Father and I Were Ranchers

  Hi knew what I wanted, though. He said, "You're damn right, you're going to get to ride him. Open the gate, Len!" His blue never left my side more than three feet all the way across the alfalfa field, out over a strip of prairie, and back to the corral. On the way back the colt wasn't fighting; I could feel the smooth power of his muscles under the saddle, and I knew he was going to be my horse.

  He had bucked harder with me than the fellows expected him to, and I don't know how I stayed on. I guess I was just too scared to fall off. Anyway, Mr. Cooper shook hands with me after Hi lifted me down. He said, "By God, you're going to make a cow poke, Little Britches. As long as you're with me you can call him your own horse." Then he laughed, and said to the other men, "I thought, by God, the kid was going to pull that one-inch hackamore rope in two before the music stopped."

  Father never swore, and I know I wouldn't ever have said it out loud, but before I really knew what I was thinking, "By God, I thought so, too," went through my head.

  25

  A Pretty Strong Current

  I SPENT the rest of the afternoon helping Juan and Hi get the chuck wagon ready. It was really more of a blacksmith and harness shop than a chuck wagon.

  Juan's kitchen was only a big pantry with doors at the back. It sat on the open tail gate and was stuffed to the roof with flour, slabs of bacon, sugar, coffee, and potatoes. Two big water casks were fastened to the sides of the wagon body, and Juan's pots and pans hung from the chuckbox like warts on a squash.

  After all the branding irons, horn saws, spare saddles, and blacksmith tools had been loaded, it was my job to flush out and fill the water casks. I thought they held a thousand gallons apiece before I got them filled.

  Mr. Cooper ate dinner in the cook shack with the men, but he ate his supper in the house with Mrs. Cooper and the little girls. I was nearly through with my second piece of pie when a team drove into the yard, and I heard Mr. Cooper come out of the house and call, "Hiya, Fred."

  I thought the answer sounded like Fred Aultland's voice, so I finished my pie as quick as I could and went out. He was so busy talking to Mr. Cooper that he didn't notice me till I went up close to the buckboard, and said, "Hello Fred."

  Fred spit so quick he hit the nigh horse on the hock, and said, "By dog, Spikes, I didn't hardly know you. Where the hell did you get that ten-gallon hat?" It was a pretty good light gray hat. Tom Brogan had given it to me after I rode the blue colt. It was a little too big, though, and he had had to roll up some paper and put it inside the sweat band.

  Hi was right behind me, and he came over yelling, "Spikes be damned! This here is Little Britches; top-hand cow poke and bronc buster of the Y-B spread. Light down, you lop-eared old son, and get the kinks out of your legs." Then he started telling Fred about my riding the blue colt the first day he'd ever had a man's hand on him, making it sound as if the colt had bucked a lot harder with me than he really had.

  I didn't like to just stand there, so I went over and climbed up on the corral fence to look at my colt. He had been running around the corral until he was sweaty, and his coat glistened blue as the sky in the light of the setting sun. I guess I was thinking about that without knowing it. And about Hi, and the way the colt leaped into the air when he started his buck. The name "Sky High" came into my head before I ever knew where it came from.

  It was deep twilight before Hi left the buckboard and came over to where I was. The colt spooked as Hi came up to the fence, snorted, and stared toward us with his head held way up and his nostrils flaring. Hi chuckled, "Lots of fight left in the blue devil yet. God! He's goin' to make a horse." We watched him for a while, and he watched us. At last Hi said, "Didn't want to bust him too hard today. Didn't want to bust his spirit." Then, after he'd rolled and lit a cigarette, "Prob'ly shouldn't ought to of put you on him so quick, Little Britches. Your pa wouldn'ta liked it." He took a couple of puffs from the cigarette and blew the smoke up over the top rail. "But, by God, if he's goin' to be your horse, he's got to get used to you from the jump. Ain't no two ways about it."

  I guessed that Fred and Mr. Cooper had been telling him he had let me ride the colt before he was broken enough. I didn't want him thinking too much about it, because I was afraid he might not let me do it again. So I told him what I'd named the colt and asked him if he thought it was all right. "Right?" he said. "Fits him like a glove! Tell you what we'll do, by God; we'll call that old cayuse of mine 'Sky Blue,' and make 'em a matched pair."

