Shaking the Nickel Bush (6 page)

At first it seemed to me that the best thing I could do was to stay where I was till noon, then eat as much as my belly would hold—on my last meal ticket—and head back to town before I got killed in one of those crazy rides. Then, after the mess had been cleaned up and I was waiting for Ted to bring out the last bunch of riders for the forenoon, I began thinking about the New Mexico rider's fall—and I got an idea. The first thought that had gone through my head when I'd seen him sailing along, just a couple of feet above the ground, was that he looked like a boy who had made his run and was flopping down onto his sled. And sliding made me think of a hill, and that made me think about the new set Ted had shown me on the side of the mesa.

It's funny how one thing will lead to another when a fellow is all alone, and in no hurry, and thinking sort of loose-jointedly. The next thing I found myself thinking about was that I'd seen skiers in New England jump nearly the whole length of hills that were fully as steep and a lot longer than the one on the edge of the mesa. Of course, they'd had snow to land on, but some of those jumpers had been as much as sixty feet above the hillside on their way down, and it wasn't the softness of the snow that had kept them from being hurt when they landed. It had been because the hillside was falling away nearly as fast as they were, and because they kept right on sliding downward after they'd landed.

It seemed to me that it might work about the same way if a fellow took a horse fall down a steep hill like that. It wouldn't do any good to somersault in the air and try to land on your feet, because you wouldn't slide but would topple over like a felled tree. That wouldn't happen if you went belly-bump, the way the New Mexico rider had, but the gravel on the new set was coarser and sharper than on the patch of ground in front of my bush.

I'd have given up any idea of trying a belly-bump fall on the new set if I hadn't happened to remember the time one of our neighbor's boys nearly got killed when we were hauling gravel for a new road. He was a smart-alec kid about ten years old, and had been amusing himself by throwing pebbles at the horses while we were loading wagons in an old pit that had been dug deep into a hillside. We were about ready to wring his neck before his father told him to go home, but he didn't go. Instead, he climbed the hill and began tossing pebbles down at us from the edge of the pit.

Suddenly I heard a screech and looked up to see the boy tumbling down the face of the gravel bank. He skidded and slid about half the distance, then started a slide that buried him four feet deep at the bottom, and we got him dug out just before he smothered to death. That gravel was really rough, and we expected to find the kid torn to shreds, but there wasn't a scratch on him, so we figured the stones had rolled under him like ball bearings.

I knew the stones on the side of the mesa wouldn't roll that easily, because the grade wasn't steep enough and the ground underneath was too rough and hard, but if they'd roll at all I thought I had an idea that would make me a lot of money. I didn't wait to see the falls of the last forenoon run, but crawled out of my bush and slipped away to the edge of the mesa, keeping out of sight as much as I could. When I was sure I was alone I walked along the rim till I found a big open patch of gravel down over the edge, with no boulders or cactus on it. Then I took a run, jumped off over the edge, and landed like a baseball player stealing second base. I landed pretty hard on my hip, but the stones rolled under me, and I'd only torn my jeans a little when I skidded to a stop.

Next I tried diving off headfirst, as if I'd had a sled to come down on, but I kept my head well back and my arms up. That didn't work too well, because I stuck my chest out too far and didn't have it full enough of air. When I lit on it I knocked the wind out of myself, but I didn't skid very far, and I didn't get scraped too badly on the gravel.

Before I could try another fall I had to sit there a few minutes to get my breath back, and it gave me a chance to do a little more thinking. I hadn't seen Lonnie land when he'd dived off the freight train, but he'd told me that if you landed rolling you wouldn't get hurt, so I decided I'd try it in making a fall. That time I took a fast run to the edge, dived high, and twisted myself crossways of the hill so I'd land rolling. I did. And I'd have rolled clear to the bottom of the hill if I hadn't wound up in a tangle of greasewood bushes. But it hadn't knocked the wind out of me when I landed, and I'd only got a few scratches from the gravel as I rolled.

On the next try I didn't turn my body so far while I was in the air, but twisted a shoulder down, so I'd land on the back of it and roll diagonally. It worked all right, and after I'd tried it a few more times I found that I could steer myself pretty well in the air, so as to land and roll about where and how I wanted to. Then I brushed myself off a little and went in for lunch.

