Father and I Were Ranchers

by Ralph Moody

  Two Dog and Mr. Thompson came the second day. Two Dog had a little pouchful of dried leaves, and Mr. Thompson told Mother to boil them and put the broth on places where I was skinned. I don't think Mother would have done it if Mr. Thompson hadn't stayed all afternoon to watch. Anyway, she only put it on my hands and arms—and they were the first sores to heal.

  Mother let me eat supper out on the porch with Two Dog. He ate all his salt pork and johnnycake, but he didn't touch his beans, and I got Grace to bring out a bowl of sugar to go with his tea. Once in a while he would reach over and lay his hand on the part of my leg that wasn't skinned, and I hoped he'd stay till late in the evening, eating sugar out of his hand, but Mr. Thompson harnessed the buckskins right after supper.

  I liked to have people come to see me and ask me about getting hurt. Really, my toes didn't ache very much after the first two days, but I thought it might be nice to act as though they were killing me, so Mother would give me lots of attention and more people would come to see how I was. I tried it for a while the next morning, but it wasn't any fun lying on the bed when Mother was busy in the kitchen and all the other youngsters were outdoors. I couldn't even fool King, and he would only come to the door and whine. By nine o'clock I took my crutches and went out to see how our new colt was getting along. I forgot all about the colt, though, because Father was just coming out of the barn, and called me to come and see Brindle's new calf.

  In a few days I got tired of my crutches and threw them away. Father glued pieces of leather on the bottoms of my wooden shoes, so I wouldn't wear out the binding tapes, and I could clump around pretty well. Of course, I had to walk kind of stiff-legged, the way you do on stilts, but it didn't bother a bit about riding Fanny. Father let me ride her to Fort Logan to see Doctor Stone, so I got a chance to let all the kids in Logan Town see that I had really broken nine toes at one time. All the doctor did was to wiggle my feet around a little and put some fresh bandages on the skinned places. He looked real carefully at the places where Mother put on the broth from Two Dog's leaves. Then he said, "Hmmm, hmmm, I do declare! Find out from that old Injun what kind of leaves those were, will you?" I said I would, but I always forgot it when I saw Two Dog.

  That spring, Mr. Welborn, a wealthy man from Denver, had bought the quarter section where I used to herd Mrs. Corcoran's cows. He had an artesian well sunk, and had trees set out along his driveways and where he was going to build his house. He used to pay me fifty cents a day to hoe and water them when we weren't busy haying. My broken toes cost me two whole weeks working for him, but Fred Aultland said I would be worth just as much in haying as if my feet were all right. He said I wouldn't be able to break any more toes driving a horse rake now that I had boards on the bottoms of my feet, and he couldn't see any reason why I shouldn't do it. Fred must have talked to Father and Mother a lot, because they didn't say no.

  We did a lot of haying that summer, because nobody but Mr. Welborn had any money to hire help, and the neighbors had to trade work back and forth. My two jobs were driving a hay rake and riding the stacker horse. And, whatever place we worked, Father sharpened the mowing machine knives, fixed the broken machinery, and ran the stacker. When it was our turn, the neighbors all brought their machines and helped us.

  I always liked working at Aultland's best. Fred used to butcher a pig for each of his three alfalfa cuttings, so there was plenty of fresh pork, and Mrs. Aultland didn't seem to care how many chickens she fried, or how much sugar it took to make pies and cookies. She and Bessie could cook almost as well as Mother, and they had lots more things to cook.

  While we were putting up Fred's first cutting of alfalfa, his cousin came out from Denver for a visit. He brought his wife and Lucy with him. Some of the other men said he was sponging on Fred because he loafed around and told stories a lot of the time. I think his wife and Lucy were sponging, too, because I never saw them help with the cooking or dishwashing, but I liked Lucy just the same. She was a year or two older than I, and while the horses were resting after dinner we used to play up in the hayloft of the barn. She told me lots of things I hadn't thought about before.

