LITTLE BRITCHES
by Ralph Moody
Illustrated by Tran Mawicke
W • W • NORTON & COMPANY • INC • 1962
Scanned by Highroller and RyokoWerx
Proofed by eBooksmith
1
We Move to Colorado
I NEVER really knew Father very well till we moved to the ranch on the Fort Logan-Morrison road, not far from Denver. That was just after my eighth birthday—right at the end of 1906. When we lived in East Rochester, New Hampshire, he worked in the woolen mill, but it wasn't good for his lungs. He was sick in bed the winter before we moved—the one after Hal was a year old.
Cousin Phil lived in Denver, and came to see us the next spring, right after Father got well enough to go back to work. I liked him a lot. He had a gold front tooth, and wore a derby hat cocked way over on his right ear. And he sold goldmine stock.
One afternoon when Grace and I got home from school, he and Mother were talking in the parlor. I didn't have much chance to listen, because Mother told Grace and me to take Philip and Muriel outside to play till suppertime. But I did hear Cousin Phil say, "Why, Mame, there just isn't any work at all to ranching in Colorado. We have three hundred and sixty-five sunshiny days in a year, and all a man has to do is toss out seed in the spring and harvest his crop in the fall. With my connections, I could make a deal to put you folks on one of the finest ranches in the country, where you'd have all the milk, butter, and eggs you could eat, and half of all the crops you could raise. Why, in one year Charlie'd be a new man—and make as much money as he'd make here in East Rochester in a lifetime."
I guess Father and Mother believed what he said, because there were letters from him all through the summer and fall. Then, just after Christmas, we had our auction and took the train for Denver—all seven of us: Father and Mother and Grace, Muriel, Philip, Hal, and I. Grace was older than I was, but the rest were younger. All the way out on the train, I kept guessing how big the house and barns on our ranch would be, and how many hundred horses and cows there'd be on it.
It was late when we got to Denver, so we rented a room in a little hotel on Seventeenth Street. The next day, Cousin Phil lent us his rubber-tired buggy and Prince, his sleek little seal-brown driving horse. Father let me go to see our ranch with him and Mother. I didn't really have to ask him to let me go. I guess he just knew how much I wanted to and said to Mother, "Do you think there'd be enough room for you and the baby if we squeezed Ralph in between us?"
We could see our new house from a couple of miles away. We knew it must be ours, because Cousin Phil had told us it was three and a half miles west of Fort Logan—the first house on the Morrison wagon road. From the hill beyond the Fort, it looked like a little dollhouse sitting on the edge of a great big table, with a brown tablecloth smoothed out flat all around it. It was right near the edge of the mesa, where the land started dipping northward into Bear Creek Valley. Away toward the south there were brown, rolling hills, as though the tablecloth had been wrinkled a little. And not far beyond it, toward the west, the hogbacks rose like big loaves of golden-brown bread sitting on the table. High above them the snowcaps of the Rockies glistened in the afternoon sunshine.
As we came nearer, it looked less like a dollhouse and more like just what it was: a little three-room cottage that had been hauled out from Denver. It was propped up on four cribs of mover's timbers, and sat at the corner of an unfenced quarter section of barren prairie land. The chimney was broken off at the roof and most of the windows were smashed. When we turned off the wagon road, a jack rabbit leaped out from under the house and raced away through the clumps of cactus and soapweed. But it was going to be our ranch—it looked all right to me.
Father and Mother didn't say a word, but when I looked up, the bunches of muscle at the sides of Father's jaws were working out and in. They always did that when he was trying not to get mad. Mother's face was as white as Hal's stocking cap, and her eyes looked as though she were going to cry, but she didn't. After Father tied Prince and helped Mother out of the buggy, he held me up so I could look in one of the windows. There wasn't much to see, except that the floor was covered with broken glass, and plaster that had fallen off the walls and ceiling.
While I was still looking in the window, Mother said, "Charlie, I don't see how in the world we can do it… with only three hundred and eighty-seven dollars. I thought, of course, there'd be good buildings and stock and machinery on it. We've got a lot of planning to do." Her voice sounded hoarse, and seemed to be coming from way down in her throat.
Father didn't say anything until he had stood me down and taken Hal from Mother. Then he put his arm around her shoulder and hugged her up against him. Father was real tall, but slim, and Mother's head fitted in under his chin. "There's only one thing to plan about, Mame," he said, "and that's getting tickets home while we've still got the money. I won't have you live in any such God-forsaken place as this."