I hadn't realized that I'd spent much time in practicing, but the last run of the forenoon had been finished for an hour before I got back to the lot. A stretcherman told me it was the wildest ride he'd ever seen. All four of the fall riders were in the hospital tent with broken arms or legs, and the rest of Group Three was in the chuck tent. I cleaned myself up as well as I could before I went over, but when I'd passed the serving counter Ted motioned for me to come and sit with him. “Where the devil you been, and what you been up to?” he asked me as I sat down opposite him.

“Practicing on the edge of the mesa,” I told him. “Who do I make a deal with for taking falls on the new set?”

Ted told me I'd have to make my deal with the production manager, and that he'd take me to him as soon as I'd finished my lunch, but it was more than half an hour before we left the table. First he made me tell him about my practicing; just how I'd done it and what I'd learned from it. Then he told me about the trouble he'd been having with our group that forenoon. He said it was divided into two war parties—the Wyoming boys against everybody else—and that a man might as well waste his time in trying to talk sense to a pack of fighting coyotes. The boys didn't dare get into any more fist fights, because there were too many armed guards around and they'd get kicked off the lot, so they'd turned the fall riding into a crazy game of stump-the-leader. That was why he wanted to get started on the new set right away. He said that the way things were going, half the boys would bust themselves up before suppertime anyway, and they might as well do it on a set where the company could shoot some premium film.

The production man knew as well as we did that the other boys were steamed up enough to tackle the new set, and that they wouldn't hold out for big pay to make the falls. Even with Ted's telling him that I'd be worth more, the best deal I could make with the man was for twenty-five dollars a fall. Even at that it didn't work out too badly. Ted was right in his guess that half the boys would bust themselves up before suppertime. They did, and the next day I was able to raise my price to thirty-five.

While we were over at the make-up tent getting ready for my first ride Ted got an idea that saved me a lot of grief, and probably made me a lot of money. I was so thin that the wardrober couldn't find anything to fit me. He was trying to make an old jacket smaller when Ted winked at me and hollered, “Wait a minute there! You can't go puttin' no pins in a fall-rider's duds, and I ain't going to have no rider out there lookin' like a dressed-up skeleton! Pad this kid up so's't he can fill man-sized cloze!” He slapped me on the back of the shoulders hard enough to rattle my teeth, and again on the chest. “Get it up high on him here, and thick,” he told the man, “so's't he'll look like a man 'stead of a scarecrow! And pad out the points of them skinny shoulders!”

When we went out of there I looked like a fat bull with a starved calf's head on him, but those pads saved me an awful lot of beating when I landed from a bad fall. Even at that, I got some pretty rough bumps, because a horse was seldom tripped where I could aim myself at a decent spot to land on. And even though the biggest staghorn cholla and yucca had been dug up and reset, they knocked the wind out of me when I hit them on the fly.

I made two falls that first afternoon, four on each of the next two days, and three on the fourth day. At the end of that last day I didn't have a broken bone anywhere, but my face and hands looked like raw hamburger, every joint in me creaked as if it were rusty, and there was hardly a spot on my legs, arms, or body that wasn't black-and-blue. The next morning I was so stiff and sore I couldn't bend over to pull on my britches.

All the way through, Ted had looked out for me as carefully as if I'd been his own son. As long as the Wyoming boys lasted he never let one of them ride near me, but always put them on the other side of the strip. He saw to it that there was never a rider behind me, and always let me know about where I could expect my fall, so that I'd be as ready for it as possible. Then, at the end of every run, I collected my pay and gave it to him to keep for me. There was $435 by the end of that fourth day—more than I could have made as a cowhand in a whole year.

I was sure that with a day or two of rest I'd be able to ride some more falls, but Ted said there was no sense in crowding my luck, and that, stiffened up as I was, I'd probably break my neck the next time out. He sat on my cot and visited so long that he missed his breakfast, just talking about old friends we'd known in Colorado, and about going back as soon as spring came. Then he held the first run of the morning over for half an hour so he could see me off when I took the flivver back to Wickenburg. When we shook hands he said, “Keep your nose clean, kid, and don't flash that roll o' long green; there's them around that would knock a man off for that much dough. Come Fourth o' July, I'll see you at the Littleton roundup.”

