Shaking the Nickel Bush (5 page)

Ted and I didn't talk about horse falls any more that evening. On the way back to our tent we talked mostly about Colorado, and the Littleton roundup, and Hi Beckman, and a few other cowhands we both had known. After we got back to the tent Ted was too busy to talk to me.

While we'd been gone, a scout whom the outfit had sent up to Wyoming to find fall riders had come in with fourteen recruits. He must have scoured the whole state to find them. There was no doubt about their being working cowhands, and I never saw a tougher-looking fourteen all in one bunch. They were all in their late twenties or early thirties, and every one of them was as stout and wild as a longhorn bull. And somewhere along the line they'd got hold of a gallon of corn squeezings. When we came into the big tent they were shooting craps in the middle of the dirt floor, whooping and yelling like a band of drunken Indians. Ted was still trying to break up the game and get them into bed when I went to sleep.

The Wyoming boys were still half-drunk the next morning, and four or five of them were uglier than grizzly bears. They seemed to be looking for trouble with anybody who didn't belong to their own gang, and a couple of fist fights were in full swing before I could get my boots and britches on. There wasn't a man in that tent who couldn't have knocked me for a loop with a single punch, so I ducked out as quick as I could and headed for the grub line. I'd been in the chuck tent fifteen or twenty minutes when the rest of Group Three came in, and among them there were half a dozen guards with night sticks in their hands. I was just getting up to leave when they came in, but Ted saw me and motioned for me to sit down again.

Most of the Wyoming boys took nothing but coffee as they passed the serving counter, then sat down at a table near the end of the line, and fired insults at the rest of our group as the boys went past to a table farther on. Ted waited until the last man was seated, then brought a cup of coffee over and sat down beside me. “You lay off this mornin', kid,” he told me. “With these fourteen, along with the twelve that was a'ready here when you come, there'll be all the riders that's needed and some to spare. The way these boys are het up there's bound to be some mighty rough goin's-on out there, and there ain't no sense of you getting mixed up in it. Them Wyoming bucks is out to make the rest of you look yella, and the way them fights went this morning they ain't goin' to have an easy time of it.”

“Are you going to put them on the new set?” I asked.

“Wouldn't be no sense in that,” he told me, “Not till a few busted arms and legs gets 'em cooled out a mite. Haired up the way they are now they'd hit that rim on the dead run, and 'fore noontime I'd have 'em all stove up into kindlin' wood. They're a'ready fightin' amongst themselves for the first shots at riding Injun falls, and I ain't goin' to tell 'em no different. Might as well leave the outfit get some high-action footage 'fore all that corn liquor wears off.

“Now I'll tell you what you do, kid; you shag on out to that set where we was last night. There'll be four or five crews settin' up cameras along the strip, so's't the riders won't know where to expect a spill. Pick the third camera from this end and hunker down in a clump of brush, where you'll be out of shutter sight but can see everything that's goin' on along the strip. Keep your eye peeled, and you ought to pick up some stuff that'll help you about getting hurt too bad when your turn comes. A man learns by mistakes, but in this game that's too late if the mistakes are his own.”

Ted didn't give me a chance to thank him, but stood up and shouted, “Come on there, Group Three! Get that grub into you! We're due at make-up in ten minutes!”

4

Horse Falls

I
FOUND
a cracking good place to watch from, a tangled bunch of creosote bush right at the edge of the strip, but I had to wait more than an hour before I saw Ted riding out at the head of a little band. There were eighteen or twenty riders in it, about half Indians and half cowboys. All the Indians were stripped down to breechclouts and moccasins, with a feather or two stuck in their long hair. And all the cowboys were dressed up Hollywood style, but it was easy enough to pick out the ones that were going to take the falls; two Indians and three cowboys. They were mounted on skinny old crowbaits, while all the others were on real good-looking ponies.

My hiding place was more than two hundred yards from the tripping reels, so I couldn't hear anything that was being said, and I couldn't see too clearly. But I could see well enough to be pretty sure that Ted was planning to take some of the fight out of the ugliest among the Wyoming riders. The three biggest ones were rigged out as cowboys, and the two shortest were stripped down and painted like Indians.

As others came out from the village afoot and ranged along behind the cameras, Ted got his riders together in front of the trip reels. From the way they were circled around, with the fall riders in the middle, I knew he must be telling each one just what he was supposed to do. But all the way through it the Wyoming boys kept yipping and howling like coyotes.

Ted wasn't the only one who was telling people what to do, and there were plenty of them to be told: cameramen, stretchermen, a doctor and a veterinary, a couple of sharp-shooters, and about forty 'leven helpers and assistants. Running around among them were the directors and bosses in their drug-store cowboy outfits—every one of them carrying a megaphone and yelling orders. And nobody was paying any more attention than the Wyoming boys seemed to be paying to Ted.

