The Fire Pony

by Rodman Philbrick

  A real cowboy, working cattle and roping steer, I bet he won’t have nothing but a quarter horse under him if he can help it.

  Anyhow, Rick has put the new quarter horse in its own corral, and that horse is acting pretty calm and confident, considering he just got off a long ride in a trailer truck. His coat is this shimmery, golden brown that makes you want to run your hands over him, and the way he holds his head, it’s like he knows he’s important. I’m kind of edging my way along the corrals, because I don’t want to spook him none, when suddenly there’s this voice behind that makes me jump.

  “That’s Pit Stop,” Mr. Jessup says. “He may be the best roping horse in this part of the world.”

  “He looks pretty near perfect,” I say.

  Mr. Jessup looks at me and then nods to himself. “You’ve got an eye for horseflesh, I can tell,” he says. “You want to give me a hand with old Pit Stop?”

  Joe Dilly probably wants me back in the barn, but I guess it’ll be okay if I help Mr. Jessup instead. He puts this fancy roping saddle on Pit Stop and cinches it tight while I hold the halter and stroke his velvety brown throat, and I can tell right off that horse has got a peaceful and gentle disposition, and that he likes to be handled. Some horses, you try and slip the bit into their mouth, they’ll kind of shudder and fight it, but Pit Stop is real polite. It’s like he wants the bit in his mouth.

  I’m just kind of standing there, watching Mr. Jessup ride that rodeo horse around the ring, when he turns to me and says, “Well, he’s about warmed up. How’d you like to be the steer?”

  At first I don’t know what he’s talking about. Then I see this rig set up on wheels, it don’t look like a steer except it has a pair of fake horns up front.

  What you do is push that contraption around the ring and Mr. Jessup throws his rope at it for practice.

  He’s pretty good, too. Mostly he gets his loop around the horns. Once he roped me, which gave us both a good laugh, and Pit Stop, well you never saw a horse move so smooth and certain. He never gets the least bit flustered or nervous, which is partly why he’s a champion roping horse.

  “I guess that’s enough showing off for one day,” Mr. Jessup says, coiling up his rope.

  I figure he’s done, and I’m getting ready to lead Pit Stop back to the corral and rub him down when Mr. Jessup stops me. “Hold on there,” he says, and real quick shortens up the stirrups. He pats the saddle and says, “Go on, take him for a drive.”

  Of course there’s nothing I want more than to try out a real rodeo horse, but for some reason my stomach feels like it’s going down an elevator.

  “You can’t go wrong with this horse,” Mr. Jessup says. “You make a mistake, he’ll still do the right thing.”

  Well, I manage to get into the saddle without falling off, which is a start, and Mr. Jessup hands me the reins and says, “Keep a soft hand.”

  That means don’t yank on the reins.

  “A horse trained like this one is, he’s so used to going through his paces you don’t hardly have to touch the reins at all,” Mr. Jessup says. “You just shift your balance here and there, as natural as you can, and he’ll know what you want.”

  That sounds too good to be true, but sure enough, Pit Stop is a mind reader. Before I’m hardly thinking “go left,” he goes left, and there’s something about the way he moves, it feels like you’re just gliding along. Smooth and gentle and powerful all at the same time.

  Mr. Jessup lets me run that fine roping horse around the ring for a while. I don’t try nothing fancy, just getting a feel of how he moves, and I can tell Mr. Jessup thinks I’m doing okay. “Not bad for a little feller,” he says. “Of course this animal is a size or three too big for you, but you manage to keep your balance in the saddle. You do a lot of riding, do you?”

  “No, sir,” I say. “I’m pretty busy helping Joe.”

  “Uh huh,” he says, and he looks over my shoulder, like something has caught his attention.

  That’s when I notice Joe. He’s standing in a shadow inside the barn and he’s watching me. I don’t know why, but it gives me this chilly feeling in my spine, like he’s mad about something and I don’t know what.

  But then when I get back to the barn all he does is clap me on the shoulder, real friendly, and say, “I should have knowed you was a born rider.”

  Pretty soon I’m out there every day helping Mr. Jessup.

