Little Britches (13 page)

Their house only had one small room and not a single window. It was made of poles on the front and sides, and built right against a ledge, so that the back wall was solid stone. The spaces between the poles were stuffed with hard-baked adobe and straw. There wasn't any stove or chimney, but there was a cleft in the ledge about three feet deep that they used for a fireplace. It was wedge-shaped, and about as wide as it was deep at the bottom, but the top narrowed to less than a foot. The floor was partly a flat rock and the rest hard dirt. There were two bunks at one end of the room—one above the other—but there weren't any bedclothes or mattresses. The springs were made of tightly stretched horsehide, and the covers were mountain goat skins with long white hair.

The only furniture was a table and two stools. The table must have weighed a ton. It was nearly four feet wide, and had been made by splitting the butt of a log in two. The legs were heavy stakes driven into holes in the round side of the log. One stool sat on each side of the table. They were made the same way, and didn't look as though they had ever been moved. Pieces of wagon iron, worn horseshoes, and harness hung on wooden pegs in the walls. Strips of dried meat and bunches of herbs were tied to a line in front of the fireplace. The only lamp was a bottle of fat with a rope wick in it. It didn't have any chimney.

Two Dog was sitting on the floor beside the fireplace with his back against the stone wall. He didn't get up when I came in, but his eyes lighted and he held one arm toward me with the palm of his hand down. I didn't know how to shake hands with his palm turned down like that, so I just took hold of the ends of his fingers, then let go and sat down beside him. He didn't say a word, but reached over and laid his hand on my leg three times, the way he did beside our barn. It was five or ten minutes before Mr. Thompson came back from putting Fanny in the corral. I had plenty of time to show Two Dog how Bill was lying on our barn floor with his back all humped up. And how he was pounding his head, and how he was breathing.

I used to wonder if the reason Two Dog didn't talk wasn't because Mr. Thompson talked enough for both of them. As soon as he came back from putting Fanny in the corral, Two Dog said about six words to him—kind of grunts, I guess it was Indian. Then Mr. Thompson began asking me questions faster than I could answer them. He wanted to know if Father and Mother knew I was coming up there, and how I had found their place, and if my folks wouldn't be worried about me. All the time he was talking he kept fussing with something in a big black iron pot over the fire.

While I was telling him, he took three dented old pie tins from the table and started ladling out the stew. It looked like rabbit stew, but the gravy was thick and brown. There was a covered iron kettle sitting on the floor by the fireplace. Mr. Thompson fished a few cold biscuits and three iron spoons out of it, put a biscuit and a spoon on each plate, and gave one to Two Dog and one to me. Then he sat down on a stool with his plate beside him on the table.

Mr. Thompson kept asking questions all the time between mouthfuls, and telling me to hurry and eat my victuals so he could take me right home. I was real hungry and the stew was good, so I just let him talk till I had cleaned up my plate. Just as I was sopping up the last of the gravy with my biscuit, Two Dog patted me on the leg again, nodded his head toward his plate, and said, "Skunk—good!" For a minute I thought I was going to be sick, but I decided it wouldn't hurt me if it didn't hurt them, and it stayed down all right.

As soon as Mr. Thompson was through eating, he snatched up the stew pot and took it outdoors. I heard him clapping his hands before he came back. Two Dog got up, took a coil of thin shiny rope from a peg in the wall, and motioned for me to follow him out the door. As I did, my heart jumped into my throat and nearly stopped. A big gray wolf was eating from the iron pot. He was standing in the light that spilled through the doorway, and when he lifted his head his eyes glowed like live coals. He snarled, and the hair bristled on his shoulders, but Two Dog grunted at him and he faded away into the shadow of the trees.

The moon had risen, and Two Dog led the way along the woods at the edge of the field to a pole corral at its far end. There was a break in the trees, so that moonlight flooded the corral, and I could see nearly a dozen mean-looking horses inside it. Fanny and the two buckskins I had seen at our place were among them. They started milling when they saw us, and crowded into the far end of the corral, snorting and rearing against the poles. Two Dog motioned me to stay outside, while he crawled through the bars.

