Home Ranch (21 page)

Blueboy went through the gulch and up the rise beyond without a break in his pace, then I felt his stride lengthen, and the sound of his breathing came back above the clatter of his hoofs. There'd been times on some of those hairpin turns when I hadn't been sure I'd be able to stay in the saddle, but that feeling was all gone now. I eased a hand up along Blueboy's neck and began soft-talking again.

For at least three miles Blueboy held that racing, killing pace, and I was sure he was going to run himself to death. Then his head began to rise, his ears lifted, and I knew he was watching me from the corner of his eye.

I didn't let myself change the tone or timing of my soft-talk, I didn't try to drive or slow him, and I kept one hand rubbing along his neck. In another half mile Blueboy had dropped his gallop to a swinging canter, and wasn't blowing any more. His breathing whispered through his nostrils with as little effort as his white-stockinged legs reached forward for the road. I looked back for Sid, but he and his piebald horse were nowhere in sight.

I think I could have turned Blueboy easily then, but I wanted him to be sure I wasn't fighting him, so I let him go on for another mile. I'd never felt small on a horse before, but there was something about Blueboy that made me feel even smaller than I was. It couldn't have been his size—he wasn't much bigger than Pinch—but I think it was his drive and power. When I turned him back, it was only because I thought Zeb and Sid might be worried, and I brought him around in a wide circle—with only the slightest draw of the hackamore rope against his neck.

Blueboy didn't break his canter when I turned him, and I didn't want him to. He'd held the pace steadily for a couple of miles when we topped a rise and I saw Sid coming up from the gully below. His horse was making hard work of the hill, and was blowing badly. Sid let him down to a walk, and called up to me, “Way you took off, I reckoned you'd be in Kansas 'fore now. Why didn't you jerk that hackamore and haul him in? Sure you ain't broke his wind?”

I didn't want to make Blueboy nervous by shouting back, so I waited till I'd ridden down to Sid, and told him, “I didn't need to haul him in, because, after the first mile, he wasn't running away. And it looks to me as if Pie is the one that might be wind-broken.”

Sid turned his horse, and we jogged side by side, with Blueboy breathing easily and the piebald fighting for each lungful of air. “By jiggers, it's a wonder if I ain't went and broke his wind!” Sid spluttered. “If that danged maverick wasn't runnin' away with you, why didn't you turn him back 'fore you scairt the livin' bejeebers out'a me? What you messing with him for? He won't never be no more use to you than a wooden leg! Ain't it best if we take him up to the mountain pasture and turn him loose? One day that dag-goned outlaw's goin' to kill you if you don't get shut of him.”

I couldn't be sure Sid wasn't right, but from the way I felt right then, I was willing to take my chances of being killed. I knew without Sid's telling me that Blueboy would probably never be any good for a cowhorse, but something made me feel as if I needed him and had to have him. I couldn't say those things to Sid without sounding foolish, so I just said, “I couldn't turn him back now, Sid—not unless Mr. Batchlett told me I had to.”

Sid had started all over again about Blueboy's being a worthless outlaw when we heard the pound of a running horse's hoofs. I guessed who it would be, and leaned a bit in the saddle. Blueboy leaped forward as if I'd spurred him, and raced up out of the gully. As we topped the hill I saw Pinto running toward us. Hazel was clinging to his bare back, and whipping him with the line ends at every stride. I forgot all about making Blueboy nervous, and shouted, “What's the matter, Hazel? What's happened?”

For a moment I thought she was going to fall. She jerked up straight for an instant, then slumped in a heap on Pinto's back. When I got to her she was laughing and crying at the same time, and her words came in gasps. “I . . . I reckoned he'd . . . he'd killed you,” she sort of burbled. “I seen how he was runnin' . . . crazy mad, with his head down . . . like a killer stallion.”

Blueboy didn't like to be stopped. He sidestepped and bobbed his head, but didn't act mean or try to break away, so I said, “Look at him now! He doesn't look crazy or mad, does he? Zeb told me how to handle him, and it worked all right. Blueboy wasn't mad, he was just trying to find out if I was looking for a fight.” Then I realized that Zeb should have been close behind Sid if he'd come with us, so I asked, “Where is Zeb?”

“That crazy old coot!” Hazel blurted. “When I run to get Pinto he was settin' by the horse corral gate—just settin' and spittin' at a rock.”

Zeb never told me I did a good job in handling Blueboy, or that he thought I was a good rider, but, after that, he didn't need to—and I loved him for it.

I was sorry Hazel got so scared when she didn't need to be, but it made me a little bit happy that she worried about me. Maybe that's what made me remember that I wouldn't see her for a couple of weeks, and why I thought it might be nice to ride out to the secret spring and back. Hazel thought so, too, and her mother said it would be all right, so I saddled Lady and Pinto and we went.

