed wagon," along with slickers and extra coats, rifles, "war bags" (the name for the cotton grain sacks in which they stored their personal effects, such as extra clothes), corral ropes, stake ropes for the night horses, spare saddlery, an anvil, a shoeing outfit, a keg of nails, and a hundred-pound keg of ready-shaped horseshoes, called "good-enoughs," to be used if a horse lost one along the trail. But the heart of the camp was the chuck wagon ("chuck's one of the things we call food"), which belonged to Jonesy: he'd been hiring himself, and it, out to drives almost since there were any, going back winters to spend the season with a brother who lived in Independence. He was the only one in the crew, except Ed, who called Pa by his first name; to everyone else Pa was "Mr. Sherman." Young Matt figured that made sense, because those two had known Pa the longest: Ed had driven cattle with him since before he was a trail boss, and Jonesy had met him while skinning mules for the Army during the war.
Pa gave him a couple of days to get used to the horses and learn to "string" a rope corral to hold them during mount changes, then they pulled out on the first stage of the drive. An hour before daylight each morning, Jonesy's experienced instinct woke him and he and Mike set about making the breakfast. At daylight the last guard, quietly and without any apparent effort at forcing them, threw the cattle off the bedground—an operation that involved working them into a tenuous thread with one side of the cordon relaxed to permit controlled grazing in the desired direction—and got them moving, allowing them to graze along at about a mile an hour. Unless the drive to the next water was a long one, they took their time getting the animals off. It was at this point that young Matt's day began, as he saddled up the pony he'd left hobbled nearby the previous night, and rode out to fetch the horses. He herded them over to the chuck wagon, where the rope corral was waiting; it was a marvel to him that the horses never seemed to try to break through the flimsy length of "grass" rope that was the only thing holding them in, but they didn't ("Not a good cowpony foaled will mess with a rope, not once he's proper broke"). He'd stay at the open side of the corral with his pony, weaving to and fro across it, holding them in place, while the men, having eaten, roped out the mounts they meant to use for the morning's work, turned their night horses loose, saddled up, and rode off to catch up with the cattle. The last watch came back, ate, got their fresh mounts, and rode in pursuit of the herd. Young Matt grabbed some food, Mike and Jonesy loaded the wagons, and Pa went loping on ahead to check out the day's trail and search out water and a good spot for the noon camp. By eight or nine o'clock the moving cattle had gone anywhere between a mile and a half and four miles, their hunger was reasonably satisfied, and at this time they were thrown back onto the trail to begin the day's driving; the men began urging them a little closer together, the point riders smartened up the pace of the leaders, and the swing riders pushed in the flanks. The wagons broke camp and whipped up to catch up, Jonesy driving his own and Mike the other, and young Matt followed with the remuda. They got themselves a couple of hundred yards onto the upwind side of the herd—as much as a quarter of a mile if the ground were especially dry—to avoid the dust, and the day began for real.
For the first few days the cattle were driven hard, as much as thirty miles per, to break them in to travelling, get them away from their old familiar stomping grounds, and tire the confused, protesting animals so they'd be less trouble for the nightguard. ("We won't make but fifteen or twenty once we get 'em away from home, sometimes no more than eight.") At noontime there'd be a rest—two hours minimum—so the cattle and the remuda could graze and the men could eat, which they did in two shifts, and then they'd get started again and travel till about sunset, or an hour or so before, though the wagons and horses usually pulled ahead some time before this, so they could get to the selected bedground by five and start setting up camp and getting supper ready. Ideally the herd was timed to graze into the selected ground before darkness set in, watering first if possible, then moving along another two or three miles before bedding; this guaranteed that the cattle would settle down in much better shape and start off better in the morning. Half the men would stand watch at a time, although once the animals were trail-broken five men per two-hour shift—one for every thousand head, as was customary with big herds-would be enough most nights, except if it was dark and stormy. They had to be moved in loose order, trailing along in a thin string, to keep them from overheating, and the five-thousand-odd of them would stretch better than three miles from the nose of the lead steer to the tails of the drags; to keep them steadily in motion, each man would ride from his position rearward and pressing in toward the center, thereby overcoming the animals' tendency to spread out, and when he met the rider to his immediate rear, would turn, swing boldly away, and ride back in a more distant line to repeat the maneuver. Besides being unusually large—most Texas trail herds numbered between three hundred and a thousand, but in these "flush times" prices had been rising every year, and nobody wanted to miss out—it was a mixed herd, as all herds were: mature steers, heifers and cows (constantly dropping calves), and a handful of dignified old range bulls, too lacking in youth and vigor to be of value as breeders, but still very useful to a trail boss who knew his business, as their status and sobriety helped calm the herd and offset the antics of the exuberant young steers, especially in the first days. The cows found it hard to keep pace with the steers, which were faster travellers and better able to endure hardship; but the steers were less placid than the cows, more likely to panic and run, and having "the ladies" along helped to quiet them. The most troublesome were the two-year-old heifers, who just refused to get "road-broke" and were always bolting out of the drags, running wildly from any rider who pursued them, then crowding in among the moving herd for safety, ducking their heads and stopping, perhaps turning sideways, and making a sort of knot as the cattle coming up swung out to avoid them.
The lead steer wasn't a steer at all, but an executive cow, an older one, a white-and-red roan with light red on her back, changing to speckles on the sides and white on the face and underbelly. Her name was Strawberry, and Pa had been using her since his first drive after the war, sending her back at the end of each season to live on Ed Farrell's land. She walked steadily along at the front of the line, moving as all longhorns did with a light elastic step, unlike plodding domestic stock, and slinging her head to the beat of her feet, a copper bell on a strap around her neck bongling steady rhythm to keep the herd oriented. Just off to her left rode Ed, with another man at the same position on the right; these were the point riders. Six pair of riders were spaced about evenly along the length of the herd, the foremost three being called the "swing" riders and the lattermost the "flankers;" and across the tail end rode four "drag" men, making sure everything kept moving.
