Little Britches

by Ralph Moody

  I wanted to claim and name the new mare, but Father wouldn’t let me. He said we had all, except Philip, named something, so he must have his choice; he chose Fanny.

  Mother didn’t want the end of the bunkhouse as a kitchen, after the horses had been living in it, so Saturday morning we hooked Bill and Nig to it and hauled it out where the first barn had stood. It had been built with board walls inside and out, and the space between them stuffed with straw. We worked to beat the band all day. After we got it moved Father ripped up the floor and pulled off all the inside boards. He let Grace and me pull the old nails and pound them out straight, while Muriel and Philip were lugging the straw to the hen coop and pig pen he built with the floor boards.

  When Father hauled the piece for the barn away, it left the bunkhouse with one end open. That Sunday he built a new end into it with boards he had pulled off the inside of the barn, and made a partition in the middle, so there was a room for Philip and me, and one for Grace and Muriel. While he was doing it, Grace and I helped Mother move the beds and make us bureaus out of boxes the groceries had come in. She put cloth around them—with ruffles—and we made scalloped paper covers for them, and cut doilies from pieces of old wallpaper. By supper time everything was done, and Grace and I were so excited about sleeping in a real bunkhouse that we could hardly get away from the table quickly enough.

  Father had promised Mother that he would plow her a garden out behind the barn before he did anything else. He started it early Monday morning, but he hadn’t got around the plot once before we had to go to school. He had made a tripletree for the plow, and balanced it carefully so to adjust the amount of pull to the strength of each horse. Nig was to walk in the furrow and pull the biggest share, Bill in the middle with the next biggest, and Fanny on the outside with only a little more than half as much load as Nig.

  But Fanny had no intention of being a plow horse. She was all right while Father was putting Nancy’s collar and the hames with chain traces on her, but when he tried to rein her up beside the other horses, she squealed and tried to bite chunks out of Bill’s neck. Father fixed that quick enough by fastening a stick about three feet long between her bridle and Bill’s collar, but when he hooked her traces, she kicked and jumped around till she had both hind legs over them and was faced the wrong way. Father unhooked her and talked easy till he had her back where she belonged, but every time he got the traces hooked to the tripletree, she would do the same thing all over again.

  If it had been Mother, I think she would have killed Fanny right then and there, but Father didn’t seem to get mad at all—only the muscles on his jaws went out and in. At last he made another jockey-stick and put her in the middle with one stick fastened to Bill’s collar and the other to Nig’s. That way she couldn’t swing out around, but she did kick like fury, and got both legs over the traces. Bill and Nig didn’t get any more excited than Father did while Fanny slatted and threw herself around. She acted just like a little kid in a tantrum.

  When she had quieted down a little, Father put the reins over his shoulder, stuck the point of the plow in the ground, and clucked to the team. Bill and Nig started up when Father clucked, but Fanny stood stock still. The tripletree caught her on the heels, and then the real fun started. Fanny went away from there like a stone out of a slingshot. When she reached the end of the jockey-sticks, she went straight up, and came down bucking, with heels flying in all directions. Finally she got one foreleg inside Bill’s bridle rein and one hind leg inside Nig’s breeching, then she went down with Nig on top of her. When Father got them untangled, he made me go to school. I never heard Father swear, but I always wondered if he didn’t that time as soon as I was out of earshot.

  I stopped by Aultland’s for the milk on my way home from school. Fred was out by the corral fixing a disk harrow, and I went over to tell him how Fanny had acted when Father hooked her up to the plow. He laughed as though it were a big joke. “It’s no wonder old man Wright traded her off cheap,” he said. “He’s spent ten years and a dozen sets of harness trying to break her to drive double. I’ll sure take my hat off to your old man if he can plow half an acre with her. Why the hell wouldn’t the stubborn down-east Yankee let me lend him a good horse to plow with? Say, how much land is he figuring to turn over this year, anyway?”

  When I told him Father was going to plow the whole place if Bill held out, he squinted up one eye for a minute, and said, “Go on in and get your milk; I’ll give you a lift home.”

