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.
13
We Go to an Auction
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 t
urn-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!"
We couldn't be buying any horses, so we stood at the back of the circle. I guess the horses were all bringing more money than Father and Mother had thought they would, because I could see them keep looking at each other every time the bidding went above fifty dollars. After a while Mother whispered, "With horses selling at this kind of price, the cows will probably be outrageous. I do hope there will be one cheap enough so that we can afford her, but we'll have to have money for groceries this winter."
I was standing on Father's side and couldn't hear what he said when he turned his head to whisper to her, but she didn't watch the horse auction any more; she just kept looking down at the ground. In a little while she leaned over close to him and said, "I'm afraid I spent more than I should have on things for the house, but there were some lovely bargains." Then Father sent me to look at Fred's new horse while he and Mother took a little walk.
I had drunk so much milk with my sandwiches and doughnuts that I had to go awful bad, so Fred took me around by the cow corral while they were auctioning off the last horse. While I was busy he went over and talked to the man who had been leading the horses out to the ring. They were looking at the cows when I got back, and I saw Fred slip a silver dollar into the man's hand when he turned away from the corral.
Father and Mother had come back, and we stood right in the front row for the cow auction. Father stood next to Mother and then came me, and then Jerry and Fred and Mrs. Corcoran— Mr. Corcoran had to stay home and herd the cows. They brought out one cow after another, and they sold for anywhere from thirty to fifty dollars apiece. One or two old skinny ones sold for a dollar or two under thirty, but the man who was having the auction bragged about every one of them.
I kept watching for the two cows Fred had pointed out to Father, but I didn't see them. I wasn't too sure I could recognize the Holstein, because there were ten or twelve black-and-white cows sold, but there was only the one brindle in the corral, so I knew I wouldn't miss her. Mrs. Corcoran bid on almost every cow, but she always stopped when the bidding got up to thirty or thirty-five dollars. It seemed as though they must have brought out all the best cows first, or else everybody got cows who wanted to pay lots of money for them, because when it was getting along toward the last, nobody was bidding much over thirty dollars. I thought sure they'd come to the end before the man Fred had been talking to led out the big Holstein. I knew her the minute he led her into the ring, and poked Father on the leg.
Mrs. Corcoran stepped right forward a foot when the man led the Holstein in, and she bid twenty dollars for her the first crack out of the box. Father said, "Twenty-one," somebody else said, "Twenty-one fifty," and then Mrs. Corcoran yelled out, "Twenty-five dollars." I knew she was going to bid more than we could pay, and hung my head down. I think I was saying a little prayer that she'd stop at thirty, when I saw Fred Aultland step right on her foot. She jumped and glared around at him, but she didn't bid on the Holstein cow any more. Father said, "Twenty-five fifty," and somebody said, "Twenty-six," but we got her for twenty-six fifty.
Before they led out the brindle cow, Mrs. Corcoran had moved down the circle away from Fred, and she yelled, "Twenty-five dollars," before the man was through telling how good a milker the cow was. I was watching her and didn't notice Fred moving down there, too, till he came right up beside her. I guess I wasn't the only one who saw him step on her foot that time, because some young fellow on the other side of the ring called out, "Get her again, Fred!" Everybody started to laugh and Mr. Wright yelled, "Sold," just as soon as Father said, "Twenty-six dollars."
I helped Father harness Bill and Nig back to the wagon while Fred and Bessie Aultland helped Mother collect the things she had bought. Father let me sit on the back of the wagon and lead our new cows home. He seemed happy while we were loading the things into the wagon, but Mother didn't say much. She had her lips buttoned up tight and her face was bright red. On the way home she talked most of the time, though. I couldn't hear all she said, because the Holstein cow held back on the rope, but I did hear enough to know she had spent more than she thought she should have. She said, "I just couldn't let those lovely Buff Orpington pullets go by at twenty-five cents apiece." And, "Two dollars and fifty cents does seem a lot of money to spend for two turkey hens, but Bessie says they're good foragers and will cost hardly a penny to feed. If I have good luck and am able to raise a brood of young turkeys, they should furnish us some very inexpensive meat—and it's so nice to have a turkey for Thanksgiving."
Then she said something about it probably not being necessary to spend the two dollars for a chest of drawers for the girls' room, but it was solid walnut. The first thing I heard Father say was, "That's a nice-looking little cuckoo clock you got." I looked around when Father said that, and saw the red run right up Mother's neck. Then they both laughed, and Mother said, "Don't you josh me about that clock, Charlie. I know we didn't need it, but it looked so much like home, and I just got bidding for it against Mrs. Thied and some other lady, and couldn't stop."
Grace had seen us coming when we were half a mile away, and all the youngsters came running up the road to meet us. She and Muriel had Hal by each hand and were almost dragging him along. I guess we all felt we were kind of rich people to be able to buy all those things. Philip put his bid in right away to be allowed to herd our cows.
14
The Irrigation Fight
THE IRRIGATION fight broke out soon after we got our cows. July was hot, the creek was low, and there was only half a head of water coming through the ditch. It started at the gorge where Bear Creek came out of the mountains, and each ranch, all the way down, had rights to so many running square inches of water. Some of it soaked into the ground as it moved along, and some was drawn up by the sun, but—unless the creek was very low—there was enough for everyone to take his full measure. Each ranch had its own ditch box. They were wooden chutes that the whole body of water passed through. And each chute had a spillway with a gate to let out the full measure of that rancher's water right. There were gauge marks on the boxes and, when the ditch was running less than full, each man was supposed to set his gate so that it would take only his share.
There were water hogs near the head of the ditch. They were men who would take their full measure of water, and more, too, when
the creek was low and crops were burning up. There had been a feud between the ranchers at the head and tail of the ditch ever since it was built. The first that I knew much about it was one night when Fred Aultland came down to talk to Father. They had a deal where Fred used all the water for both ranches twenty days, and then we had it for one. Fred came the evening before our day to have the water. Our oat field was so dry that Father was afraid the kernels wouldn't fill unless the ground got a good soaking right away. And the leaves on our peas and beans were curled up and withering. The vegetables from Mother's garden were little and scrawny.
I knew there was something the matter when I saw Fred coming down the wagon road. He always drove his tall bays as fast as they could trot, but that night they were just moping along. A cloud of dust was rising from the wheels of the buckboard that looked like white smoke from a bonfire. And Fred was hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees. Father and I went out to meet him as he came into the yard, and he looked terrible. One of his eyes was swollen and black, and there was dried blood around his mouth and nose. I started to ask him what the matter was, but Father laid his hand on my shoulder, so we just waited for Fred to talk first.
After a minute or two, he looked up at Father, and said, "Charlie, I'm afraid I've started something I'm not big enough to finish. For the last three days there hasn't been more than a trickle of water coming through the ditch as far as my place. Jerry Alder, Old Man Wright, and I went up this morning to have a look. Hardesty and Hawkins, both, had their sluice gates wide open and were taking double their full measure. Kuhl had his gate wide open and had made a cut in the bank where the ditch is built up at the back of his alfalfa field. He tried to tell me it was a natural break and he didn't know it was there, but there were shovel marks in the bank. The cut's filled in now— or it was when I left there."