Home Ranch Read online

  After we’d eaten, Zeb helped Hank and Sid, so I went to work with Tom and Ned. With what Father had taught me, and what I’d learned from watching Zeb, I could make a tree fall fairly near where I wanted it to. As soon as Tom and Ned found it out, they let me do the felling and cut the posts, while they did the trimming and loading. It worked out pretty well, and I was kind of proud that I’d found something I could do better than most full-grown cowhands.

  The sun was still high when we reached the home ranch, but I didn’t do anything to be proud of after we got there.

  As soon as we had the teams unharnessed Mr. Batchlett called, “You boys can leave the unloading till morning and saddle up; we got fifty head of stock to cut and sort this afternoon. Better toss your saddle on Clay, Little Britches, and work the kinks out of him.”

  I don’t think I worked many kinks out of Clay, but he worked plenty of them into me. Having the only cutting horse on the place in my string, it was my job to separate each animal from the herd as Mr. Batchlett called for it. I’d seen plenty of cattle cutting, but had never been the one to do it, or paid much attention to the way it was done.

  As soon as Mr. Batchlett pointed out the first calf he wanted, I rode Clay straight at it, planning to guide him around it and drive it out of the herd. Until he found which calf we were after I was the boss, but from there on I was lucky to stay in the saddle. Clay could sense an animal’s move before I could see it, and regardless of which way I tried to guide him, he’d dodge with the calf. He did it so lightning fast that before I could set myself, the saddle would be jerked out from under me. Twice I got spilled completely, and had to pick myself up while Clay took the right calf out of the herd alone. After the second tumble, Mr. Batchlett called, “You’re trying too hard! Leave him have his head as soon as he knows which one you want! And keep aholt of the horn. He don’t need help from nobody!”

  I’d always thought it was a disgrace to grab the horn, or to let a horse do whatever he wanted to. But it was sure that Clay didn’t need any help from me, and just as sure that I’d have to hang onto the horn if I was going to stay with him. After that I didn’t fall all the way off again, but I was close to it forty times, and had a lot of trouble making Clay take the right calf out of the herd. Hank kept yelling at me all afternoon, and three or four times Mr. Batchlett called, “Take it easy! Take it easy! Don’t try to rush him!” By the tone of his voice I knew he thought I was just about hopeless. When the job was finally done I was so ashamed of myself that I wanted to crawl off and hide, and I felt as if I’d been run through a thrashing machine.

  Being ashamed of the bad job I’d done riding Clay got me into plenty of trouble. Right in the middle of supper, Hank began to make fun of me for the way I’d fallen off a tame old cow pony, and telling how he used to catch and ride wild broncos when he was my age. If I hadn’t been so tired and ashamed of myself, it wouldn’t have bothered me, but that night I couldn’t help boiling over. “Why don’t you brag about your post-hacking?” I snapped at him. “I’ll bet I can cut twice as many posts as you can any day!”

  “You didn’t cut no posts!” Hank shouted. “Zeb cut ’em! By dogies, if I ain’t cut two posts to your one I’ll . . . why when I was . . .”

  Mr. Batchlett thumped the table hard, and said, “That’s enough! You team up with Zeb tomorrow, Sid, and let these two wildcats find out who’s got the longest tail.”

  Next morning I was up before the sun, took my axe to the forge, ground the cutting edge to a long slim bevel, and honed it carefully. Then I wrapped it in a gunny sack so it wouldn’t get nicked, and put it in Hank’s wagon. He was the last to come in for breakfast, and was bent over with one hand on the small of his back. “By dogies,” he sort of whined, “they’s a cloudburst o’ rain a-comin’ on ’fore noontime. The way this here misery gits into my backbone, I can always tell it. Don’t reckon we dast venture into them mountains till it’s over. Water’ll come a-roarin’ down them canyons forty foot deep.”

  “A few clouds drifting in from the north,” Mr. Batchlett said, “but I don’t reckon we’ll get more’n a drizzle of rain.”

  “By dogies, not the way my back’s a-feelin’!” Hank groaned. “This here’s cloudburst misery I got! Couldn’t no more swing an axe or lift a post today than I could fly.”

