by Ralph Moody
The second Saturday after that, Mother sent me to take a dress pattern over to Mrs. Larson. I rode Fanny, and went around by the West Denver road and through the ford. I should have come right home, but we didn’t have much work to do that day, so I went to look along the tornado path. Father had told me some of the curious things twisters could do, like driving a wheat straw through a fence post without breaking it.
While I was poking around I heard a sound like thunder from way off toward the mountains. I looked up, and there was another big black cloud half hidden behind Mount Morrison. As I watched it, it lifted a little, seemed to draw itself into a tighter ball, and grew a lot blacker. I was sure it must have a tail on it, and that I could have seen it if the mountain hadn’t been in the way.
At first I thought about going back to Larson’s storm cellar, but I was afraid nobody at home had seen the storm coming, and that it might strike them before they could turn the stock loose and get to the cellar. I flung myself flat on Fanny’s neck, slapped her with the line ends, and raced straight for the hillside going down to the creek. There was no time for going around by the ford, and I knew right where to hit the old cattle bridge in Cooly Lundy’s pasture below our house.
The hillside was rough pasture land, covered with sagebrush, Spanish dagger, and cactus; and the rain had washed little gullies all through it. I knew better than to race Fanny down over it, but when I came in sight of the creek I noticed that it had risen nearly to the top of its banks. Then I realized there was a cloudburst coming instead of a tornado, and that the water might be over the bridge before we could get there. Fanny never did like to run downhill, but that day she seemed to know we were racing against the storm, and streaked down across the pasture, dodging sagebrush, leaping gullies, and sliding through shale rock. I had to clamp my knees tight and lie close to her neck to keep from being thrown.
When we hit the edge of the valley floor, Fanny took Lundy’s irrigation ditch in a clean low jump, and tore out across the alfalfa field toward the cattle bridge. I don’t think I reined her at all; she knew what I wanted to do as well as I did. Thunder seemed to be crashing all around us. I glanced up toward the mountains, but I couldn’t see them. The black cloud was lying right against the ground, and between claps of thunder I could hear a roaring up the valley.
The creek was about half a mile from our house, and at that point it clung tight against the foot of a steep, brush-covered hill. A narrow trail led down to the old cattle bridge. As we raced toward it, I could see that the water was clear up to the bridge girders and that part of the bank had washed away, so there was a gap of two or three feet between us and the planking. I was afraid Fanny might not see it, and brought the line end down sharp against her rump to lift her over. While my arm was still in the air, the wind and rain hit us like the cracker of a bull whip.
Fanny jumped and sailed across the open strip of mad, swirling water. It was a long, high leap that carried us nearly to the middle of the span. Her nigh fore hoof thudded down against a half-rotten plank—and crashed through.
I didn’t see her fall. I only saw her head go down, and then I was thrown toward the bank like a kitten flung by a dog. I missed the bridge and my arm ripped against the end of the planking as I fell head first into the muddy, rushing water. I couldn’t swim, but I don’t think it would have made a bit of difference. When my head came up I was five or six feet from the bank. I just caught a glimpse of it as I tried to suck in a mouthful of air, but I got mostly water, and the current rolled me over and took me under again. That time I scraped against a bush, grabbed hold, and hung on. I was lucky, because its roots were in the side of the bank and it swung me around like a picket rope. When my head came up again, I was under a big sage bush that leaned out over the water. I was choking so bad it made my arms weak, and I could hardly pull myself up out of the creek.
I should have thought about Fanny the first thing, but the choking made me sick at my stomach, and for a minute or two I couldn’t think at all. Then she squealed. I never knew a sound could hurt like Fanny’s squeal. I felt something had hold of me and was tearing me in two. When I hauled myself up through the sagebrush, I could see her muzzle and part of one twisted foreleg sticking above the water that was flowing over the bridge.
