Little Britches (24 page)

Mr. Cooper lived five miles from our place—over west of Littleton, and nearer the mountains. They got their irrigation water from Platte Canyon, and didn't have any ditch fights, so they always had good crops. He had one of the biggest ranches anywhere around, and always hired a dozen or so men in the summer. Before he went home, he told us he would pay me twenty dollars a month, and give me steady work from May first till the end of September. Then he said he didn't have to have an answer for a couple of days, and he'd drop back and see us again.

I wanted to go to work for Mr. Cooper worse than I'd ever wanted anything. I pestered Father and Mother a lot about it. At first Father said I couldn't go because Fred Aultland had given me work for the past two years and depended on me to ride his stacker horse. Grace could ride a stacker horse just as well as I could, and she didn't think it was fair that I got all the money-making jobs while she had to stay home and help Mother. I went to see Fred on my way home from school the next night and talked to him about it. He said he'd give me twenty dollars a month himself, if the last year hadn't been so tough, but if I wanted to take Mr. Cooper's job, Grace could ride old Jeff.

Maybe that had something to do with Father and Mother letting me go. First Mother made Mr. Cooper promise to let me come home every Saturday night, and Father made him say I could sleep in the house instead of out in the bunkhouse with the men.

Mr. Cooper came for me the Sunday night after school closed. Before we got to his place I knew I was going to like working for him as well as I liked working for Fred Aultland, but I didn't begin to realize how much I was going to like it.

The first one I saw when we drove into his place was my old cowboy friend, Hi. He knew me right away. He was standing out by the corral fence with some other cowboys when we drove in, and he yelled, "Hi there, Little Britches! How many toes you broke so far this spring?"

Mr. Cooper told me Hi was his cattle foreman, and was a great booster of mine. Then he said for me not to let Hi spoil me, but I didn't know what he meant.

After Mr. Cooper had taken me to the house, and his wife had shown me where my room was, I went back out to the corral. There were seven or eight other cowboys there with Hi, and they were talking about bringing cattle down from the mountains for sorting and branding. When Hi saw I had come back, he picked me up and set me on the top rail of the corral. Then he wanted me to tell the other fellows about going up to Two Dog's and getting caught in the cloudburst.

I didn't want to talk about killing Fanny in the flood, and I guess Hi saw I was getting a little choked up, so he asked me where I had put my saddle and blanket. Of course, I'd never had a saddle or blanket, but I didn't like to say so, and said I liked to ride bareback better. All the fellows but Hi laughed when I said that, and one of them hollered, "By God, Hi, that'll learn you not to waste a week's time saddle makin'."

Hi looked kind of funny for about a minute, and I guess I looked funnier. Then he started to laugh, too, "Damn you, Little Britches," he said. "You're going to ride that little old saddle I made you or I'll hang it around your skinny neck."

He reached up and hauled me off the rail, and carried me to the bunkhouse under his arm—the way you'd carry a little pig. Before Father had said I had to sleep in the house, Hi had fixed me a bunk right next to his. He had the quilt spread over my saddle, bridle, and blanket. They were the prettiest ones I ever saw, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from squealing.

It was a breaking saddle like Willie Aldivote's, only a lot better. The pommel was wide and thick; and it flared out a little before it drew in to the horn, so a fellow could lock his legs in under. The horn was only high enough to get a rope around, and had a nice rake forward—the knob must have been covered half an inch thick with leather. There were wide skirts to the stirrup straps, double horsehair cinches, and rawhide latigo thongs front and back. The blanket was a Navajo—brown with bright green zigzag stripes—and the bridle was silver-mounted with a curb rowel bit. I couldn't believe that Hi was giving them to me—that they were really my own.

It was pitch dark before Hi got through showing me my saddle and making me understand that it was mine to keep. Then Mr. Cooper came out to the bunkhouse and told me it was time for me to come and turn in. He said the boys would do me enough damage when we were out working stock, and he was going to see that I got my sleep when I was at the home place.

