Home Ranch by Ralph Moody

line to hold. He didn’t sunfish, and he didn’t swap ends, but he did every double-shuffle, fence row, and zigzag in the book—and some that weren’t.
    I don’t think the seat of my pants was square in that saddle for a tenth of a second after Clay’s first side-slip. Twice I was so far off balance that I could see the ground between my own legs. But, both times, just when I thought I was a goner for sure, Clay changed direction and snapped the saddle back under me. I don’t suppose he put on more than a ten-second show—nobody could really have called it bucking—but it seemed to me like an hour. When he swung around to the gate and stopped, he turned his head and looked at me as if he were saying, “Well, you made it, didn’t you, kid?”
    Everybody, even the dairyhands, were crowded around the breaking pen when Sid opened it and let me ride Clay out. Hazel was hopping up and down, and half a dozen were talking at the same time, but I was only listening for Mr. Bendt. “Reckon you know what you done to me,” he said, with a laugh that didn’t have any music in it. “Dang near put me afoot, that’s what you done! Figgered I had a chance right up to the last hop. You wasn’t on by more’n a boot heel.” Then he slapped Mr. Batchlett on the back, and hooted, “By dog, did you take note of all the air he beat with that Stetson? Looked like a dadgummed hawk fightin’ a coyote with one busted wing.”
    Anyone could have seen how badly Mr. Bendt felt, and that he was just trying to cover up by hooting and making a joke. I didn’t feel a bit good myself. Even though I’d stayed on Clay, I’d only proved that Hazel was right when she said I probably couldn’t handle him. I hadn’t wanted the horse in the first place, and wished I could find some way of turning him over to Mr. Bendt.
    I was sitting there on the claybank with my head down, thinking, when Mr. Batchlett slapped me on the leg, and said, “Get your feathers up, boy! Between you and Hazel, you earned him fair and square. He’ll dump you plenty of times, but you’ll prob’ly learn to ride him.” He’d started away, then turned back, and said, quiet enough that no one else could hear, “You understand, Little Britches, that by pickin’ this horse you’ve picked yourself one of the toughest jobs in the outfit—and there won’t be nobody comin’ to help you.”
    â€œYes, sir,” I said, “I know it.” I really didn’t, until that minute, but I couldn’t say so.
    I rode Clay around a little after Mr. Batchlett talked to me, and he was as easy to handle as Lady. I was so excited about having him that I didn’t pay too much attention to the picking and shaking-down until it was almost my turn for the second go-round. All I’d noticed was that no one had picked Blueboy. Everyone ahead of me had used his first-pick horse to go in after his second. When Zeb went in, I rode Clay up to wait for my turn. I was sitting on him, just outside the corral gate, thinking just how I’d catch Blueboy, when I saw Hazel run to her father. He leaned down, and she seemed to be whispering to him for a minute, then she came running over to me. When I leaned down she whispered, “Take Pinch!”
    â€œIf I don’t take Blueboy this time, somebody else will get him,” I whispered back.
    That time Hazel looked right up into my eyes. She shook her head hard, and said, “Uh-uh! You take Pinch; you’ll need him!”
    After Hazel’s having picked Clay for me, and especially after her having helped me catch him, I couldn’t tell her to mind her own business, so I said, “All right. Which one is he?”
    â€œWell,” she said, “he’s bay, and he’s a little bit jugheaded, and not very pretty, but he’s . . . there he goes! Right behind that