  It seemed like everything around the place started off with "by God." I told myself I wasn't even going to think it, and then I'd be sure I didn't say it sometime when I wasn't thinking.

  I went over to talk to Fred Aultland before he went home, and asked him not to tell Mother about my riding Sky High. He didn't say he wouldn't, but he stuck his hand out to me, and I knew he meant he wouldn't tell Father either.

  We pulled out for the mountain ranch early the next morning. I had hoped that Hi would saddle Sky High and take most of the buck out of him, as he'd done the day before, so I could ride him up to the mountains. But he didn't. I was just mopping up the last of the syrup on my plate with a piece of hot biscuit when Mr. Cooper stuck his head in the cook-shack door and said, "You'll be riding Topsy, Little Britches." Then, after he'd started away, he stuck his head back in and said, "I'm giving you orders, Hi! Don't you never let Little Britches fork that blue colt till you've got him plumb wore down."

  Juan drove a four-mule team on the chuck wagon. Just as we were ready to pull out of the yard, Mr. Cooper told me again that Juan was my boss away from the home ranch, and that I belonged with the chuck wagon. So I pulled Topsy in beside the near wheel mule.

  We waited by the gate while the men got the remuda from the corral and hazed it up the wagon road toward the west. Hi was right behind them with Sky High. He had the colt haltered and his head snubbed up close to his saddle horn. As he went past me, he called, "Figure to give this little old cayuse some halter breakin' on the way up." Sky didn't seem to like it a bit, and plunged around to beat the band. But he couldn't do much about it, because Hi's blue just kept jogging along and not paying any attention to him.

  Juan followed with the chuck wagon. Until we were out of sight of the house, I rode along beside the mules, but Topsy didn't like the dust that the wagon stirred up. She kept blowing her nose and bobbing her head. Then Juan waved me to go ahead with the men and yelled, "Adelante, adelante, muchacho!" I had picked up enough Spanish from the Mexican section hands to know what that meant, and dug my heels into Topsy's ribs. I never looked back at the chuck wagon until we were in the little green valley between the hogbacks and the mountains.

  I had felt kind of bad that I was only going to be water boy and helper to the cook, but it turned out a lot better than I expected. Juan didn't want help, even if I had known enough to be of any use to him. All he let me do was carry water for the men and bring in bundles of dry scrub oak for the fire.

  Juan had a Mexican waterskin that he tied behind the cantle of my saddle. It was a dogskin, and I don't know how in the world they ever got the dog out of it, because there wasn't a break in it anywhere, except at the neck, tail, and feet. It had been tanned and polished until it was as smooth as a lady's glove, and a brownish-yellow color. The legs hung down on each side of the saddle. They were the drinking tubes, and I had to fill it through one of them. To close them tight enough so they wouldn't leak, all I had to do was fold them over and clamp on a split stick, like a clothespin. The breaks at the neck and tail were sealed so they didn't leak, and were hand sewed with double rows of fine cord that Hi said was catgut.

  Every morning that first week Hi took the kinks out of Sky High before he went out to work the cattle. And every morning the colt broke wide open for a few seconds, but the white didn't show around his eyes any more, and he didn't tremble. After he had ridden Sky for a couple of miles, we'd change saddles, and Hi would let me ride him awhile, but he always rode his own blue right beside me. The colt always crowhopped a li
ttle after I got on, but he never did any hard bucking. Hi let me ride farther each morning. Then Saturday he tied the waterskin on behind my saddle and rode with me all morning while I took water to the men. Sky High didn't like the legs of the skin dangling against him. I could never tell when he was going to spook or crowhop, and had to keep my knees pinched in tight so I didn't get spilled.

  By noon my legs were aching to beat the band from keeping them pinched up so tight on the saddle, and I had a lot of sagebrush scratches on them, because I couldn't always make Sky go right where I wanted him to. While we were eating dinner, Hi told me to put my saddle on Topsy and drag in half a dozen bundles of wood to hold Juan over Sunday, and then we'd get away early for the home ranch.

  I didn't stop to have supper with the Y-B fellows at the home ranch, but made Topsy canter all the way, so I'd get home before dark.

