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  Anyone could have seen how badly Mr. Bendt felt, and that he was just trying to cover up by hooting and making a joke. I didn’t feel a bit good myself. Even though I’d stayed on Clay, I’d only proved that Hazel was right when she said I probably couldn’t handle him. I hadn’t wanted the horse in the first place, and wished I could find some way of turning him over to Mr. Bendt.

  I was sitting there on the claybank with my head down, thinking, when Mr. Batchlett slapped me on the leg, and said, “Get your feathers up, boy! Between you and Hazel, you earned him fair and square. He’ll dump you plenty of times, but you’ll prob’ly learn to ride him.” He’d started away, then turned back, and said, quiet enough that no one else could hear, “You understand, Little Britches, that by pickin’ this horse you’ve picked yourself one of the toughest jobs in the outfit—and there won’t be nobody comin’ to help you.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “I know it.” I really didn’t, until that minute, but I couldn’t say so.

  I rode Clay around a little after Mr. Batchlett talked to me, and he was as easy to handle as Lady. I was so excited about having him that I didn’t pay too much attention to the picking and shaking-down until it was almost my turn for the second go-round. All I’d noticed was that no one had picked Blueboy. Everyone ahead of me had used his first-pick horse to go in after his second. When Zeb went in, I rode Clay up to wait for my turn. I was sitting on him, just outside the corral gate, thinking just how I’d catch Blueboy, when I saw Hazel run to her father. He leaned down, and she seemed to be whispering to him for a minute, then she came running over to me. When I leaned down she whispered, “Take Pinch!”

  “If I don’t take Blueboy this time, somebody else will get him,” I whispered back.

  That time Hazel looked right up into my eyes. She shook her head hard, and said, “Uh-uh! You take Pinch; you’ll need him!”

  After Hazel’s having picked Clay for me, and especially after her having helped me catch him, I couldn’t tell her to mind her own business, so I said, “All right. Which one is he?”

  “Well,” she said, “he’s bay, and he’s a little bit jugheaded, and not very pretty, but he’s . . . there he goes! Right behind that silver-tip!”

  I’d seen plenty of Pinch when I’d been trying to catch Clay, and had told myself he’d be the last horse in the remuda I’d ever pick. He looked old and bony and homely and lazy, and was about the meanest gelding I’d ever seen. He kept his ears pinned down tight, and every time another horse got in front of him he’d snake his neck out and bite it on the rump.

  The remuda was running in a merry-go-round, and I took Clay into the corral real slowly, planning to make a flip catch the first time Pinch passed me. But he didn’t go past. He dropped out of the circle and nipped his way into a bunch that was jammed in the far corner. I’d hardy looked toward Pinch, and don’t know how in the world he knew I was after him, but he did—and so did Clay. Both of them knew a lot more about the whole business than I did.

  Pinch turned to face us squarely as I rode toward the corner. One after another, the other horses dashed away, but he didn’t move a muscle, and Clay never once turned his head toward the others. He slowed his gait and, under me, felt the way a cat looks when it’s creeping up on a ground squirrel. I couldn’t very well make a flip catch with Pinch facing right at me, so I began to whirl my loop slowly—and must have glanced up at it. In that split moment Pinch dodged to get away, and quicker than the pop of a whip, Clay dived to stop him. If I hadn’t grabbed for the saddle horn faster than I could think, he’d have spilled me. As it was, I dropped my coil and the loop fell dead. I’d have lost my catch rope altogether if the end of it hadn’t been tied to the saddle horn.

  I was even more ashamed of myself for grabbing the horn than for wasting a throw and dropping my rope. Neither horse moved until I had the rope coiled again and had begun to swing my loop. As it came forward on the fourth swing, I yanked it down hard at Pinch’s head. But his head wasn’t there—and I came awfully near not being there either. In the split fraction of a second it took that loop to strike, Pinch had snaked his head away and dodged to one side. Clay dodged right with him, and I had to grab for the saddle horn again.

