Bud & Me

by Alta Abernathy

  “You and your big mouth,” he sneered, letting out another string of abusive words.

  “I think he must be breaking the law, Temp, don’t you?” “Sure,” I said, “he’s ‘sturbing the peace.” I remembered my dad saying that about rowdy cowboys in town on a lark. But then I remembered the words of the Chief of Police in Dayton: “Never strike a man unless you have to, but if you do, it must be to uphold the law.” I reached behind me for my little billy club.

  Showing the boy the club just as we entered the stable, I said, “I’ll give you one more chance.”

  “Coward! Coward!” he yelled back.

  Then he made a big mistake. Before I could climb down off Wylie Haynes, that ornery hooligan reached out and grabbed my boot, trying to pull me from the saddle. I gave him one sharp rap on the head with my billy club, and he fell to the ground, stunned, his face no longer scowling, but now showing shock and surprise.

  A small crowd had gathered around us, and nobody stopped the boy as he crawled to the other side of the stable and ran away. When Bud told the people what had happened and that I was trying to uphold the law, a few of them chuckled. It seems the boy was a notorious troublemaker. The livery owner took our horses, and we started down the street.

  I began to regret that I had let that boy get away. “I should have arrested him,” I told a reporter.

  There would be other fights along the way. Bud and I never wanted to fight, but we never backed down from a scrap forced on us. We’d been taught to be peaceable.

  A few days later, as we rode into Cambridge, Ohio, in the rain, I began to feel cold. Bud felt my forehead and told me I was hot, not cold. The doctor in Cambridge confined me to bed and gave me enough medicine to choke a horse.

  The next day, Bud toured Cambridge while I slept off a fever in our hotel room. He had a great time and told me all about the town, but I felt better when he added that sightseeing was more fun when we were together.

  By the next day my fever was gone, and we headed for Wheeling, West Virginia. Even though it was after dark when we arrived, the whole town seemed to be standing in the streets. They were all looking up into the sky, and whatever they were talking about, they sure were excited.

  “It’s supposed to hit the earth at 10:59 tonight,” one man said.

  I wanted to know what was going to hit the earth, but Bud’s hunger was stronger than his curiosity, and we went to dinner without investigating. During dinner, I forgot about the commotion, and eventually we went to bed without ever going back outside to find out what all the fuss was about.

  We were just dozing off when there was a great pounding on our door. “Come quickly,” said the hotel manager. We followed him out onto a fire escape, where he pointed up. There in the sky, amidst all the stars was a magnificent, radiant light, shooting across the heavens, followed by a long, glowing tail.

  I was so awestruck that all I could manage to say was,“Ohhh”!”

  I heard Bud whisper, “What is it?”

  “It’s Halley’s Comet,” the manager said. “Some folks say it’s going to hit the earth tonight. Others think the earth is going to pass through its tail and everything will be destroyed. It’s a beautiful sight, isn’t it?”

  I looked at the manager with some alarm, because I didn’t like the idea of everything, including us, being destroyed. But he seemed quite calm about the whole thing.

  He even chuckled a little. “I don’t know if you boys will understand all this, but a comet is a tremendous accumulation of gas. This one is named for an Englishman by the name of Halley who figured out that this particular comet returns every 75 years. You boys might see it twice in your lifetime.”

  His voice was soft and reassuring and I figured there must not be much chance of the comet hitting the earth. We watched for a long time before we finally went back to our beds. I lay awake quite awhile, thinking about Halley’s Comet and hoping it wouldn’t strike the earth.

  “Do you think it will hit someplace, Bud? Do you think the whole world will be ‘stroyed?” Silence was my only answer. Bud was sound asleep. I guess he figured talking about it wouldn’t make much difference, and if we survived the night, we needed to be rested to ride the next day. I rolled over and went to sleep.

  Next morning, we were still quite alive. But as we rode east, we discovered that all the streams in the area were swollen from recent rains. We came to a raging creek that looked more like a river than a creek, with swirling and churning water rushing over boulders and trees, taking lots of loose debris with it.

