John had made few close friends during his time at Haskell. He had been too distracted by personal problems and disappointments. There were short good-byes and good wishes from a few classmates, and an unexpected word of encouragement from the coach.
“Buffalo, I don’t pretend to know all your problems, but … Well, I know you’ve got possibilities. Whatever it is, don’t give up. You can do it!”
“Thank you, Coach,” muttered the embarrassed John.
If the coach only knew. But maybe he did, in some way. Coach had seen a lot of young Indians go out into the world to challenge a game in which the cards were stacked against them.
“Give it your best. I expect to hear good things about you.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll try.”
His good-bye with Walter Goingbird was not much longer. Walt was perhaps his only real friend here.
“Where will you go, John?”
“Back out to Schneebarger’s for now, I guess. You?”
“Home to Oklahoma. Lots of changes goin’ on there, I hear.”
“Good or bad?”
“Both, probably.”
The two chuckled together.
“Always that way, John,” added Walter.
John nodded, but reserved his thought that if something good was to occur in his life, it was past due. He was more than ready for the good part.
John moved into the small crib in the barn where he had spent the past summer. All in all, not a bad place. It was used as a tack room, and the walls were hung with bridles and pieces of leather harness and hand tools used in the constant necessary repairs of equipment. The familiar smells of leather and neat’s-foot oil brought back memories of last season … . Of the unexpected letter that had dashed his romantic dreams in an instant and sent him into depths of despair from which he was not yet ready to recover. He tried to push that behind him.
He did not know how long he would be here. His departure last fall had been because of the beginning of the school year. Now there would be no urgency. If Schneebarger needed him longer, so be it. Here his heritage stood him in good stead. What will happen will happen. And only when the time comes. Meanwhile, he was here. He could work with the horses, using his gifts of athletic ability and his ability to see into the thoughts of the animal. That, too, he regarded as a gift.
Last year he had barely become acquainted with the family’s three children. Looking back, he decided that Mrs. Schneebarger had probably planned it that way. There had undoubtedly been some distrust or at least doubt about the hiring of an Indian. Schneebarger had probably decided on that move without consulting his wife. Gradually, the buxom Helga had become more friendly. There had actually been tears in her eyes when John moved back to school in September.
Now she was much more open and friendly, her smile and demeanor welcoming him back. He was careful to treat her with respect, as he had been taught. The position of women among his own people was somewhat different than among whites. Indian women could speak in council, could vote, own property. In some tribes, all property. By contrast, white women seemed to have little control of their lives, beyond their kitchens and firesides. That had been very confusing to him, especially since the first white woman he had ever seen had been Miss Whitehurst. Old White Horse was a special case, and did not fit the pattern.
The Schneebargers’ home, however, was the closest contact he had experienced to an ordinary white family’s patterns of behavior. He quickly realized that the previous year had been a test and that he had passed. He was now accepted almost as family, and it was good.
The older two children finished the school year at about the time John moved into the tack room. They were home for the summer. Hans—“Little Hans” to distinguish him from his father—was about ten or eleven, John estimated. He was smart and strong and very much wanted to do “man things,” to make his father proud.
Gretchen, a year or two younger, was equally eager to become a young hausfrau. The “baby,” Wilhelm, was actually about three or four. He had been born after the family came to America, John was told.
“Ve talk only English at home, now,” explained their mother. “Before … At first ve talk Cherman. Den, Liddle Hans goes to school. De odder kids, dey laugh at him ’cause he can’t talk good, und he don’t understand. Now, ist better, nein?”
They, too, John realized, were going through a process much like his own. These people, of another origin, were trying to learn the ways of this new country. It had not occurred to him that some whites had the same problems.
Besides all this there were the Negroes, former slaves and children of slaves. He knew that they had special problems. Some had joined the Indian tribes and had intermarried, especially among the Seminoles and Creeks. He had known a couple of students at Carlisle who were very dark-skinned. He was just realizing what extra problems they would have in the white man’s world.
“Liddle Hans was having trouble mit reading,” his mother went on. “The teacher sent home his books for the summer. Maybe you help him some?”
John realized that this was a great honor, a sign that he had been accepted by the family. He was flattered.
“I’d be glad to help, Mrs. Schneebarger.”
“Ach! Call me Helga. Everybody does.”
“Okay, Helga. May I look at the schoolbooks?”
“Sure. Over dere …” She gestured.
There were four books. McGuffey’s Reader and a spelling book. He’d used those himself. An arithmetic volume and another, titled History of Kansas, by Noble L. Prentiss. Curious, he opened the history book. A printed sentence on one of the first pages indicated that this was the official history text for all schools in the state.
Curious, John scanned the table of contents and noticed a chapter titled “Indians of Kansas.” He found that page. The chapter was only three or four pages long, mostly omitting more than mention of the dozens of tribes and nations who had migrated or been forced in, out, and through the area.