  Father had most of the garden plowed when we got there. The big horses were walking slowly, just one step after another. Fanny was soaking wet and tossing her head up and down, but she was plowing, so I told Fred he’d have to take his hat off to Father.

  Father put his foot up on the hub of Fred’s buckboard the way he always did. They talked about what would be best to plant on new sod ground. They talked and talked. Then Fred said, “Charlie, how much of this place do you figure on putting into crops?”

  Father looked over toward the horses and said, “I’d like to put it all in, Fred, but with the late start I’ve got, and at the rate I’ve been going today, I guess I’ll be lucky if I get in eighty acres.”

  Fred just sat chewing for a minute or two, then he squirted a line of tobacco juice between the nigh horse’s heels. “You know this prairie land won’t produce much in the way of grain crops the first year, and drinks up a hell of a lot of water. A fellow ought to put in crops like peas and beans and alfalfa the first year, so’s to get air back into the land. Why don’t you put in about ten acres of alfalfa? We’ve had quite a bit of rain this spring, and if you sow it with oats—and get it in before the first of May—it might get roots down to moisture before it burns out on you. Then you could put in another ten to peas and beans, and you’d have about all you wanted to take care of this first year.”

  Father stood looking down at his foot on the hub of the buckboard for all of two minutes, then he looked up at Fred and his voice was real quiet when he said, “What are you telling me, Fred—haven’t I got any water?”

  Fred didn’t answer till he’d spit between the off horse’s feet and cut another corner of his plug. “Yep, Charlie, you’ve got water—ten inches. This land will produce forty bushels of wheat to the acre if you’ve got an inch of water to the acre. Without an inch to the acre, you’re lucky if you get any.”

  Father pushed his hat back and scratched his head a little. “Can I count on getting the full ten inches, Fred?” he asked.

  “That’s the hell of it,” Fred said. “You’re tail-ender on the ditch. When the creek’s high and the ditch is running full at the dam you’ll get your share, but when it’s running low and the crops are burning up, you’ll be able to lug all you get in a bucket. I won’t steal water from you, Charlie, but when only half my own is coming through to me and my crop’s suffering, I won’t pass it on to you.”

  Neither of them said anything for a long time, then Fred said, “Your cousin ought to have found out about it before he got you out here. Why, man, you couldn’t run ten inches of water to this garden from where the ditch comes onto your place; the ground would drink it all up on the way. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ve got two hundred inches with my place. I’ll use all the water that comes as far as me for twenty days, then give you the whole head for one. That’ll let you give about twenty acres a good soaking often enough to make a crop the first year. After that you might handle as much as twenty-five.”

  7

  Become a Horseman

  FATHER and Mother must have sat up and talked nearly all of that night. I woke just as the moon was slipping down behind the mountains, and there was still a light burning in the kitchen. Mother had brought some garden seed from New England and had bought more at Fort Logan. The next day she let me stay home from school and help her plant peas and potatoes and carrots and beets. We dug trenches most of the forenoon, then Mother sent me to shovel the horse manure from behind the barn onto the wagon, so Father could haul it out
for us at noon when he came in from plowing.

  Mother had me put manure in the bottom of the trenches and cover it over with an inch or two of dirt, then she laid in the cut pieces of potato and hoed dirt over them. We were right in the middle of it when I looked up and saw half a dozen cowboys riding by on the wagon road. I waved, and one of them turned his horse and came cantering across the prairie to where we were. I knew him as soon as he got near enough for me to see his face. He was the same cowboy who had given me the ride.

  He flipped out of the saddle while his horse was sliding to a stop, and took his hat off to Mother with a sort of half bow. “I see you folks are really gettin’ dug in. We was scairt the big wind might have blowed you clean out of the country.”

  While he was talking to Mother I was looking at his horse. It was a blue roan, the first one I had ever seen. “Yes, we’re here to stay,” Mother said. “My husband is going to build a storm cellar, so there won’t be any danger of our being blown clean away.”

