Читать книгу Rodeo - B.M. Bower - Страница 8

Table of Contents

THE Happy Family was inclined to make light of the storm. Kids took funny streaks sometimes, they averred, and the only danger lay in taking them too seriously. Chip, whose blood still boiled from the encounter, openly bewailed the fact that the Kid was too big to take a licking, which was plainly what he deserved. Even the Little Doctor for once failed to champion his cause. He was at that difficult age, she declared, when a boy's disposition underwent a change to match his voice and became uncertain and not to be endured except that one knew it was a temporary affliction. Claude would be all right if he were left alone for awhile.

It was with the tacit agreement to leave him alone that they decided to drive over to Cal Emmett's place, all of them, in the two closed cars. Chung, the Chinese cook, would look after J. G. for a couple of hours, and the Kid would have a chance to calm down.

But the Kid had no intention of calming down, in the sense they meant. The Kid was for once doing exactly what his father told him to do, and showing an unwonted zeal in the doing. He was just finishing the packing of his belongings on Sunup when he heard the two cars go laboring up the hill in second gear and guessed where they were going. It suited him very well, because now he would not need to take a roundabout course out of the coulee so as to avoid being seen, as he had intended to do. Furthermore, he could do something before he left which the presence of his father and mother would have made impossible. So he mounted and rode back up to the stables, his two packed horses swinging into the trail behind him and trotting docilely along at Stardust's heels. The Kid turned them into an empty corral and walked up to the house.

"Well, good-by, Uncle J. G.," he said with forced cheerfulness. "I'm pulling out for parts unknown, and I don't know when I'll see you again, so—"

"Parts unknown, ay?" The Old Man looked at him from under his grizzled eyebrows. "That means you don't know yourself, or that you ain't going to tell?"

The Kid colored and turned his gaze aside.

"That I don't want to tell, I guess. I don't want the folks to know and put up a holler about it." He glanced questioningly into the Old Man's eyes. "I suppose you heard about the row."

"Didn't get the straight of it," grumbled the Old Man. "Don't s'pose they did either, for that matter. What happened?"

"O-h—" the Kid spoke reluctantly "—I got into a nest of blind canyons, down here toward the river, and couldn't get out for about twenty-four hours, is all. Mother and Dad had me down for a major break—"

"Hey?"

"They think I stayed away just to be mean, and Dad and I can't seem to agree anyway, so I'm pulling out."

"Where to? No reason why you shouldn't tell me, is there?" The Old Man's shrewd eyes bored for the truth. "Ashamed to tell, ay?"

"No, it isn't that. But the folks seem to hate the idea of letting me grow up. They want to keep me depending on them for everything, even my opinions. Because I insist on doing my own thinking and planning my own life, they're in a blue funk. They can't or won't follow my mental processes, so they think I must be going straight to the devil. Dad's idea is to keep me out of school and make me work here on the ranch to learn what he calls sense. Mother wants me to be a doctor, and if I won't be a doctor school is going to spoil me. They stand together on one point: If I won't do what they want me to do with my life, they're not going to educate me. I don't know where they get that stuff—well, yes, I do, but it's all out of date, choosing your child's career while your child is in the cradle. It's the bunk. People of their intelligence ought to be ashamed to hold such archaic theories.

"Well, the point is, I'm going on and finish my University course, and I'm going to pay my own way. I meant to go into all this with the folks and tell them my plans, but this row kind of changes things. I'm perfectly willing to look after myself from now on, so I'm going to rustle the money to carry me through till next year."

"Far as the money's concerned—"

"No, I can't let you dig up enough to—no, not a dime, Uncle J. G. I can handle this alone, thanks just the same. That wouldn't get me anywhere in the long run. I'd still be letting some one else carry me when I'm well able to use my own legs. No, I'm going to pay my own way from now on. I can, all right—"

"How?" demanded his uncle, eyeing him curiously. "Goin' to rob a bank, ay?"

The Kid grinned and sat down on the edge of the table, thrusting his long legs straight out before him and folding his arms in a gesture of standing pat upon his own decision.

"I see I'll have to come clean," he surrendered. "Well, I've inherited some things I never will get out of my blood, I guess. You've got it, Dad's got it—call it the Western spirit. That's as good a term as I can think of now. I'm all West, all for the open and horses and all that goes with them. The boys wail because the old days are gone, but they don't realize the new days are not so bad. We've brought out of the old West the same spirit, only we express it in a slightly different way. We still love the open and we still love horses. It used to be all in the day's work; now it's the one all-American sport we have.

"The boys sneer at our contests and rodeos, but that's sheer prejudice, Uncle J. G. They've let themselves get out of touch with the real West, so they think it doesn't exist. But it does, and it has bred a sport that is worth any man's best efforts." The Kid paused, bent a questioning, wistful gaze upon his uncle.

"I've never talked about it," he said, after a hesitating moment, "but I was going to put it up to the boys when they came—till I saw what their reactions are toward us young fellows. Now, of course, I'll have to go it alone. It's a disappointment to me, but on the whole I'd just as soon put it over alone.

