The next morning, about daylight, Ma would start a fire for the coffee, and then shake me till I woke up so I could help Pa ready the horses. But on this morning, I could hear Pa cussing while I was pulling on my boots.
He always saddled Rose first, because she was his horse, and he was standing with his hand on the hemp rope where I had tethered her the night before. All of the blood dropped down to my toes when I saw the way he was looking at me.
“Uh, she must have broke loose and wandered away, Pa! I’ll go look for her,” I mumbled.
Pa crouched down and squinted at the ground, but the grass was too thick to see tracks. He quickly stood up and strode past the stock to the end of the rope where the saddles were piled. He pushed two saddles aside with his foot, then cussed again. His turquoise-inlaid saddle wasn’t there!
Rose had not just wandered away.
“What do you think, Billy? Indian or whiteman?,” my Pa quizzed me.
“White,” I said.
“What tells you that, Blue Eyes?” He called me by the name Ma’s people had given me.
“An Indian would take a horse if he needed one,” I answered. “But he wouldn’t take something he didn’t need.”
Pa nodded. “So he probably didn’t go into the hills. Which settlement do you think he headed toward?”
“Well, he could tell by our wagon tracks that we were going toward the post. I think he’d head toward Big Bend—figuring we wouldn’t bother to go all the way back, or even that somebody at the post might remember seeing him if he rode through on Rose.”
“Or they might remember that saddle!” Pa added.
Pa never slapped me after I turned fourteen, but he still said angry things sometimes: “Damn good thing for you this thief doesn’t steal boys!”
He turned and walked back toward the wagon to tell Ma what had happened, so I followed. A quick movement in the brush, to the side, caught my eye. About as far away as you could throw a bucket, there was a saddled horse grazing among some shrubs behind the trees. I touched Pa’s arm and pointed. We both walked slowly through the thicket, approaching the horse from different sides. The horse put its ears back and started backing away, but I grabbed a stirrup and was able to calm him. We looked the gelding over carefully: he was an old dapple—maybe too old for somebody to still be riding. His ribs showed through and his hooves were cracked. The saddlehorn had worn through its leather; the bridle was tied together in several places with rawhide. The gelding looked tired, and the faded saddle-blanket was still damp with sweat.
Pa pointed to mud caked above the hooves. “Looks like a miner’s horse. The bastard must have made this trade just before daybreak. And not a fair trade!”
Leading the dapple through the brush toward the wagon, Pa said over his shoulder, “I may be able to ride this thief down. You want to come along?”
“Pa, I owe it to you!”
I saddled two of our mounts, then fed and watered the dapple, while Pa explained to Ma what had happened. He got his Colt pistol out of the trunk and left it with her. Both of us gulped down some coffee and grabbed some antelope jerky.
I rode my Apaloosa. Pa told me to pull the dapple in tow behind me. He rode Spirit, Ma’s horse. Spirit and Rose were both sired by the same stallion; they both were beautiful chestnut bays. Rose was the strongest of the two; Pa spent more time training her than any other horse he had ever owned.
While the sun was still rising, we turned onto the trail and headed back toward Big Bend. I was thinking about the thief: whether he knew it or not, he took the best of the nine saddle horses a horsetrader could ever own.
This trail followed the river bed, thickly wooded on both sides with beech, cottonwood, pine trees and juniper. The land rose and fell through ravines and bluffs. Sunlight had just peeked over Piute Ridge when we came to the top of a rise; Spirit stopped, flared her nostrils and whinnied. Pa spurred her, thinking she was just complaining about the climb—but we heard an answering whinney off to the left, toward the river.
We dismounted, tied three sets of reins to one branch, and Pa slipped his Winchester rifle out of the saddle holster. We threaded our way through dense brush and trees down the hillside. There on a knoll atop the sloping river bank, stood Rose—with Pa’s saddle on her! I never knew a horse that looked as beautiful as she looked then!
I started to run toward her: Pa gripped my shirt. He squinted down toward the sandy shore of the river, a good tree’s length down the slope beyond where Rose stood. There a man was standing; he was older than Pa, beard matted, clothes filthy and his skin was pale.
He held a canteen in one hand. With his other hand, he slowly pointed in the direction he was looking—down the river. He was too far away for me to see his eyes, but he seemed to be looking up toward us without turning his head.
“You’ve got a gun, brother,” he stammered. “Shoot him.”
