Little Britches

by Ralph Moody

  That night when we were milking, he told me it had been a day I should remember. He said it would be good for me, as I grew older, to know that a man always made his troubles less by going to meet them instead of waiting for them to catch up with him, or trying to run away from them.

  The next morning Fred Aultland came for Father right after we finished breakfast. I guess Mother knew he was coming, because she had already told Grace and me we could spend the day visiting Willie and Etta Aldivote. I tried to get Father to tell me where he was going, but all he would say was, “Oh, we’re going way over by Littleton to see a fellow about a dog.” When Father said that it always meant he wasn’t going to tell you where he was going, so I didn’t ask any more.

  Grace and I had a fine time at Aldivote’s. Their house was a soddy on the front, and was dug right back into a bank like a cave. They had a big barn full of hay, and a donkey and half a dozen horses we could ride. The girls made us play house with them some of the time, but we made them try to ride the donkey, and they took some of the craziest spills I ever saw. I think we had the most fun, though, jumping from the high haymow down onto a pile of straw on the barn floor. It must have been thirty feet.

  Father and Fred got home just a little while after we did. They were leading a beauty of a bay horse. He wasn’t quite as big as Fred’s new one, but he had a lot more ginger. I guess we youngsters and Mother frightened him when we all ran out to look. But, anyway, he started bucking and pitching like Old Harry just as they were coming into the dooryard. If he hadn’t had a half-inch rope around his neck, as well as having a halter on, I think he would have broken away. They had quite a time putting him into the corral without getting kicked. And as soon as they let him loose, he went racing around and around the fence, kicking his heels higher than the top rail.

  Mother was all flustered about how dangerous the new horse was, and made us children stay in the house till suppertime. While we were eating, Father began telling what fine horses there were at the auction, but Mother asked, “Didn’t they have any nice gentle horses, Charlie? I’m afraid one of these bad ones is going to hurt you.”

  Father grinned and said, “He isn’t a bad one, Mame. He’s a good one. One of the best I ever saw. But he’s just a three-year-old, right in off the range, and he’s never had a man’s hand on him until today.”

  It looked for a minute as if Mother were going to cry. “I don’t care if he’s three or thirty. He’s bad; bad all the way through, or he wouldn’t have thrashed around and fought the way he did. I don’t see why you didn’t buy a nice gentle horse. You can’t tell what will happen to Ralph with that kind of a horse around the place.”

  Father got up and went around behind Mother’s chair. He put both hands on her cheeks and patted them. Then he said, “Son, I want you to make me a promise that you won’t go near the new horse, or into the corral while he’s in there, until I say you may.”

  My mouth was full, but as soon as I could swallow, I said. “I promise, Father.”

  “I could have bought a gentle horse, Mame. There were some, not much better than Nig, that brought seventy-five dollars. That’s what this one cost, and that’s all we planned we could spend. Well-broken, young horses, as good as he is, were bringing a hundred and a quarter or more. I picked him out before they ever put a rope on him, and there’s nothing vicious about him; he’s simply crazed with fear right now. I’ll be very careful in breaking him.”

  Mother reached up and patted his hand against her face. “You will be awfully careful, won’t you, Charlie?” was all she said. Father was real good about making people believe what he said.

  18

  Father and I Become Partners

  WHEN we lived in East Rochester, Mother used to let Grace and me take the money to pay the grocery bill every Saturday. Mr. Blaisdell always gave us a little bag of candy when we came in to pay, but since we had moved out to the ranch we never got any. I liked all kinds of chocolate, but I liked the bitter kind Mother baked cakes with best. The last Christmas before we came west, she had made fudge with some of it. It was the best candy I ever tasted. I got thinking about fudge, and one night I asked her when she was going to make some more. She said maybe she’d make some when Christmas came, but sugar cost too much to be using it up in candy we didn’t need.