  I wished Mother hadn’t said “clean away.” It sounded the way she did when she didn’t like somebody, and I wanted her to like my cowboy friend. I walked around the roan and looked at him from the other side while Mother and my cowboy kept talking

  Mother didn’t talk much, but the cowboy said, “Lady, you’re sure wastin’ your time buryin’ these here barn cleanin’s under your spuds; you’re due to get tops enough without it. All you got to have for this ground is water, and God help the man that ain’t got it.”

  The hair on the blue horse was shinier than it was on Cousin Phil’s Prince. It rippled like oily water when he moved the muscles under it. To me, it was like a magnet. I had to touch it With my hand, so I stepped up close to his shoulder. Just as I reached my hand up, the cowboy called, “Hey, Pardner, watch out, you’re on the off side. Come on around here.”

  While I was coming around, he said to Mother, “This old cayuse is clever as a kitten if you stay on the nigh side, but he might kick the stuffin’ out of him over on the off side.” He had ground-tied the roan by just dropping the reins when he got off. He picked them up while he was talking and passed them around the horse’s neck, then he caught me by one arm and swung me into the saddle. “How about a little ride, Puncher?” he asked.

  Mother thought he was just going to lead the horse around a little with me on it, and she didn’t say anything except “Be careful,” when he was showing me how to stick my feet into the loops of strap that held the stirrups. As soon as I got them in, he passed me the lines and clucked. The roan went off in a smooth, easy canter, and Mother cried, “No! No! Hell fall!”

  My friend laughed, and I could hear him say, “Aw shucks, if he falls, the ground’ll catch him.”

  It didn’t. At first I held on to the saddle horn with one hand—the ground seemed so much farther away than it did when I was riding the donkey—but I didn’t feel a bit as though I were going to fall off, so I let go and waved back to Mother and my cowboy. The only time I was frightened at all was when I went to turn him around to go back. We had gone clear out by the railroad and I was afraid he might fall down going across, so I pulled on the left rein, but he swung around to the right. For just a second I thought I was going to take a header, but I kicked out hard with my left foot and was back in balance again.

  I could see Mother was peeved when we came cantering in; her mouth was pinched up that way. For just a second I thought about seeing if I could flip off as my friend did when he came, but the ground was a long way down and I was scared to try it Anyway, my feet were stuck in the loops. He reached up and took me off while Mother stood with her hands on her hips. She looked at me with that look of hers that said, “Come here, young man!” And I went. She didn’t say a word to me, but her eyes blazed at the cowboy as if she would like to skin him. “You might have killed him,” she said. “If he’d fallen off, that horse would have trampled him to death.”

  He just laughed, “No, Ma’am! That old pony wouldn’t kill nobody. If he’d a fell off, Old Blue would of just stood there and waited for him to pick hisself up. You watch.”

  Then he said to me, “Didn’t have no trouble with him, did ya, Little Britches?”

  I said, “No, only he don’t steer very good. I pulled the rein to make him go one way and he went the other.”

  He laughed again. “He’s just rein wise and you ain’t, that’s all. Now you watch.”

  Then he turned around toward Mother, took his big hat off and said, “You watch, too, Ma’am, and you’ll see how safe he is.”

  He kicked up one leg and flew right into the saddle without ever touching the stirrup. He whistled between his teeth as he went up, and Blue was gone with his feet kicking chunks of sod out behind him. The roan had hardly gone fifty feet before he sat right down on his hind legs and skidded, then the cowboy made him do more tricks than an organ grinder’s monkey. They turned round and round in a circle, and from one side to the other so that it looked like dancing, then he would run a little way full tilt and be turned around before he got through sliding. I noticed that the cowboy never did pull on either rein; he just held them in his left hand up over the horse’s neck, and whichever way he moved his hand, that was the way the roan went. Then he did one that made Mother and me both squeal. With the pony going lickety-larrup the cowboy fell right out of the saddle. He lit on the back of his shoulders, turned a half somersault and came up on his feet The horse stopped so fast they were standing there side by side, as if they were just waiting for the mailman to come along.

