The English Horses

by William A. Luckey

  “What’s the name of the town, Señor Quitano?” Burn asked. “I come in for a few supplies, and looking to see if anyone needs a horse or two broke to ride. I can set almost anything a bronc’ can throw.”

  The hostler pulled at his nose while he studied Burn. It wasn’t a friendly face now; he’d been judged like this before. “Ah, señor. We do not have many wild horses here. It is mostly sheep, señor. José Padilla and his family, they have run sheep here a long time. José, he rides a quiet mule. So, señor, there is little need for your…talents.”

  It was judgment on Burn, his size and heart, his very being. He’d heard this before with few variations—“Your kind.” Burn felt his belly tighten. The fat man was no different than the rest, quick to judge an Anglo for his wealth. Then he laughed at what he himself was doing.

  “He is entire, señor. You will use him as a stallion? Does he have the heart to pass on the qualities needed in a good horse?”

  Burn told the truth, knowing it would not be believed, but he was already bored. “I saddled him four days ago, and he ain’t bucked yet.”

  Quitano snorted in outrage. “No wonder, señor, that you ride the grub line. For you cannot tell such outright lies and expect to be believed. It is easy to see you ride a mustang, señor. And they cannot be ridden the way you speak of this one.”

  Quitano drew in a deep breath, and Burn watched the impressive rise and fall of his girth. As the fat hostler shifted his weight, Burn felt the colt slide under him. It was a woman, tall and severe, walking toward them. Behind her stood a fat and shiny sorrel harnessed to a light wagon.

  “Buenos días, Señor Quitano.” Her accent was perfect. She stopped, looked at Burn. “That is a fine horse. Are you Burn English?”

  Sweat trickled down inside Burn’s shirt. There was no malice in the woman or her question. She was generous as she smiled at Burn, and he was shamed by his poor manners. He sat on the colt, his battered hat yanked over dusty hair. He’d been better trained but it had been a long time since any of the niceties mattered. He swung down from the colt, held tightly to the reins, and raised his hat.

  “Yes ma’am…how’d you know?”

  Her voice was quick, clear. “Mister Hildahl described you quite well, and he mentioned you were badly injured, and that he’d left the lame mare as your mount. You must be a genius with senor horses.” She extended her hand. “Katherine Donald, Señor English.”

  The feel of her cool palm eased him as he did his best. “Good day, ma’am.” The dark colt nudged him at the small of his back and Burn had to step too close to the woman.

  The woman studied the colt. “I trust you didnot trade the mare for this colt, Mister English. Therefore I am curious as to how you are riding an animal as fine as this one?”

  He told her about the mare, choosing his words carefully. She listened with a glint to her eye that let Burn know she was no innocent.

  When he finished, she laughed with delight. “I am certain the mare is pleased with your generosity, Mister English.”

  “Ma’am, I’m catching the wild horses now.”

  The woman hesitated. “There has been talk of the stallion. Several of the hands have seen him and said how wild he is. You be careful, Mister English. This is not a simple matter.”

  She was pretty when she talked, with light in her eyes and expression easing her face.

  “Ma’am, you seem to know the folks around here. Maybe you got a rancher who’d pay to get bronc’s ridden.”

  She smiled gently. “I saw Eager Briggs with my father not long ago. Eager was leading a big gray brute, just your kind of horse, Mister English.”

  He scratched at the sore on his arm and rubbed his face, then ran a hand through his hair.

  She didn’t let the gestures go without comment. “You are rougher than your horses, Mister English. And despite the wound in your colt’s side, I suspect he is healed more than you.”

  The colt reared, drawing Burn up with him. Burn clung to the reins, letting his weight bring the colt back down. The terror was caused by a gray horse tied to a burro being led by a fat man on an ancient white mule. The gray kicked and squealed, infecting the colt.