  Father was just coming in from milking when I rode into our yard. Mother came to the kitchen door, and all the youngsters came running out to see me. I hadn't known I was a bit homesick until I got in sight of our house, but when they all came running out to meet me my throat started swelling up, and I forgot all about my saddle and everything else except that I was so glad to be home.

  It was a fine evening. Mother popped corn and let all of us but Hal stay up until ten o'clock. I told them all about the mountain ranch and the dogskin water bag and the chuck wagon. But I didn't say anything about Sky High or the bucking.

  Father was awfully quiet, even for him, and I could tell he knew I was holding something back. I think I would have told him all about it if we had been somewhere alone, but I couldn't tell him with Mother and the others there. Whenever I wasn't talking I kept feeling guilty, so I told them all about dragging in wood for Juan's fire, and about Hi having his roan trained so he'd handle any kind of a mean animal without any reining. I said Hi was going to teach me how to train a horse that way.

  Father just said that would be a good thing to learn, and that a man who could train a horse like Hi's blue roan would be able to teach me lots of worthwhile things about forethought and patience as well as horse handling.

  Sunday morning I let Grace ride Topsy up to the corner and back on my saddle. Father went along on Lady, because Topsy was a strange horse, and he wouldn't trust Grace alone with her. Grace didn't like to have him go with her. I think she always did wish she had been a boy so she could have been allowed to do the things Father let me do.

  We packed a picnic lunch and spent the whole afternoon down by Bear Creek, but we stayed away from the bridge where Fanny got hurt. Mother had a new book they had bought when she and Father went to Denver to hear Mr. William Jennings Bryan make a speech. It was The Call of the Wild, and Mother read to us most of the afternoon. I think I liked that book better than any one she'd read. While she was reading, Father and I whittled a sailboat. That is, Father whittled the boat part and I made the masts and split dry Spanish dagger leaves for the sails. Then Father rigged the sails and booms with string he had brought in his pocket. He fixed two long strings to the main boom so we could swing it from one side of the boat to the other as we walked along the bank.

  While Mother and the others were getting supper fixed, Father and I sailed the boat down the creek. At a place where the current wasn't too swift, and where there was a pretty good breeze, we sat down on the bank and Father showed me how we could make the boat go either up or down stream by simply changing the angle of the sail. After I had learned how to do it and was moving the strings so to make the boat tack up against the breeze, Father said, "You know, a man's life is a lot like a boat. If he keeps his sail set right it doesn't make too much difference which way the wind blows or which way the current flows. If he knows where he wants to go and keeps his sail trimmed carefully he'll come into the right port. But if he forgets to watch his sail till the current catches him broadside he's pretty apt to smash up on the rocks." After a little while he said, "I have an idea you'll find that the current's a bit strong up at the mountain ranch."

  Just then Mother hoo-hooed for us, so we took the boat out of the water and went back up the creek. While we were walking, Father fastened the strings so the sail couldn't move and tied the long cord onto the bowsprit. When we got to where Mother had supper laid out on the bank he gave the boat to Philip.

  We left the creek just when the sun started to dip down over the highest mountain peaks, so I could get back to Cooper's before dark. When I went, Father walked out to the gate beside Topsy. He had his hand on my knee and was looking down at the ground, but he said, "Son, I want you to be a man and do the things men do, but I want you to be a good man. I'm not going to worry about you, but don't take foolish risks—and give the man who's paying you a good day's work. So long, partner." Then he waved to me as he closed the gate.

  26

  Training Sky High

  WE STAYED at the home ranch that night. Hi rapped on my window when it was just light enough so that I could see the outline of the cook shack against the sky. When I got my overalls on and went out to saddle Topsy, he was waiting for me at the corral gate. His blue was already saddled, and a pair of smooth leather chaps was hanging from the saddle horn. They were just my size and had silver disks along the sides of the legs and around the belt. Hi had cut down an old pair of his own to make them for me.

  All the way up to the mountain ranch we talked about Sky High. Hi said there wasn't a mean streak in him anywhere, and that he had more brains than any other horse in the remuda, except his own blue. Then he told me to watch and I'd see that Sky always followed the same pattern in his bucking, and that he'd let me ride him from scratch just as soon as I had it figured out.

