Little Britches Read online

  “No,” Father said, “they’re both living. I don’t know how badly they’re hurt, but there don’t seem to be any bones broken.” He didn’t unwrap his coat from around me, but whispered to Mother. Then we went into the front room where the trunks were, and she closed the door. They were the only ones who ever found out about my pants. And it never happened again.

  While Mother ripped an old sheet into bandages, Father went out to look around the barn. When he came back, he said, “Coyotes. Must have closed in and frightened them about daylight. There’s plenty of sign. What have you got for an antiseptic?”

  Mother put her hand up to her mouth. “I don’t think there’s a thing here, except a couple of bichloride tablets.”

  “Never mind,” Father said. “Ralph, you bring the bandages. I’ve got a can of axle grease in the wagon.”

  I hadn’t expected him to take me with him after my accident, and pulled my coat on as fast as I could. I was afraid both horses might die before we could get back, and wanted Father to run, but he wouldn’t. You could ask him all the questions you wanted to; he never got cross. So I said, “Why didn’t it kill Nig to pound his head on the track? Do you think Bill pounded his head, too? Father, how did Bill get out when Nig couldn’t?”

  “Well,” Father said, “Nig hadn’t been in there long enough to do himself much damage. The blood was all fresh and bright, so they must have fallen in less than fifteen minutes before we got there. Nig pounded his head because he was frantic. Bill had no reason to do it, because he could get out. From the marks on the track, I’m sure that one of his hind legs didn’t go through at all, and that he braced himself with his head to pull his front legs out. I’ll show you when we get there.”

  Father whistled when we got near the edge of the gulch. He was so much taller than I that he could see down into it sooner. I ran to the edge. Bill and Nig were cropping grass around a wet spot. Nig was limping, but Bill didn’t seem to mind the blood that was oozing from torn places on his thigh and forelegs.

  As soon as Father saw that the horses were up on their feet, we went over to the trestle. He picked me up and, after looking up and down the track, walked out on the bridge. Then he scrootched down and showed me all the marks on the crossties. “Almost everything that happens leaves its telltale marks,” he said. “If you teach yourself to see all the marks, you can always read the story.” Then he had me wait while he went down into the gulch and led the horses out. He said that since they were on their feet, we could do a better job of dressing them at the house.

  Mother came out to help with the horses when we got back. She was always good when there was sickness. She took scissors and started clipping hair from around the torn places on Nig’s forelegs. “I’m worried about this one, Charlie,” she said. “He must be badly hurt to limp so.”

  Father was poking his fist up against Bill’s belly. “I’m not worried much about him,” he said, “but I’m afraid this one may be done for. I don’t like the way he’s drawn up in the loin.”

  2

  Neighbors

  FATHER had just led the horses back to the barn when a man drove into our yard with a pair of fast-stepping bays. He drove right past the house and swung around in a circle. His horses didn’t slow down all the way around, but pulled up beside us with the pole of the buckboard pushing their collars way up high on their necks. The man wasn’t quite so old as Father, but he was as tall, and a lot heavier. He stepped out of the rig without putting the lines down, and held his right hand out to Father. “I’m Fred Aultland, your next-door neighbor, a mile up the line,” he said.

  After Father shook hands and told him he was Charles Moody, Mr. Aultland held his hand out to me. I tried to take hold of it as Father did, but it was too big, and I only got hold of three fingers. “And mine’s Ralph Moody,” I said; “I like you.” I did like Mr. Aultland right from the start.

  “And I like a man that speaks his mind,” he told me. Then he said to Father, “Hear you had a little hard luck with your team, and thought I’d drop in to see if I couldn’t lend a hand. I got half a dozen teams standing around eating their heads off at this time of year. Better let me lend you one till yours gets back on its feet again.”

  Father said, “Thank you, Mr. Aultland, but I believe we’ll make out all right. Of course, these fellows will be stiff for a few days, but I haven’t got much hauling to do, and I don’t think the black is hurt very bad.”

  Mr. Aultland said, “Hell, Charlie, don’t call me Mister; my name’s Fred.” He stepped over near Bill and pushed his thumb down hard on his back along toward the hip. He looked at Father and lifted one eyebrow. All he said was, “Kidney?”