  The hostler spun his tale while eyeing Burn but Señor addressing Katherine. “Your blessed father sold this gray to Señor Meiklejon as a fine ranch horse. Señor Meiklejon, he was thrown over the fence on the first jump. He had worn a pair of vaquero spurs and did not think about the horse’s tender hide. Your father swore the gray was well trained until the spurs tickled him. He has not been ridden since…not by any man.” Quitano turned to Burn. “Señor, if you wish to advertise your skills, here is your chance. You can offer your colt against a ride on the gray. And you will win a new horse, or run up a bill with a curandero. Either way, señor, you will rescue the town of Quemado from a dull day.”

  The gray stood close to sixteen hands, and the story was on his hide—scars along the great rib cage, healed tears at the mouth, several brands on shoulder and hip. The gray would do nothing but fight.

  The fat man was introduced as Eager Briggs. It was his burro who hauled the gray; it was in his pockets that the betting money was put for safekeeping. When Briggs held out a plump hand, Burn shook it and noted the old man’s eyes hard on him. Briggs was old, sloppy, belly hanging over his pants. He led the gray into one of the empty pens while Burn led the colt into another, taking time to put out wispy hay.

  A second man joined Briggs, introducing himself as Katherine’s father, Edward Donald. He held out his hand and said he’d heard about Burn from a mutual friend, was right glad to meet up with him. Would Burn be interested in wagering a bet on the gray? he asked. Donald was short and tidy, and his delicate hands moved about quickly, touching and patting a man on the shoulder or seizing his arm to make a particular point. He said he’d take the dark colt as payment on the bet.

  Burn agreed to the wager with stipulations. “It’s the gray against my colt and hard coin…’cause that bronc’ won’t be nothing as a working horse.” He faltered for a moment before he said he’d ride the bronco. He hoped no one had heard that break. He wanted no outsider’s pity.

  As the news went out, the town began showing up in force, with the crowd staying back from the gray’s restless movements. No one wanted to get too close to the bronco, yet they were anxious to watch the show.

  The hostler opened a round pen where they’d once bucked out a lot of broncos. Now grass grew under the rails and weeds clogged the center where the snubbing post tilted, rotted almost clear through.

  Burn stood in the pen, alone but for the gray bronco. He watched the eye show its white edge. He snubbed the gray to the post, threw a saddle blanket over the long head. The gray quivered but stood still. Burn slapped on the saddle, drew up the latigo tightly, testing the gray’s tolerance. One front hoof stamped on the weed-packed ground. Burn slipped the rawhide hackamore over the hard ridge across the gray’s nose, settled its thick knot under the sensitive chin. When he removed the blanket and touched the gray’s neck, the horse barely rolled its eye. He climbed aboard quickly. The gray trembled as Burn caught the stirrups with both feet, drew in the rein to snug the gray’s head. He remembered the story about the spurs and touched his own pair to the quivering hide.

  Miss Katherine’s father had the final word. Even as the gray bronco exploded, Burn could hear the man’s voice above the labor of his own breathing.

  “That little fellow looks like he might be able to ride.”

  Chapter Ten

  Burn cleaned a lump of muck from his mouth and asked for his $10. His lips bled when he spoke, but he didn’t care—by God, he’d earned the money. Fear had ridden with him; no one else knew that.

  Edward Donald looked right through him. “I don’t have the money with me, Mister English. Perhaps I can pay you another time.” Burn shook his head, and Donald sighed as if he’d known. “Come to the house, we’ll settle there.”

  The woman’s voice was sharp. “Mister English, you ha
ve proven your boast. No one in Quemado, or any town around here, will doubt your skills again. But is that horse going to be worth anything?”

  Burn wanted to ask what good the horse had been before he bucked it out, but his mouth was too thick. He settled on a grim smile and walked away, taking the gray gelding with him.

  He rode the stumbling gray in the wake of Edward Donald’s wagon, sorry that the daughter hadn’t come with her father. It occurred to him that she’d arrived in Quemado by herself, and had shown little interest in her father’s doings. He grunted to himself—business between a man and his family was personal.

  The spread was a soddy with a dogtrot to the back, set in a shallow bowl rested against a ridge—a shirttail outfit with a sagging barn and fallen fence. Burn saw no cattle, but a sign was carved into a slanted fence post, the Bench D. Could be Donald’s brand but, from the look of the post, it could have been lifted from another man’s fence line.