We ate breakfast in the cook shack, and the cook was a Mexican who could hardly speak a dozen words of English. But he could make good biscuits and flapjacks, and he put lots of onions and pepper in his fried potatoes. I ate so much that it nearly came out of my ears.

At breakfast Mr. Cooper told me that when we were working with the cattle, Juan, the Mexican cook, would be my boss most of the time, because I'd be the water boy, but he'd do the bossing when we were at the home place. Then he said I could loaf around that day and get acquainted while the men were getting ready for the branding.

When we were through eating we all started out to the corrals. On the way, Hi said the first thing I ought to do was to pick my horse. I don't think Mr. Cooper liked to have him say it, because he said, "Didn't you hear me tell Little Britches I'd do the bossing around the home place? I think his pa and ma had sooner he'd ride Topsy or Eva."

Topsy and Eva were the little seal-brown ponies Mr. Cooper had driven over to get me. First Hi put my saddle on Topsy and let me ride her, and then he put it on Eva. They were both nice gentle little horses, but they didn't have the get-up-and-get to them that Fanny used to have. Maybe it was my new saddle, and maybe it was because I had been used to Fanny, but I didn't like either of them. Hi's blue roan was in the big pole corral with a couple of dozen other horses, and there was another blue in there that looked almost like him. He was a young horse—wide in the chest and narrow in the withers, the way I liked them. He had a fine black head and sturdy legs with cat hams; I couldn't keep my eyes off him.

All morning the men kept busy roping horses out of the big corral, saddling them, and riding them in the breaking corral. Most always they got the horse they were after with the first throw of their ropes, but there wasn't one of them, not even Hi, who could flip a rope like old Two Dog. Some of the horses busted wide open when they got a rider on them, but most of them only crowhopped around for a few seconds before they quieted down. Hi said there were only two or three of them that hadn't been ridden the last spring, but they had gone a little wild during the winter.

I watched and watched, but nobody put a rope on the blue. I guess Mr. Cooper and Hi knew I was watching him, and knew I didn't like Topsy and Eva too well. While we were eating dinner, Hi said, "For God's sake, Len, why don't you give the kid a shot at him? I seen him ride his old man's seal-brown down back of the schoolhouse, and with a little learning, he'll stick like a louse."

Mr. Cooper didn't even answer, but kept right on eating till somebody else down the table called out, "Aw, for God's sake, Len, give the kid a break!"

Then Mr. Cooper looked up like he was mad, and said, "Look here, you damn fools, who's responsible for this kid, you or me? I promised his ma I wouldn't let nothing happen to him, and I ain't going to let him fork no green colt."

Hi looked as surprised as could be, and said, "Hell, Len, you ain't been hearin' so good. It's a blue colt we're aimin' to see him straddle, not a green one."

That time all the men laughed, except Mr. Cooper. He pounded on the table, and hollered, "I don't give a damn if he's blue or green or yellow. You ain't going to put Little Britches on no wild cayuses while I'm around to give the orders."

Nobody laughed then, but I saw the fellows on the other side of the table looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes. I don't know how Mr. Cooper could have seen it, because he was looking down at his plate, but I guess he must have. Anyway, in about a minute or two, he looked up at Hi, and grinned. "All right, you dirty sons," he said. "I reckoned that was about what you had in the back of your heads. And I guess it would be safer right here where we got a good pole corral, but I want to see you wear that maverick down before you let this little daredevil fork him."

That was the end of dinner. Hi grabbed his hat, let out a whoop, and ran for the corral with the other fellows right behind him. I did stop to say, "Excuse me," before I got up, but I was second to get to the corral. Ted Ebberts started shaking out a rope as he ran toward the corral gate, but Hi called him back. He said to take it easy, because he was going to gentle-break the colt.