  There was no bridge, but we had to cross this particular creek, if we were to go on toward Washington and New York. At the ford, the road on the far side was cut down into a steep bank. We would have to fight a stiff current to come out on that road. If we drifted downstream, we’d land someplace where the bank was even steeper, and covered with thick underbrush.

  Bud studied it a long while, and then he finally said, “Well, Temp, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better.” With that, he started across on Sam Bass. Now, Sam had plenty of experience in water, but Wylie Haynes was another story. He was reluctant, to say the least, to get into that surging water.

  “Come on, Temp! Follow me!”

  It took a lot of urging before I finally got Wylie Haynes into the water, and then he promptly turned downstream. He must have decided that if he had to swim, he’d take the easiest way possible and not fight the current. I pulled his reins, and yelled at him, and did everything I knew to turn him around, but he kept right on swimming with the current. I didn’t know where we were headed, but it didn’t look good.

  “Bud! Help me! I can’t make Wylie Haynes go!”

  “Hold on tight,” Bud yelled. “I’ll be there in a second.” He rode back into that wild water and made Sam Bass swim downstream to catch me.

  By this time, Wylie Haynes was not swimming well. I was soaking wet and in danger of being swept from the saddle at any minute. Bud swam Sam Bass past me, then grabbed my reins and guided Wylie to shore. I knew then that I had the bravest big brother in the whole world.

  In those few, scary seconds, we’d gone far downstream, and the bank where we came out was steep and muddy, with thick underbrush all the way back to the road. It was hard to get Wylie up the bank.

  When we finally got to the road, we walked in silence for awhile. I guess each of us was thinking about how close we’d come to a disaster much worse than any that had happened to us so far.

  Bud broke the silence. “Cheer up, Temp. Look, there’s a house down the road with a fire going. I can see smoke rising from the chimney. We’ll stop there and dry you out. Come on!”

  We spurred our horses to a trot. As we drew near the house, a big brown and white bulldog charged at us, snapping and snarling. His master followed, every bit as surly as the dog.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” the man demanded.

  “We’re the Abernathy boys. We’re riding to New York to meet Theodore Roosevelt.”

  “Never heard of you,” he growled. “You must be runaways. Go away! I don’t want anything to do with the likes of you.” He went back into his house, slamming the door behind him.

  Bud and I were crushed. I guess when so many people are so good to you, it makes the mean ones stand out all the more. As we rode away, cold, wet and hungry, we saw a sign with an arrow pointing to the house. “Mr. Wolfe” was written on it in bold, black letters. We thought it was a fitting name for such a mean man.

  Half a mile from Mr. Wolfe’s house, another small house sat off on the side of the road. I was so soured on people that I just stared at my saddlehorn and wished we could pass that house without seeing anyone.

  But a woman and five children came running toward us, calling out “Hello there! Are you the Abernathy boys?” When we acknowledged that we were, she said, “Come in and join us for lunch.”

  It was like Christmas. The six-year old son in the family traded me a fresh change of clothes for my muddy ones, and w
e had the most delicious meal, seasoned with love, that I’d ever eaten. Then we all sat around the fire and ate fresh popcorn.

  The father of the family put maple syrup on his popcorn. I thought that was the craziest thing I’d ever seen, but when I tried it, I found out it was a real treat.

  They wanted to know all about our adventures, and we told them, ending up with the tale of their neighbor, Mr. Wolfe. They said he was a crotchety old man who lived alone, except for his bulldog, and he didn’t like to have anything to do with other people.

  “We’re glad he turned you away, so you’d come here,” the six-year old said. “We’ve been hoping you’d stop here.”

  Bud and I hated to leave this family, but we rode on toward Washington, D.C., where we planned to spend a week.

  I’d been to Washington, D.C., twice—once while Teddy was president, and again just after Taft moved into the White House. Both times Dad had business in the city, and since I wasn’t in school, he’d let me come with him.

  But, Bud had never been to the capital, and he wanted to see all the things I’d told him about. I wanted to show him too.

