The Devil In Ol' Rosie - Hardcover

Moeri, Louise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689826141 ISBN 13: 9780689826146

Publisher: Atheneum, 2001

Synopsis

When Little Davy leaves the gate open and all the horses run free into the Oregon wilderness, young Wart must take charge of the important task of rounding them up quickly and safely as they are his family's only source of income.

About this title

About the Author

Louise Moeri is the author of many books and novels for children, including The Forty-Third War, which was selected for the Pen West Literary Award. Having grown up just miles from Wart's adventure in eastern Oregon, Louise has experienced both the difficulty and beauty of its severe landscape. She now lives in Manteca, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

"Ol Rosie's led the horses off again!" Pa's voice was like a shaft of cold steel jabbing me under my warm quilts. "Get up, Wart. You got to go after them."

I opened my eyes. It was still black dark, and the loft was so cold, there were ice crystals on the edge of the quilts where my breath had left a little moisture. I pulled my head in like a turtle and huddled down deep in the warm feather bed.

"Get up, Wart." Pa poked me in the ribs with his hard hand. I shut my eyes quick and pretended I was still asleep. Even when you are twelve years old, sometimes that will work. For a little while.

"Wart! Roll out! Now!" My name is John, but Pa calls me Wart. I guess that's the way he sees me -- hard, bumpy, and not much use. But he needed me now. He grabbed the quilts and peeled them off of me. It was like falling into ice-cold springwater as the November air wrapped itself around me. My long-handle underwear didn't even slow it down.

Pa had on his long-handles, too, with just his pants pulled on over them, but he didn't even look cold. His hair wasn't combed, and three days' beard made him look even darker in the faint light coming up through the trapdoor. But there's this thing about Pa: I don't think that the cold -- or heat or dark -- has the guts to lay ahold of him. I sure wouldn't...

Eyes barely opening, then, I rolled over, and my feet hit the bare wood floor. It felt like sheet ice with splinters. I stood up, with one hand windmilling around behind me. I was hoping I could grab a quilt and wrap it around me, but Pa stamped to the other end of the bunk and grabbed up my shirt and pants and boots. "Put these on," he said. "I'm fixing you some breakfast -- "

"Ma -- ?" I fumbled out, still barely awake.

"Ma -- she's -- took sick -- " Pa shoved my clothes at me, and I clamped my hands over them. Ma -- sick? That meant -- oh. That meant --

I sat down suddenly. Well, yes, I knew it had been getting on for the time when she was to have the baby, but I guess I'd thought she'd just have it during a night, like she did with Davy, and I'd get up one morning and there it would be. I'd never thought it would have anything to do with me -- or that I'd be stuck with a rotten job like going after runaway horses, just because a baby was being born...

Pa jerked around and strode back to the hole in the floor of the loft and started down the ladder to the kitchen below. Now I could smell the smokey kitchen stove, the coal-oil lamp on the table. He stopped -- shoulders and head still above the floor. "Hurry up," he grunted. "I'll fix you somethin' to eat. You got to get goin' -- "

Yeah, Pa -- I got to get goin'. How come you didn't send me out yesterday, if you're in such a hurry? I asked Ma once why Pa was always pushing us to hurry. She told me about the washtub and the looking glass: "Wart, when people like us get married and set up to make a living, people offer us either a washtub or a looking glass for a wedding present." I guess I looked dumb, because she went on to explain. "You got a choice. You can either use the washtub and take in washing and earn some money to eat with, or you can pick the looking glass and watch yourself starve to death. Your pa and I -- we chose the washtub." So I guess that means I'm included in the washtub deal.

"Wart!" Pa's voice was beginning to get that hard edge in it. But even then I knew that part of the edge was because of Ma. It wasn't ever said, but Pa put Ma first. Always.

