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Show Page 12 The OGDEN VALLEY NEWS Volume II, Issue III December 1999 A Christmas Story: Champion Stock By Bud Murphy I guess being raised on a ranch a fellow comes by his love for horses naturally. That, and having a Pa like mine who used to be one of the top bronc busters in the country. He was a champion, all right, and he used to tell me stories about rough horses he had ridden from Canada to Mexico, and how he won that pair of solid gold spurs at the Cheyenne Rodeo before I was born. That was the story I always liked best, about the gold spurs, I mean, because after the story he would always pull his big watch out and show me the spurs fastened on the chain. They were big as gold nuggets, caught together by a little gold chain between rowels. Of course, there was a trick to his pulling out his watch at the end of the story, because he’d always remind me the watch showed it was my bedtime. As long as I can remember I have wanted to be a top rider like my Pa. But in my seventeen years on the ranch I had never had a horse of my own. About all the riding I got to do was on the old sorrel mare Pa and I took turns riding when we had work to do up in the hills above the ranch cup, and on Saturdays when I worked over at the Kingman place. “Some day,” Pa always said, “you’ll have a horse, Billy boy. When we kind of git caught up on things an’ I c’n afford it.” But there never did seem to be money for me to have a horse like other kids who lived on ranches in that part of southern Arizona. Ours was a small ranch, as ranches go, just a few miles out of Patagonia, the nearest town, and until I got big enough to help him, Pa did the working of it himself, Ma ran a few chickens along with her housework and we always managed to have enough food though our clothes were nothing to brag about. And the one pair of boots I owned had to do me for school, church, and chores. They were so thin I finally got a new pair last Christmas. I remember it was Christmas because every year Pa had been promising me a horse for Christmas and every year there would be something else, just like last year it was boots. I really never did figure to have a horse of my own till I could earn enough money somehow to buy one. That was why I had been spending a lot of time working Saturdays over at the Kingman ranch which adjoined ours on the east. Old man Kingman had been a good friend of my Pa’s for a long time and it was really Pa who got me the job. “Course he ain’t got no more sense’n a mule,” Pa told Mr. Kingman. “But he’s strong an’ he’ll do what you tell him.” Mr. Kingman was a big bull of a man with a forehead like a barn door and a slow grin that made folks like him right off when they met him. He had done well, too, from the way Pa talked. “Trouble is, I should’a’done like him,” Pa used to say. “He settled down an’got started early raisin’ beef an’buyin’ up land fast as he c’d afford it. Me, I spent too much dad-blamed time chasin’ rodeos, driftin’ from one ranch t’another. Always workin’ fer somebody else an’ never savin’ a dime.” Mr. Kingman ran upwards of a thousand head on his place with four cowboys and me to do the work. Not that I could do much, just working Saturdays, but he paid me two dollars every week for my trouble and I saved all of it. I figured if it took a couple of years or more, I would be willing to work it out in order to buy a colt he had that was just about the prettiest little foal I ever did see. “He’s a Morgan,” I told Ma, that first day I had seen the colt over at the Kingman place. “Thoroughbred, I b’lieve, except he’s pretty big-boned for a thoroughbred.” Ma had looked at me in that sad way of hers, when the family needed things we couldn’t afford. “I know Billy,” she said, “but we could never buy one of Mr. Kingman’s horses. He raises ‘em for a hobby an’ they’re all expensive.” “Doesn’t matter,” I told her, “I’m going to buy him with my own money. I’ve been saving right along and I’ve got sixteen dollars already.” She just shook her head and said sixteen dollars was probably a long ways from what that foal would cost. So I took it up with Pa that evening. “Y’mean that little black he’s got over there?” Pa asked. I nodded. “May’s well ferget about buyin’ that hoss,” he advised. “y’got a good eye fer hosses, though, I will say that. Trouble is, y’set yer stakes too high.” “I don’t care what he costs,” I declared recklessly, “I’ll keep savin’ till I can buy him. Maybe somehow I can make some money next summer, too.” Pa’s leathery old face clouded with worry. “Trouble is, I need y’ here durin’ the summer, boy. ‘Bout all I c’n do t’spare y’ on Sat’rd’ys.” I knew that was true and it was not any fault of his, so I said no more about the colt. Pa said no more either, except that he knew the way I felt, that I wanted a horse in the worst way and he would still try to get one for me come Christmas. For the next few weeks I felt pretty glum until I gradually got over the notion of buying the Kingman Horse. I reckoned I would keep on saving my money and maybe sometime I would find a colt like him that I could afford to buy. However, it did not keep me from hanging around the corral when I would finish my work at Kingman’s, just watching the little rascal grow up. When I would come in from hauling fence or doctoring calves I would pick up a handful of oats and perch on the top rail of the corral, then coax at him. He was the worst one to get spooked by anything in the corral, and how he would jump when he was startled. Sometimes the wind would whisk a tumbleweed at him and he would light out like dust devil on the rampage, kicking and snorting. He didn’t have a name yet, so I started calling him