Spirit of the Horse

by William Shatner

  “What do you think I ought to name my colt?” I asked of the judge.

  “When I was about your age,” the judge answered, “I had a colt and I named him Royal. He won all the premiums at the county fair before he was six year old.”

  That was quite enough for me. To my thinking every utterance of the judge’s was ex cathedra; moreover, in my boyish exuberance, I fancied that this name would start my colt auspiciously upon a famous career; I began at once to think and to speak of him as the prospective winner of countless honors.

  From the moment when I first set eyes on Royal I was his stanch friend; even now, after the lapse of years, I cannot think of my old companion without feeling here in my breast a sense of gratitude that that honest, patient, loyal friend entered so largely into my earlier life.

  Twice a day I used to trudge down the lane to the pasture-lot to look at the colt, and invariably I was accompanied by a troop of boy acquaintances who heartily envied me my good luck, and who regaled me constantly with suggestions of what they would do if Royal were their colt. Royal soon became friendly with us all, and he would respond to my call, whinnying to me as I came down the lane, as much as to say: “Good morning to you, little master! I hope you are coming to have a romp with me.” And, gracious! how he would curve his tail and throw up his head and gather his short body together and trot around the pasture-lot on those long legs of his! He enjoyed life, Royal did, as much as we boys enjoyed it.

  Naturally enough, I made all sorts of plans for Royal. I recall that, after I had been on a visit to Springfield and had beholden for the first time the marvels of Barnum’s show, I made up my mind that when Royal and I were old enough we would unite our fortunes with those of a circus, and in my imagination I already pictured huge and gaudy posters announcing the blood-curdling performances of the dashing bareback equestrian, Samuel Cowles, upon his fiery Morgan steed, Royal! This plan was not at all approved of by Judge Phipps, who continued to insist that it was on the turf and not in the sawdust circle that Royal’s genius lay, and to this way of thinking I was finally converted, but not until the judge had promised to give me a sulky as soon as Royal demonstrated his ability to make a mile in 2:40.

  It is not without a sigh of regret that in my present narrative I pass over the five years next succeeding the date of Royal’s arrival. For they were very happy years—indeed, at this distant period I am able to recall only that my boyhood was full, brimful of happiness. I broke Royal myself; father and the hired man stood around and made suggestions, and at times they presumed to take a hand in the proceedings. Virtually, however, I broke Royal to the harness and to the saddle, and after that I was even more attached to him than ever before—you know how it is, if ever you’ve broken a colt yourself!

  When I went away to college it seemed to me that leaving Royal was almost as hard as leaving mother and father; you see the colt had become a very large part of my boyish life—followed me like a pet dog, was lonesome when I wasn’t round, used to rub his nose against my arm and look lovingly at me out of his big, dark, mournful eyes—yes, I cried when I said good-by to him the morning I started for Williamstown. I was ashamed of it then, but not now—no, not now.

  But my fun was all the keener, I guess, when I came home at vacation times. Then we had it, up hill and down dale—Royal and I did! In the summer-time along the narrow roads we trailed, and through leafy lanes, and in my exultation I would cut at the tall weeds at the roadside and whisk at the boughs arching overhead, as if I were a warrior mounted for battle and these other things were human victims to my valor. In the winter we sped away over the snow and ice, careless to the howling of the wind and the wrath of the storm. Royal knew the favorite road, every inch of the way; he knew, too, when Susie held the reins—Susie was Judge Phipps’ niece, and I guess she’d have mittened me if it hadn’t been that I had the finest colt in the county!