  He and Father talked about horses and kidneys for a while. Then Mr. Aultland said he was going to Fort Logan, and asked if there was anything he could bring us. Father sent me to ask Mother, and she told me the name of some kind of salve for the horses, but when I got back outside I had forgotten it. Mr. Aultland was already on his buckboard. He said, “Never mind, I’ll get you some stuff that works wonders with galls and wire cuts.” Then he let the lines go loose just half a second, and his team was away like Santa Claus’s reindeers.

  When Mr. Aultland came back, his horses were still running as fast as they were when he left. He drove around the circle, as he had before, and pulled up right beside the back steps. Father had gone to see if he could find the stakes that marked the corners of our land, so Mother went to the door. Mr. Aultland gave her a quart jar of blue-colored salve, a big square package, and a Denver Post. He said, “Tell Charlie to lay this stuff on over those sores good and heavy. It’s got blue vitriol in it, but tell him not to be afraid of it. It’ll dry those sores up quicker than anything else.”

  Mother looked at the package, and Mr. Aultland grinned. “Just a little baker’s bread for the kids. I figured you’d have both hands full without bakin’ for a couple of days.”

  Mother thanked him, and asked how much we owed him. “Forget it,” he said. “Bessie or Mother’ll prob’ly be down to borrow something off of you before the week’s out.”

  “Thank you ever so much, and tell them I shall be delighted to see them,” Mother said, as she turned away.

  But Mr. Aultland called, “Say, I don’t see any cows around here. What you going to give these kids for milk?”

  We were all watching out through the window. Mother’s face got red as could be, and she said, “Oh, we have a whole case of evaporated milk; they’ll be all right.”

  “That stuff’s only good for chuck wagons,” he said. Then he yelled, “Hey, Ralph. Get your jacket on and take a ride with me.”

  I just got a glimpse of the headline in the newspaper as I was getting my coat on. It said, “Man Killed by Mountain Lion at Moffat.” Then Mother put it up on the lamp shelf.

  When I climbed on the buckboard beside Mr. Aultland, he reached over and slapped me on the leg. It was a good hard slap, but I liked it. As we tore out of our yard, he asked me if I’d ever driven a team. I told him, yes, Father let me hold the lines when we were bringing out the lumber. He passed his reins right over to me, and said, “Here take ahold of ’em. Better wrap ‘em around your hands once; you ain’t very stout yet.”

  He showed me how to wrap the lines around my hands so they wouldn’t slip, and told me to hold them up tight. The long-legged bays were running like sixty, and I was scared. I pulled on the lines as hard as I could, but all that happened was that my bottom slipped forward on the seat. Mr. Aultland put his arm around me and held me back so I could pull harder. He said, “Betcha my life you’ll make a horseman. If you was my kid, I’d put a box in front here so you’d have something to brace your feet against.”

  As we got close to his house, he gathered both my hands inside one of his and helped me pull. The bays only slowed up a little, and the hind wheels of the buckboard slewed way around when we turned into his driveway. Aultland’s house was four times the size of ours, and there was a big red barn, and corrals, and the fields bey
ond were knee-deep with brown stubble.

  A tall, pretty girl came out to meet us when we stopped by the back door of the house. She had reddish-brown hair, and her eyes were the same color as a brand-new penny. She must have been nineteen or twenty. “Sis,” Mr. Aultland said, “this is our new neighbor. There’s a whole parcel of kids and they haven’t got a cow. How about taking them over some milk? The woman seems to be right nice, and said she’d be glad to see you.”

  While the girl was asking me what my name was, and telling me hers, Mr. Aultland tied the horses to a hitch rack, and went off to the barn. She said her mother was frying a batch of doughnuts, and asked me if I wouldn’t like to come in and have a hot one. I said, “Yes, I would, Miss Aultland. We haven’t had any hot doughnuts since we left East Rochester.”

  She laughed and said, “Don’t you dare call me Miss Aultland—that makes me sound like a schoolmarm. You call me Bessie. Come on now, we’ll get some doughnuts.”