Sox. That was because his ankles were white. Sometimes when I was trying to make friends with the little horse, Mr. Kingman would stop around at the corral and I guess he noticed I was plenty interested in that foal. “Sure a mighty fine horse,” I told him. “He ought to be,” Mr. Kingman said. “Champion quarter-horse stock, you know.” Mr. Kingman was proud of his “Thought I’d find somethin’ for horses, just as he was proud of Ma in here,” I told him, and pointed at everything else he had, not that he was the window full of gadgets. the kind to brag about things, but it showed in the way he talked about his He fell in step with me, directing house, his car, and his stock. me away from the jewelry store and up the street toward a dress shop. “Ma “What’re you goin’ to do with wants a new dress awful bad,” he said. him?” I asked. “Sell him?” “But they’re a lot o’money. Want t’go “Probably, one of these days.” in with me an’ get her one?” I swallowed, wondering when that It sounded like a good idea until we would be. I hoped it would not be for got to looking at the dresses. The only a couple of years, because perhaps by one that would fit Ma that looked like then I could have enough to buy him. anything was over twenty dollars. Pa “Like to get your dad to break him was about to settle on another one that for me,” Mr. Kingman observed, was cheaper when I offered to pay half looking over the little horse again. on the one we wanted if he would buy it. We did that and I just shut my eyes, “Pa’s getting pretty old for that any trying to forget about saving for a more,” I reminded him. Pa was in his horse. Somehow, after we left the sixties and just about every bone in his dress shop, though, I felt awfully good body had been broken at one time or inside. another. He was not in any shape to ride out a rough horse anymore in the We were sitting around the way he used to. “Maybe I could break Christmas tree that night when Ma him for you.” opened the big box and took out the dress. All she did was make a little Mr. Kingman looked at me a way gasping sound and her eyes filled up that was not encouraging. “ I don’t as though she was going to break right know. We’ll have to see. There just out crying. isn’t anybody, anymore, can ride the kinks out a bronc like your Dad used “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Oh, to.” isn’t it beautiful?” And she held it up in front of her while she looked in the Right then I remembered a few of mirror. the stories Pa had told me about his younger days. “Did you know about Pa unwrapped his bedroom the time he won the gold spurs?” I slippers and put them on as though he asked. was going to wear them for the rest of his life. “Know about it?” Mr. Kingman laughed. “I was there, waiting for my “Fine fit,” he said. “They’re just turn to ride. Your Dad drew a big, dandy.” Then he took them off and ornery buckskin horse and I told him pulled his boots back on. he was crazier’n a loco longhorn to get “Your present’s over there on the in the chute, let alone ride him. I never tree, Billy,” said Ma. did see such a horse. Must have The two of them waited while I weighed thirteen hundred pounds.” hunted through the tree for a white “That’s what Pa says, “ I agreed. package so little I could hold it in one “Thirteen hundred!” hand. It didn’t weigh an ounce. I “He darn near killed your Dad,” opened it and inside was a piece of Mr. Kingman said softly. paper tied to the end of a string. “But Pa stayed on for the full ten “Follow the string.” It said. seconds, raked him and whipped him I followed the string, which led out and gave him a whale of a ride!” the back door, across the yard and into “I’ll say he did. And he wouldn’t the feed barn. Ma and Pa were have been hurt either, if that cinch walking behind me, all of us bundled hadn’t let go. That horse just swelled up in jackets because the frost had up and snapped it.” already settled and the night was cold. When I opened the door of the feed It had been a bad accident from barn, Pa held up the lantern, and I what Ma told me. Pa had been in the stood there trying to believe what I hospital at Cheyenne for weeks saw. In the manger, up to his hocks in afterward and his back never did quite straw, was the little black colt, looking get healed up. Ma used to tell me that at me just the way he had so many part of the story when I would talk times over in Kingman’s corral. about breaking horses. “Is he mine?” I blubbered. Along about Christmas time school let out for two weeks vacation Pa nodded and I hugged him and and I got a full-time job on the mail Ma together, wondering how they truck, helping to deliver packages out ever got enough money to buy him. of Patagonia. I did not work for Then somewhere far off, the church Kingman during that time at all and I bells were ringing midnight and Pa missed seeing the little black colt. But took out his watch to check the time. I figured I could add to my savings “Merry Christmas,” he said. Ma considerably by working through the said “Merry Christmas” too, but I holidays and still have enough money could not say anything. I was looking to buy some kind of present for Ma at Pa’s watch. And the solid gold and Pa. spurs were gone. When I got my check, the day before Christmas, it was for nineteen dollars and seventytwo cents. That evening we all went to Tucson to do our Christmas shopping. I got Pa Now accepting new clients some soft brown bedroom 15 years experience slippers for two dollars and Valley References available. almost ran into him at a little jewelry store where I was Construction, Residential, Commercial headed, looking for something to buy Ma. “Where you goin’?” Pa asked, startled. Valley Cleaning Service Call 745-1238 |