“I'll be there,” I told him. And then the flivver jounced away.

It was because of my telling Ted I'd be at the Littleton roundup that I was lying flat in the ditch in the St. Joseph freight yards the night before the Fourth.

5

Friendly Phoenix

T
HE
same Mexican who had driven me out from Wickenburg drove me back, and though I think he was trying to be a little more careful, I was off the seat about as much as I was on it, and by the time we reached town I felt as though I'd been through a dozen more horse falls. My legs were so wobbly when I got out at the depot that I walked as if I were drunk, and my bedroll seemed to weigh a ton. The only thing I could think of that I'd like to do was to crawl into a soft bed and stay there for a month. But there was no sense in staying in Wickenburg, and Lonnie had said he'd wait a week for me in Phoenix, so I went into the depot to buy a ticket.

It was only a little after nine o'clock when I went in, and I found that the next train didn't leave until four in the afternoon, and the ticket office didn't open till two. The seats in that depot were harder than the rocks on the horse-fall sets, so after ten or fifteen minutes I tried walking around a little, to see if I could loosen up the kinks in my back and legs. The first thing I saw when I went outside was a ramshackle old hotel across the street, with a sign that read, “CLEAN ROOMS $1.” I was lucky enough to get one on the ground floor, so I didn't have to climb any stairs. It wasn't too dirty, and the bed wasn't bad, but I couldn't get any rest on it. In the first place, there wasn't a spot on me that didn't hurt when I lay on it, and in the second place, the keeper for the bolt on the door was missing.

When I'd come in there had been four or five rough-looking men loafing around the lobby of the hotel, and when I'd signed up for my room the clerk had asked for my dollar in advance. I hadn't expected that when I'd gone in, a five-dollar bill was the smallest I'd had, and it was the outside bill on the roll in my pocket—with an elastic band around it. The first thing I thought of was what Ted had told me about not flashing my roll, so I fiddled around with my fingers till I could slip the band and peel off the five.

As I lay there trying to find a comfortable spot, I couldn't help thinking about the way I must have looked while I was fishing around in my pocket for that five. With my fingers as swollen and clumsy as they were, it had taken me a couple of minutes, and a man wouldn't have needed much brains to know that I was peeling a bill off a roll that was bigger than I dared to show. With no way of locking my door, and with me too stiffened up to fight back, it would be a cinch for those fellows in the lobby—or any one of them—to knock me for a loop and clean me out.

I didn't have any use for $434, and if I'd had any sense I'd have left most of it with Ted, so he could keep it for me until I saw him at the Littleton roundup. But I didn't think of that. I wasn't really able to do much thinking during those last couple of days of fall riding, and I didn't try to keep any close track of what I was earning. Right at the beginning I'd given Ted my mother's address, and had told him to send her the money if anything happened to me. Then, when nothing did, I sort of had it in the back of my head that as soon as I got to town I'd buy a money order at the post office and mail it to her in a letter. But as I lay there on the bed I realized that I couldn't do that either.

I'd already written her a big fairy tale about a job I didn't have, and about having to use my next few pay checks to pay for my outfit. If I should write within a couple of weeks' time and send her four hundred dollars, even she would have to think I'd robbed a bank or something of the kind. I couldn't write and tell her about the horse falls, because that would scare her to death. And I couldn't tell her I'd won it in a poker game, because that would make her feel worse than if I told her about the riding in the horse falls. In fact, I couldn't write to her at all until my hands healed up enough that my writing wouldn't look like hen tracks.

I don't know what I'd have done with my money if I hadn't had to go to the outhouse, for I hadn't noticed till then how ripped-up and dirty my britches were. It was partly to buy some new ones, but mostly to get away from the fellows in the hotel lobby, that I went hunting for a drygoods store. And on the way I got an idea. When I went in I told the man I wanted the longest-legged, smallest-waisted pair of Levi's he had. I was only twenty-six inches in the waist, but to get long enough legs, I had to take a pair of 32–36's. Even though I'd worn a company outfit when I was taking the falls, my shirt was nearly as messed-up as my britches from practicing, and the man couldn't understand why I wouldn't buy a new one, but I didn't think it would be good business to look too prosperous, so I just asked him if he had a place where I could change britches. When I came out with those new Levi's on I looked more like a scarecrow than when I went in. I'd had to take half a dozen tucks under my belt, and I'd had to make four folds in the bottoms of the legs before my feet would show.