It must have been fifteen or twenty minutes before Ted lined his riders up in front of the reels, and I saw men bring the wires out and fasten them to the fall-ponies' shoe rings. For as much as a full minute there wasn't a sound. Then somebody with a megaphone shouted, “One! Two! Three!
ROLL
!”

In the scramble away from the start it was pretty hard to see anything clearly. But as the Indians came pounding toward me with the cowboys a few lengths behind them, I did see one thing for sure. Every pony ridden by a real Indian or a Hollywood cowboy was trained right down to a fine edge, and those ponies knew their business and that course as well as any man on the lot. With its jerk-rope hanging loose over its neck, and with its rider half turned to shoot back, every Indian's pony threaded a clean course through that gantlet of ocotillo, staghorn, brush, and cactus. The two who were carrying riders that were going to unload knew exactly where and when. I think they gave their riders the cue, because both of them swerved aside the instant before the Indian threw his arms above his head, giving him plenty of room and clear ground when he slithered down the neck and rolled clear.

The Hollywood cowboys' horses knew their business just as well, and I could see that they were running in formation, like a drill team. But the fall horses were scared out of their wits by all the screeching and shooting. They came tearing straight on through whatever happened to be in their way, like stampeding cattle in a night thunder-and-lightning storm. One of them that was carrying a make-believe Indian must have been blind or had his eyes shut. He veered wide, and ran so close under the branches of a staghorn tree that a festoon with a million prickers on it caught his half-turned rider in the back of the neck. That boy didn't have to wait for his pony to be tripped; he went flying as if he'd been caught up in a cyclone. I didn't see him land, but he was still on the ground, whirling around like a cat in a fit, when the show was over.

The whole run lasted barely ten seconds, and it was an hour before Ted brought the next bunch of fall riders out, but it took me the whole hour to sort out and remember all that I'd seen in those few seconds. It must be that a fellow sees a lot more than he can handle when things are happening so fast, and the only way he can remember all of them is if he has plenty of time to sort them out right after they've happened. At first I was too excited—and scared—to think. I wanted to jump up and run to help the boys who were hurt, but everybody else was running, so I figured I'd better stay where I was until the excitement was over.

After they'd carried the boys back to the village, and after I'd had time to reason out that they wouldn't have been so badly hurt if they hadn't been trying to show off, I found that I could remember almost everything that had happened during the run, and that in my mind I could see it all over again, almost as if it had been in slow motion.

Although I didn't know it at the time, I doubtlessly kept my eyes fixed on the fall riders all the way through the run, for it was they and not the real Indians and extras I could see again as I lay there in the brush with my eyes shut. The first one to go down had been the one whose pony ran him into the staghorn cholla. The second was the other boy who was playing Indian, because the Indians passed the cameras ahead of the cowboys.

I think that boy was trying so hard to hit one of the Hollywood cowboys with an arrow that he'd forgotten his pony was going to be tripped. He was riding bareback, had his legs clamped tight, and was turned more than halfway around when the pony somersaulted. He probably clamped tighter when he felt the pony going, for he didn't fly free but came down as though he'd been stuck in a saddle. He tried to straighten around on the way down, then stuck out his arms to push the ground away as he saw it coming toward him. Of course he broke them both, and a leg that was caught under the dead pony.

The first cowboy rider would have been all right if either he or his pony had been watching where they were going. He fell free and loose, and landed rolling on one shoulder, but he came down in a patch of prickly pears that was knee-high and as big as a table top. The next boy froze to his musket, landed with it under him, and broke a wrist, a collarbone, and five ribs.

Why the last fall rider wasn't killed I'll never know. He was the biggest man in the Wyoming bunch, the ugliest when he was drunk, and he tried to show off the most. He caught my eye from the moment he left the starting line, and Ted told me afterwards that he did every single thing he'd told him not to. He was supposed to have ridden at the tail end, and to have been the first cowboy tripped down, but he was never at the end. He left the line shrieking like a wildcat in a trap, and raking his pony from shoulder to flank with the spurs. I have an idea he was yellow and thought he'd throw the old pony into a crowhopping buck, so he'd never get as far as the cameras, but it didn't work that way.

That pony didn't buck a jump, and by the way he ran he must have been at least half Thoroughbred. Before he got opposite me he was leading the cowboy band, and was bearing straight down on an Indian that had just unloaded. If it hadn't been for that they wouldn't have risked tripping him with the others all behind, but they didn't have any choice. When the tripper man dropped the hook he happened to catch that big cowhand spurring back on the flanks, and with his feet driven home tight into the stirrups. With his legs kicked back when the pony somersaulted, he went out of the saddle like a turtle flung by the tail. Both feet stuck fast in the stirrups, and he came down flat on his belly, as if he'd been dropped from a cloud.

