My heart raced and my legs felt as jiggly as marmalade. And I wanted to do it again!
Be careful that your pretty coat is not marred by scars, little desbocado, called one of the ranch horses. Have you not heard that caution is the greater part of wisdom? He was a hacas, a part-bred, with his mane and tail cut short instead of left long and flowing like a pure Spanish horse’s.
Desbocado—runaway—I liked the sound of that. But I heeded the message and fell back to frolic among the yearling calves. They were safer adversaries, with only nubs for horns.
I touched noses with the shy, half-wild mares who kept the vaqueros supplied with foals to train and sell. The master had handpicked Rasula from this herd when she was just a filly, beguiled by her unusual beauty.
All that winter and the following spring, I roamed with the cattle and horses on the open range between the estate and the mountains. Rasula was happy to spend her life grazing like a living sculpture on the hacienda lawn, and I had also been content to be petted and admired.
But now that I had found my place among the cattle, I felt joy unfurling like a flag inside me. This was where I belonged and where I stayed for two full cycles of the seasons.
When the herd returned to the mountains in the spring of my third year, I went with them. So did Joaquin, now fourteen years old. The boy had taken to riding Amadeo—the roan stallion, long since healed from his injury, made up for what Joaquin lacked in experience and caution. Like every good ranch horse, he was trained in the doma vaquera style, so that his rider needed only the lightest touch of one hand on the reins to guide him. Above all, he kept his own eyes and ears alert for what the vaqueros might miss.
Caution was a lesson that no one escaped, living among the cattle. The cows and calves were unpredictable—peaceful at times, irritable at others. But the bulls were always dangerous. One toss of their great horned heads could put a mortal wound in the belly of a horse or a man.
The vaqueros guided the movements of the cattle with long wooden garrocha poles. Sometimes they seemed like frail tools, as if the men were trying to guide an avalanche with river reeds.
At the end of the day, both the vaqueros and their stallions were bone-tired and covered in dust. One evening, Amadeo lingered close to the warming flames of the campfire instead of joining the herd to graze.
“What’s the matter with him?” asked Joaquin, setting aside his meal of corn masa and beef jerky to check the stallion for injuries.
“Amadeo is only feeling his age,” said Tito. “He has been working the cattle since you were a baby riding a wooden hobbyhorse. Now he is having trouble keeping up with a young conquistador like you.”
Tito left the campfire and walked over to where I grazed. “Maybe it’s time you put a saddle on this colt of yours,” he said, running his hand over my short, well-muscled back.
“Of mine?” Joaquin echoed, his brows unknitting from their usual glower.
“Your father would have made a gift of him when you were old enough,” said Tito. “He would have helped you train him, too.”
“I watched my father ride,” Joaquin said quickly. “I was always watching him. I know how to break a colt.”
Ever since the time I had chased him into the orchard, I had never felt that Joaquin had much affection for me. But now he looked at me with new interest.
The next day, Joaquin lassoed me with his braided reata and took me back to the hacienda. I had grown used to my freedom, and I kicked up my heels in rebellion. But Amadeo cut off all my efforts at escape, and eventually I gave in and trotted willingly beside them.
As we neared the estate, I saw Rico overseeing the fall grape harvest, mounted on Rasula. My dam fluttered her nostrils in greeting, and I whinnied back to her.
“Still prancing around on that mare?” Joaquin taunted his brother. “Help us drive the cattle sometime and you will see why men ride stallions.”
After a year apart, the difference between the brothers was striking. Joaquin strutted like a young bull, while Rico moved as cautiously as a wild deer.
Joaquin left me in the stable with Amadeo. Rico brought us each some water and a pail of corn. It was a rare treat after foraging for all our food in the mountains.
Master Joaquin may be growing in inches, but not in wisdom, remarked Amadeo, plunging his nose into the corn. The stallion’s sides bore white marks where Joaquin’s spurs had gouged away the fur. He is like a colt who was weaned too soon and learned no gentleness of manner. I do not envy you, being broken by him.
