Little Britches (17 page)

Father explained it to me before we started, and I was so afraid I might do something wrong and get him badly hurt that my hands were shaking when I reached out to take the lines. He wouldn't let me take hold of them then. He said I'd have to stop a little while and get my mind straightened out, because a horse could tell through the feel of the reins if the person driving him was afraid. Then he told me I had already proved I could make a horse do what I wanted it to, so there was no reason to be afraid now. It made me proud to hear him say that, and when I reached out for the lines again my hands were steady. I wrapped the reins around them and called, "Get up," with my voice as deep in my throat as I could make it go.

We scooped out a hole nearly as big as our kitchen. While Father dug the corners out square with a pick and shovel, I peeled bark off the poles with his drawknife. It took five days to build the cellar. After the hole was dug we cribbed the walls up with poles like a log house. We made the end walls half round at the tops and then laid poles across to make the roof.

Grace and I stuffed all the cracks on the outsides of the walls and roof with straw while Father made the door and the steps. Then we hitched up the horses and, with the scraper at the end of a long rope, filled dirt in tight around the sides and over the roof till it looked like a little hill with a trap door in it.

The next week I peeled poles while Father built them into a corral. It was a good one, with a six-pole fence five feet high. Father set a big, high post for the gate to swing on. Then he made the gate out of slim poles with the butt ends toward the hinges, and a guy wire running from the top of the post to the lighter end of the gate so it could never sag.

While we were building it I got thinking how lonesome our little house had looked to me, sitting out there on the prairie, when I had first seen it from the hill by Fort Logan. When the last nail was driven and the hasp was put on the gate, I got Father to let me put Nig and the new colt and our two cows in the corral. Then he let me take Fanny and ride up to that hill again, so I could look at our place and see how much it looked like a real ranch now.

ALL DURING the time we were building the cellar and the corral, Grace and I had to do our schoolwork after supper. Father worked with us, too, but I couldn't make out what he was doing. He had some big sheets of wrapping paper that came with the groceries, and his steel square and dividers, and while we were studying, he'd be drawing pictures. Once in a while he'd ask Mother to figure out an arithmetic problem for him, and then he'd change his drawings all around.

The morning after we finished building the pole corral he and I drove Fanny to Englewood. It was at the end of the Denver streetcar line and had lots more stores than Fort Logan. First we went to the blacksmith shop and got a couple of lengths of angle iron, small pulley wheels, and pieces of round iron rod. Then, at the hardware store, we bought sheets of galvanized iron, three or four kinds of screen wire—some coarse and some fine—and lots of bolts, screws, and other things. There was so much that I knew it would cost a lot of money, and I asked Father if we'd have any left. He took out his long leather pouch and showed me that there was quite a little silver and some bills in it. Then he said that part of it was mine, and asked me if there was something I wanted to buy. I told him I wished I had a steel trap, so we went over to the corner where the guns and traps were, and he helped me pick out one the right size for prairie dogs and skunks.

I was wondering what we were going to do with all the hardware and iron, and after we started for home Father told me we were going to build a winnower. He said it would cost too much to have a big machine come to thresh our peas and beans, but we'd have plenty of time during the winter to do it with hand flails and a winnower.

After we got home, he spread a roll of brown paper out on the bunkhouse floor, got his drawings, and began cutting patterns the way Mother did for making clothes. Father didn't need me to help him, so I went out to set my new trap. Before I left he told me I'd have to set it quite a ways from the buildings, so King or one of the cats wouldn't get into it, and then I'd have to stay away from it if I expected to catch anything. I took it clear over beyond the railroad tracks and set it near a prairie dog village. I knew they liked peas, so I sprinkled dried grass over it till it was almost hidden, then put a little handful of peas right above the trigger plate.

After it was all set I went back to the bunkhouse and watched Father cut patterns for a while, but I kept asking him if he didn't think it was about time I brought in the cows. I was wondering if I'd caught a prairie dog yet, and I could go around that way when I went for the cows without having it seem too obvious that I was anxious about my trap.