  Mrs. Aultland was as nice as Bessie. She wasn’t very tall, but fat, with wavy gray hair. When I told her I liked Bessie and her husband fine, she laughed, and tweaked my ear. “That’s the finest compliment I’ve had in years,” she said, “but don’t you let Fred fool you. He’s just my little boy, only he’s big. He ain’t even thirty yet. And don’t you go calling him Mr. Aultland; it’ll get him stuck-up. You call him Fred.”

  Bessie didn’t let me drive going back. Maybe she didn’t know I wanted to. She and Mother got along fine. I went out to the barn where Father was putting some of the blue salve on Bill and Nig. When we came back to the house, Bessie was saying to Mother, “I’m not going to keep saying Mrs. Moody. What shall I call you?”

  Mother laughed and said, “That’s just the way I’d like to have it. My name is Mary, but nobody ever calls me that. When I was a girl, they used to call me Molly.”

  Bessie said, “All right. Molly it is. I’ll be seeing you often, Molly.” She picked up the reins and was gone.

  While we were eating supper that night, the coyotes began to howl. It sounded as though there were dozens of them; some close by, and some far away. It made shivers run up and down my back, and I think it did the same thing to Mother. As soon as supper was over, Father got up and took the lantern from the nail by the door. As he turned up the globe, Mother put both hands up to her cheeks and said, “Charlie, you’re not going out there! I won’t let you go out there!”

  Father had lit the lantern. He set it down, and took Mother in his arms. “Mame,” he said, “we’ll have to face the situations we find in this country. These fellows can’t be too dangerous, or Aultland would have warned us. If the horses were in shape to defend themselves, I wouldn’t go. But they’re not. I’ve rolled the wagon across the open side of the barn, so they can’t break out again. Coyotes are said to be afraid of a light. I’ve got to hang this lantern on the wagon.”

  He picked up the lantern and went out. Mother stood in the open doorway, and we watched the lantern till it disappeared around the barn. The coyotes’ howling stopped. In a few minutes Father was back, and said everything looked all right at the barn. Then the howling started again. Mother was still fidgety, and asked, “Where is Moffat, Charlie?”

  Father looked at her and answered, “Moffat? Oh, it’s in the mountains west of here somewhere. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Mother said. “I just wondered, that’s all.”

  Mother put the smaller children to bed while Grace and I did the dishes, and she made us go just as soon as we were finished. The coyotes stopped howling after a little while, but we couldn’t go to sleep. Grace whispered over and asked me if I thought the mountain lions had come down and frightened the coyotes away. I was afraid they had, but I told her not to worry, because Father wouldn’t let them get us. He must have heard us whispering, because he came to the door and said he didn’t want to hear any more whispering. Father always meant what he said, so we kept quiet, and I guess we went to sleep pretty soon.

  The moon was way over toward the mountains when something woke me up. It woke everybody else, too. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it was going to jump out. Then there was a clatter at the back of the house. Something had knocked the pile of firewood over. Grace shrieked, “The mountain lion!” and all the younger children yelled as though the lion had them by the ears.

  Father leaped out of bed and ran to the kitchen for the lantern. I guess he thought Grace had really seen a lion. Mother rushed from one window to the other, slamming them down tight and crying, “Don’t go out, Charlie! Don’t go out! He’ll kill you the way he did the man at Moffat.”

  Father didn’t go out. He sat on the edge of the girls’ bed, with Muriel on his knee and one arm around Mother, while he told us there wasn’t a bit of danger. Everybody stopped crying pretty soon, but they were all holding their breath as I was. It was so still it almost hurt. But only for a few minutes. Then the most terrible noise I had ever heard came from right outside our window. We were all too scared to make a sound, till I heard Mother whisper, “Oh, God,” and knew she was praying. A few minutes later there was an awful racket at the barn. We heard one of the horses squeal, and the sound of heels thudding against boards. Mother had to read to us a long time before we went back to sleep.