The days were long and dusty, though the horses, which lifted their feet higher than the shuffling cattle, set up a good deal less of it; and despite the easy ride from Austin down to San Antonio, young Matt was still pretty stiff at the end of each for the first week or so. But he had the resilience of youth and the enthusiasm that came of his excitement and curiosity, and he adjusted quickly. Jonesy was a fine cook, and the food, if simple, was always plentiful; the long hours in the fresh air insured that he never lay awake after rolling up in his bed for the night. He and Mike Farrell slept under the bedwagon (only the cook was allowed to sack out under the chuck wagon, or keep his bedroll in it by day), which was good when it rained, and since neither of them had to stand a nightwatch, they got a good bit more sleep than the grown men did.
Both of them were frequently the butt of rough jokes and pranks from the older hands—most of whom, in fact, weren't much older than they, late teens and early twenties, because trail-driving was a tiresome, and tiring, job, best suited to young men—but young Matt, at least, had half expected this from hearing Pa's stories, and he found, too, that if the hazing got excessive they could count on Jonesy to put a stop to it. Jonesy was almost more respected than Pa, because hard-working men needed to eat well, and every trail boss knew that a good cook was hard to find and harder to keep. He was treated as the most valuable man in the outfit, and the men were expected to keep on his good side by rolling and tying their bedding for loading every morning, putting their dirty dishes in the right place, and rustling wood and water when requested. ("Any man that won't do them things," Pa had said, "just don't know his place, and he's likely to soon find himself lookin' for another one.") At the chuck wagon, and for sixty feet around it in every direction, his word was law. He prized his dignity (nobody ever made fun of his city derby), had little use for the temperamental cattle, and stood firmly upon his traditional rights. A certain crankiness on his part was tolerated and even apparently expected, and almost unavoidable too, considering the conditions he had to contend with, but he generally maintained an even temper, and he was proud of his work, taking a real interest in it and giving the boys the best he could conjure up from the ingredients at hand. He was also versatile: handyman enough to mend the wagon, doctor enough to dole out home remedies (he had a great respect for herbs and kept a large assortment of them in a big wooden box in the chuck wagon), driver of a half-broke team, mender of harness, dentist, barber, veterinarian, even sewer-on of buttons if he was in a good mood. Afternoons when they'd come to whatever spot Pa had chosen for the night camp and supper was on the fire, he'd often find himself with a good two hours or more of leisure; sometimes he'd spread a blanket in the shade of the wagon and enjoy a nap, leaving Mike to replenish the fire as necessary, but often, if the stream (Pa always tried to pick a ground near a stream, though it wasn't quite so vital to water the cattle at night as at noon) showed some likely fishing holes, he might bring out a hook and line, cut a dogwood or willow pole, and haul in a mess of fish; or wander along the margin with a gun in search of a turkey or two or a half-dozen squirrels; or pick a bucketful of wild blackberries, dewberries, sandhill plums, or whatever other fruit he could find, to make a pie or cobbler as a special treat. Once or twice he helped young Matt fix his saddle, patiently demonstrating how to go about the tasks; the boy found him a good teacher, good as Pa. He was also very fond of music; he had a pleasant if untrained singing voice and could play the guitar besides, though what he dreamed of was a piano.
The chuck wagon that was his base of operations fascinated young Matt; it was like no vehicle he'd ever seen. It looked as if it might have started out as a small freight or emigrant wagon, but across the back of it was an upright "grub box," about four feet tall, two feet deep at the bottom and six inches at the top, and as wide as the wagon bed. Its outboard side was covered by a yard-square endgate, hinged at the bottom, tightly latched at the top, that could be swung down at right angles, held in place by chains to the top corners and a couple of hinged legs underneath. When lowered, this served as a worktable for Jonesy (the only person allowed to touch it), and tucked underneath it was the "wreck pan," where the crew put their dirty dishes after eating. Behind it were partitioned shelves and a dozen or so box drawers for groceries, into which, afternoons, Jonesy and Mike would transfer things from the supplies carried in the bed, so that there'd be enough of them—flour, beans, bacon, dried fruit, sugar, coffee—for the next two or three meals without their having to root around. There was a coffee mill screwed to the side and a ten-gallon can of oil for the camp lanterns slung underneath, and one drawer was reserved for the boss's branding book, work papers, and pencils. Dutch ovens, pots, a spade, ax, and fire irons rode in a rack built beneath the wagon bed, and inside it, along the sideboards, were built-in wooden chests with lift-up lids, compartmented within for medicines, tin cups and plates, wood-handled iron cutlery, dishrags, towels, soap, the S-shaped pothooks from which vessels were hung over the fire, and other small items, and wide enough for a hurt man to be lain out on top of, like he was lying on a bunk. Layered on top of these like a complex three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle were the supplies—flour, cornmeal, beans, rice, salt, and brown sugar in double sacks to prevent loss, unground coffee, jugs of vinegar and molasses, bacon in hundred-pound lots, salt pork, syrup, soda, baking powder, pepper, onions, potatoes, pickles, lard, jerky, boxes of dried fruit and cases of canned goods; iron skillets, pans, a kettle or two, a five-gallon coffeepot, a dishpan, a "camp kettle" (the large container used to heat dishwater), branding irons, crowbars, a monkey wrench, spare wagon parts, a big roll of heavy three-quarter rope, forty pounds of chewing tobacco and twenty of smoking, half a dozen bull's-eye lanterns, Jonesy's saddle and bedroll. Iron rings were screwed into the outside surfaces, to lash logs to when the outfit had to be floated over a river. A forty-five-gallon water barrel, big enough to hold two days' supply—more if they used it only for drinking and cooking and got their dishwater out of ground sources—was fastened to the side. A "jewelry chest," a small wooden box, was built onto the front, to hold hobbles, extra cartridges, latigoes, picket pins, rawhide strings and pieces to make repairs with—anything that might be needed in a hurry. Under the seat was the oblong "jockey box," where Jonesy kept everything from his Sharps and his shotgun, through axle grease, a hatchet, a hammer, and a shovel, to baling wire and whittled wooden wedges for wheel repair, spare cinch buckles, extra buttons, and a selection of small pebbles to pelt his team with. He was punctilious about everything going where it was supposed to; in that way he reminded young Matt of his ma, who was equally particular about her kitchen. He had a notion the two of them would get on real well.