  “Set, boy, grab a chair, have a drink. You look like you need oiling. That gray took some hide off you.” Donald at least knew his range manners. A drink would set right with Burn.

  The whiskey scoured its way down and tasted better once it landed. The fat man, Eager Briggs, came up quiet-like, and sat down, took his turn at the bottle, and kept his stare on Burn, until Burn stared back.

  Donald had a lot of talk in him, and the whiskey let it roll. “Here, son, take another drink. That Englishman my child works for, now he thinks he can come in and do whatever the hell he pleases and cut us off from water and graze. Hell, son, I’ve used that land, that water, to fatten my stock. He got no right putting up wire like he is.”

  The wire talk blinded Burn, and the whiskey made it easier to listen.

  “I hope my child didn’t put notions in your head about Meiklejon. She’s thinking he’s better’n her own pa. But I know, and you know, a manuses wire, he’s a curse to the free range and us who ride it.”

  Briggs found a second bottle. Burn thought Donald kept talking after that, but he couldn’t figure the words. They sat in the dark, three men on patched chairs, pulled close to an uneven keg serving as a table, sucking on the bottle till it ran dry. Briggs kept his stare on Burn the whole evening’s drunk like he was considering a fight. The watchful eyes were almost familiar, but Burn had ridden a wide chunk of earth, seen a lot of faces, and mostly he’d tried not to remember.

  At the finish of the second bottle, Burn thought Donald said they might be partners, go up against Meiklejon and his L Slash, show the damned foreigner what ranching was about. Donald gave his solemn word—his share in the partnership would be headquarters, the sod hut, and horses and cattle marked with the Bench D. Burn would catch and ride the broncos, brand, and sell for profit. Then they could expand, drive Meiklejon and his like from the range.

  Burn was drunk, even he had to admit to the fact. It was nighttime, and through the door he saw that shiny horse harnessed to that lady’s wagon. Horse was branded L Slash, had to belong to the Englishman. He looked at the woman come in the house. She was tired and dusty, but how could he have thought her plain? She was beautiful, and he best tell her so.

  “Mister English, I don’t appreciate drunken compliments,” Katherine said. “Whatever promises Papa has made to you, do not believe them. Take the hard cash he has given you and ride on before he draws you into one of his schemes.”

  He stood on legs that wanted to fold up. “Ma’am.” The sound was inside his mouth. He wanted to spit, but that wouldn’t be polite. “Ma’am,” he began again, “I got the money and the gray bronc’. More’n I started out with this afternoon.” He removed his hat in what was meant as a gallant gesture and fell down. No hand reached to help him; no female voice asked if he was all right. He climbed up on his own and reset the hat.

  She had disappeared, so he staggered outside to where the gray was tied, still saddled. The bronco lurched into him as he tried to mount and the move shoved him into the saddle. Once mounted he touched the gray with his spurs and the bronco made to buck, but was too worn down. Burn gigged the horse into a slow retreat.

  He woke in sunlight, threw up before he could roll over and do it proper. He looked through blurred eyes and saw the dark legs of the gray gelding and felt a tug from the leather that was tied to his wrist. A fool’s trick, and only because the gray was bucked out was Burn still alive. He stared up at the gray horse and shivered, then climbed to his feet. The gray’s flanks were caved in, its eyes half closed. Crusted lather stuck to the gray hide and traces of red were dried on the rib cage. Burn winced, then remembered the terrible power of the fight and knew he’d won the only possible way.

  Eventually he reset the rigging and picked up the reins and climbed into the saddle. The gelding still wanted to fight, but Burn held up the powerful head. The gray shook twice before settling into a long trot back into town. No gait of any horse would be smooth enough to stop the explosion going on in Burn’s head. He wasn’t up to talking as he paid a few coins to Quitano for the dark colt’s feed.

  He headed back to the valley, and the ride was pure misery. The colt unexpectedly fought being led and the gray tried to take a piece from the colt’s hide at every chance. Burn’s arm felt two inches longer, and his temper that much shorter when the rough trio regained the quiet of the small camp.