They stood that way for two or three minutes while Father's hand patted up and down on Mother's shoulder. And there wasn't a sound, except that dry little cough that Father had then. When Mother lifted her head, her lips were pressed tightly together, and her voice wasn't trembly any more. "The Bible says, 'Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.' The hand of God has led us here; we have set our shoulders to the wheel, and we will not turn back."
The next two days were not good ones for me. We stayed right in the hotel room, and Father was away from early in the morning till long after dark. There was nothing for us children to do, and I guess we made Mother nervous. Grace and I had two or three squabbles. She was the oldest, nearly two years older and always smarter than I, and I always got the spankings. When Father came in, the second night, Mother said, "Ralph can neither stay out of mischief himself, nor let any of the others. I declare, I shall go frantic if I have to have him cooped up in this little room another day."
Father didn't scold me at all, though. He just put his arm around Mother's shoulder, and said, "There, there, Mame. I know how hard it is for all of you. We'll get out of here just as soon as we can."
The next morning I went with Father, and we got a team of horses, and a wagon and harness. They were all kind of old and secondhand, but they were ours and I was proud of them. Father let me name the horses. I called the white one Bill, and the other one Nig.
We got up before daylight every morning for the next two weeks, Sunday and all. First, we'd pick up any of the bargains Mother had found for the house, then buy secondhand lumber, plaster, glass, and other things we needed, on our way out to the ranch. And Father would never stop working till it was so dark he couldn't see to drive a nail.
He got a man to come and help him dig the well, and some days Cousin Phil drove out and worked on the barn with us. It just had three sides and a corrugated iron roof. By Thursday night the barn was all finished, and Father had built a new chimney, patched the places where the plaster had fallen off, put glass in all the windows, and made front and back steps for the house. My part of the job was to sweep up all the broken glass and plaster, and pile up all the little pieces of board beside the back steps. There was nothing left to build but the privy.
It was just five o'clock when Father and I drove up to the depot platform Friday morning. After the baggage man had found our two trunks, we went around to the hotel and picked up everything we wouldn't need for one more night in the room. We had to tiptoe in to get the things, because all the other children were still asleep in the shakedown. I hadn't seen any of them when they were awake since the Sunday before.
The sun looked only about a foot high when we stopped at a feed barn on the outskirts of Denver. Father bou
ght a sack of oats and four bales of hay there, and we fed the horses. While they were eating, we went to a little store up the street, and Father bought a pail of milk and a whole custard pie. We ate it sitting on the curb beside our wagon. Father knew just how to buy a good breakfast.
At Fort Logan we stopped at Mr. Green's general store, and bought more groceries than I thought we could ever eat. There was a barrel of flour and a hundred-pound sack of navy beans; and salt pork, molasses, sugar, rice, and a whole case of evaporated milk. We got out to the ranch long before noon.
Cousin Phil drove out that afternoon and helped us with the privy. Father sawed the two-by-fours and spiked them together. Then, while he was making the door and the seat, Cousin Phil cut boards, and nailed them on the sides and roof. He cut some of them too long, and some too short. After a while he tossed the folding ruler over to Father, and said, "This confounded rule isn't accurate, Charlie."
Father folded the ruler up and put it in his pocket. He didn't say anything till Cousin Phil had gone for another board, then he said to me, "If you just remember to measure twice and saw once, you'll get along all right."
The last thing we did was to tie Bill and Nig in their new barn, and Father hung the harness on spikes he had driven high up on the barn wall. He said that was so the coyotes couldn't gnaw on them during the night.
The sun had gone down, and the whole sky beyond the mountains looked as though it were on fire. I looked back at our ranch as Cousin Phil drove us in to Denver, and I wouldn't have traded it for anything else on earth.
A narrow-gauge spur of the Colorado and Southern left the main line at Petersburg Junction, then followed Bear Creek to Fort Logan, where it climbed to the tableland, and ran west to Morrison. It was a single-track line, and crossed the center of our ranch. There were no passenger trains, but one freight each day had a passenger car hooked on the end of it.
We were all down at the depot early Saturday morning, and Father asked the conductor if they would stop the train so we could get off on our own place. As we were climbing down, the engineer blew three sharp toots on his whistle, and we all looked toward where he was pointing at something on the track ahead.