I guess I lost my head when I saw it. The current had washed me about sixty feet down the creek, so I scrambled along the bank to the bridge trail and ran toward Fanny. I didn’t even stop to think that the water might have carried the planks away, but splashed out onto the bridge. Her leg was broken over sideways just below the knee, and her hoof was caught in the hole it had made. She was straining to hold her head above the water, and her eyes looked up at me as if she were begging me to help her. I don’t think I ever planned what I did. I guess I just did it because I loved her. I jumped onto her head and clamped my legs around it. Her muzzle slipped off the end of the planks when I landed, and she struggled once or twice—then my head went under, too.
I only knew the water was turning me over and over. A couple of times my mouth came to the top and I tried to gasp in some air. . . . Then Father’s face was right above mine, and his hands were pumping up and down on my back. I was lying with my head downhill, and my face was turned to the side so I could see Father’s. It was as gray as ashes.
I couldn’t seem to make my body wake up when my head did, and Father’s voice sounded a long way off. He kept asking me if I was all right I was, except that my lungs hurt, but I couldn’t say so till after he’d taken me up. He was soaking wet and muddy from the creek, but he opened his shirt and held my chest close against him. As he climbed the trail, I looked back toward where the bridge had been. The water had risen another foot or two, and Fanny’s neck and withers showed above it. The rawhide thong Two Dog had braided into her mane floated up and down on the current as though it were waving good-by to me. I think that was what made me cry. I tried to tell Father what had happened, but he had seen the last of it himself. From our house, he had seen me start down across Larson’s hill as the storm was gathering, and had run for the creek to warn me back before it rose.
Mother made me stay in bed two or three days till she was sure my lungs were all right, and that my cuts weren’t going to get infected. I had a couple of cracked ribs and a little fever, and Father brought Doctor Stone out, but he just gave me some pills and strapped me up. Then he told Mother again that I’d never get killed in an accident. By the time I got up, Father had buried Fanny. I rode Lady down there so I could see her grave, but I was glad I didn’t see Fanny.
24
I Become a Cow Poke
THE FLOOD washed out the dam at the head of our irrigation ditch and tore away most of the gates and locks. Father and all the other ranchers along the ditch had to work for a couple of weeks to fix up the damage. And then there came pretty near being another battle, and everybody had to go to court to find out how much of the cost they had to pay.
We drove Prince to school for a couple of weeks at the beginning of April. That was after my ribs got well enough so I could go back to school, and Father was using Lady for plowing. After that we had to walk, because Cousin Phil came out and got Prince. The gold panic ended about that time. Fred Aultland started hauling hay again, and Mother sold five pounds of butter for cash.
Mr. Welborn sent a man out from Denver to take care of his trees, and I hadn’t been able to make a penny all spring. And I didn’t know what I was going to do after school let out May first—I almost wished I were going to herd Mrs. Corcoran’s cows again. It would be June before Fred’s hay was ready to cut, and there wouldn’t be much to do at home, except to weed Mother’s garden. And, besides, I was lost without Fanny.
I was talking about it one noon at school, and somebody must have told Mr. Cooper. Anyway, he came over to our house that evening and said he’d heard I was hunting work for the summer. Father told him I was always hunting work anywhere except in Mother’s garden, but he thought I’d find enough mischief to get into righ
t at home.
Mr. Cooper lived five miles from our place—over west of Littleton, and nearer the mountains. They got their irrigation water from Platte Canyon, and didn’t have any ditch fights, so they always had good crops. He had one of the biggest ranches anywhere around, and always hired a dozen or so men in the summer. Before he went home, he told us he would pay me twenty dollars a month, and give me steady work from May first till the end of September. Then he said he didn’t have to have an answer for a couple of days, and he’d drop back and see us again.
I wanted to go to work for Mr. Cooper worse than I’d ever wanted anything. I pestered Father and Mother a lot about it. At first Father said I couldn’t go because Fred Aultland had given me work for the past two years and depended on me to ride his stacker horse. Grace could ride a stacker horse just as well as I could, and she didn’t think it was fair that I got all the money-making jobs while she had to stay home and help Mother. I went to see Fred on my way home from school the next night and talked to him about it. He said he’d give me twenty dollars a month himself, if the last year hadn’t been so tough, but if I wanted to take Mr. Cooper’s job, Grace could ride old Jeff.