  I don’t think Pinch ever moved his hind feet, but he kept feinting and dodging with his front ones, and Clay feinted and dodged a little quicker. He didn’t pay any more attention to me than if I’d been a sack of rags—and that’s just about the way I rode him. More than half the time I was half out of the saddle, and the only way I could stay in it at all was by keeping a death grip on the horn. Hank was yelling orders at me, I could hear the men hooting and laughing, but the two horses kept feinting so fast I couldn’t get my balance long enough to coil in my rope.

  I must have slid back and forth across my saddle a thousand times before I had sense enough to pull Clay away from that corner, so he’d stand still long enough for me to think. I knew I’d lost my head in trying to handle Pinch, and I guess that’s what made me think of Hi Beckman. At the Y-B ranch he was always telling me, “A man that loses his head loses his horse. Don’t never tackle a horse till you’ve watched him and know his quirks.”

  When I’d sat still and thought a couple of minutes, I was sure I knew how to catch Pinch—and it worked just the way I’d thought it would. I whirled my rope, drove him out of the corner and into the merry-go-round, then crowded him until he caught up to the slowest runners. He did what I knew he’d do; snaked his head out to nip the horse in front of him on the rump. My loop caught him when he was looking where he was going to nip.

  Pinch behaved all right when I led him to the breaking pen, but Sid didn’t. When I was swinging out of my saddle, he fanned my behind with his hat, as if he thought I’d burned it when I was sliding around on Clay. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to: the men howled and hollered like a pack of moon-struck coyotes.

  I didn’t look at anybody when I rode Clay out and stripped off my saddle, and I was halfway back to the breaking pen with it when Mr. Batchlett called, “Hey! How about them spurs! Better leave ’em on the outside!”

  With everybody laughing at me—and having to go back to take off my spurs—I was a little careless about the way I saddled old Pinch. He blew his belly up like a balloon when Sid was passing the cinch under him, and I didn’t notice that he was still holding his breath when I yanked the cinch tight and set my knot. “Better hold off a minute and tighten that cinch again!” Sid told me, as I started up the poles to mount, “he’s still as swole up as a bloated calf!”

  I’d fussed around and been laughed at enough, and I wasn’t going to wait and let people think I was afraid to get on Pinch. Besides, I didn’t think the old horse would any more than crowhop. “He’s just hay-bellied, that’s all!” I said, balanced on the top rail, and eased myself down into the saddle.

  I found out how hay-bellied Pinch was in less than two seconds after Sid turned him loose—and I found out what kind of crowhopping he did. That old horse went at the job of unloading me the same way a man would go at chopping wood—except that he made a quarter turn between every down stroke. He didn’t move either forward or back, each jump was just like the one before it, and he didn’t hurry. With a tight saddle, any man—if he had a stout enough neck and backbone—could have ridden him all day without being thrown, but I didn’t have any of them.

  Pinch let out a big groan and a barrelful of air on his first jump, and from there on, the saddle rolled around on him like the skin on a cat. With every thud and turn, it slipped farther forward and to one side, and I got dizzier and dizzier.

  It would have been a disgrace to grab the saddle horn, but I couldn’t even do that. It was way around where my right knee should have been, and I’d had to kick my feet out of the stirrups. I don’t remember much of anything after the first half-dozen jumps, but, when Pinch stopped, I had a death grip on his mane with both hands, and my legs were clamped in front of his shoulders like a collar.

  At first, there was
n’t a sound outside the breaking pen, but the men started laughing again when Sid picked me off. And I heard Mr. Bendt hoot, “By diggity, I’ll say he’s a trick-rider! That kid’s sure got a ridin’ style all his own!”

  The lump came back into my throat, and I was sure I’d made such a fool of myself that I’d always be a joke around the place. But Mr. Batchlett was waiting when I led Pinch out of the pen. He put his hand on the back of my neck and rubbed it around a couple of times, good and hard. Then he said, “I could’a told you what would happen before you climbed aboard, but I reckoned it was best to let the horse learn you. Now you’ll remember to double-check your gear before you step foot in a stirrup. You ought to do all right this summer if you can learn to ride ’em; you got two right smart horses.”

  I still didn’t think much of old Pinch, but I nodded and said, “Yes, sir—and I think I’ll remember.”

  When my turn was coming up for the third go-round, I kneed the last breath of air out of Pinch and hauled my cinch strap as tight as I could get it. Blueboy still hadn’t been picked, and I didn’t want to take a chance with a slipping saddle when I went in after him.

