Half Broke Horses: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

Rosemary and Little Jim love to play together, and especially love to ride horses. They frequently get banged up while playing outside, but their parents tell them to “tough it out.” One day while Lily is driving with Rosemary, the hearse gets stuck in the mud. Lily spots a group of wild horses and shows Rosemary how to catch one so that they can ride it home. Rosemary wants to keep it, but Lily says the last thing they need is another “half-broke horse,” and tells Rosemary to smack her on the rump to send the mare away.

Sensing the kids need more “civilizing,” Lily and Jim send both to boarding schools. Lily vows to finish her degree and join the teachers’ union so she won’t keep getting fired for her “style.” She registers for a heavy course-load and finds a boarding house in Phoenix, again relishing academic life and feeling like it is a break from the ranch chores. Neither Rosemary nor Little Jim take to boarding school, and Rosemary especially is viewed as a “wild child” at her Catholic school because of her rambunctious demeanor. Her classmates make fun of her for being a farmer’s daughter. When she stands up for herself and dunks a classmate’s head in dishwater, Lily is proud and feels that there is some of herself in her daughter after all.

Despite being tested and proving bright, Rosemary is not allowed back at the academy after her second year because she is too disruptive. Both she and Little Jim are ecstatic to return to life on the ranch. By then, Lily has earned her college degree. She easily finds another teaching job in a town called Big Sandy and enrolls Rosemary and Little Jim in her class. World War II is underway, but it does not have a big effect on their lives apart from a shortage of gasoline. Mom has died while Lily was studying in Phoenix, and now Buster and Dorothy have put Dad in a nursing home. Dad begs Lily to come see him before he dies, calling her his “best hand.”

Lily trades beef for gasoline ration coupons and sets off with Rosemary in the hearse. They run out of gas by Tempe, however. Lily goes into a diner and plays up being a damsel in distress, asking the male customers if they can lend them some gas. They oblige, and after this Lily says to Rosemary, “Whoever said I couldn't play the lady?”

They reach Tucson and visit Dad in his old folks’ home, where he appears very frail and is too sick to be moved. Lily is proud that Rosemary remains stoic beside her grandfather, and thinks that she has “a brain, a spine, and a heart.” Dad makes Rosemary promise to bury him at the KC ranch, and he dies that evening. The next morning, they put his body in the back of the hearse and Lily drives faster to make it to the ranch before the body starts to rot in the heat. Once they arrive, they bury him in the ranch’s cemetery. Lily does not feel as gutted by his death as she was by Helen’s; she feels Dad had cheated death by surviving being kicked in the head by the horse as a boy, and that he had lived a long and happy life.

Dad left the KC Ranch to Buster and the homestead on Salt Draw to Lily, but also owed thousands in back taxes. Lily debates selling the land to pay them or digging into their savings meant to buy Hackberry. On the way home, she has Rosemary try her hand at persuading men to give them gas, and she takes to it quickly despite only being twelve. They stop to see the Madonna of the Trail in Albuquerque, a twenty-foot statue of a pioneer woman holding a baby in one hand and a rifle in the other, while another child clings to her skirt. Lily is moved to tears at the sight. She resolves not to sell the Salt Draw homestead, wanting deeply to own a piece of land and accepting they may never have enough money to buy Hackberry anyway.

With the war going on, the military is using the railroad system to ship troops and equipment. Lily and Jim take the cattle to market when the train is available in December, and they bring Rosemary and Little Jim to help. Rosemary roots for the cattle, and sometimes tries to let a steer escape—something that makes Lily say she is not suited to ranch life. Rosemary is now thirteen, “quite a looker,” and smitten with a Havasupai cowboy named Fidel Hanna. Lily tells her to watch herself around cowboys.

Rosemary declares that she wants to learn to skin a steer, something she will need to know as a rancher. Jim agrees, and slaughters one a few days later. Lily reflects that unlike herself, Rosemary has grown up around cowboys and as such has been sheltered from this part of ranch life. Rosemary cries while skinning the steer but finishes the task, proving she can do it but also that she does not have the heart for ranch life, and none of them mention the event again.

The next summer Clarice Pearl, a woman with the Department of Education, writes to request that Lily drive her and a nurse to a Havasupai village to investigate hygiene standards. Lily asks Fidel Hanna, who lives on the reservation, to help. He says they are “coming to inspect the savages.” Lily takes Rosemary and picks up Miss Pearl and a nurse, Marion Finch, both of whom she views as “disapproving do-gooders.”

Lily tries to explain some background about local tribal traditions while she drives, but the officials are dismissive. Fidel and his friends guide them the rest of the way to the village on horseback. While Lily marvels at the beauty of the land, the two officials continue to look on with disdain. Fidel comments that when people like the officials take Native children and send them to schools, they are just making them unfit for both the outside world and reservation life—like he is. Rosemary declares that it’s like the Garden of Eden, and says she wishes she could live there. Lily says that living in a dirt house gets old quickly.

The next night Lily wakes to discover that Rosemary had snuck out to go swimming with Fidel and his friends in her underwear. Clarice Pearl found her and angrily dragged her back. Lily is furious that Rosemary disobeyed her and ignored everything she has taught her, and feels something “dark” come out of her as she beats Rosemary with a belt until she feels she has gone too far. The next night at home, Lily tries to tell Rosemary that she was simply trying to teach her a lesson. Rosemary pulls away and says she will never whip her own children.

When Clarice Pearl threatens to report Fidel for indecency with a minor, Fidel joins the army. He is later traumatized by the war, and when he returns he shoots up a Hopi village. After serving time in prison, his own tribe will not allow him to return, and he lives as an outcast by himself on a corner of the reservation.

Lily sends Rosemary back to boarding school. The Poms declare their intention to sell the ranch. Gaiter—a famous movie director—and a rodeo cowboy Lily calls “Boots” buy the ranch, though Lily can sense that they don’t know anything about proper ranching. They rename it the Showtime Ranch, tear down the buildings, and fire Jim and Old Jake, along with the primarily Mexican and Native American ranch hands, because they don’t look enough like cowboys. Lily resents the changes, feeling that she and Jim ran the place honestly and well for the past eleven years. Still, Lily refuses to feel sorry for herself. She gives Patches, nearing thirty, to the Havasupai, and the family sets off for Phoenix. As they drive away in the hearse, Lily tells Little Jim he must not look back.