16

Now, Mr. Man!

EVERY day that week we swept in a corralful of cattle in the forenoon, and cut them out after dinner. Each day I learned the work a little better with Clay—and each evening Hazel and Pinto went through a dozen practice runs without a bobble. But the best part of my days came after everyone else had gone to bed.

When I was unsaddling Pinch after Monday’s practice, Lady came to the corral gate and nickered softly to me. It made me ashamed of myself. I’d been so busy with Pinch and Clay that I hadn’t paid any attention to her since I’d abused and lamed her. I was still thinking about her when we were finishing supper, and put two biscuits in my pocket, because she always liked them.

After Ned and Hank had gone to the bunkhouse, I went back to the corral gate and whistled to Lady. By that time it was full dark and the moon hadn’t come up, so I couldn’t see her, but she nickered and came to me. I broke one of the biscuits into small pieces and stood for quite a little while, scratching her forehead as I fed them to her, and telling her I was sorry I’d been so rough with her.

As my eyes grew more used to the darkness, I could see that several other horses had come over, and that Clay was among them. I would never have thought of taking him a biscuit or that he would like to be petted. But I was feeling happy about the way we’d worked together that afternoon, so I opened the gate, went in, and walked slowly toward him. He moved away just as slowly, so I stood still—just holding out a piece of biscuit and speaking quietly. Clay stopped when I did, stood for a couple of minutes, then inched toward me. He let me scratch his head and shoulders as he took pieces of biscuit from my hand.

While I was petting Clay, there was a snort from behind me, and when I looked around I could make out the shape of Pinch’s jug head. He didn’t back away when I went toward him with a piece of biscuit held out, but kept his ears back, and snatched the pieces out of my hand as if he were letting me know that he didn’t want any petting.

I was probably with the horses for half an hour, then, when I was going to the bunkhouse I began to feel ashamed of myself again. Blueboy was my horse just as much as any of the others—except Lady—but I hadn’t even bothered to look for him. Instead of going to the bunkhouse I went back to the chuckhouse, and rapped on the kitchen door. After a minute, Mrs. Bendt opened it and said, not too pleasantly, “Yes. What is it you want?”

I hadn’t expected her to be cross, and sort of stammered, “Nothing. I was . . . I was just wondering if there was an extra biscuit left over from supper.”

Mrs. Bendt stopped scowling, and said, “Why, you poor little boy! Didn’t you get enough supper? You come right in the kitchen here while I get you a piece of pie and some milk! No wonder you’re starved after the way Watt’s worked the daylights out of you today!”

For a minute I didn’t know what to say or do. I couldn’t tell her I wanted the biscuit for Blueboy, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say that wouldn’t sound silly. Finally I stammered, “Well, it . . . it isn’t for me, and I’m not hungry, and I didn’t work very hard today. I just like to keep a biscuit on hand for . . . sometimes I used to give one to Lady—that’s my horse—when we were at home.”

“Well, for pity’s sake!” she said, as if she thought I must be half crazy. “Who ever heard of feeding biscuits to horses? But you wait a minute; I think there was four or five of ’em left over from supper—if Jenny didn’t throw ’em in the hogs’ bucket.”

When Mrs. Bendt had brought me the biscuits, and I’d thanked her, I took them out and hid all but one of them in the harness shop. That one I put in my pocket, and went back to the horse corral.

Lady, Pinch, Clay, and several other horses crowded around, but my eyes were still partly blinded from the kitchen light, and I couldn’t see anything of Blueboy. I must have made ten trips around the corral before I finally found him—and then it wasn’t from seeing, but from hearing him snort as he raced out of a corner.

From the pound of Blueboy’s hoofs I could tell what corner he’d run to, and once I knew where it was, it wasn’t hard to work my way slowly toward him. There was only one big danger: if I got him too frightened or excited he might stampede and run right over me. I was a little bit worried about it, but I’d learned from Father and Hi Beckman that steady, gentle talking would calm a horse better than anything else. So I inched slowly toward the corner, holding out the biscuit and saying anything that came into my head.

