Free Duster (9781310020889) by Frank Roderus Page A

about the
Brasada—the big brush thicket down below the river—you'd think the
Nueces was the dividing line between hell and Texas. To hear them
tell it there wasn't much south of the Nueces except murderers,
rattlesnakes, and thorns.
    When we got right up on the bridge so we
could see down to the water, I was about half-expecting to find the
river-banks made of brimstone and to see Old Scratch himself
peeking out of the mesquite.
    What we found, of course, wasn't so special.
The Nueces was a sort of ordinary stream running nice and quick and
not even carrying enough clay then to make it look bloody. It was
something of a disappointment after all the buildup.
    "Is not so different than our Frio, eh?"
Jesus said, like he was reading my mind.
    "It sure ain't what I expected," I admitted.
"It seems awful tame."
    "I seen it lots of times before," Jesus said
with a touch of brag in his tone like he'd been everywhere from St.
Louie to New Orleans.
    "Well, now I seen it too."
    By then we were all the way across and
walking on the Brasada side of the river. In truth it didn't look
the least bit different from our side, and Fort Ewell didn't look
much different than Dog Town except for being some smaller and only
having one log building; everything else was 'dobe.
    "We'll go on up to the store and see will
they tell us where to find my cousin," Jesus said.
    "Long as they got some water that's fine
with me."
    It was plain enough that the wood building
was the store. It had a big old plank nailed up across the front
with "General Mercantile and Transit" printed on it. The sign was
weathered, but it was plain enough to make out at a pretty good
distance.
    I noticed Jesus setting up some straighter
in the saddle and reaching up to tug at his hat.
    "Oh, I reckon you're pretty enough already,
Jesus," I said.
    "Good enough for you maybe, but this here's
a place that may have a pretty little senorita somewheres. I got to
look spruced up jus' in case we are lucky."
    "Fat chance you'd have getting any decent
girl to look your way twice, unless it's to laugh at you," I said.
"And you smell 'most as bad as me, and that's 'most as bad as these
mules."
    "We'll fix that up as quick as we can find
my cousin's house," he promised.
    Jesus plow-reined us to a stop in the
general neighborhood of the store building, and we slid to the
ground. I got to admit I didn't feel a whole lot of regret getting
off that mule for the last time. Forty miles and one night just
isn't long enough to make me attached to an animal that ugly.
Though maybe I was getting sort of used to the one-eyed beast. I
mean, she didn't look quite as bad now as she had in Dog Town.
    I set to dipping some water from a barrel
and pouring it into the trough for the mules while Jesus got them
tied up good. It wouldn't do to have them run off now that we'd got
them all the way to Fort Ewell. Then the both of us went inside the
store.
    It wasn't much of a place, but it was all
the store there was in Fort Ewell. I'd heard somebody say once that
it had been here off and on since back during the Mexican War when
some American dragoons had camped in the area. They'd named it Fort
Ewell though as far as anyone could recall there hadn't been a
trooper in blue or gray near the place since.
    Anyway I could sure believe the store had
been around that long. I could tell that from the smells of bacon
and long-gone beef and Mex peppers and a bunch of other stuff that
I couldn't figure out right offhand. The place was sort of dark and
cool and seemed to wrap around us with all those old, warm smells
and a real quiet yellow-brown light that managed to get through the
greased paper set in windows up under the eaves.
    There was shelves over every bit of wall
space, and piles of boxes and bags and even some cans was stacked
up on them. Overhead, there was some chunks of bacon hung up, and
off in one corner a big man with a stump leg whittled out of wood
was sitting in a rickety looking old rocking chair.
    The