The chapter closed with a summary paragraph:
The story of their wars and huntings and migrations has little interest to civilized people. When they passed away from Kansas and the world, they left nothing except mounds of earth, rings on the sod, fragments of pottery, rude implements. They fought each other, disputed possession with wild beasts, were stricken down with fell diseases, but their history never became of interest or importance to the world, because they did nothing for the world.
John sat staring at the page for a few moments before he closed the book.
Some things never change, he reflected.
TWENTY-ONE
The breaking of the colt was to start immediately. Schneebarger had apparently planned it that way, waiting until his hired man was available.
“You vork mit him a liddle at first,” suggested the farmer. “He knows you from dat last summer.”
John was somewhat at a loss as to how to begin the education of a workhorse. A horse is a horse, but one may be far different from another, not only in size, color, temperament, and body build, but in its ultimate use.
At this time and place, a man might breed a mare to produce the kind of foal he needed. Bred to a light-boned, trim stallion, she might produce a carriage horse with considerable style and grace. To a medium-sized saddle horse, an animal useful for riding, roping, or herding cattle, a “cow-horse.” The same mare, bred to a heavy draft horse of the European cold-weather type would produce a “work horse” … Big footed, hairy, muscular, this animal would never excel at speed, but could pull massive loads in harness. A good mare could even be bred to a jack donkey to produce mules, a sterile hybrid with some of the best qualities of both parents.
“Oh, yah,” said Hans as he turned away. “Before you start dat, mebbes you could t’row de cow ober the fence some hay?”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”
He was often amused at the German’s stubborn attempts to speak English. This was a problem which he could understand, having had it
thrust on himself at an early age. He smiled as he visualized Old White Horse attempting to force her tutelage on someone like Hans Schneebarger. Hans was apparently having a lot more difficulty with the transition than his wife, Helga. And Little Hans would probably have little or no accent at all.
John himself felt that his English was pretty good, compared to some of his classmates. He had spoken it exclusively for several years. He still had Lakota, of course, and had picked up a little Kiowa, and rudimentary Cherokee words and expressions. Some of these, such as okeh, indicating agreement, had been adopted by whites almost without their realizing it.
Now John stood looking at the yearling colt, already the size of a good buffalo runner. A gelding, already neutered when he was small, should be no problem to handle. Hans was gentle with his horses, and his behavior would probably be transmitted to the youngster as confidence in humans. The colt would learn by example.
Hans had no patience with anyone who would mistreat an animal. John had once seem him soundly thrash a man who, on the road to Lawrence, had been beating a horse. The stranger’s wagon was stuck in mud and, instead of trying to free it by lightening the load or applying leverage to the wheels, the man was applying a heavy whip. Schneebarger stopped his own team and jumped from the wagon to pull the other man from his seat. With hands the size of slabs of bacon, the German cuffed him soundly, jerked the whip from the man’s grasp and tossed it into the mud, followed by the culprit himself. Then, as the man floundered, yelling and cursing, Hans motioned to the startled John to take the reins of the stranger’s team. While John handled the horses, Hans stepped into the mud and applied his powerful muscles to the trapped wheel. With a sucking noise the wagon rocked free, and the German slogged back onto the road, ignoring his victim in the mud. He motioned John back to his own wagon.
“You drive,” he said.
Hans himself sat on the tailgate as they moved on, scraping mud from his boots and clothing with a stick. Nothing was said for a mile or so, and finally, anger cooled somewhat, he spoke again.
“A man kin holler ven he needs help,” he philosophized. “A dumb baste cannot.”
This statement had seemed to need no comment, and John made none.
Now he smiled to himself, remembering. Already, he could feel that his medicine with this colt was good. It would only be a matter of familiarizing the animal with the routine of harness and pulling.
John began by tying the animal, already broke to halter, in one of the stalls. He dumped a bucket of oats into the feed box and began to rub his hands over the neck and shoulders while the colt ate. He whispered in the ears, words of comfort in Lakota, breathed in the animal’s nostrils … . The colt continued to chew contentedly on the oats. Confidence, pleasant association …
On the next day’s session, John took some pieces of harness with rings and buckles and fastened them together as a teaching tool. He had never done this before, but reasoned that a workhorse must learn to have straps and buckles and metal rings dragged over and around and beneath its body. Again, he let the colt see and smell the contraption before he began to drag it over the animal’s back and down the hip and stifle. The colt stiffened, ears erect, but then resumed eating. In only a few sessions, it was possible to toss a harness across hip and shoulder and buckle it.
Placing the bit in the colt’s mouth was another matter. The metallic taste and unfamiliar shape of the snaffle seemed an obstacle. John was sure that once in place, in the proper space behind the teeth, it would not be uncomfortable. His people often used metal bits, and he had seen them used at The Oaks … . (A painful jab of sweet memory—now lost—flitted over him.) He considered using a thong as a war bridle, but decided against it.