  The summer I left college there came to me an overwhelming sense of patriotic duty. Mother was the first to notice my absent-mindedness, and to her I first confided the great wish of my early manhood. It is hard for parents to bid a son go forth to do service upon the battlefield, but New England in those times responded cheerfully and nobly to Mr. Lincoln’s call. The Eighth Massachusetts cavalry was the regiment I enlisted in; a baker’s dozen of us boys went together from the quiet little village nestling in the shadow of Mount Holyoke. From Camp Andrew I wrote back a piteous letter, complaining of the horse that had been assigned to me; I wanted Royal; we had been inseparable in times of peace—why should we not share together the fortunes of war? Within a fortnight along came Royal, conducted in all dignity by—you would never guess—by Judge Phipps! Full of patriotism and of cheer was the judge.

  “Both of ye are thoroughbreds,” said he. “Ye’ll come in under the wire first every time, I know ye will.”

  The judge also brought me a saddle blanket which Susie had ornamented with wondrous and tender art.

  So Royal and I went into the war together. There were times of privation and of danger; neither of us ever complained. I am proud to bear witness that in every emergency my horse bore himself with a patience and a valor that seemed actually human. My comrades envied me my gentle, stanch, obedient servant. Indeed, Royal and I became famous as inseparable and loyal friends.

  We were in five battles and neither of us got even so much as a scratch. But one afternoon in a skirmish with the rebels near Potomac Mills a bullet struck me in the thigh, and from the mere shock I fell from Royal’s back into the tangle of the thicket. The fall must have stunned me, for the next thing I knew I was alone—deserted of all except my faithful horse. Royal stood over me, and when I opened my eyes he gave a faint whinny. I hardly knew what to do. My leg pained me excruciatingly. I surmised that I would never be able to make my way back to camp under the fire of the rebel picketers, for I discovered that they were closing in.

  Then it occurred to me to pin a note to Royal’s saddle blanket and to send Royal back to camp telling the boys of the trouble I was in. The horse understood it all; off he galloped, conscious of the import of the mission upon which he had been dispatched. Bang-bang-bang! went the guns over yonder, as if the revengeful creatures in the far-off brush guessed the meaning of our manoeuvering and sought to slay my loyal friend. But not a bullet touched him—leastwise he galloped on and on till I lost sight of him. They came for me at last, the boys did; they were a formidable detachment, and how the earth shook as they swept along!

  “We thought you were a goner, sure,” said Hi Bixby.

  “I guess I would have been if it hadn’t been for Royal,” said I.

  “I guess so, myself,” said he. “When we saw him stumblin’ along all bloody we allowed for sure you was dead!”

  “All bloody?” I cried. “Is Royal hurt?”

  “As bad as a hoss can be,” said he.

  In camp we found them doing the best they could for him. But it was clearly of no avail. There was a gaping, ragged hole in his side; seeking succor for me, Royal had met his death-wound. I forgot my own hurt; I thrust the others aside and hobbled where he lay.

  “Poor old Roy!” I cried, as I threw myself beside my dying friend and put my arms about his neck. Then I patted and stroked him and called him again and again by name, and there was a look in his eyes that told me he knew me and was glad that I was there.

  How strange, and yet how beautiful, it was that in that far-off country, with my brave, patient, loyal friend’s fluttering heart close unto mine, I neither saw nor thought of the scene around me.

  But before my eyes came back the old, familiar places—the pasture-lot, the lane, the narrow road up the hill, the river winding along between great stretches of brown corn, the aisle of maple trees, and the fountain where we drank so many, many times together—and I smelled the fragrance of the flowers and trees abloom, and I heard the dear voices and the sweet sounds of my boyhood days.

  Then presently a mighty shudder awakened me from this dreaming. And I cried ou
t with affright and grief, for I felt that I was alone.

  To Horse

  LIFE’S MINOR COLLISIONS, by FRANCES AND GERTRUDE WARNER (1921)

  Gertrude Warner is best known for her enduring children’s series The Boxcar Children. She coauthored this story with her older sister—for adults. It appeared in a wonderful collection that I read in its entirety when I should have been perusing horse tales!

  “A duck,” we used to read in the primer at school, “a duck is a long low animal covered with feathers.” Similarly, a horse is a long high animal, covered with confusion. This applies to the horse as we find him in the patriotic Parade, where a brass-band precedes him, an unaccustomed rider surmounts him, and a drum-corps brings up his rear.

