Jeannette Walls - Half Broke Horses

It was a dry, hot day, and the sheep filled the streets of Ash Fork, kicking up the dust so bad you had to cover your mouth with a bandana. The ewes were bleating and the lambs were mewing as the Camel brothers’ hands rode back and forth, driving the flock toward the shipping station, cracking whips at wandering strays.

The Camel brothers weren’t there-they were back at the ranch, rounding up the remaining sheep-and when the flock reached the shipping pen, some numbskull hand got the brilliant idea of separating the lambs from their mothers. As soon as they’d accomplished that, bedlam broke loose. The lambs were still nursing and were hungry from the journey, so they started scrambling around, crying for their mothers. The ewes, for their part, were frantically calling out for their babies.

The hands, realizing their mistake, opened the gate separating the ewes from the lambs, and the sheep all mingled together, mothers looking for babies and babies looking for mothers. That was when things got really bad. The more frantic the lambs became, the more energy they burned, which made them all the hungrier, but the flock was so big and so jumbled up that none of them could find their mothers. After a couple of hours of this, the lambs grew weak from hunger. They tried to nurse from any ewe they could, but the ewes wanted to save the milk for their own babies. They put their noses up to the lambs, and if the smell was unfamiliar, the ewes kicked them away and continued searching for their own.

The hands, frantic themselves, were wading around in the flock, trying to force the ewes to let any lamb nurse, but the ewes weren’t cooperating. They were kicking and bawling and squirming, making a god-awful racket and filling the air with even more dust as the cowboys cursed and the townspeople who had gathered around stood there watching, some calling out advice, others chuckling, shaking their heads, and waiting to see how it was all going to play out.

I was there with Little Jim and Rosemary, who was fascinated by the idea that a ewe could smell its own lamb and was running around shoving her nose into the lambs’ wool. “They all just smell like sheep to me,” she announced.

The Camel brothers finally showed up, but they were at a loss about what to do, and the situation was getting desperate, with lambs starting to drop from heat and hunger.

“You should talk to my husband,” I said. “He knows animals.”

The Camel brothers sent for Jim, who was at the garage. When he arrived, the hands explained what had happened.

“What we got to do,” Jim said, “is get those ewes to accept any lamb as her own for the time being. Then we can worry about straightening out the flock.”

Jim sent me back to the house for an old bedsheet while he fetched two cans of kerosene from the garage. He had the Camel hands tear the sheet into rags, dip the rags in the kerosene, and wipe the ewes’ noses with them. That blocked their sense of smell, and they let whatever lamb was at hand nurse their milk.

Once the lambs had been fed and the immediate crisis had passed, Jim had the hands separate the lambs and the ewes again. One by one they brought each lamb into the ewe pen and carried it around until its mother recognized it. The flock was so big that this took the better part of two days, with stops to douse the mothers’ noses again whenever the remaining lambs got hungry.

Little Rosemary was riveted by the scene and terribly concerned that all the lambs find their mothers, and she stayed there watching the entire time. When it was finally done, there was one little lamb that no ewe had claimed. Its black eyes were frightened, its white wool thick with dust, and it ran around on its spindly legs, bleating mournfully.

The Camel brothers told Jim to do whatever he thought best with the lamb. Jim scooped it up in his arms and carried it over to Rosemary. He knelt down and set the lamb in front of her. “All animals are meant for something,” he said. “Some to run wild, some for the barnyard, some for market. This little lamb was meant to be a pet.”

ROSEMARY LOVED THAT CREATURE.She shared her ice cream cones with it, and it followed her everywhere. So we decided to name it Mei-Mei, which Mr. Lee told us was Chinese for “little sister.”

A couple of weeks after Jim straightened out the flock, I heard the sound of a car pulling around the house and then a knock on the back door. A man was standing outside, smoking a cigarette. He’d left his car door open, and a girl and a young woman were sitting inside, watching us. He was a good-looking fellow with a lock of sandy hair falling across his forehead, and although his teeth were crooked and stained, he had the easy smile of a charmer. Even before he said anything, I could tell from the slightly off-balance way he was standing that he was a little potted.

“I’m a friend of Rooster’s,” he said. “And I heard this is where a man could get his hands on a good bottle of shellac.”

“Looks to me like you’re already pretty shellacked,” I said.

“Well, I’m working on it.”

His smile became even more charming, but I looked over at the woman and the girl, and they weren’t smiling at all.

“I think you’ve had enough to drink as it is,” I said.

His smile disappeared and he got all indignant, the way drunks do when you point out that they’re drunk. He started telling me his money was as good as anyone else’s, and who was I to go around deciding who had and hadn’t had too much to drink, I was just some two-bit moonshine madam. But I didn’t budge, and when he realized I wasn’t giving in and he’d be leaving empty-handed, he really lost it, telling me I was going to regret crossing him and calling me nothing but the sister of a whore who’d hanged herself.

“Wait right there,” I said. Leaving the door open, I walked into the bedroom, got my pearl-handled revolver, walked back out, and pointed it at the man’s face. The end of the barrel was about six inches from his nose. “The only reason I don’t shoot you right now is because of those two women in that car,” I said. “But you get out of here and don’t ever come back.”

That night I told Jim what had happened.

He sighed and shook his head. “We probably haven’t seen the end of it,” he said.

Sure enough, two days later, a car pulled around the house, and when I opened the door, two men in khaki uniforms and cowboy hats were standing there. They had badges on their shirt pockets, guns in their holsters, and handcuffs dangling from their belts. They tipped their hats. “Afternoon, ma’am,” one of them said. He hitched up his pants and stuck his thumbs in his belt. “Mind if we come in?” he asked.

I didn’t see that I had much choice in the matter, so I led them into the living room. Little Jim was asleep in the crib, and under it, behind the white cotton skirt, were two cases of bootleg hooch.

“Would you fellows like a nice cool glass of tap water?” I asked.

“Thank you, ma’am, no,” the talker said. They were both glancing around, trying to suss the place out.

“We received a report,” he went on, “that liquor is being illegally sold from these premises.”

At that moment Rosemary came running into the room with Mei-Mei right behind. It must have been the sight of all that gleaming metal and shiny leather, but as soon as Rosemary saw the two lawmen, she gave out a shriek that could have woken the dead. Howling, she flung herself at my feet and grabbed my ankles. I tried to pick her up, but she’d become truly hysterical and was flailing her arms, screaming, and blubbering.

Mei-Mei was bleating, and all the noise woke Little Jim, who stood up in the crib and started wailing.

“Does this look like a speakeasy?” I asked. “I’m a schoolteacher! I’m a mother! I got my hands full here just taking care of these kids.”