Moody - Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers

Books by Ralph Moody

Available in Bison Books editions

American Horses

Come on Seabiscuit!

The Dry Divide

The Fields of Home

The Home Ranch

Horse of a Different Color

Kit Carson and the Wild Frontier

Little Britches

Man of the Family

Mary Emma & Company

Riders of the Pony Express

Shaking the Nickel Bush

Stagecoach West

Wells Fargo

Father and I Were Ranchers

By RALPH MOODY

Illustrated by Edward Shenton

Copyright 1950 by Ralph Moody
Copyright renewal 1978 by Ralph Moody
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

First Bison Book printing: 1991

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Moody, Ralph, 1898

Little Britches: father and I were ranchers / by Ralph Moody; illustrated by

Edward Shenton.

p. cm.

Reprint. Originally published: New York: Norton, cl950.

Bison bookT.p. verso.

ISBN 0-8032-8178-1 (pa)

1. Moody, Ralph, 1898 . 2. Moody, Ralph, 1898 Family. 3. Moody Family. 4. RanchersColoradoBiography. 5. Ranch lifeColoradoHistory20th century. I. Title.

CT275.M5853A3 1991

978.8030922dc20

[B]

91-4139 CIP

Reprinted by arrangement with Edna Moody Morales and Jean S. Moody

E-book ISBN: 978-0-8032-8330-5

TO MY FRIEND

A. MARSHALL HARBINSON

without whose encouragement and
instruction this story would not
have been written

LITTLE BRITCHES

I NEVER really knew Father very well till we moved to the ranch on the Fort Logan-Morrison road, not far from Denver. That was just after my eighth birthdayright at the end of 1906. When we lived in East Rochester, New Hampshire, he worked in the woolen mill, but it wasnt good for his lungs. He was sick in bed the winter before we movedthe one after Hal was a year old.

Cousin Phil lived in Denver, and came to see us the next spring, right after Father got well enough to go back to work. I liked him a lot. He had a gold front tooth, and wore a derby hat cocked way over on his right ear. And he sold gold-mine stock.

One afternoon when Grace and I got home from school, he and Mother were talking in the parlor. I didnt have much chance to listen, because Mother told Grace and me to take Philip and Muriel outside to play till suppertime. But I did hear Cousin Phil say, Why, Mame, there just isnt any work at all to ranching in Colorado. We have three hundred and sixty-five sunshiny days in a year, and all a man has to do is toss out seed in the spring and harvest his crop in the fall. With my connections, I could make a deal to put you folks on one of the finest ranches in the country, where youd have all the milk, butter, and eggs you could eat, and half of all the crops you could raise. Why, in one year Charlied be a new manand make as much money as hed make here in East Rochester in a lifetime.

I guess Father and Mother believed what he said, because there were letters from him all through the summer and fall. Then, just after Christmas, we had our auction and took the train for Denverall seven of us: Father and Mother and Grace, Muriel, Philip, Hal, and I. Grace was older than I was, but the rest were younger. All the way out on the train, I kept guessing how big the house and barns on our ranch would be, and how many hundred horses and cows thered be on it.

It was late when we got to Denver, so we rented a room in a little hotel on Seventeenth Street. The next day, Cousin Phil lent us his rubber-tired buggy and Prince, his sleek little seal-brown driving horse. Father let me go to see our ranch with him and Mother. I didnt really have to ask him to let me go. I guess he just knew how much I wanted to and said to Mother, Do you think thered be enough room for you and the baby if we squeezed Ralph in between us?

We could see our new house from a couple of miles away. We knew it must be ours, because Cousin Phil had told us it was three and a half miles west of Fort Loganthe first house on the Morrison wagon road. From the hill beyond the Fort, it looked like a little dollhouse sitting on the edge of a great big table, with a brown tablecloth smoothed out flat all around it. It was right near the edge of the mesa, where the land started dipping northward into Bear Creek Valley. Away toward the south there were brown, rolling hills, as though the tablecloth had been wrinkled a little. And not far beyond it, toward the west, the hogbacks rose like big loaves of golden-brown bread sitting on the table. High above them the snowcaps of the Rockies glistened in the afternoon sunshine.

As we came nearer, it looked less like a dollhouse and more like just what it was: a little three-room cottage that had been hauled out from Denver. It was propped up on four cribs of movers timbers, and sat at the corner of an unfenced quarter section of barren prairie land. The chimney was broken off at the roof and most of the windows were smashed. When we turned off the wagon road, a jack rabbit leaped out from under the house and raced away through the clumps of cactus and soap-weed. But it was going to be our ranchit looked all right to me.

Father and Mother didnt say a word, but when I looked up, the bunches of muscle at the sides of Fathers jaws were working out and in. They always did that when he was trying not to get mad. Mothers face was as white as Hals stocking cap, and her eyes looked as though she were going to cry, but she didnt. After Father tied Prince and helped Mother out of the buggy, he held me up so I could look in one of the windows. There wasnt much to see, except that the floor was covered with broken glass, and plaster that had fallen off the walls and ceiling.

While I was still looking in the window, Mother said, Charlie, I dont see how in the world we can do it... with only three hundred and eighty-seven dollars. I thought, of course, thered be good buildings and stock and machinery on it. Weve got a lot of planning to do. Her voice sounded hoarse, and seemed to be coming from way down in her throat.

Father didnt say anything until he had stood me down and taken Hal from Mother. Then he put his arm around her shoulder and hugged her up against him. Father was real tall, but slim, and Mothers head fitted in under his chin. Theres only one thing to plan about, Mame, he said, and thats getting tickets home while weve still got the money. I wont have you live in any such God-forsaken place as this.

They stood that way for two or three minutes while Fathers hand patted up and down on Mothers shoulder. And there wasnt a sound, except that dry little cough that Father had then. When Mother lifted her head, her lips were pressed tightly together, and her voice wasnt trembly any more. The Bible says, Trust in the Lord and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed. The hand of God has led us here; we have set our shoulders to the wheel, and we will not turn back.