Father and I Were Ranchers

by Ralph Moody

  I was wondering what we were going to do with all the hardware and iron, and after we started for home Father told me we were going to build a winnower. He said it would cost too much to have a big machine come to thresh our peas and beans, but we'd have plenty of time during the winter to do it with hand flails and a winnower.

  After we got home, he spread a roll of brown paper out on the bunkhouse floor, got his drawings, and began cutting patterns the way Mother did for making clothes. Father didn't need me to help him, so I went out to set my new trap. Before I left he told me I'd have to set it quite a ways from the buildings, so King or one of the cats wouldn't get into it, and then I'd have to stay away from it if I expected to catch anything. I took it clear over beyond the railroad tracks and set it near a prairie dog village. I knew they liked peas, so I sprinkled dried grass over it till it was almost hidden, then put a little handful of peas right above the trigger plate.

  After it was all set I went back to the bunkhouse and watched Father cut patterns for a while, but I kept asking him if he didn't think it was about time I brought in the cows. I was wondering if I'd caught a prairie dog yet, and I could go around that way when I went for the cows without having it seem too obvious that I was anxious about my trap.

  Father didn't let me go for them till sunset. As soon as I got out behind the barn where nobody could see me I ran to beat the band. From the railroad track I could see that there was something in my trap, but it didn't look like a prairie dog. It looked bigger and brighter. When I got close enough I found that it was a big cock pheasant. His head was inside the jaws of the trap and there were a few feathers blowing around from his flapping when it broke his neck.

  The first thing that popped into my head was what Fred Aultland had said about spending the rest of your life in the hoosegow if you killed a pheasant. I was so scared I got all shaky. First I thought the best thing to do would be to get him out of there and hide him in the bottom of a deep gulch. I looked all around to see if anybody was in sight, then I stepped on the trap spring and took him out. The jaws had pulled a lot of feathers out of his neck and had almost bitten his head clear off. So, if I hid him in a gulch and somebody found him, they'd know just what had happened. Then I figured that if I didn't hide him, but just threw him down in the gulch, the coyotes would come and eat him.

  It wasn't very dark yet, and I was afraid somebody might see me if I just lugged him away across the prairie, so I took off my coat and wrapped him up in it. After gathering up all the loose feathers I started for the gulch, but the farther I went the more I worried for fear the coyotes might not eat him. It seemed as if it would be like trying to eat a pillow. I was sure they wouldn't do it because they'd get their mouths all full of feathers. Then I thought if I picked him they'd be sure to eat him—and I could let the wind blow the feathers away so nobody could ever tell I'd had anything to do with it.

  By that time I had reached the edge of the gulch and slid down over the bank to start picking. It was getting pretty dark, but when I unwrapped him I could see what a mess I was in. The pheasant hadn't bled a bit with the trap jaws around his neck, but after I had wrapped him up, blood had run out of his mouth till the inside of my coat was all red and sticky. I didn't know what to do. Just as if he were deciding it for me, a coyote howled from somewhere farther down the gulch. I bundled the pheasant up quick and went after the cows. I knew I'd have to have Father's help to ever get out of the mess I was in.

  Everybody was in to supper by the time I got the cows home, so I hid the pheasant, slammed the bunkhouse door as if I'd been in to hang up my coat, and went into the house. The minute I stuck my head inside the kitchen door, Mother said, "What in the world have you been up to now? You look as though a ghost had been chasing you."

  I said I hadn't been up to anything, but the cows had been way over by the big gulch and it was all full of coyotes, and maybe that had scared me just a little. Then she told Father that I was too young to be way off out there after dark, and that I'd have to start after the cows earlier. He just said, "mmhmm," and bowed his head to say grace as soon as I was in my chair. He might just as well have said to me, "You and I will talk more about this later."

  We went out to milk right after supper. I don't think I had more than a dozen squirts of milk in the bottom of my bucket —just enough so that it didn't ring any more—when Father said, "What did you do, get your own foot in your trap?"

