Thomas Mcguane - The Cadence of Grass

“Back to Mother’s Day, I let Robert sleep through the night and by the time I woke, just before sunup, I could smell his fire and coffee. Then in a bit I heard Leo’s voice and knew the two of them throwed in and was layin’ a plan. I made something decent for the three of us, mostly just to buy some time in the hopes Robert would quit this idea to bring his broncs off the bench with just me, him and Leo, a small fellow out of Sonora who listened to this kinda like polka music when he was homesick. Hair fell in his face in bangs, hard, square hands, and no sense of humor. Couldn’t read nor write but he had a perfect memory. If you lost something, could be a week ago, he’d walk straight to where you put it down.

“Robert Wood was just an old puncher who’d outlived his day. Thought the Old West could be brought back if they’d just quit dammin’ up water to make alfalfa. He hated alfalfa and would go a long way out of his way to keep from seein’ it. I suppose he was seventy-five years old ’cause I seen in the papers when he died about ten years ago he’d made ninety or better. Wore a Stetson right out of the box, no crease, no nothin’. He wouldn’t wear a straw hat in the summer, said it was a farmer’s hat.

“Robert said, ‘Here is the deal. We’ll go up the switchback together to the bench and when we get there I’ll ride around and see if I can’t stop them.’ The right place to get their attention was that big earthquake fault, you know, where we seen that lynx last summer, which no man could cross with a horse. That slope beyond it could’ve been a good escape route for those mares. ‘And hide in the brush and don’t show even the end of your nose else they’ll see it. Then you two get around them mares and start ’em home. I’ll make sure they come back down the trail. When they get down to the flat somebody will have to get outside these horses and thataway turn ’em into your corrals. I hope you don’t mind me borrowin’ your corrals.’

“Ev, you’ve seen that crack in the ground. It’s a long way to the bottom. I really doubted Robert would turn those horses there. Wild horses and canners like these just as soon jump it and break their necks, whereas a horse and rider would never do such a thing. I guessed it would end there and we’d turn ’em down off the bench and lock ’em up at the neighbors. Then we’d have time to get a proper crew together.”

Evelyn started to speak, but thought better of it.

“When the horses got out on the flat, somebody’d have to ride out around that wild band, outrun them on broken ground, turn them into the corrals. And I wondered how all of this might look to Robert, who kind of despised our horsemanship. I mean Robert Wood worked for the Hash Knife, the N Bar, the Pitchfork, the Matador. And sure always rode a finished horse, but it had to be tough as whang leather or he just wouldn’t have it around. Horse needed to stand up in that bridle and look for work.

“First off, we had to get crooked old Robert on his horse. He led his sorrel mare out of the pen behind the scales and tied her to a plank of the chute. She was a little sickle-hocked, which I’m sure he preferred, and she had good withers, short pasterns, kind of coon-footed, low-croup cow-horse look to her, ears pricked forward, even whickered at him quick as she seen him.

“It was just painful to watch him saddle this horse. He threw the Navajo up all right, but when he lifted that old slick-fork saddle, we felt how it hurt him and yet knew we ought not to help. He bridled her up in a little grazer bit and led her around to the front of the chute. He threw one rein around the horn and wrapped the other around the corner post of the loading chute. She stood all right — I mean, he’d dare her not to stand — but that wasn’t no kid’s horse, bad as anything he’d force O. C. onto, nose blowed out and white around her eyes. Cross a horse like that and she drives you into the ground like a picketpin.

“Then Robert walks around to the holding pen, squeaks the old gate open, goes inside and next time we see him, he’s crawling up the chute, out the end and onto his horse. She snorted and backed away and he hung down around her neck to catch his other rein. When he sat up in the saddle, he had both reins plaited through the fingers of his left hand and just lifted his hand about three-sixteenths of an inch and she sat down on her hocks and backed clear across the ranch yard in a cloud of dust. Then he straightened up, threw her some slack and she stood square to the world, ready for work. Had of been O. C. his ass’d be over the granary. I rode a dun gelding I’d broke and was hopin’ Robert’d tell me what a great job I’d did, but he didn’t say nothin’ .

“Up we go single file and I stay to watch Robert. His shoulders were back and he sat ramrod straight in the middle of his saddle, boots plumb home in iron oxbows, reins hangin’ soft over the side of his left hand. In the other hand he’s got a string with a knot for every mare. He turned real slow in his saddle and give my Mexican a good hard look. It wasn’t long before we were on top. When Leo loped out to the west and made a little dust, I could see Robert was gonna quit worryin’ about him. Leo made a big ride around the horses, which had wheeled up to watch him, and only began to disperse and feed as the circle he made came to seem too grand to concern them. By the time I rode back to the far side of the bench, Leo was closin’ in my direction and two miles off, them horses began to drift away. There was sixteen horses, and about ten of them was pretty uniform-looking sorrel horses that looked kin to Robert’s mount. The remainder was nothin’ but dog feed with Roman noses and big hairy feet. They’d hurt your eyes. My old man sent thousands just like them on the train to Owens Brothers in Kansas City. The good ones went to the Boer War and the Frenchmen ate the rest.

“The first part of our plan to come apart was where we’s gonna ease ’em on out of there because they plumb took off. In two jumps they was smokin’ across the flattop and our horses caught that gust off of them and liked to get out from under us. Leo had to pull his mount in some hard circles to keep him from buckin’ with him, and mine had his head in my lap to where I’d liked to broke something over it, but pretty quick I had the best of him and he’s looking straight through his bridle like a gentleman. Leo was foggin’ it about a mile off, a big cloud of dust driftin’ away like a grass fire.

“It was pretty clear there was no smart way to turn ’em down the road even if Robert had been prepared to do so, but he was nowhere in sight. So the best we could do was throw them off the slope ahead and scatter them out among those little ranches along the river, where they would just play hell with the alfalfa. Them farmers would just shoot ’em down.

“That’s where everything changed. Robert broke out of the brush on his horse way past that crack in the ground, his sorrel mare comin’ out in a flurry of sage and greasewood cracking off in the air around her. Them broncs froze at the sight of her. They could either leap that crack and fly past him, or Robert could jump the crack himself and turn ’em toward my house. It was my corrals or the alfalfa; it was that simple.

“Presently they came boilin’ back and we whooped and hollered. Leo took down his slicker and got them bunched up once more toward the trail where they did not want to go and Robert’s yellin’, ‘Drive ’em, boys!’ till they advanced his way like a bright-colored little cyclone tryin’ to break right around him. We almost lost ’em right there. Robert stretched up over his mare’s neck and she closed on that crack just burnin’ a hole in the wind, and when she reached it she soared up into the air, Robert easing back into the saddle with his stirrups pushed out in front toward the landing he hoped they would both make.”