CCORDING to his father, Jimmy Tate was locoed (i.e. crazy). Even his mother admitted "there was no understanding the boy." So you may imagine his home life on a small ranch in the Cypress Hills.
"'Tisn't that he ain't willing," Mr. Tate informed me during our evening session of stick-whittling and small-talk on the top rail of the horse corral. "The kid tries all right, and he's got sand, but it just don't seem to be in him, that's all."
"What?" I asked.
"Everything," said Mr. Tate, with a gesture embracing the narrow yet spacious limits of life at High Butte. "He, can't ride, and never will, I reckon. Not built for it. Just a natural born sack of oats in the saddle. His young brother does most of the punchin', and his sister brings in the horses. As for chores—well, he does 'em, but you can see his heart's not in the job."
"P'r'aps it's in something else," I suggested.
"Then I'd like to know what," declared Mr. Tate. "My father and his father before him ran stock on this range, and it's the same on the missus's side. If it's been good enough for us all these years"
"How about your great-grandfather?" I interrupted.
"How about Adam and Eve?" growled Mr. Tate.
"Heredity's a funny thing," I mused.
"Sounds like it," said Mr. Tate. "Maybe that's what's wrong with Jim. Is it hard to cure?"
"Very," said I.
A stick- whittling silence fell between us, and I was aware that, with the peculiar delicacy of dwellers in the wild, Mr. Tate was refraining from further inquiry because he knew there was something radically wrong with myself. As a matter of fact, I had come to High Butte to die, and High Butte didn't let me. But that's neither here nor there.
"Hi!" bellowed Mr. Tate, with an unexpectedness that nearly toppled me from the rail. "Shut that gate before you get up to any monkey tricks."
He was addressing Meg and Clem Tate, thirteen and fourteen respectively, who had driven into the corral a pretty little buckskin cayuse. Clem, inordinately freckled and wiry, was arrayed in full regalia of chaparejos and spurs. Meg looked uncommonly business-like in a short dun-coloured skirt and wide sombrero.
I was speculating on the reason for these unusual happenings, when my glance encountered it in the form of a diminutive but elaborate little person of about thirteen, whom everyone seemed to go to the trouble of addressing as "Millicent." Like myself, she was a visitor to High Butte from "down East," and already the keen, dry air of the prairie had whipped wonders of delicate colouring into the child's cheeks. She stood outside the corral, her small snub nose—no doubt in later years to be termed retroussé—pressed close to the rails, her china-blue eyes wide with excitement. Beside her, and evidently the adoring swain, though at some pains to hide the fact, lounged Jimmy Tate. It was plain that the boy suffered torments of jealousy over the accomplishments being displayed by his more gifted brother and sister inside the corral.
Mr. Tate favoured me with a wink that could almost be heard. "Showing off in front of Millicent," he told me in an aside. "That's what they're doing."
They were, and making a considerable impression by the look of things.
"Oo!" gurgled the small but enthusiastic audience, as Clem swung the lariat in a wide circle above his head. And "Oo!" she cried, hopping ecstatically on either leg as the noose fell cleanly over the head of the loping cayuse, and Clem took a turn on the snubbing-post.
"You're taking a mighty long time over that bridle," boomed Mr. Tate. "What d'you think you've got there—a man-killer?"
How any father can sit on a fence and hurl scathing comment at his offspring while they risk life and limb, it is beyond me to imagine. But he can—and does—out West. Probably if Mr. Tate had been forced to watch Meg and Clem crossing the road of any modern metropolis, he would have been a-dither with anxiety.
The cayuse stood suspiciously still when the saddle was placed on his back and cinched home. He did little even when Clem mounted and contrived to walk him round the corral—a few crow-hops, some dainty side-stepping, and that was all. It looked as if the performance were over, and I said so.
"Don't you be too sure," warned Mr. Tate. "Those quiet ones are always the worst—like the women."
"And is he a real live bronco?" demanded Millicent, when Clem had slithered to earth by way of the pony's tail, and Meg had taken his place in the saddle.
"Bronc nothing," drawled Clem, with a deprecating grin.
"But he bucked, didn't he?"
"Not so that you'd notice it," he assured her. "You're out of luck."