Father and I Were Ranchers

by Ralph Moody

  The house smelled awfully good. Father had killed one of the hens, and Mother had it cooking in the big iron pot. She was putting in the dumplings when she told us that Mr. Thompson and Two Dog were going to eat supper with us and stay all night. She said they might not eat just the way we did and she didn't want to catch one of us staring at them. Then she told Philip and me that she had fixed a shakedown in our room, and that they were going to sleep with us, and that she didn't want us to do any whispering after we went to bed because we might disturb our visitors.

  Mother let me go out to call them when supper was ready, but Two Dog wouldn't come to the house. He was still sitting on the ground with his back against the barn. His eyes didn't move or blink, but looked off across our bean field as though he were watching something far away. Mr. Thompson said Two Dog wasn't used to houses and didn't like them, but he'd bring his supper out to him when we got done eating.

  The way he ate, I don't think Mr. Thompson could have had a square meal in months. He just used his fork to push things on his knife, and he pushed them on clear up to the handle. Mr. Thompson kept telling Mother that he hadn't tasted such victuals since he was a little boy back in Missouri, and she kept asking him if he wouldn't have some more of everything. Every time she asked him he would pass his plate back and Father would scrape around in the nappy some more. I knew he was keeping one drumstick back for Two Dog, because he had only fished one out, and Philip got that.

  When everything in sight was gone, Mr. Thompson tilted his chair back on its hind legs and wiped his whiskers with the corner of the tablecloth. Then he began telling us about the time he first made his camp right where we were sitting. I liked to hear him talk, but I was worried about Two Dog's supper, and asked Father if I could take it out to him. Father dished it up and Mother got me three biscuits and some mashed potatoes she'd been keeping hot on the stove.

  I put the silverware and napkin in my overall pocket, so I'd have one hand for the plate and the other for the teacup. Two Dog hadn't moved an inch. He was still looking out across the bean field, but when I passed the plate out to him he looked up and his eyes smiled, but not his mouth. He took the plate with both hands and sat it down beside him, then reached them up for the cup. Instead of holding it by the handle, he took it like a bowl and tasted the tea. Then he looked up at me and said, "Shoog," but I didn't understand what he meant till he put one finger up above the cup and moved it around as if he were stirring.

  I forgot all about his silverware and napkin, and ran to the house for the sugar bowl. When I got back he was still holding the cup like a squirrel holding an acorn, and looking across the bean field. There was about a cup of sugar in the bowl. He poured nearly a third of it into the tea and started to stir it with his fingers as soon as he had put the bowl down. Then I remembered the silverware and held it out to him. He looked at it a minute and then stirred the tea again with his finger. I didn't want to leave him and I didn't want to just stand there holding the napkin and silver, so I sat down beside him.

  He finished all the tea first, then ate just the chicken leg off the plate. When it was gone, he took up the sugar bowl and poured a few grains into his cupped hand. He picked it out of his palm with his lips, like a horse picking the last few oats out of his feedbox. I don't know how long we sat there, but it was until long after the sun had gone down. Every ten or fifteen minutes Two Dog would pour a few more grains of sugar into his palm and pick it out with his lips. They were so dry they never made his hand sticky. He didn't say a word till the bowl was empty, and I didn't either. Once he put his hand over and let it drop on my knee; he lifted it slowly and let it drop twice more. When the bowl was empty he passed it to me and said, "Friend." That was all the conversation. I got up and went to the house with a lump in my throat and a big love in my heart for Two Dog.

  When I came into the house, the supper dishes were done and all the children in bed, except Grace. Mother had the corn popper out and was popping corn over a hot fire. Mr. Thompson was still tilted back in his chair, but had swung it around and had his feet crossed on the window sill. He and Father were munching popcorn, but Grace was sitting with her eyes bugged out, and not even nibbling at the handful of popcorn she was holding. I sat down beside her and she leaned over close to my ear and whispered, "Oh, can he tell stories! He used to go hunting and fighting Indians with Kit Carson."

