REDDY AND THE BRONCHO
There was no lack of interesting things to do that first day at the
ranch. There was one half-hour, to be sure, when five of the Happy
Hexagons sat a little quietly on the front gallery and tried to talk as
if there were no such thing as a windmill, and no such person as a girl
who could climb to the top of it; but after Genevieve and Mrs. Kennedy,
arm in arm, came through the front door--with eyes indeed, a little
misty, but with lips cheerfully smiling--every vestige of constraint
fled. Genevieve, once more in her pretty linen frock, was again the
alert little hostess, and very soon they were all off to inspect the
flower garden, the vegetable garden, the cow corral, the sheds, the
stables, and the blacksmith's shop, not forgetting Teresa, the cook, who
was making tamales in the kitchen for them, nor Pepito, Genevieve's own
horse that she rode before she went East.
"And we'll have the boys pick out some horses for you, too," cried
Genevieve, smoothing Pepito's sleek coat in response to his welcoming
whinny of delight. "I'm sure they can find something all right for us."
Tilly's eyes brightened, so, too, did Bertha's; but Cordelia spoke
hastily, her eyes bent a bit distrustfully on the spirited little horse
Genevieve was petting.
"Oh, but I don't believe they'll have time to hunt up horses for us,
Genevieve. Really, I don't think we ought to ask them to."
"Maybe we won't, then--for _you_," teased Tilly, saucily. "We'll just
let them take time for ours."
It is a question, however, if that afternoon, even Tilly wanted to ride;
for, according to Cordelia's notes that night in "Things to do," they
saw a broncho "bursted."
It was Mr. Tim who had said at the dinner table that noon:
"If you young people happen to be on hand, say at about four o'clock,
you'll see something doing. Reddy's got a horse or two he's going to put
through their paces--and one of 'em's never been saddled."
Privately, to Mr. Hartley, Mrs. Kennedy objected a little.
"Are you sure, Mr. Hartley, the girls ought to witness such a sight?"
she asked uneasily. "Of course I don't want to be too strict in my
demands," she went on with a little twinkle in her eyes that Mr. Hartley
thoroughly understood. "I realize the West isn't the East. But, will
this be--all right?"
"I think it will--even in your judgment," he assured her. "It's no
professional broncho-buster that they'll see to-day. I seldom hire them,
anyway, as I prefer to have our own men break in the horses--specially
as we're lucky enough to have three or four mighty skillful ones right
in our own outfit. There'll be nothing brutal or rough to-day, Mrs.
Kennedy. Only one beast is entirely wild, and he's not really vicious,
Reddy says. Genevieve tells me the girls have heard a lot about
broncho-busting, and that they're wild to see it. They wouldn't think
they'd been to Texas, I'm afraid, if they didn't see something of the
sort."
"Very well," agreed Mrs. Kennedy, with visible reluctance.
"Oh, of course," went on Mr. Hartley, his eyes twinkling, "you mustn't
expect that they'll see exactly a pony parade drawing baby carriages
down Beacon Street; but they will see some of the best horsemanship that
the state of Texas can show. I take it you never saw a little beast
whose chief aim in life was to get clear of his rider--eh, Mrs.
Kennedy?"
"No, I never did," shuddered the lady; "and I'm not sure that I'd want
to," she finished decisively, as she turned away.
The new horse proved to be a fiery little bay mustang, and the fight
began from the first moment that the noose settled about his untamed
little neck. As Tilly told of the affair in the Chronicles of the
Hexagon Club, it was like this:
"We saw a broncho busted this afternoon. Reddy busted it, and he was
splendid. Mercy! I shall never think anything my old Beauty does is bad
again. Beauty is a snail and a saint beside this jumping, plunging,
squealing creature that never by any chance was on his feet
properly--except when he came down hard on all four of them at once with
his back humped right up in the middle in a perfectly frightful
fashion--and I suppose that wasn't 'properly.' Anyhow, I shouldn't have
thought it was, if I had had to try to sit on that hump!
