Pa was feelin’ sick, too sick to ride a horse, but ‘course I didn’t know it then. He hired an Indian fella named Willy Sam to help me. Willy knew all the country and the horses, and everything. Mom and Pa liked Willy. When he stayed with us he’d sleep with me. So him and I, we gathered them horses. When we got ‘em to the corral, Pa separated out the ones he wanted to keep and we shipped the rest. There was one black, bald faced horse we didn’t get.

Willy Sam and I put those horses Pa wanted to sell on the railroad at Gerlach. We loaded two cars. We had most of the horses gathered, all but this black horse, and Dad wanted him, so Willy went home and I kept riding for another week or so.

While I was doin’ that Pa was gettin’ ready to go down to California. I don’t know what he had in mind exactly, I didn’t ask him. All I knew was that he wanted to take this bunch of horses and all his shop and go down to that country he came from.

Pa finally decided to forget the black horse. He said we was flirtin’ with the weather. The storms were startin’ to blow in. One day it’d be nice and warm and the next a cold wind’d be blowin’ up your shirt tail.

We had two wagons trailed one behind the other. Pa drove four horses if the weather wasn’t bad or if it wasn’t tough pullin’. But if it was tough, he put on six. It was my job to drive the extra team and saddle horses. I had two horses that I rode, a sorrel and a bay. After I got the horses trained to follow the wagons, why, they wasn’t any trouble. I just had to ride along with ‘em. After we got down a ways I would go ahead of Pa and find a place to stay all night. By the time Pa got there with the wagons I’d have it all set and he could just drive right in.

We left Duck Lake and went up through Tuledad toward the Madeline. Then we went right on across the Plains. We stopped at Termo and I went in the store and bought somethin’, I don’t remember what but it was in a little paper sack. I got on that little bay horse and the paper got to rattlin’. He didn’t like that, I can tell you and he ran away for a while. Of course, all the extra horses used the excuse for some excitement and took off buckin’ and runnin’. Dad’s team tried the same thing with him but with that big load they didn’t go far. We finally got things under control again and it was good for a laugh.

That night we stayed at an old character’s place over on the other side of the Plains. He was a bachelor, a dirty old sucker and why we ever slept in his bed I’ll never know, but we did. ‘Cause he offered it to us, I guess.

We got lousey when we stayed at that old dirty guy’s place on the Madeline but we didn’t know it, either one of us. I didn’t have any idea what a louse was anyway, but I found one on me. I captured that little sucker and showed him to my dad. Oh, God! he said, we’re lousier than pet coons. I’ll go to town and get something to get rid of these things and you get plenty of water boilin’.

We scalded all our clothes, everything that we’d been usin’, our bedding, everything. The druggist had give Pa somethin’ called Blue Ointment. Every morning and night we’d shake out our beds and sprinkle that Blue Ointment over it, and before we went to bed at night we’d go over each other lookin’ for those little louses. We was about eat up with those lousey little things.

What I hated about that was that we had stayed at some nice houses on the way down and I’m sure we had to leave some of those things behind. You can just imagine what those people would think about you, and you couldn’t blame ‘em either.

We went on down through the country. The people along the way were real nice. Sometimes we stayed a day or so to help with work or choppin’ wood to pay our board. We took Thanksgiving dinner with a man and his family. They had a boy ‘bout my age. He asked questions about runnin’ wild horses and what it was like. I think he wanted to go with us.

There wasn’t anything unusual that happened until we got way down in the valley. We stayed on a big ranch that hired a lot of men and they told us about a way we could go through the country, cut off quite a bit and miss the main highway.

So we did, but a week or so before that, when we was up in the mountains we was goin’ down a grade and Pa was on the outside edge of a drop-off when a carload of people came up the road, meetin’ us. One of the horses that I was a drivin’ stepped out in front of them just as they was even with the leaders on the wagon. Well, they cut loose with their cockeyed horn. The team would have gone anywhere if they could have got away but the bank was solid rock straight up about thirty feet and the other side was straight down, so they just had to take it. But those horses didn’t forget that car and its blamed horn.

The day we left the big ranch it was rainin’. I never saw rain come down like it did in that country. Water had been runnin’ alongside the road and cut a gully six or eight feet deep. We were just about even with the start of that gully when a car come along. Well, the horses remembered that other car on the mountain and their blamed horn honkin’ and they jackknifed on Pa. He wasn’t lookin’ for that, a course. There was room to pull behind that gully and Pa made it too, all but the last wheel on the trail wagon. It went into that ditch and pulled the whole outfit right in on top of it. We had three horses down on the bottom in that wash, three on top and two wagons on their side in there.