From the drygoods store I went to a bank and bought eight fifty-dollar bills—the oldest and softest ones the teller could find. Then I asked him if they had a washroom I could use. They did, but I used it for only about two minutes—just long enough to unfold one leg of my Levi's, lay $420 against the bottom edge, and fold it up again. I was pretty sure I wouldn't need more than fourteen dollars for the next few days, and I was even surer that if anybody robbed me, he wouldn't steal my britches or think to look inside the folds of the cuffs. With the bills being old and soft they wouldn't rustle, and no one could feel them in there.

That seven hours I had to wait in Wickenburg seemed like a week. Even when I didn't have to worry about being robbed I couldn't rest comfortably on my bed, and it wasn't much more comfortable to hobble around the streets. I went to all three restaurants to see if any of them had stewed chicken or poached fish, but they didn't so I bought a can of salmon and a quart of milk in a grocery store and took them back to my room. Then I went to the depot and bought my ticket, just to kill time. While the agent was stamping the back of it I asked, “Is the bowlegged freight conductor who runs between here and Phoenix due in this afternoon?”

“Yep! Yep!” he told me. “That'll be Jim Magee, and he ought to pull in 'long about three o'clock. How come you to ask?”

“He did me a good turn once,” I said, “and I just thought I'd like to say hello if I could find him again.”

“You ain't alone,” the agent told me as he took my two dollars and picked the change out of the till. “Jim, he's got a soft spot for down-an'-out cowhands—specially them that's kids and a long ways from home. He didn't get them bowlegs of his railroading. Didn't go to braking freight till . . . '98, if I recollect right . . . not till he was pretty well stove up. Time he was your age he was the bronc peelin'est cowhand in these parts. What did he, lend you a five?”

“No,” I said, “just did me a good turn when I needed it.”

If the agent hadn't asked me about the five I'd have hung around the depot till the freight came in, then thanked Jim Magee again for bringing me out from Phoenix. But I got the idea that the old fellow must have lent many a five to boys who hadn't been as lucky as I, and who had never been able to come back and repay him. I walked up and down the platform three or four times, just thinking about it, and the more I thought, the more I wanted to pay back the debt for one of those boys. But you couldn't walk up to a man like Jim Magee and hand him a five-dollar bill, along with some goody-goody talk about wanting to pay somebody else's debt. There was only one thing I could think of to do, so I went up to the main street, bought a box of ten-cent cigars, and was leaning against the end of the depot when Jim's freight pulled in on the siding.

I stayed where I was until the engine had been uncoupled, then started across the tracks. The old man recognized me before I was halfway to him and called out, “Hi there, bub! See you done some ridin' and come out all in one piece. Do any good?”

“Yep,” I said, “I was lucky, so I won't be needing that straw car; I'm going to ride the cushions. Just came over to thank you for giving me a lift, and I brought along a few cigars I don't have any use for. That one of yours looks kind of worn down.”

It looked as though the stump old Jim had clenched in his teeth was the same one he'd had when he brought me out from Phoenix. He took it out, tossed it away, and said, “Now that was right kindly of you, but you needn't to have fetched along no cigars. Most generally the boys don't bother to come back less'n they need another lift, and you a'ready thanked me once.”

The cigar box wasn't wrapped, and I guess Jim had thought there'd be only two or three in it. When he took it he looked up quickly and said, “Lord A'mighty! A whole boxful! You didn't go buy 'em, did you?”

I thought it would be better to tell him a white lie, so I just said, “Side bet, and I don't smoke.”

“Lord! Lord!” he said as he looked the box over. “Ten-centers! Who'd you bet with—one of them Hollywood dudes? You must'a done all right! Where you headin' for, Californy to see the sights? Most of the boys does when they make a stake.”

“No,” I told him, “I'm going back to Phoenix. I've got a buddy waiting for me there at the stockyards. He's going to find us jobs with one of the drovers or cattlemen that brings stock in.”

