I was riding through the Gypsum Hills country west of the Red Bed Plains, a series of rolling hills, buttes and red mesas some 150 to two hundred feet high, all cut through by narrow gullies. The hills are capped by fifteen- to twenty-foot layers of gypsum that sparkle in the sun—the reason the Indians called them the Glass Hills.
Here and there grew stands of red cedar, blackjack and post oak, some of them lightning-blasted and dead, and under my horse’s feet primroses, black-eyed Susans and tiny violets peeped out from among the grama grass.
I kept turning my head, checking behind me, and saw nothing but the rain-lashed landscape, iron gray clouds so low I reckoned I could reach up and grab a handful and I figured it would be like clutching at wood smoke.
I rode on, heading due south. A hundred or so miles to my west lay the majestic Black Mesa and directly in front of me, but still a long ways off, rose the weathered crags of the Wichita and Arbuckle mountains.
There was no letup in the rain, a steady, hissing downpour that ran off my hat brim like a waterfall and beat steadily on the shoulders of my slicker.
It was getting close to noon and I was becoming needful of coffee and a smoke. I’d tried to roll a cigarette earlier, but the rain had battered tobacco and paper from my fingers, scattering brown shreds over the front of my slicker. I’d given vent to a few choice cuss words, I can tell you, even though I knew if Sally heard me she’d be real annoyed. That little gal was dead set against cussing and she’d made that plain to me a time or two.
Reining in the paint, I glanced around, looking for a likely spot to hole up for an hour. If the riders behind me were honest men, they’d likely be sheltering from the downpour, and outlaws don’t much care for getting wet either, come to that.
It seemed to me, I could stop and brew up some coffee and then be on my way again, and nobody the wiser.
Like I said, that was how it seemed to me. But as things turned out, I was about to lead my ducks to the wrong pond.
About a hundred yards ahead of where I sat my horse, the gypsum crowning one of the hills slanted sharply downward to about thirty feet above the level. A narrow creek ran along the bottom of the hill under the gypsum shelf and the slope had been undercut, eroded away by wind and floodwaters, forming a natural, shallow cave about ten feet deep, twice that much high and maybe forty or fifty feet long.
A few stunted juniper grew higher up the hillside, where there might be fallen branches, at least enough to boil up some coffee.
I kneed the paint forward and rode up to the cave. Now I was closer, it was pretty much as I’ve described and I saw traces of previous fires, built small, the way Indians do. A goodly supply of dry wood, mostly pine and hickory branches, was scattered around and I was glad I didn’t have to depend on the wet, slow-burning juniper.
I swung out of the saddle, eased the girth on the paint and led him to a patch of good grass close enough to the overhang that he’d be out of the worst of the rain.
The saddlebags I took with me back to the cave. When a man you regard as a friend as well as a boss gives that much money into your trust, you take care of it real well. That was what I thought anyway, and I believe I had the right of it.
I started a fire, and when it was burning good, I went to the creek and filled the coffeepot. Then I fetched Sally’s bonnet and my sack of supplies back to the cave and laid them in a dry spot. That done, I threw a handful of coffee into the pot and set the pot on the coals to boil.
I shrugged out of my wet slicker and laid it on the ground, then adjusted the cartridge belt and holster around my hips. The faded blue shirt I wore was damp at the collar, and from the knees down, my brown canvas pants were soaked.
I was an inch above middle height that year, skinny as the shadow of a barbed wire fence, but most of the beef I did have was in my arms and shoulders, so that when I had a mind to push or pull something, it usually moved.
My hair was auburn, tinting red in places, and my eyes were gray. Bob Collins told me one time that when I was riled, my eyes shaded to the coldest gray he’d ever seen in all his born days.
Well, I didn’t get riled often. If folks let me be, then I did the same for them. I was a peace-loving man with nothing to prove, and now I turned eighteen and was almost man grown, I didn’t see much sense in fighting and feuding just for the hell of it.
Of course, as I stood there waiting for the coffee to boil, I’d no way of knowing that I’d soon be getting into plenty of both. And looking back, I think maybe that’s just as well. A man needs a few quiet moments when he can be at peace with himself and the world. I reckon a wise man is never less alone than when he’s alone.
I stepped to the mouth of the cave, looking out at the lashing rain, enjoying the solitude of that wild, beautiful country and the smell of boiling coffee and wood smoke and the sweet, fresh tang of wet grass and sage.
As was my habit recently, my fingers absently strayed to my top lip, where I hoped to grow a man’s mustache. But to my disappointment, all I felt was downy fuzz, the same fuzz I’d been feeling every day since I’d left Texas close to four months before.
Back in Dodge, I’d envied Sheriff Bat Masterson his fine mustache and the way it set female hearts to fluttering when he tipped his hat and cut a dash. Me, I’d hoped to ride back to pretty Sally with a fine mustache of my own and cut a few dashes my ownself. But the way my whiskers were progressing, or rather how they weren’t progressing, made that possibility more and more unlikely.
I sighed kind of deep and sad, dropped my hand and went back to the fire. I kneeled and picked up the coffeepot, ready to fill my cup. Then I froze real still when I heard a voice behind me.
“Rise up easy, Dusty Hannah, and when you turn, make sure the only damn thing in your hand is the coffeepot.”
I recognized that voice, and I did what it told me.
“Howdy, Clem,” I said, turning mighty careful, slow as molasses. “Thought you’d be across the Red by this time. That’s what I thought.”
Clem Kennedy shrugged his narrow shoulders. “You thought wrong, Dusty. You know how it is. Man stays in Dodge until his wages is gone. Trouble is, good whiskey and bad women don’t come cheap.”
“I don’t know how it is, Clem,” I said. “I still have my wages, at least most of them, in my pocket.”
The man with Kennedy sneered and spoke up for the first time. “Well, well, well, Clem, ain’t he the reg’lar little do-gooder? Why, I reckon if’n he was a dog, somebody would’ve stolen him when he were just a pup.”
“Let it go, Luke.” Kennedy smiled. “This boy knows why we’re here, so we’ll get right to it.” The smile slipped, then vanished into a tight-lipped grimace. “We want the money, Dusty.”
I was conscious of the coffeepot in my right hand. If it came to gunplay, I’d have to drop it before I went for my Colt, and that would cost me time, more time than these two would allow.
I knew Clem Kennedy, a thin, sour man with hard blue eyes, a ragged, tobacco-stained mustache hanging under his nose like a dead rat. He’d come up the trail with us, and before we’d even reached the Red, he’d complained to Simon Prather, the owner of the herd, that he was a top hand and shouldn’t be riding drag.
“Let the kid eat dust, Mr. Prather,” Kennedy had whined. “He’s still got plenty to learn.”
Now Simon and Ma Prather had taken me in when I was a homeless youngster just fourteen years old, and I knew he considered me a top hand. But rather than be accused of favoritism, he’d asked me, head down, digging into the dirt with the toe of his boot the way he did when he was embarrassed, if I’d keep the peace and ride the drag.
Of course, I’d agreed, knowing what kind of fix Simon was in for experienced riders. And that was how come I’d eaten dust all the way from Doan’s Crossing to Dodge, though Simon later paid me top hand wages.
The man called Luke I didn’t know. But he looked hard and mean and the walnut handle of the Colt at his waist was plenty worn from hard use.
Slowly, I kneeled and set the coffeepot down, surprised that it had not occurred to either man that I’d done it to save time on the draw.
Were they that confident?
The way they looked at me, their eyes filled with amusement not unmixed with contempt, I reckoned they were. To these two, I was just a half-grown boy without a mustache and mighty green, and they didn’t think I counted for much.
