Home Ranch (4 page)

4

Blueboy

A
S I RODE
around the outbuildings and looked the place over, I kept an eye on the horse corral. And when I saw the others go to saddle up I brought Lady back there. Sid was cinching the saddle onto his giraffe horse, and when he straightened up, the horn stood six inches above the crown of his hat. He was all over his grumpiness, and didn't get a bit peeved when Tom called out to ask if he wanted a ladder for mounting.

“Nope! Got me a sky hook!” Sid called back, hopped, caught the shoulder-high stirrup with his toe, and flipped into the saddle.

Mr. Batchlett and Mr. Bendt had already mounted, and were turning their horses onto a trail that led off toward the mountains when Hazel came running from the house. “I don't have to go to Sunday School today, do I, Paw?” she called from fifty yards away.

“Don't know no reason why not,” he said, and turned his horse half back.

“Well, I can't, Paw,” Hazel panted, as she ran up to him. “Jenny wants to go, and . . . and I'll have to stay to home to mind the baby.”

“Jenny say so?”

“Well . . . I know she wants to go, to . . . to wear her new . . .”

From where I sat on Lady I saw Mr. Bendt wink at Mr. Batchlett, then he asked, “Sure you ain't frettin' 'bout the horse-pickin', 'stead of Jenny?”

Hazel was standing so close that her father's stirrup nearly touched her shoulder. She turned her face up to him, and there were almost tears in her voice when she said, “I got to be here, Paw! I just got to be here!”

Mr. Bendt leaned down toward her, and his voice was real gentle when he said, “You run on now, gal, and help your maw with the dishes. I reckon we might be able to hold off the horse-pickin' till you womenfolks get back from church. What you think, Batch?”

“I reckon,” Mr. Batchlett said with a grin.

“Promise?” Hazel asked.

Mr. Batchlett nodded, and said, “Promise!” Then Hazel ran back toward the house without ever looking around at the rest of us.

Tom and Ned seemed to know just where we'd find the horse herd. They took a well-worn cattle trail that led northward along the foot of the mountains, forking off like branches of a river at the mouth of each canyon.

Winding in and out through the brush, we'd followed the trail four or five miles when we topped a high bench. Below us, in a little green valley, there was a bunch of forty or fifty horses grazing. Suddenly, one of them threw up his head, pointing his ears toward us, whinnied shrilly, and raced away toward a canyon mouth. In a moment the whole bunch was racing behind him.

“Blueboy!” Tom rapped out angrily. “Mighta knowed he'd wind us 'fore we could get around 'em! You and the kid cut acrost the butte and try to head 'em, Ned! Sid and me'll work around to the far side.”

I'd seen a lot of beautiful horses, but never one that caught my eye the way Blueboy did. From up there on the bench, with the horse band half a mile below us in the valley, he was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. The sun glinted off his racing back the way it glints off ripples in a deep mountain lake. His white-stockinged legs flashed like driving pistons, and his long white mane and tail streamed out like silken flags. He ran with his muzzle high, swinging his white-blazed head from side to side. As I watched, he circled to the back of the band, snaking his head out and raking his teeth at the laggards.

I was so busy watching Blueboy that I didn't notice Tom and Sid drop down over the edge of the bench, or that Ned was spurring away toward the mountains. I pressed my spurs against Lady's flanks and went racing after him. As I caught up, I shouted, “Is Blueboy the stallion?”

“No, gelding since he was a three-year-old, but he don't know it,” Ned called back. “Crazy maverick! Out of a blooded mare, by a wild stud.”

The canyon into which Blueboy had driven the horse herd wound in an S shape back between two low mountains. By cutting around one of them, and sliding down a shale bank, Ned and I reached the bottom of the canyon just as the horses rounded the last bend. At sight of us, they wheeled and started back, but Blueboy was behind them, slashing and kicking. For a couple of minutes I thought he'd drive the whole band past us. If they'd been unbroken range horses, he would have, but they were mostly saddle stock, and had too much respect for flying ropes. A shifty little claybank dodged back past him, and the rest of the band followed.