  I said, "No, sir." Then I went ahead and told him about catching the pheasant, but I didn't tell him about wanting to hide it. I asked him if he thought they'd put me in the hoosegow, as Fred said, if the sheriff found out about it.

  Father didn't say a word for a minute or two. Then he said, "It isn't a case of 'if the sheriff finds out about it.' It's a case of your breaking the law without intending to. If you tried to cover it up, you'd be running away from the law. Our prisons are full of men whose first real crime was running away because they didn't have courage enough to face punishment for a small offense. Tomorrow you must go to see the sheriff. I'll explain to Mother about your coat."

  I didn't have a very good night. I couldn't keep my mind on my business after supper, and Mother nearly spanked me because I got all mixed up and couldn't say the table of twelves. She gave me a glass of warm milk before I went to bed, but it didn't make me sleep any better. Whenever I wasn't awake I was dreaming. Mother used to recite "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," and that night I kept dreaming I was the man in the ballad. Every time I'd wake up in the pitch dark, I'd put my hand over and feel for Philip to make sure it wasn't really so.

  After breakfast I begged Father to go to Fort Logan with me to see the sheriff, but he said, "No. You haven't learned to ask for advice before you get into scrapes, and it isn't fair to expect help in getting yourself out every time."

  I told him he'd have to go with me, because I didn't even know who the sheriff was and I'd never be able to find him alone.

  He just boosted me up on Fanny's back and handed me the bag with the pheasant in it. Then he said, "You found Two Dog's lodge all right without any help, didn't you? If you ask at the post office, I think they'll be able to tell you where you'll find the sheriff."

  I'd always cantered Fanny all the way to Fort Logan—and right up to the hitching rail—but that morning I made her walk. For a while I thought about running away, but the only place I knew to go was up to Two Dog's. If he'd lived alone, I guess I might have gone, but I remembered what a hurry Mr. Thompson had been in to bring me right home, so I decided I'd better not try it. All the time I was thinking about running away, I kept getting a squirmy feeling in my stomach because of what Father had told me when we were milking. After I made up my mind that I was going to be brave and face the music it stopped a little, but it came right back again when I went into the post office.

  The lady behind the window told me I'd find the sheriff over at the Last Chance Saloon, just outside the gates of the Fort. At first I thought that would give me a good enough reason to go home without seeing him, because I knew what Mother thought of saloons, and of course she wouldn't want me to go into one. So I climbed back on Fanny and started down the street toward the Morrison wagon road.

  I knew Mother would say I had done just the right thing, but I tried not even to think about what Father might say. I couldn't help it, though. And I wasn't a bit sure he wouldn't say it was running away from the law and tearing boards off my character house. We had just turned into the Morrison wagon road when I got a big lump in my throat. Then I pulled Fanny around and galloped her back to the hitching rail in front of the Last Chance Saloon.

  My heart was thumping like sixty when I went in through the little swinging doors. I was scared, but I was a little bit proud, too, that I had business big enough so that I could go right into a saloon.

  I stopped just inside the doors—it was kind of dark in there and there were about a dozen soldiers and other men leaning against the bar and talking loud. The man behind it yelled, "What you doing in he
re, Bub? Who you want to see?"

  He leaned across the bar, and I went over and told him I wanted to see the sheriff. He just jerked his thumb toward the back of the room and said, "The big fella."

  The sheriff was talking to another man when I got back there, so I stood behind him and waited for him to get finished. He was the biggest man I'd ever seen; my head didn't come up as high as the top of his cartridge belt, and the longer I waited the bigger the lump in my throat grew. At last the man behind the bar came back and told the sheriff I was there, so he leaned over and said, "What can I do for you, Son?"

  I had to swallow hard before I could make a sound, then I said, "I broke the law and Father made me come down to tell you."

  He said, "Well, well, well! We'll have to look into this." While he was saying it he sat me up on the bar in front of him and asked me what I'd done.

