Falling From Horses (19 page)

He gave me a sideways look and a slight smile and exhaled a stream of smoke from his nostrils. “They're rubber,” he said. “They don't hardly tickle him.” He tipped a boot up and showed me how the spurs were nothing but soft props. “Rybert's finical about all his horses. He had these fake spurs made up special. I'll be walking them back over to him in a minute.”

The spurs I wore for rodeo were hand-me-downs from my dad, shop-made the old way from battleship steel, and I was pretty proud-minded about them. When Deets showed me those rubber ones, I shouldn't have been surprised—by now I had gotten used to seeing all kinds of moviemaking fakes, even rubber guns and rifles and knives—but I must have looked a little bit scornful, because he said, “Kid, everything about the movie business is phony except the broken bones and dead horses.”

I hadn't seen any dead horses or broken bones yet, not here in Hollywood, but I shook my head as if this was a regrettable fact that wasn't news to me.

When it looked like he wasn't planning to say anything else, I said, “You ride rodeo?”

He smiled, not entirely in amusement. “Used to, but this here's a more dependable payday. And the movies pay you more for falling off than for staying on. What about you, kid?” He pointed a knuckle at my flat-crowned hat. “That there looks like prize money.” His own hat was part of the costume, the hat Wichita Carson always wore, a high-crowned Texas-creased Stetson. I had thought his chin strap was a rawhide string, but up close I could see it was elastic.

I didn't think my profound knowledge of bucking broncs was likely to impress him, and my hat had been a gift from my parents, but I said, “I rode some horses.”

“You go up to Newhall, do you?”

I didn't have the least idea what this was. I thought about pretending I did, but finally I said, “Newhall?”

“Yeah. It's up the valley not too far. They got a rodeo every Sunday.” He smiled again. “There's a lot of fellows in the Hollywood posse that think bronc riding is church.” He took a long drag on the cigarette. He blew smoke and then, in a slow, droll way, said, “If you draw a horse called Pretty Dick, tell him Steve Deets said hello.”

After a bit I stuck out my hand and said, “I'm Bud Frazer.”

We shook, and then he made a gesture toward the Belgian horses loafing in the shade. “You wrangling for Harold Capsen?”

I said I was.

“Well, he's a good one to work for. Jesus, that house of his is something, ain't it? Used to belong to that old movie star. I went to a couple of parties up there fifteen, twenty years ago, before she went half nuts.” He tapped the ash off his cigarette. “She never liked the business, I guess.” He leaned forward, resting his wrists on his knees, and studied the smoke rising up from his hand. “I'll be getting out of pictures myself, here pretty quick. I've got my eye on a dude ranch over in New Mexico.”

Steve was about forty when I met him. A Texas boy, he'd left home at thirteen and worked his way west, riding for different cow outfits, until he hit California and fell into the movie business. He'd been making his living as a stunt rider since sometime in the silent twenties. But in the months I knew him, he talked all the time about his plan to get out of stunting before his body was broken for good; if it wasn't the dude ranch over in New Mexico, it was an orange grove east of Glendale. He always talked like he was a few months away from having the money for it, but every dollar he made was bet in poker games—his friends sometimes had to pay his electric bill when he ran into a losing streak at cards. He didn't have much of a life outside of his work and playing cards. He lived in a rundown furnished apartment in West Hollywood, didn't have a wife or kids. When he died, a bunch of us had to put money in a hat so he could have a cemetery plot and a tombstone.

That first day at Las Cruces, though, I didn't know a thing about him except he was dressed up like a cowboy hero and doing the kind of work I wanted to be doing. I let a little time go by, and then I said, “I don't mind working for Harold, but I guess I'd rather be riding horses than saddling them for other people.”

He gave me a brief look. “Yeah? Well, I don't recommend it—Cab ain't nothing like Harold—but you could go talk to him. One guy didn't show up to work today, maybe he'll let you fill in.” He pointed his cigarette at my hat. “You're dressed for the part.”

