No More Challenges
(Part three of three)

By Phyllis M. Letellier

When Paul Hanks goes west by bus to his grandparents’ Wyoming ranch, he wishes for the challenges that the pioneers faced. Then his grandfather breaks a leg and is taken to the hospital, and Paul is left with the irrigating and chores. Upon finally finding a missing horse, he sees that it is hopelessly caught in a tangle of rusty barbed wire.

As Paul jogged across the horse pasture toward the barn, he made a mental list of things that he’d need to free the frantic horse: I need some oats. Grandpa said that oats are a great tamer, and if there is anything I need right now, it’s a tamer horse to work on! I need some wire cutters and a halter and lead rope, too—and maybe a flashlight, in case I run out of daylight.

He found everything he needed except the flashlight. The only one he knew about was under the pickup seat, and it was at the hospital. He dropped the wire cutters into the bucket of oats, looped the halter and rope over his shoulder, and jogged back across the pasture.

Wary of getting knocked down again, he carefully offered Ginger a bite of oats. She chewed and reached for more, but he set the bucket out of reach while he put the halter on her and buckled it. Then he offered her another bite before he started cutting wires. Ginger, who must have finally realized that help was at hand, quieted down considerably. Every time she got restless, he gave her another bite of oats. The tangle of wires around her feet was such that he really couldn’t tell which wire to cut, so he had to cut several unnecessarily before he got the strand holding the mass of wire to a half-buried tree stump.

When Ginger felt the tension on her legs ease, she jumped to her feet, shook, and snorted. Then she reared up when she found that she was still tangled. Careful to not get hit by a flying hoof, Paul caught the lead rope and pulled her down. He petted her briefly, gave her a couple bites of oats, and went back to cutting wires. It was so dark by then that he had to work mostly by feel, and he had trouble finding the right places to cut.

Finally the last wire fell away, and Paul pulled the scratchy mass away from her feet. He rubbed a hand down each leg to be sure, left the now-empty bucket to be picked up later, and led Ginger out of the willows and across the dark pasture. She did fine, but he stumbled often in the darkness.

He turned on the barn light and led her under it so that he could examine her injuries. She had some bad cuts, but, he decided, nothing life threatening. Quoting what his father always told him when Paul complained of an injury, he petted the horse softly and consoled her, “It’s a long way from your heart.”

He tied Ginger to a post and went to the house to get some warm water and a rag. While there he read the labels on the containers in the veterinary cabinet until he found one that said it was for “wire cuts and to keep flies off.” Just what he needed!

Ginger let him wash the cuts all right, but pulled free when he tried to spray the medicine on them. With a quick jump, he beat her to the open barn door, closed it, tied her shorter this time, and tried again. She danced around the post, but he finally got all the deeper cuts and scratches covered.

Because the pasture seemed cleaner than the barn, he turned her out when he finished. It was nearly eleven o’clock when he returned to the kitchen, wearily put the bucket and rag into the sink, and dragged himself out to close the chicken coop door.

Too tired to make a sandwich, he drank two glasses of milk and cut a thick piece off the roast to eat. He set the alarm for 6:00 A.M., then fell wearily into bed.

“I guess I thought that the Good Fairy would wash the milk pail,” Paul grumbled sleepily to himself the next morning when he found the unwashed bucket where he had left it in the sink. He scrubbed the bucket and strainer until they were as clean and shiny as Grandma had left them, then headed out to milk the cow. He breathed deeply the fragrant early morning air as he walked and thought how very different Sunday was here than at home. A cow that had to be milked and livestock requiring feed and water every day made some changes in even the most carefully planned “day of rest.”

Paul milked with hands still sore from the night before, but at least Clarabelle cooperated a little better. She stepped around some, but she didn’t step on him or kick the bucket. “Someone should invent a cow that you don’t have to milk on weekends,” Paul told her as he turned her loose into the horse pasture.

