by Ralph Moody
27
Father and I Learn to Shoot
I USED to like having picnics down by Bear Creek, so all six of the Sundays while I was working up at the mountain ranch, Mother packed a lunch and we spent the day down there. After the first week, I never did get home on Saturday nights till after dark, and I always stayed as long as I could. So it was always dark when I started back to Cooper’s. That’s why I never noticed our crops till Hi told me about the ditch fight. From the way Father had acted on Sundays I couldn’t have guessed anything was wrong, but I should have known Mother wasn’t getting so jumpy just worrying about me.
The last Monday morning I went up to the mountain ranch before haying, Hi asked me if Father had got hurt. I said he hadn’t, and wanted to know why he asked me that. Then he told me about the fight on the Bear Creek ditch. He said, “I don’t like the looks of things over there. Fred Aultland tells me the gang up the ditch has busted out, your pa’s patent ditch boxes and is hogging all the water, so your places are drier’n a burnt boot. But he says your pa’s got a signed paper that’s tight enough to haul ’em into court for damages. If I know them dirty sons as well as I think, your old man better start pacldn’ a .45.”
I was afraid for Father, and was going to ride right home and tell him what Hi said, but he told me not to. He said I couldn’t tell Father anything he didn’t already know, and that Father probably wouldn’t thank him for having told me. I still thought I ought to go home, and I would have if Hi hadn’t said it would scare Mother to death. Then he promised he’d ride to our place with me the next Saturday afternoon and take his own .45 to Father.
I don’t think I ever put in a longer week. I couldn’t even find any fun in cutting out cattle with Sky High, and on Wednesday Hi told me I’d have to quit being so nervous with the colt or I’d spoil him. I don’t know if being nervous had anything to do with it, but that same morning Sky tossed me twenty feet when I was taking out his kinks.
Only Hi and three of the other fellows were going to stay with the cattle through haying, so Juan started for the home ranch with the chuck wagon right after Saturday’s dinner. I should have gone with the wagon, but I wanted to stay with Hi so as to be sure he would ride home with me and take his .45 to Father. It must have been four o’clock before we got the three herds thrown together and had cut out all the horses that would be needed at the ranch for haying. Hi had promised that I could ride Sky High home when he went with me, and I was getting fidgety for fear we wouldn’t get there till after dark. I had been thinking all week about how nice we were going to look riding into our yard side by side on our two blue horses.
As soon as the remuda was headed toward the home ranch, Hi yelled to Barney Ortez, “You take over, Barney. Little Britches and me has got business.” He let his roan out into a fast run, but I caught up to him before he had gone a couple of hundred yards. Of course, I was a lot lighter than Hi, and my saddle didn’t weigh nearly so much as his, but I’d bet Sky High could have outrun his blue and carried the same weight. After that we let them down into a long lope and kept it all the way to the home buildings. We passed the chuck wagon before we were halfway in.
I never did change my clothes so fast, and I don’t believe Hi ever did, either. I wasn’t in the house more than five or six minutes, but when I came out he was all ready and waiting for me by the bunkhouse door. He had his .45 on and was holding another gun and belt in his hand. The belt was loaded, and was so long he had to wind it around me twice. As he buckled it on, Hi said, “I ain’t giving this to you; you ain’t old enough to pack one, but if your pa thinks you might, he’ll be more willing to borrow it off of you than he would off of me.”
The sun was hanging about a foot above the mountain peaks when we got to the far corner of our ranch. As we rode along the west road, between Fred Aultland’s place and ours, I almost felt like crying. Fred’s alfalfa looked a lot better than ours, because it was older and the roots were deeper, but it was a sick yellow color and not more than six or eight inches high. Our oat field looked like a desert, and the sweet clover had turned brown along the irrigation ditch.
I forgot all about how we were going to look as we rode into the yard, and could only think about Father and how hard he had worked to get our crops in. Of course, I couldn’t have helped any if I had been at home all spring, but it seemed as though I had done something wrong to have been away having a good time while the rest of them had to stay home and see our crops burn up.
