by H. Alan Day
Tomorrow was Saturday. Maybe Jordan could recruit some of his buddies to help move the horses. A little voice inside me said the more the merrier. At least I thought the word was merrier. In retrospect, it might have been something more like warier.
“Tomorrow we may have a helluva race,” I said to Clyde. “Get ready for some real cowboying.”
Seven of us were horseback—me, John, Russ, and Marty Blocker, a longtime cowboy who was so enamored with the wild horses that he had been volunteering his help on weekends since they had arrived, plus Jordan and a couple of his high school buddies, Mike and Jason. On Lazy B, this size crew could round up a thousand head of cattle on twenty square miles. Even though we had one-twentieth the space, I welcomed the extra hands. A chilly easterly wind had kicked up during the night. We gathered in the corral, collars up and hands gloved, to go through tactical maneuvers.
“The minute we get to the gate, the horses are going to bolt,” I said. “They usually take off for the back northwest corner. Let’s head out there in a line, run them round the outside of the pasture, then get in position to wing them through the gate.” In such a small pasture, this was the only plan possible.
“Piece of cake,” said Jason. The cocky teen crowd seconded him. If the horses had been trained, I might have echoed that second, but my silent vote went to the more conservative “wait- and-see” side.
The herd was grazing about a quarter mile from the gate in a valley between hills. Our appearance tripped an electric current that zinged through the bunch. Within moments the horses were on the move, heading up and over the opposite hill.
“Dang, those suckers are fast,” said Jason, sounding a bit more humbled.
The last group of mares galloped out of sight. A curtain of dust rose from the far side of the hill, separating our team from theirs. I glanced at Russ, Marty, and John. They wore that look a seasoned cowboy gets when faced with a challenge. Every species has its silent language and Cowboy sapiens is no different. They sat straight in their saddles, one arm bent at a right angle holding the reins, squinting out from under their hats, assessing the situation. We all knew the mustangs could run faster than the wind pushing against our backs. Our horses could run too, but they carried a rider and a saddle. We’d have to be the smarter players on this field.
We set out at a trot to put our rudimentary game plan into action. Russ, Marty, and Jason peeled into a line on my right; John, Jordan, and Mike spread out on my left. We stretched several hundred yards. We swung in formation toward the west corner of the pasture just to make sure no horses had wandered over there. Finding none, we turned northwest.
Four hundred horses clumped in the corner, facing this way and that. We closed in at a slow, nonthreatening pace. They began to vibrate with panic. Heads shook and bobbed, tails twitched. Nervous whinnies sifted through the wind. Stranger danger. Get ready to run. We had trespassed ten yards into their personal space when a group of lead horses bolted out of the bunch at a full gallop. Along the north fence they raced, like pent-up steam escaping a boiler, heading east away from us. The herd fell into a stampede maybe fifty horses wide and rocketed toward the northeast corner of the pasture. I expected them to stop there, but instead they turned the corner and kept going south, picking up speed. At that speed they would beat us to the south corner. I waved my arm in the air, signaling the crew to my right to change directions. If we crossed the pasture as the crow flies, maybe we could get to the gate first. Unfortunately, the gate wasn’t in the corner, but about a hundred yards beyond it. We’d have to arc our line from behind the gate out into the pasture. The horses would see seven cowboys blocking their way and slow down. That’s when we would wing them through the gate and into the corral. We galloped parallel to the dust cloud rising behind the hills on our left. But when we bounded over the final hill, the horses were ahead of us.
“They’re about to round the corner already,” yelled Marty, and he spurred his horse into high gear to try to get in position to turn them into the gate. John was close behind.
The lead mares took the last corner like race cars at the Indianapolis 500 headed for the finish line. Marty and John were still several hundred yards short of being in position. The horses roared past the gate without so much as a glance. If there had been a checkered flag, it would have swished down declaring the mustangs the winners.
