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Show =?y and shade trees and a private orchard. We had cellars, granaries, corn cribs, a horse barn, and a cow barn. We did well enough, and that was the Depression, to buy a ton truck and a new Chevy sedan, and even to paint the house. There was another house on the place too where a hired man and his family lived, a bigger and better house than the Sanders'. Not that we paid much attention to them. But then my youngest sister didn't fasten a gate right, that night our two riding horses got out, and the next morning we had to throw saddles on the back of the truck and go after them, tracking them out the lane to the road over to the highway and then toward town. At Sanders' place we saw Buck cultivating com near the highway, so my father stopped and we got out and walked down across the barrow pit to the fence. "Hello there, Buck. Ain't seen two horses come by here, have you?" Buck pushed his hat back and gave us that impudent grin, full-toothed then and good ones. "Ridin' horses?" "Yep. Buckskin mare and a bay gelding." "Yeah, I seen 'em. Earlier they was feedin' right up there." He pointed up the highway to a patch of grass beneath three big cottonwoods, a place where drifting Okies often camped. "I thought I'd catch me that bay and have a little ride before breakfast. He wasn't havin' nothin' doin' though." He smiled. "Pretty fat horses," he said with lazy insolence, a tone I'd never before heard anyone use with my father. "Too fat," my father said shortly. "You see which way they went?" "On up toward town. They prob'ly been hit by two, three cars by this time." My father gave him a sharp glance, then turned toward the field. "Looks like your corn'll make." "It or the weeds, one a the two." "That team of yours could use some oats, Buck." "Nope. What I need's a new team." "You feed that team oats you'd get enough more work out of 'em you'd be ahead in the long run." "Nope. These plugs don't know what oats is. I go and give 'em oats, they'd keel over and die from the surprise." My father grinned back at him then. "Yeah, Well, guess we better find them horses. Come on, boys." We got back in the truck and drove on toward town. We had three heavy young teams and a John Deere tractor to boot. I saw the horses. I was watching the CCC camp as we drove past it and remembering what my uncle had said, that if there was a war the CCC boys would lay down their shovels and pick up guns, and just past the camp was a sideroad and down it were the horses. We saddled up and my younger brother and I rode them back, he on Babe and me on Billy, the bay gelding. Alongside the highway we let them out, then pulled in to an easy gallop, then down to a trot. They really were too fafcj 212 |
