Spooky Texas Read online

  Goll-ee, we were played out that evening. Usually Diego and a couple of the other vaqueros up from Mexico played the fiddle and danced and sang to entertain us after supper, but that night we jest flaked out as soon as we ate our grub. I settled down with my head pillowed on my saddle and smiled up at the saffron sky, thinking about my Nellie and how I’d have enough money after this gig to buy the small ranch next to her parents’ place and marry her. What she saw in an ornery, flea-bitten ol’ cowpoke like me was a mystery, but I weren’t gonna question my luck.

  I may’ve fell asleep with a smile on my face, but I woke up with a cuss and a shout as a sharp pain shot right through my nose and plumb out the back of my head. There was some sort of musky, smelly, furry thing attached to my face by its teeth. I grabbed frantically at it, wrapping my hands around a small neck as I yelled for Diego to light the gosh-dang lantern and be quick about it. The critter’s smelly breath blasted into my poor nostrils as I batted at it. I looked cross-eyed at the black-and-white thing gnawing at my nose, trying to see what it was.

  “Madre de Dios, it’s a polecat,” shouted Diego, as the other cowpokes and vaqueros came a-running from their places around the fire to see what all the shoutin’ was about. A polecat, I thought. That was what some of us Texas folks call skunks. I kept tuggin’ at the black-and-white critter, but its teeth were clenched around my nose like a clamp and it wouldn’t let go for love or money. By jing, but it hurt something fierce!

  Diego hit that polecat several times with the handle of his gun and finally managed to knock it off my nose. Billy the cook snapped its neck, and it fell to the ground in a furry little heap, releasing its scent. That weren’t a good sign. Not only did it make a bad stink in the air, but it also meant that the critter was loco. I clamped a hand over my bleeding nose and tried to think. But what with my red-hot, swollen nose and the pain shooting through my face and out the back of my dad-blame head, it was hard to pull my thoughts together.

  “You’se in trouble, my friend,” Diego said, dropping down next to me. “That’s a hybie-phobie skunk if ever I seen one.” Hybie-phobie. Cowboy slang for rabies. That weren’t no good at all.

  Rabies was a terrible disease, doncha know. Folks that got bit by a mad critter had about two weeks afore they went loco and died. It was a bad way to go. A body couldn’t sleep, couldn’t quench his thirst, had crazy dreams, and finally went right out of his head. Death came as a bit of a relief after all that dad-gum nonsense. There was only one way to heal rabies, and that was to find someone who owned a madstone and have them leach the disease outta you.

  “I’ve got to find me a madstone, quick,” I said as Billy dabbed at my torn-up nose. “Does anyone know where I can find one?”

  “I heard about a man who had one up in Kansas City,” Juan said.

  I shook my sore head. “Too far, Juan. The hybie-phobie’d get me before I got there.”

  “Socorro,” Billy said suddenly. “I hear a fella name o’ Hansen found a double madstone in the gallbladder of a white deer he shot.”

  According to Billy’s buddy, the double madstone looked like a chocolate-colored butterbean and was fastened together like an open shell. Hansen’d kept it as a curiosity, not knowin’ what it was he’d got. He actually laid the dad-blame madstone on a stump and forgot all about it (talk about loco!) ’til the local doc stopped by his house fer a chat. Hansen casually mentioned the strange stones he’d found in the deer’s gallbladder, and the doc got real excited. He examined them madstones right away and told Hansen they were worth a lot of money. Hansen broke apart the double madstone and gave one half to the doc—who sold it for a thousand bucks. He kept the other one for himself.

  “Whoo-ee, that’s a mighty large chunk of change for a little stone,” said Jeb, who was boss in our outfit. “What’s a madstone, anyhow?”

  “It’s a stone with special powers,” Billy explained. “If you apply it to a wound, it can suck the poison right out of it. Only thing known to cure hybie-phobie.”

  “You’d best find that madstone, then,” the boss told me. I nodded carefully. My nose was swelling up something awful, and my head felt like the whole herd a longhorns was stampeding up and down inside it. “Diego, you’d better go with him,” Jeb added, seeing I was in no condition to ride.