Hi must have known how bad I was feeling, because when we got to the corner, he yelled, “Yipeeeee,” and threw his spurs in against his roan’s belly. We went tearing down the last half mile as if we were running away from a prairie fire, and skidded up to the gate in a shower of dust. The folks had seen us and had come out the kitchen door. Mother was keeping Muriel and Philip back so they wouldn’t get stepped on and Father was holding Hal in his arms. Hi didn’t make any move to open the gate, so I had a chance to let Father see how well I could handle Sky High when I opened and closed it without getting out of the saddle.
Hi took his hat off to Mother with a big sweep just the way he did the first time I rode his blue, and anybody would think he had always known Father. He called, “Hi there, Charlie. This little old kid of yours is gettin’ to be quite a cow poke; broke and trained this here colt all by hisself. He fetched me over so we could show him off a little.”
Before I could even get in a word, he yelled, “Yipeeee,” and spurred his roan again. I pinched my knees in a bit and leaned forward, and both roans took off together. We tore out through the dooryard, circled around the haystack one way, turned on a dime, and came around the other way. Then we made figure eights side by side—both ways around—and a few quick stops and turns. As we came back to the door, we made the roans keep changing lead so they looked as if they were dancing. Hi’s roan would do it with nothing but knee pressure, but we had only been practicing three weeks, so I had to keep turning Sky High with the reins.
Father was always quiet and serious. He wasn’t ever sour or sulky, but he just never bubbled over or talked loud as lots of men do. I think the nearest I ever heard him come to it was when we brought the roans dancing up to the door. His eyes were shining, and when he called out to us his voice reminded me of the “merry wedding bells,” in the piece Mother used to recite. “Nice handling, Son,” he called. And then he said to Hi, “I see you’re as good at training boys as you are at schooling horses. I’m proud to have him with you, Hi.”
I do think Father was proud, but I know I was a lot prouder. And I could tell by the looks of the other youngsters’ faces that they were glad I was their brother. Mother always worried for fear I would fall off a horse and get hurt, but that night she was beaming like a sunrise in the spring. She always waited supper for me on Saturday nights, and she told Hi she was sorry she hadn’t known he was coming, because she was quite unprepared, but if he could take pot luck, supper would be ready in about fifteen minutes.
Father went to the corral with us when we unsaddled, but he didn’t try to help me. It felt as if that gun and cartridge belt weighed a ton, and the top rail of our corral was pretty high for me to toss my saddle over, but I was lucky and it balanced with the horn pointing straight up on the first try. As soon as we had forked some hay to the roans, Hi unbuckled his gun belt and hung it over the corner post of the corral. I had to climb up on the poles to put mine with it. Father hadn’t seemed to notice the gun before, but when I climbed up he said, “That’s quite a piece of artillery, Son. Do you wear it while you’re working?”
I thought about what Hi had said when he buckled it on me, so I said, “No, not yet, because I don’t know how to shoot with it, but I might need it for wolves when I go back to the mountain ranch after haying.”
I was just getting ready to ask Father if he’d keep it for me, but Hi beat me. He said, “It would be a nuisance to you during haying time, and I won’t be around to learn you how to use it; you might hurt somebody. Why don’t you
leave it here with your pa till you come back to the cattle? We’ll take you out after supper and let you find out how much it kicks.”
While we were talking, Mother came to the back door and called, “Su-u-up-perrr,” so we went over to the pump and got washed up. Maybe Mother wasn’t quite prepared, but she had an awfully good supper. We had a whole roasted ham, and the kind of baked beans nobody else could make—golden brown, with thick juice that was as sweet as maple syrup, and she must have opened a jar of everything in the cellar. After we had eaten till we were full clear up to the ears, and there wasn’t a buttermilk biscuit left on the plate, Mother opened the oven door. She had made two pies out of gooseberries Grace and I had picked along Bear Creek in the fall. Some of the juice had oozed up through the leaf pattern she always marked on the top of her pies, and just the smell of them made me hungry all over again. Hi said it was the best supper he ever ate.
