Wild About Horses

by Lawrence Scanlan

  The cattle moved like an amoeba, an amorphous mass in the middle but when parts darted in one direction the mass was inclined to follow. Cowpokery is about nipping such projections in the bovine bud. Luckily the herd seemed never to move resolutely or quickly, and the horses seemed attuned to the task. This was easy.

  Cow no. 9 corrected that impression. While Keith and I fixed fences (actually, Keith worked the pliers, while I took in the glories of hill and sky), the others moved no. 9 down to the corral for an inoculation. Then came the news that no. 9 and her calf had leaped a fence and rejoined the herd.

  Our work was just beginning. The wrangler, a shy woman named Cynndae McGowan, kept disappearing into gulches and behind hills at a full gallop in pursuit of no. 9 and calf, both creatures now thoroughly disenchanted and moving both quickly and resolutely. Like two pinto-colored pinballs. Finally, no. 9 was sequestered, thanks more to Cynndae and Keith than to helpers.

  Day two. The cattle drive was under way. We followed lonesome roads to a corral, where the cattle were to spend one night before continuing. “What’s the best part of being a rancher?” I asked Keith along the way, our horses walking in tandem. As in the movies, there was ample opportunity to ride up alongside a fellow cowpoke and chaw. “I’m doing it,” he said with a smile.

  My own smiles came harder. By noon I was a wishbone, close to snapping. Another rider offered to swap Lightning for his horse, Gina, and I felt instant relief. I had ridden a zeppelin and was now comfortably mounted on a pencil.

  We stopped for sandwiches at an elbow in the road where the cows bunched. Some horses were tethered, some hobbled around us, as we reclined in the high grass. As they grazed and snorted and blew, I thought of the ancient Germanic priests who divined good and bad omens from the neighing and snorting of snow-white horses. That day, the omens seemed as good as the sun was warm.

  Gina was a chestnut mare, calm and dutiful. When, later, a gravel truck came on at a dusty clip, the cattle parted like the Red Sea and sought the ditches. I did not, thinking the trucker would slow. He did not. Gina’s eyes bulged (much as mine had earlier in the day when I sampled chewing tobacco) and we began a skittish reverse on the road that I worried would send us tumbling backward into the ditch. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” I told her while touching her neck, though it sure as hell was not. Then, suddenly, the accursed truck was gone, taking the twentieth century with it.

  The sounds of a cattle drive seemed out of time but oddly familiar, even comforting: the clip-clop of hooves, the lowing of cattle, the idiosyncratic urgings of cowpokes.

  “Ssss, ssss, ssss, ssss!”

  “Come on, ladies!”

  “Hya, hya!”

  “Outa there, 43!”

  At day’s end, LeAnne retrieved us and the horses in a long horse trailer and we retraced roads just traveled. I noted the same patches of brilliant yellow canola; the same ducks, bottoms up, in ponds; the same huge horizon. But everything seemed remote — a topography under glass. The world from a truck was not at all the world from a horse’s back.

  Day three. The day began at 5:30 A.M. “I can give you a slow but smart horse,” Keith had said the night before, after a fine feed of Alberta steak and saskatoon berry pie, “or I can give you a fast but stupid horse. Which do you prefer?” I opted for Mabe: dumb speed.

  I liked Mabe. We talked a lot. Mabe would agree, for example, to descend into a damp ditch to move a heifer along, but she would grumble about it, her ears flat against her head and her tail swishing circles to signal her displeasure.

  By mid-morning we were in high country, approaching thirty-eight hundred feet above sea level. We ascended a steep rise, and down, far down, in the next valley other cows, other cowboys — Keith’s brother’s herd — traversed a meadow. They looked like plastic miniatures and the land swallowed all sound of them. Only fence lines, running up and down the vast hills like stitches on a belly, signaled that humankind had ever staked a claim on this wild country.

  Keith Lane’s forebears had been raising cattle in the Porcupine Hills since 1909. How strange my nostalgia for a life I had only read about. Was it because the cowboy life is so physical and in some ways unchanged from the nineteenth century? At a corral flanked by hills so cragged and steep I wanted to call them mountains, the Lane brothers’ herds blended and rested before the final push to the forest reserve.