Jim stood for a minute or two, looking down at the track and shaking his head slowly. “Doubt me he'll do it,” he said at last. “Doubt me you'd find a job anywhere in a railroad town. Too many soldier boys coming back from the war that can't find nothin' to do. Swarming over the freights like a mess of ants. Most of the crews are kickin' 'em off.”

“I know it,” I told him. “My buddy and I got kicked off a dozen times between Tucson and Phoenix.”

“Yep. Yep,” he said. “A man's takin' a risk to haul 'em—likely to get laid off if a spotter catches him.”

He looked up and grinned. “Was I bummin' the railroads, I'd never bother with no freights. Blind baggage; that's the safe place for a man to travel—and the fast one. Them mail trains will take a man further in one night than freights will in a week.”

I didn't even know there were mail trains, and I had no idea as to what blind baggage might be. When I told Jim I didn't, he looked up at me sort of questioningly. “Take it you ain't been bummin' long,” he said.

“No,” I told him, “only to get from Tucson up here.”

He turned the cigar box over in his hands and looked down at it for a couple of minutes, then he said slowly, “Well, I ain't recommendin' it to you, but if you was to get stuck bad—and broke—it might be a good thing to know.” Then he explained to me that the fast mail trains picked up and dropped off mail sacks on the fly, and made stops only at large cities or division points. He said the first car behind the engine was called the blind baggage because the front door was locked tight and the train crew didn't have a key for it, so they couldn't get through to see if a bum was riding in the doorway.

“About all a man's got to do is to flip one of them blind baggages after the train gets to rolling right good,” he told me, “and he's all set to the next division point anyways—maybe a couple of hundred miles down the line. Don't make no difference if the engine crew spots you flippin' on. They ain't going to stop a train to kick you off, and they ain't riskin' a layoff if they get caught hauling you.”

I'd thanked him for telling me about the blind baggage, and was putting out my hand to shake with him and say good-bye, when he looked up and said, “Know what I'd do if I was a young fella in these times, and had made me a little stake, and was hunting for a cowhand job? I'd buy me one of them secondhand flivvers—a man could pick up a pretty good one for about a hundred dollars—and I'd take off into the back country. Any man with a grain of sense will hire a hand that's got spunk enough to come hunting a job quicker'n he'll take one of them that's hangin' 'round the railroad towns and the stockyards. Now you understand, bub, I ain't tellin' you what to do; I'm just telling you what I'd do was I a young fella in times the like of this.”

After I'd thanked him again he stuck out his hand and said, “If you're taking the four o'clock you'd best to pick up your bedroll pretty soon. She's due in about six minutes. And if you get this way again, look me up. I reckon I'll be around quite a spell yet.”

It was long after dark when I reached Phoenix, so I didn't try to find Lonnie, but took a hotel room, about a block up from the depot. Then I found a little restaurant where the owner did the cooking and his wife waited on the counter. At first they thought I'd been beaten up in a fight, but when I told them about riding in the horse falls and about my diet, they were real friendly. They didn't have much I could eat, but the man opened a can of spinach, heated it, and put on three poached eggs. He said he'd get in some cabbage and celery the next day, and would stew me a chicken. Then his wife said that if I'd bring her the flour and Mother's recipe, she'd bake me some gluten bread. They were Swedish people, and I think they believed I was Swedish too, because my hair was blond and I had a New England accent.

The room I got was a good one, in a nice clean little hotel, and only a dollar a day. It was at the back of the ground floor, had a good bolt on the door, two large windows, and the best bed I'd slept in since I left home. Maybe it was just too good, and I was too tired. I went to sleep within two minutes after I crawled in, and I must have slept in the shape of a question mark. It was well after daylight when I woke up, and though I was warm enough, my back and hips were as stiff as if I'd been rolled into a ball and frozen. I wiggled around till I could get my legs over the side of the bed and sit up, but I could barely lean over far enough to get my legs into my britches, or straighten up enough to pull them on. I had to fish for my boots with my feet, then lie down to haul them on. Anybody who saw me going over to breakfast must have thought I was the Hunchback of Notre Dame.