Some mighty fast thinking by both men and horses was all that saved that big cowhand from being pounded to a pulp. The pony he was riding was badly hurt but not killed in the fall. It landed with its rump between the rider's spread-eagled legs—its heels kicking like the beaters in a thrashing machine. When the pony somersaulted, there was barely two lengths between him and the racing cowboy ponies. But in the fraction of a second before they reached him, a sharpshooter had broken his back with a 30–30 slug. Like a herd of frightened deer going over a fence the trained ponies sailed over and left the rider untouched. I never heard how many bones the rider had broken in that fall, but he was still unconscious at noon, and they'd taken him in to Wickenburg before suppertime.

I've seen some pretty good riflemen, but never one who made as quick and dead-sure a shot in an emergency as that sharpshooter's. As I lay waiting for the next run to be started, it made me feel a lot safer just to have a man like that on the lot, for one of the biggest dangers in horse falls is that the rider may become caught in some part of the gear and be kicked to death by his injured horse.

When Ted came riding out with the next bunch, I noticed right away that all the Indians were real ones, but there were a few more Hollywood cowboys, and four fall men were mounted on old crowbaits. I couldn't be sure, but it looked to me as if only two of them were Wyoming boys, and they were evidently pretty well sobered up, because they weren't doing any yipping and yelling. From the motions Ted was going through I knew he was telling them what they should do, and what they shouldn't do, in trying to protect themselves in both the ride and the fall.

After Ted had talked to the fall boys for ten or fifteen minutes he took the musket from one of them, then traded mounts with him. He was barely up on the fall pony when everyone along the course began yelling, shouting, shooting off guns, and making all the noise they could. Frightened by all the noise, the pony bolted straight away, but he hadn't taken three strides before he swerved to the right and skirted the edge of an open, gravelly patch of ground. At the same time, Ted threw the musket to his shoulder, hugged his chin against the stock as though he were taking careful aim, and fired. The direction he was holding the musket kept his head turned quartering from the way the pony was running. But the pony came pounding up the course toward me, weaving in and out to keep clear ground at his left during nearly every step of the way. Ted kept on shooting, with his chin hugged tight against the stock and his head turned quartering away.

At first I thought Ted must be riding a well-trained pony, but as he came closer I could see that he was swerving it this way and that with his weight and the pressure of his knees. And he wasn't sighting down the barrel of the musket. Only his head was turned; his eye was watching the ground ten feet in front of his pony's hoofs. Just as he passed the bushes where I was hiding, he threw his arms high, let the musket fall behind him, and dived down the far side of the pony's neck. He didn't unload, but straightened up after a few strides, turned the pony, and rode back to pick up the musket. He didn't look toward my bush, but as he stepped down he asked, “Did you take note o' that?”

“Nice going!” I said, without moving.

He still didn't look my way, but as he swung back into the saddle he told me, “Stay where you're at, kid, and keep your eye peeled.”

When Ted lined up his fall riders for that run I noticed that he left the two middle trip lines open. He put the two Wyoming boys way over to the right, and the other two far out to the left. Then he put the last riders among the Hollywood bunch about two or three lengths in front of them. With that much open space between themselves and the riders ahead, the fall boys had plenty of chance to watch where they were riding and to do it the way Ted had showed them. And spread out the way they were, every one of them could have made his fall with no horse behind him or within twenty feet.

They didn't do it. The instant the director yelled, “ROLL!” all four of them swerved their ponies toward the center of the strip, and spurred as if they were trying to outrun a cyclone. Not one of them was aiming his musket at the Indians, but had it swung up as if it were an ax handle. The ponies of the two riders who had started from the inside positions came together quartering, shoulder to shoulder, and went down with their riders under them in a tangle of arms, legs, kicking heels, and twanging wire. The trip man dropped his hook just as the second Wyoming boy was swinging his musket at the head of a New Mexico rider. Off balance, he had no chance to save himself, spun over with his horse, and came down with it sprawled on top of him.

The New Mexico boy tried to make a decent ride of it as soon as he was left alone. By the time he came into camera range he had his musket aimed at the Indians, was handling his pony in good shape, and made his fall within five feet of my bush. His horse was tripped just as it reached out with the lead forefoot, so it went over in a lightning-fast somersault—straight forward. The boy barely had time to heave his musket back over his head, and was shot from the saddle almost as if he'd been an arrow leaving a bow. But the horse went over so fast that the rider was only three or four feet from the ground when he flew. And he still had his arms and head thrown back, from getting rid of the musket.

Without trying to twist or turn, the rider streaked through the air for eight or ten feet, hit the ground sliding, and skidded another five or six. If he'd lit on sod, or any sort of smooth ground, he wouldn't have been hurt any more than a boy taking a belly-buster slide on a sled. But he didn't land on sod; he came down right in the middle of a gravel patch, and before he'd skidded to a stop the pebbles had ripped his clothes to ribbons and scraped most of the hair off his chest.