Texas Tomboy, Page 2

  Her father made no answer. A gust of wind came, swooping up snow from the slope and whirling it high in the air. Clumps of prickly pear looked frostbitten, and the low, scattered mesquite trees lifeless and black. The two riders went slowly on. At the top of a rise, Dan Carter pulled up Old Sam, and they looked off to where the undulating, snow-covered pastures met the horizon.

  “Our country sure is pretty!” said the girl softly.

  “It sure is, sugar!” said her father.

  To them, “our country” meant “our ranch.” They saw their country always as they wanted it to be, glorified by their faith and hope. No matter what happened, the vast acreage of these thirty sections would always be “pretty country” to them.

  “Let’s go see about that fence over in the Cutoff,” said Dan Carter.

  The girl made no answer. There seemed to be mutual understanding between her and her father.

  The rocky pastures were bleak and bare, whitened now with snow. Cows were scattered here and there, and for long stretches there were no cows at all. Sometimes a jackrabbit jumped out from behind a bush and made Old Sam swerve aside. A flock of mourning doves rose from the snow and flew away and a turkey hen was startled from its perch in a tree. There were no other signs of life—only the vastness of the sky, only the never-ending pressure of the cold wind.

  But Charlie did not mind the cold or the wind. “I sure do like to fix fence,” she said.

  “Remember the time you got stuck in the post hole?” asked her father.

  “Sure do,” laughed the girl. “You put me down in there to clean the dirt out with Mama’s pie-pan.”

  “You were a cute little old girl, not more’n five, but you were too fat when you squatted down, Charlie Boy.”

  “I was scared to death, Papa,” the girl said. “But you told me, ‘Now, hon, don’t you cry. In ten minutes I can dig you out if I have to. Fall down on your knees, hold your hands up, and I’ll pull you out.’ And that’s what you did.”

  “You never cried a single tear,” said her father.

  “I don’t guess we ever told Mama, did we?”

  “No sir-ree!” laughed the man. “She’d a kept you at home. And how could I get along without my pardner? Mighty lonesome riding pasture all day, with nobody to talk to but myself.”

  They came up to a pile of cedar posts, not far from a large wooden windmill. “We’ll make a water lot here,” said Dan Carter, “and use it for a feed trap.”

  “Cattle been eatin’ the bark off our new posts,” said the girl.

  “Jackrabbits, more’n likely,” said her father.

  “Somebody’s been stealin’ ’em.” The girl pointed to footmarks in the snow.

  Her father looked. “The Duffys, maybe. They’re always going where they have no business to.”

  “Mighty pretty posts,” said Charlie. “They’d be awful easy to take.”

  “Be awful easy to get caught going out the gate,” said her father. “No telling who they’d be liable to meet.”

  “Don’t meet a soul in a month o’ Sundays, way off out here,” said the girl. “But don’t fool yourself that them Duffys would go out a gate. They’re the kind goes under. If we make a water lot here, that’s not half enough posts. I didn’t get what I wanted for Christmas at all.”

  Dan Carter was busy nailing sagging barbwires to the fence posts with staples. “No?” he said.

  “Who wants a silly book o’ poems for Christmas? Uncle Moe must think I’m a little old whinin’ crybaby!” scoffed Charlie. “Here I wanted a load of cedar posts more’n anything. There’s nothing like a good fence to save work and worry. If you don’t have fences to stop your cattle, they’ll ramble clear off down into Mexico. Or, the south wind will blow them clear up to Kansas.”

  Her father smiled, then he pointed. “Look at the tracks in the snow. There’s rabbits, foxes, rats, mice, coons…Now, if we didn’t have anything else to do, we’d follow those tracks and catch that coon.”

  “Sure would be fun,” said Charlie, “but we left our gun at home.”

  Dan Carter checked the windmill mechanism and the water-flow into the long trough.

  “Dead cow over yonder,” announced Charlie. “See the buzzards?”

  “We’ll go look,” said the man.

  They rode into the brushy hollow and found two cows lying dead.

  “Too cold for ’em, half-starved,” said Carter. “They’ve had their calves, these two. But where are they? What’s that over there by the fence?”

