Chapter 3

I offered to let old Miguelito borrow a horse to ride back down to the reservation, but he refused my offer. I told him that I had an extra hundred weight of pinto beans that my Mexicans had gotten me to buy for them but hadn't used up before they lit out.

"Can't you do for yourself boy? You trying to give away the food that you don't know how to cook?"

"I can cook just fine. I'm boiling up a big stew right now. I just don't care for them pintos much. They give me the bloat something fierce."

"What's in your stew? I smelled something in the house there, but I just thought that maybe you were washing out your socks and old bedding." I could tell he was interested, because I'd caught him sniffing at the simmering stew that I had sitting just inside the house, over on top of my big black iron stove, that was standing close by the door. My daddy had bought that stove from a fellow that was pulling up stakes and clearing out some years before, and we'd had to spend three days trying to haul it up the hill on skids with three horses pulling at it. Daddy had been forced to open up the wall by the door just to get it slid inside. He had decided that right by the door would make a fine place to put it too. It was cast iron and weighed probably five hundred pounds or more. It was a wood burner, and wood wasn't something that we had a lot of around here. I liked it mostly because you could heat up a lot of water on top of that stove all at once. In the winter, I could fill a hot bath tub to the top before the first water had cooled down too much. I liked to stay clean, sometimes taking two baths a month during the winter.

"I've got meat, vegetables and some spices, and it's been simmering for a couple of days now. Meat's probably pretty chewable by now." I had always been partial to horse meat, more so than cattle, but it was a little tougher than beef.

"Why does it smell so rank?"

"It's just that you're not used to smelling meat that hasn't been dead for six months, that's all. Plus, it isn't dog meat, which is probably all that you've had fresh since they set you people up down there."

"Nothing wrong with dog. Tastes like mule deer, only better. Least wise it does if it's a young dog."

"Stew should be ready by tomorrow morning if you'd care to stop by. Once you've tasted it, you'll realize how much you owe me an apology for that comment about my cooking."

"You make bread too?"

"Got myself a case of hardtack that I picked up in town. Soak it in the stew's gravy and it's almost like bread."

"Your mother could bake some good bread. She never taught you how?"

"I was seven when she took sick sudden and died."

"If you've got flour and some salt and a little yeast, I can make you up some bread. Sweet water makes for good bread. You have lots of sweet water up here, so I could make us some bread for that stew if you wanted."

"I just invited you to share a meal with me at breakfast tomorrow. I didn't ask you to move in and set up house keeping with me."

"It's going to be hard for us to get along nephew, especially if you keep on thinking that you are funny."

"First you insult my cooking, and then you get mad when I don't ask you to move in with me. You sure are a bit sulky for an Indian. Come for some stew in the morning, or don't, it's all the same to me. If you want to try your hand at making some bread, I've got some preserves laid by that my Aunt Persis put up. It's strawberry flavored, and it would go good on some fresh bread. If you want to get along with me, it would be better to wait and let me invite you, rather than just barging right in. I can't abide pushiness."

"I wasn't hungry anyway. You can just keep your damn stew. It smells like horse meat to me, and I'm not partial to anything having to do with horses."

"Suit yourself. You want them beans or not?"

"Don't have the water to soak them in anyway."

"If you want it, you can take all the water you need from up here at my spring. You get water in those government two gallon buckets anyway, right? My water is better, and it's closer too. If you bring a wagon to the bottom of the pass, someone could fill up a lot of buckets pretty quick. You know, for one hundred and fifty dollars, I'd run some pipe down there to the bottom and let you get your water from right down there at the valley floor. Got some pipe already that I was planning to use for something else, but it cost me that much and a little more."

"If you run the pipe, you can take it out of the wages for your new hands. Maybe fifty a month. It would be nice to have clean water. That's been a big problem, not having clean fresh water."

"All you had to do was ask me, I'd have let you have it."

"Everyone has always known that you're a little funny about guarding your water, boy."

"I might be funny about sharing my water with strangers, but you Indians aren't strangers to me. My mother always worried about how bad things were down there for you. I guess I might favor her a little in that way. I never thought it was right the way that they penned you in on that miserable land, and left you all to survive as best as you could."

"I'll bring the rest of your hands up in the morning. Don't forget my rifle either. You need to think about what them four boys in your lower corral are going to have to eat tonight too. They'll be hungry after working your horses all day."

"I'll show them where the larder is. They better be able to make their own damn food though, because I'm not going to cook for them."

"Do you think you can give one of them a rifle and a bullet? There's plenty of rabbit running loose up by your spring."

"Send one of them up here. I'll get him a rifle and a whole box of bullets. There's also a mess of chickens running loose up here too. You're welcome to grab a couple for yourself and take them with you on your way back to the reservation. Don't mess with my eggs though, there's barely enough already."

