Western Short Story : Coming of Age

I was sixteen years of age that summer, thin but wiry from growing up tough on 1400 acres of cow-calf operation populated most heavily by sagebrush, rusty bobwire, and diamondback rattlesnakes. It had gotten plumb intense between me and the old man at times, too. He didn't much cotton to me chasing them Harris sisters from over the other side of Flat Butte, mostly due to his own personal interest in Mary Harris, the eldest of the three.

Cuttin' into his territory, apparently, despite my interest being in Serena, the middle girl, and the youngest being too young to court for a few years yet.

But neither of us spoke of it around Ma, for obvious reasons, and we knew how to do a solid day's work together. It was a sunshiny spring day. Most of the calves had been born, and we were vaccinating the cows before kicking them out to summer pasture. We didn't rope the critters, mostly because neither one of us could catch a cold with a rope.

Instead, he'd built himself a chute connected to a narrow corral out back of the barn. A cow could be cut from the herd in the big corral, then pushed on through to a one-cow-width chute. It was a tricky thing from the bovine's viewpoint. She'd be moving right along, focused on that opening at the far end which looked like her way to freedom. She'd stick her head between them two four-by-four timbers, I'd yank on the rope that run up through a couple of pulleys, the four-byes would clamp snug on either side of her neck, hinged blocks would drop in place up top, and she'd be pinned till we let her loose.

It was always me on the rope, always had been since I was somewhere around nine or ten. You gotta stand perfectly still so as not to spook the animal until it's time to pull, and timing is everything. I was good at it, mebbe the best in the family--most certainly I believed that to be a fact--and nobody ever challenged my right to man that post.

Once the cow was caught, I'd drop the rope, move a step to my right, and lift out one of the stanchion pipes that gave the old man access to the piece of hide he needed to puncture with that vaccination needle.

We could process a cow a minute, mebbe a bit more than that iffen we had a third hand pushing fresh cows to us as fast as we could sting 'em...except when something went wrong. Like that day, when I missed my neck-trap pull on that rope for the first time in years.

Pa's hired hand, Daniel, had been back there all morning, pushing cow after cow into the chute so that we had a steady rhythm going. But all of a sudden he was having trouble. The remaining critters had figgered out something bad was happening down that narrow passage, and they was ducking back on him something fierce. The chute was empty, and he didn't look no closer to getting the next cow to come through, so the old man went back there to give 'im a hand.

With two of 'em at it, it didn't take long. Here come a big old mixed-breed bossie, I set myself and--I'll never know, really, but my attention must of slipped. She got one front leg out through there, along with her head, before I yanked on that rope.

Now I had a full sized cow hung up, wanting to go forward, me hanging onto the pull rope with my right hand and yelling at her, slapping her in the face with my hat, trying to get her to back up. You could say she had my full attention at this point, and you'd be right.

The man what sired me could have a bit of a short fuse, and it turned out I'd done lit it by messing up that neck-catch. Next thing I heard was him coming up behind me, chewing me out for being a bonehead, trying to tell me my business as if I didn't know already. I never even slowed what I was doing, never turned around, just snarled,

"If you don't like it, do it yerself!"

Whereupon he kicked me right in the butt. Pa stood five-six without his boots, two-fifteen last time he was weighed. Mebbe forty pounds of that was gut, but he had some power in them legs. That kick lifted me clean off the ground, swear it felt like a good two feet. When I landed, I'd plumb forgot about cows and had spun around in a crouch, so low to the ground I could've taken a constitutional iffen I'd dropped my pants. My fists was cocked, and thinking back on it, my eyes most likely had that deadness in 'em I seen in my old man when he was ready to kill.

"YOU SONOFABITCH!!" I yelled, and yep, I meant ever' bit of it.

Of course, to him, that was the worst cuss word in the English language, 'cause I'd jist said his sainted mother was a she-dog. To that man, and I guess many of his generation, there weren't no deadlier insult anywhere.

The fight was on.