“Since the calves are a pretty good size now,” Grandpa had explained, “they get the morning milk, and we get the night milk.” So Paul fed the cats meowing around his feet, then divided the remaining milk between the two red calves. With an eye on his watch, he hayed them and grained the pigs and made sure that all the animals still had water.

The horses came when he whistled. Ginger was limping, and one knee was swollen, but she really didn’t look too bad, considering how she had looked just a few hours before.

He detoured to open the chicken coop door on the way to the house. This time he washed the milk pail right away and set it in the dish drainer.

Since he had neglected his bath the night before, he took one now, then dressed in his good clothes. He had time for a leisurely breakfast and was on his second bowl of cold cereal when Grandma called.

After she told him that Grandpa had reacted badly to the anesthetic the doctors used when they set his leg, Paul decided not to tell her about the horse just yet. She asked him to bring her a change of clothes and her scriptures after church and told him where to look. He couldn’t find the blouse that she had described, so he picked one that he liked and put all the items into a paper sack.

He was sitting on the front porch in the sunshine, the sack beside him and his scriptures in his hand, when Brother Ross arrived. This, he thought, is hardly how I expected my first Sunday in Wyoming to be.

There were a few faces that he recognized from visits other summers, but mostly he was surrounded by strangers as he entered the chapel. He was welcomed warmly, however, and it felt good to be where he knew he should be.

He watched with interest as the deacons passed the sacrament. This was the first time all year that it wasn’t his responsibility, and, fleetingly, he felt a little left out. A number of people stopped him in the hall between meetings and afterward to ask about his grandfather.

He and Brother Ross stopped at the hospital after church, and Paul gave the sack to Grandma. She looked inside briefly, nodded, and thanked him. Paul thought that she looked as tired as he felt—if that were possible.

Grandpa, pale and groggy, lay with his stiff, cast-covered leg propped up on a pillow. He squeezed Paul’s hand, smiled at him, but had little to say.

As they walked down the hall later, Grandma explained, “The doctor says that when he gets over the problem from the anesthetic, he should recover quickly. We think he’ll be home in a few days.” She hesitated, then said almost pleadingly, “If you’re going to be all right, I’ll stay here until his mind is clear enough for him to fight his own battles.”

“Everything’s under control,” Paul assured her. “He needs you worse than I do—at least until the roast runs out,” he added with a grin.

Grandma chuckled and gave him a hug.

“My family’s gone and I’m a lousy cook, or I’d invite you to dinner,” Brother Ross explained as he took Paul home.

“That’s OK. Why don’t you come have a roast beef sandwich with me? There’s a big roast in the refrigerator, and I was too tired last night to make much of a dent in it.”

After Brother Ross left, Paul carefully put away his good clothes and flopped across his bed. Despite the bright sunlight in the room, he slept until nearly chore time.

When he looked for a milk jar, there wasn’t one, so he looked in the refrigerator. All three jars were there with milk in them. What do I do now? he wondered. He leaned on the edge of the open refrigerator door and thought awhile. Finally he straightened, told himself out loud, “You think for yourself,” and took out the oldest jar.

He found a cream jar and the skimming ladle, carefully skimmed the cream off the milk, and set the jar of yellow cream in the refrigerator. Then he poured the milk into an old bucket to take to the pigs and chickens and washed the milk jar.

He set the strainer in the milk jar, picked up the milk pail and bucket of skimmed milk, and headed out into the clear evening air.

It looks like I’m going to be doing a lot of thinking for myself the rest of the summer, he reflected. After irrigating, it will be time to cut hay. Then there’ll be more irrigating. Sometime we’re—correction, I’m—probably going to have to move the other cows again.

Right now I mustn’t forget to gather the eggs and close the chicken coop door. And I should look at Ginger’s legs again while the horses are eating.

Boy! Will I have a story to tell when the teacher asks for essays on “What I Did This Summer.” I’ll call mine “The Summer I Grew Up.”

And I thought that all the challenges ended with the pioneers’ trek across the plains!

Illustrated by Ralph Barksdale