It was too late. My leg was already kicking forward, and the momentum sent me flying up to her back. I wasn’t there a second.
The instant I landed she reared straight up, and I was lucky that I was bareback instead of in a saddle. I didn’t wait to find out if she’d go clear over. In my trick-riding days I’d learned that the only way of curing a horse of going over backwards was to make sure it fell hard and flat on its back, so I jumped clear and yanked the little bronco’s head straight back as I went. Quick as she was, she had no chance to twist as she fell, and crashed down hard on her back.
Few horses are in any hurry to get up after a fall like that, but the little mustang rolled over and came to her feet like a cat. With Hudson yelling at me again, I flipped aboard as soon as she had her legs under her, only to go through the same routine a second time.
The bronc was barely on her feet again before Hudson was through the gate and coming toward me, shouting, “I told you to stay off that mare! There can’t nobody but me ride her.”
There was no doubting that the little bronco had tried to get me that second time. She’d gone up and over all in one motion, bound to take me down under her. If it hadn’t been for the recent practice I’d had at fall riding, she’d have done it, too. I barely got clear, and landed as flat as she did. It made me angry enough that I wouldn’t have paid any attention to Hudson if he’d been holding a gun on me. Before he was halfway across the corral I flipped onto the mare’s back again—and no one could have guessed that she wasn’t glad to have me there. Her ears came up, and she stepped away smoothly when I pressed my knees against her. As I reined her past Hudson and toward the gate, I told him, “I’ll ride this one.” I knew it might start trouble, but I didn’t like his yelling at me, and I thought I might as well let him know it. He didn’t say a word to me, but he cussed the tar out of the other mustang before he’d caught and saddled her.
Although the little bronco behaved herself beautifully as I rode her out of the corral I didn’t trust her. Most horses that try to get a man once will try to get him again, but if the smart ones fail in their first try or two they’ll usually wait for a chance to catch their rider napping. And it’s when they catch him napping that he really gets hurt. I was watching the bronc so closely that I didn’t look up until I was outside the gate, then I might have thought I was riding at a roundup. Hudson’s yelling had evidently frightened his wife and her sister. They, Doc, and the four youngsters were standing at the corner of the house, shading their eyes against the late afternoon sun and looking toward the corral. Paco’s teeth had flashed white when he swung the gate open for me, and the other fellows stood watching as if they expected another performance as much as I did. There wasn’t any.
Hudson came spurring out of the corral at a dead run, a heavy blacksnake whip coiled in one hand. He brushed so close to me that his leg bumped mine, then raced on across the yard. I knew he was trying to set the little bronco off again, but instead she sidestepped and dashed away behind him. It was no more than fifty yards from the corral to the gate of a milking pen at the base of the windmill. At the speed Hudson was riding, I expected him to go right on past the gate, but he didn’t. He was within a single length of it when he suddenly yanked his pony’s head up viciously and stepped from the saddle. The little mare and I were so close behind that I didn’t have time to think, but a man can’t think as fast as a topnotch mustang. I barely felt her rump fall away before she’d set her feet and slid to a dead stop. The only thing that saved me from going over her head was that I’d ridden bareback a couple of years before I ever had a saddle, and my knees clutched hold from a memory my head had long forgotten.
The gate was only three strands of barbed wire, twisted around an end pole that was held in place by a couple of loops. Hudson sprung it loose and threw it back onto the ground as though he were taking out his anger at me on it, then stepped into the saddle and raked his horse with the spurs. With dried cow chips flying back in my face, we raced through the milking pen and into a narrow lane that led over a low rise of ground behind the house, my little mare keeping exactly one length behind his.
It was no more than a quarter-mile to the top of the rise, and when we reached it we came out into a half section of pasture, hacked by deep draws and gulches. About half a mile away, where the land pitched downward to the main gulch, a dozen or so horses and three or four colts raised their heads from grazing, then plumed their tails and streaked for the gulch as if they’d been a wild herd.
Until the horses raced out of sight Hudson had shown no sign of knowing I was along. Then, without looking back, he wheeled his pony to the right, waved me in the opposite direction, and yelled, “Head ’em off, and don’t leave ’em get by you!”