"Yeah -- yeah, Pa -- I'm coming!" I dressed as fast as I could, buttoning my shirt and ramming the tail into my pants, pulling on socks stiff with dried sweat and then my boots. Needed to pee -- I had to get down to the kitchen fast enough to go outside to the outhouse before Pa had the food cooked, or else he'd throw it on the table and tell me to eat and I'd end up sitting there eating it with my belly about to burst. I turned to go. Oh -- almost forgot -- "'Mighty God, bless us in this day to come and may Your Son and our Savior be our guide -- "

Sitting at the plank table beside the wood cookstove, I shoved fried potatoes and ham into my mouth while my father shoved orders into me. "You'll have to ride Gypsy. She was tied in the barn, so she's the only one didn't run off. She's slow, so you got to use your head. The other horses can all outrun her, so you got to head them off, or run them into a box. Ol' Rosie's bound to knock the fence down in the small pasture, but if you're lucky and they ain't moving too fast, you might catch up with them before she knocks the other fence down and they get out of the back pasture. If you do, try to pen them into that back corner where I got the fence partway around the spring. You got to get ropes on Pet an' Snip, though, because they'll follow Ol' Rosie if you don't. Once you get Pet an' Snip roped, Bejeesus and Damfool and Socks and the others will probably follow them. Molly an' Blaze might. Well anyway...some of them will follow."

"What about the colt? What about Ol' Rosie?" I knew the colt would be spooky and skittish, and that was bad enough, but rounding up Ol' Rosie was like rounding up a grizzly bear. She was just as likely to charge you as she was to go along with the herd.

"Colt will follow the mare -- Pet will see to that. An' I don't care if I never see Ol' Rosie again as long as I live." Pa poured himself a tin cup of coffee and then set another cup beside my plate. "That horse's got a devil in her. She's cost me more than ten like her could ever earn."

Pa didn't ask for my opinion, but if he had, I'd have agreed with him. Pa had taken on Ol' Rosie, a huge red roan workhorse, as part payment on a loan, and we'd all been sorry ever since. Jim Cummins, the rancher who gave her to Pa instead of the fifty dollars Pa had loaned him when his wife died, had really handed Pa one of the worst problems we'd ever had -- and on a dry-land ranch in eastern Oregon in the year of our Lord, 1907, that's saying a lot.

Not that Ol' Rosie wasn't strong. She must have Clydesdale or some other heavy breed of draft horse in her, because all by herself Rosie could pull a four-bottom plow or a hay wagon loaded with green timothy hay. She could pull it, that is, if she didn't kick the singletree to pieces, break the reins, and buck off half her harness while you were getting the tugs fastened. And getting her hitched up was the easy part. After that you had to be sure no rabbits sprang up under her nose and no funny noises attracted her attention -- and Rosie was always swinging her hammer-head around looking for things that would attract her attention. She was powerful and deep-chested, and actually very smart (even those who had to drive her thought so), but she was crazy.

There are people who don't think horses go crazy, but those are people who don't have anything to do with horses. Either that or they've got them mixed up with those new automobiles you hear about, though so far I haven't heard of anybody getting kicked by a Ford. When you work with horses every day of your life, feed, brush, water, harness, drive, cuss, and depend on them every day, you get to know them. And some horses are crazy.

Pa said Ol' Rosie was crazy because when she foaled the first time, her owner left her out in a pasture that backed up to the foothills along the far side of the Ochocco Mountains. A grizzly bear came down out of the forest, smelled the blood and the new foal, and he stole that new little colt right away from her. I guess she put up an awful fight -- there are claw scars all over her -- but she lost her foal. And ever since, she's been crazy. Pa says she's got a devil in her.

I was still thinking about Ol' Rosie, and picturing that grizzly and the bloody fight she had put up for her colt, when I saw Pa suddenly jerk around. Then I heard it, too: a faint sound from the bedroom where Ma and Pa slep

About this edition

• Publisher: Atheneum
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0689826141
• ISBN 13: 9780689826146
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208