Looking toward the shadows down the river, we saw a huge black bear, standing in a riffle among the rocks in the water, where he was probably fishing. Though the air was still, the beast tilted his head back and kept sniffing, each time looking further up the river shore. The sloshing of the water past the rocks hampered the bear’s hearing; but if the thief were to make any movement, the bear would quickly be able to focus his eyes on him.
I wondered how long the man and the bear had stood there motionless like that, when I heard Pa say, loud enough for the man to hear, “Can you whistle?”
“Goddamn you!,” the thief grumbled.
Pa realized his question was misunderstood. “Listen, whistle once and the bay will run to you,” Pa said. “But ride back up here fast, because the movement will excite the bear. I’ll cover you if the bear gets too close to the horse.”
The thief dropped the canteen onto the sand, put two fingers in his mouth and sounded a shrill whistle.
If the thief held one hand full of apples and the other arm loaded with corn, Rose couldn’t have bounded forward quicker. She skittered down the sandy embankment and, with just a few leaps, was prancing in front of her rider. He scrambled onto the saddle, then slapped her with the reins. But instead of riding back up the embankment toward Pa and I, he turned her on the shore and started heading breakneck up river!
When Pa saw that, his head went back, he put a thumb and forefinger in his mouth, and he split the air with a whistle. Rose skidded to a stop, twisted around and headed back along the shore, then romped up the embankment to us—her rider pulling the reins and cussing all the way.
I nervously watched that black bear. When Rose had run down the slope, the bear dropped onto all fours and waded out of the river. When Rose headed away upriver, the bear sat on his haunches and watched. But when Rose turned around and started galloping back toward him, the beast turned tail and loped off into the woods.
When Rose stopped in front of Pa, the Winchester was raised toward the thief’s ribs. “You want to climb off, or fall off?,” Pa said through clenched teeth.
The scoundrel slid down from the saddle, held his blistered palms up in front of him and started backing away. “Brother...” He seemed to be thinking of something to say.
Pa cut it short. “I’ll watch for the bear. You go fetch your canteen. Your dapple will be waiting for you up on the trail.” Pa glared at him. “If anybody recognizes your description at the post, you’re going to be known as a midnight horsetrader!”
The Last Race
When Pa was in the Cavalry, his horse was shot out from under him in a tussle against some bandits from Chihuahua. His hip was broken, and although it healed well enough for him to serve out his hitch in the army, it began to trouble him more as he grew older. Ma finally got Pa to homestead a ranch on the plain of Oklahoma, near her birthplace. So each time a horse was sold out of the train, the money was put toward the ranch instead of going back into sale stock.
I finally got to spend my three months at Fort Horn Military Academy during the year I was fifteen, and by that time I was getting too big anyway to ri
de Grandma against youngsters who were lighter than me. With Pa’s help, I took a commission in the Army Quartermaster’s Corps when I turned 16.
Because of my background, one of my duties as a quartermaster was to buy horses for the Cavalry. Pa didn’t want to see Grandma end up as a plow horse, so he offered to let me buy her for the army. But the purser wasn’t willing to pay a fair price, since saddle horses were often taken in capture and there was plenty of young soldiers on hand, anyway, who could break wild horses.
So Pa kept Grandma on the ranch with him, and in a while she gave him twin foals that were sired by a wild mustang. These foals grew up to play an important part in the history of the west, but that’s a story my son could best tell you.
Tales of Grandma’s speed had spread through parts of the middle west and Pa was soon approached by a man who wanted to buy Grandma. The buyer was from a company that was starting an overland mail service that was faster than pack train or stagecoach, and they paid a good price for the best horses and gave them good care. This express service didn’t last for a long time because of the coming of the cross-country railroad and then the telegraph. But during the years of that company, Grandma was the only one of its horses to be marked down for a special place in its history.
I learned of the story years later from a recruit who had ridden with that service.
Though Grandma was no spring filly and was being ridden daily on the company’s route, once she got used to a saddle she began to set new records for speed or distance. Before long, she was given the most dangerous stretch on the route, taking the pouch and rider through renegade Indian country. This trip was made at night to lessen the chance of being spotted by Indian scouts.
At daybreak one morning after the spring thaw, Grandma and her rider, Mitchell James, were completing the leg from Richland to White River. The longest stretch on the route, it went from open prairie to low hills; but again the horse and rider were finishing the trip with no trouble.
