Man of the Family (23 page)

25

Hi Advises Me to Learn a Trade

T
HERE
wasn't going to be any roundup in Littleton on the Fourth of July. Other places were offering more for the good bucking horses, and there was going to be a big Thoroughbred race meet at Overland Park.

What made me feel the worst about not having the roundup was that Mother had said she'd let me do trick-riding with Hi that year. I'd figured out a couple of new tricks for us to do, and I was sure that, with a week's practice, we could win the contest again. I even thought I might be able to get Hi to go up to Castle Rock and enter us for their roundup. The last Sunday in May, Mother let me ride out to Cooper's ranch to talk to him.

It didn't do any good, though. Hi was one of the best broncobusters anywhere. And just as soon as they'd called the Littleton roundup off, he'd signed up to ride at Cheyenne, Wyoming, on the Fourth.

I tried not to let any of the fellows see how bad I felt, but it must have shown a little. Mr. Cooper said we'd have a roundup of our own, before the Fourth, right there at the ranch, and that he thought we could get enough trick-riders to have a contest.

There were half a dozen of us sitting on the top rail of the horse corral and talking about it when Mr. Batchlett and a couple of his hands rode into the yard.

Mr. Cooper kept talking as though I'd be working right there on the ranch at roundup time. I hoped I would be so much that I didn't say anything, but Mr. Batchlett did. “What you tryin' to do, Len,” he asked; “toll the kid out here for the summer with the promise of a roundup?”

“Roundup, hell!” Mr. Cooper said. “I'm tollin' him out here with twenty-five dollars a month.” Then he looked over at me and asked, “How does that sound to you, Little Britches?”

“It sounds pretty good,” I said, “but I can't promise till I ask Mother. And I don't know if Philip's old enough yet to be the man of the family.”

Mr. Batchlett knew Grace and liked her a lot. He laughed, and said, “With Grace around there, your maw don't need a man of the family. Hell's bells! I'd hate to trade horses with that one. She's Yankee clean to her toenails. Dang good little rider, too. I seen her jump the old mare over a three-wire fence—bareback—and sittin' as tight as a flea on a dog.” Then he looked up at me, and said, “Tell Len what I pay you.”

“Dollar a day,” I said, “even if it isn't a full one.”

“How many days a week?” Mr. Cooper asked.

“Sometimes one, and sometimes two,” I told him.

He looked down at Mr. Batchlett, and said, “That don't make twenty-five a month, does it, Batch?”

“I'm offering him a straight hundred days while his school's out, Len. Want to top that one?”

Then Mr. Batchlett looked up at me. “I'm makin' a swing as far south as Trinidad this summer,” he told me. “Pullin' out of Littleton June first. Roundin' up a couple hundred head of milk cows for trading in Denver this fall. Be back early in September. Want to come along?”

Anything better than five-cents-an-hour jobs was usually hard for boys to find. To have both of them wanting to hire me at high wages made me so tickled I wanted to squeal. But I didn't. I kept my face and voice as steady as I could. “I'd like to work for both of you, but of course I can't, so I'll have to think it over. And maybe I can't work for either of you. Mother might need me at home. I'll have to ask her.”

Mr. Cooper was sitting on one side of me, and Hi on the other. Mr. Cooper looked across me to Hi, and said, “Reckon we'd be takin' Little Britches up to Cheyenne with us if he was a-workin' here, don't you, Hi? Ought to have pretty good trick-ridin' classes up there.”

I expected Hi to want me to come back to Cooper's, but all he said was, “Don't push the little devil, Len. Maybe he wants to be somethin' more'n a cow poke. He's got to ask his maw, first, anyhow.”

They didn't talk about me any more after that. Mr. Batchlett was on a pretty fair cutting horse: a little old, but his legs were in good shape. Mr. Cooper wanted to swap a couple of young stock horses for him. While they were talking, Hi made a little tug at the side of my chaps and climbed down off the corral fence. Then we went over to the bunkhouse and sat on the edge of his bunk.

We didn't say anything for a minute or two. And then I said, “Don't you want me to come back to the Y-B spread, Hi?” Everybody called Cooper's ranch the Y-B because that was his brand.

Hi just sat looking at the floor for two or three minutes, but it seemed to me that it was two or three hours—and I got a terribly empty feeling in my stomach. Then he took the makin's out of his shirt pocket, and rolled a cigarette before he said, “Little Britches, you know I like havin' you on the spread. All the boys likes havin' you here.”

He took a couple of puffs and blew the smoke at the rafters. “You come here, you'll be ridin' stacker horse and workin' cattle with me. We ain't going to be grazin' the open range this year. Won't have over seven, eight hundred head o' stock. Small ranchers comin' in. Fences goin' up all over the range.”

Hi leaned his arms on his knees, and his little finger kept flicking at the ash on his cigarette. I kept still and waited till he went on. “Your paw wouldn't 'a' wanted ya to come to be a common cow poke. He set a lot o' store by ya, Little Britches. Comin' here, ya ain't goin' to be learnin' nothin' ya don't know now—only gettin' a little better at it. Understand, I'd like havin' ya here, but was ya to go with Batch, ya'd be pickin' up a trade, learnin' something ya could make a dollar at in town—and still be to home with your maw a right smart of the time.”

Hi snapped his cigarette butt out through the open door and rolled another. After he'd licked the paper and slid his thumb along it, he went on. “Yes, sir, Little Britches, time's a-comin' in this man's country when cow pokes'll be a dime a dozen. Automobiles gettin' thicker'n prairie dogs, too. Might come a day it won't be safe to drive a cow critter on the roads. Man's goin' to need a trade. You think a bit 'bout goin' along with Batch.”