If a man knows a pasture he has a pretty good idea where horses will run in it, the best place to head them off, and how to get there. But in a pasture he’s never seen before, and on land that is badly cut with gulches, he hasn’t much chance. I could think of only one sensible thing to do, and it turned out to be the right one. I leaned a bit forward and patted the smart little mustang’s neck a few slaps, just to let her know I had confidence in her, then turned her loose to take me wherever she thought best.
When I was a little kid I used to wish I could talk to horses, and they to me, but I think it’s better just as it is, for among people it’s talking more than anything else that breaks friendships and causes misunderstandings. The little mustang left me no doubt that she understood. Her ears pinched back, her muzzle stretched out like the neck of a goose in flight, and she turned on a burst of speed that I’d have thought impossible for a horse of her age.
The horse herd had been to the southeast of us, and had been running northeast when it disappeared, but the little mare raced straight to the north. In less than half a minute I could see why she had done it. A narrow ravine extended far out from the main gulch, its walls dropping straight down, twenty feet or more. I clamped my legs tight and leaned a bit, expecting the mare to swerve and circle the end of it, but she didn’t. She drove straight on, met the ravine at the one spot where it narrowed to a little more than fifteen feet, sailed across, and landed with hardly a break in the rhythm of her stride. She’d barely landed before she banked sharply, and plunged, sliding and bounding, down a second but wider ravine.
The ravine led into a deep gulch, shaped like a huge bottle, with walls rising thirty feet on both sides. The neck we had come into was less than twenty feet wide, but to the south the gulch widened into a grassy valley, a hundred feet or more across. Where it narrowed into the neck, a side ravine led off in the direction of the lane.
As we came into the big gulch I saw the horse herd trotting toward me in the wide grassy valley, about as far to the south of the bottleneck as we were to the north, and Hudson was loping his pony a hundred yards or so behind. We must have caught sight of each other at the same moment, for I’d barely seen him before he put his pony into a dead run. Shouting and lashing the blacksnake till the tip leathers popped like pistol shots, he closed in behind the heard. As if frightened by a demon, the horses flung their tails high and came racing toward me.
I didn’t need to be very smart to figure out what Hudson was up to. If he could catch me in that narrow neck and stampede the little bronco into throwing me, I’d be ground into hamburger under the hoofs of the racing herd. I had only two choices: I could turn tail and get out of there, or I could race the herd to the neck of the bottle. I dropped Indian-fashion above the little mare’s neck, dug my heels in, and she shot away like a startled cottontail.
The race was about as close as one can be. For the last hundred yards I could see that we would meet right where the shoulders of the gulch joined the neck. Coming head-on, and traveling at the speed we were, it seemed impossible that we could do anything but crash together, and that my little bronc must surely go down, but she charged that racing herd like an infuriated wildcat, head swinging from side to side and teeth bared.
For the
next minute, or maybe less, the action was too fast for me to do anything but clutch both hands full of mane and hang on for dear life. A mass of rearing, dodging mustangs swirled in the bottom of that gulch like wildly boiling paint in a pot. To me they were hardly more than a blur, for my little mare was bouncing and whirling like a cat in a fit, and my head snapped back and forth as though it were mounted on a limber spring.
The violent action stopped as suddenly as it had begun. When my head cleared a stream of horses was pouring into the ravine that led toward the lane, trying to escape the frenzy of one little thirty-year-old mare—and a fifteen-foot blacksnake whip in the hand of a raw-boned, angry man. For maybe three seconds Hudson and I sat, no more than a horse length apart, looking straight into one another’s eyes. He raised the butt of his whip threateningly, then let it fall, and reined his pony into the ravine behind the herd.
Most horses will head straight for the corral when pointed in that direction, but Hudson’s were all mustangs, the wildest I’d ever seen in captivity, and were determined not to be driven to the corral. I didn’t need anyone to tell me why. He’d evidently never fed them there, but had abused them so much that they were afraid of confinement. After we’d followed them up from the gulch it took us at least fifteen minutes to get them out of the pasture—Hudson lashing them with the blacksnake from one side, and my little mare raking with her teeth from the other.
