Little Britches Read Online Free

clatter at the back of the house. Something had knocked the pile of firewood over. Grace shrieked, "The mountain lion!" and all the younger children yelled as though the lion had them by the ears.
    Father leaped out of bed and ran to the kitchen for the lantern. I guess he thought Grace had really seen a lion. Mother rushed from one window to the other, slamming them down tight and crying, "Don't go out, Charlie! Don't go out! He'll kill you the way he did the man at Moffat."
    Father didn't go out. He sat on the edge of the girls' bed, with Muriel on his knee and one arm around Mother, while he told us there wasn't a bit of danger. Everybody stopped crying pretty soon, but they were all holding their breath as I was. It was so still it almost hurt. But only for a few minutes. Then the most terrible noise I had ever heard came from right outside our window. We were all too scared to make a sound, till I heard Mother whisper, "Oh, God," and knew she was praying. A few minutes later there was an awful racket at the barn. We heard one of the horses squeal, and the sound of heels thudding against boards. Mother had to read to us a long time before we went back to sleep.
    At daylight Father went to the barn to see if we had any horses left. In a couple of minutes he was back at the kitchen door, laughing and calling us all to come out to the barn. Cold as it was, Mother let us go without caps or coats. Standing between the two big horses was a Rocky Mountain canary—a little donkey, not much taller than I. He had been our mountain lion of the night, and had squeezed into the barn past the tail gate of the wagon.
    That Sunday afternoon our new neighbors came to call. None of them came into the house, but they sat in their buggies and talked a little while. First were the Corcorans. They lived on the same road we did, up west of Fred Aultland's place. Mrs. Corcoran was a little bit of a woman, and did most of the talking—she had a high, sharp voice. Mr. Corcoran was a kind of round-shouldered man with a beard. She didn't let him talk very much. She started asking all kinds of questions about where we came from, and whether we'd bought the ranch, and was Father a lunger, and did we want to buy a cow.
    Mother pulled her lips right up tight, but Father began telling them about the donkey—as if he hadn't heard a single question. I don't think Mrs. Corcoran liked it, because she said, "Robert, them cows of mine needs a load of hay before milkin'. It's time you was gettin' at it." Mr. Corcoran didn't say anything. He just fished on the reins a little, and the horses started moving. As they drove out of our yard, Mrs. Corcoran called back, "I hope you folks make out better than them Yankees that moved onto the Peterson place."
    The next ones who came were the Aldivotes. They lived down near Bear Creek, behind Corcoran's place. They were nice people. Quiet. And didn't seem to find it easy to talk. They'd heard about Bill and Nig falling through the trestle, and I guess they just came to tell us they were sorry.
    It was nearly sunset before Carl Henry drove in with Miss Wheeler. The schoolhouse was in the far corner of our section and Carl's house was in the section beyond. He was an old bach —he must have been nearly thirty—and Miss Wheeler was the schoolteacher. She was prettier than Bessie Aultland.
    At first they talked about Grace and me going to school. Then about horses, and fences and ranching. After a while, Mother told them how scared we'd been the night before, and asked Carl how much danger there was from coyotes and mountain lions. He laughed, and told her that the donkey was just about as dangerous as the coyotes, and that he had never heard of a lion coming that far down from the mountains. When they left, they took me as far as Aultland's to get the milk.
    I hadn't much more than started back when I heard horses running behind me. I looked around, and there were four honest-to-goodness cowboys coining down the road.