  We didn’t even wait for daybreak. They got us saddled up and Diego and I rode out within half-an-hour after I was bitten by that ornery polecat.

  I don’t remember much about the next couple, three days. My nose swelled s’bad I hadda breathe through my mouth, and my head had one of them military drummers a rat-a-tat-tatting inside it all day long. I kept seeing two Diegos instead of one. Couldn’t ’ave been the rabies yet, since it took a couple of weeks for that to set in, so Diego figured the bite must’ve got infected. By the time we rode into Socorro, I couldn’t hardly sit up in my saddle, and Diego had to lead my dad-blame horse.

  Things got a bit blurry then. I remember a sweet-faced lady exclaimin’ over me, and a hardy-looking fellow who must’ve been Hansen carrying me into a large farmhouse. I was bedded down in a nice, clean room, and ’bout ten minutes after I sank into them clean-smelling sheets, Miz Hansen came in with the madstone. She’d been soaking it in sweetmilk, and she tenderly laid it against the bite-marks on my nose. Felt as if it melted into my swollen flesh, and I heard Diego say: “It’s sticking!”

  “Good,” Miz Hansen said. “That means there’s poison in there that needs to come out.”

  I kinda drifted in and out as the madstone did its work. In a couple of hours it fell off, and Miz Hansen took it to the kitchen and boiled it in sweetmilk again. Diego told me later that the milk turned green as the poison drawn outta my nose was removed from the madstone. Once it was clean, Miz Hansen applied it to my nose again.

  Five times, the madstone stuck to my nose and leached out all the gol-darn infection and hybie-phobie. The sixth time, it fell off as soon as she placed it on my nose, and Miz Hansen declared that all was well. The madstone wouldn’t stick to my nose once all the poison was gone.

  They let me sleep then, the first good sleep I’d had since that mad polecat bit me on the beak. It was a miracle how quick the swelling left my face, once that there madstone had done its work. Three days later, Diego and I thanked the Hansens and headed back toward our outfit. I wanted to pay the Hansens for their doctorin’, but they wouldn’t hear of it. Nicest folks I’d ever met.

  MADSTONE

  Jest as soon as we’d gotten the cattle to market, I hightailed it home with my pay packet and married my Nellie. No more trail-driving for me, no sir. I wanted to sleep with a roof over my head from now on, to avoid all them mad polecats. Diego came with me, and both he and the Hansens came to my wedding.

  We named our first-born son “Diego Hansen” after the three folks who’d saved his Pa. I heard later that these so-called modern doctors don’t believe in madstones. I think that’s nonsense. I’m living proof that they work, and that’s all there is to it.

  15

  Eternal Roundup

  EL PASO

  The moisture in the air increases dramatically as the black clouds billow and boil, pouring over the land with a sudden wind that lashes the trees and howls through the grasses and mesquite. The light turns greenish and menacing. A sudden bolt of lightning strikes the land, followed by a massive clap of thunder. Around me, the cowboys stir into wakefulness, and I hear them murmuring in excitement and fear. They are coming!

  I laugh softly as I hear the first hints of a rumble behind me, growing quickly until the whole sky seems to shake. It’s the sound of a massive ghost herd of longhorns stampeding out of control, their hooves pounding the clouds. They are spurred into madness by the slap of the wind, the roar of thunder, and the crazy, pounding rain. I shout a command to my men and they leap onto their horses, eyes blazing red with excitement.

  The rain suddenly lashes the ground below us, as the first of the longhorns come racing through the clouds past us, followed by a writhing
mass of cattle that fill the sky from end to end. They bellow and shriek, tossing their dangerous horns, bucking and panicking as they are chased through the sky by violent bolts of lightning and crashes of thunder.

  “Yip! Yip!” the cowboys screech at the cattle, lashing whips and giving chase, trying to turn them without being trampled under their massive hooves or stabbed by their long, sharp horns. The Devil’s herd screams its rage and panic. Ignoring the shouts of the Ghost Riders, the cattle bolt across the sky, clouds roiling blackly around them, until the frantic herd swallows many of the cowboys and tramples their horses underfoot. But the other cowboys give chase, trying to round them up and bring them into the calm pasturelands at the far end of the world.