  The more I thought about fudge, the more I thought about the bar of Baker’s chocolate we got with our last groceries, and the more I wanted some of it. Baked beans, pea soup, and fried sidemeat had tasted all right before, but thinking about chocolate, they didn’t even make me feel hungry.

  The next afternoon when I was helping Father on the winnower, I was thinking of what he had said about going to meet your troubles and how much less they would be. I don’t know if I’d even stopped thinking about that when I began daydreaming about chocolate again. It was right then I got the idea: If I should whack a chunk off the end of that bar of chocolate, Mother would be sure to miss it. Then, before she had any idea who had done it, I could confess and probably wouldn’t even get a spanking for it, any more than I did for going up to Two Dog’s.

  I waited till she was out feeding the chickens, then told Father I was thirsty and thought I’d go in for a drink of water. All the time I was going into the house and getting the bar of chocolate down out of the cupboard, my head kept wanting to think about tearing boards off my house, but I wouldn’t let it, because I told myself that was only when you did things you shouldn’t and then lied about it. I wasn’t going to lie at all about the chocolate.

  I heard Mother coming just when I had the knife ready to whack off the end of the bar, so I had to slip it into the front of my blouse and pick up the water dipper quick. Before I went back to help Father I went to the barn and hid the bar of chocolate back of the currycomb box.

  All the rest of the afternoon, I didn’t like to look at Father. I tried to get him to let me go over to see Willie Aldivote, but he wouldn’t. Every time he spoke it made me jump, and my hands got shaking so I couldn’t hold the pieces still enough for him to solder. He asked me what was the matter, and I told him it was nothing except that my hands were getting cold. I knew he didn’t believe me, and every time he looked my way my heart started pounding, because he could always tell what was going on inside my head. It seemed it would never come time to go for the cows. I didn’t want the chocolate any more; I just wanted a chance to put it back without being caught.

  On the way out for the cows, my heart stopped pounding so hard, and I could think better. I hadn’t really stolen the whole bar of chocolate, because I had only meant to take a little piece, and that’s as much as I would have taken if Mother hadn’t come in just when she did. If I put back the whole bar, I wouldn’t have done anything wrong at all. I’d nearly decided I would do it, but just thinking so much about chocolate made my tongue almost taste the smooth bitterness of it. It didn’t seem as if it would be very wrong if I only took a small piece. Then I got thinking that if I took a sharp knife and cut about half an inch off the end—with a good clean slice—Mother might never notice it.

  I was nearly out to where the cows were picketed when I remembered what Father had said when I got my trap: some of the money in his pouch was mine because I had earned it. Why wouldn’t it be all right to figure that the bar of chocolate had been bought with my own money, and in that way I wouldn’t be stealing it at all. That seemed to fix everything, and I got planning how I would go out to the barn every night after school and whittle off a little piece of chocolate.

  I could have felt all right about the whole business if it hadn’t been for Mother’s reading. Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons, she used to read just to Father, but any of us could stay in the house and listen if we wanted to. He often had her read Shakespeare’s plays, and the one he liked best was about Hamlet. I liked it, too, and used to listen every time she read it.

  I had just pulled the picket pins and was heading the cows home when the bad king’s prayer came into my head, and I couldn’t get
it out. I tried to think about how Hi dived off his horse and came up on his feet, and about Two Dog, and King, and everything else, but my head kept on saying, “Oh, my offense is rank,” until I thought I’d go crazy.

  We were nearly to the railroad track when I decided to leave the whole matter to the Lord, and twisted out a dried soapweed stalk with seed pods on it. When you slung one of them up in the air it would wobble and twist all around so that you never knew which way it would come down. I told myself that if it came down with the pods to the west I’d take the whole bar of chocolate back. If it came down pointed to the south, I’d take half an inch off the end, but if it came down pointed to the east, it had been bought with my own money and it wouldn’t be stealing to keep it.

  I swung the pod stalk around my head a few times and flung it as high as I could, then I shut my eyes tight till I heard it land. When I opened them the pod end of the stock was pointed almost toward the west, but not quite. It was a little bit toward the south.