  In our own Welcome Home Parade, after the boys returned from France, the Legion decided to double the number of its mounted effectives: all the overseas officers should ride. All the overseas officers were instantly on their feet. Their protests were loud and heated. A horse, they said, was something that they personally had never bestridden. They offered to ride anything else. They would fly down the avenue in Spads, or do the falling leaf over the arch of triumph. They would ride tanks or motor-cycles or army-trucks. But a horse was a thing of independent locomotion, not to be trifled with. It was not the idea of getting killed that they objected to, it was the looks of the thing. By “the thing,” they meant not the horse, but the rider.

  In spite of the veto of the officers, the motion was carried by acclamation. The mediæval charm of a mounted horse-guard instantly kindled the community imagination. The chaplain, fresh from the navy, was promised a milk-white palfrey for his especial use, if he would wear his ice-cream suit for the occasion.

  There was no time to practise before the event, but the boys were told to give themselves no anxiety about mounts. Well-bred and competent horses would appear punctually just before the time for falling in. The officers were instructed to go to a certain corner of a side street, find the fence behind the garage where the animals would be tied, select their favorite form of horse from the collection they would see there, and ride him up to the green.

  When Geoffrey came home and said that he was to ride a horse in the procession, our mother, who had been a good horsewoman in her girlhood, took him aside and gave him a few quiet tips. Some horses, she said, had been trained to obey certain signals, and some to obey the exact opposite. For instance, some would go faster if you reined them in, and some would slow down. Some waited for light touches from their master’s hand or foot, and others for their master’s voice. You had to study your horse as an individual.

  Geoffrey said that he was glad to hear any little inside gossip of this sort, and made his way alone to the place appointed, skilfully dodging friends. We gathered that if he had to have an interview with a horse, he preferred to have it with nobody looking on.

  The fence behind the garage was fringed with horses securely tied, and the top of the fence was fringed with a row of small boys, waiting. Geoffrey approached the line of horses, and glanced judicially down the row. Books on “Reading Character at Sight” make a great point of the distinctions between blond and brunette, the concave and the convex profile, the glance of the eye, and the manner of shaking hands. Geoffrey could tell at a glance that the handshake of these horses would be firm and full of decision. As one man they turned and looked at him, and their eyes were level and inscrutable.

  “Which of these horses,” said he to the gang on the fence-top, “would you take?”

  “This one!” said an eager spokesman. “He didn’t move a muscle since they hitched ’im.”

  This recommendation decided the matter instantly. Repose of manner is an estimable trait in the horse.

  Geoffrey looked his animal over with an artist’s eye. It was a slender creature, with that spare type of beauty that we associate with the Airedale dog. The horse was not a blond. The stirrups hung invitingly at the sides. Geoffrey closed the inspection with satisfaction, and prepared to mount.

  In mounting, does one first untie one’s horse and then get on, or may one, as in a steam-launch, get seated first and then cast off the painter? Geoffrey could not help recalling a page from “Pickwick Papers,” where Mr. Winkle is climbing up the side of a tall horse at the Inn, and the ’ostler’s boy whispers, “Blowed if the gen’l’man wasn’t for getting up the wrong side.” Well, what governs the right and wrong side of a horse? Douglas Fairbanks habitually avoids the dilemma by mounting from above—from the roof of a Mexican monastery, for instance, or the fire-escape of an apartment house. From these points he lands, perpendicularly. With this ideal in mind, Geoffrey stepped on from the fence, clamped his legs against the sides of the horse, and walked him out into the street.