  I laugh as I watch them and then spur on my great black horse, chasing too. The men in my outfit are doomed always to chase this unruly herd during thunderstorms. Always to chase, and never to catch.

  I’ve had many names and many faces through the ages. For eons in this land that dreams under the western sun, I ran with the hunters, carrying arrows and spear, chasing the snorting, stampeding buffalo through the endless cloudy skies. When the white man came with his horses and weapons, the hunt changed. Then we galloped after the buffalo, and our weapons were guns. And still the chase went on. Now, the longhorn cattle and the cowboy dominate this land, and the eternal hunt has become an eternal roundup.

  Slowly, the storm dies away, and the panicking longhorns fade with it, until the ghost-cowboys are left sitting like fools in an empty gray sky, foiled once again in their attempt to corral the Devil’s herd. They fade slowly away to the dull, empty place where their souls rest until the next storm comes. Each storm brings the only hope they have for salvation; for if ever they manage to catch the herd and bring it safely to pasture, their souls will be freed.

  When they are gone, I sit atop a black horse with flaming eyes, a rope on my arm and a six-shooter at my side, waiting—ever waiting—for the storm and the hunt. To me, minutes, days, months, years are all the same. They last an eternity and no time at all. I never grow impatient or weary as I watch over the land and its people.

  Suddenly, I feel a tug at the corner of my mind, and I turn my gaze down toward the earth. There is another soul hovering on the brink. Another cowboy for my roundup. I smile a little, for this new land west of the Pecos is the best source of riders I have ever found for my hunt. I spur my steed, and we ride down through the clouds and into the dusty streets of El Paso.

  A posse from Mexico has come to town looking for some missing vaqueros sent to search for stolen cattle a few days before. The posse soon locates their bodies near the ranch of a man suspected of cattle rustling, and the local court is convened in town to determine what happened. The town court is just finishing its inquest as I leave the black stallion at the edge of town, to both the interest and terror of a pretty gray mare grazing nearby.

  It doesn’t take long for news of the verdict to reach the ears of the nervous vaqueros and cowboys gathered in the street. The court determines that American cattle rustlers ambushed the two vaqueros, fearing that the Mexican cowboys would discover their missing cattle and return with a larger force to reclaim them. When court is adjourned, the Mexicans ride quietly back to Mexico with the bodies, but I remain behind, watching.

  I always know when trouble is brewing, and it is happening right now in the saloon. Two of the accused cattle rustlers are confronting the constable responsible for translating the court proceedings into Spanish. A first drunken rustler grabs a pistol and shoots the constable, who reeled backward against the door. The local marshal, hearing the shot, comes running from the restaurant next door, shooting his gun wildly into the air as he bursts into the bar. He spots the first rustler, crouched behind a pillar, and shoots him in the head, killing him instantly.

  The second rustler steps away from the bar and aims his gun at the back of the marshal’s head as I throw a rope around the first rustler’s soul. The dying constable, who is slumped against the door, fires his pistol twice at the second rustler. Both bullets hit him, one in the foot and one in his right wrist. He drops his gun with a scream, but bends quickly to scoop it up with his left hand. The marshal whirls and fires, and the second rustler grabs his stomach, his body toppling to the floor. But his soul stays upright, affixed by the rope I have expertly thrown around it as he falls. Within moments the constable and the second rustler breathe their last.

  Ignoring the good soul of the constable, I loop the two ropes holding the two rustlers together and tug. The souls of both men turn astonished gazes from their slumped bodies and stare uncomprehendingly as I walk right through the wall, carrying them with me. My stallion comes running up with the gray mare at his side. Both horses look smug. That will be some colt, I muse as I mount. Behind me, the two rustlers finally realize what’s happening. They tug futilely at the ropes holding them and wail in agony as I ride up into the clouds, dragging them behind me.

  When we reach the holding camp, I hand the two souls over to the oldest of my cowboys, a thin wraith with withered features and burning yellow eyes. He kits each of them out with a horse, a whip, and a rope. He explains the task—round up the Devil’s herd and free your soul for heaven. Then he bids them wait with the others for the next storm. I sit calmly atop my black stallion, the boss of this outfit, waiting for the roundup to begin anew.

