the church. We’ll ride there one day. I’ll have to show you off sometime to all those people who know about you. Once I stop being afraid, we’ll have so much fun together!”
By the time they returned to the stable, Sarah felt that she had gotten to know her land much better than ever before. And it was Gypsy who taught her how to look at it. Gypsy was constantly aware of everything around her. For the first time in her life Sarah noticed the beauty of the light playing on the ground. She heard the music of the cracking branches and the moving leaves, the timid noise of a bird unwilling to fly off, and the powerful swish of the wings from those that took flight at the sound of the hoofs. She looked at the rabbits standing and then taking off, and she even saw a deer staring back at them, motionless; and she was glad that Gypsy feared nothing but noticed everything.
Ever since her marriage the coming of spring had filled her with an acute realization of happiness. The feeling of belonging intensified for her in the springtime. It was as if the renewal of nature welded her closer to the land and to everything she held dear. This, her first spring without Paul, was not going to be different. This spring it was Gypsy who was making the wonder of spring once again miraculous for Sarah.
Chapter Six
It was no use. The harder David stared at the questions, the harder they seemed. Looking out of the window was no help either, and noticing that Miss MacKean, his teacher, was glancing at him worriedly made it all much worse. He wasn’t even sure if any of the test questions, except one, were answered in his book. I must be stupid, he decided angrily.
There were only five kids besides him in the seventh grade, and most of them looked so much younger than he that that alone could spoil his day. Even if he didn’t dislike them all he couldn’t imagine any of them becoming his friends. The twins, who had already handed in their test papers, were the only ones who tried to find out anything about him; the others weren’t even interested in where he came from. The two boys, whom no one could tell apart, were now looking toward him, and they, like Miss MacKean, looked worried. He bent down over the paper, and this time he just tried to guess at the answers.
If only they wanted to know something about the rodeo! If only, instead of South America, they could be studying about George Washington. Of course not the George Washington who was the first President of the United States, but the Negro of that name who in Canadian, Texas, one day in 1880 got on a bucking bronco and rode him right out of the arena and down the railroad tracks all the way to the depot. Or he could tell them about Thad Sowder, a real hero, a kind of hero they should be studying about in school anyway. He was about the greatest rodeo figure around the turn of the century. In later years when Thad was paralyzed and penniless—for in those days bravery was paid more with fame than with money-he ended his days peddling pillow covers carrying his picture as the world’s champion broncobuster. David even had been to Thad’s grave in Ovid, Colorado. He had made his father take him there one winter. And if they wanted names, why couldn’t they be asking who Tom Threepersons was? He was a Cherokee, and there was no greater Indian in rodeo than Tom. And how about Yakima Canutt, John Rock, Earl Thode, Pete Knight, Doff Aber? Of course they were all dead now and lay buried in lonely graveyards out West, but that was no reason to forget them. They were, after all, a heck of a lot more important than whatever it was that was exported from Ecuador.
And whoever Magellan might have been, he couldn’t have been half the man Jazzbo Fulkerson was. Jazzbo was the first rodeo clown to use the barrel. He devised it to give the bull a hard target to hit. He fashioned it out of a steel drum with rubber tires around it, and he would crawl into it and all curled up would wait for
By the time they returned to the stable, Sarah felt that she had gotten to know her land much better than ever before. And it was Gypsy who taught her how to look at it. Gypsy was constantly aware of everything around her. For the first time in her life Sarah noticed the beauty of the light playing on the ground. She heard the music of the cracking branches and the moving leaves, the timid noise of a bird unwilling to fly off, and the powerful swish of the wings from those that took flight at the sound of the hoofs. She looked at the rabbits standing and then taking off, and she even saw a deer staring back at them, motionless; and she was glad that Gypsy feared nothing but noticed everything.
Ever since her marriage the coming of spring had filled her with an acute realization of happiness. The feeling of belonging intensified for her in the springtime. It was as if the renewal of nature welded her closer to the land and to everything she held dear. This, her first spring without Paul, was not going to be different. This spring it was Gypsy who was making the wonder of spring once again miraculous for Sarah.
Chapter Six
It was no use. The harder David stared at the questions, the harder they seemed. Looking out of the window was no help either, and noticing that Miss MacKean, his teacher, was glancing at him worriedly made it all much worse. He wasn’t even sure if any of the test questions, except one, were answered in his book. I must be stupid, he decided angrily.
There were only five kids besides him in the seventh grade, and most of them looked so much younger than he that that alone could spoil his day. Even if he didn’t dislike them all he couldn’t imagine any of them becoming his friends. The twins, who had already handed in their test papers, were the only ones who tried to find out anything about him; the others weren’t even interested in where he came from. The two boys, whom no one could tell apart, were now looking toward him, and they, like Miss MacKean, looked worried. He bent down over the paper, and this time he just tried to guess at the answers.
If only they wanted to know something about the rodeo! If only, instead of South America, they could be studying about George Washington. Of course not the George Washington who was the first President of the United States, but the Negro of that name who in Canadian, Texas, one day in 1880 got on a bucking bronco and rode him right out of the arena and down the railroad tracks all the way to the depot. Or he could tell them about Thad Sowder, a real hero, a kind of hero they should be studying about in school anyway. He was about the greatest rodeo figure around the turn of the century. In later years when Thad was paralyzed and penniless—for in those days bravery was paid more with fame than with money-he ended his days peddling pillow covers carrying his picture as the world’s champion broncobuster. David even had been to Thad’s grave in Ovid, Colorado. He had made his father take him there one winter. And if they wanted names, why couldn’t they be asking who Tom Threepersons was? He was a Cherokee, and there was no greater Indian in rodeo than Tom. And how about Yakima Canutt, John Rock, Earl Thode, Pete Knight, Doff Aber? Of course they were all dead now and lay buried in lonely graveyards out West, but that was no reason to forget them. They were, after all, a heck of a lot more important than whatever it was that was exported from Ecuador.
And whoever Magellan might have been, he couldn’t have been half the man Jazzbo Fulkerson was. Jazzbo was the first rodeo clown to use the barrel. He devised it to give the bull a hard target to hit. He fashioned it out of a steel drum with rubber tires around it, and he would crawl into it and all curled up would wait for
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