I told Hi I'd a lot rather be working the cattle with him than to be anywhere else, but I'd talk to Mother. Then we went out and saddled Sky High and Sky Blue. We rode up to the mountain ranch and talked to Ted Ebberts and Tom Brogan for a few minutes. Then we spent an hour riding up the canyons and looking over the spring calves. Hi didn't talk any more about me. Really, we didn't talk much at all: lots of times Hi and I didn't.

When we got back to the home place, I had to switch my saddle right over onto Lady, so I'd be home in time to do my chores. Hi walked out to the road beside us, and just before I touched Lady with my spurs, he looked up and said, “You could tell your maw I said Batch is a good man.” Then he jerked the front of his Stetson down and turned back toward the bunkhouse.

I thought a lot about Hi and Cooper's ranch on the way home, and about Mr. Batchlett and Trinidad. And I was pretty sure Mother would probably say I was too young to be away from home all summer. I tried to plan how I'd talk to her about it, and just what I'd say to her and what she'd say to me. But I always came out with better reasons for her to say I couldn't go than for me to say I ought to. Then I began wishing I could plan arguments out ahead the way Grace could. Before I got home I'd decided I'd better get her to help me.

Supper was ready as soon as I had Lady unsaddled, so we ate before I did my chores. And at the table I only talked about the new spring calves on the mountain ranch, and about all the new fences that were being put up on the cattle range. After we'd finished, I picked up the milk bucket and said to Grace, “I wish you'd bring that blue salve and a clean rag out to the barn. Ducklegs has a crack in one of her teats, and it isn't healing right.” Grace always liked being a nurse, and I thought that would be the best way to get her out to the barn.

I hadn't any more than an inch of milk in the bottom of the bucket when she came into the tie-up. Of course, the bandage couldn't go on till I was through milking, so it gave me plenty of time to talk to Grace. First, I said it was too bad I hadn't done quite so well helping drovers that spring as I did the one before. And then I told her that Ernie Ballad said the strawberry crop didn't look as if it were going to be very good. After we'd talked a little about the jobs I'd had the summer before, I told her what Mr. Batchlett had said about Mother not needing a man of the family with her around, and what he said about her being a good horseback rider. From there on, it was easy to tell her all about Mr. Cooper and Mr. Batchlett wanting to hire me for the summer. Then I told her what Hi had said about Father and about learning to be a trader, and about Mr. Batchlett. When I was all through, she thought I ought to go with Mr. Batchlett. And she promised she'd talk to Mother about it the first good chance she got.

When I came home from school Monday afternoon, Mother had my overalls and shirts hanging out on the clothesline. I didn't go right into the house, because I wanted to get hold of Grace first, and find out what she'd said and what Mother'd said. First, I cleaned the barn and put fresh bedding down for Lady and Ducklegs. Then I started cleaning out my rabbit hutches. I was right in the middle of it when Mother came out to take in the clothes. Neither of us said anything till she had them all in the basket. Then she called, “Son,” and when I turned toward her, she said, “Will you come up to my chamber for a few minutes? I'd like to talk to you.”

Since Father had died, Mother sometimes called one of us up to her chamber for a talk. When she did, it was usually because we'd done something bad enough that she couldn't talk about it before the other children. She never scolded us up there, but she'd give us talking-to's that counted a good deal more than a scolding.

Mother was sitting on the edge of her bed when I went upstairs. She motioned for me to close the door, and said, “Sit down here beside me, Son. I think we should talk things over a little.”

I said, “Yes, ma'am,” and sat down with my hands folded in my lap.

When Mother really wanted something to soak in, she'd always let me sit and wait a couple of minutes. Then she'd clear her throat and begin. That time it seemed as though she waited an hour before she said, “Ralph, Mr. Batchlett called on me this afternoon. I understand you have been talking with him about going away from home to work this summer.”

“No,” I said, “I haven't. But he was talking to me some about it yesterday. I just told him you might need me at home, and I'd have to talk to you about it.”

“That's what we are up here for,” she said.

I forgot all the things I'd planned to say, and the words just tumbled out in a heap: “Well, it's a dollar a day and he said it would be a hundred days and the curtains don't weigh very much and Grace said she and Philip could take them in on the streetcar and Ernie Ballad says the strawberries . . .”

“Yes, I know,” Mother said. “When did you and Gracie find time to rehearse this play so well?”

“We didn't rehearse it,” I told her. “We just talked about it a little while she was waiting for me to get through milking so she could put a bandage on Ducklegs' sore teat.”

“Mm . . . hmm,” Mother said. “You seem to have her pretty well convinced. She has told me what Hi said about your learning a trade. Don't you think you're a little young for learning to be a livestock dealer?”

“Well, I'm the top rabbit dealer in Littleton now,” I told her. “I could make more money if I knew how to be a cattle dealer, too.”

Mother put her arm around my shoulders and pulled me up close against her. “I'm afraid my little boy is growing up too fast in some ways and not fast enough in others,” she said. “How much do you weigh now, Son?”

“Well, I still weigh seventy-two pounds,” I said, “but I've grown nearly an inch taller in the last year.”

Mother let me sit up straight again, and squeezed one of my legs. “My! You're nothing but bone and sinews,” she said. “I do wish you could put on a little flesh.”

“I'm stouter than most any of the other fellows in my class at school,” I said. “I can lift more and I can squeeze tighter than any of them with my knees.”

“I know, I know, Son. Everyone said your father was tremendously strong for his weight. But let's talk about this summer. A twelve-year-old boy is entirely too young to be away from home all summer with a crew of cattlemen. Particularly when they will be moving from place to place, and when there will be no woman who could take care of him in case he were sick.”

It didn't look as though there was very much use in trying to argue, but I wanted to go so much that I said, “There wasn't any woman up at Cooper's mountain ranch two years ago when I worked up there, and I was only ten years old then.”