by Jessie Haas
But Ghazal had earned time off and wouldn’t thank him.
Bored. He turned from the window to look at the others in the living room, all reading or knitting.
Bored. He really didn’t want to ride just to exercise a horse—jingle along some trail to no place in particular. If there was an errand, a destination …
Mail a letter? None written.
Carry a message? No reason not to use the phone.
Go look for something? Nothing out there … or maybe—yes, he might try again to find the lost military road, which used to lead across their ridge into the next township. Sure, he could do that. A half-assed errand was better than no errand at all.
He put on a sweater and his knee-length, greasy yellow rain poncho. He thought of asking Gloria to come. But no, two people riding through the rain was not the same as one, alone and melancholy, fleeing his own persistent questions. He slipped out of the house and splashed across the soupy yard to the barn.
Robbie, the young Morgan, was dry in his stall, and James felt guilty taking him out. Perhaps he should give it up. What right did he have to impose his will on a hapless fellow creature?
He settled the question by cinching on the army saddle he used for trail riding, and schooling himself to a rough, no-nonsense attitude. He had the right because he had the power. Robbie spent nine-tenths of his time in the barn, eating his head off. He could go out in the rain once in a while, if his master wished.
Passing under the doorway, Robbie flattened his ears at the first drops and sidled among the puddles as James tried to mount, handicapped by the voluminous poncho. When James swung his leg across, the poncho flapped. Robbie jumped ahead, displaying a rough-and-ready attitude of his own. If James was fool enough to ride out in weather like this, he could take his lumps!
“All right, me boyo!” James muttered. He jammed his foot into the stirrup and booted Robbie ahead, up the woodlot trail.
Normally he liked riding Robbie. Though green, the young horse had a fresh, cheerful forward energy that never needed stoking. Today, though, he was resentful, and James was dreaming of another horse—Avatar, whose power, balance, and educated response made Robbie seem ugly. James found himself consumed with irritation. His temper wasn’t helped by the drenchings he got as Robbie scraped him beneath the sodden branches.
He smacked Robbie’s neck with his open hand. Robbie gave a sassy toss of the head. His neck was high and stiff, his trot hard and jouncy. James gritted his teeth. Avatar …
He remembered the incredible suppleness, the ease and grace of the great horse. Robbie, by comparison, just chugged along. But Robbie was the natural horse; Avatar was man-made.
That was true, wasn’t it? Garry Kunstler had schooled Avatar, developed him from a state of crudeness perhaps similar to Robbie’s. The work had shaped his muscles and given him the rounded, distinctive profile of a dressage horse; made him more intelligent; made him.
Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?
Actually, yes. Garry had literally shaped Avatar; and Avatar was on this earth because men had wanted a certain kind of horse on which, in the beginning, to go to war. War had made Avatar, war had made Ghazal, descendant of the ancient military tradition of the Spanish Riding School; war had even made Robbie, whose ancestor, Justin Morgan, was said to be sired by a British officer’s mount. War was behind all the million-dollar Arabs, now such a popular hobby with movie-stars. War had made the Great Horses, the declining breeds that once worked the wheat fields. War—all the way back to the runty creatures that pulled the chariots of the Sumerians.
And yet dressage he considered one of the most civilized and peaceable pursuits—
Robbie shied violently at a black stump, which to an excited imagination might conceivably resemble a bear. It was a stump they had passed at least seventy-five times this summer alone. James bit down on his annoyance and concentrated on the familiar trail.
It intersected the military road in the fern-filled corner of a stone wall, two miles from the house. All that way Robbie’s protest continued unabated. Not by chance was James dragged beneath so many low, sodden branches. The hood of his poncho hung heavy down his back like a water balloon and sloshed with Robbie’s every jiggle. Cold water thrilled down his back; water dripped steadily off his visor. His fingers were chilled on the slippery reins.
He paused in the belly-deep ferns, burned gold and brown by frost, and looked uphill, where the faint track disappeared in ledge and fallen leaves.