I could hardly believe that Blueboy wasn't a stallion. The remuda at Batchlett's ranch was made up of almost every type of stock horse. There were young ones and old ones, mares with colts running at their sides, yearlings, a few unbroken three-year-olds, and geldings that showed the white saddle marks of many hard seasons, but Blueboy handled them all as if they were his harem.

Tom and Sid were waiting at the far end of the canyon to turn the remuda onto the trail for the corrals, but Blueboy wouldn't have it. Racing with his head low and his nostrils wide, squealing, wheeling, and slashing with his yellow teeth, he charged the lead mares time and again, turning them away from the trail and driving them into the brush.

“Why in blazes Batch keeps that crazy mav'rick's more'n I know!” Tom shouted, as we spurred to head the band back toward the south. “I'd have throwed lead into him when he was foaled if I'd owned the mare.”

“Worthless half-breed!” Ned shouted back. “I'd throw lead into him now if I was packin' a six-gun.”

“Better not leave Batch catch you at it,” Tom called, and spurred away, yelling and swearing at Blueboy.

Time after time we got the horse band headed back onto the trail, and the older ones would have followed it, but each time Blueboy raced to the lead and turned them aside.

Sid tried to cut him away from the herd and drive him up the canyon alone, but his piebald was no match for Blueboy's speed. He'd circle, with his head and tail high, and race back to turn the band again. Tom and Ned tried to corner him in a gulch and get a throw rope on him, but they didn't have any better luck than Sid. Bounding up the side of the steep, rocky gulch, Blueboy whirled at the top, snorted at them, and came tearing back to the herd.

It shouldn't have taken us more than two hours to round up the remuda and bring it in to the corral, but it was well past noon before we got it there. And the only way we did it at all was by the other three fighting Blueboy away while I pushed the herd along the trail. He never gave up his fight for a second, and he wouldn't give up his band. At the last moment he broke through the whirling catch ropes, raced up, and led the remuda into the horse corral.

Mr. Batchlett and Mr. Bendt were still out looking over the cattle, Hank and Zeb hadn't come in with the chuckwagon, and Mrs. Bendt and the children weren't home from church when we brought the remuda in. There was nothing to do after we'd unsaddled, so we sat on the top rail of the corral, looking at the horses and talking.

Tom and Ned had been on the home ranch the summer before, and knew every horse in the bunch, but there was no sense in asking them any questions. They'd know which horses they wanted for their own strings, and they'd tell us almost anything to keep us from finding out which ones they were. Sid was sitting beside me, watching half a dozen different horses as they milled and turned, but there was only one I could watch for more than a minute.

Blueboy was never still an instant, and kept himself between us and the rest of the remuda, as though he were protecting it. With his head high, his eyes bright, and his ears pointing, he seemed to be trying to watch everything at once. He was neither fat nor thin, and the hide rippled over the muscles of his rump and shoulders like oil over running water. I had a feeling that, at any moment, he might race at the high pole fence and sail over it without touching. Ned was sitting next beyond Sid, and I asked him, “Has anybody ever ridden Blueboy?”

“Half a dozen, I reckon. Why?”

“I just wondered,” I said. “I'll bet it would take a real buster to stay with him ten seconds.”

“Pi'tcher horse! Crowhopper!” Ned said, without looking away from the milling remuda. “Takes brains to make a good twister; that mav'rick's loco.”

I'd seen plenty of horses that had been poisoned on locoweed. They acted half-drunk, stupid, and crazy, but Blueboy wasn't that kind of horse. He'd proved all morning that he was smarter than any one of us. I began to think that maybe both Ned and Tom wanted him for themselves, and that they'd been running him down so that neither Sid nor I would pick him.

I was still watching Blueboy and wishing I owned him when Sid leaned in front of me and asked Tom, “How come the boss holds onto the blue? Wouldn't a circus pay good money for a showy lookin' horse the likes of that?”