  “That little old calf walked up there and died.” Charlie ran to look at it. “No, it’s still alive. If the mother cow is dead, it’s a dogie—an orphan. But where’s the other one? Reckon somebody came in and took it?”

  “One calf is missing,” said Dan Carter. “Might have been a lobo, or a coyote. Or maybe Duffy’s still eating my beef. He’s been doing it ever since he squatted on that little old one-section, and turned those grass roots up to the sun. That’s what I get for telling him and his boy to take all the wood they want off our place.”

  But Charlie was no longer thinking about the missing calf. She called her father to look at the living one, curled up in a bed of snow. Icicles hung on its chin, and its tail was frozen stiff.

  “It’s mine! My dogie!” she cried. “I’ll take it home and raise it.”

  “Now, hon, you can see it’s half-frozen,” said her father. “It’ll die sure. Not worth fussing over. Even if you can get another calf’s mother to take it, it won’t amount to anything. It will be an undersized runt, not worth the milk you’ll pour down its throat.”

  “But we can’t leave it here to die, Papa.”

  The calf’s eyes opened, and its tongue licked its lip.

  “Snowball! I’ll call it Snowball!” cried Charlie excitedly.

  Without a word, the man slung the helpless calf over the front of his saddle. “Time we’re getting back,” he said, “if we want to beat that norther. Thermometer’s dropping fast.”

  “It’s not suppertime, is it? The days are so short…” Even with the cold and the wind, Charlie never wanted to go back.

  “We’ve come twenty-five miles today,” said her father. “It’s five or six miles home. I’m hungry as a cow that can’t find a blade of grass. I know just how it feels.”

  It was nearly dark when they rode into Little Pasture, which had only a hundred acres, instead of several thousand like most of the others. Here the ground was more level. Small catclaw bushes, clumps of prickly pear and small mesquite trees grew on all sides. The horse followed a freshly-made wagon track. Twin windmills loomed ahead, the only landmarks. The riders passed by a large rock corral and a lot where there was a small herd of brown and white spotted goats, the family’s summer meat supply. Dan Carter opened a gate.

  “Holy Smoke! It looks like Old Man Drake’s here!” he cried. “I wondered whose wagon-tracks those were. Look what he’s done—torn up my gate-post again. If I couldn’t drive a freight wagon through a gate without busting down the gate-post, I’d go and crawl into a prairie-dog hole.”

  “Don’t stop now, Papa,” said Charlie eagerly. “Let’s go see what he brought. I don’t guess you ordered more cedar posts, did you?”

  To the left stood the two windmills, heavy wooden structures, with pumps which pumped water into a wide, scooped-out pond, four or five feet deep in the middle. The wind was blowing up snow from the tank dump, and ruffling the surface of the water. Several black crows flew up, cawing noisily, startled by the clop-clop of the horse’s hoofs.

  The man and girl rounded a curve and came through a gate into the water lot. From there the house could be seen, a six-room, one-story building. It sat in the middle of the horse trap beyond, inside a wire fence. The freight wagon had stopped a short distance beyond. The cowboys, Bud Whitaker and Gus Owens, were unhitching the three teams of horses, while the dog, Ringo, barked excitedly. Mrs. Carter had come out, a small, delicate woman, wrapped in a warm shawl, and was talking to Old Man Drake. Char
lie slipped off Old Sam and ran over.

  “Hey, Drake, did you bring me any cedar posts?” she cried. “No? More cow cake? None at all?”

  Drake the driver, a lanky man with whiskers hanging down on both sides of his face, kept on talking to her mother and did not answer. The men unloaded the semi-annual supply of food—barrels of flour and sugar, and hundred-pound sacks of meal, potatoes and red frijole beans.

  “Nothin’ but stuff to eat!” scoffed Charlie.

  She ran back to Old Sam. Her father had lifted the dogie down, and was holding it in his arms. Ringo came up, sniffing.

  “Where do you want it, sugar?” asked Carter. “Go in the barn and make a bed of hay. I’ll bring your dogie in.”

  “Oh, no, he’ll freeze in there, sure,” said Charlie. “Let’s take him in the kitchen.”

  “You know your mother doesn’t allow livestock in the house,” said Dan Carter. “Pile up some hay, quick, so I can put him down—he’s heavy.”