Every horse in young Matt's remuda had a name and a personality, and he had to know them all; had to know every one by sight and by name, and know at a glance if one was missing. He had to know the species as a whole, too, and be able to handle them separately or in a bunch. Boys, Pa had said, usually did know horses better than cattle, because they'd been thrown in with them at an earlier age; that was why most cowhands started out as wranglers. And while horses were a lot less trouble to keep together than cattle were (owing, probably, to the fact that as colts they'd been brought up in herds made up of a stallion and as many mares as he could accumulate, and were therefore more accustomed to living that way than the cows, which on the range generally tended to congregate in small groups more or less widely separated), he had to be able to keep the individually-minded and more intelligent equines close to the herd of slower, leader-following beef, quietly and without fuss. As a general thing, when there was a river to cross, he and they would be sent over first: the horses swam better than cattle and were more courageous at a crossing, and the crew generally had no trouble in getting the latter to follow them. This was an important task, there being no bridges over any of the many streams that lay between them and their goal, and, as Pa pointed out, young Matt was a good swimmer too, though maybe not so good as his mount. They also had the responsibility of helping deal with the quicksand that lined many streams: Pa would first send a few of the men forward to ride their horses back and forth over it and pack it down, and then young Matt would run the remuda over it a few times. This worked, Pa told him, because a loose horse would pick up his feet and move quick when he felt himself sinking, but a cow would stop to see what was up, and in hesitating be lost.
There were two or three runs, or "stampedes," as they were called: longhorns weren't tame Eastern cattle, they were almost as wild as deer, and easily startled, especially at night—most particularly around midnight, when it was their custom to get up for a stretch, look around, take a few steps, browse a bit, turn around a few times, and finally lie down again (usually on the side opposite the one they'd started from) and go back to sleep. Storms were almost certain to start these, and they were about the scariest thing young Matt had ever seen; Jonesy, who had a good feel for the temper of cattle after his many years as a trail cook, would take him and Mike into the chuck wagon when he thought there was a chance of one. But Pa's crew knew their business, and were able to stop the animals within ten miles or less; once they did it in under a mile. The best way to keep it from happening, weather aside, was to push them by day till they were tired, then feed and water them heavily; that way they wouldn't run far even if they got started.
River crossings—and they were frequent—were one of the trickiest aspects of trail-driving, and getting a big herd over a river in freshet was the next hazard to a night stampede. Often the cattle could just wade across, but if not they had to plunge in and swim, with only their horns and noses showing above the water. In this case success depended on many factors: the sunlight must not be reflected from the water or shining across it into the eyes of the herd, for cattle wouldn't swim anything they couldn't see the other side of; there must be no high waves, nor any particularly swift current, nor floating trees or logs that might break the swimming line of cattle in midstream and cause them to mill or try to turn back; the weather must be right—cold or rainy weather was a bad time to put a herd into a stream—and the cattle warm or thirsty; and the stream, if possible, should be middle stage and calm. If the takeoff point was much higher than the water, the crew had to cut brush and build a chute to force the cattle in. A landing place had to be chosen that would insure quick ascent of the opposite heights, and was far enough downstream from the point of entry to allow for the drifting of the cattle with the current, not to mention the fact that even in a still pond they were constitutionally incapable of swimming in a straight line. Longhorns also shared the uneasiness of all wild creatures around watering places, so a careful boss would always send a man ahead to scare up the ducks; if they flew up after the cattle began to drink, there might be no end to the running. He also saw to it that his herd approached the crossing well strung out and walking briskly; if the lead animals were thirsty, they'd wade right in to drink, and the press behind them would then force them across. There were several methods of making a crossing, but in all of them the herd seemed to require leaders of one kind or another. Most frequently the remuda was employed for this task, sometimes in tandem with some other tactic, such as keeping the cattle away from the water for a day or two and then gradually working them down to an easy taking-off place, or letting the leaders drink, cutting out a few of them, and pushing them over, all the while feeding the others in behind them. A lead steer could be roped to a rider's horse and dragged bawling into the water while the other men choused the herd in after it. Or all hands might cut out fifteen or twenty head and push them across to the opposite bank, where they were held and allowed to "drip and bawl;" then their fellows would be brought down, allowed to see them, and fed in after them. After they were all well in, the crew's job was to keep the line moving and prevent it from bending and spreading downstream, or from getting caught in swift currents to be sucked under, washed downstream, or drowned from exhaustion. Once the animals reached swimming depth they generally went ahead to the other side, unless a floating log, an unexpected wave, or a sudden change in the current caused them to begin to turn back and circle upon themselves in midstream—"milling," or swimming round and round in an ever-tightening circle. In this case they could become hopelessly massed, unable to go either forward or back, and would soon begin panicking and trying to climb over each other, pushing the weaker ones under the surface. The loss from drowning would be enormous unless the crew was lucky enough to break the mill up in its early stages. This was a difficult and dangerous job: you couldn't enter the center of the mass, and pushing from the outside only tightened it. One method was to desert your horse, crawl over the backs of the cattle, get them turned, and then slip back to be ferried over by hanging onto the tail of one of them. Even if a mill could be avoided, high water, quicksand, treacherous banks, muscle cramps, suckholes, undercurrents, and swift water offered hazards to even the best swimmer, while the cattle might get trapped in quicksand or caught in submerged tangles of driftwood, and a single animal stumbling and struggling to regain its footing could cause a panic in midstream.