"But that wasn't the only thing that he did. Dear me, no! He danced, and
rolled, and seesawed up and down--'pitching,' Mr. Hartley called it. And
I'm sure it looked like it. First he'd try standing on his two fore
feet, then he'd give them a rest, and take the other two. And sometimes
he couldn't seem to make up his mind which he wanted to use, or which
way he wanted to turn, and he'd change about right up in the air so he'd
come down facing the other way. My, he was the most uncertain creature!
"It didn't seem to make a mite of difference where the horse was, or
what he did with his feet, though. Reddy was right there every time, and
all _ready_, too. (Yes, I know a pun is the lowest order of wit. But I
don't care. I couldn't help it, anyway--it was such a _ready_ one!)
There he sat, so loose and easy, too, with his quirt (that's a whip),
and it looked sometimes just as if he wasn't half trying--that he didn't
need to. But I'm sure he was trying. Anyhow, I know I couldn't have
stayed on that horse five minutes; and I don't believe even Genevieve
could. (I said that to Mr. Tim Nolan, and he laughed so hard I thought
I'd put it in here, and let somebody else laugh.)
"Of course every one of us was awfully excited, and the boys kept
shouting and cheering, and yelling 'Stay with him!' and telling him not
to 'go to leather'--whatever that may mean! And Reddy did stay. He
stayed till the little horse got tired out; then he got off, and led the
horse away, and some of the other boys went through a good deal the same
sort of thing with other horses, only these had all been partly broken
before, they told us. But, mercy, they were bad enough, anyhow, I
thought, to have been brand-new. Reddy did another one, too, and this
time he put silver half-dollars under his feet in the stirrups: And when
the little beast--the horse, I mean, not Reddy--got through his antics,
there the half-dollars were, still there in the same old place. How the
boys did yell and cheer then!
"After that, they all just 'showed off' for us, throwing their ropes
over anything and everything, and playing like a crowd of little boys on
a picnic, only Mr. Hartley said they were doing some 'mighty fine
roping' with it all. Their ropes are mostly about forty feet long, and
it looked as if they just slung them any old way; but I know they don't,
for afterward, just before we went in to supper, Reddy let me take his
rope, and I tried to throw it. I aimed for a post a little way ahead of
me, but I got Pedro, the Mexican cowboy, behind me, right 'in the neck,'
as Mr. Tim said. Pedro grinned, and of course everybody else laughed
horribly.
"And thus endeth the account of how the bronchos were busted. (P.S. I
hope whoever reads the above will own up that for once Tilly Mack got
some sense into her part. So there!) I forgot to say we took a nap after
dinner. Everybody does here. 'Siestas' they call them, Genevieve says."
* * * * *
It was after supper that Genevieve said:
"Now let's go out on to the front gallery and watch the sunset. Supper
was too late last night for us to see much of it, but to-night it will
be fine--and you've no idea what a sunset really can be until you've
seen it on the prairie!"
Tilly pursed her lips.
"There, Genevieve Hartley, there's another of those mysterious words of
yours; and it isn't the first time I've heard it here, either."
"What word?"
"'Gallery.' What is a gallery? I'm sure I don't see what there can be
about a one-story house to be called a 'gallery'!"
Genevieve laughed.
"You call them 'verandas' or 'piazzas,' back East, Tilly. We call them
'galleries' in Texas."
"Oh, is that it?" frowned Tilly. "But you never called Sunbridge piazzas
that."
Genevieve shook her head.
"No; it's only when I get back here that the old names come back to me
so naturally. Besides--when I was East, I very soon found out what you
called them; so I called them that, too."
"Well, anyhow," retorted Tilly, saucily, "I've got my opinion of folks
that will call a one-story piazza a 'gallery.' I should just like to
show them what we call a 'gallery' at home--say, the top one in the
Boston Theater, you know, where it runs 'way back."
Genevieve only laughed good-naturedly.
On the front gallery all settled themselves comfortably to watch the
sunset. Already the sun was low in the west, a huge ball of fire just
ready to drop into the sea of prairie grass.
"It doesn't seem nearly so hot here as I thought it would," observed
Bertha, after a time. "Oh, it's been warm to-day, of course--part of
the time awfully warm," she added hastily. "But I've been just as hot in
New Hampshire."