  In the morning he likes to work Pit Stop, what he calls a “tune-up” because he’s got a funny way of talking about horses like they were cars or trucks. Like he’ll say, “I’m gonna take this baby out for a spin,” or “You drive for a while,” or “Ask Joe can he check on the tires,” when he really means check the hooves.

  Just because he talks like that, it don’t mean he don’t like horses, though. He’s always real gentle in the way he handles them, and he hardly ever uses his spurs. He says, “A rider that keeps digging in his spurs is just plain ignorant.”

  Which makes me think I don’t want a pair of spurs after all, even if they do look pretty cool the way they clip on your boots.

  Then one fine morning I go to Pit Stop’s stall and before I can clip on his lead rope, Mr. Jessup calls me out of the barn. “Leave that beast where he is for now!” he yells out. “Come on out here, Roy, I want to get your opinion on some horseflesh!”

  So I go out to the yard and there’s Mr. Jessup with the small trailer hitched up to his Ford pickup, and he’s leading this little golden-colored filly down the ramp. He’s got hold of a soft rope halter and the filly is fighting him some — you can tell she’s pretty scared. She’s also the most beautiful creature you ever saw, so pretty she sort of glows from inside.

  “Roy, I’d like you to meet Lady Luck. She’s almost three and just as green as she can be.”

  Before I know it, he’s stuck that halter rope in my hand and it’s all I can do to keep hold, the way she shies away from me. “Easy,” I say, “easy there,” but she’s not in a mood to listen.

  The filly has a fine, silky white mane and a tail like an Arabian, but she’s small for a three-year-old, and Mr. Jessup says nobody knows for sure, she’s probably part Arabian and part quarter horse, but she’s small enough to be a pony.

  “The little spitfire has been out to grass since she was born,” he says. “Running wild. Never been broke or handled. You got your hands full, Roy — look how she prances!”

  I can’t hardly look because she’s yanking me around so much. Mr. Jessup just stands back and watches — he’s waiting to see what I’ll do. Finally I get her settled enough so I can get up close and breathe into her nose, which is a trick Joe taught me, and what do you know, that gets her attention. She holds stock-still for just a moment, sniffing my breath. I work my hand up on the halter, where it wraps around her nose, and that filly, she starts to shiver and roll her eyes white, but she quits trying to pull on the halter rope.

  “Lady,” I say. “You sure are pretty, but you got to learn some manners.”

  Mr. Jessup is chuckling. “I think she likes you,” he says.

  Lady’s looking me over with those big brown eyes of hers and I’m talking soft, not saying anything but just getting her used to the sound of my voice, and letting her smell me. There comes a moment when I can feel her change, right there in my hands. All those tensed-up muscles kind of relax and she decides to trust me.

  “I’ll be darned,” Mr. Jessup says.

  “You going to put a saddle on her?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says. “You are.”

  “Do you mean it?” I ask.

  Mr. Jessup is looking us both over, me and Lady, and he nods his head to himself, like he’s come to a decision. “If you can ride this pony, you can keep her,” he says.

  Then he starts to walk away, shaking his head. Before I can say anything he turns around and says, “More likely she’ll keep you.”

  * * *

  What happened is, I got so excited about Lady that I clean forgot about Joe. He’s
in the back stalls, working on an ornery stallion that split his back hooves, and I’m supposed to help him, soon as I’m finished with Mr. Jessup.

  Well, Mr. Jessup goes off to tune up his rodeo horse, and I go into the small training ring with Lady Luck. I put this long lead on her halter, they call it a gyp rope, and just let her prance around the ring, feeling me there on the other end of the lead.

  She’s got a real springy step, like she don’t hardly like to let her feet touch the ground, and she keeps rearing up and shaking her head, as if she wants me to know who’s boss.

  “Go on and run!” I tell her, circling around and paying out that rope to keep up with her. “Run till you fly!”

  I swear, I almost expect that little horse to sprout wings, she’s so light and airy on her feet. She keeps looking over at me and whinnying, like she’s making conversation. Mostly she’s saying, Look at me! Just look at me!

