Stormy and Stub
Neva Andrews

One

 

Early June 1937

Josephine Barkley stabbed her pitchfork into the haystack. “Why can’t I drive the colts?”

            “Dad doesn’t want you getting hurt.” Clyde threw another forkful of hay into the horse corral.

            “I could handle them better’n you.” She kicked a rock and glared at her brother. “Just because you’re three years older’n me doesn’t make you a better horseman. I’m almost fifteen, you know!” Jo stuffed her fists into the pockets of her jeans. “You just wait. I’m gonna drive those two colts.”

            Clyde stood his fork in the base of the haystack and headed to the “barn,” which was simply a shed with straw walls. “I’ll push the milk cart out to the road while you feed your calf.”

            Jo hated it when he changed the subject like that. She knew it was no use saying anything. How can you argue with a guy who won’t argue? She bit off a retort and strode to the granary to get a scoop of cracked corn. A black bull calf with a white face stood in his pen, bawling. Jo dumped the grain into his feed bucket, turned on her heel, and stalked back to the granary to put the scoop away.

            The sun peeked over the horizon. Jo’s stomach rumbled, and she could almost smell the pancakes, but she was drawn to the horses as a mule to clover. She glanced toward the house, shrugged, then crawled through the pole fence into the corral. A big-boned mule ambled up to her.

            “Missin’ me, Pete?” She scratched his forehead. “Sun’s up. Think I should go in to breakfast?” Pete waggled his ears and brayed. “I’ll take that for a no. But Mom’ll have a fit when she finds out I’ve been in the corral with Mr. Martin’s black colts. Seems like everything I do worries her. Remember when I was training you? But you came around all right, didn’t you?” Jo slipped her arms around the mule’s neck and laid her face against his rough hair. “No offense, old boy, but Snip’s a whole lot easier to ride.”

            At the mention of her name, a trim, bay, workhorse mare paused in her eating to whinny a greeting. Jo stepped quietly to her side and stroked her neck. “You’re not exactly a riding horse, but you’re sure better than Pete.” Jo tickled the mare’s muzzle, but her eyes were on Stormy and Stub, the team her father was breaking to harness for a neighbor. They stood aloof in the far corner of the corral.

            Jo stood for a long moment, admiring the black colts. They were not big like Clydesdales, but heavier than Snip and Gyp. Each had four white stockings─a perfectly matched team. When she tried to approach Stormy, he snorted and trotted away from her.

            “That’s all right,” she said. “We’ll be friends soon.”

            Jo climbed to the top rail and leaped to the ground. Her anger had cooled, and she knew she owed her brother an apology. She sprinted up the lane, trotted past the outhouse, and bounded up the back steps three at a time. Dad, Mom, and Clyde were already seated at the large oval table in the middle of the kitchen.

            “Those pancakes sure smell good, Mom.” Jo washed her hands at the washstand and threw the water out the back door.

            “You’re late, dear. Have you been in the corral with those horses again?” Mom fidgeted with the gold band on her finger. Jo noticed the worry lines on her forehead.

            “Just had to say hi.” Jo slid into her place at the table and bowed her head while Dad said the blessing. After the amen, Mom started to get up, but Jo put her hand on her mother’s arm. “You eat, Mom. I’ll fry the eggs and tend the rest of the pancakes.”

            She stepped to the cast-iron range and shoved in a couple sticks of wood. Pulling the egg skillet to a warmer spot, she broke in four eggs, then poured more pancake batter onto the griddle. As she finished frying eggs and flipping flapjacks, she thought how good it was to have their own place. It wasn’t fancy like her friend Kate’s house, but two rooms with a full basement seemed roomy. With Mom and Dad’s bed in the front room, she and Clyde each had a room downstairs. Jo remembered how proud she’d felt to nail up some of the lath for the plaster walls and help shingle the roof. They even had electric lights. Sure beat that coal oil lamp she used to read by─

            “Those eggs about ready?” Dad’s voice broke in upon her thoughts.

            “Coming up.” She flipped the eggs and slid them onto a plate.

            When Dad finished eating, he put a toothpick in his mouth and picked up the Rockville Times. “They’re having a draft-horse pull at the fair this year. Wonder how Stormy and Stub would do.”

            Jo almost dropped her fork. The fair! She had been to the fair so many times, she could see it now─families feeding and watering their animals, some catching a few winks in a pile of hay. She felt the dust in the air and heard the carnival noise in the background as she walked down the aisles of the barns─how the smells changed from the pig barn to the chicken barn to the cattle barn. Then she was in the horse barn, brushing Stormy and Stub, admiring their glossy, black coats, polishing their hooves─she thrilled to the feel of that powerful team under her control as she gave them confidence with her firm grip on the lines and her words of encouragement─

            “Jo, I want you to start getting the pasture west of the house ready for the water.” Dad’s voice jolted her from her reverie. “Use the mules.”