  Her father had just been fired from a good office job in Denver, but Lucy didn't care. She said he'd been fired lots of times before so it didn't make any difference. I remembered what Fred had told Father about needing food for us youngsters more than money, and I told Lucy about it. Then I said that the Aultlands had better things to eat than anybody else in the neighborhood, and I thought Fred would let them live right there if they did enough work.

  Lucy didn't like that at all. She asked me if I thought her father looked like a darn fool. Then, before I could tell her, she said that only dolts and darn fools lived on ranches, because farmers didn't need any brains and there was too much hard work to do.

  When I got mad, she said that Fred and Father weren't fools because they owned their own ranches and hired men to do most of the work. I didn't want to tell her that Father didn't own our ranch, and I didn't want her to think he was a darn fool, so I just kept still. Then she told me that smart men like her father never did have to work hard, because they knew the world owed them a living and there were easier ways to get it than doing hard work.

  I wanted her to tell me more about the easier ways, but the men had come out to get the horses, and Jerry Alder yelled, "Jigger, up there in the haymow, Spikes; your old man's coming."

  All the men except Father and Fred were there, and when I started coming down the ladder, Jerry called up to me, "I'll bet you learned a hell of a lot of new things up there; did you do any good?"

  I told him I didn't know if I did any good, but I sure learned a lot of new things. Then, before I could tell him anything about the world owing everybody an easy living, they all started howling and laughing. Lucy's father laughed louder than anybody else.

  While we were milking that night, I told Father what Lucy said about her father, and asked him why he didn't try to do the same thing.

  I only saw Father mad two or three times, but that was one of them. He jumped up off his milking stool and came around behind Brindle. His face was gray-white—even his lips were white—and his voice was shaky when he said, "Don't you ever talk to that girl again."

  He just stood there for a minute, as if he didn't know what he was going to say, then he put the stool right down in front of me and sat on it. He reached out and took hold of my knee hard. His voice didn't shake then, but he talked low. "Son," he said, "I had hoped you wouldn't run into anything like this till you were older, but maybe it's just as well. There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men. There are black men and white men and yellow men and red men, but nothing counts except whether they're honest men or dishonest men."

  "Some men work almost entirely with their brains; some almost entirely with their hands; though most of us have to use both. But we all fall into one of the two classes—honest and dishonest."

  "Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same God that made you and me made this earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest."

  "Son, this is a long sermon for a boy of your age, but I want so much for you to be an honest man that I had to explain it to you."

  I wish I knew how Father was able to say things so as to make you remember every word of it. If I could remember everything the way I remember the things Father told me, maybe I could be as smart a man as he was.

  22

  Bad Times Were Not So Bad

  WE HAD traded what was left of our good beans for groceries at Mr. Green's store in Logan Town, but there were a couple of sacks of our peas and all our landlord's peas and beans left in the bunkhouse. The landlord wrote us in September and wanted Father to bring his share of the good beans
in to Denver, and as many of his peas as we could haul.

  After the letter came, Mother got down her Wedgwood sugar bowl and poured the money out on the kitchen table. There was only twenty-four dollars and a quarter in it. Most of it was money I got working for Mr. Welborn. Of course, we had receipts for fifteen and a half tons of hay in there, too. That was how we got paid for work we did for other people in haying.

  When the money was counted, Mother told Grace to take all the youngsters but me out to play, and to ask Father to come in. The three of us sat around the table where the money and Mother's memo pad were laid out. She said I had earned so much of the money that I should help decide how much of it we could afford to spend and what we would buy with it.

  The bottoms of my feet were so tender from having worn my boards all summer that I couldn't go barefoot, and my Christmas shoes were all worn out. Mother said I would have to have new ones before school started, and she thought we'd better pay two dollars and get a good pair, because my Christmas shoes didn't wear very well. Then she said she could can tomatoes and green peas and beans from the garden if we could afford to buy some canning jars and rubbers. After that, we started going over the list of unbleached muslin, calico, quilting cotton, and other things she had written down on her pad.