  Hazel hadn’t come near me since I’d made that terrible ride on Pinch’s neck, but she came walking over when we were waiting outside the corral gate. She didn’t mention the ride, or the way I’d slipped and slid around on Clay, but asked, “Which one you goin’ to pick this time?”

  “Blueboy,” I told her.

  “Fiddle-tee-dee!” she said, with her nose wrinkled up. “He ain’t got any more sense than y . . . , than a jack rabbit. Look at him! `Four white feet and a white nose; haul off his hide and feed him to the crows.’ Why don’t you pick Juno?”

  “Because I want Blueboy,” I told her.

  “Why?”

  “Because I like him,” I said. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “Hmff! ‘Tis for you, I reckon!” she snapped, and started away toward her mother. Then she flung back over her shoulder, “but you’ll be sorry to the very longest day you live.”

  “If I’m sorry, it’ll be because I got this crabby old jughead,” I snapped back. But when I rode into the corral I wasn’t as sure as I had been that I wanted Blueboy. He’d been getting more and more excited as the picking went on, and was no longer running with the bunch, but dashing this way and that—ripping at the other horses and driving them out of his way. If I hadn’t had that little tiff with Hazel, I’d have tossed my rope onto a neat-looking pinto mare that had caught my eye. But if I’d done it, everybody would have known I was letting Hazel boss me around. I just about had to take Blueboy, whether I still wanted him or not.

  If cow horses aren’t mind readers, they come awfully close to it. I’d hardly made up my mind that I had to take Blueboy before Pinch knew it. He didn’t pay the least bit of attention to any other horse in the corral—and he surprised me half out of my skin. I’d just set my loop whirling when Blueboy made a wild dash past us. The cantle of my saddle came up and spanked me across the seat of my pants, then it snapped to the side. I don’t suppose it took me a tenth of a second to catch my balance, or I’d have gone flying. But in that split instant old Pinch had pulled the throttle wide open. He was racing stride for stride with Blueboy, and holding him in against the pole fence at my right. All I had to do was to let my loop drop over his head; I could have made the catch just as easy with a barrel hoop.

  Every other horse had cooled right down when it felt the rope around its neck, but Blueboy went wild. He reared, struck with his fore hoofs, then whirled and charged away. Pinch whirled to face him and half squatted—almost like a dog sitting down. The rope whizzed out like a whip lash, and Blueboy was the cracker when he reached the end of it. Pinch didn’t budge an inch when the rope twanged tight against the knot on the saddle horn, but Blueboy did a flying somersault and landed on his back. He was still groggy when he lurched to his feet and let me lead him to the breaking pen.

  I think all the men had expected another show when I rode in to make my third pick. And I don’t believe one of them expected me to take Blueboy. I guess it happened so fast that it took everybody as much by surprise as it did me. As Sid swung the bucking pen gate open, he yapped, “What in the blazin’ . . .?”

  But Mr. Batchlett came up to the fence and called, “Watch that horse, Sid! He’s treacherous!”

  “Ain’t it best I turn him back?” Sid asked.

  “He picked him; leave him learn his lesson!” Mr. Batchlett said in a hard dry voice. “But watch out when you saddle up! And hang in close for a pick-up when the kid mounts!”

  Blueboy was still acting half stunned, and hardly made a move when Sid hauled the cinch tight. Sid had his mouth clamped as tight as he pulled the cinch, and he didn’t open it until I was balanced on the top rail, ready to ease into the saddle. He’d taken the hackamore from his own rig, put it on Blueboy, and let the nose band out until it was only a couple of inches above the nostrils. As he passed me the hold-rope, he said, “See them scars acrost this blue devil’s muzzle? Them’s hackamore scars; he’s got a tender nose bone. Keep your hold-rope hauled up tight, so’s he can’t neither bog or h’ist his head. Don’t try to grab a-holt of nothin’ when you get throwed!”

  Then I eased into the saddle, found the stirrups, and Sid drew his horse away to turn us loose.