  Mother had never let us sit up so late as we did that evening, and I had never seen anybody eat so much popcorn. Mr. Thompson seemed to have known every trapper and hunter who came west for beaver and buffalo skins. Between mouthfuls of popcorn, he told us about guiding wagon trains from Westport Landing to Oregon, and about going to rendezvous on the Green River with Kit Carson and Bent and Lucien Maxwell. Every once in a while he would stop and tell Mother that he hadn't had such a fine evening since he was a little boy in Missouri. Then he would eat more popcorn, and start all over again.

  His last story was about a fight with the Blackfoot Indians. He told how the Indians set fire to the prairie clear around their wagon camp, and about his being the only white man to get out alive. The only reason he didn't get killed was that Two Dog was a chief's son. Mr. Thompson pulled him out from under his dead horse just before the fire reached him, and two young braves rode in through the flames to save them. He said that was why he and Two Dog were blood brothers. I didn't know what that meant, so he told me how they had cut themselves and placed the wounds against each other, so their blood would mix and make them brothers forever.

  After that Mother made Grace and me get ready for bed. But while we were brushing our teeth, Mr. Thompson kept on telling Father about Two Dog. He said, "Old Two Dog, he's the cleverest man with horses ever you see. That old Injun, he can take a horse critter that's nine parts dead, and have him prancin' 'round like a colt in a couple days. And there ain't no horse so mean he can't handle him." I wanted to stay and hear more, but Father snapped his fingers.

  I couldn't have gone to sleep when I got out to the bunkhouse if I'd wanted to, and I didn't want to. I thought maybe Mr. Thompson would tell another story when he came out to go to bed, or that when he was putting his nightshirt on I might be able to see some of the places where he had been shot. He came out just a little while after I was in bed, but all he said was, "Whoosh." And all he took off was his calfskin vest and his high-heeled boots, then he crawled in between the blankets with everything else on. I asked him if he wanted me to go out and call Two Dog to come to bed, but he said, "Old Two Dog, he ain't never slept in no house; he'd rather sleep right where he's at." In two minutes he was snoring so loud I couldn't go to sleep.

  Even if it was June, it was cold at night, and I got thinking about Two Dog sitting out there beside the barn. After a little while, when I knew Grace would be asleep, I pulled my overalls on and took the top blanket off our bed. I didn't make enough noise so I could even hear myself above Mr. Thompson's snoring, and was holding my breath as I eased the door open, but he sat bolt upright when I touched the latch, and said, "Who goes there?" I told him and said I was just taking a blanket out to Two Dog. He was snoring again before I closed the door.

  When I got to the barn Two Dog was sitting exactly the way he was when I left him. The moon was way over in the west, above the mountains, and I could see that his eyes were open and that he was still looking off across the bean field. I held the blanket out toward him and he reached up for it. With a quick flip, he flung it around his shoulders so that it covered all but his head like a tent. He didn't say a word and I didn't want to just walk away and leave him, so I sat down beside him again. I guess I sat down by him because I was thinking about Mr. Thompson's story, and wished I could be a blood brother to Two Dog as he was. He didn't look over at me, but he flipped the blanket around me so we were both under the same tent.

  Grandfather used to be deaf and, before he died, he and I used to play sign language. I thought maybe I could talk to Two Dog in sign language, so I raised my eyebrows, put both palms together a
nd laid my face down against them; then I looked far off along the mountains. Two Dog knew I was asking him where he slept—where his home was—just as well as Grandfather would have known. He pointed with a straight arm and finger toward the V-shaped gap where Turkey Creek came out of the mountains. Then, using his forefingers to follow the trail forward and upward, he told me where his camp was, high in the upland valley.

  Two Dog and I sat and talked with our hands till the moon dipped down and started to slide away behind the mountains. Then he reached over and laid his hand against my leg in three slow strokes the way he did when I brought his supper. I knew he meant for me to go in to bed, so I went. But I stayed awake a long time, thinking about the stories he had told me with his hands. When Father called me in the morning, Mr. Thompson and Two Dog were gone.