In the morning, Joaquin entered the stable with the bridle my sire had worn. He slipped it over my head before I could protest. The bocado bit was heavy in my mouth. The slightest pressure on the reins caused the metal serreta noseband to dig into the sensitive bones of my face.
Joaquin tied me to a ring on the wall and left me there for two nights. He gave me a little water, but I had no more food. My neck ached from the strain of being forced to hold my head so high. At first I was filled with rage and kicked out at the walls of my stall.
By the third day, I began to feel dizzy and weak. Joaquin released me into the circular pen the master had used for breaking horses. I galloped around the curved stone perimeter, seeking the security of a corner but finding none.
Whenever I tried to stop or change direction, the lash of Joaquin’s whip—the same he had held when threshing the wheat—drove me forward again.
Anger overcame my weariness, and I turned and charged at Joaquin, this time not in the spirit of play.
But this time, Joaquin was armed with more than unripe oranges. His reata hissed through the air and caught me by the hind leg. A quick jerk, and I crashed to the ground.
I lay still while the world spun around me. How was it that Joaquin—the boy I had played games with, as if he were another foal—had turned on me like a mad watchdog savaging its own flock?
Joaquin leaned down and tied something to my ankles. I thrashed to my feet and found that my legs had been bound together with hobbles. Traitor! I thought, and my shock warmed into fury once more.
Joaquin grabbed the sheepskin saddle that had belonged to his father and flung it onto my back. He cinched the girth tight under my belly and swung up into the saddle. The hobbles would not allow me to bolt forward or back up.
But I could rear.
I flung my body high into the air. Joaquin shouted and jerked on the serreta. The pain only made me rise higher, higher, until my feet slipped in the dirt and I fell backward.
Joaquin rolled away before I hit the ground, but the saddle was crushed beneath me.
I tried to lift my head. A bolt of pain shot through my neck and back. Joaquin moved into my field of vision. He lowered his hand toward my bridle, as if to release the serreta.
No—it must be a trick! My teeth grazed his hand and I tasted blood. The boy’s eyes blazed. He grabbed the whip from the dirt where it had fallen.
“Joaquin! Do not strike that horse again,” a stern voice said from the edge of the corral.
It was Tito. He strode into the corral and took the whip from Joaquin. His strong, sure hands unfastened the hobbles from my legs. I scrambled to my feet and limped as far from my captors as the fence would allow.
“When you or your brother disobeyed your father, what did he do?” Tito asked Joaquin. His voice was calm, but anger was present in his stiffened shoulders and stern expression.
“Switched us with his belt,” said the boy. “But only me. Rico was always good.”
“And was it the sting of the lash that made you wish to undo your misdeeds?”
Joaquin was silent, staring at the ground. Then he shook his head.
“You cannot train a Spanish horse with iron on iron,” said Tito. “Lesser men train lesser horses that way, but you will shatter that horse’s spine before you break his will.”
A cooling breeze found its way into the pen. I lifted my head to meet it. The serreta cut into my nose, and I squealed with pain. Joaquin looked at me as if he we
re seeing me for the first time.
“A stallion who obeys out of fear will flee instead of standing with his rider in the hour of truth,” said Tito.
Joaquin’s black eyes glittered with tears that would never fall. Tito took something from his pocket and handed it to Joaquin. It was a glass jar filled with amber liquid.
“In training a horse, there is a time for iron and a time for honey,” he said. “Men like your father knew the difference.”
Joaquin took the jar of honey and put it in the pocket of his calfskin vest. Slowly, he walked over to me and removed the crushed saddle from my back. I was too exhausted to challenge him. He slipped off my bridle. There was blood on my bit and in the teeth of the serreta.
Joaquin brought me food and water in the corral. Although a powerful thirst had built in me, I would not approach the brimming pail until he had left the corral.
Later, under a moon as round and bright as one of Ana Sofia’s pearl earrings, the boy returned with the jar that Tito had given him. I bared my teeth in warning as he approached.