A quarter of a mile west there was a deep gulch where, after storms, water from the hills had cut the land away in running off to the creek. The railway crossed it on a high trestle, and something that looked to me like a big black whale was floundering around in the middle of it.
Father ran toward the front of the train, and I ran after him. The engineer cupped his hands around his mouth, and shouted, "Horse through the trestle. Is it yours?"
Father motioned for Mother to go to the house as he swung up on the engine. But he could run so much faster than I that the train started moving when I was at the back end of the first box car. After going everywhere Father had for the last couple of weeks, I didn't want to be left behind then, so I grabbed hold of the foot rods and pulled myself up. I heard Mother scream, "Ralph!" but I held on tight, and the train didn't stop till it got to the trestle.
Nig's four legs were down between the crossties, and he was thrashing around like crazy. The first thing I wanted to do when I saw him was to run for home, but I couldn't pull my eyes away.
His hind end was toward us and there were big bloody patches on his thighs. He was out nearly twenty feet on the trestle. Between him and us there was more blood on the crossties, and big clumps of white hair. I knew Bill had been in there, too, but he was nowhere in sight. I peeked down into the gulch and there he was—stretched out on a little patch of snow near the bottom. The snow was half covered with dust and tumbleweeds. And big blotches of bright red blood showed between them.
Nig would thrash and jump until he was all tired out, trying to pull his legs up from between the ties. Then he'd fall back and pound his head against the track. I was sure he would kill himself any minute. All the men from the train came running up to the trestle, but Father was the only one who seemed to know what to do.
There was a sign on a four-by-four post beside the track, right near the end of the bridge. Father wrenched it out of the ground, smashed the sign off, and ran out on the trestle toward Nig. I didn't want to see Father kill him, so I covered my eyes with my hands. There was a hollow thud, like a wooden tub hit with a stick. When I dropped my hands, Nig was lying perfectly still.
Father called to the men standing at the end of the trestle. His voice wasn't quiet then, as it usually was, but he didn't yell. It was big and deep like the ring of a church bell. "Bring chains and anything you can find to pry with," he called. "We'll have to hurry a bit; he'll come around in two or three minutes."
All the men started running around like ants when you plow into their nests. In another minute they went swarming out onto the bridge. They were all chattering like magpies, and some were yelling. Father's voice rang through the hubbub, deep and strong: "Run that chain under here! Take a pry across the top of that rail! Here, big fellow, heave up on his head… Wait for the word!" He sounded the way I had always imagined George Washington must have, and I was proud he was my father. I saw him crouch with his back against Nig's hind end. He pulled the long tail over his shoulder and cried, "Up!"
Nig's legs came up through the ties with a rush. He must have come to at the very second they got him up. He thrashed and the men jumped away from him. In another second he toppled over the side of the trestle. There was a dull thud when he landed. It was then I realized that my pants were wet.
Father vaulted over the side of the trestle near our end and disappeared into the gulch. I didn't dare to look down. In a minute or two his voice came up. "No broken legs, and they're breathing well. I think they'll make out all right. Thanks!"
The trainmen didn't seem to care about anything except having the track clear. The engineer climbed back on the engine and tooted the whistle. In another minute the train had gone, and I was left all alone. Father came up over the edge of the gulch and picked me up. He didn't mention my pants, but unbuttoned his reefer and wrapped me inside it. "I'm sorry you had to see it, Son," he said, "but it's that sort of thing that makes a fellow into a man. We'll go get some bandages and see what can be done for them."
Carrying me to the house, he said, "Sometimes these things seem awful hard to take, but maybe they all happen for the best. Now you children will know that bridge is dangerous. It might have been one of you that fell off it." After that he pointed out a jack rabbit that was scurrying away along the track, and to a single, stunted cottonwood tree near the far end of our land. "There," he said, "who says we haven't got a wood lot on our place? Perhaps, with enough irrigation water, it will grow into a fine big tree. It would have been nice if they'd put the house by the tree, wouldn't it?"
When Father brought me into the house, Mother had a fire going in the cookstove, and everybody was standing by it getting warm. She looked up at Father, and her underlip was trembling. "Are they both dead, Charlie?" she asked.
"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 c
ross. 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. Ho 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."