Home Ranch (30 page)

Then he looked over at Hank, and said, “Trade where and how you can. I trust your judgment. If I ain't in Rocky Ford by the time you get there, trade on up to the Black Squirrel. Little Britches, here, knows the trail back to the home ranch.” Then he swung into the saddle, but before he set spurs, he turned to me, and said, “Cool Blueboy out good! He's too much horse to let founder!”

With a glance at the sun, Mr. Batchlett set Starlight's head a little to the north of west, and took off at a brisk canter, quartering up the slope beyond the creek valley. I knew that every ten miles he'd be changing horses, that somewhere in front of him there'd be three check points picked out, and that Colorado Springs would be sixty miles straight down that line of check points.

29

Lucky on Every Pick

A
FTER
Mr. Batchlett had ridden out of sight, Hank still sat motionless on his horse, and asked in a dull voice, “Is she dead?”

“I don't know about now,” I told him, “but when the rider brought the telegram he said she was bad off.”

Hank sat looking at his saddle horn a minute or two without saying a word, then he mumbled, “Poor child . . . poor child . . . she wa'n't never stout enough to a-born him them four little young'uns.”

I'd never guess that Hank knew anything about Mr. Batchlett's wife, or his family—or that he was anything more than a worn-out, windy old cowhand who couldn't get any better job than working with milk cows.

I had been afraid, just as I could see Hank was, that Mr. Batchlett would be too late, but I didn't want Hank to worry any more than I could help, so I said, “Dr. Crysler is an awful good doctor, and my mother is the best nurse in Littleton, and we live right close to the Batchletts, so I know she's going to be all right.”

Hank still sat, staring at his saddle horn and mumbling as if he were talking to himself. “Don't seem no ways right . . . The Lord a-takin' away them as is needed . . . and a-leavin' them of us as ain't no need to nobody.”

The only thing I could think of to say was what Mother had said when Father died, “Maybe He needs them in Heaven.” Then I added, “And we needed you last Sunday about as much as anybody was ever needed.”

“Wa'n't nothin' nobody else couldn't a-done,” Hank said quietly, then turned his horse back toward the herd.

I found myself sitting and staring at my own saddle horn. I couldn't make out what had come over Hank since the cloudburst. Ever since I'd known him, he'd bragged his head off about things that everybody knew he'd never done. And now, when he'd really done something worth bragging about, he didn't even want to take credit for it.

Whatever had happened to Hank seemed to have happened for keeps. All the way down the Big Horse, and along the Arkansas Valley to Rocky Ford, he was as good a partner as I could have asked for. He didn't boss me, he didn't yell at me when I made mistakes, and he didn't once “recollect” about when he was my age.

I didn't think that some of Hank's trades were as good as Mr. Batchlett would have made, but I kept my mouth shut about those. I did tell him, though, when I thought he'd made a real good trade.

Hank had traded out about half of our yearlings, and we had some pretty good cows when we came into sight of Rocky Ford. We were still a good ways out from the edge of town when I saw a rider coming toward us. At a quarter mile, I knew it was Mr. Batchlett, from the way he sat his horse. We pushed the herd off to the side of the road, and when Mr. Batchlett rode up there was a broad grin on his face. “It's a boy!” he called out. “Had us all scared stiff for a while there, but they're both doin' right fine now.”

Mr. Batchlett fished in his shirt pocket, gave Hank a cigar, and started to pass me one, but he put it back, and said, “Made the one o'clock train with five minutes to spare. Watt's back to the home ranch. Ruined the buckskin; had to put him under grass. You done all right when you risked your pick on Blueboy! Know how many miles you two covered in seven hours? Seventy-eight, as near as I can reckon it.”

Then he looked around the herd, and told Hank, “You done fine, Mister! Couldn't have done better myself!”

Mr. Batchlett had hired the horse he was riding from a livery in Rocky Ford. When he'd shifted the saddle to his chestnut, he flipped me a five-dollar-gold-piece, and said, “Want to run this cayuse back to town and pay the man? Big stable near the depot; ought to be about two dollars—I had him since yesterday.”

I didn't like to draw anything ahead on my pay, but I didn't like to go past Rocky Ford without buying another present for Hazel, either. It must be that my face is awfully easy to read. While I was sitting there, trying to make up my mind whether or not to ask Mr. Batchlett for an advance of a dollar, he said, “Ain't no rush now; why don't you look around for some trinkets to take on back to the Bendt kids? There'll be change enough left over from the horse hire; that's your cigar.”

The belt I got for Hazel wasn't quite as fancy as the one Sid made for Jenny, but it was a real pretty one. And I got something for Kenny and Martha and the littler girls—but I liked the belt best of all.

It was twilight on the Monday before Labor Day when we brought our trail herd in to the home ranch. Of course, it was too late then for Hazel and me to ride out to our secret spring, but we did walk around the corrals, and looked at the new cows, and named some of them; and I gave her the belt.

While we were feeding pieces of biscuit to Blueboy, Hazel got tears in her eyes, and when I asked her what the trouble was, she said, “I got to take back what I said to you at the horse-pickin'. It was a lie! I said you'd be sorry all the rest of your life if you ever picked Blueboy, but not you, nor nobody . . . nor anybody else could be sorry now.”

“I guess I was just lucky,” I said. “I guess I was lucky when I picked every single one of my string. Did you ever think of it: if I hadn't picked Clay and Pinch I'd have been out on trading trips all summer?”

Hazel didn't really lean against me, but we were standing sort of close together, and we touched when she turned her face up to look at me, and asked, “Why do you think I told you which ones to pick, Ralph?”

That was the first time I ever wanted to kiss a girl, but I didn't. Hazel whirled away and raced for the house. With my high-heeled boots and chaps on, I couldn't run fast enough to catch her.

About the Author

R
ALPH
O
WEN
M
OODY
was born December 16, 1898, in Rochester, N. H. His father was a farmer whose illness forced the family to move to Colorado when Ralph was eight years old. The family's life in the new surroundings is told from the point of view of the boy himself in
Little Britches
.

The farm failed and the family moved into Littleton, Colorado, when Ralph was about eleven. Soon after, the elder Moody died of pneumonia, leaving Ralph as the oldest boy, the man of the family. After a year or so—described in
Man of the Family
and
The Home Ranch
—Mrs. Moody brought her three sons and three daughters back to Medford, Mass., where Ralph completed his formal education through the eighth grade of grammar school. This is the period of
Mary Emma & Company
. Later, Ralph joined his maternal grandfather on his farm in Maine—the period covered in
The Fields of Home
.

A new series of books, about Ralph's experiences as a young man, starts with
Shaking The Nickel Bush
.

In spite of his farming experience, Ralph Moody was not destined to be a farmer. He abandoned the land because his wife was determined to raise her family (they have three children) in the city.

“When I was twenty-one,” he writes, “I got a diary as a birthday present and I wrote in it that I was going to work as hard as I could, save fifty thousand dollars by the time I was fifty, and then start writing.” True to his word, he did start writing on the night of his fiftieth birthday.

—Adapted from the
Wilson Library Bulletin