Free Harris and me : a summer remembered by Gary Paulsen Page B

with the loft door opening where I still hung.
    Harris, legs straight out to the side, holding his groin tightly, did an almost perfect backward swan dive and was coming down on his head directly in

    back of Bill where he would have crunched in the dirt and chicken mess.
    But Bill obeyed the second code and just as Harris came into range kicked with one back hoof, a hoof as large as the top opening of a milk bucket, with a force just below nuclear.
    It caught Harris directly in the middle of the stomach and drove him backward into the barn so hard that I heard him skip twice across the bam floor.
    I hung from the door opening another second while Bill went back to eating quietly. Then I dropped and ran into the barn.
    Harris was by the back door, having been propelled nearly the full length of the building. He was on his side, still holding his groin, looking past me at Bill, or trying to. His eyes had a distinctly unfocused look and he was still fighting for breath.
    He whispered something so softly I couldn't hear.
    "What?" I leaned closer.
    He mumbled again.
    "You'll have to talk louder ..."
    He got a breath down and hissed. "Did we save the rustlers?"
    I didn't have the heart to tell him the truth. "Yes, Gene. We saved them."
    "Good."
    He mumbled something else.

    "What?" I leaned closer. "Don't move me for a while." "I won't." "Good."
    It was during the next week, after another Saturday night dance and the ensuing Gene Autry binge, that we tried the second cinematic event. It was also coincidentally the second time the grown-ups left us alone, this time to take a load of hay to the Halver-sons.
    Again Harris watched them drive off, this time with the old John Deere tractor pulling a trailer of hay and everybody sitting on top holding pans of food.
    As soon as they were out of sight he headed for the barn and took down Bob's harness and moved into the pasture.
    Bill would not let us get close but Bob hadn't been indoctrinated—yet—and Harris walked up to him and haltered him and led him to the barn.
    "I'm not jumping out of the barn loft on him," I said as Harris led him through the barn and outside into the yard.
    "Naww. We've already done that. What's the other thing he does?"
    "Who?"
    "Gene, you dope."

    "Sings."
    "Naww. We ain't gonna sing. It's the other thing."
    "Well he rides, and jumps on horses, and sings, and . . ."
    "Shoots," Harris interrupted. "He rides and shoots, don't he?"
    "Well, yes ..."
    "He's got that horse going wide open and he pulls out that six-shooter and blasts away, don't he? Well don't we do that we're lower than pig puke, ain't we?"
    "That's what you said last time. When we jumped out of the loft and you got kicked through the barn."
    "When J jumped," Harris corrected me. "You hung and J jumped. Could be if you had jumped the right way instead of turning into a chicken it all would have worked out all right. You scared to do this?"
    Of course that did it. I was scared—any time Harris started talking about shooting and horses it would be impossible not to be scared. Which of course meant I had to do it, whatever it was he wanted to do.
    "Here's how we'll do her," he said after he'd put a bridle with short reins on Bob. He was leading the horse across the farmyard and near the house. "You get that silver shooter and I'll get a gun and we'll climb up on Bob and get him moving at a good clip and then we'll shoot."

    "A good clip?" I had seen Bob and Bill trot. Once. Other than that they never did more than a lumbering walk. "Can't we just walk?"
    He snorted. "Don't you watch them movies at all! You ever see Gene walking his horse while he shoots? Now run get your gun ..."
    I ran in the house and upstairs where I had the cap gun. There were no caps but I was good at making gun sounds and I thought it was just as well. The sound of the caps going off might startle Bob and if we got him moving at all I didn't want to startle him. Ever. Memories of Bill line-driving Harris through the barn were