Maybe that had something to do with Father and Mother letting me go. First Mother made Mr. Cooper promise to let me come home every Saturday night, and Father made him say I could sleep in the house instead of out in the bunkhouse with the men.
Mr. Cooper came for me the Sunday night after school closed. Before we got to his place I knew I was going to like working for him as well as I liked working for Fred Aultland, but I didn’t begin to realize how much I was going to like it.
The first one I saw when we drove into his place was my old cowboy friend, Hi. He knew me right away. He was standing out by the corral fence with some other cowboys when we drove in, and he yelled, “Hi there, Little Britches! How many toes you broke so far this spring?”
Mr. Cooper told me Hi was his cattle foreman, and was a great booster of mine. Then he said for me not to let Hi spoil me, but I didn’t know what he meant.
After Mr. Cooper had taken me to the house, and his wife had shown me where my room was, I went back out to the corral. There were seven or eight other cowboys there with Hi, and they were talking about bringing cattle down from the mountains for sorting and branding. When Hi saw I had come back, he picked me up and set me on the top rail of the corral. Then he wanted me to tell the other fellows about going up to Two Dog’s and getting caught in the cloudburst.
I didn’t want to talk about killing Fanny in the flood, and I guess Hi saw I was getting a little choked up, so he asked me where I had put my saddle and blanket. Of course, I’d never had a saddle or blanket, but I didn’t like to say so, and said I liked to ride bareback better. All the fellows but Hi laughed when I said that, and one of them hollered, “By God, Hi, that’ll learn you not to waste a week’s time saddle makin’.”
Hi looked kind of funny for about a minute, and I guess I looked funnier. Then he started to laugh, too, “Damn you, Little Britches,” he said. “You’re going to ride that little old saddle I made you or I’ll hang it around your skinny neck.”
He reached up and hauled me off the rail, and carried me to the bunkhouse under his arm—the way you’d carry a little pig. Before Father had said I had to sleep in the house, Hi had fixed me a bunk right next to his. He had the quilt spread over my saddle, bridle, and blanket. They were the prettiest ones I ever saw, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from squealing.
It was a breaking saddle like Willie Aldivote’s, only a lot better. The pommel was wide and thick; and it flared out a little before it drew in to the horn, so a fellow could lock his legs in under. The horn was only high enough to get a rope around, and had a nice rake forward—the knob must have been covered half an inch thick with leather. There were wide skirts to the stirrup straps, double horsehair cinches, and rawhide latigo thongs front and back. The blanket was a Navajo—brown with bright green zigzag stripes—and the bridle was silver-mounted with a curb rowel bit. I couldn’t believe that Hi was giving them to me—that they were really my own.
It was pitch dark before Hi got through showing me my saddle and making me understand that it was mine to keep. Then Mr. Cooper came out to the bunkhouse and told me it was time for me to come and turn in. He said the boys would do me enough damage when we were out working stock, and he was going to see that I got my sleep when I was at the home place.
We ate breakfast in the cook shack, and the cook was a Mexican who could hardly speak a dozen words of English. But he could make good biscuits and flapjacks, and he put lots of onions and pepper in his fried potatoes. I ate so much that it nearly came out of my ears.
At breakfast Mr. Cooper told me that when we were working with the cattle, Juan, the Mexican cook, would be my boss most of the time, because I’d be the water boy, but he’d do the bossing when we were at the home place. Then he said I could loaf around that day and get acquainted while the men were getting ready for the branding.
When we were through eating we all started out to the corrals. On the way, Hi said the first thing I ought to do was to pick my horse. I don’t think Mr. Cooper liked to have him say it, because he said, “Didn’t you hear me tell Little Britches I’d do the bossing around the home place? I think his pa and ma had sooner he’d ride Topsy or Eva.”