  It’s pretty cool, how you can feel a horse through the rope, as if the rope itself is alive, and it makes me so anxious to ride her I’m practically shaking inside. I feel like the anvil when Joe whacks it with his hammer, and it vibrates and hums. But you can’t just throw a saddle on a wild horse or the horse will throw the saddle, or you, or even worse she might hurt herself. So you have to do it gradual, and let ’em get used to the idea.

  That’s what finally gets me thinking about Joe, because I want to ask him what should I do and how do I do it, and I want him to love Lady as much as I do already, and we barely been acquainted for an hour.

  So I’m hanging on to that wild filly and thinking about Joe Dilly when suddenly I look over and he’s standing there inside the barn, watching me. Man, it looks like his eyes are on fire, but that must be the sunlight or something.

  Whatever it is, I accidently let go the gyp rope and Lady just plain goes nuts. She’s running in about three directions at once, with the gyp rope whipping around, and before you can say jackrabbit that rope has caught up in her hind legs and she goes down and rolls over on her back with the rope all tangled everywhere and somehow wrapped around her neck. She’s still going crazy, too, and she’s got this wild look in her eyes like she can’t breathe.

  I’m just standing there like a total idiot, like a darn fence post stuck in the ground, and my heart is beating so hard I can’t hardly see.

  Next thing you know, Joe leaps over the fence rail and he’s got his knife out, the wicked curved blade he cuts hooves with, and he leaps right on Lady where she’s rolling and struggling on the ground. Somebody is screaming like a girl — me, as it turns out — and then the gyp rope comes loose and Lady quits struggling and lies there in the dirt, panting and getting her breath.

  By the time I figure out how to move, Joe has her back up on her feet. She’s wobbly but okay.

  Joe, he’s covered with sweat and dirt and a little blood from where he nicked his finger on the knife. He just looks at me and shakes his head.

  “You’re supposed to break a horse,” he says, “not kill it.”

  Something gets into Joe Dilly after he saves that filly, and he’s so agitated he don’t want to go into supper with the rest of the hands.

  “Mr. Jessup says he’d give you that pony? Now why’d he do a thing like that, if he knows we’re leaving come the fall?”

  Joe isn’t talking to me, he’s talking to himself the way he does, scuffling around the bunkhouse and running his fingers through his hair and looking like something is about to jump out of a corner and go for him, he’s that spooked.

  I’m sitting there on the edge of my bunk, staring at the wood stove even though it ain’t lit, just so’s I won’t look too close at Joe and get him more riled. Finally he pats me on the back and says, “Come on, Roy, whatcha waiting for, get your lazy backside up and let’s go.”

  He’s already at the screen door, waiting for me.

  “Where we going, Joe?” He’s got that look, like maybe he wants to hit the road and never come back.

  “Just for a ride is all. You coming or what?”

  I can’t let Joe leave on his own, no matter how much I want to stay, so I get in that old pickup. Joe kicks it over and scoots out of the Bar None before I hardly get settled in the truck. Soon as the wheels hit the paved road he’s feeling better. He’s whistling and lighting up a cigarette and he’s got that old Joe Dilly sparkle in his eyes. “What do you say, sports fans? You up for mystery meat surprise? I hear they got buffalo burger, and snake on a stick. You ever eat snake, Roy?”

  I shake my head.

  “They say it tastes like chicken, but they’re lying. Snake tastes exactly like snake.”

  “Where we going, Joe?” I ask.

  “You’ll see,” he says, acting like he’s got a secret.

  I’m thinking maybe I had it right about hitting the road, and I’ll never see that pony again, when all of a sudden Joe pulls into this old gas station. There’s a creaky lunch counter there, looks like something you see in an old magazine, but they have some hot dogs in the steamer, and we get a couple to go.

  “Don’t forget the mouse turd and the weepers,” Joe says to the old guy behind the counter.

  “What?”

  “Mustard and onions,” Joe says.

  “I get it,” the old man says, but he don’t crack a smile.

  Me, I just keep my mouth shut and go with a little ketchup.

