Free Little Britches by Ralph Moody Page A

things I would have said myself if I hadn't been afraid of the damage it might do that character of mine—I wished Father had never told me about it.
    Fred helped me till we got the cows over onto the piece of prairie where I was supposed to pasture them, then he gave me his blacksnake and told me not to be afraid to lay it on if I had to. I had forgotten all about my spurs, but Fred saw them and laughed. He said that baling wire was the only thing that had held the State of Colorado together, but he'd bet I was the first one who ever made spurs out of it. Before he left he showed me how to swing the blacksnake so as to make the cracker pop right behind a cow, and said to let Ned have the handle across the rump if he wouldn't go. Then he told me to try to keep the cows bunched pretty well in the middle of the quarter section, and that he'd have one of his men come to help me take them home at night.
    It was a terrible day. The quarter section wasn't flat like our place, but was all roily hills. And those cows knew more tricks than Hi's blue roan. As soon as Fred was out of sight, they started spreading out in all directions. I beat the tar out of Ned, trying to make him go fast enough so that I could keep them rounded up, but the most I could get out of him was that clumping trot. While I was driving back a few stragglers on one side, others would head for Carl Henry's oat field on the run. When I came back with the first bunch that tried it, I found that I only had nineteen cows left in the herd—the rest had got away over one of the hills.
    I beat on Ned's rump and went to hunt them. His trot was pounding the dickens out of my behind and it was getting awful tender. I had worn off a piece of skin the size of a silver dollar. Ned had started to sweat a little right where I was trying to sit, and the salt in the sweat made it sting like blazes. When I got over the hill, I saw my strays a quarter of a mile away, headed for the oat field. They were in it before I could catch up to them.
    Father must have been watching me from where he was sowing alfalfa. I had left Ned and was wading around in the oats, trying to drive the cows out with the blacksnake. I couldn't handle it very well when I was on horseback, but it was almost useless in the oat field. I didn't have strength enough to keep it in the air through the back swing, and the cracker got tangled in the oats. I guess my yells were getting sort of warbly, and I was about ready to cry when Father showed up on Fanny.
    He got them out of there in no time, helped me to collect the rest of the herd, and bunched them way over at the east end of the quarter. Four more times he had to come to my rescue before six o'clock, and then he helped me get them back to Corcoran's. After we had the cows in their corral, Mrs. Corcoran came out from the house and tried to give Father my quarter. He nodded his head over toward me and said, "Give it to the boy, he certainly earned it."
    I don't think Mrs. Corcoran liked what Father said, because her face got a little red. She passed the quarter up to me and said, "Now don't go and lose it the first thing you do." Then she said to Father, "Too much money ain't good for children. These young ones nowadays haven't no idea of the worth of a dollar. I don't know what things are coming to."
    Father only said, "Better slide off him, Son. Mother'll be waiting supper for us."
    I slid off and put Ned in the corral with the cows. All the time it took me to climb on the gate to get his bridle off, Mrs. Corcoran kept talking. First she said, "Little boy, you didn't let my cows get into nobody's crops, did you?"
    I kept looking right at the cheek strap buckle, but I knew I had to tell her, so I said, "Well, sometimes I couldn't make Ned run fast enough to—"
    That's as far as I got. She sounded mad as could be. "My land sakes alive! You ain't been running my milch cows all over creation, have you?" I tried to tell her I hadn't, but she didn't even stop to