“Calvino…” Something in the way he spoke made my ears flicker forward. My nostrils caught a whiff of sweetness. He held no whip, and the spurs were gone from his boots.
I did not move away, but neither did I lower my head to meet his hands. I was a statue of cold marble in the moonlight.
Joaquin anointed the honey onto the bridge of my nose and the cracked corners of my mouth. I began to lick and chew despite myself. Joaquin rested his hand on my nose where it curved slightly, like a falcon’s beak.
His touch reminded me of the serreta, and I flinched away. What reason had I to submit to the will of this boy, who demanded obedience without earning it?
I pushed my nose roughly against his chest and felt his heart beating like a startled rabbit’s. With one toss of my head, I could have flung him high into the air.
Joaquin reached again into the glass jar and held up his palm. It would be easy to claim his fingers as well as the offering. But after a trembling moment, I plunged my nose into his hand and took only the honey.
Joaquin uncapped another jar that held a salve of fat and herbs. He rubbed it into the strained muscles of my neck and back. When I grew tired of his attention, I moved away and cantered in a circle around the corral, showing that neither my stride nor my spirit had been broken.
“You are the equal of your sire in every way,” murmured Joaquin, watching me with his dark eyes. “I can only pray that someday the same will be true of myself.”
Love is not earned with a few drops of honey. But I was bred like Rasula, like my sire, like all Andalusian horses—with no place for fear in my heart when danger had passed.
By the time the light shining down on us had turned from night’s silver to day’s gold, the boy’s hands had learned the power of a softer touch, and the jar of honey had been licked clean.
Trust was built from need on the rugged steppes, and devotion followed. The vaquero and his horse depended on each other for survival. There were rivers to cross, rocky slopes that could shatter the legs of horses or cattle, and ravines filled with spiny broom and stinging nettle. Wolves stalked in the forest, and wild boar could be fiercer than the cattle.
Joaquin’s manner was not always gentle, but he proved many times that he valued my life as equal to his own. Once, I startled a deadly asp viper that was sunning itself on a flat rock on the peninsula. Joaquin saw it before I did. He shouted and let go of the calf he was holding down to be branded. Without hesitation, he stepped between me and the snake and crushed it with the branding iron.
In time, I had a chance to repay his loyalty. When we were driving the cattle home from the mountains, a sideswipe from a bull’s horns caught Joaquin’s leg and swept him out of the saddle.
I turned my body sideways to shield him from the oncoming herd. The cattle plunged around me. Their bodies fell heavily against mine, and their horns raked my sides. I knew that to move would mean the death of my rider. Joaquin was lucky to escape with a badly crushed hand and I with several deep gouges on my flanks.
When we reached the Moreno estate, Ana Sofia and Rico were waiting as they had once waited to greet Joaquin’s father. Ana Sofia’s face grew pale when she saw Joaquin’s bandaged hand. “Mother of Mercy, Chimo,” she said, using her pet name for her elder son.
“It’s all right, Mamá,” said Joaquin. “God has given us all more fingers than we need, has he not?”
Ana Sofia shook her head. “You are so much like your father, living on the goodwill of angels.”
A look of pride crossed Joaquin’s face until Rico said, “I guess Papá’s goodwill ran out.”
When they were younger, the two years between the brothers had not seemed like much. Now Rico looked like a weanling colt beside a fully grown stallion.
The boys struggled to run the hacienda, as the master had seemed to do so effortlessly. The family’s silver trickled thin. Many of the vaqueros left to work on other estates or crossed the ocean to the promised riches of the New World.
It was a relief when April came, the month of spring grass and of the horse fair in Seville. Everyone was eager to see the city after a long, isolated winter on the hacienda. On the day of the fair, Rico hitched Amadeo to Ana Sofia’s stylish two-wheeled cart. Rasula’s new foal was too young to be separated from her, so she stayed behind.
Joaquin rode ahead with the vaqueros, guiding a group of a dozen newly branded weanlings and forty head of yearling cattle.
“Are you sure you don’t want to ride Calvino and let me drive Mamá for once?” he said, circling back to taunt his brother. “The cattle are only babies—they won’t hurt you.”