This is stupid, horse! His hands tightened on the reins. He thought he’d turn around.
But the wet leather slid through his fingers, and Robbie, determined to be naughty, forged ahead through the ferns. The tips slapped James’s knees, soaking his jeans in the small space between poncho and boot top. He gave way to the adventure, to the odd pleasure of persisting in foolishness.
This ride belonged to another tradition of horsemanship—the messenger, the traveler, the cowboy—users of horses for pragmatic human purposes, hired hands on horseback, riders in the rain. It was a tradition that left the horse mostly to himself, trusting in his native sense and surefootedness; a tradition that cared little for purity of gait, beauty, or exactitude, as long as the horse covered ground.
A saner tradition, maybe, thought James as Robbie scrambled up the rocky ridge, slippery with wet leaves. He bowed low to Robbie’s neck, and the branches scraped across his back. He smelled hot, damp horse.
What does a horse care if it makes a round circle instead of an oval? They just want to eat and wander. Why should we fiddle with their minds?
Yet automatically, as Robbie reached the piny top of the ridge and began to trot, James made him go straight and pushed him up to take frank contact with the bit. He gazed morosely at the nervous little ears, flicking back toward him in cursory attention, then snapping forward as Robbie’s thoughts fastened on the trail ahead. In cowboy tradition he should let the reins slop now, and relax his driving legs. Just travel, never mind how. He knew he wouldn’t, for the result would be intolerably ugly.
Why wasn’t plain traveling enough? It had its own beauty. It was no stranger to balance and rhythm.
But there was nowhere to go. No one’s life was so constructed that a horse could take them anyplace essential. No important work was done on horseback. When people went trail riding now, it was just play, and if that was all there was to riding, he would be in college now. He saw himself, loafers, chinos, and yellow sweater, feet firmly on the path to business school, dollar signs for eyes. Shiver.
Shiver. Cold day! He sniffed at a drop on the end of his nose, which was only water and made him sneeze. Then Robbie hesitated under him, and looking up, he saw that they’d come to the end.
Here the big ridge they’d been following disappeared, forking and forking again into a dozen high, rocky ridgelets with deep ravines between. Here was where he and every MacLiesh before him had begun to get lost.
He made Robbie stand, requiring a good, four-cornered halt. Slowly and thoughtfully he looked down every ravine and along every ridge top, considered the age of every tree, and tried to decide where he would put a military road if he were General John Stark on his way to Fort Crown Point.
I sure as heck wouldn’t put it here!
He turned in the saddle softly, to keep Robbie still, and looked back. It was possible they’d always come too far, that the trail angled off at some earlier point, and that already he was lost.
Yet he didn’t think so. The way behind him led straight and clear to Robbie’s hind feet. The military road must take one of these ravines, one of these ridge tops. Which?
Robbie bobbed his nose impatiently and took a couple of unbidden steps, choosing the ravine straight ahead. That was the one they’d taken last time, that looked so plain and ended a hundred yards downhill in a tangle of spruce.
Come to think of it, they’d always tried ravines, never ridges. The ridges were steep and treacherous; bare e
xposed rock and slippery leaves, roots writhing over the surface like snakes hunting a hole.…
But to the left was a ridge with a broad, flat top, nearly as passable as the big ridge that had just ended. Men could march along it if the trees were cleared. A horse could make his way even now. No other ridge was so broad; no other seemed possible. James made his choice.
Still, he wasn’t confident. He put Robbie up what had seemed a gradual slope, and felt the horse’s withers rise steeply before him, his hooves slip and scramble. His breath made big clouds of steam through which they passed. Saplings on either side constantly menaced James’s knees. Only his quick reflexes saved him from a crushing.
When they reached the level area, it was less level than it had seemed, and narrower. James viewed it dubiously, wishing he knew his history better. How big was a Colonial army? How would they have marched? Might they have split up here? Flowed through all the ravines and over all the ridges, to regroup on the other side?
Good questions. He kept going because he didn’t see a better choice.