  Mr. Batchlett didn’t look up, but said, “That’s enough belly-achin’! You’re going to cut posts with the kid, like it or not! If you want to limber up while the boys unload, you can take the turn-back yearlings out to the calf pasture.”

  “Way my back’s a-kickin’ up, I don’t know if I can make it or not, but I’ll do the best I can,” Hank whined.

  He was still at the table when the rest of us went out, and we were pretty well started on the unloading when he hobbled to the corral, caught a horse, and saddled it. He was still walking bent over, and made three tries before he pulled himself up into the saddle. But the horse he’d caught was one of his new string. It took half a dozen crowhops as soon as Hank was in the saddle, and he rode them out with his back as limber as a buggy whip. Then he saw us watching him, and began to cuss and rub his back as he rode out of sight.

  Hank hadn’t come back from the pasture when the other two teams drove off to the mountains, so I went to the corrals and was scratching Lady’s forehead when Hazel and Kenny rode up to the gate. She was on a nice little pinto and he was bareback on a sleepy looking old donkey. Ever since Sunday I’d been wanting to see Hazel and ask her why she’d tricked me into picking Clay, but she didn’t give me a chance. Before I could open my mouth, she taunted, “Well, Smarty, didn’t I tell you you’d be sorry for picking Blueboy? I seen you when he run away with you Monday morning. You looked like he was goin’ to dump you off again every minute.”

  I didn’t like that “again” business, and besides, I didn’t want her to think she could act as if I was just a little boy, so I said, “Well, I haven’t seen anything to be sorry about yet! And if you saw him running away, you must have seen me bring him back. I didn’t look very much as if I was falling off then, did I?”

  Before she could answer, Kenny piped up, “Betcha my life you can’t ride Jack.”

  “That old jackass?” I asked him.

  “Betcha my life you can’t ride him like he is.”

  It was bad enough to have Hazel picking on me, and Kenny made me kind of peeved. “I don’t care how he is,” I told him, “I’ll bet I could ride him backwards from here to Castle Rock.”

  Both of them began snickering, and Kenny slid off and passed me the reins. I didn’t even bother to put them around the donkey’s neck, but hopped and swung a leg over, so I was sitting on him backwards. I expected him to make a few crowhops, but he didn’t. He just stood still, trying to kick the clouds out of the sky—and I began to slip.

  As far as Jack’s kicking was concerned, any little girl could have ridden him, but he’d shed his winter fur, and his back was as slippery as a wet bottle. With every kick I slipped a few inches farther, and it wasn’t long before my behind was almost down to his ears. Then all he had to do was twist his neck and lay me on the ground. That’s where I was when Mr. Batchlett came to the corner of the corral and called, “Better saddle up and go see where Hank’s at! Take the north trail along the foothills and you can’t miss him.”

  I was glad of any excuse to get away from Hazel and Kenny, but it was only by luck that I found Hank. I’d ridden nearly to the north end of the ranch when I saw a wisp of smoke rise from a plum thicket, and Hank and his horse were hidden inside it. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground, smoking his pipe and whittling. When I surprised him he said his back hurt so much he’d had to stop to rest, and couldn’t get back into the saddle without help.

  Hank moaned and groaned all the way back to the corral, but he didn’t do much of it after we got there. Mr. Batchlett was waiting by the gate, and as soon as Hank let out one groan, he snapped, “That’ll be enough! You’ve ducked this kid all you’re goin’ to! Now get on that wa
gon and head for the mountains! If you’re not back with a full load of posts by sundown I won’t keep you around here.”

  Hank climbed down as spry as a spider, pulled off his saddle, and hurried away toward the wagon, calling back, “Don’t you have no fear, Batch! Me and the kid’ll fetch in all the horses can haul!”

  As I started to follow, Mr. Batchlett caught me by the shoulder, and said, “Now don’t go swingin’ an axe like you’re killing snakes, and don’t bust a gut liftin’! You got plenty of time between now and sundown.” Then he turned away and went in to catch up his horse.

  If anybody had heard me scolded the way Hank had been I could hardly have looked at him, but it didn’t seem to bother Hank a bit. All the way to the mountains he talked like a magpie with a split tongue, bragging about the things he’d done when he was my age. After the first mile I began thinking about Zeb and Pikes Peak and Blueboy and Clay, and only heard Hank as I’d have heard a flock of geese gabbling.