The guys in the car didn’t have anything to do with it but they stopped and helped us. We had to unhook the horses and get ‘em out of the wash, then unload the wagons. Then we hooked the leaders up and they had to pull the wagons out alone. Now, you never saw anything dig and scratch mud like those leaders did, just the two of them. It took most of the day to get straightened out and loaded again. We were wet from the skin out and muddy. None of the horses were hurt but I sure felt sorry for ‘em. Pa worked ‘til I thought he was gonna drop, but we went on. No use to stop, he said. There was no way to get dried off. Couldn’t even start a fire in all that rain.

It was after that that Pa started havin’ these spells. He’d wake up and he couldn’t get his breath, so he’d kick me out and I’d get a fire goin’. He’d sit by the fire a while and pretty soon he’d get all right. As time went on the spells started comin’ on everyday, and a little earlier everyday, too. The first ones were in the night, and pretty soon, it was daylight.

We got to Lodi and a spell came on him in the night and some people took him to the hospital in French Camp. Then I was left with the outfit alone. I didn’t have any idea where to go except I knew about where he was headed, that’s all. So, the next morning I picked out four of those horses I knew I could handle, the wheelers and the pointers, caught a saddle horse, tied him behind a wagon and took down the road.

‘Course then I had to drive into a place to find out about the stayin’ all night. The first place I went into was three or four miles off the road. Couldn’t stay, so by the time I come out I lost quite a bit of time. It got dark and fog, man, talk about fog. It was thick. I got back out on the highway and a taxi pulled up beside me and the guy said, you better put out a light. I didn’t have a light, I told him and I asked him how far it was to Stockton.

You’re on the wrong road to get to Stockton, he said. In that fog I got off on the wrong road and he said I was on the way to a country club. I had to get turned around, so I found a wide place, no fences. I got off the wagon and looked it over, and it looked all right. There was a little dip right along the road and since it had been rainin’, it was soft, but in the dark I didn’t notice, so I pulled around. I made the turn all right but when I pulled back on the road the front wheels went into that little ditch and I was stuck, right to the axle.

I knew I couldn’t get out with the horses on that pavement. They were tired too. I had drove ‘em all day. So, I just pulled them over to the side of the road and unhooked the team, tied ‘em to the wagon wheel, and fed ‘em some grain. I had my bed in the wagon so I crawled into it and went to sleep.

The next morning I started unloadin’ that trail wagon. I didn’t think I could pull it out of there with all that weight, and on the pavement, too. Well, Pa had a blacksmith shop, a big anvil, and a tire shrinker in that trail wagon. A lot of heavy stuff. I had some of it unloaded when some guys come along in a truck. They could see the predicament I was in, so they said they’d pull the wagons onto the road with their truck. They helped me load that heavy stuff back into the wagon. Some of it was too heavy and I know I couldn’t have loaded it by myself. Then they pulled me back on the road. I hooked up the horses and started off again.

When I got into Stockton I ran right into one of those feedyards where you can keep a horse on board. There was an old guy runnin’ it and when I told him my predicament, that I wanted to look out of there and find some pasture for the horses, he gave me a corral for my horses and threw ‘em some hay. They spent time rollin’ in the dirt and then they went to eatin’. It had been quite a long time since they had been let loose and weren’t tied to something. The old guy let me throw my bed in the barn and shared his dinner with me. It had been a day or so since I ate last.

The next morning I started ridin’. One day I’d go one way and the next day I’d go another way. One mornin’ as I was goin’ through town this guy crossed the street in front of me afoot. He stopped and was lookin’ my horse over. He wanted to know if I wanted to sell the horse I was ridin’. God, no, I said, I need him. So I asked him if he knew where a fella could get some pasture. Yeah, he said, he had lots of pasture along the San Joaquin. Grass knee high, lots of water, a good place. So, we made a deal right there on the street and he told me how to find the place. But it was too late to start that day, so I waited ‘til the next morning.

First thing next morning I hooked up the four horses. The fog on the pavement made it slick and the horses weren’t used to the darned pavement, too. They were desert horses. We were all like fish out of water.

One of my wheelers, this bay horse, got to pullin’ extra hard and the harder he pulled the more he slipped and he finally fell. There I was, and I knew I was gonna have to unhook him to get him up. About that time some guys come along in a car and wanted to know if they could be of help. I said they sure could—if they’d just stand out there in front of the leaders and hold ‘em, I’d get the horse up and hook him up again. So, I did, but when that horse fell down he broke that back band that goes around the hames to hold the hames together up on top, and I didn’t notice it.

