Little Britches

by Ralph Moody

  Mr. Cooper liked to have the Y-B fellows win prizes at the roundups, and kept ten or a dozen outlaw horses at the home place so the men could keep in practice. I wanted to try to ride a couple of them—they didn’t seem to buck as hard as Prince used to—but Mr. Cooper wouldn’t let me. And every night he had one of the fellows ride with me when I was practicing with Sky High. Usually it was Tom Brogan. He wasn’t very good at busting, but he could make a rope do more funny tricks than a monkey on a grapevine. I learned to do some rope tricks from him, but he couldn’t make his old sorrel do tricks like Hi’s blue, and I never could seem to keep Sky in step with him.

  Mr. Cooper had Hi come in from the mountain ranch about the end of June, so he could get some practice on the outlaws before the roundup. And from then till the Fourth, Hi practiced with me three or four hours a day. Mr. Cooper saw us riding together that first night after Hi came in from the mountains, and after that he’d send Tom Brogan to ride the stacker horse at about three o’clock in the afternoon, and I had all the rest of the day with Hi.

  There wasn’t any haying on the Fourth of July, and everybody went to the roundup early in the forenoon. I rode Sky High, and I didn’t have to stay in the grandstand, either, like the other kids. Hi took me right out into the middle of the racetrack oval, where they had the bronco busting and bulldogging and calf roping.

  Hi won first prize in the bronco busting, and Tom Brogan in calf roping, but it was the trick riding that I liked best. One girl crawled clear around her horse, under his belly, and back into the saddle while he was on the dead run. Another one stood with her feet in loops of strap on the saddle pommel, and rode all the way around the race track without losing her balance. And there were at least a dozen men riders who did all kinds of stunts, from going under a running horse to sliding off over one’s tail and jumping back into the saddle.

  After everything else was over, the man with the megaphone shouted, “The last number on our program will be an exhibition of matched pair riding by Hi Beckman and Little Britches of the Y-B spread. . . . Bring ’em out, Hi!”

  Hi hadn’t told me we were going to ride. Tom Brogan picked me up by one arm and the hind end of my chaps, and tossed me into my saddle, but my legs were shaking so that I could hardly get my feet in the stirrups. Then somebody opened the gate and let us out onto the racing strip in front of the grandstand.

  It was a good thing I’d had those few afternoons to ride with Hi, because I was so mixed up at first that Sky High pretty nearly had to do everything by himself. I didn’t help him much till it came to the end, where we went up to the grandstand changing lead, so that it looked as if both horses were dancing. As we went up, Hi said, “Grab your hat off, Little Britches, when you see me grab mine.” I did, and the people in the stands yelled louder than they did when Fred Aultland’s bays won the trotting race. All I could think of was that I wished Father could have been there to hear it.

  All the Y-B fellows went uptown to Monahan’s saloon as soon as the roundup was over, and I went with them. Sky High didn’t like going up Main Street very well and kept bobbing his head and dancing. But it was the doctor’s horseless carriage that really scared him. He crowhopped right up onto the sidewalk in front of Schellenbarger’s market, and he was still trembling when I left him ground-tied at the hitch rail by Monahan’s.

  I was about as nervous as Sky High, because I knew Mother wouldn’t want me going into a saloon. Anyway, not unless I had to go in to see the sheriff. Hi sat me up on the middle of the bar, and lots of fellows came and shook hands with me and called me Little Britches and wanted to buy me birch beer and sarsaparilla. But all the time I seemed to be hearing Mother’s voice, as it was down there by the creek, when she recited, “So live that when thy summons comes.”

  I had to talk about something to get that out of my head, so I said to Hi, “I’ll bet we could do some stunts pretty near as good as those trick riders. I can do that diving trick and come up on my feet, like you did when Mother and I were planting potatoes.” Then I told him about practicing it in the sandy spot when I was herding Mrs. Corcoran’s cows.