  With all his talking and bragging, I think Hank was worried about getting a load of posts back to the home ranch by sunset. He didn’t let the horses stop for a single breather, and kept them trotting whenever the hills weren’t too steep.

  At the lower end of the Bootheel, a narrow side canyon led off to the north. There was no roadway up it, but the dry creek bed was fairly wide and cobbled with stones the size of muskmelons. Each time we’d passed it, I’d noticed the thick stand of tall firs along the canyon walls.

  I was half dreaming when we reached the mouth of the side canyon, and nearly fell off the seat when Hank suddenly turned into it. “By dogies,” he shouted, “I’m a-goin’ to show ’em how to fetch out a load o’ posts quicker’n you can say scat my cat! Ain’t no sense a-goin’ up Bootheel where the good trees is all took out. I know this here country like I know the palm o’ my own hand, and I know where the best post trees is at. Why, when I was your . . .”

  “Mr. Batchlett told Ned we were to take them out of Bootheel,” I said, “and I don’t think he’d like it if we . . .”

  “You leave me do the thinkin’, kid!” Hank shouted. “You’ll have both hands full and your little britches to hold up jest a-doin’ your end o’ the post-hackin’!”

  There was no sense in my trying to change his mind, and I wasn’t big enough to make him do anything he didn’t want to, so I kept my mouth shut. The canyon twisted and wound around in the shape of a great question mark, and the farther we went the narrower and rougher the creek bed grew. The first good stand of firs was above a high ledge, the second on a mountainside too steep to climb, and the third behind an aspen thicket. I think we’d driven about five miles before we came to any good post trees that could be gotten out.

  “There, by dogies! How’s them for post trees?” Hank shouted, and passed the reins to me. “You turn the wagon about while I go to knockin’ some of ’em down.”

  The wagon was hard to turn in the narrow creek bed, and before I had it around Hank had stripped off his jumper, grabbed an axe, and was hacking at a big tree about a hundred feet up the mountain side. “Leave ’em be! Leave ’em be!” he yelled when I started to unhitch. “We ain’t got time to mess with no horses! Ain’t no grass for ’em nohow!”

  I should have had sense enough to move the team farther down the creek bed, and to unhook the traces, but I lost my temper when Hank began yelling at me. “Then you’d better quit hacking at this side of that tree!” I yelled back. “It’ll nearly hit ’em if it falls this way.”

  “You leave me do the thinkin’!” Hank hollered, but moved around and began hacking at the uphill side of the tree.

  Then, when I went to get my axe I found that he’d taken it and left me his dull one. I grabbed it up, jumped off the wagon, and shouted, “You’ve got my axe! It was wrapped in a gunny sack.”

  “You ain’t got no axe!” he yelled back. “The both of ’em belongs to Batch, don’t they? Now get on up here and go to limbin’ out! I got this here tree almost down a’ready.”

  I’d never stopped to think that all the axes belonged to Mr. Batchlett, and that I didn’t have any more claim to one than to another. If I had, I’d have been grinding the other axe instead of being kicked off by Kenny’s burro. I was standing thinking about it when there was a crash above me, and I looked up to see Hank’s tree topple sideways and hang in the branches of the tree next to it.

  The axe Hank had left me was too dull to work with, and had four big nicks in the edge, so I ground it into half-decent shape on a smooth stone beside the wagon. When I’d finished Hank had hacked off four more trees, and they’d all fallen part way down, crisscrossing each other. I’d stopped to look at the mess when he yelled at me, “Don’t stand there a-gawkin’! Get them trees limbed out and cut to post lengths! Can’t you see I’m way out ahead o’ you?”

  “Yes, I can see,” I told him, “but I’ll cut my own posts and you can cut yours.” Then I went farther along the stand, found some trees the right size for posts, took off my jumper and went to work. I tried to do it as near the way Zeb did as I could. Before I cut into a tree I planned just where I wanted it to fall, and when it was down I trimmed it, cut it into posts, and carried them to the wagon. As I worked, I heard several more crashes, ring after ring of an axe against stone, and a lot of cussing up where Hank was working.

