| OCR Text |
Show 21 sweat it: the day was usually sufficient in itself, especially in the summer when each day I rode out to the farm with my father and brothers, and sometimes took a town boy along. We called it the The Ranch because it had been Wild Bill's home place, all hay and pasture and cattle, even though now my father grubbed in the dirt to raise spuds and corn, only a farmer. The town kids were impressed though, and I told them everything there was to know about chickens and horses and cows, about mowing machines and cultivators and grain drills, about how to raise alfalfa or pinto beans. I took them down to the river for a swim, me knowing every sandbar and swimming hole, or down to the beaver pond to see the ducks and eat the watercress. Best of all I took them riding on our horses, not the work plugs but on the riding horses we always kept around, over the years all sorts of horses, tame old horses and half-blind horses and small little horses and big fast horses. For a while our old grey mare still stumbled along. I remember a one-eyed bay who shied violently away from his blind side, who when he went through a gate would shave the post so close on his good side that if you weren't watching he would scrape your leg off. He galloped with his head turned a little to one side, good eye forward, and he tended to drift off the straight-arrow path. Other times I would ride along on a buckskin mare named Dixie while my little brother was trotting beside me on a Shetland named Beauty, his head level with my knee. The black Morgan stud we called Ace was later, when I was in high school, as was a big roan which had been trained as a quarterhorse racer and could run right out from under you. Horses. I remember them on summer pasture when a thundershower came up and they lifted their heads and pranced and bucked and ran for the love of it, sharing their joy with each other, nipping at some other's ass, kicking out behind. If the rain stayed a while and the wind blew they would stick their butts into it and drop their |