He was all decked out in that Wichita Carson costume, fancy blue embroidery on the yoke and cuffs of the shirt, but he meant I was dressed like any of the riding extras, the men riding behind the leaders in a posse or a band of outlaws. Most of the riding extras in those days were men who had come off the ranches, like me, and they just showed up to the set in their own Levi's and a faded work shirt, their own hat and boots, sometimes a neck scarf. I didn't look much different, although I guess my flat-crowned buckaroo hat must have looked old-fashioned.

I didn't have any idea how to find Cab, which I said to Steve Deets. “Anyway, I've got to stick around until they shoot the scene with Harold's plow horses.”

He stood up. “Well, when you get done with it, we'll likely still be working. We're shooting a couple of chases today and a bulldog fall. I expect Cab's already headed out to Cow Rocks to get set up. Ask somebody where that is.” He dropped his cigarette and stepped on it and started to move off.

I said, “That ride you made was something.”

He looked back at me. “Yeah? Cab run the shot so long, that horse like to beat me to death. I can still feel I got blood behind my eyes.” He looked pleased about it, though, so I was glad I spoke up.

IT WASN'T MUCH LONGER
before they called up the Belgians, and then it wasn't much of a scene, just pulling a farm wagon down the western street, clopping past John Barlow in his Wichita costume and a pretty actress in a suede skirt, the two of them saying their lines on the steps of the sheriff's office. When they cut me loose for the day, it was just past noon. I turned the Diamond horses into the corral with Verle's stock, unhooked the trailer from the truck, and drove up a rutted dirt track about a half-mile to the Cow Rocks location where O'Brien's crew was filming. There weren't any permanent buildings out there, just a bunch of trucks parked next to a clump of dry trees, and some picnic tables under a shade cover. They were breaking for lunch just then, and a guy in a caravan was doling out sandwiches and soda pop from the back end of his rig. I asked a guy in the lunch line where I could find the ramrod, and he pointed to Cab standing over by the camera truck with three other men. I guess if I'd listened for a minute I could have found him just by following the sound of his Mississippi drawl. That voice could charm the quills off a porcupine, but he was swinging it like a club just then, shouting past one of the men without waiting to hear what was said back. I stood off from them and tried not to look like I was listening in. The fellow Cab was arguing with gave up after not too long and just dropped his chin and stared at the ground. Cab stuffed his hands in his pockets, rocked on his heels, and went on talking in a gradually lowered voice. Every so often one of the others nodded, but none of them said anything. After a couple of minutes Cab broke it off and headed for the lunch truck. He walked right past me without giving me a look.

I said, “Mr. O'Brien, I heard you were short of riders today.”

He didn't stop walking.

I caught up and walked with him. “I was wrangling a wagon team this morning, but I'm done for now and I thought maybe I could ride for you.”

He didn't slow down or look at me, but he said, “Who the hell are you?”

“I'm Bud Frazer, I've been working for Harold Capsen at Diamond Barns. But I was riding rodeo broncs before I came down here. I've been riding horses since before I could walk.”

If he heard any of this, he didn't act like it. He bulled right to the front of the lunch line, picked up somebody else's box lunch, sat down in a camp chair, and unwrapped the waxed paper from a sandwich and started eating. I could feel the heat building in my face. I wasn't about to stand over him, begging for work. I said, “Well, just so you know, I can ride anything with four legs and a tail. I'll be around if you want to give me a try,” and I turned on my heel.

I sat a minute on the running board of the Dodge and didn't look his way. I was too steamed up to be hungry, but then I got up anyway and walked over to the caravan and got myself a box lunch and sat in the open door of the truck to eat it. When Cab finished his lunch, he went off without looking in my direction.

About the time the lunch truck was packing up to leave, a guy carrying a clipboard came over to me and said, “If you can get yourself a horse and get back here in ten minutes, Cab says you can have half a day's work.”

He meant get a horse from Verle. I raised a big rooster tail of dust driving back down that dirt road. Verle half laughed and shook his head when I told him what was up. Actors and extras familiar with the White Oak stock had already taken his good mounts, so he didn't have much left. He brought me a sorrel with a flaxen mane and tail, a good-looking horse except for the long scar on his off foreleg, and while we were tacking him up he said, “You might have to strong-arm the son of a bitch. He's opinionated, and he's got a cast-iron mouth.” Well, I felt half-naked getting on a horse without spurs, but I had left Diamond that morning figuring I wouldn't need spurs for a wagon team, and my dad's rowels were lying where I'd kicked them, in a corner of the bedroom. When I climbed on the sorrel and booted him in the flanks, he just flattened his ears and chewed the bit. It wasn't until Verle whacked him with a buggy whip that he finally broke into a jog-trot, and then I had to plow-rein him with both hands to get him steered back along the rutted road.