  We’re almost out the door when Joe says, “Oops, I almost forgot,” and he goes back in for a six-pack of beer.

  I don’t say nothing about the beer, but Joe notices how I’m not looking at where it is on the seat between us. “Hell, Roy, there’s nothing to worry about. Just a couple of beers is all. I been working hard, right? Ain’t I been good? Couple beers never hurt a man on a Saturday night. Hell no.”

  I hate it when he drinks, but I don’t say nothing and he turns on the radio and starts singing along with this crummy old song and looking at me sideways.

  “I’m an old cowhand on the Rio Grande,” he sings, making his voice go screechy-high and funny. “Just an old cowhand, on the Rio Grande.” He keeps singing and making faces and sticking his tongue out at me until I can’t help it, I’m laughing.

  “That’s more like it,” he says. “Couple of good old boys in a pickup truck, that’s how the West was won.”

  Another couple of miles down the road and he turns off onto this dirt trail, nothing but a couple of ruts overgrown with tall, spiky grass. He puts the truck in low gear and we bump along, and it’s all I can do to keep my head from banging against the top of the cab. “Where we going, Joe?” I ask, spitting out the dust that’s already mixed up with the hot dog.

  “Top of the world!” he says. “Put on your oxygen mask, ’cause the air is getting thin!”

  We go pretty high into those mountains, climbing along this switchback trail, until we come around the bend and there’s a flat area that overlooks the whole valley. The sky is full of that thin blue twilight you get on a summer evening, and it hovers over everything, like maybe the sun will never get around to setting and the light will last forever.

  “Cool,” I say.

  “Cool? You mean you’re cold?”

  “You know what I mean,” I say, and it really is cool, how you can see the Bar None from here, and the old gas station, and a bunch of other ranches, all laid out like on a checkerboard, except the Bar None has more squares than most of the other ranches.

  “Take a deep breath,” says Joe, getting out of the truck and stretching out his arms. “What do you smell?”

  “Pine trees, I guess. And dirt.”

  “Okay, what don’t you smell? I’ll tell you what — you don’t smell horses.”

  “I like the smell of horses.”

  “That’s not the point,” he says. He gets the beer out of the truck and sets it on the tailgate, so we can both sit and look over the valley. “The point is, this is another world up here. We could be anybody, sitting here. Anybody at all. Down there we’re Horseshoe Joe and his little brother Roy
. Up here, why, we could be princes. We could be kings!”

  Joe has downed a couple of beers before you know it, and he’s getting that look on his face that means he’s changing inside. When he lights up a cigarette and cups his hand around the match, the fire is in his eyes again, like it was when he watched me from the barn. It’s a scary look. I’m not afraid of Joe — he’d never hurt me, ever — but I’m scared of what he might do.

  “You’re shivering, Roy,” Joe says.

  “I’m okay.”

  He stands up and wipes his hands on his pants and says, “We got to warm ourselves up.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t, Joe!”

  He’s already kicking some brush together. “Nothing to worry about, sports fans,” he says. “Just a small campfire. No law against a small campfire, is there?”

  “You promised,” I say. “You promised!”

  Joe looks at me over the beer and he kind of freezes for a moment. “Listen here,” he says. “What happened in Montana, that was an accident. It just got out of hand, is all.”

  “Let’s go home,” I say. “We don’t need no campfire. Please?”

  But it’s like Joe won’t listen to what he don’t want to hear. He drinks the beer fast and then he stomps around and gathers up these old pieces of wood. Mostly tree branches and twigs and stuff. He kicks it all up together and before you know it he’s crouching down and flicking his cigarette lighter. When that don’t work he curses. “That darn wood is green,” he says. “As green as that darn pony.”

  Then he opens the hood of the truck and squirts some gas from the carburetor into an empty beer bottle and he pours that on the wood and that does it, the fire takes off with a woof! that lifts his hat clean off his head.

  When the flames are going good he sets back on the tailgate with me and it’s like something has switched off inside him and he’s the same old Joe again. “I didn’t mean nothing about that pony, Roy. She’s a fine animal, and it’s right you should want to keep her.”