The herd wound steadily up the trail, pace easing a bit after the first three days. It crossed the Colorado, crossed the hoydenish Brazos, paused briefly at Fort Worth so Jonesy could stock up on supplies, went on again. The first night out the crew was eating supper when Pa and Ed Farrell, at almost the same instant, looked up and slipped their hands toward their guns. It took even young Matt's quick youthful ears another minute or so to catch the sound: hoofbeats, one horse, coming in slow. Then a hail from out in the darkness: "Hey, cow camp!"
Pa gave Ed a look, and the segundo began easing off away from him, to make the two executives of the herd hard to take down at the same time. "Come in easy," Pa invited, not loud, but in a voice plenty strong enough to make sure he'd be heard. Jonesy gestured summons to Mike and young Matt, drawing them back out of the firelight to stand against the front end of the chuck wagon. One or two of the crew reached for their rifles.
A horse loomed out of the murk, a deep-red pinto whose white blotches at first looked ghostly, disconnected to any known creature. Just well inside the circle of the firelight it pulled up, and the rider leaned forward, resting elbows on the horn of his saddle, a position, young Matt guessed, from which it would be pretty hard to bring any sort of weapon into play, and therefore a tacit declaration that he planned no mischief. He was maybe sixteen, with dark brown hair and light brown skin—about the color of white skin exposed daily to the sun—teamed with dark gray eyes under faintly oblique brows. He wore a pearl-gray buckskin tunic with six-inch fringes along the sleeves and hem, calf-high moccasins with leather insteps, moleskin-cloth breeches between. A rumpled porkpie hat was jauntily angled on his head, a feather tucked through the band. Tied on behind the cantle of his saddle were an oilskin poncho and a bright-colored trade blanket, and under the stirrup leather was an old Hawken rifle in a boot. He carried a Colt Paterson .40 revolver, with a foot-long barrel, in a pommel holster, and at his waist a .34 about half that length. He looked around at them, and grinned—a quick flash of beautiful teeth, there and gone almost too fast to register it. "No need for guns," he said, with an odd thick accent that sounded a bit like German, only not really; and with a thumb-gesture to his chest: "Peaceful Injun."
"You're no Injun, boy," growled Ed Farrell. "Not with those eyes."
"Some might say," the kid allowed. "Not 'round home."
"Where's home?" asked Pa.
The kid gave him a sly look. "You boss?"
Pa nodded. "Matt Sherman."
"Joey Redhawk," said the kid, and then: "Tishomingo. Chickasaw Nation."
"You're Chickasaw?" Young Matt thought he saw some of the tension ease out of Pa's shoulders. He knew, from the stories the man had told over the long winter evenings, that the Chickasaw were one of the so-called "Five Civilized Tribes," the nations that had been moved out of the Southern states twenty-odd years ago and settled north of the Red. There was a lot of white blood in them, from the old English and Scots and Irish traders who'd been serving them since back before the first big scrap with England, and they were known as peaceable; most now farmed for a living, and some were prosperous enough to build large houses and own slaves.
Headshake. "Quarter-white. Quarter-Chickasaw. Half-Comanche."
Young Matt saw Ed Farrell frown, but he left the next move to Pa. "That's not a thing a man hears of often," Pa observed mildly.
"Mother's father white trader. Come with the Nation when they move," Redhawk explained. "Married Chickasaw girl. Daughter stolen, fifteen years old, Comanche raiders. Soldiers get her back, five years later, she got me. Sent her back home." For just an instant something flashed across his hard-boned face—sadness? "She died, two years. Grandfather can't stand look of me. Said go. So—" a shrug— "I go." He glanced around. "You got good camp here. Go far?"
"Headin' 'em for Independence, out of San Antonio."
"Need man to work?" That flash of grin again. "Injun don't need money, much. Work cheap."
"Man works for me, he gets full wage," Pa said. He thought it over a minute or two, glanced back toward where Jonesy and the boys stood. "Don't need any more men for the herd, and I got a day wrangler. No nighthawk, though. That suit you? Twenty-five a month, grub, and you can sleep days on top of the beds in the wagon. You make a good showing, there might be a couple more trips this season."
"Okay." Pause, then: "I get down now?"
"Come ahead, and get something to eat."
Jonesy relaxed his vigilance, and the two boys returned to their meals. But later, just as he was drifting off to sleep, young Matt heard voices, Ed Farrell and Pa, trying to keep their talk private so as not to create dissension among the crew. "This really a good idea, Matt?" Ed asked.
"You think it isn't?" Pa responded mildly.
"He's half Comanch'."
"We're a good bit of travelling from Comanche country," said Pa, "and besides he's been raised with the Chicks since he was four, maybe younger. And if he was some kind of spy, you reckon he'd admit to bein' part their blood?"
"There's that," Ed grudged, "but not every man can see things as clear as you can, Matt. That's one reason why you're boss and they're not. Man with wild blood could mean trouble."