Hudson neither looked my way nor spoke until we’d driven the frightened and excited horses into the corral, then he yelled at me, “Watch that gate while I cut the colts back!”
As I tended the gate and the rest of the crew looked on in awe, Hudson rode to the center of the corral, wheeled his pony, and set his whip lashing as if it were actually an infuriated blacksnake. The terrified horses crowded into the farthest corner, but there was no way of escape, no letup in Hudson’s lashing—and no missing either. Each time the tail of the whip lashed out it bit hair from a two-year-old, a yearling, or a foal.
Without looking away, Doc asked, “Is the man crazy?”
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “We had a little go-round in the pasture, and he’s mad enough to kill me if he dared. He’s taking it out on the colts.”
“Then you’re crazy,” Doc told me, “or you’d be making tracks away from here. Skunk that he is, he’s a wizard with that whip. He could cut you into jerky with it in less than two minutes.”
“He won’t,” I said. “Any man who treats animals the way he does is a coward, and there’s no reason to be afraid of him.”
In panic the horses broke out of the corner, racing around the corral, and as they ran Hudson turned his pony and kept his whip writhing until he had strung them out in single file, whirling like a runaway merry-go-round. I knew well enough what he’d do next, so set my feet, ready to swing the gate open. As a yearling came racing around the end of the corral, Hudson’s whip bit it on the head, knocked it off stride, and sent it hurtling toward me. I barely had time to yank the gate open and let it out. He cut the rest of the colts in the same way, one at each turn of the merry-go-round.
With all his brutality, Hudson was an expert with a whip, and there could be no doubt that he’d been showing off for the crew, just as he thought I’d been doing when the mare went over backwards with me. It seemed to me that a little recognition of his skill might help matters between us, so as I swung the gate open for him I looked up and said, loud enough for the other fellows to hear, “You’re a crackerjack with that whip.”
He glared at me as he rode on past, and growled, “Don’t you never forget it neither!” Then he spurred away to drive the colts back to pasture.
Hudson was barely out of hearing before Doc slapped me on the back, and said, “Good going, Bud! I figured I’d have to get you out of here before nightfall, but it looks like the war’s over.”
“Armistice anyway,” I told him, “and it was my place to ask for it. I started the rumpus by riding the bronc after he’d told me not to. She’s some horse, for an old one.”
“Could you teach a horse that over-backwards trick?” Doc asked.
“Sure,” I said, “but it would only ruin him for anything else.”
Doc slapped me again, and said eagerly, “I’ll tell you what: soon as harvest is over and we’ve made a little stake, you and I’ll go into the medicine-show business, and brother we’ll clean up a fortune. We’ll get us a couple of gals that can shake a leg, and a show wagon, and you teach a bronc to. . . .”
That’s as far as he got. From the windmill platform, Judy called, “Supp—pper!”
3
Judy’s Story
WHEN Judy called us to supper she set a tin wash basin on the platform under the windmill, and went back to the house. The rest of the crew hurried away to wash, leaving Doc and me stragglers. He seemed to be in no hurry, and wanted to talk more about our going into the medicine-show business, but I told him, “Keep your shirt on till after supper, Doc. Right now I’m more interested in fried pork and gravy than medicine.”
Doc’s belly jiggled as he snickered and told me, “You’ll get your medicine right along with your supper. That hog I cut up was an old boar, and by the time he’s fried he’s going to be strong medicine.”
I’d forgotten about Doc’s having been at the house till he mentioned the hog, so I asked, “What’s Judy like?”
“Nice kid,” he told me, “but no good for the medicine-show business. You got to have troopers for that game, gals that can pass a bunch of wise-crackers back as good as they send. This kid’s all right, though, for a small town girl. Knows how to take hold and get things moving. That poor sister of hers is kind of on the skim milk side, beat out by having one youngster right after another, and if I don’t miss my guess she’s been doing field work.”
