Jeannette Walls - Half Broke Horses

We were still stopping to beg for gas, and a couple of times I insisted Rosemary make the pitch. At first she was so embarrassed that she could barely get the words out, but I figured she needed to learn the art of persuasion, and by the end, she was throwing herself into her performances with gusto, relishing the idea that even though she was just twelve years old, she could talk grown-up strangers into doing something for her.

As a reward, I decided to make a detour up to Albuquerque so we could both see the Madonna of the Trail. The statue had been put up several years earlier, and I’d always wanted to have a look at it myself. It stood in a small park, almost twenty feet high, a figure of a pioneer woman in a bonnet and brogans, holding a baby with one hand and a rifle with the other while a small boy clung to her skirts. I thought of myself as the sensible type, not given to a lot of sentimental blubbering- and most statues and paintings struck me as useless clutter-but there was something about the Madonna of the Trail that almost brought tears to my eyes.

“It’s kind of ugly,” Rosemary said. “And the woman’s a little scary.”

“Are you kidding?” I said. “That’s art.”

When I returned to the ranch, Jim and I sat down to figure out what we should do about the west Texas land. Jim was of two minds, but for some reason, seeing that statue had made me hell-bent on holding on to the land Dad had homesteaded.

For one thing, land was the best investment. Over the long haul, and provided you treated it with respect, land pretty much always rose in value. And while that west Texas land was definitely parched, they were drilling for oil all over the state-Dad’s papers contained some correspondence with Standard Oil-and it might well be sitting on a big field of black gold.

But Dad’s west Texas land called to me for a deeper reason. Maybe it was the Irish in me, but everyone in my family, going back to my grandfather-he’d come over from County Cork, where all the land was owned by absentee Poms who took most of what you grew-had always been obsessed with land. Now, for the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to own some outright. There was nothing to compare with standing on a piece of land you owned free and clear. No one could push you off it, no one could take it from you, no one could tell you what to do with it. The soil belonged to you, and so did every rock, every blade of grass, every tree, and all the water and minerals under the land all the way to the center of the earth. And if the world went to hell in a hand-basket-as it seemed to be doing-you could say good-bye to everyone and retreat to your land, hunkering down and living off it. Land belonged to you and yours forever.

“That’s one unyielding patch of earth,” Jim said. He argued that we couldn’t raise much of a herd on 160 acres, and paying off those taxes would make a big dent in the fund to buy Hackberry.

“We might not ever be able to buy Hackberry,” I said. “This is a sure thing. I’m a gambler, but I’m a smart one, and the smart gambler always goes for the sure thing.”

We paid off the taxes and became bona fide Texas land barons. I felt that the Madonna of the Trail would have approved.

WE USUALLY TOOK CATTLEto market in the spring and the fall, but that year the fall roundup was delayed until Christmas because, with the war going on, the military was using the railroad to ship troops and equipment all over the place, and that was the only time the train was available. But that also meant Rosemary, Little Jim, and I could pitch in, which worked out well, because the war had created a shortage of cowboys. We usually had upward of thirty cowboys on a roundup, but that year we had half that many.

Rosemary and Little Jim had both been going on roundups ever since they were old enough to walk, first riding behind me and Jim, then on their own ponies. Even so, Big Jim didn’t want them in the thick of the drive, where even the best cowboys could get thrown off their horses and trampled by nervous cattle. So he had Rosemary and Little Jim work as outriders, chasing down strays and stragglers hiding in the draws. I followed the herd in the pickup, carrying the bedrolls and the grub.

It was cold that December, and you could see steam rising off the horses as they cut back and forth, keeping the herd together while it moved across the range. Rosemary was riding old Buck, the buckskin-colored Percheron who was so smart that Rosemary could drop the reins and he’d corner strays on his own, biting them on the butt to drive them back to the herd.

Rosemary loved the roundups except for one thing-she secretly rooted for the cattle. She thought they were kind, wise animals who, in their hearts, knew that you were leading them to their death, which was why their lowing had such a piteous tone. I suspected that from time to time, she’d helped the odd steer escape. One day, well into the drive, Jim noticed a stray sidling up a draw and sent Rosemary after it. We heard old Buck whinnying, but a little later, Rosemary rode back out all innocent-eyed, declaring that she couldn’t find the steer.

“Just plain disappeared,” she said, and held up her hands with a shrug. “It’s a mystery.”

Jim shook his head and sent Fidel Hanna, a young Havasupai, into the draw. Soon enough he came trotting out, driving the steer in front of him.

Jim gave Rosemary a hard look. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

“Not her fault, boss,” Fidel Hanna said. “That steer, he was hiding way up a gulch.”

Jim looked like he didn’t completely buy the story, but it got Rosemary off the hook. Fidel glanced at Rosemary, and I saw him give her a sly little wink.

Rosemary had turned thirteen that year, which put her right on the brink of womanhood-girls of my generation sometimes got married at that age-and from that moment on, she was smitten with Fidel Hanna. He was only sixteen or seventeen himself, a tall, good-looking boy with an angular face who was moody and aloof but also sweet. He had a languid way of moving, wore a black hat with a shiny silver concha, and rode like he was part of his horse.

Rosemary by then was quite a looker, with her dark blond hair, wide mouth, and saucy green eyes, but she seemed unaware of it, carrying on instead like a complete tomboy. Her crush on Fidel Hanna left her confused and acting silly. During the day, he’d catch her gazing at him. She’d do things like challenge him to Indian wrestling matches, but she also made drawings of him on his horse and left them under his saddle at night.

The other cowboys noticed and started ribbing Fidel Hanna. I figured I’d have to keep an eye on the situation.

“Watch yourself around these cowboys,” I told Rosemary.

“What do you mean?” Rosemary asked, giving me that same innocenteyed expression she’d given Jim when she couldn’t find the stray.

“You know what I mean.”

With demand for beef down because of the war, we rounded up only two thousand head of cattle, not the usual five thousand, and when we put the herd together, we drove it east across the plateau to the loading pens in Williams. Once we got there, I saddled up Diamond, one of our quarter horses, to help with the corralling and the loading. Near the end, two steers ducked out of the chute and headed through an open gate toward the range.

“Go, babies, go!” Rosemary shouted.

I looked sharply at her, and she covered her mouth with her hand, which made me realize she hadn’t even known what she was saying. She’d just blurted it out.

Fidel Hanna and I chased down the two runaways and drove them back to the chute, where they were loaded onto the cattle cars with the rest of the herd. I trotted over to where Rosemary was sitting on Buck.