  It is easy to pick out the two new souls among the thousands of faded cowboys who already run with this hunt. They retain the shape of their former bodies, and their clothes are still bright and colorful with hope.

  “This ain’t so bad,” I hear one of them say to the other, as the thunderheads began to roil around us.

  “Jest one more roundup and we’re free,” his companion agreed. “How hard can that be?”

  It is at this moment they hear it: The roaring, snorting, pounding sound of a monstrous stampeding herd, coming right toward us. The two rustlers gasp and whirl their horses round as the Devil’s longhorns come smashing through the cloudbank, spurred on by the thunder and lightning, and run among us.

  I laugh exultantly as the beasts pummeled me from all sides. This is the moment I live for. Around me, the phantom cowboys are shouting to each other, their futile hope of heaven renewed once more: “Yip! Yip!”

  The two rustlers, unprepared, are caught up in the stampede and trampled underfoot. The rest of us follow the herd, shouting and cracking whips, trying to tame the untamable. The two trampled riders will get up and follow in due course, I know. It is their destiny. For they are Ghost Riders, lost souls who follow the Devil’s cattle from one end of the sky to the other for all eternity, doomed always to chase and never to catch.

  It’s a year or more before a thunderstorm happens over the El Paso ranch of a friend of the two cattle rustlers. The souls of the two rustlers have faded, now, along with their hope of salvation; their shapes and colors have gone dim. But they are still recognizable to the man hastily riding toward shelter as the thunder crashes and the lightning illuminates the faces of the ghost cattle bellowing and bucking and stampeding through the sky directly above his head. For an instant, the living cowboy is face to face with his dead comrades, his horse rearing in fear as the Devil’s cattle thunder above him. The noise of their passing shakes his whole body and makes his eyes pop out in terror.

  The second rustler rides past him, cracking his whip at the nearest longhorn. But the first rustler slows his horse for a moment just above the cowering cowboy and his rearing horse. Their eyes meet, and the cowboy sees the hollow, unending anguish of the doomed rustler. Then I am upon them both. The cowboy screams in terror when he sees my massive, horned figure filling the sky as completely as the thunderheads, red eyes blazing as fiercely as those of my stallion. The cowboy’s horse twists frantically, lashing defensively at me with his front hooves before hitting the ground at a run. The cowboy is thrown under a mesquite tree, where he lays unconscious, heavy rain splashing over his white features but not reviving him.

>   It is at this moment that I heard a familiar whinny. The gray mare comes running across the range with a coal-black colt at her side. My stallion whinnies back to her eagerly as the Devil’s longhorns stampede past us, knocking us this way and that with blows that would have killed a human. I gesture at the popped-eyed, bellowing cattle, and they part to stream around us without losing an ounce of their forward motion.

  I eye the black colt and his eager mother, and think, why not? Riding closer, I pull out the Devil’s brand I carry for such occasions and touch it to first one quivering forehead and then the other, making them mine. Then all of us are running together, up and up into the whirling thunderclouds. I glance back once and see the living cowboy slowly sitting up and rubbing his rain-soaked eyes. I shake my head, knowing that his soul will never come my way now. Not after seeing his doomed friends; not after seeing me. A pity. But what a tale he will have to tell his friends. The thought makes me chuckle with glee.

  ETERNAL ROUNDUP

  Then I am caught up again in the exultation of the eternal roundup, thriving on the vain hope of the cowboys who chase the Devil’s herd through the lightning strikes. A gust of wind slaps across my face, and pounding rain soaks my skin. Shouting “Yip-e-i-o,” I spur my black stallion and race after the Devil’s herd, forever and ever, world without end.

  16

  Little Eight John

  JACKSONVILLE

  Little Eight John, he never listened to his Mama. No, sir! Not even when she told him things for his own good. He thought life was a lot funnier when he didn’t mind. He’d sass his Mama something awful, and if she told him not to do a thing, he’d go right out and do it, laughing all the time.