Robbie stepped unwarily into a leaf-filled hollow, jolted and snorted. “C’mon, Rob, watch where you’re goin’!” He listened with his body for a few strides, trying to feel out any lameness. None, apparently. Robbie was no good for a job like this. Too hasty, too jumpy, mind anywhere but his feet. For going like this you wanted a sage, mature—
Blow from the side! Branches clawed his face; his foot was torn from the stirrup. The bright leaves smeared and slid and spun around him … wet slaps in the face. He hauled Robbie to a standstill, gasping, trying to realize what had happened.
Bashed me on a tree.
“You do that on purpose, little bastard?”
The sick, stunned feeling drained slowly. Robbie fidgeted, and somewhat vindictively James snatched him up short. “Stand, damn you!” He started to grope for his lost stirrup.
“Ouch!”
His knee hurt. Cautiously he moved it and had to bite his lip at the sudden pain. Broken? Torn cartilage? “Robbie, I could kill you!”
Holding Robbie on a very tight rein, he bent and gently probed with his fingers, then massaged more deeply, wiggled the kneecap. The pain didn’t get any worse. Just bruised, he thought with a sigh of relief.
The stirrup was gone.
“Oh, hell.” He looked back and saw it lying in the leaves many feet behind him. It had torn from the safety bar as a stirrup is supposed to, to save a rider from being dragged. James said a number of unkind things to Robbie, turned him, and rode back to it.
He dismounted, lighting gingerly on his hurt leg, slid the stirrup leather back over the safety bar, and looked around, reassessing his position.
The ridge dropped steeply down before him, disappearing in deep golden ferns. Many yards away, it curved up again, undulating through the woods like a sea serpent. On either side the undergrowth looked impassable.
He looked at the slope again and sighed. Too steep to ride down, with Robbie acting like this. Have to lead him.
“All right, here we go. Be careful, you little jerk!”
Robbie had no intention of being careful. His eyes glowed, his breath came in great puffs, his feet scattered recklessly on the leaves. James had to brace against him at every step, which did his knee no good.
“Whoa, Robbie!” He wished he had a different horse. Even Petra, who threw herself over backward, had some sense on the trail.
Despite everything, they reached the bottom safely. James mounted and found he couldn’t flex his knee enough to find the stirrup. He rode up the next ridge, bushwhacked across the top, dismounted, and slid down the other side.
His knee hurt too much for this. Next time the ridge dipped down, he stayed in the saddle. It felt perilous; himself so high in the air, Robbie’s withers falling away in front of him, all the scrabbling, scraping sounds from the four hooves so far below. But they got safely to the bottom. Robbie’s third ridge; he was beginning to know how to handle them.
Now a broad, ferny corridor opened up, running parallel to the spine of rock they followed. James turned into it, grateful for the respite.
He listened to the quiet, dripping woods, and Robbie’s footfalls so loud in it. He already felt a long way from home, but at least it seemed he’d been on the right track. This corridor made easy riding, and his imagination filled it with an army of men in buckskins, marching shoulder to shoulder. Beside and in front rode officers.…
Officers. Again his mind slipped into the well-worn groove; the Spanish Riding School in Vienna and the school at Saumer, and beyond. The Mongols, the Slavic riders on the plains of Eastern Europe, knights on Great Horses, Arabs in a swirl of robes, Athenians in the time of Xenophon, twenty-three centuries past.
He, in America, was a very late follower in this procession. He tried to place himself precisely; Vermont, somewhere between two townships, late twentieth century; of the educated upper class, though not educated or upper himself; on a horse bred to work small hill-farms and amuse country people in harness racing. He did not ride to kill anyone, defend any civilization, or prove any point. Robbie would never clear a field or carry a family to town in a farm wagon. The traditions they belonged to were old and cold. The trail they followed was cold, too, built by dead men to take them to a dead fort, for reasons James could not clearly recall.
Then why? Why do this?
Why follow this trail? Why keep breeding Morgan horses? Especially, why learn and practice the discipline of the European riding schools, the outgrown relic of a dead way of warfare?