There was little to look forward to at White River. It was simply a stagecoach stop, as well as a pouch relay point for the Overland Express; the road just widened a little there in front of the farmhouse of Errol and Becky Hansen. But Becky always kept buttermilk biscuits and honey waiting for the riders; Errol kept the feedbag filled with oats for the horses; and the rider from Salt Rock would be waiting to share a cigarette and a bit of news before they traded pouches. Though tired and cold, James and his mount likely picked up speed as they leaned into the last quarter mile over the rise to the White River way station.
But James must have gulped when the farmhouse came into view. The stagecoach, which should have been on the plain to Salt Rock, was braked in front of the farmhouse, it’s team tossing their heads and bumping around in their harness. There were bodies of five men on the ground next to the stagecoach—likely three passengers and the two teamsters. On the farmhouse porch, four more bodies lay where they fell: they could only have been the Hansens, their new hand and the Salt Rock rider. The bodies of both teamsters were without clothing, except for their underwear.
As James came galloping up to the house, he could see that some of the dead had been hit by arrows and others killed by gunshot; both of the drivers had been shot in the head. The bodies of the woman and men on the porch suggested to James that they’d all come out of the farmhouse door firing. But he noticed no rifles or pistols. Quickly a picture came to his mind: the Indians had come from around back of the house, on both sides, shot the drivers as soon as the coach pulled to a stop, shot the farmhouse crew as they rushed out the door, then pulled the passengers out and killed them next to the coach. The Indians would have collected the guns, the passengers’ luggage and stolen the Hansen’s horses.
James froze in his saddle as he was about to dismount. His eyes had gone past the back of the house, to the stable. A cluster of seven Indian ponies stood under the oak tree that shaded the water trough. Almost at the same moment, he saw four Apaches come out of the stable, each leading one of Hansen’s horses. James was close enough to get a good look at the four redskins—in fact, too close because they saw him. Two of the Indians were wearing the clothing of the dead stage drivers. One of them shouted something in Apache over his shoulder, and the other three young bucks that were in the raiding party came running out of the stable. The last time James looked back, before he spurred Grandma, the three Indians had jumped on their horses and were starting after him and Grandma.
James gave Grandma a loose rein, stayed high in the stirrups and leaned as far forward as he could; man and horse moved like one body as they put distance between them and the sound of the hoofbeats behind them. The rider, tired and hungry, likely had two thoughts on his mind: though he and Grandma had never before been past White River, they were headed toward Salt Rock—fortunately the shortest and flattest leg on the route. But the redskin raiding party would probably make Salt Rock their next stop—possibly using the stagecoach to surprise the crew of the inn right at the front door. At least if he could get to Salt Rock in time, the crew there could be ready with a surprise of their own!
The three redskins behind him had plenty of reason to ride fast: if they didn’t kill him, James could probably pick out all seven of them if the army ever rounded them up. But Grandma edged so far ahead of them, that the Indians could only fire a volley of rifle shots and arrows, and they gave up the chase when they were sure they’d hit their targets.
James took a bullet through his ribs, that pierced a lung. While he was a strong young man, it was all he could do to keep from blacking out. He slumped forward onto Grandma’s wet, bobbing mane, held onto her neck and gasped for cold air.
He had felt Grandma stumble twice, but he did not know she had been shot through the belly and had taken an arrow deep in the left flank. Blood pumping from her wounds, and his, streaked her grey hide like red banners. The Indians had good reason to believe that this white man and his horse would fall in the brush before reaching the plain outside Salt Rock.
The young man fought to keep his eyes open, and finally the morning sun glinted on the windmill behind the inn. Grandma didn’t have to be told where to stop: there was nothing at Salt Rock but the inn and stable. She was wheezing like a bellows when her rider was lifted out of the saddle to be carried into bed. When James’ saddlebag and rifle were lifted off her and the innkeeper’s wife started to lead Grandma to the stable to treat her wounds, the mare staggered, fell to one knee, rolled on her side and whinnied for the last time.
Shortly, the Indians showed up at Salt Rock, just as James thought they would. With hats pulled low, two of them drove the stage—a rifle on each lap—while the other five Apaches crouched inside the coach. But before the stage could pull to a stop, the inn’s crew opened fire on them from the windows. The tragedy of White River was not repeated.
James was given credit for saving the lives of the half dozen settlers at Salt Rock, but he said it was Grandma that saved his life.
A bronze monument to this mare and her rider stood outside the Express home office in Topeka for years, but was finally moved to a park. When I took my son to see it, I had to tell him: “That’s not the way I’ll remember Grandma; I’ll always see her standing in the traces of Pa’s wagon, looking like she didn’t know nothing about running!”
The End
A Collection of Plain Horse Tales Page 3
