Horse Lover

by H. Alan Day

  I squinted into the sun. Were horses on the wrong side of the fence? Four stood looking right at me. Well son-of-a-gun. Those suckers were in Randy Campbell’s pasture. Now how in the world had they gotten there?

  I turned the Suburban toward the fence. Happy looked up as I drove by and chewed a greeting. While going through training about two-thirds of the herd acknowledged us in this way and continued to do so, though not every time we interacted with them. I rolled down the window. “Wouldn’t want to give me the scoop on those renegades, would you?” He tilted his ears forward as the wind swooped up my words. On the opposite side of the fence, one of the four, a big dun, shook her head up and down as if laughing, then took off at a run up the nearest hill. Up and over she went, accomplices close behind. Oh great, they were playing hooky.

  I steered the truck along the fence line. No broken wires or fallen posts. No open gates. Those horses must have jumped out. What needled me more than having to be the truant officer and go out and collect them was the fact that they were trained. They knew better than to leave the herd. What was going on here? Were these horses part of the one-third that never spoke to us using the mustang code of friendship? Would the rest of this group revert to their wild ways and start jumping fences? I shivered, rolled up the window, and cranked the heat to melt the heavy thought out of my mind.

  Back at headquarters, I found John and Alan Jr. leaning over the engine of a tractor. Alan Jr. had come up from Arizona for the week, something he liked to do every month or so, and had been amazed at the horses’ progress. Until twenty minutes ago, I had shared his awe. I related what happened.

  John stood up and wiped his hands on a rag. “Well, darn. Didn’t want to hear that news,” he said. “I thought they were all good and trained.” He tossed the rag to Alan Jr. and slammed down the tractor hood. “I’ll go saddle up after lunch and see if I can’t bring those badasses back.”

  The shadows were already lengthening by the time John came riding across the meadow, shoulders drooped. “He didn’t get those horses gathered,” I said to Al. I had a cold beer waiting for him in the doublewide. John leaned against the kitchen counter and took a healthy swig.

  “Those four head, man, they are one stubborn group. They sure did default back to their skittish state.” He sounded like a father disappointed in his children’s behavior. “One rider can’t take them. I blew through that meadow back and forth more times than I care to count and never got them to turn. We’re going to need a crew to outflank them.” He suggested that Russ, Alan Jr., and I slip around the group on the east side, while he would cross the creek pasture and flank them on the other side. “We’ll leave the meadow gate open and when they run from us, they’ll run right back into the herd.” He shot his empty hand forward like it was taking off down a runway.

  I took a sip of scotch and considered the idea. The wild turkeys marched past the window headed for their nighttime roost. Whatever was going to happen it would have to happen tomorrow.

  “What do you think, Al?” I asked my son. Though fairly quiet, he had a way of coming up with the right answer at the right time.

  “Well, Dad, we have those good motorcycles here. I’d love to blow the rust out of their pipes a little. Why don’t I take one of the fast ones and show those rascals how to run? Maybe I can bend them and get them back into the herd.”

  We had used the motorcycles—wide-tired dirt bikes—while training each group of horses. We would walk the bikes into the arena, fire them up, and wind through the herd. Motorcycles come in handy on a ranch, so I wanted the animals to get accustomed to the sound and sight of them. Although they didn’t like the snarly beasts, they grudgingly accepted them. I didn’t want to rely on the bikes; I wanted to keep things as natural as possible. Since most of the mustangs had been freaked out by loud motors at some point in their past, I tried to avoid having them relive that horror. But now four recalcitrant animals were throwing a challenge directly in our faces.

  I weighed Alan Jr.’s plan against John’s. The trainer in me needed to teach those horses a lesson, to show them that their safest place was in the middle of the herd. The speed of a dirt bike might just help ingrain that concept. Alan had raced cycles extensively in high school and was clearly the best rider among us. A part of me acknowledged my hypocrisy for preaching against helicopters, then using motorcycles for the same purpose. At least a dirt bike didn’t have near the noise of a chopper. Besides, we might learn something new.