I pulled up and watched four hundred crazed horses run past me, necks outstretched, blindly following each other, intent on doing a victory lap in full throttle. The wind pushed gritty air into my face, my nose, my ears. From somewhere, a little voice taunted. “You think you can train these horses? Who’s the sucker now?” I hit the mute button. That’s the last thing I needed to hear. As it was, the horses had written the first chapter in the training manual. It was titled “How to Get Your Way.”
I edged Clyde out of the dust storm and the cowboys followed. Twelve eyes looked at me. “Well, boys, we lost that one,” I said. “Score is horses ten, us zero.”
“More like twenty to zero,” said Marty and turned his head to spit. Defeat always stings more when you’re on a fast horse.
My mind sifted through the slim pickings of game plans. “We’re going to play the second half a little differently. Russ and Jordan, you go roust those bastards out of the corner and swing in behind them. Follow them on around. The rest of us will spread out and be ready to turn them in the gate. Everyone got it?” Heads shook in acknowledgment. Russ and Jordan galloped off and the rest of us took our positions. “Mike, move over toward John. There’s too big a gap.” I waved him to the left. A horse would accept that space as an invitation to bolt through it.
This plan had to work. Sweet Jesus, we couldn’t be having horse races every time we tried to move the herd. The other grazing pastures were six to eight square miles. If we had to keep repeating this gathering game, it would be chaos. Our horses would tire by the second go-around and the crew would get frustrated. Today wasn’t so bad; it was our first attempt and felt more like adventure than anything else. Training. That’s what these horses needed. Would their wild spirits respond? I kicked the worry aside and focused on the distant cloud of dust inching toward us along the fence line.
The lead horses galloped into sight. They looked to be going a step or two slower. No wonder. They had been running almost nonstop for about four miles. The lead horses blew around the corner, saw us, slowed down, and realized that this time they had no other choice. They turned and went through the gate without a hitch.
“Those bastards knew where the gate was all along,” said Marty. “They were just testing us.”
I had to agree with him. They had entered this pasture through that gate. They knew where it was. They were letting us know they would take the gate when they chose and not a lap sooner. We were on the scoreboard, but the horses had won the match.
The roundup pointed in bold letters to the need for training. They were only responding in the way in which they had been taught: Humans are the enemy. Flee from them. We needed to change their thinking. More than anything, I wanted to succeed in doing that. In the past I successfully trained horses, but I also had failures, and I did not want to relive the pain of failure, especially as I had experienced it a decade ago.
I had been managing Lazy B full-time for about eight years and had just lost a horse from my string, so I needed a replacement. I spent quite a little time observing our crop of young horses and chose a good-looking filly whose mama I had ridden years back, before we turned her out with the mares to raise foals. She had been a nice horse, very solid and good to ride. Like her mother, this filly was blond, with broad shoulders, a large frame, and an amiable disposition, all traits of a good horse. I decided to name her Candy after one of our family’s friends, whose sunny disposition and pretty face always made me smile.
Our longtime cowboy Claude Tippets heard me calling the newest horse in our remuda Candy. He said, “Alan, that’s a really bad name for that horse.”
“What
makes you say that?” I said. “Didn’t know a bad name made a bad horse.”
“It’s too pretty a name. That filly can’t carry a name like that and carry you at the same time. She’ll die.”
Maybe Claude was losing it. Next he’d be telling me to keep salt in my chaps to throw over my shoulder. I shrugged. “Well, we’ll see about that.”
“Nope, she won’t live. Ya named her wrong,” he insisted. “She should be called Squaw Piss.”
If I had seen a crystal ball sitting on the corral post maybe I would have changed her name, even to Squaw Piss, but I didn’t, so she remained Candy, and Candy remained sweet with one exception. When I went to fetch her in the horse pasture, she’d nuzzle me and enjoy being petted. She remained cheerful while being saddled, but as soon as I’d get on her, she’d put her head down and go to bucking. She couldn’t buck very hard, so she never bucked me off, but when the cycle started, I had a hard time getting her to stop. I figured she was one of those young horses that had to go through the bucking phase. Eventually I’d just ride her out of it, so I kept riding her in an effort to do that.