  Mrs. Corcoran came to the corral when I went to take the cows out the next morning. She hadn't combed her hair and had her hands rolled up in her apron because it was still a little chilly. She called, "Little boy!" before she was halfway across the dooryard, and from the way she had her mouth clamped up I thought she was going to scold me. But when she got over to where I was waiting to let the cows out of the gate, she said, "I hear tell that old reprobate, Horsethief Thompson, and his Injun put up at your place last night. Good lands! I hope your folks had better sense than to let 'em in the house. Did they?"

  I told her that Two Dog wouldn't even come into the house for supper and that he slept sitting out beside the barn. She snorted like a spooky horse when I told her that, and said, "Then you're telling me your maw did let old Horsethief in? My land o' Goshen! Well, you better tell her they'll steal anything that ain't red-hot or nailed down. I hear tell that dirty old man's got more lice on him than a settin' hen. I suppose your folks didn't have no better sense than to sit around with their mouths a-gap listening to a pack of his lies."

  I got so mad when she said that, that I forgot she was my boss, and hollered, "My folks have got more sense than you have, and he did not tell us a pack of lies. He told us about Kit Carson, and I know it isn't lies, because I read about Kit Carson in a book. And besides, he isn't a dirty old man."

  I kept getting madder and madder at Mrs. Corcoran for what she said, until the lump got so big in my throat that I thought I was going to cry. So to keep from it, I slammed the gate open and ran Fanny right in among the cows. Until I had them nearly out to the wagon road, Mrs. Cocoran kept yelling after me, telling me that if she had a "sassy young one" like me she'd take him across her checkered apron, and saying more mean things about Mr. Thompson and Two Dog.

  When I went past Aultland's for the milk that night, Fred told me he was going to start stacking alfalfa the next day and that Father was going to help him. Then he asked me how much Mrs. Corcoran was paying me for herding cows. When I told him, he said, "I'll double the ante if you want to ride stacker horse for me."

  I didn't know what he meant, but I told him I'd do it, so he had me go back and tell Mrs. Corcoran I wouldn't be coming to herd her cows till haying was over. From her telling me she'd take me over her checkered apron if I was her young one, I didn't think she'd care if I never came back, but she just about had a fit. She asked me how much Fred was going to pay me, and I said I didn't know but he had said he'd double the ante. When I told her that she got madder than ever and called him a help stealer, and said he was ruining me so I wouldn't be any good to anybody. Then she told me she never wanted to lay eyes on me again. But when I was riding back to the road, she yelled for me to be sure and come back the day after Fred got done haying.

  I didn't want to tell Mother what Mrs. Corcoran said about Mr. Thompson and Two Dog, because I knew if I did she'd get around to where I'd have to tell her that I'd been saucy. But I was worried that some of it might be true, and besides I didn't want to have any question in my own mind about either Two Dog or Mr. Thompson, so I told Father all about it while we were out feeding the horses.

  Father said that, of course, you never could tell by the looks of a frog how far he'd jump, but he'd bet that neither Mr. Thompson nor Two Dog would ever steal anything from us, and that he thought Mr. Thompson was telling the truth in his story. Then he said Mother could get books in the Denver Library that would show whether or not Kit Carson did the things Mr. Thompson said he did and, if he did, then we would know the stories were true. He said maybe the part about the lice was right, but it might be best not to mention it to Mother till we knew more about it.

  11

  Haying

  I LIKED working for Fred Aultland. Haying and threshing were big times at his place, and he always had a dozen or so men to help him. Some of them were neighbors who didn't have so much hay of their own, and some were hired hands Fred brought out from Denver. Father and I didn't work for him until the hay was all cut and raked into windrows. I had never seen a hay stacker before, and Father had to snap his fingers at me twice during the morning, because I got so interested in what was going on that I forgot about my own job. Fred's was what they called a bull-stacker and the hay was brought in from the fields with bull-rakes.

  They were sort of three-wheeled carts, and always looked as though they were going backwards, because they scooped up the hay and carried it to the stacker in front of the horses, instead of behind them. Each load weighed nearly half a ton.