  I had my fourth tree down and was cutting it into post lengths when, from right behind me, Hank shouted, “Gittin’ pretty dadgummed big for them little britches o’ yourn, ain’t you? Git on over there and go to trimmin’ out them trees I chopped down ’fore I have to lay a hand on you!”

  I knew Hank was bluffing, and he didn’t scare me a bit. “I’m not going to help you, and you’re not going to lay a hand on me,” I told him. “You took the best axe and now you can cut your own posts; this is supposed to be a race.”

  Hank went grumbling back, and though I could hear him cussing once in a while, he didn’t bother me again for three or four hours. He hadn’t taken a single post down to the wagon, and each time I took mine down I glanced up to see how he was doing. He was still hacking away at standing trees, but every one he’d cut had fallen crossways and hung up in the branches. I could have gone up and showed him how to make them fall the right way, but I was still peeved about his taking my sharp axe and wouldn’t do it.

  Though we hadn’t stopped to eat, and the sky was so overcast I couldn’t tell the time, I guessed it to be about four o’clock when I started to fell the tree that would finish my half of the load. As it toppled straight out toward the creek bed I jumped back, and found Hank standing behind me. “By dogies, didn’t I tell Batch?” he shouted. “We’re a-goin’ to get the dadgumdest cloudburst ever you seen! Look how them clouds is a-settin’ in! We’d best to hightail out’n here ’fore we get catched in a flood and drownded.”

  I stood my axe down and stepped out where I could see the sky better. The clouds had become dark, and I was pretty sure we’d get rain, but not a cloudburst, so I said, “It’s all right to go if you want to, but Mr. Batchlett will know by the axe marks that I cut every post on the load.”

  “Reckon we might as leave stick it out a while longer,” Hank said, and started back with an axe over his shoulder. When I went to pick up mine, I found that he’d traded with me again. He’d left me the one I’d ground so carefully that morning, but the edge was nicked and scalloped till it looked like the crust on a piece of pumpkin pie. There was no sense in trying to make Hank trade back, or in trying to use the ruined axe, so I went over to grind it on the rock beside the wagon.

  I might have been sitting there fifteen minutes when the horses suddenly snorted and plunged away, with the wagon bouncing, slewing, and spilling off all the posts I’d loaded. A moment later the top of a tree whipped down where the wagon had stood.

  As the team raced away down the creek bed Hank came yelling at me, blaming me for scaring the horses. I knew he’d found out, from watching me, how to drop a tree where he wanted it, and had purposely felled that one so it wou
ld frighten the horses. When I yelled back and told him so, he quieted down and said pleasantly, “Ain’t no sense of us a-squabblin’ ’bout it. I reckon we’d best cut acrost the ridge and get home ’fore that cloudburst sets in. I know these here mountains like the palm of my own hand. ‘Tain’t more’n seven, eight miles the way the crow flies.”

  “Isn’t it best to go back the way we came?” I asked. “If we found the team we could finish out the load by sunset.”

  “No, by dogies!” Hank shouted. “I don’t aim to get catched in no dad-burned canyon in a cloudburst! And I don’t aim to get catched in these here mountains after dark without no gun! There’s a mess o’ bears hereabouts, and there ain’t no tellin’ when a mountain lion’ll spring out on you.”

  There was nothing for me to do but pick up my jumper and axe, and follow him as he led off up the mountainside.

  8

  Lost

  HANK led off up the ridge we’d been working on, quartering along below the trees. With the whole sky clouded over I couldn’t be sure of the direction, but if the canyon had looped around the way I thought it had, we’d be heading north. I knew the home ranch was just a little south of straight east, so I asked, “Aren’t we going the wrong way, Hank?”

  “Just a dite,” he said, “to get around these here trees.”

  I kept still for another half hour, but was sure we should have gone up the ridge on the other side of the canyon. After Hank turned up a rocky ridge to our left, I asked again, “Are you sure we’re going the right way?”

  “Got the mountain fever a’ready?” he laughed. “By dogies, I seen prairie men get so fuddled up in these here mountains they didn’t know straight up from Sunday. Now you take . . . Why, afore I was your age . . .”

  “I didn’t say you were wrong,” I told him. “I just thought we should have gone up the other side of the canyon.”