Free Duster (9781310020889) by Frank Roderus

about folks who
talked different than them and of course us keeping off to
ourselves at the ranch anyway, I just didn't know much at all about
Mex talk.
    Now that I think on it, it was maybe odder
that Jesus could speak English so good than for me to not speak
Spanish. Yet, I never once knowed a Mex who couldn't talk pretty
good English when he wanted to. Maybe they tried a little harder
than us ... I don't know.
    Anyhow, Jesus shut up after that and rode on
real quiet, not doing much of anything but watching the road and
smirking to himself from time to time. That really did get me mad,
and I decided I wasn't going to give in no matter what he done.
    For a time it was all right going on that
way, but after a while I commenced to get thirsty again. And Jesus
had the water gourd. I went on without saying anything, though, for
most of the morning until I was getting worried that if I didn't
ask for the water pretty soon I wouldn't be able to talk. Once that
dumb Jesus, looking just as smug as ever, took the gourd off his
saddle and drank a big swallow out of it, then put it back without
offering it to me nor even glancing my way. It was enough to make
me mad all over again.
    I thought on it some, though, and after a
while I saw that the only thing I had to fuss with Jesus about was
that dude we had passed in the morning, and as long as I didn't ask
about him there wasn't no reason I couldn't talk to Jesus about
other stuff.
    "Jesus," I said finally, "there's no need
for you to hog all that water."
    He grinned over at me like he had won
something off me even though the water hadn't anything to do with
any of it. "Why, sure," he said, "all you got to do is ask. Any
time at all." He reached behind him and fished up the gourd and
passed it over after taking the plug out for me.
    I mean to tell you that water tasted good.
It wasn't very cool, but it really hit the spot.
    After I give him back the
gourd, Jesus said, "You're just an awful
lot like that mule you're riding. You're both stubborn, and you're
both ugly. But I think I got you figured out."
    Well, I sure wasn't going to ask him about
that, not after all the other troubles I had with him, so I kept my
mouth shut.
    Jesus pulled the mules off to the side of
the road and let them crop some curly mesquite grass that was
beginning to show in patches along the way. When the mules were
rested we went on, and before long we could see that the brush was
getting thinner and the grass more frequent. Finally, just a little
after noon, we broke out of the brush altogether and there wasn't
nothing in front of us but dirt and grass and low, scrubby stuff.
That and the old wood bridge on the Nueces.
    That bridge and the mud huts on the far side
of the river looked almighty good to me right then.
    "Eeeeeya," Jesus hollered. "Duster, even if
these old mules drop dead right here we've made it to Fort
Ewell."
    I gave Stardust a good thump, and him and
Gert took off across that last stretch as hard as they could go.
They got so carried away with smelling water or something that they
actually trotted most of the way across the flat.
    "Don't stop 'til you get to the water
barrel, Gert, and then you best stand back and let me in first," I
yelled.
    We clomped and stumbled our way down the
road and onto the bridge. The mules didn't much like the hollow
sound their hooves made on the wood of the bridge and they shied
just a little. Maybe they'd never before been any place where there
wasn't good, solid ground underneath them, but a tap on Stardust's
backside woke him up to the idea that there was more solid
territory ahead and we hustled on over to it.
    That bridge was something new for me, too.
I'd heard about the Nueces just about all my life, and up toward
Dog Town it wasn't really very far south of us since the Nueces
took a bend north to Three Rivers where it and the Frio and the
Atascosa all come together. But somehow I'd never seen it—staying
close to home like I had.
    The way most folks talk