  Beyond that point, roads ended and a new world of lush meadows began. I trailed a cow and her calf as they strayed into grass up to my stirrups. I committed to memory the swish as Mabe cut a swath through the grass; the rising sweet smell of wild mint, with its purple spiked bloom; the brown-eyed susans and the rampant color of all those wildflowers. Contentment washed over me. I loved the quietude and the sweet simplicity of our task: move cattle, at the speed of cattle, to where they must go. It seemed a cleansing thing to be on horseback, neither wholly at work nor entirely at play but in the blessed middle.

  That evening, back on the porch of the Willow Lane, we all sat and for hours talked horses. We recalled the moods of our mounts that day, we mused on their intelligence (or lack of it) and we heard horse stories and horse philosophy from Cynndae and Keith — while the horses themselves hobnobbed in the fields beyond the gate, tails spanking flies, heads down to the grass, now and again breaking into a playful canter, manes flying like streamers in the wind.

  To ride in near-wild places is to remember a time when individuals lived and died by their partnership with a horse. “The affection between man and mount,” wrote the authors of The American Cowboy, “cemented through months of sharing privation and danger and adventure, was therefore an almost human thing; and many a cowboy … would gladly share the last of his water canteen rather than see his equine friend go thirsty.”

  Though I rode her only a few days, I got to like Mabe — her spirit, her cantankerousness, even her impatience to get a move on. But what happens between horse and human when they spend years in each other’s company, as Aime Felix Tschiffely did?

  The Swiss-born Tschiffely, thirty years old when his trip began in 1925, had been teaching at an English-American school in Argentina for nine years but, as he put it, had fallen “into a groove.” (Fallen “into a rut,” we would say today.) The notion of a great trek had fired his imagination for years. A photograph of him in his book Tschiffely’s Ride shows an agreeable, freckled man, his arms crossed, his shirt sleeves rolled up thickly, past the elbows, and on his head a wide-brimmed high hat. If you ever read as a child the Curious George series (written during Tschiffely’s time), think of George’s friend, “the man with the yellow hat.” That’s the kind of hat Tschiffely wore on his adventure.

  He was a rugged traveler and an expert horseman, but he could never have accomplished the journey without his two “old pals” — Mancha (“the stained one,” in Spanish) and Gato (“the cat”).

  Before the trip began Tschiffely had the good fortune to encounter Dr. Emilio Solanet, an authority on, and breeder of, Criollo horses. They were descended from fine Spanish, Arab and Barb stock brought to what is now Buenos Aires in 1535 by the Spanish general Don Pedro Mendoza. When the Indians slaughtered the first Spanish settlers, the horses took to the countryside. Hunted by wild animals and the indigenous peoples, toughened by cold and intense heat, drought and hunger, the Criollos survived — but only the strongest among them. Their feats of endurance fell into legend. The two horses whom Solanet recommended to Tschiffely were only partially broken in, though they were not — at fifteen and sixteen years of age — at all young.

  Neither horse was terribly graceful, but each had bright intelligent eyes, a thick neck, sturdy legs and a formidable spirit. Just getting to Dr. Solanet’s ranch required the two Criollos to travel more than a thousand miles and to forage on sparse vegetation along the way. Mancha and Gato, the author reports in the wonderfully detailed Tschiffely’s Ride, were “the wildest of the wild.” Bringing them to a stable in the small hours was a monumental task, for streets, houses and cars
all terrified them. Tschiffely thought he was doing the horses a favor by offering them the finest alfalfa, barley and oats. They declined those delicacies and supped, instead, on the coarse straw he gave them as bedding.

  Mancha, sixteen, was a pinto — red with splashes of white, his face almost entirely so — but pintos were rare in South America and other horses spooked when they saw him. His ears always moving, his eyes always fiery, Mancha had the wariness of a watchdog, and whenever strangers came near he would lift one leg in warning, flatten his ears and stretch his neck threateningly. When Mancha wanted something from Aime, the horse let him know by nickering or neighing, rubbing his forehead against his master or nipping him. He would let no one but Aime saddle or ride him and if anyone else tried to, he would resist by bucking and kicking.