It was still fairly early in the afternoon, so we spent about an hour watching some rabbits play by the basin below the spring. And I made a slingshot out of a latigo string and a willow crotch—to scare away the weasel if it came again. Then Hazel thought it would be fun to go around to the beaver dam in the valley west of the buildings. She said that if we crept up to it real quietly we might see a beaver swimming.

We left Lady and Pinto nearly a quarter of a mile below the beaver dam, and went up the little valley by the cattle path through the willows. We went as quietly as we could, but when we got to the dam we didn't see any beaver. There was an outcropping of rock on the shady side of the pond, and Jenny and Sid were sitting on it. She was holding the belt he'd made for her, looking down at it and rubbing her fingers over the buckle. Sid was looking down too, picking petals off a flower and dropping each one into the water. Jenny was saying something, though her voice was too low to be heard across the pond, but it didn't sound as if she were making fun of Sid the way she usually did.

The minute we saw them, Hazel put a finger to her hips and motioned for me to go back the way we'd come. I didn't make a sound until we were halfway back to the horses, then I said, “That's the funniest thing I ever saw! From the way Jenny's been treating Sid I thought she hated him.”

“Hmmmff! That's all you know about women!” Hazel told me, as if she thought I was just plain stupid.

I couldn't help remembering her calling me a dirty squealing pig, and making fun of me when I slipped off Kenny's donkey, then her crying when she thought Blueboy had hurt me, so I said, “I guess I don't know much about women, but they're an awful lot harder to figure out than horses.”

Hazel didn't even bother to answer, but sniffed again, and walked on down the path through the willows.

20

Trinidad

S
ID AND
Jenny must have left the beaver pond right after Hazel and I did. We rode straight back to the corrals, and they came into the dooryard while I was unsaddling. Jenny had her arm hooked inside of Sid's, and they were walking slowly, still talking. By the time I'd spread the sweat blankets to dry and gone to the bunkhouse, Sid was already there. He was whistling like a meadow lark, and getting a big piece of seal-brown leather out of his war sack.

With Sid busy and Zeb taking a nap, there wasn't much for me to do, and I began to worry about the trip I was going on with Mr. Batchlett. I'd be his driver, and it was the driver's job to do the packing, cooking, and camp making, but I didn't know any more about it than a jack rabbit.

At the Y-B ranch we'd always had a chuckwagon when we were out on the range, and I was supposed to have been the cook's helper, but the most he'd ever let me do was to haul wood and water and peel potatoes. I couldn't even make flapjacks, and didn't have any idea how to make a trail pack or what to put in one. Besides that, we were going to start away from the home ranch at the crack of dawn, and I'd look pretty silly if I didn't have our packs made up and ready.

I could think of only one way to begin. I got a piece of paper and began writing down everything I could remember that we'd had in the Y-B chuckwagon. I was still trying to remember things when Zeb yawned, stretched, and sat up on the side of his bunk. “Tobacca's better chawin' than pencils,” he said. “What's got you throwed?”

“Well,” I said, “I'm trying to write down the things Mr. Batchlett and I will need for our trip, but I've already got enough to load nine horses, and know there must be something I've forgotten.”

“Always is,” Zeb yawned. “Ever make up a trail pack?”

“No, I haven't,” I said, “but I think I've remembered almost everything we had on the Y-B chuckwagon.”

“Wouldn't doubt me none,” Zeb yawned again. “I seen packs the likes o' that. Want I should lend a hand?”

Zeb did more than lend a hand: he did nearly the whole job of making up the packs for both his trail trip and ours. As I brought flour, sugar, canned goods and frying pans from the kitchen, he explained why everything had to go just where it did, and how to balance a pack to make it ride square on a horse's back.

We'd finished our packing, and were sitting on the bunkhouse steps in the deep twilight, when I heard a faint shout from far away toward the east. As the breeze shifted a bit, the sound of shouting came clearer. Zeb turned on one elbow, looked into the bunkhouse where Sid was busy with his leather, and drawled, “Reckon you might as leave go to makin' pack, Sid. Hank, he's had him a Fourth o' July celebration.”

It was full dark before the men reached the home ranch, and we went out to the horse corral to meet them. As they rode toward us across the little valley we could hear them laughing and talking, but Hank was the only loud one. He'd never stopped shouting from the time we'd first heard him. When he rode up to the corral gate he was hanging half out of his saddle, and yelling, “
I'm a wild coyote (hic)—a-huntin' for a high place to howl!
”

In the darkness I didn't notice the new man until Zeb had lifted Hank out of his saddle and started for the bunkhouse with him. The man was as big as Mr. Bendt, dressed in fancy cowboy clothes, and riding a silver-studded saddle on a palomino that looked like a circus horse. He was leading another palomino with a big trail pack on its back. The new man didn't step down from his saddle when the others did, but said to Mr. Batchlett, “Where's the bunkhouse at? Reckon I'll stow my gear.”