While Doc and I were waiting our turn at the wash basin, Hudson came back from the pasture, driving half a dozen old milk cows. He didn’t look toward us as he closed the lane gate, but rode on through the milking pen, turned his sweat streaked pony into the corral, and stalked to the house without coming near us.
As the other fellows washed, they stood aside, waiting so that we’d all go in to supper together. And when we went I lost my appetite. The half-rancid, nauseating smell of old-boar pork came out to meet us. The kitchen was no more than ten by twelve feet, with a hot cook stove at one side, and a cream separator in the far corner. An uncovered table of rough boards stood in the center of the room, surrounded by a few rickety chairs, a bench, and a couple of boxes stood on end. Although the door and windows were wide open, the temperature was about 120°, and the flies must have liked the smell of boar pork better than I did. The room was swarming with them.
Ten places had been set at the table, and in the center there was a bowl of unpeeled boiled potatoes, another of gray milk-and-flour gravy, two plates of biscuits, a cracked pitcher that was leaking skimmed milk, a gallon-sized coffee pot, and a platter of fried side meat. Neither Mrs. Hudson, Judy, nor the children were in sight, but Hudson was seated at the far end of the table, shoveling pork and potato into his mouth as though he were stoking a boiler. He didn’t look up as we came in, so after bunching inside the doorway a few moments we found ourselves seats, everyone trying to stay as far as possible from the stove and the boss. Doc and I were the last in, so had to take seats beside Hudson.
For maybe six or seven minutes the only sounds were the click of knives against plates, or someone asking, “Pass the spuds.”
Then, from a room beyond a half-closed door behind me, a child coughed and began to cry. Hudson stopped shoveling just long enough to turn his head toward the doorway and yell, “Shut up!” Then he went on with his eating, end the child stopped crying.
With the first whiff of pork, I’d made up my mind that I wasn’t going to eat any of it, but I found myself licked. The rest of the meal wasn’t exactly planned for a diabetic diet, and the only way I could avoid that pork was by sticking to straight boiled potatoes. The milk pitcher was emp
ty long before it reached me, the coffee was as bitter as gall, and both the gravy and the biscuits had been made with grease from the pork, so they were just as rank tasting as it was. All I could do was to tell myself it wouldn’t poison me, and that it would do me less harm than too many potatoes, so I waded in. That pork was sort of like the sulfur and molasses my mother used to give us every spring when we were kids. The first mouthful nearly gagged me, but after I got used to it I could swallow it without too much trouble.
I’d just reached for my third slab of side meat when Hudson pushed his chair back from the table, took a lantern from a nail above the separator, lit it, and went out. The meal had been gloomy enough that I hadn’t noticed twilight was deepening until he lit the lantern, and after he’d gone out the gathering darkness seemed restful to me. It must have been the same with the other fellows. Though none of them spoke, the tension seemed to drain away, and one after another they left their half-eaten meal and went outside.
Being farthest from the door, Doc and I were the last ones out. Paco was waiting at the corner of the house, in the dusk I could see the others straggling away to our camp behind the barn, and a yellow speck of lantern light showed that Hudson was at the header. The wind had gone down with the sun, leaving behind it a void of silence and breathless heat, broken only by an occasional clink of metal at the header. Weary as I was, there seemed no sense in going to lie and sweat on a mattress of prickly straw. Doc must have felt as I did, for without a word he turned toward the windmill, and I went with him, Paco trailing a step or two behind. The mill tower stood on a plank platform about a foot above the ground, just the right height for men to sit restfully, elbows on their knees. And when a man is resting there’s no reason to talk.
Gradually the twilight faded to darkness, broken only by the gleam from Hudson’s lanterns and a yellow shaft that reached out across the ground from the kitchen doorway. So slowly it was barely noticeable, the eastern sky lightened until the shape of the land stood black against it, turned a faint pink, then deepened to a dusky rose that glowed and expanded as though, far beyond the horizon, there might be an enormous prairie fire. Like a low bank of flame at its center, the dome of the full moon pushed upward, blood red above the black outline of the land.