She still hadn’t ditched her habit the day I saddled her for a pleasure ride. The summer rains had spit-shined the ranch and persuaded grass to grow, especially in the big floodwater draw that ran past headquarters in the east pasture. An inviting blanket of green covered its normally dry dirt bottom. About a mile and half down, the draw spread out into a big hole, maybe a hundred yards long and fifty yards wide, that remained bone dry until the summer rains filled it. Then it turned into a twelve-foot-deep water hole. I thought we’d go check it out, then ride through the pasture.
We hadn’t even left the corral yet when Candy went to bucking. When I got on her she bucked. When we went out the gates she bucked. When we rode through the draw she bucked. Each time, she’d buck a few jumps, and I’d get her pulled up and scold her either verbally or with a little bit of corporal punishment—a spur, a slap of the reins—enough to let her know she was misbehaving. This went on and on as we progressed down the draw. I thought she’d get her head up and start paying attention to the work we were doing, which was nothing more than me riding her trying to enjoy the scenery. But no. She had to buck.
By the time we arrived at the water hole, we were hot and downright irritated with each other. The waterline had edged up as far as it could go without spilling onto the land. The calm water invited us to cool our tempers and wash the sweat off. I decided we would go for a swim. Since a horse can’t buck in water, at least that nonsense would end for a bit. I rode Candy to the edge of the water, but she refused to put her feet in. I spurred her. She turned left. I turned her back and spurred her again. She turned right. That darn horse was doing everything possible to avoid the water. This was ridiculous. I grabbed the get-down rope with its big cotton knot at the end, swung it with one hand, and popped her a good one on the hip.
I should have named her Pegasus, because Candy just about sprouted wings. She leapt into the air and plunged in the middle of the water. I slid off the saddle still holding the reins, prepared to do what cowboys do when you swim with a horse. With one hand, you hold either the saddle horn or the tail and let the horse pull you around. Kind of a western version of swimming with a dolphin, though I wouldn’t exactly call twenty pound chaps and a pair of pointed leather boots a version of a wetsuit.
I didn’t get a chance to grab the saddle horn or Candy’s tail. Her back end sank under water and she started flailing her front legs and thrashing her head. She couldn’t swim! I had never seen a horse that couldn’t swim. I tightened my grip on the reins and tried to keep her head above water. One leg came down on my head and knocked me underwater. I kicked back up. A hoof hit my shoulder hard, another glanced my ear. I dodged another hit, still trying to hold her head up. Water was getting in her nose and she was snorting and rolling her body back and forth and trying to climb all over me. I went under again, this time with a mouthful of water. I came up gasping for air. The water roiled around us. Candy pawed harder, desperate to find solid ground. She was starting to push me around and under. I couldn’t hold her up anymore. I could barely hold myself up. I let go of the reins.
By the time my boots hit soggy bottom, the muddy water had swallowed Candy. No burping bubbles marred its dark surface. I crawled up on dry land, my chest heaving with exhaustion. What felt like a twenty-minute struggle surely had been no more than five minutes. Hell, maybe three minutes. I was numb to the bruises I sustained, numb to the glory that had been in the day. Disaster had struck with the fury of a cyclone, a tidal wave, a horse that couldn’t swim. How could a horse not swim? They were like dogs. Every dog can swim. Candy had tried to tell me she couldn’t swim, but in my frustration and need to win the battle, I had failed to listen. I was not numb to the feel of being a fool and to having my heart broken by my own stubbornness.