Mr. Batchlett was unsaddling, and said, without looking up, “The boy'll show you.”

The cutting corral and harness shop stood between the horse corral and the bunkhouse, so I couldn't point it out, but said, “It's over here; I'll show you,” and led the way.

The man rode along beside me until we were past the cutting corral, then asked, “The old man your paw?”

“No,” I told him, “I just work here.”

Then, when we'd rounded the harness shop, I said, “There's the bunkhouse right there,” and started to turn back.

“Come here, kid!” the man ordered. “Lug my stuff inside!”

I didn't like having a new man order me around like that, and I knew that if I let him boss me once he'd always do it, so I turned back toward him and said, “Mr. Batchlett gives the orders around here.”

“And when he ain't around, I'll do it! See!” As he said, “See!” he popped the quirt on the end of his bridle reins at my shoulder. It would have drawn blood if I hadn't ducked quicker than a prairie dog. When the quirt snapper missed me it cracked like a pistol shot, and before I caught my balance the bunkhouse door opened. Against the yellow light of the lamp behind him, Zeb's black outline towered to within two inches of the top of the doorway, and he drawled, “What's the ruckus?”

I kept quiet, but the man sort of growled, “Any more yap out o' this smart-aleck kid, and I'll . . .”

“Doubt me I would,” Zeb drawled into the growling. “If you're the new hand, light down and fetch your stuff in.”

I stood where I was, ready to duck if the man popped the quirt again, but he didn't. He climbed out of his saddle and began untying the lashings on his pack. Zeb didn't move from the doorway, but motioned for me to go back to the corral.

I'd only gone part way when I met the men. Tom was dragging both his saddle and Hank's by the horns, and Ned was staggering a little, with his saddle hugged up against him in both arms. Mr. Batchlett and Mr. Bendt were laughing, and asked Sid why he hadn't gone along for the celebration, but neither of them seemed a bit drunkish.

Mrs. Bendt had waited supper, and Jenny rang the bell while the men were putting their saddles away, but Ned and Tom weren't hungry. As I watched them go toward the bunkhouse I noticed that the new man's horse was all unpacked, and that Zeb was leaning against the door jamb.

The dairyhands went right at the milking when they got home, and none of them came to the chuckhouse for supper. At first there were only four of us at the table: Mr. Batchlett, Mr. Bendt, Sid and I. Jenny brought the meat and potatoes, and we'd filled our plates before Zeb came slouching in. When Mr. Batchlett saw he was alone, he asked, “Where's Trinidad? Didn't you tell him to come in and eat?”

“Unsaddlin',” Zeb drawled, as he sat down. “Don't calc'late he's back'ards. He'll be along.”

I'd had my second helping of meat and potatoes, and Jenny was bringing in the pie when the new man came into the chuckhouse. He had his hat on, but when he saw Jenny he swept it off and stood staring at her. Mr. Batchlett looked up, and said, “Miss Warren; Trinidad Bates. He'll be going out as driver for Zeb, Jenny.”

When I looked around, Trinidad was holding his hat against his chest, and bowing so low that only his curly black hair showed. “Jenny Warren,” he said in a voice that was almost singing, “a beautiful name for a beautiful lady. One day soon I will sing and play for her.”

Jenny's face turned as red as a windy sunset, and she bowed her head a little, but Mr. Batchlett cut in, “This day you'd best to sit in and eat your grub; it's gettin' cold.” Then he looked at me and said, “Reckon you'd best to find us a lantern after you've had your grub. We got a job of pack makin' to do 'fore we turn in.”

“It's all done,” I told him. “Zeb did it this afternoon. All we'll have to do in the morning will be to put in our bedrolls and war bags.”

“Good!” Mr. Batchlett said, and nodded toward Zeb. Then he looked back at me, and asked, “Ride Blueboy today?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, “I rode him half way to The Monument and back, and he didn't buck or fight the hackamore.”

“Run away with you?”

“Well . . .” I said, “he kind of acted like it . . . but he wasn't toward the end, and . . .”

“Couldn't hold him, eh?”

Before I could answer, Trinidad asked, “That blue devil with the white socks?”

Mr. Batchlett nodded.

“Too much horse for a kid!” Trinidad said, but looked at Jenny instead of Mr. Batchlett. “Outlaw showed fight when I turned my palominos into the corral. Needs handlin'! I'll take him in my string.”

“He's took,” Mr. Batchlett said, without looking away from me. Then he asked again, “Couldn't hold him?”

“I didn't try to,” I said. “Zeb said he wouldn't fight back if I didn't fight him.”