Instead, he obtained from Helga a small jar with a little sorghum molasses. A smell, a thin smear of the sweet thick syrup over the snaffle … By the third session, the colt would trot eagerly toward the bit to take it in his mouth.
In two weeks, John could drive the harnessed colt around the barnyard, pulling a log on a chain. He was ready to place the colt in team harness with a more experienced animal to finish his training.
“Yah! Ist goot!” marveled Hans.
A few days later, Hans called to John as he was harnessing the team to the cultivator. A neighbor had stopped by.
“John! Heinemann, here, likes de vay you handle dat colt. He wonders could you mebbe help him mit vun colt of his?”
“Well … I’ll try. If it’s okay with you, of course.”
“Shure.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Not sure, John,” said Heinemann. “He’s spooky. Fights anything you try. Oh, yes, he’s a saddle horse. You have any experience with them?”
John smiled to himself. Nearly all of his experience was with horses that were ridden. The training of the young work horse had been new.
“Some,” he said aloud. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good. Come on over when you get a chance.”
“Ven de work’s all done, I send him ober,” said Schneebarger.
All three chuckled. This was a common oft-repeated remark, never taken seriously. An inside joke, which was understood by all. The work was never all done on a frontier farm or ranch. It isn’t, even now. Something always beckons, and part of the management was—and is—the selection of the most urgent among those chores that need attention.
“Maybe Sunday?” asked John, with a glance at Hans. The Germans tried to observe the sabbath within their ability to defer some of the more major jobs. Some things must be done daily, of course. “Yah! Ist goot, ef you want, John.”
The colt in question was a stocky, well-built two-year-old, recently gelded and completely undisciplined. He’d make a pretty good horse, John thought. This was the useful sort of animal sometimes referred to as a “chub,” a stout animal that could be used as a cow horse or to work in double harness to pull a light wagon. Sometimes, both. He’d probably have made a good buffalo runner, John thought.
Just now, the animal stood in a small corral, ears erect and attention riveted on the newcomer. Everything about him radiated fear and suspicion.
“You raise him, Mr. Heinemann?” John asked.
“No, no … I just bought him from a trader. Looks like he could be dangerous.”
That would explain a lot. No telling what the horse’s background or experience had been. It was not impossible that this was a wild colt, recently captured in a horse hunt on the prairie farther west, still partly unsettled. With the buffalo gone, wild horses had proliferated. There were still a few wild horse hunters capturing the animals for resale to settlers, because good horses were always in demand.
No matter his origin, this colt would be a handful. He had possibly been mistreated, probably been handled roughly, and the distrust he now had for the human race shone plainly in the wide-set eyes.
“Well,” said John cautiously, “we’ll see.”
He tried to think of some of the tricks he had seen his father use. There was much medicine involved, a communication and mingling of the spirits of man and horses. Yellow Bull had had a special medicine bag, containing a few items that he used sometimes. A “chestnut” from the foreleg of an old stallion, the odd misplaced toenail at the knee which is a remnant of ages past … A grayish lump of dried “milt,” the bit of tissue found sometimes on the tongue of a newborn foal, its purpose unknown. Tradition has it that the milt teaches the foal to suckle, even before birth. Regardless, such objects carry the medicine which had allowed Yellow Bull to become the horseman that he was … . They carry primitive spirit of the horse, present since Creation.
Yellow Bull’s horse-medicine bag had accompanied him to the Other Side on the burial scaffold. John could certainly have used some spirit-help now, and hoped to remember some of the skills he had seen his father and other men use in a horse’s training … Skills not entirely dependent on the medicine of milt and chestnuts from an old stallion.
“Just leave me with him f
or a while to get acquainted,” he told Heinemann.
“Go ahead!” Heinemann shrugged and turned away. “There’s a rope on the post, there. Stuff in the tack room if you get that far.”
Heinemann didn’t seem as if he had a lot of confidence.
“Thanks!” John called after him.
Then, he wondered if his thanks had sounded sarcastic. He turned his attention to the colt, who still stood watching him.
“Okay, fella,” he said softly. “I’m comin’ into your camp, but I mean you no harm.”
He crawled between the poles of the corral and stood upright, moving very slowly. The horse’s ears flattened against the head and his nostrils flared.
John stood very still. He must not show fear. Especially just now.
TWENTY-TWO
The average cowboy would have roped the horse, snubbed him to a post, and by brute force and awkwardness forced the creature to submit. The very term “breaking” of a horse implies dominance over the animal being trained.
Maybe a more accurate word for the manner of readying a horse for use among John’s people would have been “taming.” This is not to say that there was no force involved in their methods. It is necessary to exert control over other creatures at times for their own or for mutual good. The American Indian would not have become the finest horseman in the world without this. In a group of animals within any species, some exert dominance over others. This is necessary for the common good.
But in the case of the unusual relationship between the American Indian and his horse, the key factor is the closeness of the partnership. Among the plains tribes, a child might literally ride before he could walk, as Little Bull had.
The Long Journey Home Page 13
