Читать книгу Lone Cowboy - Will James - Страница 3

Table of Contents

It was one June day in 1892 when a long-reach wagon pulled by four tired horses came to a stop amongst the elders and quakers bordering a little creek which run into the Judith Basin in Montana. The young woman who had been driving the team climbed down off the wagon seat and throwed the lines to one side. The horses would stand, they'd be glad to.

On the same trail the wagon had took, and a quarter of a mile back, rode a long lean cowboy. He was hazing upwards of ten head of saddle horses with him. As he seen the wagon stop he left them to graze and he loped up to where the woman was busy unhooking the team.

"Now, Bonnie," he says, as he slid off his horse, "don't you go to bothering with that." He smiled at her. "I'll show you what you can do."

He climbed up in the wagon, yanked out a heavy tarpaulin-covered roll of bedding and slid it to the ground. He jumped down after it, unrolled the bed, throwed back the dusty tarpaulin, and pointing to the bedding he says:

"This is what you can do, Bonnie. Stretch out on that and rest up while I unhook the team."

"But I ought to start setting up camp, Bill."

Bill frowned, and smiled, "You do as I tell you, Bonnie," and to end the subject he added on as he turned to look at the loose saddle horses, "Them ponies sure don't seem to have no grudge against that tall green grass do they?"

The team was unhooked, grained and turned loose. The tent was set up and a comfortable camp was made. All the while Bonnie was made to stay where she was and look on.

"We ought to make the town to-morrow or early next day, Bonnie," says Bill.

But it was many days before the town was reached, and, that night, without the help of a doctor, the woman went thru the sufferings of childbirth...I had come into the world.

No tag was needed around my neck where I came into the world at, for I don't think there was another child to within thirty miles of there. I was born close to the sod, and if I could of seen far enough I could of glimpsed ponies thru the flap of the tent on my first day while listening to the bellering of cattle and the ringing of my dad's spurs.

My dad was a Texan, born and raised in West Texas. My mother was from Southern California. Both was of the Scotch-Irish nation, with some Spanish blood on my mother's side. I was about a year old when I lost my mother, and, by the time I was four, my dad went and joined her acrost that Range Beyond.

I remember the time of my dad's death, but to go back on my earlier childhood I have to use the tally of what an old timer told me, the Old-timer who adopted and raised me. He seemed to know my dad mighty well.

According to what he told me, My dad had come up trail from Texas with many herds of the southern cattle during the "eighties." He'd delivered some herds as far north as Canada. After the last drive, he'd come to figger that for a cow country the North was sure enough all of that. It was colder up there but the grass was sure a plenty, so was the water, and there was no droughts, like there was in the South, no tick fever and it sure was the place to mature beef.

So, early one spring he sells out what holdings he has in Texas, hooks up four horses to a wagon, has my mother take the lines, and he himself brings up the rear with ten head of picked saddle horses. (The Old-timer often said that the brands on some of them horses was sort of hard to read.)

It was my dad's and mother's first intentions to keep going till they reached some place in Alberta, Canada, and start over again in the cow business up there. Then I comes along and stops the outfit in Montana. If I'd been born a month later I'd been a Canadian, and four months sooner would of made me a Texan.

But anyway, whatever I would of been, I was sure good in holding up the outfit...It didn't move for many days, but soon as was possible, my dad, after hunting up a pasture for his saddle horses, hooked up the team again and, slow and easy, took us to town (I don't know which town it was). After a spell there, we drifted on north some more just for a short ways and my dad found a cow outfit to work for where me and my mother had a good roof over our heads. He'd given up the idea of going any further north for the time being, and when fall begin to set in he decided to winter where he was. In Montana.

It was along the next spring when my mother took down with some sort of cold which, to-day, I guess is called the flu, and soon after that my dad found himself with no one but just me.

The Old-timer told me that my dad liked to lost his mind when my mother went and that her death come near being his own too. He'd got wild and reckless and I was all that kept him from doing things that would sure enough have killed him. He'd went back to riding the "rough string" (spoiled horses) and taking on bronks, something my mother had made him promise never to do again. A Montana rough string is sure not at all mild but he more than welcomed the fighting they done. Fast action and danger made him forget the hurt he packed in his heart.