  “Go for it,” I said to my son.

  The next morning Alan groomed the cycle, topped off the tank, oiled the chain, donned helmet and gloves, and set out on his mission.

  I stayed busy at my desk and kept one eye on the clock. A little before noon, I walked outside thinking it time to get in the Suburban and go look for him, but there he was, putting back up the meadow. I met him on the side of the shed where we stored the bikes. His jeans were muddy almost up to the knee. Maybe the ground was softer than I had thought. He told his story over lunch in John’s kitchen.

  Even before he opened the gate to Randy’s pasture, Al saw the horses. When he drove through, they took off in a high run to the east. He set out in hot pursuit. The horses ran, ducking and dodging through the hills and vales. Al would pull up alongside and try to turn them, but they refused to be turned. He tried a few more times but realized his efforts would continue to be futile. These were smart, stubborn SOBs. So he tried something a little different. While driving parallel to them, he pushed just a bit. They, in response, turned just a bit. He kept at it, patiently pushing, little by little getting them to bend how he wanted them. He became so engrossed in the task that when the horses ran on one side of a small rise, he stayed on course with them and zipped over the center of the hill. Suddenly he found himself airborne and looming above a large pond. He splashed smack-dab in the middle of the waist-high muddy water. The motorcycle sank out of sight. I could just see the horses snickering as they ran off. Al managed to push the cycle through the spongy mud onto shore.

  We always carried tools under the seat, so he pulled out the spark plug, then dried it and the wires going to it. An hour later, the cycle fired up and he was off again. He probably was freezing, but he also was determined. He found those four head. This time they responded to him and turned. He said they seemed glad to go through the gate and ran pell-mell into the main herd. Maybe they were happy to get away from the wild, noisy demon. Maybe they finally recognized the calming safety of the herd. Maybe they were tired of running. Regardless, they learned something because they never ran away or jumped a fence again.

  Two horses must have been understudies for those four head. A chestnut and a palomino soon followed and jumped over the fence. Not just once or twice, but every day. There they would be on the other side of the fence, taunting us. We’d have to spend time getting them back through the gate. After three weeks of these antics, my patience wore thin. “Let’s bring the herd through the lanes and cut those two out,” I told John. It was time for some remedial training.

  It took us a couple of hours to gather the herd and push them through the lanes. As the two naughty renegades went through, we switched the gates and pushed them into the corrals. John and Marty managed to get each in a separate small corral.

  I rode into the first corral feeling like a boxer going into a cage fight. The corral was so small that when we entered, the mustang freaked. She started running around bug-eyed and crazy, rearing up and racing side to side. Clyde and I stood our ground at one end, moving as little as possible. My senses were on high alert. I kept Clyde facing the mare and watched for the start of an attack. I watched her ears, the tension in her muscles, her body language. Never did I allow my fear or nervousness to surface. Either of those would have been a magnet for an attack. The entire time I talked. Gentle, firm, encouraging words. After thirty or forty minutes, the horse, now foamy with sweat, started to calm down. Her sides heaved and she sent out a string of snorts, but she listened to me. Clyde and I cou
ld approach a few steps without her having a tantrum. At the end of the hour- and-a-half session she was exhausted. As was I. I turned her back out into the herd and repeated the same routine with the other horse.

  The two horses never reached the point in the corral where they would bob their heads in acknowledgement, one ear forward and one ear up, or chew their mouths or paw their front legs. Their pride got in the way. They were more like reformed teenagers, too stubborn to admit their erroneous ways but no longer eager to disrupt the class. Later I could spot them in the herd. They were content to hang in the middle, not at the edge. My will won those battles and the outcome was positive for all. That hadn’t always been the case in my life. My proof was Tequila and the day that started with a simple phone call.

  “When are you gonna come get your bull? He’s tramplin’ our cotton plants and almost lives in our alfalfa.” Charlie Clouse didn’t sound angry, just a little frustrated.

  “I’d be happy to, but what are you talking about, Charlie?” I said into the phone. Charlie owned a farm down on the Gila River across from Lazy B.