Tom nodded, “Sure would, but Batch, he won't give up on him. Got him in his blood, I reckon. I've heard tell he had the old stallion in his blood so strong he could taste it. Put in three summers tryin' to lay rope on that wild stud when him and Beckman first come up from Texas. Run him clean down into the Sangre de Cristos and back half a dozen times. Spent the price of forty good stock horses on him.”

“Catch him or give up?” Sid asked.

“Reckon you don't know Batch very good,” Tom said, as he and Ned climbed down from the fence. “He don't give up his chips till the last card's down. Couldn't lay rope on the stud, but he had a thoroughbred mare shipped in here. Turned her loose in the mountains. Daggone shame he couldn't'a got nothin' better'n that blue devil for a colt!”

I'd been interested in Tom's story, but it was what Ned had told me that made up my mind. I'd ridden some pretty good bucking horses at the Y-B and the fair-grounds, though I'd never ridden any real twisters, and was a little out of practice. But when Ned said Blueboy was only a crowhopper, I made up my mind that I was going to pick him for my string, no matter what anybody thought about him.

Sid and I sat without saying anything for quite a few minutes after Tom and Ned had left, then I asked, “Made your pick yet?”

“Well, yes and no,” Sid answered. “I been keepin' an eye on that sorrel gelding yonder, and aim to dab my rope on him if I can. If he don't bust it and throw me cattiwumpus, and if he can turn on a dollar and a half, I might think about him. For this brush country, I like a horse tall enough to histe a man up, so's he can see where he's headed for. You got an eye peeled yet?”

“Mmm-hmm,” I told him, “if he doesn't histe me over the fence on his first pitch. I haven't tried to ride a rough one for nearly a year.”

“Ground'll always catch you! Never heard tell of it lettin' nobody through! Which one you aimin' to go after?”

“Blueboy,” I told him.

“Blueboy! What you aimin' to do, start up a circus?” Sid asked sharply. “Ain't you the one that claims he come out here to work cattle?”

“That's what I am here for,” I told him, “and I'm going to do it with Blueboy. If he can handle cattle the way he handles horses, I guess we'll make out all right.”

“Take it easy! You ain't workin' mustangs, but milk cows!” Sid said—and he said it in exactly the same voice Mr. Batchlett had used when he'd told me the same thing the day before. Sid pointed to a sleek-looking seal-brown mare, and went on, “You forget about that Blueboy; he's too much horse for you! How 'bout that little mare with the star in her forehead? I been watchin' her, and she's handy and clever; make you a mighty fine trail horse.”

Zeb and Hank drove in with the chuckwagon just then, so I didn't have to argue with Sid any more. Mrs. Bendt and the children were right behind them with the buckboard. Before we had the teams unharnessed and watered, Mr. Batchlett and Mr. Bendt rode in. And Jenny rang the dinner bell as soon as she saw them.

The day the horse strings are picked in the spring is one of the biggest days on cattle ranches. In working cattle, a cowhand and his horse have to be partners, and understand and trust each other. If a man picks the wrong horses in the spring, there isn't much understanding, and even less trust. A man may be a top hand, but if he gets a poor string of horses he can't do a very good job. Or a man can be only a fair rider and, with a good string, do the job of a top hand.

Picking our horses in go-rounds, as Mr. Batchlett had said we would, no one could be sure of getting the horses he wanted, and most of the men were nervous and jumpy when we sat down at the dinner table. Nobody joked, and Sid didn't even try to get Jenny to talk to him. First one man would tell about some smart horse he used to ride, then another would brag about one he'd had that was smarter. But no one mentioned the horse-picking until we'd nearly finished eating. Then Kenny piped up, “If Batch would leave me have my pickin's, I know what ones I'd take. I'd take . . .”

“Never you mind which ones you'd take” his father told him. “Them of us that's been around here and knows 'em ought to have claim to a little edge. Who's goin' to get the first pick, Batch?”