            “Why the mules?”

            “Clyde has to take Snip and Gyp and go help Mr. Martin.”

            She always got those stupid mules. Why couldn’t she use Stormy and Stub? Jo picked up her plate and left it on the kitchen counter. She mentally slammed the door on her way out.

            At the corral, Jo stopped to talk to Stormy and Stub. Strange how a little time with the horses always calmed her spirit.

            She caught Pete and Molly and led them out. She curried and harnessed them, then hitched them to the corrugator and drove to the pasture. She lined up the machine so the corrugator shovels would clean out the little ditches that carried the irrigation water through the pasture. Then she released the lever and lowered the shovels into the corrugations.

            “Gee up, Pete.” She slapped the mule with the line and let her body relax to absorb the shock when the shovels hit a rock. As they made the turn at the end of the field, Molly got her feet tangled up.

            “Whoa.” Jo stopped the mules and tied the lines to the lever. “Molly, if you’d keep your leg inside that tug, we’d get through in half the time.” She patted the jenny on the rump and slid her hand down the mule’s hind leg. “Now lift up your foot and get it back in there.” Jo pushed the tug down with her foot, and Molly stepped back in. Jo sighed. How many times would she have to do this throughout the day?

            That evening after supper, Jo measured grain into the six feed boxes for the cows while Clyde pitched hay into their manger. She tried to think how to apologize to him, but the words wouldn’t come. She ran her fingers through her tangle of red curls and picked up a one-legged stool and a bucket. Making her way behind the other cows, she sidled in beside her own Holstein and balanced on the stool. She set the bucket out of the way while she brushed the loose dirt from Bonnie’s bag. Clyde sat down beside another cow and soon the strident sound of streams of milk hitting empty buckets filled the barn. As the milk rose, the swish-swish became a soothing rhythm. She decided it was time.

            “Sorry I blew my stack at you this morning.”

            Swish-swish. Swish-swish.

            “That’s okay. I know how frustrated you are.”

            Swish-swish.

            How she needed her brother’s calming influence! A comfortable silence settled between them.

            After a bit, Clyde asked, “How’d you get along with the mules on the corrugator today?”

“All right, I guess. Got the job a little more than half done.” Jo squirted a stream of milk to the waiting cat. “Molly pulled her usual trick.”

            “Getting her foot outside the tug?” Clyde chuckled.

            “Yeah, but I got it back in. Didn’t even have to unhitch the tug.”

            “You get along with those mules better than I do.”

            “Thanks. Wish Dad thought I could get along with Stormy and Stub.”

            Jo listened to the swish of the milk in the buckets and the rasp of rough tongues swiping the last bit of grain from feed boxes. Outside, sparrows quarreled over nesting places in the straw walls of the barn. A dog’s bark floated on the evening air from a neighbor’s place half a mile away. She heard the horses milling around out in the corral. Milking time─a time to remember and to dream.

            She leaned her head into Bonnie’s flank and felt her creature warmth─her own cow, bought with the money Grandma sent from the sale of her pony. Bred to a Hereford bull, Bonnie had given her two calves. Blacky, a heifer, would be the first of her herd of black whiteface cattle. Jo would prefer purebred Herefords, but a Hereford-Holstein cross wasn’t bad. This spring it had been a bull calf. She would sell him when the price was right.

            Jo got up to empty her bucket into the strainer in the milk can. “When we get through with the chores, I think I’ll ride over to Brauns’.”

            “You sweet on Alvin? I thought he was sweet on Kate.”

            “He is, but can you see Kate helping him rope a steer?” Jo laughed and cuddled up to the next big Holstein. “He’s teaching me to rope so we can do team roping in a rodeo.”

            “You two going to enter the rodeo in Brushdel on the Fourth?” Clyde emptied his bucket and sat down to another cow.

            “Maybe the one in Springvale on the twenty-fourth of July.”

            “What will you get into next?”

            “Next?” Jo gave a few strong pulls on the cow’s teats and watched the foam rise in the bucket. “Next I’m going to drive Stormy and Stub in the draft-horse pull at the county fair.”

            “Wow, Sis, you dream big.”

            When chores were done, Jo caught Snip. She had just finished saddling, when Kate rode in on her black American Saddle Bred Beaufort. Jo couldn’t get over what a striking figure her friend made with her glistening, black hair, smooth, cream-colored skin, and high cheek bones. No wonder Alvin was sweet on her. Jo was kind of glad for her unruly red hair and freckles. Alvin accepted her as a friend without the complications of a boyfriend relationship.

            “What’s up?” Jo said.

            “I’m on my way home from Alvin’s. He told me to stop in and tell you to get over there for a roping lesson.”

            Jo grinned. “I’m on my way.”

            “Have you met that new kid over at Taylors’?”

            “What new kid?”

            “He claims he grew up on a ranch in Montana. He’s really a jerk.”

