The Fire Pony

by Rodman Philbrick

  Mr. Jessup stands back and looks her over. “We could keep fussing with her,” he says. “Eventually she’ll have to give up. Or we could switch gears and go with a hackamore rig for now.”

  A hackamore is like a soft rope halter. Instead of putting a bit behind the horse’s teeth, it tightens up around the nose and mouth. Some trainers like to use it from the start, so the inside of the horse’s mouth won’t get hard from the bit. Anyhow, we go with a hackamore and Lady don’t like it much, but she don’t fight us real hard as we slip it over her nose.

  “There,” says Mr. Jessup. You can see where the beads of sweat have collected along his upper lip, which seems to happen when he concentrates real hard. “Don’t be afraid to be firm,” he says to me. “She has to learn that you’re the boss.”

  Which is easier said than done, as it turns out. She lets me get up in the saddle okay, but the first time I pull on the reins she fights me and skitters sideways, bumping up against the rail. It’s all I can do to keep from falling off.

  “Drop the reins,” Mr. Jessup says. “See what she does.”

  The last thing I want to do is drop those reins, because what if she gets it into her mind to buck me off? Cowboys, they don’t think anything of it, getting thrown, but there’s nothing about falling off that I like. Still, I do what Mr. Jessup wants and let the reins drop, and what happens is exactly nothing.

  Lady just stands there. Then she lowers her head and sniffs at the reins. When she’s satisfied she lifts her head and looks at me, as if to say, Oh, is that all? What was I making such a fuss about?

  “Pick ’em up slow,” Mr. Jessup says. “That’s it. Now instead of pulling back, lay the reins against the side of her neck and give her a little nudge with your heels. And remember to shift your weight back in the saddle.”

  When I give her a nudge, Mr. Jessup taps behind her back feet with his long, stiff-handled whip. Of course he don’t whip her with it, he just taps, so she’ll start to go forward, which she does. I lay them reins against her neck and she turns the opposite way, with a little encouragement from Mr. Jessup, and before you know it, she’s walking around the ring.

  “Ha!” cries Mr. Jessup, and he snaps the whip in the air.

  Lady hears that, and all of a sudden she’s trotting, keeping her feet high to get away from where the whip is tickling her ankles. I’m taken by surprise almost as much as she is, but I manage to stay in the middle of the saddle and keep hold of her with my knees, like you’re supposed to, and try not to look scared, even though I am, a little bit.

  “Stop her now!” Mr. Jessup yells out, and I almost forget what I’m supposed to do, until it comes to me. You have to squeeze with your legs and pull back on the reins and shout “Ho!”

  I have to do it three or four times before she figures out what I want, with a little help from Mr. Jessup.

  “That’s enough for today,” he says, putting away his training whips. “You go on and help Joe. Tomorrow we’ll take her out on the trail, see how she behaves when she’s outside a corral.”

  “You mean it?”

  He shrugs. “Why not?”

  I go right into the stable and tell Joe and he says, “That’s nice,” and then he hands me the shovel and the broom. “Go ahead, Hercules. You put the hay in one end, now clean up after the other.”

  I’m in such a fine mood it don’t matter how many stalls got to be mucked out, because all I can think about is taking Lady out on the trail. In real life I’m inside the barn, shoveling up about a million tons of fresh manure, but inside my head I’m gliding over the meadows on Lady, and we’re running so fast that we don’t weigh more than a feather or two, and the amazing thing is how smooth and graceful it seems, like we don’t touch the ground at all. Like I’m part of the horse, or she’s part of me.

  Of course, this is all daydream kind of stuff. Except it feels so real. It makes me happy but I figure it won’t last long. You can’t hold on to a thing like that.

  * * *

  Later on, after I finish up my chores and we chow down, me and Joe sit around the bunkhouse. He’s perched up in this old ratty leather armchair he favors, smoking one cigarette after another, like something is on his nerves. Times like this I just keep quiet, so I don’t set him off. You don’t fool with Joe Dilly when he’s got something on his mind.

  After a while he says, “They do give me slack, here at the Bar None, you got to give ’em that much. That’s all I ever want, just let me do things my own way.”