Fast action and danger made him forget the hurt he packed in his heart

And fast action and danger is what he went after. With them big rough horses he'd go and pile his rope on everything that was wild and needed roping, and lots of big stuff that didn't need roping. The time and the place he done that never mattered to him, and many a cowboy held his breath at watching the "fool things" he'd do.

He tore the riggin' out of his saddle twice that year and, by the end of the summer, the saddle horn had been jerked off too, but he never bothered having it replaced. He fixed his own riggin', tied his rope thru the fork, and went on roping off of the rough ponies just the same.

"And" as the Old-timer said, "the rough string sure had the rough took off of 'em that year."

I didn't get to see much of my dad that summer, only for a day or so about once or twice a month. He had left me in care of a couple who was running a small outfit on the outskirt of the range he rode on. They had no children and they was mighty glad to have me. Once in a while the Oldtimer, who later gave me this story of my childhood, used to come and see me and rest his horses while visiting. Sometimes he'd bring me a chipmunk, in a cage which he'd made, or a squirrel. He always kept me supplied with horned toads, young woodchucks, young beavers, and even young porcupine. The very young porcupine has no quills but they don't stay that way long, and soon as the quills begin to show, they somehow or other disappeared. Most of the young animals I had made good pets and a few of them stayed around the ranch even after they was full grown.

My dad took on a contract breaking horses. He stayed at a ranch, but being there was no one there to take care of me he left me where I was. Once a week or so he'd ride over on some big snorting bronk and stay over night.

But the horse breaking contract didn't pan out so good. He'd been pretty well bruised up in being so wild the summer before and then one day, about Christmas time, a stump-headed bronk bucks off the side of a mountain with him, turns over, and leaves him lay in a willow thicket at the bottom. One of the boys finds him there just by pure luck, brings him in and takes him to a hospital in a buckboard. He layed there between sheets till away into the next summer, and when he come out he couldn't afford to be wild at all for the rest of that summer. He was with me most of the time then and I must of got to know him again.

That summer was my first time on a horse, for soon as my dad could ride a gentle horse he'd hoist me up on top with him. I'd set on the bastos behind the cantle and hang on to his cartridge belt and the Old-timer told me that we used to go on powerful long rides that way and run in stock to boot.

I didn't feel so good when my dad left me again that fall. He'd gone to finish up his contract breaking them bronks. He turned them over as broke the next spring and then went to work on the round-up. He didn't call for the rough string that year and he'd lost a considerable of his wildness. Maybe his heart had healed some and maybe not, for he'd got awful quiet as he worked and none of the boys could ever get more than a grunt out of him.

I pegged along sort of lonesome that summer and the next winter on account he couldn't come and see me very often and, to make things worse, the Old-timer had left for the far North into Canada, where he'd set his trap line. I liked the folks I was with a whole lot, they was mighty good to me, but I liked my dad first and the Old-timer second. I wasn't getting much riding while my dad was gone, and I wasn't getting so many pets as when the Old-timer was around. But the folks tried to make up for that as best they could. A wooden horse on rockers was made for me. That's one of the first things I remember. The body was hewed out of a cottonwood log and painted gray and there was a real horsemane and tail on him. I had a lot of fun saddling and unsaddling him with an old sawbuck pack saddle tree. Then Mommy, as I called the lady there, was a great hand at calling me in often and handing me things to eat which I had a weakness for.

I had some more fun down by the corrals and stables too, had a piece of light rope and I'd try to rope chickens. Then I'd go to the pig pen, and calf pen, and play horse by the mangers in the stable. I'd put a halter around my neck, stick some hay in my mouth, then nicker and stamp my feet. I'd snort too and pull back like a bronk.

But with all of that to play at I was lonesome. I was often calling for someone, and I'd set down for long spells and just stargaze. It was during them lonesome spells that I would often pick up things and want to make marks, tracing something in the dirt with a stick, or, with a hunk of charcoal I'd pick up from the last fire at the branding pen, I'd go and mark up the rough boards of the bunk-house porch...That winter, while the cold winds blowed outside and the snow piled up and I couldn't go out, is when I first got acquainted with a pencil and some blank paper, and I spent many hours a day making funny marks which, to anybody else, didn't mean nothing but to me meant a lot. To me they was all pictures of animals, mostly horses. My dad would say they was sure fine and once in a while he'd criticize and pass such remarks as "The hind legs on that horse are a little too straight, son" or "you forgot the dew-claws on that steer."