            “Yeah?”

            “I was riding along minding my own business when he came charging up behind me. He yanked his Quarter Horse to a stop. Then he had the nerve to start telling me what’s wrong with American Saddle Breds. Can you imagine that?”

            “What a hood.”

            “Besides that, he chews tobacco.” Kate made a face. “He’s going to be trouble, Jo. Mark my words.”

            Jo shrugged and swung into the saddle. As they rode up to the house, Jo’s mother came from the chicken yard with a basket of eggs.

            “I’m going over to Alvin’s for a roping lesson, Mom.”

“Don’t be late.” Mom brushed a lock of hair from her face.

“I’ll be back before dark.”

            At the road, Kate said, “See you later. I’ve got to get on home.”

            Jo and Snip headed east at a lope. A couple of dogs greeted Jo as she rode into the Brauns’ yard. She spoke to them and their barking turned to tail-wagging. Jo drank in the perfume of roses by the front door of the two-story house. Beyond the house, flowers bloomed among the vegetables in the garden. Chickens clucked and scratched in a fenced area by the hen house. Jo gazed at the barn and thought of the straw shed at home. Someday they’d have a barn like that, with stalls for horses and even a tack room.

            Alvin waited with a sawhorse in one hand and a coiled rope in the other. He was nearly as tall as Clyde, and heavier. He had been the first to accept her when she came to Rock School last fall.

            “Tie your old work plug to the hitch rail.” He grinned up at her with a twinkle in his dark blue eyes.

            Jo stuck her tongue out at him. “Snip’s not a bad riding horse. She did all right in the neighborhood races until Dad put a stop to it. Says I can’t race her in the evenings and expect her to work in harness all day.”

            “Well, she’s a step up from that mule you used to ride.” Alvin set the sawhorse down.

Jo dismounted and tied her horse. “What are we workin’ on tonight?”

            “The heel trap. This is the one you’ve got to get down pat. When the steer crosses the starting line, I come up on his left. You come up easy on his right and haze him toward me. When I get a rope on his horns, you swing your horse to the left and lay a loop under the steer to trap his hind legs.”

            “How come you brought out a sawhorse?”

“We’ll let it be the critter for now.” He shook out a loop. “We’ve practiced the flat overhead swing enough for now. Remember, that’s the one we use to make a head catch from behind the steer. This throw we’ll learn tonight is a little different.” He swung the rope forward and up over his head, bringing it down so that the loop curled in front of the sawhorse’s hind legs.

            “Now you try.” He handed her the rope.

            Her first throw hit the ground before it reached the sawhorse.

            “Imagine you’re pitching a baseball with the side-arm throw. Keep your eye on the spot where you want the loop to land.”

            By the time Jo got the loop landing where it was supposed to, the sun had set. She rubbed her right shoulder. “My arm’s about to fall off.”

            “Okay. We’ll call it quits for tonight. Next time we’ll practice from horseback.”

            They sat beside the barn while evening settled over the farm. Jo watched nighthawks swoop and dart and listened to the crunch-crunch of horses eating hay. An occasional whiffle floated up from the corral as a horse cleared dust from his nose. She could have sat there the rest of the evening soaking in the sounds and smells of the farm settling for the night. Alvin broke the silence.

            “Dad was impressed with the way you trained that Pete mule. He’d like you to start one of our colts this summer.”

            “Really?”

            “The colt’s a two-year-old. Halter broke, but that’s all we’ve done with him. Think you’d be interested?”

            “Boy, would I!” She sprang to her feet. It would be almost like having her own horse again.

            “You could keep him at your place for the summer and ride him as soon as he’s ready. Wanna see him?”

            “Sure.”

            Alvin put the sawhorse and rope back in the tack room and brought out a halter. As soon as they opened the corral gate, a perky buckskin trotted over.

            “He’s a friendly little guy.” Jo stroked the black mane and dark tan shoulder.

            “He’ll eat the shirt off your back if you don’t watch him.” Alvin chuckled. “We call him Scamp.”

            The colt nipped at Jo’s sleeve. “Oh no, you don’t.” She scowled and gave him a light tap on his nose. He shook his head and trotted away.

            When he came back, Alvin slipped the halter on him and handed the lead rope to Jo. “Lead him around a little and see how he handles.”

            She led Scamp around the corral. He followed willingly and didn’t try to run over her. She took him through a few figure eights and back to Alvin.

            “I’d say someone did a good job of halter training him. Shouldn’t be long before I can climb aboard.” A million grasshoppers played leapfrog in her stomach, but all she said was, “I’ll talk to Dad and let you know.”

            Out on the road, Jo put her horse on a slow lope. “What do you think, Snip? Will Dad let me start a colt?” The mare tossed her head and pulled at the bit. “I’ll take that for a yes.”

Jo shouted, “Yippee!” and let Snip out for a little run before settling her into a slow lope the rest of the way home.