  “They like you, Joe,” I say.

  “Ain’t being liked I’m talking about,” he says. “It’s being left alone to do the job the best way you see fit. Mostly, as you know, I don’t think much of bosses and owners, but Rick and Mr. Jessup, they’re okay in my book. So far.”

  That’s a change of pace, Joe saying he don’t mind the boss, and I take it as a good sign. Maybe that fire I saw in his eyes was just the sun catching him, and he really is over and done with getting in trouble, like he promised. Except for that time up on the mountain, he’s been real calm since we come to the Bar None, and he don’t seem ready to fight at the drop of a hat, like he used to.

  I’m lying sideways on my bunk, counting the knotholes in the pine boards but not keeping track, kind of waiting to see what he’ll say next. Even though part of me is on edge, it’s real peaceful. I like hanging out in the bunkhouse, just me and Joe, with the air so still outside you can hear the horses snorting and snuffling, and the soft click of their hooves on the hard floor, and the silvery sound of cool water trickling into the troughs. Somewhere off in the distance there’s an owl hooting, and it gives me a nice little shiver — I don’t know why, but that wild bird sound always makes me feel lonesome in the best way.

  After a long while, Joe gets real calm and puts away his cigarettes and says, “You better turn in, Roy. You’re going riding with the boss, you’ll want a clear head.”

  “What if she bucks me, Joe?”

  He looks at me and nods kind of slow. “I don’t think she will, from what I seen of her. But if she does buck, you just hang on and try to turn her if you can. That’s all you can do. Sooner or later every horse stops.”

  “Maybe you could come with us,” I say. I been waiting all day to ask him and this is the first chance I had, when his mood seems okay.

  But Joe shakes his head real firm. “I ain’t been invited. Besides, I got more than I can handle such as it is, without taking a day off to tour the back country.”

  “But you don’t mind if I do?”

  “Why should I mind?” he says. “It ain’t right a boy your age should have to work like a full-growed man. You go on and have a good time for once.”

  Sooner or later I fall asleep and I’m pretty sure there’s a grizzly bear in my dreams. This big old quiet bear sits up almost like a man on his haunches and he’s watching as me and Lady canter by, and he raises his paw as if to say, “You haven’t got a worry in the world. Nothing can catch you, not even me.”

  It don’t scare me, that dream about the bear. Matter of fact, I kind of like it.

  You get the impression, coming over the ridge, that the Bar None goes on forever, but when I ask Mr. Jessup how big the ranch is, he says, “Big enough,” and leaves it at that.

  We been out on the trail for a mile or more before the sun comes up and turns everything the color of pink cotton candy, the kind will make your teeth hurt with sweetness. Mr. Jessup stops his rodeo horse and takes a deep breath, like he wants to inhale that pretty pink color, which before long starts to turn into that shade of orange you get when you crack open a fresh cantaloupe.

  Maybe I’m thinking about candy and melons because we ain’t had breakfast yet. The way it works, you have to get up early in the morning if you want to ride the back country at the Bar None. I figure Lady was so easy to saddle because she was still asleep, and here she is following along behind Pit Stop and Marzy Doats like it’s the most natural thing in the world. You already heard about Pit Stop, and Rick’
s horse is called Marzy Doats, from some dumb old song I never heard before. He’s this old, toffee-colored gelding with a star blaze on his forehead and white stockings, and Rick says he’s a real gentleman with manners better than most people.

  After Mr. Jessup gets a sniff of the sunrise, he giddyaps his horse and says, “Let’s get a move on, I smell coffee.”

  I take a deep breath, but all I smell is green grass and morning dew and a couple of fresh horse buns old Marzy Doats left steaming on a rock. But pretty soon I figure out that’s just the way Mr. Jessup talks about things, because what he means about smelling the coffee is that it’s time to make some. There’s this spot further on down the trail, just where it starts to level out at the bottom of the valley, where stones have been laid out in a circle, and you can see the black and soot from a lot of campfires.

  We stop there and tie off the horses while Rick unpacks all this cooking gear from his saddlebags.

  “I bet you worked up an appetite,” Mr. Jessup says. “What’d we bring for grub? Hardtack and beans?”