  “One of your bulls has been jumping the fence,” he said.

  This was news to me. Apparently, for the past year, this bull would hightail it over the fence and maraud through the fields, crushing cotton plants, feasting on alfalfa, and making a general mess of things. Charlie would run him into the thickets by the river, where he would hide until Charlie disappeared. Then the naughty guy would jump the fence again and the cycle would repeat.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner? I would have come and gotten him.” I felt a prickle of irritation. I could already tell this bull had taught himself well. He had the upper hand and was working the system. Now we’d have to retrain him, if that was even possible. Charlie wanted to know how we were going to get him. “Will you rope him if you have to? Because that’s one big sucker of a bull.”

  “Yeah, Charlie, if I need to rope him, I will.” I didn’t particularly want to rope a full-grown bull, but if that was the only way to gather him, I would do it. Shooting him wasn’t an option.

  “Then tell me when you’re gonna do it cuz I’ll stay home from work. I want to see this one.”

  Oh good grief. What were we running, a rodeo? “Stay home tomorrow, Charlie, and we’ll come get that bull.”

  9. Tequila

  If Saber had been in my string, I would have chosen him for the job but this was the pre-Saber era, so the next morning I went out and caught Tequila, a young mare with mousy, grulla coloring that I was riding at the time. She was Candy’s older sister but from the start was a sweet, kind gal. She had a big, solid frame, with strong shoulders, and never shied away from work. She liked to work cattle but wasn’t a top-notch cow horse or particularly athletic. We had never been in a situation together that demanded she give everything; thus I didn’t know her limits. Since she was the biggest horse in my string, I chose her for the job hoping she could handle it. I recruited Cole Webb, our foreman, and Vince Sanchez, a Lazy B cowboy, to accompany me. Cole’s horse was smaller than Tequila, but I didn’t think that would pose a problem. Vince would work the corral gate on foot. We saddled the horses, loaded them in the trailer, drove over to the Clouse farm, and parked near an old corral adjacent to the cotton field. The plan was to run the bull in there, then load him in the trailer.

  The corral was cluttered with wood and debris and had loose rub boards hanging down. I assigned Vince cleanup duty. Cole and I headed our horses out along the levy that separated the Gila River from Charlie’s fields. A barbed wire fence ran the length of the levy. The ground on both sides of the fence was a mosaic of giant hoofprints. We opened a gate to get to the river where we thought the bull might be hanging out and left it open so we could backtrack through it. The ground had long since gulped the monsoon rains so the slender river barely filled one-eighth of its quarter-mile bed. Thickets of scrub brush and mesquite grew in the sand, perfect hideouts for a crafty animal not quite crafty enough to hide his trail. We followed a fresh track of prints that led straight into a thicket.

  There was a muted drum roll of thudding hooves, a splash of water, and a big red bull with a massive set of horns jumped out front and center about eighty yards ahead of us. Except for the tips having been cut off the horns years before, he could have been the poster bull for Merrill Lynch. He must have weighed eighteen hundred pounds. He glared at us, defiant, then bolted into the next thicket. He might have been all hulk, but he was quicker than an NFL running back.

  Cole and I loped toward him, hoping to haze him out of the thicket. Instead he raced downstream to the next clump of brush. We approached and he dashed out, ran across the river, and ducked behind more mesquite and sagebrush. This tacking back and forth across the river with him getting the better of us quickly grew tiresome. I decided to call a different play. I hand signaled to Cole that I was going to slip around to the far side of brush where the bull would exit. Cole knew the play. He stayed on the opposite side and started making a racket. The bull burst out. He looked startled to see me twenty yards away. The lid popped off the action box.

