Falling From Horses

by Molly Gloss

  17

  IT WASN’T MUCH LONGER before they called up the Belgians, and then it wasn’t much of a scene, just pulling a farm wagon down the western street, clopping past John Barlow in his Wichita costume and a pretty actress in a suede skirt, the two of them saying their lines on the steps of the sheriff’s office. When they cut me loose for the day, it was just past noon. I turned the Diamond horses into the corral with Verle’s stock, unhooked the trailer from the truck, and drove up a rutted dirt track about a half-mile to the Cow Rocks location where O’Brien’s crew was filming. There weren’t any permanent buildings out there, just a bunch of trucks parked next to a clump of dry trees, and some picnic tables under a shade cover. They were breaking for lunch just then, and a guy in a caravan was doling out sandwiches and soda pop from the back end of his rig. I asked a guy in the lunch line where I could find the ramrod, and he pointed to Cab standing over by the camera truck with three other men. I guess if I’d listened for a minute I could have found him just by following the sound of his Mississippi drawl. That voice could charm the quills off a porcupine, but he was swinging it like a club just then, shouting past one of the men without waiting to hear what was said back. I stood off from them and tried not to look like I was listening in. The fellow Cab was arguing with gave up after not too long and just dropped his chin and stared at the ground. Cab stuffed his hands in his pockets, rocked on his heels, and went on talking in a gradually lowered voice. Every so often one of the others nodded, but none of them said anything. After a couple of minutes Cab broke it off and headed for the lunch truck. He walked right past me without giving me a look.

  I said, “Mr. O’Brien, I heard you were short of riders today.”

  He didn’t stop walking.

  I caught up and walked with him. “I was wrangling a wagon team this morning, but I’m done for now and I thought maybe I could ride for you.”

  He didn’t slow down or look at me, but he said, “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m Bud Frazer, I’ve been working for Harold Capsen at Diamond Barns. But I was riding rodeo broncs before I came down here. I’ve been riding horses since before I could walk.”

  If he heard any of this, he didn’t act like it. He bulled right to the front of the lunch line, picked up somebody else’s box lunch, sat down in a camp chair, and unwrapped the waxed paper from a sandwich and started eating. I could feel the heat building in my face. I wasn’t about to stand over him, begging for work. I said, “Well, just so you know, I can ride anything with four legs and a tail. I’ll be around if you want to give me a try,” and I turned on my heel.

  I sat a minute on the running board of the Dodge and didn’t look his way. I was too steamed up to be hungry, but then I got up anyway and walked over to the caravan and got myself a box lunch and sat in the open door of the truck to eat it. When Cab finished his lunch, he went off without looking in my direction.

  About the time the lunch truck was packing up to leave, a guy carrying a clipboard came over to me and said, “If you can get yourself a horse and get back here in ten minutes, Cab says you can have half a day’s work.”

  He meant get a horse from Verle. I raised a big rooster tail of dust driving back down that dirt road. Verle half laughed and shook his head when I told him what was up. Actors and extras familiar with the White Oak stock had already taken his good mounts, so he didn’t have much left. He brought me a sorrel with a flaxen mane and tail, a good-looking horse except for the long scar on his off foreleg, and while we were tacking him up he said, “You might have to strong-arm the son of a bitch. He’s opinionated, and he’s got a cast-iron mouth.” Well, I felt half-naked getting on a horse without spurs, but I had left Diamond that morning figuring I wouldn’t need spurs for a wagon team, and my dad’s rowels were lying where I’d kicked them, in a corner of the bedroom. When I climbed on the sorrel and booted him in the flanks, he just flattened his ears and chewed the bit. It wasn’t until Verle whacked him with a buggy whip that he finally broke into a jog-trot, and then I had to plow-rein him with both hands to get him steered back along the rutted road.

  When I got to Cow Rocks I could see some men on horseback lounging about a hundred yards off and a bunch of people gathered out there around a camera and boom mounted on a dolly. I was about to head that way when the guy with the clipboard waved me down and called out, “Go see the prop master, get yourself a gun.”