  When we got back to the home ranch, everyone wanted to see me do it—even Mr. Cooper—and I almost wished I hadn’t said anything about it. With Fanny, I’d always done the diving stunt bareback, and she never spooked or changed direction when I was starting my dive. I knew it would be a lot different to do it from a saddle, and was afraid I might get a foot caught in a stirrup, or that Sky High might spook so that I’d land square on my head. I guess Hi was thinking about the same things. Anyway, he wouldn’t let me try it till we went way out into the middle of a plowed field, and then he led Sky High the first couple of times. I hadn’t tried the stunt since about a month before we lost Fanny. And Sky didn’t run very well in the plowed ground, so I kind of messed up the first couple of tries. After that Hi let me try it alone and it went better.

  From there on to the end of August, I don’t think I always gave the man who was paying me a good day’s work, the way Father told me to. Hi went back to the mountain ranch with the cattle, and we hardly got one cutting of alfalfa put up before another was ready to be started. But a couple of mornings every week, Mr. Cooper would say he had to go up to the mountains to see how the cattle were getting along, and that I could go with him if I wanted to. Of course, I always wanted to. And Hi would spend two or three hours practicing stunts with me.

  There were only two of them that were hard to learn, and we practiced them both a dozen times whenever I went to the mountains, and on Saturday afternoons when Hi came in to the home place. For one of them, Hi would have me stand facing him, then he’d take Sky Blue back a hundred yards to give him a good start, and come pounding down past me. As he came, he’d lean over in the saddle and stick one arm out straight. I’d stick my arm out straight, too. If I kicked my off leg up just at the instant our arms met, and if we got a handhold on each other’s arms, I’d go flying right up back of his cantle. The trouble was that I had to kick my leg up before our arms really came together. Whenever they missed, or we didn’t get a good handhold, I’d turn a somersault without using my arms. My face got skinned up a little at first, but after a few days I’d sail up back of the saddle nearly every try.

  The only other hard one was the one where Hi swung me. We practiced that one first with a jockey pole between the two horses’ bridles, so they would have to run side by side without any guiding. We tied our lines around the saddle horns, and when the horses were going lickety-cut, I’d put both arms over my head and lean toward Hi. He’d lean toward me with one arm looped up over his head, and we’d get a wrist hold. Then he’d jerk me out of my saddle and swing me over his head so that, at the top of the swing, I was doing a handstand at the end of his upstretched arms. I had to bounce and jump when my feet hit the ground on the off side of his horse, so that he could swing me back into my own saddle again.

  It wasn’t nearly as hard at it was scary, and we only made two or three bobbles before it worked as smooth as a stream of warm milk. One thing that helped was that I weighed only seventy pounds. Of course, the big danger was that if the horses didn’t stay side by side, there wouldn’t be any saddle there for me to come down into. After the first few days, though, both roans knew the trick just as well as we did, so from there on we practiced without the jockey pole.

  At first I didn’t want to tell Father anything about our new tricks, or that Hi and I were planning to ride in the Labor Day roundup. I was afraid he might say it was taking unnecessary chances. Every time I thought about it, I’d feel sneaky and remember about the day I stole the chocolate bar, and what he said to me out there by the chopping block. And how much I liked to have him walk out to the gate with me and say, “So long, partner,” when I went back to Cooper’s Sunday nights. So I told him that first Saturday night after the Fourth of July, before I even got the saddle off Sky High. I didn’t tell him just what the tricks were, but I did say that Hi would look out that I didn’t get hurt.

/>   Mother didn’t want me to ride in the roundup, but I kind of think Father did. He didn’t really tell me I could until the last Sunday. And then he didn’t really tell me. There was a paper that everybody had to sign before they could go into the contests. It was something about riding at your own risk, and I wasn’t old enough to sign it, so Father would have to if I was going to ride.

  I didn’t say a word about it, and he didn’t either, until we were out milking that Sunday night. Then I heard the milk stop singing in his bucket, and he passed the paper to me down under Brindle’s belly. All he said was, “You’d better ride on over to Cooper’s tonight. Hi may want to get an early start in the morning.”