  He put the calf down and Charlie knelt to look at it. “He’s still alive,” she said softly. “I’ve got to warm him some milk.”

  On her way to the house, Charlie saw that all the family were crowded about the freight wagon. The food supplies were unloaded, and the men were lifting down a large, heavy white object. When she came out again, with the warm milk in a bucket, they were standing around the object, admiring.

  But Charlie hurried to the calf. He was standing on his four wobbly legs now. He was the most beautiful calf she had ever seen. His face was pure white, and his body was velvety red. He hadn’t had time to get his face dirty. He was gentle too, because he was not old enough to be afraid. His eyes were big and appealing.

  She must keep him alive. She must get some warm milk inside him.

  It was not easy. The calf did not know how to drink. She found the green bottle with the large nipple, which had been used for calves before. But he did not want to take it, even when she held it down in the milk. When she pushed his head down into the bucket, he jerked it up and sneezed all over her.

  She pushed his head down again, and put her milky fingers inside his mouth. At last he began to suck, and as he sucked, strength began to flow into his weak, shivering body.

  But a norther was blowing up, and Charlie knew he would have to stay in a warm place, or he would die. Daddy would help her to carry the calf into the kitchen. She ran out to call her father, and she saw the men carrying the big white thing across the back porch into the door. Ringo went in after them.

  “Hey, Bones, what they got there?” cried Charlie. “Hey, Grace, what is it?”

  But her brother and sister were too excited to answer. Mama had a proud look on her face. Mama had something she wanted. Even Papa looked happy. The cowboys, Bud and Gus, were talking loudly.

  “Where we gonna sleep?” demanded Gus.

  “ ’Taint big enough for you, Gus,” said Bud. “You’d spill over both ends.”

  “I’m a big boy,” said Gus. “I never did get off the bottle.”

  “You never grew up, that’s right,” said Bud.

  Old Man Drake broke in. “Hustle up, boys, I’m hongry.”

  Into the cowboys’ room off the back porch they went, and there they deposited their load. Was it a new white iron bed for the cowboys? They had been making jokes about the way their old one sagged. Charlie peeped in at the door. The cowboys’ bed, boots, clothes and other possessions were gone. The floor and walls were bare. Mama must have had it cleared out. And there in the middle of the floor stood the new possession.

  It was a large white shiny porcelain enamel bathtub, standing up on four clawlike legs. Charlie stared.

  “Gee-whillikens! What in the old scratch? A BATHTUB!” the girl exclaimed.

  “Don’t say things like that, daughter,” begged Mrs. Carter. Then she smiled. “Maybe now we can begin to live like civilized people. Want to take the first bath, Benoni?” She turned to the small boy standing quietly beside her. Only his mother called him by his real name. He was seven, and so thin that everybody else called him Bones.

  “Where’s the water?” asked Bones.

  “That will be the next thing,” said Mrs. Carter. “When we get running water in the house, it will be just like living in town.” She opened a side door which led into the kitchen. “The stove will heat the room up nicely, and we’ll put the hot-water tank over in that corner. The cowboys will like it better out in the bunkhouse, now that we’ve put in a stove for them.”

  “When do we eat?” It was Old Man Drake speaking. He had driven fifty miles from San Angelo with the load of freight, camping out several nights along the way, doing his own skimpy cooking. Now he was ready for a good meal, cooked by a woman.

  The table almost filled the narrow dining room. A hot fire blazed in the small heating stove in the corner. Mounted deer antlers and cow horns adorned the walls and linoleum covered the floor. Grace, Charlie’s fourteen-year-old sister, red-faced from the heat of the kitchen range, was putting the food on the table.

  “Come and get it or I’ll throw it in the creek!” she called out.

  Chairs were pulled up with a noisy clatter. Fried ham and red beans were passed and everybody fell to and ate. Nobody noticed Charlie’s absence until suddenly there the girl stood at Old Man Drake’s elbow. She still had her felt slouch hat on, and her face and clothes were dusty. She put her hands on her hips and watched the old freight driver.

  Grace filled two large plates with hot biscuits at the stove.

  One plate never got past Old Man Drake. He helped himself liberally. He poured black sorghum molasses and red grease gravy on each biscuit. Then he popped them, one by one, into his mouth and swallowed them in gulps. Between biscuits, he ate his beans covered with “red hots”—tiny red peppers fished out of vinegar sauce.