  There was a bright moon when I went to bed that night, and it was sharp and frosty. I couldn’t go to sleep and kept trying to remember how much the pod end of that stalk had really been pointing toward the south. At last I heard Father put King outside for the night, and a little later when I peeked under my curtain I could see that he had blown out the lamp.

  I pulled my overalls up over my nightgown and took my shoes in my hand. After I was out in the yard I slipped them on and took the axe from the chopping block. It was good and sharp, and I was sure I could peel off a smooth, thin slice of chocolate with it.

  It was dark as tar inside the barn, but I felt along the wall for the currycomb box, and lifted the chocolate box out from behind it. King had followed me, and I nearly fell over him when I was groping for the door, but it was so light outside that you could almost have read a book. I shook the bar out of the box, unwrapped it, and laid it on the lower rail of the corral fence. Just as I was starting to cut it with the axe, Father said, “Son!”

  I couldn’t think of a thing to say, but I grabbed up the bar of chocolate and shoved it inside the bib of my overalls before I turned around. He picked me up by the shoulder straps—just as he’d have picked up a kitten that had wet on the floor—and took me over to the wood pile. I didn’t know anybody could spank as hard as he spanked me with that little piece of board. It felt as if my bottom were going to catch fire at every lick.

  Then he stood me down and asked me if I thought I’d deserved it. He said it wasn’t so much that I took the chocolate, as it was the way I took it, and because I tried to hide it when he spoke to me. But it was the next thing he said that hurt me worse than the spanking.

  He said, “Son, I realize a lot better than you think I do that you have been helping to earn the living for the family. We might say the chocolate was yours in the first place. If you had asked Mother or me for it, you could have had it without a question, but I won’t have you being sneaky about things. Now if you’d rather keep your own money separate from the family’s, so you can buy the things you want, I think it might be a good idea.”

  I never knew till then how much I wanted my money to go in with Father’s. Ever since we bought the cows, I had been able to feel I had a part in all the new things we were buying to make ourselves real ranchers, and it looked as though it were all slipping away from me. I had felt I was beginning to be a man, but I guess I was still just a baby, because I hid my face against Father’s stomach and begged him to let me put my money in with his.

  Father hadn’t been coughing nearly so much that fall as he used to, but he coughed and it seemed as if he choked a little before he answered me. He said he didn’t want a sneaky partner, but if I could be open and aboveboard he didn’t know a man he’d rather be in business with.

  I couldn’t help crying some more when he told me that; not because my bottom was still burning, but just because I loved him. I told him I’d never be sneaky again, and I’d always ask him before I did things. We walked to the house together. At the bunkhouse door he shook hands with me, and said, “Good night, partner.” When I went to sleep, my hand was still hurting—good—from where he squeezed it when we shook hands.

  19

  Trapping Pheasants

  WHILE we were in school Father hauled all the beans in from the field and made a stack right beside the barn. Every day he would flail out a big pile of them, and when I got home we would winnow them out. The vines were so musty that the dust nearly choked us and it made Father cough terribly. And the beans weren’t very good either. Almost half of them were little tiny ones, and a third of all we winnowed were black from being frozen before they were ripe.

  Mother would come out every night when we were finished. Then she and Father would look at the bags of beans in the barn and at what was left of the stack. He’d say, “There are still quite a few left in the stack, and they’re from this end of the field. That’s where I took the samples we figured from, and I’m in hopes they’ll run a little better.”

  Mother would bite her underlip in between her teeth, and then she’d say, “Don’t worry about it, Charlie. We’ll get along all right—one way or another. I think it’s the worry as much as the dust that’s running you down so. Why don’t you have Mr. Lewis come with his machine and finish the threshing for you? We could pay him with part of the peas and beans, couldn’t we?”

  Then Father would put his arm around her, and they’d walk to the house while he told her that, with a wife like her, a man had nothing to worry about; and she’d tell him that the Lord had always provided for us and that He always would.