Father didn't let me go for them till sunset. As soon as I got out behind the barn where nobody could see me I ran to beat the band. From the railroad track I could see that there was something in my trap, but it didn't look like a prairie dog. It looked bigger and brighter. When I got close enough I found that it was a big cock pheasant. His head was inside the jaws of the trap and there were a few feathers blowing around from his flapping when it broke his neck.

The first thing that popped into my head was what Fred Aultland had said about spending the rest of your life in the hoosegow if you killed a pheasant. I was so scared I got all shaky. First I thought the best thing to do would be to get him out of there and hide him in the bottom of a deep gulch. I looked all around to see if anybody was in sight, then I stepped on the trap spring and took him out. The jaws had pulled a lot of feathers out of his neck and had almost bitten his head clear off. So, if I hid him in a gulch and somebody found him, they'd know just what had happened. Then I figured that if I didn't hide him, but just threw him down in the gulch, the coyotes would come and eat him.

It wasn't very dark yet, and I was afraid somebody might see me if I just lugged him away across the prairie, so I took off my coat and wrapped him up in it. After gathering up all the loose feathers I started for the gulch, but the farther I went the more I worried for fear the coyotes might not eat him. It seemed as if it would be like trying to eat a pillow. I was sure they wouldn't do it because they'd get their mouths all full of feathers. Then I thought if I picked him they'd be sure to eat him—and I could let the wind blow the feathers away so nobody could ever tell I'd had anything to do with it.

By that time I had reached the edge of the gulch and slid down over the bank to start picking. It was getting pretty dark, but when I unwrapped him I could see what a mess I was in. The pheasant hadn't bled a bit with the trap jaws around his neck, but after I had wrapped him up, blood had run out of his mouth till the inside of my coat was all red and sticky. I didn't know what to do. Just as if he were deciding it for me, a coyote howled from somewhere farther down the gulch. I bundled the pheasant up quick and went after the cows. I knew I'd have to have Father's help to ever get out of the mess I was in.

Everybody was in to supper by the time I got the cows home, so I hid the pheasant, slammed the bunkhouse door as if I'd been in to hang up my coat, and went into the house. The minute I stuck my head inside the kitchen door, Mother said, "What in the world have you been up to now? You look as though a ghost had been chasing you."

I said I hadn't been up to anything, but the cows had been way over by the big gulch and it was all full of coyotes, and maybe that had scared me just a little. Then she told Father that I was too young to be way off out there after dark, and that I'd have to start after the cows earlier. He just said, "mmhmm," and bowed his head to say grace as soon as I was in my chair. He might just as well have said to me, "You and I will talk more about this later."

We went out to milk right after supper. I don't think I had more than a dozen squirts of milk in the bottom of my bucket —just enough so that it didn't ring any more—when Father said, "What did you do, get your own foot in your trap?"

I said, "No, sir." Then I went ahead and told him about catching the pheasant, but I didn't tell him about wanting to hide it. I asked him if he thought they'd put me in the hoosegow, as Fred said, if the sheriff found out about it.

Father didn't say a word for a minute or two. Then he said, "It isn't a case of 'if the sheriff finds out about it.' It's a case of your breaking the law without intending to. If you tried to cover it up, you'd be running away from the law. Our prisons are full of men whose first real crime was running away because they didn't have courage enough to face punishment for a small offense. Tomorrow you must go to see the sheriff. I'll explain to Mother about your coat."

I didn't have a very good night. I couldn't keep my mind on my business after supper, and Mother nearly spanked me because I got all mixed up and couldn't say the table of twelves. She gave me a glass of warm milk before I went to bed, but it didn't make me sleep any better. Whenever I wasn't awake I was dreaming. Mother used to recite "The Ballad of Reading Gaol," and that night I kept dreaming I was the man in the ballad. Every time I'd wake up in the pitch dark, I'd put my hand over and feel for Philip to make sure it wasn't really so.

After breakfast I begged Father to go to Fort Logan with me to see the sheriff, but he said, "No. You haven't learned to ask for advice before you get into scrapes, and it isn't fair to expect help in getting yourself out every time."