"Well," said Pa, "we'll wait and see, won't we?"
"I don't like it," Ed replied. "But you're boss."
**SR**
Young Matt didn't know—or even much care—about anyone else; he liked Joey Redhawk from the start. For one thing, the older boy made his job easier. Having two riders on the open side of the rope corral cut way down on the chances that some frisky pony would bolt out and make good its escape, and having a wrangler on duty all night meant that the day one didn't have to go chasing after the band rounding up stragglers and troublemakers. Apart from that, whether it was because of prejudice on the part of the older men, or something else, wasn't clear, but Joey didn't make friends except with Mike and young Matt; being the juniormost in the group the three of them naturally hung together. Since young Matt had never met a real Indian—well, a three-quarters Indian—before, he was fascinated by the newcomer, and Joey for his part seemed perfectly willing to answer questions, usually in the evenings over supper. The fact that they were both wranglers tended to cement their bond quickly—much as young Matt liked Mike, Mike was still just cook's louse, and didn't do his work in the saddle, but Joey did: already the pride of the mounted man had become a part of young Matt's outlook on life. And having another wrangler in the crew tended to diffuse a bit of the hazing, too. Joey took his share of it with surprisingly good humor and even temper. "Injuns like practical jokes too," he explained.
"I always heard they were a pretty solemn bunch," young Matt observed.
Joey grinned and shook his head. "No. You see us at home, you find out. Someday maybe you and me, we go to Nations and I show you."
"I'm goin' to Wyoming some day, with my ma and pa, soon as Pa gets up a big enough stake," young Matt told him. "But maybe you could come. Jonesy says he might. He says sleepin' on the ground half the year or more's not good for his sacroiliac." He'd learned by now that this mysterious term referred to part of Jonesy's back, which hadn't been the same since he got caught in a wagon wreck during the battle for Mexico City.
"Hah," said Joey. "Maybe."
Young Matt found out that Joey's odd accent was the result of two things: he'd been four years old and talking when his mother was rescued from the Comanches, so theirs was his first language, and his second was Chickasaw; when he'd started to learn English—which hadn't been till he was past ten years old—he'd naturally tended to speak it with a Comanche accent. He could make himself understood, though, as well as anybody young Matt knew, and he understood a lot better than he spoke. And, gratifyingly enough, he didn't need young Matt confiding in him first to express at least a mild sympathy with the younger boy's discontent over his name. "Even young brave should have own name, not father's," he said. "You want Injun name?"
"Can I have one? I mean, not bein' an Indian?"
"Sure. Lots of whites that work with Injuns, traders, agents, we give 'em Injun names. Plenty Chickasaws don't talk English so good. Easier to use own language. Same with any tribe—big tribes, Comanche, Sioux, all them."
"Well," young Matt ventured, "if you were gonna give me an Indian name, what would it be?"
Joey looked him over thoughtfully. "You pretty tall for young kid," he said. "Gonna be tall man like boss, I think. Maybe not so big. Maybe like now, long and slim like piece of string. Maybe I call you Huutunaakatu Tuinuhpu'. Means Slim Boy in Comanche—you like that? Maybe sometime, you do something big, you get better one, warrior name, but that good enough for now."
They kept it private, like a sign or a grip between a couple of Freemasons, but it gave young Matt a feeling that he was, somehow, just a little bit special, if only because he had a friend who had given him a name of his own. Joey also let him try the heft of his Paterson .34—an old gun, almost twenty years, with no trigger guard, and so light it would be no good as a club once shot dry, but just about the right size and weight for the boy's hand. An uncle of his, he said, had given it to him when his grandfather ordered him away.
They swam the Red River and crossed into the Indian Territory, bearing a little east of north, and paused at Fort Washita for supplies; next stop would be Fort Gibson, about twenty-five miles past the Arkansas. The weather was getting hotter, the mercury some afternoons hitting the low eighties. There came a day when the nightground Pa had chosen for them was marked out by a little low bluff, maybe fifty feet high, to the west, perfectly positioned to shade the camp, and Jonesy pulled the wagon in beside it, leaving a space between for the men to spread their beds. Mike parked the bedwagon directly behind, with a good interval left for Jonesy to work in, and they set about making the fire and getting supper going. Young Matt took the remuda out to graze its fill before the cattle got there. Just north was a stream, not a full-size river like the Red, but still just big enough that they'd probably have to swim it; by now the boy was experienced enough to know that Pa would want them to be thirsty when they neared it, so they probably wouldn't be watered before bedding. That might make for a restless night, since they were sure to know it was there—longhorns could smell water at ten miles. East, the land lifted in the long parallel rolls typical of the eastern Territory. It was a pretty place, young Matt thought, except for the heat. He let his pony laze, just keeping alert enough that none of the bolters or troublemakers could get out on him, and watched absently as Mike took the wagon down to the water to fill the barrels before the herd could muddy the water up, then brought it back and began foraging along the margin for firewood.
After a time Joey came jogging out toward him on his red pinto, which he usually kept close up for night work; he said he and Little Hawk had been together so long that he worked best with the spotted pony, no offense meant to Pa's choices. As he got closer, young Matt saw that his face was tight, looking harder than usual. "Hey, Joey, what's up?" he asked.
"Don't look," said Joey in a quiet voice. "Injun up on that roll east."
Young Matt tensed a bit, and his sorrel pony, feeling it, lifted its head curiously, looked around, and seeing nothing scareworthy went back to feeding. "Well, this is Indian Territory, isn't it?" he asked.
"Not civilized Injun," said Joey. "Got look at pony, just before he back'im down over crest. Lance and shield. Comanche. Scout for raiding party, I think."