When the moon rose I’d spent more than an hour trying to get near Blueboy, and he’d dashed out of a corner past me six or seven times. I don’t know whether it was his getting used to me, my talking, or that he could see me better, but when the top of the moon showed above the hill, he stood long enough to let me get within a few feet of him. I had to remind myself of what Mr. Bendt had said about my having plenty of time ahead of me, but I didn’t hurry, and I kept talking as I inched forward with the biscuit held out.

Blueboy stood with his feet braced, his ears pricked forward, and white showing around his eyes in the moonlight. I couldn’t tell whether it was from hate or fear, and I knew that at any second he might lunge and strike with either his teeth or his hoofs. Hi used to tell me that a horse could smell fright on a person, and I think it’s true, because you can never do much with one when you’re afraid. That’s why I couldn’t even let myself think that Blueboy might strike—and one of the reasons I had to keep on talking.

My head was within less than three feet of Blueboy’s—and my heart was pounding as if it would jump out of my chest—when he snatched the biscuit from my hand and bolted away. When I went back to the bunkhouse my nerves were still zinging, and it was a couple of hours before I could go to sleep.

Tuesday night I waited for moonrise before I went to the horse corral, and when I whistled for Lady, Pinch came with her. Clay seemed glad enough to have a piece of biscuit and some petting, but he stood back and made me come to him. Blueboy stayed way at the back of the corral, snorting and stamping a hoof. But that night it only took me about ten minutes to work my way up to him, and he didn’t bolt after he’d snatched the piece of biscuit. Still, he wouldn’t let me get close enough to put a hand on him.

It wasn’t until Thursday that Blueboy would let me touch him, and then it was only because I wouldn’t let him have any biscuit until he did. And he moved off to the other side of the corral just as soon as he got it. Friday he was a little better, and let me walk up to him slowly without his backing off. Even then, he didn’t want my hand on him, and only let me stroke his muzzle a second before he jerked it away.

Saturday we made the last roundup sweep of the home ranch. It was the one nearest the buildings, and not a very large one, so we had all the cattle in the corral by noon. When I was going in to dinner Hazel met me outside the chuckhouse door, and seemed as excited as if it were already the Fourth of July. “We’re having roast pork and applesauce and peach pie,” she whispered, “and you eat every single bit you can hold.”

“Why?” I asked. “I’m not very hungry this noon.”

“That don’t make no never-minds!” she whispered again. “You eat every mouthful you can stuff down! I got a special reason; I’ll tell you after dinner. And don’t you go back to the corrals till I get the dishes done! You wait for me right here!” Then she ran away to the kitchen.

The dairyhands had just butchered a young pig, and the roast pork was real good, but I couldn’t hold more than two helpings. And all the time I was eating I could hear dishes rattling and clicking in the kitchen. Hazel must have been washing them just as fast as Jenny could take them in from the chuckhouse, because I only had to wait three or four minutes for her. Then she stuck her head out of the kitchen doorway, and called, “Go get your chaps and spurs on! I’ll meet you up to the milk house at the dairy barn.” Before I could ask her what in the world it was all about she’d ducked back inside.

I couldn’t imagine why Hazel wanted me at the milk house, and particularly with my spurs and chaps on, but I went back to the bunkhouse, put them on and went up to the dairy barn. When I got there she was standing by a pair of scales, and she had both hands on her hips. “Now, Mr. Man,” she said, “we’ll see if you gained your weight back yet! I a’ready got the scales set for seventy-two pounds.”

I knew it would be cheating a little to weigh with my chaps and spurs on, because I’d weighed seventy-two pounds without them and barefooted when I left home. But I knew how much Hazel wanted me to show her the somersault trick before Mr. Batchlett came back, so I kept my mouth shut and stepped on the scales. The bar went up with a good hard bump, and Hazel squealed, “You done it! You done it! Now there ain’t no reason you can’t show me how to do the somerset trick.”

With the amount of riding I’d done that week—and with staying up kind of late every evening—I hadn’t been a bit sure I’d gained all my weight back. But from the way that scale arm bumped I knew I had, and I wanted to tease Hazel a little, so I said, “Don’t you think it’s cheating to weigh with my stomach nearly popping and with my chaps and spurs on?”

