LAZYING ALONG
UPON even the most seasoned outdoor men the weather has undeniable
influence. Came now a bright sun and gentle winds. The prairie lay like
a silver sea. The surliness of the men vanished, they were children
again. Once more the force of custom, of duty, made itself felt.
One more camp brought them to the North Fork of the Canadian, a more
serious proposition than had been the main river of that name. The
channel was narrower and deeper, and the banks, especially upon the
south side, much more steep. There was only a narrow channel of swimming
water, but not a man in the outfit would have consented to see the
mistress of Del Sol undertake to swim her own horse across even the
narrowest channel. The entire herd was held up for half a day while the
men make a rude raft sufficient to cross the carts and their occupants.
They dug down the bank on the farther shore so that better egress might
be offered for the cattle.
“By the time a cow has swum a river,” said Jim Nabours to expostulating
men, who did not like shovel work, since that, at least, could not be
done on horseback, “he’s plumb tired, like enough. Make him climb a
steep bank and he may fall back in. The worst place for them to get
crowded is on the far side of a river. Now you fellows go on and dig a
nice path, or else maybe we won’t have no cows a-tall before long. I’m
scared to make a tally, way it is.”
So they passed yet another unknown river and swung on out, their own
trail makers.
“I wish to God I knowed where we was,” grumbled the trail boss to Len
Hersey, carefree cowhand, to whom he happened to be talking. “Unless’n
that wagon tongue has got warped we’re still heading north. I done set
her on the North Star last night my own self. But a trail scout had orto
have a watch and a compass, and there ain’t nary one of either in this
whole outfit.”
Hersey took a chew of tobacco.
“Heap o’ things in life ain’t needful,” said he; “just only folks gets
used to them, that’s all. That lead steer Alamo’s all right if nobody
don’t move the North Star. He’s got his eye sot on that. I seen him
standing up the other night about one o’clock, looking at that star with
one eye. He done wink at me with the other one. He shore knows where
we’re at, Jim. You’d oughtn’t to worry. This suits me, although I will
say that this here shirt I got now might be a little better around the
elbows. I hate to go to meeting in it.”
“When I was a boy,” said Nabours reminiscently, “the onliest kind of
church we had was camp meeting. I ain’t saw one of them for quite a
while.
“Them big meetings used to bring in everybody from all over. The
preacher’d throw the camp in some nice grove, and folks would build a
shed with a brush roof and make some seats out of slabs. That was the
church. I’ve saw a bearskin used for a pulpit cover. If there was extra
ministers on hand, sometimes they’d have rawhide-bottom chairs made for
them. The mourner’s bench, it always had a good rawhide bottom too.
There used to be plenty straw scattered around between the benches for
the sake of them that got conviction right strong and begun to throw
fits. What with horses and dogs and babies, there was quite a settlement
to a good camp meeting, while it lasted. The men didn’t always have hats
and the women couldn’t always afford calico, but I can’t see but what we
got along all right.
“Them days a feller had to load a rifle at the front end exclusive—no
Henry rifles then. It was perlite for to lean your shooting iron against
a tree and hang your powder horn on it before you went in to get
religion. My pap always taken a drink of corn licker afore he set in;
but he always put down a gourdful of cold water on top of it, so it
didn’t hurt him none, he told me.
“I recollect when we built the first log school in the valley. It was
about ten foot square. But come to style, the courthouse up to Sherman,
twenty years ago, it made a ree-cord. I was there when that house was
built. It was twenty foot square. That and a few furrows of plowed
ground was all there was to the county seat. We dedicated her with a
barbecue; a barbecue was the only thing Texas could afford then. Huh!
It’s the only thing she can afford now. We all sot under a brush shed
and everybody felt right good. There was a barrel of whisky and a tin
cup and a nigger with a fiddle. That’s the way to start a county seat
right.
