Free Fields of Home by Ralph Moody Page A

were times when I was really frightened before he stopped kicking and put his head down for the bridle. I’d just slipped the bit into his mouth when, from the stall door, Uncle Levi said, “Sort of early to be harnessing up, ain’t it?”
    I tried to act as if I’d known he was there all the time, but my voice sounded a little shaky when I said, “I wasn’t harnessing him for work, but I’ve got to teach him to stand for harnessing without an hour’s fight every morning. As soon as he understands that he won’t get any breakfast till it’s all over, he’ll learn quick enough.”
    “Kind of hard to learn an old dog new tricks, ain’t it?”
    “Yes, but he’ll learn,” I said. “How old is he, anyway? His mouth looks as smooth as a range bull’s.”
    “Been smooth more years than you be old. Let me see. I was sixty-four last spring, and I fetched Old Nancy home the day I turned thirty. Seems to me she didn’t have a colt that next year, and foaled the yella colt the following spring. Might be a year later. I ain’t real sure. By that time I was off to Dakota, homesteading. How old would that make him?”
    “Thirty-one or -two,” I said.
    “Great day of judgment! Cussed contrary old critter! Born ugly, and never got over it. Calc’late we better get at the rest of the chores afore we have Thomas out here to boss the job. Thomas, he’s a little long on the bossing sometimes. Like as not he learnt it when he was a sergeant in the rebellion.”
    “They’re all done, except milking one cow and feeding the calf,” I told him, “and Grandfather doesn’t want the milking done till six o’clock. I wonder why he doesn’t milk the other three cows instead of letting those big calves run with them.”
    “Thomas?” he said. “If ’twas left for Thomas to do, there wouldn’t be no milking. Never heard tell of him milking a cow. Womenfolks always done it. Millie gets her back up at more than one cow to milk. Cussed good girl, Millie. Don’t know how Thomas would get on without her.” As he spoke, Uncle Levi took his big gold watch out of the bib pocket of his overalls, untied the little leather pouch he kept it in, and said, “Right on the button. Six o’clock, straight up.” Then he followed me into the tie-up.
    The milk was still ringing off the bottom of the bucket when Uncle Levi brought a little wooden firkin and sat down behind Clara Belle. In a couple of minutes, Old Bess came in and sat down beside him. Then, from one direction and another, the three cats came and sat beside Bess. For two or three minutes, the only sounds were the occasional mewing of a cat and the whisper of the milk streams as they plunged into the foam. The bucket was a third full when I remembered that I hadn’t shot the usual squirt of milk at Bess. I reached high on the milk-bag, brought down a big teatful, and turned my fist up toward Bess’s head. As the white stream came toward her, she opened her mouth wide and caught it. “There’s an old dog that’s been taught a new trick,” I told Uncle Levi. “She didn’t know how to do that when I came down here.”
    “Clever, ain’t she?” was all he said for a minute. Then, “How you and Thomas getting on, Ralphie?”
    “Not very well, I guess. Mostly, I’ve only had hand mowing to do, and I’m not very good at it. Especially, right-handed. I never tried to use a scythe before I came down here, and I can’t always make it go right where I want it to. He says I’m more hindrance than help to him, but I worked for a good many different men in Colorado, and they’d all hire me back again. I could always get jobs when most of the other kids in Littleton couldn’t.”
    “Mmmm Hmmm. What’s this business about the strawberries and tomatoes?”
    “Oh, that? I don’t know why he got mad about that. I just told him that I worked for a man in Colorado who raised strawberries and tomatoes.”
    “Did you?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “How’d you get along with