  The stacker looked like the mast of a ship mounted on a big turntable, with a long boom fastened near the bottom of it. The cradle was hinged to the end of the boom, and pulley ropes ran between it and the top of the mast. Jeff was the engine that furnished the lifting power, and I was the engineer. Jeff was a big, lazy old horse—strong as a pair of oxen—and had been pulling the hoist rope for the past five years. As Jeff pulled on the rope, the hay was raised from the bull-rakes and lifted nearly to the top of the mast. Then, while we held it there, Father and another man heaved the turntable around with a long gee-pole, till the cradle was over the stack. When I backed Jeff to slacken the hoist rope, the cradle tilted forward and the load fell with a thump. It took Fred and two other men to get it untangled and built into the stack before another load was brought in. The only hard part of Father's job was heaving the turntable around, but that made him cough a good deal.

  After the first couple of loads, he talked to Fred about the stacker, and they sent a man to the barn for tools and other things Father needed. He worked, between loads, all morning; changing pulleys, rigging a heavy cable from the turntable to the hoist rope, and putting trip-catches on the cradle. When he was finished, they didn't need to heave the turntable around any more, nor lift the hay any higher than the top of the stack, and Father could drop the hay wherever Fred wanted it, by just jerking a trip-cord. In that way Fred only needed one man to help him on the stack, and Father could do all the work on the ground alone.

  I liked noontimes best of any part of the haying. When it came twelve o'clock, Bessie would hammer on an old wagon tire hung near the kitchen door. The sound would roll out across the hayfields like the ringing of a big bell, and after it had stopped, the echo would come back from the hills as though they were full of far-off churches.

  The minute the bell rang the drivers would stop their teams wherever they happened to be and unhook the horses. It was always a race to see who could get his team to the barn quickest, so as to get them unbridled and fed, and be first at the washstand. It was out by the windmill, and Bessie always had three blue enamel basins' half a dozen flour-sack towels, and a bar of homemade yellow soap waiting for us.

  Aultlands had a big porch on the east side of their house, with a row of apple trees that shaded it. In haying and threshing time, Bessie set a long table out there, and that's where we ate our dinners. At home, Father always served everyone and said grace before we started to eat, but that wasn't the way they did it at Aultland's.

  As soon as we were down at the table, Bessie would start bringing out big platters of meat and fried chicken, and potatoes and vegetables, and bowls of gravy, and plates of hot biscuits and corn m
uffins. As quick as she'd set a platter down, somebody would pick it up, help himself, and pass it on to the next man. They came so fast that I could hardly help myself from one before another one caught up to me. Some of the platters were still pretty heavy when they got to me, and I could just barely hold them with one hand while I forked some off with the other. At first the men wanted to hold them for me, but they saw I didn't like them to, and let me handle my own platters. Mrs. Aultland was a real good cook, and I used to eat until I couldn't hold another mouthful.

  The most fun came after we were done eating. We had to take an hour for dinner because the horses needed that much time to eat and rest. So, as soon as the last piece of pie was eaten, the men would lie down on the grass under the apple trees. Father didn't smoke, but all the other men would get out their pipes or Bull Durham, and talk or tell stories while they were smoking. Jerry Alder was the best storyteller. Sometimes he told stories so quiet I could hardly hear them, and they didn't sound funny at all, but all the men would laugh till the fat ones had to hold on to their stomachs. Even Father laughed sometimes when I couldn't see anything funny.

  It was one of those noons that I found out about pheasants. There were lots of them, and they were so tame they'd come almost up to the haystack. I wanted to do some of the talking after dinner as the men did. So one noon I told Fred that if I had a gun I could shoot some of those pheasants for us to eat, and then his mother wouldn't have to kill so many chickens. Everybody laughed at me, and Fred said, "If you're going to do any shooting in Colorado, shoot a man. You can always call it self-defense, but if you kill a pheasant you'll spend the rest of your life in the hoosegow."