by H. Alan Day
The intermittent whir of a distant drill pulled me toward the corrals. In one of the small corrals north of the barn Carlos straddled the top rung of metal tubing, steadying one end of a long piece of lumber while Ramon attached the other end to a post with lag screws. I opened the main gate into the large training arena. At dawn John and I had walked through it for the fiftieth time, shaking the fencing and rub boards that Carlos and Ramon had reinforced. It was a fortress. Strong enough to withstand the power of angry or crazed mustangs and, at six feet tall, too high for them to jump.
I walked across the arena into the cool sanctuary of the barn and let my eyes adjust. Dust lazed in the shafts of light. The calming scent of worn leather, seasoned wood, horse feed, and horse soothed my nerves. From his stall, my new horse, Clyde, gave a nicker of recognition. We had gotten acquainted over the last several months after John bought him for me. A handsome sorrel, Clyde fit the bill as a good ranch horse. He wasn’t flashy or high-strung but a solid horse to ride. I grabbed the curry brush off the wooden box next to the grain barrel.
“Hey buddy,” I said, walking into the stall. I stroked his nose with my hand. “How ya doin’?” I ran the brush along one side of his neck. His coat had started to thicken, a response to the expanding chill of nights and decreasing warmth of days. He pushed against the pressure, his head arcing one way, then another in a figure eight of contentment.
“It’s a big day. Our new life is going to begin.” The muscles of his shoulders shifted under my hands as he stretched his head forward. “I have to tell you—and this stays between you and me—we have it all to learn with the wild horses.” I stroked down the withers to his front leg, my free hand following the wake of the brush, a comforting motion for both of us. “Jesus, fifteen hundred of them,” I said. Clyde gave his head a little shake and snorted. “What if we can’t handle them? What if they refuse our training? Refuse to be our friends?” I could hear Red and Roy insisting that a herd of horses couldn’t be trained and would never accept friendship. Clyde reached around to the brush and nuzzled my stalled hand. “Well, I can’t help it. You’ve gotta admit, it’s a little frightening.”
I moved up to the swale of his back, home to my saddle. The brush bumped over a clump of hair wadded by sweat. I smoothed it out and felt carefully for tiny thorns that might rub into his skin and create a sore.
“Well, it’s too late to back out now. The fat’s in the fire.” I rounded up my fears, stashed them on a shelf in the back of my mind, and tuned in to every cell and fiber saying the sanctuary would be a success. The ranch was a horse’s paradise, like an all-inclusive resort with an endless supply of grass and open pasture. On these grounds no one would chase, harass, or kidnap. Our job was to replace the horses’ mistrust with trust, their fear with friendship, and I believed we would succeed.
“I’m telling you, Clyde, it’s all in the training.” Clyde swished his tail and pawed a front hoof. I pulled the brush along his back hip and felt him tense. His head came to attention and he wiggled one ear. I stopped. Only the screeching drill and sharp caw of a crow reached my ears.
“All right now, what would you think about getting some fresh air?” Clyde pushed his nose toward the barn wall. That’s when I heard it. The distant rumble of a diesel engine. A vehicle had to be within two miles of ranch headquarters for a motor to be heard, at least by a human. Judging by its throaty growl, the vehicle was large. For a moment I thought maybe I had lost track of time, that amid my musings, morning had shifted into afternoon, but the slant of sunlight slipping through the barn door said high noon had not arrived.
It had to be the horses.
“Damn, they’re early.” So much for John and Russ being present. At this point, there was no way to summon them. I’d have to manage alone. I gave Clyde a pat, returned the brush, and set out to greet the driver. I was halfway across the lawn when the cab of a semi edged into view and behind it a trailer as long as five flatbed pickups. The beast ground to a stop where the road forked.
4. The first truckload of horses arrives
The driver rolled down the window and tipped up the bill of his ball cap. “You Alan Day?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. The air held an astringent, wild smell. “You sure got on the road early.”
“Yep, we started loading these guys at four-thirty this morning. Went without a hitch. Gives me time to head back to load cattle for points north.” He patted the steering wheel as if satisfied with the day so far. “Horses got a bit of a ride over that road of yours, though.”