  I had been around enough sets to know what a prop master was, but I hadn’t ever needed to ask one for a gun. I found him sitting under a shade umbrella next to the grip wagon. He wrote my name in his ledger and held out a rubber six-shooter and a vinyl holster and belt. I had to get down off the horse to take them from him, which I knew was a bad idea, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. When I buckled on the gun belt, the whole outfit was light and stiff, nothing that felt real, but I liked the way it looked hanging from my hips.

  When I tried to get back on the sorrel he got cagey, pivoting sideways to keep the stirrup out of reach of my boot. I yanked on him and cuffed his nose, which caused him to act aggrieved and let me mount, but as soon as my back pockets hit the saddle he broke into a hard trot and tried to head for the corrals. I had to seesaw the bit in his mouth to get the son of a bitch headed the right way, out to where they were getting ready to shoot.

  Steve Deets was there, still dressed up like Wichita Carson. When they’d filmed the bucking scene he hadn’t been wearing a gun belt, but now he wore a fancy tooled leather belt with a big buckle and two pearl-handled pistols that looked real. He gave me a glance and then inclined his head to point me toward where I should be, at the back of the posse of eight or nine riders. A couple of the other men glanced at me, but nobody said anything about the way I had come in, steering with both arms like a greenhorn.

  The dolly track started right there and ran straight out in front of us across a hardpan plain tufted with clumps of sage and greasewood. Cab was standing on the dolly with two camera operators, looking through a small eyepiece across the flats toward a line of scrub willows more than half a mile away. When he turned back around to us he didn’t notice me, or he acted like he didn’t. He said to Steve Deets, “I want you charging like hell, and you better get this in one shot,” as if it was a warning, and Deets said, “You bet.” I couldn’t see his face, but he sounded like he was smiling when he said it. Then a shirtless grip rolled the dolly out along the tracks, with Cab and the two cameramen riding on it. Halfway to the willows, they anchored the dolly and Cab stepped off and walked around behind, and you could just see his head peering at us past the shoulder of one of the camera operators.

  Half a dozen crewmen were standing way off to the side of us, one of them the man that Cab had been arguing with before lunch. He called to us through a megaphone, “Y’all let Deets get out about thirty yards and then go. Everybody stay in a tight pack.” I guess he thought this was enough instruction even for the greenhorn, because he gave me a short look without adding anything else.

  Deets glanced back at all of us. He was wearing long-shank Mexican spurs this time, and I could hear the rowels jingle lightly when he straightened around in the saddle. I thought the horse he was riding was the one Wichita Carson always rode, a big white stallion called Sunday, but I heard later he was a stunt double that looked like Sunday. The saddle was decked out with silver conchos, and there were long, silver-trimmed tapaderos over the stirrups. Deets settled his hat and made a gesture with his head to signal he was ready.

  The guy with the megaphone called, “Quiet on the set,” and I guess seasoned picture horses—chase horses, they were called—must know the sound of those words, because all them, even that cross-grained horse I was riding, went still. I don’t think I’d ever heard things fall so suddenly quiet, the only sound the kind of clicking whisper that insects make moving through dry grass. Then there was a shout from out at the dolly, and the man with the megaphone, maybe echoing the word lost to distance, shouted, “Action!” and Deets whooped a
nd spurred his horse into a flat-out run. The rest of the horses were savvy enough about movie work that they didn’t quite bolt after him but nervously shifted their weight, and I felt the sorrel shiver underneath me and give a little crow hop of excitement. Then the fellow with the megaphone called “Go!” and we all took off in a bunch.

  I had thought I might have trouble with the sorrel, that he might veer off in his own stubborn direction or not have the legs to keep up with the others, but he lit out at a hard run—I lost my hat on the first jump—and he wormed his way into the middle of the pack and settled there. I leaned out over his stretched neck, ropes of his slobber trailing back in my face. Clods of dirt and grass flew up in a pelting rain. We were galloping so close together that I could have reached out and touched the man on either side of me. We raced out along the dolly rails, chasing the dust plume of Deets’s horse, and when we swept past the camera I saw it swivel to follow us, the grip pushing the dolly along the rails a short way to give the scene more of a rush.