“There wasn’t a foot of railroad anywheres in them days. Yet in Texas
we’ve got over a hunderd miles of railroad built already. The Lord knows
what’ll happen next.
“You talking about shirts, Len! Enduring of the war, three or four years
ago, all my folks had to make their own shirts. The women folks had to
weave and spin the woolsey. First thing I can remember was helping to
braid hide and horse-hair ropes. Everybody tanned their own leather with
oak bark. We made our own saddle trees out of forks and rawhide, and we
covered them with our own leather—_lastro_, _rosaderos_, taps and all.
We didn’t have no wells; we drunk out’n the creeks. Some neighbor had to
make all the shoes we got. We ground our corn meal in a hand mill and we
made our own wagons and ox yokes. If we got a loom or spinning wheel we
had to make that too. Folks used to make hats out of palmetto; they
braided them theirselves. What we got done we had to do; there wasn’t no
one to hire nor nothing to pay them with.
“Shirt? Why a shirt, now, Len—a shirt in the old times used to last a
feller for years. Has yores?”
“It shore has,” replied Len Hersey. “She’s been a plumb good one, too,
and I’m sorry to see her go. My mammy made her for me, I don’t know how
long back, but quite some time. Trouble about shirts is, anyways
boughten ones, it takes so much for spurs and boots and saddles a feller
ain’t got much left to buy a shirt. I wouldn’t be no ways contented with
one of them homemade saddles of yourn no more. It don’t leave much for
shirts atter you got a cow outfit paid fer.
“But as I was sayin’, I’m happy just to drift along over this here
country. Ain’t she fine? This morning, along when the sun was shinin’ so
perty, you’d orter seen old Sanchez’ fighting rooster! He natural flewed
up on the cart and crowed to a fare ye well, he felt that good!”
“He’d ’a’ been a lot better off if he’d ’a’ sot on top the cart every
night,” commented Nabours. “Anita, old Sanchez’ woman, she starts out
with three roosters and eight hens, allowing, I reckon, to start a hen
ranch somewhere up north in case we got busted and couldn’t get home.
She can’t no ways start one now. The skunks and wildcats and coyotes has
got ’em all excepting old Mister Gallina, and he shy part of one wing.
“Ain’t that rooster like a fool Texan? He’s lonesome and broke, and
don’t know where he’s at, and part of his comb is tore, and he can’t fly
much; but, ‘Praise God,’ says he, ‘I got both my spurs!’”
“Shore he does,” nodded Len Hersey. “All the whole state o’ Texas ever
has owned has been a pair o’ spurs.
“Funny how time changes,” he went on, lolling on his saddle horn as he
spoke. “When my pap moved into Ulvade County cows wasn’t worth nothing.
The only thing to do was to kill them for their hides, and if you got
four bits for a hide that was big money. Lately people got a dollar
apiece fer hides. I wouldn’t be surprised ef we got two dollars a hide
in Aberlene. We’ll like enough have to sell ’em fer the hides. Ain’t no
money in cows.
“I was on a herd oncet that driv to Shreveport time of the war. We got
into cockleburs so heavy the cows’ tails got like clubs. They’d hung up
by the tails in the piney woods over in Louisiana. You could hear ’em
bawl bloody murder. I don’t know how many we left hanging in the piney
woods. There wasn’t no money in that drive and the cows got thin as
rails. We couldn’t even skin ’em.”
“Huh!” commented the older man. “The longer you live the nearer you’ll
come to learning how many things can happen to folks that trails cows,
son. Give us two or three more acts of God on this drive, and we’ll be
lucky ef we hit Aberlene with fifty head of cows to skin. We-all may
have to sell our saddles to get home.”
“Then I wouldn’t get no new shirt?”
“I ain’t promising you none.”
“Well,” said Len Hersey philosophically, reaching in a pocket for loose
tobacco, “so long’s a man has got his spurs he don’t need a thousand
shirts nohow. I don’t see nothing to worry about.”