“Yeah, well. Be glad you weren’t here last week before we filled in a dozen giant potholes. You’d be cussing me up and down right now.” A horse whinnied inside the trailer. The cargo was eager to unload. “Follow the road around to the left and I’ll open the gate for you.” I hopped on the running board and grabbed onto the mirror bracket. The driver shifted the rig into low gear and along the road we rolled, past the training arena to the north corral. I opened the gate and he made a U-turn and backed up to the chute as I spotted him. By the third try, it was a perfect fit. The airbrakes hissed and the engine breathed a sigh, then stopped. Carlos and Ramon had abandoned their work and sauntered over to watch the festivities. Debbie stood next to them loading film in her camera.
The driver climbed down. From a cubbyhole on the side of the cab, he removed rubber boots, coveralls, and gloves, his uniform for working with livestock, and put them on. He walked around to the back of the truck and looked at me: “You ready?”
My voice said yes, my thoughts said I hope so. The driver walked up the chute to the back of the trailer and unlatched and pushed up the gate. He quickly climbed out of the way. A bay head with a white star between the eyes popped out into the sunlight, ears forward, eyes inquisitive. Debbie’s camera clicked. The bay headed down the chute. On his tail came a sleek brown mustang, shaggy mane bouncing in the breeze. Black, white, gray, a palomino, and more browns—in less than two minutes a baker’s dozen had entered the corral. They shook their heads and snorted. A few trotted around exercising the stiffness out of their legs.
Before any of us bystanders could comment, the driver opened the gate for the next bunch of thirteen to exit. Down they came, single file, as easily as the first. Although these horses were a far cry from the thoroughbreds of a white-fenced Kentucky ranch, they also weren’t nearly as skittish as the horses that I had watched in Palomino Valley. Their Bloomfield experience had taught them not to panic at the sight of humans. Their frames were filled out like they had been eating regular meals and their coats had a healthy sheen.
The driver’s footsteps echoed along the metal bottom of the trailer. We heard the third gate open. He jogged out, climbed over the chute, and jumped with a thud to the ground. Debbie put her camera to her eye. Nothing happened. No clopping footsteps. No heads poking out. I squinted down the shadowed lane of trailer. At the far end, I could make out seven or eight horse rumps in an arc, heads down in a defensive huddle.
5. The first wild mustangs to unload
The driver reached under the seat of his cab and pulled out a billy club. He banged it on the side of the truck. “Come on, now. Git.” Metal rattled and echoed inside the trailer. The horses held their position. He continued banging, but no movement ensued. “Well I’ll be damned. They got in there just fine. Why won’t they come out?”
I turned to Carlos and Ramon. “You two go over to the other side of the truck and start pounding. Debbie, you come on this side.”
The five of us pounded and shouted and pounded some more. I expected the lead horse to turn at any moment and exit the trailer. But it didn’t. Two or three minutes of noisemaking failed to dissolve the invisible bonds that held the bunch together.
I grabbed a stick from the ground and pushed it through a slat of the trailer. It ran into the muscled side of a horse. “Move,” I yelled, to no avail.
Carlos climbed on top of the trailer. Ramon followed. They pounded and yelled. “Vaya, stupido caballo.” I peered
through the slats but didn’t see any movement inside. Debbie looked at me, eyebrows raised in question. I was mystified. What had scared them?
“I’ve got some hot shots in the back of the cab we could use,” said the driver.
Good Lord, the horses had been here all of fifteen minutes and already I was being asked to break one of my top rules. Some ranchers and haulers of livestock resort to the electric prods to get cattle moving. The animals get a pretty good sting, as I discovered once when I tested one on myself. I considered them inhumane. There had to be another way. If John was here we would be able to noodle over some ideas, but I was solo on this one.
“Want me to get them out?” The driver had his hand on the cab door.
“No,” I said. “We don’t use prod poles.”
“Okay, do what you want, but get these sonofabitches off. I’ve got to get back on the road. That next load is waiting.”
