The Pastures of Beyond (11 page)

paused a minute thoughtfully. “My gawd!” he said. “Do you suppose Dad butchered that BarY steer?”

I'd ridden with Albert since I was a kid, and he was a favorite friend. Now I could just grin and ride off on my way, shaking my head. I suppose that sack with the steer hide is there to this day.

Joe Perry (actually his name was spelled Parais, but everyone knew him as Perry) was out in front of his cabin, feeding birds, when I rode up. Joe was a little bit flighty, and I never could tell whether he'd meet me with a rifle or a smile. A Louisiana Cajun, he'd done time in Leavenworth, where, it was rumored, he'd killed a guard. He'd ended up on the reservation, living in a small cabin on Long Prairie and generally staying out of trouble. His main difficulty, as I saw it, was that he was a great storyteller and everyone liked him. Certain women, perhaps sensing the magnetic force of his ready availability, wouldn't let him alone.

I rode old Heavy through his gate, and as I got off my horse, Joe made about three tours around him, spitting out tobacco juice onto the bitterbrush as he inspected the animal. “Reminds me of a horse I had when I first come to

Klamath,” Joe said. “Man, could he trot!”

BK Heavy wasn't too comfortable to be inspected by a man packing a rifle, but after a loud snort or two which scared the chickadees off the bird feeder, the horse settled down, grabbed a mouthful of bitterbrush, and commenced to chew while Joe sat down on a stump.

“One winter day,” Joe said, “one winter day I was ridin' thet ol' hoss down Long Prairie Road when Frank Summers come along in his pickup and stopped.

“ ‘Joe,' he says. ‘It must be coldern hell out there. Git off yore hoss and climb in this cab and get warm. You can roll down the window a little and lead that old pony by the reins.' “We had gone along like that about a mile and had dropped the level of Frank's whiskey bottle 'bout three inches when Frank said, ‘You know, from the looks of thet old hoss

of yourn I bet he could really trot.'

“I says, ‘Yessir, headin' down the road fer home, he can really fly.' We had another drink of whiskey, Frank an' me, and got to timin' the old hoss on the speedometer. Frank got to goin' faster an' faster an' thet old horse got to fairly flyin'. I looked out the window an' says to Frank, ‘I think maybe you ought to slow down a little, pardner. Why, thet ol' hoss's feet ain't touched the ground in a mile an' 'is head is stretched out six feet long!'”

Joe might not have been too enthused about helping me on the ranch, but by the time I got back to Yamsi there was smoke coming out of the bunkhouse chimney and a big greasy pot of porcupine meat stewing on the stove.

“Reminds me of when I first come to this country,” Joe said, stirring the pot. “I eat a lot of porcupine 'cause they is easy to catch in the woods.”

Joe put another log into the stove, and we both had a fit of coughing as a sudden backdraft filled the room with a layer of smoke.

“How did you happen to end up in this country, Joe?” I asked, hoping for a story.

“I come here through California an' was tryin' to catch a freight from Sacramento to Chiloquin. Well, I got on a freight goin' north all right, but by the time we passed Chiloquin, we were goin' a hunnert miles an hour, an' I ended up in Portland. Well, I caught a train headin' south an' when we passed through Chiloquin, dam' ef we warn't goin' a hunnert miles an hour again an' I ended back in Sacramento.

“Finally,” Joe said, “I got tired of travelin'. Here I was goin' south again from Portland, an' we hit Klamath Marsh goin' a hunnert miles an hour. Well, I jumped off thet train and landed in pummy dust right up to my chin!

“Hadn't been in Chiloquin long when I married the biggest lady on the reservation, but she died.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, aware I was about to be had. “What happened?”

“You might say she died of bad eyesight,” Joe said. “She was wadin' in the Williamson River one day without no clothes an' she looked down at her reflection in that clear water, thought she saw a canoe, stepped in it, an' drowned.”

I was about to leave the bunkhouse, afraid I would have to eat some porcupine, when Joe spotted a photograph someone had tacked to the bunkhouse wall. “I know thet woman in thet picture,” Joe said. “I was drinkin' one night in Chiloquin when she come up to me an' sez, ‘Joe. My old man an' I need a ride out to Sprague River. You live out thet way. How 'bout you give us a ride?'”