"We think we've got a mighty fine climate," spoke up Mr. Hartley. "Now,
last year, you in the East, had heaps of prostrations from the heat.
Texas had just three."
"I suppose that was owing to the Northers," murmured Cordelia,
interestedly. "Now, feel it!" She put up her hand. "There's a breeze,
now. Is that a Norther?"
Mr. Hartley coughed suddenly. Genevieve stared.
"What do you know about Northers?" she demanded.
"Why, I--I read about them. It said you--you had them."
Genevieve broke into a merry laugh.
"I should think, by the way you put it, that they were the measles or
the whooping cough! We do have them, Cordelia--in the winter, specially,
but not so often in July. Besides, they don't feel much like this little
breeze--as you'd soon find out, if you happened to be in one."
For a moment there was silence; then Genevieve spoke again.
"See here, where'd you find out all these things about Texas--that we
didn't have butter, and did have Northers?"
Before Cordelia could answer, Tilly interposed with a chuckling laugh:
"I'll tell you, Genevieve, just where they found out," she cut in,
utterly ignoring her own share of the "they." "Now, listen! How do you
suppose they spent all the time you were in New Jersey? I'll tell you.
They were digging up Texas every single minute; and they dug, and dug,
and dug, until there wasn't a mean annual temperature, or a mean
anything else that they didn't drag from its hiding-place and hold up
triumphantly, and shout: 'Behold, this is Texas!'"
"Girls--you didn't!" cried Genevieve, choking with laughter.
"They did!" affirmed Tilly.
"Yes, _we_ did--including Tilly," declared Cordelia, with unexpected
spirit.
Everybody laughed this time, but it was Alma, the peacemaker, who spoke
next.
"Oh, look--look at the sun!" she exclaimed. "Aren't those rose-pink
clouds gorgeous?"
"My, wouldn't they make a lovely dress?" sighed Elsie.
"Yes, and see the golden pathway the sun has made, straight down to the
prairie," cried Bertha Brown.
"Oh, look, look, Mr. Hartley! Is that grass on fire?" gasped Cordelia.
Mr. Hartley shook his head.
"No--I hope not."
"But you do have prairie fires?"
"Sometimes; but not so often nowadays--though I've seen some bad ones,
in my time."
There was a long silence. All eyes were turned toward the west. Above, a
riot of rose and gold and purple flamed across the sky. Below, more
softly, the colors seemed almost repeated in the waving, shifting,
changing expanse of fairylike loveliness that the prairie had become.
"Oh, how beautiful it all is, and how I do love it," breathed Genevieve,
after a time, as if to herself.
Gradually the gorgeous rose and gold and purple changed, softened, and
faded quite away. The slender crescent of the moon appeared, and one by
one the stars showed in the darkening sky.
"It's all so quiet, so wonderfully quiet," sighed Cordelia; then,
abruptly, she cried: "Why, what's that?"
There had sounded a far-away shout, then another, nearer. On the breeze
was borne the muffled tread of hundreds of hoofs. A dog began to bark
lustily.
* * * * *
Later, they swept into view--a troop of cowboys, and a thronging,
jostling mass of cattle.
"On the way to a round-up, probably," explained Mr. Hartley, as he rose
to his feet and went to meet the foreman, who was coming toward the
house.
Still later, he explained more fully.
"They've put them in our pens for the night. The boys have gone into
camp a mile or so away."
Genevieve shuddered.
"I hate round-ups," she cried passionately.
"What are round-ups?" asked Bertha Brown.
"Where they brand the cattle," answered Genevieve, quickly, but in a low
voice.
Cordelia, who was near her, shuddered. She seemed now to see before her
eyes that seething mass of heads and horns, sweeping on and on
unceasingly.
Cordelia had two dreams that night. She wondered, afterward, which was
the worse. She dreamed, first, that an endless stream of cattle climbed
the windmill tower and jumped clear to the edge of the prairie, where
the sun went down. She dreamed, secondly, that she was very hungry, and
that twenty feet away stood a table laden with hot biscuits and fried
chicken; but that the only way she could obtain any food was to "rope
it" with Reddy's lariat. At the time of waking up she had not obtained
so much as one biscuit or a chicken wing.