  The whole chase didn’t last much more than a minute. Deets pulled to a stop at the edge of the willows, and the rest of us barreled up to him and brought our horses on their tails. I don’t know if I thought it at the time—not in words, anyway—but if I could have kept racing like that until my horse wore himself out and lay down underneath me, I think I would have been glad to do it.

  18

  EVERY RIDER WORKING THAT DAY was well acquainted with the cold-jawed son-of-a-bitch horse I was riding, which is why he’d been the last one standing in Verle’s picket line. Somewhere or other that horse had learned all manner of low tricks, and once you had ridden him you would go to some trouble to keep from riding him again. Somebody had named him Prince, so whoever was stuck with him was naturally dubbed the Prince of Fools, a label that got shortened to Fool and trailed me for most of the time I worked in the movies. But the men had all had plenty of practice keeping a straight face when a newcomer got stuck playing the Fool, so they didn’t start ribbing me until after we’d finished the chase.

  “Hey kid, since you need both hands to steer that horse, maybe you want me to scratch your ass when it itches.”

  “Nah, Jerry, he don’t need your help. He bounces on the saddle so much he can scratch his ass on the horn.”

  And so forth.

  In my experience hanging around rodeos and ranches, men wouldn’t bother to razz a green hand or a dime-store cowboy, so I took this to mean I had measured up. I said something along the lines of go-to-hell-why-don’t-you, which seemed to make them happy.

  I had been ready to beat the damn horse with a piece of pipe earlier, but by now I was feeling almost warmly toward him. I steered him back along the dolly rails to hunt up my hat, and when we went past Cab he looked over but didn’t say a word to me.

  They set up the camera at a new place, right at the bottom of a long hill. What Cab wanted for the scene was the outlaw gang exploding over the top of the rise, racing in a tight bunch downhill straight toward the camera, then scattering apart at the last minute, the horses flying by close enough to throw dirt on the lens. He sent a guy out to tie a strand of orange ribbon to a clump of greasewood so we’d know where to swerve off—“and no damn sooner.” He didn’t want all of us breaking in the same direction, so he told each man which way he wanted him to swerve. When he got to me, he said, “I want you to follow Wes there, when he heads off to the right,” and he pointed out a guy sitting on a broad-barreled chestnut. “But if you can’t muscle the fucking horse where I’m telling you, just be sure you don’t run over the fucking camera. Got the idea?”

  I could feel a little blood come into my face. Cab’s foul mouth shocked me a bit, to tell the truth. I had grown up in a part of the world where men just didn’t swear that much, and even hanging around rodeo grounds I hadn’t often heard worse than son of a bitch. But I was feeling pretty cocky right then, so I said, “You bet,” trying to get the same tone I’d heard Steve Deets use, and this made a few people crack a smile. Cab was one of them. I didn’t know him yet, or I might have seen this as a reason to worry.

  We started our run a few hundred yards back so that when we cleared the top of the hill we’d be going flat out. The sorrel liked to gallop, I’ll give him that, but for his own inscrutable reasons he wanted to put himself shoulder to shoulder with a big red roan in the middle of the pack, nowhere near Wes’s chestnut, and I had all the work I could handle trying to get him lined up behind Wes so we could veer off the way Cab wanted us to. When we came pounding down that hill, the ground streamed by in a blur and I never did see the orange ribbon, but when Wes peeled off to the right I yanked the reins hard over. The sorrel flung his head around, fighting the bit, and cut so close to the camera I think he wound up jumping one of the splayed legs of the tripod. The camera operator’s head was down, his eye fixed to the lens—I don’t think he knew how close we came to running him over—but I caught a glimpse of Cab perched on a stool behind him, arms folded and shoulders leaning out almost in our path, and Cab didn’t flinch a bit. I never got to like Cab much, but I sure admired his nerve.

  He was known for keeping a tight schedule and shooting his scenes quickly, but he made us run that chase twice more—he wanted us breaking over the hill faster, he wanted us bunched up tighter, he wasn’t happy with the way we were veering off. When he finally had something that suited him, we brought the horses into the shade under a couple of valley oaks and took a break while the crew got busy setting up for a new shot.