Sprague River was only a few miles out of his way, so Joe agreed. They had a few drinks for the road, and Joe loaded the woman and her husband into his pickup. It was winter and below zero, but the ice on the windshield soon melted from body heat. The lady took up most of the front seat, with Joe and her husband crowded up against opposite doors.

“We passed my bottle around a few times,” Joe said. “When I looked over at her husband, he had passed out. I said to that woman, ‘Now that was an unmannerly thing for him to do,' so I pulled over to the borrow pit, reached across her lap, opened the door, and let him fall out into the snow.

“We were goin' by the Lone Pine turnoff and the lady said, ‘Joe, I've never seen your cabin. I want to see where you live.'

“Well, we stopped at the cabin an' had a few more drinks. I left her sitting on the edge of my bed and went to put another log on the stove. When I came back, she had passed out cold.

“I thought, Now that was an unmannerly thing for her to do, so I went out to my shed, got a big bucket of green paint, lifted up her dress, and painted her green.”

Joe had agreed to come out to the ranch for a few days and help me, but he said he had to be back in a couple of weeks to go to court. He had put out some seed for his chickadees and some apples for the porcupine that lived in a pine tree beside his cabin, loaded some venison and a bedroll into his pickup, and had been ready to go. Even then I was surprised that he actually made it to the ranch without changing his mind.

“It's none of my business, Joe,” I said as we ate supper at the ranch, “but what's that court date all about?”

“Oh, I just killed a guy,” Joe said. “I was bangin' on this old lady in my bed when someone started poundin' on my door. It kind of scared me an' I thought, Now that's an unmannerly thing to do! So I took my old rifle and shot through the door, and there was no more of that noise. When I went out later, there was the lady's husband layin' there dead with a bullet hole in him. Hell, it was all an accident. I was just tryin' to scare him away.”

The chickadees around the ranch seemed to like Joe, for they called to him from the pines, and one flew down and sat on his arm. I rode down through the ranch a-horseback, knowing that Joe was a man of his word. He would stay at the ranch until his court date and be ready and willing to help.

We got along fine, Joe and I, but you can bet I watched myself so as not to do an unmannerly thing.

Chapter Eleven

W
ITH WORLD WAR II IN FULL SWING
, and not much gasoline available, I spent more and more time a-horseback. Occasionally the employment office in Klamath Falls would send out a warm body in response to my pleas for help, but no one seemed to stay very long. Most of them came out from town bleary-eyed and smelling of cheap wine, seeking a place to dry out and reform, but after a week or two there was no holding them back from their thirst, and some of them simply disappeared, hiking the thirty miles to Chiloquin rather than face me.

Buck cut down his operation as best he could until the only regulars left were Ernest Paddock at the BK Ranch at Bly and myself at Yamsi. There was not much communication between Ernest and me. Being the owner's nephew was not the easiest cross to bear, and as yet, in spite of trying hard, I had not proven myself a very handy cowboy. One trouble was that when I began to make some pretty fair shots with a rawhide reata or rode a bucking horse, there was no one there to see.

I was taken by surprise one day when I came into the ranch kitchen with an armload of wood, to hear the old crank telephone ringing away. It was Paddock on the line, calling from the BK. I expect a wild party was in progress, for there was lots of drunken laughter in the background. Ernie was actually very friendly, a fact that made me instantly suspicious. And furthermore, he wanted to make me a present of a horse. Not any old horse, he said, but one to drool over.

“I've got a King Ranch quarter horse from Texas,” he said. “He's the prettiest little bay gelding you ever saw, and I'm in the notion of giving him to you. Throw your rigging in the pickup and come over here right away!”

Paddock knew his horses and wasn't about to get rid of an expensive quarter horse from the King Ranch in Texas unless something was very wrong with the animal. Since the pickup gas tank was dry, I had no transportation beyond my horses and was about to tell him I wasn't interested, but somehow the situation intrigued me. A few minutes later I had dropped my saddle on old Whingding, and was on my way through the back country to Bly.