"Is that stew made from horse meat or not?"

"That's for me to know. I don't think you've ever tasted well cooked horse before. Once you did, you'd probably turn up your nose the next time someone offered you dog to eat. I guarantee you that whatever is in that stew pot, it will still taste better than what you are used to."

"That's not something that would be too hard to do. We've already finished off one of those steers that you gave us. That was the first good meat we've seen for awhile. I appreciate that you still left them for us, even after I was rude to you."

He was starting to get on my nerves with all his sweet talking. I knew that he'd shamed me into leaving his people those cattle. He knew that he'd had to swallow hard on his pride before he could bring himself to telling me that my mother was related to him. There wasn't any need to say anything more about it. If those cattle had helped ease their misery some, the money from having eight reservation Indians with jobs and food to eat would ease things a whole lot more. I also knew that I'd get started in on running that pipe down to the bottom of the pass as soon as I could after Miguelito left. I felt good that his people, our people, would soon have better water to drink and cook with. I knew that I could find a fat steer every month for a reasonable price too. Probably for half the cost that it would be if an Indian was the one buying it.

"The sooner you light on out of here, the sooner we all can start working on getting things done. I can't be spending my whole morning standing here and listening to you prattle on like some old squaw. Why don't you get on down the hill so that I can take care of the things I need to do?"

"Don't forget those guns and the bullets too. We'll all be expecting them come morning."

I hope he didn't think that I was stupid enough to let him see where I had hid my guns? Finally, he started off towards the back of my ranch house. I heard some chickens squawking, and then heard Miguelito running around cussing up a blue streak. It wasn't long before I heard a screech of triumph out of him and knew that at least one of my chickens had breathed her last. There was another little flurry soon after, and then I heard another one when it bit the dust. Old Miguelito had to be pretty spry to have caught his breath after running down that first chicken, to have been ready so quick to get himself another.

It was well past noon and I was taking a break after spending all morning digging up a case of rifles and another filled with ammunition. My daddy had found himself a whole wagon of Army stuff out about thirty miles or more from our ranch. The two Army boys who were driving that team and wagon had tipped it over and fallen, along with their wagon and the team, off of a too narrow part way up on a steep hillside road. By the time my daddy found them, both men were dead and only one of the horses was still alive. He'd had to put the horse down too, after seeing that it had a badly broken leg.

Among some other supplies on that busted up wagon, there were three cases of repeating rifles, and fifteen cases of bullets. It took daddy a long time, mostly because he trusted no one else to help him, but he managed to get all that was of any real value up to our ranch. I was about fifteen years old at the time, and he had made me dig all of the holes to bury things in. It was hard digging too, but I managed it. That was about six years before, and we hadn't found a use for any of that stuff since then. I hoped that those rifles were still good. There were fifteen rifles in a case, and two thousand bullets in each of the ammunition cases. I had opened up one of the bullet cases, and it all looked good to me. No signs of corrosion or anything. The rifles all needed to be cleaned up some and oiled, but they looked to be in pretty good shape too.

I had wanted to get some of that pipe carried out and start laying it, but before I could get started on doing that, I heard one of those motor cars as it strained to try and make it up the trail to my ranch. I figured it was Mr. Lyons, but I figured it wrong. When the motor car had stopped, and the engine was turned off, it was Mrs. Lyons who opened the door and climbed down from that noisy and smelly contraption. She had driven up there all by her lonesome.

"Mr. Gardner. It's a pleasure to see you again. I had no idea that you lived so high up here. I've been driving for more than an hour to get here."

"Hello Mrs. Lyons. I'm surprised to see you all the way out here, and especially all alone. This is very rugged country for a woman to be out in all by herself. There's Mexicans and Indians that would just love to get their hands on someone like you. There's some white men that would like the same, let me tell you. Is there something wrong down at the Denby place?"

"Wrong? I don't think so Mr. Gardner. Actually my husband was able to secure another, cheaper, source of water. He's having it brought in daily in large wooden barrels. The labor is considerable, but the cattle seem to be faring quite well drinking from the troughs that we've had built. I came by to take you up on your offer of a nice refreshing bath in clean fresh water. I simply can't put it off another day. I've been thinking about bathing, really bathing, ever since you visited the ranch. I'm tired of cleaning up with a damp towel every night. Please lead me to your tub."

"You'll have to forgive me Mrs. Lyons, but I don't recall offering you any such thing. I merely mentioned that we are blessed with a surfeit of fresh water. I recall discussing my Mexicans sponging down the horses too, but I'm certain that we didn't discuss any bathing, certainly not in regards to you."