  Tequila charged the bull. I threw my rope, intending to rope him around the neck so I could choke him if I had to. A bull can’t fight if he can’t breathe. But instead, the rope pulled up around his horns. I dallied up. Tequila jammed her front legs straight out. The bull turned and headed off, dragging her twelve hundred pounds like a sled in a southwestern Iditarod. A hundred yards later he stopped to catch his breath. Cole rode up on the side of him and hazed him toward the corral. For the next twenty minutes, the fight spread over the river valley. When the bull turned toward the corral, we gave him slack and followed him. Then he’d tire, stop, and turn back toward us. Not what you want. A feisty bull facing you. Cole would fight him again until he turned forward again and we’d make more progress. I could feel Tequila beginning to tire. I was sorry that I had roped this sucker; it was more than Tequila could handle, but she wasn’t going to quit. She remained brave and stayed with the job.

  “Come on, girl. I can see the corral.” The bull jerked the rope and I let him pull us. “Cole, you take the rope,” I yelled. It seemed like a good point to give Tequila a break. I loosened the taut rope and threw Cole the slack; he dallied on his saddle horn. The bull must have felt the rope’s tension change, because as soon as Cole dallied up that big old lug took off, practically pulling Cole’s horse on her nose. Her nine hundred pounds were no match for his brute strength. I could see this was a mistake.

  The bull climbed up the levee and veered through the open gate. Tequila and I galloped up next to Cole and reclaimed the rope. Tequila gave it another all. She grunted, tightened her shoulders, leaned back, and locked her legs. The bull slowed, but didn’t stop. He was furious that he was still roped and in a fix. He hunched forward and stomped down the levee toward the cotton field. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a red dirt bike at the edge of the field. I could see two teenagers in a row of cotton, hoeing weeds. They must have arrived while we were chasing the bull in the riverbed.

  The bull caught site of the cycle and made a beeline for it. Tequila lost her leverage and galloped behind him. That ornery beast made for the bike as if he was a bull in a Spanish ring charging the matador’s red cape. One of the boys stood up and pointed. “Hey, that’s our bike,” he hollered. “Leave it alone.” They started running toward it.

  “Get away. I can’t control him,” I yelled, motioning them to turn back. I could feel the bull’s strength and determination pulling the rope. All I could do was hang on and pray he was more interested in the bike than the boys.

  The bull never paused. He ran right up to that motorcycle, hooked his horns under it, and tossed it in the air like it was a play toy. Everything halted—the boys, the bull, Tequila, Cole—except the bike. We watched that two-wheeler fly twenty feet in the air, then plummet toward earth. It landed with a metal-crunching thud. The boys took off running in the opposite direction. Shit. They probably save
d up a year’s salary of cotton-hoeing money to buy that motorcycle. Now there it lay, crumpled to death.

  The bull shook his head, snorted, and stamped a few times. Tequila raised her head. She wasn’t going to let him get the last laugh if she could help it. He looked around as if contemplating what more damage he could do. He charged forward, jerking Tequila. She followed for a few steps, then splayed her feet and leaned back as hard as she could. I could feel her shoulders shake.

  “Hang in there, girl,” I said. “Maybe he’ll head for the corral.”

  Her quivering muscles told me her shoulders were sore and she was having a hard time holding the bull. She couldn’t dig in enough and we had to give slack when he pulled. Desperation hovered around the scene. If I let the bull go, he could turn and charge Cole or me or run after the boys. None of us wanted to see an angry, horned, one-ton animal barreling toward him. I heard a motor sputtering behind me. I turned in the saddle enough to see Charlie Clouse coming up the levee on his old popping Johnny, a 4020 John Deere tractor with a front-end loader. He must have seen our predicament because he wheeled in through the gate and pulled up beside me.

  “Looks like the battle’s in full swing,” he shouted. “Can I help out?”

  “Lord, I hope so. We’re just about overmatched here.” The bull stopped and turned to look at us, deciding whether to go forward or retrace his steps toward us. Charlie accelerated. He steered the tractor in front of Tequila and bumped that old bull none too gently. The bull wheeled around and took off straight toward the corral. Our convoy followed at high speed. Along the edge of the cotton field we went, then the alfalfa field. The bull stopped abruptly and looked back. Charlie was on him with the John Deere, and off the bull ran, not happy about being bumped again. The alfalfa field bordered the corral.