Topsy and Eva were the little seal-brown ponies Mr. Cooper had driven over to get me. First Hi put my saddle on Topsy and let me ride her, and then he put it on Eva. They were both nice gentle little horses, but they didn’t have the get-up-and-get to them that Fanny used to have. Maybe it was my new saddle, and maybe it was because I had been used to Fanny, but I didn’t like either of them. Hi’s blue roan was in the big pole corral with a couple of dozen other horses, and there was another blue in there that looked almost like him. He was a young horse—wide in the chest and narrow in the withers, the way I liked them. He had a fine black head and sturdy legs with cat hams; I couldn’t keep my eyes off him.
All morning the men kept busy roping horses out of the big corral, saddling them, and riding them in the breaking corral. Most always they got the horse they were after with the first throw of their ropes, but there wasn’t one of them, not even Hi, who could flip a rope like old Two Dog. Some of the horses busted wide open when they got a rider on them, but most of them only crowhopped around for a few seconds before they quieted down. Hi said there were only two or three of them that hadn’t been ridden the last spring, but they had gone a little wild during the winter.
I watched and watched, but nobody put a rope on the blue. I guess Mr. Cooper and Hi knew I was watching him, and knew I didn’t like Topsy and Eva too well. While we were eating dinner, Hi said, “For God’s sake, Len, why don’t you give the kid a shot at him? I seen him ride his old man’s seal-brown down back of the schoolhouse, and with a little learning, he’ll stick like a louse.”
Mr. Cooper didn’t even answer, but kept right on eating till somebody else down the table called out, “Aw, for God’s sake, Len, give the kid a break!”
Then Mr, Cooper looked up like he was mad, and said, “Look here, you damn fools, who’s responsible for this kid, you or me? I promised his ma I wouldn’t let nothing happen to him, and I ain’t going to let him fork no green colt.”
Hi looked as surprised as could be, and said, “Hell, Len, you ain’t been hearin’ so good. It’s a blue colt we’re aimin’ to see him straddle, not a green one.”
That time all the men laughed, except Mr. Cooper. He pounded on the table, and hollered, “I don’t give a damn if he’s blue or green or yellow. You ain’t going to put Little Britches on no wild cayuses while I’m around to give the orders.”
Nobody laughed then, but I saw the fellows on the other side of the table looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes. I don’t know how Mr. Cooper could have seen it, because he was looking down at his plate, but I guess he must have. Anyway, in about a minute or two, he looked up at Hi, and grinned. “
All right, you dirty sons,” he said. “I reckoned that was about what you had in the back of your heads. And I guess it would be safer right here where we got a good pole corral, but I want to see you wear that maverick down before you let this little daredevil fork him.”
That was the end of dinner. Hi grabbed his hat, let out a whoop, and ran for the corral with the other fellows right behind him. I did stop to say, “Excuse me,” before I got up, but I was second to get to the corral. Ted Ebberts started shaking out a rope as he ran toward the corral gate, but Hi called him back. He said to take it easy, because he was going to gentle-break the colt.
I had seen Father gentle-break a couple of horses, and expected to see Hi go at it the same way. But he didn’t. Instead of putting his rope on the blue colt, he tossed it on his own blue, led him out of the corral, and saddled him. When he rode back in, he was holding a short loop on the off side of his saddle, not swinging it the way the other fellows did when they were after a horse. The remuda circled the corral, but Hi didn’t follow them. He held his blue quiet near the center till they bunched in a corner. Then he moved in toward them at a slow walk. When they broke, his rope flipped out and settled around the roan colt’s neck, the way the tongue of a toad flips out at a fly.
I was watching like a hawk, and I never saw him give his horse the least bit of a sign, but as the blue colt raced out of the fence corner, Hi’s blue was right beside him. He was snubbed to the saddle horn with no more than four feet of rope, but there was no jerk on his neck as Hi drew him away from the remuda and into the center of the corral.