  I didn't have to figure it out, though. All I had to do was close my eyes, and I could remember just how he did it. He'd rear high, bounce first left and then right for six jumps, then crowhop for a hundred yards and go into a stiff-legged run. I guess Hi liked it because I already knew. Anyway, he told me I could try it that morning, but to fall loose if I felt myself going. He said I might just as well get started if I was ever going to do it, because Sky might morning-buck all his first season. And it wasn't because he was mean, but just his way of showing how good he felt after a night's rest. He did buck every morning as long as I was there, and always just the same way. After I got used to it I could have ridden him blindfolded.

  Hi started teaching me how to train Sky High right from that day. First it was breaking him to the rein, and teaching him to stop with a light pull on the line, then with just lifting them. By the time we went back to the home ranch the next Saturday he would rein either way without any pull, and come from a lope to a walk when I raised the lines with my hand. After that, Hi filed the rowel out of his bit.

  I would have liked to ride Sky High home Saturday night, but Hi thought it would be better for me to take Topsy. I guess he thought Mother wouldn't let me come back if she saw the colt put on his morning show, and he was probably right.

  I guess I never noticed how good a cook Mother was, or what good times we had at home, until after I went to work at Cooper's. It wasn't that I didn't like the things we had to eat at the mountain ranch, or that I didn't have a good time when I was up there. I did. It was only sometimes at night, after I was in my bedroll, that I'd even think about home. But always when I got to where I could see our house on Saturday nights, I'd be so homesick that I'd make Topsy run as fast as she could.

  That week end we all went for a picnic up in Bear Creek canyon. It was the first time the other children had been up there, and I think Father had been planning it long before Sunday came. He had traded our old buckboard, and the colt he got for building ditch boxes, for an almost new spring wagon with two leather-covered seats and red-striped wheels. Mother had the lunch basket all packed when we got up Sunday morning, and Father and I did the chores as fast as we could. You could just barely see the tip of the rising sun when we drove out of our yard.

  Father could tell every different kind of tree and rock and mo
st of the bushes and flowers. And he didn't just point them out and say, "That's a spruce and that's a fir and that's a jack pine." He'd show us where this one was different from that one, until even Hal could tell them at a glance. Of course, Hal was too little to go on the hike up the canyon with us, or to climb up the side of the mountain, so he had to stay at the wagon and help Mother get lunch ready. But Father took the rest of us way up into a box canyon he had found when he was hauling fence posts. It was just like a big room, built off to one side of the main canyon, and the walls went up almost straight. He could call one of our names, and the mountains would keep calling it back till it sounded as if they were all full of people who knew us. And he found a smoky topaz for Muriel, and a piece of quartz with green agate in it, that he afterwards ground and polished for Grace.

  Mother finished reading The Call of the Wild to us during the afternoon, and we didn't get home until time to do the milking. Father said I could have taken Topsy along with us. Then I could have saved about five miles by cutting across to Cooper's place from Morrison. I didn't want to do it, though, because I liked to help Father with the milking, and to have him walk out to our gate with me when I went, and say, "So long, partner."

  I learned a lot of things during the six weeks we were at the mountain ranch. My real work didn't take more than an hour a day, and I spent all the rest of the time practicing the things Hi showed me. He taught me how to train Sky High until we could ride the two blue roans side by side, and make them do exactly the same things without even straightening a rein. And he taught me to swing a rope till I could spin it in a flat circle I could walk in, or make it dip to catch the leg of a running calf.

  After that first week, I was the only one who ever got a leg up on Sky High, and I must have been on him at least twelve hours every day. As soon as I learned to handle a rope well enough so that I could get it on a calf and shake it off again without getting out of the saddle, Hi helped me break the colt for handling a steer. The first thing we did was to pare his forehoofs right down to the quick so they were tender. Then we set shoes on his hind feet. Always before, when I would snub a calf to the saddle horn, Sky would set his forelegs against the lunge, but Hi said that would be bad with steers. He said that in a couple of years the colt would get sprung knees and never be able to take quick turns. Sky didn't do it any more, though, after his front hoofs were trimmed.