BEN STEELE was five years old the first time he fell off a horse.
Happened over at the Gilberts’, neighbors a few hills away who raised racers. Grover Gilbert had put him on a retired plug named Old Pardner. “You just grab ahold of the horn and hang on, Bud,” Gilbert said, but as soon as that horse stepped onto the hardpan oval it took off, pitching the child into the bunchgrass and dirt. He was too young to remember the spill, but he heard about it often enough.
His father had been a cowboy, among the last to ride the open range, so it was only natural that the Old Man would take the measure of his oldest son by the boy’s ability to keep his seat.
At their ranch at Hawk Creek, the Old Man put him on a frisky cow pony, a mare named Squaw. In the afternoons—he was six or seven years old now—father and son would saddle up, cross a meadow, and climb into the hills.
Their second, maybe third time out, Squaw caught a hoof on broken ground, and Bud went flying.
The Old Man stopped his horse, looked down, shook his head.
“Horse stumbles and you fall off? You’re a helluva of cowboy!”
Then he dismounted, brushed the boy off, and hoisted him back into the saddle.
For a while Ben Steele was about half afraid of that animal, but he never spoke of his fear lest the Old Man leave him home and ride the hills without him.