When spring come, my dad rode up again and I can remember how glad I was when I seen the white tarpaulin of his bed hitched on to the horse he was leading. That meant he'd be with me more than a day or so, and sure enough, he was with me about a month.

I think the greatest surprise and pleasure of my life was when he took his roll of bedding off the pack horse, after he rode in that evening, for under the bed was a little bitty saddle that looked just like a full size one, and just my fit. My dad lifted me up on it and he says, "This is your outfit, son, this horse and this saddle." I was so tickled that I just hollered and throwed both my feet up on the pony's withers.

The horse, as I remember, was a little long-maned black. I don't think he weighed over six hundred. He was round as a butter ball, and gentle as a gentle kitten, but the saddle is what interested me the most. I'd already seen lots of horses, but a saddle like the one I had, all for my own self, struck me as a gift that even Santa Claus couldn't compete with in handing out. There was even a brand-new rope on it. I know that that night was sure long for me and I was sure watching for daybreak so I could get out and try my horse and rigging. They had a hard time getting me in to eat the next morning.

Dad and me took many a good ride together that month. I was with him steady, all excepting when he'd be gone for an all-day ride, then I'd hit out by myself. The little black horse had to be shod and fed lots of grain so he could stand up under the work I was giving him, and come a time when they had to hand me a fresh horse while the black recuperated.

I was sure a happy kid, and, to make things even better, here drifts in the Old-timer one day. He'd long ago sold his furs from the winter's trapping and come South again. But I wasn't looking for no more pets just then, I was very busy with my horse, my saddle and my rope, and with my dad's and the Old-timer's company to fill in I sure had my hands full. There was one month when I hardly touched a pencil or try to make marks on anything. I sure wasn't lonesome no more.

If my mother had been along then and all of us settled on our own place, as had been my folks' first intentions, I guess I'd been the happiest kid in the world, for, even tho I didn't remember her, I think I missed her just the same, specially when my dad was gone. I missed someone besides him and I didn't know who...

My dad had given up the idea of going to Canada to start for himself again, for, as he told the Old-timer, he couldn't think of settling anywhere or building any home, with Bonnie gone. His intentions was to keep on riding for the outfits around here and there, keep a saving his wages, and some day, when I got big enough, to start me out in life with a good spread of my own.

But that never came true, and when he left me after that great month we had together, a month which I'll always remember and be thankful of living thru, I never seen him no more.

He'd gone to join the round-up wagon again. Some time later a big herd of cattle was gathered, many thousands of head, which was being run thru corrals and chutes at some home-ranch. They was being separated and vented. Some outfit had changed hands or bought up more cattle.

By the chute of them corrals is where my dad drawed his last breath. The only way he had against his way of cashing in, as he said before he died, is that he was afoot and not at all being wild. His idea of going to the Other Range was while setting on top of a hard bucking, roman-nosed bronk, his rope tied hard and fast and a big steer in the loop.

As it was, he was peacefully prodding cattle thru the chutes to the squeezer when his time come. There was quite a herd of cattle in that same corral where he was working, and amongst that herd was a big "staggy" steer that'd just broke a horn. The blood from that broken horn was running down that steer's face to his nose and he was on the fight, not with his own breed, but with anything strange, like a human.

He seen my dad a standing there, and my dad, being busy, wasn't paying no attention. He'd just stooped down for the prodding stick he'd dropped when the big steer caught him broadside with his one good horn, hoisted him in the air, took him on a ways and then flung him against the chute. The horn had pierced him thru the stomach like as if it had been done with a knife, only worse.

The cowboys rushed to him, straightened him from the crumpled position he was in, and, so they told the Old-timer, they seen at a glance that nothing could be done. But, they said there was a smile on my dad's face when, after a while, he opened his eyes, and the first words he'd said was, "Well, boys, I'm due to join her soon now"...Then, after a while, he'd added on, "The only thing I regret is to leave little Billy behind...Tell old trapper Jean that all my gatherings are his and to see that my boy is well took care of. I leave him to him."

He'd talked on for a little while and within an hour from the time the steer had picked him up he.'d closed his eyes and went on the Long Sleep.