  All the men along the bar came and made a big crowd around us, I showed him the pheasant and told him that I didn't kill it on purpose, but it got in my trap when I was trying to catch a prairie dog.

  He took the pheasant and laid it on the bar beside me. Then he rumpled up all its feathers and felt it all over with his hands. After he'd finished, he said to the men, "By God, that's the way he got it all right. I'd 'a' sworn his old man shot it and sent the kid in to get himself out of a pickle."

  I didn't like that, and I guess I must have yelled, "Father would not try to get himself out of a pickle."

  Everybody laughed and hollered, and the sheriff said, "Kind of like your old man, don't you? What makes you think he wouldn't try to get out of a scrape?"

  I told him, then, what Father had said about our prisons being full of men who ran away from the law, but that time nobody laughed. The sheriff put the pheasant back in the bag and handed it to me. He said the law was that you couldn't shoot a pheasant, but he didn't remember anything in it against catching one in a steel trap, so I'd better take it home for Mother to roast.

  Then he asked me if I'd like a drink. I told him I liked brandy with sugar and water in it, but Mother would only give it to me when I got blue from the cold. All the men laughed some more, and one soldier yelled, "Set the kid up a shot of brandy, Tom." But the sheriff shook his head, and told the bar man to make it birch beer. At first I didn't know if Mother would want me to drink it, but the sheriff said it was all right. It was, too.

  I cantered Fanny home as fast as she could go, and Father didn't scold me for bringing her in hot. Everybody came out to the barn when I got there, and I told them what the sheriff said, but I didn't tell them about the saloon and the birch beer. Grace and Philip seemed to think I was a lot more important now that I had talked to a real sheriff. Mother took the bag with the pheasant in it, and said the sheriff must be a fine man. I guess Father thought so, too, because he said he must look him up the next time he went to Fort Logan. I pretty nearly told Father where to find him but I caught myself just in time.

  That night when we were milking, he told me it had been a day I should remember. He said it would be good for me, as I grew older, to know that a man always made his troubles less by going to meet them instead of waiting for them to catch up with him, or trying to run away from them.

  The next morning Fred Aultland came for Father right after we finished breakfast. I guess Mother knew he was coming, because she had already told Grace and me we could spend the day visiting Willie and Etta Aldivote. I tried to get Father to tell me where he was going, but all he would say was, "Oh, we're going way over by Littleton to see a fellow about a dog." When Father said that it always meant he wasn't going to tell you where he was going, so I didn't ask any more.

  Grace and I had a fine time at Aldivote's. Their house was a soddy on the front, and was dug right back into a bank like a cave. They had a big barn full of hay, and a donkey and half a dozen horses we could ride. The girls made us play house with them some of the time, but we made them try to ride the donkey, and they took some of the craziest spills I ever saw. I think we had the most fun, though, jumping from the high haymow down onto a pile of straw on the barn floor. It must have been thirty feet.

  Father and Fred got home just a little while after we did. They were leading a beauty of a bay horse. He wasn't quite as big as Fred's new one, but he had a lot more ginger. I guess we youngsters and Mother frightened him when we all ran out to look. But, anyway, he started bucking and pitching like Old Harry just as they were coming into the dooryard. If he hadn't had a half-inch rope around his neck, as well as having a halter on, I think he would have broken away. They had quite a time putting him into the corral without getting kicked. And as soon as they let him loose, he went racing around and around the fence, kicking his heels higher than the top rail.

  Mother was all flustered about how dangerous the new horse was, and made us children stay in the house till suppertime. While we were eating, Father began telling what fine horses there were at the auction, but Mother asked, "Didn't they have any nice gentle horses, Charlie? I'm afraid one of these bad ones is going to hurt you."

  Father grinned and said, "He isn't a bad one, Mame. He's a good one. One of the best I ever saw. But he's just a three-year-old, right in off the range, and he's never had a man's hand on him until today."