  We arrived in Washington late on the night of May 27, having ridden 57 miles from Frederick, Maryland, that day. We rode up and down Pennsylvania Avenue looking for a livery stable, but never could find one. Finally, we just stopped in front of the Raleigh Hotel, and the doorman said he’d see that the horses were well taken care of.

  When we registered, I said, “Give us a room on the top floor please. I want to see the Washington Monument. George Washington was our first president.”

  A group of reporters had gathered behind us, and they laughed at my speech. But then they started to question us about our trip. We’d been on the road for five weeks by then. One asked if we were tired.

  “Not a bit,” said Bud. “We’re ready to see the sights. We got a late start from Frederick this morning, or we’d have been here earlier.”

  When a reporter asked how we traveled all the way from Frederick so quickly, Bud laughed and said, “Oh, we walked part of the way, cantered some, and raced each other the rest of the way.”

  The clerk at the hotel desk gave us a bunch of telegrams that had arrived for us. One reporter wanted to know who they were from, so we opened them and read them aloud. Some were from anonymous admirers, but one was from our friend H.D. Garrison, an Oklahoma Sheriff, who said, “Congratulations. All Oklahoma is proud of you. Will give you a big time when you come home.”

  Another reporter asked what we wanted to see in Washington, and Bud told him, “We want to see the animals Mr. Roosevelt sent from Africa.”

  “What are you going to say to Mr. Roosevelt when you see him?” the reporter asked.

  “That depends on what he says to us,” Bud answered and then in true Oklahoma fashion added, “I won’t cross that bridge until I come to it.”

  That particular reporter went with us to our rooms while we bathed and got ready for a little late-night sightseeing. I bathed first, and then played marbles with the reporter while Bud took his bath.

  “Let me try one of your cigarettes,” I said.

  My reporter friend refused.

  “Aw, come on,” I begged. “I’ve never tried one. Let me have a puff.”

  I pestered him until finally he lit one and handed it to me. Puffing on the thing, I watched the smoke curl up in front of my nose. The second puff went into my throat and lungs. I coughed violently. I was dizzy, my eyes burned, and I thought I might throw up any minute. Completely miserable, I lay on the floor.

  Bud was out of the shower by then, and I begged him to do something to help me, but neither he nor the reporter would even look at me. They figured I’d gotten just what I deserved.

  I begged off sightseeing, too miserable to even think about it, and crawled into bed with a cold, wet towel over my face. At that moment, I vowed never to touch another cigarette in my life, and I never have.

  But no matter how awful I felt, I couldn’t stand to miss out on anything. At the last minute, as they were about to go out the door, I jumped out of bed and yelled, “Wait! I’m coming with you!”

  Dad had sent us new suits to wear in Washington—brown with light blue waistcoats. They were a real change from the cowboy outfits we usually wore. Bud looked at himself in the mirror and joked, “These are pretty nice rags, aren’t they?”

  I added a straw hat to my outfit, given to me by a reporter, and felt I was in perfect style.

  Saturday was our first day in Washington. We’d hoped to visit President Taft that day, but his secretary said he couldn’t see us before Tuesday. Cowboys often have to improvise, so instead, we went to the Smithsonian, and looked at the animals Teddy had sent from Africa. I was so impressed that I thought perhaps the next trip Bud and I took should be to Africa, wherever that was.

  Bud wanted to see the Washington monument next. When we got there, he said it was just as I’d described it. We climbed all the way to the top to count the stairs and look at the magnificent view of the city.

  At the Zoological Gardens, a man was taking pictures with a box camera. “I’d like one of those cameras,” I told Bud. “Then, every time a reporter takes a picture of us, I’ll take one of him, too. That way, we’ll have our own pictures to show the folks back home.” I must’ve said it pretty loud, because the man came over and gave me his camera, and then showed me how to use it.

  I spent the rest of the day absorbed in my new hobby, taking pictures.

  Later, some reporters from the Washington Post invited us to their office. I was fascinated by the teletype machine as I watched it type out baseball scores, and thought it was every bit as magical as the pink rabbits that were pulled out of the magician’s hat in Arcadia, Oklahoma.