Debbie, Carlos, and Ramon looked at me, the boss, the supposed horse expert. The sun had reached full strength and a dribble of sweat ran down my back. Shit, shit, shit. I never had a horse that wouldn’t come out of a trailer. My first contact with wild horses, and I’m poking a stick into them and don’t know what the hell to do next. I wanted to yank them out. Yeah, like I would really yank out the remaining fourteen horses. Maybe pull them out, but not yank.
Pull. Now there was an idea.
The image of a truck stuck in a desert wash roaring with summer rains flashed through my mind. The Lazy B cowboys and I had been struggling to free it. I was fourteen and didn’t want to meet my dad’s eyes if we came home without one of our vehicles. As a last-ditch effort, I suggested tying one end of some nylon rope to the Jeep on dry land and the other end to the truck stuck tire-deep in water. The rope stretched to breaking point, but it held and pulled the truck up the bank.
“You guys wait here a minute. I have an idea.” I headed for the barn.
I grabbed three saddle ropes from the tack room, knotted them together, and coiled the long rope. On my way out, I grabbed a broom. The tractor we had been using to haul lumber sat parked on the side of the shed. I slung the looped rope over my shoulder, climbed up in the tractor seat, and balancing the broom on my lap, drove along the outside of the corrals to the gate. Carlos ran up and opened it. The horses in the corral scattered nervously out of the way. I swung the tractor around and backed it up to the bottom of the chute. I tied one end of the rope to the tractor’s back hitch.
“Carlos, aqui,” I said, pointing to the tractor seat. Carlos got up onto the tractor. “When I give the go-ahead,” I explained in Spanish, “you take off. Keep it strong and steady. I’ll tell you when to stop. You’ll have to back up quickly to release the tension in the rope. It’ll be less than a minute. Make sure you stop right when I say.” With rope and broom in hand, I went up the chute and cautiously approached the knot of horses. Tails swished.
“Okay, guys, we’re going to have a little dance here,” I said while making a loop with the rope. “This is your new home and you’re going to like it. Trust me on this.” I took a few slow steps along the side of the trailer, closer to the bunch. If the group bolted, I wanted to be out of the way. “But you won’t know that unless you give it a try. So I’m here to help you get your feet going in the right direction.” I slid the loop over the end of the broom.
“Who’s up first for this adventure? You can tell the others out there all about it. How you got pulled off the trailer and into the corral in less than sixty seconds.” The bunch twitched and shuffled and warned me away with snorts. Every head remained down.
“It’s getting kind of warm in here. The fresh air and breeze is going to feel good. And all that hay, it’s real sweet. You can stretch your legs, too.”
As if curious to see if there really was a brightly lit world, a horse close to me lifted its head. I swung the broom handle through the air, dropped the loop over its head, and tightened it.
“GO!” I shouted out the trailer. Carlos hit the accelerator. The rope stretched tight around the horse’s neck. The startled animal spun around toward the chute. Down it went on its rump, forelegs stuck out trying to resist the drag. Its hooves clamored and tapped against the slippery metal floor. The rope pulled. The horse flailed against the lack of oxygen. A few more feet and he was in the chute. I signaled to Carlos to keep pulling. The horse’s eyes bugged and he was gasping. He slid to the bottom and I ran down the incline.
“Whoa, Carlos!” Tractor and horse stopped. Carlos shifted into reverse to give the rope slack. I loosened the noose and pulled it over the horse’s head. He scrambled to his feet shaking his head, sides heaving. He gave me a good glare before trotting off to join his compatriots.
Ramon and Debbie clapped, but there was no reason to take a bow. Thirteen horses stood in the truck behind me. Three hundred sixty-four days and twenty-three hours of year one with the horses stood in front of me. The driver checked his watch.
I waved Carlos back into position, slid the loop on the broom handle, renewed my determination, and walked back into the truck. Horses jostled.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it? A quick dance. Who wants to go next?” A roan raised its head. I swung the broom handle over her like a boom on a movie set, raised the handle, and let the loop slide off. Bingo. I yelled to Carlos. Panic filled the animal’s eyes and limbs. But it was a quick ride to the chute and down it. Again, the rope loosened easily under my hands. I made sure that it would not become a deadly noose. The roan took a few deep gasps and clopped into the corral.