  It looked for a minute as if Mother were going to cry. "I don't care if he's three or thirty. He's bad; bad all the way through, or he wouldn't have thrashed around and fought the way he did. I don't see why you didn't buy a nice gentle horse. You can't tell what will happen to Ralph with that kind of a horse around the place."

  Father got up and went around behind Mother's chair. He put both hands on her cheeks and patted them. Then he said, "Son, I want you to make me a promise that you won't go near the new horse, or into the corral while he's in there, until I say you may."

  My mouth was full, but as soon as I could swallow, I said. "I promise, Father."

  "I could have bought a gentle horse, Mame. There were some, not much better than Nig, that brought seventy-five dollars. That's what this one cost, and that's all we planned we could spend. Well-broken, young horses, as good as he is, were bringing a hundred and a quarter or more. I picked him out before they ever put a rope on him, and there's nothing vicious about him; he's simply crazed with fear right now. I'll be very careful in breaking him."

  Mother reached up and patted his hand against her face. "You will be awfully careful, won't you, Charlie?" was all she said. Father was real good about making people believe what he said.

  18

  Father and I Become Partners

  WHEN we lived in East Rochester, Mother used to let Grace and me take the money to pay the grocery bill every Saturday. Mr. Blaisdell always gave us a little bag of candy when we came in to pay, but since we had moved out to the ranch we never got any. I liked all kinds of chocolate, but I liked the bitter kind Mother baked cakes with best. The last Christmas before we came west, she had made fudge with some of it. It was the best candy I ever tasted. I got thinking about fudge, and one night I asked her when she was going to make some more. She said maybe she'd make some when Christmas came, but sugar cost too much to be using it up in candy we didn't need.

  The more I thought about fudge, the more I thought about the bar of Baker's chocolate we got with our last groceries, and the more I wanted some of it. Baked beans, pea soup, and fried sidemeat had tasted all right before, but thinking about chocolate, they didn't even make me feel hungry.

  The next afternoon when I was helping Father on the winnower, I was thinking of what he had said about going to meet your troubles and how much less they would be. I don't know if I'd even stopped thinking about that when I began daydreaming about chocolate again. It was right then I got the idea: If I should whack a chunk off the end of that bar of chocolate, Mother would be sure to miss it. Then, before she had any idea who had done it, I could confess and probably wouldn't even get a spanking for it, any more than I did for going up to Two Dog's.

  I waited till she was out feeding the chickens, th
en told Father I was thirsty and thought I'd go in for a drink of water. All the time I was going into the house and getting the bar of chocolate down out of the cupboard, my head kept wanting to think about tearing boards off my house, but I wouldn't let it, because I told myself that was only when you did things you shouldn't and then lied about it. I wasn't going to lie at all about the chocolate.

  I heard Mother coming just when I had the knife ready to whack off the end of the bar, so I had to slip it into the front of my blouse and pick up the water dipper quick. Before I went back to help Father I went to the barn and hid the bar of chocolate back of the currycomb box.

  All the rest of the afternoon, I didn't like to look at Father. I tried to get him to let me go over to see Willie Aldivote, but he wouldn't. Every time he spoke it made me jump, and my hands got shaking so I couldn't hold the pieces still enough for him to solder. He asked me what was the matter, and I told him it was nothing except that my hands were getting cold. I knew he didn't believe me, and every time he looked my way my heart started pounding, because he could always tell what was going on inside my head. It seemed it would never come time to go for the cows. I didn't want the chocolate any more; I just wanted a chance to put it back without being caught.

  On the way out for the cows, my heart stopped pounding so hard, and I could think better. I hadn't really stolen the whole bar of chocolate, because I had only meant to take a little piece, and that's as much as I would have taken if Mother hadn't come in just when she did. If I put back the whole bar, I wouldn't have done anything wrong at all. I'd nearly decided I would do it, but just thinking so much about chocolate made my tongue almost taste the smooth bitterness of it. It didn't seem as if it would be very wrong if I only took a small piece. Then I got thinking that if I took a sharp knife and cut about half an inch off the end—with a good clean slice—Mother might never notice it.