"What I'm working on, Uncle J. G., is the organization of a Western Contest team of riders and ropers. Fellows that will be under regular athletic training rules that gives them much more speed and endurance than is possible in the haphazard way most of them live now. With a coach, too, that knows the game. Get the idea, Uncle J. G.? One good clean bunch of real athletes will do more to lift our Western sports up to the level of baseball and football than anything on earth. And it certainly needs to be lifted to where the American public will stand back of it. People love horsemanship, racing and skillful riding. My idea is to combine athletics with our Wild West stunts, make the public see that here is our real American sport—the only one on earth that has grown out of an American industry!

"One good clean, fast team will convince them and bring others into existence. There'll be leagues, some day, contesting against each other. Riding clubs of the East can take it up—nothing to prevent any good horseman from learning the game—we've kept the East from thinking so, with our chaps and big hats and six-guns mostly! England might take it up too. More fun than riding to hounds, I should think. Each team would wear its own colors—" He flushed, took a quick breath and went on:

"The way it is now, too many people in the East believe we're all rough and tough out here. We've given ourselves the name of being ignorant, illiterate. It's time we taught the world that a man may be college-bred, qualified to hold a place in polite society and still be able to ride a bucking bronc to a standstill. I—I want to make bronc riding and steer wrestling and roping respected—accepted the world over as an American sport—have the East as well as the West proud of it, loyal to it. I want to put Wild West contests right up alongside polo!"

"Kid-glove contests, ay?" commented the Old Man shrewdly, thereby proving to the boy that he had at least made himself fairly understood.

"Put it that way if you want to. Anyway, that's what I've staked out as my particular ambition, and that's what I'll be working toward from now on. I began it last year, for that matter. Laramie's a good place to start. They've got the background our first contest team will need. You know they call their football team the Cowboys, don't you? Some of the most prominent rangemen in the West graduated from that University years ago. I've got four fellows in training, on the quiet—not letting on what we're aiming at. And that's what I got my three horses for. I rode at Cheyenne last year when I spent vacation down there at Walt Myers' ranch. I—don't ever tell, will you?—I entered as Montana Kid, and won second money in the bucking contest, first in fancy roping, second in the relay—and that's the money I bought Stardust and Blazes with. I knew Dad would raise a holler if he knew it, and Mother thinks contests are terribly roughneck, so I never said anything.

"This year I've got the best relay string in the West; I'll bet money on that. They're fast, and they're trained to stand at their stations till the saddle's on and I'm up. They won't stampede like most horses. I trained them last winter, with these boys I told you about. Luckily, the race track is close by the campus so we could get out there whenever the weather was fit and work out our strings. The boys have entered at Cheyenne this summer, but I couldn't on account of the folks coming on from the Coast. If I'd known as much as I know now," he added bitterly, "I'd have stayed away; I'd rate higher with Dad and the rest if I hadn't come home at all this summer."

"You been uppity," the Old Man told him bluntly. "Too dog-gone uppity to get along with anybody. You can't blame 'em—much."

"They hit me wrong, first thing. We couldn't seem to get together on anything. I wanted them just as they used to be, I guess—and they didn't want me at all. Oh, well—I've got to be going, Uncle J. G. Point is, I've got a prospect of making a nice little stake before school starts in the fall. I'm sure of winning the relay race, and I think I've got a good chance—"

"So you're going to Cheyenne, ay?"

"No." The Kid shook his head regretfully. "It's too late now—I couldn't make it if I flew."

"There ain't any other contest close enough, is there?" The Old Man was studying him with the old keen attention which the Little Doctor would have given much to see in his face.

"Oh, there are some local ones here and there, but I can't afford to chase them up. Chicago's where they'll hang up the big purses this year; a thousand dollars for first money on the bronc riding, and from that on down. I hear they're offering good day-money—a hundred dollars and on down, on the relay race." As if the thought of it impelled him to action, the Kid stood up and settled his hat for riding. "Well, good-by, Uncle J. G. Take care of yourself, and don't tell the folks anything I've said, will you?"

"I'm gittin' hard of hearin'," the Old Man told him dryly. "You never told me yet where you're goin' or when yuh figure on gittin' back—how you fixed for money, ay? Think you can live on faith?"

"Oh, I've got a little—enough to see me through, I guess. That Stardust horse of mine won me a race or two this spring, and I hung on to the money; had a hunch the parental ax would fall if I stuck to my plans. Thanks, just the same. You're a good old scout, do you know it? When I get a training ranch you can come and help run it."

"Don't go breakin' your dog-gone neck—" The Old Man's voice broke unexpectedly as the Kid gripped his hand and turned away, and the Kid stumbled in the doorway, his eyes suddenly blurred.

At the top of the hill, just before he rode out of sight, the Kid pulled up and waved his hat high over his head, watching the house far below him. Something white—a newspaper, he guessed—fluttered from the window where the Old Man had been sitting in his wheel chair. The Kid blinked, bit his underlip long and painfully and rode on toward the goal he had fixed for himself far down the gray miles and into the future that beckoned.