  Verle had come out to the field by then, driving a truck with a water tank, and he started making the rounds with buckets, watering all the horses. When he got to mine he petted the sorrel’s forehead and said sweetly to the horse, “I hear you and that Fool over there are getting along real swell.”

  I made a scoffing sound, and Verle looked my way and grinned and said, “I told you he was opinionated.”

  I said, “If he was mine, I’d think about shooting him.” I wasn’t joking, which I guess Verle could hear.

  He ran his hand down the horse’s shoulder to the scar on his leg. “Well, he got tripped one too many times with a dubya, and he took a grudge about it. Next thing we knew, he was making up his own mind about what he’d do or not do.”

  What I’d heard about the Running W had come mostly from Harold—the dubya was the principal reason he wouldn’t let his horses be used for stunts. I hadn’t seen one in action yet, but I knew a horse could wind up lamed or dead. Or you’d get a horse like Prince, who had so much hatred for the people who’d tripped him he was ever afterward looking for ways to make a rider’s life miserable.

  The horse had his nose buried deep in the water bucket. When Verle stroked his long neck he sighed and shifted his hindquarters as if he was making ready for a cow kick, and Verle laughed and took a step back. “He’s pigheaded,” he said, “but he looks good on camera and he still likes to run, so we keep him around.” He gave the horse a couple of pats and walked off. Verle was never sentimental about the horses he wrangled for the cameras, but he could find something to like in just about any horse he came across.

  Some of the riders were lying on the dry grass, catching a little rest while they could, so I lay down too and pulled my hat over my face. Almost as soon as I shut my eyes I heard Cab call out, “Hey kid, you, what’s your name, Frazer.” When I sat up he gestured that I should come over where he was powwowing with Deets. I figured I was about to get my walking papers for some reason, but that wasn’t what happened. Cab was sitting in a canvas chair, and he leaned back in it and said, “Have I got you wore out yet?”

  My arms and shoulders were aching from fighting the damn horse, but I wasn’t about to own up to it. I said, “No sir, I’m doing all right.”

  “Well, we’re about to shoot this here bulldogging gag, you know what that is?”

  I would have known what bulldogging meant if he’d been talking rodeo, but I didn’t figure it meant the same thing here. I acted like I knew, though, and just gave him
a little nod. He said, “I was gonna let Epps play the bad guy, but now I’m thinking you might could do it. It’s an easy gag, you’d get a little extra paid. You want it?”

  Deets was looking at the ground, frowning slightly, so I knew Cab wasn’t giving me a prize for good riding. But I figured this was a tryout, and if I passed I might get on steady with him, so I said, “You bet,” which caused Cab to give me another of his little smiles.

  “Good. Go back over there to the trailers, find the wardrobe guy, and tell him I want you dressed up like Gillis, and then get back here pronto.”

  Gillis was the outlaw leader, so the costumer dolled me up in a high-crowned black hat and black leather vest and spurs duded up with copper trimmings. I remember feeling stupidly self-admiring, as if it meant something to be wearing those clothes. Walking back to the setup, I happened to think about Lily, that the next time I saw her I’d be able to say I was riding in pictures now. That in half a day I’d gone from the back of the posse to doubling for one of the principal players.

  Lon Epps, the one who had been set to do the gag before Cab gave it to me, and Steve Deets were waiting for me. Epps had a high-bridged nose and a face so deeply tanned that I took him for part Apache, although I heard later he was Dutch or German and came from a tank town in Oklahoma where he had sold barbed wire for a living before he moved over to California and got into movies.

  He said to me, “This here bulldog is Carson chasing the outlaw leader, jumping him, knocking him off his horse. But this here won’t be like getting bucked off a bronc, if that’s what you’re thinking. This here horse will be going at a dead run when you bail off. You got to land right, and then you got to hope the other man don’t land on you. There ain’t no rehearsal, kid, so listen to what we’re telling you and maybe you won’t get killed.” He looked over at Steve. “Or kill my friend here.”