Young Matt knew that Fort Washita had been established in '42 to protect the Choctaw and Chickasaw from the hostile Plains tribes, and Washita was close on a hundred miles southwest of them now. "Isn't this kind of far east for Comanches?"
"Huh," Joey grunted. "Comanche horse Injun. Goes where loot is. Raid way down into Mexico, sometimes. Soldiers at Washita can't be all places all time. War parties take chance, can get in and out with plunder before anybody cut trail. Maybe got troops from Gibson chasing now, though. See remuda, figure they get remounts."
The younger boy suddenly felt cold—not scared, just cold. "What do we do?" he asked. "Pa and the herd won't be here for a couple hours yet."
Joey, not moving his head, slid his eyes toward that rising roll of land. "Gone now, I think. Gone back to get friends. Give us little bit of time to get ready. You drift remuda back to wagons, corral 'em against bluff. I go down to stream and bring Mike."
"Does Jonesy know?"
"I tell Jonesy first thing. He get ready," said Joey. "You go now, quick. Don't know how far back war party is."
Young Matt did as he was told. Jonesy had already tied the corral ropes to the wagons; he was standing by the one opening he'd left, holding the loose end, as the boy whistled the horses in, snapping the end of his catch rope at the laggards. "Peg up as many of 'em as you can," the cook said, "so if we get a run we might still have a chance of movin' the herd; without horses we're stuck."
"Yessir." Young Matt set to work.
Joey came cantering back with Mike hanging on behind his saddle, let the younger boy slide down, and tied off the end of Jonesy's rope. As he cut out the most skittish and likely-to-run of the horses, young Matt could hear Jonesy giving orders. "You boys set some boxes and barrels between the wheels and under the tongues, we'll need 'em for breastworks. Mike, fetch down three or four rifles from the bed wagon, and powder and lead." He remembered that Jonesy had been in the war—not a fighting man, but he'd known enough of the breed that he'd have learned something about defense.
He got about twenty of the horses tied up right against the bluff, then his own sorrel next to Joey's Little Hawk, and went to join the others. "Good, you're done," said Jonesy, shooting quick glances toward the east. "We're gonna be spread pretty thin. How many do you figure there'll be of 'em, Joey?"
"Don't know. Depends who leads, whether he get good medicine dream for big raid or just figure on stealin' stock," said Joey. "Figure twenty maybe."
"Five to one," muttered Jonesy. "Well, they can't come at us from behind, and the stream should protect our left flank—didn't you say you thought it had sand in it, Mike? They try to send any over it, they might bog down, and they'd have to cross twice, which makes it even likelier, not to speak of the delay. All right. Joey, young Matt, you two got the best range, with that Hawken and the Volcanic. You hold the center. Mike and me'll take the right. If we get real lucky, they might get here, see we're set for 'em, and decide it's not worth the try, but best to expect the worst, just the same. If we can hold here long enough for Matt and them to hear the shootin', we'll be okay."
They found their places and settled, young Matt with a couple of boxes of Volcanic self-firing cartridges near his knee, Joey with the percussion caps and pre-measured paper wads of powder that would let him fire his single-shot rifle nearly as fast. "Scared, Slim Boy?" he asked.
"Not yet," young Matt replied. "Kinda numb."
"Yeah. Happens. Listen, now. White man always figures other fellow might get killed but not him. Injun's got notion every bullet is marked for him personal, so gets out of way if he can. Couple men, if they keep heads and only shoot at sure targets, can break up Injun charge. So you hold fire till you know can't miss, and don't get rattled. Remember, Injuns whoop to scare you, so you miss or start runnin'. We got good cover here, and Jonesy smart old man, knows what he's doin'. You stay cool, you come out okay." He grinned then. "Always good thing to remember no matter who you fight."
"I will," young Matt promised, his lips tight.
It was maybe fifteen minutes later that the Indians appeared, a long line abreast at the crest of the roll. "Hah," said Joey, and young Matt heard him counting under his breath: "...ten...twelve...fifteen...hey, Jonesy, we got seventeen."
Jonesy lifted one hand to acknowledge that, and rested his smoothbore Sharps .56 on the crate in front of him; his long twin-barrelled shotgun leaned against the barricade within easy reach. "No war bonnets," Joey went on quietly. "Good one way, bad another."
"How's that?" young Matt asked.
"Means no big chiefs, nobody with lots of coups, plenty battles, experience. We got Jonesy, makes difference, like you see, huh? But if all them young braves, glory-hungry, maybe they take stupid chances. Could mean tough fight if they do." He jerked his head toward the ridge, pointing with his chin, which, as young Matt had learned, was the Indian way of doing it. "You see? They talk now. They see things not same here as when scout first find us. Like Jonesy say, maybe they think not worth risk to try us. We see pretty quick."
They did. The Indians debated for maybe five or ten minutes, gathered into a clump, well out of range—even the Hawken wasn't much good at past 350 yards—then spread out again; even at that distance there was a kind of splendor about them, with feathers blowing from their hair and lances and the manes and tails of their ponies. " 'Nother way Injuns try to scare you," said Joey— "let you see how many they got, let you think about that. Ain't dumb, Injuns. Been fighting wars lot of years now. Most Injun men fighting men, not like whites. They know that."
Then the brave in the middle raised his lance, and they came.
