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Show aw It was that same man who sent me out to hoe corn, a black tyrant who ruled my life. Actually the work wasn't so bad, up one row and down the next in the cool green shade of the tall corn, my mind j$L to dream myself into fuller being, with long rests beside the water bottle at the south end of the field from where I could look on further south to the San Juans, dominated by Mt. Sneffles. My grandfather of the big mustaches had once run cattle up there and this farm had been the ranch where the cattle wintered. Even before I knew he was cailed Wild Bill I had associated him with Wild Bill Hickok and Billy the Kid, and one of my dreams was of Billy not dying young but faking it and going legit and taking the name Brocken, grandfather to me. Then tne cattle market went bust in the twenties and here I was hoeing corn, just a clodhopper when I could have been a cowboy^ Sometimes it was almost too much to bear, my fate, and I blamed my father even though I knew that he was not happy either at being trapped into being a farmer, that some other yearning was expressed in his Stetson hat, white and crisp an as crackers, and in his fancy cowboy boots. He did the best he could with what he had, but it was with a special voice when he spoke of the days of his youth when there was toi'lt of not a»fence in Western Colorado. Spoke of a trip to Texas to buy cattle, and of the .3a special on a ,45 frame which he carried in his saddle pocket and sohic once shot a ceer with. Spoke of wintering.cattle up near Ridgeway one winter when it was so cold that the cattle's ears and tails froze stiff, and some of tnera bumped their tails and they snapped off like dry dead branches. That Stetson and those highheeled boots were his go-to-town clothes. On the farm he wore an old, broken, sweatstained hat and farmer's shoes like me. Only his gloves were always trie best, the strongest and most supple horsehide. When I was twelve or tnirteen, coming up to puberty, I remember especially one summer branding calves, the Holsteins and Jerseys as well as the red Herefords of our small herd of beef cattle. In the corral Henry and I and Dad took turns roping them, Davy watching from the top of the pole fence, and my first tr.row I |
