My Rodeo Debut
Horses captured my heart when I was eight or nine years old. I loved everything about them, even their smell of sweat after being ridden. I enjoyed nothing more than saddling one of Daddy's horses and riding it all over the pasture, at the back of our home.
I thought I had been doing pretty good until one evening Daddy told me, "Be sure always to put the girt tight and the flank strap a little loose."
The next day, as I was putting the saddle on the horse, I got mixed up to what Daddy had told me. I made the girt around the horse's belly loose and the flank strap as tight as I could get it.
I got on the horse and off, we went. Boy, I didn't know a horse could pitch this high. It took off in a wild run and then tried to pitch me off again.
The thought came to me, if he slows down a little, I'll gladly get off, but he kept running and pitching.
Mama and Daddy saw me through the kitchen window and came running out the back door of our house.
"Hold on! Hold on," Daddy was hollering.
Well, I don't know what he thinks I have been trying to do, since I got onto this crazy bronco.
I saw the horse heading for a low-hanging limb on one of the oak trees in the pasture. Looks as if I'm going to cut my rodeo debut short.
"Geronimo!"
I plopped and rolled on the ground. Well, I guess the ground was better than hitting the limb.
"Are you alright?" Daddy asked. He was so shaken by all of this.
"Yes."
After seeing I was not hurt, Daddy took off in the pasture to catch the horse and brought him back to where I still lay on the ground.
"I told you how to saddle up a horse," he said with a firm voice.
"Well, I got mixed up," I said.
Funny, I never felt the same about horses again.
--Lillie Cook