At Cooper’s I got coffee like the men, and I liked it a lot better than I did milk, but I didn’t think Mother would have liked it if she had known. I was a little bit afraid Hi might ask why I wasn’t taking coffee when Mother got up for the coffeepot and cups, so I hurried to say, “I won’t have room for anything to drink tonight with all these good things to eat.” Sometimes Hi could catch on as quick as Father. He was sitting next to me, and when I said that he bumped me under the table with his knee.
After Hi had told Mother how good the supper was, he said to Father, “How about it, Charlie—hadn’t we better take Little Britches here out behind the barn and learn him how to shoot a six gun? It’s better he have a couple of men around the first time he tries it.”
Mother kind of gasped, and looked up at Father. I thought she might spoil everything, but Father kept on stirring his coffee and didn’t look up at her. Then he said, “That might be a good idea,” almost as though he were talking to the cup.
I said, “Please excuse me,” and tried to get up from the table as if I weren’t in any hurry, but somehow I got tangled up with the long tablecloth and nearly pulled some of the dishes onto the floor. It was just medium twilight when Mother said, “Now do be careful,” and we went back out to the corral. Before we took the guns down, Hi sent me to pick up a canful of pebbles. He said to hunt for ones that were about as big as a peach stone. He and Father helped me, and we must have picked up as many as a hundred. Then we took the guns and went out behind the barn.
Hi dumped the can of stones on the ground about thirty feet from the haystack, then he sat the can right at the foot of it. He had me lie down on my stomach beside the pile of stones, and said, “They’s two kinds of gun shootin’, but one’s all you’ll need to learn. In the army they learn you to aim a six gun and shoot it with a straight arm. That’s all right if you’re target shootin’, but it ain’t no good for cow pokes. When a poke needs a gun he’s always got to make a quick shot, like when a mean bull has knocked your pony down, or wolves has jumped a calf. In them chances there ain’t no time to take aim, and you got to be able to throw a slug close to where you want it—and quick. Now pick up one of them stones between your thumb and finger, and fire it at the can.”
My first stone didn’t get as far as the can by ten feet, and the second one nearly went over the top of the haystack. Hi didn’t laugh, but there was a kind of chuckle in his voice, and he said, “See, it ain’t as easy as it looks. He ain’t got the idea of tossin’ it with his forearm and wrist, Charlie. See if you can’t show him how it’s done.”
Father lay down beside me and tossed a couple. His were nearer than mine, but he didn’t hit the can. “You ain’t quite got the knack yet,” Hi said. “It’s like this—mostly with your wrist.” He flopped down with us and snapped out two or three stones. His wrist acted as if it were hung on his arm with a hinge, and he hit the can right in the middle with every stone.
After that Father could come closer to the can, and he hit it a good many times. I hit it once or twice, too, but Hi seemed to have almost forgotten I was there. When Father had hit the can about four times in a row, Hi passed him the gun I had been wearing, and said, “Now throw a slug at it the same way. You won’t have to think nothin’ about squeezin’ the trigger.” Father whanged a hole through the can the first shot.
We were out there till it got almost pitch dark, but Hi didn’t seem to want to stop. He said it was the best practice in the world for a man to learn to shoot after dark, because that was usually the time he had to do his shooting. He said he never did get a thieving wolf in daylight, but he’d got a couple of dozen after dark. Father did more shooting than I did because the gun was too heavy for me and hurt my wrist. He got so he could punch a hole in the can four or five times out of ten shots, but the best I ever did was two.
When it was so dark we could only see a shiny place where the can was, Hi had us stand up and toss stones underhand—the way they throw a bowling ball. Then he showed us how to whip a gun out of the holster, and shoot as the muzzle comes up. He could pull the gun out of his holster, shoot, and put it back, almost in the same motion. He hit the can ten times in a row that way, and drove it—a couple of feet at a time—from one end of the haystack to the other. When I tried it, every one of my shots went into the stack, and Father only hit the can once. Hi said nobody could learn to do it well without a lot of practice, but there were times when it was worth all the work it took to learn.