Such as it was. I was already some taller than him but only weighed one-thirty at most that summer, and he'd been around the Horn when it come to fisticuffs. I'm thinking I might've blacked out for a few seconds, 'cause the next thing I remember is being faced up against the stanchion pipes on the chute with him pounding my shoulders from behind. Even in the middle of that, it was obvious he was picking his spots and pulling his punches, not beating his only son in the head or kidneys or any of that.

But still.

With my wits back about me, I managed to slip sideways, git back in that deep fighting crouch that weren't like none I'd ever seen before but which somehow felt right. Not that I ever had a real chance against him. Hell, I never even come close to landing a punch! But I did throw one or two, and I most surely wasn't in any mood fer giving up and wimping out.

Then all of a sudden he backed up a step or two, looked down at me--yeah, I was crouched that low, in between lauching them futile counterattacks--and growled,

"Straighten up!"

That was when I realized I had both an oppertunity and a problem. Iffen I straightened up too dang quick-like, I'd come off looking like a chicken-sh*t yellowbelly coward...but take too long, and he was likely to kill me dead. I had no illusions I could beat him, you know, but neither was I about to waste all the hard work I'd jist done.

"Straighten up!" He demanded again, and I begin to think it was time to start moving vertical afore he felt I'd pushed him too far. But I drug it out, my mind was working crystal clear again, and I could see where to walk that razor's edge clear as day.

"Straighten up, now!" It took him that third time, and then it was over, sort of.

Right after that, he run out of vaccine and had to stop work for a while until he could ride up over Cricket Hill to Doc Harper's place to fetch more. I never thought about it then, but he didn't run out of vaccine at all; he run out on me so he could cool off a bit. I say so because he never run short of what he needed to do a job; he was a better planner than that.

While he was gone, Daniel and I had a chance to shoot the breeze a bit. Danny got along good with both of us, being some older'n me and some younger'n Pa, and we could talk.

"Damn, C.C.," he told me as soon as the old man was out of earshot, "I was jist about to put down ten bucks on you!" He grinned when he said it, and then we both laughed. But I had to ask him,

"C.C.? Crazy Cowboy?" I had to ask. I mean, our family name is Craddock, but my first name is Lemuel, not Christopher or anything like that.

"Nah," he shook his head, "Crouching Craddock. I never seen a fighting stance like that in my life. Looked like you was half coiled rattlesnake and half cougar. Tell you something, kid," he added seriously, "You work on that. You're coming of age, and this ain't gonna be the last time you'll have to face a dangerous man. When you launch out of that crouch, you can git to be plumb dangerous yerself. Work on it."

I stared at him. "Daniel, I never come close to landing a punch. What the Hell are you talking about?"

He looked me in the eye. "Lemuel, I've seen me some fights; I know what I'm saying. Your Pa is one of the toughest men in the county--maybe the toughest. He's seen some hard times and hard places; you can't expect to go up against that at sixteen and win. But I'm telling you, work on it. I know what I seen."

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"Dang it, Doc, go easy with that sacking needle, would you? That ain't no burlap up there, you know!"

"Sorry, Sheriff," the sawbones replied, not sounding the least bit sincere. "You go getting a bullet crease that takes out a line all along your scalp, you've got to expect sewing it up is going to sting a little."

"I guess," I muttered.

"So, you're saying that it was your father pounding on you when you were sixteen that saved your life all these years later?"

"Exactly, Doc. I took Daniel's words to heart. Even now, even when it comes to a shootout, I turn into Crouching Craddock every time. That shootist had seventeen notches on his pistol when he come up against me, most of 'em heart shots from what I hear."

"But he didn't know about me. Never heard of me, jist a small town lawdog of no repute. Habit got him killed; he couldn't adjust his aim fast enough to shoot low enough when I dropped into that crouch, and as you know he didn't git no chance to try again. Creased my scalp, but got permanently flattened fer his effort."

"Well, Lemuel," the doctor opined, tying off the catgut and placing the needle on the counter to be cleaned later, "You've come of age, sure enough." Then he chuckled.

"What's so dang funny?"

"Oh, nothing," he snorted twice, got control of himself, then added, "It's just that we hear about a man here and there who's ducked a bullet, so to speak."

"You're just the first patient I've had who's done that in the literal sense."