  Gato was what Tschiffely called coffee colored; we might say buckskin. The two horses were inseparable, but Gato, at fifteen years, was clearly the junior of the two. He never retaliated when Mancha boxed him. Gato, Tschiffely wrote, was a willing mount, the kind who, “if ridden by a brutal man, would gallop until he dropped dead. His eyes had a childish, dreamy look, seeming to observe everything with wondering surprise.”

  Tschiffely summed up their characters this way: if the horses could fathom human speech, Gato was the one to tell your troubles to, Mancha was the one you took for a night on the town.

  Few horses could have done what they did — cross deserts, navigate dizzying mountain paths, penetrate tropical jungles. They were attacked by vampire bats, gnats and mosquitoes, they endured bitter mountain winds and steamy jungle heat and lived on the most meager fodder. Some of the heart-breakingly steep inclines they climbed were littered with the bleached bones of mules and burros who had perished trying to make the ascent. One desert they crossed in Peru was called Matacaballo, meaning “horse killer,” but it seemed nothing would stop them.

  8.3 A. F. Tschiffely and Mancha greeted in New York, 1928 after a 10,000-mile, two-and-a-half-year journey. (photo credit 8.3)

  They carried no water, even across deserts. Tschiffely reasoned that because water is heavy and awkward to carry, they could travel lighter and faster without it. They drank only when they chanced across water in a lake or river or village.

  The three could have perished on innumerable occasions. Gato, who had an unerring instinct for quicksand and deadly mudholes but who was perhaps a little too sure of himself on narrow mountain paths, once lost his footing and was skimming down the mountain toward certain death when a tree brought him to a shuddering halt. Gato had the good sense not to stir, but he neighed pitifully to Mancha while Tschiffely gingerly hiked down the slope and carefully unsaddled the trembling horse. With rope and with help, he was able to rescue the horse, but it was a narrow escape.

  If Tschiffely saved Gato’s life, both horses returned the favor many times. In one incident, Gato refused to go forward, and even the use of spurs only caused him to rear and snort. Finally, an Indian chanced by and told Tschiffely that he stood on the edge of a very dangerous mudhole. The mystery was how the horse knew, for no such mudholes existed in the horse’s home territory.

  The three travelers nearly drowned in raging rivers, and the crossing of canyons on narrow suspension bridges, some of them 450 feet long and only four feet wide, took much courage and horse sense.

  Aime would walk behind Mancha, holding his tail and talking to calm him. By the time they reached the middle of one sagging and particularly flimsy bridge, it was swaying like a rope under a tightrope walker. Mancha was clever enough to stop until the swaying ceased, before proceeding. Had he lost nerve, bolted or tried to turn back, it would have been the end of them all.

  In Ecuador, where the trails were no more than thin lines of muddy porridge, Tschiffely passed the saddest, vilest pack animals he had ever seen. Their sufferings, he said, were best left undescribed, but suffice to say “my conception of hell is to be a pack-animal of the Andes.”

  Along one such trail, Tschiffely came across an odd, mud-covered shape alongside a mule similarly encased in mud. The shape turned out to be a man who wanted to know what Tschiffely was doing “in these blessed [he meant, I think, Godforsaken] parts.” When Tschiffely replied that he was traveling for pleasure, the muddy fellow — a surveyor — thanked Tschiffely for saving his life. The wretched surveyor had considered shooting himself, he said, for being such a fool, “but now, having met one bigger than myself, I shan’t do it!”

  Though the horses were quite attached to Tschiffely, the vestiges of their wildness never left them. Mancha, by lifting his head and sniffing the air, gave ample warning of other humans in the vicinity. The horses could smell panthers and wild animals a long way off and called pitifully to Tschiffely if he staked them in the jungle far from the hut where he slept. And so all slept in proximity. When in Mexico, Gato had to be sent by train to the city for treatment of an infected knee, the departure was hard on all three. “I had a big lump in my throat,” Tschiffely wrote, “when the train disappeared around a curve, for I really believed I would never see my dear Gato again.” Mancha and Gato must have had similar thoughts since both horses called out desperately to each other.

