Part 4

As the summer of 1922 drew to an end, my father, my brother Charles and myself were staying at the ranch, working crops, tending livestock, and weeding grandfather Hodge's garden. Charles and I stayed with grandfather at his home. He prepared our meals, and we slept on a pallet laid out on the front porch because it was uncomfortably warm inside the house.

The magic of early daybreak created strange shapes and shadows among the trees in the orchard, and my brother and I awoke listening to the rhythmic noise of the windmill turning ever so slowly as a gentle morning wind propelled its blades. In the early half light we talked about what we should do that day, then suddenly remembered it was Charles's birthday. He was turning nine while I was still ten, only one year older than Charles. That would hold true until my own birthday in September when once again I would be two years ahead of him.

Dad was away on an area wide cattle roundup, but we figured he was not too far away for us to ride out and see him. Besides we wanted to learn if he had received news about whether our new baby brother or sister had been born. Mother had been in Lovington for three weeks and we were lonesome for her. Hodge and Juanita were there with her, and we were lonesome for them as well.

Our lonesomeness and it being Charles's birthday made us want to get in touch with Dad, and we decided he would be surprised and happy to see us if we rode out to the Bowen ranch holding corrals and waited there for the herds to arrive that he was helping round up. The men in the Ranger Lake area were taking part in bringing in the scattered herds to be sorted, each head of livestock to its ranch owner, then moved homeward to graze their own pasture lands during the fall and winter, and we wanted to be part of this exciting and important effort.

Whisper quiet we dressed ourselves, ate breakfast, and gathered supplies to take with us. We then went to the corrals where we caught our horses, saddled them, and soon were on our way to the Bowen ranch, before the sun had come up over the distant edge of the world. Seven miles lay between us and the gathering spot. On the way we spooked and ran a small bunch of antelope, then pulled up to watch as they crawled under a barbed wire fence and raced away across the flats.

Prairie dog holes were everywhere. There was always a danger that a horse might step into a hole and break a leg, especially if running hard enough that they could not watch for and avoid the holes. Prairie dogs watched as we passed, dropping off the edge of the mounded earth around the openings of their underground burrows if we made even so much as a slight motion in their direction. Chirping and whistling they barked dog town messages one to another until the danger of our intrusion was past. Always, in prairie dog towns, numerous small owls shared the burrows with the dogs, and it seemed there was never any conflict between them.

An hour later we rode up to the Bowen ranch catch pens. The corrals, pens and windmill were well kept. Remains of an old homestead settlement was still scattered around there, however anything and everything of value had been hauled away for use elsewhere. Inside an old piece of rusty half buried pipe we found a cottontail rabbit that we killed, cleaned and roasted over a small fire for our lunch.

It seemed a long wait before the first sign of the cattle herds finally appeared, trailing clouds of dust and coming our way from a great distance, headed for the pens. When the herds and the men began arriving, hot, sweaty, and covered with dust, everyone was happy to see us. Dad said there was no news yet about the baby. It was not until several days later that we received word from Lovington that we had a new baby sister named Betty Flo, and that she had been born on Charles's birthday.

Before mother arrived home again Charles fell and broke his arm. While father was taking a bath and changing clothes to go to Tatum, we boys decided we would ride one of the calves in the corral. I told Charles he could ride the calf if he really wanted to, and I would hold on to it so it would not buck too much. However the calf proved much stronger than I, and he bucked so hard that Charles fell off, striking his arm against a fence post and breaking both bones cleanly in two. His arm hung down between the wrist and elbow like a broken wing on a bird. He held up that pitiful looking little arm crying "I broke my arm, I broke my arm," over and over again.

By cradling his broken arm with his good arm he was able to walk just fine, so we went quickly to the house for help. Dad and grandfather pulled the splintered bones gently apart and expertly fitted them together again. Grandfather whittled splints from a cedar shingle taken from the edge of the roof. Clean white strips of an old bed sheet served as bindings. Although the doctor in Tatum looked at the arm some time later he found nothing more that needed to be done. The bones had set straight and true and were mending just fine. Mother and our new baby sister Betty Flo, together with Hodge and Juanita, came home a few days later, and once again everything in our world was right.

As happens to many children, faith in people and naive innocence was sorely and shockingly tested when I first began school. Having enjoyed almost no everyday playmates except for my brother Charles, I was much less prepared and more seriously disturbed than a child accustomed to the give and take of preschool play and socializing with others would have been.

An older boy, whom I liked least of all the people in the entire school, abruptly informed me and others that my beloved Daddy was, according to him, not my real father. I soon fought about every boy and some of the girls in school, vehemently defending my conviction that this was nothing more than a mean and hurtful lie. I hit one of my tormentors on the foot with a half brick and was punished by having to stay in from play at recess. My world had been shattered and was suddenly bewildering, filled with conflicting emotions of shame, hate, fear, rage, and a burning desire for revenge on my "enemies," who I imagined to be everyone in school.

I was tortured with this several days until I finally burst out and told my mother of my problem and its cause. She did her best to explain how this was true, that my real father was not my present father, and tried to assure me that this was not a bad thing as my schoolmates had teased me into believing.

Knowing the truth did not make me any happier about going to school. I knew I was going to have to fight even more people who would tease me, and I was afraid of the larger boys that I knew I couldn't whip in a fair fight. I had to conclude for the first time in my life that the judgment of my parents was not always right. They had taught me not to fight, yet I knew I had to fight to maintain any degree of self respect. Secretly I was proud of the sense of self-vindication and self-assurance I experienced whenever I subdued a "enemy."

Soon my tormentors had had enough of me, and for the most part we became friends again. Then I began to wonder about my real father. Where was he? Would I ever see him? What did he look like? Would I like him if I talked to him? Why did he and my mother not stay together? Even though I tried not to deliberately think about it I could not help but be aware of a perceived difference between my position in the family and that of the other children.

I watched my father closely, not knowing particularly why except I hoped he would say something or do something to reassure me of his love. I came to understood that he would not talk with me about this matter, and accepted that as fact. However it is only fair to him to say that he was a very shy man, reserved with people, and not at all good at expressing himself, in particular about family affairs or emotional matters of any kind.

As time went by I came to know these things about him, and began to understand his deep and abiding love for me. I was in fact his oldest son in the truest sense, and he was openly proud as I did well in school, in athletic contests, or in whatever work he assigned me. However my first year in school at Ranger Lake was a challenging and emotional experience, with the weight of perceived problems often so great that I could only rage and hate and fight against what I felt were the vicious and unfair accusations and attitudes that others exhibited towards me.

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