When I got to Cow Rocks I could see some men on horseback lounging about a hundred yards off and a bunch of people gathered out there around a camera and boom mounted on a dolly. I was about to head that way when the guy with the clipboard waved me down and called out, “Go see the prop master, get yourself a gun.”

I had been around enough sets to know what a prop master was, but I hadn't ever needed to ask one for a gun. I found him sitting under a shade umbrella next to the grip wagon. He wrote my name in his ledger and held out a rubber six-shooter and a vinyl holster and belt. I had to get down off the horse to take them from him, which I knew was a bad idea, but there wasn't much I could do about it. When I buckled on the gun belt, the whole outfit was light and stiff, nothing that felt real, but I liked the way it looked hanging from my hips.

When I tried to get back on the sorrel he got cagey, pivoting sideways to keep the stirrup out of reach of my boot. I yanked on him and cuffed his nose, which caused him to act aggrieved and let me mount, but as soon as my back pockets hit the saddle he broke into a hard trot and tried to head for the corrals. I had to seesaw the bit in his mouth to get the son of a bitch headed the right way, out to where they were getting ready to shoot.

Steve Deets was there, still dressed up like Wichita Carson. When they'd filmed the bucking scene he hadn't been wearing a gun belt, but now he wore a fancy tooled leather belt with a big buckle and two pearl-handled pistols that looked real. He gave me a glance and then inclined his head to point me toward where I should be, at the back of the posse of eight or nine riders. A couple of the other men glanced at me, but nobody said anything about the way I had come in, steering with both arms like a greenhorn.

The dolly track started right there and ran straight out in front of us across a hardpan plain tufted with clumps of sage and greasewood. Cab was standing on the dolly with two camera operators, looking through a small eyepiece across the flats toward a line of scrub willows more than half a mile away. When he turned back around to us he didn't notice me, or he acted like he didn't. He said to Steve Deets, “I want you charging like hell, and you better get this in one shot,” as if it was a warning, and Deets said, “You bet.” I couldn't see his face, but he sounded like he was smiling when he said it. Then a shirtless grip rolled the dolly out along the tracks, with Cab and the two cameramen riding on it. Halfway to the willows, they anchored the dolly and Cab stepped off and walked around behind, and you could just see his head peering at us past the shoulder of one of the camera operators.

Half a dozen crewmen were standing way off to the side of us, one of them the man that Cab had been arguing with before lunch. He called to us through a megaphone, “Y'all let Deets get out about thirty yards and then go. Everybody stay in a tight pack.” I guess he thought this was enough instruction even for the greenhorn, because he gave me a short look without adding anything else.

Deets glanced back at all of us. He was wearing long-shank Mexican spurs this time, and I could hear the rowels jingle lightly when he straightened around in the saddle. I thought the horse he was riding was the one Wichita Carson always rode, a big white stallion called Sunday, but I heard later he was a stunt double that looked like Sunday. The saddle was decked out with silver conchos, and there were long, silver-trimmed tapaderos over the stirrups. Deets settled his hat and made a gesture with his head to signal he was ready.

The guy with the megaphone called, “Quiet on the set,” and I guess seasoned picture horses—chase horses, they were called—must know the sound of those words, because all them, even that cross-grained horse I was riding, went still. I don't think I'd ever heard things fall so suddenly quiet, the only sound the kind of clicking whisper that insects make moving through dry grass. Then there was a shout from out at the dolly, and the man with the megaphone, maybe echoing the word lost to distance, shouted, “Action!” and Deets whooped and spurred his horse into a flat-out run. The rest of the horses were savvy enough about movie work that they didn't quite bolt after him but nervously shifted their weight, and I felt the sorrel shiver underneath me and give a little crow hop of excitement. Then the fellow with the megaphone called “Go!” and we all took off in a bunch.