Little Britches (27 page)

I went, but I didn't want to, and I chewed my fingernails clear down to the quick, worrying about Sky High. I thought sure he'd get a broken leg or his insides ripped out, and every time I gave one of the fellows a drink, I asked him if it wasn't pretty near noon. They were rustling the stragglers down from the draws and gulches where the cows hid away with their new calves, and sometimes I'd have to sit there an hour and wait for a driver to come out into the canyon. When Juan blew his old cow horn for dinner I raced back out to the valley as if there were a pack of wolves after me.

I could see Sky High and the bull from the moment I came out of the canyon mouth. They were still in the middle of the valley, and were having a tug-of-war, but Sky's hind feet were planted deep in the sod and the bull couldn't budge him an inch. The line was tight as a stretched elastic band past the side of his head. I kept an eye on them all the time I was eating my beans and bacon. The bull got tired of the tug-of-war business after a while and started circling again, but Sky High backed away and turned so as to keep a tight rope running past his head.

When I was tightening up my cinches after dinner, Hi came over and noticed that the end of one of my fingers was bleeding. He slapped me on the back so hard it made my teeth rattle, and said, "You stop frettin' 'bout that old cayuse or you'll have your fingers et clear down to the knuckles. He ain't nobody's fool, and I'll lay you no bull will ever dump him again as long as he lives. You stick around here and help Juan this afternoon; I'll let Tom peddle water to the boys in the canyon."

I did go and drag in a couple of loads of firewood, but that's about all Juan let me do besides peel the spuds for supper. He didn't have too much to do himself. I was learning to talk enough Spanish so that we could get along pretty well, so a lot of the time we sat in the shade of the chuck wagon and watched Sky High and the bull. They must have gone up and down the length of the valley a dozen times during the afternoon. I don't know whether Sky ever got dumped again during his life, but he didn't during the time I knew him.

The only other lesson that really hurt me was teaching Sky High to stand ground-tied. When a fellow is working with cattle there are lots of times that he needs to tie his horse where there is nothing to tie him to. He has to be able to go away and leave him sometimes for hours, and find him right there when he comes back. Some horses learn to stand ground-tied after they've jerked their mouths a few times by stepping on a hanging rein, but Sky High was too smart for that. If I left him with the rein hanging, he'd hold his head off to the side so as to keep the line out from under his hoofs, and go back to the remuda. It was a nuisance when I was gathering wood, because I always had to find a bush where I could tie him.

One morning Hi told me to catch up another horse for a couple of days, because we were going to "learn" Sky to stand ground-tied. Hi saddled him, and put on a bridle with short reins and a big rowel in the bit. The rowel was so big that the colt could hardly close his mouth without having it cut against his tongue and the roof of his mouth. After that, Hi got a long iron picket pin with an eye-loop at the top. Then we led Sky High up into the canyon, drove the picket pin clear down to the eye, and ground-tied him within twenty feet of the brook.

There was good grass around the picket, but he couldn't eat it with the rowel bit in his mouth. And every time he tried to take a step forward or back, the bit would cut the rowel into the roof of his mouth or against his tongue. I got mad about that, and told Hi it was a dirty thing to do, and there ought to be some easier way of teaching a horse. He said, "Yep, they's easier ways, and it would be easier for him to forget. The lessons you remember longest are the ones that hurt you the most when you learn 'em. Do you follow what I'm tryin' to tell you?"

I couldn't help thinking about what Father had said—that night out on the chopping block—and I said, "I guess I know what you mean."

We rode back toward the chuck wagon side by side. Hi kept looking down at the horn of his saddle, but he went on talking. "You ain't goin' to like this, because it'll make his mouth bleed, and he'll slobber a bit, but it ain't going to hurt him much more than it hurts you to get a tooth pulled. After a couple or three hours I'll trade that rowel for a straight spade bit that won't cut him, but he's goin' to have to stand there through all of today and tonight without feed or water. That way he'll learn that he can't move for nothin' less than prairie fire when he's ground tied. And if he's half the horse I think he is, hell remember it the rest of his life."

Sky High's mouth wasn't sore for more than two or three days after his ground-tying lesson, and from then till haying time Hi let me work with the cattle as soon as I had dragged Juan enough wood for the day. We were herding out on the rolling prairies between the home place and the hogbacks. Juan would move the chuck wagon from place to place with the herds, and I sometimes had to drag the firewood three or four miles from the nearest scrub oak patch. I had to drag two loads a day, so I always brought one the last thing at night, and then got up at dawn to go for the other one. That way, I could spend the rest of the day at the herds with Hi and the men. I always carried my waterskin on the back of my saddle, and by going from one herd to the other, morning and afternoon, I had plenty of time for training Sky High as I worked.

Hi was range boss, so he went from one herd to the other as I did, unless he had to be at the wagon for branding or dehorning, or something like that. Between herds, we always practiced tricks with Sky High and Sky Blue. We got them so they would even do figure eights at a canter without ever losing step, and so we could stop and turn them both right on the same dime. I think my blue roan liked Hi's roan as well as I liked Hi.

The way Hi had me train him for cutting was to pick some quick-moving steer, or a breachy-looking old cow from the middle of every herd, then work that one to the outside without running it, and drive it a quarter of a mile from the herd. They never wanted to go where I wanted them to, and would duck and dodge to get away from me. At first I had all kinds of trouble, because Sky High would get excited when I had to keep turning and twisting him from one side to the other in trying to work some ornery old heifer out of the herd. Sometimes he would get so mad he'd bob his head and rear. Then we'd always lose the cow we were after, and half the time we'd start some of the other cattle running—and Hi didn't like that. By haying time Sky wasn't as good at heading them off as Fanny used to be, but he could almost always tell which one I was after when I picked it, and would work it to the outside of the herd without my having to rein him enough to make him mad.