  The gray had to be bucked out each morning before it settled to work. It seemed a miracle each time Burn wasn’t thrown. He didn’t trust the bronco, but it was strong enough to catch the bachelor colts. The dark colt had time to heal; the circle of pink grainy flesh got smaller each day. The colt remained calm and steady, traits certainly not in the gray’s makeup, yet Burn knew what the gray would give him, and he didn’t trust the colt.

  The valley grasses were cropped too short; the mares were foaled out; the stallion leaned down from a frantic need to court and service the harem and fight off any outsider. Burn rode inside the fence each day. The horses watched and kept their distance, but the mares no longer panicked when Burn and the gray rode by.

  This day he climbed down, hobbled and sidelined the gray. It was a bright, noisy day in which birds squabbled over new seeds. Burn fitted his back to a sun-warmed rock and shoved the hat back from his face. Where the cuts had healed, he carried an itch to remind him. All else that was left of the wreck was Burn’s dreams each night and a few bones scattered between the rocks. He knew he needed to hurry, but the warmed rock felt good and he was tired. A dream beckoned him. A simple house built well enough that a man could bring a woman to it and be proud. A kitchen with water pumped to the sink, a shiny black cook stove, a bed wide enough to hold two people’s passion. A few mares and foals, a dark stallion as sire. The dream was a long shot, but it didn’t hurt to dream. It only hurt when the dream was stolen.

  He knew he had company. He kept his eyes stubbornly closed, but it had to be Davy Hildahl.

  “ ’Morning to you, English. You thinking ’bout something?”

  There was that cheerful note, that easy humor that hid the tough core. Trouble was coming—the woman in Burn’s dreams was Miss Katherine Donald.

  He opened his eyes. True enough, Davey Hildahl sat a bay horse and his shadow covered all of Burn through the crude fence.

  “I brought some grub, English. Nothing needs cooking…can’t have you changing that smell you been working on.” Hildahl waved his hand as if to move something along. “Jerky and biscuits, a few airtights, and a fruitcake Meiklejon had sent from home. Says it’s a tradition there. The boys and I say it’s poison, but it don’t have to be cooked.”

  Burn crawled through the fence and got on the restless gray.

  Hildahl kept talking. “That’s a rough bronc’, English.” There was a bit of silence. “Meiklejon’s beginning to think maybe them bronc’s you prize are his after all. Custom gives him the right, but you got a head start.”

  A man wanted what was his. The land—the damned grass—wasn’t the question. That all belonged to Meiklejon. It was claiming the few horses wort
h catching. Burn raised his eyes to Hildahl.

  “Yeah, English, he gave his word and you still got a deadline. But it’s closing in and I thought you better know.”

  Burn shook his head. “He claiming this gray ’cause it eats his grass? He want this rank son-of-a-bitch back under his brand? Couldn’t ride the bronc’ the first time, now he wants that damned fool back? He that kind a man?”

  Hildahl looked from Burn to the gray. “English, that bronc’s got him a rep. Dumped every ranny said he could ride. So now you got famous…a tough man on a tough horse. Listen to me, he ain’t wanting your horses, he’s just asking questions on what rights’re his.”

  Burn spat out his temper, knowing it was wrong, but he felt the edge of meanness. “Your boss has been fencing off the springs, Hildahl. Water other folks been using all these years. There’s a precedent set by use. He can’t change the rules just ’cause he wants to.”

  Hildahl’s face contorted in surprise. “I got schooling, mister. I can read and write and talk proper when I need to. Precedent …ain’t that big a word.” The mustanger’s eyes stayed on Hildahl’s face. “English, you been talking to Katherine’s father. He gets on water and wire and forgets he don’t own the land he’s squatting on. Owns the brand but that brand ain’t on too many hides. It sure surprises me that you got took in.”

  They watched each other. Burn got squirrelly first.

  “You came up here to warn me about something, Hildahl? You gonna tell me, or do I have to poke you in the belly with a tree limb?”

  Davey pushed back in his saddle and a grin passed quickly across his face. “You ain’t so dumb for a horse chaser. Yeah. I come to tell you Meiklejon’s stuck in Albuquerque for another week. That gives you extra time.”