  Really, Father and I didn't do much of the planning. Mother would guess how much different things would cost, and put down the amounts. Then she would add them up, and say, "Oh my! That's a lot more than we can afford to spend. Charlie, do you think there will be a cash market for sugar beets or beans or hay this fall?"

  Father only said, "I hope so, but the panic seems to be as tight as it was in the spring; maybe things will open up a little before cold weather."

  Mother would cross off some of the things on the list, and change the amounts on others. Then she would sum up, and say, "Oh my!" again. At last it got down to where it was just my shoes, some cloth for winter coats and dresses, and the canning jars—if Father could trade our two sacks of dried peas for them. And then we'd have ten dollars left in the sugar bowl for emergencies.

  We loaded the big wagon that night and Father let me go to Denver with him the next morning. We started way before daylight. Mother made me wear Grace's new shoes and the stockings she had knit with yarn from an old shawl. The last thing Father did before we left was to tie the feet of Brindle's calf together and lay him up on top of the load.

  Grace's shoes hurt my toes and the stockings made my legs prickle, so Father let me take them off till we were almost in to the Capitol building. First, we went right to the Golden Eagle and got my new shoes; then we drove by Cousin Phil's office, and Father sent me up to get him. The office didn't look a bit the way it used to; there was nothing left in it but two chairs and a desk. The stenographer was gone—desk, typewriter, and all— and Cousin Phil looked terrible. He told me to stay there and look at the newspaper on his desk while he went down and talked to Father.

  He was gone a long time, and when he came back he said I was to stay with him while Father went to do his trading. There wasn't a thing for me to do in the office and nobody to talk to. Cousin Phil just kept reading the newspaper and looking at his watch every once in a while. About noontime he went out and brought me back a couple of doughnuts, but he didn't bring himself any and he wasn't gone long enough to have eaten lunch. But he did talk a little after he came back. He told me he had a big deal all ready to go through, but the panic had knocked the bottom out of everything. Then he asked me how I'd like to have Prince to drive instead of old Fanny, and said he thought a while on the ranch would be good for the little bronc.

  All afternoon I watched from the window for Father to come back, but it was nearly suppertime before he got there. Prince was tied to the tail gate of the wagon, but Cousin Phil didn't even come to the window to look down. He just told me to run along so as not to keep Father waiting, and said he'd be out to see us before too long.

  As soon as I climbed up on the wagon I could see that Father had several good-sized bundles piled up in the front end, and half a dozen boxes with pictures of canning jars on them. When I asked him how he got so many things with only fourteen dollars and a quarter, he kind of chuckled a little bit and pulled his leather pouch out of his pocket. There was still some money in it, and from the sound of the jingle I knew some of the pieces were as big as half dollars. Then he told me that Mother had overlooked the fact that everything was a lot cheaper since money got so scarce, but he wouldn't tell me what was in the packages. He said I'd have to wait till we could all look at them together.

  After that I asked him what was the matter with Cousin Phil, and why he didn't have the stenographer and her things in his office any more. He didn't answer me for a few minutes, then he told me we hadn't stopped to realize how well off we were to have enough to eat every day, and to have a good home and clothes enough to keep us warm, when there were people who were actually starving. I remembered about eating both of the doughnuts Cousin Phil brought back at noon, and asked Father if he thought maybe he was starving. He said no, Cousin Phil would never starve, but he thought the panic had clipped his wings a little bit.

  Father and I were both as hungry as we could be, and just talking about having plenty to eat made us hungrier. When we got out by the lumber barn we bought a custard pie and a pail of milk in the same little store where we had got them when we were first moving out to the ranch. While Billy and Nig were eating their oats, Father and I ate our pie and talked about all the new things we had been able to get since we had been sitting there eating a custard pie less than two years before. It seemed to us then that we were going to be rich people before very long. And the next morning it seemed to everybody at home that we already were.