  The horses took turns as pack animals, and though Tschiffely picked up the odd fellow traveler along the way, for the most part Mancha and Gato remained his only companions. He talked to them a great deal, and they seemed to understand some things. If he said ¿Qué hay? (“What’s up?”) they would prick their ears and look nervously about. If he said puma, they would sniff the air for lion. They knew that chuck-chuck meant food, that agua meant water; they would accelerate to his vamos and stop at bueno.

  Tschiffely was later asked countless times if he found the journey in the wilds lonely. Never, he said. “The company of a horse or a dog is a wonderful thing, and with Mancha and Gato I never felt the want of any better.” Feeding and looking after them, he said, was a reward in itself, and he never tired of talking to them, nor they, it seemed, of listening.

  Their journey ended in New York City, where the mayor welcomed them, and in Washington, D.C., where they were greeted by President Calvin Coolidge. In New York, while Tschiffely was busy with lectures and public appearances, one well-meaning army sergeant attempted to ride Mancha to give him some exercise. The man later said that the “hell-pet” had “gone off like a stick of dynamite.”

  To complete the journey and get home safely, Tschiffely needed a great deal of luck — right to the end. He gave a last-minute lecture to the National Geographic Society about his extraordinary expedition, and the delay caused him to forgo passage on the ill-fated Vestris, whose sinking claimed more than a hundred lives.

  By then the two horses and their rider had become true celebrities, and they were featured at an international horse show in New York. They returned to Buenos Aires on the Pan America, a ship normally off-limits to livestock. The head of the company declared an exception for Mancha and Gato: in their own way, they traveled first-class and free of charge.

  Tschiffely briefly considered someone’s suggestion that the horses be put in a public park in Argentina but wisely reconsidered it. The two Criollos got the freedom they deserved and both would live well into their thirties. “As I write these last lines,” he wrote in Tschiffely’s Ride, “I can see them galloping over the rolling plains until they disappear out of sight in the vastness of the pampas … Good luck … to you, old pals, Mancha and Gato.”

  Barbara Whittome must possess a little Tschiffelyan wanderlust of her own. In the summer of 1995, she left her home in Suffolk, England, to travel to the tiny village of Alexeikovo, near Volgograd, where she bought four Cossack ponies, intending to breed them with her own Arab stock back home.

  In her late forties and a rider since the age of three, she had heard that Cossack ponies were the toughest in the world and decided to test the claim by embarking on a six-month, twenty-five-hundred-mile journey across the plains of Russia. Besides, she added, “I wasn’t in a hurry.”

  In Ale
xeikovo, she first rode Pompeii, a fifteen-three-hand palomino stallion. “I had a connection with that stallion the first time I rode him,” she told me. “We charged across the snow-covered steppes and it was love at first sight. I can’t explain it. It’s never happened before.” To convey his character, Whittome cited a British fictional series from the 1920s called Just William, about a little imp who bears no malice toward anyone but who gets himself into the worst sort of trouble. Pompeii, Whittome said, was just like William. He was not fit when she purchased him, but the journey and the years since have improved his appearance mightily. He still loves long rides, and has lost none of his Williamness.

  8.4 Barbara Whittome and Pompeii in England after their trek across the plains of Russia in 1995. (photo credit 8.4)

  Whittome bought Pompeii and three other ponies “for peanuts,” though far above the going local price, and headed west, but she soon discarded one pony given to biting and kicking. She took turns riding Pompeii, a black mare named Masha and a gray mare named Malishka. Whittome began the journey with Cossack guides, reputed to be tough horsemen, but they whined so much about saddle sores and the rugged pace that she left them behind and sometimes used a compass to guide her, instead. For most of the way, a companion followed behind in a truck bearing oats (the horses went through fifty sacks) and camping equipment.

  And while the ponies themselves were relatively cheap to purchase, the expedition cost close to $90,000 and forced her (now former) husband, Giles, to sell off his antique-gun and classic-car collections.

  Along the way a friend named Alison Lea, then later, Whittome’s daughter Katie Farmer, joined her. There were some terrifying moments. Russian thugs on motorbikes tried to rob their camp, but the mounted women fought them off, and Pompeii, with Barbara up, even trampled one would-be robber. Giles later scored it, “Girls on horseback 1, Russian thugs on motorbike 0.”