Was it only a game? Elaborate cowboys and Indians?
He didn’t care for that idea. What he did felt more essential than that—something necessary, something from the core.
I suppose I’m bred to ride, he thought, as much as they’re bred to be ridden. Throughout history the riders had been the winners and the survivors, stamping the gene pool with their type. Perhaps it was by deepest instinct that so many little children cantered so joyfully, champing imaginary bits, hands on imaginary reins—the original centaurs. To be part horse, an ancient human dream. Imagine! A little Mongol child, a little Arab, a little Greek …
He suggested that Robbie trot, here where the going was so fine, and began to think about dressage, the most self-disciplining of these ancient paths. To do dressage was also to be a centaur, to be so much a part of a horse that you placed him precisely where you wanted, at precisely the correct moment. It was control, down to the very stride—every stride. And it was freedom; the horse freely assenting to the control, with relaxed muscles and with glad cooperation. Horse and rider both must be gay and bold and buoyant, thoughtful, controlled, and exact. It was this paradox that made dressage such a pleasure of the mind. The rest of life should be like that.…
He came around a bend, and his fine corridor disappeared. A thick wall of spruce grew up before him, and beyond them he could make out a steep slope strewn with chunks of granite and thickly grown with trees.
Robbie turned around matter-of-factly, and headed back the way he’d come.
“Oh no, you don’t! We have to climb again.”
The ridge was more fractured here, brushier, slick with wet leaves, confusing. Promising pathways ended in steep drops or in thickets, and they had to retrace their steps. It seemed to James that Robbie was always going a shade too fast. While his own eyes searched for a safe way, Robbie was moving on a slight tangent and getting them into trouble.
They scraped through dripping branches, slipped on leafy slopes, stumbled over tangles of downed trees. Once Robbie tripped getting over a heap of loose stone and almost fell from under James. He scrambled forward to regain his balance and then stopped, jammed against some saplings. James let him stand and breathe, rubbing his own knee, which had been wrenched in the stumble. The pain was swelling, hot and sick.
After a moment he noticed that Robbie’s breath still came quick and agitated. He laid his hand on the young horse’s shoulder and felt him tremble.
“What’s the matter, Rob? Hurt yourself?”
He couldn’t dismount here. They were too close to the saplings on one side, and on the other the rock sloped down sharply. He urged Robbie a few steps onward, to a more open and level spot, listening intently with his body for any lameness. He felt nothing.
Slowly and stiffly he dismounted. He was beginning to think more seriously now that this was a foolish enterprise—risking the legs of his good young horse, risking his own knee … knees are nothing to fool around with.
He stooped, running a hand down each hard black leg. No swelling, no scratches. But Robbie still seemed deeply agitated, a state far different from his earlier spooks and naughtiness. The fall had scared him.
Scared me, too, thought James. He stood with his hand on Robbie’s quivering neck, looking around. This wild tangle of brush and broken rock was not a trail. He should have seen that at once. He should have resisted the blind urge to go forward, when there was no obvious way.
“Anyway, little fella, let’s get you down off this rock.”
It was easier said than done, but after limping along a little farther, James found a path. He had to go down on the opposite side from the ferny corridor, which made him uneasy. His thoughts were becoming disorganized. Time to turn around, before he got lost.
But when he reached the level, a new path seemed to open up paralleling the ridge, and he thought, One more try. He checked the girth and gathered the reins to mount. Reaching for the pommel, he saw across the back of his right hand a thick smear of blood.
His heart thudded. Blood didn’t make him queasy, but alone here in the dripping woods, it had a powerful, primitive effect. He found himself listening hard.
After a second he collected himself and stepped back a couple of paces, looking at Robbie. He saw no hurt, but Robbie still seemed upset and sorry for himself.
Something must be wrong! Blood doesn’t come from nowhere. Me? He ran a quick inventory and found himself intact.
He stepped to Robbie’s head and stroked him, speaking softly, trying to think. The blood, now thinned by rainwater, filled his eyes.…