So I went on and when I got right down in the main part of Stockton the britchin’—it was all britchin’ harness—fell down on the single tree behind him. There I was right in the middle of town with streetcars and automobiles, and those horses just weren’t used to that kind of stuff. If I got down off the wagon I wouldn’t have had any control over the team so I asked this guy to pick up that britchin’ and hook it over the hames, or anywhere so I could get out of the doggone traffic and fix it.

You’d a thought I asked him to pet a rattlesnake, but he finally got up his nerve. The horse was all right. The guy was more scared than the horse was. I was headed to French Camp where Pa was in the hospital. But I was afraid to take time to go in and see him because I didn’t know how long it would take me to get to Tracy. I didn’t want to get caught in the dark in strange country, so I thought I should go on. When I got to French Camp there was a wide, flat place so I pulled off the highway and thought I’d check my outfit and see if everything was all right.

I’d lost my darned saddle horse. He’d been tied behind the trail wagon and the chain had come unsnapped or somethin’. He was gone, anyway. Well, I needed that sucker so I drove the team over to the fence and tied ‘em up and started back afoot. I figured I’d find him along the road someplace.

I got a ride and went clear to Stockton and never seen a sign of that darned horse. I knew I couldn’t fool around and leave that darned team so I started back and got a ride to the wagon. I got them off the highway that night. I was gonna have to go back to Stockton the next day to try to find that saddlehorse.

The next morning I had to pack my saddle clear back to Tracy where I could catch a bus. When we got into Stockton I see some kids with my horse down off the edge of the road. I hailed the driver to a stop and went back. The snap had come unfastened and he was draggin’ the halter chain. They’d tied him to a fence. I got on him with just the halter and rode to the feedyard.

The next day I started out with the horses. Of course, they was used to followin’ the wagon and when I started just drivin’ ‘em loose, with nothing for ‘em to follow, they didn’t know where to go. God, they run into every gate that was open into every lousy yard. Didn’t miss one, I don’t believe. I give both of my saddle horses out just tryin’ to keep them blamed horses gathered up.

I finally got to Stockton and I tried to go around town and ended up in a lousy little suburb off to the side. Green lawns, God! Did I have hell. I was ready to give the whole bunch away. I’d get ‘em out of one yard and they’d run into the next and around the house, under clotheslines, through gardens and flower beds. People were yellin’ at me to get ‘em out and I was doin’ my level best, but it wasn’t good enough.

About then a little kid on a bicycle come along, so I got him to ride on the sidewalk—asked him if he would—to keep the horses out in the street, so they wouldn’t run on those darned lawns. As soon as I had some help they lined right out and went along good. He knew all the streets, too, and showed me some shortcuts I’d never a known about, so we were out of town in no time at all. When I got in the clear he pulled up to go back and I told him I wanted to pay him for his help.

Aw no, he said. Said he was a boy scout and he was supposed to do a good deed for somebody everyday. Well, I can tell you, he did his good deed that day.

Well, anyway, I got the horses back on the main highway again. I’d run the heck out of ‘em all day and they was give out. It got dark and the road was just a string of cars. You could see their lights one right after another for miles, not travelin’ fast but lots of ‘em. Those darned horses took right down the white line, down the middle of the pavement, one behind the other one in a little dog trot and they just kept a goin’. I couldn’t keep ‘em off of there, so I rode off down in the gutter and stayed behind. It was dark, holy smoke, it was dark. Two different horses got hit by cars. Didn’t hurt the horses but they knocked out the cars’ headlights. The rest of the horses went out around the cars and right on down the road. Didn’t even stop. Boy, was I glad to get off that highway, I tell you.

I got the horses turned into the field at Tracy, I don’t know, it was late. I rolled up in my saddle blanket like a dog and went to sleep.

The next day the guy that owned the field give me a job, plowin’ for him. I knew I was gonna need some money for Pa’s doctor bills so I took it.

I got to go see Pa once. Had to just bum a ride. He didn’t know me, not too good anyway. He was kinda out of his head. The nurse hadn’t shaved him,

God. His whiskers was long. I never saw him with whiskers. He always shaved, every morning. She wanted me to shave him. I just looked at her. Didn’t say a word.

from Desert Rodear, a book of creative nonfiction by Linda Hussa based on the oral history of Lige Langston (1908-1987). horsehair mecate and rawhide rein by Lige Langston. Photos from his scrapbook.