  Father left our new horse out in the corral all the time we were threshing beans. But every evening he’d take him in a few oats in an old bucket. At first the colt wouldn’t come near him, but crowded into the farthest corner of the corral. Then Father would set the bucket down and come outside the gate. After a while, the colt would start sticking his nose out toward it. Pretty soon he’d creep up and grab a mouthful, jerk his head up quick, and watch us while he chewed them. Every day he seemed to be less afraid, and the last day of bean threshing he came trotting right up to the gate when he saw Father coming toward him with the bucket.

  The peas were easier to thresh than the beans, and weren’t quite so musty, but there were an awful lot of small ones. Father made me a little flail out of an old broom handle and a singletree stick, and let me stay home from school to help him thresh. The only way Mother would let us do it was with wet cloths tied around our faces. Maybe it was a good idea, because we didn’t breathe in so much dust, and the wet cloths got so cold that we had to flail like sixty to keep from freezing.

  As soon as we opened the stack and started threshing peas, the pheasants would come every morning at daylight. There were as many as a dozen on top of the stack one morning when we went out to milk. Father said they were getting to be pests, and would rob us of ten pounds of peas every morning.

  While we were milking I got thinking about all the peas the pheasants were robbing us of, and about how good the one Mother roasted had been. That night I set my steel trap right in the middle of the open place on top of the pea stack. The next morning there was a nice fat cock pheasant in it. At breakfast Father and Mother talked about whether or not it was all right for me to have done it. At first they said it was against the spirit of the law for me to catch him, but I told them again what the sheriff said about there being nothing he knew of in the law against catching pheasants in a steel trap.

  Father said, “You know, son, a man sometimes has to consider the spirit of the law as well as the actual words.”

  But all Mother said was, “Wasn’t that other one delicious?”

  I kept wondering all day about trying to trap another pheasant. Father hadn’t really said I couldn’t, but he hadn’t said I could, either. I started to ask him two or three times, but without Mother there to say how delicious the first one was I thought I’d better not. Then I thought I’d just slip out when I went to bed and set the t
rap. If I didn’t catch anything, of course, Father would never know anything about it, because I was the one who always climbed up on the stack to pitch the vines down. If I did catch one, Mother’d probably say, “How delicious!” again, and that might be all there’d be to it.

  I thought I had my mind all made up, but I tried to keep my back turned toward Father as much as I could, so he wouldn’t be able to see what I was thinking. Then I’d get worried that he might be able to see, anyway, and I’d start remembering about our being partners, and the chopping block, and how good my hand felt that night after he shook it. I tried to tell myself it wouldn’t be sneaky to set my trap without his knowing about it, because he didn’t always know when I set it for prairie dogs, but my head kept saying, “It would, too, be sneaky!”

  I didn’t figure out what to do till we were eating supper; then I said to Father, “Do you think I ought to drive a stake down in the pea stack to keep the pheasant from flying off with my trap?”

  Instead of looking at me, he looked up at Mother. We were having spareribs and beans for supper that night. She was helping Hal get the meat off the bones when Father looked up at her. I don’t know whether she saw him or not, but she kept right on cutting Hal’s meat, and said, “I do hope the children won’t get tired of pork and beans before spring comes.”

  Father looked down at his plate again, and said, “It might be a good idea, Son.”

  I got a pheasant off the pea stack every morning till we finished threshing. I guess that made up a little bit for how few bags of peas we got out of it.

  The day we finished winnowing, we carried all the peas and beans into my room in the bunkhouse. Then we measured them all out into other sacks. When we were through putting two bushels into each one, we had just an even hundred sacks. Forty-nine of them were peas, twenty-eight were little beans, and twenty-three were large ones. Of course, the frozen beans were still in with the good ones, and there were lots of them. Father kept running the big ones through his hands, and saying, “They’ll be more- than half salable.”