  Blueboy went up like a geyser, and came down running and crowhopping. He didn’t twist or side-jump, and I’d ridden yearling calves that were harder to stay on. After three crowhopping, bouncing turns around the breaking pen, he settled into a fairly even gait.

  I was sitting in the saddle sort of loose-jointed—thinking what I was going to say to Hazel—when Blueboy suddenly busted wide open. He caught me when I wasn’t ready, and I didn’t have a chance. From the instant of his first side-jump, I bounced around in my saddle like a pea in a gourd. I forgot what Sid had told me about keeping the hackamore tight, and couldn’t even hold an arm out for balance. Both arms and both legs were flailing and I was flying in mid-air when Sid’s arm looped around me and pulled me across his horse’s neck. I don’t think Blueboy even missed me; he kept right on pitching as if he were trying to throw the saddle over the moon.

  The wind was knocked out of me so much I couldn’t talk when Sid gathered me in—but he could. He spluttered at me like an old setting hen, wanting to know why in the world I’d picked Blueboy in the first place, why I hadn’t been watching out for tricks, and why I didn’t take a dive when he caught me napping. There weren’t any good answers, and I didn’t try to give any. It seemed as if I’d made a monkey of myself with everything I’d tried to do all afternoon, and I didn’t feel very happy when Sid let me slide down at the gate. If I could have slipped away, climbed onto Lady, and headed for home, I think I’d have done it.

  Blueboy was still kicking and bucking, and Mr. Batchlett looked pretty sore when he opened the gate and came in. “Well, young fellah,” he said, “you picked yourself a big handful, didn’t you? What you goin’ to do with him now you’ve got him?”

  “I haven’t got him,” I said. “He had me thrown clear when Sid grabbed me.”

  “Rode out your ten count, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “but then he wasn’t bucking like . . .”

  “Then he’s yours! You going to ride him or ruin him?”

  For a second it seemed as if the bottom had dropped out of my stomach, and my mouth went dry as powder. The first thought that crossed my mind was that Mr. Batchlett was sore at me for having picked Blueboy, and that he wanted me to get hurt.

  I hadn’t been so scared since the first time I was dumped off a horse—and I think that’s what saved me.

  That first tumble came back to me in a flash. It had been when I was eight years old. Father had picked me up, caught the horse, and told me to get back on. “Unless you show him who’s boss right now, it will ruin you both,” he’d told me. “He’ll lose respect for you, and you’ll lose respect for yourself.” When I’d hung back and told hi
m I was afraid, he’d said, “You don’t have to be ashamed of that. Every man who ever did a brave thing was afraid. It doesn’t take courage to do the things you’re not afraid of.”

  It almost seemed as if I could hear Father’s voice again. I looked up at Mr. Batchlett, and said, “I’ll ride him now . . . and thank you.”

  He slapped me on the shoulder, and called, “Get a rope on that blue devil, Sid! We got a bronc-twister comin’ up.”

  There wasn’t any real bronc-twisting to my second ride on Blueboy. He’d nearly bucked himself out in trying to unload the saddle. I kept the hackamore rope pulled tight, and he only made about ten straightforward pitches before he came to a stand.

  Even Hazel came over to the gate to meet us when I rode Blueboy out of the breaking pen, but she was still snippy. The first chance she got, she turned up her nose at me and said, “Well, you got him, Smarty, but you’ll be sorry.”

  When Mr. Bendt was in the corral for his third pick, Mr. Batchlett came and stood beside me. “You’ve got more horse there than a boy of your age ought to have,” he told me, “and I reckon I’m out of my head to let you keep him. He’s headstrong as a mule, tougher’n bull beef, and can’t be trusted. Don’t you go tryin’ to ride him without there’s one another of us close by.”

  I just nodded my head—we stood there for a couple of minutes, watching Mr. Bendt catch Juno—the neat pinto mare I’d had my eye on, and the one Hazel had told me to pick. Then Mr. Batchlett squeezed my shoulder a quick little grab, and said, “I know how you feel about him, Little Britches. Felt the same way ’bout his old man when I was younger—greatest wild horse ever I laid eyes on!” He rubbed a hand along Blueboy’s sweaty neck, smiled, and said, “Reckon maybe that’s why I ain’t give up on this worthless son-of-a-gun.”