By the time I had tied my horse in the BK barn the next day and run the gamut of a dozen back-slapping drunks, I knew that there was more to Paddock's generous gift than met the eye. I had a sinking feeling that Paddock was giving a big three-day party, and that I had been set up as entertainment. When I walked down to the corrals to inspect the horse, a whole crowd found an excuse to go down the hill in step with me.

The horse seemed gentle enough. He was one of the most gorgeous pieces of horseflesh I'd ever seen, and I was sure Paddock had paid a lot of money for him. King Ranch horses were famous and cost a pretty penny. I caught up the beast and became more pleased and excited by the moment. Maybe the old foreman had finally recognized my true worth and decided to be nice to me.

I saddled up the horse, checked my rigging, ran him around the corral a few times to warm his back, hung a snaffle bit in his mouth, mounted carefully, and rode the animal around the corral. There was a murmur of disappointment in the crowd when nothing untoward happened. The horse responded well as I circled the round corral and did figure eights, then I nodded to Paddock to open the corral gates and turn us loose into the big field.

I had just ridden the colt up on an irrigation canal bank when he figured he had me, dropped his nose between his forefeet, shot skyward, and came down bucking hard. I lost one stirrup, got it back, then lost the other. Every jump popped me up a little higher above the saddle, and I was starting to look for a soft place to land. Out in the middle of the field, the horse gave one big freak jump that should have sent me flying, but by accident I came down hard on the saddle. There was one split second when I considered jumping off, but I doubled the animal left and right, then rode him calmly back to the corrals.

Coming through the gate, I rode straight up to Paddock, who was standing there red-faced and flustered, angry that he had given that horse away. “You got any more horses around you old bastards can't ride?” I asked.

It turned out he had quite a few and was tickled to death that I asked. That afternoon, I saddled up one nasty horse after another and rode them until they quit. The last one was a big bay horse that ended up on top of the hayrack with me, and it took the rest of the afternoon to extract the animal and get him back to earth.

That afternoon gave me a confidence I'd never had before. There were some good old ranchers in that crowd of spectators, and I suddenly realized I was going to have to try my hand in the rodeos someday and determine just how well I could ride a bronc in competition.

It was not a good day for Ernest Paddock. He had just bought a beautiful set of draft harness for a team of Percherons he liked to drive in parades. He had hung the harness in a special place in the barn where he could show it off to visitors. We were having supper that night in the BK dining room when there was a knock on the door and in came a neighbor named Lester Hixon. Old Hick had a set of harness he wanted to sell Paddock, and his description of that harness was enough to make a teamster reach for his wallet. When Lester dragged the harness in across the floor, the leather gleamed and the silver conchas lit the room with a thousand little moons. Paddock was hooked and gave Hixon a pot full of cash and a fifth of whiskey for the set. “It's lots prettier even than the set I bought the other day,” he gloated as Hixon left. “And did I ever get it cheap!”

After supper we helped the old foreman pack the heavy harness down to the barn. It was an awful moment for Paddock. The harness hooks were empty. Hixon had sold Paddock his own rigging.

Not long after Lester Hixon sold Paddock the harness, he was arrested by livestock theft officers for possession of about fifty head of horses he had stolen from his neighbors. The law impounded the horses over in Medford, Oregon, some two hundred miles away, and held them as evidence in Hixon's coming trial. Hixon himself was released on bail.

The case never came to trial, for someone crept into the Medford stockyards one night and stole the herd of horses. The tracks led east to the Oregon desert, where the animals scattered like the winds and were never seen again.

Hixon was eventually sent to the pen on other charges. There he distinguished himself by doing leatherwork and silversmithing, creating items which were of great demand amongst his former neighbors. He sent Jack Morgan a breast collar inlaid with silver hearts, and Margaret Biddle acquired a half-breed bit whose shanks were inlaid with silver hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs, all done by Hixon while he was doing time.

I was afraid that Paddock would renege on his promise to give me the bay horse, but next morning he was out in the corrals helping me halter the little bay and tie the lead rope to Whingding's tail.

In a week, I was back at the BK a-horseback to pick up a string of colts to start, for Yamsi was in dire need of horseflesh, even though it was hard to come by cowboys willing to ride. I left the BK early one morning leading five colts tied nose to tail. I rode north of Bly past the Obenchain Ranch and headed for the Sycan Marsh and the ZX, where I would spend a few days.