  Charlie watched, fascinated. Then she asked in a loud voice: “Hey, Drake, you got tape-worm?”

  A roar of laughter went round the table, laughter that echoed and re-echoed through the wood-ceiled room. The cowboys slapped their levis in delight.

  “Daughter!” scolded Mrs. Carter. “Haven’t I told you…?”

  “Why can’t he leave some biscuits for the rest of us?” demanded Charlie.

  “Daughter, I’m ashamed of you,” said Mrs. Carter. “Why are you late? What have you been doing? You haven’t washed.”

  “Mama! Mama!” called Grace from the back room. “She’s brought that little old smelly dogie into the house! She’s put it in our nice new shiny bathtub! Mama! Make Charlie take it out to the barn.”

  Again, laughter filled the room, as Papa, the cowboys and the family left the table and crowded round. There, in the new porcelain tub, on a nest of hay and old blankets, lay the newborn calf.

  “This is a bathroom,” cried Grace indignantly, “not a barn. Mama, if you don’t make Charlotte get that critter outa here…”

  “Now Grace, that’s where you’re dead wrong,” said Bud Whitaker slowly. “This is the room that’s going to be the bathroom. You can’t rightly call it a bathroom until the pipes are in and the water’s hooked up.”

  “But we’ll be taking baths in here,” answered Grace. “We’ll heat water on the kitchen stove and pack it in. If that don’t make it a bathroom…”

  “Charlotte Clarissa Carter, you’ll have to take the calf out to the barn,” said Mama firmly. “You know I cannot allow livestock in the house.”

  Charlie said nothing. She looked from her mother to her father, and her eyes rested on his in mute appeal.

  At last Papa spoke in his soft, easy-going drawl: “Thermometer’s dropped forty degrees since morning. Let the kitchen door stay open, Grace. Snowball needs to be kept nice and warm.”

  Charlie smiled.

  CHAPTER II

  Where’s My Horse?

  GR - R - R - R! GR -R - R - R!

  Charlie turned over in bed. She was sleepy, but the coffee grinder always woke her. She wished her mother would grind the coffee at night, so she would not
hear it every morning.

  Gr - r - r - r! Gr - r - r - r - r!

  It was no use. She might as well get up. Besides, she had to see how Snowball was getting along. As she stepped into overalls and threw on an old shirt, she whispered to herself: “ ‘Time was when the little toy dog was new…Now don’t you go till I come he said…and don’t you make any noise…’ ”

  She hated the poem and she always got it mixed up, but she had to learn it to please Uncle Moe. Bones could say it without a mistake. Bones liked to sit with his nose in a book all day. But she did want that horse. She had to have a horse. She could not live without a horse, and after all, learning a poem was a pretty easy way to get one.

  “ ‘Little Boy Blue was covered with dust…’ ” No, that wasn’t right. Out into the kitchen she flew, whistling like a boy.

  “Don’t whistle in the house, Charlotte,” said Mrs. Carter.

  “Gimme the milk!” demanded Charlie. “I got to feed Snowball.”

  What if Uncle Moe took it into his head to come over from headquarters today? Snowball was getting along fine, and had been banished, after the first few nights, to the barn. The milking was already done. A five-gallon can stood just inside the kitchen door. Charlie ate her breakfast quickly, then picked up the can.

  “What you doin’ with all that milk?” asked Bud Whitaker, sprawled lazily on a chair.

  “Got to feed Snowball and the dogies,” said the girl.

  “Too much milk will make a dogie sick,” said Bud.

  “Don’t you think I know that much?” replied Charlie. “I gave Snowball four cups at a time, and fed him four times a day at first. He’s three weeks old now, so I’ve started him on bran, cottonseed meal and grain. Pretty soon, I’ll give him all the milk he wants. Coal Oil and Fleabite, they’re just babies. They can’t take much yet.”

  “By gravy! Milk-fed, corn-fed beef!” cried Bud, smacking his lips. “Snowball sure will taste good. How tender and juicy them steaks are gonna be. I can taste ’em already. Can’t hardly wait to sharpen my…”