Young Matt did his best to follow Joey's advice, but it was harder than he'd figured. He'd aim at what he thought was a certain target, and he'd been shooting a good long time now, being as Pa was gone most of the warm weather and if he and Ma and Mrs. Browning were to eat much of anything but pork, it had to be brought in by him; but the game he shot was usually from cover and not moving, and the Indians were moving, fast. He brought down one pony that he was sure of, tail-over-head and thrashing, catching the rider underneath, and he thought he knocked one brave spinning, but he couldn't tell how bad hurt the redskin was, as one of his friends whirled back, picked him up, and carried him out of range. Beside him, Joey was firing coolly and steadily, in between shots pulling the Hawken back in to clear the nipple with a quick blow down the barrel, then breaking a powder wad with his teeth, pouring the powder in, thrusting the patch and ball home, checking the priming, and capping the lock—less than thirty seconds and he was ready to aim again.
Young Matt noticed that the Indians only had two or three guns; most were armed with bows and arrows, and they were fast with them, fast as any man with a muzzle-loader, though not a patch on the Volcanic as long as he had rounds in it. The arrows whistled into the little fort or hit the breastworks with muffled thuds; at least they didn't seem to be scaring the horses the way gunfire might.
He was halfway through his second magazine when he felt a searing shock of pain along his left cheek, bad enough that the carbine fell from his hands. He heard Joey let out a shriek of fury—"Yaaaaa-aiiiii!"—and heard the Hawken boom, and then he found himself on the ground, his eyes so full of tears that he could scarcely see. Jonesy was kneeling over him. "Hold still, boy. Let me look."
"No," he gasped. "No—the Indians—"
"Don't you worry about them," Jonesy told him. "They pulled back a bit. We bloodied 'em pretty fair, they need to think on that a while."
As he got his breath and vision back and realized what Jonesy was doing, he understood what must have happened. An arrow had skinned along the side of his face, catching on the point of his cheekbone and plowing a shallow furrow in the skin; it hurt like blue blazes and was bleeding like there was no tomorrow, but Jonesy didn't seem worried about it—he was gently cleaning off the blood, then laying a cold cloth on it to ease the flow. "Hold that," he ordered, positioning the boy's fingers so they wouldn't press directly on the wound. "Well, it's just a flesh wound; you won't die of it unless you get poisoning, but you might have a scar to show for it."
His vision cleared some, and he took the canteen Joey offered in his free hand and gulped water. "Did we scare 'em off?" he asked.
"Count five good big blood spots out there, and two ponies dead," Joey told him. "Not bad for old man and three kids, you think, Jonesy?" The cook snorted, but he looked pretty pleased with himself. "Figure maybe one more charge—getting time boss and herd near enough to hear, and maybe Gibson soldiers coming up behind too, like I say before. We get lucky, maybe we catch from three sides, wipe 'em out."
"Jonesy!" Mike shouted. "They're millin' around a lot, looks like they're gettin' ready to hit us again."
"I got to get back, boy," Jonesy said. "We get through this and I'll stitch up that face of yours, but there's no time now."
"Okay," young Matt agreed, still a little dazed, and watched the cook scuttle off to the right to join his louse, keeping low.
"Here," said Joey, pushing his Paterson .34 into his friend's hand. "Might get close. You hold this in case, okay, Slim Boy?"
"Yeah, okay," he said again. "Joey?"
"Hah?"
"Been good fighting with you."
"We long way from not fighting together again," Joey told him, teeth flashing in his powder-grimed face. "But same back at you, ehaitsma." Seeing young Matt's puzzled look: "Comanche word. Means close friend who is only boy. We win this fight, then you be tsukup—experienced warrior." He glanced sideways, over their breastwork. "Mike say true. They come again, 'nother minute or so. Get ready."
Young Matt laid the Colt Paterson on the crate in front of him and rested the Volcanic's barrel beside it, fitting fresh cartridges into the magazine to top it off. There was a sudden explosion of high, staccato, barking shouts and shrill, turkey-gobbling whoops, and the surviving Indians charged again.
Less than five minutes later young Matt heard it: a distant, rising moan of hoofs, a steady clamor of bawling, and thinly above it the whoops of men. He looked right, to the south, and saw the hulking dust cloud of the stampede, the dark mass of bodies beneath it, the flash of horns catching sunlight. "Yeeeee-haaaah!" Joey yelled. "Here comes boss, we okay now!"
The Indians saw it too, what was coming at them, and they tried to get out of the way, but they didn't have many options. Pa had spread the herd out on as wide a front as he could. If they tried to cross it, they'd be riding right into the guns at the wagon fort; if they ran straight north, there was the stream and its timber, and the rise on the east was too steep to get up in a hurry. They boiled around in confusion like a water-blister, as the cattle thundered ever nearer, then scattered in all directions.
Including the one who figured he was done, but made up his mind to die warrior-fashion, charging his enemies.
To young Matt it was all a succession of images, one flash on top of another: the big brown-bay mare with splashes of red and yellow war paint on her body, the long slender lance with the feathers on its shaft blowing wildly in the wind of the rider's passage, the Paterson Colt under his hand as he clawed for it, knowing the Volcanic would be worse than useless at that range—a blur of pearl-gray, Joey's buckskin tunic, as he flung his weight against the younger boy, knocking him back—the moving shadow of the mare soaring over the barricade—sunflash off the flat metal head of the lance—glimpse past Joey's shoulder of the painted, distorted features of the Indian—a loud grunt, an explosion as the Colt went off in his hand, a howl and a horse's startled whinny, and over all that sinister roar of cattle running, and somewhere Pa's voice bellowing, "Turn 'em! Turn 'em! Get 'em milling before they crash into that timber and kill half their fool selves!"—Jonesy's long shotgun going off with a crash that would wake the dead, a thud, and then only the cattle rushing by, bawling, as the cook's hand fell on young Matt's shoulder. "You all right, boy?"
