Take off your hat, I want to stand up.

Chapter 22: The Greenhorns.

Chapter 22: Three Greenhorns.

Three greener green horns you never did see.

The trail ride. I remember the trail ride like it was yesterday, I think I was twelve and my brother, must have been about ten.

A trial ride, we had no clue. I went along because I always went along. It was my job to watch out for my younger siblings and mind my parents, life-long features of being the care giver in a family. I had on flip-flops because I knew Papa Jourdies yard was chock full of all kinds of crap, literally, usually I went barefoot at the lake, but not today. I had on Lee Jean cut offs. We would wear the jeans for six to eight months and as the knees and bottom edges frayed and became unruly you added new life to the pants by cutting off the ripped part and using the rest as handy beach cutoffs. Naturally, I wore them to the stable. My brother wore the same.

Ev had on a strapless halter top with matching ladies shorts, for foot wear she wore beach slippers. We should have watched more episodes of Bonanza before we went, this would have cut our western wear issues down to a simple level. In fact we were not dressed properly for the activity.

Papa took a measure of our outfits. We had the appearance of natural greenhorns. He scratched his wire whiskers,  gave a half chuckle, shook his head, swiped his forehead, spit into the dust and indicated we should pick out a horse to ride.

He said to me, you can take Dusty. He pointed to a small, hardy, mean-eyed nag with a scoop full of house flies racing around his back-end nature. They were not landing in any sequence the just seemed to be hopeful. Dusty would shiver ever once in awhile as the insects crowded his sensibilities and good nature. I always liked Little Joe's horse and I saw some similar colour son Dusty so I felt cowboy connected, yes this would be a good horse for me. The other two horses seemed to be named after distant relatives, aunties or grannies they were; Trixie and Ruth, Trixie I could kind of see as a name for a horse but Ruth, that one had me thinking.

All of the horses seemed to be quite content to lollygag and hag around in the stalls, chewing on the hay, swishing the critters away with long swoops of their tails. They gazed this way and that in a general manner, stepping form one foot to the next. They appeared peaceful.

Peaceful, until Papa shook them up with his invading manner. He growled, here girl get over, he slapped Dusties flank, dust and flies flew off her hide and settled out as a mist. Move he commanded and the horse flickered to life. Papa tossed a saddle across her flank, he winched and tugged the harness under her belly, pulling it with bare knuckle strength and force. This action made Dusty rear up slightly, to me it looked like two kinds of trouble. Don't rile the horse, please.

During this time Papa was barking instructions in my direction. I paid particular mind to the tone of the talk, but heard only bits and pieces of what he was trying to relay to me. The emphasize seemed to be, get on the left side, do not get off, hold the reigns together, not separate, keep his head up, do not let him get into any water, it wets out the saddle, ruins them as they dry.

Further to the point he added, do not come back until your times up. You paid for one hour, come back in one hour. Then he looked at me for the first time. He gave his head a cowboy nod, shuffled the dirt on the ground and grunted. The conversation was at a close.

He pulled Dusty out of the stall, all the while, Pappa cajoled and hirupped Dusty to cooperate. He grabbed the reigns tight on the mouth and nose of Dusty, which made the horses mouth contort, eyes bulged, rolled, widened and flared, snot streamed from the froth around the bit.

Get up on her, he directed toward me. I screamed, no I shouted in my mind, but my feet answered the scowl of Papa by awkwardly crawling up onto the back of Dusty. I relaxed a bit, easy girl, easy, I patted her main as I had seen Little Joe do about a hundred times on Bonanza. Dusty pawed the ground, snorted and reached around to get a bead on me with her left eye only.