I reached into Bill’s mouth with my fingers and raked out the lodged dirt. He took a deep breath and coughed up blood. I tried to drag him free from under the horse but he only groaned in pain. I had to leave him on his side, his left leg under the mare. I retrieved my canteen and soaked my bandana to wash the dirt from Bill’s mouth and nose.
As I washed the filth from his face, Bill was able to speak. “Don’t move me. I’m all busted up inside. My ribs are crushed, and I think my back may be broke. I couldn’t stand it.”
I could feel myself shaking uncontrollably. “I’ve got to do something. I can’t leave you like this. It must be fifteen miles to help.”
Bright blood oozed from the side of Bill’s mouth as he coughed softly. He shook his head weakly. “It’s no use. You’ve got to go. I’ll make out all right until you get back.”
“God, I hate to do this.”
Bill smiled. “I know boy, but you’ve got no choice. Go…go now.”
The Davis place was fifteen miles north but I had no idea if anyone would be home. My best option was to head for the house where I knew there were men and equipment. I swung into the saddle and set Lightning for home at a full run.
No man should push a horse the way I did. With each pounding mile, I unmercifully drove him forward. He was wheezing for breath and lathered throughout when we staggered into the yard. As I stepped from the saddle and ran for the house, I heard him collapse. I was afraid to look back. I knew I had run him to death.
Jenny met me at the door. Her face reflected the fear in my own as I told her of Bill’s condition. She gathered sheets and a mattress from one of the beds as I hitched two mules to the buckboard. Grandpa followed her from the house, supporting himself with a cane. As they drove the wagon from the yard, I saddled old Ben. I couldn’t tolerate looking toward Lightning lying on his side in the yard.
We found Bill as I left him. As Jenny and I lifted on the mare, Grandpa dragged him free. He lifted Bill into a sitting position as Jenny and I arranged the mattress on the buckboard.
Grandpa offered him some water but he shook his head. He looked up at Grandpa and made an effort to smile. “Hell of a wreck.”
“You just be still. We’ll get you home directly.”
“No use for that. I’ll never stand the trip.”
“Don’t be saying that. You’ll make it.”
Bill took hold of Grandpa’s hand. “Is there any message you have for Nell?”
Grandpa gasped and shook his head. “Just that I love her.”
Bill smiled and nodded. He shuddered slightly and a deep rattle came from his chest. His eyes faded but never left the face of his old friend.
Grandpa slowly raised his free hand to close Bill’s eyes. Jenny and I waited silently until Grandpa lowered Bill’s head back to the ground.
It was sunset when we drove the buckboard into the yard. Lightning was standing by the breaking corral.
We lifted Bill from the wagon and took him into the house where we could clean him up and arrange his final position. I checked Lightning and unsaddled him. I spent an hour currying, graining, and stroking him. Once again I had demanded more than I should have and he had given his all. I decided that I would never work him again. Sunday’s colt would live out his days in retirement.
We buried Bill on a sandy knoll west of the house in the shade of a small cottonwood tree. He told Grandpa years before that he didn’t want to be planted in some city or church cemetery. Grandpa emptied a small jar of dirt from Bill’s cabin over his remains before we closed the grave. It was Texas dirt and was to be placed over him when he went under. Grandpa told the Eden Valley congregation that Bill loved his place in the sandhills of Kansas but wanted a little Texas dirt to comfort him through the ages. I never imagined Bill to be so sentimental.
A lawyer in St. John wrote us a letter informing that Bill had ordered a last will and testament document shortly after Jenny and I were married. Bill’s place was left to Jenny and I. He also asked that Lightning be buried next to him. The lawyer wrote that he had never heard of a man requesting that he be buried next to a horse and had advised that it wasn’t a proper request, but the eccentric Texan had been firm in his stipulation. The lawyer stated that there would be no mention of the stipulation if we decided against it. In those days there were no laws concerning where a person should be buried, and if Bill Sunday wanted to be buried next to a horse that is exactly what we would do.
The country went to war the following year. We took another contract for mules for the French army and continued with ranch activities. I registered for the draft but was never called to service. Younger, unmarried men filled the county quota.