  When I say that he walked him out into the street, I use the English language as I have seen it used in books, but I think that it was an experienced rider who first used the idiom. Geoffrey says that he did not feel, at any time that afternoon, any sensation of walking his horse, or of doing anything else decisive with him. He walked, to be sure, dipping his head and rearing it, like a mechanical swan. But on a horse you miss the sensation of direct control that you have with a machine. With a machine, you press something, and if a positive reaction does not follow, you get out and fix something else. Not so with the horse. When you get upon him you cut yourself off from all accurately calculable connection with the world. He is, in the last analysis, an independent personality. His feet are on the ground, and yours are not.

  We bow to literary convention, therefore, when we say that Geoffrey walked his horse.

  Far ahead of him, he saw the khaki backs of two of his friends who were also walking their horses. One by one they ambled up to the green and took places in the ranks. Geoffrey discovered that his horse would stand well if allowed to droop his long neck and close his eyes. Judged as a military figure, however, he was a disgrace to the army. If you drew up the reins to brace his head, he thought it a signal to start, and you had to take it all back, hastily. With the relaxed rein he collapsed again, his square head bent in silent prayer.

  With the approach of the band, however, all this changed. He reared tentatively. Geoffrey discouraged that. Then he curled his body in an unlovely manner—an indescribable gesture, a sort of sidelong squirm in semi-circular formation. His rider straightened him out with a fatherly slap on the flank.

  It was time to start. The band led off. Joy to the world, thought the horse, the band is gone. The rest of the cavalry moved forward in docile files, but not he. If that band was going away, he would be the last person to pursue it. Instead of going forward, he backed. He backed and backed. There is no emergency brake on a horse. He would have backed to the end of the procession, through the Knights of Columbus, the Red Cross, the Elks, the Masons, the D.A.R., the Fire Department, and the Salvation Army, if it had not been for the drum-corps that led the infantry. The drum-corps behind him was as terrifying as the band in front. To avoid the drum-corps, he had to spend part of his time going away from it. Thus his progress was a little on the principle of the pendulum. He backed from the band until he had to flee before the drums.

  The ranks of men were demoralized by needless mirth. Army life dulls the sensibilities to the spectacle of suffering. They could do nothing to help, except to make a clear passage for Geoffrey as he alternately backed from the brasses and escaped from the drums. Vibrating in this way, he could only discourse to his horse with words of feigned affection, and pray for the panic to pass off. With a cranky automobile, now, one could have parked down a side street, and later joined the procession, all trouble repaired. But there was nothing organic the matter with this horse. Geoffrey could not have parked him in any case, because it would have been no more possible to turn him toward the cheering crowds on the pavement than to make him follow the band. The crowds on the street, in fact, began to regard these actions as a sort of interesting and decorative manœuvre, so regular was the advance and retirement—something in the lin
e of a cotillion. And then the band stopped playing for a little. Instantly the horse took his place in the ranks, marched serenely, arched his slim neck, glanced about. All was as it should be.

  Geoffrey’s place was just behind the marshal, supposedly to act as his aide. During all this absence from his post of duty, the marshal had not noticed his defection or turned around at all. Now he did so, hastily.

  “Just slip back, will you,” he said, “and tell Monroe not to forget the orders at the reviewing stand.”

  Geoffrey opened his mouth to explain his disqualifications as courier, but at that moment the band struck up, and his charger backed precipitately. The marshal, seeing this prompt obedience to his request, faced front, and Geoffrey was left steadily receding, no time to explain—and the drum-corps was taking a vacation. There was, therefore, no reason for the horse ever to stop backing, unless he should back around the world until he heard the band behind him again. As he backed through the ranks of infantry, Geoffrey shouted the marshal’s message to the officer of the day. He had to talk fast—ships that pass in the night. But the message was delivered, and he could put his whole mind on his horse.

  He tried all the signals for forward locomotion that he could devise. Mother had told him that some horses wait for light touches from their master’s hand or foot. Geoffrey touched his animal here and there, back of the ear—at the base of the brain. He even kicked a trifle. He jerked the reins in Morse Code and Continental, to the tune of S O S. The horse understood no codes.