Carlos and I became more efficient. Each time I approached, the horses stood quieter. I chatted and they responded by looking up. I was looping the broom for the tenth time when a pretty chestnut horse with a long black mane turned on her own and trotted the length of the trailer and right down the chute. She pulled the other horses with her single file like they had practiced the drill a hundred times. The gallery erupted into another round of applause.
Maybe these last five decided they didn’t want to endure the brief struggle like their buddies had. Maybe they finally smelled the hay. Maybe they realized they were here to stay and no sense fighting it. Maybe they were weary of hearing me talk. I shrugged my shoulders. It was not for us to know.
Before the driver latched the doors of the trailer, John and Russ pulled up in the pickup. They eyed the tractor in the corral, the knotted saddle rope snaking behind it.
“So how’d it go?” John asked. He knew damn well how it went.
“Went just fine. These five horses here,” I said, pointing, “just walked off without a hitch.” And thankfully without rope burns.
The only one burned so far was me. Fortunately it wasn’t a first-degree burn or even a third-degree burn. It was more like feeling singed around the edges. With thirty-five more truckloads of mustangs expected, I just prayed I wouldn’t go up in flames.
8.
Vying for the Upper Hand
I saddled Clyde and, like every morning for the past four weeks, we headed through the corrals to the horse pasture just north of headquarters. Four hundred horses now lived there. Semitrailers had chugged up the ranch road two or three times a week, bringing more horses from Bloomfield. Later, after that facility emptied, they would come from Nevada, New Mexico, and sometimes Wyoming. The anticipation of horses arriving drifted over fence lines and pulled in neighbors and an occasional local journalist, all armed with cameras. On days we had an audience, the cowboys and I would stand a little taller or sit straighter in our saddles. Thankfully we never again had to deal with balky horses that refused to unload. But the mustangs made sure to show their resistance in other ways.
I dismounted and opened the gate. The horses closest to me shot up their heads and flipped back their ears as if responding to the entrance of a drill sergeant. Hooves thumped the sand and snorts filled the air, encoded messages alerting the others to come to attention. But instead of lining up for inspection, the herd turned in unison and hauled ass in the other directi
on, away from the enemy. Me. Their caretaker. By the time I shut the gate and swung back in the saddle, they had disappeared over hill and dale, headed for the farthest corner of the square-mile pasture.
This wasn’t the first time we had gone through this drill. During their first week at the ranch, they remained in the corrals. As long as no one disturbed them, they stayed calm. If they felt threatened, they bunched together in a corner, heads down. At week’s end, we turned them out to the horse pasture. They had yet to learn that we came waving an olive branch, not hot shots or long sticks with white flags.
Clyde trotted through the open space, unperturbed by the scent of his unruly wild cousins.
“Let’s hold up here,” I said.
We stopped on the brow of the first hill. The herd had vanished. I hopped off and dropped the reins, ground-tying Clyde. He didn’t waste time burrowing his nose in the grass. I swished my boot through the plants. Less resistance than a few days ago. I dropped to my hands and knees, the sandy loam yielding to my weight in a way the hard sands of Arizona never did. I examined the soil, searching for gaps where plants had been yanked from the ground by the teeth of hungry horses. If cows had been in this pasture, their bovine jaws would have sculpted the vegetation into neat teepees. Horses dive straight down like bomber pilots, mouths open, and bite, giving grass a flat top haircut or uprooting young plants.
Clyde and I rode to another section of the pasture, then to another and another. A few times, we saw horses in the distance grazing. They were grazing well, all right, maybe too well. The grass had shrunk by about 50 percent and its density had thinned. The pasture needed a rest, which meant the horses needed to move to fresh prairie. I knew this time would come. I had hoped it would be after the horses were trained, but if I waited to complete their training, this pasture would be trashed. Within less than half a year of owning the ranch, I would have broken my promise to the land.