He seemed so frail and old that I was sure they would kill him, but he walked straight toward them. As he went, he shook out a loop in the horsehair rope, holding it in one hand and letting it trail along behind him. He was almost to them when one of the horses whistled, and they all came racing toward him. I ducked my head without meaning to, and when I lifted it Two Dog was snubbing one of the buckskins to a corral post. The buckskin jumped and reared, fighting the rope for a couple of minutes, but it didn't seem to worry Two Dog a bit. He waited for the bronc to calm down, then led him to the gate and haltered him.

I watched like a hawk when he caught the other buckskin, but I couldn't see how he did it. He didn't any more than snap his wrist and forearm, but the rope leaped off the ground, passed over another horse's back, and came looping down around the buckskin's neck. It all happened in less than a second. After that, he caught Fanny the same way, only he didn't have to snub her to a post. As soon as she felt the rope around her neck she stopped dead still. Two Dog snapped his wrist again and a loop that looked like a little barrel hoop ran up the rope and settled around her nose. Then he led her to the gate and put her bridle on.

I started to climb up the poles to get on her, but Two Dog shook his head at me. There was a rawhide strap about an inch wide hanging on one of the corral poles. He cut a piece off it a little more than a foot long, sliced about half its length into three narrow strips, and braided them into Fanny's mane, way back close to her withers. Then he showed me how to grab it with one hand and swing myself up so I could get an arm over her back. From there it was easy to pull myself on, and Fanny wore the rawhide braided in her mane as long as she lived.

Two Dog led the horses to the house, and when Mr. Thompson came out with the harness he was all dressed up in his calfskin vest, ten-gallon hat, and high-heeled boots. While he harnessed the horses, Two Dog went in and put on his black coat and derby. When he came back he was holding a small leather pouch that rattled as if it had dry leaves in it.

I don't remember much about the trip home that night. One minute I was listening to the drumbeat of the buckskin's running hoofs, and what seemed to be the next, Mr. Thompson was passing me over the wagon wheel into Mother's arms, and she was crying. I was awfully sleepy and I just remember having my head against her neck and telling her I was sorry, as she was carrying me through the bunkhouse door.

It was pretty late when Father came and woke me. He sat on the edge of my bed and held me on his lap. Then he told me how wrong a thing I had done, and that it had frightened Mother so that he wouldn't be surprised if it took several years off her life. He said that every man in the neighborhood had been out riding the hills looking for me, and that he thought Mother would have lost her mind if he hadn't made her believe Fanny would have come home alone if anything had happened to me. Then he said that wasn't really so, because she might have broken a leg in a gopher hole and fallen on me. I don't remember Father ever kissing me any other time, but after he put me back in bed he leaned over and kissed me right on the forehead. I didn't wake up till late the next morning. When I did, Mr. Thompson and Two Dog were gone, and Bill was up on his feet, nibbling at a few wisps of alfalfa.

THE SECOND Saturday after I went up to Two Dog's there was an auction at one of the ranches down in Bear Creek Valley. Father and Mother were going to go and see if they could buy a good milch cow. While we were eating supper Friday night they were talking about the auction. Mother wanted to buy some things for the house, and some more chickens, and she said she'd like to get a turkey hen if she could pick one up reasonably. Afterwards they talked about what kind of a cow they'd like. Mother said to be sure it was one with a heifer calf, and she hoped it would be a Jersey because they gave good rich milk. Then Father said, "Mame, don't you think Ralph ought to go along and help pick out the cow, since he's earned part of the money?" I was drinking milk when he said it and caught my breath so quick I pretty near choked to death.
As
soon as supper was over I rode up to the Corcorans' on the fly to tell them I wouldn't be there to herd the cows next day.

Mr. Wright was the auctioneer, and they started off by selling furniture and pots and pans and things out of the house. Mother stayed there to see what bargains she could find, but Father and I went to the corrals and barns to look at the stock.

