Little Britches by Ralph Moody Page B

scared to try it. Anyway, my feet were stuck in the loops. He reached up and took me off while Mother stood with her hands on her hips. She looked at me with that look of hers that said, "Come here, young man!" And I went. She didn't say a word to me, but her eyes blazed at the cowboy as if she would like to skin him. "You might have killed him," she said. "If he'd fallen off, that horse would have trampled him to death."
    He just laughed, "No, Ma'am! That old pony wouldn't kill nobody. If he'd a fell off, Old Blue would of just stood there and waited for him to pick hisself up. You watch."
    Then he said to me, "Didn't have no trouble with him, did ya, Little Britches?"
    I said, "No, only he don't steer very good. I pulled the rein to make him go one way and he went the other."
    He laughed again. "He's just rein wise and you ain't, that's all. Now you watch."
    Then he turned around toward Mother, took his big hat off and said, "You watch, too, Ma'am, and you'll see how safe he is."
    He kicked up one leg and flew right into the saddle without ever touching the stirrup. He whistled between his teeth as he went up, and Blue was gone with his feet kicking chunks of sod out behind him. The roan had hardly gone fifty feet before he sat right down on his hind legs and skidded, then the cowboy made him do more tricks than an organ grinder's monkey. They turned round and round in a circle, and from one side to the other so that it looked like dancing, then he would run a little way full tilt and be turned around before he got through sliding. I noticed that the cowboy never did pull on either rein; he just held them in his left hand up over the horse's neck, and whichever way he moved his hand, that was the way the roan went. Then he did one that made Mother and me both squeal. With the pony going lickety-larrup the cowboy fell right out of the saddle. He lit on the back of his shoulders, turned a half somersault and came up on his feet. The horse stopped so fast they were standing there side by side, as if they were just waiting for the mailman to come along.
    The cowboy looked around at Mother and took off his hat. It had stayed on all the way through the somersault. He stepped back into the saddle again and trotted over to where we were. First he said to me, "Catch on, Little Britches?" Then he took off his hat to Mother again, and said, "Hiram Beckman's the name—they call me Hi." As he raced back toward the road he turned and waved his hat. Mother and I waved back.
    I could hardly wait for Father to come in from the field to tell him about Hi and his blue roan horse. Father had been plowing way over across the tracks, and I didn't think he'd noticed us, because he never stopped to look when I could see him. I ran out to meet him when he came, and got all mixed up, I was trying to tell him so fast. He put his hand out and rumpled up my hair. I didn't know what he meant, but he said, "I guess you're a chip off the old chopping block. If you understand them, you never have any trouble making them understand you. You did all right on that horse. I knew you weren't afraid by the way he was acting." We walked along a little way, then he rumpled my hair again and said, "Your father was proud of you, Son." It was the first time he ever told me that, and I got a lump in my throat.
    Then he told me that Hi might be a little bit of a show-off, but he was a good horseman; not so much because he could fall off and come up on his feet, but because he had been patient in training Blue. He said that Blue wasn't a bit afraid of Hi or he wouldn't have handled so smoothly, and that it was the best example he had ever seen of complete understanding between a man and a horse. "If you want to be a good horseman," he said, "the first thing you'll have to learn will be how a horse thinks, and next to think the same way yourself."
    That Sunday was nice and warm. After the chores were done, Father said, "Mame, this is too nice a day to be cooped up in the