Hazel thought about it for a few seconds, then put a finger out to try the scale beam, and said, “Well . . . the chaps might be a little bit cheatish, but what you’ve et is a part of you now, so it’s fair.”

“And how about the spurs?” I asked.

“They don’t weigh next to nothin’! Just take your chaps off!”

“All right,” I told her, “but you’ll have to set the scales up a pound.”

Hazel looked at my spurs and seemed to be weighing them with her eyes. “Take ’em off, then!” she snapped. “They don’t weigh over half a pound, and I ain’t going to be cheated by no half a pound!”

When the weighing was over, I was even happier than Hazel. Besides gaining back all the weight I’d lost in the mountains, I gained another couple of pounds. For two years I hadn’t been able to gain an ounce, but at last it looked as if I might be growing up a little. “All right,” I told Hazel, “as soon as we finish cutting the cattle this afternoon I’ll ask your father if I can show you how to do the trick. But you’ll have to watch me do it at least a dozen times before you can try it yourself.”

“That’s just more excuses!” Hazel shouted. “That’s just more excuses so’s I won’t be able to do it by the time Batch gets home—and then you’ll go out on the next trip with him—and then I won’t never get to learn to do it!”

“Maybe you can try it tomorrow if your father thinks you’re ready, but unless you’ll promise not to try it today I won’t show you how it’s done.”

“You’re a cheater! You’re a cheater!” she flared at me. “You’re just tryin’ to save the trick all for your own self!”

I knew Hazel didn’t mean what she was saying, and was only blowing off steam, so I grinned and said, “Promise?”

“Well . . . I s’pose I got to, but it ain’t . . . isn’t fair,” she said slowly.

“Cross your heart?”

Hazel made a quick X with one finger across the front of her blouse, and said, “Now don’t go to fiddle-diddlin’ around all afternoon with cutting that little dab o’ cattle, so’s to let it get supper time on us! Get your saddle on Clay while I run for the herd book!”

Clay worked the best he ever had for me that afternoon, and by half past three the last animal on the home ranch had been rounded up, cut out, and written down in the herd book. “That done it!” Mr. Bendt sang out, as Hank opened the gate for the last cow. “By the old Harry, I’d swore we couldn’t’a done it—short-handed as we was! You boys done fine—you too, Hank! Let’s knock off and call it a day.”

Hazel was trying to write down the last cow with one hand and talk sign language to me with the other, so I rode over to Mr. Bendt, and said, “I’ve gained back more weight than I lost, and I promised Hazel that when that time came I’d show her how I do one of the trick-riding stunts. She’s promised not to try it herself today, but is it all right if I show her how it’s done?”

Hazel had jumped down from her little platform and was running toward us. When her father saw her coming, he asked real quietly, “Think she’s ready? How risky is it?”

I nodded, and said, “Well, you could watch me do it a few times and see for yourself. Of course, she could take kind of a bad spill if she got scared and tightened up at the last second.”

By that time Hazel was hopping up and down at the side of her father’s horse. “I ain’t scairt the least tiny little bit!” she squealed, “And I ain’t tightened up once at practicin’ all week! And anyways, I ain’t going to do it myself today. Can’t he show me? Can’t he show me, Paw?”

“Can’t see no hurt in him showin’ you, gal,” he told her, “but I ain’t about to let you break your neck in somethin’ you couldn’t prob’ly make out at. You kids go get your horses saddled! Where at do you reckon on doin’ this stunt?”

“Well, you said we’d have to do it here at the corrals,” I told him, “but I think the horses would do better for the first time or two if we did it where we’ve been practicing. I’m not much worried about Pinch, but I’m going to use Pinto mostly—he’ll probably spook the first couple of times; most horses do.”

Mr. Bendt rose in the saddle, so that his head was higher than the corral poles, and looked toward the house. “Hmmm,” he said, “where’s this practicin’ place at?”

“A little valley about three miles up the north trail,” I told him; “the one where you swept out the big White Face bull and three heifers.”

“Hmmm,” he said again. “Reckoned that was it by the way the turf was chawed up. Might not be a bad idee.”