I sloshed back the mile and half to headquarters in a flabbergasted fog. I could still see our trail through the grass. I had been out for a ride on a young, healthy, pretty horse and now she was dead. I stumbled my way over uneven ground, wet chaps swishing, boots sloshing, talking out loud trying to figure out the whole situation. If I had named her Squaw Piss would she have died? Probably. But I couldn’t say for sure. All I knew was that I failed her. And here I was doing the cowboy walk of shame back to the ranch, my horse on the bottom of a stinking water hole. I was an idiot. I lost a horse and a friend. What kind of cowboy was I?
That day I was a jumble of recriminations—guilt, anger, regret. I was not in a place to learn. But in the following weeks and months, I looked hard at my role in Candy’s death and acknowledged I had failed my horse by not paying attention. I vowed from that point on to be receptive to what my horses were telling me.
9.
In Training
The day after the horses played ring-around-the-rosy with us in the horse pasture, I started the training. Monty Roberts and his horse-whispering manual had not yet appeared on the scene, and in my research and meanderings I never had bumped against anyone who trained a herd of wild horses. Training one adopted wild horse, maybe even two at a time, was business as usual. But training a group of a hundred, then another group and another, up to fifteen groups, up to fifteen hundred horses? Then merging them into one herd and getting that herd to follow men on horseback with no renegades blasting out? Even for a lifelong cowboy that was one heck of a wow. Yet I held to the belief that herd modification training would work with horses just as it had with cattle.
The four hundred head remained in the same corral where we penned them the day before. With another dose of difficulty, Russ, Marty, John, and I cut one hundred horses and drove them into the training arena. They gathered at the far end, a nervous bunch shaking their heads, shifting around as if threatened by shadows dancing on the ground. I gathered the cowboys at the opposite end. Anticipation filled our corner. I didn’t want anyone to go out swinging like a hyped-up boxer, so I laid out a plan.
“Let’s spread out and take it at a walk. No quick movements. Just ride toward the group.” The three men, all professional horse handlers, nodded. “And at the same time, we’re going to talk to them. Out loud. Real friendly.” No one said a word. “You know,” I said, “talk like you’re sitting across from your buddy having a beer at the end of the day.” Russ shifted slightly in his saddle and looked down. It’s bad cowboy etiquette to roll your eyes at the boss. John looked thoughtful for a moment, then jogged his head as if the concept clicked. We were out to make friends, win the horses’ trust. No yelling. No getting frustrated or angry. We headed out toward the jittery group.
“Easy does it. We’re not going to hurt you.”
“No need to get that wild look in your eyes.”
“We’re all friends here.”
We had walked halfway down the corral, chatting steadily, when a bay mare at the edge of the bunch decided she’d had enough. She sprang into a run, headed for the opposite end of the arena, setting an example for the o
ther ninety-nine mustangs. I pulled up on Clyde as horse after horse whizzed past, so close I could have reached out and touched them. The whites and darks of their eyes blurred into orbs of fright and suspicion. As abruptly as it started, the stampede stopped. The horses stood, for a moment more confused than afraid. Their run had been cut short by corral fencing. I turned the crew around.
“All right, here we come again. Let us get a few feet closer.”
“Bay mare, why don’t you stay in the bunch this time? It’s a safe place to be.”
“Steady, there. No need to bump each other.”
“You horses, you’re doin’ great . . . uh oh, there you all go again.”
It was a reenactment of Palomino Valley. Horses crowd in corner. Cowboys approach. Horses bolt to other corner. It would take time before these animals figured out our intentions. Fortunately the dimensions of the arena would give them no choice but to pay attention to us and listen to what we had to say. The memory of Roy’s niggling voice tried to rebuke me for thinking wild horses could be trained. I muffled his words.
After twenty minutes of this back and forth, the mustangs started showing frustration and looked harassed. “Let’s give ’em a break, guys,” I said. We returned to the barn to unsaddle.
“Boy, they don’t like to catch you looking at them,” said John, dismounting. “More so than any horse I’ve ever trained.”
“I’m not so sure those critters are ever going to be our friends,” said Marty.