It was late afternoon when we reached Seville. The narrow streets were packed with carriages, livestock, and running children. I helped to herd the cattle and the weanlings through the crowded square and into the temporary pens outside the city walls.
In a field nearby, a crowd had gathered for acoso y derribo—the trial of running young steers and knocking them down with garrocha poles to test their temperaments. It was also a way for the vaqueros to display their skill and, more importantly, their horses.
The men had traded their everyday clothes for their best: dark wool trousers, flared at the knee, and matching short jackets with colorful shirtwaists. On their heads, they wore felt hats fastened beneath their chins with silk straps.
The vaqueros jeered with laughter as a wiry steer leaped like a trout at the touch of the garrocha pole. “You’re supposed to roll him, Valdez, not scratch his back!”
Joaquin separated a big yearling from the Moreno herd and prodded him over to join the crowd. When our turn came, he set his steer loose in the grassy aisle formed between the rows of onlookers.
Joaquin held me back to give the calf a head start, then spurred me into a gallop. My heart leaped with the thrill of the chase, and in a dozen ground-swallowing strides, I had closed the gap between us. Joaquin lowered his garrocha pole so it was level with the steer’s hindquarters.
With one swift thrust, he sent the animal tumbling to the ground. The steer bellowed in surprise but quickly regained his footing and turned back on us, shaking his small—but still sharp—horns. Joaquin removed his sombrero and held it down so that the steer appeared to be wearing the hat as he circled us. Laughter rippled through the crowd.
But I noticed one person who was not laughing—a man dressed differently from the vaqueros, in a ruffled silk shirt, a short jacket elaborately embroidered with gold thread, and leather polainas over his boots that looked as fine and soft as the velvet of a black mare’s nose. He gazed at me intently from the back of a handsome but rather fat bay stallion.
Joaquin set his spurs into my ribs and tightened the reins. I rose up into a rear and the crowd whistled and applauded. Joaquin tipped his sombrero to the audience and let the steer escape to join the other calves huddled at the far end of the field.
“Joaquin Moreno!” A young woman waved to us from the crowd, si
lver bracelets jingling on her arm.
“Buenos dias, Inez,” said Joaquin, and I recognized the eldest daughter of our neighbor to the south. I had not seen her since the master’s funeral. She was dressed much more festively today, in a ruffled red dress with a rose tucked behind her ear. “How are you? Has your father brought many cattle to the fair?” he asked in an unusually pleasant tone.
“Not this year. He has leased the grazing rights to another fifty hectares of land from the Crown, so he is looking to buy instead of sell,” said Inez. She took the flower from behind her ear and twirled it in her hand. “Is your mother well? How is her health?”
Joaquin and Inez exchanged more pleasantries. Then he reached down to offer her his arm. In a moment, she was sitting on my back, perched sideways behind my saddle.
We rode back into the city. Flowers were strewn across the ground, and their scent mingled with the rich smells of sherry and roasted meat. A band of Gypsy musicians began to strum their guitars and shake their castanets.
People clapped their hands and stomped their feet to keep time, and soon the square was whirling with dance. I was glad to see Ana Sofia among them, laughing as I had not seen her laugh in a long time.
I stepped gaily in time with the music while Joaquin promenaded around the city with Inez. The streetlamps glowed like fireflies on their iron posts, and many people were out strolling or driving in the fair spring evening.
I spotted Rico kicking a leather ball with some other boys in an alleyway.
“He is still just a child…,” murmured Joaquin, reining me to a halt while he watched his brother play.
We returned to the crowded square. Joaquin tied me to a hitching post and helped Inez down from my back. They danced the flamenco while I exchanged whinnies with a fetching mare with colorful silk ribbons braided into her long mane and tail, lamenting the distance between us.
That night, the Moreno family stayed at the home of friends in the city. I slept in the crowded cattle pen, guarded by several vaqueros who made pillows of their saddles. Fires from the Gypsy camps glowed in the distance.
Calvino Page 2