We had a son the following year and a daughter fourteen months after. Six years later, a second son was born but didn’t survive more than a week. Jenny gave birth to a third son two years later.
The world changed greatly after the war. It wasn’t long before the demand for horses and mules dwindled, replaced by new-fangled tractors and automobiles. By the time our oldest boy was ready for fieldwork, we used mules only for row crop tillage and hay harvest. A Caterpillar tractor, Baldwin combine, and Model T Ford automobile slowly replaced the teams. Grandpa had the first Baldwin combine in the county.
During the twenties, farm prices fell and we struggled to keep the place going. If oil hadn’t been discovered in the west pastures during the thirties, we would have lost the ranch during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. Wheat that had sold for two dollars a bushel during World War I was worth no more than six cents. Prices for our cattle fell from fifteen cents a pound to three. Great dust storms from the west blocked sun and filtered through the walls of the house during the bad years. Jenny developed the habit of placing the dishes upside down when setting the table so they wouldn’t be covered with dust when we ate. There were times when we would leave lanterns burning all day to light the house. The oil production income was sufficient for us to save our place while others all around us failed. Those were sad times and we spent many helpless nights wondering how we were going to survive. The Porters, Thairs, and several other families left for town work, leaving their farms abandoned. For two years I took a job on a public works program grading roads with mules just to have money to send the children to school.
The depression and President Roosevelt’s programs also brought positive changes to the farm. We received telephone service and a few years later the Rural Electric Authority was established to supply electricity. We were able to have refrigeration and wringer washing machines. In the evenings we would gather around the radio and listen to broadcasts from Chicago and New York. Just before World War II, we installed an indoor toilet and shower bath in a converted closet of the original house.
We began receiving daily mail delivery. Trips to St. John, Larned, and Great Bend could be made in a matter of minutes rather than hours. Our one-room community school was closed and we sent our children to high school in St. John. We developed the habit of regular Saturday visits to the town grocery for store-bought bread and to the produce stores to market eggs and lard.
Grandpa passed away in his sleep in 1937 at the age of ninety-five. We buried him next to Grandma in the Eden Valley cemetery. He lived a happy and productive life up to the very end.
I kept my oath to Lightning. He lived to a ripe old age. Often, especially when I was troubled, I would visit him in the pasture with my dog, Laddie, offering a treat of sugar or grain. He would always respond to my call and eagerly accept the treat. Unlike his days as a colt, however, he would stand calmly and accept my attentions.
He was grazing on a hilltop in the summer of 1940 when a thunderhead appeared in the northwest. Sometime during the storm’s approach, a lightning bolt struck him down just as it had his mother so many years before. I found him the next morning on that hilltop, his final mouthful of grass still clinched between his teeth. I left his grain bucket beside him. I reckon Lightning was thirty years old.
We sent our oldest boy
, Glenn, off to war in 1941. He was killed at Iwo Jima while serving in the Marines. Jenny and I retired from the farm in 1960, rented out our land and moved to a new house in St. John. Today, the farmstead is nothing like it was. The old barn was destroyed by a tornado in the ’50s and the house burned down in the ’70s. The sandhill pastures have been worked under and are now covered with modern circle irrigation systems. Acres of irrigated corn and sorghum grain now grow where once there were only sandhill plumb thickets and rolling grassland. There is no room in the modern world for the quiet pastures of yesterday.
If you should ever find yourself in Kansas and should happen to venture four miles west and five miles south of a sleepy little grain elevator village known as Seward, you will find an unbroken corner of one of the circles of irrigated crop land. At the top of a small sandy knoll is a great cottonwood tree. At the base of the tree is a tiny grave plot enclosed by a modest, unpainted picket fence. Inside the fence is a plain, white marble cross with the engraved name, “Bill Sunday.” Beside the cross is the relic of a rusty old grain bucket and a small, gray, marble stone jutting just above the surface of the ground. You may have to wipe away the grass and debris to read the simple inscription, “Lightning.”
If you visit in the evening on a pleasant summer’s day, don’t be disturbed to find a very old and feeble couple visiting there as well. Feel free to stop and introduce yourself. They would love the company and enjoy the chance to retell the story of Sunday’s colt.
END
Sunday's Colt & Other Stories Page 15