We had used up all the cartridges out of Hi’s belt, and nearly half of the ones in mine before we quit. I went to the corral with Hi while Father took the gun into the house. When he was tightening up his cinches, he said, “Your pa is goin’ to make a good hand with a six gun. I don’t think I’d say nothin’ to him about them fellows up the ditch if I was you. I’ll put a flea in Fred Aultland’s ear on my way back to the home place.”
While we had been out shooting, Mother had made a big pan of fudge. When Hi reined up at the door to tell her again how good supper was, she gave it to him—all packed up in the box Muriel’s shoes came in—and asked him if he would mind taking it back to the other fellows at Cooper’s. He went off as tickled as I had been with my saddle.
I didn’t get any chance to talk to Father about the ditch fight until we were milking Sunday morning. He didn’t seem to want to talk much about it then. He just told me not to worry about our crops; that with what we had left over from last year we would be able to get along all right. Then he said there was going to be a court hearing in July, and he thought the neighbors at our end of the ditch were in a good position to collect for the loss of their crops. I asked him if he wasn’t afraid there was going to be some shooting that year as there had been the first year we moved there, but he said, “There would be if we tried to take the law into our own hands, but few men will shoot at law-abiding people. If Fred and Mr. Wright can keep the hotheads quiet, I think everything will be all right. Anyway, worrying won’t help it a bit, so let’s get Mother to fix us up a lunch, and we’ll spend the day down by the creek.”
We had another fine day down at the creek. I don’t remember what Mother read that day, but I do remember getting her to recite “Thanatopsis,” and that she was looking right at me when she said, “So live, that when thy summons comes.” She said each word slow and clear, and the “thy” rung like a stroke on a heavy bell.
I didn’t go back to Cooper’s that night till after milking. If I had something I needed to talk to Father about, and didn’t want anybody else to know, milking time was when we always talked. Most of the nights, though, we didn’t talk at all. We didn’t that night. I don’t know how to tell it, but there was something nice about being out there alone with him and smelling the cow smell, and hearing the milk go singing into the buckets. Sometimes it’s nicer not to talk when you’re near somebody you love.
Father helped me saddle Sky High when I had to go. He didn’t do it as if I were a little boy and had to be helped, but the same way he would have done it with Fred Aultland or any other man. I had never waited till so late in the day to get on Sky fo
r the first time, and I didn’t know if he’d buck or not, so I told Father not to be afraid if he was a little frisky, because he wasn’t mean. I couldn’t get my foot into the stirrup from the ground, but Hi had taught me how to hop and catch the saddle horn and stirrup at the same time. Once in a while Sky High started his leap before I got clear up, and then I had to do it all over again, but that night I guess he knew I wanted to show off for Father, and he didn’t rear till I was all set.
He only crowhopped a few jumps and then we waited for Father. He walked out to the gate with me as he always did, but the only things he said were that he was proud of the way I had trained Sky High, and it would be best to put lots of cream in my coffee. He waved to me as he closed the gate, and called, “So long, partner.”
28
Riding in the Roundup
RIDING hay rake and stacker horse were kind of monotonous after being at the mountain ranch with Hi and the cattle. If it hadn’t been for the evenings, I don’t think I would have liked it at all. Before Hi went back to the mountains, he told me that I would have to ride Sky High every night if I wanted him to remember all the things I had taught him during the spring, and that I ought to keep him in practice on cutting and roping by working on the young stock in the home pasture.
There were about twenty men around the place during haying. Eight or nine of them were cow hands who weren’t needed with the stock through the summertime, and the rest were hands that Mr. Cooper had hired in Denver. All the cow hands were getting ready for the Fourth of July roundup at Littleton. They always had roundups at the fair grounds on Fourth of July and Labor Day, and there were prizes for bronco busting, horse racing, trick riding, and roping.
