Father and I Were Ranchers

by Ralph Moody

  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 he 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 for 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 hi
s 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.

  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 1 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.