I guess everybody who lived within ten miles was there. Mrs. Corcoran was in the corral looking every cow over and feeling their bags, and Fred Aultland and Jerry Alder were in the barn looking at the horses.

Fred came out and stood beside us while we were looking at the cows. There must have been thirty of them. He put his foot up on the bottom rail of the fence, laid his arms on the top one, and rested his chin against it. "Charlie, there are two or three pretty good cows there," he said. "Why don't you buy that brindle over there that Liz Corcoran's looking at, and this big Holstein nearest us? They'd give you all the milk and butter the kids could handle."

Father didn't say anything for a minute, then he smiled at Fred, "Did you ever hear of the fellow who could have bought Brooklyn Bridge for a million dollars, only he was short nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars and fifty cents?"

Fred laughed and said, "You can swing it all right, Charlie. I don't think those two are going very high, anyway." Then he rumpled up my hair, and said, "I'm going to have a couple more hayings this year, and you got Spikes here to help you pay for them. I hear tell he's holdin' Liz up for thirty-five cents a day now." He said it loud enough so that she couldn't help hearing him, and then he laughed till you could hear him all over the place.

Father just chuckled a little. Then he said, "It isn't only the cost of two cows, Fred. I'm going to have to ration close if I have enough winter feed for three horses and one cow off that little patch of oats and alfalfa."

Mrs. Corcoran got red as a beet when Fred laughed about me charging her thirty-five cents a day for herding her cows, but instead of going away she started looking at cows nearer to us, and I think it was just so she could listen. Anyway, Fred let his voice way down and said, "I can stop you on that one, too. Soon as cold weather sets in I'll go to baling all the alfalfa I'm not going to feed to my own horses. There's always a lot of leaf and chaff shakes out when you bale alfalfa. It's too dusty for horses, but it's great cow feed. Liz'll only give me a dollar and a half a ton for it, and I'd rather sell it to you. Those cows would turn it into some damn cheap butter."

It was the hay part that convinced Father. He left me to look at horses and hogs with Fred and Jerry while he went back to the house to talk with Mother.

I don't know when I ever ate anything as good as we had at the auction. They had dug a big pit out by the windmill and built a fire of railroad ties in it the night before. And there was a whole yearling calf roasting over the pitful of red-hot coals. They had a windlass rigged up over the pit, and the whole dressed calf was trussed on a turn-bar. An old man with a big walrus mustache was turning the windlass and throwing handfuls of salt on the meat as it turned brown. You could smell it all over the yard and it made me almost drool.

It was about noon when Mr. Wright finished auctioning off all the things from the house, and the hens and ducks and turkeys. Then two or three men helped lift the roasted calf from over the pit and put in on a big heavy table. There were boxes and boxes of soft round rolls and two or three firkins of butter set out on another table. They brought out four or five butcher knives and put them on the table with the meat. Then they brought a washboiler full of coffee from the house, and pitchers of milk, and pies, cakes, and doughnuts. Everybody who could get near enough to the meat grabbed a knife and sliced off big wedges to put in the split rolls and make sandwiches. I was one of the first ones to get a sandwich. Jerry Alder put me on his shoulder and went through the crowd around the table like a Shorthorn bull going through a pack of coyotes. I ate so much my stomach ached clear up to my wishbone.

As soon as dinner was over Mr. Wright started the horse auction. There were some pretty good horses, and Fred paid more than a hundred dollars for one of them. He was a three-year-old bay, and almost as big as old Jeff that I rode to pull the stacker. Everybody stood out in a circle in the yard, and they led the horses out one at a time. Before anybody bid on it, the man who was having the auction came out into the circle and told about the horse. He would tell how old it was and how long he had owned it and how well it would pull and all kinds of things. If it was one he had raised from a colt, he would tell which mare was the dam and what stallion the colt was after. Every time he finished telling about a horse he'd pat it with his hand and say, "Sound as a nut!"