  “Cold beans,” says Rick. “And moldy biscuits.”

  You’d never know they’re fooling to hear them talk, but they are, because before you know it Rick is brewing up a pot of boiled coffee over an open fire and he’s got a big iron skillet spattering with slabs of bacon and fresh eggs and brown bread from a can. Rick puts evaporated milk in his tin mug of coffee, but I take mine black just like Mr. Jessup, and I like it fine.

  Nothing ever smelled so good as that thick bacon sizzling away, and like Mr. Jessup says, we’re about ready to chew the saddles off the horses before Rick heaps it all in these dented tin plates he carries around in his saddlebags. “What you do is mush up the eggs on the brown bread and pick your teeth with the bacon,” he says. “Go on and try it.”

  He don’t have to tell me twice. We set ourselves down around the campfire and just dive into that food and I’m wishing Joe Dilly would have come along, because he sure would get a kick out of this. How clear and right and simple everything seems when you’re outside under a big sky, and you’re hungry, and there’s plenty of good food to eat.

  “You notice how sure-footed that pony was, coming down the steep part of the trail?” Rick says to Mr. Jessup.

  Mr. Jessup sips his coffee and nods. “I noticed,” he says.

  “You can’t teach an animal to be sure-footed,” Rick says to me. “They have it or they don’t.”

  “Lady’s the best pony in the world,” I say.

  Rick and Mr. Jessup look at each other and smile. Rick says, “I remember my first horse, Serita. She was a broodmare that couldn’t foal no more, so she wasn’t worth but a few dollars. I sure did love her though.”

  “Mine was Bart,” Mr. Jessup says. “A mustang stallion. I never did break him. He broke me.”

  “More coffee?” asks Rick.

  “Don’t mind if I do,” says Mr. Jessup.

  “Fill ’er up,” I say, holding out my mug, too, and for some reason that makes them both laugh. They give me the coffee, though, and another helping of bacon, and by the time we climb back up on the horses I’m about ready to burst.

  We go along slow until the food shakes out and settles, like Rick says, and all I have to do is keep my balance and look around to see Lady don’t step in a gopher hole. She sees ’em before I do, though, and picks her way around.

  Mr. Jessup rides on ahead a little ways, and that’s when I notice he’s got his own personal way of riding. He sits up real straight in the saddle and his feet kind of pedal in the stirrups, like he’s walking. I try to do it, but it won’t work for me, so I go back to my own way.

  It’s just starting to really warm up so you can see the heat making the ground blurry when Mr. Jessup points up to a bluff and says, “If you don’t mind, I’m going to pay my respects.”

  Rick stops his horse while Mr. Jessup rides on up to the bluff on his own. When he’s most of the way up there Rick says to me, “That’s where he and Sadie and little Nick used to picnic.”

  When I don’t say nothing, Rick takes off his hat and goes, “I guess maybe you didn’t know that Mr. Jessup had a wife and child that died. Road accident. Hit by a drunk cowboy.”

  I don’t know what to say about that, because it seems so awful. But maybe that’s why Mr. Jessup sometimes looks like he’s listening real hard when there’s nothing to hear.

  “Little Nick would be about your age now,” Rick says. “Don’t mention I told you unless he brings it up himself.”

  “I won’t,” I say.

  The funny thing is, when Mr. Jessup comes back down from the bluff he don’t look sad at all. He looks exactly the same, except he’s even more quiet than usual.

  “Lovely morning,” he says. “Let’s ride on.”

  So that’s what we do, we ride on, away from the ridge and the bluffs and the steep parts of the trail, and all around us the country starts to change, real gradual. Where before it was all wild grass and rolling fields of alfalfa, and here and there stands of low piney trees, now you can’t find but a few blades of grass. There’s mostly just rusty-looking dirt and a few scraggly cactus, and once in a while an old mesquite tree so thick with knuckles and twigs it looks like somebody throwed it away.

  Rick calls this place the back country, and he says it’s pretty close to the high desert except not quite so dry. It ain’t lush or green, but there’s something about it I like. The way you can see where the wind blows by the way it squiggles up the dirt in long furrows, and the quiet in your ears, and the feeling of how big the sky gets, and how far away it looks to the edge of the world.