  The cowboy looked around at Mother and took off his hat. It had stayed on all the way through the somersault. He stepped back into the saddle again and trotted over to where we were. First he said to me, “Catch on, Little Britches?” Then he took off his hat to Mother again, and said, “Hiram Beckman’s the name—they call me Hi.” As he raced back toward the road he turned and waved his hat. Mother and I waved back.

  I could hardly wait for Father to come in from the field to tell him about Hi and his blue roan horse. Father had been plowing way over across the tracks, and I didn’t think he’d noticed us, because he never stopped to look when I could see him. I ran out to meet him when he came, and got all mixed up, I was trying to tell him so fast. He put his hand out and rumpled up my hair. I didn’t know what he meant, but he said, “I guess you’re a chip off the old chopping block. If you understand them, you never have any trouble making them understand you. You did all right on that horse. I knew you weren’t afraid by the way he was acting.” We walked along a little way, then he rumpled my hair again and said, “Your father was proud of you, Son.” It was the first time he ever told me that, and I got a lump in my throat.

  Then he told me that Hi might be a little bit of a show-off, but he was a good horseman; not so much because he could fall off and come up on his feet, but because he had been patient in training Blue. He said that Blue wasn’t a bit afraid of Hi or he wouldn’t have handled so smoothly, and that it was the best example he had ever seen of complete understanding between a man and a horse. “If you want to be a good horseman,” he said, “the first thing you’ll have to learn will be how a horse thinks, and next to think the same way yourself.”

  That Sunday was nice and warm. After the chores were done, Father said, “Mame, this is too nice a day to be cooped up in the house. If Fanny hadn’t been plowing all week, I’d say let’s hitch her up to the buckboard and take a drive up to the mountains, but she hasn’t steadied down yet, and is making twice as much work of it as she needs to. So, what do you say—let’s pack up a picnic lunch and a good book, and make a day of it down by the creek?”

  We all went running around trying to help Mother get ready faster, when we’d have helped more by keeping out from under her feet. By ten o’clock the big lunch basket we had on the train was packed, and we were on our way down over the hill to Bear Creek. Father found a place where the creek made a wide curve through a grove of cottonwood trees and tumbled down in a cascade to a deep, clear pool, l
ined with willows. He showed us how to skip flat stones on the pool, and then we all went wading in the creek—even Mother and Hal. Mother took a puckering string from her petticoat, and a safety pin, so Philip could go fishing in the pool, while Father taught me how to whittle a willow stick into a whistle.

  Grace and Muriel went up the creek to pick up colored stones while Mother unpacked the lunch basket and boiled water to make tea for herself and Father. Pretty soon Grace came running back, calling for us all to come quick, she’d found a whole bushel of pure gold and had left Muriel to guard it till we got there. We all went running but Father. He tried to act as if he were hardly interested, but he did walk faster than usual. All the way, Grace kept babbling about how we were rich now and could get a cow, and a pony to drive to school. When we got to where Muriel was, the sand near the shore was all covered with shiny yellow flakes. Father took some of it on his hand and looked at it carefully. Then he said, “Girlie, I wish you were right, but I believe it’s mica. I think they call it fool’s gold. I read about it once, but if I hadn’t, I’d certainly be fooled, too.”

  After we had our picnic, Mother read to us. She didn’t read like other people; she talked a book. I mean, if you were where you could hear her but couldn’t see her, you’d be sure she was telling the story from memory instead of reading. And another thing different about Mother’s reading was that she didn’t care if you watched the book over her shoulder. I used to watch her eyes by the hour as she read. They would swoop across the page like a barn swallow across a hayfield, then she would look up and recite for a full minute before she looked back at the book again. When Mother read, we children had to be quiet and pay attention. We could do most anything we pleased with our hands, like making whistles, stringing dried berries for beads, or playing with dolls, but if one of us whispered, Father would snap his fingers. If he ever got to the third snap, Mother would close the book and we would do something else for a while.