  Always, when I went back to Cooper’s on Sunday nights, I’d put Sky High in the big corral, and go right on in to bed. There was always a poker game going on in the bunkhouse, and Father didn’t like me to hang around out there.

  It was just after dark when I got back that night, and there was only a dim light in the bunkhouse. After I’d hung up my saddle and started for the house, Hi called to me from the bunkhouse door, “Come on over here, Little Britches. Bill Engle left a box here for you.” Bill Engle was the express driver to Morrison, but I couldn’t imagine why he’d have a box for me.

  When I got over there, there wasn’t any poker game, and all three lanterns were turned down low. I thought Hi was all alone, but when I went through the door, fellows poured out of every bunk, and started yelling, “Surprise, surprise!” Hi grabbed me up in his arms, and Mr. Cooper turned up the lanterns.

  There was a big package sitting in the middle of Hi’s bunk. It had SEARS ROEBUCK in big printing across one corner, and the lettering on the tag was so big I could see it before Hi got me halfway over there. It said, “Little Britches, % Y-B Ranch, Littleton, Colorado.”

  My hands were shaking so I couldn’t untie the strings, and Hi had to cut them with his knife. There was everything in that box that I ever hoped to have. And it was all just my size. There were a pair of mountain-goat chaps with long white hair; a tengallon, light tan hat; Spanish high-heeled boots with pointed toes; and a peach-colored silk shirt, with a bright red neck scarf. I didn’t find the silver spurs till Hi told me to look in the box again. It must have been ten o’clock before the fellows got done making me try my things on, and let me go to bed—and then I couldn’t go to sleep for a long time.

  Hi took me to Littleton early Labor Day morning, and I wore all my new cowboy clothes. He wanted Sky High to get used to town noises and hearing the band play, so he wouldn’t be nervous when it came our turn to ride. Sky spooked and crow-hopped a little the first time we rode up Main Street, and it took him quite a while to get used to the band—they hadn’t had one the Fourth of July.

  By eleven o’clock he had quieted down, so we put both roans in the livery stable while we went up to the hotel and had dinner. Hi had fixed it up with Father to meet us there, and when we came out after eating, our spring wagon was standing right in front of the hotel steps. Mother and all the youngsters were there, and I don’t know when I was any more glad to see them all. I had hoped Father would come to see me ride, but I hadn’t ever thought he’d bring the whole family clear down there. I knew Mother would have a fit if she ever knew what kind of stunts we were going to do, and I wasn’t a bit sure Father would like it either. Of course, if he’d asked me, I’d have told him, but he didn’t ask.

  Each rider or team in the trick-riding contest had to draw a number out of a hat to see when they would get their turn. We drew the highest number so we had to be last. There were some real good tricks—a lot better than the Fourth of July. The nearer it came to our turn, the more nervous I got, and I think I would have chewed all my fingernails off if Hi hadn’t been standing right there beside me. I was sure we couldn’t win one of the prizes with all those fancy trick riders, and once or twice I almost wished that something would happen so we wouldn’t have to ride at all.

  Every nerve in me was singing like a telegraph line on a cold night, when the man with the megaphone hollered, “Hi Beckman and Little Britches on Sky Blue and Sky High, representing the Y-B spread.” Then we rode out onto the race track.

  Hi couldn’t help seeing how nervous I was, and the first two or three tricks we did were the easy ones we had shown Father and Mother at home. I don’t know when I got over being nervous, but after the easy tricks were finished, I forgot all about the grandstand being there. Trick riding doesn’t take nearly as smart a fellow as most people think, but it does take smart horses—and we had them. Sky High and Sky Blue didn’t make a misstep anywhere, and everything went as if we had been practicing for years. We saved the dive trick for the end, and when we raced up toward the center of the grandstand, dived, and bowed, it sounded as if all the Indians in the world were practicing war whoops together. I was lucky. I came clear over onto my feet—and my hat stayed on all the way. I swept it off, the way Hi did, when I bowed.