  Monday was a full day, beginning with a ride on the “rubber-neck wagon,” a tour of the city by bus. I took lots of pictures with my new Kodak camera. Next, we visited an old army buddy of Dad’s at Fort Myers and watched the cavalrymen drilling. As we said back in Oklahoma, they rode, “tall in the saddle.” That evening, we met L.H. Winkler, a special writer from one of the New York papers. He planned to stay with us the rest of the way to New York.

  I was tired of reporters, and thought I’d answered more than enough questions, but Winkler was smart. He made a deal with me that every time he asked me a question, I could ask him one in return. We were great friends by the end of the evening.

  Tuesday was the big day. At last, we were going to see President Taft. Bud and I dressed in our new clothes, but I was already tired of my straw hat, and insisted on wearing my Stetson. We walked down Pennsylvania Avenue, even though Representative McGuire of Oklahoma had offered us a ride, and arrived at the White House at 10:15 a.m. When we were shown into the President’s office, Mr. Taft greeted us with a friendly smile and an outstretched hand.

  “You must be Louis,” he said to Bud, and then, “Temple, I remember you from your last visit. It’s good to have you both here. Sit down and tell me all about your ride.”

  Dressed in our fanciest clothes and new

  Stetsons, we could hardly wait for Teddy’s big

  homecoming parade to begin.

  He was just as large as I had told Bud he was, much bigger than Teddy.

  We told him all about our adventures, and Bud asked him how the government was doing. He said he missed Teddy sometimes, and we told him how we were going to meet Teddy’s boat in New York.

  “You know,” he said, “a fleet of Coast Guard cutters will meet the ship when it comes into the harbor. I could probably arrange for you to be on one of the cutters, and be one of the first persons to greet Mr. Roosevelt, if you’d like.”

  We would like. “Yes, sir,” Bud exclaimed. “Please do.”

  “That’s a bully idea,” I said, using Teddy’s favorite phrase, which made Mr. Taft laugh.

  After our visit with the President, we went on a tour of the White House. I showed Bud where I’d played with my friends, the Roosevelt boys. It was fun to se
e the upstairs bedroom where I’d been part of a rousing pillow fight, and the long staircase where we had taken turns sliding down them on serving trays.

  The next day we visited the chambers of the Senate and House of Representatives, and were called on to make speeches. “I like the Washington Monument,” I said from my position on a chair behind the Speakers podium. “And I liked seeing Teddy’s African animals, and visiting the President. I think this is the finest city in the East.”

  The representatives laughed and clapped, and I thought to myself that I was getting better at speechmaking all the time. They clapped for Bud, too.

  Dad wired us, telling us to leave Washington the next Monday. On June 6, we mounted our horses and rode toward Baltimore. Sam Bass and Wylie Haynes were well rested, and seemed to sense our excitement as we began the last leg of our journey. They pranced all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue as we waved goodbye to the people who’d come to see us off at that early hour. Our week in Washington had been great fun.

  Our ride from Washington to New York City, was one big parade. People lined the streets to cheer. Many walked along side us asking dozens of questions. We were apparently celebrities, and more than a little overwhelmed by the whole business.

  From Wilmington, Delaware, to Trenton, New Jersey, was a long 75-mile ride. In spite of a heavy rain, we left at 5:30 in the morning. As we mounted our horses, a member of the local Elks Club approached with two warm, heavy sweaters which he gave us. Bud offered him a five dollar bill, but the man refused and with a little grin, said he was going home to get some more sleep. We liked him enormously, and we blessed him for the sweaters as the long, cold day wore on.

  We made Philadelphia around eleven, in the rain. Sam Bass threw a shoe, so we stopped for an early lunch while the blacksmith put on a new shoe. The reception committeeman found us while we were eating, and took us for a brief tour in his car, telling us that festivities were planned at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel.

  My heart sank. If we got tangled up with a reception, we’d never make it to Trenton that night, and Dad was waiting for us there. To my great relief, Bud was firm.