I USED to like having picnics down by Bear Creek, so all six of the Sundays while I was working up at the mountain ranch, Mother packed a lunch and we spent the day down there. After the first week, I never did get home on Saturday nights till after dark, and I always stayed as long as I could. So it was always dark when I started back to Cooper's. That's why I never noticed our crops till Hi told me about the ditch fight. From the way Father had acted on Sundays I couldn't have guessed anything was wrong, but I should have known Mother wasn't getting so jumpy just worrying about me.

The last Monday morning I went up to the mountain ranch before haying, Hi asked me if Father had got hurt. I said he hadn't, and wanted to know why he asked me that. Then he told me about the fight on the Bear Creek ditch. He said, "I don't like the looks of things over there. Fred Aultland tells me the gang up the ditch has busted out your pa's patent ditch boxes and is hogging all the water, so your places are drier'n a burnt boot. But he says your pa's got a signed paper that's tight enough to haul 'em into court for damages. If I know them dirty sons as well as I think, your old man better start packin' a .45."

I was afraid for Father, and was going to ride right home and tell him what Hi said, but he told me not to. He said I couldn't tell Father anything he didn't already know, and that Father probably wouldn't thank him for having told me. I still thought I ought to go home, and I would have if Hi hadn't said it would scare Mother to death. Then he promised he'd ride to our place with me the next Saturday afternoon and take his own .45 to Father.

I don't think I ever put in a longer week. I couldn't even find any fun in cutting out cattle with Sky High, and on Wednesday Hi told me I'd have to quit being so nervous with the colt or I'd spoil him. I don't know if being nervous had anything to do with it, but that same morning Sky tossed me twenty feet when I was taking out his kinks.

Only Hi and three of the other fellows were going to stay with the cattle through haying, so Juan started for the home ranch with the chuck wagon right after Saturday's dinner. I should have gone with the wagon, but I wanted to stay with Hi so as to be sure he would ride home with me and take his .45 to Father. It must have been four o'clock before we got the three herds thrown together and had cut out all the horses that would be needed at the ranch for haying. Hi had promised that I could ride Sky High home when he went with me, and I was getting fidgety for fear we wouldn't get there till after dark. I had been thinking all week about how nice we were going to look riding into our yard side by side on our two blue horses.

As soon as the remuda was headed toward the home ranch, Hi yelled to Barney Ortez, "You take over, Barney. Little Britches and me has got business." He let his roan out into a fast run, but I caught up to him before he had gone a couple of hundred yards. Of course, I was a lot lighter than Hi, and my saddle didn't weigh nearly so much as his, but I'd bet Sky High could have outrun his blue and carried the same weight.

After that we let them down into a long lope and kept it all the way to the home buildings. We passed the chuck wagon before we were halfway in.

I never did change my clothes so fast, and I don't believe Hi ever did, either. I wasn't in the house more than five or six minutes, but when I came out he was all ready and waiting for me by the bunkhouse door. He had his .45 on and was holding another gun and belt in his hand. The belt was loaded, and was so long he had to wind it around me twice. As he buckled it on, Hi said, "I ain't giving this to you; you ain't old enough to pack one, but if your pa thinks you might, he'll be more willing to borrow it off of you than he would off of me."

The sun was hanging about a foot above the mountain peaks when we got to the far corner of our ranch. As we rode along the west road, between Fred Aultland's place and ours, I almost felt like crying. Fred's alfalfa looked a lot better than ours, because it was older and the roots were deeper, but it was a sick yellow color and not more than six or eight inches high. Our oat field looked like a desert, and the sweet clover had turned brown along the irrigation ditch.

I forgot all about how we were going to look as we rode into the yard, and could only think about Father and how hard he had worked to get our crops in. Of course, I couldn't have helped any if I had been at home all spring, but it seemed as though I had done something wrong to have been away having a good time while the rest of them had to stay home and see our crops burn up.

Hi must have known how bad I was feeling, because when we got to the corner, he yelled, "Yipeeeee," and threw his spurs in against his roan's belly. We went tearing down the last half mile as if we were running away from a prairie fire, and skidded up to the gate in a shower of dust. The folks had seen us and had come out the kitchen door. Mother was keeping Muriel and Philip back so they wouldn't get stepped on and Father was holding Hal in his arms. Hi didn't make any move to open the gate, so I had a chance to let Father see how well I could handle Sky High when I opened and closed it without getting out of the saddle.

Hi took his hat off to Mother with a big sweep just the way he did the first time I rode his blue, and anybody would think he had always known Father. He called, "Hi there, Charlie. This little old kid of yours is gettin' to be quite a cow poke; broke and trained this here colt all by hisself. He fetched me over so we could show him off a little."

Before I could even get in a word, he yelled, "Yipeeee," and spurred his roan again. I pinched my knees in a bit and leaned forward, and both roans took off together. We tore out through the dooryard, circled around the haystack one way, turned on a dime, and came around the other way. Then we made figure eights side by side—both ways around—and a few quick stops and turns. As we came back to the door, we made the roans keep changing lead so they looked as if they were dancing. Hi's roan would do it with nothing but knee pressure, but we had only been practicing three weeks, so I had to keep turning Sky High with the reins.

Father was always quiet and serious. He wasn't ever sour or sulky, but he just never bubbled over or talked loud as lots of men do. I think the nearest I ever heard him come to it was when we brought the roans dancing up to the door. His eyes were shining, and when he called out to us his voice reminded me of the "merry wedding bells," in the piece Mother used to recite. "Nice handling, Son," he called. And then he said to Hi, "I see you're as good at training boys as you are at schooling horses. I'm proud to have him with you, Hi."