Zeb had pushed his chair back and was leaving the table when I spoke, but he slumped back into it and said, “Naw! Said there wa'n't no profit a-fightin' a man as wa'n't lookin' for a fight.” And when he said it he was looking right square into Trinidad's eyes.

I guess everybody knew Zeb was talking to Trinidad instead of me. We were all watching them when Mr. Batchlett said, “Takes two to make a fight. Sit tight a minute, Zeb! I want to lay out your trip with you.” Then he nodded to me and said, “Better turn in, Little Britches! We'll be hitting the trail at crack o' dawn.”

Sid had finished his pie when I left the table, but was sitting with his fork in his hand, watching Jenny with eyes as big and soft as a sheep's. She was pouring Trinidad's coffee, and he was saying something to her, so low I didn't hear it. Whatever it was, it made her face as red as it had been when he bowed to her.

When I went to the bunkhouse Tom, Ned, and Hank were snoring to beat the band. I didn't want to wake them by lighting the lamp, so felt my way to the bunk. As I reached my hand out, my fingers struck tight wires that twanged sharply. I couldn't have jumped back quicker if I'd found a rattlesnake in my bunk. When my heart stopped pounding I lit the lamp. My bunk was piled high with fancy clothes, boots, and saddle bags. A guitar was propped against the headboard, and lying on top of everything was a silver-studded gun belt and holsters—with two pearl-handled six-shooters, and every loop of the belt filled with .45 cartridges.

All the bunks in our bunkhouse were double ones, and the posts between them ran up to the roof. About a foot and a half above the floor, a tanned horsehide was stretched tight to make the spring for the lower bunk. There were three double bunks on each side of the room, and one across the back wall.

When you went to work on a ranch, nobody ever said, “This will be your bunk.” You looked around till you found one without a blanket on it, then pushed your war sack underneath and moved in. No cowhand would take an upper bunk if he could get a lower one, but it was first come, first served. Once you'd moved in, the bunk was yours till you quit or got fired, and it didn't make any difference whether you were top hand or the horse wrangler.

When I'd gone to the bunkhouse the first evening I'd come to the home ranch, there had been blankets on the three lower bunks along the south side of the room, so I crawled into the front one on the other side. Sid had taken the one next to me, then Hank, and Zeb had the one across the back, but all the uppers were empty.

When I found all Trinidad's stuff on my bunk, I looked to see if he'd bothered my war sack. Both it and my blanket were gone. At first I thought he'd thrown them outside, but when I stepped up onto a chair I saw them, slung into the far corner of the upper bunk above Hank.

I had to stand there a few minutes before I could make up my mind what to do—and I was so mad that I bit my lip till it bled. I couldn't run back to the chuckhouse and tattle to Mr. Batchlett. Hank, Ned, and Tom were too drunk to be of any help to me, and it would have been almost like tattling to have waked them anyway.

I thought about yanking Trinidad's stuff off my bunk and slinging it up where he'd slung mine—but I didn't more than think of it. He hadn't been fooling when he'd popped that quirt at me, and he might come back to the bunkhouse before any of the other men did. I decided that it would be best to climb up where my blanket and war sack were and say nothing—but I decided something else, too. As much as I liked my job, and as much as I wanted to keep it, I'd quit if Mr. Batchlett let Trinidad keep my bunk. Then I blew out the lamp and shinnied up into the bunk above Hank.

I'd lain there about half an hour when I heard voices coming toward the bunkhouse. A minute later boots scuffed on the steps, I heard the scratch of a match on rough cloth, then the tinkle of the lamp chimney, and the bunkhouse glowed with light. At about the same moment Mr. Batchlett called, “Little Britches!”

I sat up and said, “Yes, sir.”

“What you doin' up there?” he asked. “Did you trade bunks with Trinidad?”

“No, sir,” I said, “but this is where I found my blanket and war sack when I came out from supper.”

When I first sat up, the light from the lamp blinded me. As I blinked, my eyes cleared, and I was looking down on three tall, big men—each of them standing as still as if he'd been frozen. Trinidad stood in front of the bunk that had been mine, and I couldn't see his face. Zeb was just inside the doorway, crouched to a few inches shorter than his six-feet-four, and with his long arms hanging a little out from his body. From above, he looked like the gorilla in the Denver Zoo, and he was watching Trinidad with the same look that the gorilla had when he watched the people in front of his cage.

Mr. Batchlett was looking at Trinidad, too, but it wasn't the first time I'd seen the look that was on his face. I'd seen it when I'd ridden a matched race against his horse the summer before. His rider had spit tobacco juice in my face when we were in the home stretch, and if the other men hadn't held Mr. Batchlett I think he'd have torn that rider to shreds. He didn't make a sound as he watched Trinidad, but stood there by the bunkhouse table with his hands right in front of his pants pockets—as if they were poised to grab the handles of six-shooters.