  Father must have thought I was going to get hurt, because he had come down from the grandstand, and when I looked around I saw him standing by the track gate. I guess I forgot where I was, and about Hi and Sky High and Sky Blue, because I dropped my reins and went running down to him. I think I expected him to scoop me up in his arms the way he used to when I was only six or seven years old, but he didn’t. He just stuck out his hand and shook mine. Then he said, “Better get your horse, partner; I think the judges are going to call you,” but his voice had that silver bell sound in it.

  I was nearly back to where Hi was bringing the horses, when the man with the megaphone hollered, “First place in the trick-riding contest: Hi Beckman and Little Britches, of the Y-B spread! Hi, bring Little Britches on over here to the judges’ stand.”

  Most of the men in both Arapahoe and Jefferson counties must have come over to the judges’ stand while they were giving Hi and me our gold watches, and I shook so many hands that my arm ached. Mother was still wiping her eyes when Father and I went up into the grandstand to show her my watch. I guess it would have been better if I had told her a little more about our new tricks before we did them. Grace said Mother thought I was going to get killed every minute, and was scared nearly out of her wits.

  I let all the other youngsters, even Hal, hold my gold watch and listen to it tick. And after the bucking contest was over—and Hi had won another watch—we all went up to the drug store, and Father bought everybody an ice-cream soda. It was the first one I had ever had, and I liked it even better than birch beer or sarsaparilla. Grace and the other youngsters liked theirs, too, and so did Father, but I think Hi would rather have had whiskey.

  29

  We Face It

  THINGS didn’t change much at Cooper’s during the rest of September, but they hadn’t been going so well over to our place. Father wouldn’t talk much about the court trial, except to say that it would probably be long-drawn-out. But Fred Aultland told me more about it one night when he was over to see Mr. Cooper. He said Father had rigged some sort of a recording gauge at the headgate of our ditch, so they were going to be able to prove in court how much water had been stolen by the water hogs. He said our neighbors were lucky we had moved there, because if it weren’t for Father’s agreement and gauge, they would never be able to win damages in court for the crops they had lost. He told Mr. Cooper that Father was going to show his gauge readings in court the next day, and that the water hogs were going to be the most surprised men in the world.

  I left Cooper’s as early as I could the next Saturday night and got home just before sunset. Father and I put Sky High in the corral and fed him. Then we stood out there by the corral gate quite a while and watched him eat. I don’t know just how long we were out there, but it must have been ten or fifteen minutes. We didn’t talk. We just stood there leaning on the gate and watching Sky eat. Father was different from most people; you didn’t have to talk much to visit with him.

  After a while, I told him what Fred had said about our neighbors being lucky we had moved there, and
asked him to tell me about his recording gauge at the ditch-head. He said it was nothing but an old coal-oil can he had rigged so that the flow of ditch-water past a paddle wheel would make it turn clear around in a week. Then he had rigged a float with a pencil fixed to an arm. As the water rose or fell, the pencil moved up or down on the paper he had wrapped around the can. He said he had shown the readings in court, the jury had been up there to test it, and had found it to be accurate, so he thought our case would turn out all right.

  Mother came to the back door and called us to supper just as he finished telling me about the gauge, so we started to go and get washed up. The washpan and a bucket of water were on the back porch. I had dipped up a pan of water, and was just ready to reach for the soap, when we heard what sounded like a couple of gunshots down the road. It wasn’t, though. It was a horseless carriage—the first one that had ever come up the wagon road since we had lived there.

  We called Mother and the youngsters out on the porch to watch it come. It was a two-seater, black, with a round hood over the engine. After it crossed the bridge at the gulch, it banged a couple of more times as it chugged up the road toward our house. There were two men in the front seat and two more in the back. When it was almost up to the front of the house, I saw one of the men in the back seat lean over, grab up a gun, and swing it toward us.

  Father leaped like a horse going into a low buck, and knocked everybody over but me. I guess I just got bewildered and stood there. Not more than a tenth of a second before the first bullet ripped a hole in our bunkhouse, Father grabbed my arm and yanked me down. There were two more shots. The second one couldn’t have missed his head an inch.