  I guess some folks think all that emptiness looks plain ugly, but I feel right at home even though I’ve never been to this spot before. It just seems right, like I already know this place in my bones and under my skin.

  “We’re in high cactus now,” Rick says. “Once in a blue moon it rains out here. Then all the flowers bloom.”

  I figure they’re pulling my leg except nobody laughs, so I guess it really does happen sometimes, even if you can’t see anything like a flower in all that red dirt.

  Lady seems to like it, too. She keeps snorting and checking out the high desert smells, and sometimes she skitters sideways if a gust of wind licks her. I keep the reins in my left hand like you’re supposed to, but it don’t really matter about the reins because Lady just follows along behind Rick’s horse, and walks where he walks. She knows more about it than I do.

  We must have come a couple or three miles into the back country, following this trail that looks like it might have been a creek bed once upon a time, when all of a sudden Lady stops dead in her tracks. She puts her head up and flicks her ears forward and makes this whinny sound deep in her throat.

  I’m about ready to give her a giddyap and put her mind back on her business when suddenly I hear this dry, ratchety noise, sounds like somebody winding on a broken music box.

  “Rattlesnake,” says Rick.

  That’s the last thing he says to me for a while because right about then Lady takes off like a bolt of lightning.

  It happens so fast I can’t tell how it started. One second she’s standing there, sort of frozen and scared, and the next she’s going about a hundred miles an hour, straight at this patch of sorrel cactus, and I’m hanging on for dear life.

  The only reason I don’t fall off and break my neck is I’m too surprised to think. There’s nothing in my head but this bright yellow noise, and it’s all I can do to wrap my arms around her neck and hold on tight. The reins are flying over my head and there’s no way Lady can miss this bunch of cactus that are coming up faster than a rocket. I figure I’ll look like a pincushion, or worse.

  Then suddenly she leans to the other side, dodging around, and the cactus are flying by so close I can feel the wind they make, and she’s turning so hard and fast the red dirt is exploding under her hooves like hand grenades or something.

  For a second I get a look behind me and there’s Mr. Jessup ri
ding hell-bent for leather, trying to catch up. He’s smacking his hat on Pit Stop’s rump, and that rodeo horse is flat out, but he’s not gaining much.

  Then I can’t look back because Lady is scrabbling sideways to get around another cactus, and the way she lunges ahead, stretching her neck out and picking up speed, it makes me think she’s got over being scared and now she’s having fun.

  I ain’t having much fun, though. Bent over like I am with my arms around her neck, that saddle horn is banging right into my gut, and finally I just give up and sit back and expect the worst.

  I figure the only reason I don’t fall off is I worked up such a sweat that I’m stuck on that saddle like a suction cup. Right about then the reins bounce up near to hand and I try pulling back, not that Lady’s in a mind to pay attention — she’s having a wild time of it going fast and seeing if she can run backward and upside-down all at the same time.

  What happens in the end is she tires herself out and finally slows down and puts on the brakes on her own, without any help from me. She’s standing there shaking her head and sneezing on all the dust she raised, and that’s when Mr. Jessup catches up.

  Both he and his horse look the same rusty color, all lathered up with the dirt and dust, and his eyes are squinted almost shut. I can tell he’s looking at me, though. He shakes his head and coughs and after he gets his breath back he says, “Holy cow, that was a run, wasn’t it? How’d you manage to stay on, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  I tell him my theory about the sweat making my butt into a suction cup and he gets to laughing so hard he starts to cough again. Then Rick catches up to us on old Marzy Doats, and he gets down and rummages around in his saddlebag and gives us each a rag to clean up with, and he passes around a water canteen, which really hits the spot.

  “What do you think?” Rick says to Mr. Jessup. “Aside from the fact that this boy is a natural-born rider, I mean.”

  Mr. Jessup takes a swig out of the canteen and screws the lid back on, real careful. “I think I never saw a pony so fast out of the gate,” he says. “And did you see the way she cut around that sorrel cactus and then took off?”