"I—I—don't know—Joey?" There was something heavy half on top of him, something that grunted and shifted—
"Here, ehaitsma..." There was something strange and tight in Joey's voice, and as he sat up young Matt saw why. The Indian who'd jumped the barricade lay about ten feet away, a bloody little hole in his upper chest, half the side of his head gone where Jonesy's shotgun blast had hit him; a dozen feet back was his bay mare, shaking but standing on her own. Jonesy was kneeling beside Joey, who had a feathered lance shaft sticking out of his back. He lay on his side, his eyes on young Matt. "You okay?"
The boy scrabbled around on his knees, the old Colt still in his hand. "Joey!"
"You do real good, ehaitsma," Joey gasped. "Think he dead before... Jonesy blow his head off. You keep gun. You earn. And my Little Hawk... you take... good care of him, hah?"
Young Matt grabbed his friend's hand; it was cold, too cold. "Joey, no, you hang on—"
Joey's head moved side to side. "No good, Huutunaakatu Tuinuhpu'. I don't last much longer." He grinned, weakly. "Like you say before... good fighting... with... you..." His voice faded a moment, then he rallied. "Mi'aru tsaa, tami'—go well... younger... brother..." His fingers turned in young Matt's grip, he squeezed once, and then his eyelids drooped. Pa found them there, the three of them, Jonesy watching quietly as the boy grieved over his friend.
**SR**
They buried Joey beside the bluff, with a rough marker on which Jonesy had used a hot poker to burn the words: HERE LIES JOEY REDHAWK – 1856 – A GOOD FRIEND.
Young Matt stayed beside the neatly rounded-up mound, squatting at his pony's head, the sorrel's reins and Little Hawk's in his hand, as the rest of the crew slowly drifted away; it was too late in the day to go on now, and the cattle, worn out from their charge, needed to feed and rest and settle down. After a time he heard Pa's voice: "You better come now, boy. Jonesy's got grub on."
He didn't stir, just kept his eyes on the grave. His cheek stung and smarted from the stitches Jonesy had put in it; there was a patch over it to keep it clean. "It's a strange thing, Pa. I hardly knew him two weeks, and yet—I feel like I'd just lost a brother."
Pa's spurs chimed softly as he shifted his weight. "Happens that way," he agreed. "Two men come together and there's something between 'em from the start. There's a word for a man like that on the range—'pard.' "
"Pard?" young Matt echoed.
"Short for partner," Pa explained. "Got a notion that's what Joey might have been to you."
"Pard," the boy repeated in a husky near-whisper. "I like that." He turned then, looking up to his father's solemn face. "He saved my life, Pa. He figured makin' sure I'd live was more important than him doin' it. How does a man even the score for somethin' like that?"
"It's not easy," Pa admitted. "Me, I always figured the best way was to try to live the rest of your years so that, if that man was still here, he'd feel you'd been worth givin' everything up for. Like buildin' him a monument out of the life he gave back to you."
Young Matt thought that over a minute. "I'm gonna try real hard to do that, Pa," he said in a low voice. "I'm gonna try to think every day how I can act so I don't shame him, or make his dyin' be for nothing. But... I think maybe I might need some help."
"What kind of help would that be, son?"
"We didn't tell you," young Matt said, "but Joey gave me a name, a special Indian name—you can ask Jonesy; he called me by it just before he died, like sayin' goodbye. Pa—I'm not ashamed of bein' named after you, I never could be, but I want—I want—to go by that name now. So that every time somebody calls to me, or speaks to me, I'll remember Joey and what he did, and how I wouldn't be alive for them to call or speak to except he let himself be killed here today."
Pa's eyes were steady. "What name was it?"
"Huutunaakatu Tuinuhpu'. Slim Boy. A Comanche name."
"Slim," Pa repeated, thoughtful. "Well, it suits you. Slim. Slim Sherman. Not a bad sound to it, either."
"You don't mind?"
"No, boy, I don't mind. I owe him too. Wouldn't have no sons left at all but for him." He looked at the mound. "Jonesy'll be growlin' that your food's cold. Let's go back to the wagon, Slim."
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Note: In our reality, the chuckwagon was developed around 1866 by Texas cowman Charles "Charley" Goodnight; before that, cattle drives packed what they needed on muleback or in ox-drawn carts. But, in our reality, barbed wire wasn't patented till 1873, and didn't become widespread on the northern ranges till the 1880's—but we see Slim and Jess stringing it as early as First Season, which is more or less established as taking place in 1870. So I've assumed that, in their world, certain things were simply introduced earlier than in ours.
Drives of cattle from Texas to markets elsewhere began almost as soon as Anglos entered the cattle business there—and they entered it almost as soon as they arrived, owing to the fact that, under Mexican land laws, a man who declared an intention to raise livestock could claim a much larger tract than one who merely farmed (4428 acres against 177, or more than 25 times as much). By the middle '50's, Americans had been established in the Lone Star State for more than a generation, and most of the standard tropes of cow-ranching, picked up from the Mexicans, were well understood; men had been building careers, and fortunes, on beef (as opposed to cotton) for at least a decade, with cowmen already owning vast herds. Early trail herds were quite small, not over 600 head, but as the Texans became more comfortable with the handling of the half-wild cattle, they grew, and by around 1837 as many as 1000 at a time were being taken to the Gulf towns to be shipped by boat as far as Boston. A drive is reported as going to St. Louis as early as 1844, and herds were trailing to Shreveport and New Orleans even before that. The Shawnee Trail had become an important route north by 1854.
2000-3000 head was generally considered the ideal maximum for safe handling, but one herd of 5500 did go up the trail in 1879, 6500 in '81, and the biggest on record was 15,000, trailed from Texas as early as 1869. So Jonesy's description, in "The Lonesome Gun," of the herd as "five thousand longhorns" isn't totally implausible.