Gramp turned Stude around, and we went back and found the tire. Near it we saw a chuck wagon drawn up and some men outside who didn't look at all like cowboys but more like hobos sitting around, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes while a cook filled tin coffee cups.
“How far to Salt Lake City?” asked Mama.
“Oh,” said a long cowboy (who looked the way Gary Cooper was going to look in a few years), “just about a hundred miles, more or less.”
“Any place to cat around here?” Mama tried out her Lord-I'm-just-a-poor-little-woman-alone-in-the-world smile. “It's been a long time since we've had solid food.”
“Best place is right here. Come on over.” And the cow-boy held the strands of barbed wire apart for Mama to crawl through. “And bring your friends. Plenty for all.”
We followed him around to a small fire and met the cow hands (they're not called cowboys, but hands. I found out). and Stretch, as they called the tall one, yelled out, “Hey, Cookie, we got company.”
Cookie was a wide, fat, dipped-in-some-soot-and-oil mixture, part Mexican and part mustache. He came over, a flour sack tied around his middle, and said, “Sure, plenty in the chuck wagon for all.”
“Don't bother on account of us,” said Mama, sitting down on the saddle Stretch had put down for her.
“No bother, is it, Cookie?”
“No siree,” said Cookie.
“Punching cows?” asked Mama.
“Steers, ma'am. No cows around here.”
“Herding steers?” asked Mama.
“No, ma'am, we're … well, we're gathering in the calves, and… .”
He went on to talk of the process of overtaking a lot of new-born calves. I guess you could call it “making steers.” Mama nodded and listened, and then Stretch blushed under his tan and said weakly, “Anyhow, that's what we're doin'.”
Cookie came over with some frying pans and tin trays and set down his camp cooking before us. Cow hands eat well on the range—or did—or else we were lucky in finding a good outfit.
Cookie was an expert on outdoor and Spanish cooking. Each of us got a tin pan full of puchero, a meat and vegetable stew, with a side dish of calabacitas rellenos, stuffed squash, to be common about it.
“I'm sorry,” said Stretch. “We haven't butchered a steer, or we could have Cookie give us a mess of steaks.”
“This will do fine,” said Gramp, as his tin cup was re-filled with cow-hand coffee, which experts claim is the best coffee in the world. “Cookie should get a medal.”
Stretch picked up a sliver of fire from the ground and set his cigarette glowing. “He'll get a swift kick in the slats if he's got no fugazza left for you.”
“I got, I got!” screamed Cookie. “I've got enough left. You fellas got no sense humor. All the time, lady, they want to kick poor Cookie in the—the ribs. What for fun is that?”
Stretch winked at Mama. “Keeps him spry and busy. Bring on that fugazza.”
It came—large squares of pastry, covered with cheese, tomatoes, onions, thyme, and baked out of doors in a tin stove. It was very good and, like the apple pie that cow hands eat, very hot—hot enough to boil their insides for any expected blizzards. Hot pie has always amazed visitors to America, but nobody eats it as hot as the cow hands.
We ate with cow hands a lot after that, every chance we got on the road, and some of them ate well, and some badly. If they had a Mexican or colored cook, they ate well. But no damn yankee could cook well for cow hands, and a cow hand would leave an outfit and drift around until he found the kind of grub he liked. Cookie was one of the best, even if he did live in terror of the hands who promised him all sorts of fearful adventures if the standard of the food fell away.
The best food we ever ate in a cow camp was on the birthday of a foreman down in Texas. The cook made molé de guajalote, turkey in a hot pepper sauce. It takes four kinds of hot peppers (not chili powder—which is only used if the peppers are difficult to get). It has sesame seeds, coriander, almonds, cloves, and cinnamon in it—and, of course, garlic. But then, everything in Mexican ranch cooking uses garlic; even the tea seems CO taste of it, and the coffee just a hint. Turkey and hot peppers topped with fried pasta and baked in a casserole, covered and buried in a campfire, is a pleasure that the old mountain men liked best next to wrassling grizzly bears.
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