  School didn't start that fall till we had everything from our garden that we hadn't peddled put away in the cellar. We got some more canning jars and sugar from Mr. Green in trade for a pig and vegetables. Mother filled every one of them with green corn, tomatoes, peas, and green beans. Father built bins on the cellar floor, and we loaded them with carrots, table beets, and turnips; but we had put horse manure under the potatoes when we planted them, and they went all to tops as my cowboy friend, Hi, had said they would.

  It was Mother who got the idea about selling vegetables at the Fort. She said that officers in the army got paid cash whether there was a panic or not, and she'd bet their wives would buy fresh vegetables. I think Father would rather have taken a beating than do it, but we went from one back door to another, all through the officers' quarters in Fort Logan, till we'd sold all the garden stuff we didn't need for ourselves. It brought in nearly twenty-one dollars.

  Denver must not have been a good place to be during the panic, because Prince looked nearly as bad as Cousin Phil. He was skinny and didn't have anything like the pepper he used to have when I first saw him. Father started giving him two quarts of oats every morning and night, and by school time he'd run like a rabbit again. Father let us drive him once in a while till he found out what was going on at school, but after that we had to take Fanny. He might not have found out about it at all if I hadn't got my face skinned.

  Willie Aldivote rode a horse to school that fall instead of his old spotted donkey. It wasn't much of a horse, but he had a saddle for it—and it was a good saddle. It was wide in the pommel, with a short seat and double cinches. Willie said it was a breaking saddle. We put it on all the horses at school and tried to make them buck, but Prince was the only one that would.

  At first he didn't buck very much harder than Willie's donkey used to, but the more we tried to ride him, and the more oats he got, the harder he bucked. After a while he didn't crowhop, but would bounce from one side to the other and turn almost end for end while he was in the air, and he'd get his nose right down between his front hoofs. It got so only Willie and I could stay on him at all—and we got tumbled off plenty of times. I couldn't reach the stirrups, and I didn't dare put my feet into the stirrup straps with my shoes on, for fear one of them wo
uld stick and drag me when I got thrown, so I always had to ride barefoot. Even at that, my foot stuck one noontime when I went off sideways, and Prince dragged me a few feet. Miss Wheeler fixed me up all right with a little court plaster, but, of course, Grace had to tell Mother what happened. Maybe it was just as well, though, because after that Prince bucked so crazy there was hardly a man in the neighborhood who could ride him.

  Right after Thanksgiving Hal came running up the wagon road to meet us when we were coming home from school. He was just past four years old then, and nearly as wide as he was tall. We could hear him jabbering as he came, and he was so excited he could hardly wait for Fanny to stop before he started trying to climb up over the wheel of the buckboard. In between gasps he was hollering, "We got a new horse… and she's got a colt… and she's brood… and her name is Bread."

  I guess we all got about as excited as Hal was, and I turned in at the gate so fast that I nearly slewed him off the seat. Father and Mother were out at the corral with the new mare and colt. The mare was a nice-looking bay, a little bigger than Fanny and as smooth as butter. The colt looked to be a yearling, and was a bright sorrel. Father let me walk right up to the mare and pat her. I wanted to be gentle with her and have her like me, so as I went close to her I said, "Easy, Bread. Easy, Bread."

  Mother heard me, and said, "What is that you're saying?" So I told her Hal said that was the mare's name. Mother's face looked kind of funny for a minute, and she pulled her lip down as if she were trying not to laugh. Then she said, "No—no. Hal must have been mistaken when he heard Father talking to Mr. Cash about her. No, she doesn't have a name yet, but she's going to have another little colt pretty soon. Isn't she beautiful? She's a perfect little lady." Mother didn't know it then, but she'd named our new mare. Nobody ever called her anything but Lady after that. Grace named the colt Babe.