  At daylight Father went to the barn to see if we had any horses left. In a couple of minutes he was back at the kitchen door, laughing and calling us all to come out to the barn. Cold as it was, Mother let us go without caps or coats. Standing between the two big horses was a Rocky Mountain canary—a little donkey, not much taller than I. He had been our mountain lion of the night, and had squeezed into the barn past the tail gate of the wagon.

  That Sunday afternoon our new neighbors came to call. None of them came into the house, but they sat in their buggies and talked a little while. First were the Corcorans. They lived on the same road we did, up west of Fred Aultland’s place. Mrs. Corcoran was a little bit of a woman, and did most of the talking—she had a high, sharp voice. Mr. Corcoran was a kind of round-shouldered man with a beard. She didn’t let him talk very much. She started asking all kinds of questions about where we came from, and whether we’d bought the ranch, and was Father a lunger, and did we want to buy a cow.

  Mother pulled her lips right up tight, but Father began telling them about the donkey—as if he hadn’t heard a single question. I don’t think Mrs. Corcoran liked it, because she said, “Robert, them cows of mine needs a load of hay before milkin’. It’s time you was gettin’ at it.” Mr. Corcoran didn’t say anything. He just fished on the reins a little, and the horses started moving. As they drove out of our yard, Mrs. Corcoran called back, “I hope you folks make out better than them Yankees that moved onto the Peterson place.”

  The next ones who came were the Aldivotes. They lived down near Bear Creek, behind Corcoran’s place. They were nice people. Quiet. And didn’t seem to find it easy to talk. They’d heard about Bill and Nig falling through the trestle, and I guess they just came to tell us they were sorry.

  It was nearly sunset before Carl Henry drove in with Miss Wheeler. The schoolhouse was in the far corner of our section, and Carl’s house was in the section beyond. He was an old bach—he must have been nearly thirty—and Miss Wheeler was the schoolteacher. She was prettier than Bessie Aultland.

  At first they talked about Grace and me going to school. Then about horses, and fences and ranching. After a while, Mother told them how scared we’d been the night before, and asked Carl how much danger there was from coyotes and mountain lions. He laughed, and told her that the donkey was just about as dangerous as the coyotes, and that he had never heard of a lion coming that far down from the mountains. When they left, they took me as far as Aultland’s to get the milk.

  I hadn’t much more than started back when I heard horses running behind me. I looked around, and there were four honest-to-goodness cowboys coming down the road. They wore ten-gallon hats and leather chaps with bright silver disks on them. As they came closer, I could see hol
sters with six-shooters in them, strapped to their waists. I was so busy watching that I forgot to move.

  They didn’t slow up a bit till they were right beside me, then they skidded their horses to a stop on the hard adobe road. One of them leaned over and said, “Want a lift, Sonny?”

  I almost bit my tongue before I could make it say, “Sure I do.”

  He leaned so far out of his saddle that he took the milk bucket right out of my hand without my lifting it. Then he passed it to one of the other fellows, and swung me up behind his saddle by one arm. I had hardly landed when the horses started off. My cowboy said, over his shoulder, “Hang on if you want to burn some trail.” I dug my fingers in under his cartridge belt. Somebody yelled, “Yipeee!” and we were off like scared rabbits.

  Mother used to recite “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” With all the guns and running horses, I was sure I was in it. They put me down right at our back steps and raced away. There wasn’t a drop of milk spilled when the cowboy passed me the bucket.

  3

  Fight, Molly!

  MONDAY morning Grace and I went to school, and the attendance went up a fifth. Bessie Aultland came for us and drove us over to the little brick schoolhouse, a mile and a half from home.

  When Bessie took us in to Miss Wheeler, she said, “I tried to tell Molly just to let them come in overalls and frock, not to get them all dressed up like they were going to Sunday school; but she wouldn’t think of it. Doesn’t Ralph look cute in his little Buster Brown suit? Molly made it herself.” Bessie didn’t really talk loud, but her voice was clear and rang in the little room.

  There were ten pupils in the school—I was going to say, children, but I couldn’t, because Rudolph Haas was nearly as tall as Father. He was in the eighth grade. They all watched us like chicken hawks while Miss Wheeler had us read and do numbers for her. After we were done with the numbers, she decided Grace belonged in the fourth grade and I in the third.