I had seen Father gentle-break a couple of horses, and expected to see Hi go at it the same way. But he didn't. Instead of putting his rope on the blue colt, he tossed it on his own blue, led him out of the corral, and saddled him. When he rode back in, he was holding a short loop on the off side of his saddle, not swinging it the way the other fellows did when they were after a horse. The remuda circled the corral, but Hi didn't follow them. He held his blue quiet near the center till they bunched in a corner. Then he moved in toward them at a slow walk. When they broke, his rope flipped out and settled around the roan colt's neck, the way the tongue of a toad flips out at a fly.

I was watching like a hawk, and I never saw him give his horse the least bit of a sign, but as the blue colt raced out of the fence corner, Hi's blue was right beside him. He was snubbed to the saddle horn with no more than four feet of rope, but there was no jerk on his neck as Hi drew him away from the remuda and into the center of the corral.

For just one second the colt stood trembling. Then he seemed to explode, striking at the taut rope with his fore hoofs, and thrashing his head to try to shake it loose. My fingernails were digging into one of the corral poles, and I was shaking all over, but Hi seemed as calm as if he had a kitten on a string. His blue circled and moved away, keeping the line snug on the colt's neck, while Hi easy-talked him.

Hi must have held the blue colt there in the middle of the corral for ten minutes. He kept talking to him all the time, as his own blue danced in a circle with the colt thrashing around them. I couldn't make out a word Hi was saying, but his voice sounded like water running over stones in a brook.

The roan was wringing wet, but he had stopped striking. Hi motioned with his hand, and Ted Ebberts swung the gate to the breaking corral open, then stepped away from it. Hi's blue changed the direction of his dance until the colt had been led through the gate without seeming to realize it.

When Ted closed the gate and started toward them with a saddle in his hand, the colt went crazy all over again. Mr. Cooper was standing down the fence a ways from where I was. After the colt quieted down a little, he called to Hi, "Ain't you seen enough yet to know that maverick will never be a kid's horse?"

Hi didn't lift his voice a bit, but he said, "No, I ain't, and you ain't seen the kid ride. You got two surprises comin'."

I liked to hear Hi say that, and I made up my mind that I was going to ride that blue roan if it killed me—but I was really awful scared. I held my hands tight on the rail, so nobody could see how they were shaking, and tried to think of things Father had told me that might make them be still.

As they had moved into the breaking corral from the big one, Hi had shortened the snub rope till the colt's head was pulled to within less than a foot of his saddle horn. He slid from the far side of his horse, dropped his reins, and came around where Ted was waiting with the saddle. His roan stopped dancing the minute he dropped the reins and stood as still as a snubbing post. The blue colt crowded against him, and stood trembling as Hi came slowly toward them with the saddle held chest-high. He was still talking like water running over stones when he eased it over the colt's back.

Hi worked his hand up along the blue colt's neck as Ted moved in closer and passed him a hackamore. He slipped it around the colt's neck and over his nose as Ted tightened the saddle cinch and knotted it. White was showing around the blue's eyes, and every muscle under his dripping hide was pulled tight. He looked as though he might explode any second, but both men worked without a quick move anywhere. My chest hurt and I realized I was holding my breath.

Ted loosened the lasso as Hi passed the hackamore rope through the loop, bent, and took off his spurs. Then Hi hitched up his belt, wrapped the hackamore rope around his hand, and eased into the saddle. When he nodded, Ted slipped off the lariat and jumped clear.

The roan colt stood for maybe ten seconds as though he were cut out of stone, and Hi sat just as still. Then the colt shot off as if a trigger had been pulled somewhere inside of him. I had thought Prince could buck, and that I could ride a bronco, but it was only because I didn't know any better. The blue didn't buck straight out, and he didn't spin or circle. His first leap took his front hoofs ten feet off the ground and they came down like pile drivers. He bounced to the right, smashed down, snapped to the left, and went up again like a geyser. His hindquarters didn't follow his fores, but snaked around like a bucking bull's.