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Show <23Z couldn't pet him enough -- or say enough nasty things to me. Whooee, she did have a tongue on her." Henry laughed. "So you didn't do too well?" "Well now, she wasn't the only girl at the dance." Even stronger than my father's words I remember my emotion at hearing that story, and of the vision I r.ad of my father as a bold young cowboy riding over the green mountain meadows where grazed the red Herefords with their snow-white faces, rode the meadows and the hills, around the pines and through the white-boled aspen quaking in the breeze, tne horse good and his neck hot and sleek under the noon day sun. From where I squatted in the dust I could raise my eyes and see the San Juans, Mt. Sneffles thirty-five miles away in the clear air, those scopes where my father and my grandfather had ridden. Though the world had changed with fences and depressions I was sure that if circumstances had caused us to fall, I could sieze them and pull us back up, with the nucleus of a new beef herd we had now I could win it all back, and more, the Brocken cattle empire. Dad had been keeping his eye on the testicles and now with a stick rolled them out of the coals, offering one to Henry and one to me, showing us how to break off the black charred crust to expose the steaming meat. We handled them with gloves, keeping a bit of crust on one end to hold on to, and when they had cooled a bit Dad bit into one, said it was good all right, brought back old memories. Then we tried it. I found the meat tender and sweet, with an unfamiliar consistency, more springy thain a roast. Davy only tasted it, too young to appreciate it, but the rest of us ate, squatting there together around the fire, a man and his sons. Then Dad stood, stretching out the kinks. "Reckon we'd better finish up here." Nothing had been said about taking equal turns with the roping but I assumed it, and as the afternoon ran out down to chore time I was considerably behind Henry and Dad, not being as good, and so when it came to the last one, I wanted |