The wagon should have come by six.
By eight we’d eaten beans,
and Nell had scraped the kettle clean
while we discussed cuisines:
the steaks we’d had in other camps,
the pies we’d once been fed,
and what we’d eat when supper came—
which Nell had cooked instead.
“A hungry man recalls a feast
he wouldn’t recognise,”
said Amos, folding up his coat.
He had a cook’s old eyes.
We’d asked him for the story of
the bear that stole his hat.
“The bear was small. The hat was bad.
I’m done explaining that.”
The fire was less than we preferred;
the wood was running low.
Our wagon carried flour and oats
and wood, which didn’t show.
Above the black mesquite the stars
shone hard and close and clear.
Buck said, “That driver met a witch.
They get peculiar here.”
“A witch?” said Lee. “A sorceress,
as tall as any shed.
She turned the wheels to wedding rings
and asked him if he’d wed.”
“He would,” said Buck. “He owes me cash.
He’ll do a lot for board.”
“She married him,” Lee said, “and now
he’s hauling for her lord.”
Nell sat on an upended box
and held her empty cup.
“I knew a mule,” she started in.
Buck helpfully spoke up:
“A mule with horns? I’ve heard of him.
He ploughed the Devil’s field.”
“This mule was brown,” Nell said. “His name—”
“Was Thunder,” Lee revealed.
“Was Button. And he wouldn’t cross
a shadow in the road.”
“A mountain’s shadow,” Buck declared.
“He felt its dreadful load!”
“He kicked the mountain into dust,”
Lee said, “to clear the way.”
“He stood there,” Nell said, “with a man
who’d hired him for the day.”
The man became a bandit king.
The mule grew twenty feet.
The shadow ate a railway train
and asked for more to eat.
I laughed until my coffee spilled.
Nell set her cup aside.
The corners of her mouth went flat.
She let their mountain ride.
Amos stirred the coals once through
and laid the poker down.
“I’ve heard you finish other folks
from here to Silver Town.
I haven’t heard this mule yet.”
He turned toward Nell’s seat.
“Has Button any further plans?
We’ve given him big feet.”
“He had four feet,” Nell told him,
“which he preferred to keep.
The man had bought some fancy boots
and called the animal cheap.
He hauled the rope and shook a stick.
He took the packs right off.
He swore a mule that feared the dark
was scarcely worth his trough.
“The shadow came from bridge planks,
and Button heard the creek
where normally the decking stood.
The boards had sprung a leak.
One stringer lay below the bank;
the other bent in two.
The plank tops hid the gap from him
till crouching changed his view.
“He couldn’t haul the creek away.
He couldn’t buy new ground.
He walked the mule a mile upstream
and took the long way round.
He reached the camp at half past dark
and told them of his fight
against a very monstrous beast.
The mule ate oats that night.”
“That’s it?” said Buck. “No bandit king?”
“No king,” said Nell. “Just pride.”
Lee scraped a bean from off his plate
and set the plate aside.
He said, “That man was awful slow.”
Nell said, “He got there dry.”
Amos made a little sound
which might have been a sigh.
We heard the wagon well before
its lantern found our camp:
the wheels complaining at the stones,
the harness leather damp.
The driver asked for coffee first.
We asked him where he’d been.
“The bridge below the wash is gone.
I had to turn again.”
Buck said he’d guessed the bridge was out.
Lee said he’d named the wash.
I thought I’d mentioned water once;
they called my mention bosh.
We sang a ragged chorus:
I told you so! I knew!
The driver took the coffee Nell
had saved, and drank it through.
Nell took the flour beneath a tarp.
I helped her lift the sack.
“You knew that road?” I asked her.
“Less talk. Help lift the sack.”
She didn’t say whose boots they’d been,
or who had led that mule.
She checked the flour for water marks
while I admired the mule.
By then the tales had started fresh:
a witch had killed the bridge;
the bandit king had sold the nails;
the mule had ate the ridge.
Amos followed Nell to where
she stacked the wood away.
“The actual mule,” he said. “I’d like
his version, if I may.”
“He’d tell it slow.”
“We’ve got the time.”
She set a log down flat.
He sat, and left the bear untold.
The log was good for that.
Across the camp we thundered on
with Button’s mighty deeds.
Nell told Amos how that mule
could pick out oats from weeds.
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