Little Britches (25 page)

All the blood seemed to have drained out of me and left me dry as prairie dust. My eyes burned and my tongue stuck to the top of my mouth. The roan crashed against the poles at the far end of the corral in a sideswipe, pivoted, and rushed across the ring. He had changed his stride to a chop, and Hi's head was snapping like a ball on a string. It wasn't till then that I noticed he wasn't raking or fanning the roan; just pulling against the horse's bogged head with the hackamore rope, and holding himself tight up against the pommel. The colt was plunging right toward me. Hi saw me just when I was ready to jump, and waved his free arm as the blue jackknifed back toward the center of the ring.

Nothing alive could have stood that pace long, so it probably wasn't more than a minute before the roan rocketed, crashed down, and stood trembling. Hi's face and neck were swollen, and so red they looked as though they might break into flames, but he didn't seem a bit afraid. He stroked the colt's neck and talked to him. His voice hadn't changed a mite from the way it sounded before he got on.

Sweat dripped off the roan like rain from the eaves of a house, and his sides pumped in and out like a bellows. I could see the whites showing around his eyes, and it was a look of fright, not of meanness. None of the men on the fence made a sound as the horse seemed to be making up his mind whether to start all over again or to relax. I watched the quiver in his withers grow less and less, and then he moved a foot forward. The saddle squeaked, and he spooked, but he didn't buck. Then he took another step, and another. Neither Hi nor any man on the fence moved as the colt made a nervous circle of the corral.

After a couple of rounds Hi motioned Mr. Cooper to open the outside gate. The colt shot through the opening, around the big corral, and away across a hayfield. Hi had a short hold on the hackamore rope and was holding the blue's head up to keep him out of another buck. It might have been ten minutes before they came back, and it was easy to see there had been an understanding between Hi and the colt. He spooked a little, and shied off from the corral gate, but Hi let him take his time, and he sidled back through.

When the gate was closed Hi slipped out of the saddle and loosened the cinches. He must have had the rest of it all planned out with Ted Ebberts, because Ted went in and took the saddle to the barn. When he came back he was carrying mine, and laid it by the gate. I was still afraid, but nothing like I had been before, and I knew it was my time to ride, so I climbed down and picked up my saddle. Mr. Cooper took it from me and told me to stay outside till it was on. He asked me if I was scared and I lied to him. I said, "No, not a bit," but I was shaking inside. I never knew a horse could buck like that blue, and I knew I'd go off at the first thud if he did it again. I wasn't so much afraid of falling off outside where a horse could run away, but it seemed as though I would surely get trampled if I went off in that little corral.

Hi gentle-talked the roan colt, and stroked his head while Mr. Cooper and Ted cinched my saddle onto him. Then he motioned me to climb up on the fence beside them. He told me the colt would buck again with a new rider, but not so hard—not so hard as he had seen Prince buck with me. He told me not to be afraid, but to keep myself pulled up tight against the pommel with the hackamore rope, and to keep my eyes on the roan's ears so I'd know which way he was fixing to jump. After that, he got on his own horse and sidled the colt over against the fence. I noticed that all the other fellows had spaced themselves around the corral with their ropes shaken out. It made me feel a lot safer as I eased myself down into my new saddle.

When I was set Hi wheeled his horse away, Ted and Mr. Cooper jumped back, and I was on my own. The colt bogged his head, leaped, and thudded down. From there on I don't know much about it except what they told me afterwards. But I do know that he didn't buck the way he did with Hi, or I'd have gone flying. When it was over, Hi came riding in to take me off, but I didn't want him to. I was so dizzy I could only see a blur, and I couldn't make words come out of my mouth. Maybe it was because I had bitten my tongue, but I don't think so. I think it was because I was still too scared—and too happy because I hadn't fallen off.

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.

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.