I told him he'd have to go with me, because I didn't even know who the sheriff was and I'd never be able to find him alone.

He just boosted me up on Fanny's back and handed me the bag with the pheasant in it. Then he said, "You found Two Dog's lodge all right without any help, didn't you? If you ask at the post office, I think they'll be able to tell you where you'll find the sheriff."

I'd always cantered Fanny all the way to Fort Logan—and right up to the hitching rail—but that morning I made her walk. For a while I thought about running away, but the only place I knew to go was up to Two Dog's. If he'd lived alone, I guess I might have gone, but I remembered what a hurry Mr. Thompson had been in to bring me right home, so I decided I'd better not try it. All the time I was thinking about running away, I kept getting a squirmy feeling in my stomach because of what Father had told me when we were milking. After I made up my mind that I was going to be brave and face the music it stopped a little, but it came right back again when I went into the post office.

The lady behind the window told me I'd find the sheriff over at the Last Chance Saloon, just outside the gates of the Fort. At first I thought that would give me a good enough reason to go home without seeing him, because I knew what Mother thought of saloons, and of course she wouldn't want me to go into one. So I climbed back on Fanny and started down the street toward the Morrison wagon road.

I knew Mother would say I had done just the right thing, but I tried not even to think about what Father might say. I couldn't help it, though. And I wasn't a bit sure he wouldn't say it was running away from the law and tearing boards off my character house. We had just turned into the Morrison wagon road when I got a big lump in my throat. Then I pulled Fanny around and galloped her back to the hitching rail in front of the Last Chance Saloon.

My heart was thumping like sixty when I went in through the little swinging doors. I was scared, but I was a little bit proud, too, that I had business big enough so that I could go right into a saloon.

I stopped just inside the doors—it was kind of dark in there and there were about a dozen soldiers and other men leaning against the bar and talking loud. The man behind it yelled, "What you doing in here, Bub? Who you want to see?"

He leaned across the bar, and I went over and told him I wanted to see the sheriff. He just jerked his thumb toward the back of the room and said, "The big fella."

The sheriff was talking to another man when I got back there, so I stood behind him and waited for him to get finished. He was the biggest man I'd ever seen; my head didn't come up as high as the top of his cartridge belt, and the longer I waited the bigger the lump in my throat grew. At last the man behind the bar came back and told the sheriff I was there, so he leaned over and said, "What can I do for you, Son?"

I had to swallow hard before I could make a sound, then I said, "I broke the law and Father made me come down to tell you."

He said, "Well, well, well! We'll have to look into this." While he was saying it he sat me up on the bar in front of him and asked me what I'd done.

All the men along the bar came and made a big crowd around us, I showed him the pheasant and told him that I didn't kill it on purpose, but it got in my trap when I was trying to catch a prairie dog.

He took the pheasant and laid it on the bar beside me. Then he rumpled up all its feathers and felt it all over with his hands. After he'd finished, he said to the men, "By God, that's the way he got it all right. I'd 'a' sworn his old man shot it and sent the kid in to get himself out of a pickle."

I didn't like that, and I guess I must have yelled, "Father would not try to get himself out of a pickle."

Everybody laughed and hollered, and the sheriff said, "Kind of like your old man, don't you? What makes you think he wouldn't try to get out of a scrape?"

I told him, then, what Father had said about our prisons being full of men who ran away from the law, but that time nobody laughed. The sheriff put the pheasant back in the bag and handed it to me. He said the law was that you couldn't shoot a pheasant, but he didn't remember anything in it against catching one in a steel trap, so I'd better take it home for Mother to roast.

Then he asked me if I'd like a drink. I told him I liked brandy with sugar and water in it, but Mother would only give it to me when I got blue from the cold. All the men laughed some more, and one soldier yelled, "Set the kid up a shot of brandy, Tom." But the sheriff shook his head, and told the bar man to make it birch beer. At first I didn't know if Mother would want me to drink it, but the sheriff said it was all right. It was, too.